The Grand Alliance (85 page)

11. I believe that we have gone to the limit, if not
beyond it, in respect of the security of Great Britain,
with which the defence of Ireland and the seizure of the
Atlantic islands are inextricably bound up. In my view it
would be unjustifiable, during the next three months, to
risk sending away from this country more than an
adequate maintenance reserve for the tanks already in
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or on the way to the Middle East. Even this, at a
wastage of ten per cent per month, will involve the
monthly despatch of about fifty tanks.

I was astonished to receive this document, and replied a week later somewhat controversially as follows:
Prime Minister to C.I.

13 May 41

G.S.

There is a great deal in your paper of May 6 with
which I agree. There are also many statements which
leave me unconvinced. I thoroughly agree with you in
paragraph 8 that our military advisers underrated the
Germans in Norway, in Belgium, and in Libya. Of these
Belgium is the most remarkable. Yet I never remember
hearing a single British soldier point to the weakness of
the Sub-Maginot Line or deprecate our occupation of
Belgium. I only mention this to show that even the most
expert professional opinion may sometimes err amid
the many uncertainties of war.

2. … I gather you would be prepared to face the loss
of Egypt and the Nile Valley, together with the
surrender or ruin of the army of half a million we have
concentrated there, rather than lose Singapore. I do not
take that view, nor do I think the alternative is likely to
present itself. The defence of Singapore is an operation
requiring only a very small fraction of the troops
required to defend the Nile Valley against the Germans
and Italians. I have already given you the political data
upon which the military arrangements for the defence of
Singapore should be based, namely, that should Japan
enter the war the United States will in all probability
come in on our side; and in any case Japan would not
be likely to besiege Singapore at the outset, as this
would be an operation far more dangerous to her and
less harmful to us than spreading her cruisers and
battle-cruisers on the Eastern trade routes.

At this time of course the Japanese were not established in Indo-China.

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3. I wonder whether the German action in the
Balkans can be cited as an example of “their capacity
for overcoming the most formidable difficulties.” As a
mere exercise in historical perspective, I should have
thought the opposite was true. They were allowed to
accumulate unresisted overwhelming forces to attack
Yugoslavia before it was mobilised, and when it had
been betrayed by its pre-war Government; Greece was
exhausted and held by the Italian Army, and we were
left practically alone, with only one-fifth the armoured
vehicles and practically no Air, to resist their overwhelming onslaught. The fact that with all these advantages,
so cheaply gained, the Germans were unable to
impede seriously the masterly extrication and re-embarkation of our forces inspires me with confidence
and not with apprehension.

4. The truisms set forth in paragraph 10 depend
entirely upon their application to circumstances. But I
hope the last sentence is not intended to have any
relevance to the present position in Egypt.

Many Governments I have seen would have wilted before so grave a pronouncement by the highest professional authority, but I had no difficulty in convincing my political colleagues, and I was of course supported by the Chiefs of the Navy and the Air. My views therefore prevailed and the flow of reinforcements to the Middle East continued unabated. It will be seen that I did not even think it necessary to repeat the arguments against the likelihood of a successful invasion of Britain. Sir John Dill must have been himself conscious of the consensus of opinion against him on this aspect, and having struck his note of warning he let the matter drop.

However, two months later the subject arose from another quarter. In the middle of July Mr. Harry Hopkins arrived in England on his second mission from the President. The first topic which he opened to me was the new situation created The Grand Alliance

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by Hitler’s invasion of Russia and its reaction upon all the Lend-Lease supplies we were counting on from the United States. Secondly, an American general, after being given the fullest facilities for inspection, had made a report throwing doubt upon our ability to withstand an invasion.

This had caused the President anxiety. Thirdly, and in consequence, the President’s misgivings already mentioned about the wisdom of our trying to defend Egypt and the Middle East had been deepened. Might we not lose all through trying to do too much? Finally, there was the question of arranging a meeting between Roosevelt and me somehow, somewhere, soon.

This time Hopkins was not alone. There were in London a number of high United States officers of the Army and Navy, ostensibly concerned with Lend-Lease, and in particular Admiral Ghormley, who was working daily with the Admiralty on the Atlantic problem and the American share in its solution. I held a meeting with Hopkins’s circle and the Chiefs of Staff on the night of July 24 at Number 10. Hopkins brought with him, besides Admiral Ghormley, Major-General Chaney, who was called a “special observer,” and Brigadier-General Lee, the American Military Attaché. Averell Harriman, who had just returned from his tour in Egypt, in which by my directions he had been shown everything, completed the party.

Hopkins said that the “men in the United States who held the principal places and took decisions on defence matters”

were of the opinion that the Middle East was an indefensible position for the British Empire, and that great sacrifices were being made to maintain it. In their view the Battle of the Atlantic would be the final decisive battle of the war, and everything should be concentrated on it. The President, he said, was more inclined to support the struggle in the Middle East, because the enemy must be The Grand Alliance

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fought wherever he was found. General Chaney then placed the four problems of the British Empire in the following order: the defence of the United Kingdom and the Atlantic sea lanes; the defence of Singapore and the sea lanes to Australia and New Zealand; the defence of the ocean routes in general; and, fourth, the defence of the Middle East. All were important, but he placed them in that order. General Lee agreed with General Chaney. Admiral Ghormley was anxious about the supply line to the Middle East if American munitions were to go there in great volume. Might this not weaken the Atlantic battle?

I then asked the British Chiefs of Staff to express their views. The First Sea Lord explained why he felt even more confident of destroying an invading army this year than last.

The Chief of the Air Staff showed how much stronger was the Royal Air Force compared with the German than in the previous September, and spoke of our newly increased power to batter the invasion ports. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff also spoke in a reassuring sense, and said that the Army was immeasurably stronger now than in the previous September. I interposed to explain the special measures we had taken for the defence of aerodromes after the lessons of Crete. I invited our visitors to visit any airfield in which they were interested. “The enemy may use gas, but if so it will be to his own disadvantage, since we have arranged for immediate retaliation and would have admirable concentrated targets in any lodgments he might make on the coast. Gas warfare would also be carried home to his own country.” I then asked Dill to speak about the Middle East. Without expressing any opinion contrary to his paper of May, he gave a powerful exposition of some of the reasons which made it necessary for us to stay there.

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My feeling at the end of our discussion was that our American friends were convinced by our statements and impressed by the solidarity among us.

Nevertheless, the confidence which we felt about Home Defence did not extend to the Far East should Japan make war upon us. These anxieties also disturbed Sir John Dill. I retained the impression that Singapore had priority in his mind over Cairo. This was indeed a tragic issue, like having to choose whether your son or your daughter should be killed. For my part I did not believe that anything that might happen in Malaya could amount to a fifth part of the loss of Egypt, the Suez Canal, and the Middle East. I would not tolerate the idea of abandoning the struggle for Egypt, and was resigned to pay whatever forfeits were exacted in Malaya. This view also was shared by my colleagues.

I felt the need for repeating in the Far East the institution of a Minister of State, who, in the closest touch with the War Cabinet, would relieve the Commanders-in-Chief and local Governors of some of their burdens and help them to solve the grave political problems which gathered swiftly. In Mr.

Duff Cooper, then Minister of Information, I had a friend and colleague who from his central point of view knew the whole scene. His firmness of character which had led him to resign his office as First Lord of the Admiralty after the Munich Agreement in 1938, his personal gifts of speech and writing, his military record as an officer in the Grenadier Guards during the 1914–18 war, combined to give him the highest qualifications. On July 21 he was appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and was succeeded as Minister of Information by Mr. Brendan Bracken. Early in August, accompanied by his wife, Lady Diana, he left for

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the Far East via the United States. It was not till the end of October that he submitted his report from Singapore, to which he had returned.

For several months the British and American Governments had been acting towards Japan in close accord. At the end of July the Japanese had completed their military occupation of Indo-China. By this naked act of aggression their forces were poised to strike at the British in Malaya, at the Americans in the Philippines, and at the Dutch in the East Indies. On July 24 President Roosevelt asked the Japanese Government that, as a prelude to a general settlement, Indo-China should be neutralised and the Japanese troops withdrawn. To add point to these proposals, an executive order was issued freezing all Japanese assets in the United States. This brought all trade to a standstill. The British Government took simultaneous action, and two days later the Dutch followed. The adherence of the Dutch meant that Japan was deprived at a stroke of her vital oil supplies.