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By Root 783 0

if once you compromise with evil683. You find yourself shooting a good man for doing what you should have done yourself.” It was a relief to almost everyone else, however, that Bonnier de la Chapelle was extinguished without revealing details of his plot. That there was a plot is certain. A priest granted Bonnier de la Chapelle absolution for his action before he walked into the Summer Palace, and modern conspiracy theorists have not failed to notice that Brigadier Menzies, chief of the SIS, was in Algiers on Christmas Eve. The historian David Reynolds believes that the British684 were implicated. The most likely explanation, however, is that the killer was incited by a Free French group. Though there is no evidence of de Gaulle’s personal complicity, the ruthless behaviour of his London organisation between 1940 and 1944 makes this credible.

While Darlan’s murder was ugly, it lifted a heavy shadow from Anglo-American relations. General Giraud was installed in Darlan’s place. After tortured negotiations between Churchill, Eden and de Gaulle in London, the two Frenchmen achieved a grudging and distant accommodation. Macmillan’s attitude reflected that of many British politicians and diplomats: “One comes away, as always after conversations with De Gaulle685, wondering whether he is a demagogue or a madman, but convinced that he is a more powerful character than any other Frenchman with whom one has yet been in contact.” This widely shared view caused most British politicians and diplomats to conclude that de Gaulle must continue to be supported. Churchill kicked against such realism, demanding with extravagant verbosity that the general should be dumped. At the last, however, he sulkily acquiesced. De Gaulle remained recognised by London, though not by Washington, as the principal representative of France in exile.

On November 29, 1942, Churchill minuted the Chiefs of Staff: “I certainly think that we should make all plans to attack the French coast either in the Channel or in the Bay of Biscay, and that 12 July 1943 should be fixed as the target date.” Throughout this period, he pressed Roosevelt repeatedly to expedite the U.S. buildup in Europe so that the invasion of France could take place in 1943. Astonishingly or even perversely, given his almost unflagging enthusiasm for attacking the supposed “soft underbelly” of the Axis, on December 1 Churchill wrote to Brooke: “It may be that we should close down the Mediterranean activities by the end of June with a view to Round-Up in August.” The U.S. Chiefs of Staff were wholly justified in their belief that their British counterparts were unwilling to execute a 1943 cross-Channel attack. But they did an injustice to Churchill in supposing that he, too, had at this stage closed his mind. In the course of the next year, he vacillated repeatedly.

Marshall and his colleagues also underrated the professional skill and judgement of Brooke and his team. American practise was founded upon an expectation that means could always be found to fulfil chosen national objectives. Thus, Roosevelt’s Chiefs of Staff decided upon a purpose, then addressed the practical problems of fulfilling it. The British Chiefs, by contrast, forever struggling against straitened resources, declined to endorse any course of action unless they could see how it was to be executed. Such caution irked Churchill as much as the Americans: “I do not want any of your own long-term projects,”686 he often expostulated to Brooke, shaking his fist in the CIGS’s face. “All they do is cripple initiative.”

In December 1942, it seemed to Britain’s service chiefs that it would be impossible to mass sufficient landing craft to support a D-Day in 1943. Pressure on shipping was unrelenting in every theatre. In addition, there were never enough troops. British relations with the Australian government were further strained in December by Canberra’s insistence that 9th Australian Division should return home from North Africa, even though the threat of a Japanese invasion of Australia had been lifted. Churchill cabled Curtin,