Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [112]
Yet there is evidence that Churchill’s personal view was shifting towards an expectation of U.S. belligerence. He asserted to Lord Camrose at the Other Club on November 14 that he was confident the Americans would soon be in the war. Camrose was sufficiently impressed406 to write to his son, repeating the prime minister’s words. On the nineteenth, Churchill told guests during a lunch407 at Downing Street that he expected to land the second of four possible “prizes.” The first would be U.S. entry into the war without involving Japan; the second would be America’s accession as an ally, matched by that of Japan as an enemy; the third would be that neither country entered the war; and the fourth, that Japan became an enemy, while the United States remained neutral. Yet to others, even those privy to secret intelligence of Japanese movements, the prime minister’s hopes seemed ill-founded.
Churchill strove to provide cause for Americans to modify their impression of British passivity. Briefing Commodore Lord Louis Mountbatten on his new role as “chief adviser” to Combined Operations, which soon became translated into overall command, the prime minister said: “Your whole attention is to be concentrated on the offensive.” This was another of the periods when he enthused about a possible descent on Norway, heedless of the intractable reality that its coastline was beyond British fighter range. Eden expressed dismay about this plan to his private secretary: “A.E. is much perplexed408—he feels as I do so many of W.’s gorgeous schemes have ended in failure … a false step—a faulty short-cut—would set us back years.”
The prime minister often felt oppressed by the perceived pettiness and petulance of Parliament. In the House on November 11, 1941, he faced a barrage of questions and supplementaries: first about alleged Italian atrocities in Montenegro, then about the government’s apparent unwillingness to allow the RAF to bomb Rome. When he answered evasively, Sir Thomas Moore, MP for Ayr, demanded: “Does my right hon. friend really think it wise to provide a hide-out for this rat Mussolini?” The prime minister responded: “I think it would be as well to have confidence in the decisions of the Government, whose sole desire is to inflict the maximum of injury upon the enemy.” Another MP drew attention to shortages of equipment, described in Lord Gort’s recently published dispatch on the 1940 campaign in France. Churchill brusquely rejected calls for an enquiry. He might have suggested that such matters came under the heading of archaeology, rather than conduct of the war.
Another member demanded information about the precise composition of the prime minister’s party at the Placentia Bay meeting, and asked, “whether in view of the fact that we are fighting for our existence, he will consider removing from Government service all persons of German education and of German origin.” Churchill invited the questioner to be explicit. This the MP declined to do, but the House readily comprehended the enquiry as an attack upon Lord Cherwell. Other MPs then raised questions in which Cherwell was named. “The Prof” was widely perceived as a pernicious influence upon the prime minister. MPs who did not dare to attack Churchill himself instead vented their frustrations upon his associates. The prime minister defended Cherwell, but he bitterly resented being obliged to do so.
Such exchanges filled twelve columns of Hansard, and caused Churchill to return to Downing Street in dudgeon. Who could blame him? How pettifogging seemed the issues raised by MPs, how small-minded the pinpricks of their criticisms, alongside the great issues with which he wrestled daily. If self-pity about the intrusions of democracy is in some measure common to all national leaders in war or peace, such carping became infinitely irksome to the