How Churchill tried to put the British Empire before destroying Nazism

“There is one thing I would like to make absolutely clear. We are determined to fight for Egypt and the Nile Valley as if it were the soil of England itself.” Churchill to the Cairo Press Corps, August 22, 1942

GEORGE Marshall wasn’t the only individual with a strong interest in opening a Second Front in Europe.

With Axis forces operating deep inside Russia, it was a matter of some concern to first secretary Josef Stalin who had despatched foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov to London and Washington in May-June 1942 to secure a firm Anglo-American commitment to a cross-Channel assault.

Winston Churchill had been guarded and negative but Franklin D Roosevelt – who believed that ­Britain was committed to the Operations Bolero-Roundup-Sledgehammer at that point – was more forthcoming and approved a joint communique confirming that Russia and America had reached “full understanding … with regard to the urgent tasks of creating a Second Front in Europe in 1942”.

The confirmation of Operation Torch (the Allied invasion of North Africa) on July 25 undermined this commitment and Churchill offered to carry the news to Stalin in person, a task he compared to “carrying a large lump of ice to the North Pole”.

However, before enduring Stalin’s icy disdain, Churchill and Field Marshal Alan Brooke visited Egypt to remedy ­Britain’s difficulties in the desert.

As Prime Minister and Minister of ­Defence, ­Churchill took a keen interest in senior ­appointments, though not always to great effect.

On his ­insistence, Admiral William Boyle – an old friend – replaced ­Admiral Edward Evans as Naval ­Commander of the Norway expedition two days ­before launch, ­contributing greatly to operational chaos and ­precluding effective Army-Navy ­cooperation.

Field Marshal Archibald Wavell was removed ­after ­Operation Battleaxe and Field Marshal Claude Auchinleck – who had been given a full year to deliver a desert victory – was also to be dismissed.

Auchinleck’s removal coincided with the detachment of Iran and Iraq from Middle East Command to form a separate Iran-Iraq Command. The post was offered to Auchinleck – who declined – so it went to General Henry Maitland Wilson, while the remainder of the Middle East (Egypt, the Levant, Sudan, Somaliland, Aden) was placed under General ­Harold Alexander who had just completed the British Army’s longest ever retreat, 600 miles across Burma pursued by a relentless Japanese enemy.

Auchinleck’s departure created a command ­vacancy in the Eighth Army and the post was ­originally offered to Churchill’s choice, General ­William Gott.

However, Gott was killed two days ­after accepting the appointment, clearing the way for Brooke’s candidate, General Bernard Montgomery, thus initiating one of Britain’s most celebrated and contentious senior military careers.

Satisfied with his desert revisions, Churchill ­embarked for Moscow in the company of American envoy Averell Harriman, while Brooke, Wavell and other diplomatic and military advisers travelled in a separate aircraft.

However, the Liberator ­carrying Brooke, Wavell et al developed engine trouble ­shortly after leaving Tehran, ensuring that Churchill met ­Stalin for the first time on Wednesday August 12 without his usual retinue of diplomats and generals to restrain his impetuosity.

Churchill met Stalin for the first time at 7pm on August 12 and – aware that nothing could be gained by delaying the delivery of bad news – informed him at the outset that there would be no Second Front during 1942.

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Stalin believed that the Americans had promised such an operation and with German forces pouring into the Caucasus (the centre of ­Soviet oil production), his frustration can be readily ­appreciated. However, this first meeting remained largely free of rancour and recrimination.

As the ­official records note, Stalin looked “glum” and the mood was sombre but the Soviet leader stoically ­accepted that if Britain and America “could not make a landing in France this year, he was not entitled to demand it or insist upon it, but he was bound to say that he did not agree with Mr Churchill’s arguments”.

Having discharged his most difficult task, Churchill then informed Stalin that the operation for 1942 had – in large part – been cancelled to ensure the ­success of a larger venture in 1943, and he ­described Allied plans for this project in detail. One million men would land in 48 divisions (27 American, 21 British) with almost half of these divisions being armoured.

This force would land in the Scheldt, Gironde or Loire estuaries (or on the French coast directly opposite ­England) and Churchill repeatedly assured ­Stalin that the 1942 operation had been ­cancelled to pave the way for a bigger ­venture in 1943.

When Stalin questioned the ­difficulties involved in launching such an ­undertaking, Churchill conceded that “it would indeed be difficult to land a ­million men, but that we should have to persevere and try”.

CHURCHILL was therefore committing the Allies to a full Roundup in 1943 even though senior British and American planners had informed him that such a commitment was out of the question.

Such an acknowledgement had been written into the document committing Britain and America to Torch on July 24 and British planners had drawn the same conclusion after Brooke commissioned them to investigate the matter earlier in the month.

The chiefs discussed the joint planners’ report on July 16, agreeing that “Super-Gymnast [Torch] … must be regarded as an alternative and not as a supplement to Roundup.”

The issue was explored again ­during a War Cabinet meeting on July 24 when Churchill confidently asserted that “it did not … follow that Torch would ­necessarily be regarded as an alternative to ­Roundup. We had sufficient forces to make it ­possible for planning to proceed concurrently for both operations”.

But Brooke corrected this view, stating that there was complete unanimity between the British and United States chiefs of staff.

Both the British and United States chiefs of staff believed that it was ­unlikely that Roundup would be carried out in 1943, and that … Operation Torch therefore had the field.

As Prime Minister and Minister of ­Defence, Churchill was entitled to ­discard professional military advice but only on the basis of superior evidence and argument.

By the time he met Stalin in mid-August, no such re-assessment of Torch-Roundup had been undertaken, so when Churchill was committing Britain and America to cross-Channel operations in 1943 – fuelling Stalin’s expectations of such an assault – he was doing so on the basis of his own highly subjective ­intuition rather than any careful ­analysis.

Churchill accepted that Torch might ­delay Roundup but he believed it could still proceed later in the year, and his ­rationale for offering such a firm ­commitment merits investigation.

He ­certainly saw himself as a ­master ­strategist, more prescient than his ­professional advisers, and he may have simply believed that the strength of his convictions out-weighed any professional advice.

Having disappointed Stalin over 1942, he may also have wished to ­forestall an explosion of Soviet anger by promising a big event for 1943 which would also ­encourage Soviet forces to ­continue ­fighting. Whatever his motives, ­Churchill’s judgment proved faulty and his chiefs’ views were vindicated.

No cross-Channel assault was launched in 1943 – partly because Churchill later ­opposed all such operations – but his rash promises, delivered in the absence of Brooke and Wavell, certainly fuelled Stalin’s hopes for such an operation and, when it failed to materialise, provoked the worst crisis in ­Anglo-American-Soviet relations of the war. Such were the ­consequences of Churchill’s rash and ­unsustainable promises to Stalin in ­August 1942.

Having committed Britain and ­America to cross-Channel operations in 1943, Churchill also committed the ­western ­Allies to significant operations in southern Europe through his method of explaining Torch to Stalin.

Sketching a crocodile to illuminate matters, Churchill explained that Britain and America proposed “to attack the soft belly of the crocodile [southern Europe] as we attacked its hard snout [northern France].”

Churchill was ­therefore ­committing the western Allies to major operations in both southern and ­north-western Europe without giving any thought to the logistical, manpower or shipping resources required to support such operations.

Indeed, over the next two years – until June 1944 – the ­western Allies lacked the capacity to ­sustain major operations in both northern and southern Europe and were continually forced to choose between the two and – on every occasion when confronted with such a choice – Churchill favoured the “soft underbelly” over the “hard snout”, completely invalidating his promises to Stalin.

Churchill’s naïve depiction of ­southern Europe as the Axis “soft underbelly” is also questionable for while Italy is blessed with a balmy summer climate, its peninsular terrain is dominated by a rugged mountain range (the Apennines) characterised by steep hillsides, narrow passes, plunging ravines and fast-flowing rivers.

As such, it is infinitely more suited to ­defence than attack – and defence by a relatively small army against a much larger force – particularly in winter when snow, mud, rain and ice complicate ­matters.

Once Hitler decided to contest Italy – as he did following Italy’s armistice – it could never be depicted as a ­theatre of “easy victories” and Churchill’s ­insistence on portraying Italy as a land of great opportunity – and his determination to commit Allied resources to this theatre long after its sterility had been revealed – merits comment.

He continually espoused peripheral operations in marginal theatres against secondary opponents, an impulse which found expression at Gallipoli in 1915, in Norway, Libya and Egypt in 1940 and Greece in spring 1941.

In March 1939, he’d described Italy as a “long, ­vulnerable peninsula … in which important victories could be gained” and he continued to ­espouse this view long after it was shown to be false.

As noted earlier, Churchill was in no hurry for a decisive encounter with ­unbroken German forces, and Italy – because of its terrain – could never sustain large-scale engagements on the scale of Kursk, Stalingrad or Normandy.

At its peak, Germany had 29 divisions based in Italy (against 195 in the Soviet Union), so Italy could never be classed as a primary theatre, and even if the Allies gained the whole peninsula, the physical barrier of the Alps would deny easy access into Germany. Outright Allied victory in Italy would yield little in terms of forcing Germany from the war.

Finally, Italy’s position in the middle of the Mediterranean – straddling ­Britain’s highway to India and the Far East – ­explains Churchill’s persistent ­obsession with operations in this theatre even when they contributed nothing to ­ weakening Germany.

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In spring 1939, he had declared that “for Britain in time of war, the ­command of the Mediterranean must be the prime objective” and he clung to this view long after the strategic considerations ­­­supporting such analyses had ­evaporated and the accession of Russia and ­America to the Allied cause justified more ­aggressive strategies.

Churchill’s first session with ­Stalin ­concluded at 11pm on Wednesday ­August 12. He’d undertaken a long and ­arduous journey for a man in his late ­sixties and delivered unwelcome news to the ­Soviet leader without suffering any ­major ­backlash.

Indeed, he believed he had ­established warm and friendly ­relations with Stalin, but the depth and durability of these relations would be tested to the limit at their next meeting.

THE second meeting opened at 11pm on August 13 when Stalin presented Churchill and W Averell Harriman with a note castigating western failure to open a Second Front.

In Stalin’s view, such an omission “inflict[ed] a mortal blow to the whole of Soviet public opinion … [and] ­complicates the situation of the Red Army at the front and prejudices the plan of the Soviet Command”.

In Stalin’s view, 1942 was a propitious time to launch a Second Front “in as much as almost all the [best] forces of the German army … have been ­withdrawn to the Eastern front, leaving in Europe an inconsiderable amount of forces and these of inferior quality”.

Stalin’s rebuke set the scene for two hours of bitter wrangling in which Stalin accused the British of being afraid of fighting. “You should not think the ­Germans are supermen. You will have to fight sooner or later. You cannot win a war without fighting.”

These comments echoed Churchill’s own bleak assessment of British military prowess but it must have been galling to hear a foreign leader express such views. Wisely, Churchill declined to respond, noting merely that he pardoned “that ­remark only on account of the bravery of the Russian troops”.

Throughout this ­second meeting, ­Stalin made the case for a Second Front, Churchill assured him that Britain and America had “made up our minds upon the course to be pursued and that ­reproaches were in vain” and the session ended in ­stalemate.

Stalin could not force the western ­Allies to launch a Second Front and Churchill stoically ­endured the Soviet leader’s reproaches.

The mood did not improve at a ­formal dinner in the Kremlin the following night – the Russians were in full fig while Churchill sported his “siren suit” – and the British prime minister was all for leaving on August 15 without repairing his breach with Stalin or contributing to a joint communique until Sir Archibald Clark Kerr pointed out that only Hitler would benefit from such a rift. Churchill considered this argument and agreed to meet Stalin at 7pm.

By this stage, the two leaders had gained some personal familiarity and –with no substantive issues to discuss – this ­meeting passed off without ­acrimony. ­

After an hour or so, Stalin invited Churchill to his private apartment for drinks and the two leaders stayed up to 2:30am drinking, snacking and teasing Molotov who joined later.

Churchill hinted at the major raid planned for Dieppe on August 19 and Stalin observed that “the fact that he and Churchill had met and got to know each other and had prepared the ground for ­future agreements, had great significance. He was inclined to look at the matter more optimistically.”

Shortly before Churchill departed, the two leaders agreed a joint communiqué stressing their determination “to carry on with all their power and energy until the complete destruction of Hitlerism … has been achieved” and reaffirming “the existence of the close friendship and ­understanding between the Soviet ­Union, Great Britain and the United States of America”.

The crisis had passed. The Alliance had survived Stalin’s frustration with western refusal to open a Second Front and Churchill and Stalin had established a tolerable working relationship.

Churchill departed Moscow at 5:30am and – after a brief stop in Tehran – ­returned to Egypt on August 17 to assess his new desert commanders.