Churchill's Secret War (23 page)

In retrospect, it is clear that the threat to British rations posed by the shipping crisis was exaggerated. Take, for instance, the discrepancy between the stock estimates that the S branch provided to the War Cabinet and the figures that the War Cabinet provided to the U.S. government. On January 8, 1943, Cherwell stated in a draft paper that domestic reserves “are now only 3 million tons above the minimum working level absolutely required, and would continue for several months to dwindle by ¾ million tons a month unless remedial steps were taken.” On March 9, in a draft paper prepared for use by the foreign secretary in his dealings with American authorities, Cherwell again asserted, “by April it seems likely that we shall be down to about ¾ million tons above the minimum safety level.” This estimate is consistent with the previous one if the gains from the cut to Indian Ocean shipping are ignored. But the final version of this paper stated: “by April it seems likely that stocks will be nearly 1 million tons below the minimum safety level.” This was an extraordinary claim, given that in March stocks were 2 million tons
above
the minimum (of about 12.5 million tons) implicit in the S branch calculations of January. The War Cabinet went on to warn of “living from hand to mouth. Any further drop and the wheels would cease to turn and rations would be jeopardised.”
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If the food reserve situation was not as critical as claimed, what contingency actually motivated the Indian Ocean shipping cut? In internal documents, the Statistics Division and the Ministry of War Transport cited the real reason as operational flexibility. As Smith explains, an atmosphere of distrust between British and American shipping authorities had made the War Cabinet uncertain of whether the president would keep his promise of extra ships for the United Kingdom import program.
In addition, much acrimony prevailed around which of the desired military operations would actually take place. In such circumstances, it made sense for Churchill and Cherwell to hold on to as much shipping and stocks as they could, so that the War Cabinet could pursue military objectives for which the Americans might decline support.
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Indeed, when in March 1943 General Charles P. Gross, who determined shipping allocations for the United States armed forces, learned of the president’s promise of 7 million tons for the British civilian import program, he expressed himself in such forceful terms that his remarks were left off the record. Such a large call on shipping threatened the entire strategic program agreed upon at Casablanca. Gross alleged that the United Kingdom could get by on 16 million tons of imports for 1943 instead of the 27 million tons that it demanded as the “first charge” on Allied shipping. Furious about what it regarded as British deviousness in having directly approached the president, the U. S. military resisted the handover of ships.
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THE NOTES ON War Cabinet meetings that were released in 2006 point also to an economic factor as having bolstered the need to retain ample stocks: the extent to which the United Kingdom’s indebtedness threatened its postwar well-being. After the war, Europe would need large infusions of food, world prices would be high, and for the United Kingdom to be importing food at that time would prove costly. Rather than let domestic food stocks run down as the war turned in the Allies’ favor, in July 1942 Churchill had resolved to build them up by accepting Cherwell’s formula of requiring 27 million tons of civilian imports in 1943. Whatever reserves happened to be left at the end of the war would help feed the United Kingdom.
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Surplus stocks would also be worth a lot on the world market. On January 5, 1943, the War Cabinet discussed an American plan to create stockpiles for feeding liberated Europe. Gathering these supplies without provoking a price rise would require the United States to extend rationing, and officials had asked for a British gesture to help “[put] this across to their people.” An S branch memo composed the day before
the meeting noted that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had cautioned against making promises to the United States “about the disposal of any stock-piles of commodities we may hold at the end of the war, as these will be our only liquid assets.”
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At the meeting, Lord Woolton said that the United Kingdom might have to continue rationing after the war, but Americans would still be enjoying more ample portions. “Why shd we bind ourselves to rationing more severe than U.S. impose upon themselves?” Churchill retorted. (The transcripts are abbreviated.) “We have done our share already.” Nor was it wise to promise contributions to Europe: “Do we want to pledge ourselves in advance to give away our only liquid assets?”

“Don’t want to promise free gifts. Many countries cd. pay,” countered an official.

“We can bld. up stocks of some commodities here and in Empire. We can promise contributions from those stocks,” added the minister of production.
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On that very day, the prime minister instituted the shipping cut in the Indian Ocean. Unless the Americans provided a great deal of extra shipping, the goal of 27 million tons of imports could not be met, the Prof warned on January 8: “restriction of shipping to the Eastern theatres will therefore have to be maintained to a very considerable extent throughout the year.” That would be well after the stock stringency anticipated for the spring had passed. So it was concern about the United Kingdom’s postwar finances, not just about wartime food supply or operational flexibility, that motivated the determination to build domestic stocks by cutting Indian Ocean shipping. In making their decision, the Prof and the prime minister exported as much as possible of Britain’s future economic risk to the colonies—where it precipitated immediate catastrophe.
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DURING THE FIRST half of 1943 the United Kingdom would receive two-thirds of the goods that were loaded at North Atlantic ports. British stocks of food and raw materials, after dipping to a low of 14.6 million tons in March, increased steadily to reach an all-time high of
18.5 million tons in December. Such levels of reserves had to be repeatedly justified to American officials who questioned British appetites. The explanations involved elasticity in the definition of a key quantity: the working stock. As R. J. Hammond described in the official history of Britain’s wartime food supply, the most essential stocks were of the “working” or “distributional” type, needed to maintain the smooth flow of commodities. For instance, a dockside warehouse needed to be sufficiently empty that it could absorb goods whenever a ship arrived to unload, but also full enough that it could disgorge goods to trucks anytime they showed up to load. Working stocks were the sum total of such reserves. The exigencies of war required, in addition, “contingency” stocks to allow for sudden difficulties.
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In practice, the Ministry of Food lumped working stocks together with contingency stocks to define a quantity that it insisted was an absolute minimum. This figure was actually much higher than necessary. Hammond noted, for instance, that although in the first months of war the stocks of wheat available to mills had fallen to 260,000 tons, the vast majority of mills had kept on going. But in 1943 the ministry insisted that it needed 850,000 tons of working stocks alone. And although 1942 saw a record harvest of wheat (2.5 million tons) and 1943 topped even that, the ministry ignored the home crop in its calculations—almost doubling its secret margin of safety. Nor did estimates of bread consumption allow for the gigantic output of potatoes (10.1 million tons in 1942), large quantities of which would be fed to pigs. The Ministry of Production similarly inflated the stock requirements of industrial raw materials and defined a “distributional minimum” that it put forth as irreducible. The Prof referred to an analogous, but even higher, quantity as the “minimum safety level” or “danger level”—at once rendering it sacrosanct. In truth, had stocks fallen below even “the real minimum working level, there still remained some additional economies the Government could impose,” noted Hancock and Gowing.
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Unfortunately, “every ton of food unnecessarily earmarked for [working stocks] was condemned to uselessness only less surely than if it had been destroyed,” commented Hammond. Millions of tons of
supplies had to be held in storage in the British Isles and could not be consumed even during the shipping crisis of early 1943. In December 1942, for instance, 1.8 million tons of wheat grain and flour were at hand, enough for more than six months’ consumption, with record harvests of wheat expected for, and reaped in, the summer of 1943. Overall, the stocks of imported food and raw materials held at the end of 1942 were around 4.5 million tons higher than those consumed during the next six months—after which the shipping stringency was over.
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On March 9, 1943, Leathers reminded the shipping committee that the second half of 1943 should see a “large increase” in available shipping because of the phenomenal rate at which Americans were producing ships. The president should be persuaded to transfer some vessels to British control, Cherwell suggested: “Only if we can build up our stocks to something like the 1942 level shall we be in a position to seize our opportunities in the summer and autumn.” Losses of vessels to submarines fell steeply that spring, because bombers recently assigned to the convoys of merchant ships were picking off the enemy’s U-boats in unprecedented numbers. So Roosevelt reiterated his promise of 7 million tons. Even if all this shipping should come in, the Prof argued in April, “it would still leave us short, unless shipments to the Indian Ocean remained at their present low level.”
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As it happened, in April 1943 a bumper wheat crop was being harvested in the northwest of India, so the Government of India agreed to do without further shipments. But it then proceeded to buy such vast quantities of grain—the armed forces alone would consume 650,000 tons that year—that by May prices had resumed their upward trend.
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In the circumstances, it was inevitable that London would later accuse New Delhi of having sent conflicting messages about its need. The Ministry of War Transport pointed out that the estimated cereal shortage had fallen from 2.5 million tons before the wheat harvest to 1.3 million tons after it, “which suggests that these paper calculations are rather an unreliable basis” for the Government of India’s requests for substantial help. Defending the government against the charge of unreliability, Robert Hutchings of India’s food department stated to the famine commission
that he and others had “always tried to recognize the appalling strain on His Majesty’s Government and the United Nations over shipping. We never felt justified in asking for a ton more than we really believed to be necessary. Sometimes, when our crop prospects seemed good, we have stated: ‘All right, we could do with a little less or you could slow up imports; let us have them later in the year.’ . . . [W]e never at any stage adopted what is sometimes described as bazaar tactics—that is, asking for a lot in the hope that we will get something less.”
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British officials in India were understandably alarmed by reports of food stringencies back home. The prime minister had warned of living “hand to mouth”; the secretary of state for India had stated that British rations, which were “already cut to bone,” might have to be further trimmed to meet the colony’s demands; and the viceroy of India had informed provincial governors that home rations might have to be reduced in order to send wheat to India. In late December 1942, the Ministry of War Transport had congratulated the India Office on dealing “so firmly” with the colony’s request for cereals, and expressed a hope “that the demand is at least watered down, if not eliminated.” According to the ministry, meeting the Indian need would have reduced U.K. imports by a million tons in 1943.
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Even when they hit bottom in March, however, U.K. stocks were between 2 million and 5 million tons above the various estimates of necessary minimum levels. Thus the Indian cereal requirement posed no actual threat to British rations. The warnings had nevertheless suggested to expatriate civil servants that their shortcomings were adding to the troubles of their beleaguered countrymen. “I am fully confident you will agree that if we can save, by our own efforts in India, even one of the ships [diverted to bring grain], then we shall have made a significant contribution to easing the burden on those responsible for directing the war,” the viceroy had exhorted.
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So it was that the Government of India came to measure the food problem by the yardstick of the United Kingdom’s needs. When officials could feed the army and the industrial population for some months, and thereby keep up the war effort, they figured they had enough. Rather
than importune the War Cabinet for ships, they chose to ignore the distress in the eastern villages. In late spring, the viceroy informed Governor Herbert that little could be done about the food shortage, which would likely persist for the duration of the war.
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In any event, India received a little less than 30,000 tons of wheat by July 1943 (plus the 30,000 that had been previously promised to the army). That is, of the 600,000 tons that the viceroy had requested in December 1942 as being essential to avert disaster, it received less than 5 percent. As a result, only a quarter of the wheat that the Government of India had promised to send to Bengal in the first half of 1943 could arrive in that province. Most of that, in turn, remained in Calcutta for use by the priority classes, with small quantities being sent to the districts for official use. In April, an intelligence summary observed that “large numbers of starving people” were emigrating from the province—a marker of famine as given in the Bengal Famine Code, the official manual for the region.
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Curiously, the Government of India chose not to explain to the Bengal administration why it was unable to help out in supplying wheat. Instead it insisted that the province had more than enough rice. “This shortage is a thing entirely of your own imagination,” Justice Henry B. L. Braund of Bengal’s Department of Civil Supplies said he had been told by officials of the Government of India in March 1943. “We do not believe it and you have got to get it out of your head that Bengal is deficit. You have got to preach that there is sufficiency in Bengal and if you wait you will find that there is sufficiency in Bengal.” Civil servant Pinnell was similarly instructed, by Major General E. Wood of New Delhi’s Department of Food, that if only he would “preach the gospel of sufficiency” and hint that large imports of grain might suddenly arrive and drive down prices, he would draw out hoarded stocks. Meanwhile he should battle any misconceptions about shortages “by attacking and confining on a large scale those who were likely to be its exponents.” A food minister was appointed for Bengal—Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy of the Muslim League—and although he believed a famine to be approaching,
“he was not allowed by the Government of India to say so.” On the contrary, he announced that the province faced no shortages.
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