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about Poland and free elections is carried out in the spirit as well as in the letter.” In reality, of course, Yalta was flouted in both. Almost daily, news reached Downing Street of savage Soviet oppression in Poland, including the imprisonment of sixteen prominent Poles who had attended a meeting under a safe-conduct from the Red Army, and the deportation to labour camps of thousands of non-Communists. Beria’s NKVD conducted a war of repression against Polish democrats which persisted until the end of the German war, and after. Churchill drafted a fierce cable to Stalin, for which he invited American approval: “All parties were exercised,” he wrote, “about the reports that deportations, liquidations and other oppressive measures were being put into practice on a wide scale by the Warsaw administration against those likely to disagree with them.”

The dying Roosevelt vetoed this message, and thereafter repeatedly rejected Churchill’s imprecations for the United States to adopt a harsher policy towards Moscow. The president proposed a “political truce” in Poland, which the British believed would merely strengthen the Soviet puppet regime. “I cannot agree that we are confronted1072 with a breakdown of the Yalta Agreement,” Roosevelt wrote on March 15. “… We must be careful not to give the impression that we are proposing a halt to the land reforms [collectivisation] imposed by the new Polish government.” A stream of messages followed from Churchill to Roosevelt, emphasising the prime minister’s perception of the urgency and gravity of the Polish situation. Most went unanswered. The British persisted with their efforts, but received scant comfort from Washington, and none from Moscow.

Events on the battlefield had a momentum of their own, which Churchill could not influence. At this very late hour, he made a brief attempt to assert British influence by exchanging Tedder with Alexander. He wrote to his field marshal on March 1, as if this was a done deal: “I have written privately to Eisenhower to tell him that you will be replacing Tedder as Deputy Supreme Commander about the middle of this month and that I propose Tedder shall replace you in the Mediterranean.” The purported justification was that Alexander’s presence in northwest Europe would ease tensions between Eisenhower and Montgomery. In reality, Churchill wanted his favourite to assume control of the entire Allied ground battle for the last phase of the German campaign. The proposal was mistaken from every possible standpoint, not least Alexander’s unfitness for the role. The Americans swiftly quashed it. Churchill received no more satisfaction from Washington when he remonstrated about Eisenhower’s signal to Stalin, assuring him that the Western armies would stay away from Berlin. The Americans were not listening. If their manner towards Churchill was increasingly brusque, on the points of military substance it is impossible to doubt that they were right.

Churchill made one further intervention on strategic bombing policy, which has cast a baleful shadow over the historiography of the Second World War. On March 28, he minuted Portal and the Chiefs of Staff Committee:

It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land … The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing … I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives, such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive.

Portal, the standard-bearer of the Royal Air Force, was affronted by these remarks, as well he might have been. He persuaded Churchill to withdraw them, substituting a fresh document which omitted such phrases as “acts of terror.” The new minute began in more pedestrian terms: “It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of the so-called