Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [196]
It had become plain that, even if other factors proved favourable, landing craft would be lacking for a French D-Day in 1943. Lack of shipping also made it necessary to abort a proposed amphibious landing in Burma. Churchill wanted to ensure that the Americans persevered with his Mediterranean strategy, and were neither deflected towards the Pacific nor persuaded to hold back their forces for a later descent on France. He was shocked and angry when he learned that Eisenhower had said that news of two German divisions deployed in Sicily might make it necessary to abort Husky. On April 8, he minuted the Chiefs of Staff that he was bewildered about how the American general could therefore have professed himself so eager for a 1943 invasion of France across the Channel, “where he would have to meet a great deal more than two German divisions … I trust the chiefs of staff will not accept these pusillanimous and defeatist doctrines, from whomever they come.”
John Kennedy wrote, as he watched the prime minister compose one such missive: “I had never seen him dictate before733, and it was most interesting. He mouthed and whispered each phrase till he got it right, & then said it aloud to the typist.” Churchill suggested another meeting with Marshall and Hopkins in North Africa in April, but neither the War Cabinet nor the Americans favoured such a rendezvous. Instead, he decided to go to Washington again. On May 4, he set off from London to Clydebank, and thence onward aboard the great liner Queen Mary to New York.
Throughout the first half of the war, Britain confronted predicaments rather than enjoying options. Henceforward, however, vastly improved circumstances conferred opportunities, and promoted dilemmas. The North African campaign was at last approaching a close. On May 8, British forces entered Tunis and the Americans took Bizerta. At Casablanca, the Americans had endorsed an overwhelmingly British vision for further Mediterranean operations. The two subsequent Anglo-American conferences of 1943, code-named Trident and Quadrant, were dominated by British efforts to sustain the U.S. commitment made in January. Some of the contortions of Marshall and his colleagues reflected a desire to gain control of the Allied agenda, to resist British wishes simply because they were British. It seemed to the Americans intolerable that, when their cash, supplies, aircraft, tanks and—soon—manpower would overwhelmingly dominate future Allied operations, Churchill and his colleagues should still seek to dictate the nature of these.
Each side also cherished its own delusions. For instance, the Americans were uninterested in amphibious operations in Southeast Asia, because these would contribute nothing towards fulfilling their only strategic interest in the region, that of assisting Chiang Kai-shek’s ramshackle war effort in China. On Churchill’s part, he sailed to America in May determined to resist entanglement in the fever-ridden jungles of Burma, eager instead for “an Asiatic Torch”—possible landings on Sumatra, Java or Malaya, all fanciful. Shrewd strategists, notably including the British general Bill Slim, understood that the American drive across the central Pacific would be the key element in Japan’s defeat. British operations in Burma were chiefly designed to “show willing” to the United States, which goes far to explain the prime minister’s cynicism about most things to do with the Asian war.
Churchill and his commanders were justified in their insistence that operations in Sicily, and thereafter some further exploitation in Italy, were indispensable. He told the Chiefs of Staff at a meeting aboard the Queen Mary on May 10: “The greatest step we could take in 1943 … would be the elimination of Italy.” But the British woefully underestimated the difficulties of conducting a campaign on the mainland, and the likely strength of German resistance. They were rash enough to urge upon the Americans a view, reflecting their experience against Mussolini’s troops in North Africa, that occupying most of Italy would be