The Secret History of Freemasonry
by Paul Naubon
This book is a paradigm shifter. A game changer. For all those teaching the mind-set of the Dark Ages I say tisk-tisk. Middle...Yes. Dark...No. Paul Naubon while enlightening the reader with a brilliant unfurling of the lineage of Freemasonry back to the coagulation of society of man from hunter gatherer to agrarian age to the industrial world, the original domino is not lost from view. In fact it gains in its energy, and with that immense sense of energy the reader is able to realize that behind the mystery of intrigue, there is a bit of truth to the simple act of connecting with the earth, the universe and being one with God.
The first domino begins with the rational for builders/masons to become a revered person in a new society where people actually pool their resources together and organize the harvest of their crops. It is then that builders became essential in building first houses, then utility buildings. An ancient mason looked at his work as he visualized the earth’s resources and transforming them into to a statement of mans existence. Hence one’s home became a spiritual place. As man began to meet with others in general assembly, the notion of Temples became a pinnacle of his work. Before he struck each rock to transform earth into a statement of himself and his extended society, he made a spiritual testament as to his purpose. While this gave meaning to his work he began to realize that this is special work that required codification, rituals, and a sense of a threshold to cross in order to enter into the practice. And hence my dear reader I introduce to you the worlds first college and trade union all in one felled swoop.
So with that introduction Naubon spends an appropriate amount of time on the history of architecture in a Western Civilization setting that clearly includes the Orient. This with extensive Muslim influence, twin to that of Byzantine world is work of the Benedictines of Cluny which really was exported to Constantinople from France, witnessed by the Basilicas built in the East, and then back to the West. The Templars became the bridge and guard as they most certainly gained their earliest knowledge of architecture, by virtue of proximity to the Masons themselves, and consequently its trade secrets, from the Benedictines and Cistercians. Secrets that were Christian in origin, influenced by Muslim minds and exported back to the Christian West. So while in the East, Persia to be more precise, The Templars benefited from Islam where they opened numerous doors for Christians toward social understanding and harmony. On the Muslim side, the principle artisans of is action were the Isaimli sects, particularly Karmates and the Assassins; all Persian, descendants of Zoroastrians and therefore Sunni converts who evolved into Shiite to find a way to accept the hostile rule of the Sunni. One has to wonder what happened to the peaceful Persians that we now refer to as Iranian? Was it 1,000 years of Islam? Or was it 1,000 years of Sunni’s influence, and then 80 years of Christan Western quasi colonization attempts? These questions do not get a any attention, raised or answered by the author. But what is clear is what the Templars adopted through their Mason builders was as a willingness for coexistence of peace with all men, something I find rare in Arab history with exception to Saladin, and ironically enough something that King Phillip of France took objection to.
Pulling the thread through time, the reader learns in order to build their church on Fleet Street, the Templars had to import an architectural brotherhood from the Holy Land and thus may well have been responsible for the formation of the original masons guild in London. To see Masons evolve to Freemasons within the covers of this book derives much more intrigue to the well founded speculation that our founding fathers of the United States were one and the same. Could it be that power still has its roots in heritage well beyond the dynasty of any King’s family? The question does not get answered, nor is it even stated or implied, but is merely the wild speculation of a novice student reader of the subject, me.
Where did this thread of power come from is answered early on in the book where one learns that the first trade union, the first college, and the first brotherhood; all speaking about the same group of men, were masons? They adopted a code of conduct, rituals and rites. Because the clergy of the church, Jewish Muslim and the royalty were equally dependent on this skill to convert the wondrous works of The Mason's minds in to the wondrous works of architecture. In making a statement of their civilization they were granted special privileges in society and as well were excused from certain civilian obligations including taxes. Early on the Church brought along all the royalties of the Holy Roman Empire and all of the Celtic Royalty to to the practice of embracing the strong arm of the Templar’s. These Templars were the protectors of the Masons which gave fertile ground for their power, not only be wielded by the sword, but through the political web and flow of commerce that came with their sheltering of the masons builders guild. Albeit this is only implied by the author; this reader took the bait to deep water.
The Templar’s actually ruled most of Paris among other cities through Masonic Order influence, which is thoroughly described in the book, a case is made for Phillip to wrest back that control through contrived cooperation with Pope Clement. So the reason for the condemnation of the Templars is not to be sought in a heretical deviation. In fact they were never condemned by the Pope – who was satisfied with simply dissolving the Order – but by temporal authority. The dissolution was forth coming from Rome in payment of a debt of gratitude owed the King of France. Be warned this drama is clearly not the main story line of the book, and only gets a couple of paragraphs. What does come out is that of the architecture and culture within “commanderis” as they were called under Templar control shaped early Paris and still has its say in the 21 century. That say is the "mind of the Middle Ages". With this in mind a tour of today’s Paris becomes that much more intriguing to a studied eye. In the course of this enlightenment, the reader cannot help at this juncture of the book to say the Dark Ages were much more enlightening than many modern scholars portray to their students. I believe it was that spiritual enlightenment that gave America’s founding fathers the courage and power to give rebirth to an ideology that King Phillip suppressed for a mere 400 years.
At the core of Masonry and its off shoot Freemasonry is found the ideology to treat all mankind as one. It is very much in keeping with the doctrine of Jesus Christ, and yet preceded him by a couple thousand years. Ironically Christ was a carpenter, Muhammed was a merchant. The signatories (of the members of builders trades, Freemasons) went on to list the two guiding principles for all the brothers activities” Love and cherish all men as if they were your brothers and kin; render to Ceaser that which is Ceasers’s and render unto God that which is God’s. Hence we pledge allegiance to the flag one nation (of many) under God. Its an idea of the masons that we are all one with the universe of the earth all animate and inanimate objects, and they were the first to make a science in molding that universe to suit an improved standard of living.
At the core of the code is the following that I took verbatim from the mind of Naubon through his well researched book. Call the rest of my review a distortion, but please as a reader of my work take the following to heart. With that came a code of ethics, found in the American Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. The code is very much Christian based as it follows the natural laws of the universe. But more so Masonic ideology is God based to include that of any faith and many trades and orders of business. I cannot improve on Naubon so I will close with his words:
Those who have faith in God don’t see him with the eyes of children, enthroned on top of a mountain of sugar between blessed rivers of honey. We refrain from talking of him too much and seeking to define him. It is preferable to envision the itinerary that allows us to approach him and to think that God constructed himself in such a way that man’s gravitation to the Spirit is, by virtue of reason, the best proof of God’s existence. This increasing number who do not believe in God or who turn him into an abstraction out of concern for tolerance, base what they deem to be just, good, and desirable on the good use of reason, on their own intelligence, and on the infinite perfectibility of humanity.
The difference between these two attitudes is essentially dependent on the value given to the origin of reason: God, still unknown to the believer; or unknown, for the nonbeliever another cause for natural laws that govern life. In one case or the other, if we use our ability to reason as best we can, to work with the certitude of the goal yet to be attained, what are we doing if not working under the auspices of and for the glory of this Unknown? And what better symbol for this Unknown than that of the Great Architect of the Universe?
Page 23: It is also worth noting that thin influence of these associations occurred in an era contemporary with that of Charles Martel, who, as legends in France and England have it and we shall see, played a prominent role in the formation of Freemasonry.
NOTES:
Page 25: Before studying the fate and evolution of their collegia, that continued to exist in those parts of Italy that remained free, as well as the collegia in Eastern Empire,, we need to look as to them in the Lombard Kingdom. This region has left behind the memory of renowned architects.
Page 33: Finally there is one important fact produced its own ramifications: The still thriving Byzantine collegia, with their traditions, rites, and symbols, were later discovered by the Arabs and the Crusaders, a discovery that both turned to their own advantage.
Page 34: at the time of the formation of Ecclesiastical formations in the Gothic regions, the Church did not merely represent a belief and form of worship, it also constituted a political organization.
Page 35: in 300 - 600 As a self contained body, the Church had retained its own rights. It remained subject to Roman laws. At this time, the Church did not merely represent a belief and a form of worship; it also constituted a political organization. As a veritable State, it exercised all the attributes of one and extended it authority over all Christian countries.
The builders from the collegia, who, as we have seen, found refuge with bishops, discovered themselves to be bound simply by close personal ties to these prelates. This was not the case for members of the collegia who were integrated into the monasteries. While their former status had vanished, they were better able to survive corporative preserving their practices and traditions and even their rites and secrets which allowed them to form veritable schools whose influence often radiated quite far.
Page 39: The Benedictine Order to which Romanesque art owes the greatest debt is definitely that of Cluny. During the twelfth century the abbey of Cluny was the center and regulator of civilization.
Page 61: in order to build their church on Fleet Street, the Templars had to import an architectural brotherhood from the Holy Land and thus may well have been responsible for the formation of the original masons guild in London.
Page 66: The Templars most certainly gained their earliest knowledge of architecture, and consequently its trade secrets, from the Benedictines and Cistercians. In fact, we have already pointed out the Romanesque Cistercian style of the basilicas built by the Crusaders in the East.
Page 67: In addition to their servant brothers, the Templars also employed Christian workers who were not officially members of the Order. These persons were sometimes Crusaders, but might also be local operatives especially in northern Syria, where the Armenian and Syrian population had remained entirely Christian and welcomed the Crusaders as liberators.
Huges Plagon, the second continuer of Guillame de Tyr, writes that in 1253 the Saracens of Damascus came to Acre, destroyed Doc and Ricordane and captured Sidon, “and slew eight hundred men and more and took prisoners, including masons as well as other folks, some four hundred persons.” This quote from a contemporary underscores the regard held for the masons on the part of the Crusaders.
Page 69: Legist of the time not only considered Roman Law as the science and law of the past. They endeavored, with deep faith, to bring these laws back to life, to restore them to common practice in both institutional and private arenas. In France, especially, government and administrative personnel were soon recruited primarily from among these legist. The evolution reached full flowering under Phillip the Fair, when French legist strove to formulate the power of the Roman emperor for the kings’s benefit.
Page 71: On the Christian side the Templars were always the most active artisans of these kinds of alliances. In 1129, the Templar grand master urged Baldwin II to come to an understanding with the Ismaili Abu Fewa. Under terms of their agreement, Baldwin exchanged Tyre for Damascus. In fact, “for some eighty years, the Templars maintained close relations with the heads of the Isamaili sect. Similarly, in 1136 the Templars of Saint John of Acre became friends with Turkish captain Unur.
Page 73: Islam opened for Christians numerous doors toward social understanding and harmony. On the Muslim side, the principle artisans of this action were the Isaimli sects, particularly Karmates and the Assassins
In the social sphere, Karmatism is characterized by the organization of labor and groups of workers into professional corporations which seem to have been in existence since the tenth century and were connected with religious brotherhoods. It is important to note the contemporary recollections of asnafs and turuq in Shiite sects emphasized both spiritually and socially education value and labor.
The Karmati movement, which is the source of these Muslim institutions, stands out both religiously and philosophically in its introduction to Islam of basic foreign assumptions – primarily those that were Hellenic, Neopaltonic, and pseudo Hermatic, and “Sabine”.
Page 75: It is this extensive Arab influence, twin to that of Byzantine world (the work of the Benidictines of Cluny), that prompted the first cultural and philosophical renaissance that took place in the West during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, especially France.
Page 78: Going beyond simple architectural instruction, the influence of the Ismailians and the Assassins also left a mark on Templar ceremonies as well as other of their customs. “Ismailism clearly seems to have been a practical model that the Templars adopted almost immediately .
It is also acceptable to believe that outside the respective dogmas of Assassins and Templars there were flexible interpretations of ideas and doctrines. … It becomes all more likely given that the faith of Eastern Christians showed such distinctive features that it was almost impossible to discern any demarcations between Christian sects and the derivatives of Islam. Both sides came closer to one shared ideal. The Fatimids of Cairo imagined the possibility of peace universalism that was the rebirth of the thought of the pharaoh Amenhotep IV.
Page 79: So the reason for the condemnation of the Templars is not to be sought in a heretical deviation. In fact they were never condemned by the pope – who was satisfied with simply dissolving the Order – but by temporal authority. … The dissolution was forth coming from Rome in payment of a debt of gratitude owed the king of France
Page80: In short, it is acceptable that the destruction of the Order was legitimized by reasons of stats; it was only the means used to accomplish this destruction that were iniquitous.
Page 90 : The religious order that appears most prominently at the origin of the franc métiers is that of Templars, a fact that has largely gone un noticed. In the jurisdiction of its commanderies, free craft was the rule, just as the bourgeois residents of Templar-controlled areas were free bourgeois. In the cities where the Templars had establishments, a distinction can be made in the same craft between franc craftsman living in the Templar domain, and artists who were merely free who worked in other quarters and were subject to royal an manorial charges and taxes as well as to their own trade regulations.
Page 91: The exemptions and privileges that craftsmen benefited from in Templar commanderies were particularly propitious for increasing the Orders’s influence and popularity. In the troubled times of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the craftsmen and bourgeois of the cities sought protection for themselves and their properties by free themselves from their cities’ control, the Temple offered them not only asylum but also the model of a free professional trade organization.
Page 101: 1.) the Templars formed monastic builders associations that possessed Greco-Roman traditions passed down by the Benedictines and Cistercians. 2.) The Templars had close ties to Christian and Muslim architectonic associations in the East and were subject to their operative and initiatory influences. 3.) In Europe the Templars were the source of the creation and development of builders associations that long enjoyed specific exemptions. The terms franc métiers and free masonry are derived from these associations. 4.) Following the dissolution of the Templar Order, a certain number of Templars were incorporated into the mastery associations.
Page 108: In Paris the Templars’ quarter, which was in full development at this time, must have been particularly appealing to them. “Because of the great hurt and great rapines they suffered in the provost-ship,” writes Joinville, “the little people dared no longer to remain on the grounds of the king, but sought instead to dwell in other provost-ships and manorial holdings; and thus it was lands of the king that became so sparse that when he held his plebiscite, no more than tem or twelve people would elect to attend
Craftsmen were all the more inspired to dwell in the Temple’s jurisdiction, for doing so, let us recall, gave those who came seeking assistance and protection the benefit of two important privileges: asylum and trade exemptions.
Page 110 Thus privileges of asylum and franchise were not common. They long made the Temple highly popular among craftsmen. It was the influx of these artisans that helped populate and enrich the Parisians establishment of the Order – so much so that is was chosen to be the Order’s headquarters when the Christians lost the Holy Land.
The Temple enclosed its population within a huge commandery, effectively a large city that manufactured everything needed to live there. The Parisian merchants, craftsman, bourgious who lived under the Temple jurisdiction were so numerous in comparison to those who were dependents of the royal provost- ship, and tutelary action of the Order was so powerful, that the Templars can be credited with the transformation of the hansa, home to the Hanseatic League of Paris, into a municipality under Saint Louis, with freedom and an administration that it helped to develop further. In support of this theory, we can note that the seat of municipal government was originall located within the Temple censive district.
My comment: and hence we detect the real reason why King Philip the Fair concocted a coup detente with a contrived story and blackmailed the pope to go along
Page 114 The Templar Order was abolished by Pope Clement V on March 22, 1312. In a bull issued on May 2 of that same year, he decreed that all Templar properties, with rights and privileges granted their owners, would be transferred to the possession of the Hospitellers of Saint John of Jerusalem. Philip the Fair ratified this transfer in France on August 24, 1212.
Page 132 The travelers of the Crusaders a Tour de France of guildsmen. Wondering the countryside echoed the rout take by those on pilgrimage, which was how they would obligatory visit Saint Baume to pay homage to Saint James, in whom they say their patron Maitre Jaques, who would have lived near Saint Magdalene and been buried in her famous cave.
They stated that their modern organization dated from the Templars and some identified Master Jacques as Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Templars.
My comment: It seems you could draw a line from these dots in history that connects our Founding Fathers, as Freemasons, to at least the origins of Christianity and possibly Christ himself.
Page 136 in a tour de Paris; To bring our stroll to an end, we cross the place de Greve and the Notre Dame bridge over the Sine. Now we are in the Cite. Here the Templars long held ownership of a large domain between Notre Dame and the palace. As we all recall, the rights of the Temple over this domain were the result of the accord concluded in 1175 by the Order and the prior of Benedictines of Saint Eloi.
Page 160 In the Purposes and Traditions of Brotherhoods; The purpose of Brotherhoods is defined as follows in an edict issued on March 1319 restoring a brotherhood of Saint James and Saint Louis that had been abolished in 1306. “to provide through one’s work the gifts of alms, to feed the indigent brothers, to have Masses sad for the living and the dead, and to busy oneself with various charitable works.” But the primary goal, not said outright here yet implied in all that was said and done was “ to elevate man to God and let him earn the Lord’s infinite grace.
We know about the organization and life of the brotherhoods thanks to eighteenth-century documents. Each trade community placed under the protection of a patron saint owned a private chapel in a church, where it held its meetings. Each had special officers who were elected to their posts-sometimes a provost and a chairman or two sworn masters would share the position.
Page 163 Of the Compagnonnages (brotherhoods, for all practical purpose); Much more than an association, it involved a state of mind, a bond and a means by which workers sharing a profession could recognize one another and thereby maintain the unity and traditions of the trade.
Page 164 But economic and social revolution soon gave the compagonnages a new purpose. More and more, the exercise of trade was becoming the privilege of masters and their sons. The journeyman could no longer move up the status to master nor buy their craft
Beaumanoir in his Costumes de Beaivais (written around 1280), considered it a serious crime to ally against the common good for the purpose of demanding a higher salary. Going on strike was punishable by prison and a fine of 60 sols.
Page 175 The signatories (of the members of builders trades, Freemasons) went on to list the two guiding principles for all the brothers activities” Love and cherish all men as if they were your brothers and kin; render to Ceaser that which is Ceasers’s and render unto God that which is God’s
Page 184 In the Organization of English Guilds; here we pause for consideration of the term free man. It is probably more effective for our purposes to use the ancient French term franc home, with connotations that we have already established: These is the franc hons who neither a serf nor a villain but has become a free bourgeois, independent of any lord Going further along these lines, we come upon the free man craftsman called a free burgess.
Page 185 In the Organization of English Guilds; As in other countries, things went differently for the professional brotherhoods that remained tied to the domain an suzerainty of the religious orders that held all rights to administer justice. This was the case in the jurisdictional areas of the Benedictine abbeys and the Templar commanderies.
My comment: this explains where Philip and Clement V fond their authority to banish the Templat Order.
Page 187 The lay mason dependent upon a guild and subsequently a ligier, lige,or vassal, could be opposed to the freemason, who is free because of his connection to the Church.
Only the Benedictines, and especially the Templars, assured trade franchises to everyone throughout the whole of their domains.
It was to the advantage of these kings to support the power and freedom of these professional associations-and it is now easier to understand the reason for the diametrically opposed policy of the French kings regarding them.
Page 191 The Cooke Manuscript dates from 1410-1420 but is a transcription of a compilation that was at least a century older. It is divided in to two parts. The first, consisting of nineteen articles, is a history of geometry and architecture. The second is a “book of duties”, including an historical introduction ; nine articles governing the organization of labor, which were allegedly promulgated at a general assembly that took place during the time of King Athelstan; nine counsels of a moral and religious nature; and four rules concerning the social life of masons. The word speculative actually appears in this document: “the son of King Athelstan was a true speculative master.” The Cooke Manuscript served as the foundation of the work of George Pyane, the second grand master of the grand lodge of London, who ensured that this organization adopted a first rule to Saint John in 1721. It also appears to have been the principal source from which Anderson drew his Book of Constitutions.
Page 206 Their religious foundation was the essential glue of all the builders groups of the Middle Ages. For the monastic brotherhoods, the propagation of the faith was the direct impulse for the construction of convents and churches. The vast brotherhoods that built the Gothic cathedrals responded to this religious inspiration. It was an era when “man looked up at the heavens with faith, in search of hope and consolation. He entrusted his misery to she who should no doubt understand it best, because she was weak and she was a woman, and she could best speak to He who could do all, because she was the Mother of God. He built the Lord of Lords; he built for Our Lady.
It is beyond doubt that religion and metaphysics were a part of the lodges’ practices, all the more so as they gave shelter to artists and scholars as well as simple craftsmen, and as the study gradually turned on a philosophy that was identical to theology.
Page 208 The hypothesis (on either side) is merely based on legend; not one historical element nor even any probability exists to accredit it. The same can also be said of similar theories suggesting that in connecting the Templars to the freemasons, the alleged heresies of one group are imputed by the other. Yes the builders associations were subject to Templar influence; this is clear. But there is no sound supporting evidence that these influences could have caused the builders, masons and carpenters to deviate from the orthodox Catholicism of that time – especially given, as we have seen that the Eastern, Muslim and Gnostic influences absorbed and transmitted by the Templars did not provide grounds enough to label them heretics.
In order to dispel any misunderstanding, it is helpful to emphasize here how the medieval mind conceives of religious orthodoxy. In the Middle Ages and up until the Reformation, though theology was the chief topic of debate, freedom of expression was quite considerable.
The apparent paradox concerning dogmas also stems from evolution-or rather change in modes of reasoning. Today’s logic finds it difficult to find a place in the framework of the dogmas and theories that medieval logic found entrance with no difficulty.
My comment: Sir Francis Bacon ushered in the change in reasoning with the dawn of modern science.
The fable that the Middle Ages were Dark Ages must be abandoned. With respect to certain crimes of intolerance, such as the Albigensian Crusade , or the condemnation of the Templars, medieval motives are much more easily explained as originating from politics rather than from any impulse to combat heresy. Heresy merely served as a pretext for seeming intolerance. True intolerance was born with the Reformation.
My comment: In this comment there is an implied indictment of the Muslim leaders of every era using religion to invoke power. The same could be applied to France, England, Germany, and Spain of the Renaissance. In modern day politics we find Muslims advocating intolerance towards Jews when really its about a hate for their supremacy in thought and entrepreneurial ism. With regard to science -v- religion it is also a fundamental struggle in politics as opposed to philosophy, when in the end the philosophy is the same study of the same universe with the same outcome.
My comment: I also find it intriguing that Martin Luther, a German brought on the dawn of true intolerance.
Page 210 It is most important to avoid viewing the audacious sculptures of the gargoyles and tympanums as merely a liberal manifestation of some satiric artists who have seen behind the scenes and grasped more than others what was really going on there. These fantasy depictions show that freedom of stone had been in practice for many centuries before freedom of the press. What was attacked were the mores of the clergy and not the religion itself.
Page 211 The international unity experienced by freemasonry was clearly displayed in the practice of the craft. The brotherhoods and communities fulfilled an educational mission insofar as each master instructed journeymen and apprentices in the craft (who transitioned across boarders, kingdom, countries).
Page 212 The Church was the sole power capable of granting and guaranteeing to builders of internationality that earned them “freedom of passage”
My comment: this was as much out of necessity of the regional power because each region did not have enough craftsmen to build their cathedral, a building that had a spiritual calling. This should not be confused with a purposeful claim to the power over the mind of the populace.
Page 213 This was why builders communities identified with monastic associations. Their ecclesiastical quality conferred upon craftsmen the privilege of inter nationality. The builders, both lay and clerical, who belonged to the Benedictine, Cistercian, and Templar brotherhoods could circulate freely, build, and settle any where in the whole of Christendom. Their freedom was guaranteed by the immunity and sovereignty of the Church to which they belonged.
More important, all craftsmen had the right to asylum and free exercise of their trade in the domains of the Templar commanderies and the popes maintained these privileged for domains held by the Knights Hospitaller or Knights of Malta until the time of the French Revolution. When we recall that the Temple numbered 900 commanderies, many of which were extensive, and 10,000 castles,, we can see how operative, especially masons who traveled widely, could be assured of finding hospitality, security, and work everywhere he went.
Mention has been made of the briefs that Popes Nicholas III in 1277 and Benoit IX in 1334 crafted with regard to mason corporations, confirming their status as a monopoly that encompassed the entire Christian world, granting them protection and an exclusive right to construct all religious edifices, and conceding to them “ the right to direct authority from only the popes” who freed them “from all local laws and statutes, royal edicts, and municipal regulations concerning conscript labor or any other obligatory imposition for all the land’s inhabitants.
My comment: you can see clearly that while Luther had a dogmatic difference to the Church of Rome/Avignon , there was a practical argument in terms of power and union busting that inspired the kings and rulers to get behind Luther’s argument. It is clearly the dogmatic argument that still prevails in the mostly Protestant prejudice over Catholics today. In intolerance that is accepted by mainstream power brokers and dealt and insensitively by the general populace (Dan Brown’s following) and received with a calloused upper lip by Catholics.
Page 214 The use of symbolism on its own constituted a universal language. Symbols were used by builders as much for spiritual teaching as for the transmission of operative craft secrets’ “During the Middle Ages,” Victor Hugo states, “the human race formed no important thought that was not set down in stone.” All form as Emile Male put it, the clothing of thought.
Page 215 The symbolism in architecture, sculpture, and staind glass, which was the work of artists under the direction of the clerics, was the expression of science and philosophy, akin to that of alchemists and Hermeticsts. Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, philosophy, metaphysics, alchemy, and Hermeticism were closely co-mingled and these disciplines were inseparable from theology.
My thoughts: With the ushering in of Sir Francis Bacons decree of science, has his original decree morphed in to a monster of politics? Was Bacon simply wrong? Did he not evolve enough to have understood that the discovery of the universe is the discovery of heaven and is the agenda of both science and religion? One comes from the perspective of substance, the other from symbols. The migration of inanimate substance to animate beings that use inanimate materials to express thought which is neither animate nor inanimate.
Page 216 It is important to underscore that the immense symbolism, the true thought of the Middle Ages, was not only the philosophical province of great doctors and scholars; it had a universal teaching power and the Church understood how to impart it to the masses. This is why there exists such perfect unity between different works – though of course the artisans who crafted it, be they ever so humble, were admirable artists .
That masons may have benefited from outside contribution to their repertoire of symbolic expression is beyond doubt. But the terrain was prepared beforehand to receive them. Traditional symbolism was a framework that was ready to accept these diverse influences. A vital force full aware of its universal nature, it did hesitate to create the synthesis and transmutation of everything it found valid in its view as debatable syncretism, or even heresy. Furthermore, during the Middle Ages everything, even that which seems most profane to us remained within the universal vision, marked by connection between the visible and the invisible. Our modern mind, habituated as much to strictly logical method of reasoning as to crystallized dogmas, often finds it difficult to perceive such mentality.
Page 217 They have grasped the hidden meaning of their writing and have understood that the symbol is a suitable kind of approach and even an expression of truth. According to the priori of the transcendent.
Page 224 It is significant that, starting at the end of the fourteenth century, all symbolism that had been used in previous centuries to formulate the Christian truths that had experienced an apotheosis in the thirteenth century gradually fell in to misuse and became incomprehensible. …After around 1530 it no longer had any deep roots. …The Cathedral no longer took the place of all the books.
Page 225 The esoteric character of the operative ritual can be boiled down to the general symbolism of the building of Solomon’s Temple, which was one of the most popular myths of the Middle Ages. This popularity reveals an interpretation of the story that reaches far beyond the tale of the magnificent temple, which David began and Solomon completed in order to provide a dignified place to worship the Eternal One and house and house the Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant containing the Tablets of the Law. To the medieval mind, Solomon’s temple was the replica of God’s true temple and must be visualized on two planes: that of the Universe and the Divine Creation and that of Man the reduced form of the Universe to which Christ’s in carnation had conferred a level of grandeur or some value sequal to it The temple was a symbol of both the universal macrocosm and the human microcosm. …symbolizing the union of heaven and earth, the uncreated and the created.
Page 229 The entire Christian doctrine can be found reinforced in this text: the immanence of God in man, the realization of the law by the Incarnation of Christ, the construction within man of God’s tru temple by obedience to the Law and by Love, the symbolic figure from the Hebrew Scriptures as a sign of the gospel. This interpretation was very familiar in the Middle Ages. Developed as early as the eight century by the Venerable Bede in his work De Tempo Solomonis, it can be found everywhere in Strabo’s Ordinary Gloss of the Bible.
Page 233 Each year at Christmas or Ephany or other religious feast days and commemorative celebrations, these figures (the prophets of Israel)and their retinues paraded in costume. The precessions they formed all entered the church or cathedral and each of them, at the call of their name stepped forth to give witness to the truth, reciting verso or monologue.
My thoughts: In the middle ages the statements carved in stone was the written word. It seemed to have an immense effect on the people, not deluged with other input from the printed word, 1600s, TV 1900’s, Internet, 2000’s. Is this the reason why new churches do not have the rich artistic message of churches even in the 1800’s?
Page 234 The mason’s legend connected to Hiram belongs within the general framework. The circumstantial and fixed death of Hiram, followed by his resurrection within his own person as well as in those who emulated him, is a reflection of the Passion in the fullness of its lesson. It is also a continuation and the Christianized spiritual finality of the ancient mysteries: the attainment of immortality and the understanding through by incorporating the divine substance within ones self and through this becoming a god.
My thoughts: becoming One with God.
Page 265
“one cannot be sensibly a Deist without being Christian, and one cannot be philosophically a Christian without becoming a Catholic”…This was both awell-intentioned and laudable beginning. Still it was necessary for Freemasonry to act as the centralizing factor of Deist sentiments and the catalyst of their transcendental unity around aspiration of betterment
Page 270
The facts, however, can speak clearly enough on hteir own to require no interpretation at all. It is necessary, of course, to connect them to the social structures of the past, but only the way we think has the power to distort how we see them
Sunday, December 12, 2010
The Templars
The Templars
By Piers Paul Read
If you are looking for proof that the Templars and the succeeding secret society of the Free Masons have something over on the Catholic Church, this book is not for you. If you want a thorough academic glimpse of a period of history that still reaches in to today, read this book. The author does a nice job putting the history in the context of the times and not only building a bridge to a current times paradigm, but he also crosses that bridge through the use of quotes from historians from intermediate eras along the way. What makes this book a prize is its collegiate delivery of the history with no appeal of hype to those looking to bash the Catholic Church by making martyrs of the Knights of the Temple. While it may have been the agenda for King Philip of France, this is one French trait that is put to rest.
As a fact finder, one would find more interest in the mechanics and strategy of civil governments on a world stage post collapse of the Roman Empire and the rise of Western Civilization and European colonialism than who hid the Lost Sea Scrolls. More intriguing than any hype about the Templars is reading how the Church became a central influence over King, Queen, Prince, Princess, Baron, Duke, Knight, and serf of philosophy and hence a defacto government including financing of all causes espoused by said philosophy. What made the read intriguing was the sorting out of the back and forth chess match of politics between kings and popes where the Knights Templar and the average man, of any era, gets either caught in the cross fire or lost in the fog. The book in the process of history conveys first the selling and financing of crusades. In that process money and power overshadow what may have been honorable ideals where church and state collude to dismantle the Templars, the very arm that brought them both. In the end the Templars have every right to take a vengeance out on first the King of France and second the Catholic Church as a reluctant accomplice. For some reason Piers Paul Read leaves hyperbole surrounding the history of Christ and his family, and any Templar vengeance to the likes of Dan Brown.
The Pitch: From the time of the Prophet Muhammad’s first razzia, the Christians’ perception was that wars against Islam were waged either in defense of Christendom or to liberate and re-conquer lands that were rightfully theirs. The selling of the first crusades began with Bernard of Clairvaux, an appointee of the King of France. Pope Urban had a voice through Bernard. But in the rise to a decision to crusade the pope did not simply dream up the idea of crusading as a case had to be made. In the Latin Church, Alexius approached Pope Urban: His Ambassadors admitted to the Council at Piacenza and the Council fathers listened to their eloquent depiction of the suffering of their fellow Christians in the East.
In the chicken and egg quandary, the cause now properly sold to the Church ‘s highest authority, Pope Urban had a strong ally in France’s King Phillip where within his ranks was a charismatic preacher from Picardy known as Peter the Hermit who claimed to have had a letter from Heaven authorizing the crusade. So we have a collision course of tyranny, authority from God directly, and the Pope secondarily, and an ambitious King taking it to the people. The French nobles gathered in Vezelay, as had been arranged. Already the knowledge that Bernard was to preach had drawn admirers from all over France. At the core of his message was that a sojourn to the Holy Land was a once in a life time penance that all Christians should make. Sojourn, as it escalated up the ranks of the gentry and then the nobles morphed into a crusade, which went back down the social ladder compelling knights, sentinels, and servants to follow their king. When he had finished his address, so many French were ready to take the Cross that Bernard had to cut his habit into strips of cloth.
While sticking to the facts with a collegiate discipline the author spends time applying the sequence of event upon canvases of character building. Of the people in general, the church held a penitentiary obligation over the heads of their parishioners to trek and or crusade to the Holy Land, and you were guilty until you trekked. It is difficult, in the late twentieth century, when a monk is seen as an oddity on the margins of society, to understand how so many belonging to their country’s elite should have chosen a life of self-abnegation. Without necessarily doubting the sincerity of each one’s conviction that the choice for a scion of a noble house, or even the minor gentry, was then and was to remain for some time, between fighting and praying, warfare and ministry, the scarlet and black. Bernard’s power did not stem simply from influential connections: in a world where so many preached but so few practiced the Christian virtues, his piety and asceticism qualified him to act as the conscience of Christendom, constantly chastising the rich and powerful and championing the poor. Having the backing of King Philip of France only gave muscle to his message. To some modern historians, living in a period when most are indifferent to what awaits them after death, Bernard comes across as a self-righteous zealot – someone who ‘saw the world with the eye of a fanatic’ and had a disquieting tendency to take it for granted that his contemporaries were evil-doers who needed to repent. However, to Bernard, surrounded by secular brutality and clerical corruption, and utterly convinced of the reality of Hell, it was impossible to do too much to save the imperiled soul until the invention of the crusade.
Funding: With the politics of crusades, whoever really did make the final decision to crusade it had to be sold to t he people so that if could be funded. Albeit it was not always the case kings could ill afford to leave their people in a stir over an unpopular cause when he himself is embroiled in that far away cause. Leaving a Court and ministry behind that would not be tempted into a coup involved intrigue that is modestly covered in this book. The history is in the book, however because this author has little agenda towards intrigue you the reader must knit the facts together and make a case.
The funding of every crusade was essential to the politics of the crusade itself. The kings would look for funding first from their taxes and then through borrowing from the Church who saw their revenues from tithing who would lend at 10% interest and typically do so if the loan were backed by the Templars. These crusades and subsequent wars incurred enormous expense beyond what was initially envisioned, and the phrase a war that will be paid for by our children becomes prevalent where for example adding to the liability upon the people that Phillip had inherited from his father’s war against Aragon was around 1.5 million livres tournois. Every expedient available to the monarch was used to raise funds. Feudal obligations were exploited to the limit, and force used to extract taxes from the towns. While the author doesn’t brand the politics totalitarian, from a kings point of view it had every appearance to be as such when it came to collecting money, save the grace of the church who coerced the people into cooperation upon the crucible of guilt.
Political intrigue: What did Philip inherit you may ask: King Louis IX ‘s zeal for justice, and his scrupulous attention to the needs of the poor established his saintly reputation and an unparallel prestige, but it was taking of the Cross that set the seal of kingship: ‘crusading still held its place as the highest expression of the chivalrous ideas of the aristocracy in the west. Once the vow had been made, Louis prepared for the crusade with the same efficiency that he had shown in subduing his rebellious vassals and reorganizing the administration of France. His first objective was to raise money to fund his expedition overseas. This added a twentieth tax on the resources of the Church and subventions from the cities. And this alone was not enough for Louis did not foresee the costs of holding his winnings.
Paralleling the politics of the king and his people, the politics of all kings each individually with the Pope singularly is made clear where the Church may have sold the idea of crusading, it was the Kings and their subjects who individually made the decision to crusade. The Kings strategy included any war upon any select Muslim army and the employment of any Order including the Knights Templar to accomplish their goals. Given that the Pope had supreme authority over military orders, it shows some restraint that there was only one instance where Popes directly employed the service of any “Order” in their wars: that being in 1267 Pope Clement IV asked for Hosptaller help against the Germans in Sicily. Clearly, whether they were in the service of the popes or kings, individual knights belonging to their military orders were expected to take up arms to protect their master’s interest. That one case aside because it was through the church that taxes were collected, and it was through the Templars that funds were secured, the arrangement found the Pope, Kings, and Templars in a triangle of intrigue. The former two students of philosophy and higher learning and the latter a student of high minded honor and chivalry. The intrigue continues for close to 300 years until you read of King Philips’ disposal of the Templars in the early 1300’s and its not until the American and French revolutions that you see a bold separation of Church and State where the second shoe drops.
Appearance are not always what they seem to be: While it appears to be all about the money, not simply to launch off into a crusade but then to sustain the crusade and then support the conquered lands against re-conquest by Muslims or by rival Christian Kings led to schemes of power bestowed upon the Templars mostly by default. Honest tax collecting alone could not stand up to such goals. In the Kingdom of Aragon for example, the kings were constantly borrowing money from the Temple and in France the Order often had difficulty in meeting the royal demands to defend the lands for which their funds are underwritten. While the Church institutions were readier to lend money to the Crown if the Temple secured the loan it appeared as though the Templars were one up over both Church and State. While power is implied, the actuality of interest bearing profit did not always follow suit. In Syria and Palestine, too, the Templars’ wealth and power increased because the nobility of Outremer/Jerusalem, whose fiefs were now confined to enclaves around costal cities, could not afford to garrison their castles and so handed them over to military orders, including the Templars. In the same way that modern charities build up investments, the Templars used their funds not just to pursue the war against the Sacacens but also to extend their own estates in the East. But one must remember the expense to fortify the liberties for the people demanded by said clientele.
The appearance of cash and its accompanying power was deceiving, rising to the top of the heap of deception was King Philip of France. Despite the evidence that the Temple often had cash in hand, their running costs were considerable: in the Latin states they garrisoned and maintained at least fifty-three castles or fortified staging posts ranging from great fortresses like Castle Pilgrim to small watch towers on pilgrim routes. Though the Temple’s wealth had led to some envy, their annual income from landed property did not exceed 4,800 livers, not enough to inspire strong feelings of jealousy or a general dislike, with the exception of King Philip who was really in a power struggle with Pope Clement. James of Molay , the head of the order who at the time of French inquisition of the early 1300s had been warmly received by King Edward I when he visited England in 1294 was caught in the middle. He did not see it coming. The politics first between Philip and Pope Clement, and then the coalesced politics of neighboring kings of Europe who fell in line left the Molay and his Templar’s as the ‘odd man out’.
Due Process? While it is often called an inquisition the legal proceedings described in the book gave much to the transcendence of Jewish to Roman law as it survived through to the 14 century. Due process did exist in a primitive sense or should I say in the same way as we experience it today. The following dominoes had to fall in order for the Templars to meet their demise. First, founded to root heresy in Languedoc, and staffed by the friars of the Order of Preachers founded by Dominic Guzman, since 1234 a canonized saint, the Inquisition in France had become an instrument of coercion in the hands of the state. The chief Inquisitor, William of Paris, was King Philip’s confessor and given the King’s piety, was no doubt privy to his plans. On Sunday after the Templar’s arrest, it was Dominican preachers who first explained the reasons for the arrests at a public meeting in the King’s garden, appearing along side the officers of the King. Who was to argue?
King Philip using political maneuvering that I have come to know as typically French, put Pope Clement on the defense as a way to coerce his cooperation in the foiling of the Templars. When the trial eventually opened Clement himself defended the record of Boniface VIII, which was at the core of King Philips intrigue, before advocates of the French King, recalling his piety, his service to the Church and the many manifestations of his orthodox faith. After this, he allowed the trial to continue but, thanks to his knowledge of Roman law, was able to spin things out, either by calling for written depositions or in December 1310, by suspending the proceedings on the grounds that he was suffering one of the reoccurring bouts of his illness, thus leaving a complete distraction to evidence of Clements’ collusion with Philip against the Templars. In the end Clement only managed to slow Philip down as he found it easier to collude with the King that the head of the Knights Templar, who was not versed in politics, than to exonerate them.
While Hospitallers and the Masonic orders engaged the services of legal counsel, the Knights Templar ‘seem to have made little effort to recruit lawyers or to raise up legal experts from within their own ranks’ despite the vigilance with which the head protected their rights an immunities….James Molay later regretted his omission. Through ignorant chivalry where no prove of any allegations could be found in due process of a trial , so guilt was garnered through torture. Said Peter of Balongna of the torture of the Templar Knights to confess upon the allegations; ‘Torture, removed any freedom of mind, which is what every good man ought to have’ ‘It deprived them of memory, knowledge and understanding’ and therefore anything said under torture should be discounted, hence my earlier ascertain of a French totalitarian state which stood in varying degrees as such until 1892. What Philip won was his power back as he was persuaded by his brother, Charles of Valois, and his chief minister, Enguerrand of Marginy, that capitulating to Pope Clement on the question of the Templar’s property was a price worth paying to secure the definitive dissolution of the Order.
The evidence: King Philip IV of France was not making things up entirely. The Templar Knight left a trail of questionable activity that enabled the ‘French connection’ and conviction. in 1143; Of the seventy-three clauses in the Rule approved by the council of Troyes for the Knights of the Temple, around thirty are based on the rule of the Benedict of Nursia. Bernard and the Council fathers seemed more anxious to make monks out of knights than knights out of monks. Hence there was always an exclusive private mystery hanging over their day to day activities. When one thinks of the Knights Templar against the setting of the average educated person one must not get confused with the stories of King Arthur. The men of the order were of all sorts as it would require an Order to be completely self sustaining. They were not a band of merry chivalrous men banging mugs of mead on the table and reading scripture from the Dead Sea scrolls while shuffling the assets within their 401K accounts.
The Knights founder, Hugh of Payns proposed the incorporation of a community of knights that would follow the Rule of religious order but devote themselves to the protection of pilgrims, The Rule they had in mind was Augustine of Hippo, followed by the cannons of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Within that Order, living very Spartan lives the members of whom were not all knights, formed a close bond. They followed rigid rituals in daily life habits that may have drawn question, however the rituals were merely aimed at healthy eating and grooming separate from what may have been an imperfect world. Not intermixing with the common folks, women folk, it was easy to perceive that perhaps they were homosexual or at least homosexual activity was taking place. If it was, it was in no way a part of any Templar policy or sanction. If, therefore, one can avoid the distortions of late-twentieth century prejudice, one can be fairly certain that there was no institutionalized sodomy in the Temple as alleged by King Philip; and at the same the truth which has emerged from recent research is that the crusader frequently sold or mortgaged all his worldly wealth in hope of a purely spiritual reward. Unlike the Muslim jihad, the crusader commitment was always voluntary.
The conspiracy…or not.
Myth and history: There are 300 plus pages in this book and nothing is brought to the fore on the Mary Magdalene or the Lost Dead Sea Scroll conspiracy. There is a tremendous amount of dialogue surrounding the anti Christ and homosexual brought out by King Philip of France, home of the suggested burial of Mary Magdalene, only to be confessed to through torture. Was the Templars’ wealth extraneous in any one persons mind is a question answered only by King Philips’ condemnation of them in a power grab. Only time allowed for the culprits escape from this world where reputations live only in history books of all genres.
King Philips’ speculation did not end with the eighteenth century; in fact it has never been more feverish than it is today, creating, in words of Malcolm Barber, Britain’s foremost Templar historian, ‘a very active little industry, profitable to scientists, art historians, journalists, publishers, and television pundits alike’. Starting with esoteric claims of the Freemasons, the Templars are claimed to have been the guardians of the Holy Grail which in turn the chalice to have been used by Christ in the Last Supper, the blood line of the Merovingian kings descended from the union of Christ with Mary Magdalene, or simply the Templars’ most precious relic the Shroud of Turin.
Intriguing though such speculation may be, they betray by their use of language the lack of a plausible historical foundation: ‘the answer would seem to lie…’; ‘it seems very likely that’…’it seems certain that’…After some research, writes Andrew Sinclair in his book The Discovery of the Grail, these fantasists put forward a hypothesis. Was Christ or the Grail buried under a mountain in the south of France? Did Jesus marry Magdalene and provide the blood line of the Merovingian” Within a few pages, the assertion becomes the actual, the idea is changed into the proof… Or as Peter Partner succinctly puts it in relation to the Templars, Templarism…was a belief manufactured by charlatans for their dupes. It is this book that finally sheds light on the real culprit of the unjust case against both the Catholic Church and the Templar Knights. The first of many intrigues of French…imperialism?
By Piers Paul Read
If you are looking for proof that the Templars and the succeeding secret society of the Free Masons have something over on the Catholic Church, this book is not for you. If you want a thorough academic glimpse of a period of history that still reaches in to today, read this book. The author does a nice job putting the history in the context of the times and not only building a bridge to a current times paradigm, but he also crosses that bridge through the use of quotes from historians from intermediate eras along the way. What makes this book a prize is its collegiate delivery of the history with no appeal of hype to those looking to bash the Catholic Church by making martyrs of the Knights of the Temple. While it may have been the agenda for King Philip of France, this is one French trait that is put to rest.
As a fact finder, one would find more interest in the mechanics and strategy of civil governments on a world stage post collapse of the Roman Empire and the rise of Western Civilization and European colonialism than who hid the Lost Sea Scrolls. More intriguing than any hype about the Templars is reading how the Church became a central influence over King, Queen, Prince, Princess, Baron, Duke, Knight, and serf of philosophy and hence a defacto government including financing of all causes espoused by said philosophy. What made the read intriguing was the sorting out of the back and forth chess match of politics between kings and popes where the Knights Templar and the average man, of any era, gets either caught in the cross fire or lost in the fog. The book in the process of history conveys first the selling and financing of crusades. In that process money and power overshadow what may have been honorable ideals where church and state collude to dismantle the Templars, the very arm that brought them both. In the end the Templars have every right to take a vengeance out on first the King of France and second the Catholic Church as a reluctant accomplice. For some reason Piers Paul Read leaves hyperbole surrounding the history of Christ and his family, and any Templar vengeance to the likes of Dan Brown.
The Pitch: From the time of the Prophet Muhammad’s first razzia, the Christians’ perception was that wars against Islam were waged either in defense of Christendom or to liberate and re-conquer lands that were rightfully theirs. The selling of the first crusades began with Bernard of Clairvaux, an appointee of the King of France. Pope Urban had a voice through Bernard. But in the rise to a decision to crusade the pope did not simply dream up the idea of crusading as a case had to be made. In the Latin Church, Alexius approached Pope Urban: His Ambassadors admitted to the Council at Piacenza and the Council fathers listened to their eloquent depiction of the suffering of their fellow Christians in the East.
In the chicken and egg quandary, the cause now properly sold to the Church ‘s highest authority, Pope Urban had a strong ally in France’s King Phillip where within his ranks was a charismatic preacher from Picardy known as Peter the Hermit who claimed to have had a letter from Heaven authorizing the crusade. So we have a collision course of tyranny, authority from God directly, and the Pope secondarily, and an ambitious King taking it to the people. The French nobles gathered in Vezelay, as had been arranged. Already the knowledge that Bernard was to preach had drawn admirers from all over France. At the core of his message was that a sojourn to the Holy Land was a once in a life time penance that all Christians should make. Sojourn, as it escalated up the ranks of the gentry and then the nobles morphed into a crusade, which went back down the social ladder compelling knights, sentinels, and servants to follow their king. When he had finished his address, so many French were ready to take the Cross that Bernard had to cut his habit into strips of cloth.
While sticking to the facts with a collegiate discipline the author spends time applying the sequence of event upon canvases of character building. Of the people in general, the church held a penitentiary obligation over the heads of their parishioners to trek and or crusade to the Holy Land, and you were guilty until you trekked. It is difficult, in the late twentieth century, when a monk is seen as an oddity on the margins of society, to understand how so many belonging to their country’s elite should have chosen a life of self-abnegation. Without necessarily doubting the sincerity of each one’s conviction that the choice for a scion of a noble house, or even the minor gentry, was then and was to remain for some time, between fighting and praying, warfare and ministry, the scarlet and black. Bernard’s power did not stem simply from influential connections: in a world where so many preached but so few practiced the Christian virtues, his piety and asceticism qualified him to act as the conscience of Christendom, constantly chastising the rich and powerful and championing the poor. Having the backing of King Philip of France only gave muscle to his message. To some modern historians, living in a period when most are indifferent to what awaits them after death, Bernard comes across as a self-righteous zealot – someone who ‘saw the world with the eye of a fanatic’ and had a disquieting tendency to take it for granted that his contemporaries were evil-doers who needed to repent. However, to Bernard, surrounded by secular brutality and clerical corruption, and utterly convinced of the reality of Hell, it was impossible to do too much to save the imperiled soul until the invention of the crusade.
Funding: With the politics of crusades, whoever really did make the final decision to crusade it had to be sold to t he people so that if could be funded. Albeit it was not always the case kings could ill afford to leave their people in a stir over an unpopular cause when he himself is embroiled in that far away cause. Leaving a Court and ministry behind that would not be tempted into a coup involved intrigue that is modestly covered in this book. The history is in the book, however because this author has little agenda towards intrigue you the reader must knit the facts together and make a case.
The funding of every crusade was essential to the politics of the crusade itself. The kings would look for funding first from their taxes and then through borrowing from the Church who saw their revenues from tithing who would lend at 10% interest and typically do so if the loan were backed by the Templars. These crusades and subsequent wars incurred enormous expense beyond what was initially envisioned, and the phrase a war that will be paid for by our children becomes prevalent where for example adding to the liability upon the people that Phillip had inherited from his father’s war against Aragon was around 1.5 million livres tournois. Every expedient available to the monarch was used to raise funds. Feudal obligations were exploited to the limit, and force used to extract taxes from the towns. While the author doesn’t brand the politics totalitarian, from a kings point of view it had every appearance to be as such when it came to collecting money, save the grace of the church who coerced the people into cooperation upon the crucible of guilt.
Political intrigue: What did Philip inherit you may ask: King Louis IX ‘s zeal for justice, and his scrupulous attention to the needs of the poor established his saintly reputation and an unparallel prestige, but it was taking of the Cross that set the seal of kingship: ‘crusading still held its place as the highest expression of the chivalrous ideas of the aristocracy in the west. Once the vow had been made, Louis prepared for the crusade with the same efficiency that he had shown in subduing his rebellious vassals and reorganizing the administration of France. His first objective was to raise money to fund his expedition overseas. This added a twentieth tax on the resources of the Church and subventions from the cities. And this alone was not enough for Louis did not foresee the costs of holding his winnings.
Paralleling the politics of the king and his people, the politics of all kings each individually with the Pope singularly is made clear where the Church may have sold the idea of crusading, it was the Kings and their subjects who individually made the decision to crusade. The Kings strategy included any war upon any select Muslim army and the employment of any Order including the Knights Templar to accomplish their goals. Given that the Pope had supreme authority over military orders, it shows some restraint that there was only one instance where Popes directly employed the service of any “Order” in their wars: that being in 1267 Pope Clement IV asked for Hosptaller help against the Germans in Sicily. Clearly, whether they were in the service of the popes or kings, individual knights belonging to their military orders were expected to take up arms to protect their master’s interest. That one case aside because it was through the church that taxes were collected, and it was through the Templars that funds were secured, the arrangement found the Pope, Kings, and Templars in a triangle of intrigue. The former two students of philosophy and higher learning and the latter a student of high minded honor and chivalry. The intrigue continues for close to 300 years until you read of King Philips’ disposal of the Templars in the early 1300’s and its not until the American and French revolutions that you see a bold separation of Church and State where the second shoe drops.
Appearance are not always what they seem to be: While it appears to be all about the money, not simply to launch off into a crusade but then to sustain the crusade and then support the conquered lands against re-conquest by Muslims or by rival Christian Kings led to schemes of power bestowed upon the Templars mostly by default. Honest tax collecting alone could not stand up to such goals. In the Kingdom of Aragon for example, the kings were constantly borrowing money from the Temple and in France the Order often had difficulty in meeting the royal demands to defend the lands for which their funds are underwritten. While the Church institutions were readier to lend money to the Crown if the Temple secured the loan it appeared as though the Templars were one up over both Church and State. While power is implied, the actuality of interest bearing profit did not always follow suit. In Syria and Palestine, too, the Templars’ wealth and power increased because the nobility of Outremer/Jerusalem, whose fiefs were now confined to enclaves around costal cities, could not afford to garrison their castles and so handed them over to military orders, including the Templars. In the same way that modern charities build up investments, the Templars used their funds not just to pursue the war against the Sacacens but also to extend their own estates in the East. But one must remember the expense to fortify the liberties for the people demanded by said clientele.
The appearance of cash and its accompanying power was deceiving, rising to the top of the heap of deception was King Philip of France. Despite the evidence that the Temple often had cash in hand, their running costs were considerable: in the Latin states they garrisoned and maintained at least fifty-three castles or fortified staging posts ranging from great fortresses like Castle Pilgrim to small watch towers on pilgrim routes. Though the Temple’s wealth had led to some envy, their annual income from landed property did not exceed 4,800 livers, not enough to inspire strong feelings of jealousy or a general dislike, with the exception of King Philip who was really in a power struggle with Pope Clement. James of Molay , the head of the order who at the time of French inquisition of the early 1300s had been warmly received by King Edward I when he visited England in 1294 was caught in the middle. He did not see it coming. The politics first between Philip and Pope Clement, and then the coalesced politics of neighboring kings of Europe who fell in line left the Molay and his Templar’s as the ‘odd man out’.
Due Process? While it is often called an inquisition the legal proceedings described in the book gave much to the transcendence of Jewish to Roman law as it survived through to the 14 century. Due process did exist in a primitive sense or should I say in the same way as we experience it today. The following dominoes had to fall in order for the Templars to meet their demise. First, founded to root heresy in Languedoc, and staffed by the friars of the Order of Preachers founded by Dominic Guzman, since 1234 a canonized saint, the Inquisition in France had become an instrument of coercion in the hands of the state. The chief Inquisitor, William of Paris, was King Philip’s confessor and given the King’s piety, was no doubt privy to his plans. On Sunday after the Templar’s arrest, it was Dominican preachers who first explained the reasons for the arrests at a public meeting in the King’s garden, appearing along side the officers of the King. Who was to argue?
King Philip using political maneuvering that I have come to know as typically French, put Pope Clement on the defense as a way to coerce his cooperation in the foiling of the Templars. When the trial eventually opened Clement himself defended the record of Boniface VIII, which was at the core of King Philips intrigue, before advocates of the French King, recalling his piety, his service to the Church and the many manifestations of his orthodox faith. After this, he allowed the trial to continue but, thanks to his knowledge of Roman law, was able to spin things out, either by calling for written depositions or in December 1310, by suspending the proceedings on the grounds that he was suffering one of the reoccurring bouts of his illness, thus leaving a complete distraction to evidence of Clements’ collusion with Philip against the Templars. In the end Clement only managed to slow Philip down as he found it easier to collude with the King that the head of the Knights Templar, who was not versed in politics, than to exonerate them.
While Hospitallers and the Masonic orders engaged the services of legal counsel, the Knights Templar ‘seem to have made little effort to recruit lawyers or to raise up legal experts from within their own ranks’ despite the vigilance with which the head protected their rights an immunities….James Molay later regretted his omission. Through ignorant chivalry where no prove of any allegations could be found in due process of a trial , so guilt was garnered through torture. Said Peter of Balongna of the torture of the Templar Knights to confess upon the allegations; ‘Torture, removed any freedom of mind, which is what every good man ought to have’ ‘It deprived them of memory, knowledge and understanding’ and therefore anything said under torture should be discounted, hence my earlier ascertain of a French totalitarian state which stood in varying degrees as such until 1892. What Philip won was his power back as he was persuaded by his brother, Charles of Valois, and his chief minister, Enguerrand of Marginy, that capitulating to Pope Clement on the question of the Templar’s property was a price worth paying to secure the definitive dissolution of the Order.
The evidence: King Philip IV of France was not making things up entirely. The Templar Knight left a trail of questionable activity that enabled the ‘French connection’ and conviction. in 1143; Of the seventy-three clauses in the Rule approved by the council of Troyes for the Knights of the Temple, around thirty are based on the rule of the Benedict of Nursia. Bernard and the Council fathers seemed more anxious to make monks out of knights than knights out of monks. Hence there was always an exclusive private mystery hanging over their day to day activities. When one thinks of the Knights Templar against the setting of the average educated person one must not get confused with the stories of King Arthur. The men of the order were of all sorts as it would require an Order to be completely self sustaining. They were not a band of merry chivalrous men banging mugs of mead on the table and reading scripture from the Dead Sea scrolls while shuffling the assets within their 401K accounts.
The Knights founder, Hugh of Payns proposed the incorporation of a community of knights that would follow the Rule of religious order but devote themselves to the protection of pilgrims, The Rule they had in mind was Augustine of Hippo, followed by the cannons of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Within that Order, living very Spartan lives the members of whom were not all knights, formed a close bond. They followed rigid rituals in daily life habits that may have drawn question, however the rituals were merely aimed at healthy eating and grooming separate from what may have been an imperfect world. Not intermixing with the common folks, women folk, it was easy to perceive that perhaps they were homosexual or at least homosexual activity was taking place. If it was, it was in no way a part of any Templar policy or sanction. If, therefore, one can avoid the distortions of late-twentieth century prejudice, one can be fairly certain that there was no institutionalized sodomy in the Temple as alleged by King Philip; and at the same the truth which has emerged from recent research is that the crusader frequently sold or mortgaged all his worldly wealth in hope of a purely spiritual reward. Unlike the Muslim jihad, the crusader commitment was always voluntary.
The conspiracy…or not.
Myth and history: There are 300 plus pages in this book and nothing is brought to the fore on the Mary Magdalene or the Lost Dead Sea Scroll conspiracy. There is a tremendous amount of dialogue surrounding the anti Christ and homosexual brought out by King Philip of France, home of the suggested burial of Mary Magdalene, only to be confessed to through torture. Was the Templars’ wealth extraneous in any one persons mind is a question answered only by King Philips’ condemnation of them in a power grab. Only time allowed for the culprits escape from this world where reputations live only in history books of all genres.
King Philips’ speculation did not end with the eighteenth century; in fact it has never been more feverish than it is today, creating, in words of Malcolm Barber, Britain’s foremost Templar historian, ‘a very active little industry, profitable to scientists, art historians, journalists, publishers, and television pundits alike’. Starting with esoteric claims of the Freemasons, the Templars are claimed to have been the guardians of the Holy Grail which in turn the chalice to have been used by Christ in the Last Supper, the blood line of the Merovingian kings descended from the union of Christ with Mary Magdalene, or simply the Templars’ most precious relic the Shroud of Turin.
Intriguing though such speculation may be, they betray by their use of language the lack of a plausible historical foundation: ‘the answer would seem to lie…’; ‘it seems very likely that’…’it seems certain that’…After some research, writes Andrew Sinclair in his book The Discovery of the Grail, these fantasists put forward a hypothesis. Was Christ or the Grail buried under a mountain in the south of France? Did Jesus marry Magdalene and provide the blood line of the Merovingian” Within a few pages, the assertion becomes the actual, the idea is changed into the proof… Or as Peter Partner succinctly puts it in relation to the Templars, Templarism…was a belief manufactured by charlatans for their dupes. It is this book that finally sheds light on the real culprit of the unjust case against both the Catholic Church and the Templar Knights. The first of many intrigues of French…imperialism?
Monday, November 1, 2010
The Gathering Storm
The Gathering Storm
by Winston Churchill
The following poetic quote sums up the words on the pages of the age of ink press:
He who will not when he may
When he will, he shall have Nay
Churchill’s prose interpretation of the same:
“In this Twilight War…It was after France had been flattened out that Britain, thanks to her island advantage, developed out of the pangs of defeat and the menace of annihilation a national resolve equal to that of Germany.
I personally noted that it were those same pangs of defeat that gave Germany the resolve to rise up to the world in the way they did. In reading this remarkable account of history by a leader who was part of it makes you the reader in want to take decisive lesson from the time spent between the covers of this book. The following summarizes what I learned.
It has been claimed at dinner parties that Britain and France had been the policemen of Europe in the prelude of World War II. Churchill makes in plainly clear in this book that they were champions of appeasement and diplomatic folly. In his careful and colorful description of events, using excerpts of speeches, and correspondences, blended with dialogue; the reader becomes painfully aware that appeasement was simply a term used in the press to lull the citizens towards a false hope for peace. Rather, the reader becomes clearly appraised as to the miss-steps in diplomacy in the nature of French Richelieu’s balance of power. A diplomacy where France instead breaks her commitment of balance of power through failed obligation in defense of smaller nations in domino succession, leaving Poland as the last domino to fall coinciding with the outbreak. Britain simply followed suit, as there were no formal commitments to counter act the overwhelming call in the press for peace. In the end such folly rendered both policemen as accomplices to a world tragedy. Churchill writes that the tale was not about diplomacy aimed at national security guised as justice; it ended up being a fight for our lives.
While the copyright is 1948 Churchill claims many words published were actually written eighteen years earlier as a message to prevent what he calls the second conclusion of mankind. I took grave note that Britain and France' roles aside, Churchill makes clear that most of all the immense power and impartiality in the United States allowed conditions to be gradually led to the very climax that peace dreaded most. In 1948 he is certain to caution any notion that the United States should make the same mistake for a third convulsion from which none may live to tell the tale. In almost every strategic decision to prepare England and her allies for defense, Churchill found himself perplexed with the prevailing sentiment of defensive –v- offensive stratagem. Where you actually call the start of the war didn’t matter. For instance just before Hitler attacked Norway and France it was learned that Hitler planned to attack Norway to defend herself and as well, maintain the industrious raw material from Sweden. Churchill faced absolute refusal to land troops in Norway or supply bombers to an offensive plan of defense of the world. Churchill writes of a French communiqué from his interlocutor: “The president of the Republic himself had intervened and that no aggressive measure must be taken which might only draw reprisal upon France. “ He again writes his personal frustration of well laid offensive plans in the defense of his home land
“The idea of not irritating the enemy did not commend itself to me.”“
To help the reader comprehend such a grim summary view the beginning is a good place to start. Churchill spends a chapter describing how the German leadership began their rearmament as early as 1923 and could have been stopped with out the risk of a single life up to 1934. Even when he sounded the alarm in 1930, there were eight years to arrest the build up of which not only did the allies reject but they also proceeded to reduce their own militaries.
In describing Hitler, in immediate Post Great War, Churchill describes a man capable of rationalizing a hatred for Jews and Bolsheviks, not for any other reason than it was they who exploited the defeated German people. But Hitler found himself not alone as he discovered a party of people of the same mind. They held a defeated passionate hate for those who exploited them in a time of defeat. With the collapse of the German mark Hitler, the new leader of the National-Socialist Party, found hungry AND THUS EASY RECRUITS. A PARTY FOUNDED IN HATRED. While in prison in 1924, Hitler outlined Mien Kampf. A Hitler doctrine adopted by the German people that appeared to have its sole basis in nothing but hatred of anything not German. It was a doctrine that mandated men to fight for freedom, a word guised in supremacy. Ironically, freedom arrived at a cost of individuals surrendering ones mind to the Fuehrer. In Churchill’s chapter on Locusts the reader of twenty-o-four cannot help but draw an Ominous Parallel to current world situation, but also to a theory analyzed on Piekoff’s book Ominous Parallel.
It took more than a desperate people for Hitler to spring to power. It took the coalescence of military organizations bent on power. As they viewed each other as foes that could bring each other down against the political enemy, being communist Bolsheviks, they united in a fashion that brought down the Bruening Cabinet, thus creating a political vacuum. There existed a vacuum; not of ideas, but of a leader to execute on his ideas. It should be noted that while the elite palace leaders were in no way impressed with Hitler, 13,000,000 Germans were behind him. While Churchill does not address the philosophical foundation of the German mind he makes a case for opportunity for a leader to take advantage of a willing mind, for whatever reason. In essence it takes willing people, but a cacophony of political stratagem must also coincide for such a catastrophe of an elected Hitler leadership to occur. In a note on humility, Hitler’s predecessor Hindenberg once said that Hitler is suited for no more than Postmaster, "where he can lick stamps with my head on them".
Meanwhile in the course of European debate over weapons of war (WMD) Churchill gave his first warning to England of the eminent danger being sown in 1936. While Europe was disarming, Germany was ripe to rearm. Meanwhile British public opinion concluded that all doubts of a peaceful Germany should be cast aside. After the takeover of the Rhineland of which without a challenge Hitler assumed un- questionable authority over his Generals. All of Germany was succeeded in the easy gain of ground against its former adversaries, so divided and tame. There is no doubt that had His Majesty's Government chosen to act with firmness and resolve through thru League of Nations, they could have led a united Britain on a final quest to avert war. In 1939 Churchill writes
“in keeping with a 400 year history to avert a dominance by a dictator from any country We ought to set the life and endurance of the British Empire and the greatness of the this island very high in our duty, and not be led astray by illusions about an ideal world, which only means that other and worse controls will step into our place, and that future direction will belong to them.''
In a speech to the House of Commons Churchill said the credit of the Government has been compromised by what has occurred. The House has been consistently misled about the air-position. The Prime Minister himself has been misled. He was misled right up to the last moment, apparently. Look at the statement, which he made in March when he spoke about our armaments:
“The sight of this enormous, this almost terrifying power which Britain is building up has a sobering effect, a steadying effect, on the opinion of the world.”
When I compare the political debate surrounding National Defense of 1936-1938 and compare it to 2001-2004, I am again struck by the similarities. History will again decide if G.W. Bush made the correct strategic decisions in Iraq. The notion to bring Bush up for war crimes comes from minds not incapable of examining the multi layered landscape of issues with a focus on National Security. And thus with absence of personally formed bias our ill informed public opinion leaves our current world vulnerable to Churchill’s greatest fear. Back to the book review specifically Churchill’s views were opposite those of Baldwin and Chamberlain. Attack through diplomatic channels and then with arms were his messages. The measured results of Churchill’s time where an immediate World War with grave loss of life ensued, yet it’s conclusion drew an apparent beginning of lasting peace in Europe. That conclusion did not have to weigh so heavy a price on the world. Credit is given to leaders such as Churchill, Roosevelt & Truman, of WWII and then Reagan who pushed for the close of the Cold War. Can history be used to chart our future in twenty-o-four?
Some lessons are never learned; this one being harmony in leadership. In 1937 and in the midst Italian buildup Secretary of British Foreign Affairs Eden was knitting together a plan to ally France and England against Italy on submarine attacks. Of course there are a few dynamics to be noted that draw a parallel with slight departure in terms of role reversals to current events in 2004. At first it should be noted that Eden, Secretary of State was placed at odds with his Prime Minister, Chamberlain of who replaced Baldwin. He did his duty at odds with his cabinet in a Machiavellian setting and eventually was neutralized in Chamberlains circle. His course of action was to play a strong hand and tendered an offer to Mussolini that the powers of the Mediterranean will join together to sink all submarines as pirates and requested Italy’s participation. With firm resolve of a united front Mussolini agreed to enjoin in the anti pirate campaign, and suddenly his Italian subs refrained from sinking any more merchant ships. The outlook Churchill held as he encouraged Eden to continue in the face political headwinds he wrote
“Poor England! Leading her free, and careless life from day-to-day, amid careless good-tempered parliamentary babble, she followed, wondering, along the downward path which led to all she wanted to avoid, She was continuously reassured by the leading articles of the most influential newspapers, with some honorable exceptions, and behaved as if all the world were as easy, uncalculating and well-meaning as herself.”
He further writes:
“Mr. Roosevelt was indeed running great risks in his own domestic politics by deliberately involving the United States in the darkening European scene. All the forces of isolationism would have been aroused if any part of these exchanges had transpired. On the other hand, no event could have been more likely to stave off or even prevent war than the arrival of the United States in the circle of European hates and fears.”
Churchill’s following words damning Chamberlain’s decision to not accept Roosevelt’s offer must be left for the reader, who would by page 255 of the book be in a Churchill frame of mind to appreciate the gravity of Chamberlains mistake.
” I must remark here though there is at least on consistent parallel and that is the influence of the press to tilt an uniformed population with incomplete information, and the necessity of a press secretary to spin leadership policy against these winds. And we the people must vote a leader and allow him to lead with a willingness to view and seek out the complete story as opposed to submit to the whirlpool of partisan politics found in the press at the fate of National Security. “
Churchill’s story makes this ever clearer in my mind and puts me on the look out for Colin Powell’s book. I must personally say that I have making a case for clarity and thoroughness in reporting. As well I have been condemning those with a voice of hatred towards our leadership when I find them banking all their emotion on the whims of our American press. If only in the heat of debate could I remember such eloquent words?
I also learned that the Domino Theory that prevailed in the 50s and formulated a tenant of our involvement in Viet Nam becomes none too original when reading the succession of events in the late 1930s where England and France, mishandled their “world policemen” obligations. France was bound by treaty to defend Czechoslovakia in the case of invasion by Germany. England had no such obligation. However without the commitment of one or the other, neither would defend Czechoslovakia over the Hitler proclaimed issues of the Sudentland area of German speaking Czechs. To this extend a French envoy to the Czechoslovakia government since 1925 resigned and became a Czech citizen when he heard of the folly of the French and Brits over Czechoslovakia. “Honor among men existed somewhere.” Were Churchill’s words. Underpinning the whole situation was a bent towards world peace through disarmament against a world axis menace of Germany, Japan, and to a lesser degree Italy. As a student I remember the film reels of Neville Chamberlain boarding tail-dragger planes of DC3 form, in his last ditch attempt of diplomacy with the Fuehrer. In the letters between all parties, held within the pages of this book, and Churchill’s description, the reader clearly becomes aware, how innocent and ill-informed leaders can play the wrong cards in the high stakes game of world dominance of that time. Chamberlains trip to Berchtesgaden proved to be a pinnacle mistake in diplomacy. Churchill in my opinion describing the events makes a clear case for a strong hand i.e.: T.Rex “speak softly and carry a big stick” or Ronald Reagan’s clear stand with Gorbechov in Reykjavik and then Berlin. Churchill in his book asks for history to be the judge of diplomacy’s hand. When I read of Carters handling of Iranian affairs in 1979 along with Chamberlain Berchtesgaden in contrast to Reagan and Bush(s), I must again stand behind a leader who plays a strong hand in matters of National Security, at high sacrifice to world opinion or ACLU protests of encroachment upon civil liberties. Both are a small price to pay for inalienable rights of freedom. I fully appreciate that there is a difference and a hierarchy between and within the two.
The most striking “news to me’ was to read of the high ranking German Generals plot to arrest Hitler and his leadership just prior to Chamberlains lack luster attempts at diplomacy. Churchill’s conclusive words are most appropriate at this point:
“If it should eventually be accepted as historical truth, it will be another example of the very small accidents upon which the fortunes of mankind turn.”
I am quickly reminded of Jimmy Carters week-handed diplomacy that was followed two days later of the capture of the American embassy in Iran. If only fate fell into the hands of stronger leaders?
In the aftermath of the Czechoslovakia invasions and the prelude of Poland and Albania by Germany and Italy respectively, Churchill continues to detail the errant decisions carried out in diplomatic relations; not only with his allies but also with his adversaries. The familiar phrase of appeasement becomes clearly understood, in terms of miscalculations, by the emotional words of Churchill standing in the wings waiting his turn to lead. His words towards Neville Chamberlain are typically British, as he allows history to redress Chamberlains leadership into disaster.
Coincidently mentioned but not delved into in this book was the quality of intelligence available to Chamberlain. Churchill claims a superior level of intelligence, and questions Chamberlains and the British Admiralty lack of preparedness against Mussolini’s invasion of Albanian. Ciano, a cabinet member of Mussolini, writes these British are not those of Drake, they are tired old rich men. As I listen to John Kerry not knowing hunger and the Democratic candidate of Presidency of 2004. He who claims he would have gotten up from a school room and done something on the morning of 911, without specifying what he would have done, gives me reason to draw a parallel to Chamberlain; rich men compelled to say I’m in charge and make decisions without trusting the service of his administration and his advisors. Churchill paints an emotional picture of failed diplomacy when placed in the hands of a leader with a self-centered leadership, bent on decision-making in a closet. Perhaps this could be a lesson in history.
As the book transitions from the sad tale of failed diplomacy to a declaration of war, Churchill describes his feelings upon inspecting the naval positions in Scotland as the reappointed Minister of the Admiralty, a position he once held in the onset of the Great War. He first writes a short poem reflecting his reaction to a new generation of crew placed upon the same ships of a previous war. It goes like this:
I feel like one
Who treads alone,
Some banquet hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed.
After reading of the failed preparations at cost of appeasement, Churchill while having a picnic lunch on a hill overlooking a Scottish harbor writes:
“Poland is in agony; France but a pale reflection of her warlike ardour; the Russians Colossus no longer and ally, not even neutral, possibly a foe, Italy no friend, Japan no ally. Would America ever come in again? The British Empire remained intact gloriously united but ill prepared.”
I was struck in reading these words written by a man who was placed in political exile for many a year, waved his flag of alarm to a deaf ear of England, and could place claim on a gloriously united spirit of his countrymen. I am struck by what it took to unite England, as it was not Churchill’s flag waiving. And then I am awe-struck at Churchill’s immediate gratification to be once again in a position to defend his fellow man. Churchill is immediately forgiving of his fellow mans penchant for peace at any cost. In a prefect world it is the higher road. In a real world of 1930 thru 1939, 1991 thru 2004 history proved that perfection was yet to be met.
As the story plunges deeper into the reality of war, the Cabinet officials were busy consuming themselves with the affairs of their own offices and vying for priority with the Prime Minister. Churchill spends a chapter describing his private letters to key officials, putting forward his concerns, recommendations and commitment for support. What Churchill had in his favor were actual experience in many posts of government, a continued study of the government while in 10 years exile, and as sense of raising above any grudge with an aim of National Defense in a headwind of war. The lessons in diplomacy on paper are well worth reading to glean the art of apprising your friend of unsolicited advice. This nature of diplomacy at an individual level is in my opinion a tenant of his countrymen’s call for his Prime leadership.
With Poland in ruins, the Baltic States parlayed to the Soviet Union, Churchill describes the strategy and diplomacy in building the defensive lines along it Belgian frontier. Herein, Churchill describes two tenants of diplomacy finding them tangled in military strategy. The first tenant is quite simple and basically prescribes that no military strategy involving the occupation of Belgian soil in the defense of France could be permitted without Belgian approval. As no approval came forth, plan B was quickly acquiesced to with no hard insistence by either party to Belgium for a plan of mutual benefit. One could easily draw a parallel to the Cambodian circumstance along the Ho Chi Min Trail question and find that world standards caused extreme compromise on a military battlefield. The questions placed upon our leaders are far more complicated than the average bear comprehends. And in too many cases our journalists as simply average bears. Second tenant was the military question of success of attack -v- defend, being argued largely by diplomats as opposed to military strategists. While history at that time proves that attacking leaves one in a more vulnerable position in terms of battlefield and supply lines, Hitler defied history as his Armies broke through the Allied lines on the Belgium frontier and proved that attack can be done while defending ones self. Churchill simply notes that Germany was first to put heavy plates of armor in vehicles. This lesson seems to have been over looked in 2004 by the greatest military planners in man kind.
The combination of the two issues draws into question preemptive attack, which is as a popular question today as it might well have been in 1961 with regard to the Cuban missile crisis. When war is eminent not in terms of days but years, building a case for preemptive action as a defense seems plausible, as Churchill makes clear. However on a world stage of hundreds of countries, this leaves the country of preeminence vulnerable to technical objection reverberated into a frenzy of biased views and exacerbated by journalist. The real questions may be when do the people entrust in our leaders, elected via due process and allow them unabated, but questioned execution of a plan. Churchill’s history makes it clear that the challenge for a unanimous world coalition in the winds of the minority objectors requires a strong leader to stay a course in National Defense, regardless of the popular view.
With regard to making strategic war decisions involving small countries soil, Churchill is mindful of international law but willing to abrogate to the laws of humanity, and allow history to be his judge. Here is a man willing to chart a new course if required; the mark a great leader on a world stage, in my opinion. This said, Churchill describes his efforts to not be confrontational with his “Commander in Chief” Neville Chamberlain; a requisite step in becoming a world class leader, teacher in history, professor in journalism, and spokesperson for personal integrity on a world stage. He was appointed Prime Minister of England by the King on the day Germany invaded Belgium and Holland; not because of the invasion but because of Chamberlains resignation over the poor performance in Norway. His words spoken and written are a hallmark of great leaders worth reading from. Had we only listened in 1936?
Post Script: To draw an ominous parallel to today’s popular venue in Michael Moore’s film, I read in this book of two days prior to the German invasion of Norway, German officials invited the civilians of Oslo, including Western Allies to view a film reel of the capture of Warsaw. With the falling of the bombs the caption at the bottom of the screen read: “This if not for the hand of France and England”. It seems Moore is a student of Hitler. It is too bad our general population is one of “30 second sound bites” students as opposed to one of conscientious study of grave matters. We can be so easily duped. Like the Communists of France who denounced the war as “an imperialistic and capitalist crime against humanity”, there are those factions here in the United States who continue in those ways of the French. As much as I can say I enjoy French culture and would endorse a world of it, I have yet to read of French politics where there was not a selfish French end in mind, blind to the realities of the world.
Catch phrases
1. Death stands at attention, waiting the command to pulverize civilization.
2. Long his victim - for once his master.
3. The world lifted its head, surveyed the ruin
4. The vessel of peace has sprung a leak at every beam.
5. Of all this let history be the judge. We now face events.
6. The veils of the future are lifted one by one, and mortals must act from day to day.
7. Facts are better than dreams.
by Winston Churchill
The following poetic quote sums up the words on the pages of the age of ink press:
He who will not when he may
When he will, he shall have Nay
Churchill’s prose interpretation of the same:
“In this Twilight War…It was after France had been flattened out that Britain, thanks to her island advantage, developed out of the pangs of defeat and the menace of annihilation a national resolve equal to that of Germany.
I personally noted that it were those same pangs of defeat that gave Germany the resolve to rise up to the world in the way they did. In reading this remarkable account of history by a leader who was part of it makes you the reader in want to take decisive lesson from the time spent between the covers of this book. The following summarizes what I learned.
It has been claimed at dinner parties that Britain and France had been the policemen of Europe in the prelude of World War II. Churchill makes in plainly clear in this book that they were champions of appeasement and diplomatic folly. In his careful and colorful description of events, using excerpts of speeches, and correspondences, blended with dialogue; the reader becomes painfully aware that appeasement was simply a term used in the press to lull the citizens towards a false hope for peace. Rather, the reader becomes clearly appraised as to the miss-steps in diplomacy in the nature of French Richelieu’s balance of power. A diplomacy where France instead breaks her commitment of balance of power through failed obligation in defense of smaller nations in domino succession, leaving Poland as the last domino to fall coinciding with the outbreak. Britain simply followed suit, as there were no formal commitments to counter act the overwhelming call in the press for peace. In the end such folly rendered both policemen as accomplices to a world tragedy. Churchill writes that the tale was not about diplomacy aimed at national security guised as justice; it ended up being a fight for our lives.
While the copyright is 1948 Churchill claims many words published were actually written eighteen years earlier as a message to prevent what he calls the second conclusion of mankind. I took grave note that Britain and France' roles aside, Churchill makes clear that most of all the immense power and impartiality in the United States allowed conditions to be gradually led to the very climax that peace dreaded most. In 1948 he is certain to caution any notion that the United States should make the same mistake for a third convulsion from which none may live to tell the tale. In almost every strategic decision to prepare England and her allies for defense, Churchill found himself perplexed with the prevailing sentiment of defensive –v- offensive stratagem. Where you actually call the start of the war didn’t matter. For instance just before Hitler attacked Norway and France it was learned that Hitler planned to attack Norway to defend herself and as well, maintain the industrious raw material from Sweden. Churchill faced absolute refusal to land troops in Norway or supply bombers to an offensive plan of defense of the world. Churchill writes of a French communiqué from his interlocutor: “The president of the Republic himself had intervened and that no aggressive measure must be taken which might only draw reprisal upon France. “ He again writes his personal frustration of well laid offensive plans in the defense of his home land
“The idea of not irritating the enemy did not commend itself to me.”“
To help the reader comprehend such a grim summary view the beginning is a good place to start. Churchill spends a chapter describing how the German leadership began their rearmament as early as 1923 and could have been stopped with out the risk of a single life up to 1934. Even when he sounded the alarm in 1930, there were eight years to arrest the build up of which not only did the allies reject but they also proceeded to reduce their own militaries.
In describing Hitler, in immediate Post Great War, Churchill describes a man capable of rationalizing a hatred for Jews and Bolsheviks, not for any other reason than it was they who exploited the defeated German people. But Hitler found himself not alone as he discovered a party of people of the same mind. They held a defeated passionate hate for those who exploited them in a time of defeat. With the collapse of the German mark Hitler, the new leader of the National-Socialist Party, found hungry AND THUS EASY RECRUITS. A PARTY FOUNDED IN HATRED. While in prison in 1924, Hitler outlined Mien Kampf. A Hitler doctrine adopted by the German people that appeared to have its sole basis in nothing but hatred of anything not German. It was a doctrine that mandated men to fight for freedom, a word guised in supremacy. Ironically, freedom arrived at a cost of individuals surrendering ones mind to the Fuehrer. In Churchill’s chapter on Locusts the reader of twenty-o-four cannot help but draw an Ominous Parallel to current world situation, but also to a theory analyzed on Piekoff’s book Ominous Parallel.
It took more than a desperate people for Hitler to spring to power. It took the coalescence of military organizations bent on power. As they viewed each other as foes that could bring each other down against the political enemy, being communist Bolsheviks, they united in a fashion that brought down the Bruening Cabinet, thus creating a political vacuum. There existed a vacuum; not of ideas, but of a leader to execute on his ideas. It should be noted that while the elite palace leaders were in no way impressed with Hitler, 13,000,000 Germans were behind him. While Churchill does not address the philosophical foundation of the German mind he makes a case for opportunity for a leader to take advantage of a willing mind, for whatever reason. In essence it takes willing people, but a cacophony of political stratagem must also coincide for such a catastrophe of an elected Hitler leadership to occur. In a note on humility, Hitler’s predecessor Hindenberg once said that Hitler is suited for no more than Postmaster, "where he can lick stamps with my head on them".
Meanwhile in the course of European debate over weapons of war (WMD) Churchill gave his first warning to England of the eminent danger being sown in 1936. While Europe was disarming, Germany was ripe to rearm. Meanwhile British public opinion concluded that all doubts of a peaceful Germany should be cast aside. After the takeover of the Rhineland of which without a challenge Hitler assumed un- questionable authority over his Generals. All of Germany was succeeded in the easy gain of ground against its former adversaries, so divided and tame. There is no doubt that had His Majesty's Government chosen to act with firmness and resolve through thru League of Nations, they could have led a united Britain on a final quest to avert war. In 1939 Churchill writes
“in keeping with a 400 year history to avert a dominance by a dictator from any country We ought to set the life and endurance of the British Empire and the greatness of the this island very high in our duty, and not be led astray by illusions about an ideal world, which only means that other and worse controls will step into our place, and that future direction will belong to them.''
In a speech to the House of Commons Churchill said the credit of the Government has been compromised by what has occurred. The House has been consistently misled about the air-position. The Prime Minister himself has been misled. He was misled right up to the last moment, apparently. Look at the statement, which he made in March when he spoke about our armaments:
“The sight of this enormous, this almost terrifying power which Britain is building up has a sobering effect, a steadying effect, on the opinion of the world.”
When I compare the political debate surrounding National Defense of 1936-1938 and compare it to 2001-2004, I am again struck by the similarities. History will again decide if G.W. Bush made the correct strategic decisions in Iraq. The notion to bring Bush up for war crimes comes from minds not incapable of examining the multi layered landscape of issues with a focus on National Security. And thus with absence of personally formed bias our ill informed public opinion leaves our current world vulnerable to Churchill’s greatest fear. Back to the book review specifically Churchill’s views were opposite those of Baldwin and Chamberlain. Attack through diplomatic channels and then with arms were his messages. The measured results of Churchill’s time where an immediate World War with grave loss of life ensued, yet it’s conclusion drew an apparent beginning of lasting peace in Europe. That conclusion did not have to weigh so heavy a price on the world. Credit is given to leaders such as Churchill, Roosevelt & Truman, of WWII and then Reagan who pushed for the close of the Cold War. Can history be used to chart our future in twenty-o-four?
Some lessons are never learned; this one being harmony in leadership. In 1937 and in the midst Italian buildup Secretary of British Foreign Affairs Eden was knitting together a plan to ally France and England against Italy on submarine attacks. Of course there are a few dynamics to be noted that draw a parallel with slight departure in terms of role reversals to current events in 2004. At first it should be noted that Eden, Secretary of State was placed at odds with his Prime Minister, Chamberlain of who replaced Baldwin. He did his duty at odds with his cabinet in a Machiavellian setting and eventually was neutralized in Chamberlains circle. His course of action was to play a strong hand and tendered an offer to Mussolini that the powers of the Mediterranean will join together to sink all submarines as pirates and requested Italy’s participation. With firm resolve of a united front Mussolini agreed to enjoin in the anti pirate campaign, and suddenly his Italian subs refrained from sinking any more merchant ships. The outlook Churchill held as he encouraged Eden to continue in the face political headwinds he wrote
“Poor England! Leading her free, and careless life from day-to-day, amid careless good-tempered parliamentary babble, she followed, wondering, along the downward path which led to all she wanted to avoid, She was continuously reassured by the leading articles of the most influential newspapers, with some honorable exceptions, and behaved as if all the world were as easy, uncalculating and well-meaning as herself.”
He further writes:
“Mr. Roosevelt was indeed running great risks in his own domestic politics by deliberately involving the United States in the darkening European scene. All the forces of isolationism would have been aroused if any part of these exchanges had transpired. On the other hand, no event could have been more likely to stave off or even prevent war than the arrival of the United States in the circle of European hates and fears.”
Churchill’s following words damning Chamberlain’s decision to not accept Roosevelt’s offer must be left for the reader, who would by page 255 of the book be in a Churchill frame of mind to appreciate the gravity of Chamberlains mistake.
” I must remark here though there is at least on consistent parallel and that is the influence of the press to tilt an uniformed population with incomplete information, and the necessity of a press secretary to spin leadership policy against these winds. And we the people must vote a leader and allow him to lead with a willingness to view and seek out the complete story as opposed to submit to the whirlpool of partisan politics found in the press at the fate of National Security. “
Churchill’s story makes this ever clearer in my mind and puts me on the look out for Colin Powell’s book. I must personally say that I have making a case for clarity and thoroughness in reporting. As well I have been condemning those with a voice of hatred towards our leadership when I find them banking all their emotion on the whims of our American press. If only in the heat of debate could I remember such eloquent words?
I also learned that the Domino Theory that prevailed in the 50s and formulated a tenant of our involvement in Viet Nam becomes none too original when reading the succession of events in the late 1930s where England and France, mishandled their “world policemen” obligations. France was bound by treaty to defend Czechoslovakia in the case of invasion by Germany. England had no such obligation. However without the commitment of one or the other, neither would defend Czechoslovakia over the Hitler proclaimed issues of the Sudentland area of German speaking Czechs. To this extend a French envoy to the Czechoslovakia government since 1925 resigned and became a Czech citizen when he heard of the folly of the French and Brits over Czechoslovakia. “Honor among men existed somewhere.” Were Churchill’s words. Underpinning the whole situation was a bent towards world peace through disarmament against a world axis menace of Germany, Japan, and to a lesser degree Italy. As a student I remember the film reels of Neville Chamberlain boarding tail-dragger planes of DC3 form, in his last ditch attempt of diplomacy with the Fuehrer. In the letters between all parties, held within the pages of this book, and Churchill’s description, the reader clearly becomes aware, how innocent and ill-informed leaders can play the wrong cards in the high stakes game of world dominance of that time. Chamberlains trip to Berchtesgaden proved to be a pinnacle mistake in diplomacy. Churchill in my opinion describing the events makes a clear case for a strong hand i.e.: T.Rex “speak softly and carry a big stick” or Ronald Reagan’s clear stand with Gorbechov in Reykjavik and then Berlin. Churchill in his book asks for history to be the judge of diplomacy’s hand. When I read of Carters handling of Iranian affairs in 1979 along with Chamberlain Berchtesgaden in contrast to Reagan and Bush(s), I must again stand behind a leader who plays a strong hand in matters of National Security, at high sacrifice to world opinion or ACLU protests of encroachment upon civil liberties. Both are a small price to pay for inalienable rights of freedom. I fully appreciate that there is a difference and a hierarchy between and within the two.
The most striking “news to me’ was to read of the high ranking German Generals plot to arrest Hitler and his leadership just prior to Chamberlains lack luster attempts at diplomacy. Churchill’s conclusive words are most appropriate at this point:
“If it should eventually be accepted as historical truth, it will be another example of the very small accidents upon which the fortunes of mankind turn.”
I am quickly reminded of Jimmy Carters week-handed diplomacy that was followed two days later of the capture of the American embassy in Iran. If only fate fell into the hands of stronger leaders?
In the aftermath of the Czechoslovakia invasions and the prelude of Poland and Albania by Germany and Italy respectively, Churchill continues to detail the errant decisions carried out in diplomatic relations; not only with his allies but also with his adversaries. The familiar phrase of appeasement becomes clearly understood, in terms of miscalculations, by the emotional words of Churchill standing in the wings waiting his turn to lead. His words towards Neville Chamberlain are typically British, as he allows history to redress Chamberlains leadership into disaster.
Coincidently mentioned but not delved into in this book was the quality of intelligence available to Chamberlain. Churchill claims a superior level of intelligence, and questions Chamberlains and the British Admiralty lack of preparedness against Mussolini’s invasion of Albanian. Ciano, a cabinet member of Mussolini, writes these British are not those of Drake, they are tired old rich men. As I listen to John Kerry not knowing hunger and the Democratic candidate of Presidency of 2004. He who claims he would have gotten up from a school room and done something on the morning of 911, without specifying what he would have done, gives me reason to draw a parallel to Chamberlain; rich men compelled to say I’m in charge and make decisions without trusting the service of his administration and his advisors. Churchill paints an emotional picture of failed diplomacy when placed in the hands of a leader with a self-centered leadership, bent on decision-making in a closet. Perhaps this could be a lesson in history.
As the book transitions from the sad tale of failed diplomacy to a declaration of war, Churchill describes his feelings upon inspecting the naval positions in Scotland as the reappointed Minister of the Admiralty, a position he once held in the onset of the Great War. He first writes a short poem reflecting his reaction to a new generation of crew placed upon the same ships of a previous war. It goes like this:
I feel like one
Who treads alone,
Some banquet hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed.
After reading of the failed preparations at cost of appeasement, Churchill while having a picnic lunch on a hill overlooking a Scottish harbor writes:
“Poland is in agony; France but a pale reflection of her warlike ardour; the Russians Colossus no longer and ally, not even neutral, possibly a foe, Italy no friend, Japan no ally. Would America ever come in again? The British Empire remained intact gloriously united but ill prepared.”
I was struck in reading these words written by a man who was placed in political exile for many a year, waved his flag of alarm to a deaf ear of England, and could place claim on a gloriously united spirit of his countrymen. I am struck by what it took to unite England, as it was not Churchill’s flag waiving. And then I am awe-struck at Churchill’s immediate gratification to be once again in a position to defend his fellow man. Churchill is immediately forgiving of his fellow mans penchant for peace at any cost. In a prefect world it is the higher road. In a real world of 1930 thru 1939, 1991 thru 2004 history proved that perfection was yet to be met.
As the story plunges deeper into the reality of war, the Cabinet officials were busy consuming themselves with the affairs of their own offices and vying for priority with the Prime Minister. Churchill spends a chapter describing his private letters to key officials, putting forward his concerns, recommendations and commitment for support. What Churchill had in his favor were actual experience in many posts of government, a continued study of the government while in 10 years exile, and as sense of raising above any grudge with an aim of National Defense in a headwind of war. The lessons in diplomacy on paper are well worth reading to glean the art of apprising your friend of unsolicited advice. This nature of diplomacy at an individual level is in my opinion a tenant of his countrymen’s call for his Prime leadership.
With Poland in ruins, the Baltic States parlayed to the Soviet Union, Churchill describes the strategy and diplomacy in building the defensive lines along it Belgian frontier. Herein, Churchill describes two tenants of diplomacy finding them tangled in military strategy. The first tenant is quite simple and basically prescribes that no military strategy involving the occupation of Belgian soil in the defense of France could be permitted without Belgian approval. As no approval came forth, plan B was quickly acquiesced to with no hard insistence by either party to Belgium for a plan of mutual benefit. One could easily draw a parallel to the Cambodian circumstance along the Ho Chi Min Trail question and find that world standards caused extreme compromise on a military battlefield. The questions placed upon our leaders are far more complicated than the average bear comprehends. And in too many cases our journalists as simply average bears. Second tenant was the military question of success of attack -v- defend, being argued largely by diplomats as opposed to military strategists. While history at that time proves that attacking leaves one in a more vulnerable position in terms of battlefield and supply lines, Hitler defied history as his Armies broke through the Allied lines on the Belgium frontier and proved that attack can be done while defending ones self. Churchill simply notes that Germany was first to put heavy plates of armor in vehicles. This lesson seems to have been over looked in 2004 by the greatest military planners in man kind.
The combination of the two issues draws into question preemptive attack, which is as a popular question today as it might well have been in 1961 with regard to the Cuban missile crisis. When war is eminent not in terms of days but years, building a case for preemptive action as a defense seems plausible, as Churchill makes clear. However on a world stage of hundreds of countries, this leaves the country of preeminence vulnerable to technical objection reverberated into a frenzy of biased views and exacerbated by journalist. The real questions may be when do the people entrust in our leaders, elected via due process and allow them unabated, but questioned execution of a plan. Churchill’s history makes it clear that the challenge for a unanimous world coalition in the winds of the minority objectors requires a strong leader to stay a course in National Defense, regardless of the popular view.
With regard to making strategic war decisions involving small countries soil, Churchill is mindful of international law but willing to abrogate to the laws of humanity, and allow history to be his judge. Here is a man willing to chart a new course if required; the mark a great leader on a world stage, in my opinion. This said, Churchill describes his efforts to not be confrontational with his “Commander in Chief” Neville Chamberlain; a requisite step in becoming a world class leader, teacher in history, professor in journalism, and spokesperson for personal integrity on a world stage. He was appointed Prime Minister of England by the King on the day Germany invaded Belgium and Holland; not because of the invasion but because of Chamberlains resignation over the poor performance in Norway. His words spoken and written are a hallmark of great leaders worth reading from. Had we only listened in 1936?
Post Script: To draw an ominous parallel to today’s popular venue in Michael Moore’s film, I read in this book of two days prior to the German invasion of Norway, German officials invited the civilians of Oslo, including Western Allies to view a film reel of the capture of Warsaw. With the falling of the bombs the caption at the bottom of the screen read: “This if not for the hand of France and England”. It seems Moore is a student of Hitler. It is too bad our general population is one of “30 second sound bites” students as opposed to one of conscientious study of grave matters. We can be so easily duped. Like the Communists of France who denounced the war as “an imperialistic and capitalist crime against humanity”, there are those factions here in the United States who continue in those ways of the French. As much as I can say I enjoy French culture and would endorse a world of it, I have yet to read of French politics where there was not a selfish French end in mind, blind to the realities of the world.
Catch phrases
1. Death stands at attention, waiting the command to pulverize civilization.
2. Long his victim - for once his master.
3. The world lifted its head, surveyed the ruin
4. The vessel of peace has sprung a leak at every beam.
5. Of all this let history be the judge. We now face events.
6. The veils of the future are lifted one by one, and mortals must act from day to day.
7. Facts are better than dreams.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Master and Commanders
Master and Commanders
By Andrew Roberts
This book is an analysis of the prime movers in WWII strategy for the allies. Chief among them were Franklin D. Roosevelt and George C. Marshall for the Americans and Winston Churchill and Sir Allen Brooke for the British. The first question I raised in reading the inside of the jacket cover was who is Brooke? I found out five hundred plus pages later. The author does a convincing job in portraying Sir Allen Brooke as the grand master who got things done in spite of his boss, Sir Winston Churchill. While I give praise to the character the author builds in Brooke, I disparage the character built in Churchill. Having been the benefactor of reading Churchill’s accounts that are backed by a plethora of correspondence with key players of the war, I completed the book prepared to defend Churchill against yet another critic with a skewed opinion based in assorted fact, standing in shallow and murky water.
Aside from character building, which the author believes was an essential ingredient to decision making on a strategic level, the strategic planning of every Allied initiative are discussed in detail, where the page count of five-hundred-eighty-four was its only limitation. As the chronology progressed through time, I could not help but asking myself about Stalin and Hitler. In 1941 Roosevelt characterized the situation where ‘the principle objective was to help Russia,’ since ‘It must be constantly reiterated that Russian armies are killing more Germans and destroying more Axis material than all the twenty-five United Nations put together.
Through much of the war, the prevailing strategy seemed to be more the failure of Hitler’s strategy than the brilliance of any of the allied Commanders. As I closed the back cover of his book, I wrote a big question mark on my reading list. I have read in many accounting at surface level description of the inner works of the Hitler command, at least from a resulting decision perspective. But I have yet to read a comparable accounting of equal measure specifically from the German side, where Hitler’s strategy trumped his generals. I have learned that there was great disagreement, but how is it that the strategy that told the fate of this world conflict was really a losing strategy as opposed to a winning strategy and why have we left the details to that question uncovered? I generally understand that the western leaders drew a strategy from consensus, while Hitler dictated a strategy against the advice of clearer thinking Generals, excluding Goering. I ask only because I am ignorant to any book on such a theme.
As the Grand Strategy was taking its form, there was an overriding idea that it should be a Germany first strategy. This strategy was largely British driven and bought in to because the Americans were of a junior partner status and did not as well have a better strategy. While this strategy prevailed it was periodically tested as Japan drew the United States in to the war. The timing of Germany first seems to have been controversial throughout the war. Intervening events and competing strategies were played out. In the fog of a couple hundred pages it seems that the Russian’s advance across eastern Europe post Stalingrad, and Hitler strategy held sway over the timing than anything else, including victories in Africa. I am once again not certain that Stalin and Hitler, though little was written between the covers, should not have had their pictures on the cover of this book. While the book did much in terms of the timing of the Normandy invasion, Operation Overlord, It seems that the narrow one tracked thinking of Marshal and Eisenhower, borne in classic Clauswitzian military mentality, forced an invasion that cost millions of lives and only got the Allies to Berlin after the Russians.
And finally I must be critical be critical of yet another author’s inability to see a folly of strategy that led to a Russian victory of WWII and a postponement of the Allied victory, where victory is defined by the liberation of Europe, that had to wait 45 years for the end of the Cold War. I say this because riddled throughout this book are arguments between Brooke and Churchill and then between the British and the Americans. In all arguments the author goes through pains to color Churchill as the cigar smoking, drunken strategy zealot, and in that course clouded his vision to draw that reality to the forefront is fogged over. The big decision to attack Germany from the beaches of Normandy, as we did, or to have attacked the Germans from the Italian front was a vexing intrigue on many levels, in the strategy for the race to Berlin. It was a protracted debate that could only have been equaled by the Germany First debate. All these debates carried the background references of each of the participants to readings of past great war strategies where the decision makers banked their views upon.
Here is my argument on both who the Masters and Commanders are, and what was the winning strategy. The early strategy was clearly a counter strategy to anything Hitler had already accomplished. The Brits when in to North Africa first because it was their only option at the time and second then needed to shore up their empire along what I refer to as the English Tierra; the arc from the horn of Africa through the Middle East down to India and through to Singapore ending at Australia. This was the heart of the English Empire and thus a worth prize to protect. Meanwhile the Americans agreed to participate merely because they had to do something of consequence to keep the American people bought in to the war effort. Meanwhile the Americans were formulating a Clausweitizian front across the same Channel that the Germans failed to see through in 1940. To think this massive attack could overshadow the wisdom of an assault from already conquered shores in Italy can only be rationalized by weak arguments provided both the actors of the book and the author. One can only wonder that if half the Herculean effort applied in Normandy was applied to the Ljubljana gap between Yugoslavia and Italy, the Allies could have first had an easier and shorter route to Berlin and second have precluded the Russians of their land grab of eastern Europe which set the stage for a forty-five year long Cold War.
I don’t know whether to compliment or criticize Andrew Roberts for his effort. There is enough granularity in this snap shot of history to reveal an alternative ending to World War Two, if only the masters and Commanders under the American flag had paid closer attention to Britain and namely Churchill. Roberts delivers this enlightenment through first person views and his narrative of the events. Yet he camouflages this nugget of insight at an alternative ending with unnecessary coloring of Churchill as a reckless egomaniac. In this review I interlace ‘My Comments’ with pertinent bibliography notes to demonstrate how the enlightenment makes itself apparent, in the shadow of ridicule of one of the most important men of the twentieth century.
Notes
Page 24: …it was at Forth Benning, in Georgia for five years head of infantry school , that Marshall showed his capacities as a reformer. His experience of the later stages of the Great War had convinced him that, in any future conflict, officers would not be able to wait for perfect orders written out over four pages of single-spaced foolscap sheet, such as the ones GHQ had provided then, especially with un reliable intelligence reports that might be expected from a fast moving battlefield.
Page 26/26: In July 1938….Marshall was ordered to Washington DC to become assistant chief of staff in the War Plans Division of the War Department. This was a key position, overseeing all future offensive operations of the United States. Three months later and a fortnight after the Munich Agreement, he was appointed chief of staff. It was In that post that he attended a conference at the White House on November 14, 1938 to discuss the Presidents plans to build fifteen thousand war plans
According to Arnold’s notes of the White House meeting the President did most of the talking, emphasizing that ideally he would have liked to build twenty thousand warplanes and create an annual capacity for twenty-four thousand, but acknowledged that this would be cut in half by Congress.
Page 27: Marshall well understood Roosevelt’s way of suborning people in this way, and refused to be drawn in to it. As chief of staff he didn’t visit Roosevelt’s country estate in Hyde Park (ever), saying that he found informal conversation with the President would get you ion trouble.
In this paragraph is an interesting end note: (it was suspected in the Churchill family that Marshall disapproved on moral grounds of the President’s affair with Lucy Mercer Rutherford.) This is not common knowledge in 2010.
Page 33: Whether Marshall had a “feel” for operations and a sense of strategy is a central question that this book will seek to answer.
Page 37: The BEF escaped destruction of Dunkrik. Even Pownall admitted in June 1946 that Brooke ‘came out trumps’. As we shall see, the experience of the campaign taught Brooke a number of important lessons about how he believed the rest of the war should be fought, lessons that diverged sharply from te ones Marshall had learned at Fort Leavenworth, Chaimount and Fort Benning.
Page 42 On 11 October 1940, staying at Chequers for the weekend, Churchill and Brooke disagreed over the use being made of the eccentric but occasionally brilliant Major-General Percy Hobart, who was then languishing as a lance-corporal in the Home Guard due to the War Office’s extreme inclination to employ him. Brooke said he was too wild , recorded Colville but ‘Winston reminded him of the Wolfe standing on a chair in front of Chatham brandishing a sword. “ You cant expect, he said “to have the genius type with conventional copy-book Style” That exchange could almost be taken as a template for their future relationship.
My comment: At this point I notice the difference in the dynamics between Marshall and Roosevelt and Brooke and Churchill. Where Marshall was smart enough to keep his boss at arms length, Brooke was not. In this case where Brooke challenged Churchill, even his own command was hesitant to use him militarily. Thus leaving a little grandstanding as a viable play to inspire the English people. Churchill used all the faculties of his people, ( and other Presidents, people) where Brooke’s vision was strictly military.
Page 45: The adoption of the memorandum, first by Marshall and then by Rossevelt- though not in writing – and then by the US Joint Planning Committee, meant that te United States had an outline plan to use durning the secret, arm'-length Anglo- American Staff talks, code named ABC-I which were about to start. No such talks could be organized before Roosevelt’s third inauguration on 20 January 1941, because during the election campaign he had promised American parents that ‘Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.’
Page 52: In a nine page hand written letter on 4 August, 1940 to his cousin and confidante Margaret ‘Daisy’ Suckley, who lived close to him in Dutchess County, New York, Roosevelt described how he had been secretly transferred from his presidential yacht the Potomac on to the heavy cruiser USS Augusta, and, with another cruiser and five destroyers as escort had made his way to Newfoundland. The Potomac had continued to fly his presidential flag once he’d left her, in order to maintain deception: “even at my ripe old age I feel the thrill in making a getaway, especially from the American Press.”
Page 68: The Grand Strategy Arcadia (1940) agreed was summarized in a document written by Churchill entitled WW1, which was to represent the Allies overall position until superseded by another document, CCS 94 in August 1942. This enshrined the concept of Germany first.
Page 69: Eisenhower agreed with Admiral Stark’s original assessment in ‘Plan Dog’ that the defeat of Germany would make the defeat of Japan a matter of time, whereas the defeat of Japan would not materially weaken Germany.
Page 77: Marshall’s institution of the Joint Chiefs of Staff could not, however, wholly alter the disorganization in the American system which Jacob had commented on so tartly. Roosevelt’s desire to retain power closely in his own hands, and to keep Administration officials competing for his favor, les him to adopt methods that seem indescribably Byzantine, even administratively dysfunctional, to modern eyes.
Page 91: On January 18 1942, in a memorandum to Roosevelt, Marshall identified what was for Brooke also a key aspect of the war, and one that the British believed justified the Gymnast operation. ‘The future effort of the Army is dependent on shipping, he wrote. ‘More shipping than is now insight is essential if the national war effort is not neutralized to a serious extent.’ Marshall estimated that by December 1942 there would be 1.8 million American troops ready for over seas service and by the end of 1943 about 3.5 million.
Page 110: Eden wanted to abolish the Defence Committee altogether, but recorded that Churchill was ‘obstinate about it, and maintains that it is better to have one place where service members have a show’ Eden thought that since it effected little and tended to attract criticism in parliament, it ought to go, but Churchill spotted that is would be better for an important committee to attract criticism than the real power-house of the war which were the Staff Conferences – meanwhile Ismay was the oil-can that greased the relationship between Churchill and Brooke.’ Says General Fraser – much as Dill oiled that between Brooke and Marshall.
Page 111: Dining with John Kennedy at the Savoy Grill on 4 June 1942, Ismay said Churchill ‘needs someone to use as a whipping boy on whom to blow off steam’ and he was ‘quite frank in admitting this as his chief function’ He added that someone with sounder and stronger judgment could hold his job it would be doubtless better, but chances are that such a person would soon be thrown out.’ Kennedy concluded that he would never have Ismay’s job ‘for anything in the world.’
Page 117: Like Brooke, Kennedy considered the bombing campaign against Germany ‘ineffective’ and ‘beyond our means.’ He repeated to his diary the views he injudiciously blurted out at Chequers the previous year, that if it came to worst, ‘It is certainly more important to hold India and Ceylon than to hang on in Egypt. We are getting very little for our effort in the Middle East and certainly not enough to compensate for serious losses of positions in the Indian Ocean. After hearing Churchill’s views on Singapore, Kennedy reiterated: ‘It is wrong to depend so much on one man who is so temperamental, so lacking in strategical knowledge and in judgment, despite his other great qualities.’ This summed up the view of Churchill that was held most universally among senior British Planners and especially Brooke., though none failed to praise those ‘the great qualities’, principally the fillip he gave national morale.
Page 119: Brooke’s adamant opposition to an early Second Front alienated plenty of liberal intellectuals …..who believed that Marshall’s judgment was ultimately better that Churchill’s and far ahead of General Brooke…whose judgment about Russia, was abysmal. In fact had a far more hard-headed attitude towards the Russians, who had until very recently been allies of the Nazis and had been supplying them with grain and oil right up to the night of Barbarossa was launched…Brooke was rather impatient with our attitude of giving everything Russians ask and getting nothing in return. Pf course the Russians are fighting - but for themselves and not for us.
Page 140: Brooke’s experiences in France in the two BEF expeditions of 1940 had a deciding influence on the assumptions underlying his formulation of grand strategy in the Second World War, principally in convincing him that the French could not be relied upon and that the Germans were very formidable opponents indeed.
Page 141: According to Hopkin’s notes of the trip, from 4p.m. to 6p.m. Marshall presented the broad outlines of his Memorandum to Churchill’s, who ‘indicated that he had told the Chiefs of Staff that, in spite of all the difficulties, he was prepared to go along.’ Churchill repeated the objections that the Chiefs of Staff had put, ‘all of which he had heard in Washington before coming to England’. Marshall was more optimistic about the interview than Hopkins, thinking that ‘Churchill went a long way and he Marshall, expected far more resistance than he got..
What Hopkins guessed, but Marshall seems not to have, is that Churchill privately opposed an early Roundup and Sledgehammer just as much as Brooke.
Page 155: Brooke then stated unequivocally that ‘The Chiefs of Staff entirely agreed that Germany was the real enemy. At the same time, it was essential to hold Japanese and ensure that there was no junction between tem and t Germans. He conjured up the by now familiar lurid scenario in which the Japanese won control of the Indian Ocean, allowing the Middle East to be gravely threatened and oil supplies prevented from going though the Persian Gulf. Under those circumstances, Germany would seize Persia’s oil, the southern route to Russia would be cut off, and Turkey would be isolated, destroying any hope of her joining the Allies, while Germany and Japan could exchange any hardware they needed
Page 156: Of Brooke he explained that the Germany First policy had been adopted because the US High Command wanted to fight on land, at sea, and in the air, as well as in the most useful place, and in the place where they could attain superiority, and they were desirous above all of joining in an enterprise with the British. He might have been more honest if less comradely, if he added that Roosevelt and Marshall realized how more difficult the task would be if Britain lost to Germany darning the time that it took for the United States to defeat Japan.
Page 170: ‘On 13 January last’ Marshall wrote to Roosevelt, on 5 May, ‘you authorized an increase in the enlisted strength of the Army to 3.6 million by 31 December 1942. Authorization for additional men in 1942 is now essential to out plans.’ In the intervening four months the Army had to garrison the lines of communication to Australia, and rush reinforcements to Hawaii, Alaska, and Panama.
Page 171: Roosevelt characterized the recapture of previously British- and Dutch-owned islands as ‘premature’. In the Near East and East African theaters, the responsibility was against the British, although America “must furnish all possible material’ in Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and the Persian Gulf. Britain and America would split responsibility for the Atlantic, while ‘The principal objective was to help Russia,’ since ‘It must be constantly reiterated that Russians armies are killing more Germans and destroying more Axis material, than all the twenty-five United Nations put together.’
Page 198. So, just as Marshall, King and Eisenhower were trying to consign Gymnast to a strategic, logistical and even ‘logical’ grave in Washington – hardly resisted by an almost equally skeptical Brooke- Churchill resurrected it at Hyde Park. In getting Roosevelt on his own there, Churchill had a considerable advantage, as ‘amateur strategist’ President tended, at least at this stage of the war, to defer to him on military matters in a way that he would not have done had Marshall been present. ‘I must emphasize’, admitted Wedemeyer, after the war.
Page 200: The American response to the news about Tobruk was instinctive, and was often later recalled with powerfully nostalgia by all Britons present. ‘For a moment or two no one spoke,’ recalled Ismay, but then the silence was broken by Roosevelt. ‘In six monosyllables he epitomized his sympathy with Churchill, his determination to do the utmost to sustain him, and his recognition that we were all in the same boat: “What can we do to help?”
Page 214: Churchill himself admitted being haunted by the ghosts of the Somme and in the Closing Ring he wrote of Roundup: “The fearful price we had to pay in human life and blood for te great offensives of the First World War was graven on my mind….
Yet is wasn’t so much getting to Passchendaele and the Somme that worried the British strategists in 1942-4 as the Dunkirk and Brest campaigns of the summer of 1940. Rommel’s and Guderian’s seemingly unstoppable blitzkrieg campaign across France featured more in their fears – especially Brooke’s and Dill’s – than the mud and blood of Flanders of a quarter century before.
Page 220: Brooke explained his view and thus his fundamental difference of view from Marshall. “ Having been forced to fight on two fronts during 1914-18 War’ he began te Germans ‘had further developed their East-West communications with double railway lines and autobahns, to meet the possibility of being again forced to fight on two frontiers. They were capable of moving some six to eight divisions…simultaneously from East to West. That the Germans had far less maneuverability ins southern Europe and the Mediterranean, where he argued the rail and road communications from northern France to southern Italy and the Mediterranean were very poor.
Page 233: ‘I have carefully your estimate of Sunday’ wrote Roosevelt to Marshall and Stimson on Tuesday 14 July, before his return to the White House the next day. “My first impression is that the [Pacific Option] is exactly what Germany hoped the United States would do following Pearl Harbor. Secondly, it does not in fact provide American troops in fighting, except in a lot of [Pacific] islands whose occupation will not affect the world situation this year or next….
Page 235: Dill also mentioned another un-welcomed fact to Churchill in his telegram, namely that the American Chiefs of Staff were reading Field Marshall Sir William Robertson’s two-volume memoir about grand strategy of the Great War, Soldiers and Statesmen, and that Marshall had sent him a copy with the third chapter of the first volume heavily annotated. Churchill would have understood immediately what that meant. Robertson, whi had been CIGS from 1915 to 1918, was a Clausewitizian, and volume I chapter III of his book covered the Dardanelles expedition. ‘An essential condition of success in war being, the concentration of effort on the decisive front, ….
Over the Dardanelles, Robertson did not deny that ‘it might be desirable to threaten interests which are of importance to the enemy, so as to oblige him to detach for their protection of force larger than te one employed making the threat, thus rendering him weaker in comparison on the decisive front,’ which was precisely Churchill’s and Brooke’s Italian strategy for 1943-4, but Marshall is unlikely to have underlined that for Dill’s attention. Much more likely candidates for annotation were Robertson’s strictures on ministers – primarily Churchill himself – who were indifferent to, or ignorant or, the disadvantages which always attend on charges of plan and t neglect to concentrate on one thing at a time’ Churchill was also criticized by name for having briefed the supreme strategy-making body, the War Council, directly, instead of allowing the Admiralty professionals to do it, ‘as was, in fact done after Churchill left the department’.
My Note: First the Clauswitzien strategy of WWI only produced an armacist and planted the seeds of the Second World War. To be direct it was a failed strategy that cost millions of lives. Of this excerpt there is far too much conjecture. First the author attempts to connect the dots of history back to the Dardanelles and pin full blame on Churchill, when other accounts find that there was nothing wring with Churchill’s strategy in the Dardanelles if only the Admiral of the Fleet at the time had sailed into the ports of a Turk army who was completely out of ammunition. Additionally in his concluding sentences to indict Churchill of over reaching his authority, the author does not concede that at the time of Churchill’s address to the War Council, that it was his place and duty to do so, regardless of future changes in structure. The author is guilty of “piling on” in wrongful criticism of a leader who with faults led the world to victory in WWII. Form this point, on through the rest of the book the reader witnesses the bias of the author. Where as the strategy unfolds Churchill’s idea of attacking Germany from the south, may have inflicted lives cost in terms of lives and blood, and as well have reached Berlin far ahead of the Russians which would have stalled the Russian land grab of which was known for forty-five years as the Eastern Bloc countries that fell under the heel of the USSR.
Page 238: On the evening of 14 July, at a meeting at No 10 Downing Street of representatives of Allied countries grandly entitled the Pacific War Council, Kennedy recorded: “Winston in his blue romper suit but with clean white shirt with cuffs…looked well and serene, lit a cigar and proceeded to give a general survey of the war, speaking slowly and without effort.”. After asking the New Zealand High Commissioner Sir William Jordan to stop taking notes because it distracted his attention, he talked of shipping losses, the efforts to sustain Russia, and the Eastern Front, and pointed out that Germans had only seventy-five days before winter fell there. He believed ‘The Japs would attack Russia when the moment came the- they would stab her in the back…. But for the moment they were gorged with their prey’.
Page 251: Eisenhower reacted somewhat melodramatically to the news, telling Butcher that Wednesday 22 July 1942 could well go down as ‘the blackest day in history’ if Russia was defeated by ‘the big Boche drive now so alarmingly under way’ and the West had done nothing to save her.
Back in Washington, Stimson insisted on seeing the standoff in terms of ‘a fatigued and defeatist government which lost her initiative, blocking the help of a young and vigorous nation whose strength had not he been tapped so much as wrecked, and Britain’s along with it. The experience of these negotiations with Marshall and King must have been rather like reliving his June 1940 conversation with Churchill at Lamans.
That day John Kennedy was given a full briefing on the negotiations by Brooke, who told him that Roosevelt had given instructions to Marshall to the effect that the American Army must get into action somewhere against the Germans and that he was to go and make plans accordingly. This is so remarkably accurate that Brooke simply must have known or at least the gist of the secret instructions that Roosevelt had given Marshall and Hopkins before they left. Had Hopkins leaked them to Churchill, who passed them on at 11:00 PM meeting at Downing Streets? However he came by the information, Brooke knew that if he stayed utterly intransigent over Sledgehammer – if he kept ‘looking into the distance’ – Marshall was under orders to finally buckle.
Page 254: Like Portal, Kennedy also thought that superior British arguments rather than presidential diktat had won the day, ‘The last week has seen a development in our planning with Americans that may govern the future outcome of the war’ he wrote.
Page 255: As so often in hard-fought compromises between Staffs m the key detail was to be found towards the end, almost in the small print. Under paragraph C subsection 4 it stated: ‘That it be understood that a commitment to [Torch] renders Roundup in all probability impracticable of successful operation in 1943 and therefore that we have defiantly accepted a defensive encircling line of action for Continental European Theater, except as to air operations and blockade.
That might sound like Brooke’s strategy, but there was a catch, pone that Michael Howard has even likened to Faustian compact made between British Chiefs of Staff and the Americans, CCS 94 seemed to imply that Churchill’s original WWI document from Arcadia Conference had now been officially superseded, and that instead of Germany First, the phrase ‘defensive encircling line of action, meant that Americans could now concentrate more on the Pacific.
My Note: seems to imply is always a warning sign that the author may be attempting to add a new color to history. Robert Andrews does this often to cast Churchill in a critical light.
Page 258: The change of Allied policy from attacking Cherbourg in France to attacking Casablanca in Africa, swiveling the whole focus of grand strategy 1,250 miles to the south, cannot have but rankled with Marshall. Even ten months later walking to a meeting together in Washington, he told Brooke: ‘I find it very hard even now not to look upon your North African strategy with jaundice eye!!’
Considering that even the US secretary for War had bet the President that the American invasion of Morocco would fail – something that would surely have forced his resignation if know publicly – there was much ground to be made up.
My Note: The reader must be very careful to note where the end quotes are and where the conjecture begins in the above second paragraph. Earlier in the book the author portrays the North African Strategy as the only one available at the time where action must be made to demonstrate deterrence and affirmative action on the Allied part. For Marshall, there could only be a tactical interpretation of the North African campaign as he was always a Clausewitz advocate and North African distracted that effort. I’ll share my views in the body conclusion.
Page 267: On Brookes decision to remain Churchill’s strategist and not assume command in the field, deferring the job to Montgomery: Brooke was not persuaded by Smuts, not least because he was a gentleman, he couldn’t bear the idea that Auchinleck ‘might think that I had come out here on purpose to work himself into his shoes!’ He thought over the offer throughout the day, but remained convinced that his decision was the correct one, and that he could ‘do more by remaining CIGS’…..we assume that politicians are driven by personal ambition, but soldiers are too, and although in career terms to swab the job of CIGS for Near East commander-in-chief might have looked like a demotion, in fact it would have afforded, Smuts intimated, a ‘wonderful future’.
Page 268: Brooke and Churchill also agreed that Alexander Should succeed Auchinleck in Cairo, Lieutenant- General Thomas Corbett and Brigadier Eric Dorman-Smith were to leave their commands altogether, and Lieutenant-General William ‘Strafer” Gott was to lead the English Army, although Brooke had misgivings about this. Yet on his way to take up his new command on the very next day, 7 August, flying the Burg el Arab to Heliopolis route, which was considered safe, Gott’s slow transport plane was shot down ‘inflames’ by a lone German fighter. Churchill and Brooke then quickly settled on the man whom Brooke had wanted originally, Lieutenant General Bernard Law Montgomery.
My note: By now the reader is cautious on an author’s bent to color history. With an agenda to criticize Churchill’s credibility, Roberts could have provided evidence as to Brookes preference of pick.. While the story may or may not an accurate reflection of Brooke’s preference, this book does not stand on its own on this point.
Page 270: Everyone cheered up once Churchill passed on to what he called operation Torch, at which Stalin ‘became intensely interested’
Page 273: On the failed Operation Jubilee : A small German convoy in the Channel alerted the shore defenses before the assault could take place, so the element of surprise was lost, yet Mountbatten ordered it to go ahead anyhow.
Although no German troops were moved from East to West as a result of the debacle, coastal defenses were massively strengthened. ‘If I had the same decision to make again,’ Mountbatten nonetheless answered, ‘I would do as I did before. It gave the Allies the priceless secret of victory.’ This is trip, unless the lesson of not attacking a well-defended town without proper intelligence and a preliminary aerial and naval bombardment is a ‘priceless secret’….Yet even as late as 2003 historians would still take Mountbatten at his word, with one writing” ‘The catastrophe provided priceless lessons for a full scale amphibious invasion”.
My note: While this time I agree with Robert’s assessment or coloring of Mountbatten’s decisions, Roberts falls prey of criticizing other historians where his narrative stands on its own. In my view Mountbatten’s strategy and tactics has not been the benefactor of history’s long view on numerous other occasions; specifically post war India.
Page 276: It was Stalingrad that finally, in Stimson’s words, ‘banished is the spectre of a German victory in Russia, which had haunted the Council table of Allies for a year and a half.’ IT also greatly reduced the likelihood of a German attack through Spain, cutting off American forces from their supply lines. Just as Wellington’s campaign in the Iberian peninsula had been small but significant “ulcer’ for Napoleon, but certainly not the Russian ‘coronary’ that destroyed him, so too the North African and Italian campaigns would be ulcerous for Hitler, but it was the Eastern Front that annihilated the Nazi dream of Lebensraum for the mater race.
My note: To my observation on the missing strategy are those of Stalin and Hitler. Each of which contributed to the outcome of the Second World War, yet over looked in this book.
Page 279 We are undertaking something of a quite desperate nature and which depends only in minor degree upon professional preparations we can make or upon the wisdom of our military decisions,’ wrote Eisenhower in his diary that week. “in a way it is like the return of Napoleon from Elba – if the guess as to psychological reaction is correct we may gain a great advantage in this war; if the guess is wrong, it would be almost certain that we would gain nothing and lose a not.’ He feared that there might be a ‘very bloody repulse’ and that Vichy France and even Spain might enter the war against the Allies.
Page 281: When Roosevelt’s cable duly arrived on Monday 31 August it caused consternation.’ I feel very strongly that the initial attacks must be made by an exclusively American ground force supported by your naval and transport and air units,’ it read. This was because Roosevelt believed that the French would offer less resistance ‘to us than they will to the British’.
Page 293: Smuts suggested that the real victory front was to be found ‘from the South not from the West’, and Churchill agreed,
Page 297: It was a magisterial rebuke, and the figures still have the power to impress. An army of fewer that two hundred thousand when the European war broke out in September 1939 would grow into one seven million – thirty-five times its size- a mere four years later. In divisional terms, the US Army had 37 trained divisions at the time of Pearl Harbor, 73 by Operation Torch, 120 by the summer of 1943 and 200 by D-Day. By contrast the British Commonwealth had seventy-five divisions by the summer of 1943 and hardly any more the nest year. Nor was the American Revolution confined to the Army; on 13 November 1942 a US shipbuilding yard built a standard 10,500-ton merchant vessel - a Liberty ship in exactly four days and fifteen hours. Two days later the ship was fully equipped and ready for service. No other country or alliance could begin to match such efficiency and productive power.
Page 299: Had the entire German and Italian army in Tunisia- approximately a quarter of a million men- not been captured, they might well have stalled the later Allied advances into southern Europe. It might be, therefore, that the very lack of early success immediately after Torch paradoxically increased the success later, given Hitler’s unwillingness to retreat even tactically, a characteristic that American strategists were about to note with glee.
Page 301: With Churchill and Brooke now tending to agree on the big issue – that the next stage in the war ought to be in the Mediterranean rather than across the Channel – Brooke allowed himself to be irritated only by small issues, such as Churchill’s love for rodomontades during meetings. At one Defense Committee with Winston holding forth, he passed a note to Grigg saying ’15 minutes gone and no work done’, which he subsequently altered to 20, 30, 35, 40 and then 45, before the real business of the beating began. ‘Winston is really stupid the way he tries his team’ concluded Kennedy after he heard this…
My comment: Other than to tarnish an otherwise brilliant performance of Churchill , the author spends too much print like above to make his disenchantment with Churchill known.
Page 303: CIGS is quite determined to go flat out in the MED recorded Kennedy
We can waste German strength there and tackle him on equal or better terms in outposts like Sardania, Sicily, tip of Italy, Crete. We cannot develop an an offensive on both fronts. The essential condition for France is still a crack in German morale and strength. Italy may be knocked out of the war by a combination of landing attacks and bombing. The Balkans are a weak spot for the Axis. If we can get near enough to bomb the Roumanian oilfields and cut the Aegean and Turkish traffic (chrome, etc) we can go far to hamstring the Germans
My comment: What is missed by the author and the western strategists is had we marched from Yugoslavia to Berlin, the Russians would not have taken that territory and we would not have had a fifty-year Cold War.
Page 311: The strategy of North Africa-Ital-France, stated the American historian Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison in an Oxford lecture series in the 1950’s ‘was a perfectly cogent and defensible strategy; but Sir Alan Brooke disclosed it only bit by bit, which naturally gave Americans the feeling that they had been had.. He cited Admiral King’s prediction that once forced to the Mediterranean, We would be forced to go on had proposed North Africa as a stepping stone to mainland Italy and the Balkans, and possibly beyond, right at the start, the Americans would never have undertaken Torch.
Page 317: Broke thought it best to put the war against Japan high on the agenda, reasoning that if Admiral King ‘was able to get everything about the pacific “off his chest”, then perhaps he ‘would take a less jaundiced view vis-à-vis the rest of the world’
Page 323: At 5:30 PM the Combined Chiefs, along with Eisenhower, Alexander and Tedder, met Roosevelt and Churchill in the first of three plenary sessions- ‘at which we did little’, recorded Brooke, ‘except that the President expressed views favoring operations in the Mediterranean’. Far from little, this was the first glimpse that as with Torch, the Americans were split over strategy, and therefore might be prevailed over isolating Marshall again. This time it would take much detailed argument, especially by Staffs, rather than the point-blank veto that Brooke had exercised in London backing July.
Page 334: When the Combined Chiefs of Staff met again at 3p, the compromise paper was accepted with only a few minor alterations. The recapture of Burma through Anakim and a south-west Pacific offensive to Rabaul and then on to Marshall and Caroline Islands would be conducted with whatever means could be spared without compromising the objective of defeating Germany.
Page346: Ian Jacob believed that being expelled from North Africa ‘would be shattering for Italians. Their vitals would be exposed to attack.’ The surrender of Italy would present Hitler with a tough choice: either to let her go or else reinforce her by taking troops from elsewhere, such as Russia and the Balkans. There was an aspect to the Fuhrer that was only just becoming apparent to the Allied High Commands: it seemed clear from the orders that he gave both to Paulus in Stalingrad and to Rommel at El Alamein (and again in Tunisia) the he could not countenance even strategically justified with drawls.
Page 347: Churchill insisted on th President being carried up on to the roof of Villa Taylor, ‘his paralyzed legs dangling like limbs of a ventriloquist’s dummy, limp and flaccid’ in the words of an on looker, and together they watched the purple mountains changing color in the setting sun. It was from that roof that Churchill painted his only picture of the war, despite taking his canvases and paint box on several trips.
Page 384: In a Cabinet discussion on war criminals on 7 July, Churchill reported that FDR [was] inclined to let our troops shoot them out of hand! ‘I suggested the United Nations [should] draw up list of fifty or so who would be declared as outlaws by the thirty-three nations. (those not on the list might be induced to a rat!) If any of these were found by advancing troops, the nearest officer of Brigade rank should call a military court to establish identity and then execute without higher military authority.’
Page 402: On Monday 16 August, Brook and Marshall returned to the Trident system of off-the-record meetings. The secretaries and Planners left the Salon Rose, and for three hours after 2:30 p.m. the Combined Chiefs undertook ‘the difficult task of finding a bridge.’ These discussions were ‘pretty frank’ with Brooke opening by saying that ‘the root of the matter was that we did not trust each other’. He went on to accuse the Americans of doubting the British commitment ‘to put our full hearts into the cross Channel operation next spring’, while their part the British were not certain that Americans ‘would not in future insist on our carrying out previous agreements irrespective of changed strategic conditions’. This was a veiled reference to the seven divisions due to be withdrawn from the Mediterranean theatre only eleven weeks hence.
Page 403: Vast amounts of construction work had to be done – hard roads, railways to beaches, exits, fuel and storage tanks, railway sidings. The amount of construction in southern England was terrific. It is interesting to note that millions of pounds were spent from early 1943 onwards, when there was only COSSAC Staff; millions spent on a plan which had not been approved
‘It was the logic of events resulting from a loss of time more than logic of argument’
Page 404: Meanwhile, Churchill was still pressing hard for an attack on the northern tip of Sumatra, code named Operation Culverin. Rather condescendingly Brooke wrote that ‘Winston…had discovers with a pair of dividers that we could bomb Singapore’ from Sumatra, ‘and he had set his heart on going there’. Brooke believed Sumatra to be unsuitable place for any long term projects against the Malay States, and told the Prime Minister at a meeting at t Citadel at noon on 19 August the ‘when he put his left foot down he should know where the right foot was going to go’. In cold black and white print, that does not look too rude, but we cannot know the tone of voice and the body language that accompanied it. The result was Churchill lost his temper completely and shook his fist in Brook’s face saying ‘I do not want any pf your long term projects that cripple initiative!
Page 419: So the meeting served no useful purpose other than blowing off ministerial steam. It was not mentioned at all in Churchill’s war memoirs, probably because he did not want readers to appreciate how doubtful he was about Overloard.. Yet he was, and so – at least on this occasion –was Brooke.
My comment: Operation Overloard was clearly from the military books and minds of the Americans. It proved to be a victory or at least in my mind we didn’t lose. It was a victory at the cost of immense loss of life. Likely more so than the strategy being argued by the British at the time; which was to advance in to Germany from the south through a landing in what was then Yugoslavia. War was won by the Russians as much as the Allies. Overloard was the seed of the Cold War. Overloard was pushed by American who buy 1944 were contributing more to the war effort and therefore carried the commanding voice, without listening to alternative strategy.
Page 427: reported by Sir Alan Lascekes: great problem at the moment is to teach th Americans that you cannot run a war by making rigir ‘lawyers’ agreements’ to carry out preconceived strategic operations at a given date (ie Overloard), but you must plan your campaign elastically and be prepared to adapt it to the tactical exigencies of the moment. They don’t seem to grasp that a paper-undertaking made in the autumn to invade Europe (or any other Continent) in the following spring may have to be modified in accordance with what the enemy does or does not do in the intervening winter.
Page 428: With only days to go before the Cairo Conference began, The British crystallized their ideas about what they wanted out of it. The main desiderata would be to continued the offensive in Italy, to increase the flow of supplies to the partisans in the Balkans, to try to induce the Balkan powers to break away from Germany, to induce Turkey to enter the war, and to accept a postponement of Overloard. Of these five British hopes only the first two were adopted.
Page 433: Roosevelt evinced yet more hostility towards Britain in the COSSAC proposals for the division of post war Germany into zones, codenamed Rankin. He believed that ‘the British wanted the north western part of Germany and would like to see the US take France and Germany south of the Mouselle River. ‘ He said ‘he he did not like that arrangement’. Other than mentioning its Roman Catholicism, the President did not explain what he had against ‘southern Germany, Baden Wurttemburg, everything south of the Rhine’, but clearly preferred America to control the Protestant north-west of the Reich The reason was doubtless because that was generally where the manufacturing industries were located.
…continued onto page 434: King added that the military plans for Overloard were too far developed to permit any changes in deployment. Roosevelt then astonishingly suggested that American forces might instead be sent around Scotland and land in northern Germany, adding that “He felt that we should get out of France and Italy as soon as possible, letting the British and the French handle their own problem together. There would definitely be a race for Berlin. We may have to put the US divisions into Berlin as soon as possible
My comment: Again we find within his own words an author taking the ever popular attack on a religious argument when he also includes the practical argument for ones desires on the spoils of war. Andrew Roberts expounded on the religious points and glossed over the practical. And you wonder why there is a popular view against religion.
Page 436: Although the British wanted an agreement on Overloard and the Mediterranean before they all me the Russians in Tehran, the Americans needed a decision on south-eat Asia immediately, but wanted to discuss Overloard and the Mediterranean only at Tehran, where the knew they would be supported by Stalin, who was desperate for Overloard as he was opposed a Western presence In the Balkans. Furthermore, Roosevelt and Marshall rated Chaing Kai-shek highly and saw China as a post-war great power, where as Churchill saw him as a peripheral figure and Brooke considered him “Evidently [had]…no grasp of war in its larger aspects…
Page 440: Roosevelt had wanted to invite Moscow to Cairo but the Russians wouldn’t meet the Chinese generalissimo for fear that it might compromise the uneasy truce the Russians maintained with Japan since 1941.
Page 444 The Russian dictator stated unequivocally that Overloard should be the overriding priority for 1944, that the Italian campaign was a mere diversion (and an unimpressive one at that); that Turkey would not enter the war so Britain’s Aegean planes were still born, and that southern France needed to be invaded before Overlord.
Page 451
Stalin promised to declare war on Japan after Germany surrendered, and to launch an offensive during Overlord to discourage the Wermacht from moving troops westwards during the initial stages.
My comment: a convenient promise by Stalin, but it is not mentioned that Stalin did not declare war on Japan, and we fought on resorting to the Atom bomb.
Page 453: The realities were spelt to Stimson by Roosevelt after Marshall had specifically refused to ask for t Overlord post: ‘The President said that he had decided on a mathematical basis that if Marshall took Overlord it would mean that Eisenhower would become Chief of Staff. Yet Eisenhower was unfamiliar with the war in the Pacific and, in Stimson’s view he ‘would be far less able than Marshall to handle the Congress’…
Page 463: Brooke added that, when he visited Italy that December, ‘The terrain defies description. It’s like the North-West Frontier: a single destroyed culvert can hold up an army for a day.’ He then went on to talk about the Germans, saying they were fighting magnificently: ‘Marvelous it is perfectly marvelous.’ Hitler’s strategy was all wrong, however, in trying to establish a front in Italy so far south while simultaneously holding Nikopol on the lower Dnieper, for “While one is on the wave of victory no one can successfully violate all the established rules of war. But when one starts to decline, one cannot violate them without disaster.
Page 476: …when the War Cabinet was informed that there could be as many as 160,000 civilian casualties as a result of bombing the French railway network prior to Overloard, Cunningham noted,’ Considerable sob stuff about children with legs blown off and blinded old ladies but nothing about saving of risk to our young soldiers landing on a hostile shore. It is of course intended to issue warnings before hand’
Page 477: From Cunningham’s journals it is evident that the Chiefs of Staff were looking towards the post-war situation, with a suspicions eye towards Russia, almost before any other British government agency or institution.
My comment: yet they insisted on a text book attack of Overlord as opposed to attacking through the Balkans.
Page 490 The day after D-Day, Alexander reported that if he were left with his twenty-seven divisions in Italy, and not lose any to Anvil, he could break through the Appennines into the Po Valley, take eighteen divisions north of Venice and force the Ljubljan Gap between Italy and northern Yugoslavia. Once there, he stated in his memoirs, the way led to Vienna, an object of great political and psychological value’. The prospect appealed to Churchill and Clark, but not very much to others…
Marshall vociferously opposed forcing Ljubljana Gap, arguing that Eisenhower needed the southern French ports so that he could deploy on a much wider front, and that the Germans would merely withdrawal from north Italy to the Alps under Alexander’s attack, which could then be held with far smaller forces.
Page 490: Churchill’s dreams of British Commonwealth forces planting Union Jack over Schonbrunn and the Hofburg before the Russians arrived in Vienna was ended by Brooke, who knew Marshall’s view of it. There would still be plenty of teeth gnashing before Churchill relinquished his project,…
Page 498: said McMillan we should have to give in if Eisenhower and Marshall insisted upon ‘Anvil”. We can fight up to a point, we can ;eave on record for history to judge the reasoned statement of our views, and the historian will also see that the Americans have never answered any argument, never attempted to discuss or debate the points, but have merely given flat negative and slightly Shylock-like insistence which they conceive to be their bargain.
My comment: With all the negative color that the author puts on Churchill I don’t know what to make of him putting the most critical analysis of the most critical decision in terms of joint strategy in a first person voice of one of the actors of the story. Being that McMillan was not a prime mover of this book this critical analysis could have gone un noticed.
Page 499: Churchill’s reply on 1 July was anguished. Even though he began with first person plural – ‘We are deeply grieved by your telegram’ – he soon slipped into more intimate vernacular, saying that this was ‘the first major strategic and political error for which the two are responsible. At Teheran you emphasized to me the possibilities of a move eastward when Italy was conquered.’ He claimed that ‘N one involved in these discussions has ever thought of moving armies into the Balkans,’ but stated that Istria and Treste were strategically and politically important position ‘which, as you saw yourself, very clearly might exercise profound and widespread reactions, especially now after the Russians advances’ Finally Churchill stated that:
If you still press upon us the directive of your Chiefs of Staff to withdraw so many of your forces from the Italian campaign and leave all our hopes there dashed to the ground, His Majesty’s Government, on the advice of their Chiefs of Staff must enter a solemn protest…. It is with the greatest sorrow that I write to you in this sense. But I am sure that if we could have met, as I so frequently proposed, we should have reached a happy agreement.
That is precisely what Marshall had feared, and was one of the reasons Churchill did not meet the President at all throughout the nine months between December 1943 and September 1944, despite having seen him thrice in the seven months in 1943. Churchill‘s force of personality was blunted once it was translated on to printed telegraph slips…
My comment: The most critical turn of strategy is depicted in the book from page 436 through page 499. It bares the power to the phrase “let history” judge our actions. I am simply suspect that our author was so bent on the critique of Churchill that he missed an opportunity to expound on the genius of Churchill.
Page 505: Churchill agreed, telling Charles Moran ‘Good God, can’t you see that the Russians are spreading across Europe like a tide; they have invaded Polan, and there is nothing to prevent them into marching in to Turkey and Greece!...but the Americans would not listen to him….But The Americans would not listen to him. Moran concluded that Churchill was distraught, but you cannot get him down for too long.’He sat up in his bed as his speech quickened and he expounded on how “Alex might be able to solve this problem by breaking into the Balkans. Out troops are already in the outskirts of Florence. They would soon be in the valley of the Po.’ Churchill’s promise to Roosevelt on 1 July that ‘No on involved in these discussions has ever thought of moving armies into the Blalkans’ there for is obviously completely misleading.
My comment: I have learned that what an author in history uses words like obviously; it was a harbinger that the words immediately following is an attempt to either re-write history, bend it, or perhaps cast an undue judgment of history. In this point I find Andrew Roberts guilty as charged as history clearly finds that the period immediately after WWI was the dawn of the phrase Soviet Bloc which included all the countries that the USSR invaded while the Allies were spending all their effort in operation Overlord. So when the West say they won WWII I beg to differ. The USSR won WWII and the West won a Cold War that could have been avoided, had they listened to Churchill.
Page 510: That question then led to the next: what kind of front would the Allies choose in the drive to the Rhine and beyond? Would it be a broad one that comprehensively forced the Germans back towards the Fatherland, with two major advances on wide fronts north and south of the Ardennes or would the attack instead be on narrow fronts, spearheaded by several faster thrusts to try and capture important targets deep within Germany, possibly even including Berlin before the Red Army reached it? Here again Roosevelt and Marshall supported Esienhower’s inclination for the former, while Brooke and Churchill tended to opt for Montgomary’s and Patton’s preference for the latter.
On the question of what the armies in Italy under Alexander and Clark would do once Lucain Truscott’s fifth Army and Sir Richard McCreery’s Eighth Army broke through the Gothic Line, the Americans strongly deprecated moves towards Treste, Istria, the Ljubljana Gap, Vienna and the Balkans.
Page 511 On 29 August Churchill sent Roosevelt a telegram about the Mediterranean in which the final paragraph once again brought up their Tehran conversation. It ended, ‘I an sure the arrival of a powerfull army in purely military values.’ Although the condition of Hungary could not be predicted, he believes that having troops there would leave the Western Allies ‘in a position to take full advantage of any great new situation.’ Roosevelt passed this on to Marshall, who asked McNarney and Handy to work on a draft reply that covered Italy in full but deliberately bypassed Istria completely. Churchill cannot have failed to mark the implications.
My comment: In this paragraph you see Roosevelt’s hubris coming out. His economy was saved by a war. Are participation in that war was only granted the time to tool up by the British of who he arrogantly ignores the visionary words of an Allies with much more intimate experience in European affairs in than himself. While Roosevelt did much good in holding his country together through a great depression, his economic and war time strategy receives low scores from the 20/20 perspective of history.
Page 515[Brooke] believes that seizure of the Istrian peninsula ‘not only had a military value, but also a political value of the Russian advances in the Balkans’.
Page 525: That same day Roosevelt and Churchill, amazingly enough initialed the Morgenthau Plan, which said that Germany needed to be turned into a country primarily agricultural and pastoral in character. Brooke was fundamentally opposed, already seeing Germany as a future ‘ally to meet the Russian threat of twenty-fie years hence.
Page 527: Churchill went on to claim, rightly, that Britain had nonetheless saved Greece from the flood of Bolshevism.
Page 528: Marshall later recalled: We were very much afraid that Mr. Churchill’s interest in matters near Athens and in Greece would finally get us involved in that fighting, and we were keeping out of it in every way we possibly could.’ On 13 December, Roosevelt cabled Churchill to say that ‘the traditional policies of the US’ meant that as head of state he had to be ‘responsive to the state of public feeling’ against Britain on the Greek issue, and concluded, I didn’t need to tell you how much I dislike this state of affairs between you and me. Churchill replied generously: ‘I have felt it much that you were unable to give a word of explanation for your actions, but I understand your difficulties.’ The new burden of combating Communism in south-eastern Europe therefore looked as if it would be carried entirely by the British
Page 531: On 29 November Churchill made clear his objections to the early liberation of the Channel Islands, telling the War Cabinet that while the twenty-eight thousand Germans there ‘can’t get away’, if they surrendered Britain would have to feed them.
Page 535: The battle of the Bulge, for the potential danger it posed in the west, was only half the size of the [Russian] battle of Kursk, for example.
Page 539: This was particularly so in regard to the Balkan states and the now-termed satellite states. ‘You can’t treat military factors in the way you do political factors. It’s quite a different affair.’ Marshall felt that his brief was not to save eastern Europe from Communism but instead to win the war in the shortest possible time and with the fewest possible Allied lives lost.
My comment: First it is Roosevelt’s job to tell Marshall what the objectives are. Had Roosevelt listened to Churchill earlier in the game of war strategy he could possibly have had his cake and eat it too. As much as the author took license to bend history and inject his comment elsewhere on to cast Churchill in poor light I find his vision slightly clouded by American hubris as well.
Page 532: In 6 February [at Yalta] [Marshall] summarized the Burmese campaigns for t Russians, and Marshall reported that ‘in the face of unparalleled difficulties’ 44,000 tons of supplies had been flown over the Himalayas the previous month, which he described somewhat hyperbolically, as ‘the accomplishment of the greatest feat in all history’ and beside which he said inter-Staff co-operation ‘should be relatively easy. One problem frequently encountered was the reluctance of even high-ranking Russian military officers to commit themselves to anything, however minor, until it ad been referred back to Stalin; the hitherto short life-expectancies of marshals of t Soviet Union made that a sensible precaution.
Page 553: Although Balaklava mattered much to men like Churchill and Brooke who had grown up with Tennyson’s poem, the Prime Minister complained that local Russian guides had shown ‘no sort of feeling’ there. Either they thought they had won the battle or they had never heard of it…. We stood on the little ridge on the end of that famous battlefield where the Charge of the Light Brigade took place. All around us were twisted remains of German anti-tank guns.
My comment: having read up on the Crimean War I noted to myself that while the Charge of the Light Brigade was eventually successful, the British actually lost the battle of Balaklava. This was at some level because that while the taking of the objective in the Charge of the Light Brigade, there was no coordinated effort with the rest of the British and French armies, hence they soon lost their prize back to the Russians. I must be critical of the author, a historian, who did not seem to portray history correctly.
Page 555: Because he is usually accredited the victor of Yalta, it is sometimes forgotten that Stalin made a number of concessions there. He gave a firm date of entry into the Japanese war (three months after the Tennyson’s poem e German surrender); agreed to observe the provisions of the Atlantic Charter in eastern Europe by signing the Declaration of Liberated Europe, which affirmed the right of all peoples to choose their form of government under which they live’; assent to France sitting on the Control Commission for Germany, and agreed that the USSR would join the new United Nations Organization, largely on Roosevelt’s terms. Taken together these seemed significant, yet in reality they amounted to relatively little.
Page 556: Speaking in 1974, Ed Hull made the sensible but rarely heard argument that: All that Yalta did was to recognize the facts of life as they existed and were being brought about…The only way we could have in any way influenced that in a different way was not to have put our main effort into France and the Low Countries but to put it into the Balkans…It might have meant that Bulgaria, Rumania, and possibly other of those Eastern European countries that are now Communist-dominated would have other type of control. But…it would also mean that all of Germany and probably a good portion of t Low Countries, Belgium, Holland, and even France, might have Soviet influence over them rather than Western influence. To me there was no choice to make.
My comment: Again since the author took critical license out on Churchill throughout the book, albeit slight; to take grave objection to him actually taking down Hull’s statement in this book and failing to be critical. Imagine the Russians leapfrogging over Germany to actually occupy Western Europe. To use that is a mitigating circumstance is absurd. The book is subtitled how Four Titans Won the War using superb strategy. He then proceeds to berate one of the titans, and then describes a missed strategy and writes it off as insignificant lesser of two evils. Who really won the War appears to have been the USSR. It was not until the USA won the Cold War that Europe was fully liberated from tyranny.
Page 557: It is hard to be naïve and cynical at the same time, but Roosevelt was both when it came to Stalin and the fate of the Poles. ‘of one thing I am certain’ he told the Polish Prime Minister-in-exile Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, ‘Stalin is not an imperialist.’ To the former American Ambassador to France, William C Bullitt, he also said: “I have a hunch that Stalin doesn’t want anything other than security for his country, and I think if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work for a world of democracy and peace’
My comment: When an author writes these words in a book one has to think his cover subtitle is off the mark.
Page 561: As there was no point in doing that, there was no race to Berlin between Montgomery and Patton, or anyone else. Berlin was in the Soviet zone, and if the Allies had reached it first they simply would have to withdraw.
Page 565: Roosevelt’s curt reply to Churchill –“I do not get the point’ – ended with his ‘regret that phrasing of a formal discussion should have so disturbed you but I regret even more at a moment of a great victory we should become involved in such unfortunate reactions. Churchill could hardly have felt that it was worth while ripping up various agreements made with the Russians over Occupation zoning in order to dash for Berlin. More likely he wished to put in writing that he was on the right side of the Cold War which he saw – earlier than anyone else except perhaps Brooke – was looming. Between Churchill’s wildly over-optimistic report to the War Cabinet on returning from Yalta and this doleful telegram to Roosevelt only two months later, Stalin had given no indication that his promises of free and fair elections in Eastern Europe had been genuine.
Page 567: despite the tension between the two Masters in the last year or so, there is no evidence to support the notion that Churchill’s absence was ‘because he felt the President had latterly become unsupportive’, or that ‘the emotional link was never as close as commonly thought,’ as some historians suggested.
Page 569: Truman, who in all military matters understandably tended to defer to Marshall, followed the Joint Chief’s line that it was best to adhere to the Yalta zoning arrangements whatever the legal or political circumstances. Brooke wanted Prague to be liberated by the Western Allies for the ‘remarkable political advantages’ that would accrue, but Marshall merely passed this information on to Eisenhower with the comment: ‘Personally, and aside from all logistics, tactical, or strategic implications, I would loath to hazard American lives for purely political purposes.
My comment: Here I struggle with American lack of consolidation of a military effort to not acquire a lasting peace. First the President is the Commander in Chief and Truman failed to lead. As a result we saw no real commitment from the Russians against Japan, which led to Truman’s calculated decision for the Atom Bomb. This lit the fuse for the nuclear arms race, and subsequent waves of nuclear proliferation around the world of which the world now. What if the Russians helped draw the Japanese War to an end without the benefit of the Manhattan Project; where would we be now?
By Andrew Roberts
This book is an analysis of the prime movers in WWII strategy for the allies. Chief among them were Franklin D. Roosevelt and George C. Marshall for the Americans and Winston Churchill and Sir Allen Brooke for the British. The first question I raised in reading the inside of the jacket cover was who is Brooke? I found out five hundred plus pages later. The author does a convincing job in portraying Sir Allen Brooke as the grand master who got things done in spite of his boss, Sir Winston Churchill. While I give praise to the character the author builds in Brooke, I disparage the character built in Churchill. Having been the benefactor of reading Churchill’s accounts that are backed by a plethora of correspondence with key players of the war, I completed the book prepared to defend Churchill against yet another critic with a skewed opinion based in assorted fact, standing in shallow and murky water.
Aside from character building, which the author believes was an essential ingredient to decision making on a strategic level, the strategic planning of every Allied initiative are discussed in detail, where the page count of five-hundred-eighty-four was its only limitation. As the chronology progressed through time, I could not help but asking myself about Stalin and Hitler. In 1941 Roosevelt characterized the situation where ‘the principle objective was to help Russia,’ since ‘It must be constantly reiterated that Russian armies are killing more Germans and destroying more Axis material than all the twenty-five United Nations put together.
Through much of the war, the prevailing strategy seemed to be more the failure of Hitler’s strategy than the brilliance of any of the allied Commanders. As I closed the back cover of his book, I wrote a big question mark on my reading list. I have read in many accounting at surface level description of the inner works of the Hitler command, at least from a resulting decision perspective. But I have yet to read a comparable accounting of equal measure specifically from the German side, where Hitler’s strategy trumped his generals. I have learned that there was great disagreement, but how is it that the strategy that told the fate of this world conflict was really a losing strategy as opposed to a winning strategy and why have we left the details to that question uncovered? I generally understand that the western leaders drew a strategy from consensus, while Hitler dictated a strategy against the advice of clearer thinking Generals, excluding Goering. I ask only because I am ignorant to any book on such a theme.
As the Grand Strategy was taking its form, there was an overriding idea that it should be a Germany first strategy. This strategy was largely British driven and bought in to because the Americans were of a junior partner status and did not as well have a better strategy. While this strategy prevailed it was periodically tested as Japan drew the United States in to the war. The timing of Germany first seems to have been controversial throughout the war. Intervening events and competing strategies were played out. In the fog of a couple hundred pages it seems that the Russian’s advance across eastern Europe post Stalingrad, and Hitler strategy held sway over the timing than anything else, including victories in Africa. I am once again not certain that Stalin and Hitler, though little was written between the covers, should not have had their pictures on the cover of this book. While the book did much in terms of the timing of the Normandy invasion, Operation Overlord, It seems that the narrow one tracked thinking of Marshal and Eisenhower, borne in classic Clauswitzian military mentality, forced an invasion that cost millions of lives and only got the Allies to Berlin after the Russians.
And finally I must be critical be critical of yet another author’s inability to see a folly of strategy that led to a Russian victory of WWII and a postponement of the Allied victory, where victory is defined by the liberation of Europe, that had to wait 45 years for the end of the Cold War. I say this because riddled throughout this book are arguments between Brooke and Churchill and then between the British and the Americans. In all arguments the author goes through pains to color Churchill as the cigar smoking, drunken strategy zealot, and in that course clouded his vision to draw that reality to the forefront is fogged over. The big decision to attack Germany from the beaches of Normandy, as we did, or to have attacked the Germans from the Italian front was a vexing intrigue on many levels, in the strategy for the race to Berlin. It was a protracted debate that could only have been equaled by the Germany First debate. All these debates carried the background references of each of the participants to readings of past great war strategies where the decision makers banked their views upon.
Here is my argument on both who the Masters and Commanders are, and what was the winning strategy. The early strategy was clearly a counter strategy to anything Hitler had already accomplished. The Brits when in to North Africa first because it was their only option at the time and second then needed to shore up their empire along what I refer to as the English Tierra; the arc from the horn of Africa through the Middle East down to India and through to Singapore ending at Australia. This was the heart of the English Empire and thus a worth prize to protect. Meanwhile the Americans agreed to participate merely because they had to do something of consequence to keep the American people bought in to the war effort. Meanwhile the Americans were formulating a Clausweitizian front across the same Channel that the Germans failed to see through in 1940. To think this massive attack could overshadow the wisdom of an assault from already conquered shores in Italy can only be rationalized by weak arguments provided both the actors of the book and the author. One can only wonder that if half the Herculean effort applied in Normandy was applied to the Ljubljana gap between Yugoslavia and Italy, the Allies could have first had an easier and shorter route to Berlin and second have precluded the Russians of their land grab of eastern Europe which set the stage for a forty-five year long Cold War.
I don’t know whether to compliment or criticize Andrew Roberts for his effort. There is enough granularity in this snap shot of history to reveal an alternative ending to World War Two, if only the masters and Commanders under the American flag had paid closer attention to Britain and namely Churchill. Roberts delivers this enlightenment through first person views and his narrative of the events. Yet he camouflages this nugget of insight at an alternative ending with unnecessary coloring of Churchill as a reckless egomaniac. In this review I interlace ‘My Comments’ with pertinent bibliography notes to demonstrate how the enlightenment makes itself apparent, in the shadow of ridicule of one of the most important men of the twentieth century.
Notes
Page 24: …it was at Forth Benning, in Georgia for five years head of infantry school , that Marshall showed his capacities as a reformer. His experience of the later stages of the Great War had convinced him that, in any future conflict, officers would not be able to wait for perfect orders written out over four pages of single-spaced foolscap sheet, such as the ones GHQ had provided then, especially with un reliable intelligence reports that might be expected from a fast moving battlefield.
Page 26/26: In July 1938….Marshall was ordered to Washington DC to become assistant chief of staff in the War Plans Division of the War Department. This was a key position, overseeing all future offensive operations of the United States. Three months later and a fortnight after the Munich Agreement, he was appointed chief of staff. It was In that post that he attended a conference at the White House on November 14, 1938 to discuss the Presidents plans to build fifteen thousand war plans
According to Arnold’s notes of the White House meeting the President did most of the talking, emphasizing that ideally he would have liked to build twenty thousand warplanes and create an annual capacity for twenty-four thousand, but acknowledged that this would be cut in half by Congress.
Page 27: Marshall well understood Roosevelt’s way of suborning people in this way, and refused to be drawn in to it. As chief of staff he didn’t visit Roosevelt’s country estate in Hyde Park (ever), saying that he found informal conversation with the President would get you ion trouble.
In this paragraph is an interesting end note: (it was suspected in the Churchill family that Marshall disapproved on moral grounds of the President’s affair with Lucy Mercer Rutherford.) This is not common knowledge in 2010.
Page 33: Whether Marshall had a “feel” for operations and a sense of strategy is a central question that this book will seek to answer.
Page 37: The BEF escaped destruction of Dunkrik. Even Pownall admitted in June 1946 that Brooke ‘came out trumps’. As we shall see, the experience of the campaign taught Brooke a number of important lessons about how he believed the rest of the war should be fought, lessons that diverged sharply from te ones Marshall had learned at Fort Leavenworth, Chaimount and Fort Benning.
Page 42 On 11 October 1940, staying at Chequers for the weekend, Churchill and Brooke disagreed over the use being made of the eccentric but occasionally brilliant Major-General Percy Hobart, who was then languishing as a lance-corporal in the Home Guard due to the War Office’s extreme inclination to employ him. Brooke said he was too wild , recorded Colville but ‘Winston reminded him of the Wolfe standing on a chair in front of Chatham brandishing a sword. “ You cant expect, he said “to have the genius type with conventional copy-book Style” That exchange could almost be taken as a template for their future relationship.
My comment: At this point I notice the difference in the dynamics between Marshall and Roosevelt and Brooke and Churchill. Where Marshall was smart enough to keep his boss at arms length, Brooke was not. In this case where Brooke challenged Churchill, even his own command was hesitant to use him militarily. Thus leaving a little grandstanding as a viable play to inspire the English people. Churchill used all the faculties of his people, ( and other Presidents, people) where Brooke’s vision was strictly military.
Page 45: The adoption of the memorandum, first by Marshall and then by Rossevelt- though not in writing – and then by the US Joint Planning Committee, meant that te United States had an outline plan to use durning the secret, arm'-length Anglo- American Staff talks, code named ABC-I which were about to start. No such talks could be organized before Roosevelt’s third inauguration on 20 January 1941, because during the election campaign he had promised American parents that ‘Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.’
Page 52: In a nine page hand written letter on 4 August, 1940 to his cousin and confidante Margaret ‘Daisy’ Suckley, who lived close to him in Dutchess County, New York, Roosevelt described how he had been secretly transferred from his presidential yacht the Potomac on to the heavy cruiser USS Augusta, and, with another cruiser and five destroyers as escort had made his way to Newfoundland. The Potomac had continued to fly his presidential flag once he’d left her, in order to maintain deception: “even at my ripe old age I feel the thrill in making a getaway, especially from the American Press.”
Page 68: The Grand Strategy Arcadia (1940) agreed was summarized in a document written by Churchill entitled WW1, which was to represent the Allies overall position until superseded by another document, CCS 94 in August 1942. This enshrined the concept of Germany first.
Page 69: Eisenhower agreed with Admiral Stark’s original assessment in ‘Plan Dog’ that the defeat of Germany would make the defeat of Japan a matter of time, whereas the defeat of Japan would not materially weaken Germany.
Page 77: Marshall’s institution of the Joint Chiefs of Staff could not, however, wholly alter the disorganization in the American system which Jacob had commented on so tartly. Roosevelt’s desire to retain power closely in his own hands, and to keep Administration officials competing for his favor, les him to adopt methods that seem indescribably Byzantine, even administratively dysfunctional, to modern eyes.
Page 91: On January 18 1942, in a memorandum to Roosevelt, Marshall identified what was for Brooke also a key aspect of the war, and one that the British believed justified the Gymnast operation. ‘The future effort of the Army is dependent on shipping, he wrote. ‘More shipping than is now insight is essential if the national war effort is not neutralized to a serious extent.’ Marshall estimated that by December 1942 there would be 1.8 million American troops ready for over seas service and by the end of 1943 about 3.5 million.
Page 110: Eden wanted to abolish the Defence Committee altogether, but recorded that Churchill was ‘obstinate about it, and maintains that it is better to have one place where service members have a show’ Eden thought that since it effected little and tended to attract criticism in parliament, it ought to go, but Churchill spotted that is would be better for an important committee to attract criticism than the real power-house of the war which were the Staff Conferences – meanwhile Ismay was the oil-can that greased the relationship between Churchill and Brooke.’ Says General Fraser – much as Dill oiled that between Brooke and Marshall.
Page 111: Dining with John Kennedy at the Savoy Grill on 4 June 1942, Ismay said Churchill ‘needs someone to use as a whipping boy on whom to blow off steam’ and he was ‘quite frank in admitting this as his chief function’ He added that someone with sounder and stronger judgment could hold his job it would be doubtless better, but chances are that such a person would soon be thrown out.’ Kennedy concluded that he would never have Ismay’s job ‘for anything in the world.’
Page 117: Like Brooke, Kennedy considered the bombing campaign against Germany ‘ineffective’ and ‘beyond our means.’ He repeated to his diary the views he injudiciously blurted out at Chequers the previous year, that if it came to worst, ‘It is certainly more important to hold India and Ceylon than to hang on in Egypt. We are getting very little for our effort in the Middle East and certainly not enough to compensate for serious losses of positions in the Indian Ocean. After hearing Churchill’s views on Singapore, Kennedy reiterated: ‘It is wrong to depend so much on one man who is so temperamental, so lacking in strategical knowledge and in judgment, despite his other great qualities.’ This summed up the view of Churchill that was held most universally among senior British Planners and especially Brooke., though none failed to praise those ‘the great qualities’, principally the fillip he gave national morale.
Page 119: Brooke’s adamant opposition to an early Second Front alienated plenty of liberal intellectuals …..who believed that Marshall’s judgment was ultimately better that Churchill’s and far ahead of General Brooke…whose judgment about Russia, was abysmal. In fact had a far more hard-headed attitude towards the Russians, who had until very recently been allies of the Nazis and had been supplying them with grain and oil right up to the night of Barbarossa was launched…Brooke was rather impatient with our attitude of giving everything Russians ask and getting nothing in return. Pf course the Russians are fighting - but for themselves and not for us.
Page 140: Brooke’s experiences in France in the two BEF expeditions of 1940 had a deciding influence on the assumptions underlying his formulation of grand strategy in the Second World War, principally in convincing him that the French could not be relied upon and that the Germans were very formidable opponents indeed.
Page 141: According to Hopkin’s notes of the trip, from 4p.m. to 6p.m. Marshall presented the broad outlines of his Memorandum to Churchill’s, who ‘indicated that he had told the Chiefs of Staff that, in spite of all the difficulties, he was prepared to go along.’ Churchill repeated the objections that the Chiefs of Staff had put, ‘all of which he had heard in Washington before coming to England’. Marshall was more optimistic about the interview than Hopkins, thinking that ‘Churchill went a long way and he Marshall, expected far more resistance than he got..
What Hopkins guessed, but Marshall seems not to have, is that Churchill privately opposed an early Roundup and Sledgehammer just as much as Brooke.
Page 155: Brooke then stated unequivocally that ‘The Chiefs of Staff entirely agreed that Germany was the real enemy. At the same time, it was essential to hold Japanese and ensure that there was no junction between tem and t Germans. He conjured up the by now familiar lurid scenario in which the Japanese won control of the Indian Ocean, allowing the Middle East to be gravely threatened and oil supplies prevented from going though the Persian Gulf. Under those circumstances, Germany would seize Persia’s oil, the southern route to Russia would be cut off, and Turkey would be isolated, destroying any hope of her joining the Allies, while Germany and Japan could exchange any hardware they needed
Page 156: Of Brooke he explained that the Germany First policy had been adopted because the US High Command wanted to fight on land, at sea, and in the air, as well as in the most useful place, and in the place where they could attain superiority, and they were desirous above all of joining in an enterprise with the British. He might have been more honest if less comradely, if he added that Roosevelt and Marshall realized how more difficult the task would be if Britain lost to Germany darning the time that it took for the United States to defeat Japan.
Page 170: ‘On 13 January last’ Marshall wrote to Roosevelt, on 5 May, ‘you authorized an increase in the enlisted strength of the Army to 3.6 million by 31 December 1942. Authorization for additional men in 1942 is now essential to out plans.’ In the intervening four months the Army had to garrison the lines of communication to Australia, and rush reinforcements to Hawaii, Alaska, and Panama.
Page 171: Roosevelt characterized the recapture of previously British- and Dutch-owned islands as ‘premature’. In the Near East and East African theaters, the responsibility was against the British, although America “must furnish all possible material’ in Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and the Persian Gulf. Britain and America would split responsibility for the Atlantic, while ‘The principal objective was to help Russia,’ since ‘It must be constantly reiterated that Russians armies are killing more Germans and destroying more Axis material, than all the twenty-five United Nations put together.’
Page 198. So, just as Marshall, King and Eisenhower were trying to consign Gymnast to a strategic, logistical and even ‘logical’ grave in Washington – hardly resisted by an almost equally skeptical Brooke- Churchill resurrected it at Hyde Park. In getting Roosevelt on his own there, Churchill had a considerable advantage, as ‘amateur strategist’ President tended, at least at this stage of the war, to defer to him on military matters in a way that he would not have done had Marshall been present. ‘I must emphasize’, admitted Wedemeyer, after the war.
Page 200: The American response to the news about Tobruk was instinctive, and was often later recalled with powerfully nostalgia by all Britons present. ‘For a moment or two no one spoke,’ recalled Ismay, but then the silence was broken by Roosevelt. ‘In six monosyllables he epitomized his sympathy with Churchill, his determination to do the utmost to sustain him, and his recognition that we were all in the same boat: “What can we do to help?”
Page 214: Churchill himself admitted being haunted by the ghosts of the Somme and in the Closing Ring he wrote of Roundup: “The fearful price we had to pay in human life and blood for te great offensives of the First World War was graven on my mind….
Yet is wasn’t so much getting to Passchendaele and the Somme that worried the British strategists in 1942-4 as the Dunkirk and Brest campaigns of the summer of 1940. Rommel’s and Guderian’s seemingly unstoppable blitzkrieg campaign across France featured more in their fears – especially Brooke’s and Dill’s – than the mud and blood of Flanders of a quarter century before.
Page 220: Brooke explained his view and thus his fundamental difference of view from Marshall. “ Having been forced to fight on two fronts during 1914-18 War’ he began te Germans ‘had further developed their East-West communications with double railway lines and autobahns, to meet the possibility of being again forced to fight on two frontiers. They were capable of moving some six to eight divisions…simultaneously from East to West. That the Germans had far less maneuverability ins southern Europe and the Mediterranean, where he argued the rail and road communications from northern France to southern Italy and the Mediterranean were very poor.
Page 233: ‘I have carefully your estimate of Sunday’ wrote Roosevelt to Marshall and Stimson on Tuesday 14 July, before his return to the White House the next day. “My first impression is that the [Pacific Option] is exactly what Germany hoped the United States would do following Pearl Harbor. Secondly, it does not in fact provide American troops in fighting, except in a lot of [Pacific] islands whose occupation will not affect the world situation this year or next….
Page 235: Dill also mentioned another un-welcomed fact to Churchill in his telegram, namely that the American Chiefs of Staff were reading Field Marshall Sir William Robertson’s two-volume memoir about grand strategy of the Great War, Soldiers and Statesmen, and that Marshall had sent him a copy with the third chapter of the first volume heavily annotated. Churchill would have understood immediately what that meant. Robertson, whi had been CIGS from 1915 to 1918, was a Clausewitizian, and volume I chapter III of his book covered the Dardanelles expedition. ‘An essential condition of success in war being, the concentration of effort on the decisive front, ….
Over the Dardanelles, Robertson did not deny that ‘it might be desirable to threaten interests which are of importance to the enemy, so as to oblige him to detach for their protection of force larger than te one employed making the threat, thus rendering him weaker in comparison on the decisive front,’ which was precisely Churchill’s and Brooke’s Italian strategy for 1943-4, but Marshall is unlikely to have underlined that for Dill’s attention. Much more likely candidates for annotation were Robertson’s strictures on ministers – primarily Churchill himself – who were indifferent to, or ignorant or, the disadvantages which always attend on charges of plan and t neglect to concentrate on one thing at a time’ Churchill was also criticized by name for having briefed the supreme strategy-making body, the War Council, directly, instead of allowing the Admiralty professionals to do it, ‘as was, in fact done after Churchill left the department’.
My Note: First the Clauswitzien strategy of WWI only produced an armacist and planted the seeds of the Second World War. To be direct it was a failed strategy that cost millions of lives. Of this excerpt there is far too much conjecture. First the author attempts to connect the dots of history back to the Dardanelles and pin full blame on Churchill, when other accounts find that there was nothing wring with Churchill’s strategy in the Dardanelles if only the Admiral of the Fleet at the time had sailed into the ports of a Turk army who was completely out of ammunition. Additionally in his concluding sentences to indict Churchill of over reaching his authority, the author does not concede that at the time of Churchill’s address to the War Council, that it was his place and duty to do so, regardless of future changes in structure. The author is guilty of “piling on” in wrongful criticism of a leader who with faults led the world to victory in WWII. Form this point, on through the rest of the book the reader witnesses the bias of the author. Where as the strategy unfolds Churchill’s idea of attacking Germany from the south, may have inflicted lives cost in terms of lives and blood, and as well have reached Berlin far ahead of the Russians which would have stalled the Russian land grab of which was known for forty-five years as the Eastern Bloc countries that fell under the heel of the USSR.
Page 238: On the evening of 14 July, at a meeting at No 10 Downing Street of representatives of Allied countries grandly entitled the Pacific War Council, Kennedy recorded: “Winston in his blue romper suit but with clean white shirt with cuffs…looked well and serene, lit a cigar and proceeded to give a general survey of the war, speaking slowly and without effort.”. After asking the New Zealand High Commissioner Sir William Jordan to stop taking notes because it distracted his attention, he talked of shipping losses, the efforts to sustain Russia, and the Eastern Front, and pointed out that Germans had only seventy-five days before winter fell there. He believed ‘The Japs would attack Russia when the moment came the- they would stab her in the back…. But for the moment they were gorged with their prey’.
Page 251: Eisenhower reacted somewhat melodramatically to the news, telling Butcher that Wednesday 22 July 1942 could well go down as ‘the blackest day in history’ if Russia was defeated by ‘the big Boche drive now so alarmingly under way’ and the West had done nothing to save her.
Back in Washington, Stimson insisted on seeing the standoff in terms of ‘a fatigued and defeatist government which lost her initiative, blocking the help of a young and vigorous nation whose strength had not he been tapped so much as wrecked, and Britain’s along with it. The experience of these negotiations with Marshall and King must have been rather like reliving his June 1940 conversation with Churchill at Lamans.
That day John Kennedy was given a full briefing on the negotiations by Brooke, who told him that Roosevelt had given instructions to Marshall to the effect that the American Army must get into action somewhere against the Germans and that he was to go and make plans accordingly. This is so remarkably accurate that Brooke simply must have known or at least the gist of the secret instructions that Roosevelt had given Marshall and Hopkins before they left. Had Hopkins leaked them to Churchill, who passed them on at 11:00 PM meeting at Downing Streets? However he came by the information, Brooke knew that if he stayed utterly intransigent over Sledgehammer – if he kept ‘looking into the distance’ – Marshall was under orders to finally buckle.
Page 254: Like Portal, Kennedy also thought that superior British arguments rather than presidential diktat had won the day, ‘The last week has seen a development in our planning with Americans that may govern the future outcome of the war’ he wrote.
Page 255: As so often in hard-fought compromises between Staffs m the key detail was to be found towards the end, almost in the small print. Under paragraph C subsection 4 it stated: ‘That it be understood that a commitment to [Torch] renders Roundup in all probability impracticable of successful operation in 1943 and therefore that we have defiantly accepted a defensive encircling line of action for Continental European Theater, except as to air operations and blockade.
That might sound like Brooke’s strategy, but there was a catch, pone that Michael Howard has even likened to Faustian compact made between British Chiefs of Staff and the Americans, CCS 94 seemed to imply that Churchill’s original WWI document from Arcadia Conference had now been officially superseded, and that instead of Germany First, the phrase ‘defensive encircling line of action, meant that Americans could now concentrate more on the Pacific.
My Note: seems to imply is always a warning sign that the author may be attempting to add a new color to history. Robert Andrews does this often to cast Churchill in a critical light.
Page 258: The change of Allied policy from attacking Cherbourg in France to attacking Casablanca in Africa, swiveling the whole focus of grand strategy 1,250 miles to the south, cannot have but rankled with Marshall. Even ten months later walking to a meeting together in Washington, he told Brooke: ‘I find it very hard even now not to look upon your North African strategy with jaundice eye!!’
Considering that even the US secretary for War had bet the President that the American invasion of Morocco would fail – something that would surely have forced his resignation if know publicly – there was much ground to be made up.
My Note: The reader must be very careful to note where the end quotes are and where the conjecture begins in the above second paragraph. Earlier in the book the author portrays the North African Strategy as the only one available at the time where action must be made to demonstrate deterrence and affirmative action on the Allied part. For Marshall, there could only be a tactical interpretation of the North African campaign as he was always a Clausewitz advocate and North African distracted that effort. I’ll share my views in the body conclusion.
Page 267: On Brookes decision to remain Churchill’s strategist and not assume command in the field, deferring the job to Montgomery: Brooke was not persuaded by Smuts, not least because he was a gentleman, he couldn’t bear the idea that Auchinleck ‘might think that I had come out here on purpose to work himself into his shoes!’ He thought over the offer throughout the day, but remained convinced that his decision was the correct one, and that he could ‘do more by remaining CIGS’…..we assume that politicians are driven by personal ambition, but soldiers are too, and although in career terms to swab the job of CIGS for Near East commander-in-chief might have looked like a demotion, in fact it would have afforded, Smuts intimated, a ‘wonderful future’.
Page 268: Brooke and Churchill also agreed that Alexander Should succeed Auchinleck in Cairo, Lieutenant- General Thomas Corbett and Brigadier Eric Dorman-Smith were to leave their commands altogether, and Lieutenant-General William ‘Strafer” Gott was to lead the English Army, although Brooke had misgivings about this. Yet on his way to take up his new command on the very next day, 7 August, flying the Burg el Arab to Heliopolis route, which was considered safe, Gott’s slow transport plane was shot down ‘inflames’ by a lone German fighter. Churchill and Brooke then quickly settled on the man whom Brooke had wanted originally, Lieutenant General Bernard Law Montgomery.
My note: By now the reader is cautious on an author’s bent to color history. With an agenda to criticize Churchill’s credibility, Roberts could have provided evidence as to Brookes preference of pick.. While the story may or may not an accurate reflection of Brooke’s preference, this book does not stand on its own on this point.
Page 270: Everyone cheered up once Churchill passed on to what he called operation Torch, at which Stalin ‘became intensely interested’
Page 273: On the failed Operation Jubilee : A small German convoy in the Channel alerted the shore defenses before the assault could take place, so the element of surprise was lost, yet Mountbatten ordered it to go ahead anyhow.
Although no German troops were moved from East to West as a result of the debacle, coastal defenses were massively strengthened. ‘If I had the same decision to make again,’ Mountbatten nonetheless answered, ‘I would do as I did before. It gave the Allies the priceless secret of victory.’ This is trip, unless the lesson of not attacking a well-defended town without proper intelligence and a preliminary aerial and naval bombardment is a ‘priceless secret’….Yet even as late as 2003 historians would still take Mountbatten at his word, with one writing” ‘The catastrophe provided priceless lessons for a full scale amphibious invasion”.
My note: While this time I agree with Robert’s assessment or coloring of Mountbatten’s decisions, Roberts falls prey of criticizing other historians where his narrative stands on its own. In my view Mountbatten’s strategy and tactics has not been the benefactor of history’s long view on numerous other occasions; specifically post war India.
Page 276: It was Stalingrad that finally, in Stimson’s words, ‘banished is the spectre of a German victory in Russia, which had haunted the Council table of Allies for a year and a half.’ IT also greatly reduced the likelihood of a German attack through Spain, cutting off American forces from their supply lines. Just as Wellington’s campaign in the Iberian peninsula had been small but significant “ulcer’ for Napoleon, but certainly not the Russian ‘coronary’ that destroyed him, so too the North African and Italian campaigns would be ulcerous for Hitler, but it was the Eastern Front that annihilated the Nazi dream of Lebensraum for the mater race.
My note: To my observation on the missing strategy are those of Stalin and Hitler. Each of which contributed to the outcome of the Second World War, yet over looked in this book.
Page 279 We are undertaking something of a quite desperate nature and which depends only in minor degree upon professional preparations we can make or upon the wisdom of our military decisions,’ wrote Eisenhower in his diary that week. “in a way it is like the return of Napoleon from Elba – if the guess as to psychological reaction is correct we may gain a great advantage in this war; if the guess is wrong, it would be almost certain that we would gain nothing and lose a not.’ He feared that there might be a ‘very bloody repulse’ and that Vichy France and even Spain might enter the war against the Allies.
Page 281: When Roosevelt’s cable duly arrived on Monday 31 August it caused consternation.’ I feel very strongly that the initial attacks must be made by an exclusively American ground force supported by your naval and transport and air units,’ it read. This was because Roosevelt believed that the French would offer less resistance ‘to us than they will to the British’.
Page 293: Smuts suggested that the real victory front was to be found ‘from the South not from the West’, and Churchill agreed,
Page 297: It was a magisterial rebuke, and the figures still have the power to impress. An army of fewer that two hundred thousand when the European war broke out in September 1939 would grow into one seven million – thirty-five times its size- a mere four years later. In divisional terms, the US Army had 37 trained divisions at the time of Pearl Harbor, 73 by Operation Torch, 120 by the summer of 1943 and 200 by D-Day. By contrast the British Commonwealth had seventy-five divisions by the summer of 1943 and hardly any more the nest year. Nor was the American Revolution confined to the Army; on 13 November 1942 a US shipbuilding yard built a standard 10,500-ton merchant vessel - a Liberty ship in exactly four days and fifteen hours. Two days later the ship was fully equipped and ready for service. No other country or alliance could begin to match such efficiency and productive power.
Page 299: Had the entire German and Italian army in Tunisia- approximately a quarter of a million men- not been captured, they might well have stalled the later Allied advances into southern Europe. It might be, therefore, that the very lack of early success immediately after Torch paradoxically increased the success later, given Hitler’s unwillingness to retreat even tactically, a characteristic that American strategists were about to note with glee.
Page 301: With Churchill and Brooke now tending to agree on the big issue – that the next stage in the war ought to be in the Mediterranean rather than across the Channel – Brooke allowed himself to be irritated only by small issues, such as Churchill’s love for rodomontades during meetings. At one Defense Committee with Winston holding forth, he passed a note to Grigg saying ’15 minutes gone and no work done’, which he subsequently altered to 20, 30, 35, 40 and then 45, before the real business of the beating began. ‘Winston is really stupid the way he tries his team’ concluded Kennedy after he heard this…
My comment: Other than to tarnish an otherwise brilliant performance of Churchill , the author spends too much print like above to make his disenchantment with Churchill known.
Page 303: CIGS is quite determined to go flat out in the MED recorded Kennedy
We can waste German strength there and tackle him on equal or better terms in outposts like Sardania, Sicily, tip of Italy, Crete. We cannot develop an an offensive on both fronts. The essential condition for France is still a crack in German morale and strength. Italy may be knocked out of the war by a combination of landing attacks and bombing. The Balkans are a weak spot for the Axis. If we can get near enough to bomb the Roumanian oilfields and cut the Aegean and Turkish traffic (chrome, etc) we can go far to hamstring the Germans
My comment: What is missed by the author and the western strategists is had we marched from Yugoslavia to Berlin, the Russians would not have taken that territory and we would not have had a fifty-year Cold War.
Page 311: The strategy of North Africa-Ital-France, stated the American historian Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison in an Oxford lecture series in the 1950’s ‘was a perfectly cogent and defensible strategy; but Sir Alan Brooke disclosed it only bit by bit, which naturally gave Americans the feeling that they had been had.. He cited Admiral King’s prediction that once forced to the Mediterranean, We would be forced to go on had proposed North Africa as a stepping stone to mainland Italy and the Balkans, and possibly beyond, right at the start, the Americans would never have undertaken Torch.
Page 317: Broke thought it best to put the war against Japan high on the agenda, reasoning that if Admiral King ‘was able to get everything about the pacific “off his chest”, then perhaps he ‘would take a less jaundiced view vis-à-vis the rest of the world’
Page 323: At 5:30 PM the Combined Chiefs, along with Eisenhower, Alexander and Tedder, met Roosevelt and Churchill in the first of three plenary sessions- ‘at which we did little’, recorded Brooke, ‘except that the President expressed views favoring operations in the Mediterranean’. Far from little, this was the first glimpse that as with Torch, the Americans were split over strategy, and therefore might be prevailed over isolating Marshall again. This time it would take much detailed argument, especially by Staffs, rather than the point-blank veto that Brooke had exercised in London backing July.
Page 334: When the Combined Chiefs of Staff met again at 3p, the compromise paper was accepted with only a few minor alterations. The recapture of Burma through Anakim and a south-west Pacific offensive to Rabaul and then on to Marshall and Caroline Islands would be conducted with whatever means could be spared without compromising the objective of defeating Germany.
Page346: Ian Jacob believed that being expelled from North Africa ‘would be shattering for Italians. Their vitals would be exposed to attack.’ The surrender of Italy would present Hitler with a tough choice: either to let her go or else reinforce her by taking troops from elsewhere, such as Russia and the Balkans. There was an aspect to the Fuhrer that was only just becoming apparent to the Allied High Commands: it seemed clear from the orders that he gave both to Paulus in Stalingrad and to Rommel at El Alamein (and again in Tunisia) the he could not countenance even strategically justified with drawls.
Page 347: Churchill insisted on th President being carried up on to the roof of Villa Taylor, ‘his paralyzed legs dangling like limbs of a ventriloquist’s dummy, limp and flaccid’ in the words of an on looker, and together they watched the purple mountains changing color in the setting sun. It was from that roof that Churchill painted his only picture of the war, despite taking his canvases and paint box on several trips.
Page 384: In a Cabinet discussion on war criminals on 7 July, Churchill reported that FDR [was] inclined to let our troops shoot them out of hand! ‘I suggested the United Nations [should] draw up list of fifty or so who would be declared as outlaws by the thirty-three nations. (those not on the list might be induced to a rat!) If any of these were found by advancing troops, the nearest officer of Brigade rank should call a military court to establish identity and then execute without higher military authority.’
Page 402: On Monday 16 August, Brook and Marshall returned to the Trident system of off-the-record meetings. The secretaries and Planners left the Salon Rose, and for three hours after 2:30 p.m. the Combined Chiefs undertook ‘the difficult task of finding a bridge.’ These discussions were ‘pretty frank’ with Brooke opening by saying that ‘the root of the matter was that we did not trust each other’. He went on to accuse the Americans of doubting the British commitment ‘to put our full hearts into the cross Channel operation next spring’, while their part the British were not certain that Americans ‘would not in future insist on our carrying out previous agreements irrespective of changed strategic conditions’. This was a veiled reference to the seven divisions due to be withdrawn from the Mediterranean theatre only eleven weeks hence.
Page 403: Vast amounts of construction work had to be done – hard roads, railways to beaches, exits, fuel and storage tanks, railway sidings. The amount of construction in southern England was terrific. It is interesting to note that millions of pounds were spent from early 1943 onwards, when there was only COSSAC Staff; millions spent on a plan which had not been approved
‘It was the logic of events resulting from a loss of time more than logic of argument’
Page 404: Meanwhile, Churchill was still pressing hard for an attack on the northern tip of Sumatra, code named Operation Culverin. Rather condescendingly Brooke wrote that ‘Winston…had discovers with a pair of dividers that we could bomb Singapore’ from Sumatra, ‘and he had set his heart on going there’. Brooke believed Sumatra to be unsuitable place for any long term projects against the Malay States, and told the Prime Minister at a meeting at t Citadel at noon on 19 August the ‘when he put his left foot down he should know where the right foot was going to go’. In cold black and white print, that does not look too rude, but we cannot know the tone of voice and the body language that accompanied it. The result was Churchill lost his temper completely and shook his fist in Brook’s face saying ‘I do not want any pf your long term projects that cripple initiative!
Page 419: So the meeting served no useful purpose other than blowing off ministerial steam. It was not mentioned at all in Churchill’s war memoirs, probably because he did not want readers to appreciate how doubtful he was about Overloard.. Yet he was, and so – at least on this occasion –was Brooke.
My comment: Operation Overloard was clearly from the military books and minds of the Americans. It proved to be a victory or at least in my mind we didn’t lose. It was a victory at the cost of immense loss of life. Likely more so than the strategy being argued by the British at the time; which was to advance in to Germany from the south through a landing in what was then Yugoslavia. War was won by the Russians as much as the Allies. Overloard was the seed of the Cold War. Overloard was pushed by American who buy 1944 were contributing more to the war effort and therefore carried the commanding voice, without listening to alternative strategy.
Page 427: reported by Sir Alan Lascekes: great problem at the moment is to teach th Americans that you cannot run a war by making rigir ‘lawyers’ agreements’ to carry out preconceived strategic operations at a given date (ie Overloard), but you must plan your campaign elastically and be prepared to adapt it to the tactical exigencies of the moment. They don’t seem to grasp that a paper-undertaking made in the autumn to invade Europe (or any other Continent) in the following spring may have to be modified in accordance with what the enemy does or does not do in the intervening winter.
Page 428: With only days to go before the Cairo Conference began, The British crystallized their ideas about what they wanted out of it. The main desiderata would be to continued the offensive in Italy, to increase the flow of supplies to the partisans in the Balkans, to try to induce the Balkan powers to break away from Germany, to induce Turkey to enter the war, and to accept a postponement of Overloard. Of these five British hopes only the first two were adopted.
Page 433: Roosevelt evinced yet more hostility towards Britain in the COSSAC proposals for the division of post war Germany into zones, codenamed Rankin. He believed that ‘the British wanted the north western part of Germany and would like to see the US take France and Germany south of the Mouselle River. ‘ He said ‘he he did not like that arrangement’. Other than mentioning its Roman Catholicism, the President did not explain what he had against ‘southern Germany, Baden Wurttemburg, everything south of the Rhine’, but clearly preferred America to control the Protestant north-west of the Reich The reason was doubtless because that was generally where the manufacturing industries were located.
…continued onto page 434: King added that the military plans for Overloard were too far developed to permit any changes in deployment. Roosevelt then astonishingly suggested that American forces might instead be sent around Scotland and land in northern Germany, adding that “He felt that we should get out of France and Italy as soon as possible, letting the British and the French handle their own problem together. There would definitely be a race for Berlin. We may have to put the US divisions into Berlin as soon as possible
My comment: Again we find within his own words an author taking the ever popular attack on a religious argument when he also includes the practical argument for ones desires on the spoils of war. Andrew Roberts expounded on the religious points and glossed over the practical. And you wonder why there is a popular view against religion.
Page 436: Although the British wanted an agreement on Overloard and the Mediterranean before they all me the Russians in Tehran, the Americans needed a decision on south-eat Asia immediately, but wanted to discuss Overloard and the Mediterranean only at Tehran, where the knew they would be supported by Stalin, who was desperate for Overloard as he was opposed a Western presence In the Balkans. Furthermore, Roosevelt and Marshall rated Chaing Kai-shek highly and saw China as a post-war great power, where as Churchill saw him as a peripheral figure and Brooke considered him “Evidently [had]…no grasp of war in its larger aspects…
Page 440: Roosevelt had wanted to invite Moscow to Cairo but the Russians wouldn’t meet the Chinese generalissimo for fear that it might compromise the uneasy truce the Russians maintained with Japan since 1941.
Page 444 The Russian dictator stated unequivocally that Overloard should be the overriding priority for 1944, that the Italian campaign was a mere diversion (and an unimpressive one at that); that Turkey would not enter the war so Britain’s Aegean planes were still born, and that southern France needed to be invaded before Overlord.
Page 451
Stalin promised to declare war on Japan after Germany surrendered, and to launch an offensive during Overlord to discourage the Wermacht from moving troops westwards during the initial stages.
My comment: a convenient promise by Stalin, but it is not mentioned that Stalin did not declare war on Japan, and we fought on resorting to the Atom bomb.
Page 453: The realities were spelt to Stimson by Roosevelt after Marshall had specifically refused to ask for t Overlord post: ‘The President said that he had decided on a mathematical basis that if Marshall took Overlord it would mean that Eisenhower would become Chief of Staff. Yet Eisenhower was unfamiliar with the war in the Pacific and, in Stimson’s view he ‘would be far less able than Marshall to handle the Congress’…
Page 463: Brooke added that, when he visited Italy that December, ‘The terrain defies description. It’s like the North-West Frontier: a single destroyed culvert can hold up an army for a day.’ He then went on to talk about the Germans, saying they were fighting magnificently: ‘Marvelous it is perfectly marvelous.’ Hitler’s strategy was all wrong, however, in trying to establish a front in Italy so far south while simultaneously holding Nikopol on the lower Dnieper, for “While one is on the wave of victory no one can successfully violate all the established rules of war. But when one starts to decline, one cannot violate them without disaster.
Page 476: …when the War Cabinet was informed that there could be as many as 160,000 civilian casualties as a result of bombing the French railway network prior to Overloard, Cunningham noted,’ Considerable sob stuff about children with legs blown off and blinded old ladies but nothing about saving of risk to our young soldiers landing on a hostile shore. It is of course intended to issue warnings before hand’
Page 477: From Cunningham’s journals it is evident that the Chiefs of Staff were looking towards the post-war situation, with a suspicions eye towards Russia, almost before any other British government agency or institution.
My comment: yet they insisted on a text book attack of Overlord as opposed to attacking through the Balkans.
Page 490 The day after D-Day, Alexander reported that if he were left with his twenty-seven divisions in Italy, and not lose any to Anvil, he could break through the Appennines into the Po Valley, take eighteen divisions north of Venice and force the Ljubljan Gap between Italy and northern Yugoslavia. Once there, he stated in his memoirs, the way led to Vienna, an object of great political and psychological value’. The prospect appealed to Churchill and Clark, but not very much to others…
Marshall vociferously opposed forcing Ljubljana Gap, arguing that Eisenhower needed the southern French ports so that he could deploy on a much wider front, and that the Germans would merely withdrawal from north Italy to the Alps under Alexander’s attack, which could then be held with far smaller forces.
Page 490: Churchill’s dreams of British Commonwealth forces planting Union Jack over Schonbrunn and the Hofburg before the Russians arrived in Vienna was ended by Brooke, who knew Marshall’s view of it. There would still be plenty of teeth gnashing before Churchill relinquished his project,…
Page 498: said McMillan we should have to give in if Eisenhower and Marshall insisted upon ‘Anvil”. We can fight up to a point, we can ;eave on record for history to judge the reasoned statement of our views, and the historian will also see that the Americans have never answered any argument, never attempted to discuss or debate the points, but have merely given flat negative and slightly Shylock-like insistence which they conceive to be their bargain.
My comment: With all the negative color that the author puts on Churchill I don’t know what to make of him putting the most critical analysis of the most critical decision in terms of joint strategy in a first person voice of one of the actors of the story. Being that McMillan was not a prime mover of this book this critical analysis could have gone un noticed.
Page 499: Churchill’s reply on 1 July was anguished. Even though he began with first person plural – ‘We are deeply grieved by your telegram’ – he soon slipped into more intimate vernacular, saying that this was ‘the first major strategic and political error for which the two are responsible. At Teheran you emphasized to me the possibilities of a move eastward when Italy was conquered.’ He claimed that ‘N one involved in these discussions has ever thought of moving armies into the Balkans,’ but stated that Istria and Treste were strategically and politically important position ‘which, as you saw yourself, very clearly might exercise profound and widespread reactions, especially now after the Russians advances’ Finally Churchill stated that:
If you still press upon us the directive of your Chiefs of Staff to withdraw so many of your forces from the Italian campaign and leave all our hopes there dashed to the ground, His Majesty’s Government, on the advice of their Chiefs of Staff must enter a solemn protest…. It is with the greatest sorrow that I write to you in this sense. But I am sure that if we could have met, as I so frequently proposed, we should have reached a happy agreement.
That is precisely what Marshall had feared, and was one of the reasons Churchill did not meet the President at all throughout the nine months between December 1943 and September 1944, despite having seen him thrice in the seven months in 1943. Churchill‘s force of personality was blunted once it was translated on to printed telegraph slips…
My comment: The most critical turn of strategy is depicted in the book from page 436 through page 499. It bares the power to the phrase “let history” judge our actions. I am simply suspect that our author was so bent on the critique of Churchill that he missed an opportunity to expound on the genius of Churchill.
Page 505: Churchill agreed, telling Charles Moran ‘Good God, can’t you see that the Russians are spreading across Europe like a tide; they have invaded Polan, and there is nothing to prevent them into marching in to Turkey and Greece!...but the Americans would not listen to him….But The Americans would not listen to him. Moran concluded that Churchill was distraught, but you cannot get him down for too long.’He sat up in his bed as his speech quickened and he expounded on how “Alex might be able to solve this problem by breaking into the Balkans. Out troops are already in the outskirts of Florence. They would soon be in the valley of the Po.’ Churchill’s promise to Roosevelt on 1 July that ‘No on involved in these discussions has ever thought of moving armies into the Blalkans’ there for is obviously completely misleading.
My comment: I have learned that what an author in history uses words like obviously; it was a harbinger that the words immediately following is an attempt to either re-write history, bend it, or perhaps cast an undue judgment of history. In this point I find Andrew Roberts guilty as charged as history clearly finds that the period immediately after WWI was the dawn of the phrase Soviet Bloc which included all the countries that the USSR invaded while the Allies were spending all their effort in operation Overlord. So when the West say they won WWII I beg to differ. The USSR won WWII and the West won a Cold War that could have been avoided, had they listened to Churchill.
Page 510: That question then led to the next: what kind of front would the Allies choose in the drive to the Rhine and beyond? Would it be a broad one that comprehensively forced the Germans back towards the Fatherland, with two major advances on wide fronts north and south of the Ardennes or would the attack instead be on narrow fronts, spearheaded by several faster thrusts to try and capture important targets deep within Germany, possibly even including Berlin before the Red Army reached it? Here again Roosevelt and Marshall supported Esienhower’s inclination for the former, while Brooke and Churchill tended to opt for Montgomary’s and Patton’s preference for the latter.
On the question of what the armies in Italy under Alexander and Clark would do once Lucain Truscott’s fifth Army and Sir Richard McCreery’s Eighth Army broke through the Gothic Line, the Americans strongly deprecated moves towards Treste, Istria, the Ljubljana Gap, Vienna and the Balkans.
Page 511 On 29 August Churchill sent Roosevelt a telegram about the Mediterranean in which the final paragraph once again brought up their Tehran conversation. It ended, ‘I an sure the arrival of a powerfull army in purely military values.’ Although the condition of Hungary could not be predicted, he believes that having troops there would leave the Western Allies ‘in a position to take full advantage of any great new situation.’ Roosevelt passed this on to Marshall, who asked McNarney and Handy to work on a draft reply that covered Italy in full but deliberately bypassed Istria completely. Churchill cannot have failed to mark the implications.
My comment: In this paragraph you see Roosevelt’s hubris coming out. His economy was saved by a war. Are participation in that war was only granted the time to tool up by the British of who he arrogantly ignores the visionary words of an Allies with much more intimate experience in European affairs in than himself. While Roosevelt did much good in holding his country together through a great depression, his economic and war time strategy receives low scores from the 20/20 perspective of history.
Page 515[Brooke] believes that seizure of the Istrian peninsula ‘not only had a military value, but also a political value of the Russian advances in the Balkans’.
Page 525: That same day Roosevelt and Churchill, amazingly enough initialed the Morgenthau Plan, which said that Germany needed to be turned into a country primarily agricultural and pastoral in character. Brooke was fundamentally opposed, already seeing Germany as a future ‘ally to meet the Russian threat of twenty-fie years hence.
Page 527: Churchill went on to claim, rightly, that Britain had nonetheless saved Greece from the flood of Bolshevism.
Page 528: Marshall later recalled: We were very much afraid that Mr. Churchill’s interest in matters near Athens and in Greece would finally get us involved in that fighting, and we were keeping out of it in every way we possibly could.’ On 13 December, Roosevelt cabled Churchill to say that ‘the traditional policies of the US’ meant that as head of state he had to be ‘responsive to the state of public feeling’ against Britain on the Greek issue, and concluded, I didn’t need to tell you how much I dislike this state of affairs between you and me. Churchill replied generously: ‘I have felt it much that you were unable to give a word of explanation for your actions, but I understand your difficulties.’ The new burden of combating Communism in south-eastern Europe therefore looked as if it would be carried entirely by the British
Page 531: On 29 November Churchill made clear his objections to the early liberation of the Channel Islands, telling the War Cabinet that while the twenty-eight thousand Germans there ‘can’t get away’, if they surrendered Britain would have to feed them.
Page 535: The battle of the Bulge, for the potential danger it posed in the west, was only half the size of the [Russian] battle of Kursk, for example.
Page 539: This was particularly so in regard to the Balkan states and the now-termed satellite states. ‘You can’t treat military factors in the way you do political factors. It’s quite a different affair.’ Marshall felt that his brief was not to save eastern Europe from Communism but instead to win the war in the shortest possible time and with the fewest possible Allied lives lost.
My comment: First it is Roosevelt’s job to tell Marshall what the objectives are. Had Roosevelt listened to Churchill earlier in the game of war strategy he could possibly have had his cake and eat it too. As much as the author took license to bend history and inject his comment elsewhere on to cast Churchill in poor light I find his vision slightly clouded by American hubris as well.
Page 532: In 6 February [at Yalta] [Marshall] summarized the Burmese campaigns for t Russians, and Marshall reported that ‘in the face of unparalleled difficulties’ 44,000 tons of supplies had been flown over the Himalayas the previous month, which he described somewhat hyperbolically, as ‘the accomplishment of the greatest feat in all history’ and beside which he said inter-Staff co-operation ‘should be relatively easy. One problem frequently encountered was the reluctance of even high-ranking Russian military officers to commit themselves to anything, however minor, until it ad been referred back to Stalin; the hitherto short life-expectancies of marshals of t Soviet Union made that a sensible precaution.
Page 553: Although Balaklava mattered much to men like Churchill and Brooke who had grown up with Tennyson’s poem, the Prime Minister complained that local Russian guides had shown ‘no sort of feeling’ there. Either they thought they had won the battle or they had never heard of it…. We stood on the little ridge on the end of that famous battlefield where the Charge of the Light Brigade took place. All around us were twisted remains of German anti-tank guns.
My comment: having read up on the Crimean War I noted to myself that while the Charge of the Light Brigade was eventually successful, the British actually lost the battle of Balaklava. This was at some level because that while the taking of the objective in the Charge of the Light Brigade, there was no coordinated effort with the rest of the British and French armies, hence they soon lost their prize back to the Russians. I must be critical of the author, a historian, who did not seem to portray history correctly.
Page 555: Because he is usually accredited the victor of Yalta, it is sometimes forgotten that Stalin made a number of concessions there. He gave a firm date of entry into the Japanese war (three months after the Tennyson’s poem e German surrender); agreed to observe the provisions of the Atlantic Charter in eastern Europe by signing the Declaration of Liberated Europe, which affirmed the right of all peoples to choose their form of government under which they live’; assent to France sitting on the Control Commission for Germany, and agreed that the USSR would join the new United Nations Organization, largely on Roosevelt’s terms. Taken together these seemed significant, yet in reality they amounted to relatively little.
Page 556: Speaking in 1974, Ed Hull made the sensible but rarely heard argument that: All that Yalta did was to recognize the facts of life as they existed and were being brought about…The only way we could have in any way influenced that in a different way was not to have put our main effort into France and the Low Countries but to put it into the Balkans…It might have meant that Bulgaria, Rumania, and possibly other of those Eastern European countries that are now Communist-dominated would have other type of control. But…it would also mean that all of Germany and probably a good portion of t Low Countries, Belgium, Holland, and even France, might have Soviet influence over them rather than Western influence. To me there was no choice to make.
My comment: Again since the author took critical license out on Churchill throughout the book, albeit slight; to take grave objection to him actually taking down Hull’s statement in this book and failing to be critical. Imagine the Russians leapfrogging over Germany to actually occupy Western Europe. To use that is a mitigating circumstance is absurd. The book is subtitled how Four Titans Won the War using superb strategy. He then proceeds to berate one of the titans, and then describes a missed strategy and writes it off as insignificant lesser of two evils. Who really won the War appears to have been the USSR. It was not until the USA won the Cold War that Europe was fully liberated from tyranny.
Page 557: It is hard to be naïve and cynical at the same time, but Roosevelt was both when it came to Stalin and the fate of the Poles. ‘of one thing I am certain’ he told the Polish Prime Minister-in-exile Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, ‘Stalin is not an imperialist.’ To the former American Ambassador to France, William C Bullitt, he also said: “I have a hunch that Stalin doesn’t want anything other than security for his country, and I think if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work for a world of democracy and peace’
My comment: When an author writes these words in a book one has to think his cover subtitle is off the mark.
Page 561: As there was no point in doing that, there was no race to Berlin between Montgomery and Patton, or anyone else. Berlin was in the Soviet zone, and if the Allies had reached it first they simply would have to withdraw.
Page 565: Roosevelt’s curt reply to Churchill –“I do not get the point’ – ended with his ‘regret that phrasing of a formal discussion should have so disturbed you but I regret even more at a moment of a great victory we should become involved in such unfortunate reactions. Churchill could hardly have felt that it was worth while ripping up various agreements made with the Russians over Occupation zoning in order to dash for Berlin. More likely he wished to put in writing that he was on the right side of the Cold War which he saw – earlier than anyone else except perhaps Brooke – was looming. Between Churchill’s wildly over-optimistic report to the War Cabinet on returning from Yalta and this doleful telegram to Roosevelt only two months later, Stalin had given no indication that his promises of free and fair elections in Eastern Europe had been genuine.
Page 567: despite the tension between the two Masters in the last year or so, there is no evidence to support the notion that Churchill’s absence was ‘because he felt the President had latterly become unsupportive’, or that ‘the emotional link was never as close as commonly thought,’ as some historians suggested.
Page 569: Truman, who in all military matters understandably tended to defer to Marshall, followed the Joint Chief’s line that it was best to adhere to the Yalta zoning arrangements whatever the legal or political circumstances. Brooke wanted Prague to be liberated by the Western Allies for the ‘remarkable political advantages’ that would accrue, but Marshall merely passed this information on to Eisenhower with the comment: ‘Personally, and aside from all logistics, tactical, or strategic implications, I would loath to hazard American lives for purely political purposes.
My comment: Here I struggle with American lack of consolidation of a military effort to not acquire a lasting peace. First the President is the Commander in Chief and Truman failed to lead. As a result we saw no real commitment from the Russians against Japan, which led to Truman’s calculated decision for the Atom Bomb. This lit the fuse for the nuclear arms race, and subsequent waves of nuclear proliferation around the world of which the world now. What if the Russians helped draw the Japanese War to an end without the benefit of the Manhattan Project; where would we be now?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)