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on Italy can, so far as Russia is concerned, attain the proportions of a real Second Front. The public are convinced that the chance has now come to take the fullest advantage of Russian successes. And no operation in the West which left unaffected the German dispositions in the East would for long meet with popular favour.” Surrey court reporter George King agreed with Beaverbrook: “When Mr. Churchill received the freedom of London745 last week,” he wrote on July 7, “he said it seemed clear that ‘before the leaves of autumn fall, real amphibious battles will be in progress.’ One hopes so, because much as all must dread the casualties, the allies owe such an action to Russia and the slaves of Europe.” Oliver Harvey wrote from the Foreign Office: “To some of the Government it is incredible746, unforgivable, indeed inadmissible, that the Russian can be so successful. This is the attitude of the W[ar] O[ffice].”

On July 10, Allied forces landed in Sicily under the command of Britain’s Sir Harold Alexander. In Washington and London, ministers and generals knew that Husky was marred by all manner of blunders, great and small. The airborne assault was shambolic. Anglo-American command arrangements remained confused throughout the campaign. Italian troops showed no desire to fight seriously, but the two German divisions on the island displayed their usual high professionalism in resisting the attacks of Alexander’s much superior forces. The British and American publics, however, knew little about the bungles. They perceived only the overriding realities that the landings were successful, and that within weeks Axis forces were driven from Sicily. Brooke, who had been profoundly worried about Husky because it reflected a British design, experienced a surge of relief. Churchill, rejoicing, urged the Chiefs of Staff on July 13 to plan ambitiously for follow-up operations in Italy: “Why should we crawl up the leg like a harvest bug, from the ankle upwards? Let us rather strike at the knee.” He wanted early amphibious landings, even before Sicily was cleared, directed against Naples and Rome. On July 16, he told Smuts: “I believe the President is with me: Eisenhower in his heart is naturally for it.”

Macmillan pitied Eisenhower, attempting to fulfil his role as Mediterranean supreme commander amid a constant bombardment of cables marked “private, personal and most immediate,” and emanating variously from the Combined Chiefs of Staff, Marshall, Roosevelt, Churchill direct, Churchill through the Foreign Office, or Eden through the Foreign Office. “All these instructions,”747 observed Macmillan laconically, “are naturally contradictory and conflicting.” He and Ike’s chief of staff, Walter Bedell Smith, endeavoured to sort and reconcile such communications and decide which should be acted upon.

Even as Churchill enthused about the prospects in the Mediterranean, he began to waver again about Overlord, as D-Day in France would henceforward become known. On July 19 he told the Chiefs of Staff that he now had doubts whether the forces available in Britain by May 1, 1944, would suffice for a successful landing “in view of the extraordinary fighting efficiency of the German Army, and the much larger forces they could so readily bring to bear against our troops even if the landings were successfully accomplished. It is right for many reasons to make every preparation with the utmost sincerity and vigour, but if later on it is realised by all concerned that the operation is beyond our strength in May and will have to be postponed till August 1944, then it is essential that we should have this other consideration up our sleeves.” He urged them to dust down Jupiter, his long-cherished scheme for a descent on northern Norway.

Oliver Harvey wrote admiringly in his diary on July 24 about the firmness with which Churchill had dismissed a proposal from Henry Stimson, visiting London, to advance the May 1 D-Day date: “On this, I’m thankful to say748, the PM will refuse absolutely to budge. On military affairs he is instinctively right as he is wrong