Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [194]
Tory MP Cuthbert Headlam lamented news of a later U.S. battlefield success: “I am told that our efforts723 are scarcely noted in the American press. I fancy that the Americans after this war are likely to be more swollen-headed and tiresome than after the last; they may well be more troublesome to us than the Russians.” In their hearts, all these men knew that their country could accomplish nothing without the United States, that only American supplies—albeit dearly purchased—made the defeat of Hitler possible. But it was sometimes hard to avoid indulging ungenerous sentiments amid British consciousness that the struggle was reducing their own society to penury, while America grew relentlessly in wealth and might. If many upper-crust British people hoped that the Soviets and Nazis would destroy each other in the course of the war, most Americans seemed equally enthusiastic about the prospect of the British Empire becoming a casualty of victory.
The Russians expressed renewed impatience about lack of progress in the Mediterranean. Stalin cabled Churchill: “The weight of the Anglo-American offensive in North Africa has not only not increased, but there has been no development of the offensive at all, and the time limit for the operations set by yourself was extended.” The Soviet leader said that thirty-six German divisions were being redeployed from the west to the Eastern Front, an unimpressive testimonial to Anglo-American efforts. Churchill persuaded himself that this show of anger reflected the influence of the Soviet hierarchy. He still cherished delusions that he possessed a personal understanding with Stalin, interrupted only when other members of the Moscow politburo demanded a harsher line with the imperialists. Anglo-Russian relations worsened again when the Admiralty insisted on cancellation of its March convoy to Archangel. German capital ships posed a continuing threat off northern Norway, while British naval resources were strained to the limits by Mediterranean and Atlantic commitments. In early spring, for the last time in the war, Allied decryption of U-boat signals was interrupted, with shocking consequences for several Atlantic convoys—forty-two merchant ships were lost in March, against twenty-six in February.
Churchill sought to placate Moscow by promising a dramatic increase in aircraft deliveries via Iran, and 240,000 tons of supplies in August. But, once again, British assurances were unfulfilled because of shipping and convoying difficulties. Stalin cared nothing about these. Why should he have done? He saw only that his armies were being called upon to destroy those of Hitler, aided by more Western words than action. After the war, Brooke expressed surprise on rereading his own diary: “It is rather strange724 that I did not refer more frequently to the news from Russia.” Indeed it was. Some 2.3 million Russian soldiers—and millions more civilians—died in 1943, while British and American forces fighting the Germans lost around 70,000 killed, including aircrew. In Moscow’s eyes, it seemed characteristic that the Western Allies should again suspend supplies to Russia, where the real war was being fought, for the convenience of their own marginal operations in North Africa. Hugh Dalton asked Britain’s Moscow ambassador, Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, if there was a danger of the Russians making a separate peace with Hitler: “He says he would not rule this out725, if we continue to seem to them to be doing nothing to help.”
Anglo-Soviet relations were further soured by the Germans’ April announcement of the discovery of thousands of bodies of Polish officers killed