Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [264]
As Churchill railed in the face of so many difficulties and disappointments, he adopted a familiar panacea: personal activity. In a fashion imbued with pathos, because it marked his transition from prime mover to spectator, he became for some weeks a battlefield tourist. During his travels he conducted some business. But his journeys represented a substitute for implementing policy, rather than a means of doing so. On July 20 he flew to Normandy, where 1.4 million Allied troops were now deployed. On August 5, he again toured the battle zone and met commanders. Both trips delighted him, for he savoured proximity to the music of gunfire as much as ever. He underrated the scale and speed of the developing German collapse in France, and the new strategic opportunities which would follow. He expected months more fighting before Allied troops reached the borders of Germany. Had he understood that dramatic change in the circumstances of Eisenhower’s armies was imminent, with the collapse of German resistance in France, he would probably have remained at hand, to dispatch a flood of imprecatory messages to Roosevelt, Marshall, Eisenhower and Brooke. As it was, however, he departed for the Mediterranean.
On August 11, he landed in Algiers. Summoning de Gaulle for a meeting, he was infuriated when the Frenchman, seething with indignation about the Allies’ refusal to grant him authority in his own country, declined to attend. Randolph Churchill, recuperating after a plane crash in Yugoslavia, met his father and heard a stormy denunciation of de Gaulle. Afterwards, in an unusually statesmanlike intervention, Randolph urged pity: “After all, he is a frustrated man966 representing a defeated country. You as the unchallenged leader of England and the main architect of victory could well afford to be magnanimous.” Churchill wrote to Clementine: “I feel that de Gaulle’s France will be a France more hostile967 to England than any since Fashoda [in 1898].”
Nonetheless, under relentless pressure from Eden, Churchill supported de Gaulle’s cause against the Americans. Before D-Day, Admiral Leahy, Roosevelt’s chief of staff who had served as U.S. ambassador to Vichy, told the president that the Allies would find Marshal Pétain their most appropriate French negotiating partner, because of his popularity with his own people. In the weeks following the invasion, this delusion was confounded by French Resistance fighters who seized power in liberated areas, and displayed overwhelming support for de Gaulle. The men of Vichy were consigned by their countrymen to prison or oblivion. Late in August, the general was allowed to return to France, where he became the country’s de facto ruler. Two months later, albeit with the deepest reluctance, Washington recognised his leadership of a French provisional government.
On August 12, Churchill flew to Italy, where he installed himself in Maitland Wilson’s residence, the Villa Rivalta, overlooking the Bay of Naples. He remained in Italy for more than two weeks, bathing several times in the sea, much to his pleasure, and conducting meetings. He continued to fume about the diversion of forces to France. In those days of mid-August, 100,000 men were being transferred in landing ships from Italy. Offshore in a launch one sunny morning, Churchill found himself hailed by thousands of troops lining the rails of vessels on passage to the Côte d’Azur. He acknowledged their cheers, but wrote in his memoirs, “They did not know that if I had had my way968, they would have been sailing in a different direction.” As for the Italian people, after years of proclaiming the need for firmness, if not harshness, toward Mussolini’s nation, the sight of smiling Italian faces now softened his heart, rekindling his lifelong instinct towards mercy.
He met Tito, flown in from Yugoslavia, and feted him considerably. The Communist leader returned to his headquarters so enchanted by the prime minister that some of his partisan comrades were alarmed. Dismissing their warnings of the British leader’s duplicity, the Yugoslav