Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [123]
There were important nuances about this first visit, however. First, at a time when most of the decision makers in both Britain and the United States still thought it likely that Russia would be defeated, they failed to perceive the extent to which the war against Hitler would be dominated by the struggle in the east. At the turn of 1941–42, Roosevelt and Churchill in Washington supposed that they were shaping strategy for the destruction of Nazism. They had no inkling of the degree to which Stalin’s nation would prove the most potent element in achieving this. Though the United States was by far the strongest global force in the Grand Alliance, the Soviet Union mobilised raw military power more effectively than either Western partner.
As for Anglo-American relations, Charles Wilson wrote of Churchill: “He wanted to show the President437 how to run the war, and it has not quite worked out like that.” Eden told the Cabinet: “There is bound to be difficulty in practice438 in harmonizing day-to-day Anglo-Russian co-operation with Anglo-American co-operation. Soviet policy is amoral: United States policy is exaggeratedly moral, at least where non-American interests are concerned.” Despite the success of Churchill’s Washington visit, it would be mistaken to suppose that all Americans succumbed to the magic of his personality. His great line to Congress—“What kind of people do they think we are?”—prompted widespread editorialising. But in the weeks that followed, by no means all of this was favourable to Britain. The Denver Post said sourly: “There is one lesson the United States should learn439 from England. That is to put our own interests ahead of those of everybody else.” The Chicago Tribune’s attitude was predictably rancid: “It is unfortunate that Mr. Roosevelt440 has had the example of Mr. Churchill constantly before him as a guide. Mr. Churchill is a man of very great capacity in many directions, but as a military strategist he has an almost unbroken record of disappointments and failures.”
Some of the foremost personalities at Arcadia found one another unsympathetic. Henry Morgenthau, the treasury secretary, thought Max Beaverbrook cocky to the point of impertinence. In the absence of the newly appointed Alan Brooke, the British Chiefs of Staff made a weak team. The Americans liked Charles Portal, but the airman rarely imposed himself. Admiral Dudley Pound seemed a cipher, whose fading health disqualified him from meaningful participation. The Americans were too polite to allude in the visitors’ presence to Britain’s resounding military failures, but these were never far from their minds when they discerned extravagant assertiveness in Churchill or his companions. They had respect for the Royal Navy and RAF, but scarcely any for the British Army. Scepticism about British military competence would persist throughout the war in the upper reaches of the U.S. Army, colouring its leaders’ attitudes in every strategic debate.
As for the president and the prime minister, Hopkins said, “There was no question but that [Roosevelt] grew genuinely to like Churchill.” This seems at best half true. Their political convictions were far, far apart. For all Franklin Roosevelt’s irrepressible bonhomie, excessive doses of Churchill palled on him. A joke did the rounds in Washington, and indeed was featured in Time magazine, that the first question the president asked Harry Hopkins on his return from Britain in February 1941 was, “Who writes Churchill’s speeches for him?”441 The prime minister sought to display courtesy by pushing the president’s wheelchair