Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [105]
When Marshall spoke of creating an army of four million men, the British expressed amazement. There seemed no prospect, they said, that land fighting would take place in the continental United States. Shipping did not exist to transport and supply a large army overseas. What need could there be for such a mobilization? Churchill himself was at pains to assure the mothers of America that, even if their nation entered the war, their sons would not be required to shed blood on the battlefields of Europe. A month before Placentia, he rebuked Auchinleck for telling journalists that U.S. troops were needed. Such remarks, said the prime minister, strengthened the hand of American isolationists, and ran “contrary to what I have said about our not needing the American Army this year, or next year, or any year that I could foresee.” British strategic calculations denied a requirement for British or U.S. land forces capable of engaging the Wehrmacht on the Continent, because Dill and his colleagues did not perceive this as a viable objective.
At Placentia, Arnold said little on behalf of the U.S. Army Air Forces, while Marshall talked more about equipment than strategy. The Americans said they found it hard to satisfy British demands for weapons. They claimed that requests were submitted in muddled profusion, through a variety of channels. The British felt a chasm between their own mind-set, formed and roughened by the experience of war, and that of their American counterparts, still imbued with the inhibitions of peace. It was not easy for men with lesser gifts of statesmanship than the prime minister to subdue their consciousness that the leaders of America’s armed forces resented shipping to Britain arms which they wanted for themselves. It was hard for Dill and his colleagues not to be irked by the caution of these rich, safe Americans, when they themselves were battered by the responsibility of conducting Western civilisation’s struggle for survival. The Royal Navy’s officers noted the lack of curiosity displayed by the Americans, notably Admiral King, about their experiences of battle, for instance against the Bismarck. Privately, U.S. sailors mocked Dudley Pound, “the old whale,” as British soldiers called him. Dill got on well with Marshall, but Ian Jacob wrote bleakly in his diary: “Not a single American officer379 has shown the slightest keenness to be in the war on our side. They are a charming lot of individuals, but they appear to be living in a different world from ourselves.”
Roosevelt was irritated to learn that the prime minister had brought with him two well-known journalists, H. V. Morton and Howard Spring. Though they were barred from filing dispatches until back on British soil, this was a reminder that Churchill sought to extract from the meeting every ounce of propaganda capital. Roosevelt, meanwhile, was determined to keep open every option, to proceed with utmost caution. The reporters were denied access to U.S. ships.
It is important to recognise that both the British and Americans still expected Russia to suffer defeat, leaving Britain alone once more to face the Nazi empire—and soon also, perhaps, the Japanese. Churchill urged Roosevelt to offer the strongest possible warnings to Tokyo against additional aggression. It has been suggested that he went further, pleading for preemptive U.S. military action in the Far East, but this seems implausible. Several times during the conference, Churchill asked Averell Harriman if the president liked him. Here was an admission of the prime minister’s vast anxiety, and vulnerability.
“It would be an exaggeration to say that Roosevelt and Churchill380 became chums at this conference, or at any subsequent time,” wrote Robert Sherwood, White House familiar and later biographer of Harry Hopkins. “They established an easy intimacy,