As Napoleon sagely wrote over 220 years ago, “The victors writes the history!” How true! Each society has its own narrative on how it sees itself. In a sense almost all autobiographies are lies, and if they were true, who would really know? On the other hand, no biographer knows everything, how could they? When a cohort of Winston Churchill’s worried how history would view questionable events, Churchill is reported to have said, “…don’t worry! I’ll write the history!” In Hamilton’s first book, “The Mantle of Command,” the scene is set for America’s emergence into the greatest and most important crusade against evil in history! Peter Baker, of the NY Times wrote, in his review in the last book in the trilogy:
Since Roosevelt left no lasting record of his life and thoughts following his untimely death in Warm Springs, Ga., in April 1945 at age 63, Hamilton relies on those left by others, including insightful diaries by Mackenzie King, the Zelig-like Canadian prime minister who always seemed to be on hand at key moments, and Henry L. Stimson, the Republican secretary of war who at times resisted Roosevelt’s judgments only to come around to recognize the virtues of the president’s approach.
Thus, as a student and faithful follower of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his immense legacy, I was most gratified to start Nigel Hamilton’s massive trilogy regarding “FDR at War” and his relationship with his great partner in that titanic event, Winston S. Churchill the most significant war-time Prime Minister of Great Britain (there were two other Neville Chamberlain and Clement Atlee.) Peter Baker of the NY Times continued in his review:
But for years in many households, it provoked endless dinnertime debate. In the annals of the 20th century, who was the greater, more significant historical figure: Franklin D. Roosevelt or Winston Churchill?
The case for Churchill is powerful. He rallied Britain against Hitler’s hordes when the rest of Europe had fallen. While the United States remained on the sidelines and the Soviet Union embraced its devil’s-bargain alliance with Nazi Germany, Churchill virtually single-handedly defied the Third Reich in the face of existential threat: He was personally at risk, along with his countrymen, amid the cascade of bombs raining down on London during the Blitz.
But count Nigel Hamilton in Roosevelt’s camp — not just in his camp but perhaps his most passionate and eloquent champion. In “War and Peace,” his latest book on the American wartime leader, Hamilton presents a farsighted Roosevelt riding to the rescue of freedom, then setting the stage for a new world order to come. Churchill is depicted as a military dunderhead who let ego and imperial ambition get in the way of sensible strategy. Courageous? Yes. A stirring orator? Absolutely. But if not restrained by Roosevelt, Churchill, in Hamilton’s view, might easily have lost World War II for the Allies.
“War and Peace” is the third and final volume in Hamilton’s “F.D.R. at War” trilogy and certainly as gripping and powerfully argued as the first two, “The Mantle of Command” and “Commander in Chief.” Hamilton, as the historian Evan Thomas once observed, ended up producing the extended memoir that Roosevelt himself never got to write. Throughout Hamilton’s three books, Roosevelt is the wise and clever sage fending off myopic cabinet secretaries, generals, admirals and colleagues to steer the Allies to victory and the world to a better future.
“The Mantle of Command” opens with the critical Atlantic Conference held between President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in the waters of Placentia Bay, Newfoundland in August of 1941.
In FDR’s typical, secretive way, he used diversionary tactics to prevent the revelation to the press, the public, and his own government of this meeting with the Prime Minister. The secrecy of this meeting was critical when one understands the isolationist, anti-British feeling that not only dominated many in the Congress, but throughout the country. Of course, Churchill was eager for this meeting, and in a sense it was an effort to induce the president to support a declaration of war against Nazi Germany. This meeting came almost after two years of war, which saw the decline and fall of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who preceded Churchill, and the various disaster that befell the western alliance of Britain and France.
After the invasion of the Low Countries, the fall of Norway and Britain’s naval disasters in the North Sea, the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), along with thousands of French and Dutch soldiers from Dunkerque, the massive losses to German submarines in the Atlantic, setbacks in North Africa at the hands of General Erwin Rommel, along with the failures of British commanders, Wavell, Auchinleck and Ritchie in the Egyptian-Libyan Desert War, and the threat to the Suez Canal, the British were on the verge of desperation, and thus the need for this meeting. A declaration of war was certainly not in FDR’s mind, knowing the mood of a majority of the American people. But he wanted a strong show of commitment to the cause of Britain, without making a commitment that would probably never be sustained.
Out of that conference emerged the Atlantic Charter, an agreement to transfer 50 surplus American Destroyers to Great Britain, in exchange for the United States to have long-term leases on British territories in the Caribbean. There was no formal, legal document entitled “The Atlantic Charter”. It detailed the goals and aims of the Allied powers concerning the war and the post-war world, and it was based very much on FDR’s famous “Four Freedoms,” State of the Union speech made in January of 1941.
Of course, events following that meeting in August of 1941, would change the calculus of world power and the direction it was heading. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the heart of the American Navy and its armed forces in the Hawaiian Islands on December 7, 1941, would of course bring a Declaration of War on the Japanese Empire, but it did not mean we would be involved in the European War. As a consequence of that surprise attack, the Japanese war juggernaut would attack American, British and Dutch territories all over the Pacific Rim. Before America could even respond, the Philippines were attacked, and the American Army Air Force, under the direct command of General MacArthur, was virtually destroyed. As these multiple tragedies unfolded, Churchill was privately relieved of his greatest anxiety that he would have to continue to fight alone against the Nazis. Of course, he couldn’t be sure that America would be directly involved in the European War, and as a consequence of the Japanese attack on British interests, more disasters ensued. Eventually Hong Kong, Malaya, and their impenetrable fortress of Singapore would eventually collapse. As time moved on, even before America could respond, Burma would fall, as Rangoon was taken by the Japanese, and the India Ocean would become almost a Japanese lake.
In one of the strangest moves in history, Hitler, seeing the immediate success of the Japanese war machine, impulsively declared war on the United States. This of course, eliminated the problem for FDR regarding an effort to declare war on Nazi Germany! Therefore, after December 11, 1941, we were in World War II on both fronts, East and West! With this reality in mind, Churchill immediately made plans to travel to Washington to formulate a coordinated strategy to first turn the tide of battle around and eventually win the war. In the critical days through Christmas, 1941, in now wartime America, the policy of Germany First would emerge.
In the days ahead, Churchill would attempt to direct and control President Roosevelt with regards to the direction of their joint effort. As Christmas approached, the United States was facing the unpleasant reality that the Philippines and MacArthur’s American and Filipino Forces on Bataan and Corregidor, were doomed to destruction as were the British possessions of Hong Kong, Malaya and their Singapore fortress. The Americans, with their Filipino allies, fought a delaying action in the Philippines, while a mixed American, British, Dutch, and Australian (ABDA) naval structure was set up to operate from Java in an attempt to hold the Japanese at the Malay Barrier. Given command of ABDA naval forces, Admiral Thomas Hart directed part of this defense into mid-February 1942. By that point in time, it had become evident that despite the brave ABDA sailors, the Japanese were not to be denied. The Japanese Navy was able to literally destroy the remaining Allied naval assets in, and around, the Java Sea and the India Ocean.
Therefore, as India was being threatened by massive Japanese naval assets in the Indian Ocean, two realities emerged. There were not enough Allied ships to counter their strength and India soldiers had almost no enthusiasm to defend India and their colonial status from the potential of a Japanese invasion. In fact, the British were seeing more and more evidence that their colonial armies were not willing to fight for the British Empire. FDR, a confirmed anti-colonialist understood this reality, despite Churchill’s inability to face the reality of the deteriorating situation in both the Middle and the Far East. FDR urged Churchill to promise India eventual self-rule or even the commonwealth status of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Churchill hated this option, danced around it, and delayed making a decision, until he almost was backed into a corner. He certainly was opposed to giving up any sovereignty in India, as he claimed that the subcontinent was not really a country, but a collection of princely states and contentious religions bodies: Hindus, Moslems and Sikhs among hundreds of others sects, who spoke many hundreds of dialects. To add to the anxiety of the British, their fortress at the Port of Tobruk (Libya) fell to an inferior force (30,000 personnel surrendered) without putting up a major fight.
With that in mind, along with the existential threat to India, the British were apoplectic and were trying to insist that American intervene in the Indian Ocean. Of course, Americans did not have the assets to counter the Japanese. But, FDR initiated a bold plan that would eventually produce a remarkable chain of events. He wanted to strike back at the Japanese and change the whole defeatist attitude that was threatening to become pervasive in the post-Pearl Harbor America, and with our British allies. Roosevelt authorized the famed Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. The raid was planned, led by and named after Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle of the United States Army Air Forces. FDR was able to turn the corner of defeat with one bold stroke.
This air raid, by sixteen United States B-25s, from the aircraft carrier Hornet, on the Japanese capital, Tokyo and other places on Honshu Island, was the first air operation to strike the Japanese archipelago. The sixteen B-25B Mitchell medium bombers were launched without fighter escort from the deep in the Western Pacific Ocean, (further out than planned) each with a crew of five men. The plan called for them to bomb military targets in Japan, and to continue westward to land in China, since landing a medium bomber back on the Hornet was impossible. The bombing raid killed about 50 people, including civilians, and injured 400, was tactically minimal, but, in retrospect, strategically immense.
It was also the first time, in more than 1000 years, that the Japanese home islands were attacked. It demonstrated that the Japanese mainland was vulnerable to American air attack, served as retaliation for the attack on Pearl Harbor and provided an important boost to American morale. Even though the results were almost miniscule the political and strategic fallout was immense. The Japanese had never been attacked on their home islands, and with the knowledge that their air defenses were almost non-existent, they therefore, in an almost panic withdrew much of their naval assets from the Indian Ocean, to protect the Home Islands. The next consequence of this action was to assemble a massive fleet to strike back at America. Their aim was Midway Island. If they destroyed the American assets and presence on Midway, and occupied the island as a base, both the West Coast of America and Hawaii would be threatened. The Japanese never knew that American cryptographers had broken their naval and diplomatic codes (the Purple Codes) years before. When the speculation that Midway was confirmed as the target (the famous water desalination plant ruse) of this large Japanese force, of which some headed north to the Aleutian Islands, an American naval trap northeast of Midway was set. Of course, the rest is history.
Despite initial successes by the Japanese naval force regarding their bombardment of Midway and the destruction of many attacking American carrier and land-based planes, a series of strange and fortuitous events ensued, as the battle took a dramatic and fatal turn against the Japanese fleet. As a result of courage and luck, the United States Navy under Admirals Chester Nimitz, Frank Jack Fletcher, and Raymond A. Spruance were able to defeat this massive, attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy under the command of Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chūichi Nagumo, they inflicted devastating damage on the Japanese fleet that proved irreparable. Military historian John Keegan called it “the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare” With their loss of four fleet aircraft carriers, the Japanese were never able to regain the initiative in the Pacific. They would never be able to replace these ships, men or planes for years. With that result, India would never be threatened, the divisive issue of Indian independence was placed on the back burner, and after early June, 1942, the United States would always be on the offensive against the widespread Japanese-controlled territories.
After this spectacular and unexpected victory, the next strategic argument would be where the Allies would strike. The issue of Germany First was settled, as Japanese expansion in the Pacific was halted with the both the naval stalemate (strategic victory) at the Battle of the Coral Sea and the “incredible victory” with the Battle of Midway! President Roosevelt was dynamically opposed to an invasion of France in 1942. Our leading military leaders, including General George C. Marshall, Henry Arnold, and Admiral King were focusing on France, as was Secretary of War Stimson. The British, for sure, were totally against that effort, but were obfuscating the issue by diverting attention to other theaters of operation. In fact, they were not sure of anything, but wanted to defeat the Afrika Korps in Libya.
This, of course, was creating a fissure between FDR and the Joint Chiefs. His idea was to invade French, Vichy-controlled, northwest Africa. Many American military leaders were opposed to helping the British retain their empire at the expense of American blood and treasure. A number of these same people (ranking officers) were using the threat (blackmail) to the British of moving the president away from the Germany First strategy to a focus on the Pacific. The British were incredibly fearful of this happening. But, FDR was much tougher than they realized and adamant about his strategic perspective. His idea was to establish a landing in Vichy French Morocco and North Africa and thus control the West Coast of Africa. He realized immediately, with his encyclopedic knowledge of geography, that the Germans would be prevented from using that part of Africa as a potential launching site (springboard) for a later invasion of South America. In other words, FDR was protecting our Southern Hemispheric flank. FDR also recalled retired Admiral William D. Leahy, who had been his Ambassador to Vichy France, and made him his personal Chief of Staff. Leahy would be his direct, and authoritative liaison to Marshall, King and Arnold. Leahy also reported to FDR that there were less than 200 German personnel in Morocco. With this information, and FDR’s coterie of diplomatic, vice-counsels (spies) assigned to French North Africa, (Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco) who were known as the 12 Apostles, he knew more about the conditions on the ground (in Vichy-controlled North Africa) then Churchill, General Alan Brooke, the head of the Imperial War Staff, and certainly the American chiefs. He was able to keep this plan secret from the press, his own government, other members of the US military and most importantly, the Axis Powers.
Eventually, all the concerted opposition to the newly renamed Operation Torch would dissipate. The European invasion of France, called at one time, Operation Bolero and Roundup, leading to the eventual Operation Sledgehammer, would be tabled (delayed) to at least 1943. Marshall Joseph Stalin, our eastern ally in this great effort to destroy the Nazis, had been calling for a “Second Front” to divert Nazi forces for almost a year. Understanding the reality of the war and the limited strength that the western Allies possessed, Stalin was delighted with Operation Torch. Of course, FDR was proven completely correct. The invasion of North Africa turned out to be a brilliant strategic move. At almost the same time, the British 8th Army, led by their new commander General Bernard Law Montgomery, successfully broke the German lines in the 2nd Battle of Alamein. The result was that for the first time since September 3rd 1939, the Axis, led by Hitler and the Nazis, were on the defensive. Rommel’s Afrika Korps was on the run and caught between the two pincers: the British surging westward towards Tunisia and the Americans eastward from Morocco.
With regards to WW II Churchill’s strategy was basically no better than Chamberlain’s. Under his watch the British experienced disasters with the navy in Norway, the 8th Army in North Africa and its collapse at Tobruk, the insane and huge defeat and disaster in Singapore, (the worst and most costly British defeat in history), the disaster at Dunkerque, the catastrophic losses of the HMS Repulse and Prince of Wales off Hainan Island, near the Chinese mainland, the abandonment of Greece and Crete, the ill-fated attack at Dieppe, the alienation of the French and the subsequent defection of the French fleet, causing the need for it to be crippled by British naval action along with many others. He was lucky that the Nazis re-directed the Luftwaffe to bomb British cities and not go after their radar early warning stations, their aerodromes, and the British fighter defense. A smartly delivered strategy against these targets would have reduced the British to a position where their air cover became hopeless. One could say that Churchill’s greatest failure was his ego, his idea that he was a military expert, and his ability to choose the right people, for the right task.
In retrospect, as the war would move on to its successful conclusion, Churchill did have many successes aside from American help. Their victory at Taranto that devastated the Italian fleet, the sinking of the Graf Spee, the hunting down of the Bismarck, the destruction of the 10 German destroyers off Norway, his policy supporting Orde Wingate and the Chindits in Burma, his mobilizing massive bombing raids over Germany, the destruction of the French dry docks at Saint Nazaire, and his selection of Montgomery to head the British 8th along with his subsequent victory at El Alemain were strong plusses. But even with the entrance of America into the war, later British strategy with Churchill’s blessing and interference led to the huge loses in Holland with the ill-fated Market-Garden assault on the Dutch bridges. Montgomery, Churchill’s greatest choice for leadership squandered his opportunity to cross the Rhine and was trumped by the American capture of the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen. That single event of intrepid work by American forces dealt a huge blow to German resistance on the Western front. While Montgomery was accumulating landing craft, the US Army was surging over the Rhine with men and armor, creating an unassailable bridgehead, and trapping German forces on the wrong side of the River.
FDR, on the other hand mobilized the American economy in an unprecedented way, fought an effective two ocean war, selected and appointed excellent overall leadership with his Joint Chiefs lead by Admiral William D. Leahy, who coordinated the activities of Generals Marshall and Arnold along with Admiral King. FDR’s selections, in all of the theaters of his responsibility, of MacArthur, Nimitz, Eisenhower, reflected excellent carefully thought out judgment. Their choices of subordinates that included Bedell-Smith, Clark, Bradley, Patton, Hodges, Simpson, Eaker, Doolittle, Stillwell, Halsey, Spruance, Vandergrift, Smith, Lemay and many others, spelled eventual success. His speeches, and cool leadership gave the people confidence after Pearl Harbor and the loss of the Philippines. FDR’s leadership of the wartime conferences at Argentia Bay, Quebec, Casablanca, Teheran and Yalta were the driving force behind victory and the post-war dominance of the West. Roosevelt knew almost all the top ranking officers of our armed forces, because he had been president for eight years before Pearl Harbor. Therefore, he knew their weaknesses and their strengths and how they could be best utilized. He knew who to fire and who to hire!
The centerpiece of Roosevelt’s strategy, and that of all of the American leadership, of course, was Operation Overlord, the Normandy invasion, which Roosevelt advocated relentlessly despite doubts, arguments and even sabotage by Churchill. The prime minister, aware that the sun was setting on the empire on which the sun never set, suggested almost every other option. He pressed for more Allied focus on Italy, as well as landings in Greece and the Aegean. He was consumed inexplicably with the island of Rhodes. He fixated on the bloody battle of Anzio. Roosevelt batted away one Churchill effort to derail the D-Day invasion after another, single-mindedly determined to seize the beaches of Normandy. In Peter Baker’s words:
Hamilton’s case for Roosevelt is a compelling one. Even in decline, the president had a vision that eluded others, including his closest partner. Yet if the author’s antipathy for Churchill’s strategic miscalculations is buttressed by prodigious research, it nonetheless seems to sweep aside too easily the profound importance of his singular resolve, grit and determination to defeat Hitler — not to mention his clear eyed view of Stalin and the looming Soviet threat that Roosevelt, ever confident of his own powers of persuasion, mistakenly thought he could manage.
To Hamilton, Churchill’s inspiration was no match for Roosevelt’s sagacity, his stirring speeches no substitute for the American’s strategic brilliance. Roosevelt was the architect and engineer who translated Churchill’s grandiloquence into a plan for victory. The Allies did fight on the beaches, as Churchill once memorably vowed, but it fell to Franklin Roosevelt to make sure they were the right beaches.
History has favored Winston Churchill for many reasons, which include his lonely pre-war opposition to the rise of Hitler and the threat of Nazism. He battled against both the appeasers and the pro-fascist elements in Britain. He also stood head and shoulders above his rivals, like Lord Halifax, who wanted to succeed the failed Neville Chamberlain.
He was always given exceptionally high marks as an inspiring and eloquent orator before the war and during it. His ability to lead a beleaguered nation in its darkest hours can never be underrated. With that in mind, he has been awarded high marks for standing alone during the Blitz (German air attacks) and keeping up British morale despite the nightly bombings, the massive destruction and the battlefield reversals. He certainly deserved criticism for his endless micro-managing policy, interference with his generals, reversals in strategy and poor choice in military appointments. He even was very critical of his “star” appointment of General Montgomery. The victor at Alamein. Ironically, Montgomery wasn’t his first choice to command the 8th Army in Egypt. His first selection was Lt. General Richard Gott, who killed in a plane crash. According to many of the veterans of that campaign, who were familiar with both men, they felt that Gott certainly would have lost the battle for control of Egypt, the Suez Canal and the oilfields of the Middle East. Churchill certainly opposed Operation Torch and wanted American men and material supporting Montgomery, was against Operation Anvil-Dragoon, the August, 1944 invasion of Southern France, in the days after the Normandy Invasion and the breakout into France.
On the other hand, he and the British leadership understood FDR’s problems and political skills. His promises on the mobilization of American’s war industry were exceeded, and he for sure delivered on America being the Arsenal of Democracy. FDR’s strategic vision reached much farther and more accurately than Churchill’s FDR understood the emergence of Russia and China as world powers, and he pressed for the Unconditional Surrender, to avoid the postwar disaster that followed the end of WWI. He also knew that the Allies had to secure the peace, and that was why he worked so hard to create the United Nations. Churchill vision was most often limited to the sustaining of the British Empire.
As Nigel Hamilton commented at the end of his first book, “The Mantle of Command,”
On Armistice Day, 1942, “America’s new journey had just began. It would not be an easy road, but it was a noble challenge Roosevelt was setting. Moreover, they (the people and the military) could take comfort in the fact that the President, who had saved the nation at a time of the worst economic depression it had ever suffered, was now, on a global stage, proving to be perhaps the greatest commander in American History!”
The next book, “Commander–in-Chief brings us into the great battle, in 1943, between FDR and Churchill, as the American contribution to the war effort escalates and fighting gets tougher in theaters, all over the world.