THE POLITICS OF WAR

QUEBEC, CAIRO AND TEHERAN

By mid 1943 it was clear to the leaders of the three senior Allied powers, indeed to most of the world, that Germany and Japan would lose the war, and that the combined forces of the Allies would win it. Each of those leaders - Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin - began to speculate on the attitudes of the others to the postwar world. Each was prey to the prejudices about and fears of the others that had until now been suppressed in the common cause.

Roosevelt and the US advisers began once more to think as an isolationist government - and yet to see the potential for world power that the USA's coming of age in international politics had brought. Roosevelt had an underlying belief in seeking and finding good in everyone, even a Communist tyrant who had been liquidating his opponents since before Roosevelt was President. He did not see in the USSR's fearsome accumulation of armed might the threat to the future of Europe that Churchill had come to believe was inevitable.

With General Marshall, the keystone of Washington strategic planning, Roosevelt shared a deep mistrust of the extent to which Britain was committed to an invasion of Europe across the English Channel - to the operation that had been called "Roundup" and was now rechristened "Overlord". Twice already, Britain had deferred a major landing in northern Europe when the USA was eager to fight Germany in France. Now, Roosevelt feared, Churchill and his adviser Sir Alan Brooke would do it again, and would seek to involve the USA in Southern Europe, bringing America into the Mediterranean theatre even more deeply than she was already. The American President and his advisers believed that the memory of Dunkirk, of Flanders, of the Somme and Passchendaele was too vivid for Britain's military leaders to commit themselves wholly to France. Therefore, they reasoned. "Overlord" must have an American commander. In fact they went further, and sought to gain acceptance from Churchill of a US Supreme Commander for all operations against Germany.

Britain's military planners, for their part, had never lost their mistrust of US military methods; of what they regarded as slapdash planning, brash arrogance, and an insensitive attitude to European needs. To them, as to Britain's mothers guarding their daughters, the US forces were "oversexed, overpaid and over here". Churchill, despite his close personal relationship with Franklin D. Roosevelt, was aware of Roosevelt's leaning to acceptance of his military advisers' views, and he did not like it. Churchill and Brooke were doubtful of the wisdom of Roosevelt's continuing faith in and desire to help Chiang Kai-shek in China, and had no confidence in American acceptance in principle of demands by Chiang for greatly increased commitment of US troops and aircraft that were desperately needed to win the war against Germany. Churchill believed deeply in the strategy of "Germany First", and was (probably wrongly) doubtful of the extent of the Pentagon's belief in the strategy agreed and reaffirmed at each Allied conference.

Perhaps more important, Churchill saw clearly Stalin's intention that the USSR should dominate Europe after the war, but was obliged nonetheless, in order to preserve the alliance and the relationship with Roosevelt, to participate in strategic planning which pivoted on the basic and inaccurate assumption that the USSR was honest, trustworthy and prepared to honour its pledges. To Churchill, Roosevelt's trust of Stalin, and the ailing President's courtship of the tyrannical Soviet leader, were deeply disturbing.

Stalin, for his part, believed that Russia had been fighting the Germans virtually single-handed since June 1941 - a view to which statistics alone would lend credence. His perpetual impatience, rising to blazing anger, at the failure of Britain to support US plans for an invasion of Northern Europe in 1942, then again in 1943, caused him to accuse Churchill and the British people of cowardice, an unwillingness to fight and a lack of fellow feeling for Britain's allies. The probability is that he had hoped for a premature invasion of France so that the British and Americans would become bogged down in a stalemate battle that they could not win, and thereby weaken Germany in the East by causing her to fight on two major fronts. That weakening would have enabled Stalin to realise to an even greater degree than he eventually did his true objective - the subjugation of Europe. Had Churchill not held out against a cross-Channel invasion until the Allies could push the German Army back where it came from, West Germany as we knew it until recently would not have existed.

Quebec

All these conflicts, undercurrents, fears and doubts came to the surface when Churchill heard from Averill Harriman that Roosevelt was planning a US-Soviet meeting without Britain. Swiftly, Churchill proposed an alternative summit meeting in Canada, which Roosevelt accepted. On August 14th, after a sedate crossing of the Atlantic in the Queen Mary , the Allied Chiefs of Staff met in one place, while Churchill and Roosevelt met in private elsewhere. It soon became apparent that these and the subsequent meetings at Quebec turned on the fundamental issue of "Overlord" versus the Mediterranean theatre - a disagreement that had already been settled once at Casablanca. The American planners were convinced (with some justice in the light of postwar evidence) that Churchill was still seeking either greater commitment in the Mediterranean, or an invasion in Norway, or an assault in the Balkans - anything rather than a head-on confrontation in France. The facts were that, although Churchill had been energetically pursuing alternatives in the belief that "Overlord" was an intensely risky undertaking, he had been convinced by the immensely upright Sir Alan Brooke that the commitment to "Overlord" was right, and must stand.

Nonetheless, the British position at the Quebec conference was that a full-scale invasion in Italy to capitalise on the confusion following Mussolini's departure was vital as a prelude to an invasion of France. Only by having bases in northern Italy, the British argued, could the Allies have the means to strike at vital aircraft and arms manufacture in Southern Germany. This view, subject to an acceptance by Britain that "Overlord" should have over-riding priority, was accepted reluctantly by the US President and the Chiefs of Staff, but the slowness of the campaign in Italy was to show that General Marshall may well have been right, and Brooke and Churchill wrong. During its discussions of European strategy, the Quebec conference also concluded that the bombing offensive on Germany should be intensified, again as a necessary preliminary to an invasion of France.

When the conference discussed the Far Eastern war, it was the turn of the British to express doubts about American objectives and policies. Yet here there was an illogical and unrealistic contradiction in the British position, perhaps because Churchill knew that it was the intention of the US delegation to suggest and promote at a later date a large scale landing in Burma with the objective of reopening the Burma Road. On the face of it, all the Americans were proposing for the Far East at Quebec was a nebulous British commitment to a greater effort in Burma, possibly because they feared that Britain did not intend doing much to advance the defeat of Japan in the forseeable future. The British Chiefs of Staff, resenting the implication of inaction and unwillingness to do battle, were nonetheless unprepared to agree to a Burma commitment because they knew such a strategy would inevitably mean amphibious landings, which would drain the available resources of landing craft and support vessels needed for "Overlord".

The contradiction was that, despite this rejection of positive plans for Burma, Churchill was enthusiastic about the plans propounded by Brigadier Orde Wingate, who was also at Quebec, for Chindit operations on a huge scale as a means of retaking Burma. In alarm, it was pointed out that such a plan would cause an even greater drain on "Overlord" than an amphibious landing.

After days of muddled discussion on the Far East issue, one of the few positive, far-reaching and successful decisions reached was the creation of an Allied South-East Asia Command, and the appointment to its command of Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, with General Stilwell as his deptuy. In addition, the conference endorsed the decision, already being acted upon, to advance in New Guinea and the Solomons as a two-prong pincer movement to bypass and isolate Rabaul, and set a target date for the defeat of Japan as twelve months after the defeat of Germany.

Cairo and Teheran

In November 1943, after Roosevelt had refused to meet Churchill privately in Malta for a preliminary discussion before a summit conference at which Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek (the latter at Roosevelt's insistence) were to be present, Churchill sailed for Cairo in the battlecruiser Renown . The two linked conferences at Cairo and Teheran that were to last three weeks through the second half of November and the first week of December would clearly decide Allied strategy for the conduct of the remainder of the Second World War, and Churchill was far from happy - and, incidentally, far from well, with a severe sore throat and the effects of his inoculations for the trip keeping him in bed for days.

The Cairo conference took place in the shadow of the Sphinx at Giza, with Chiang Kai-shek present, but without Stalin. Mountbatten and Stilwell, the latter still Chiang's Chief of Staff despite his additional appointment as Deputy Supreme Commander South-East Asia, were also there. To Churchill's intense irritation, South-East Asia strategic issues were moved to second place on the agenda, and the continuing debate about the relationship between "Overlord" and the Mediterranean war was relegated to third spot on the bill. Chiang was determined to get more than his fair share of conference time, and, if he could, more than a sensible slice of Allied resources, with the result that the detailed debate about Europe that Churchill wanted in plenary session before the encounter with Stalin in Teheran was late coming, and limited in scope. Despite this, separate meetings on Europe and Asia took place between the Chiefs of Staff each day, and there was considerable overlap between the two groups. Chiang fought hard for an impossibly large airlift of supplies over "The Hump" to China, and in fact gained a commitment to 8,900 tons of supplies per month for the next two months. He also pushed hard for an invasion of the Andaman Islands (Operation "Buccaneer") as an essential precursor to driving the Japanese northwards across Burma and reopening the Burma Road, and had the support of Roosevelt and the American Chiefs of Staff for this plan. The British demurred, wanting the overall strategy in South East Asia agreed before detailed individual operations were planned, and presented their proposals for further operations in the Mediterranean.

The British proposal was neatly summed up by Churchill as `Rome in January, Rhodes in February, supplies to the Yugoslavs, a settlement of the command arrangements and the opening of the Aegean, subject to the outcome of an approach to Turkey; all preparations for Overlord to go ahead full steam within the framework of the foregoing policy for the Mediterranean.' The American Chiefs of Staff saw in this plan some confirmation of their worst fears, but Roosevelt, with some reluctance, accepted it as the basis for discussion with Stalin.

On November 28th, the British and American leaders and their staffs having moved to Teheran to meet Josef Stalin, the first plenary session with all three Allied leaders present took place. From the outset, Stalin surprised the other delegations by leading the debate, and announcing quite unexpectedly that, once Germany was defeated, the USSR would join her two allies in defeating Japan. When Churchill put the British strategic proposals for "Overlord" backed by the capture of bases in Italy, Stalin cross-examined him remorselessly on the proportion of the British and American commitment that would be devoted to the French and Italian campaigns, and on the size and nature of the force that Churchill envisaged for the Balkans assault. Having got his answers on these points, Stalin announced that he did not agree with the proposed Balkans campaign (presumably because it would have muddied the Eastern European position for his intended postwar colonisation), and that the major effort for 1944 should be devoted to "Overlord". All this was music to the ears of Roosevelt and the US Chiefs of Staff.

Next day, General Sir Alan Brooke was subjected by the Russians - by Marshal Voroshilov in particular - to the kind of mistrustful interrogation on Britain's belief in and commitment to the "Overlord" concept that he had previously experienced at the hands of the Americans. Progressively, and ever more determinedly, Stalin and his staff pushed for greater and more definite agreement on the invasion of Europe across the Channel. Churchill in turn pushed Roosevelt to abandon the "Buccaneer" operation in South-East Asia, without apparent effect. When finally the Conference minute of agreement was drawn up, it was with the unanimous approval of those taking part. The Allies had agreed their strategy for the remainder of the European War as follows:

(a) That we should continue to advance in Italy to the Pisa-Rimini line. (This means that the 68 LSTs which are due to be sent from the Mediterranean to the United Kingdom for Overlord must be kept in the Mediterranean until 15th January).

(b) That an operation shall be mounted against the South of France on as big a scale as landing craft will permit. For planning purposes, D-Day to be the same as Overlord D-Day.

(c) That we will launch Overlord in May, in conjunction with a supporting operation against the South of France.'

On December 2nd 1943, Churchill and Roosevelt arrived back in Cairo. There they tackled the tactical considerations that the strategic decisions raised, and conferred with their Chiefs of Staff on the logistics of two major simultaneous landings in France. For three days, amid the detailed discussions, Churchill and the British delegation urged Roosevelt and his Chiefs of Staff to forget "Buccaneer", the operation to invade the Andaman Islands, and the drain on resources that it would bring. The US Generals stood firm on their commitment to Chiang Kai-shek. But on December 5th Roosevelt overruled them and told Churchill that Buccaneer was off. Now only the vexed question of the choice between an American and a British commander for the "Overlord" invasion remained.

Churchill had long held that the preoponderance of British and Empire troops in the fight against Germany made a British commander obligatory, and had an informal understanding with General Sir Alan Brooke that he (Brooke) would have the command. But the US President stood firm on the necessity for an American commander. Given that they were obliged to accept an American general, the British wanted General Marshall. However, Roosevelt demurred, feeling - probably rightly - that Marshall's presence in Washington was too important to the successful prosecution of the war for him to be given another task, even one as important as this. In looking for an alternative there was, to Roosevelt, only one candidate - General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Thus it was that Eisenhower gained the most prestigious command of the Second World War, and with it the awesome responsibility of bringing to reality the long-awaited Allied assault on Europe.