BOOKS OF THE WEEK
Threshold of Victory
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This, presumably, is the penultimate volume of Mr. Churchill's great war-history. The final volume, which must be well advanced in preparation, will bring the drama to its climax. Meanwhile there is this new instalment, taking us back to the war's penulti- mate year, beginning with the crisis of the fight against submarines in the Atlantic and ending literally on the very eve of D-day—actually at 4 a.m. on June 5th, 1944, when the die was cast and it was decided that, whatever the menace of the weather, the troops should be put asnore in Normandy on the 6th. The intervening months saw the conferences of Heads of States at Quebec and Cairo and Teheran, and the conference of Foreign Ministers at Moscow, the capture of Sicily and the slow invasion of Italy, questions and hesitations about the supreme command in Western Europe, discussions amount- ing almost to disputes about priorities as between " Overlord " (the Normandy invasion) and a landing in Southern France with an advance up- the Rhone Valley, an intensification of the Italian campaign with a view to pressing on into Austria, about/the capture of the Aegean islands of Rhodes, Cos and Leros as an encourage- ment to Turkey to come definitely in on the Allied .side.
I Such are the themes. The story could be told with accuracy and clarity by any competent historian. Parts of it have been ; more its of it will be. But only one man could tell it as it is told here. nly one was, as it were, in the operations-room from start to finish. nd though a few others possessed the knowledge necessary as basis r an " inside story " not one of them commanded the craftsman- s p to tell it like this master of style. Towards the close of the book . Churchill describes in detail the preparations, incredibly extensive a d elaborate, for Overlord, remarking almost casually at the end it : " All these matters aroused my personal interest, and, when I seemed necessary, my intervention." The interventions may not ways have been welcome, possibly not always wise, and certainly— here agreement with allies was imperative—not always successful. t it is the 'personal interest, the familiarity with every detail, not t e interventions, that counts here. It is the personal interest which ompted the author (for the instruction of persons, in Moscow as 11 as London, apt to talk light-heartedly about " throwing armies a hore ") to explain to Parliament in 1943 just what throwing ies ashore means.
"I iuppose, "he said," it is realised that these matters have to be arranged in the most extraordinary detail. Every landing-vessel or combat-ship is packed in the exact order in which the troops landing from it will require the supplies when they land, so far as can be foreseen. Every lorry indeed is packed with precisely the articles which each unit will require when that lorry comes. Some of the lorries swim out to the ships and swim back. They are all packed exactly in series, with the things which have priority at the top and so on, so that nothing is left to chance that can be helped. Only in this way can these extraordinary operations be carried out in the face, of the vast modern fire-power which a few men can bring to bear."
o doubt all this was read from a brief. But Mr. Churchill, u like any Prime Minister since—unlike any Prime Minister ever, f no other Prime Minister with any strategic experience ever had t handle -a war-machine of such incredible complexity—could rfectly well have drawn the brief himself ; quite possibly he did. ItI is true that Mr. Churchill was Minister of Defence. But what other. Prime Minister was capable of holding such an office ? Cer- tainly not Wellington, for sea-power was largely outside his ken and air-power beyond his imagination.
In this volume, even more clearly than in its predecessors, is revealed a born strategist—no ardent amateur, for he had held at different times the portfolios of the Admiralty, War, Air and Munitions aad seen active service in three continents—exercising the supreme direction of the greatest war in history, discussing its details with his Chiefs of Staff on equal terms and understanding the Generals' problems as well as they did themselves. What is remarkable, if the whole truth and nothing but the truth is told here, no major disagreement between Staff and Minister arose at any time. What is equally important, perhaps more important, there was never a major disagreement between the British Prime Minister and the American President. The close understanding they achieved and maintained, on the basis of real personal friendship, was one of the prime consti- tuents of victory. Minor differences, of course, there were. Roosevelt wanted one Supreme Commander (obviously an American) for both Overlord in Normandy and the Mediterranean ; Churchill imposed an absolute veto on that. Churchill had throughout (after he had reluctantly agreed to setting aside the appointment of General Alan Brooke) hoped for General Marshall as Overlord commander ; Roosevelt kept Marshall at Washington and allotted Western Europe to Eisenhower. Roosevelt's ideas about the Cairo Confer- ence did not in various respects commend themselves to Churchill, but the Prime Minister no doubt eased matters by quoting Scripture by cable—first of all Matt. xvii 4, and then (a little profanely, as he admits) John xiv 1-4. And at Teheran Roosevelt went further than the Prime Minister thought necessary in avoiding social intercourse with him, in order to keep Stalin, whom the President thought himself an adept at handling, conciliated. Matters were not improved by rather elephantine attempts at humour by Stalin at Churchill's expense at a Teheran dinner.
On the whole the Prime Minister through this period was as much preoccupied with keeping the peace as with waging the war, and with little less success. Stalin, with his " manifestations of ill- temper and bad Manners," made inordinate demands on patience and restraint. The " sharp and sultry negotiations " with General de Gaulle would have exhausted patience sooner if the Free French leader had let his sense of self-importance carry him too far, for the Free French leader was a less important person. Divergences of view with Sir Reginald Leeper, the Ambassador at Athens, at a critical moment caused some irritation, and Mr. Churchill, being at the moment in charge of the Foreign Office, took the opportunity to remind his envoy who had submitted that " the advice of people on the spot should be accepted ; My views are shared by every- one here," of some of the qualities required in the British Diplomatic Service ; the observation " You speak of living on the lid of a volcano. Wherever else do you expect to live in times like these?" seems worthy of perpetuation. Even with the King there is one moment of slight frigidity. The current story of how Churchill determined to sail with the bombardment fleet on D-day and was stopped by the King's saying that if his Prime Minister went he himself would go too needs some correction. What happened, as the letters repro- duced here show, was that, Churchill having told the King of his intention, the King said immediately he would like to come too ; he had not been under fire since Jutland. This was submitted to the Cabinet, and it was decided to discuss the matter With the Naval Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Ramsay. But meanwhile the King, With the wisdom characteristic of him, had reconsidered the matter, and wrote expressing his conviction that neither sovereign nor Prime Minister was justified in risking his life at such a juncture.
The matter was then discussed orally, the King and his private secretary, Sir Alan Lascelles, going to the map-room at the Admiralty to meet the Prime Minister and Admiral Ramsay. The Admiral was definitely not in favour of His Majesty going to sea, but Churchill reaffirmed his intention of going as Minister of Defence. The next day the King wrote a very human letter.
"My dear Winston " it ran, " I want to make one more appeal to you not to go to sea on D-day. Please consider my own position. I am a younger man than you, I am a sailor, and as King I am head of all these Services. There is nothing I would like better than to go to sea, but I have agreed to stay at home ; is it fair that you should then do exactly what I should have liked to do myself ?"
On that the Prime Minister, deferring to " Your Majesty's wishes, and indeed commands," gave way, but with rather marked reserve, adding " I rely on my own judgment, invoked in many serious matters, as to what are the proper limits of risk which a person who discharges my duties is entitled to run. I must most earnestly ask Your Majesty that no principle shall be laid down which inhibits my freedom of movement when 1 judge it necessary to acquaint myself with conditions in the various theatres of war."
Mr. Churchill deserves well of his readers for setting out in full an interchange throwing so honourable a light on the character of the late Sovereign. But of course, he deserves well of his readers throughout. He has traced the course of the war in its many theatres in the year that marked " the Closing of the Ring " with the same clarity and force of diction that marks all his earlier volumes. The last, which might be entitled, metaphorically, "The Kill" will be awaited with the keenest expectation of all.
WILSON HARRIS.
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