WINSTON CHURCHILL'S .... FINEST HOUR #3

CHURCHILL'S  FINEST  HOUR

TOTAL WAR

In 1941, Britain was joined by two allies: Soviet Russia,
invaded by the Nazis in June, and the USA, which
declared war after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor
on 7 December. The next day, Churchill kept a promise
made to Roosevelt in November and declared
war  on Japan. After initial setbacks, the tide -  -.

slowly began to turn in the Allies' favour.

The Nazi invasion of Russia forced Churchill out of a mindset that he had held for almost a quarter of a century. He saw at once the need to set aside his hatred of Communism and give all possible support to the Soviets as the most recent victims of Nazi aggression. In a radio broadcast on 22 June, 1941, Churchill acknowledged that no-one had been a more consistent opponent of Communism than him, but added that' ... all this fades away before the spectacle which is now

unfolding. The past, with its crimes, its follies, its tragedies, flashes away ... we shall give whatever help we can to Russia and the Russian people ... The Russian danger is ... our danger.'

Churchill was already passing on decrypted German radio messages to Josef Stalin, the Soviet leader, ten days before the Nazi invasion took place. Churchill was careful to keep from him the source of the intelligence - the Bletchley Park code-breaking machine. Five days after the start of the invasion, Bletchley Park broke the Enigma key the Germans were using in Russia and again passed decrypts to Stalin, enabling Red Army commanders to anticipate German strategy. Churchill at once ordered diversionary attacks to distract the invaders from their Russian campaign. Only

[Speaking on 14 July, 1941, Churchill (left) praised the grit of Londoners as they confronted the depredations of the blitz. 'You do your worst - and we will do our best.' Churchill (above) returns from his historic meeting with President Roosevelt at Placentia Bay, Neivfoundland.]

two the invasion he sanctioned the bombing of German military and naval installations in orthern France, and ten days later initiated a series of night raids against the Rhineland and Germany's main industrial area, the Ruhr. On 6 July, the RAF flew 400 sorties over northern France and that night, Germany was attacked again by a force of 250 bombers. By 12 July, the joint war aims of Britain and the Soviet Union were formalised by an agreement of mutual assistance, signed in Moscow. 'We shall do everything to help you that time, geography and our growing resources allow,' Churchill told Stalin by telegram on 7 July. 'We have only to go on fighting to beat the life out of these villains.' The Prime Minister showed a confident facade to Stalin and the world, but behind it, he feared the Soviets would be defeated. Despite his warnings to Stalin, the Soviet leader had not expected the invasion to come and the Red Army was unprepared. More than 600,000 Soviet troops were taken prisoner, and the remainder retreated rapidly before the German blitzkrieg. The Germans made rapid progress and were within 224 miles of Moscow in four weeks. Churchill was not alone in doubting the Soviets' prospects. Churchill's Foreign Minister, Anthony Eden, as well as the British Ambassador to Moscow, Sir Stafford Cripps, and Sir John Dill, Chief of the General Staff, were also convinced their resistance could not last. The US Ambassador in Britain, John Gilbert "Winant, gave the Soviets a mere six weeks before they would fall to the Nazi forces.

Six weeks passed and the Soviets were still holding out, but the supplies Churchill had sent to Russia were beginning to deplete Britain's own stocks and, crucially, to reduce the number of fighter aircraft at the disposal of the RAF. The Americans, Churchill decided, would have to provide materiel Britain was unable to furnish.

PLACENTIA BAY TALKS

In August 1941 Churchill crossed the Atlantic bound for Newfoundland in eastern Canada, where he met the American President at Placentia Bay. It was not their first encounter. They had met briefly at the end of World War I. Churchill had been impressed by Roosevelt then, but now admired him even more for his strength of will and determination, which had enabled him to fight his way back into politics and to the presidency after being crippled by polio at the age of 39. 'I have established warm and deep personal relations with our great friend,' Churchill later told the War Cabinet.

Before talks began in earnest, Churchill and some of his entourage disembarked for an afternoon to explore the shoreline at Placentia Bay. According to one member of his staff, Colonel Ian Jacob, they 'clambered over some rocks and the PM like a schoolboy, (got) a great kick out of rolling boulders down a cliff.' Talks began on 11 August and at first Churchill was pleased with the results. The discussions produced an impressive statement of democratic intent in a document later known as the Atlantic Charter. Among its provisions, Britain and the United States pledged to protect the right of peoples to choose their own governments and to live free

[Churchill sailed to Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, on board HMS Prince of Wales in August 1941. Four months later, he was distressed to learn that the battleship had been sunk in the Pacific by the Japanese.]

from fear. Roosevelt also promised to commit the United States to even greater involvement in the war, including supplying aid to the Soviet Union 'on a gigantic scale', more merchant ships to transport tanks and bombers to Britain, and five destroyers for each convoy sailing the dangerous North Atlantic run.

But it soon became clear that the Americans were no closer to joining the war: when Roosevelt returned to Washington he assured the American people that Placentia Bay had produced no commitment to enter the conflict. What was needed, Roosevelt confided to Churchill, was a big, dramatic incident that would instantly clear away all doubts and propel the United States to war on a wave of national outrage.

In a telegram, Churchill told his friend Harry Hopkins: 'There has been a wave of depression through Cabinet and other informed circles here (over) the President's many assurances about no commitments and no closer to war etc' Churchill's main concern was that a German victory in Russia would have dire consequences for Britain. 'If Germany beat Russia to a standstill, and the United States made no further advance towards entry into the war, there was a great danger that the war might take a turn against us.'

RAYS OF HOPE

 In September 1941, this outcome seemed imminent. The Germans were closing in on Moscow. In the north, they were besieging Leningrad. In the south, they captured Kiev in the Ukraine. The Caucasus and its valuable oil wells were almost within reach. Stalin grew increasingly agitated. Churchill sought to assuage the Soviet leader's fears with a generous aid package. He promised to send Russia half the aircraft and tanks Stalin had requested and urged the Americans to provide the rest.

A joint British and Soviet force occupied oil-rich Iran to create a northward route for oil supplies to Russia. Another route, to Murmansk, the only major ice-free port in northern Russia, was opened up in September. Despite terrible, freezing conditions and fierce attacks by German submarines and aircraft, Britain shipped 4 million tonnes of war materiel and other supplies to the hard-pressed Soviets via Murmansk. Churchill reassured Stalin: 'We shall batter Germany from the air with unceasing severity and keep the seas open and ourselves alive.'

[On 29 August, 1941, representatives of all the Allied governments ivere invited to the Soviet embassy in London. It was an extraordinary, but cordial, meeting of ideological foes, who set aside their differences to confront the common German enemy.]

CHURCHILL  BROADCASTS  TO  THE  NAZI-

OCCUPIED  COUNTRIES  OF  EUROPE,  24

AUGUST  1941

[The ordeals ... of conquered peoples will be hard. We must give them hope; we must give them the conviction that their sufferings and their resistances will not be in vain .... Do not despair, brave Norwegians; your land shall be cleansed ... from the invader .... Be sure of yourselves, Czechs: your independence shall be restored. Poles, the heroism of your people ... shall not be forgotten; your country shall live again .... Tough, stout-hearted Dutch, Belgians, Luxembourgers, tormented, mishandled, shamefully cast away people of Yugoslavia ... yield not an inch! Keep your souls clean from all contact with the Nazis; make them feel... that they are the moral outcasts of mankind. Help is coming; mighty forces are arming on your behalf. Have faith. Have hope, deliverance is sure!]

Fortunately, Bletchley Park decrypts were able to provide some hope. In September and October, Churchill learned that Luftwaffe units in Russia were suffering major supply and maintenance problems. It was too late in the year for the quick blitzkrieg victory Hitler had anticipated and as the Russian winter advanced, German prospects worsened.

Meanwhile Churchill's restless imagination searched for any possible opportunities for action. In late October 1941 he produced plans for two amphibious assaults, one against occupied Norway, the other against the Mediterranean island of Sicily, to help the forthcoming British offensive against Rommel's Afrika Korps in North Africa. To Churchill's disappointment, the Chiefs of Staff turned down both proposals, considering them to be too risky and impractical. Under War Cabinet rules, the Prime Minister had no powers to override their decisions and he became frustrated at what he considered their lack of daring. 'The Admirals, Generals and Air Marshals chant their stately hymn of "Safety First", '

[In the surprise Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor, the damage to US aircraft was exacerbated by the fact that they were parked wingtip-to-wingtip as a defence against sabotage.]

Churchill wrote to his son, Randolph. 'I have to restrain my natural pugnacity by sitting on my own head!'

Churchill longed for a tough-minded companion who would share his urge to go on the offensive and strike the enemy with maximum force. His impetuous nature meant he often clashed with his cautious Chief of Imperial General Staff, (CIGS), General Sir John Dill. Churchill eventually lost patience and dismissed Dill, replacing him with General Alan Brooke on 16 November. There was a personal tie between Churchill and his new CIGS. In his youth, Churchill had been friends with Brooke's two brothers, Victor and Ronald, both of them now dead. Churchill wrote to Brooke on 18 November. 'I feel that my old friendship for Ronnie and Victor, the companions of gay subaltern days and early wars, is a personal bond between us, to which will soon be added the comradeship of action in fateful events.'

GLOBAL WAR

Unknown to Churchill, a fateful event was only three weeks away. On 7 December, 1941, without any warning or declaration of war, Japanese carrier-borne aircraft attacked the US Pacific fleet at anchor in the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. By the time the two-hour assault ended the Americans, caught unawares, had lost 5 warships, 187 aircraft and some 2400 personnel. On what he later termed 'a day that will live in infamy', President Roosevelt had at last found the justification he had been seeking and on 8 December Congress declared war. When Churchill telephoned for news Roosevelt told him: 'We are all in the same boat now.'

Immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, which was designed to prevent the US from interfering with Japan's expansionist plans in the Pacific, a Japanese tide of conquest swept across the ocean, engulfing American territories and colonies of the British, French and Dutch empires one after the other. Nazi Germany and Italy, Japan's partners in the Axis Tripartite Pact signed in September 1940, declared war on the United States on 11 December. Churchill was both saddened and relieved. 'We must expect to suffer heavily in this war with Japan,' he wrote to Clementine. ' ... The entry of the United States into the war is worth all the losses sustained in the East many times over. Still, these losses are very painful to endure and will be very hard to repair.'

December's declarations of war prompted Roosevelt to ask for another meeting with Churchill. The Prime Minister arrived in Washington after a ten-day transatlantic journey, and was the President's guest at the White House for the next three weeks. The Prime Minister was tired of defensive actions and longed to take the initiative with a landing in enemy-occupied

[On 26 December, 1941, two weeks after the United States entered the war, Churchill addressed a joint session of Congress in Washington: 'As long as we have faith in our cause and an unconquerable willpower, salvation will not be denied us.']

territory. The talks with Roosevelt produced agreement on this score, though the landing place was not in Europe, but North Africa, where an Anglo-American force could expect to make relatively easy progress against the Vichy French defenders. After some tough negotiation, the American Chiefs of Staff agreed that Europe, rather than Asia, would be the primary theatre of war. Four days later, on 26 December, Churchill suffered a mild heart attack while struggling to open a window in his overheated room. The standard treatment was at least six weeks in bed, but Churchill's doctor, Charles Wilson, later Lord Moran, realised this was impossible. As one of the major war leaders, the Prime Minister could not be revealed to the world as an invalid with a bad heart. Wilson took a big risk. He kept his diagnosis to himself, and did not even tell 

Churchill, as he was suffering from exertion.

A CLOSE SHAVE        

Though tired and weak, Churchill managed to continue talks with the Americans. It appears nobody suspected anything was wrong, although he did take a week's break at a beach-side bungalow in Miami before the conference ended on 12 January, 1942.

Churchill started his return journey to Britain by flying to Bermuda, from where he was due to board ship for his passage home. During the flight, Churchill's fascination with aircraft surfaced and he asked if he could take the controls. He flew the plane for 20 minutes, making two banking turns before handing the controls back to the pilot, who was impressed with his performance.

Bad news awaited Churchill in Bermuda. Singapore, in the British colony of Malaya, was in imminent danger of falling to the Japanese. Churchill cancelled the sea voyage home and opted instead to return by flying boat, which could cover the 3365 miles to Britain in less than 18 hours. The change of plan nearly ended in disaster. The flying boat was off course as it approached Plymouth on the south coast of England, and was veering towards the target zone of German antiaircraft guns sited at Brest on the Atlantic coast of Brittany in France. The error was corrected and the flying boat altered course northward, but coming from that direction, it was identified by radar at Plymouth as a 'hostile bomber'. Sector controllers issued orders for fighters to intercept the intruder and Churchill was within minutes of being shot down when the mistake was, fortunately, discovered.

The news from south-east Asia that had brought Churchill hurrying home was grim. The garrison at Singapore was on the brink of being overrun, and surrender seemed imminent. Churchill refused to countenance it. 'I want to make it absolutely clear,' he telegraphed to Field Marshal Sir Archibald "Wavell, British Supreme Commander Far East, on 20 January, 'that I

[CHURCHILL  REFUSES  TO  NEGOTIATE  PEACE  WITH  GERMANY,  9  SEPTEMBER  1941  --  We are told ... that we must soon expect what is called a 'peace offensive' from Berlin .... They ... show that the guilty men who have let Hell loose upon the world are hoping to escape, with their fleeting triumphs and ill-gotten plunders, from the closing net of doom. We owe it to ourselves, we owe it to our Russian ally and to the government and people of the United States, to make it absolutely clear that whether we are supported or alone, however long and hard the toil may be, the British nation and His Majesty's government in intimate concert with the governments of the great Dominions will never enter into any negotiations with Hitler or any party in Germany which represents the Nazi regime.]

[Churchill (third from left) joined President Roosevelt {on his left) and Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt (on his right) to attend a Christmas service in ^Washington in 1941. Though his legs were paralysed by polio, the President was able to stand with the support of metal callipers.]

expect every inch of ground to be defended, every scrap of material or defences to be blown to pieces to prevent capture by the enemy, and no question of surrender to be entertained until after protracted fighting among the ruins of Singapore City.' Churchill had already told his Chiefs of Staff that 'commanders, staffs and principal officers are expected to perish at their posts'.

'THE GREATEST DISASTER' 

The news got worse. Despite Churchill's strictures, General Arthur Percival, in command at Singapore, surrendered to the Japanese on 15 February, 1942 and 62,000 British, Australian and Indian soldiers were taken prisoner. The loss of Singapore hit Churchill hard. He called it 'the greatest disaster to British arms which our history records'. He had not fully recovered from his heart attack in Washington, yet still put on a pugnacious, optimistic front to the world. The strain was immense. As Captain Richard Pirn, head of Churchill's War Map Room, noted on 18 February, 1942: 'He said he was tired of it all; he is very seriously thinking of handing over his responsibilities to other shoulders.'

Churchill's black mood was only a temporary lapse. On 24 February, when he was pressured in Parliament to relinquish his second role as Minister of Defence, Churchill was ready with a typically vigorous answer. He told the Commons: 'However tempting it may be to some, when much trouble lies ahead, to step aside adroitly and put someone else up to take the blows, the heavy and repeated blows, which are coming, I do not intend to adopt that cowardly course.'

[Churchill is pictured here with his daughter Maiy on 2 Inly, 1942, the day he was confronted with a vote of censure against him in the House of Commons over his conduct of the war. Only 25 MPs supported the motion.]

Churchill faced more pressing challenges than those in Parliament. Stalin was urging his allies to make an Anglo-American landing in northern Kurope, to create a second front that would relieve the pressure on Soviet forces. But despite their enormous industrial capacity, the Americans were not yet ready to comply, and in 1942 could provide only 40 per cent of the men and materiel required. The only alternative capable of sapping German strength and willpower was the continued bombing of German cities. Churchill had no faith that bombing would prove a decisive factor in the war, but the campaign escalated after the first thousand bomber raid struck Cologne at the end of May 1942. Though enormously destructive on the ground, the raids were costly in bombers and aircrew lives. After three more mass raids, casualties were so great that thousand bomber attacks were halted and not resumed until 1944.

In the third week of June Churchill flew to the United States for another meeting with the President at the Roosevelt mansion in Hyde Park, New York. Roosevelt personally drove Churchill to his splendid home and impressed the Prime Minister with the deft way he used the special controls on his car. 'Mr Roosevelt's infirmity prevented him from using his feet on the brake, clutch or accelerator,' Churchill wrote later. 'An ingenious arrangement enabled him to do everything with his arms, which were amazingly strong and muscular. This was reassuring.' It was a hair-raising journey at times. Churchill continued '...but I confess that when on several occasions, the car poised and backed on the grass verges of the precipices over

[Churchill takes a trip along the River Thames on 25 July, 1942 with several US diplomats, including John Gilbert Winant, US ambassador to Britain (third from left), with whom he was dining when he received news of the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. Churchill had been so incensed that he ivanted to instruct the Foreign Office to declare war on Japan immediately.]

the Hudson (River), I hoped the mechanical devices and brakes would show no defects.'

CRITICISMS AT HOME

The talks at Hyde Park were productive and included a secret agreement that Britain and the United States would share research into the creation and manufacture of an atomic bomb. They also gave the go-ahead for an Anglo-American amphibious landing in one of the Vichy-ruled French possessions along the North African coast. Churchill remained in America for five days before returning home to what he told his friend Harry Hopkins promised to be 'a beautiful row'. On 2 July, a Liberal MP, Leslie Hore-Belisha, launched a fierce attack on the way the war had been handled leading to a Vote of Censure in the House of Commons. 'In a hundred days,' Hore-Belisha declared, 'we have lost our Empire in the Far East. What will happen in the next hundred days?'

Another critic, the Labour MP Aneurin Bevan, was more personal. 'The Prime Minister wins

[On Churchill's visit to the United States in June 1942, he was taken to Fort Jackson in South Carolina to watch a demonstration of US Army parachute troop techniques.]

debate after debate and loses battle after battle,' he complained. 'The country is beginning to say that he fights debates like a war and the war like a debate.' It hardly helped Churchill's case that eleven days before the debate took place, Rommel's Afrika Korps had succeeded in capturing Tobruk in Libya from the British garrison, putting the Germans in a position to threaten Cairo, the capital of Egypt. Churchill launched a robust defence of his government's record, telling the House: 'If those who have assailed us are reduced to contemptible proportions and their Vote of Censure on the National Government is converted to a vote of censure upon its authors, make no mistake - a cheer will go up from every friend of Britain and

[Five or six years ago, it would have been easy, without shedding a drop of blood, for the United States and Great Britain to have insisted on fulfilment of the disarmament clauses of the treaties which Germany signed after the Great (First World) War .... That chance has passed. It is gone. Prodigious hammer strokes have been needed to bring us together again ... some great purpose and design is being worked out here below, of which we have the honour to be faithful servants .... I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and American peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice and in peace.]

every faithful servant of our cause, and the knell of disappointment will ring in the ears of the tyrants we are striving to overthrow.'

The Censure motion was easily quashed - with a mere 25 voting in favour to 475 against. But in mid July Churchill received more bad news: a large convoy, code-named PQ17, had been devastated on the Arctic run to Murmansk by German U-boats and torpedo bombers, which sank 24 of its 35 ships. The attacks brought the total losses of the Arctic convoys to 60 ships sunk in 1942. The death toll was immense and the convoys for August and September were cancelled. The attacks also ruled out the possibility of an Anglo-American -landing to open up a 'second front' in northern Europe. Stalin was infuriated, not least because the Germans had recently broken through the Caucasus defences in southern Russia and were heading for the precious oil wells.

[Churchill takes a closer look at the paratroopers during his visit to Fort Jackson. During World War II, airborne troops represented a new means of invasion and attack, both in Europe and the Pacific.]

On 12 August Churchill flew to Moscow from Cairo to meet face-to-face with Stalin. He made the ten-and-a-half hour flight in the unpressurised cabin of an American Liberator bomber, wearing an oxygen mask specially adapted so that he could smoke his cigar. In Moscow, Churchill found Stalin volatile, veering between anger and despondency. Churchill was careful to keep his temper and his tough, retributive talk thawed Stalin's hostility. The Soviet leader was cheered by the Prime Minister's promise that air raid would 'shatter almost every dwelling in almost every German city.'    

'(This) had a very stimulating effect upon the meeting,' Churchill later recalled, 'and thenceforward, the atmosphere became progressively more cordial.' Churchill's five-day visit ended with a banquet hosted by Stalin. It had been a nervy experience, but the meeting brought an important benefit: the Soviet leader agreed to provide long-range air cover for the reinstated September convoy to Murmansk. This, together with a powerful destroyer escort, ensured that when the convoy sailed on 14 September the number of ships sunk was reduced by almost a third. By the autumn of 1942 Churchill saw the first glimmer of victory on the horizon. On 23 October, a tremendous artillery barrage flashed across the night sky over the desert near El Alamein, an Egyptian town some 50 miles west of Alexandria. It was the prelude to an advance by the British Eighth Army, which was moving inexorably towards the defence lines of Rommel's Afrika Korps. By 4 November the Afrika Korps was in full retreat westwards. Churchill ordered church bells to be rung all over Britain to acknowledge the victory. On 8 November, Anglo-American troops landed

[In August 1942, Churchill toured 8th Army defences in the Western Desert, which, according to decrypted German messages, were to be the targets of Afrika Korps assaults in the coming offensive.]

along the Algerian coast of North Africa in Operation Torch. Algiers, the capital of the French colony of Algeria, surrendered on 10 November and a ceasefire was arranged with the Vichy French forces the next day.

THE TIDE BEGINS TO TURN 

In London, Churchill spoke of the triumph at El Alamein at the Lord Mayor's Luncheon at the Mansion House. 'I have never promised anything but blood, tears, toil and sweat,' he said. 'Now, however, we have a new experience. We have victory, a remarkable and definite victory. The bright gleam has caught the helmets of our soldiers, and warmed and cheered all our hearts.'

Neither El Alamein nor Operation Torch were isolated triumphs. They were only two in a series of hard-won successes that turned the gloom of 1940-1941 into fresh hope for the future. In June 1942, off Midway Island in the north Pacific Ocean, the Americans defeated the Japanese in the first sea battle fought exclusively between naval air forces. Four Japanese aircraft carriers were sunk - half their entire carrier force. It was a critical loss from which the Japanese Imperial Navy never fully recovered.

By the end of 1942 the British and Americans were at last getting the better of the German U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic. Faster convoy escorts had now been introduced. Hunter-killer convoy support groups were formed, comprising ships and aircraft dedicated to the detection, pursuit and destruction of German submarines. Aircraft such as Liberator bombers were equipped for the purpose with the latest high-detection radar, airborne searchlights, machine-guns and depth charges. At the end of January 1943 the remnants of the German 6th Army surrendered to the Soviets at Stalingrad after five months of savage warfare fought in atrocious winter conditions. From then on, the Germans, like the Japanese, were never able to regain the upper hand. The tide of war had finally turned.

[Churchill met British Service Chiefs and members of the Middle East War Council at the British Embassy in Cairo during his visit to Egypt and the Western Desert in 1942.]

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TO  BE  CONTINUED