Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [163]
Several other letter writers addressed intelligently and pertinently the inadequacy of British tanks. The Times commented on their strictures: “The simple question—though the answer may be complex622—is how a great and inventive industrial country nearing the end of the third year of War has failed to supply its Army with weapons superior to those employed by the enemy, the nature of which was for the most part known?” An editorial in the New Statesman on July 29 asserted that the “military situation of the [Allies] is graver than at any time since 1940.”
Within a few minutes of Churchill’s return to Downing Street from the Commons on July 2, Leo Amery arrived with his son Julian, an army officer just back from Egypt. To the fury of Alan Brooke, who was also present, young Amery—“a most objectionable young pup,”623 in the general’s words—painted for the prime minister a picture of the desert army as demoralised, poorly equipped and bereft of confidence in its commanders. This confirmed Churchill’s own views. In an unpublished draft of his war memoirs, he characterised the 1942 desert defeats as “discreditable624” and “deplorable.” In six months, Auchinleck’s forces had been driven back six hundred miles. Worst of all, in Brooke’s eyes, Captain Amery played to the strongest instincts of the prime minister by urging that Churchill should go himself to the Middle East and resolve the situation. “The cheek of the young brute625 was almost more than I could bear,” wrote the CIGS. He had hoped himself to travel alone to Egypt, to address the army’s difficulties. Now, instead, the prime minister was determined to intervene personally, then fly on to Moscow to confront Stalin.
But first, there was another visit to London by Hopkins, Marshall and King. Before they arrived, former CIGS Sir John Dill wrote to Churchill from Washington: “May I suggest with all respect that you must convince626 your visitors that you are determined to beat the Germans, that you will strike them on the continent of Europe at the earliest possible moment even on a limited scale, and that anything which detracts from this main effort will receive no support from you at all.” The general mused tendentiously about a possible landing in France: “What does success mean? If invasion ultimately fails tactically but causes diversion from Russian front will it have succeeded?” Such maudlin reflections were unlikely to increase Churchill’s confidence in Dill, who had gained some personal popularity in Washington because he was thought to favour an early Second Front. “Churchill, however, believes the other way,”627 wrote Vice President Henry Wallace. “Apparently the ruling class in England is very anxious not to sacrifice too many British men. They lost so many in World War I that they feel they cannot afford to lose more in World War II. They want to wait until the American armies have been sufficiently trained so that losses will be at least fifty-fifty. Dill does not belong to this school of thought.” It was certainly true that some people in London believed the general had “gone native” in Washington.
To the prime minister’s annoyance, following Marshall, King and Hopkins’s arrival in London on July 19, they spent some hours communing with the newly appointed senior U.S. officer in Europe, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, before calling at Downing Street. When Anglo-American discussions began, the visitors repeated their familiar demand for a 1942 beachhead in France. They clung stubbornly to two propositions which the British deemed monstrous. First, they thought that a “redoubt,” such as Churchill had briefly favoured in June 1940, might be seized and held in northern