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his rambling: “I really am fussed about the PM,” he wrote in his diary. “He is not the man he was twelve months ago, and I really don’t know whether he can carry on.” When the dominion prime ministers met in London on May 1 to begin a nine-day conference, Canadian premier Mackenzie King joined South Africa’s Jan Smuts in paying tribute to Churchill’s achievement in having deflected the Americans from a D-Day in 1942 or 1943. Churchill avowed to the dominion leaders that he himself would have “preferred to roll up Europe from the south-east924, joining hands with the Russians. However, it had proved impossible to persuade the United States to this view. They had been determined at every stage upon the invasion in North-West Europe, and had consistently wanted us to break off the Mediterranean operations.”

The range of problems besetting the prime minister was as daunting as ever, especially when others saw in him the same exhaustion as did Cadogan. “Struck by how very tired and worn out925 the prime minister looks now,” wrote Colville on April 12. Churchill was full of fears about the cost of Overlord, though he wrote cheerfully to Roosevelt that day, asserting that he did not think losses would be as high as the pessimists predicted: “In my view, it is the Germans926 who will suffer very heavy casualties when our band of brothers gets among them.” The prime minister had never liked Montgomery, whose egoism and crassness grated on him. Now, he told the War Office that the general must abandon his vainglorious round of public receptions and civic visits. In particular, Churchill recoiled from Monty’s proposal to hold a “day of prayer” and to “hallow” Britain’s armed forces in advance of D-Day at a grand religious service during which the king’s coronation regalia would be paraded. Such an occasion, thought Churchill, would be more likely to demoralise the invasion forces than inspire them.

Intelligence warned that Hitler’s secret weapons, flying bombs and rockets, would soon start to fall upon Britain. There was continuing difficulty with Washington about the Free French. The United States refused to concede authority in France to de Gaulle following the invasion. Churchill agreed that it would be prudent to keep the general in Algiers until the last moment before D-Day. He chafed unceasingly about the stalemate in Italy, both at Anzio and around Monte Cassino. Again and again, Allied forces suffered heavy casualties in assaults frustrated by Kesselring’s stubborn defenders. Greek troops and sailors in Egypt mutinied, calling for Communist participation in their own leadership. An ugly armed confrontation took place. Churchill insisted on rejection of the mutineers’ demands. The revolt was suppressed after a British officer was killed.

The Foreign Office and the service chiefs urged the prime minister to curb his telegraphic bombardment of Roosevelt about strategic issues. Churchill now favoured additional landings on the Atlantic coast simultaneous with Overlord. Dill cautioned him on April 24: “The president, as you know, is not military-minded.” Appeals to Roosevelt were simply referred to Marshall, who could only be irked by attempts to circumvent him. The British lost an important battle with Washington about preinvasion bombing of French rail links. Churchill and the War Cabinet opposed extensive attacks, which were bound to kill many French civilians. Eisenhower and his staff insisted that a sustained interdiction campaign was essential, to slow the German post-D-Day buildup. Roosevelt and Marshall agreed, and were surely right. The RAF joined the USAAF to mount raids by night and day in the weeks before June 6, which inflicted damage of critical value to the Allied armies, at the cost of around 15,000 French lives. In the course of the whole war, Allied bombing killed 70,000 French people, against 50,000 British who died at the hands of the Luftwaffe.

Relations with the Russians had grown icy. Moscow accused the British of intriguing against them in Romania. Churchill wrote bleakly to Eden on May 8, “The Russians