Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [113]
The best news in November was of Auchinleck’s long-delayed offensive in the desert, Operation Crusader, which began on November 18. Churchill trumpeted its progress: “For the first time, the Germans are getting a taste of their own bitter medicine.” On the twentieth, before the House of Commons, he described the North African assault in the most dramatic terms: “One thing is certain—that all ranks of the British Empire troops involved are animated by a long-pent-up and ardent desire to engage the enemy … This is the first time that we have met the Germans at least equally well-armed and equipped.” Churchill knew from Ultra that Auchinleck had launched 658 tanks against Rommel’s 168, that the RAF deployed 660 aircraft against 642 of the Luftwaffe’s. Yet, in Crusader’s first days, the British suffered much heavier losses than the Germans. The prime minister continued to cherish hopes for the tangled, messy desert fighting, but there was no sign of a breakthrough. On November 23 Auchinleck sacked Alan Cunningham, commander of the newly christened Eighth Army, and replaced him with his own chief of staff, Neil Ritchie. Rommel had destroyed the career of yet another British general. The Germans were once again fighting harder, faster and more effectively than the British.
It was at this time that Churchill’s patience with his senior soldier, Sir John Dill, chief of the imperial general staff since May 1940, at last expired. Dill’s difficulty was that, like his predecessor, Sir Edmund “Tiny” Ironside, he suffered from a surfeit of realism. This inspired in both men successively a gloom about their own nation’s prospects which grated intolerably upon the prime minister. Dill was exhausted by Churchill’s insistence upon deciding every issue of strategy through trial by combat, testing arguments to destruction at interminable Downing Street meetings. “Winston’s methods were frequently repulsive to him,”409 wrote Alan Brooke. He recoiled from the need to work with the Russians, whom he abhorred. He believed that whenever Hitler chose to reinforce Rommel, the Middle East would be lost, and feared that neglect of Britain’s Far East defences would precipitate disaster if the Japanese attacked. Dill never doubted Churchill’s greatness as national leader. But he considered him wholly unfit to direct strategy.
Churchill, in his turn, had told John Kennedy many months earlier that he found Dill “too much impressed by the enemy’s will.”410 The CIGS was an intelligent man, possessed of famous charm. But, like many other British officers, he lacked steel to bear the highest responsibilities in a war of national survival. On November 16, 1941, Churchill told Dill he must go, designating as his replacement Sir Alan Brooke, C-in-C Home Forces. The change provoked dismay in high places. Dill’s colleagues and friends indulged that fatal British sympathy for agreeable gentlemen, however inadequate to their appointed tasks. He was perceived as a victim of Churchill’s determination to bar dissent from his own conduct of the war. There is no doubt, however, that his removal was right. Never a driving force, he was now a spent one.
His successor proved the outstanding British command appointment of the Second World War. Brooke—like Dill, Montgomery and Alexander—was a Northern Irishman, fifty-eight years old. He had characteristics often identified with Protestant Ulster: toughness, diligence, intolerance, Christian commitment and a brusqueness that sometimes tipped over into ill-temper. His sharp brain was matched by extraordinary strength of purpose. A passionate bird-watcher, Brooke saved his softer side for his feathered friends, his adored second wife, Benita, and their two young children. A misanthrope, he had a low opinion of his fellow men, fellow soldiers and allies, expressed in his wartime diaries with a heavy dressing of exclamation marks. His booming voice and thick-rimmed spectacles intimidated strangers. Intensely active and indeed restless, Brooke was so little