Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [175]
TWELVE
The Turn of Fortune
CHURCHILL’S PURGE OF desert generals was greeted in Britain with unsurprising caution. So many newly promoted officers had been welcomed as Wellingtons, only to be exposed as duffers. The Times’s military correspondent observed that commanders in the Middle East “have changed so frequently that the subject655 can now be approached only with tempered enthusiasm.” Through the months that followed, the British media displayed a wariness close to cynicism about Eighth Army’s prospects. A Times editorial on August 26 observed that neither the RAF’s bomber offensive nor the raid on Dieppe had “relieved the continuing sense of an inadequacy in the British military achievement at a time when our allies face a supreme crisis.” Journalist Maggie Joy Blunt wrote in her diary on August 19, expressing dismay about Dieppe: “While I grumble young Russia waits656 in agony for our Second Front. Here in England we are divided, despondent and without faith, ruled by old men, governed by money. The old fears, the old distrust are deeply rooted.” Such gloom was not confined to civilians. Brooke wrote later: “When looking back at those days657 in the light of after events one may be apt to overlook those ghastly moments of doubt which at the time crowded in on me.”
Churchill, who read newspapers avidly, cannot have gained much pleasure from their scepticism about the command changes. However, he returned to London on August 24 exhilarated by what he had seen in the desert and by the perceived success of his visit to Stalin. His boundless capacity for optimism was among his greatest virtues, at a time when those around him found it easier to succumb to gloom. On the night of August 30 Rommel, desperately short of fuel, attacked at Alam Halfa. The British, forewarned by Ultra, inflicted a decisive repulse on the Afrika Korps. The prime minister now became passionately anxious that Montgomery’s own offensive should be launched before the U.S. North African landings, provisionally scheduled for October. There was fresh trouble with Washington, where Marshall was urging Roosevelt to limit the scale of Torch, and to omit Algiers from its objectives. Churchill feared that he would have to defy medical advice and fly once more to see the president. Only on September 3 did Roosevelt accede to Churchill’s imprecations, which were supported by U.S. generals Dwight Eisenhower and Mark Clark in London. Torch was to proceed on November 8, with landings at Casablanca, Oran and Algiers.
But while Allied warlords nursed private excitement about the prospect of great happenings, the public and body politic perceived only continuing inactivity. Churchill indulged an outburst of self-pity on September 24, telling Alan Brooke that he, the prime minister, “was the only one trying to win the war658, that he was the only one who produced any ideas, that he was quite alone in all his attempts, no one supported him … Frequently in this oration he worked himself up into such a state from the woeful picture he had painted, that tears streamed down his face!”
It was inevitable that, having insisted upon assuming sole responsibility for direction of the war, Churchill should bear blame for the weaknesses which caused the armed forces so often to be seen to fail. Public dissatisfaction with Britain’s wartime government attained its highest pitch during the last weeks before a dramatic change of