Triumph and Tragedy (The Second World War) (117 page)

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summoning of all nations, great and small, powerful or powerless, on even terms to the central body may be compared with the organisation of an army without any division between the High Command and the divisional and brigade commanders. All are invited to the headquarters.

Babel, tempered by skilful lobbying, is all that has resulted up to the present. But we must persevere.

A few days later I sent Halifax a cable on details about which the President and his colleagues might be glad to be informed.

Prime Minister to Lord

6 July 45

Halifax (Washington)

Naturally I am looking forward very much to meeting
the President. The political members of the British
delegation will quit the [Potsdam] Conference on July
25 in order to await the poll in England. This will avoid
embarrassment when the results are made known. I am
led to believe that the present Government will obtain a
majority, but, as the President knows, electioneering is
full of surprises. It is most unlikely in any event that I
should resign on an adverse declaration of the poll,
unless it amounted to a very extreme expression of
national displeasure. I should await the result of a
confidence vote in the House of Commons on the
King’s Speech, and take my dismissal from the House.

This would enable the various parties and individuals to
define their position by a vote.

2. The British delegation could therefore return to
Berlin on the 27th, and I should personally be able to
stay there if necessary till about the 5th or 6th August.

Parliament meets on the 1st to elect a Speaker and to
swear in Members. But it is not till Wednesday, 8th, that
the King opens Parliament, and the decisive division
would not take place before Friday, 10th. I thought all
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these details, some of which are extremely private,
would be of interest to the President.

3. I am delighted to hear that the President
contemplates two or even three weeks, as I think it of
the utmost importance that whatever happens in
England the Conference should not be hurried. It was
somewhat abruptly curtailed in the Crimea. We have
here to try to reach settlements on a great number of
questions of the greatest consequence, and to prepare
the way for a Peace Conference, which presumably will
be held later in the year or in the early spring.

He replied next day with the following telegram, which shows how well he understood the Washington view.

Lord

Halifax

7 July 45

(Washington) to Prime

Minister

The President had already left for Potsdam when
your telegram reached me. Your message will be
relayed to him on board ship.

I am sure you will find Truman most anxious to work
with us, and fully alive to the long-range implications as
well as short-term difficulties of the decisions we have
to make. I judge that American tactics with the
Russians will be to display at the outset confidence in
Russian willingness to co-operate. I should also expect
the Americans in dealing with us to be more responsive
to arguments based upon the danger of economic
chaos in European countries than to the balder pleas
about the risks of extreme Left Governments or of the
spread of Communism.
1
They showed some signs of
nervousness in my portrayal of Europe (whatever the
facts) as the scene of a clash of ideas in which the
Soviet and Western influences are likely to be hostile
and conflicting. At the back of their minds there are still
lingering suspicions that we want to back Right Wing
Governments or monarchies for their own sake. This
does not in the least mean that they will be unwilling to
stand up with us against the Russians when necessary.

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But they are likely to pick their occasions with care, and
are half expecting to play, or at any rate to represent
themselves as playing, a moderating rôle between
ourselves and the Russians.

A few years later it was Britain and Western Europe who were urged in many quarters to play the “moderating rôle”

between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. Such are the antics of fortune.

I was resolved to have a week of sunshine to myself between the General Election and the Conference. On July 7, two days after polling day, I flew to Bordeaux with Mrs.

Churchill and Mary, and found myself agreeably installed at General Brutinel’s villa near the Spanish frontier at Hendaye, with lovely bathing and beautiful surroundings. I spent most of the mornings in bed reading a very good account, by an excellent French writer, of the Bordeaux armistice and its tragic sequel at Oran. It was strange to revive my own memories of five years before and to learn of many things which I had not known at the time. In the afternoons I even sallied forth with my elaborate painting outfit, and found attractive subjects on the river Nive and the Bay of St. Jean de Luz. I found a gifted companion of the brush in Mrs. Nairn, the wife of the British Consul at Bordeaux, with whom I had made friends at Marrakesh a year before. I dealt only with a few telegrams about the impending Conference, and strove to put party politics out of my head. And yet I must confess the mystery of the ballot boxes and their contents had an ugly trick of knocking on the door and peering in at the windows. When the palette was spread and I had a paint-brush in my hand it was easy to drive these intruders away.

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The Basque people were everywhere warm in their welcome. They had endured a long spell of German occupation and were joyful to breathe freely again. I did not need to prepare myself for the Conference, for I carried so much of it in my head, and was happy to cast it off, if only for these few fleeting days. The President was at sea in the United States cruiser
Augusta,
the same ship which had carried Roosevelt to our Atlantic meeting in 1941. On the 15th I motored through the forests to the Bordeaux airfield, and my Skymaster took me to Berlin.

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18

The Defeat of Japan

Plans and Perplexities in Southeast Asia — The
Fourteenth Army Crosses the Irrawaddy —

General Slim wins the Battle for Meiktila —

Chiang Kai-shek Recalls the Chinese Divisions
—

My Message to General Marshall About the
Withdrawal of the American Transport Squadrons

— His Disquieting Reply
—
The Fall of Mandalay,
March
20 —
The Race for Rangoon — The
Amphibious Assault, May
2 —
The End of a Long
Struggle — My Telegram to Admiral Mountbatten,
May
9 —
Climax in the Pacific — A British Fleet
Arrives in Australia — The American Attack on
Iwo Jima
—
General Lumsden Killed — The Fall of
Okinawa, June
22 —
My Congratulations to the
President — The Liberation of the East Indies —

British Earnestness to Aid the Final Assault on
Japan
—
A Merciful Reprieve.

W
INTER OPERATIONS in Burma have already been described,
1
and hard strategic decisions confronted Admiral Mountbatten when the decisive battle across the Irrawaddy began in February 1945. His instructions were to liberate Burma, for which purpose he was not to expect greater resources than he already had, and then to occupy Malaya and open the Malacca Straits. Weather was dominant. The first task was to occupy the central plain of Burma and capture Rangoon before the monsoon, and the monsoon Triumph and Tragedy

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was due in early May. He could either concentrate the whole Fourteenth Army on a decisive battle in the Mandalay plain and make a swift advance to the south, or use some of his troops for an amphibious operation against Rangoon and a northward stroke against the Japanese rear. An amphibious attack on Rangoon would mean deferring the capture of Puket Island, off the coast of the Kra Isthmus, which was a valuable stepping-stone towards Malaya.

Important but uncertain factors complicated his choice.

Success depended greatly on air supply, in which United States aircraft played a big part, and we also hoped that General Sultan’s Chinese-American forces, who had been fighting two Japanese divisions north of Lashio, would remain with us in the struggle. But aid to China was still the overriding American policy, and this help might be withdrawn and the Admiral’s plans ruined.

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