Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [268]
The two leaders wasted considerable time discussing the plan of Henry Morgenthau, the Treasury secretary, for pastoralising postwar Germany. The president, knowing that Churchill was increasingly fearful about how Britain could pay its bills when Lend-Lease ended, said that deindustrialising the Ruhr would remove Britain’s principal competitor in Europe. Great economic opportunities could thus shine upon the British people. This notion prompted a spasm of enthusiasm in Churchill. Cherwell, in one of his baleful interventions, urged the scheme’s merits. On September 15, both leaders formally endorsed the Morgenthau Plan, to the horror of both Cordell Hull and Anthony Eden, who said the British Cabinet would never accept it. Roosevelt quickly recognised that he had made a mistake. The Morgenthau Plan was forgotten—except by Nazi propagandists, when the story leaked. In the last months of the war, many Germans believed Goebbels when he told them that, if they bowed to defeat, they would be condemned to become slave labourers in a peasant economy. The Treasury secretary’s foolish initiative at Quebec motivated some enemies to fight even more desperately than they might otherwise have done, even to the last ditch.
The final formal session of the conference took place on September 16. Churchill proclaimed his commitment to dispatch a major fleet to join the Pacific campaign, as soon as the European war allowed. He made much of this, heedless of the fact that the Royal Navy’s ships were as worn and battered as their crews. They lacked ventilation systems appropriate to Pacific conditions. And carrier operations, the dominant feature of the campaign, were the least impressive British naval combat skill. At the closing press conference of the summit, appearing as usual beside the president, the prime minister trumpeted Britain’s commitment to the Pacific theatre. He prompted laughter among the assembled American correspondents when he said: “You can’t have all the good things to yourselves. You must share.” He then waxed lyrical about the virtues of summitry: “When I have the rare and fortunate chance to meet the President of the United States, we are not limited in our discussions by any sphere … The fact that we have worked so long together, and the fact that we have got to know each other so well under the hard stresses of war, makes the solution of problems so much simpler, so swift and so easy it is.”
This was flummery. In truth, even after two days with Roosevelt at Hyde Park before boarding the Queen Mary in New York on September 20 for the voyage home, Churchill knew how little he had achieved. “What is this conference?” he rumbled to Moran. “Two talks with the Chiefs of Staff; the rest was waiting to put in a word with the President.” The British had been dismayed to note the absence of Harry Hopkins from Quebec. Even when their favourite American sage appeared at Hyde Park, it was plain that Hopkins no longer enjoyed his old intimacy with Roosevelt. Especially in a U.S. election year, he represented baggage which the president did not wish to be associated with, not least because Hopkins was perceived by his countrymen as too susceptible to British special pleading. Now that the British saw that his influence was gone, their old affection ebbed shamelessly. Brendan Bracken dismissed him984 as “weak” and “useless.” Yet there is no reason to suppose985 that Hopkins was moved by pique when he warned Halifax, in Washington, that a Republican victory in the imminent presidential election might serve British interests better than the return of Franklin Roosevelt.