The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965

  The second phase of 1941’s Blitz—the “Luftwaffe’s tour of the ports”—began in mid-February with four straight nights of raids on Portsmouth, where the quays were smashed and the city center reduced to rubble. The town anointed itself “the smitten city.” Then Plymouth came in for it, and the Mayflower stone, which marked the spot from which the Pilgrims had ventured forth to the New World, was blown to smithereens. Göring put Hull, Bristol, Merseyside, Swansea, and Glasgow in his sights, and hit them hard, especially—and worrisomely—just as convoys made port. Göring’s uncanny ability to find convoys on the open seas and hit the ports at such opportune times (for Germany) inclined Churchill to believe that a spy had to be forwarding information to the Germans. In fact, the Germans had cracked the British merchantman code years earlier. U-boats and Luftwaffe planners simply followed ships’ radio signals. Almost 150,000 tons went to the bottom within sight of land in the last days of February and first days of March, the third worst week of shipping losses since the war began. “The sinkings are bad and the strain is increasing at sea,” Churchill cabled Roosevelt.156

  The president did not reply.

  The previous summer, Spitfires and Hurricanes helped keep the Germans out of Britain, but bombers, not fighters, were now Churchill’s weapons of choice. Despite Fighter Command’s protests, Churchill, in his capacity as minister of defence, demanded more bombers. He understood that British night fighters accounted for few German kills, and would not do so until British airborne radar—the “smeller,” he called it—was made far more efficient and lighter. The Germans meanwhile, stung by Fighter Command, had ceased daylight raids the previous October. More RAF fighters, therefore, would not result in more downed German pilots, but more RAF bombers would result in more dead Germans. To accomplish that, Churchill turned to the Aircraft Ministry and Beaverbrook.157

  Beaverbrook, though not as steadfast a believer as Churchill in bomber warfare, complied. It was the correct decision, made at the correct moment, for by the end of 1940, with growing numbers of RAF bombers lost and in need of repairs (for which there were scarcely any spare parts), Bomber Command was flying only about one-half the sorties flown in the summer. The tonnage of bombs dropped on Germany had fallen to barely a third of the tonnage dropped in September. The RAF was inflicting no pain on the Reich. By January, Beaverbrook’s factories began to meet Churchill’s demand. The first Lancaster bombers—powered by four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, and toting up to six tons of bombs—had taken their shakedown flights in mid-January. The Germans had nothing to match the armament, range, and bomb capacity of the Lancasters. These were the instruments of destruction that Churchill needed in order to fulfill his strategic priority, which was, as he stated frequently and with no equivocation, to deliver “an absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland.”158

  Beaverbrook took it as his mission to make good on Churchill’s oath, and he did so in a manner that pleased no one but the prime minister. The Beaver’s staff resented his holding his cards close, and neither the fighter nor bomber wings of the RAF were satisfied with their allotments. But he was not to be denied. He changed production schedules seemingly at random, broke aircraft factories into smaller components, and scattered them in the countryside, where the Luftwaffe could not find them. He unilaterally granted permission to American factories to build Merlin engines under license, and Hurricanes and Spitfires, too, if they desired (the British had to pay cash for the end products). Harold Macmillan thought him “half mad, half genius… who thinks only of his present work, and that all his old fortune, newspapers and women are completely forgotten.” Beaverbrook managed by cajoling and by instinct; he operated at full steam ahead, until a crisis arrived, which he would fix before steaming off again at flank speed. Randolph cautioned his wife, Pamela, to avoid at all costs “Beaverbrook’s spell, because nothing amuses Beaverbrook more than to have complete control of people’s lives, to smash them or put them together as he sees fit.” In his dealings with everyone (including Churchill), Beaverbrook was clever to the point of deviousness, yet Churchill, recalled Pamela, “had great respect for Beaverbrook’s shrewdness and cunning and ability—tremendous respect.” He kept his production schedules and inventory needs on scraps of paper in his pocket and available in case Churchill asked about such matters, which he did often. For this trait alone Churchill respected Beaverbrook, a happy confluence of utility in a friendship of three decades’ standing. In Churchill, Beaverbrook found the hero he had sought out since childhood—a great man who appreciated his talents and who welcomed him into his inner circle. In return, Beaverbrook reciprocated with absolute loyalty, although when he and Churchill agreed to disagree—which they did on a regular basis—he was not the sort to back down.159

  By late February, O’Connor’s VIII Corps, now commanded by General Philip Neame, held the Libyan flank, five hundred miles west of Cairo. On the Horn, the Italians still fled before Wingate and Cunningham. All looked well. Harold Nicolson saw the African campaigns as “mere chicken-feed.” He told his diary there was no doubt where the real threat lay, “We know that the Great Attack is impending…. When the climate improves they may descend upon us with such force as they have never deployed before. Most of our towns will be destroyed.” Expecting the worst, Nicolson closed his diary entry with: “Well, if they try, let them try. We shall win in the end.”160

  On March 1, Hitler secured his right of way to Yugoslavia and Greece when Bulgaria ignored Churchill’s warning of February 9 and signed on with Hitler. The Bulgarians had no choice. Since the previous autumn, Hitler had pressed Yugoslavia and Bulgaria to join the Tripartite Pact, as had Hungary and Romania, each in its own turn humiliated and cajoled into becoming Nazi cat’s-paws. Bulgaria was the latest to succumb. Its king, Boris, ruled a country that was Russia’s only real friend in Europe, a good friend of long standing, by mutual agreement. Czar Nicholas II was Boris’s godfather; Russia had backed Bulgaria in its exit from the Ottoman Empire sixty years previously. These were cultural bonds of a sort Hitler could not tolerate, for if Boris and Stalin were to strengthen them, Hitler would be denied his most direct transit to Greece. The Führer made Boris the same offer he had made Antonescu the previous autumn, a guarantee of protection. Of course, the refusal of such protection would result in problematic relations with the Reich. Boris faced a choice between two evils: to make way for the Wehrmacht or to be taken out of the way.

  Boris, a peaceful man who liked to collect butterflies and tinker with automobile engines, was made of stern enough stuff to say no to Hitler, but his army could not back him up. No army in Europe could back up any leader who said no to Hitler. Had Bulgaria been protected by an oceanic tank ditch, as was Britain, Boris might have bought more time. Furthermore, Boris’s ministers were pro-German, his wife pro-Italian, and his people pro-Russian. His safest move was to put himself under Hitler’s protection, which he did on March 1. Hitler now held both banks of the Danube down to the Black Sea, and he had plans for the seven hundred German pontoon bridges sitting on the Romanian bank.161

  On March 6 Lend-Lease began the third month of its journey through Congress; the U.S. Senate had been debating the bill for almost a month. That day, Churchill displayed his displeasure over the lethargic pace of the legislation when he appeared late, tired, and “grumpy” at No. 10 for a luncheon held for James Conant. The guests dined in awkward silence until Conant voiced his “belligerent” interventionist views. At that, Churchill became animated and turned the talk to Lend-Lease: “This bill has to pass,” he snarled. Conant recalled the Old Man’s “irritation rising as he spoke.” Churchill went on: “What a failure he [Roosevelt] would appear if this bill is not passed. What would happen in the United States if the bill was rejected? Would the president resign” and if so, “who would become president, the vice-president?”162

  Conant was stunned. He asked himself if Churchill might “really have such a profound ignorance of
the American constitutional system.” The Harvard man—wary of angering Churchill—gently informed him that an American president, unlike a British prime minister, did not resign after major political setbacks, and that America “did not operate under a parliamentary system,” as did the British. Emboldened by “gaining the ascendancy for a moment,” Conant tossed out the prospects of American armies coming to the rescue. “We don’t want your men,” Churchill snarled, “just give us the tools and we shall finish the job.” Conant realized at that moment what many of Churchill’s dinner companions had long known: “Mr. Churchill had this way of quoting from his own speeches even in casual conversation.” Churchill plowed on, insisting to Conant that nobody in England had ever in public asked America to enter the war. Conant took Churchill’s words at face value but was skeptical and felt that “Mr. Churchill and his associates were not entirely frank” and tended to say one thing “while thinking quite another,” although “no responsible statesman is required to be completely candid.” Conant concluded that Churchill had “rather let himself go” during the luncheon, “perhaps unconsciously, perhaps consciously for my benefit.”

  Conant did not yet understand that Churchill put on a show whenever he had an audience. Ambiguity was alien to the man. Churchill, wrote Sir John Keegan, “had no capacity for sustained dissimulation.” His outburst produced the intended results. Conant rushed back to his hotel and—“upset at Churchill’s troubled eloquence”—fired off letters to his wife and colleagues in which he asked, “Why don’t they pass Lend-Lease? Why doesn’t FDR appeal to the country in another radio speech?”163

  Roosevelt had no need to. Conant, overseas for three weeks, was unaware that during those weeks, Roosevelt’s victory in the Senate had gone from a possibility to a certainty. Apparently Churchill’s Washington embassy was furnishing him with no better intelligence than Conant was deriving from his friends. In any case, Lend-Lease cleared the U.S. Senate by a vote of 60–31 on March 8. Roosevelt signed it on the eleventh. “The bill,” Churchill told Winant, “is a draught of life.” But it was not as sweet a draught as he thought. The New York Times reported that the president had said the first matériel to be sent to the British and Greeks was not very large in dollars and cents, but, whatever the amount, it would be charged against the limitation of $1.3 billion “placed by the lease-lend bill upon the value of materials that may be transferred from the existing facilities of the Army and Navy. Figures before the President did not necessarily mean the billing price inasmuch as much of the material was considered out of date, or surplus, and not worth the money paid a good many years ago”(italics added).164

  Britain’s first shipments of arms, therefore, would consist of junk, long since written off America’s books. British pilots were training in America, and American pilots, including women, were ferrying bombers to Britain. Fuel and ammunition arrived at British ports weekly. But as with the obsolete destroyers, Roosevelt told Americans they were getting the best of the deal. No doubt Churchill, too, would get a good deal, if Congress passed—and passed rapidly—the pending appropriation of $7 billion. That was a lot of money in 1941. Yet even fully funded, Lend-Lease would only partially address Britain’s needs. On the day the bill passed, a dozen oil tankers and refrigerator ships were scheduled to sail for England. In peacetime such a fleet could, by way of round-trip relays, fuel and feed a moderate-size city, indefinitely. Yet, at the rate U-boats were sending British hulls to the bottom in early 1941, Britain would have to spend much of its Lend-Lease windfall on new ships, with little left over to fill their holds.165

  Churchill put a good face on the matter, as he had with the fifty old destroyers. To the House of Commons, he declared that by taking this action, “the Government and people of the United States have in fact written a new Magna Carta, which not only has regards to the rights and laws upon which a healthy and advancing civilization can alone be erected but also proclaims… the duty of free men and free nations, wherever they may be, to share the burden and responsibility of enforcing them.” Later in the year, as tens of thousands of tons of American matériel sailed to Britain, he told the audience at the annual Lord Mayor’s Day luncheon, “Never again let us hear the taunt that money is the ruling thought or power in the hearts of the American democracy. The Lend and Lease Bill must be regarded without question as the most unsordid act in the whole of recorded history.” Lend-Lease was a start, but enough of a start for Churchill to conclude that Britain no longer would fight with its back to the Atlantic but henceforth with America at its back. That alone would not ensure a British victory, but it would make British defeat almost impossible—almost but not absolutely, because American industrial capacity had yet to reach a level that could guarantee British survival. Harry Hopkins told Churchill he believed America would reach its stride in eighteen months. Churchill estimated America needed at least two years to attain full war production. Hitler’s best estimate, which he imparted to the Japanese foreign minister, was four years.166

  Two years would prove a year too many if Britain’s shipping losses continued at February’s pace, when almost 320,000 tons went down. March was shaping up as the worst month yet. Losses in the first week approached 150,000 tons, more than twice the average for any three weeks of the war, and were easily on a pace to exceed 400,000 tons for the month. Britain’s importing capacity—the gross tonnage of material it could handle with its fleet, its docks, and warehouses—had fallen from almost 43 million tons in 1939 to under 29 million, a level not seen since 1917. The Atlantic Ocean, Churchill had predicted early in the year, would be the major battleground of 1941. He anointed the ordeal the Battle of the Atlantic with the same intent as when the previous summer he anointed the pending battle the Battle of Britain, to focus the attention of the government and the people upon the most immediate threat to their existence. But whereas in 1940, the RAF could put into the skies enough Spitfires and Hurricanes to fight the Luftwaffe to a stalemate, the Royal Navy in March of 1941 had not the ships, nor the weapons, nor the advanced radar needed to stop Dönitz’s U-boats. As well, the Focke-Wulf 200 bombers that Raeder had snatched from Göring had taken their toll, until Göring returned from his vacation and demanded their return. British shipping losses due to German aircraft began to fall, and continued to do so throughout the spring and summer. By recalling his bombers, Göring had committed a strategic blunder. Still, by March the German navy and the Luftwaffe had just about severed the sea-lanes into Britain.167

  The continuing success of the Germans against British shipping and the prospect of greater losses to come was, Churchill wrote in his memoirs, “the only thing that really frightened me during the war.” U-boats and German bombers had so far sent 15 percent of Britain’s prewar merchant fleet of eighteen million tons to the bottom. One million tons had gone down since the American election. Norway had added a thousand ships and almost three million tons to the Allied merchant marine, but Norwegian ships were being hit as hard as British. Were half of the remaining British shipping to go to the bottom, Britain would starve. National survival depended upon convoys bearing wheat getting through. A halving in wheat imports could, in a few months time, result in a Malthusian halving of the British population. It was just that simple. Churchill pleaded with Roosevelt throughout the first seven months of the year to move the American patrol zone into the far eastern Atlantic, to arm American merchantmen (a violation of the Neutrality Act of 1939), and to show the flag in the vicinity of the Azores (where U-boats resupplied and re-armed with impunity). In Churchill’s estimation, if Lend-Lease had put America on the path to war, let the journey continue apace.168

  Roosevelt, though ready to help, was not ready to fight. Restrained by conflicting and strongly held public opinion, he made his way along his chosen path with the same tortured gait he displayed while thrusting himself through the rejuvenating waters of Warm Springs, in the central Georgia foothills of the Appalachians. There, he took his measured and painful steps, with the utmost care, lest
his footing be unsure. Heroic as his progress was—in the medicinal springs of Georgia and in the politics of war—Roosevelt’s progress when it came to Hitler was not swift enough for Churchill.

  With Lend-Lease on the books, Roosevelt dispatched Averell Harriman as his special envoy to London with the extraordinary mandate, to “recommend everything we can do, short of war, to keep the British Isles afloat.” Harriman reported directly to Hopkins and the president, a ploy that kept Secretary of State Cordell Hull (to Hull’s increasing annoyance) on the sidelines. Harriman also consulted directly with Churchill, thus bypassing the Foreign Office. Lend-Lease was not strictly speaking a matter of foreign affairs but rather one of American national security and, for Britain, national survival. Roosevelt’s choice of Harriman was brilliant. He represented America’s capitalist class rather than the Democratic Party’s ideological class. He was a product of Groton (the motto of which is cui severe est regnare, “to serve is to rule”) and Yale. His politics was business. The captains of industry Roosevelt needed on his side listened to Harriman. Almost fifty, he had never lacked that which Churchill always had lacked: money, and not simply money, but capital. He dressed the part. If Anthony Eden was the most impeccably attired Englishman in the land, Harriman took the honors for visitors, always smartly attired in trim, custom-made dark suits that accentuated his sharp WASP features. Pamela Churchill was certainly taken with him, and within a few weeks, taken by him.169

  Young Averell had expanded the railroad holdings of his father, E. H. Harriman, and moved into banking, oil field equipment, and shipbuilding. He was board chairman of the Union Pacific Railroad and of his banking firm, W. A. Harriman & Company, which after a merger became Brown Brothers Harriman. His fellow Yale alumnus, Prescott Bush, son-in-law of W. A. Harriman’s president, George Herbert Walker, had recently been made a junior partner. Together, Harriman and Bush sustained a modest loss that year when the U.S. government seized the German accounts maintained by Brown Brothers Harriman. Yet those losses, as well as the Depression itself, were but potholes on Easy Street for Harriman. He had two daughters by his first marriage; one, Kathleen, became fast friends with Pamela Churchill, and they soon shared a London flat, Randolph having been posted to Cairo. Harriman’s first marriage had ended in divorce. He was now married to Marie Norton Whitney, the former wife of Cornelius (“Sonny”) Vanderbilt Whitney, the son of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, she of the Whitney Museum. Harriman’s credentials therefore were as solid as those of Churchill’s late cousin, John “Sunny” Spencer Churchill, the ninth Duke of Marlborough, himself the former husband of Consuelo Vanderbilt, who dwelled now mostly in Palm Beach, the Nazis having confiscated her French manse. Sunny’s son, “Bert,” made do at Blenheim, where the roof leaked and a distinct mustiness permeated the old palace. Harriman and Churchill were connected therefore by marriage, however distantly, like members of one big happy Anglo-American family, but for the distinction that one side was well off and living in peace, while the other was nigh broke and being bombed into oblivion.170