Churchill's Triumph by Michael Dobbs
Churchill remembered the first time the subject of unconditional surrender had come up. Early 1943. North Africa, near Casablanca, where Roosevelt and he had met to decide Allied priorities and to knock together the heads of the feuding French generals. They’d held a press conference and Churchill had listened as the President had suddenly announced a new war objective, without consultation and, perhaps, without consideration, and all built upon some rickety piece of American history.
“Some of you Britishers know the old story,” Roosevelt had begun. “We had a general called U. S. Grant. His name was Ulysses Simpson Grant, but in his day he was known as Unconditional Surrender Grant. That’s our policy too.”
And that was it. A policy born. Fallen out of the desert sky. It was the first Churchill had ever heard of it. Roosevelt had been in the war barely twelve months and already he was trying to take it over. The policy of unconditional surrender was crass, discourteous, simplistic, outrageous, misconceived, and, above all, wrong: it would probably prolong the war, make the Germans fight ever harder, to the bitter end. But there it was, dangling in front of the press corps. So what could Churchill do? Declare that the President was talking through his socks? Openly rip holes in the alliance? Show them both up? Instead he said nothing, had sulked in silence about a war distorted, a war extended, a war made absolute, no matter what the circumstances, all for the sake of a cheap headline.
Like so much of Roosevelt’s politics, it was a half-formed idea dressed in high-minded phrases. A few months previously the American president had endorsed the Morgenthau Plan that amounted to the destruction of the German state and its reduction to an agricultural outback, yet now he seemed uncertain whether there should be one, two, or five German states, whether reparations should be paid, to whom, or how much. Roosevelt wriggled in discomfort. He had a hacking cough and the skin of his face behind his pince-nez was sticky. Stalin was trying to engage him, asking his opinion, seeking his advice, using a tone of humility that was quite unknown to his Russian colleagues, yet Roosevelt was not to be won over. He was distracted, wouldn’t decide. The man who had plucked the policy of unconditional surrender out of the desert air as if it were a gnat now declined to come to a conclusion about anything. And he leaned on such weak reeds—Stettinius and the ailing Hopkins, seated behind, who had his head bent as though in prayer, but probably in sleep.
Ah, but Stalin. The Russian seemed to know precisely what he wanted. Revenge. Reparations. Retribution. By the truckful and trainload. “We will have half of everything,” he growled, in his soft Georgian accent.
Darkness was falling outside the ballroom. Roosevelt’s head sagged as he gave his eyes yet another massage; he seemed unwilling to contradict. He left it to Churchill.
“Marshal, I fear that the Russian economists have forgotten the lesson of the last war,” the Englishman said, careful to lay his criticism at the door of Stalin’s advisers rather than the man himself. “A load of terrifying weight was placed upon the German back. It crippled them. They were so overwhelmed by paying reparations and loans that soon a single loaf cost a billion Reichsmarks and the nation starved.”
“You talk to me, a Russian, of suffering?” It was noticeable how Stalin, so considerate of Roosevelt’s opinions, was so willing to cut across Churchill’s.
“I am not against reparations—how could I be? No victorious nation will emerge from this war more destitute than my own. I am happy to accept reparations. But I would be happier still to accept a peace with Germany that will endure.”
“That’s why they must be crushed.”
“That was what we tried the last time. It was a policy that played into the hands of the extremists rather than the peacemakers.”
“Germany will have peacemakers when Poland has a pope!”
The insult was intended to finish the topic and Birse, the British translator who was sitting beside the Prime Minister, flushed with irritation as he spelt it out, but Churchill was not to be so easily distracted. He grabbed for a metaphor. “If you want the German horse to pull a great wagon, Marshal, you must first of all keep it fed.”
“You feed him, then! But I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him get close enough or grow strong enough to kick me in the bollocks again.”
The flush on Birse’s cheek rose several hues. His pencil flooded across the notepaper and sweat broke on his brow as he translated.
The rising heat also galvanized Roosevelt into action. “Gentlemen,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose, “I sense this matter requires a little further study. It’s not one for this table or this evening. I suggest we refer the matter to our ministers and officials—perhaps a reparations commission. We could set it up in Moscow.”
“Excellent suggestion, Mr. President,” Stalin exclaimed immediately, and Roosevelt nodded in gratitude.
Churchill sat in silence. He could only nod his reluctant acquiescence as the other two played their game. Another decision delayed. Another settlement postponed, and all the while the Russian armies tramped further west.
“After all,” Roosevelt continued, “when this war is over the conditions will be entirely different from the last. America will be generous to a fault, as we always have been, but in all candor I cannot see how I could ever get the approval of Congress to finance Germany again. We will not repeat the mistakes made last time. We have learned our lesson. Europe’s problems require a European solution, and when the fighting’s over I reckon the American people will decide that we’ve just about done our bit. Time to head home.”
Suddenly, Churchill found Stalin staring at him, catching his eye, knowing that they both shared the same thought. Was this merely a passing presidential homily? Or was there a point to it?
Stalin picked up his empty pipe, with its characteristic white spot on the stem, a Dunhill English briar, and sucked thoughtfully. “How long will American troops stay in Europe after the war is over, Mr. President?” he asked softly.
“They’ll stay while we’re working out the peace but… it’s my view that I couldn’t get Congress or the people to keep an army in Europe for long. Two years would be the limit.”
“Your country has already been more than generous—and patient—with us Europeans,” the Russian declared respectfully. Then Stalin turned towards Churchill. There were no words. All he had to say was contained in his yellow eyes, and in the small smile he was unable to resist.
Two years. Two years! Inside, Churchill was screaming like a condemned man who had just seen the executioner sharpening his axe. Poland obliterated. Germany in ashes. France prostrate. Britain destitute. And America gone. Nothing would stand between the Kremlin and the Atlantic coast—nothing, that was, but honor, and humanity, and any agreement they might reach together at this conference.
And what Stalin knew of honor or humanity could be crammed into the bowl of his pipe.
***
He was wallowing in the bath, an enormous cast-iron tub the size of an inland sea that could have met the ambitions of any three of his admirals—but the admirals, like the rest of the British party, were condemned to wait in line in the annex with towels hanging from their arms or submit to the babushka and her sponge in the garden. For a period of time that seemed to threaten imminent drowning, Churchill disappeared beneath the steaming waters, only to emerge like a pink-skinned Poseidon to glare once more at the hapless Sawyers.
Sawyers was having one of his turns. He wouldn’t listen to reason. He’d had the temerity to ask, as Churchill was stepping into the bath, if there was any news about “our Pole.” It was most unlike Sawyers to raise that sort of business with the Old Man, but the horny-handed, missing-fingered plumber had clearly impressed the butler. Sawyers wanted action.
Yet, for all his love of secrecy and the dark arts, Churchill wasn’t convinced. He had no firm idea about this Pole, the truth of his story or the nature of his purpose. He couldn’t even b
“Even if it were wise, Sawyers, how could we do anything for him? How could we hide him, smuggle him away?”
“We got more than three hundred people here, and the Yanks about the same. What difference would one more make?”
He had a point. Churchill cast his mind back to his first wartime meeting with Roosevelt, even before America had joined the fray. On that occasion he had sailed across the Atlantic to Newfoundland with a party that numbered barely fifty, but the business of diplomacy, like the business of war, had grown out of control. So many hangers-on, so many desk-sailors eager to escape the grayness of wartime London, to indulge in free hospitality and wash away their cares in new and exotic places. Still, he muttered to himself, maybe the bloody Crimea in February wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Teach the buggers a lesson.
“We could slip him in the back of one of the cars,” Sawyers continued.
“No, that would be wrong. Against all the rules. We dare not. Think of the consequences if we were discovered trying to smuggle him out. This conference is already hanging by a thread. Such a thing could bring the whole edifice crashing down on our heads.”
Sawyers sulked. “You were once on the run. In South Africa, during Boo-er War. They helped you.”
Churchill cursed his bloody impertinence. Such comparisons were grossly unfair. And now the wretched man appeared to be holding the soap hostage. “We cannot save every benighted Pole.”
“Then how’s about savin’ the one? Just for a start? Don’t he deserve it?”
“Enough of all this common-man solidarity, Sawyers. I’m not bloody Solomon.”
“You’re not bloody Marshal Stealin’, either.”
TUESDAY, 6th OF FEBRUARY, 1945
THE THIRD DAY
FOUR
“Penny for them, Papa?”
“Oh, nothing, Mule. Just enjoying the sun.”
He had taken a few moments to sit outside and allow himself to be embraced by the warm winds as they trickled off the sea, carrying with them the scent of the zinnias and geraniums that the Russians had imported and planted in pots to give the impression of perpetual summer. Nonsense, of course, even fraudulent, like so much of this place, yet sitting out here was better than staying inside and listening to the intellectual agonies of Anthony and Alec, or being left alone with his foreboding.
Beyond the carefully manicured terraces, the dark, oily sea spread out to the horizon, sprinkled with a frosting of sunlight, while from nearby came the gentle, almost musical sounds of water dripping from the Fountain of Tears.
“It’s a copy of a famous Tartar fountain at the Bakhchisarai Palace,” Sarah told him.
“Little too ornate for Chartwell.”
“And far too sad.”
“Sad? How can a bloody fountain be sad?”
“You’re such an unromantic beast, Papa,” she said, nudging his elbow. “It’s a tale of endless love.”
He groaned in mock boredom.
“It’s about one of the last Tartar Khans,” she continued. “He broke all the rules and fell in love with a girl who was part of his harem, but he had a reputation for such cruelty that she refused to love him in return. Then she died, and he was inconsolable. So he had the Fountain of Tears built. It would weep for ever, he said, just as he would. Don’t you think that wonderful?”
“I think it highly improbable.”
“Oh, Papa, you’re such a lost cause!”
“So they tell me.”
“Weren’t you distracted with love when you first met Mama?”
“We sat and watched bugs crawling across the stones of the Greek temple at Blenheim. Is that the same thing?”
She squeezed his arm playfully.
“Anyway, who was the magical woman who could cure such cruelty and tame the harshest passions in the breast of man? We could use her wiles right now.”
“She was supposed to be the greatest beauty and came to him as booty from one of his wars.”
“Where?”
“In Poland.”
He groaned once more, this time in earnest. “Then the Khan was right to build a Fountain of Tears, for her and all her kin.”
Beneath them, they could see a family of dolphins agitating the water. They had discovered a school of sardines and were encircling the fish, forcing them closer together to make them easy plunder. The sea began to froth and sparkle in the sun as the dolphins pirouetted and leapt in what quickly became a dance of death. As Churchill stared, transfixed, seagulls joined in the attack.
Then Cadogan was calling. The car was ready.
“I must go for lunch with the President,” Churchill sighed, “to see whether we have all become sardines.”
***
The Germans began their preparations for destroying Piorun early that morning. There was so little of real substance to destroy. Most of the town was built of wood, but they mined the two stone bridges that crossed the meandering river, then they mined the church, and soon it was done. For the rest, incendiary grenades and flame-throwers would be enough.
A loudspeaker truck toured the scanty streets blaring out its message.
The people were told that the execution would take place at four that afternoon in the square. Attendance was compulsory. They were informed that any inhabitant of Piorun found to be missing would be shot, along with the rest of their family.
Yet already the town seemed to have died. No one walked the snow-swept cobbles, no trader set out his stall, no children played, no baby cried, no lessons were taught. Doors were bolted. Two elderly women shuffled with bowed heads towards the church, but found a German soldier on guard outside and quickly retraced their path. Even the scavenging dogs seemed to sense the tension and retreated. From behind shuttered windows, from the corners of dark alleyways and through the cracks in ill-fitting doors, all eyes were fixed on the clock above the town hall as it inched its way towards the hour set for dying.
***
“I don’t understand it, Alec. It disturbs me. It offends me!” Churchill turned on the taps to create a satisfying echo that would outwit any listening device.
“And what is that, Prime Minister?” Cadogan replied primly, still smarting from the indignity that had been inflicted upon him the moment they’d arrived at the Livadia. No sooner had they been told that the President and his other guests were waiting for them than Churchill had frogmarched Cadogan into the lavatories as though he were a naughty schoolboy. It brought back unpleasant memories of his first year at Eton.
“I’d hoped for the chance to have a quiet word with Franklin. On his own. One to one. Now it seems there’s a bloody posse waiting for us.”
“Is that a problem?”
“It is when I find it easier to arrange a private conversation with Stalin than with the President of the United States.”
“Perhaps he feels he needs the support of others. He’s looking so tired.”
“Might there be another reason?”
Cadogan cocked his over-large head and examined his tie in the mirror. “We have to consider the possibility that the interests of the United States and Great Britain are no longer as close as they used to be.”
Churchill grunted and bent over the wash-basin like a boxer in his corner.
“We also have to consider the possibility that it’s a little of both,” Cadogan continued, adjusting his Windsor knot. “He intends to go behind our backs”—the knot was once again perfect—“and he doesn’t want to be bullied by you about it.”
“I don’t bully,” Churchill growled impatiently, jerking the plug from the
And at considerable length, but Cadogan daren’t suggest that. It was common knowledge that Stalin doodled and Roosevelt cat-napped whenever Churchill launched into one of his sweeping panoramas; the instinct that guided the Prime Minister so well in front of microphones and massed audiences sometimes deserted him in more intimate settings. If only Winston would read his briefing papers and stick to the points the Foreign Office had given him, but that was a little like hoping for salmon to swim around ready-smoked.
“Since it’s the President’s lunch, perhaps we should listen to him before responding,” Cadogan said.
Churchill snorted. He was sure that an insult lay buried in there somewhere but Cadogan didn’t elaborate, concentrating instead on wiping his hands with meticulous care on a harsh white cotton towel, which he dropped into a basket. Churchill, from afar, simply hurled his. The towel didn’t make it, flapping to the floor like a swan that had been shot through the heart.
The President’s room was poorly lit and had the aura of perpetual dusk—a little like the frail Hopkins, who was also there, along with Harriman and others. As Churchill and Cadogan entered, Roosevelt waved from his chair. He was already seated at the lunch-table; it was his habit to ensure that he had been lifted from his wheelchair and into his place before any visitors arrived.
“Franklin, I see you have us outnumbered.” Churchill strode across the room to shake Roosevelt’s hand.
“Winston, I know that’s the way you like it. You enjoy playing Custer, while I get no choice but to be Sitting Bull.”
“It was Sitting Bull’s victory.”
“Was it? I’ve never been sure on that one. Trouble is, Custer never knew when he was beaten.”
It was another of the gentle jibes they’d been using since their first wartime conference in Newfoundland nearly four years earlier, yet Churchill detected an undercurrent to this exchange. Perhaps it was nothing more than his overactive imagination, some of the bruises coming out, but nevertheless he decided on caution. He adopted Cadogan’s advice and during lunch he did little but listen. He intervened only for the purpose of discovering more about the President’s intentions and, reluctantly and contrary to all his instincts, he didn’t delay matters with argument.