Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [199]
Churchill spent eight happy days in Tunisia and Algeria, on one of them addressing a great throng of British troops in the ancient amphitheatre at Carthage. “I was speaking,741” he told guests at dinner that night, “from where the cries of Christian virgins rent the air while roaring lions devoured them—and yet—I am no lion and certainly not a virgin.” Eisenhower and Montgomery expressed confidence about planning for the Sicilian landing. Marshall, however, made it plain that he was determined to reserve judgement about future Italian operations until the outcome of the Sicilian campaign became clear.
On June 4, Churchill flew home to Britain in a Liberator. Four days later, he offered a survey of the war to the House of Commons which was justly confident, though Marshall and his colleagues might have disputed his sunny portrayal of Anglo-American relations: “All sorts of divergences, all sorts of differences of outlook and all sorts of awkward little jars necessarily occur as we roll ponderously forward together along the rough and broken road of war. But none of these makes the slightest difference to our ever-growing concert and unity, there are none of them which cannot be settled face to face by heart-to-heart talks and patient argument. My own relations with the illustrious President of the United States have become in these years of war those of personal friendship and regard, and nothing will ever happen to separate us in comradeship and partnership of thought and action while we remain responsible for the conduct of affairs.” Here was, of course, an expression of fervent desire rather than of unfolding reality.
If Churchill expressed satisfaction about the progress of the war, Stalin did not. He cabled Roosevelt, copied to Churchill, to express dismay at Anglo-American postponements of D-Day, then wrote direct to the prime minister on June 24: “It goes without saying that the Soviet Government cannot put up with such disregard of the most vital Soviet interests in the war against the common enemy.” Two days later, Churchill responded by dispatching one of his toughest messages of the war to the Russian leader: “Although until 22nd June 1941, we British were left alone to face the worst that Nazi Germany could do to us, I instantly began to aid Soviet Russia to the best of our limited means from the moment that she was herself attacked by Hitler. I am satisfied that I have done everything in human power to help you. Therefore the reproaches which you now cast upon your Western Allies leave me unmoved. Nor, apart from the damage to our military interests, should I have any difficulty in presenting my case to the British Parliament and nation.” He was growing weary of the Russians, writing a fortnight later: “Experience has taught me that it is not worthwhile arguing742 with Soviet people. One simply has to confront them with the new facts and await their reactions.”
Yet many British citizens sympathised with the Russian view. “I am the last to plead Stalin’s case,”743 Clark Kerr cabled from Moscow on July 1, but it seemed to the British ambassador that the weakness in the British position lay “not in our inability to open this second front but in our having led him to believe we were going to.” Beaverbrook, still chronically disloyal, wrote to Henry Luce, overlord of Time magazine, on July 2: “In my view there is an undercurrent of uncertainty744 [in Britain] whether an attack