Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [258]
Even in the last phase of the war, when American dominance became painfully explicit, Churchill fulfilled a critical role in sustaining the momentum of his nation. After D-Day, but for the prime minister’s personal contribution, Britain would have become a backwater, a supply centre and aircraft carrier for the American-led armies in Europe. On the battlefield, there was considerable evidence that the British Army was once more displaying its limitations. The war correspondent Alan Moorehead, who served through the desert, Italy and into Normandy, enjoyed a close relationship with Montgomery. His view was noted after the war by Forrest Pogue: “By July, the American soldier945 [was] better than the English soldier. Original English … came from divisions which had been much bled. In first few days [I] went with Br. tanks. They stopped at every bridge because there might be an 88 around.” These strictures might be a little harsh, but the Americans were justified in thinking the British, after five years of war, more casualty-averse than themselves.
In 1944–45, Churchill exercised much less influence upon events than in 1940–43. But without him, his country would have seemed a mere exhausted victim of the conflict, rather than the protagonist which he was determined that Britain should be seen to remain until the end. “So far as it has gone,” Churchill told the Commons, “this is certainly a glorious story, not only liberating the fields of France after atrocious enslavement but also uniting in bonds of true comradeship the great democracies of the West and the English-speaking peoples of the world … Let us go on, then, to battle on every front … Drive on through the storm, now that it reaches its fury, with the same singleness of purpose and inflexibility of resolve as we showed to the world when we were alone.” And so he himself sought to do.
EIGHTEEN
Bargaining with an Empty Wallet
FOR CHURCHILL, the weeks that followed D-Day were dominated by further fruitless wrangles with the Americans. Roosevelt sent him a headmasterly rebuke946, drafted by Cordell Hull, for appearing to concede to the Russians a lead role in Romanian affairs, in return for Soviet acquiescence in British dominance of Greece. To the Americans, this attitude reflected the deplorable British enthusiasm for bilaterally agreed spheres of influence. Churchill replied irritably next day: “It would be quite easy for me, on the general principle of slithering to the left, which is so popular in foreign policy, to let things rip, when the King of Greece would probably be forced to abdicate and [the Communists of] EAM would work a reign of terror … I cannot admit that I have done anything wrong in this matter.” If Roosevelt proposed to take umbrage about British failure to inform the White House about every cable to Stalin concerning Greece and Romania, then what of U.S. messages to Moscow concerning Poland, which the British were not made party to? Churchill concluded sadly: “I cannot think of any moment947 when the burden of the war has lain more heavily upon me or when I have felt so unequal to its ever-more entangled problems.”
The prime minister still favoured landings on the Atlantic coast of France instead of Anvil and, even more dramatically, a major assault on Istria, the northeast Italian coast beyond Trieste, to take place in September. Brooke was cautious about this, warning that the terrain might favour the defence, and could precipitate a winter campaign in the Alps. But the Chiefs and their master were galvanised by an intercepted German signal on June 17. In this Hitler declared his determination to hold Apennine positions as “the final blocking line” to prevent the Allies from breaking into the northern Italian plain of the Po. Here, in British eyes, was compelling evidence of the German commitment to Italy, and thus of the value of contesting mastery there. The Americans—both