Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [250]
The British and American peoples would have been even more alarmed had they known of the acrimony which overtook relations between Churchill and his Chiefs of Staff in the spring of 1944. Ironically, given that the prime minister’s interest in the Japanese war was desultory, this was provoked by argument about operations in the Far East. Churchill became obsessed with the desire to commit all available British forces, including the powerful fleet earmarked to join the Americans in the Pacific, to a “Bay of Bengal” strategy for the recapture of Burma and Malaya. He was especially enthusiastic about a prospective landing on Sumatra, to provide a stepping-stone. He threatened to impose this plan on the Chiefs of Staff, against their implacable opposition, by exercising his prerogative as minister of defence. On March 21, Brooke wrote of a meeting with Cunningham and Portal: “We discussed … how best920 to deal with Winston’s last impossible document. It is full of false statements, false deductions and defective strategy. We cannot accept it as it stands and it would be better if we all three resigned sooner than accept his solution.”
It was a measure of the extravagance of Churchill’s behaviour, and of the exhaustion of the Chiefs at this time, that they should have discussed resignation in the shadow of D-Day. The prime minister had never visited the Far East, knew nothing of conditions there, and seldom acted wisely in his occasional interventions in a hemisphere where Allied operations were overwhelmingly dominated by the United States. In the event, a compromise was fudged. The British proposed a campaign against the Japanese, launched from Australia through Borneo. A minor-key version of this was executed by Australian forces in the summer of 1945. Relations between the Chiefs of Staff and the prime minister steadied in the weeks following the awful March 1944 meetings, as the minds of these strained and weary men focused on the dominant reality of impending invasion of the Continent.
Churchill’s misgivings about Overlord persisted until the invasion. D-Day planner Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick Morgan, his rancour increased by being denied an operational role in the invasion, said later: “Until the invasion921 of NW Europe was actually demonstrated to be successful, I believe [the prime minister] had the conviction it could not succeed.” This is an overstatement and oversimplification, but there is no doubt of Churchill’s unhappiness about Allied deployments. All through the spring of 1944, he chafed at the inadequate resources, as he perceived it, committed to Italy, and about continuing U.S. insistence upon Anvil, the planned Franco-American landing in southern France. Ironically, after so many clashes between Churchill and his Chiefs of Staff, they were now brought together by opposition to U.S. European strategy. “Difficulties again with our American922 friends,” Brooke wrote on April 5, “who still persist in wanting to close down operations in Italy and open new ones in the south of France, just at the most critical moment.” The same day, Churchill minuted the chiefs: “The campaign in the Aegean was ruined by stories of decisive battles in Italy. The decisive battles in Italy were ruined by pulling out seven of the best divisions at the critical time for Overlord.”
On April 19, he talked of the invasion to Cadogan: “This battle has been forced upon us923 by the Russians and the United States military authorities.” The diplomat, who spent some hours that day in meetings with the prime minister, was dismayed by