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?
