Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [116]
Yet even this blow was endurable, in the context of American belligerency. On December 11, Germany and Italy removed a vital lingering doubt, by declaring war on the United States. The next day Churchill cabled to Eden, who was en route to Moscow: “The accession of the United States makes amends for all, and with time and patience will give certain victory.” There were short-term hazards. Washington would cut overseas weapons shipments, to meet the needs of its own armed forces. Ten RAF squadrons en route to Persia to support Stalin’s southern front would have to be diverted to the Far East. But these were mere inconveniences alongside the glittering prospect opened by American might.
The prime minister’s first priority was to meet Roosevelt and his military chiefs face to face, to cement the alliance created by events, though never ratified by formal treaty. Henceforward, Anglo-American dealings would be influenced by formal agreements on matériel issues, above all Lend-Lease, but governed chiefly by personal understandings, or lack of them, between the leaders of the two nations and their Chiefs of Staff. When Churchill proposed himself for an immediate descent on Washington, the president demurred. On security grounds, he suggested a rendezvous in Bermuda, which he said that he could not himself attend before January 7. In reality, Roosevelt was hesitant about making space at the White House for the overpowering personality of Britain’s prime minister and the torrent of rhetoric with which he would assuredly favour the American people. Nonetheless, in the face of Churchill’s chafing, the president agreed that he should come to Washington before Christmas.
As the prime minister prepared to sail, there was a flurry of last-minute business. He cabled Eden that while it might be desirable for Russia to declare war on Japan, Stalin should not be pressed too hard on this issue, “considering how little we have been able to contribute” to the Soviet war effort. The foreign secretary was told, however, that on no account should he appear willing to satisfy Moscow’s demands for recognition of the frontiers which the Russians had established for themselves by agreement with Hitler, absorbing eastern Poland and the Baltic states. Not only would such action be unprincipled, it would discomfit the Americans, who were at that time even more hostile than the British to Stalin’s territorial ambitions. Meanwhile, Attlee was urged not to implement a threatened cut in the British people’s rations: “We are all in it together and [the Americans] are eating better meals than we are.” Reducing supplies would savour of panic, said the prime minister. From Gourock, on the Clyde, on the morning of December 13, he telephoned Ismay to urge that “everything that was fit for battle” should be dispatched to the Far East. Then, with his eighty-strong party which included Beaverbrook and the Chiefs of Staff—Dill still representing the army while Brooke took over at the War Office—he boarded the great battleship Duke of York, sister of the lost Prince of Wales.
The passage was awful. Day after day, Duke of York ploughed through mountainous seas which caused her to pitch and roll. Max Beaverbrook, who had been invited partly to provide companionship for “the old man” and partly because he was alleged to be popular with Americans, wheezed that he was being borne across the Atlantic in “a submarine masquerading as a battleship.” Churchill, almost alone