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By Root 738 0

By August 6, after discussion with Smuts, whom he had asked to meet him in Cairo, he had made up his mind to sack Auchinleck. The general received his dismissal ungraciously639, and harboured bitterness for the rest of his life. Dill blamed Churchill for the Middle East C-in-C’s failure, claiming that the prime minister “had ruined Auchinleck … he had dwarfed him just as he dwarfs and reduces others around him.” This charge says more about Dill’s limitations as a shop steward for unsuccessful British generals than about the prime minister’s. Of course Churchill had harried Auchinleck. It has been suggested above that the general’s failure in part reflected institutional weaknesses in the British Army. But “the Auk” had been the man in charge through a succession of operations abysmally conducted by subordinates of his choice. British failure to defeat the Afrika Korps at Gazala in May–June 1942 reflected gross command incompetence. It was surely right to dismiss Auchinleck.

Churchill’s first impulsive thought for his replacement was Alan Brooke. The CIGS was much moved by the proposal, but wisely and selflessly rejected the chance of battlefield glory. He perceived himself as indispensable at the War Office—and he was right. The prime minister’s next choice was Lt. Gen. William “Strafer” Gott, who had gained a reputation for dashing leadership from the front, but in whom Brooke lacked confidence. Since 1939, the prime minister had been convinced that Britain’s armed forces lacked leaders with fire in their bellies. He sought to appoint to high command proven warriors, heroes. In this, he was often mistaken. Steely professionalism was lacking, rather than conspicuous personal courage. Many of Churchill’s favourite warriors lacked intellect. Gott commended himself to the prime minister because he had made a name as a thruster, yet it is unlikely that he was competent to command Eighth Army. But fate intervened: en route to Cairo to receive his appointment, Gott’s plane was shot down and he was killed. Instead, Brooke’s nominee, Sir Bernard Montgomery, was summoned from a corps command in England to head Eighth Army. Churchill had met Montgomery on visits to his units, and was impressed by his forceful personality, if not by his boorish conceit. But, in accepting his appointment to the desert, the prime minister was overwhelmingly dependent on the CIGS’s judgement. Gen. Sir Harold Alexander, a brave, charming but unassertive Guardsman who had recently presided over the British retreat from Burma, was appointed C-in-C Middle East. The prime minister, who found “Alex” congenial and reassuring, expected him to play a far more important role in shaping future operations than Montgomery. Several senior subordinate officers were also earmarked for sacking and replacement.

Having set in motion wholesale change at the top, Churchill departed from Cairo on the most taxing stage of this epic excursion. He was to meet the Soviet Union’s warlord, and deliver the unwelcome news that the Western Allies had determined against launching a Second Front in 1942. After a brief stopover in Tehran, on August 12 he made a ten-and-a-half-hour flight to Moscow, accompanied by his personal staff and Averell Harriman. A few hours after landing, Churchill was summoned to the Kremlin. He asked Harriman to accompany him: “I feel things would be easier if we all seemed to be together. I have a somewhat raw job.”

In truth, and as surprisingly few historians show recognition of, Stalin was already aware of all that Churchill feared to tell him. Whitehall and Washington were alike deeply penetrated by Communist sympathisers. Among the most prominent, John Cairncross served as Lord Hankey’s private secretary with access to War Cabinet papers until Hankey’s sacking in 1942, when he was transferred to Bletchley Park. Anthony Blunt served in MI5, while Guy Burgess and Kim Philby worked for SIS. Donald Maclean had access to key Foreign Office material, especially concerning research on the atomic bomb. In the U.S. government—which was anyway lax about securing