Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [206]
Brooke, meanwhile, was perhaps the greatest staff officer the British Army has ever known. But experience of fighting the Germans for four years with chronically inadequate resources had made him a cautious strategist, and by this stage of the war an unconvincing one. He shared the Americans’ impatience, indeed exasperation, with Churchill’s wilder schemes. But in the autumn of 1943 and indeed well into the winter, Brooke was joined to the prime minister in a common apprehension about Overlord. American resolution alone ensured that the operational timetable for D-Day was maintained. If Roosevelt and Marshall had been more malleable, the British would have chosen to keep larger forces in Italy, especially when Clark’s and Montgomery’s advances languished. D-Day would have been delayed until 1945.
The Allies were now committed to take the port of Naples, and exploit northwards to Rome. Thereafter, they had uneasily agreed that the future of the Italian campaign should be settled in the light of events. John Kennedy wrote on September 3: “It will be interesting to see whether the Americans have judged the Mediterranean war better than we have.” He himself bitterly regretted the scheduled diversion of forces from Italy to Overlord: “But we cannot dictate and I doubt if we could have done more765 to persuade the Americans. They are convinced that the landing in France is the only way to win the war quickly, & will listen to no arguments as to the mechanical difficulties of the operation or the necessity of weakening & drawing off the Germans by means of operations in the Medn.” A month later, he was still writing about the arguments concerning “the Mediterranean versus Overlord strategy,” but the War Office seemed resigned to the likely triumph of the latter: “In the end I suppose that we shall probably go into France766 with little opposition & the historians will say that we missed glorious opportunities a year earlier etc. etc.”
Beaverbrook had tabled a new motion767 in the House of Lords calling for a Second Front. Now, he allowed himself to be wooed back into government as lord privy seal by Churchill’s private assurance that the invasion was fixed for the following summer. Beaverbrook’s recall exasperated many ministers. Churchill spoke passionately of his friend to W. P. Crozier of the Manchester Guardian: “I need him, I need him768. He is stimulating and, believe me, he is a big man.” Sir John Anderson felt it necessary to call the ministerial grumblers to order. “He says we must not make things too hard for the PM769, who is conducting the war with great skill,” recorded Dalton. “The PM was very unhappy during the period when Beaverbrook was not one of his colleagues. He is a sensitive artist, attaching great value to ‘presentation’ and the quality of the spoken word. He likes to have around him certain people, whose responses will not be jarring or unwelcome. He has valued Beaverbrook for this for many years. We must not, therefore, be too particular, even if things are sometimes not done in quite the most regular or orderly way.” Beaverbrook’s irregularities included, at this time, assisting Randolph Churchill to pay his debts. Though such subsidy certainly did not influence the prime minister’s conduct towards him, it reflected a fundamentally unhealthy relationship, such as Beaverbrook contrived with many of his acquaintances.
The Americans found much more substantial cause for complaint about the prime minister’s behaviour. Transatlantic debate remained dominated by British attempts to regard the Overlord commitment as flexible, and by U.S. insistence upon its