Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [308]
The Potsdam conference, of which the first formal session took place on July 17, achieved no meaningful decisions or conclusions. Churchill said of himself: “I shall be only half a man1112 until the result of the poll.” Diplomat John Peck noted with some foreboding that, when the prime minister and Attlee inspected a parade of British troops in Berlin, Attlee received the louder cheers. Opening a soldiers’ club, Churchill said: “May the memory of this glorious pilgrimage of war never die!” Yet many of his audience, men of Montgomery’s armies, viewed both their recent past and future prospects in much more pragmatic terms.
Churchill’s first responsibility was to take the measure of Harry Truman, and to lay before the new president his fears for Britain and the world. Truman, in his turn, felt a certain apprehension about the encounter. Harry Hopkins, in Moscow late in May, told Zhukov as he bade farewell before flying to London to see Churchill: “I respect the old man, but he is difficult1113. The only person who found talking to him easy was Franklin Roosevelt.” Now, in Potsdam, Churchill described to Truman his fears for British solvency, when the country owed £3 billion of external debt. He expressed his hopes of American support. They talked much of eastern Europe, from which the news daily grew worse. Churchill was very excited by news, which reached the president at Potsdam, of the successful atomic bomb test at Alamogordo, New Mexico. He encouraged the president to disclose to Stalin “the simple fact that we have this weapon”—a significant and optimistic use of the plural possessive.
Churchill agreed, without consulting his cabinet colleagues, that the Americans would employ the atomic bomb against Japan without further reference to London. He urged that Britain and the United States should maintain the closest postwar military links, with reciprocal basing rights around the world. When Truman took refuge in bromides, and declined an explicit commitment, Churchill sallied in disappointment: “A man might make a proposal of marriage to a young lady, but it was not much use if he was told that she would always be a sister to him.” He was rash enough to indulge a tirade against China and its pretensions, which of course irked the Americans. Brooke was indignant that the U.S. Chiefs of Staff discussed strategy for the final phase of the Pacific war in the absence of the British. What else could he have expected? The most significant British role was to endorse, and marginally to modify, the so-called Potsdam Declaration to Japan, warning of dire consequences if she failed forthwith to surrender to the Allies.
Brooke was exasperated by Churchill’s exuberant display of enthusiasm about the news of “Tube Alloys”—the atomic bomb project. The CIGS displayed an extraordinary failure of understanding when the prime minister discussed the issue with his Chiefs of Staff over lunch on July 23. “I was completely shattered by the PM’s outlook!” wrote the CIGS.
He had absorbed all the minor American1114 exaggerations, and as a result was completely carried away. It was now no longer necessary for the Russians to come into the Japanese war, the new explosive alone was sufficient to settle the matter. Furthermore we now had something in our hands which would redress the balance with the Russians! The secret of this explosive, and the power to use it, would completely alter the diplomatic equilibrium! Now we had a new value which redressed our position (pushing his chin out and scowling), now we could say if you insist on doing this or that, well we can just blot out Moscow, then Stalingrad, then Kiev, then Kuibyshev, Karkhov [sic], Stalingrad, Sebastopol etc. etc. And now where are the Russians!!! I tried to crush his over-optimism based on the results of one experiment, and was asked with contempt what reason I had for minimizing the results of these discoveries. I was trying to dispel his dreams and as usual he did not like it. But I shudder