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THE

CHANGED THE WORLD
1945

by Brian Gardner

THE YEAR THAT CHANGED THE WORLD
is a rich and vivid account of what surely
must be regarded as the most fateful
single year in recent history - the year of
the last great military victories of the
Ardennes, Iwo Jima and Okinawa; the
great Conferences of Potsdam and Yalta;
the defeat o2 Churchill and the death of
Roosevc-t; and, aocve all, the year of the
atomic bon^i under ^ I o ; o shadow the
high hopes for v^orld peacd i^ way to
the grim dawn of Jio cold war.

The story of 1945 is i :o *h^ story of
supreme opportunities lost or. t * -&gt; ; ele
and of momentous tragedy. By re-&lt;_ . i n-
ination of the events that made 1945 a
turning point in world history, by his
reappraisal of the background which pro
duced them and allowed their effects to
persist, by throwing a new light on de
cisions now deeply regretted, Mr. Gard
ner has added a new dimension to our
understanding of the period and of our
present situation. Events domestic, in
ternational, trusting, deceitful, all played
their part in the patchwork which was to
determine our future. The closing stages
of the war, the Bomb, a West gone wild
with joy at the news of victory, the Three
Power conferences were important key
points: but so too were the lesser known
incidents which Mr. Gardner clarifies -
the ending of the monarchy in Yugo
slavia, the German evacuation of East
Prussia, the machinations of de Gaulle
ind of the Doenitz Government, and so
i any others which can now be seen as

(continued on back flap)

0109

940.932 G22y
Gardner, Brian

The year that changed the
world: 1^5- N.T., Coward-Mc-

940.932 G22y 64-14156 $5-75
Gardner, Brian

The year that changed the
world: 1945. N.Y., Coward-Mc-
Sann [1964]

356p. maps.

The Year That Changed
The World

1945

By Brian Gardner

THE BIG PUSH
A Portrait of the Battle of the Somme

GERMAN EAST
The Story of the First World War in East Africa

BRIAN GARDNER

The

Year That Changed
The World

1945

COWARD-McCANN, Inc.
New York

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION 1964

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced
in any form without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Library of Congress Catalog
Card Number: 64-13055

Manufactured in the United States of America

Our pilgrimage has brought us to a sublime moment in the
history of the world. From the least to the greatest, all must
strive to be worthy of these supreme opportunities. There is
not an hour to be wasted; there is not a day to be lost.

WINSTON S. CHURCHILL, August 16, 1945

.ff HAS C T,

GS14158

Twice in this century the Western Powers have won a world war and
lost the peace. Why? Mainly, I think, because of their continuous
refusal to acknowledge political realities, without attempting to
alter them; and because of their failure to comprehend the nature
of the twentieth-century revolution. Despite the terrible warning
of the inter-war years, the Western democracies clung, at Saa
Francisco in 1945, to the out-dated Wilsonian principle of self-
determination , which in practice meant secession and isolation;
and covered it up with the smoke-screen of a high-sounding but
impotent international superstructure. . . , There was not really
much excuse for our failure in 1945. This was the moment when
Britain could, and should, have taken the undisputed leadership of
a united Western Europe. We were the only country which had not
been defeated and occupied, our prestige was as high as it has ever
been, and we could have had it on our own terms. We did nothing.
The death of Roosevelt and the subsequent defeat of Churchill at
the General Election left the West bereft of leadership for a critical
year, and Stalin took full advantage of it The Potsdam agreement
set the seal on the Russian/0/V accompli.

Lord Boothby, in My Yesterday, Your Tomorrow

Since America fights for no political objective, except peace, no
political directives should be given to American commanders in the
field. They should be completely free to determine their strategy
on military grounds alone. To pursue a political aim is to practise
Imperialism. This was the doctrine applied by Marshall and his
colleagues in the conduct of the war against Germany, although
with an ambivalence not uncharacteristic of the American people,
it was not always applied in relation to the war against Japan.

Chester Wilmot, in The Struggkfor Europe

The Russians trust the United States more than they trust any power
in the world. I believe they not only have no wish to fight with us,
but are determined to take their place in world affairs in an inter
national organization, and above all, they want to maintain friendly

relations with us.

Harry Hopkins, 1945, from The White House Papers

Stalin s actions [in 1945] show many strange and striking contra
dictions which do not indicate that he had any revolutionary
master-plan. They suggest, on the contrary, that he had none . . ,
the control of events over him was much stronger than his control
over events.

Isaac Deutscher, in Stalin: A Political Biography

All of us want to secure peace for at least fifty years. The greatest
danger is conflict among ourselves, because if we remain united the
German menace is not very important

J. V. Stalin to Winston Churchill, Yalta, 1945

The question for the future is whether the new enterprises on which
such high hopes have been founded can be made, by the common
effort of humanity, so to grow and prosper in the time to come that
in the ultimate record of history the date 1945 shall be remembered
even more vividly as the birth-time of a better world than for the
vast and dramatic events on the battlefield and the crowning victory
to which they led.

The Times, January ist, 1946

CONTENTS

1 GRAND DISALLIANCE i

2 EXULTANT DISCORD 43

3 UNREMITTING BATTLE 69

4 INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY 107

5 WIDENING CHASM 163

6 MOMENTOUS DECISION 239

7 UNEASY PEACE 275

Sources and Notes 315

Index 329

MAPS

The Western Front, January-March 1945 8

The Eastern Front, January-April 1945 36

The Struggle for Poland, 1914-45 58

The Collapse of Germany, April 1945 92

The Withdrawal of the Western Powers, July 1945 204-5

The War in the Pacific 244

1 Grand Disalliance

The state of the war, January

The battle of the Ardennes

Anglo-American military differences

Anglo-American political differences

The Polish dispute

The Russian attitude

Yugoslavia

Preparations for the Yalta conference

The Japanese war: the invasion of Luzon

The assault by rocket on S.E. England

The Russian offensive in Poland and in Eastern

Europe

The Anglo-American meeting at Malta
More Anglo-American military differences

1 GRAND DISALLIANCE

The world was at war; once more great American and British armies
rolled eastwards across the hills and plains of France towards the
Rhine. For the fourth time in living memory French and Belgian
farmers and townsfolk were scuttling down to cellars and shelters as
the thunder and terror of war bore down on them. The clanking of
tanks, the metallic whirr of armoured-cars, and the crash and fumes
of explosives overwhelmed their daily lives. There was, it seemed,
nothing that ordinary men could do to dissuade the politicians, the
generals, the statesmen and the great leaders of the world from up
rooting their existences twice in every generation. But on January i st,
1945, after more than five years of bitter and wretched war that had
seen Germany rise to a position of power that had not been equalled
in Europe since the days of the Romans, it seemed that at long last
peace was within reach. Just one long, desperate grasp, and those
beatific days of peace, dimly remembered from the late 19308,
would return only less anxious, more prosperous and better in
every way. Even the cynical believed that this time peace would
last, if not for ever, at least into the distant future. No one born
before 1930, surely, it was said, would allow the same mistakes to
happen again.

So strong were thoughts of the end of the war and after, which
millions now permitted themselves to think of after years of denial,

GRAND DISALLIANCE

that Winston Churchill, Prime Minister, in a New Year message to
the Primrose League, said: Before many months have passed the
evil gang that has too long dominated this unhappy continent will
be wiped out. Until that end has been achieved there can be no
return to our normal habits. It would be tragic folly to prolong, by
any slackening in the last phase, the agony that a megalomaniac
ambition loosed upon the world. Churchill considered that the war
in Europe would be over by October ist, 1945 (the last date officially
fixed by the Cabinet Office for the likely end of the war had been
December 3 1 st, 1944). In a memorandum for the New Year, Churchill
said: The expectation is very hard fighting all through the summer
on land, a recrudescence of U-boat activity on a serious scale from
February or March, and the revived challenge of the German Air
Force implied in their leadership in jet-propelled aircraft.

The year was five minutes old when Adolf Hitler, whose out
rageous, half-mad ambitions had plunged the world into the state
existing that day, also spoke on the situation of the war. Broad
casting to the Third Reich, but especially to his tired and anxious
troops, he said that Germany was winning the war. The fact that
every evidence was to the contrary did not leave him abashed. He
asked the German people, dazed with saturation bombing, to trust
him and his lieutenants. As he spoke, Berlin was undergoing one of
the heaviest air-raids it had known, with the strongest force yet sent
to the German capital dropping 4,000 Ib bombs like giant eggs falling
through the winter night. He concluded a rousing speech with the
words: My belief in the future of our people is unshakeable.

On New Year s Day the American President, Franklin D,
Roosevelt, began his thirteenth year of office; the only President to
have been elected for a fourth term, he had come to that office first in
March 1933 in what seemed, and was, another age. It had been the
same year that Hitler had first come to power in Germany. His
Vice-President was a little known Senator, Harry S. Truman; but,
as everyone knew, his was a comparatively unimportant post, and
most people outside his own country, and even some of those in it,
had never heard of him. The Deputy Prime Minister in Britain,
Mr C. R. Attlee, Leader of the Labour Party, was also considered a
comparatively insignificant figure in the inner Allied councils of the
war. The other great leader of the world, Josif V. Stalin, did not
notice the passing of the old year, apart from a curt acknowledge
ment of the good wishes conveyed to him on the occasion by the
other two of the Big Three . Like them, a man completely occupied

THE STATE OF THE WAR, JANUARY 1945

by a mass of affairs and decisions, he preferred to conserve his time
for more important matters. That other men, potentates like him
self, thought such courtesies a necessary adjunct to diplomacy both
bewildered and slightly amused him. Meanwhile, silent, lonely and
enigmatic, he worked with his small staff in his rooms in the
Kremlin. As Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart has said: Millions of
words have been written about [Stalin], yet little is generally known
of the true character of this man who launched Soviet Russia into
the twentieth century and put his indelible mark on history . . .
gangster, genius, bank robber, theological student, brothel-keeper,
poisoner, mass-murderer and master of political strategy the man
who for thirty years ruled Russia by terror yet became a hero saint. 5
The world at large preferred not to think of this tough old revolution
ary as in any way sinister. For some years he had been thought of by
the Western World, and still was, as a gruff old ally whose for
bidding exterior might even conceal a kindly heart. He was known
to all, President and Prime Minister, soldier and sailor, factory
worker and newspaper reporter, as Uncle Joe .

The start of the year saw the Allies closing their grip around the
German core in Central Europe. In Italy the advance of the army
of Field-Marshal Sir Harold Alexander had come to a standstill
only through a lack of supplies and men that had been diverted to
the more important sector of the Western Front, but already there
were signs of an impending German collapse in the area, with
Italian partisans desperately and heroically attempting to salvage
some honour from the debacle of that country s recent history. In
Greece, where civil war had followed the German evacuation the
previous year, prompt action by British troops was restoring some
stability. A Communist attempt to seize power had been met with
force, and what had looked only a few weeks before a certain prize
for ruthless Communist partisans was now a democratic state, as
befitted the home of democracy, looking somewhat shakily to the
future. Archbishop Damaskinos, Metropolitan of Athens, had been
appointed Regent on December 30th, but there was still some street
fighting in the capital. The British intervention in Greece had met
with considerable criticism from America, but few people attached
much weight to what seemed a purely isolated example of mis
understanding and suspicion of motives among friends. The
Germans had retreated helter-skelter in front of irate and deter
mined partisans in Yugoslavia, under an enterprising leader called
Tito, and of a seemingly irresistible Russian advance from the East.

GRAND DISALLIANCE

Both Rumania and Bulgaria had realized that they were on the wrong
side and, having made approaches to the Allies, watched with alarm
as the Red Army overran their territories. In Hungary a long and
bitter battle was being waged for the city of Budapest, with the
Russians encircling a German force there. In Poland the advance
was temporarily halted.

In the war in the East the Axis powers, namely Japan, were
also on the defensive; General Douglas MacArthur, Commander-
in-Chief, South-West Pacific, had returned, in something like
state, to the Philippines. In Burma, the forgotten Fourteenth
Army of Lieutenant-General Sir William Slim had suddenly
become news. Having built up an impressive fighting force, with
a tremendous esprit de corps, from a defeated and tired army, Slim
was pushing the Japanese back through the jungle. On New Year s
Day the Fourteenth Army had advanced 300 miles from the
Chindwin River, which had been crossed only six weeks before,
and was now eighty-five miles from Mandalay.

Across the world, in London, another well-worn battlefield was in
the front line once more. To the great alarm of every expert on de
fence, to say nothing of countless ordinary citizens, rocket bombs
were raining on the city and suburbs daily, and there was nothing
much anyone could think of to stop them. The publication of the
New Year s Honours List provided no comfort. The news that the
Right Hon. David Lloyd George had become Earl Lloyd George
came like a distant sigh from a forgotten age.

The most dramatic activity at the beginning of January 1945 was
taking place at the old cockpit of Europe where Belgium, France,
Luxemburg and Germany congregate.

(ii)

It was bitterly, cruelly cold in the Ardennes; colder than local in
habitants could ever remember it having been. In snow and icy
wind, with temperatures below zero all day, Hitler had made the
last throw of a desperate gambler. Already, during autumn and
winter of 1944, the Allied advance in Europe had been slowed and
halted by a brilliant, if improvised, defence; a defence that had
benefited from the lack of a singleminded, concerted offensive on

THE BATTLE OF THE ARDENNES

the part of the Allies, On December i6th Hitler had struck on a
front forty miles wide at the Ardennes, with the intention of
crossing the Meuse and reaching Antwerp. It was a bold throw, but,
from Hitler s point of view, attack was better than seeing his man
power whittled away in stationary defence. All the German generals
concerned, and especially von Rundstedt, later insisted that the
whole thing was Hitler s doing, even down to details of tactic and
formation. Achieving some surprise (although American Intelligence
had reported a German build-up at this sector), the thrust met at
first with considerable success in an area where similarly concen
trated German thrusts had met with success three times already in
the century. The American forces holding the line reeled and fell
back. The Germans, through their experiences on the Russian
Front, had better techniques at this kind of winter warfare. The con
flict that emerged was, according to one of its historians, the greatest
pitched battle ever fought by the United States. . . . Unlike any
other campaign in World War Two, it was conceived in its entirety
by Adolf Hitler; over a million soldiers were involved.

In the Battle of the Bulge Americans faced some of the worst and
toughest fighting in the history of their nation. Fox-holes and dug
outs were waterlogged and muddy when they were not frozen into
hard, inhospitable wounds in the tortured earth. Snow descended
continually, adding an eerie element to the battlefield. Visibility
was always bad, and troops stumbling forward through snow and
frozen slush would come upon road-blocks and well-disguised slit-
trenches before they realized the danger. When it was not snowing,
it was misty and the air nicotine-coloured with fog, smoke and
fumes. Above all, it was cold.

Then, suddenly, the weather improved; still bitingly cold, the
sky cleared. The German attack, which had progressed sixty miles
and encircled Bastogne, around which there was desperate fighting
night and day, for the first time became really vulnerable from the
air. Appreciating the danger, the Luftwaffe attacked Allied airfields
on January ist. But the Luftwaffe, manned by half-trained pilots,
battered in numerous fights and handicapped by a once forceful
but now indolent and complacent commander, was not what it had
been. However, considerable damage was done to airfields in
Belgium and north-east France, and the loss of aircraft was great;
but the Luftwaffe suffered severely, too (over 100 planes), and, as
Major-General Francis de Guingand, Field-Marshal Montgomery s
Chief of Staff, pointed out; *We could afford it, whilst the enemy

GRAND DISALLIANCE

could not afford the cost of his audacious attack. Nevertheless, the
British Chief of Air Staff got a very severe reprimand indeed from
Winston Churchill about the lack of dispersion of grounded air
craft on RAF airfields in Northern Europe.

The change in weather which had permitted this unaccustomed
German air activity also worked to their disadvantage. Although not
as quick to take advantage of it as the Germans, the Allied air
forces were soon decorating the pale blue skies in tight formations,
picking out their targets on the magnificent white desert below. And
their targets were two: the lines of supply and the neck of the Bulge.
For by the time of the good weather, and the turn of the year, the
American forces were already regaining the initiative. Von Rund-
stedt s offensive had run out of momentum, was tottering and
beginning to fall back. Its problem of supplies, practically all of
which had to come down two roads through the neck, was not
helped by the large number of empty trucks which had been sent up
to collect loot from the captured towns and villages; these clogged
up the roads and helped the Allied airmen in their simple task of
blasting the vehicles massed below.

There was a good deal of confusion in the American lines at this
time, the local organization of the ground forces having not yet
recovered from the initial disruption. Rumours abounded; some of
them were high phantasy. Everyone was on the look-out for spies
with American accents, wearing American uniforms, driving Ameri
can vehicles. Everyone had heard of them. No one had seen them.
American commanders were well up with their men, completely
contrary to the fashion in Europe in the previous war, twenty-seven
years before. One of them, Major-General Matthew Ridgway, re
called the scenes of despair in the front line, and one soldier in
particular: He was just crouched there in the ditch, cringing in
utter terror. So I called my jeep driver and told him to take his
carbine and march this man back to the nearest MP, and if he
started to escape to shoot him without hesitation. He was an object
of abject cowardice. By this time, in a long war, the nerves of
fighting men were taut, and the sensibilities of others hardened.
The German generals, too, were close to the war. Field-Marshal
Waelter Model, an energetic and clever tactician who commanded
the northern sector of the German Front, went right up to the line to
see what could be done about the waning Ardennes offensive. The
desire of the generals, both of the Allies and the Germans, to get
into the firing line was no doubt a subconscious effort to avoid the

THE BATTLE OF THE ARDENNES *

criticisms levelled at the commanders in the previous war; it was the
frequent concern of their superiors. But apart from this human
foible, the standard of generalship was high. In the Second World
War the generals were men of an intelligence and resourcefulness
that permitted them to make the fullest use of new aspects of war
fare, such as combined operations, tanks, and air support; in sharp
contrast to the generals of the First World War.

The situation at the Ardennes had caused some quickening of the
pulse at Allied GHQ, and in London. It would, it was realized by
military and political leaders, be disastrous psychologically for the
Americans to suffer a severe defeat when the war, it seemed, was so
nearly won. There was a danger of a static front settling down, as in
the First World War. Throughout the first week of January the
situation was still serious enough, although the crisis in forming and
holding a line was over. The Germans struggled to increase the
area of the salient, sixty miles long and forty wide, and the Americans
struggled to push it back and close in at its sides. General Dwight
D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, had sent his deputy
(and main British ally), Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, to
Moscow, via Cairo, to press for a resumption of the Russian offen
sive in the East to take some of the weight off the Ardennes. Tedder
was held up by bad flying weather, and Churchill sent a message to
Stalin politely asking if an Eastern offensive would be coming soon.
You yourself know from your own experience how very anxious
the position is when a broad front has to be defended after tempor
ary loss of the initiative. It is General Eisenhower s great desire
and need to know in outline what you plan to do. At this time the
Germans in Warsaw were mopping up the last of the resistance that
had risen in that city months before at the sound of Russian artillery
in the distance. Preparations were under way for the mighty Red
Army to move forward once more. Churchill had decided to send
another 250,000 men to the Front, and, for the first time in the
war, the British Government used its special powers to compel
women of the Services to go abroad. Nine fresh divisions were
being got ready to be sent from the United States. Over 100,000
Negroes serving behind the lines as kitchen-hands, batmen,
orderlies and at other unwarlike tasks were given the opportunity of
volunteering for sterner duties with Negro combat units . To
strengthen the Ardennes Front still further, Eisenhower ordered the
Sixth Army Group to the area, leaving Strasbourg somewhat open
to the enemy. General Charles de Gaulle, heading the French

SECOND BR.

Dempsey

Frankfurt

SEVENTH US,

THE WESTERN

FRONT,
Jan-Mar, 1 945

The Bulge

The Remagen Bridge-head

The Ruhr Pocket

Allied Linefebruary 7 } 1945

THE BATTLE OF THE ARDENNES

Provisional Government in Paris, made immediate representations
as soon as he heard of this plan. National prestige was involved, he
pointed out. He said that Strasbourg was a place of historic im
portance. He told Eisenhower that any withdrawal might mean
the fall of his government. Eisenhower hurriedly cancelled his
order; he could not afford to have his lines of supply endangered
by civil unrest. Eight German divisions actually attacked in this
area on New Year s Day, but this time surprise was not achieved
and the line held. De Gaulle insisted on the retaining of Strasbourg
at all costs, and although some small German advance was made
the city was never in serious danger. For some time de Gaulle had
been depressing other Allied leaders with his insistence on putting
France s concerns before those of the Allies as a whole.

Although many considered him complacent, ineffective and some
what lazy, the amiable Eisenhower was well liked by all his sub
ordinates, including Montgomery, but during recent months there
had been deep mistrust among the British of his ability as a com
mander. They felt he should confine himself to the true duties of a
Supreme Commander (i.e. naval, air and military) and not try to
command the land forces as well. Montgomery wrote to the Chief
of the Imperial General Staff, Field-Marshal Sir Alan Brooke,
that he had neither seen nor spoken to Eisenhower for a month,
and had, indeed, met him only four times since the end of the
Normandy campaign. He is at Forward Headquarters at Rheims,
Montgomery wrote; the Directives he issues from there have no
relation to the practical necessities of the battle. It is quite im
possible for me to carry out my present orders. . . . Eisenhower
should himself take a proper control of operations or he should
appoint someone else to do this. Alan Brooke, himself quite as
critical of Eisenhower s ability as Montgomery, tried to persuade
Montgomery to meet the situation, at least until the Command
organization and strategy . . . prove themselves defective by oper
ational results . Like Montgomery, Alan Brooke particularly ob
jected to Eisenhower s insistence on attacking on a broad front at as
many places as possible. He replied to Montgomery: I have [always]
agreed with you that Ike was no commander, that he had no
strategic vision, was incapable of making a plan or of running
operations when started. Personally I consider Bradley much better
suited to carry out the tasks of land force commander than Ike; he
might make plans, decide on objectives, allot forces, co-ordinate,
etc. Alan Brooke has recorded that Eisenhower s addiction to

GRAND DISALLIANCE

playing golf on the links at Rheims* when he was needed at For
ward Headquarters became so bad during the weeks before the
Ardennes battle that a deputation of his staff, including Americans,
went up to him to tell him that he must get down to it and RUN
the war, which he said he would . At length Alan Brooke went to
Churchill about his worries, and the Prime Minister confided that
he, too, was concerned about the matter. Montgomery wrote a
letter to Eisenhower, couched in terms surprisingly strong for a
subordinate commander, making it more than clear that he felt c we
must get away from the doctrine of attacking in so many places that
nowhere are we strong. We must concentrate such strength on the
main selected thrust that success will be certain. This letter at last
roused Eisenhower; he was furious. Shortly after this von Rundstedt
had launched his offensive at the Ardennes. In view of the fact that
Alan Brooke already believed Eisenhower s policy to be sheer
madness . . . without any reserves anywhere , it did not come as a
surprise to him and the other British commanders that the German
attack met at first with considerable success.

Eisenhower s handling of the Ardennes assault, however, had been
cool and masterly, in contrast to the excitement of some of his
commanders. Indeed, some have considered it his greatest hour as a
military commander. Against the wishes of General Omar Bradley,
who commanded at the southern side of the Bulge, he actually en
couraged some of the American retreat. He said: By rushing out
from his fixed defences the enemy may give us the chance to turn
his great gamble into his worst defeat. Refusing to be panicked, he
directed operations from a champagne king s handsome chateau in
the centre of Rheims. He watched as his line expanded and as the
Germans ran into inevitable supply difficulties as soon as the weather
cleared and the Allies mastered the skies once more. His calm
direction, and his appreciation of the benefits deriving from the
elasticity of lines, surprised those generals, mostly British, who had
little opinion of either his strategy or his handling of his senior
commanders. This latter facet, which was meant to be his special
quality and which had been well publicized in the Press, came under
a severe test during the Ardennes battle. For, after the German
break-through, Eisenhower had quickly realized that Bradley s
command was effectively cut in half. He gave Bradley s two northern
corps to Montgomery s command a daring and decisive stroke.

* Montgomery himself had been pkying *a few holes of golf* when the German
Ardennes offensive was launched.

THE BATTLE OF THE ARDENNES

Eisenhower s decision, which could have led to confusion and
disaster, led to total success. For Field-Marshal Bernard Law
Montgomery, despite the convictions of some American staff
officers not familiar with him, was not a fool. Like Eisenhower,
he, too, kept his head. His gathering-in of the American divisions,
co-ordinating them with his own XXX Corps, and quickly bringing
them to bear on the northern flank of the German advance, was a
brilliant and confident manoeuvre. Patiently he re-established his
front. He visited the commanders of the US First and Ninth
Armies and reported to Alan Brooke: Neither had seen Bradley or
any of his staff since the battle began [this was not surprising, as the
two American armies had been cut off from Bradley]. There were
no reserves anywhere behind the Front. Morale was very low. They
seemed delighted to have someone give them firm orders.

Montgomery, however, was far too patient for Bradley and
General George S. Patton, Commander of the Third US Army
under Bradley. They wanted an immediate pincer movement at the
neck of the Bulge. While Montgomery was in agreement with this
in principle, he felt he could not put all his weight behind it until
he was properly organized. During the previous year Montgomery s
abrupt, clipped and somewhat supercilious manner had been
steadily irritating most of the American commanders who came in
contact with him. Coupled with this was the fact, annoying to
them, that Montgomery seemed to be gaining all the credit from
the British Press for winning the war, and even from some of the
American Press too. Montgomery himself was not averse to taking
any credit that came his way. This might have been all right if he
had been the kind of chummy good-mixer that American military
men appreciate. This, unfortunately, he was not. Ever since his
wife had, tragically and unexpectedly, died many years before,
Montgomery had been a cold figure who seemed to recoil from
close human relationships. The fact that Montgomery, like Alex
ander, was a Field-Marshal, and thus senior in equivalent rank to
all the American generals except Eisenhower, did not improve
matters. The rift between him and Bradley came to an explosive
head towards the end of the Ardennes offensive.* The break in
American and British military relations, already damaged in
Algeria and Normandy earlier, was to become so wide that it
could only be superficially repaired for the remainder of the war.

* Bradley has stated that he had already threatened to resign rather than serve under
Montgomery, and that Patton would have followed him.

GRAND DISALLIANCE

While Pattern was attacking fiercely around Bastogne, Mont
gomery still declined to throw in his reserves, preferring to keep
some troops fresh for a later blow. The American policy, inherent
especially in all Patton s military thinking, was to worry about
reserves when they were needed, and in the meantime to throw
everything into attack. Bradley was an excellent tactician, and a good
organizer. Patton was a forceful and sometimes inspired leader, but
Montgomery, as history was to show, was the only one, including
Eisenhower, who had a grasp of strategy wide enough to take in the
whole landscape of the war and the days that were to follow it.

The trouble really flared up at a Press conference on January yth.
At this Montgomery, in his customary fashion, spoke of the success
ful progress of the battle, with a number of hints that this was
mainly due to him. He had, he said, taken immediate action at the
start of the battle to make sure that the Germans would not get
over the Meuse. When the crisis had come, he said, national
considerations had been thrown overboard . To the Americans this
seemed as if he were saying that when the chips were really down
Eisenhower had been forced to call in the best man available.
Montgomery did not mean that; but he had a remarkable talent for
saying things that could easily cause offence without actually in
tending any. Bradley and his staff (whom Bradley himself des
cribed as acutely sensitive ) were furious. They believed that the
battle was being won despite, rather than because of, Montgomery.
To have a British commander in charge of American troops was
bad enough. For that commander to be Montgomery was barely
tolerable. But for him to claim all credit was outrageous. Bradley
never forgave the pious, teetotalling Montgomery , as he called him
in his memoirs. That Montgomery had also referred at the con
ference to the fact that the battle could not have been won without
the good fighting qualities of the American soldier , and had in
sisted that the Germans had been halted before British divisions
were even committed, went comparatively unnoticed.

Eisenhower wrote of this occasion: I doubt that Montgomery
ever came to realize how deeply resentful some American com
manders were. They believed he had belittled them and they were
not slow to voice reciprocal scorn and contempt. Two days later
Bradley issued a firm statement to the Press acknowledging Mont
gomery s contribution, and defending himself. On the same day,
Eisenhower diplomatically awarded Bradley a Bronze Star, citing
the important part he had played in the battle. Montgomery has

THE BATTLE OF THE ARDENNES

since admitted: 4 I think now that I should never have held that
Press conference. So great was the feeling against me on the part of
the American generals that whatever I said was bound to be
wrong.

It was unfortunate that at this time Montgomery and Churchill
were trying very hard to get Eisenhower to agree that the final
thrust into Germany should be undertaken under one overall com
mand in the field, and that the thrust should take place in the
north, and that the commander should be Montgomery. Although
Eisenhower had not been keen on the idea previous to this point, it
now became an impossibility. Bradley and Patton would not have
stood for it. In retrospect it seems that Montgomery was tactless,
Bradley as touchy as a prima donna, and Eisenhower lax in not
demanding silence and discipline from his generals. That such an
angry exchange could take place in public, while men were dying
in some of the worst conditions of the whole war, does little credit
to anyone involved. Montgomery tried unsuccessfully to smooth
things over in a personal letter to Bradley, saying what an honour it
had been to command American troops and how well they had done.

Meanwhile the twenty-four German divisions packed into the
salient were being gradually pushed back. Realizing withdrawal
was inevitable, von Rundstedt asked Hitler for permission to retire
to his original lines. This was refused. The weather continued
bitterly cold, and there were further snowfalls. Soldiers died of
frostbite and exposure. At night men froze to death in fox-holes.
Anti-freeze mixture froze in radiators. Petrol froze in vehicle tanks.
Many hundreds of men lost fingers; others suffered mental break
downs. Snow-drifts hampered the advance of American infantry,
trudging through untrodden snowfields under the frosty lantern of
a weak winter sun; and the frozen roads, and mines cleverly hidden
in snow, brought mobility almost to zero. But during the second
week in January the American push south of the Bulge had pro
gressed five miles (at a rate of a mile a day) and now Model, too,
was asking permission to withdraw. Hitler s hope that the Wehr-
macht could repeat its success of 1940 in a powerful, irresistible
thrust, had been proved hopelessly overconfident. The German
attempt had failed through lack of air superiority, insufficient fuel,
inexpert planning from Hitler himself, and an underestimation of
the American power to recover so different from that of the
French earlier in the war. On January 8th the Fuehrer authorized
a complete withdrawal. The German withdrawal, considering the

GRAND DISALLIANCE

conditions and the ceaseless battering from Montgomery s and
Bradley s forces, was highly successful. The infantry divisions with
drew to a new position each day, the tanks forming a rearguard.
Owing to the lack of fuel, many tanks and vehicles had to be
abandoned. By January i6th the German army was back where it
had started before Christmas, having suffered 120,000 casualties in
its assault at the Ardennes. American losses, too, had been very
heavy. The First and Third US Armies alone had suffered more
than 75,000 casualties. Hitler was more disillusioned than ever with
his generals, and turned more and more to the faithful Grand
Admiral Karl Doenitz for encouragement and hope. Bewlidered and
angry, he told assembled generals, including von Rundstedt: We
should not forget that even today we are defending an area . . . which
is essentially larger than Germany has ever been, and that there is at
our disposal an armed force which even today is unquestionably
the most powerful on earth/ There were, in fact, 260 German
divisions in the field, twice as many as in May 1940. These were,
however, scattered about in Norway, Yugoslavia and Italy, as well
as on the two main fronts. Hitler s advisers pleaded with him in vain
to evacuate outlying areas. He was particularly anxious to protect
the naval bases in Norway and Denmark, from which, he was
assured, Doenitz s remarkable new submarines were about to launch
a crippling attack on Allied shipping. Thus, of the German divisions,
only seventy-six were on the Western Front; on the Eastern Front
there were 133 divisions.

As the Allies reorganized their line and prepared for a final on
slaught on Germany itself, Winston Churchill made an attempt to
patch up the quarrel between American and British commanders.
Speaking in the House of Commons, he said: I have seen it sug
gested that the terrific battle which has been proceeding since
December i6th on the American front is an Anglo-American
battle. In fact, however, the United States troops have done almost
all the fighting, and have suffered almost all the losses. . . . According
to the professional advice which I have at my disposal, what was
done to meet von Rundstedt s counter-stroke was resolute, wise and
militarily correct. Even if this obvious kind of speech could have the
effect intended, it was too late. American generals, as well as the
already suspicious politicians, were wondering how much they could
trust the British. And the British, in their turn, were wondering
what kind of allies would these over-sensitive, proud Americans
make after the war.

ANGLO-AMERICAN POLITICAL DIFFERENCES

After thirteen days of misadventures with flying and weather,
Tedder and his mission arrived in Moscow. Their journey had been
wasted. For, on January I2th&gt; the great Russian advance through
Poland, Prussia and then on to Berlin had begun.

OS)

If the military situation at this time was characterized by dissension
and distrust among the Allied powers, the political situation was
almost as chaotic. Stalin and Churchill were jockeying furiously
for positions all over Europe, realizing that the coming weeks, as
German power collapsed, would set the map of Europe for many
years. Churchill was particularly concerned about the results of the
vacuum German withdrawal was leaving in Central Europe. He was
anxious to avoid a repetition of what had happened after the
previous war, when an opportunity had been created for the Hitler
monster to crawl out of its sewer on to the vacant thrones . Roosevelt
was not only far away and comparatively inexperienced in European
affairs, he was also a sick man. He did not seem to appreciate the
importance of the Red Army swallowing up Eastern Europe, or so
it seemed in London. He believed he could negotiate eventually
with Stalin. His advisers convinced him that British fears and sus
picions of Russia were, if not unfounded, certainly exaggerated. This
view was strengthened by what sometimes seemed to be a traditional
and conventional attitude by Churchill to the Russian Government,
to which he often referred in messages and memorandums as the
Bolsheviks .

German Intelligence knew something of these differences,
especially of those between the Western powers and Russia. As the
news reached Hitler, it thrilled him. Senior German officials waited
for what they considered the inevitable clash between the Russians
and the British. Goebbels had already written in Das Reich that
the winter would see the end of the unnatural Russo-British
alliance . Hitler increasingly began to think of some kind of alliance
between Germany and Britain that would halt the Russian spread
into Western Europe. As the Soviet advance began again in the
East, he waited daily for an approach from London. On the evening
of January 2yth he discussed the political situation with Reichs-

GRAND DISALLIANCE

marschall Hermann Goering and Colonel-General Alfred Jodl.
Hitler asked whether the British could be happy about the Russian
advances in the East. Jodl replied: Certainly not. Their plans were
quite different. Only later on perhaps will the full realization of this
come. 5 Goering added: They had not counted on our defending
ourselves step by step and holding them off in the West like mad
men while the Russians drive into Germany. Hitler revealed at this
conference that he had ordered a false report to be allowed to fall
into British hands to the effect that the Russians are organizing
200,000 of our men led by German officers and completely in
fected with Communism . . . that will make them feel as if someone
has stuck a needle into them . This conference did much to raise
spirits among the Fuehrer s inner circle. Happy in the belief that,
despite appearances, all might not be lost and that a clever, waiting,
diplomatic game might save them from catastrophe, they prepared
to watch events. But the Nazi leaders understood nothing of high
diplomacy, and even if they had acted on their false hopes, instead of
waiting for them to develop, they would have been sorely dis
appointed. Although they appreciated the rift between East and
West, and the dangers for Britain and America in an uncontrolled
and rapid Russian advance, they knew little of the rift between the
United States and Britain and the suspicions harboured by the
leaders of the former towards the actions and views of the latter.
Goering summed up their appraisal of the situation when, speaking of
the Russian advance, he said: If this goes on we will get a telegram
[from the West] in a few days.

In the late autumn of the previous year Churchill and Anthony
Eden, Foreign Minister, had made a hurried visit to Moscow to
get some agreement from Stalin regarding Russian ambitions in
Europe. Roosevelt, in the midst of an election campaign, had de
clined to attend the meeting. But Churchill had pointed out that the
advancing Russian armies were not going to wait while the returns
from Michigan, South Dakota and Oregon were counted. Much to
the alarm of Roosevelt s advisers, the British had proceeded on their
own. On his very first night in Moscow, Churchill, who believed
the way to deal with Uncle Joe was to talk straight from the
shoulder when you wanted to make a deal with him, and to flatter
him most of the time, had come straight to the point.* He was,

* Churchill assured Roosevelt that Harriman, US Ambassador in Moscow, would be
present at all important meetings, but he was not present on this and a number of other

ANGLO-AMERICAN POLITICAL DIFFERENCES

perhaps, glad of the opportunity to try to settle matters in Europe
without interference from the Americans.

Churchill recalls that he said to Stalin at this meeting: Let us
settle our affairs in the Balkans. Don t let us get at cross-purposes in
small ways. So far as Britain and Russia are concerned, how would
it do for you to have 90 per cent predominance in Rumania, for us
to have 90 per cent of the say in Greece, and go fifty-fifty about
Yugoslavia? While the translater was coping with this, Churchill
wrote out on a sheet of paper:

Rumania

Russia go per cent

The others 10 per cent
Greece

Great Britain 90 per cent

Russia 10 per cent

Yugoslavia 50-50 per cent

Hungary 50-50 per cent
Bulgaria

Russia 75 per cent

The others 25 per cent

Churchill pushed this chart over to Stalin. There was a slight
pause. Then he took his blue pencil and made a large tick on it and
passed it back. This was followed by a long silence, with the
paper predominant in the middle of the table. Each thought his
own thoughts. At length Churchill, apparently somewhat taken
aback by the simplicity and boldness with which such matters
affecting the lives of millions were, it seemed, settled, suggested
that they should burn the paper. Might it not be thought rather
cynical if it seemed we had disposed of these issues in such an off
hand manner? he said. No, you keep it, Stalin had replied.
(Churchill later described these percentages as purely temporary
arrangements.)

Later in this visit Eden, who was well liked by Stalin, had a
curious conversation with the Russian leader. Stalin had said:
Hitler is undoubtedly a clever man, but he has one capital fault-
he doesn t know when to stop. Noticing a smile from Eden, he
added: You are thinking that I, too, don t know when to stop

GRAND DISALLIANCE

You are profoundly mistaken, Mr Eden. I know very well when to
stop, as you will see,

It remained to be seen if Stalin was prepared to stop at the limits
set down on Churchill s chart. At any rate, armed with this piece of
paper, on which was Stalin s heavy tick in blue pencil, Churchill
and Eden returned to London. When the State Department got to
hear of it, they considered the whole scheme a cynical and sinister
manoeuvre to further British ambitions in the Balkans. In Greece,
where Russian armies (twenty divisions) on the Bulgarian frontier
hopelessly outnumbered the small British force (10,000 men), it
seemed that the scrap of paper had been observed a fact of tre
mendous and gratifying importance to Churchill, for ever conscious
of the Empire s vital highway through the Mediterranean. In
Bulgaria, however, the British Charge d affaires had been expelled;
but, on the whole, Churchill was resigned to having to forgo the
25 per cent of that country and the 10 per cent in Rumania. In
Hungary the future was still uncertain. In Yugoslavia Tito had
threatened to hang King Peter if he returned to his country, but
Churchill still had high hopes of keeping the agreed fifty-fifty basis
there, even if he had to throw King Peter overboard to get a suitable
compromise. More important, Churchill s astute action in insisting
upon agreement had deprived the Nazis of their trump card, whether
Stalin strictly kept to the sphere of influence or not. All in all,
Churchill s action, independent of the Americans, might have been
thought a considerable success if it had not been for the increasingly
difficult problem of Poland, about which Stalin seemed quite un
willing to come to any kind of compromise whatever. It was this
fact which disturbed Churchill more than anything else, and
Roosevelt too was highly concerned at what seemed complete in
difference on Stalin s part to the views of the West. Churchill, in
particular, felt deeply about Poland. He could not forget that it
was because of that country that Britain had originally gone to war.
By the beginning of 1945 the Polish problem was uppermost in his
mind. After Poland lay Germany. Rumania was one thing, but
Germany was quite another. He viewed with increasing alarm the
prospect of the Red Army rushing into Germany, the traditional
bastion between Western and Eastern Europe.

Stalin seemed determined to set up a purely puppet government
in Poland, known as the Lublin Government , while both Churchill
and Roosevelt insisted that the exiled government in London be
represented in a caretaker government before free elections were

ANGLO-AMERICAN POLITICAL DIFFERENCES

held. The Soviet Union had broken off diplomatic relations with
the London Polish Government in 1943 when the Poles had asked
for an inquiry by the Red Cross into the discovery at Katyn of
mass graves containing the remains of 4,000 missing Polish officers.
With great difficulty Churchill and Eden had been able to initiate
negotiations between these two Polish authorities during their visit
to Moscow in the previous autumn. These negotiations had met with
failure. The London Poles had refused to admit to the Curzon Line,
although Churchill himself had described it as reasonable and just*,
and their own Prime Minister, Stanislaw Micolajczyk, had been
prepared to accept it under certain conditions. But Micolajczyk had
resigned, and his colleagues were not prepared to make any deal with
Moscow. On December 2yth Stalin had written to Roosevelt: C I have
to say frankly that if the Polish Committee of National Liberation
[the Lublin Government] will transform itself into a Provisional
Polish Government then the Soviet Government will not have any
serious ground for postponement of the question of its recognition.
It is necessary to bear in mind that in the strengthening of a pro-
Allied and democratic Poland the Soviet Union is interested more
than any other Power, not only because the Soviet Union is bearing
the main brunt of the battle for the liberation of Poland, but also
because Poland is a border state with the Soviet Union and the
problem of Poland is inseparable from the problem of security of
the Soviet Union. To this I have to add that the successes of the
Red Army in Poland in the fight against the Germans are to a great
degree dependent on the presence of a peaceful and trustworthy
rear in Poland. Stalin also pointed out that the exiled government
(to whom he contemptuously referred as a handful of Polish
emigrants in London ) had lost the confidence of the Polish popula
tion. This was no doubt true, as few Poles seriously wanted a return
to the days of their inefficient and right-wing governments of the
19305. Roosevelt replied that he was disturbed and deeply dis
appointed . He went on: The fact is that neither the Government
nor the people of the United States have as yet seen any evidence
either arising from the manner of its creation or from subsequent
developments to justify the conclusion that the Lublin Committee
as at present constituted represents the people of Poland. I cannot
ignore the fact that up to the present only a small fraction of Poland
proper, west of the Curzon Line, has been liberated from German
tyranny; and it is therefore an unquestioned truth that the people
of Poland have had no opportunity to express themselves in regard

GRAND DISALLIANCE

to the Lublin Committee. But events were moving fast. Stalin, his
plans and ambitions firmly set, was unmoved by these strong words
from the West. The Red Army was stronger. Already Stalin was
preparing for a final invasion of Poland that would leave the entire
country in his possession. On January 4th Stalin wrote to Churchill:
C I think that Poland cannot be left without a government. Accord
ingly, the Soviet Government has agreed to recognize the Provisional
Polish Government. This was despite a request from Roosevelt to
delay the recognition for one month. Stalin had replied to Roosevelt
that he was powerless to do so, as he could not overrule the
Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, which had already decided on this
course. To this ingenious excuse, Roosevelt did not bother to reply.

Things had come to such a head that Churchill was convinced
nothing more could be done without a meeting of the Big Three as
soon as possible. Now that Roosevelt was seemingly thoroughly
alert to the dangers in Poland, Churchill believed he might be a
strong ally in a stand-fast encounter with Stalin. Clearly now was
the time, for on the Polish problem at least the United States and
Britain were agreed. Roosevelt also was not averse to a conference
of the three leaders, although his main interest was to complete
agreement on a world organization for the post-war period, in
which he was passionately interested, and to ensure help from
Russia in the war against Japan once Germany was defeated. (The
President believed that a combined operation in the Pacific would
produce harmony in the after-war years.) Stalin, also, saw the
moment as an opportune one for a summit meeting. The Anglo-
American forces had suffered an embarrassing reverse in the West.
His new offensive in the East, which he was about to set in motion,
would give him an all-powerful role in Poland. He was aware of
some discord between the British and Americans.

American suspicions of Britain at this time were not only con
fined to the interference of British troops in Greece. There were
also political crises in Belgium and Italy, following the German
withdrawal. It seemed to the American Secretary of State and others
close to the President that, in the words of Robert E. Sherwood, in
the two latter countries Churchill s well-known predilection for
constitutional monarchs was dictating policies which were against
the people s will . Churchill was certainly anxious to establish
governments in the political vacuum in these countries as soon as
possible, and in his desire to forestall Communist ambitions he no
doubt seemed far too hasty to back the right-wing elements. The

ANGLO-AMERICAN POLITICAL DIFFERENCES

American Democratic administration of this time self-consciously
considered itself far left politically of the Conservative Churchill.
Roosevelt, particularly, felt he was more in tune with the Socialist
movements that seemed to be sweeping across Europe in 1945 than
was the British leader whose past associated him with imperialism.
That this was a grave miscalculation of British motives cannot be
doubted; but the attitude was inherent in the contemporary Ameri
can thinking. During the Atlantic Charter meeting the President
had already made his position clear to Churchill. He expected
Britain to renounce all its former Colonial power and set in motion a
complete and widespread freeing of people throughout the British
Empire. Later, at the signature of the Lend-Lease agreement, he
had insisted on the same thing. He told his son Elliott: Tve tried to
make it clear to Winston and the others that while we re their
allies and in it to victory by their side, they must never get the idea
that we re in it just to help them hang on to the archaic, medieval
Empire ideas. He knew that in the East especially colonialism had
been entirely discredited, unable even to prevent Japanese conquest
of the European possessions. He had already made it clear that the
liberation of these places with the help of American arms would
imply complete national freedom after the cessation of hostilities.
He was less suspicious of Holland (he had a verbal agreement
with Queen Wilhelmina that the Dutch East Indies would receive
independence) than he was of France. But his main suspicions
were reserved for Britain. He told Stettinius, his Secretary of
State, that the British would take land anywhere in the world
even if it were only rock or a sandbar . He even considered demand
ing from Britain, France and Holland specific dates when inde
pendence would be granted. It had, therefore, come as a complete
surprise when Churchill, the previous autumn, had offered to send a
large part of the RAF and most of the British Battle Fleet to the
Pacific, for Roosevelt had always assumed that Britain s only interests
in that theatre were regaining Burma and Malaya. The offer only
succeeded in heightening American suspicions still further. Admiral
Ernest J. King, who was obsessed with anti-British feelings, at first
flatly refused to have anything to do with it. However, the Americans
could not be expected to know that already forces were on the move
that would make a new Conservatism, with policies both domestic
and foreign, different to any that had been known before. But it
seems to have been Roosevelt s ambition to see Britain a compliant
power after the war. He believed, moreover, that there was no

GRAND DISALLIANCE

fundamental national conflict of interest between the Soviets and
the United States. He was by no means alone. Eisenhower said that
the long, unbroken friendship between the two countries would not
go for nothing, and pointed out, incorrectly, that, both were free
from the stigma of colonial empire-building by force . All this, how
ever, did not affect the close personal friendliness between Roosevelt
and Churchill, cemented in common interests of anti-Nazism.

That American doubts about Britain could not apply to all
circumstances is shown by the strange affair of King Peter of
Yugoslavia. During January Churchill, following his private fifty-
fifty deal with Stalin the previous year, was attempting to get a
compromise government established in Belgrade. These manoeuvres
do not seem to have been widely known in Washington, although the
President certainly knew of them. Recognizing the military position
of Tito, which made him already virtually dictator of the country
so far freed from German forces, Churchill tried to arrange for a
Regency with a government headed by Tito in which the Royalist
Government in London under Dr Subasic would take part. On
January nth he wrote to Stalin: Mr Eden and I tried our best on
several occasions with King Peter. He is a spirited young man and
feels that the Tito-Subasic agreement is virtual abdication. He has
now put out his declaration without consultation with us and, indeed,
against our advice. He thinks that if he keeps himself free of all that
is going to happen in Yugoslavia in the next few years a day will
dawn for him. I now suggest that we make the Tito-Subasic agree
ment valid and simply by-pass King Peter II. Stalin replied: I
accept your proposal for putting the Tito-Subasic agreement into
effect. By doing so we shall stave off eventual complications. *

This was followed by a message from Churchill to Stalin on
January i4th: Since sending you my telegram of January nth
about Yugoslavia a new development has occurred in that Dr
Subasic, basing himself on King Peter s acceptance in principle of
the agreement, is trying to see whether there is any way of getting
over the King s objections. Stalin, however, was tiring of the
correspondence. He had every intention of putting Tito in power
anyway. He replied: As far as I am concerned I see no grounds for
putting off execution of our decision, which I communicated to you
last time. Churchill, still playing for time, replied: Many thanks.
At our suggestion King Peter is discussing with Dr Subasic the

* The Churchill-Stalin correspondence over Yugoslavia at this time is not mentioned
in Churchill s history of the war.

ANGLO-AMERICAN POLITICAL DIFFERENCES

possibility of finding a solution whereby he can accept the Tito-
Subasic agreement. I think we should give them a little more time
to work it out. On the night of the 22nd there was a startling
development. Churchill telegraphed to Stalin: c King Peter, without
informing us of his intention, dismissed Subasic and his govern
ment last night. We are informing Dr Subasic that the King s action
does not affect His Majesty s Government s intention to see that
the Tito-Subasic agreement is carried out and that we are therefore
ready to transport him and his government to Belgrade. I suggest
that the three great powers should now decide to put the Tito-
Subasic agreement into force and that Tito should be informed that,
if he will consent with Subasic and his government to carry out the
agreement, the three great powers will recognize the united govern
ment formed therewith. Stalin replied that he agreed, and once
more Churchill telegraphed, repeating that it should be carried out
whatever the King may say . In fact, the King, this time under
pressure from the State Department, restored Subasic a week later.
Negotiations with Tito were opened up, and it was agreed that there
should be three Regents, one to be nominated by the King. King
Peter soon found the Regents did not provide him with any power
in Yugoslavia. He said: I have been denied the right to participate
in the affairs of Yugoslavia. The young King continued to bombard
Churchill with letters and messages, some of which he delivered to
10 Downing Street himself, and all of which expressed indignation
at his exclusion from Yugoslav affairs. He also appealed to George
VI ( Uncle Bertie ): Please help me to make Churchill understand
my point of view.

There was only one possible outcome to all this: a Communist
dictatorship under Tito although for Stalin, at least, the story
was later to have a surprising and painful twist. Churchill s efforts
to get his 50 per cent, desperate and persistent, and not helped by
a proud and stubborn young King out of touch with realities,
were in vain. But no one could accuse him in this instance of trying
to prop up a tottering monarchy; but American suspicions remained
as strong as ever. According to Sherwood: Liberal opinion which
was feeling particularly potent after the recent election was be
coming increasingly suspicious of Churchill s apparent determina
tion to restore the unsavoury status quo ante in Europe. The Secre
tary of State issued a statement in which he said: We have reaffirmed
to both the British and the Italian Governments that we expected
the Italians to work out their problems of government along

GRAND DISALLIANCE

democratic lines without influence from outside. This policy would
apply in an even more pronounced degree with regard to govern
ment of the United Nations in their liberated territories. This last
sentence was an obvious reference to Greece and Belgium. Following
this, relations between Downing Street and the White House were
extremely strained. Churchill sent a very strong protest to the
President, and made a long speech in the House of Commons
justifying his policy, especially in Italy, where the British Govern
ment had stated its reluctance to recognize the left-wing Count
Carlo Sforza. John G. Winant, the US Ambassador in London,
reported that the Parliament [in London] is definitely to the Right
of the country .

The British Ambassador in Washington was the respected and
competent Lord Halifax. Affairs had been allowed to get to such a
state that neither he nor Winant was able to do much about them,
especially as the President, who was worrying everyone with his
tired and sickly appearance, was spending much time at Warm
Springs, Georgia. One of Roosevelt s closest confidants, Harry L.
Hopkins, had a unique position of trust in foreign affairs, and was
sent on special assignments by the President, not always to the
pleasure of the State Department. Halifax called on Hopkins and,
instructed by Churchill, gave a vigorous and heated refutation of
the charges that were being made in America about British foreign
policy. Hopkins replied that public opinion about the whole Greek
business in this country was very bad and that we felt the British
Government had messed the whole thing up pretty thoroughly .

The Secretary of State, Edward R. Stettinius, had succeeded
Cordell Hull, who had been forced to resign due to ill health. There
had been a number of candidates for the job, and Stettinius, who
had been Under-Secretary, had not been the most obvious. James
F. Byrnes had been the most likely choice; his high standing in the
Senate would have been a great aid to Roosevelt. But he did not get
on with the ubiquitous and powerful Hopkins, to whom he had
once said keep the hell out of my business . He was also a man
likely to have views of his own, which might even from time to time
differ from those of the President. Sumner Welles was another
possibility, but his appointment would have been resented by Hull;
so Stettinius found himself in this vital role.

President Roosevelt made his fourth inauguration speech on
January 20th. He stood throughout the ceremony, his face twisted
with pain as the heavy braces pressed against his body. It was a

ANGLO-AMERICAN POLITICAL DIFFERENCES

bitterly cold day. The President wore no overcoat or hat; he wore, as
he usually did, a lightweight suit. One of those who was shocked
by his appearance was a man who had seen comparatively little of
the President in recent months: the Vice-President, Harry S.
Truman. The President s voice, though less powerful than before,
still had a thrilling ring of greatness about it. He said: We have
learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human com
munity. We have learned the simple truth, as Emerson said, that the
only way to have a friend is to be one.

They were moving words, and everyone there knew they were
true. For never before in their history had the United States become
so inextricably involved in the affairs of the world.

In London, Churchill kept his ceaseless pressure on all the diplo
matic fronts. During January his correspondence with Stalin was
well over twice that between Stalin and Roosevelt. He now tried to
arrange for a meeting between himself and the President before
going on to Yalta, the Crimean resort where it had been arranged
the Big Three should meet. He thought it would be a good thing if
they could have a talk together, although, anxious not to increase the
President s suspicions any further, he insisted that it would only be
to discuss such affairs as were of concern to them alone. Never
theless, it would certainly have afforded him an opportunity of
explaining his fears about Russian ambitions in Europe privately
to the President. The meeting could, he pointed out, be carried on
unostentatiously . Roosevelt would not hear of such a suggestion.
Churchill then pressed for a meeting of British and American Staff
to discuss the military situation, and to try to iron out the differences
now appearing between American and British military viewpoints.
Roosevelt replied to this: I regret that in view of the time available
to me for this journey it will not be possible for us to meet your
suggestion and have a British-American Staff meeting at Malta
before proceeding to [Yalta]. Churchill, by this time accustomed
to being baulked at every move, pressed his proposal. He also pressed
for a conference of the three Foreign Secretaries, Eden, Stettinius
and Molotov, which he felt should take place before the Yalta
conference to clear some of the ground before the Big Three
actually met. Roosevelt turned this down, saying that Stettinius
could not be spared . Roosevelt seemed to believe that if he could
get to Yalta without being distracted by Churchill, of whom he was
personally fond but whom he was now finding excitable and danger
ous, he could talk to Stalin alone and would stand a good chance of

GRAND DISALLIANCE

settling their problems. He had told Churchill long before: I
know you will not mind my being brutally frank when I tell you
that I think I can personally handle Stalin better than either your
Foreign Office or my State Department. He did, as a concession to
Churchill, now agree to the meeting of the Combined Staffs at
Malta.

Churchill persisted in his request for a meeting of the Foreign
Ministers, this time leaving out Molotov. Eden has particularly
asked me to suggest that Stettinius might come on forty-eight hours
earlier to Malta, 5 he said. But Roosevelt, determined not to be en
snared into this British trap and thus offend the Russians, and
bracing himself for a great effort to reach agreement with Stalin,
once more replied that there was too much business in Washington
for Stettinius to meet Eden in anything but the briefest meeting at
Malta. Hopkins was sent over to Churchill instead; his mission
being more to soothe the Prime Minister than to sound out his views.
He reported Churchill as being in a Volcanic mood. There is no
record of anything useful having been achieved during Hopkins s
visit, most of which appears to have been taken up with social
courtesies. It is significant that, after leaving London, Hopkins
went on to visit de Gaulle in Paris. No doubt Roosevelt considered
the two European leaders equally troublesome, if in different ways.
The State Department had been finding de Gaulle next to impossible.
It was felt in Washington that the American Army had largely
liberated his country, had helped him to power, and yet still the
man was not satisfied. De Gaulle was deeply offended that he had
not been asked to the Yalta conference. The Big Three, he thought,
should be the Big Four. Hopkins found de Gaulle neither responsive
nor conciliatory .

In the last week in January Roosevelt boarded the USS Quincy to
cross the Atlantic, for what he hoped was going to be a historic and
successful meeting between himself and Uncle Joe . With Germany
about to collapse in Europe, there would be problems in that
continent, of course. They could be settled satisfactorily without
panicking about Russian ambitions. Britain, after all, was not blame
less. She would have to curb her ambitions in Greece. And, perhaps
most important of all, the question of Russian participation in the
war against Japan could be settled. Above all, he was determined to
keep an open mind on all things, avoiding preconceived ideas, with
no plan that had to be strictly adhered to, but with one guiding
principle: that free people, no matter whether they had been freed by

THE JAPANESE WAR

British or Russians, had the right to freely elect the kind of govern
ment they wished.

Among the great many messages with which the President had
been bombarded by the Prime Minister in recent weeks were irri
tated ones, almost mincingly polite ones, pleading ones, and pessi
mistic ones such as: This may well be a fateful conference, coming
at a moment when the Great Allies are so divided and the shadow of
the war lengthens out before us. At the present time I think the end
of this war may well prove to be more disappointing than was the
last/

(IV)

Meanwhile, far away in another part of the globe, the Second World
War was also reaching its climax. Although the Japanese had acquired
an immense empire, its very size was beginning to defeat them. The
Japanese Army, still strong in number, was spread out over China
and South-East Asia and in numerous Pacific and East Indian
Islands. Already its forces were retreating in Burma before the
Fourteenth Army, and were on the defensive in the Philippines
where the Americans had returned to the island of Leyte the
previous October. At the naval battle which accompanied the land
ings at Leyte the power of the Japanese Navy had been virtually
destroyed in a tense and confused naval battle, at which the Royal
Australian Navy had played a small but honourable part. The end of
the greedy ambitions of Japanese militarism in the East was at last in
sight. Some of the more level-headed of the Japanese leaders were
beginning to think of how best they could end the war before their
country was humiliated in the total defeat that was clearly coming.
They were overruled by the military hierarchy. At the battle of
Leyte Gulf Japanese suicide-bombers had first made their devastat
ing appearance an act of despair rather than a means of victory.
The High Command ordered a fight to the finish in the Philippines.
By January nearly a quarter of a million American troops were on
Leyte, and Japanese resistance was broken. There were at this time
three main schools of strategic thought about how best to defeat
Japan. The naval theory was that Japan could be defeated by means
of a blockade, especially as America now had command of most of
the Pacific and as Japan was a heavily over-populated area lacking in
internal resources. The Army theory was that Japan would have to

GRAND DISALLIANCE

be gradually encircled and then itself be invaded. Many officers were
certain that nothing short of physical capture and seizure of their
homeland would distract the Japanese soldiers and airmen from their
present hideous capitulation to the death-wish. The Air Force
theory was that Japan could best be defeated by saturation bombing
of her cities and industries; a few senior Air Force men knew of work
in progress on a secret weapon that would support their theory and,
if it were made operation-ready in time, might win the war for them
against Japan. But ever since Roosevelt s great speech after Pearl
Harbour American policy in the Japanese war had been one of
unremitting pressure on every possible front.

General Douglas MacArthur prepared now for the invasion of the
largest and most important of the Philippine islands, Luzon, on
which was Manila, the capital. His plan for the landing was one of
the most brilliant of the war; a subtle and sophisticated series of
decoys and counters, it kept the Japanese commander, General
Tomoyuki Yamashita, the arrogant but by no means incapable
conqueror of Singapore, in continual and, as it proved, fatal doubt.
Yamashita had, however, greater forces than MacArthur had at his
disposal; before the invasion had even begun he had moved his
puppet government and headquarters from Manila to the hills.

There were a great number of difficulties before MacArthur could
put his plan into operation; they were mostly of supply, and particu
larly of supplies for the engineers vital for fighting to take place in
wild country with inadequate roads and bridges. As the invasion
fleet and escorts moved into position, carrier-based aircraft main
tained a permanent umbrella over the Japanese airfields in an attempt
to keep the enemy aircraft on the ground. This was one of several
innovations of Admiral John S. McCain, a thoughtful commander
who was concerned about the large-scale suicide attacks. To combat
this he had cut his number of carrier dive-bombers to less than half,
and more than doubled his number of fighters. Three weeks before
the invasion of Luzon was scheduled to begin one of the naval forces
suffered an unexpected and serious set-back. A particularly severe
and concentrated typhoon blew up, undetected by the meteorolo
gists, and caught a part of the force refuelling. At the height of the
storm three destroyers the Hull, the Monaghan and the S pence
capsized and all went down. Seven other ships were severely damaged
and 1 86 planes blown overboard or destroyed. Nearly 800 men were
lost. It was as if the force had been engaged in a major battle.
MacArthur s beach-head was to be at Lingayen Gulf, on the west

THE JAPANESE WAR

coast of the island. It was, and this was typical of MacArthur s

daring, almost arrogant plan, the very spot where the Japanese

themselves had landed three years before. As the fleet steamed

through the islands towards the Gulf, part of it was spotted by a

Japanese look-out in a church steeple on high ground. The following

day the first of the suicide-bombers arrived, hitting an oiler. Within

three days a constant stream of these suicide planes was screaming

down from the sky, a nerve-tingling and frightening spectacle of war

at its most obstinate and depressing. A two-engined bomber dived

straight into the flight-deck of the carrier Ommaney Bay, which had

to be abandoned. The Louisville and HMAS Australia were hit, with

three other warships, the following day. As the support force

steamed relentlessly into Lingayen Gulf the suicide planes, or

kamikazes^ attacked for eight hours. Every few minutes a Japanese

pilot was taking off, usually half-hysterical, to fly to his death. The

wastage in planes was high, as the vast majority never reached a

target. They had, however, obviously been trained in the manoeuvre,

as their deception was excellent, making skilful use of land masses,

metal tape to confuse radar readings, and low-level flying. McCain s

frantic efforts to keep them on the ground were failing. During these

eight hectic hours, while the sky was diseased with puffs of smoke and

planes darting in every direction, the cruisers Louisville and

Australia again both received direct hits; the battleships New

Mexico and California^ the cruiser Columbia^ three destroyers, a

destroyer-transport, a seaplane-tender and a minesweeper also

suffered direct hits; the minesweeper, hit twice, capsized with its

back broken. Later in the day the Australia was hit yet again,

but somehow managed to keep going. Her captain refused the

US Admiral Jesse Oldendorf s offer to relieve her of further

duties.

The assault took place on January gth. More ships were hit by the
fanatical kamikazes^ including the Columbia for the second time and
the battleship Mississippi. During the landings the Australia sus
tained her fifth hit from suicide bombers. In the whole operation the
Japanese suicide planes damaged forty-five Allied vessels, sinking
four; 738 men were killed, and nearly 1,400 wounded. Congratulating
the naval forces on their part in the landings, Admiral William F.
Halsey said: C I am so proud of you that no words can express my
feelings . . . superlatively well done!

The landings received little opposition. Once MacArthur s inten
tion had been obvious, it was too late for Yamashita to do anything

GRAND DISALLIANCE

effective to stop it, apart from attempting to destroy the American
fleet by destroying his own air force. Yamashita s tactics were to
ignore the beach-heads but to make a stand in the hills.

The first landing was at 9.30 a.m., and by 9.40 all advance
echelons were on the beach. By late afternoon four divisions were
assembling; by sunset American troops had penetrated three miles
inland. During the following days MacArthur pushed his men on
south-east, straight towards Manila. By January ic;th the Agno
River had been successfully crossed. There were stories of starving
Allied prisoners in the capital, and MacArthur was in a hurry. He
was also, it would seem, in his element. A great deal of his life had
been associated with the Philippines. There, more than anywhere
else, he was already a legendary figure. To many of the Filipinos
he was a kind of superman. His father before him had won a great
victory on the same scene. He knew the terrain well; every wrinkle of
its topography. He must, in days of peace, have considered and
practised many times the way to invade Luzon and take Manila.
No one was in a better position to undertake the task he had been
given; it was almost his right. The landings had been a brilliant
success. As he himself said of his plan: It worked like a charm. He
was everywhere; working himself to near-sickness. His appetite
went; he seemed to some to be nervy and over-tense. Some even
dared to suggest, but not in his presence, that he spent more time
right up at the front than a general who wished to get a clear picture
of the battle should.

When Major-General Kenney called at headquarters to report, he
noticed that MacArthur was not eating. The Commander-in-Chief
said he was so tired he could not eat. Kenney had to leave early the
next morning and, not wanting to disturb MacArthur, he told the
orderly officer to apologize for him. Said the officer: General
MacArthur left for the front two hours ago, sir. 5

Douglas MacArthur had a tremendous reputation, of which he
was extremely conscious and inordinately proud. Yamashita was
proving stubborn; and not only stubborn, but clever too. The
American force had to pass over a series of ridges. These not only
provided fine cover for artillery, they were also heavily fortified with
tunnels and caves, which were by then well supplied and prepared.
At some places tanks had been half-buried in the ground and were
being used as pill-boxes in support of infantry. It was quite clear
that the line which MacArthur had drawn on his map was going to
be a difficult one to follow. The Japanese were going to fight hard

ROCKET ASSAULT ON S.E. ENGLAND

and well. Three American columns pushed on with a front of thirty
miles, but Manila, to say nothing of Tokyo, was still a long way off.

(v)

In London and south-east England the final terror of the war made
the winter a strange mixture of excitement at the prospect of victory
and of fear of a dreaded new German weapon: the V.2 rocket bomb.
On the home front there had been a slight moving away from the
rigid austerity of wartime regulations. The previous summer had
been a brilliant one; large crowds had watched cricket at Lord s,
disturbed only now and again by the ominous purring of flying
bombs (V.is). Bread was whiter. Cheering and singing repatriated
prisoners of war were arriving at London and Liverpool docks in
beflagged boats to the noisy welcome of wailing ships hooters.
Barrage balloons, which had made the skies ugly for so long, were
disappearing. Fire-guard duties were being relaxed. Articles in the
newspapers were beginning to be about such matters as what atten
tion a car needs after being laid up for five years, and how to renew
tennis-courts.

In the early weeks of the winter the occasional plane-launched
flying bomb had still come rumbling across the Channel and the
North Sea, blindly speeding over the fields of Kent, clearly seen by
people on the ground, who were able to do nothing to stop it, and on
towards London, where suddenly the rumbling had stopped, to be
followed by an even louder silence while everyone for miles cowered
in fear under the nearest shelter they could find, with up to a minute
to wonder whether their time had come at last. Only London, of all
the cities of the war, had this particularly nerve-racking kind of
attack on a large scale. The next most-favoured targets were the
liberated cities of Antwerp and Liege. Only Londoners and Belgians
who were there know how, after a long war, it had seemed the final
insult to nerves and sensitivities already tautened to full stretch. Even
more calculated to cause psychological strain were the V.2S. For
these descended from the sky with no warning whatever. They could
blow a man and his home into infinity, or blast him to nothing at his
place of work, in the street, or as he sat in the cinema. The only
certain thing was that it would come before he could do anything to
help himself. The effect of this worked in two ways. In the first place

GRAND DISALLIANCE

it meant that there was, in effect, a permanent warning. Death could
come at any time. On the other hand, one could be only a few miles
away from a V.2 and know little or nothing about it, there having
been no air-raid siren. All this made for a particular and weird
atmosphere in London during the first quarter of 1945. The capital
had already, as far as fatal casualties were concerned, taken the
heaviest load of anywhere in the Commonwealth. By February 1945
one in five of all British deaths during the war had been Londoners.
The war death rate among Londoners at this time was one in 130,
compared to one in 165 for the whole of England, one in 175 for
New Zealand, and one in 775 for the United States.

Germany had been working on rocket bombs for at least fifteen
years before the war, much of the research being directed by a
Colonel Dornberger. In 1937 a rocket organization had been set up
at Peenemiinde on the Baltic coast. It seems that there had been
some indecision as to whether to concentrate on the flying bombs,
favoured by the Luftwaffe, or on the V.2, favoured by the army, and
this had held up development. In 1940 Hitler had reduced the
claims of the V.2 to a low level of priority, thus delaying its produc
tion and operation by several months. Only a few months before, in
October 1939, a rocket had climbed five miles with perfect stability
(the success of this was largely due to a brilliant young scientist,
Werner von Braun). In Britain at this time no official research had
been made into long-range rocket projectiles. Some comparatively
small rockets were produced in 1940 for anti-aircraft purposes, but
had practically no success (they were later to be of inestimable value
when fired from aircraft at tanks, vehicles and shipping). The first
British rocket battery was not formed until November 1940. The
commanding officer was Major Duncan Sandys, who spent most of
the war engaged in rocket investigations. One of his tasks was to dis
cover whether Britain, or the Germans at Peenemiinde, could send
up a rocket with a warhead of quite exceptional power (i.e. atomic).
In 1944 Sandys had said: In the future the possession of superiority
in long-distance rocket artillery may count for as much as superiority
in naval or air power. There are signs that the Americans have
already embarked upon an ambitious programme of development,
and it is possible that the Russians are not far behind as they are
much impressed by this new technique. But by 1945 no effective
method had been devised to stop the drizzle of rockets (in the
phrase of the official historian) on London. Weighing twelve and a
half tons, with a one-ton warhead, the V.2 had a range of 207 miles.

ROCKET ASSAULT ON S.E. ENGLAND

The average monthly production during the winter was 618; about
1,300 fell on England, causing 9,277 casualties, nearly a third of
them fatal. Rockets were also aimed at Antwerp and Brussels. It
seemed that Hitler s men had, indeed, produced a trump card.*

Intelligence discovered that the rockets came from Holland; from
the race course at The Hague, the neighbourhood of Wassenaar, the
pine woods and sand dunes close to Leiden, and from Walcheren
Island. These areas were heavily bombed, but with no effect apart
from the destruction of much Dutch property. Until land forces
could overrun the area there was clearly to be no respite for the
Londoners. Some alarm was caused in the United States when
Admiral Ingram, commanding the US Atlantic Fleet, said:
Robot bomb raids against New York and the east coast are possible
and probable within the next thirty or sixty days.

In London during the winter rockets fell on the doctors quarters
of a hospital, and on a blind people s home. One fell on a cinema
during a performance, another at lunch-time on a crowded sub
urban store, Woolworth s at New Cross. In the latter case the build
ing and the pavement outside were crowded with women and
children. This rocket killed 160 people and seriously injured as many
more. Another rocket fell outside the LCC Infectious Diseases
Hospital at Blackheath, demolished a hotel, blew a passing bus into
small bits, and shattered the hospital. Sixty-eight people were killed
by a rocket which fell on a domestic street in Islington: Mackenzie
Road. A rocket fell into the middle of Farringdon Market, when the
stalls were crowded with shoppers, and killed no and injured 123
people. Another destroyed two blocks of flats in Stepney, which had
seen so much of the Blitz four years before, reduced them both to
rubble and killed 134 occupants. Another disaster occurred at
Dalston Public Library, where many women with shopping-bags
who had called in to change a book had been peacefully examining
the shelves one second and were blown into eternity the next. One
of the problems, as always, was rescuing people trapped under heaps
of debris. On one occasion five people were trapped for two hours
while rescue workers, aided by police and firemen, tried to extricate
them. Fire broke out, setting surface wreckage ablaze. While fire
fighters attempted to keep the flames from spreading downwards,
the rescue workers continued digging feverishly. The entombed
people were rescued. After another rocket which fell on a terrace of

* The Japanese had perfected a V.I type rocket, launched from a bomber in flight
and piloted by a suicide pilot; about fifty were launched against US positions in the
Pacific.

GRAND DISALLIANCE

small houses during the night, an anti-aircraft searchlight unit was
rushed to the scene while rescuers worked furiously to bring out
people still alive. A tunnel nearly five yards long had to be drilled
through smashed debris and masonry. The tunnel collapsed, trap
ping three firemen. When these were eventually extricated they were
found to be seriously injured and were taken to hospital. Volunteers
took their place and the tunnel was completed again. During the
morning two brothers, one aged eight and one five, were rescued on
this site. There were hundreds of other episodes, resulting from the
rocket bombs, where hurried improvisation and the rescuing skill
that ordinary London people had learnt in recent years saved
numerous families from death by suffocation in ruins.

Lord Beaverbrook, the Lord Privy Seal, writing to his friend
Harry Hopkins, well illustrated the prevailing tension: The rockets
come to us in London at the rate of six a day. Last Saturday morning
we suffered a disaster when one fell in a suburban district, causing
the heaviest single bomb incident of the war. I do not know how
much injury we shall have to sustain before the winter is over. The
slogan of "London Can Take It" will prevail. But there may be
quite a lot to take. The Prime Minister is fully alive to the situation.
He knows very well how much the public can stand before they
begin to grumble, and knows, too, how to suppress the grumbles
when they come. His method is to set up in the people s minds a
feeling of kinship with the men at the battle-front. Anyway, the
rocket is to be preferred to the flying-bomb with its two warnings
first the siren and then the noise of the approaching engine. The
experience was strange indeed. For while there was noise there was
safety. Only when the engine cut off and silence fell did you stand
in need of prayer.

(vi)

The long and strangely sinister quiet on the Eastern Front, which
had lasted from August 1944, wa $ rudely shattered on the early
morning of January i2th, when the first of a series of brilliantly syn
chronized and tremendously powerful Soviet attacks was launched.
The halt on this front was due, as Stalin had told Churchill, to
atrocious weather. But this would not have applied the previous
autumn. At that time the reason had been stated to be severe diffi
culties of supply. But if this was so, it is strange that these difficulties

THE RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE

did not also affect the Hungarian front, where the lines of communi
cation were very much longer. There is no doubt that the Russians
suffered a defeat to the east of Warsaw (two armoured divisions were
said to be lost), but not a defeat strong enough to halt a whole
Soviet army for nearly half a year. Whatever the Russian reasons,
which have never been fully explained, it is certain that the Polish
resistance led by the gallant if rash Bor-Komorowsky was success
fully crushed by the Germans during this five-month delay. The
Poles have always been the first to suspect the Russians of the very
worst motives.

Owing to the heavy fighting on the Danube, especially at Buda
pest, and the attempt to build up a powerful defence of East
Prussia, the centre of the German line in the east was relatively
weak. The reserves were few, defences thin. The German divisions
here contained a great number of newly raised young troops of little
fighting value. The assault they had to face on the i2th was preceded
by an enormous artillery bombardment, and German resistance
crumbled during the day. Some units were isolated and remained
fighting in strong positions, others fled before the irresistible force
of the mighty Red Army that had been preparing for this day for so
long. The Russian tanks of Marshal Konev s army roared across
Poland towards Cracow and Silesia. Two days later another Russian
army, under Marshal Zhukov, launched a second blow at the
German line, to the north of Konev s forces, between Lodz and
Warsaw. Here, too, German resistance, although desperate and
sometimes courageous, collapsed before the Russian pressure. The
Red Army s superiority was at least threefold. North of Warsaw
Marshal Rokossovsky s forces crashed through the German forces
attempting to secure East Prussia. Zhukov s armour had soon reached
far west of Warsaw, and began turning round to attack the city from
that side. This led to the evacuation of the ruined Polish capital by
the Germans, and it was occupied by the Russians on January xyth.
In an Order of the Day by Stalin, however, the Russian General
issimo made much of the forcing of a passage acrqss the Vistula in a
frontal attack. The announcement of the taking of the city had first
been made by Radio Lublin, the propaganda-broadcasting system of
the Polish Provisional Government. As news of the city s condition
began to drift slowly through the news channels, the world could only
pause in amazement at the thoroughness of war s devastation. This
great European city had enjoyed a population of 1,289,000 on Jan
uary ist, 1939. It had surrendered on September 27th, 1939, after a

THE EASTERN FRONT,
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THE RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE

heroic resistance of twenty days. For five years and four months it
had been ruled by Aider s lieutenants. It had suffered aerial and
land bombardment so intense that hardly a building in the whole
city remained undamaged. Latterly it had been ravished by a bitter
and bloody revolt. Its population in January 1945 was approxi
mately 25,000.

The greatest Soviet offensive of the war was now under way. One
hundred and eighty divisions were rolling across the plains of central
Poland. Within a week the Russian armour, leaving behind many
pockets of German resistance in a huge area that bubbled with
desperate fighting like some boiling cauldron, had advanced 100
miles. Hitler insisted on a policy of unyielding defence; there was to
be no tactical withdrawal This meant some of the most fanatical, if
hopeless, fighting of the whole war by German troops, as the Rus
sians were known to take few prisoners. Casualties were appalling.
In twelve days there were 200,000 German dead. Pockets of resist
ance continued to fight to the death at Courland, Danzig and in east
Prussia. The ten divisions of the 6th Panzer Army were transferred
from the west, but it was like throwing a leaf against a tornado. There
was no question of a large-scale movement of troops from west to
east, always the classic German move since Bismarck, as the railways,
bombed and short of fuel, were only able to move one-third of the
traffic they had carried six months earlier. As for the great autobahn,
which stretched from the Rhine nearly to the Oder, there was little
petrol with which to make use of it. It had always been Hitler s
belief that in a drastic emergency these interior lines of communica
tion would save him.

By the end of January most of Poland, gasping and almost as
dead as a nation can be, was freed from Nazi rule. Konev had
advanced 225 miles along the road from Warsaw to Berlin. By
January 2yth Zhukov had crossed the German frontier and was less
than 100 miles from Berlin. On the same day Hitler threw his last
card, the Volkssturm, or Home Guard, against the first of the Soviet
assault. Youths and old men marched side by side, wondering,
singing and afraid.

Cracow, the ancient capital, and Lodz and Danzig, where the
war had begun on September ist, 1939, all fell.* Poznan was sur
rounded. Breslau was being attacked from several directions and

* The people of Gdansk (Danzig) are fully conscious of the city s history, and every
year mark the anniversary of the war s start with quiet but moving ceremony; there is no
area in Europe where anti-Germanism (by no means excluding East Germany) is so
strong.

GRAND DISALLIANCE

seemed destined for a siege. There was now only one barrier left at
which the German forces could possibly stand, and at which the
German Chief of Staff in the east, General Heinz Guderian, could
perhaps gain enough time to launch a counter-stroke the Oder
River. After that there were only fifty miles to Berlin. Stalin, on his
way to the conference at Yalta, assembled his generals (who
apparently had a poor opinion of his generalship) at Minsk. He
explained to them the dangers of their present position. A sudden
and unexpected defeat of the Red Army at this juncture could have a
catastrophic psychological effect on the Russian troops who were so
near to victory. He warned them that the Red Army, no longer
fighting on its own territory, could not expect to have the same
resistance to any set-back as previously. It was, he explained, most
important to him politically that the Red Army should now proceed
to Berlin without further delay. He then dispatched his commanders,
suitably aware of their responsibilities, back to their respectiye
fronts and made his way to the Crimea.

(vii)

On January 29th Churchill flew out of London on the Skymaster
that had been given to him by the Chief of the US Air Staff,
General H. H. Arnold. His daughter Sarah flew with him, as nearly
always, to attend to his personal needs and provide loving com
panionship during the stress of the coming conference. Most of the
Prime Minister s staff, and the officials, flew in two other planes.
During the journey Churchill developed a high temperature. He
arrived at Malta s famous Luqa airfield, which for years had been
the target of countless German and Italian bombers, in the chill
early morning of the following day. There he learnt that one of the
other two aircraft had crashed near the island of Pantellaria; there
were only five survivors. It could well have been the Prime Minister s
plane that had crashed. Such*, said Churchill, are the strange ways
of fate. On the morning of February 2nd he watched from the
deck of a British warship as the USS Quincy steamed into Valletta
harbour, under a glorious sunny sky. As the American ship got
closer and slid slowly towards its berth, Churchill was able to
discern the unmistakable figure of the President sitting on the
bridge. The two men raised their arms in mutual salute. Suddenly

THE MALTA MEETING

an escort of Spitfires roared overhead, guns thudded out a salute, a
band at the harbour struck up The Star-Spangled Banner*. It was a
most impressive scene. The great American President had crossed
the ocean once more to exert his country s will on the shaping of
the world.

At six o clock that evening the two leaders reviewed the report
that had been prepared for them by the Combined Chiefs of Staff
during the previous three days. This meeting had been, perhaps, the
most bitter between Allied commanders of the entire war. There had
been an almost total lack of understanding and sympathy on both
sides. Dissension had arisen over Eisenhower s plan for the final
defeat of Germany in the west. In outline this consisted of assaulting
the Germans west of the Rhine and then establishing bridge
heads. He then planned two deep and simultaneous thrusts into
Germany: one, under Montgomery, across the northern edge of the
Ruhr, which would be by-passed, and then on across the north
German plain towards Hamburg and the Baltic; the other, south of
the Rhur, between Frankfurt and Stuttgart, was to head towards
Kassel and then the heart of Germany. The British were totally
against this plan. They wanted all the effort to be made by the north
ern thrust under Montgomery, which seemed to be the most
important. There even seemed some hope of reaching Berlin and
achieving a knock-out blow by this route, they argued, whereas
the southern thrust could achieve nothing except a useless punch
into the flabby belly of Germany. They were most anxious to secure
all ports on the North Sea before the Russians. Although they con
fined their arguments to the purely military aspect, political motives
were clearly behind their thinking. The Americans viewed these
British objections with extreme scepticism. It seemed to them
only too obvious what the British were up to: a trick to get all the
glory at the end of the war for the Twenty-First Army Group, its
British and Canadian troops, and particularly for its commander,
Field-Marshal Bernard Montgomery. They saw Monty s work in
x the whole affair. (Churchill has denied this, stating that it was a
combined British view.)

Eisenhower was not present at the conference. He was repre
sented by his Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-General Walter Bedell
Smith, who defended his chief s intentions with some vehemence
and, apparently, not a little volubility. The arguments reached a high
pitch. General George C. Marshall, US Chief of Staff in Washing
ton, said that if the British plan were accepted he would recommend

GRAND DISALLIANCE

to Eisenhower that he ought to ask to be relieved of his command.
The British gave in, but only after it had been agreed that of the two
thrusts the northern one was to be the most powerful, receiving a
predominance in divisions and supply.

The document which the two Western leaders now studied con
tained little that revealed this violent and bitter controversy; a
controversy that had been settled but which was not to be forgotten.
Churchill still viewed the American plan with some concern , but
the matter was hardly discussed with the President.

Roosevelt took the opportunity of getting Britain to agree to
withdrawing two divisions from Greece, a victory which, with his
persistent suspicions of British intentions in that country, must have
particularly pleased him. The President was also anxious to with
draw troops from the Italian theatre to North-West Europe, but
Churchill stressed that it was very important to follow up any
German surrender in Italy and . . . that we ought to occupy as much
of Austria as possible as it was undesirable that more of Western
Europe than necessary should be occupied by the Russians . It was
agreed, however, that three divisions were to be sent from Italy to
the Western Front

A few hours later a large party dined together on the Quincy, and
the talks between Stettinius and Eden that had taken place were in
formally discussed. Everything seemed very much in order. There
had been agreement over the military plan in the West. There had
been *wide agreement* on political issues between the two Foreign
Secretaries. If this agreement had been reached by the British giving
way to the Americans at every point, it was only to be expected.
Britain might have been the senior partner in the association as far
as length of service in the Second World War was concerned, but
America was senior in every other matter, especially in the might of
her munitions and manpower. Besides, the British considered it
absolutely essential that the two Western allies should present a
united front when meeting Stalin.

The President must have been glad to get the brief Malta meeting
over he had always considered it of little account. Indeed, he still
had fears that it could be positively dangerous; it was essential to his
plan of campaign that he and Stalin should deal freely together with
out the latter having any suspicions of the two Western powers
c ganging-up against him. Moreover, Roosevelt was anxious to return
to Washington as soon as possible. He was feeling none too well.
Several people in Malta, including Admiral E. J, King, were shocked

THE MALTA MEETING

at the President s sickly appearance, particularly worrying after
a calm and relaxing sea voyage. Roosevelt had not bothered to study
the pre-conference briefs prepared for him by the State Depart
ment on the voyage, and had enjoyed something of a holiday.
James F. Byrnes wrote: Later, when I saw some of these splendid
studies, I greatly regretted they had not been considered on board
ship. I am sure the failure to study them was due to the President s
illness. And I am sure that only President Roosevelt, with his
intimate knowledge of the problems, could have handled the
situation so well with so little preparation/ Byrnes was disconcerted
to observe the President sitting with his mouth hanging open during
the cinema shows.

That same night, of February 2nd, saw more activity than the
little Luqa airfield had ever known before. At ten-minute intervals
the transport planes took off, carrying the 700 persons of the British
and American delegations through a dark night to the conference at
Yalta, 1,400 miles away, where the world s three greatest leaders
were meeting expressly to discuss the shape of the world during the
coming peace. As his plane trundled through the night, Churchill
went to bed. For him the meeting at Malta had not been satisfactory.
His hope of strengthening the Anglo-American alliance, through
the mutual concern of the two countries over the Polish question,
had met with a strange and disappointing frustration. Perhaps there
had not been enough time. Perhaps the President did not wish at
this juncture to have his eyes opened any more than they were
already. There was still a little time to save the situation but
precious little. In any event, Churchill was almost resigned to the
fact that Eastern Europe was lost. Only Poland and Germany re
mained. The President had only been at Malta a few hours; Churchill
had hardly had more than a few minutes with him alone. All in all,
the Prime Minister was in a disheartened mood as he dropped off to
sleep. Roosevelt, in his plane, rested as best he could, his mind
wrestling, as it always did, with physical pain, his thoughts on the
enigmatic Uncle Joe with whom he had come so far to reason. In
the cockpit of the plane the navigator studied the latest weather
report for the airport of Saki, near Yalta, in the Crimea. It indicated
poor conditions: snow and extreme cold.

2 Exultant Discord

The delegations to Yalta

The Yalta conference

The Middle East conference

Reaction to the Yalta communique

2 EXULTANT DISCORD

The planes started to land at Saki airport late the next morning.
Churchill s was one of the first to get there, and he stood waiting
for a while in the bitter cold for the President to arrive. As Roosevelt
was lifted from his plane, Churchill noted that he looked frail and
ill . They inspected a guard of honour, and then were led into a
marquee for drinks with Molotov, who had come to welcome the two
Western leaders. There followed a long drive, about eighty miles,
from Saki to Yalta.* Churchill, never a man to forget such matters,
had cabled Stalin to tell him that his party would have lunched on
the plane. In fact, they had kept sandwiches for the car, and as soon
as they left the airport Churchill began to eat. He was therefore
surprised when his car pulled in at a house beside the road, where he
found Molotov awaiting him with a magnificent meal. He was in
the best of humours and offered us all the delicacies of the Russian
table. We did our best to conceal the fact that we had already
blunted our appetites. The Presidents party had apparently
slipped past unawares . The journey continued. Here and there
Russian soldiers, some of them women, lined the road, and in the
streets of villages through which the cavalcade Hurtled, curious
country folk peered at the famous British imperialist as he passed.
Suddenly the road descended from the mountains and, far below,
could be seen the glistening Black Sea. The climate dramatically
changed. It was cool, sunny and mild.
The three national delegations were centred on three large,

* Churchill recalls that this took nearly eight hours . It is more probable that it
seemed that long.

EXULTANT DISCORD

ornate palaces. The Soviets were at Yusupov Palace. Here Stalin*
had assembled his machinery for running the war, and here also
was the Permanent Committee of the Politburo to follow the ne
gotiations on the spot. The committee consisted of Beria, Molotov,
Malenkov, Bulganin, Voroshilov and Mikoyan. Stalin s son Basil
acted as secretary to the committee. (Several people brought
members of their families along to the conference in one role or
another; apart from Sarah Churchill Oliver, Roosevelt and Harri-
man both had daughters with them, and Harry Hopkins s son was
present.) The committee was to become more than a nuisance to
Stalin in the following days. He was already having trouble with
Molotov, who suspected him of having become far too close
personally with Roosevelt at Tehran. Molotov saw it as his duty to
protect Stalin from the wiles of this charming but dangerous
American statesman. All Stalin s decisions at the conference had
to be referred to the committee, which, although it could not chal
lenge Stalin s authority, could act as a brake on him. Stalin also had
with him his three chiefs of staff, with whom he conferred every day
at midnight precisely or after the business of the conference was
done. A direct telephone linked him with the headquarters of
Konev, Zhukov and Rokossovsky.

All the Russian delegates, Stalin included, were used occasionally
to living rough. The Western delegates were not. The lack of com
fort at Yalta brought astonishment, mirth and embarrassment to
nearly all of them. Stalin, especially, was bemused by the tales he
heard of their fussy ways. He had thought they had come to Yalta
to work; but if it was a holiday they wanted, then he could provide
that too. He ordered those responsible to see that nothing was spared
for the comfort of the foreign visitors.

President Roosevelt was at the Livadia Palace, close to Stalin s,
but even more magnificent in appearance. It had been a summer
home of the Czars. Admiral King was assigned the Czarina s
boudoir, and was endlessly teased about this throughout the con
ference by diplomats and high-ranking servicemen. The Russians
had spent three weeks renovating the palace, but, noted Byrnes,
some of the conveniences we fortunate Americans are accustomed
to were missing . Sherwood described the accommodation as un
exceptionable for those on the Very Important Person level .
Sixteen US Army colonels had to share one bedroom. Hopkins was

* Sherwood says that Stalin did not arrive till the day after the Western delegations.
In fact, he was there at least two days before them (he cabled Churchill from Yalta on
February ist).

DELEGATIONS TO YALTA

sick. He spent all the time in his bedroom, only coming downstairs
to the Grand Ballroom of the Livadia Palace (where, in deference to
Roosevelt s disability, all the official conferences were held) for the
big meetings.

Yalta had, in fact, only been vacated by the Germans ten months
before. When the Russians had returned to the Crimea they had
found it almost a waste land, blackened and burned by the enemy.
They had done their best to restore the resort to something like
its former glory by detaching some thousands of soldiers to repair
the roads, fill in bomb craters and redecorate and refurnish the
three leading palaces (among other things, thousands of panes of
glass had to be replaced). The best hotel staff in Moscow (which
may not have been saying a great deal) were brought down to the
Black Sea for the occasion. Moscow s hotels were practically denuded
of carpets for the occasion. All this, it seems, was not enough.

It was very noticeable to everyone at Yalta that the palace
assigned to the British was easily the most shabby of the three. Not
only that, their palace, the Vorontzov Palace, was five miles out of
town,* while the other two huddled almost side by side. Nothing
could have indicated more bluntly whom the Russians considered
the more important guests. Roosevelt must have reflected that he
could hardly have planned it better himself. There was, however,
some aptness in the choice, for the Vorontzov Palace had been built
by an Englishman for a Russian Ambassador to the Court of St
James. Those of the British delegation who could not fit into the
palace stayed at two small rest-houses about a mile away, five or six
sleeping to a room. Churchill and his delegation were warned that
the area had not been completely cleared of mines, except for the
immediate grounds of the house. Churchill, with characteristic
sweep of eye, took in the scene: Behind the villa, half Gothic and
half Moorish in style, rose the mountains, covered in snow, cul
minating in the highest peak in the Ciimea. Before us lay the dark
expanse of the Black Sea, severe, but still agreeable and warm even
at this time of the year. Carved white lions guarded the entrance
to the house, and beyond the courtyard lay a fine park with sub
tropical plants and cypresses. In the dining-room I recognized the
two paintings hanging each side of the fireplace as copies of family
portraits of the Herberts at Wilton. Yalta harbour was still full of
mines and sunken vessels, so the British and American warships,
which were the sole reliable links of the Western delegations with

* According to Churchill; twelve miles according to Sherwood. See Notes.

EXULTANT DISCORD

their home countries, had to anchor off Sebastopol, about forty
miles away.

At the Vorontzov Palace as many as twenty high-ranking officers
shared one bathroom, hilariously reminding many of them of their
schooldays. Sir Charles Portal, Chief of the Air Staff, objected to
the bathroom door being locked when beyond lay the lavatory. As
delegates wandered round the palace, viewing with dismay its long,
draughty corridors and sparse furnishings, more inconveniences
were discovered. Portal, admiring a large glass tank with plants in it,
casually remarked that it contained no fish. Two days later a con
signment of goldfish arrived. At cocktail time someone noticed that
there was no lemon peel in the drinks. Next day a whole lemon tree
was placed in the hall. Anthony Eden was surprised to find that the
windows of his room did not open. Instead of a proper desk for him
to work at, the only thing that could be found was a small French
table with unequal legs. Most important of all, a bed for the Prime
Minister had only just arrived. Churchill liked to sleep in a large
bed. Before his arrival the advance staff discovered that the one
supplied to him was extremely narrow. It was suggested to the
Russians, that, as Roosevelt and Stettinius both had double beds,
could not Stettinius and Churchill do a swap so that at least the
two heads of state had large beds each. This could not be done.
Instead, a special train was sent to Moscow to return with a large
double bed for the Prime Minister.

General Sir Leslie Hollis has recalled that at the rest-houses,
also, as many as twenty would be queueing each morning to use the
wash-house. Everyone lived in barrack-room conditions. While
those who had served a long war in more humble positions might
have reflected that all this did the brass-hats and politicians no
harm, it was at any rate enough to make everyone anxious to con
clude the conference as soon as possible.

The first move was made by Stalin at three o clock on Sunday
afternoon, February 4th. He called on Winston Churchill at the
Vorontzov Palace, and the two leaders discussed the progress of
the war. Stalin was in an optimistic mood. He said that already the
Red Army had bridge-heads over the Oder; that Germany was short
of coal and bread; that her transport was badly damaged. The
Volkssturm were untrained, badly led and ill-equipped. He con
sidered the Ardennes offensive a stupid adventure that had been
done for prestige. The best German generals were no longer on the
scene, with the possible exception of Guderian. He felt that Germany

THE YALTA CONFERENCE

was no longer a power of much consequence. Churchill then took
him to his map-room, which had been mounted and prepared
exactly as it was in London. He called on Field-Marshal Sir Harold
Alexander to explain the situation in Italy, the only front in Europe
in which the British were predominant. Stalin then made a comment
no doubt calculated to further dampen Churchill s powder, which was
already wet enough. As there was nothing much happening in Italy,
he asked, why did Churchill not redirect some British divisions from
that front, transfer them to Yugoslavia and Hungary and direct them
on Vienna? He must have known that something like this was what
Churchill had for long wanted, only prevented from doing so by
American recalcitrance.

The Red Army, Churchill now answered, may not give us time
to complete the operation.

The meeting had been cordial and easy. It was noticed that
Stalin had chosen to call on Churchill first, which, as Britain was
the senior partner in the war, was strictly correct.

At four o clock Uncle Joe called on Roosevelt. Here the meeting
was more jovial. A joke was made about whether the Russians
would get to Berlin before the Americans to Manila. There was a
resume of the military situation on Russian and American fronts,
but with far less formality than the one in the Vorontzov Palace.
Roosevelt asked how Stalin had got on with de Gaulle, who had
recently visited Moscow. The most obstinate man I have met in my
life, said the Generalissimo. Roosevelt explained that there had
been some disagreement between himself and Churchill over policy
towards France, and in other matters. On this note the two leaders
left Roosevelt s private study, where the talk had taken place, and
repaired to the ballroom a few minutes before 5 p.m. for the first
formal session of the conference.

(ii)

No sooner had the delegates seated themselves round the table and a
hush fallen on the assembly than Marshal Stalin suggested that
President Roosevelt should preside over the meetings. This the
President was delighted to accept. The stage was now set with
Stalin in one corner and Churchill in the other. Roosevelt was to be
the referee, and both corners believed he was, if anything, slightly
biased in each of their favours.

EXULTANT DISCORD

This first discussion dealt almost entirely with military matters.
The atmosphere was cordial and friendly. The Russian Chief of
Staff, General Antonov, read a paper giving a long and detailed
exposition of the situation on the Eastern Front, and General
George C Marshall reviewed the situation in the West. Churchill
then suggested that the Russian offensive could be helped by an
Anglo-American expedition across the Adriatic, which would delve
into the Balkans and join up with the Russian left flank, an idea
similar to that suggested by Stalin just over an hour before. His
proposal was now met with disinterest, not only by Roosevelt but by
Stalin as well, and was not mentioned again. It was decided that the
demand for a German unconditional surrender should be persisted
in; a move that had its opponents in both Western delegations.

After this meeting Roosevelt was host at dinner at the Livadia Palace.
The President s personal Filipino mess-men served the strictly
Russian food. Once again the atmosphere was cordial, no doubt
helped by the vodka and five different wines. The only sour note of
the day seems to have been struck when Charles E. Bohlen, the
President s special adviser on Russian affairs from the State Depart
ment, had a brief exchange with Andrei Vyshinsky. During this
dinner Churchill pointed out that he was the only one of the three
leaders present who could be removed from office at any moment by
the votes of his people, and yet he was constantly being described as
a reactionary. Stalin replied that evidently the Prime Minister of
Great Britain was worried about the result of the forthcoming election.
Churchill said that, on the contrary, he did not fear the election.

After the meal Roosevelt and Stettinius were alone for a few
minutes with Stalin and the Russian interpreter. Stalin said: You
are mistaken in believing that I am a dictator like Hitler. He said
that he had difficulties with Molotov, whom he found difficult to
bring to reason . He was also worried about the situation in the
Ukraine, where any negotiations about the Polish eastern frontier
would be closely watched.

At breakfast the following morning, Monday, February sth,
Roosevelt received his White House mail by courier. The mail had
been dispatched from Washington five days before. This meant
that the President was now at the limit of the distance he could travel
from Washington under the ten-day limitation on his power to
act on Congressional bills. It was now known to the President and
his party that Manila had been reached by MacArthur s force on
Luzon.

THE YALTA CONFERENCE

The next meeting began at 3.45 p.m. that day, after a very heavy
lunch at which Molotov was host, and during which Harriman had
proudly announced c the fall of Manila;* so many mock-formal
toasts had been drunk that the atmosphere was again one of smiling
benevolence all round.

The discussion opened on the question of the future of Germany.
It was already agreed by all three leaders that Germany should be
dismembered: Roosevelt was inclined to think it should be split
into five parts; Stalin had agreed. Churchill wanted only two states
Prussia and Austro-Bavaria, with the Ruhr under international
control. Churchill now pointed out that there was so much to study
in this matter, including historic, ethnographical and economic
factors, that they could not possibly reach a decision there and then.
Roosevelt suggested the question should be examined by the
Foreign Secretaries. This was agreed, and there the matter was left.
A long exchange then developed between Churchill and Stalin on
whether France should be allotted a zone of occupation in Germany,
and whether she should have a representative on the Allied Control
Council. Stalin was clearly not impressed with French claims. He
thought that Yugoslavia and Poland were more entitled to con
sideration than France. He said he did not mind France being given
a zone, so long as the British and Americans supplied the area out of
their own zones. He certainly would not be prepared to give
the French any of the Russian zone. As for a representative on
the Control Council, he was very much against it. He said he could
not forget that it was France that had opened the gates to Nazi
Germany. He complained that de Gaulle was unrealistic; that
France had done little fighting in the war. If France was given a
place on the Control Council, then what would other countries
who had done more fighting than France say? He pointed out that
France had, at that moment, only eight divisions, while even the
Lublin Government had ten a typical and revealing statement.
Soon, he said, France would be demanding a place at the Big Three
conferences.

Churchill replied that there was no question of France being
allowed to join the Big Three. It was an exclusive club, the entrance
fee of which was five million soldiers at the very least. Such a

* In a series of brilliant surprise movements, MacArthur had penetrated the Japanese
lines at a number of points, but the Japanese had made a strong stand at the city itself.
Corregidor had to be captured by a parachute assault; the city was then open to attack
from the sea, and landings took place. The outskirts were reached on February 4th. A
month of bitter street fighting followed, during which the city was reduced to a shambles.
Harriman s announcement was therefore premature, to say the least.

EXULTANT DISCORD

demand on the part of de Gaulle could not be tolerated. But he felt
that France should have a place on the Council, as Britain alone,
in the event of the withdrawal of the United States, could not
defend Western Europe (against precisely whom it was not made
clear). The President had already said that although the United
States was prepared to take all reasonable steps to keep the peace
after the war, the maintenance of a large army in Europe, 3,000
miles from home, was a step that his country would not be prepared
to take. Roosevelt was inclined to sympathize with Stalin. He had a
personal distaste for de Gaulle, and he referred to the occasion
when de Gaulle had compared himself to him with Joan of Arc.
Hopkins and Harriman, however, urged him to support the British
view on this matter at least, and he eventually persuaded the
reluctant Stalin to agree to both Churchill s proposals regarding
France. This had been a difficult discussion, and a victory for
Churchill.*

No sooner had this problem been put aside than Churchill and
the Russians were at loggerheads again, this time on the question of
German reparations after the war. It was soon obvious that of the
several matters concerning Germany, this was the one that interested
Stalin most.

I. M. Maisky, who had been Russian Ambassador in London for
eleven years, and was now Molotov s deputy, outlined in English
the Russian proposal. As soon as the war was over, he said, Germany
should be denuded of its wealth. Factories, land, machinery,
machine tools, rolling stock, investments abroad, aircraft factories
and all military enterprises should be withdrawn. He explained that
by withdrawn he meant actually physically carried away. Not only
this, but every year for ten years payments in kind should be made
by Germany. A system of priorities should be arranged so that those
countries who had suffered most under the Germans should receive
most reparations. The total worth of the reparations should be
twenty billion dollars; of this, Russia should receive half. Germany
should be allowed to retain 20 per cent of her industry, which would
be enough to keep the country going.

Churchill and members of both British and American delegations
had listened to this speech, so indicative of naive Communist
economic thinking, with growing depression. Churchill responded
immediately. He reminded the conference of the experience after

* Strangely, Churchill deals with this in less than six lines. It would seem that de
Gaulle has not entirely appreciated British efforts on his behalf at Yalta and Potsdam.

THE YALTA CONFERENCE

the First World War; an experience which he described as Very
disappointing . He pointed out that Britain, too, had suffered greatly.
Her foreign investments, which had provided so much of Britain s
strength in the past, had been decimated in order to pay for the war.
But in his opinion it would be impossible to extract from Germany
total reparations sufficient to complete the figure that Maisky sug
gested should be paid to Russia alone. Besides, what would happen
if Germany were reduced to utter starvation through these measures
as seemed very likely? If the intention was to bring eighty million
people to the brink of starvation, were the great powers then to sit
back and say it serves you right ? He pointed out that if you have a
horse you must provide it with hay if you want it to pull the wagon
whereupon Maisky butted in: But the horse must not kick*. With
laboured patience, Churchill tried another example. If you have a
motor-car, he said, it is necessary to give it a certain amount of
petrol to make it go.

Roosevelt then said that after the First War the United States had
been obliged to pay out millions of dollars to Germany, and this
certainly could not be allowed to happen again. But he said he
supported the Soviet Union s proposal that a reparations committee
should be set up. Stalin, who had been listening to the translation
of all this with considerable care, then entered the discussion. He
said that the trouble after the First War had been that the reparations
were demanded in money; this time they should be demanded in
kind. He said that the Reparations Commission should take in its
initial studies, as a basis for discussion, the suggestion of the Soviet
Government that the total sum of reparations should be twenty
billion dollars and that half of it should go to the Soviet Union .*
It was agreed by all three that the Russian proposal should be
examined by such a committee in Moscow, and that Stalin s words
should be incorporated in the protocol to be issued after the con
ference (the protocol, signed by Churchill and Roosevelt, contained
the statement that the committee was to consider the use of labour
as a means of reparation).

The President opened the discussion on the World Instrument for
Peace on February 6th. He said that in the United States public
opinion on this matter was decisive, and public opinion would
be very much in favour of a world organization along the lines of

* It has been suggested that Stalin s insistence on this matter was due to his fear of
large-scale discontent in Russia after the severities of war; when peace had arrived with
out much lessening of the ardours of the Soviet regime. The thought of vast wealth
coming from Germany might act as a sop to the Russian people.

EXULTANT DISCORD

those suggested by the United States at the conference at Dum
barton Oaks in the autumn of the previous year. This conference
had reached broad agreement on most points except the vital
matter of voting rights in the Security Council. Prior to the Yalta
meeting, however, Roosevelt had made a new suggestion to Churchill
and Stalin. This was that unless the Big Four, i.e. Russia, America,
Britain and China, were unanimous, no important actions could be
carried out by the Security Council. If any one of the four disagreed,
therefore, that one could render the Council powerless to act. In this
way the exclusive club , which had won the war for the rest of the
world, could protect their own interests. Roosevelt, addressing the
Yalta conference, reminded them of their pledge at Tehran: We
recognize fully that supreme responsibility resting upon us and all
the United Nations to make a peace that will command the good
will of the overwhelming mass of the peoples of the world and banish
the scourge and terror of war for many generations. Stettinius then
presented the American plan in detail. There followed another long
and argumentative exchange between Stalin and Churchill.

The Prime Minister began this extraordinary affair with, for him,
a rather confused speech. He said he saw no dangers in Britain
associating herself with the proposal of the United States, but on
the other hand he was anxious that the three great powers should
not appear to have the power to rule the world after the war. He
thought it would be a good thing that Egypt, for instance, could
raise a question in the world organization about the Suez Canal.
He thought it would be wrong if states that felt they had a grievance
against one of the powers that had the right of veto could not air their
grievances. Britain would not fear such airing of grievances because,
by means of the veto, she would be able to kill any action suggested
by the world organization. He stressed that it would be wrong for
the three great powers to rule the rest of the world without even
allowing other countries to state their case against them. (Churchill
omits this speech from his account of the conference.) The Prime
Minister was followed by Stalin, who caused a surprise by saying
that he had not yet had time to study the American proposal (it
had been sent to him by diplomatic pouch a month before). From
what he had heard of Mr Churchill s views, however, he had some
doubts about the proposal. The Prime Minister seemed to think that
China, if it raised the question of Hong Kong, would be content
only with expressing its opinion. Similarly, he suspected that Egypt
would not have much pleasure in simply expressing the opinion

THE YALTA CONFERENCE

that the canal should be given to Egypt. She might expect a decision
on the matter. He continued in this vein for some time, not allow
ing Churchill, who was anxiously trying to interrupt him, to speak.
When Churchill was at last able to answer he said that what had
really worried him was the future, after the present leaders had
gone. The world could feel safe under its present leaders, but in
ten years time they might disappear. A new generation would come
that had not known the horrors of the war, and the experiences
that they had all lived through together. What he wanted was to
secure the peace for at least fifty years, and to build up obstacles
to prevent the future generations quarrelling among themselves.*
Stalin replied that the real danger to the future was conflict among
the Big Three present at Yalta. The danger from Germany would
not be great. He feared that disputes about Hong Kong or Suez
would break the unity of the three great powers. Churchill replied
that normal diplomatic channels would continue as before, in no
way affected by the Security Council, and would no doubt be able
to deal with such problems. He said he felt certain that Marshal
Stalin would not make an attack on the British Empire verbally,
of course without discussing the matter privately with Britain
first. Stalin agreed that this was so. He promised to study the plan
and to discuss it further the next day. There followed a long and
somewhat superficial argument about what countries, especially
South American, should be admitted to the United Nations. The
President seemed to enjoy this, and as soon as he had finished with
the respective cases of Ecuador and Peru, Uruguay and Paraguay,
the Marshal kept him going by asking: c What about the Argentine?
This took up some time.

The discussion then turned to Poland.

The President began by admitting that he took a distant view of
the Polish question. There were five or six million Poles in the
United States, and most of them agreed to the Curzon Line,f
realizing they would have to give up eastern Poland to Russia,
but they would like some German territory in return. Stalin inter
rupted to say that most of the American-Poles never voted anyway.
He had gone into the matter thoroughly. Taken aback by this,
Roosevelt said he thought the Russians ought to modify the Curzon

* According to the shorthand notes taken at the time by James F. Byrnes this was
said by Churchill; but Churchill (p. 309-10) credits the same remarks to Stalin. See
Notes.

f The line put forward by-Curzon and Clemenceau after the First World War, which
would bring Poland s eastern frontier about 150 miles to the west.

EXULTANT DISCORD

Line so as to give the oil-bearing regions around Lvov to Poland.
He thought that the question of a government for Poland was more
important than the question of her boundaries. Churchill then said
he agreed about the Curzon Line, and pointed out that both he and
Eden had been constantly attacked for this in England. But he had
always thought that because of Russia s tremendous efforts in
liberating Poland her claim was founded on right rather than might.
It would, however, be a magnanimous gesture that would be widely
applauded if she granted the Lvov region to a much weaker power.
But he, too, thought the governmental issue was far more im
portant. He wanted the Poles to be able to live freely, and to live
their own lives in their own way. It was for this very object that
Britain had gone to war against Germany. Everyone knew what a
terrible risk had been involved, for Britain was ill-armed at that
time. It had been a risk that had nearly cost Britain its life as a
nation. The question was a matter of honour. He asked for a com
promise government pending free elections; one that could be
temporarily recognized by all.

This was Churchill s most impassioned speech at the con
ference. After a short adjournment, Stalin spoke. He was clearly
in an excited state. He rose to his feet and spoke beside the table
(it was the only occasion during the Yalta conference that he did this).
For Russia, he said, the Polish question was not so much a matter of
honour as of security. Throughout history Poland had been a cor
ridor through which Russia had been attacked. It was a matter of life
and death for the Soviet Union, which thought very differently about
the matter than had the Czarist government. The Czars had always
wanted to suppress and assimilate Poland. The Soviet attitude, on
the other hand, was to secure a strong, independent and free
Poland. As for the present question of a temporary government
the situation was very difficult, as the exiled government in London
had described the Lublin Government as a collection of bandits and
criminals. This was not calculated to help matters. Now the Lublin
Government was replying in similar coin. The agents of the exiled
government had killed 212 Russian soldiers. It was vital for the
Red Army to have a safe rear area.

The evening was closing in, but Stalin continued along this line.
At length Roosevelt suggested they should adjourn till the following
day, but Churchill would not comply. Thoroughly roused himself,
he pointed out, as he had so often in recent months, that the Lublin
Government was not based on the expressed will of the Polish people.

THE YALTA CONFERENCE

He continued with this and other arguments he had used on many
occasions until the President, pointing out that Poland had already
been a source of trouble for over 500 years, insisted on bringing the
meeting to a close.

Churchill, always meticulous in such matters, sent off* a long
report to Attlee, Deputy Prime Minister, which he did not finish
till after 2 a.m. He concluded it by writing: In spite of our gloomy
warning and forebodings [the conference] has turned out very well
so far. It is a sheltered strip of austere Riviera, with winding
Corniche roads. The villas and palaces, more or less undamaged,
are of an extinct imperialism and nobility. In these we squat on
furniture carried with extraordinary effort from Moscow. The
plumbing and road-making has been done without regard to cost in
a few days by our hosts, whose prodigality exceeds all belief. All the
chiefs of staff have taken a holiday today to look at the battlefield of
Balaclava. This is not being stressed in our conversations with our
Russian friends.

The conference resumed the next day, February yth. Roosevelt
suggested that two members of the Polish London Government and
two of the Lublin Government should be sent for immediately
and asked to agree on a provisional government in the presence of
the conference. Stalin said there might not be time to arrange this.
Molotov then stated that his government were prepared to accept the
Curzon Line, a western boundary for Poland along the rivers Oder
and Neisse, and that the Lublin Government should have a number
of exiles added to it; the two Western ambassadors could discuss
the exact composition with himself. Roosevelt and Churchill both
considered this was evident of some progress, although the latter
expressed doubts about the western frontier and the large-scale
movement of population that would result.

To make matters seem even brighter, Molotov then announced
that the Soviet Union was prepared to accept the veto proposal of the
United States in the world organization. The only problem to be
settled was how many seats were to be allotted to Russia, for the
Soviet Union consisted of a number of republics. He thought that
two or possibly three such republics should be admitted as original
members, namely the Ukraine, White Russia and Lithuania.
This was a great relief to all the Western delegates, as there had
been a fear that the Russians would persist in asking for repre
sentation for all the republics. Roosevelt went into a long and
woolly speech about small nations and large nations, the object

EXULTANT DISCORD

apparently being to confuse the issue and to gain time to give him
self what he always sought, freedom of action later. Hopkins
scribbled him a note, and passed it to him, suggesting that the
President should deal with the subject as quickly as possible, as the
Russians have given in so much at this conference . Churchill spoke
out strongly in favour of the Russian proposal; he had the Dominions,
and especially India, to think of. It was decided to refer the matter
to the Foreign Secretaries the following day.

At the meeting of the Foreign Secretaries it was agreed that two
Russian republics be admitted, and that only nations which had
declared war on Germany by March ist, or had signed the United
Nations Declaration by the last day of the Yalta conference, should
be invited to attend at the first full meeting of all the United Nations
which was to be held at San Francisco in April. (Stalin said he
thought he could get the signatures of White Russia and the
Ukraine in time.) Roosevelt said there might well be howls of
protest in Congress, but he would agree to support the Russian
request if it were made at San Francisco. Both Churchill and
Stalin agreed to support the United States having two more votes,
if such a move proved necessary to soothe public opinion in America.
(Roosevelt later dropped all idea of this.) There the matter was left.

As for Poland, nearly all Molotov s suggestions of the previous
day were accepted by Roosevelt and Churchill, with reservations
in the case of the western frontier of Poland reaching as far as the
Neisse (although there was no objection to the Oder). Roosevelt asked
how soon could free elections be held. Within a month, replied
Stalin, without hesitation. This seemed to decide Churchill; he
agreed that the question of enlarging the Lublin Government
should be examined by the Foreign Secretaries.*

That evening Stalin held a dinner party at the Yusupov Palace.
There were a great number of toasts (one account says forty-five;
another thirty-eight) in which the three leaders all spoke of each
other in the most flattering terms, and also much mutual con
gratulation by the lesser figures. Churchill said: I earnestly hope
that the Marshal may be spared to the people of the Soviet Union
and to help us all to move forward to a less unhappy time than that
through which we have recently come. I walk through this world
with greater courage and hope when I find myself in a relation of
friendship and intimacy with this great man. It was, at these meet
ings, always the Russian custom to outdo the other countries in

* The one-party elections were not held till January 1947.

THE YALTA CONFERENCE

hospitality and the quantity of food and drink, especially the latter.
They seemed to take a mischievious delight in this. That night the
wine and vodka flowed well. Stalin replied to Churchill, describing
him as the most courageous of all Prime Ministers in the world .
Churchill rose again: *My hope is in the illustrious President of the
United States and in Marshal Stalin, in whom we shall find the
champions of peace, who after smiting the foe will lead us to carry
on the task against poverty, confusion, chaos and oppression. I
propose the toast to the broad sunlight of victorious peace. Stalin
replied to this in terms that astonished everyone. C I had never
believed he could be so expansive, said Churchill.

Stalin said: *I am talking as an old man that is why I am talking
so much. But I want to drink to our alliance, that it should not lose
its character of intimacy, of its free expression of views. I know that
some circles will regard this remark as naive.* In an alliance the
allies should not deceive each other. Perhaps that is naive? Ex
perienced diplomats may say: Why should I not deceive my ally?
But I, as a naive man, think it best not to deceive my ally even if he is
a fool. Possibly our alliance is so firm just because we do not deceive
each other; or is it because it is not so easy to deceive each other?
I propose a toast to the firmness of our three-power alliance. May
it be strong and stable. May we be as frank as possible. ! There
were some more similar words. At the time most observers felt that
the Russian dictator had been a little overcome by the numerous
toasts and the rather emotional atmosphere. The toast has often
been considered a prime example of Stalin s supposed tongue-in-
cheek brand of super-cynicism. As more is learnt about the Kremlin
scene at that time, however, it looks now as if this speech, unique
in its terms of unequivocable friendship, was directed at the airy,
but no doubt real, powers that existed behind Stalin.

The following morning the Foreign Secretaries met to discuss
the Polish Government question, as agreed the previous day, but
they were unable to reach agreement. The conference proper re
assembled at four that afternoon (February gth). Molotov then
made what seemed a further concession. He agreed that new
members of the Lublin Government should not only include exiles
living abroad, but also democratic leaders from Poland itself. This

* Molotov?

t Throughout this phase of the war Stalin, on the one hand, advocated ... the
world condominium of the Big Three, resenting any suggestion that tended to weaken it,
and on the other, he at every step betrayed his fear and suspicion of Russia s would-
be partners. I. Deutscher, Stalin: A Political Biography.

THE STRUGGLE FOR POLAND, 1914-45

MILES

100

200

300

400

Oder-Neisse Line

CurzonLine

Russian Frontier, December 1945

International frontiers t Pre-War, 1939

Areas annexed by Poland,l945,considered
at the Potsdam conference

Russia s Western Frontier, 1914

THE YALTA CONFERENCE

seemed a considerable advance to both Western leaders, and Roose
velt said that the whole difference was now only a matter of words.
As the Russians had agreed to hold elections in Poland shortly, both
he and Churchill were reluctant to demand anything further,
although Churchill raised the question of observers at the election.
On February roth Roosevelt had a private discussion with Stalin,
to which Churchill was not invited. They had already met in
secret two days earlier for a short time. The only people present
were the two leaders, the Russian interpreter, Averell Harriman
and Charles E. Bohlen. It was agreed by Stalin that Russia would
enter the war against Japan within four months of the surrender of
Germany. A number of American advisers, including Admiral
William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to the President, had told Roose
velt that they did not believe Russian intervention in the Japanese
war was necessary; they were not heeded by the President. In
return Russia would be granted a number of territories in the Far
East. These included the southern half of Sakhalin Island, Port
Dairen, Port Arthur, a 50 per cent interest in the East Chinese and
Manchurian railroads, the Kurile Islands, and a predominant in
fluence over Outer Mongolia. Most of these territories affected not
Japan so much as China, and China was an ally of the Western
powers. Roosevelt undertook to secure Chiang Kai-shek s compli
ance in due course, although it was agreed that these decisions about
Chinese territory should be kept from the Chinese for the time
being. (He also told Stalin confidentially that he thought Hong
Kong should be returned to the Chinese, or internationalized.)
Stalin asked whether it would be necessary to send American troops
to Korea, and when Roosevelt replied in the negative he expressed
approval. All observers agree that Roosevelt was tiring rapidly by
this time in the conference. Not the least surprising aspect of this
strange agreement was that it committed the President (something
which he always tried to avoid anyway) to accepting spheres of in
fluence and territorial changes, both of which struck at his own
philosophy. Stalin later called on Churchill, and the Prime Minister
agreed to the conditions of Russian entry in the war against Japan,
although, as he later made clear, neither I nor Eden took any part
in making them . Eden, in fact, tried to dissuade him from agreeing.*
Later that day the conference reassembled, and agreement was
reached about Poland. A New Provisional Government, more

* Chiang, when told months later, was horrified at the US betrayal* (Wedemeyer).
The two ports were returned to the Chinese in 1955, but Sakhalin and the Kuriles
are in the USSR.

EXULTANT DISCORD

broadly based , was to be established. It would include the members
of the Lublin Government and others (although no mention was
made in the declaration about members of the London Polish
Government). The exact composition was to be discussed by Molo-
tov and the two Western ambassadors in Moscow with a number of
Polish leaders. The new government was to hold free and un
fettered elections as soon as possible on the basis of universal
suffrage and secret ballot ... all democratic and anti-Nazi parties
shall have the right to take part and to put forward candidates .
Poland s eastern frontier was to be basically the Curzon Line, and
the western frontier was to be moved to the west its final delimita
tion remaining in abeyance.

Churchill was not entirely dissatisfied. The Russians had, it
appeared, made a concession about the provisional government, even
if the basis of it was still to be the Lublin one. If they kept to their
word about the elections all might be well. His incessant fighting
and pleading on behalf of the Poles had, it seemed, brought some
reward.

That night it was Churchill s turn to be host at dinner. More
rounds of flattering toasts were proposed and drunk. Stalin was
especially generous in his terms towards the President, who looked
pale and tired. Roosevelt, in his turn, moved Stalin almost to tears
by saying: You see, Winston, there is something here that you are
not capable of understanding. You have in your veins the blood of
tens of generations of people accustomed to conquering. . . . We are
here at Yalta to build up a new world which will know neither in
justice nor violence, a world of justice and equity. Churchill en
deavoured to explain to Stalin the forthcoming General Election in
Britain, which was bound to follow Hitler s defeat. The Russian
leader dismissed the thought that Churchill would not continue in
his eminent position. Churchill explained that there were two
parties in Britain, and that he belonged to only one of them. One
party is much better, replied the Marshal. The evening passed
away agreeably . When Stalin left the Vorontzov Palace, the British
delegation assembled in the hall and Churchill called for three
cheers. They were boisterously given.

Next day the final declaration was signed at lunch by the three
leaders in the Czar s former billiard-room at the Livadia Palace.
Roosevelt s mood at this time was described as one of extreme
exultation . He was confident that the conference had been a real
success. Hopkins later said: We really believed in our hearts that

THE MIDDLE EAST CONFERENCE

this was the dawn of the new day we had all been praying for and
talking about for so many years. Leahy wrote of a "feeling of great
hope, almost exultation*. Before leaving Yalta, Churchill and his
daughter went off to see the battlefield of Balaclava (having got a
brigadier of the Intelligence staff c to look up all the details of the
action and prepare himself to show us round ). The great statesman
and historian gazed on the valley down which the Light Brigade
had thundered many years before. He flew from Saki airfield on
February I4th.

He intended to make a quick visit to Athens on the way home,
and made sure his plane detoured over the island of Skyros, where
Rupert Brooke, whom he had known in 1914, was buried. In
Athens he drove through the streets in an open car, and in the even
ing addressed a crowd of 50,000 in Constitution Square. Suitably
impressed with the grandeur of the setting, in bright evening sun
light, he made an impassioned speech, appealing for Anglo-Greek
friendship. In the early hours of the following day he left for Egypt.

Throughout the conference Roosevelt had remained ostentatiously
apart from the Prime Minister, remembering the advice of Ouman-
sky, a Soviet Ambassador to Washington, who had often warned
him of the innate suspiciousness of the Russians. The conference
had been five days old before he had lunched privately with Chur
chill, although having met Stalin alone before that. He had told
Stettinius to avoid any private meeting with Eden. Convinced
that Britain was now a second-rate power, in terms of armies, wealth
and munitions, he sought to prove that he could be trusted by the
Russians by being quick to reveal, and even magnify, every differ
ence between Churchill and himself, particularly on colonialism.
Churchill was therefore dismayed when, on the last night of the
conference, Roosevelt had told him that he was going to visit
Egypt on the way home. He had already summoned King Ibn
Saud of Saudi Arabia, King Farouk of Egypt, and Emperor Haile
Selassie of Ethiopia to meet him, on three successive days, aboard
the Quincy on the Great Bitter Lake. It was the first Churchill
had heard about this. He was, according to Hopkins, flabber
gasted . He attempted to find out what were the President s

EXULTANT DISCORD

intentions, but no one had any very clear idea. It seemed, however,
that Roosevelt believed he could make some decisive contribution
to Middle East affairs in this short visit. As he might never be in
the area again, he was not going to miss the opportunity. Churchill,
worried about British interests in the area, told the President next
day that he, too, intended to go to Egypt.

The meetings duly took place. Roosevelt was especially impressed
with Ibn Saud, with whom he tried to discuss the Palestine question.
The discussion 5 soon turned into a monologue by Ibn Saud. At a
Press conference the President said that he had learned more about
Palestine in five minutes from Ibn Saud than he had previously
learnt in his whole life. But according to Hopkins, who was de
pressed by Roosevelt s apparent naivety, the only thing he learnt,
which all people well acquainted with the Palestine cause know, is
that the Arabs don t want any more Jews in Palestine .

By no means aware that the President s intentions were not in
the least sinister, Churchill saw Ibn Saud two days later. A grand
reception was arranged for the potentate at the Hotel du Lac at
Fayoum oasis from which we had temporarily removed all the
residents . Churchill had been warned that neither alcohol nor
tobacco was allowed in Ibn Saud s presence. He was not long in
raising the matter and told the interpreter that if it was the religion
of His Majesty to deprive himself of smoking and alcohol I must
point out that my rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite
smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and,
if need be, during all meals and in the intervals between them .
The King accepted the position. Not only that, but he lavished the
whole British party with priceless gifts, including jewelled swords
with diamond-studded hilts. Churchill s daughter Sarah received
an enormous portmanteau. Beneath a profusion of Arab robes and
vessels of rare perfume she discovered some cardboard boxes; one
of them contained a diamond with the valuation tag of 1,200 still
attached. Eden also received a diamond. It occurred to Churchill
that his own present in return, a case of perfumes, was rather out
classed, so he promised the King that he was to receive the finest
motor car in the world . This was duly sent out from Britain,
Churchill having reported the whole affair to the Cabinet, and was
almost paid for by the presents the party had received (which, with
admirable self-denial, they turned over to the Treasury).

After meeting Farouk and the President of Syria, Churchill went
north to say farewell to Roosevelt. At Alexandria he went aboard

REACTION TO THE YALTA COMMUNIQUE

the Quincy for lunch, after which the two noble heads of state parted
to go their various ways. Roosevelt steamed with the cruiser to
Algiers, where he was expecting to meet de Gaulle. The Frenchman,
however, had changed his mind, and a message was received from
Paris saying that it was no longer convenient for him to go to Algiers
he was upset, it seemed, because the Yalta declaration had paid
little attention to him and to France. This renewed example of de
Gaulle s pride infuriated the President. He was further irritated by
Hopkins s illness, which necessitated his being left at Algiers; for
Hopkins was to have helped him prepare the speech which he was to
deliver to Congress on his return. The two men parted on bad terms
Hopkins was never to see his chief again. However, the President s
mood soon changed when he began to receive the flood of cables that
poured in from the United States congratulating him on the Yalta
communiques which had just been published. It will offer a great
hope to the world , said Herbert Hoover, speaking of the conference.
William L. Shirer said it was a landmark in human history . Alben
W. Berkeley cabled: Accept my sincere felicitations upon the historic
Joint Statement issued today. I read it to the Senate immediately
upon release, and it made a profound impression. I regard it as one
of the most important steps ever taken to promote peace and
happiness in the world.

Churchill reached Lyneham aerodrome, in Wiltshire, on Febru
ary i gth. He was driven up to London in thick fog. The great
meeting of the Big Three, which had promised little but had, so
it was said, achieved much, was at an end.

(Lv)

The Yalta communiqu6 was issued in the three capitals on February
1 4th. Soon everyone throughout the world was discussing it. They
have discussed it ever since, mostly in terms of abuse of the Western
participants or (like Robert E. Sherwood) as devoted admirers. But
the Yalta conference was not an affair of simple black or white, and
the men who attended it were neither gods nor superhumans above
the multitude of extraneous pressures and insidious suspicions. Some
things have been easy to see in the light of later history. Roosevelt s
wish for freedom to act , which merely meant putting off decisions,
was not a strong counter to Russian manoeuvres. The constant

EXULTANT DISCORD

references of Churchill and Roosevelt to the feelings of their public
at home did not impress the Russians. The joyful acceptance of
promises that could be interpreted in two, at least, ways was pre
mature to say the least; what the Communist interpretation of demo
cratic elections in Poland was to be should have been clear to anyone
with a cursory knowledge of Communist practice and theory. The
inability, or the unwillingness, of the Western delegates to quite
appreciate the full implications of occupation by the Red Army did
not strengthen them in their arguments. The failure to understand
that the only possible way the Red Army could be prevailed upon to
withdraw from Eastern Europe was by offering some alternative in
exchange, left the two Western leaders appealing to fairness, honour
and the rules of an exclusive club . Above all, the lack of bargaining
strength that a totally united and cohesive Anglo-American front
would have presented to Stalin lost any small chance there might
have been of enforcing a tolerable after-war situation. On the other
hand, it has been pointed out by Leahy: Stalin had shown a con
ciliatory attitude on the United Nations, on giving France a voice in
the Control Council of Germany. ... In fact, on almost every
political problem, after a forceful statement of their views, the
Russians had made sufficient concessions for an agreement to be
reached, on paper at least. It is true that the ink was hardly dry on
the Yalta Protocol before serious difficulties in interpretation arose.
How much Roosevelt s close advisers and admirers were responsible
for his belief that he could deal with the Russians alone is still not
clear. It is of interest to remember that one of those employed on the
American Advisory Committee on Post- War Foreign Affairs was
Alger Hiss. He boasted at his trial: It would be an accurate and not
immodest statement to say that I helped to formulate the Yalta
agreement. In any event, the great issues were seldom touched on at
Yalta. The decisions taken were few. A high percentage of the
words spoken consisted of meaningless mutual admiration. Much of
the rest consisted of side-tracking and waffle by both Roosevelt and
Stalin. Stalin was quite happy to lead the talk round to whether the
Argentine should be included among the United Nations. This, and
a great deal else, could have been much better discussed by the
Foreign Ministers at a less exceptional time. But if Yalta looks like
muddled appeasement now, at the time it seemed to be preventing a
clash between the Russian hordes advancing into Western Europe
and the British and American armies conscious of their responsibil
ities to the liberated peoples. Lord Ismay has said: Perhaps we were

REACTION TO THE YALTA COMMUNIQUE

all deceived by the spirit of exuberant bonhomie which had prevailed
throughout the conference; or perhaps we preferred not to look
unpleasant facts in the face.

Some things have not been so easy to discover. To what extent
Stalin was restricted by others could only then have been known to
very few, and thus it is likely that the full facts will remain unrecorded
and lost to history. But that he had lost some power since the con
ference at Tehran seems certain. It is similarly unrewarding to
speculate how different things would have been if he had been free
there is evidence that he felt some personal warmth towards both
Churchill and Roosevelt, and even sympathy for their predicaments,
perhaps partly due to his own position of extreme loneliness.
Certainly his heartening and continued attitude on Greece gave
Churchill much hope at the time.

Since Yalta one controversy has remained above all others: can
democratic, elected leaders usefully bargain and negotiate with a
dictator? It seems that Stalin may well have wished to come to an
accommodation with the Western powers, and almost certainly
wished to preserve the alliance; but he expected the Anglo-Americans
to show their goodwill by recognizing authoritarian regimes in
Eastern Europe, while he showed his by providing a face-saver for
the Western leaders through admitting a few non-Communists to
unimportant posts and holding (one party) elections.

In February 1945 nearly everyone thought the conference a
success. The future of Poland had been settled; it seemed possible
that country was to be free. The Russians had made a notable
concession with regard to the Lublin Government. A World
Organization had been agreed to. It had been agreed that reparations
from Germany should be studied; the Atlantic Charter had been
reaffirmed in respect of liberated nations. . . .

The Christian Science Monitor said: The Crimea conference stands
out from previous such conferences because of its mood of decision
... it was plainly dominated by a desire, willingness and determina
tion to reach solid decisions. The New York Herald Tribune said
the conference had been proof of Allied unity, strength arid power
of decision*. Time magazine said: All doubts about the Big Three s
ability to co-operate in peace as well as in war seem now to have been
swept away. In London the reaction was a little more guarded. The
Daily Telegraph described decisions of far-reaching importance to
the future of the world .

But not quite everyone felt relieved. In Britain there were still

EXULTANT DISCORD

doubts about Poland. General Anders, commanding the Polish
troops in Italy, said: We do not recognize and shall never recognize
unilateral decisions/ But on the whole these worries and doubts
were held by only a handful of people, whose protest was hardly
heard above the many expressions of congratulation accorded the
Prime Minister. The latter made his statement to the House of
Commons on February 27th. He said: Most solemn declarations
have been made by Marshal Stalin and the Soviet Union that the
sovereign independence of Poland is to be maintained, and this
decision is now joined in by both Britain and the United States. The
impression I brought back from the Crimea, and from all my other
contacts, is that Marshal Stalin and the Soviet leaders wish to live in
honourable friendship and equality with the Western democracies.
I feel also that their word is their bond. I know of no government
which stands to its obligations, even in its own despite, more solidly
than the Russian Soviet Government.* It is quite evident that these
matters touch the whole future of the world. Sombre indeed would
be the fortunes of mankind if some awful schism arose between the
Western democracies and the Russian Soviet Union. He asked the
House for unanimous approval for the measures he had taken at
Yalta. But a number of Members spoke in opposition. One of them
was the Member of Parliament for South Lanark, Lord Dunglass,
later better known as Lord Home. Dunglass had recently made a
prolonged study of Communism. He pointed out that the agree
ments about Poland had been carried out without the consent of the
Polish people, for whom Britain had gone to war. The agreement
was based on an act of power. Russia s relations with Poland were
the first test-case of the post-war period; a test between a great
military power and her weaker neighbours. As international super
vision of the forthcoming elections had not been secured, there was,
he said, a certainty of the Russians exploiting the situation. Twenty-
four members voted with Dunglass against the Government, and
eleven members of the Government abstained. In addition, Mr
H. G. Strauss, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Town
and Country Planning, resigned.

Roosevelt made his speech to Congress on March 2nd. He
delivered it sitting down, referring for the first time publicly to the
weight of the metal braces on his legs. His mood was hardly less
exultant than it had been immediately after the conference had
finished. He said: It has been a long journey. I hope you will all

* i.c. in Greece.

REACTION TO THE YALTA COMMUNIQUE

agree that it has been a fruitful one. . . . The Crimea conference
spells the end of the system of unilateral action, exclusive alliances
and spheres of influence, and balances of power and all the other
expedients which have been tried for centuries and have always

failed I am sure that there will be a more stable political Europe

than ever before. . . .

3 Unremitting Battle

The run-up to the Rhine
Hitler and the Berlin bunker
The Eastern Front
The saturation bombing controversy
The Japanese war: Iwo Jima
The crossing of the Rhine
Further Anglo-American military differences
The German military situation
The Japanese war: the Burma offensive; the
conquest of Luzon; the assault on Okinawa
More Anglo-American political differences
Russian intransigence
The Separate Peace

3 UNREMITTING BATTLE

The Anglo-American offensive, delayed because of the Battle of the
Bulge at the Ardennes, began near the end of the Yalta conference,
on February 8th. It opened after the most concentrated artillery
bombardment of the war in the West, in which 1,034 guns put down
more than half a million shells in five and a half hours on a seven-
mile front. As had been agreed, General Eisenhower planned three
operations: the destruction of the enemy west of the River Rhine, the
establishment of bridge-heads across the river, and then the two
thrusts into Germany north and south of the Ruhr. Even before the
meeting at Malta the British had been worried about this plan,
considering that Eisenhower did not have enough forces at his
disposal to merit two assaults. Neither was General Bradley, who
was to command the southern attack, happy about it, as he felt that
his Twelfth Army Group, entirely American, should have the
predominant role, rather than Montgomery s British, Canadian and
American Twenty-First Army Group. (Montgomery could count on
thirty-five divisions, Bradley twenty-five.) The move to the Rhine
would have to be on a broad front rather than the thrusts which
were to come later, as Eisenhower did not have enough reserves
available to permit the two assaults to take place while large pockets
of German forces remained west of the river. It was not, however,
expected that either of these armies would have much trouble in
reaching the Rhine, which was obviously a fine natural barrier for
the Germans to retreat behind. But from the moment the British and

UNREMITTING BATTLE

Canadians attacked it was clear that this was not to be the case. The
Allied staff officers had forgotten that not only was the Rhine a
natural barrier, it was also a means of transporting coal from the
Ruhr to the various industrial centres near the great river, and
therefore of vital importance to the German economy. Hitler had no
intention of giving up the western bank. The area that had to be
fought over included the redoubtable Siegfried Line. Its defences
included well-laid minefields, an intricate network of tank obstacles
and ditches, and concrete fortifications connected, as Eisenhower
pointed out, by *a superlative communications system . According to
General Patton, however, the amazing thing about all these defences
is that they produced no results . One division alone of Patton s early
on knocked out 120 pill-boxes in forty-eight hours. Abandoning
their static defences, the Germans were fighting hard; and they were
in considerable strength. To make matters worse, there was heay
rain and much flooding. Lieutenant-General B. G. Horrocks s
XXX Corps became bogged down in water and mud, and tanks and
transport were soon hopelessly jammed on the only main road.
Confusion won the day. The Ninth US Army was delayed by the
flooding of the River Roer, the Germans having broken the dams,
and the British and Canadians were left to try to push on alone, in
the Reichswald forest, for a fortnight. On February 23rd the Ninth
Army started to move forward, and met surprisingly little opposition.
By March it had reached the Rhine at several points. One of the
American armoured columns penetrated ten miles through the
disintegrating German lines, its tanks disguised to look German.
Soon the Canadians were at Wesel, and the Americans looking
across the broad river to Duisburg and Dusseldorf. Everywhere the
bridges were down.

Several attempts by local commanders to rush the river met with
total failure.

Meanwhile Bradley s Army Group, too, had been pushing von
Rundstedt s force back on the river. The famous Third Army of
General Patton, which had the longest way to go, covered fifty-six
miles in three days. Bradley s northernmost army, the First, also
made good progress. Leading its advance was the Ninth US
Armoured Division. It encountered little opposition and hurtled on
through quiet villages bedecked in drooping white flags. As the
advanced troops reached the ridge overlooking the Rhine, they were
astonished to look down and see the railway bridge at the town of
Remagen stretching away across the river to the east bank and the

THE RUN-UP TO THE RHINE

heart of central Germany beyond still intact. A prisoner told them
that it was due to be blown up at 4 p.m. The charges had already
been set. The time was then 3.15 p.m. Ten minutes before the hour
the Americans reached the bridge, and a number dashed across. The
first Allied soldier across the Rhine was Sergeant Alexander Drabik,
thirty-four years old, a butcher from Holland, Ohio. He said: c We
ran down the middle of the bridge, shouting as we went. I didn t
stop because I knew that if we kept moving they couldn t hit me. We
took cover in some bomb craters. Then we just sat and waited for
the others to come. That s the way it was. Engineers hacked at
everything in sight that might have been a demolition cable.
Infantry raced on across the bridge. At four, two charges went off;
the structure shuddered, but remained intact. Reinforcements
rumbled over as fast as they could go. Within hours a bridge-head
had been established across the Rhine. The Americans speed of
advance had surprised the Germans, and their elan had been
rewarded by one of those unexpected strokes of luck that occur from
time to time in war, to confound the best-laid plans of even the
most brilliant tacticians.

After six weeks of rather unco-ordinated and hectic fighting
sometimes fierce, sometimes with little opposition the Allies had
reached Hitler s last great barrier in the west. Killed and wounded
in the First Canadian Army had been very severe: 16,000. The US
Ninth Army had suffered 7,300 killed and wounded. Across the
murky, swift waters, over which they were now able to gaze, lay the
prize of victory that would lead them once more to their homes far
away. Churchill visited S.H.A.E.F., and, being taken on a car tour,
was the first British statesman to set foot in Germany since Neville
Chamberlain had made his journey to Munich six and a half years
before.

For the first time the American and British troops were seeing the
homeland of the enemy. As they had rolled towards the Rhine they
observed the countryside and villages with particular interest; for
this was where Jerry lived. It was the first time they had come into
contact with large numbers of German civilians, and were able to
see the -way they lived and dressed and behaved. Alan Moorehead, a
correspondent who went forward with the troops, noticed that the
countryside, at least, was a surprisingly clean and friendly-looking
place. The first thing that struck you in the lush green countryside
was the cattle, so numerous, so well fed. The farms were rich,
wonderfully well-equipped and managed. The farming people and

UNREMITTING BATTLE

their foreign workers were well dressed, and they looked strong and
healthy. One could turn into any house at random and find a cellar
lined with glass jars of preserved vegetables and fruits. It was
nothing unusual to come on many sides of bacon, and larders of
fresh meat and dairy butter. Within a few days of living with the
Germans it became clear that they expected to be ill-treated. When
a car got stuck in mud, willing German civilians would appear from
everywhere to help push it out. The requisitioning of houses and
small hotels was simple; the families went off to live in the cellars
before they were even asked. They cleaned rooms, washed clothes,
did the cooking for the troops as if they knew it was only their duty
as a defeated people. Moorehead found most to be mortally and
utterly afraid .

Then the Americans entered Cologne. This was different; whole
streets had been obliterated by the numerous air-raids. The place
was hardly recognizable. There were 25,000 survivors still in the city,
mostly living in cellars. Christopher Buckley, Daily Telegraph war-
correspondent, wrote: Walking along many of the streets is largely
a matter of guess work. The houses have been brought so low and
the rubble is piled so high that one really does not know when one
is walking in the street and when one is going across the ruins of
buildings. The remarkable thing is that life goes on ... the in
habitants have adapted themselves to an almost wholly troglodyte
existence. Only the cathedral spires still soared, majestically and
miraculously, over the devastation, to the sky above.

(ii)

Meanwhile, on the Eastern Front, the Red Army was still pushing
relentlessly towards Berlin, By February German resistance had
hardened, and a line had been formed at the Oder. Left behind in
Poland, however, were large pockets of German troops that could no
longer play an effective role in the defence of the Reich. Nearly a
quarter of a million men were cut off in East Prussia. Another
pocket was left behind on the coast at Courland, being steadily
pushed back towards the sea. These areas beside the Baltic were not
only packed with military, they were also the refuge of hundreds of
thousands of East Prussian and Polish refugees fleeing from the Red
Army, which they feared was little better than a horde of terrible and

HITLER AND THE BERLIN BUNKER

uncivilized barbarians. Neutrals arriving in Zurich for their own
safety described the long columns, thirty-five to forty miles long,
advancing on foot, winding serpent-like across the country. An eye
witness said: These people arrive at the villages at night with no
energy left. The route is dotted with the dead bodies of those who
were unable to continue, or who fell victims to disease. Men who
tried to push handcarts with a few belongings hastily gathered
together were often obliged to desist and to leave their only remaining
property on the roadside. Weary, unkempt, often bootless and in
rags, they drag their way through snow and mud/

By the first week in February Zhukov s tank vanguards were only
forty miles from Berlin, at the most westerly point of the Oder.
General Guderian, having suffered a 3oo-mile retreat in three weeks,
ordered a stand east of Berlin. Every man and youth from the city
itself who was not already in uniform was taken out to the line. The
pitiful and wretched Volkssturm, an unreliable mixture of fanatical
boys and disillusioned elderly men, were hardly trained or equipped;
many of them were without uniform, with only an arm-band to
identify them as soldiers. Anti-tank ditches thirty feet wide were dug,
concrete and steel pill-boxes hastily constructed, and an intricate
system of trenches and wire lined the river s forested banks. Against
this Zhukov s breathless offensive came to a slow halt, although the
advance continued further south. There the Silesian coal-field was
soon in Russian hands. This was a catastrophic blow to the German
High Command because, since the decline of the Ruhr due to Allied
bombing, these coal-mines had been developed into Germany s
main source of supply, accounting for 60 per cent of total production
in 1944. In February 1945 German coal production was less than
a third of the previous March; steel was down to a sixth.

Against all expectations, the besieged city of Breslau was somehow
holding out; the result of occasional parachute supply drops, stub
born house-to-house fighting and a brilliant defensive commander.
In February more infantry and armoured divisions were sent from
the west to attempt to stop the irrepressible Russian flood. There
were no reserves to fall back on. Budapest fell on February 12th,
after a siege of seven weeks during which 49,000 Germans were
killed; the biggest loss in one operation since Stalingrad. Now the
Red Army was striking across Czechoslovakia and Hungary towards
Vienna.

In Berlin itself the atmosphere was wholly Wagnerian, with fires
smouldering everywhere, constant air-raids both real and false

UNREMITTING BATTLE

alarms and feverish efforts being made to throw up fortifications in
the eastern outskirts of the city. Trenches were dug at cross-roads
and in the Tiergarten. Women, and even children, laboured on these
works. There was no coal and very little food. Thousands of refugees
camped out as best they could. A report from the German Overseas
News Agency described the scene: Tank columns are driving over
slushy roads to the east. Troop and supply columns dominate the
picture in the centre of the city. Policemen with steel helmets and
guns are posted at outer positions. A system of trenches is being dug
around Berlin. After their day s work, Berliners who have not yet
been sent to the front are being trained in the use of anti-tank
weapons and machine-guns. More and more Berliners are being
thrown into the surrounds of the city in Volkssturm battalions. In
his weekly article in Das Reich, Joseph Goebbels wrote: It will be a
decision of life and death. One would think that the people of
Europe, who fear, hate and despise Bolshevism, would hasten to aid
the German nation. But no the German people today stand almost
completely deserted.

On the morning of February 3rd nearly a thousand American
6.295 (Flying Fortresses) raided the capital with incendiaries and
high explosive.* A Swedish reporter in the city described it as
incomparably the biggest trial Berlin has faced in the whole war .
Deserters and foreign slave workers were beginning to appear,
scavanging and terrorizing in the streets. With Germany nearing
collapse, there was no sign of any letting up in the policy of satura
tion bombing of the German cities. Between February i3th and i6th
there was one of the vastest series of raids of the war. One of the
principal targets was Dresden, only seventy miles from Konev s
tanks. The assault on that city took place on the night of February
1 3th, and was conducted by 770 aircraft of the RAF and 310 of the
US Eighth Air Force; 135,000 people died. A war correspondent of
the German News Agency reported: In the inner town not a single
block of buildings, not a single detached building, remains intact or
even capable of reconstruction. The town area is devoid of human
life. A great city has been wiped from the map of Europe. There
were 1,000,000 people in Dresden at the time, including 600,000
bombed-out evacuees, and refugees from the east. The raging fires
which spread in the narrow streets killed a great many from sheer
lack of oxygen. The siren system had long ceased to function as more
waves of bombers spread further destruction. This raid brought to

* Only twenty-four planes were reported missing.

HITLER AND THE BERLIN BUNKER

a head the controversy about terror bombing* that had been
simmering between Sir Arthur Harris, commanding Bomber Com
mand, and the Prime Minister. Since December 1940, when it had
originally been adopted as a retaliatory measure, saturation bombing
had taken up the greater part of Bomber Command s effort. This
offensive had been supported by the Cabinet; but now that German
resistance was clearly doomed the Prime Minister began to be
distinctly uneasy about such tactics. He doubted the wisdom of
more bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing
the terror. . . . The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query
against the conduct of Allied bombing. * Churchill was strongly
supported by Eden. The matter was complicated by an Associated
Press report, which received wide publicity and was quoted in the
House of Commons, declaring that raids on residential areas were
part of deliberate terror bombing of German population centres as a
ruthless expedient to hastening Hitler s doom . This report was
suppressed, after its release, in Britain. In America, where a great
deal of emphasis in the past had been carefully placed on the
selective and precise nature of American bombing, it caused serious
embarrassment. In Britain, too, there had been repeated Govern
ment declarations in answer, for instance, to the Archbishop of
Canterbury that the RAF was bombing only military or industrial
targets. (After the war it was officially admitted indeed it became
self-evident that Bomber Command had been aiming most of its
bombs at the centres of residential areas.) Despite political pressure
it was April 4th, 1945, when German resistance was practically over,
before the Air Staff agreed that nothing further was to be gained
from such bombing; but during the previous week the RAF had
dropped 67,365 tons of bombs on Germany something of a record.
The last big American raid, on Berlin, was on April loth.

As his empire and dreams blazed and crashed to earth all about
him, the instigator and architect of the terror that had spread across
the world, causing indescribable suffering, misery and death to many
millions of people who had never seen him or been nearer to him
than thousands of miles, had scurried below ground in Berlin like a
rat frightened by the disturbance it has made in the yard above. In
his bunker, surrounded by his staff and sycophants, Adolf Hitler,
the Fuehrer, planned and pontificated, ranted and accused. He had
arrived at the bunker on January i6th (having called on the way for

* In the air attack on Dresden more people were killed than at Hiroshima or
Nagasaki.

UNREMITTING BATTLE

afternoon tea with Frau Goebbels and the children bringing his
own tea in a thermos flask), straight from his headquarters at
Rastenburg, where he had been directing the Ardennes offensive.
After the collapse of this attempt to change his destiny, Hitler took
less active control of the direction of the war. Convinced that all his
generals were useless, he sat in his bunker in the heart of the
destroyed city and waited. He waited for he hardly knew what; for
the collapse of the Allied coalition (especially after receiving from
Kesselring a captured document giving the lay-out of the occupa
tion zones, from which he divined the likelihood of inter-Allied
squabbles); for the lucky stroke that the astrologers assured him
would yet save all; or and he was privately prepared to admit it
for his total eclipse. Closest to him was Martin Bormann, who by
now had successfully dealt with nearly all his rivals, and was in effect
internal ruler of the collapsing Reich. Himmler, whom the outside
world considered to be almost omnipotent in Germany, was in fact
out of favour (since the attempt on the Fuehrer s life the previous
year; as chief of police it had reflected on him).* He was now in
command of an SS Army Group on the Eastern Front vainly trying
to contain the Russians. Goering, who was nominally Hitler s
successor, was entirely discredited due to the failure of the Luftwaffe
to protect Germany and to his somewhat sensational and ridiculous
private life. Goebbels spent most of his time in the bunker trying to
spur the German people to a final bloodbath sacrifice in the name of
National Socialism, but he, too, had lost influence.

From January i6th Hitler never left the bunker, apart from an
occasional brisk walk in the compound above. He rose every day at
noon, received a string of officials and officers calling, even at that
late date, often merely to receive his favour. This string of inter
views was interrupted for irregular meals and sessions with secre
taries and doctors. Every bite he ate had to be tasted by his personal
chef. Some time during the day he would find time to pore over his
plans for the reconstruction of Linz, to which he intended to retire.
He lost his thoughts in elaborate designs for a new opera house and
art gallery for that town. He would also find time to see his two
favourites, Eva Braun, the loyal, dull, simple woman whom he had
secretly been close to for twelve years, and his Alsatian dog Blondi.
Braun spent the time polishing her finger-nails and changing her

* Since the attempt on Hitler s life, British and American newspapers had indulged in
the foolish but popular journalistic game of suggesting that Hitler was dead, using
rumour and comparisons of photographs, etc., to make their point. Some even said he
had been imprisoned by Himmler.

7 6

HITLER AND THE BERLIN BUNKER

clothes almost hourly. At 2 a.m. there would be a supper party, at
which the Fuehrer would tell his attentive audience his philosophy
and his thoughts on the war.

Those who were summoned to the bunker were amazed at
Hitler s appearance. His face had thinned to a startling extent, and
was a greyish colour. His body was stooped; his voice weak; his
eyes dull. His hands were seen to shake. The theory that his un
doubted debility at this time was due to after-effects of the bomb
explosion which had so nearly killed him has been discounted.* It
is more likely that it was a direct result of his unhealthy life, with
little exercise or fresh air, and of the attentions of his well-meaning
but incompetent physician, Professor Theodore Morell. This ex-
ship s doctor was a quack of the most absurd and dangerous sort. He
claimed that, after years of research, he had discovered penicillin,
but that the secret had been stolen by the British Secret Service. He
had first met Hitler when attending the Fuehrer s photographer for
venereal disease, on which he considered himself an expert. Since
those days he had become obsessed with the techniques of injection,
and was now injecting various drugs into the rapidly sickening
Hitler every day.

What Hitler, unable to adjust himself to purely defensive thinking,
liked to hear most from those who came to him at the bunker were
the three things that he believed might still turn the war in his
favour; the jet fighters, the rockets, and the electro-submarines. The
former were having difficulty in getting off the ground due to Allied
attacks on airfields, the second were being threatened by Mont
gomery s forces in the west, and it was the last which appealed to
Hitler most. One person who was being seen much more of in the
bunker was Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, who had been com-
mander-in-chief of the German Navy since January 1943. Hitler was
in touch with him nearly every day. Doenitz, shrewd, calculating
and competent, had become the only high-ranking officer whom
Hitler still trusted. The Navy s performance, in contrast to that of
the Army, had been good (in the last four months of the war in
Europe Britain lost more tonnage through enemy action than in the
previous five months). Although by no means an out-and-out Nazi,
Doenitz was certainly more in favour of the Party than most of the
generals were; he had become, moreover, completely overwhelmed
by Hitler s personal magnetism. Strangely, Hitler seemed to respect
the Admiral s lack of sycophancy the two men could disagree

* by H. R Trevor-Roper.

UNREMITTING BATTLE

without any mad ravings from Hitler. The new U-boats that
Doenitz had been developing were certainly dramatically advanced
on the older type. They could stay under water for days on end,
reaching the Atlantic without surfacing. They could travel submerged
at fifteen knots. There was no doubt that, once in service, they
could bring the initiative on the seas back to Germany. Hitler was
delighted; even when Doenitz had to inform him that owing to
training difficulties the submarines were going to be months late, his
interest remained as keen as ever. To bring the crews to a proper
degree of competence would take up to six months. For this reason
Doenitz told Hitler that it was imperative that the Baltic be kept
open as a training and testing ground for these revolutionary
weapons. Hitler agreed. This was one of the reasons why he insisted
on large forces remaining in Norway and Denmark when the
generals were begging for men for the Eastern Front, and why he
ordered the troops in East Prussia, around Danzig and Courland, to
fight to the last man.

It was a grotesque miscalculation. For the submarines, however
successful, could no longer have any strategic significance in the war.
Like the V.2S and the jet fighters, they were too late.*

While Hitler talked and talked, Bormann, at his command, wrote
down and preserved what seemed his more important utterances.
Some of them were wild rambles, some were merely to show off his
incomplete knowledge of European history. He spoke of why he had
attacked Russia (to take the initiative before the Russians made the
inevitable attack on Germany, although he was, he said, fully aware
of the dangers of waging war on two fronts); on the Italians ( the
greatest service Italy could have rendered to us would have been to
remain aloof from this conflict ); on Roosevelt (a madman* in the
power of Jews); on Churchill ( an old man, capable, and only just
capable at that, of carrying out the orders of Roosevelt ); of Russia
( their philosophy allows them to avoid taking risks and to wait a
year, a generation, a century, if necessary until the time is ripe for
the implementation of their plans. Time means nothing to them );
on Stalin (his empire is, in all its essentials, only the spiritual
successor to the empire of Peter the Great ); on Germany ( post-war
Germany s . . . preoccupation should be to preserve indissoluble the
union of all the German races ). On February 4th he said that
Britain could, if she had wanted, have put an end to the war at the

* One hundred and twenty of the new submarines were ready for service by May
1945; only two were sent on operations, and they saw no action.

THE JAPANESE WAR

beginning of 1941. Peace then would have allowed us to prevent the
Americans from meddling in European affairs. Under the guidance
of the Reich, Europe would speedily have become unified . . .
Germany could then have thrown herself heart and soul into her
essential task, the ambition of my life and the raison tfetre of National
Socialism the destruction of Bolshevism ... we ourselves were
disposed to compromise. . . . We can with safety make one prophecy:
Germany will emerge from this war stronger than ever before, and
Britain more enfeebled than ever. Some of his talk was indicative of
his wishful mood. On February 6th he expounded on one of his
favourite subjects: If Churchill were suddenly to disappear, every
thing could change in a flash. . . . We can still snatch victory in the
final sprint. On February yth: What we want is a Monroe Doctrine
in Europe. Europe for the Europeans. He talked increasingly of
European Union. The last entry Bormann made in his lovingly kept
book was for April 2nd. Hitler said: With the defeat of the Reich and
pending the emergence of the Asiatic, the African, and perhaps the
South American nationalisms, there will remain in the world only
two great powers capable of confronting each other the United
States and Soviet Russia. The laws of both history and geography
will compel these two powers to a trial of strength, either military or
in the fields of economics and ideology. These same laws make it
inevitable that both powers should become enemies of Europe. And
it is equally certain that both these powers will sooner or later find
it desirable to seek the support of the sole surviving great nation in
Europe, the German people. . . ,"

The Japanese, too, were facing their cataclysm. That they would
lose their war was now inevitable, but the Japanese leaders, in stub
born mood, intended that their country should go down fighting, in
an orgy of courage, death and self-pity.

While MacArthur was still fighting in Luzon, plans had been made
to carry the war still nearer to Japan itself. It had been stated at a
meeting at San Francisco the previous year that it was essential that
the two islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, which lay in the path of
American long-range bombers, should be occupied before an air
offensive could be launched against the main Japanese island of

UNREMITTING BATTLE

Honshu. The spokesman for this plan was Admiral Chester W.
Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief Central Pacific (distinct from Mac-
Arthur s South-West Pacific Command). It had been accepted by
the Chiefs of Staff, but not without opposition. It was eventually
decided that the two islands were to be taken in February and April
respectively.

If Iwo Jima had strategic importance, it certainly held no other
interest for mankind whatever. A volcanic rock, it had only emerged
from the sea less than fifty years before. Shaped like a pork chop on
its side, it was four and a half miles long and two and a half wide.
The volcanic crater of Mount Suribachi, 550 feet above sea level,
was the extreme southern tip. There was practically no vegetation on
the island, which was greyish in colour; the terrain was of volcanic
ash and soft rock only recently formed from volcanic mud. The
features below the crater were jumbled and rugged. Throughout the
island, jets of steam and sulphur rose from fissures in the rock.

The landing force was to consist entirely of Marines, the Third,
Fourth and Fifth Marine Divisions, the largest self-contained
Marine force ever to go to war.

Since March 1944 the Japanese had realized that Iwo Jima would
be an obvious objective for the Americans. Of all the islands in the
vicinity it was the only one suitable as an air base. They themselves
had already constructed two landing-strips and were now engaged
in building a third. Fully expecting an assault, they increased the
garrison from 1,500 men to 21,000. The whole island was turned into
a fortress of tremendous strength, every defensive position being dug
into the rock. Casements were strengthened with four to six feet
of concrete, a system of tunnels connected the various positions and
cave-like shelters, and anti-aircraft guns were placed in pits so that
only direct hits could knock them out. In six months the island
became a labyrinthine catacomb-fort put under the command of
Lieutenant-General Tadamichi Kuribayaski, a most determined
commander whose arrangements for static defence were of the
highest class. Emplacements were so constructed that each beach
came under several lines of enfilade fire.

Just after daybreak on February igth there opened one of the
heaviest bombardments of the Second World War. Seven battle
ships, seven cruisers and ten destroyers rained shells on to the tiny
island, which had already been under fire during the two preceding
days. So close was the manoeuvring for this massive force to get into
range for their small target that three of the ships were involved in a

THE JAPANESE WAR

collision. At 8.05 a.m. carrier-based planes joined in. The whole
island became covered in a cloud of smoke, dust and risen ash. It
seemed impossible that anything could stay alive under such a
massive battering; it almost seemed that the rock itself ought to be
submerged back into the sea from whence it had so recently come.
The US Official Naval History says: The operation looked like a
pushover. Optimists predicted that the island would be secured in
four days. 5

The assault began at 8.30, hitting the beach at 9 a.m., and was
completed in twenty-three minutes. By 9.44 tanks were arriving at
the beach. As the launches raced in towards the beaches, their long
thin wakes streaming behind them in the early morning sunlight, it
seemed that everything was going according to plan.

In fact, the Marines had walked into a nightmare. The beach
selected had been the easiest of approach and was therefore the most
heavily defended. The volcanic ash and cinder made quick move
ment difficult, and men who came running out of the launches found
themselves reduced to a slow walk within a few steps. Tanks became
bogged down on the beach, and both men and machines found it
impossible to scale the terraces behind the beaches, which rose as
high as fifteen feet. A ceaseless and withering fire seemed to be
aimed at everyone from all directions. By 11.30 one battalion had
gained 600 yards, but many others were still pinned down on the
beaches, which had become the scene of bloody and awful chaos.
Not only were men and machines all tightly packed together in a
small space, but the landing craft continuing to arrive behind them
were disintegrating under the battering they were receiving from
mortars, and the beach was already so littered with wrecked craft
that it was difficult to find a place to land. By nightfall about 30,000
troops had been landed on Iwo Jima; of these, nearly 2,500 were
already casualties. The beach-head was so crowded that there was
hardly room to move, let alone find somewhere to take cover.

The story of the taking of the island is one of relentless and bitter
fighting, as valiant and terrible as any in the history of war. Bit by
bit, day by day, the bedraggled and nerve-shattered Marines
struggled northwards and inwards up the island, which, steaming
and hissing and so willingly embracing death, seemed to many of
them like a real hell on earth. Fighting became desperate and
savage, with quarter seldom asked and never given; the taking of
prisoners was practically unknown. Robert Sherrod, war corres
pondent, described the beach on the second day: &lt; Whether the dead

UNREMITTING BATTLE

were Japs or Americans, they had died with the greatest possible
violence. Nowhere in the Pacific War had I seen such badly mangled
bodies. Many were cut squarely in half. Legs and arms lay fifty
feet away from any body. In one spot on the sand, far from the
nearest cluster of dead, I saw a string of guts fifteen feet long. The
smell of burning flesh was heavy. . . .

The truth was that the Japanese had sat out the bombardment
in their deep caves in comfort, and had not emerged until the
assault took place and the barrage ha leased a simple technique
employed by the Germans in the First World War. The tremendous
and expensive American bombardment had hardly inflicted one
Japanese casualty. In the end, it was only the flame-throwing teams,
infantry with grenades and engineers with demolition charges that
secured the ground. Long-range artillery, except in the rare and
necessarily somewhat flukish event of a direct hit, was as useless as
the infantrymen s rifles. The advance of troops on Iwo Jima has
been described as like throwing human flesh against reinforced
concrete .

On February 23rd a forty-man detachment of the Twenty-
Eighth Marines, commanded by Lieutenant H. G. Schreier, scaled
the side of Mount Suribachi, which had become isolated from the
main Japanese force. As they scrambled over the rim of the crater,
they were met by heavy fire from the opposite rim, and it was
some time before they could claim the height unchallenged. One of
the Marines picked up a length of iron piping that had been dis
carded or blown up and attached to it a small American flag which
he had brought up in his pocket. It did not look very impressive, and,
as the peak could be seen from nearly all points on the island, a
larger flag eight foot long was brought up, and Joe Rosenthal,
Associated Press photographer, also made the climb. Seventeen
minutes after the first flag had been raised he took the great photo
graph of grimy and battleworn Marines holding up the Stars and
Stripes; a picture that was shortly to become one of the most famous
of the war.

Iwo Jima was declared secured on March i6th. But there were
still pockets of isolated Japanese holding out till March 26th, on
which day the announcement was made operation completed . On
March 2ist Kuribayaski had informed, by wireless, the Japanese
commander of the neighbouring island of Chichi Jima: We have
not eaten or drunk for five days. But our fighting spirit is still high.
We are going to fight bravely to the last. On March 24th he had

THE CROSSING OF THE RHINE

sent his last message: All officers and men of Chichi Jima, good-bye/
Those of the remaining Japanese who could not be taken without
more loss of American life were sealed up in their caves and left
to their fate. Total identified Japanese dead were 20,703, but this
clearly left a great many unaccounted for.* Only 216 were taken
prisoner. The American casualties actually exceeded the Japanese,
totalling 26,000. It was, said Lieutenant-General Holland Smith,
c the most savage and the most costly battle in the history of the
Marine Corps .

There was soon much doubt as to whether the fighting had not
been too costly altogether. It was learnt that a ten-day bombard
ment had been asked for, but a three-day bombardment was all
that had been supplied by the Navy. Not surprisingly, this caused a
great deal of bitter comment. An attack on both the Navy, for
strategy, and the Marine Corps, for tactics, was made in the Hearst
and McCormick press. It was suggested that Marine commanders
were inclined to demand tough fighting from their Corps merely
for the sake of the fighting itself, and for the glory of the Marines.
It was said that Iwo Jima was far too obvious a target, and that its
capture was not worth the effort involved. It was pointed out that
well before the capture of the island had been completed over 200
bombers had been able to bomb Tokyo (but by that time the Japanese
airfields in Iwo Jima were out of action). No doubt the matter will
remain a controversy. About the only certain thing seems to be that
perhaps the US Marines were the only unit in the world that could
have eventually succeeded in such a badly planned and over
confident scheme.

(iv)

Now that Hitler s much-vaunted Siegfried Line, west of the Rhine,
had been overrun, preparations were complete for the crossing of
the river. Germany was clearly done for, but there was no thought
of making a peace. The Allied agreement to demand unconditional
surrender made it certain that the German state was to be an
nihilated and that there was to be chaos in Central Europe, for
Hitler had no intention of making any move towards a surrender.

* Spasmodic fighting, as more small groups of Japanese were discovered, continued
well into May.

UNREMITTING BATTLE

Montgomery s preparations for the crossing (his was to be, it will
be recalled, the major thrust) were nothing if not thorough. He was
assuming that the far bank would be strongly defended. More than
250,000 tons of stores, ammunition and bridging equipment had
been dumped near the west bank of the Rhine. While all these
preparations were being made, Montgomery refused to be rushed,
although he was well aware that a desperate situation was developing
in Holland, where famine seemed likely, and also that every day he
delayed meant more lives lost in London. Like most successful
commanders, he never fought a battle unless he could be absolutely
sure of winning it. In common with all of the British commanders,
he had been deeply depressed by what he had seen of the Allied
generals in the First World War, and had never forgotten the
lessons he had learnt from observing their failure and the needless
waste of life that they had caused.* His first plan was to let General
M. C. Dempsey s Second (British) Army make the initial crossing,
with Simpson s Ninth US Army playing no part. Dempsey, a most
efficient commander, was a sound choice. He was described by
Moorehead as a lean and nervous figure, a manipulator of facts,
not so much a popular leader as a remarkable co-ordinator and a
planner. There was a certain greyhound quality about him. But,
strangely, after all the trouble of recent months, Montgomery still
had not learnt his lesson. The Americans were flabbergasted. To
them, of course, it seemed that he was callously getting his revenge,
and was this time determined to steal all the glory for the British.
Once again, however, they misjudged the Field-Marshal, who, in
fact, was far too good a commander ever to take national considera
tions into account as a commander of allies, this was precisely his
trouble. The plan was greeted with a storm of bitter protest, and he
modified it, with the two armies now having responsibilities on the
narrow front. But he insisted on his plan for a tidy assault rather
than the improvised and lightning stroke that the Americans pre- N
ferred. As always, he was influenced by the thought of heavy
casualties.

Meanwhile Patton s Third Army was dashing on, and taking part
in fighting as hard as any since the Ardennes, and harder than most
other forces had undergone in the run up to the river . He was
spurred on by messages from Bradley warning him that if he did not
secure a bridge-head, as General C. H. Hodges First Army had
done at Remagen, Eisenhower might take away some of his divisions

* q.v. his Memoirs p. 35.

8 4

THE CROSSING OF THE RHINE

to give to Montgomery an unthinkable suggestion. In point of
fact, because of the trouble over the Ninth Army, Eisenhower was
already dubious about giving any more US troops to Montgomery,
despite the promises made at Malta. He feared the reaction from
Marshall, Bradley and American public opinion. On the night of
March 22nd six battalions of Patton s Fifth Infantry Division
slipped across the Rhine in pursuit of the fleeing German Seventh
Army. The following day, his bridge-head well established, Patton
telephoned Bradley with the ridiculous statement: C I want the world
to know Third Army made it before Monty starts across.* Patton
had been reprimanded before this about the colourful language in
which he composed his official reports, and the dispatch he sent to
the War Department on this occasion was written in studiously
correct and formal language; below it was the famous postscript: C I
peed in the Rhine today. Patton had brought home the point, and
this time no one could or wished to deny it, that himself, Hodges
and Bradley, if not expert strategists, were exceedingly good
tacticians brilliantly good against a half-beaten foe.

On the same night as Patton s crossing, Montgomery, his prepara
tions completed, opened his assault with a massive and typical
bombardment from over 2,000 guns on a front of twenty-five miles.
A very heavy bombing programme had already taken place behind
the German lines in order to disrupt communications and supply
lines. A brigade of Commandos got across the river almost un
noticed to take Wesel, while two British and two American divisions
made the crossing of 400-500 yards on either side of the town with
little difficulty. By daylight there were thus three firm bridge-heads
in Montgomery s sector, all of which were pressing into the interior.
The amount of opposition can be gauged from the fact that the
Ninth Army lost forty-one men killed in the first day. On the 24th
Montgomery followed up the crossing by a massive parachute and
glider assault of two airborne divisions, involving more than 5,000
planes, gliders and protective aircraft. These were dropped not far
in front of the advancing troops, in careful determination to avoid
another Arnhem. There was little opposition, as by now the Luftwaffe
was practically non-existent, but there were a large number of
parachutes which candled , a sickening spectacle for the troops on
the ground, and many of the gliders were wrecked or caught fire
(the petrol in the jeeps inside being ignited) on landing. In fact, there
were probably as many casualties from these causes as there were
from German opposition. For Montgomery had completely over-

UNREMITTING BATTLE

estimated the strength of the enemy. His tremendously powerful
operation was faced by only three parachute and three weak infantry
divisions, with two battered armoured divisions in reserve. The
German forces in the west, now under command of Field-Marshal
Albrecht Kesselring, who had replaced von Rundstedt after the
American seizure of Remagen, had now been fatally depleted to
strengthen the line at the Oder. In the first few days the most urgent
problem of Montgomery s staff was to establish communications
in the area, which had been over-bombed , particularly in the
demolished town of Wesel. A dozen bridges were quickly thrown
over the Rhine, and on the fifth day of the crossing the bridge-head
was thirty-five miles wide and as many miles in depth. The German
line snapped on that night, and the northern plains were open to
Montgomery. His progress would have been quicker if it had not
been for the difficulty in passing through the towns which recently
had been so heavily bombed. Within a week he had twenty divisions
and 1,500 tanks across the river.

The Rhine crossing had been observed by a distinguished visitor.
Winston Churchill had come over especially for the occasion, and
by all accounts, including his own, enjoyed himself immensely. On
arrival he had been taken to Montgomery s famous caravan, and
after dinner the British commander had gone over his plan in the
map-wagon which always accompanied him. Churchill, as a student
of military history, was not greatly worried about the Rhine as a
barrier. Everything I had seen or studied in war, or read, made me
doubt that a river could be a good barrier of defence against superior
force ... a river running parallel to the line of advance is a much
more dangerous feature than one which lies squarely athwart it. He
therefore went to bed in hopeful mood. Unknown to him, Eisen
hower was not far away, watching the barrage from a clock tower
on his own except for his driver. The following morning Churchill
looked down on the river, where troops were still crossing in boats
and on rafts, from a near-by hill. I should have liked to have de
ployed my men in red coats on the plain down there and ordered
them to charge, he said. But now my armies are too vast. After
watching the parachute drop, he was taken on a long motor tour.
He was amused by two signs he passed on the roadside. The first
read This was the Siegried Line ; the second, a hundred yards
further on, was a post bearing a clothes line and the words This is
the washing a reference to the song We re Going to Hang Out
the Washing on the Siegfried Line , so sadly premature, which had

THE CROSSING OF THE RHINE

been sung on the old Western Front in the first weeks of 1940. After
a visit to Eisenhower for lunch, the Supreme Commander had taken
him to a specially prepared, sandbagged house from which he could
see the opposite bank of the river. There Eisenhower left him, con
tent no doubt that this proximity to the battle would satisfy the
Prime Minister. No sooner had Eisenhower gone than Churchill,
accompanied by Montgomery, persuaded some Americans to boat
him across to the other side. During the afternoon he came within a
hundred yards of shell-fire, a fact which apparently made his day.
Brooke recalled in his diary: c . . . General Simpson, on whose front
we were, coming up to Winston and saying: "Prime Minister,
there are snipers in front of you; they are shelling both sides of the
bridge and now they have started shelling the road behind you. I
cannot accept the responsibility for your being here, and must
ask you to come away." The look on Winston s face was just like
that of a small boy being called away from his sand-castles on the
beach by his nurse! The junior officers around, to whom, in their
recent past, war had meant more than a noisy game to be enjoyed
by ebullient spectators, may well have wondered if the British Field-
Marshal and the famous Prime Minister did not have better ways of
spending an entire day.

A week after the crossing, Montgomery gave orders for Dempsey
and Simpson to drive on towards the Elbe, with the Canadians,
now also across the river, advancing north to seal off the Germans
in Holland. Simpson s Ninth US Army was to connect with the
First US Army, now coming up from south of the Ruhr, having
burst out of the Remagen bridge-head. Hodges Army was ad
vancing with extraordinary speed as it skirted the Ruhr, as was
Patton s Third Army, which was in Frankfurt by March agth.
Further south still both the Seventh US Army and the First French
Army were over the Rhine and heading east and south-east re
spectively. All these crossings and movements had been achieved
with only very small losses indeed, a fact that Eisenhower was
rightly quick to point out although the lack of German opposition
and the disintegration of their forces by the end of March was not
fully brought out in official dispatches. As Major-General J. F. C.
Fuller has written: Within a week of crossing the Rhine the German
forces were in complete disintegration. All organization on the
Western Front had collapsed; yet the fighting went on so that un
conditional surrender might receive its belly-full. All these thrusts
were now probing deep into Germany, but it seemed that it must

UNREMITTING BATTLE

only be a matter of weeks before the mightiest of all, that under
Montgomery, burst across the Westphalian plain and then on ir-
resistably to Berlin.

But this was not to be. Eisenhower had already decided that
Bradley, after all, was to get the additional American divisions
originally intended for the north. This decision brought to a head
the row in the Anglo-American military alliance which had been
crackling away all year.

The main difference between the two schools was, as has been
seen, a strategic one; the British believing in one strong thrust and in
lack of dissipation; the Americans believing in a broader front in
which all thrusts should be strong, a policy with which the British
disagreed not only on strategical grounds, but on logistical ones as
well Irritants to this main dissension were the suspicion that the
British were up to at least one trick to steal the main glory of
victory for themselves, and the personal dislike in which all the
Americans (except Eisenhower, who disliked no one) held Mont
gomery. It was the strategic difference which had now come to the
boil. A secondary point of the British view was that by concen
trating on one advance only there was a chance that Berlin could be
reached, if not before the Russians, at least at the same time. This
was seen to have certain political advantages. Eisenhower, however,
was disinterested in any such considerations. He saw his task as
beating the Germans. He looked forward to the surrender of the
German armies opposing him, but he looked no further than that.
In reply to a query from Churchill, the Supreme Commander
wrote: As soon as the US Ninth and First Armies join hands and
enemy encircled in Ruhr area is incapable of further offensive
action, I propose driving eastwards to join hands with the Russians
or to attain general line of Elbe. This will be my main thrust, and
until it is quite clear that concentration of all our effort on it alone
will not be necessary I am prepared to direct all my forces to en
suring its success. It lies in Bradley s zone Thus Bradley had

won after all. There was a feeling of acute frustration in London
and at Montgomery s headquarters. At about the same time it had
been learnt that Eisenhower, without any authority from Washing
ton, had communicated this plan to Stalin, without consulting the
Combined Chiefs of Staff. When the British heard of this they
believed they had got hold of something which would help them to
bend Eisenhower more to their will. Eisenhower made a rather un
convincing excuse for his surprising action (his direct contact with

THE CROSSING OF. THE RHINE

Stalin and the Russians seems to have dated from Tedder s visit
to Moscow in January, at the end of the Ardennes campaign).
The British chiefs of staff complained at length, as always on purely
military considerations, about Eisenhower s new strategy, and his
direct approach to Moscow. As was to be expected, they received a
reply from their opposite numbers in Washington supporting the
Supreme Commander to the hilt; it said, in fairly icy tones, that the
matter was best left to the Supreme Commander in the field. The
US chiefs of staff said that the battle for Germany had now reached
the stage where Eisenhower alone could judge what measures ought
to be taken. As for communication with Stalin, they agreed that he
should first show them any such messages in future.

There was at this time still considerable veiled criticism of
Eisenhower in the British Press, where he was frequently described,
somewhat disparagingly, as the Chairman of the Board rather than
as a real Commander-in-Chief. Although the public knew little of
the controversy now raging, rumours abounded among the press
men. The trouble with Eisenhower, as some people saw it, was that
he not only obviously did not enjoy war, he also did not appear to
enjoy high command both, until that time, considered to be
essential qualifications for any great military commander. He was
personally popular with the Press, but not at all approachable. On
February 24th he had given only his first Press conference since
November. Matters were not helped by the extraordinary circum
vention of syntax and phrase which he seemed to find necessary to
express himself on even the most straightforward matters. Some saw
his glaucous statements as a desire not to commit himself on any
thing, revealing a basic lack of confidence. When in Paris, he some
times stayed at a small hotel in semi-secrecy. However, as the war
progressed successfully, he became noticeably more relaxed, as did
his staff, who were often to be seen at the bar of the Scribe Hotel
entertaining journalists, Congressmen and other visitors. One of
the British visitors was Leslie Hore-Belisha, who had been Minister
of War at the beginning of hostilities and had been invited to Europe
(apparently at the Army s expense) by de Guingand in order to see
the end .

At the end of March Churchill intervened on behalf of his re
buffed chiefs of staff. In a letter to Eisenhower he wrote: If the
enemy s resistance should weaken, as you evidently expect, and
which may well be fulfilled, why should we not cross the Elbe and
advance as far eastward as possible? This has an important political

UNREMITTING BATTLE

bearing, as the Russian armies of the south seem certain to enter
Vienna and overrun Austria. If we deliberately leave Berlin to them,
even if it should be in our grasp, the double event may strengthen
their conviction, already apparent, that they have done everything. 5
The last sentence indicates how unwilling the Prime Minister was
to put his real fears bluntly to the Americans, although, as he claims,
by this time his policy was based on the tenets that Soviet Russia
had become a mortal danger to the free world and that a new
front must immediately be created against her onward sweep* and
that this front in Europe should be as far east as possible . Although
he went on in this letter to Eisenhower to point out the advantages
of taking Berlin, Churchill nowhere mentioned that it would be in
any way fatally disadvantageous for the Russians to take it instead.
This may have been because Eisenhower was well known to shy-
off from political considerations. Churchill also wrote to Roosevelt,
in carefully politic tones ( I venture to put to you a few considera
tions upon the merits of the changes in our original plans now
desired by General Eisenhower ). Ralph Ingersoll pointed out in
this connection: Mr Churchill apparently said everything but the
truth, which was that the military situation had nothing to do with
it. Although he did not know it, Churchill s letter was dealt with,
not by Roosevelt, but by Marshall, for the President s health was
causing great concern to those in his innermost circle.

Eisenhower replied to Churchill at length (and almost totally in
comprehensibly). He seemed to say that he had not changed his
plan at all; that he had always thought the main thrust should be in
the north, but that he thought the centre one should be strong too.
This was, to say the least, a disingenuous answer. He made his
position more clear, later, in his Supreme Commander s Report:
Berlin, I was now certain, no longer represented a military ob
jective of major importance. The function of our forces must be
to crush the German armies rather than dissipate our strength in
the occupation of empty and ruined cities. He also believed that an
entanglement with the Russians, who were only forty miles from
Berlin, was to be avoided, and that there was a strong possibility
that the Germans would concentrate on the Tyrol and South Ger
many, forming a powerful redoubt. If this was so, clearly it was
better to strengthen Bradley, who could be directed to the danger
area in question, rather than Montgomery, who could not. Churchill
himself had wondered about the possibility of the Germans retreat
ing to such a fortress, but British Intelligence thought it unlikely.

THE CROSSING OF THE RHINE

Two of Eisenhower s harshest critics have been Ingersoll and
J. F. C. Fuller. The former blames Bradley more than the Supreme
Commander, as he claims Bradley was completely the boss . He
says that to the American chiefs of staff war c was a game played
for cheers from the grandstand a game in which people get hurt
and a grim game which is taken seriously but still a game . Fuller
has written: The Americans were such military amateurs that they
failed to realize that war is a political instrument, and that the
defeat of the enemy is but a means to a political end. Looking upon
war as a game, they imagined that once it was won both sides would
disperse and, like Candide, go home and cultivate their gardens.

Churchill now wrote a little more strongly to Eisenhower, almost
coming to the point: I deem it highly important that we shake
hands with the Russians as far to the east as possible. The Supreme
Commander, however, with Marshall, Bradley and the whole
American executive and military machine behind him, did not feel
he had to give way.

Meanwhile, Eisenhower s military moves had met with total
success. Patton s army was ploughing deep into the southern
Germany of small, bell-ringing towns, which smelt of incense, wood
fires, beer and fatty sausages. There was little opposition. Further
north it had been a sound and well-conceived plan to encircle the
Ruhr rather than get held up in months of delaying street fighting.
The movement of the armies, being free, had been quick. Whereas
Montgomery had been right about his desire for a powerful narrow
front in 1944, Eisenhower, from a purely military point of view,
was right on this occasion. His connected strokes across the Rhine
had been a masterly series of operations, conceived with a broad
sweep of eye, and in their ruthless execution they had prevented
any possible stand by Kesselring. The irony is that the strategy
of the British chiefs of staff, no longer applicable militarily at this
stage of the war, would have been perhaps not a little accidentally
the correct strategy from a political point of view. The tragedy
is that Eisenhower s, which was so militarily copybook, was un
doubtedly the wrong one from a Western point of view in the larger
world of international politics.

Churchill reserves his strongest criticism for the Americans in
this affair. In Washington especially longer and wider views should
have prevailed. It is true that American thought is at least disinter
ested in matters which seem to relate to territorial acquisitions, but
when wolves are about the shepherd must guard his flock, even if

E.PRUSSIA )

-,,,,

b V A K I A

LGRADE
YUGOSLAVIA

THE COLLAPSE OF GERMANY, APRIL 1945

German Territory, April 27, 1945
Neutral Countries

THE GERMAN MILITARY SITUATION

he does not himself care for mutton. At this time the points of issue
did not seem to the United States chiefs of staff to be of capital
importance. Nevertheless, as will not now be disputed, they played a
dominating part in the destiny of Europe, and may well have denied
us all the lasting peace for which we had fought so long and hard/
This may indeed be so, but some Westerners might wish that the
Prime Minister had made his point louder and clearer at the time;
for he alone had the vision and clarity to see the future by reading
current trends. But he clearly saw his primary duty as preserving
the tattered shreds of the Anglo-American alliance; and who, even
with the benefit of afterthought, can blame him?

(v)

By now the Allied armies were meeting only spasmodic opposition.
Some of it was bitter, conducted by fanatical groups of soldiers who
were prepared to fight to the last. But it was piecemeal and unable
to stop the various thrusts from the west, which seemed to the
British and American public like great and hard-fought victories in
the field. There was a brief gleam of hope in the German High
Command when their first jet fighter, the Me.262, appeared in the
skies. These brilliant planes could outstrip even the Allied jets, and
caused a little consternation among some RAF pilots still flying
Spitfires. But, like the submarines and the flying bombs and the
rockets, they were too late.

The Volkssturm, Hitler s last reserve in the west as in the east,
was just fading away. The Commanding Officer of the 4ist Volks-
sturm Battalion described what happened when, in March, his unit
was sent into battle: c We were ordered to go into the line in civilian
clothes. I told the local Party Leader that I could not accept the
responsibility of leading men into battle without uniforms. Just
before commitment the unit was given 180 Danish rifles, but there
was no ammunition. We also had four machine-guns and 100 anti
tank baz ookas. None of the men had received any training in firing a
machine-gun, and they were all afraid of handling the anti-tank
weapon. . . . What can a Volkssturm man do with a rifle without
ammunition? The Reich s very last defenders were now in action.
The best fighters among them were young boys of fourteen and
fifteen, who fought without skill but to the death. Although they

UNREMITTING BATTLE

made no difference to the course of the war, groups of them at
bridges, or entrenched at cross-roads, caused minor hold-ups. They
seldom allowed themselves to be taken prisoner. Thus had the
Fuehrer, with the aid of Goebbels, gained a kind of loyalty from
Germans too young even to have been much influenced by the
Hitler Youth. The girls did not lag behind the boys. Patton s
Eightieth US Division encountered and shot at least one girl sniper.
A number of stratagems were adopted in an attempt to keep the
Wehrmacht fighting. Awards were lavished upon all units; Iron
Crosses of all classes being handed out by the dozen. Goebbels made
a desperate attempt to heighten his campaign of terror about the
Communists. The German people were told of the horrors that
would befall them if they allowed the Russians to enter the home
land. Children would be taken from their parents by force, women
would be raped by beasts in human guise , families would be torn
asunder for deportation. The death sentence was laid down for an
ever-increasing number of offences: for neglecting to blow up a
bridge on time, for being a deserter, for being related to a deserter,
and^ finally, for failing to hold a town. But it was of no avail.

Kesselring, who had a great reputation for last-ditch stands since
his brilliantly conducted defence in Italy, was unable to stem the
Allied tide. Hitler had ordered that the Ruhr must be held; even if
surrounded, it should be held as a fortress. On April ist the Ninth
and First US Armies met at Lippstadt and the Ruhr was, indeed,
isolated; an enormous gap had been torn out of Kesselring s totter
ing line. He was unable to do any more. One of his commanders,
General G. Blumentritt, said; Nevertheless, orders from the
Supreme Command were still couched in the most rigorous terms
enjoining us to "hold" and "fight" under threats of court martial.
But I no longer insisted on these orders being carried out. It was a
nerve-racking time we experienced while we secretly allowed
things to go their own way. By April ist I had decided to direct
things in such a way that the army could be withdrawn in a more or
less orderly manner and without suffering any great casualties.

The whole of Model s Army Group was cut off in the Ruhr.
Hitler ordered a scorched-earth policy, destroying even what re
mained of the industrial plant in the area and turning the Ruhr
pocket into a desert . But Model had already received a plea from
Albert Speer, Minister of Armaments and War Production, to
ignore this order, with which, indeed, he had no intention of
complying. Conditions inside the Ruhr worsened rapidly; quicker

THE JAPANESE WAR

than anyone had expected. With Allied planes still keeping up their
bombardment, communications broke down. (Allied tactical
bombing raids continued until the very last days, until, as Churchill
says, it became difficult to bomb ahead of our troops without risk
to the Russians . Churchill wrote in a memo: If we come into
control of an entirely ruined land, there will be a great shortage of
accommodation. ... We must see to it that our attacks do not do
more harm to ourselves than they do to the enemy s immediate war
effort. ) Although there were both ammunition and food for
civilians and military in the pocket, it became impossible to distri
bute it. Above all, the troops had no wish to fight on. Model released
his oldest and youngest soldiers. The remainder started giving them
selves up rapidly. On April i8th, after eighteen days of siege,
325,000 troops, representing two armies with all supporting services,
including thirty generals, gave themselves up. One person was
found to be not among them. Field-Marshal Walter Model had
shot himself in a wood near Duisberg. He had told his senior
Intelligence officer that he feared he would be handed over to the
Russians, who had accused him of being a war criminal.

(vi)

The Japanese in defeat were an altogether tougher proposition than
the Germans. Many of their troops were prepared to fight to the
death, even in hopeless situations, and would not surrender. This
made it necessary for the British and Americans in Asia and the
Pacific to fight hard to win the war, although the Japanese had
already lost it.

The battle for Burma had reached a crucial stage. Admiral Lord
Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Commander South-East Asia, had
decided on an all-out offensive against the main Japanese force
west of Mandalay. This had to be accomplished as quickly as
possible, as General Marshall had indicated that American air
support would soon be withdrawn, partly to aid the campaign of
General Chiang Kai-shek in China. Mountbatten s was still the
Cinderella theatre of the war; he had six divisions to put against
the Japanese nine. Bridge-heads had already been seized on the
Irrawaddy north of Mandalay, and these were able to be held
despite fierce counter-attacks. Bridge-heads were now also taken

UNREMITTING BATTLE

south of the city, and about fifty miles south again. From these latter
bridge-heads two columns broke out eastwards and eventually
*net near the important Japanese centre of Meiktila. Fifty per cent
of the Japanese strength in Burma was thus cut off. It had been a
daring and brilliant flank attack by General Slim, commanding the
Fourteenth Army. A British correspondent went with the southern
column and reported: Mules would have been a handicap in this
dry area, so the force was completely motorized, with a spearhead of
tanks and armoured vehicles. It carried five days supplies, which
were supplemented by a few air drops before Meiktila was reached,
including more than 100,000 gallons of petrol. The column had to
be kept compact when settling down after the day s schedule had
been completed. Everything was concentrated into one great box
with its perimeter heavily manned. On the broken roads dust lay a
foot thick, like a great pile of cocoa. Dazed Burmese, pathetically
huddled on the outskirts of their burnt-out villages, stared at the
lumbering tanks and at the apparently endless procession of trucks
behind them, and wondered what new terrors of war had come
among them. The two converging columns sandwiched a Japanese
force attempting to escape between the gap. There was a massacre
in a scrub-covered valley, in which one Indian battalion alone
accounted for 113 enemy killed. Of the 1,500 garrison at Meiktila,
1,000 were killed. The loss of this important centre, at which there
were eight airfields, proved fatal to the Japanese. Three years before,
General Slim had fought a stubborn rearguard action through the
same town. The Japanese Commander-in-Chief later described this
attack as the master-stroke of Allied strategy .

Further north, the fighting at Mandalay was particularly bitter
even for this hard-fought campaign. Captain Frank Owen described
the scene in a BBC broadcast: *You are sitting in a forest. The
nearest city to you is 500 miles away. If you re unlucky you re
squatting in a foxhole under Japanese mortar fire, waiting to assault
a Japanese machine-gun nest, and it is probably raining. This is the
Burma Front. A quarter of a million British soldiers live there,
fight there, march, patrol and stick it out. Some have been on duty
there for three years, guarding the gates to India. Now they are
deep into Burma, driving the enemy down the road to Mandalay,
down the long, long road to Singapore, where 60,000 of our com
rades, prisoners of war in the hands of the Japanese, are waiting for

us to come and set them free It is the largest single army in the

world. For besides the British there are Indians [and others]

THE JAPANESE WAR

altogether 600,000 troops are fighting in the Fourteenth Army and
all must eat. So every twenty-four hours 2,000 tons of food go
rattling up a single-track mountain railway and along that military
road. War in the jungle is really the art of keeping that road open;
if you don t you may die. And secondly, it is the art of cutting the

road behind the enemy; then he will die. And the jungle It is a

place of treachery and, for those who don t know it, of terror. In
this murky, shadowy war, if a soldier is brave few even of his
comrades see it. If he quits, perhaps nobody will see it. All then
depends on the soldier himself, on his loyalty to his comrades, to
his regiment, to the Army. All depends on what each man feels in
his own heart. As the British broke out of their bridge-heads and
fought their way into Mandalay, they met suicide-opposition all the
way. The garrison defended two strongpoints, Mandalay Hill and
Fort Dufferin, to the end. General Slim has written: Mandalay
Hill is a great rock rising abruptly from the plain to nearly 800
feet and dominating the whole north-eastern quarter of the city.
Its steep sides are covered with temples and pagodas, now honey
combed for machine-guns, well supplied and heavily garrisoned.
Throughout the day and night of March Qth the fiercest hand-
to-hand fighting went on, as a Gurkha battalion stormed up the
slopes and bombed and tommy-gunned their way into the concrete
buildings. Next day two companies of a British battalion joined
them, and the bitter fighting went on. The Japanese stood to the
end, until the last defenders, holding out in cellars, were destroyed
by petrol rolled down in drums and ignited by tracer bullets. It
was not until March nth that the hill was completely in our hands.
When, shortly afterwards, I visited it, the blackened marks of fire
and the sight and stench of carnage were only too obvious, while
distant bumps and bangs and the nearer rattle of machine-guns
showed that the clearing of the city was still going on. Fort Dufferin
was even more difficult to conquer. Its massive walls, impenetrable
to artillery, withstood everything the Fourteenth Army could
hurl at it. It was not finally taken until March 20th, whe * 2,000 Ib
bomb breached its tough old walls.

By the end of March the enemy were falling back through the
mountains to the east, and down the road to Rangoon. If the
conquest of Burma was to be completed, Mountbatten had to act
quickly. He could permit his battle-worn, but tremendously proud
troops no rest. Chiang Kai-shek had decided to withdraw the support
he had been supplying on Slim s left flank in order to attempt to

UNREMITTING BATTLE

free the rice-producing areas of China from the Japanese. He also
demanded the US air squadrons that had been supporting his
divisions in the area. This could hardly have happened at a more
inopportune moment for the Cinderella Campaign , which had
fought so long with so little, and was now in sight of victory. If the
transport planes, especially, were withdrawn, Slim s men would
have been forced through lack of supplies to trudge back again
until they could be supplied from the road and railhead. The recent
campaign would have been a complete waste of life. Churchill
himself urged Marshall to leave the planes where they were, and it
was eventually agreed they should remain with Mountbatten until
June ist or until Rangoon was reached. Slim, however, was almost
immune to lack of support from every quarter. Typically, he wrote:
There seemed to be nothing that I, or apparently anyone else,
could do about it, except to remember our motto God helps
those who help themselves and to get on with the war without the
Chinese. So with little hope of help on either of my flanks I con
tinued the main battle. The Fourteenth Army pushed south in
three main columns towards Rangoon.

Mountbatten decided to speed up the campaign by launching an
amphibious and airborne assault on the city, as Slim approached it.
A battalion of Ghurka paratroopers was dropped on the approaches
to the town around Rangoon River, The following day a division
was safely landed, in heavy seas and a deluge of rain, south of the
city. During the previous day a pilot flying over Rangoon had seen
written on the roof of the gaol, in huge letters: Japs gone. Exdigitate.
Another RAF pilot now flew his Mosquito aircraft low over the
city. Seeing no signs of the enemy, he landed on an airstrip eight
miles to the north. The airstrip turned out to be damaged, and he
crashed his aircraft. Undismayed, he set out on the eight-mile
walk and entered the city, the only man to take a capital city single-
handed during the war. The Japanese had, in fact, withdrawn some
days before. He visited the British prisoners in the gaol, who had
been waiting for this day for three years and more, commandeered a
sampan, and sailed down the river to meet the division advancing
up-stream.

Rangoon was freed. But a fierce battle developed to the north of
the capital.

The Japanese had now lost two capitals from their crumbling
empire. At the other, Manila, General MacArthur was already
well installed. The remaining Japanese defenders in the area had

THE JAPANESE WAR

been sealed up in the deep caves to which they had taken, and left
to their fate. Unlike Mountbatten, MacArthur made the most of
his position as returning saviour of the country which he knew
and loved so well. The Commonwealth Government of the Philip
pines had been restored, although much of the country was still in
enemy hands. MacArthur spoke to the Assembly in Malacanan
Palace, where his father before him had lived as Governor-General,
and where he himself had once become Field-Marshal in the
Philippine Army. He said: More than three years have elapsed since
I withdrew our forces from this beautiful city that, open and un
defended, its churches, monuments and cultural centres might be
spared the violence of military ravage. The enemy would not have
it so ... but my country has kept its faith.

After Manila Bay had been cleared, the fighting went on. Mac-
Arthur was hampered in his task of freeing the remainder of the
archipelago by the fact that the 100 transport ships which had
brought him to Lingayen Gulf, and had supplied him ever since,
had been ordered to Vladivostok to carry munitions and supplies
for the Russians. He protested bitterly that his entire campaign
might be seriously jeopardized, but to no avail. He blamed the
decision on Hopkins s influence on Roosevelt. To secure Luzon,
MacArthur launched a three-pronged attack on the Japanese, who
had retreated to the most hilly and inaccessible parts of the island.
Making considerable use of bulldozers, he got tanks and artillery
to positions that confounded the Japanese, under no mean command
themselves. The fighting was everywhere hard. The Japanese
defenders fought with fanatical ferocity. MacArthur said: The
campaign was one of the most savage and bitterly fought in American
history. No terrain has ever presented greater logistical difficulties
and none has ever provided an adversary with more naturally im
pregnable strongholds.

One of the few campaigns which was even more bitterly fought
was the conquest of Okinawa. About half-way between Formosa and
Japan, Okinawa, about sixty miles long and five miles wid.e, was in a
highly strategic position; more so even than Iwo Jima, of which it
was the twin operation. Some critics have said since (and some said
at the time) that it would have been wiser to have concentrated
everything on taking Formosa rather than Luzon and the two
fortress islands. In any event, Japanese preparations at Okinawa
were quite as thorough as they had been at Iwo Jima. Awaiting the
American invasion were some 100,000 Japanese troops in a clever

UNREMITTING BATTLE

system of pill-boxes, caves, trenches, blockhouses and tunnels, with
an extremely strong defence-citadel as a final retreat. They were
well stocked with food and ammunition to last a long siege. The
defenders had orders not to waste ammunition at the landings, as
these could not indefinitely be stopped, but to prepare for a long-
drawn-out battle of attrition. After a huge process of softening-up
by aerial and naval bombardment, the Tenth US Army went ashore
on April ist, at the very beach where the Japanese commander had
been expecting them. The element of surprise seemed to have
utterly escaped from all operations in the Central Pacific theatre.
The landing parties were met by only scattered small-arms fire.
By the end of the day 50,000 soldiers and Marines were ashore. In
three weeks they had captured nearly all of the northern sector of
the island. Only the citadel remained on the southernmost tip of
Okinawa. Repeated attacks on this were bloodily repulsed. Great
difficulty was found in maintaining the naval and supply link with
the island. Suicide kamikaze planes, with incessant and mad
sorties, had already caused much damage. Nearly every day they
came screaming down from the skies, the red suns on their wings
easily visible to the taut and horrified crews below, the young pilots
shouting Babe Ruth, go to helP (which they had been told was the
supreme insult) as they lowered their planes, in the noses of which
were packed more than 250 Ib of TNT, into their last dives. Now
a new danger was apparent. For many of the kamikazes were flying
in with bombs attached below the fuselage. The flagship, Indian-
afolis, was hit and had to retire. A destroyer was so mangled by
another crashing plane that it had to be sunk. On April 6th, in a
mass suicide that horrified and appalled those who saw it, 355
pilots walked to their planes on airfields in Japan and set off for the
American fleet near Okinawa. Many of them were intercepted, but
about 200 reached the fleet. Anti-aircraft fire became so intense in
the hectic desire to hit the advancing planes before they themselves
hit the ships that thirty-eight American casualties were caused by
the hail of falling shell fragments. Six vessels were sunk and twenty-
two damaged. Two of the ships that had gone down were the
destroyers Bush and Calhoun, an outlying radar patrol. They met,
alone, the first fury of the death-seeking pilots as they swarmed past
them, and the crews of each refused to abandon their burning,
battered and sinking ships till the last minute, in an incredible dis
play of mass courage, as notable as the display of mass suicide all
about them was revolting. In conjunction with the kamikazes, a fleet

100

ANGLO-AMERICAN POLITICAL DIFFERENCES

had also put out from Japan, including the last remaining Imperial
battleship. This force, too, was intent on self-destruction. The force
was powered by the last suitable fuel oil left in Japan; there was
just enough for a one-way journey to Okinawa. The intention was
to beach the ships on the island and to pour shell-fire into the
American ground forces until there was no more ammunition left.
Fortunately the force was sighted and destroyed before it reached
the island. During this very testing week, the US Navy acquitted
itself with exemplary calmness. At the end it remained, despite all
odds against a maddened and ruthless foe, almost entirely afloat.
A British fleet, newly arrived from Sydney under Admiral Sir
Bernard Rawlings, had also taken an active part in all these affairs.
Its four carriers proved particularly valuable as their armoured
flight-decks gave them added protection against the kamikazes, as
compared to the wooden flight-decks of the American carriers.

But the citadel fortress of Okinawa remained to be taken; and it
was obvious that before this obscure and tiny outpost of the Japanese
Empire could be secured many thousands of Americans would have
to die.

(vii)

On the very evening that Churchill spoke to the House of Commons
so hopefully about the results of the Yalta conference, a violation of
the spirit of agreements made there was, unknown to him, being
made. All the Allies were committed to bringing about free elections
in the countries that they freed from Nazi rule. In Rumania, where
King Michael was struggling to maintain the position of his all-party
government which had expelled the Germans from the country
in 1944, the Russians were showing a contemptuous disregard for
that commitment. Vyshinsky appeared unexpectedly in Bucharest,
stormed into the King s office, banged his fist on the table, demanded
the dismissal of the government and, looking at his watch, said that
the King had just two hours five minutes to obey. He then stalked
out, slamming the door behind him (so hard that, according to the
American political representative, the plaster round the door-frame
was badly cracked). With Soviet tanks and troops taking up positions
in the streets and vital points of the capital, he could afford such
behaviour. A few days later a Russian-nominated government took

101

UNREMITTING BATTLE

office. A Communist minority had thus seized power by the ruthless
use offeree. Although Churchill was deeply disturbed suspecting
that it might prove a pattern of things to come he decided against a
strong protest. In the first place, he felt handicapped by the agree
ment he had made with Stalin about Russian influence in Rumania
and the Balkans; and, in the second, he was fully conscious of the
fact that the same agreement provided for British influence in
Greece, which Stalin seemed to be observing, and which the Prime
Minister deemed to be of vital importance to the interests of the
Empire. As Churchill says, writing of the Greek agreement: Stalin
had kept very strictly to this understanding during the six weeks
fighting against the Communists and ELAS in the city of Athens, in
spite of the fact that all this was most disagreeable to him and those
around him. It was, of course, just this kind of attitude of the Prime
Minister s which made Roosevelt, who hated all idea of spheres of
influence, so suspicious of him. It was left to the United States to
take the initiative over Rumania. Averell Harriman made an effort
in Moscow to intervene on behalf of the Rumanians, but met with a
blunt rejection from Molotov.

Only a few days after his address on returning from Yalta, the
President, too, like Churchill, was suffering from disappointment.
Once more the trouble was Poland. At first Churchill again took the
lead in the West on the Polish question. It had become clear that the
Russians had no intention of carrying out the agreements about
broadening the basis of the Lublin Government. None of the Tree
Poles suggested by London were allowed to enter the discussions in
Moscow. Molotov steadfastly refused to allow observers into liber
ated Poland. There was no sign of the promised free elections. As
each day passed, the Lublin Government was becoming a fait
accompli Churchill has written: Time was on the side of the Russians
and their Polish adherents, who were fastening their grip upon the
country by all kinds of severe measures which they did not wish
outside observers to see. Every day s delay was a gain to these hard
forces. Churchill appealed to the President for concerted pressure
on Stalin before it was too late. He believed that only a direct and
tough approach to Uncle Joe 5 could achieve results.

Roosevelt, however, was against the direct approach on this
occasion, and Churchill had some difficulty in convincing him as to
the seriousness of the situation. The Prime Minister was deeply
aware, as he frequently pointed out to both Stalin and Roosevelt,
that he had to report to Parliament on Poland (but not Rumania).

ANGLO-AMERICAN POLITICAL DIFFERENCES

According to Churchill, Roosevelt was at this time so ill that he was
not able to attend to these matters himself. Churchill says: *I was
no longer being fully heard by him. The President s devoted aides
were anxious to keep their knowledge of his condition within the
narrowest circle, and various hands drafted in combination the
answers which were given in his name. Other evidence,* however,
suggests that Roosevelt, while being weak enough, and writing few
of the messages of these weeks himself, was not as out of touch as
Churchill believed. At any event, Churchill deferred, with much
reluctance, to the President s wish not to approach Stalin.

Roosevelt was busily occupied with problems at home that had
arisen as an aftermath to Yalta. News of the voting procedure in the
proposed Security Council of the World Organization had not yet
been released. The President, expecting a storm, had been anxious
to delay this revelation until a favourable moment. The veto
procedure was announced by Stettinius on March 5th. The fact that
the United States would support Russia s request for three votes
was leaked*, either accidentally or deliberately, to the Herald
Tribune, which printed the story on March 29th. These two revela
tions received much adverse Press criticism and public comment.
The news came as a shock, especially as the State Department had
been carefully conducting an educational campaign emphasizing
that one of the main points about the United Nations Organization
was to be that small countries would get exactly the same rights as
big ones. To make matters worse, Stalin had now indicated that he
would not be sending Molotov to the San Francisco conference. As
Eden and Stettinius were going, this was taken not only as an indica
tion of what the Russians expected from the United Nations, but
also as a personal rebuff to the President, whose high hopes for the
organization were well known.

In the midst of all this, a personal telegram from Churchill to
Roosevelt arrived in Washington stating that a dangerous divergence
in views on the Polish question was developing between Britain and
the United States. The long and cold answer that Churchill received
three days later clearly came as a shock to the Prime Minister. It was
written in a tone quite different from any that the President had used
before. It contained none of the flourishes that Roosevelt liked to use,
even when irritated. It seems certain that it was written by the State
Department. That Roosevelt signed it at all shows how strained
relations had become between the two leaders during the year. In

* When F.D.R. Died, page 20.

103

UNREMITTING BATTLE

fact, the message said little except that the United States recognized
no divergences of opinion, that the President could not agree that
there was a breakdown of the Yalta agreement, and that Churchill s
suggestions were not helpful. It indicated the latent anti-British
feeling in the State Department; and the conviction that Britain was
a second-class power, and that the United States could better deal
with the Russians without the nagging encumbrance of Churchill.
The Prime Minister was not, however, an easy man to rebuff, and
he kept up his barrage of communications to the President, begging
for some action on Poland. At length, at the end of the month,
Roosevelt agreed to approach Stalin about the broken agreements of
Yalta. Both the Western leaders sent off long letters to Stalin,
detailing their complaints about the Lublin Government and the
non-admittance of observers into Poland.

Stalin replied a week later. The whole dispute had arisen, he said,
because of the inability of the British and American ambassadors in
Moscow to negotiate properly. They had led the Polish affair into a
blind alley. No new members could be admitted to the Lublin
Government unless they were friendly to the Soviet Government.
At this time, the first week in April, Roosevelt had at last been
stirred to strong words against Stalin not on anything to do with
the Polish question, but on a matter of personal pique. This resulted
from the fact that the Germans on the Italian front had been making
hesitant peace moves. The commander of the SS in Italy had
appeared in Zurich and contacted Allen Dulles, the head of US
Intelligence in Switzerland. He was told that negotiations could only
take place on the basis of unconditional surrender. Although the
SS chief did not appear to accept at that time the notion of such a
surrender, it was decided that the British and American Chiefs of
Staff in Italy, Generals T. Airey and L. Lemnitzer, should go to
Switzerland to meet the SS commander. This they did in disguise.
Dulles was well known among those involved in the heady world of
espionage as being well cocooned in intrigue and the mystiques of
spying; so much so, some believed, that he was not always able to
see as clearly as he might.

Stalin had been informed by his own Intelligence of these over
tures from the Germans on the Italian front, and he soon became
thoroughly alarmed. The visits of the two Chiefs of Staff in disguise
convinced him that the Western allies were about to prepare a
separate peace with Germany. Molotov handed a strong and
insulting note to the British Ambassador, Sir Archibald Clark Kerr,

104

ANGLO-AMERICAN POLITICAL DIFFERENCES

and a harsh exchange developed between Roosevelt and Stalin.
Roosevelt, horrified that Uncle Joe 5 was as good as accusing him of
being a liar and a cheat, was angered. Stalin however was not con
cerned with anyone s honour. Buried in the heart of one of his
messages to the President was his major interest in the matter. I
understand that there are certain advantages for the Anglo-American
troops as a result of these separate negotiations in Berne or some
other place, since the Anglo-American troops get the possibility to
advance into the heart of Germany almost without resistance on the
part of the Germans, but why was it necessary to conceal this from
the Russians, and why were your allies, the Russians, not notified?
Roosevelt s reply was in similarly straightforward terms, and, in
hotly denying the charge, it bore some evidence of the President s
own anger. He pointed out that no real negotiations had taken place,
only a certain amount of preliminary probing, and thus it had not
been possible to notify Moscow of any negotiations. After an equally
outraged message from the Prime Minister, Stalin seems to have
realized that his fears were unfounded. He was surprised by the
reception that his charges had received. He wrote to Churchill: My
messages are personal and strictly confidential. This makes it possible
to speak one s mind clearly and frankly. This is the advantage of
confidential communications. If however you are going to regard
every frank statement of mine as offensive it will make this kind of
communication very difficult.

The matter of the non-existent separate peace treaty having been
settled to the satisfaction of all, there remained only the Polish
dispute. Roosevelt was hopeful that it might similarly be cleared up.
He wrote to Churchill on April I2th: I would minimize the general
Soviet problem as much as possible It was his final advice.

105

4 Inconclusive Victory

The death of Roosevelt

The advance into Holland and Western

Germany

More Anglo-American differences
The concentration camps
The Italian campaign
The death of Mussolini
The agony of Berlin
The last days in the bunker
The evacuation of East Prussia
The Himmler-Bernadotte peace moves
The death of Hitler
Last days of the Reich
The Doenitz Government
The Luneburg surrender
The capitulation at Rheims
The pretensions of the Doenitz Government
World wide rejoicing on VE Day
The celebrations in London
First days of peace in Europe

4 INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

President Roosevelt was at the home of his cousins in Warm
Springs, Georgia. He had gone there for a few days* rest, and on the
morning of April i2th, the courier plane not having arrived with
mail and papers from Washington, due to bad weather, he lay late in
bed with only the Atlanta Constitution to read. He read there that the
Ninth US Army was only fifty-seven miles from Berlin, and that 150
Flying Fortresses had made a visit to Tokyo in a two-hour daylight
raid. He read for a while the thriller by John Dickson Carr that had
been engaging his attention the previous night, complained of a pain
in his head, got up, and went to the living-room to pose for a portrait
painter, Madame Shoumatoff. He then signed a number of papers
(the plane having arrived) handed to him by William D. Hassett,
Secretary to the President, including the note to Churchill. To the
devoted staff, the portrait painter seemed to be worrying the President
unnecessarily with measurements and frequent requests to turn his
head this way and that. Hassett considered it hounding of a sick
man . She arranged a heavy blue cape on his shoulders and carefully
arranged its folds. The room grew quiet. The President seemed to be
lost in his papers. He placed a cigarette in his holder, lit it, and
smoked reflectively. Suddenly he pressed the palm of his left hand
behind his neck, closed his eyes and said, very softly: I have a
terrific headache. His head nodded on to his left shoulder, his arms

107

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

slipped down, and his body sagged in the chair. It was 1.15 p.m.

It seems that the President remained there for twenty minutes or
more his two lady cousins, who had been in the room at the time,
quietly sitting on the couch before Roosevelt s doctor, Commander
H. G. Bruenn, arrived at the house. Roosevelt was then carried into
his bedroom, where he was laid on the bed and his clothes torn from
him. A call was put through to the Navy Surgeon-General in
Washington, nearly an hour after the President s collapse, and the
symptoms of a cerebral stroke were reported. The Surgeon-General,
Admiral Ross Mclntire, called a distinguished Atlanta physician,
Dr James E. Paullin, and told him to get to Warm Springs immed
iately. A Secret Service car was sent to patrol the main highway to
facilitate Paullin s progress, but the doctor had taken to small side-
roads through the Georgia hills. He arrived at Warm Springs after
about an hour of fast driving. He later wrote in his report to
Mclntire: The President was in extremis when I reached him. He
was in a cold sweat, ashy grey, and breathing with difficulty.
Numerous ronchi in his chest. He was propped up in bed. His pupils
were dilated, and his hands slightly cyanosed. Commander Bruenn
started artificial respiration. On examination the President s pulse
was barely perceptible. His heart-sounds could be heard, but about
three and a half minutes after my arrival they disappeared com
pletely. I gave him an intercardiac dose of adrenalin in the hope that
we might stimulate his heart to action. By 3.35 all evidence of life
had passed away.

One of the greatest figures in the history of the United States had
disappeared; an American era was over. Roosevelt had become one
of the truly great men of the half-century. He had fought and won
hard battles against strong opposition in the domestic field; had
restored the respect of Americans for the politician who held execu
tive posts; and had showed that he fully understood America s
responsibility as a world power.

It was several hours before the world at large became aware of its
loss. Mrs Roosevelt was contacted while making a speech in
Washington, and brought back to the White House. It had been
decided by the President s personal staff that no one should be told
of the news until the President s wife had first been informed. On
being told, she shortly suggested that the Vice-President should be
brought to the White House.

The Vice-President was in a room in the Senate, about to drink a
glass of bourbon with tap water, when he received the message to go

108

THE DEATH OF ROOSEVELT

over to the White House at once. The Senate was perhaps the only
place where the Vice-President was likely to be immediately
recognized for the purpose of handing him a message, or, indeed, for
any purpose at all. Harry S. Truman had been chosen as Vice-
President as a compromise between the more colourful and ambi
tious Henry A. Wallace and James F. Byrnes, between whom the
Democratic Party could not agree. It seems that the main reason for
Truman in particular being chosen was his almost universal
popularity in the Senate, where he was widely respected, and the
fact that such a choice did not tread on anyone s toes.* Roosevelt
was determined that his vision for the post-war world should not
become clogged in the Senate. Truman was a poor speaker (in that
he could never think of anything to say except making his point and
then sitting down), but he had popularity and respect, although no
one found it easy to say exactly why, unless it was for his intelligent
and firm chairmanship of a well-known investigating committee.
Two days after he had become Vice-President, Roosevelt had gone
off to Yalta (the President had, in fact, been in Washington for less
than a month of the eighty-two-day-old term). Apart from Cabinet
meetings, Truman had met Roosevelt only twice since his appoint
ment as Vice-President.

On the afternoon of April i2th Truman had found little enough
to do. The main duty of the Vice-President is to act as Chairman in
the Senate. On that day he had indicated to one Senator that if he
wished to cast his vote he had best be present in person in order to
cast it an old Senate rule which had long been ignored; his
suggestion was practically revolutionary, but it was quite clear that
he meant it. He had then sat on at his dais while the Senator from
Wisconsin talked interminably; he leant over and asked the clerk
below for a sheet of paper, had written a letter to his mother back
home in Missouri, and, after a recess had been called for, had called
at the room of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Sam
Rayburn, for a bourbon and a chat.

On arrival at the White House, the Vice-President was ushered to
Mrs Roosevelt s second-floor study. Roosevelt s widow said:
Harry, the President is dead. Truman was shocked, and remained
speechless for some moments. The last news he had heard of the
President s health was that it was satisfactory. He has recalled: *I had
been afraid for many weeks that something might happen to this

* This is the reason usually given; it may underrate the fact that Roosevelt, who was
well aware of his own ill-health, was a shrewd judge of a man.

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

great leader, but now that the worst had happened I was unprepared
for it. After a brief expression of sympathy, there was a long silence,
broken by a knock on the study door. Edward R. Stettinius,
Secretary of State, walked in. His appearance shocked Truman out
of his reflective trance; for the Secretary of State, a man widely
known for his urbane suavity, was weeping.

The Presidential Press Secretary, Steve Early, was also in the
study. Truman briskly asked him to arrange a Cabinet meeting as
soon as possible. He then went down to the first floor, along a
deserted, covered terrace to the west wing, and into the oval office
of the President of the United States.

The Cabinet quickly assembled in the Cabinet Room and stood
muttering in small groups about the news, which was now rapidly
spreading. Truman, meanwhile, had picked up a telephone and
spoken to his wife and daughter at their five-room apartment on the
second floor of 4701 Connecticut Avenue. He asked them to come
over to see him sworn in. Soon all the necessary officials and Cabinet
members were gathered, together with a large group of Press photo
graphers who, the news of Roosevelt s death having been given to
the three main news agencies, had rushed to the scene and now
seemed to be taking control of the proceedings. While the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court, Harlan F. Stone, waited nervously to
fulfil the highest function of his office, Bill Simmons, the President s
receptionist, searched from office to office, rummaging through
desks and shelves, for a copy of the Bible. He eventually found one in
the absent Hassett s office a cheap Nelson edition, used for checking
the accuracy of quotations. He took it to the crowded Cabinet Room
and showed it to Truman, explaining that it was all he could find.
Mr Truman said it would be perfectly satisfactory.

The Chief Justice began to intone to the squat little man in a
lounge suit, with beady eyes behind trim spectacles, and a straight
mouth clamped tightly shut over a well-proportioned and deter
mined-looking jaw: *I, Harry Shippe Truman . . .*

Truman solemnly repeated: *I, Harry S. Truman . . . (He later
explained that the C S did not stand for Shippe, his grandfather s
name it stood for nothing at all.) The short ceremony was quickly
over. There was a certain amount of pandemonium. The photo
graphers insisted on a second performance. It was 7.09 p.m., two
hours, thirty-four minutes since Roosevelt had died.

As everyone calmed down, people began leaving the room, each
shaking hands with the new President, until only the Cabinet were

THE DEATH OF ROOSEVELT

left. The members of the Cabinet seated themselves in their accus
tomed places, Truman taking the President s chair; only the second
man to sit in it for twelve years. He was about to speak when a
secretary burst into the room and said that the Press were asking
whether the San Francisco conference of the United Nations would
still take place. The members of the Cabinet all turned and carefully
watched the new President who replied, according to those who
were there, without any hesitation whatever, that the conference
would most certainly be held as planned; it was of supreme impor
tance to the future of the world. His first Presidential decision having
been made clearly and impressively, Truman then told the Cabinet
that he wished them all to remain in their present posts, but,
although he intended to follow the general line of Roosevelt s
policy, he also intended to be President in his own right, and he
indicated that there would shortly be some Cabinet changes. The
Cabinet then rose and silently filed out of the room.

One man remained the Secretary of War, Henry Stimson. In
what Truman thought were strangely urgent tones, he told the new
President that the latter ought to be made aware at the earliest
convenient moment of an extremely secret project known to hardly
anyone even in the Government or Cabinet. It was, Truman
gathered, something to do with a new explosive or bomb of excep
tional destructive power. Stimson having left, Truman followed and
returned to the car which had been waiting for him since bringing
the Vice-President, the holder of the job often referred to as *a
political graveyard , to the White House after an unexpected
summons.

The President found his wife and daughter Margaret with some
neighbours. His neighbour s wife made him a ham-and-turkey
sandwich and a glass of milk. Having eaten this, Truman telephoned
his mother, telling her that she would be unlikely to be hearing from
him for some time, and then went straight to bed.

While the President relaxed peacefully at home, the communica
tion media of the world were flashing across the globe the most
sensational news for many years. Radio programmes throughout the
United States were interrupted with brief and explosive announce
ments of Roosevelt s death. In New York the news spread like some
massive instantaneous plague from person to person. Shocked office
workers stood around in lobbies; restaurants, bars and theatre foyers
were crowded while total strangers, in half-disbelief, stood discussing
the loss as though of a mutual relative. Commuters who heard the

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

news in the subway came pouring out again on to the streets.
Mounted police in Times Square fought to keep the crowds on the
pavements.

Churchill heard the news, from a Press agency, in the early hours
of the following morning. e l felt as if I had been struck a physical
blow, he later wrote. He personally telephoned the news to
Buckingham Palace. The BBC telephoned the famous American
servicemen s canteen in London s West End, the Rainbow Club,
warning them that an important announcement was to be broadcast
shortly. In Germany, Eisenhower had been having a conference
with Generals Bradley and Patton at the latter s trailer. After
Eisenhower and Bradley had left to spend the night at a small house
nearby, Patton switched on his radio to check his watch with the
midnight news bulletin on the BBC. Hearing the announcement, he
ran to the house and informed Bradley and Eisenhower; the three
soldiers talked of Roosevelt late into the night. Within an hour of the
news being received in Moscow, Molotov called at the American
Embassy, apparently genuinely moved.

In Germany, Goebbels was the first of the senior figures to hear of
the news. He telephoned Hitler and, with immense excitement,
exclaimed: My Fuehrer, I congratulate you. Roosevelt is dead. He
informed Hitler that according to the stars the second half of April
would be a turning point in Nazi fortunes, and that this piece of
happy news was certainly the start of such a process. A number of
other senior German leaders were also confident that Roosevelt s
death might well lead to some dramatic improvement in their
country s position. Hitler himself, however, was not roused from his
moody depression.

Short-wave radio had flashed the news to Tokyo, where the
broadcasting system made a special announcement. It was followed
by a few minutes of sombre music c in honour of the passing of this
great man*. Before long the Japanese Premier had himself arrived at
the studio, and he went on the air. To the astonishment of the US
monitoring service, he said: I can easily understand the great loss
his passing means to the American people, and my profound
sympathy goes to them. Could it mean that Japan was about to
attempt to soften up American resistance before suing for peace?
Some people thought so, but not the American troops fighting
desperately against suicide brigades in Okinawa they considered it
just one more example of what was widely considered in the Pacific
theatre to be the national hysteria of the Japanese. (Two of the late

112

THE DEATH OF ROOSEVELT

President s sons were, as it happened, serving with the fleet near
Okinawa.)

The following morning the new President was up at 6.30 a.m.
Waiting beside his car, when he emerged from the apartment block,
were a number of reporters. The President knew one of them, and
greeted him thus: c Hey, Tony, if you re going down to the White
House you may as well hop in with me. For press-men attuned to a
President who had always moved with distant, if graceful, grandeur,
it was an extraordinary scene. It had, indeed, been a tremendously
dramatic moment a few seconds earlier to see the President of the
United States actually trotting down a flight of steps, walking
briskly to his car and getting into it unaided. The few people who
stood in Connecticut Avenue that morning were among the first to
dimly realize that the previous day had not only marked the end of a
great career, it had also marked the beginning of a change in the
whole tone of American government.

On arrival shortly after 9 a.m., Truman found that the machinery
of the White House, which had worked so smoothly round Roose
velt s special needs and long-established habits, had almost com
pletely collapsed. As the morning progressed he improvised as best
he could, dealing with caller after caller behind Roosevelt s desk,
which he had already divested of the more obvious symbols of
F. D. R., while confusion reigned in the anterooms around him.
Stettinius was the first to be admitted to see the new President; he
was asked to prepare in brief outline a statement of American
foreign relations. He was followed by Stimson, Secretary of the
Navy James Forrestal, Presidential Chief of Staff Admiral William
D. Leahy, and the Chiefs of Staff of the Army and Navy, Marshall
and King. From these visits Truman, who had previously known
very little indeed about how the war was waged, gathered that the
defeat of Germany could be expected in six months, and that Japan
would probably be conquered about a year after that. That, at any
rate, was the opinion of the experts. After an informal lunch with
some old friends in Congress, Truman met the Press. Boys, if

newspapermen ever pray, he said, pray for me now I ve got the

most terribly responsible job a man ever had. Afterwards he met
James F. Byrnes, who had resigned from the Roosevelt administra
tion, in which he had been Director of War Mobilization, only five
days earlier. Truman, already aware through his experience of a few
hours that international affairs were in a critical state, and that his
knowledge of them was totally inadequate, seems to have decided

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

that all other business would have to wait while he got himself
briefed on these matters. He asked Byrnes to tell him everything he
could remember of the Yalta conference, and later was given a
resume of the Polish question by Stettinius and Charles Bohlen.
Truman returned home in the evening laden with papers which had
been prepared by most of the departments to bring him up to date in
their affairs.

In London, Churchill had made a short announcement in the
House of Commons, which had adjourned in respect. In Moscow,
Harriman had called on Stalin. The Marshal was visibly moved and
spoke of Roosevelt in glowing terms as of a respected and close
personal friend. But his grief was probably not entirely unselfish, for
with the death of Roosevelt he had lost one of his best cards in his
uncomfortable relationship with the Politburo. He knew that so long
as Roosevelt had been in power there had been no question of the
United States taking the lead in an anti-Soviet bloc. He said that in
his opinion the late President had been the welding force in the
alliance, and asked if there was anything he could do to ensure that
the solidarity between the Allies was maintained. With creditable
promptitude, Harriman replied that indeed there was: the sending of
Molotov to the San Francisco conference. Molotov, who was present,
immediately protested that such an idea was impossible. Stalin,
however, overruled him, and said that Molotov would go. The
delighted Harriman rushed off to radio Stettinius, who immediately
informed Truman.*

The world s newspapers had met the situation as best they could.
Everywhere there had been fervent eulogies to Roosevelt. The
normally restrained New York Times said: Men will thank God, a
hundred years from now, that Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the
White House. . . . As the hours went by, however, it was becoming
more and more obvious to editors as well as others that there was a
new man in the White House. By April i4th the initial shock of
Roosevelt s death had worn off, and there was a furious quest for
information any information about Harry S. Truman. As the
New York Times resoundingly put it: c ln one of the great moments
of history there steps into the office of the Presidency of the United
States, and into a position of world-wide influence and authority

* Official Russian policy has been to look back on the Roosevelt era with nostalgia.
As recently as 1962 Khruschev said (in an exclusive interview with the Daily Exfress):
The best thing would be for co-operation pervaded with the spirit which prevailed in
our relations at die time of the great President Franklin Roosevelt. This is the avenue
for Soviet-American relations.

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THE DEATH OF ROOSEVELT

such as no other living American has ever held, a man who is less
well known to the people of this country than many other public
figures, and almost totally unknown abroad/ London newspapers
were offering exceptional prices for a thousand words on the new
President. Associated Press reported from Paris that a few days
before not one Frenchman in ten had even heard of Truman. As
editorials and articles groped about, it sometimes seemed that the
writers were valiantly attempting to hide the fear that the man was a
nonentity. Although such a frightening thought was not openly
voiced in the newspapers, it was widely mentioned in private. There
were, however, two reports which gave to the careful reader a com
pletely contrary view of the little man who had stepped into the big
man s shoes. The first to appear was by Roy Roberts, managing
editor of the Kansas City Star. He had known Truman, and followed
his career, for many years. His article was widely syndicated. He
recalled that only twenty years before, Truman, then a man of forty,
was looking at the rear of a horse as he ploughed a furrow in a
Missouri field. Later he had sold haberdashery, and failed at it. He
had been, apparently, a failure in life. The sheer fact that he is this
average man, understands the average man and his quality, is
probably Truman s greatest asset. Rogers pointed out that Tru
man s friendships and associations dated from the First World
War, when he had fought in France. But was he really as average as
he appeared? To some extent, perhaps; but a slightly different view
appeared in the London Observer a day or two later. In the main
article, Dorothy Thompson wrote: The new President ended his
short career as Vice-President of the United States Senate admirably,
and even dramatically, especially in view of the fact that he had not
the slightest idea that he was ending it. ... And he began his
administration by the simple statement that the San Francisco
conference would go on. That was also a decision taken immediately
and without timidity. President Truman did not express him
self as overwhelmed. He rose to an immediate crisis. . . . The
Truman "Report" I remember as courageous, meticulous and
fair.

Meanwhile the object of all this attention and conjecture had
begun another day of hurried education at the White House. Senior
government officials and Cabinet members who continually called on
him, glad of the chance to study this man whom they had neglected
to observe closely before and hardly knew, were surprised to find
themselves curtly dealt with and then dismissed. Henry Morgenthau,

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

Secretary of the Treasury, was disconcerted when his interview was
quickly cut short by a request for a written report on the state of the
nation s finances. Truman had summoned Byrnes and Henry
Wallace to the White House, and they duly appeared in the oval
office. There was no urgent reason for his seeing these two men, and
they talked idly for a few minutes before Truman announced that it
was time for him to go to Union Station to meet Roosevelt s funeral
train from Warm Springs. These were the two men who had been,
as all the world knew, rivals for the Vice-Presidency only a few weeks
before. With all his other worries and new responsibilities, Truman
had nevertheless initiated this brilliant move. The three men went
down to the station together, and from there the cortege moved
slowly through the streets, past silent and weeping crowds, to the
White House. Arrangements for a funeral had been hastily made by
the White House Social Bureau, after a search through the files for
the records of the funeral of Warren Harding, the last President to
have died in office. (Roosevelt had prepared a most detailed pro
gramme for his own funeral as far back as 1937, asking, among other
things, that a gun-carriage and not a hearse should be used through
out, and that there be no lying in state anywhere 5 ; it was found in his
bedroom three days after the burial.) As the coffin was carried into
the White House, and a Navy band played the National Anthem on
the lawn, and men, women and officials stood around openly weep
ing, Truman rushed back to the President s office, for the world had
not stopped going round, and it was still at war. He had sent for
Harry Hopkins, who had flown straight from hospital, and F. D. R. s
old adviser and confidant now talked for two hours, giving a back
ground picture to the events leading up to Yalta, and describing in
detail the characters of those involved ( Stalin is a forthright, rough,
tough Russian . . . but he can be talked to frankly ). During the
afternoon two messages came from Churchill; the first calling for a
joint statement to celebrate the fast-approaching junction of Soviet
and Anglo-American forces in Germany. Truman dealt with this by
asking Churchill to submit a draft. The second was a reply to a
suggestion of Roosevelt s that pilotless bombers, guided by remote
control, should be launched from England on industrial targets in
Germany. Churchill now begged that this should not be carried out;
the state of the war no longer demanded such drastic methods, which
might even yet result in heavy retaliation against the South of
England, which had already, especially London, suffered severely
(he pointed out that 30,000 civilians had been killed in raids on

116

THE DEATH OF ROOSEVELT

London). Truman agreed to postpone the plan for pilotless
bombers.

At four o clock Truman walked from his office to the East Room,
where 200 guests were assembled for the funeral of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt. The guests included Eden and Gromyko, the Philippine
President Osmena, Thomas E. Dewey and Harold Stassen
(Roosevelt s Republican rivals), and Mrs Woodrow Wilson. Eighty
years earlier to the day Abraham Lincoln had been shot dead, and
had lain in state in the same room. Throughout the United States a
two minutes silence was observed. Telephone services were cut
off, in newspaper offices teletype machines tapped out SILENCE,
trains in New York s subway ground to a halt, production halted in
factories. While many millions that evening genuinely mourned a
man who had become a legend in his own lifetime, the lights burned
bright on the second floor of 4701 Connecticut Avenue the new
President was still at work.

On Tuesday, April iyth, Churchill made one of his most famous
speeches in the House of Commons; a generous and heartfelt tribute
to the late President, who, as he pointed out, was the greatest
champion of freedom who has ever brought help and comfort from
the New World to the Old . During this time he became aware that
the new President was a man still trying to find his feet in a world on
which he had never trod before. c lt seemed to me extraordinary,
especially during the last few months, that Roosevelt had not made
his deputy and potential successor thoroughly acquainted with the
whole story, and brought him into the decisions that were being
taken. This proved of grave disadvantage to our affairs. There is no
comparison between reading about events afterwards and living
through them from hour to hour. How could Mr Truman know and
weigh the issues at stake at this climax of the war? In these early
months his position was one of extreme difficulty, and did not enable
him to bring his outstanding qualities fully into action. The British
Ambassador in Washington, Lord Halifax, sent Churchill some good
news on the subject of the new President: It may be of interest that
Truman s hobby is history of military strategy, of which he is
reported to have read widely. Nothing could have been calculated to
please Churchill more. After a meeting with Truman, Eden reported:
My impression from the interview is that the President is honest and
friendly. He is conscious of but not overwhelmed by his new
responsibilities. On the whole, this view of Eden s reflected the
general opinion that was gaining currency in Washington.

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INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

(ii)

It is difficult to see why the American military experts expected the
war in Europe to last another six months, for at the time of Roose
velt s death organized German resistance in the west had practically
ceased. With mopping-up still taking place in the Ruhr, Eisenhower
was pushing on towards the Elbe with astonishing speed. The
encirclement of the Ruhr had deprived Kesselring of his centre, and
his movements were now confined to concentrating his two flanks,
one being rolled back on to the northern ports, and the other (with
which he remained in person) falling back on the southern moun
tains. Most of the Nazi administration, loot, hostages and important
personages had already begun drifting into the fastnesses of the
southern sector, including a nuclear reactor and a group of nuclear
physicists who were evacuated to a cave in the Bavarian Alps.
Already a rail bridge had been constructed by the Allies across the
Rhine at Wesel, and supplies were pouring into Germany for the
advancing armies. Only the fierce resistance of the German force
outside Berlin, holding back the Russian advance, was preventing a
junction of Russian and Anglo-American forces; when that happened
German resistance would be cut in two. The Americans were already
deep into the zone which had been allocated for Russian occupation,
but there had been no agreement at Yalta about the Allied armies
restricting themselves to any particular areas in pursuit of the
common enemy, and certainly nothing had been said about the
occupation of Berlin (it having been taken for granted, at that time,
that the Russians would reach the capital first). As has been seen,
Eisenhower was not, in any event, interested in the capture of
Berlin. In his report he said: Military factors when the enemy was
on the brink of final defeat were more important in my eyes than the
political considerations involved in an Allied capture of the capital. 5
He was now more than ever convinced that the Nazis intended a final
stand in the Bavarian hills and mountains, and especially at a super
fortress of almost impregnable passes, which would be difficult and
costly to overrun, around Berchtesgaden. Bradley wrote afterwards:
*Not until after the campaign ended were we to learn that this
Redoubt existed largely in the imaginations of a few fanatic Nazis.
It grew into so exaggerated a scheme that I am astonished that we
could have believed it as innocently as we did. It was with this fear

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ADVANCE INTO HOLLAND AND W. GERMANY

very much in mind that Eisenhower decided to give all the support
he could in the south, at the expense of Montgomery in the north.
He was also influenced by Bradley s recent performance, a series of
brilliant tactical strokes against a crumbling enemy. He told his
naval aide, in an obvious reference, to Montgomery: Bradley has
never held back and never has paused to regroup when he saw an
opportunity to advance. This was perfectly true. For Montgomery s
whole tactical thinking, and especially his fear of careless planning
and the resulting heavy casualties, was conditioned, unlike Bradley s,
by his experiences in the First World War. Bradley, militarily
speaking, was the better man for the hour, and Eisenhower sensed
this. With all this in mind, Eisenhower ordered a halt at the Elbe. He
had no wish to get entangled around Berlin. All this was a bitter
disappointment to Montgomery, who had lost the Ninth US Army
to Bradley, but he now realized, as he has said, that it was useless
for me to pursue the matter further . (Montgomery insists that
Berlin, Vienna and Prague could all have been grabbed before the
Russians .) After an advance of fifty-seven miles in the day, the
armoured vanguard of the Ninth US Army reached the Elbe, near
Magdeburg, on April nth. Bradley s forces were fifty-three miles
from Berlin, not much further than the Russians, who had been held
up not long before by an inconvenient thaw of the Oder. There is no
doubt that they could have crossed the Elbe with little opposition
and taken the city from the rear. Eisenhower promptly sent a
message to Stalin, informing him of his intention of stopping at the
Elbe, and ordered Patton, already at the Czech frontier, not to probe
towards Prague (which, according to Bradley, could have been taken
within twenty-four hours), but to concentrate on the so-called
National Redoubt. Thus half-way through April American forces
were more than 100 miles inside the Russian Zone of Germany
before the Russians had themselves hardly entered it, and were in an
excellent position for driving on to Prague. At this time Stalin
became extremely apprehensive about the success of his intentions
in Central Europe, and his own advance from the Oder was con
ducted with the utmost secrecy so far as the West was concerned,
and brief Soviet statements gave little away.

Meanwhile Montgomery, urged on by Churchill, was racing
for Liibeck to cut off the Danish peninsula from the Russians.
Churchill was suspicious of Russian intentions in this area, as in all
others. With Denmark in their hands, the Russians would have
control of the Baltic. Montgomery s armoured divisions operated in

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INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

great depth on narrow thrust-lines, by-passing areas of enemy
resistance. On the far left flank the First Canadian Army was mean
while striking deep into the Netherlands with three targets: the
capturing of the V-bomb sites, the liberation of the Dutch people
(many of whom were by this time dying from starvation) and the
destruction of the German forces under the local commissar
Artur von Seyss-Inquart. The latter, indulging in blackmail of
grand enormity, threatened to break a dyke for every kilometre the
Canadians advanced. He indicated that he was quite prepared to
smash the great dyke across the Zuider Zee, thus putting much of
Holland under water. The Canadians halted; but Seyss-Inquart,
after representations from Bedell Smith, agreed to supplies being
allowed in to the starving Dutch. The Canadians, however, had
already reached the North Sea, and the last V.2 had fallen on
England. Throughout their advance the Canadians had come upon
railway sidings jammed with V-bomb-laden trucks.

By the third week in April Allied troops were well ensconced in
Western Germany. Already tentative efforts were being made to
bring some order to the anarchy they found there. Military Govern
ment officers went around delivering proclamations (one had actually
crossed the Rhine with the assaulting troops) which demanded: the
abolition of all Nazi organizations and law courts; the destruction
of Nazi emblems; lists of inmates to be posted on the doors of all
houses. It was stated that marks were to be held at the rate of forty
to the pound sterling. According to Alan Moorehead: Looting was
widespread and heavy. German cars by the hundred were dragged
out of garages and hiding-places under the straw in the barns,
painted khaki and driven away. Cameras and watches and revolvers
were taken automatically from prisoners, and frequently from
civilians. In nearly every town the shops were broached, the distil
leries emptied. Even pictures were stripped from their frames.
Within weeks, when men returned on leave, Britain seemed to be
flooded with German cameras.

It was at this time that the prisoner-of-war camps were relieved.
Men who had waited with mounting excitement, almost unable to
believe that the rumours they had heard were true, burst into free
dom like a sudden joyous eruption from a volcano. In most cases, so
fast was the Allied advance, the gates were actually opened for them
by the forward troops themselves. Their release could not have been
more dramatically ordered; it happened exactly as they had dreamed.
At one of the biggest camps, Fallingbostel, the British troops found

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ADVANCE INTO HOLLAND AND W. GERMANY

their comrades drawn up in the compound inside, before the Union
Jack; gaiters, belts and badges immaculately turned out. The
relieving troops watched as the prisoners-of-war came, as one man,
to the salute. Among those released in the last days of the war were
Captain Earl Haig, Lieutenant Lord Lascelles (cousin of the Queen),
Captain the Master of Elphinstone (nephew of the Queen),
Lieutenant John Winant (son of the US Ambassador to Britain),
Jean Borotra, in somewhat adventurous circumstances, and French
leaders like Daladier, Reynaud, Gamelin and Weygand. (And from
the concentration camps staggered many eminent Jewish scientists,
writers and academics who had long since been forgotten by the
world.) But all was not to be joy and gladness; men who had, it
seemed, missed the war , who had been taken prisoner at Dunkirk or
in the desert years before, were naturally bitter and apart; not all
their hearty relievers were quick to appreciate this. It was, perhaps,
a classic remark made by a released prisoner-of-war that first brought
home to the invading troops, and the public at home, what five
years out of life had meant. It was a true remark that, within days,
was to be reported around the world: So that s what a jeep looks
like.

The greatest administrative problem of the American and British
military authorities, apart from the huge number of German
surrenders growing every day, was the mass of foreign slave-labour
that was found in West Germany, mostly wandering around, living
off the land, and in sleazy camps. French, Dutch, Belgian, Czech,
Poles and, especially, in their green overalls with S.U. painted in
white on the backs, Russians. It was soon clear that there were many
millions of these; no one knew exactly how many. Millions wished to
return home; hundreds of thousands did not. All were uprooted from
families. All were suspicious of authority, even when it was kindly
and for their own benefit. They were a hopeless, introspective
legion, cut off by experience and outlook from the conquerors who
had come to free them, and with whom, for the time being, they had
lost all meaningful communication. A phrase was coined for these
wretched people: Displaced Persons.

But now an event was to occur which was to shock the world in a
way that it had never been shocked before; that was to send an
involuntary shudder of disgust and grief through every country.

On April i3th, 1945, Patton s Third US Army reached an appar
ently insignificant spot, called Buchenwald. What the American
troops saw there is well enough known today. At the time there was

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INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

a shock which touched the roots of humanity; for in all recorded
history, even in the times of the barbarians, there had never been
anything like Buchenwald. There had been rumours of the concen
tration camps for many years; on several occasions, even in the
thirties, there had been evidence of them, particularly of Dachau.
Many people had put down such stories to Allied propaganda.
Others had accepted that there were such camps. But no one had
even been able to conceive in their minds anything quite like what
was now to be unveiled before their reluctant gaze.

Camp after camp, in quick succession, fell into Allied hands. For
the dehumanized objects that were found in them, alive only as any
organism is alive, it was mostly far too late. They continued to die
like flies. At first the horrified troops who burst into the camps in
almost all cases went berserk. The few German guards still present
were beaten and shot out of hand. Those Germans who survived the
first few days were put to work to dig communal graves; they were
forcibly joined at a number of camps by civilians, including women
and children, who lived in the vicinity. After a few days the Press
and selected visitors were allowed in.

The first camp to fall into British hands was Belsen, the Germans
having asked the British to take it over for fear that the typhus there,
if left uncontrolled, would spread throughout the Reich. (Hitler had
ordered that the camp should be evacuated and the inmates com
pelled t to march 190 miles to a less vulnerable spot; as the inmates
would have found difficulty in marching 190 yards, he was persuaded
to cancel this order.) Although few British people had been in
Belsen, and although it was in fact one of the smallest and, if possible,
a camp slightly less appalling than some of the others (there were, for
instance, no gas chambers), it was, because it was associated with the
initial shock, to become a part of the British conscience. In Britain
the word Belsen became more than the name for a concentration
camp. For the first time there was a word in the language for the
unmentionable. Reporters who were shown round the camp begged
to be excused after the first few minutes, but were forced to continue.
What they saw was what was seen at all other camps: an entire new
species of the human animal, that was soon to become familiar
through pictures released over the world: a small, childlike, skin
tight, hairless, sexless, pearly coloured being which made occasional
high-pitched squeaks and smelt of its own excrement and urine in
which it lay. The reporters were, after the inspection, taken to see
the German guards locked up in cells. They had been interrogated 7

122

ADVANCE INTO HOLLAND AND W, GERMANY

that morning and were covered in blood; a number were unable to
get off the floor. A camp doctor* begged to be killed before under
going further interrogation . His request was turned down.

A British Parliamentary delegation visited Buchenwald, at the
insistence of General Eisenhower, Their report stated that such
camps as this mark the lowest point of degradation to which human
ity has yet descended . The Government fully supported their
backing of General Eisenhower s action in forcing Germans living
in the vicinity of the camps to visit them. Two sentences of the
long and horrible Parliamentary report riveted the attention of the
world: They were informed that Frau Koch, the wife of the
German Commandant, had collected articles made of human skin.
They obtained, among other pieces of hide which Sir Bernard
Spilsbury identified as human skin, one clearly forming part of a
lamp-shade. Why this, among all the many horrors, should have
surfaced above the others is a mystery, but surface it did. There was
no degree of horror. It was all total horror; experiments on human
beings in changes of air pressure (resulting in haemorrhages of the
brain); experimental injection of every conceivable disease; experi
ments in immersion in iced water (resulting in death or insanity);
surgical experiments conducted without anaesthetic; all were die
ultimate in refined inhumanity. Skin-collecting was widespread at
all the camps, not just Buchenwald. A survivor, who had worked in
the hospital at Dachau, testified at the Nuremberg trial: It was
common practice to remove the skin from dead prisoners. It was
chemically treated and placed in the sun to dry. After that it was cut
into various sizes for use as saddles, riding breeches, gloves, house
slippers and ladies handbags. Tattooed skin was particularly valued
by SS men. This skin would have to be from healthy prisoners and
free from defects ... we would receive twenty or thirty bodies of
young people. They would have been shot in the neck or struck on
the head so that the skin would be uninjured. Also we frequently got
requests for the skulls or skeletons of prisoners. In those cases we
boiled the skull or the body. Then the soft parts were removed and
the bones were bleached and dried and reassembled. In the case of
skulls it was important to have a good set of teeth. So it was

dangerous to have a good skin or good teeth The first American

troops to reach Dachau ranged through the camp spraying bullets
from machine-guns and pistols at the guards; released prisoners
exacted terrible vengeance on their tormentors. But Buchenwald
was the camp to which the American military authorities took most

123

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

of their selected visitors. After one such visit Colonel Charles
Codman wrote: The shelves were still well filled. Some of them
were living human beings, but the majority were almost indistin
guishable from the corpses we saw in the death cart. On one shelf
barer than the rest, three shadowy figures huddled together for
warmth. Cold comfort for the outside two, since the middle one had
been dead for several hours. Under the old regime he would even
tually have been stripped and thrown out on to the flagstones to
await the next tour of the wagon. Further on, an emaciated spectre
of a man . . . was crawling up on to the next shelf. It was only three
feet from the floor but he could not make it. One of the first
correspondents to visit the camp was the American broadcaster
Edward Murrow. Several almost naked skeletons came up to him,
and, touching him hesitantly, told him that they knew him. He
remembered them, but could not recognize them; one was the
ex-Mayor of Prague. They were in rags . . . death had already
marked many of them. I looked out over that mass of men to the
green fields beyond where well-fed Germans were ploughing.

How much did the German people know of the concentration
camps? It was said that the smoke from the incinerators, with the
unmistakable stench of burning flesh and bone, had been both
visible and well known to the nostrils for miles around. It was said
that for this reason there had been petitions by local residents to the
authorities to have the camps removed. But this was a question that
was not satisfactorily answered; and it most certainly never will be.

What required no answer was that in the concentration camps an
utter and total contempt had been displayed by humans for the lives
of fellow humans; that there had been a massive and well-organized
orgy of the most depraved sadism and inhumanity. The reaction in
America, Britain, in Europe, and in other countries, was quite clear.
After the initial shock, there was no anger; only shame.

cm)

While in Germany the Allied advance revealed the nightmarish
secrets of the Nazis, as if rolling back some carpet which had been
hiding a vermin-covered floor, in Italy, too, the advance of the
British, American and Polish armies was bringing Italian Fascism
to its last moments; but in this case there was more bathos than
gigantic horror.

124

THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN

The campaign was coining to a brilliant close. Alexander,
Supreme Commander in the Mediterranean, and General Mark
Clark, Commander of the Fifteenth Army Group, had delayed all
thought of an offensive till the spring; previous experience of winter
campaigning in Italy left them with no other choice. But the Allied
air forces, outnumbering the enemy by thirty to one, had kept up a
ceaseless attack on the passes connecting northern Italy with
Austria and Germany. Some passes were blocked in this way for
weeks at a time; supplies, especially of fuel, were thus rapidly
diminishing among the German forces. German morale, however,
was comparatively high, units were up to strength, and, as nearly
always in the entire Italian campaign, they outnumbered the Allied
divisions; but they were fatally hampered by their lack of fuel and
the rigid defensive position south of the River Po on which Hitler
insisted. They would have done far better, as all the German
commanders realized, to have retired to the Tyrol. But Hitler had
told Kesselring s successor: The Fuehrer expects . . . [you] to
defend every inch of the North Italian areas entrusted to your com
mand. But under modern conditions the holding of such static
lines is impossible. The Allied forces struck on April gth. There
were two main thrusts, by the Eighth and Fifth Armies, which made
up one of the most polyglot forces of the war, including British,
New Zealand, Indian, American, Polish, Brazilian and Italian
troops. According to Attlee, there were twenty-two nations under
Alexander s command. A superbly commanded campaign, in which
land, air and naval (supporting both flanks) forces concerted with
notable success, followed. The enemy, by no means already beaten
as they were in Germany, were forced to steadily withdraw. In
fourteen days the Po was reached and crossed. The Fifth US Army
headed north-west towards Milan, Turin and Genoa, and the
Eighth north-west towards Trieste. Although the Allied forces in
Italy were only expected to contain the Germans and to keep as
many enemy divisions in that theatre as possible, they had of their
own accord broken free from their secondary role and won an
important victory. Italian partisans, who for many weeks had been
conducting guerrilla war in the back areas, now rose with confidence
and gained control of several cities and towns, including Venice. The
negotiations that had begun in Switzerland some time before were
hurriedly reopened by German emissaries, after moves by the
Cardinal Archbishop of Milan. In a message to Alexander, Churchill
said: This great final battle in Italy will long stand out in history as

125

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

one of the most famous episodes in the Second World War. Alas,
this was not to be so; the advance from the Rhine was to steal the
glory.

In Milan, Mussolini s puppet government kept up a pretence of
authority until mid-April; but by then extensive partisan activity
throughout northern Italy had made the Duce s position impossible.
(As late as March he had visited Hitler and returned much en
couraged at the news of the V.2S and the super-submarines.) On
April 25th, with Allied forces rapidly approaching the city, he held
a meeting of what could still be found of his Cabinet. Graziani, his
Minister of War, reported on the complete collapse of the front at
the Po. But Mussolini still believed he would be able to salvage
something from the wreckage of his empire; he harboured the
illusion that he could make a deal with the leaders of the extreme
left, who controlled the partisans. A meeting was arranged at the
Palace of the Cardinal. The Cardinal, comparing the disconsolate
Duce with Napoleon, argued that the world would appreciate it as a
gesture if he capitulated now. It seemed that Mussolini was about to
do so when he suddenly broke up the meeting and stormed out. He
was dazed by the news that the German forces in Italy were already
preparing to surrender, a fact which had previously been kept from
him. In fact, as no doubt he realized, it no longer mattered a scrap to
the world whether he capitulated or not; events were entirely beyond
his control, and would now take their ordained course. On arrival at
the Prefecture, which he had turned into the seat of his so-called
government, he ordered an immediate departure for Como. He gave
no reason for this particular destination; and, indeed, there was
none. As usual, his familiar abruptness hid his indecision. A column
of ten cars was assembled, and together with some truck-loads of
German troops who had been assigned to him as a personal guard,
the Duce and the few Ministers and officials who were still with him
set off at 8 p.m. on April 25th. His last act before leaving was to
release all party members and troops from their oath of allegiance.
He wanted no fighting in Milan. On his arrival at Como he refused
to give any orders, and made it plain that he had abandoned all
authority.

Thus ended the political career of a remarkable and ambitious
man, equipped with an extraordinary power of dramatizing himself
and his policies; a bombastic self-adulator whose performance would
have received scant recognition among any people but the opera-
loving Italians; a ruthless and violent conniver who nevertheless did

126

THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN

not descend to gas-ovens and mass-slaughter. Had he died or
retired in the early thirties he would possibly have gone down in
history as the spiritual descendant of the medieval despots of the
city states; a dictator who had brought a few worthwhile achieve
ments to his country. But dictators seldom retire. Now, with no
coherent plan and surrounded only by those minions who sought
personal safety through keeping in his company, he was, too fast for
him to fully appreciate it, changing from a head of state (of sorts) to
a hunted outcast. After a day at Como he set off once more, having
agreed to attempt to cross the Swiss frontier. Despair and confusion
were all that he found at the border; a scouting party which had been
sent ahead discovering that the Italian border guards had joined the
partisans. The cavalcade was driving around the border area, with
out any clear plan, when it was stopped by a strong partisan patrol at
a place called, ironically enough, Musso. After a long wait, during
which the commander of the German guard and the partisan leader
conferred, it was agreed that the German soldiers would be allowed
through but not the mysterious Italian civilians. Mussolini hurriedly
donned a German greatcoat and helmet and, a sten-gun between his
knees, he pretended to be asleep in one of the trucks. But even in the
thin and haggard condition to which he had been reduced in recent
months there was no adequate disguise, in Italy, for the Duce. He
was docilely taken prisoner, only complaining when someone picked
up his leather brief-case: Be careful, that case contains documents of
great historical importance. He spent the evening, during which it
rained incessantly, being taken from one party of guerrillas to
another; no one wanting to take the responsibility of doing anything
with the once-mighty Duce himself. His faithful mistress, Claretta
Petacci, who had always adored him, had also been taken prisoner in
the same convoy, and, at her request, she was taken to him. The
two spent the night, under guard, at a peasant s house in a remote
village. Up till this time they had been considerately treated, and
kept in disguise (Mussolini in an old workman s cap), in case they
should be recogni2ed by more ardent partisans who might execute
them before orders as to what to do with them could come from
Milan. Those orders arrived during the night. Early in the morning
three women kneeling by the village pump, washing clothes, saw a
small party with a smartly dressed woman in tears and a man with a
look of utter despair on his features under his shabby cap get into a
black car, which roared out of the village.
Benito Mussolini and Claretta Petacci were taken up a steep hill,

127

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

bundled out of the car, and stood up against a wall beside a gatepost.
From where they stood they could have had a brief glimpse of the
waters of Lake Como glistening far below in the early morning
sunlight. No one saw the execution except the three partisans
present;* it is not clear whether the death of Petacci was intended or
not. A maid at a house opposite heard the shooting (it took six shots
to kill Mussolini), and peeped through a hedge shortly afterwards.
She saw the bodies, which lay there in the rain, which was now
falling, before being thrown into a lorry containing the dead
ministers and officials who had been caught with Mussolini but
separated from him after capture. Before it left for Milan, a partisan
climbed into the truck and took from Petacci s neck a gold pendant
on which was inscribed: Clara, I am you you are me, Ben:
24.4.32-24.4.41.

The truck was unloaded in a garage on the Piazzale Loreto,
Milan. As the news spread, a crowd assembled at the garage and
demanded to be shown the bodies, whereupon a tall man in shirt
sleeves lifted them up one by one as the crowd shouted their names.
After this had gone on for some time, the tall man wearied of his
task, and someone had the idea of stringing the corpses up by meat-
hooks from the roof. This was done; Mussolini being the first to be
strung up, head downwards. When he appeared, the crowd, which
had now grown to an enormous size, let out a prolonged burst of
hissing, jeering and catcalls. Those near enough spat. They were
the same people who had, for so many years, cheered, fawned upon
and grovelled before the same man. The faithful Petacci s body was
next to be displayed, followed by the remainder. The bodies were
already rigid, and the arms stuck out in various attitudes. A slight
wind swept them to and fro as in some ghoulish dance; a photo
grapher snapped them, and yet another famous picture of the
Second World War was taken.

Winston Churchill was, like many others, profoundly shocked .
He wrote to Alexander: The man who murdered Mussolini made a
confession, published in the Daily Express, gloating over the treacher
ous and cowardly method of his action. In particular he said he
shot Mussolini s mistress. Was she on the list of war criminals?
Had he any authority from anybody to shoot this woman? It seems
to me the cleansing hand of British military power should make in
quiries on these points. But inquiries were inconclusive and passive.
The act had been done, and the world was spared another Nuremberg.

* And only one of them has given a full version of what happened.

128

THE AGONY OF BERLIN

Two German delegates reached Alexander s headquarters on
April 29th. They signed an unconditional surrender (in the presence
of Russian observers), and on May 2nd nearly a million German
troops surrendered. The war in Italy had ended in the way that
everyone, including Hitler, knew it had to. In an order of the day,
Field-Marshal Alexander, aloof, shy, widely respected but im
mensely reserved, wrote perhaps the only really relaxed words of his
public life: After nearly two years of hard and continuous fighting
which started in Sicily in the summer of 1943, you stand today as
victors in the Italian campaign. You have won a victory which has
ended in the complete and utter rout of the German armed forces
in the Mediterranean. Today the remnants of the once-proud army
have laid down their arms to you close on a million men with all
their arms, equipment and impedimenta. You may well be proud
of this great victorious campaign. . . . No praise is high enough for
you, sailors, soldiers, airmen, and workers of the united forces in
Italy, for your magnificent triumph. My gratitude to you and my
admiration is unbounded and only equalled by the pride which is
mine of being your Commander-in-Chief.

Adolf Hitler, in his testament carefully recorded by Bormann,
contrived to get the final and most apt word on the Italian war,
during which he had scattered his armies from Tobruk to the Po
in the service of the Duce, whom he had once so admired. *It is
quite obvious that our Italian alliance has been of more service to
our enemies than to ourselves. Italian intervention has conferred
benefits which are modest in the extreme in comparison with the
numerous difficulties to which it has given rise. If, in spite of our
efforts, we fail to win this war, the Italian alliance will have con
tributed to our defeat. To ensure her abstention, no sacrifices, no
presents on our part, would have been too great/

(iv)

On the same day that Mussolini had attempted to discard his
responsibilities by leaving Milan, two events of far greater im
portance had occurred in Germany; Berlin was encircled, if some
what tenuously, by the Russian armies which had been steadily
pushing back the German defence from the Oder, and, at 1.30
p.m., the forward patrols of Konev s s8th Guards Division linked

129

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

up on the Elbe with the van of the 273rd Regiment of the First US
Army at Torgau, on the Elbe.

The defences that had been prepared on the outskirts of Berlin
now took the full brunt of the Russian onslaught as much of the
remaining Wehrmacht on the north-eastern front, about 250,000
strong, withdrew behind them to make a last stand in defence of the
city. Little information about this great Russian advance was given
at the time (the same applies, to a lesser extent, to the advance into
Austria and the fall of Vienna on April 13*, the bitter siege of
Breslau, which lasted eighty-two days, and other fighting on the
Eastern Front in the last stages of the war), but there is no doubt
that the full weight of two whole Soviet armies, Konev s and
Zhukov s, were hurled at Berlin. Hitler s much-heralded and
pathetic Volkssturm^ ill armed and wretched, had mostly faded away.
As in the west, the Hitler Youth had done better. Such a bombard
ment was now poured on to the city that the whole area became
hidden in a cloud of dust and smoke; many soldiers, and some of the
civilians lurking in cellars, were suffocated by the stifling air.
Detachments of defenders were rushed from one threatened spot to
another, stumbling over the ruined city, already blasted to rubble by
British and American bombers, in a haze of blinding grit and
powdered plaster. All the while the Red Army, advancing in stages
of 100 yards or so, inexorably closed in like a circular vice. The re
maining German forces now began concentrating in the centre of
the city, having fortified the demolished buildings. Russian artillery
was brought up, with great difficulty, into the few uncluttered
open spaces in order to blast, from the shortest range, this final
stronghold into eternity. Tunnels and sewers were used by the
German defenders to good effect; for linking their own positions,
for appearing behind the Soviet lines, and as ammunition and
supply depots. Fearful hand-to-hand fighting took place below
ground in engagements that must have savoured of Dante s Inferno.
None of the senior commanders dared to open negotiations with the
Russians in order to bring this brutal and senseless fighting to an
end; as much through fear of the Fuehrer as of the Russians. Roughly
in the centre of the German position was the plain entrance of
solid concrete to Hitler s bunker. Here, fifty feet beneath the
Chancellery and its garden, in his enormous study with walls of
blood-red marble, the Fuehrer sat pondering on his horoscope and
the plans for the opera house at Linz, with only the distant thudding
from far above to remind him of the cataclysm that he had himself

130

THE AGONY OF BERLIN

caused. In the last hours before the encirclement, and (from Tempel-
hof and down the banks of the Havel) even after it, many of his
senior aides had departed, either to the concentration in the north
or, with most of the Ministries, to Berchtesgaden, in the south,
where an emergency capital 5 had been prepared and from where
some still hoped to prolong the stand in an Alpine Redoubt
Hitler himself refused to leave for the latter, stubbornly preferring
to remain in the capital and to personally conduct its defence. Only
five days before the encirclement he had, on his fifty-sixth birthday,
held his last grand conference, at which Himmler, Goering,
Goebbels, Axmann (leader of the Hitler Youth), Doenitz, Keitel,
Speer, Jodl and Bormann had all been present; most of them en
treated him to leave the city, and all, apart from Goebbels, Axmann
and Bormann, immediately did so themselves. Two days later, at a
military conference, he had perhaps the greatest fit of anger ever in
his stormy life, accusing everyone present of total incompetence
and disloyalty, and it was apparently on this occasion that he decided
not to join in the hasty and undignified escape to north and south.
His decision to remain meant some confusion as to leadership of the
Reich. He had already made arrangements that if a geographical
split should occur, Doenitz should take command in the north if
that area were separated, and Kesselring if it were the south. It
had not occurred to anyone till too late that Berlin might be cut off
from both. Goering, however, as soon as he learned of Hitler s
decision to remain, had asked whether he, as titular deputy, did
not now take overall command. The Fuehrer, infuriated and con
fused, replied by dismissing him. Hitler even now clung to his hope
of a clash between Soviet and Anglo-American interests in Germany,
resulting in a clash between their forces, which would in some
devious way save him from total disaster; failing that, there was, he
hoped, always the possibility of a relief reaching the city in the
form of the German Ninth Army (which to all practical purposes
no longer existed). But as the hours ticked remorselessly by and the
thudding from above grew more insistent, he became drained of
everything except despair. Goering, who had been attempting to
run the scattered remnants of the Luftwaffe from a lunatic asylum
near Munich, before evacuating to Berchtesgaden, had been har
bouring similar delusions, and tried to negotiate with the Americans
on the basis that the German forces would join with them in warding
off the Russians from Central Europe.
On the night of April 26th shells began to fall on the Chancellery

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

building itself. It started to crack and chunks of it fell to the ground,
sending explosive shudders through the bunker below. At mid
day on April 2Qth the usual situation conference was held, and at it
Hitler was told that the Russians had advanced in Grunewald and
at the Anhalter railway station. Of the Ninth Army there was no
news. There was another conference at four, and yet another at
ten at night. At the last, together with various officers, were Goeb-
bels, Bormann and General Weidling, Commandant of the city.
The latter reported that a Russian group was at that moment
advancing down the Wilhelmstrasse and had almost reached the
Air Ministry.

A senior staff officer, Colonel Nicolaus von Below, was given the
Fuehrer s final message to the Chiefs of Staff at the northern
capital , Fuerstenberg, in which he poured recrimination on them
for not relieving the city and gave his command that the fight
should be continued on other fronts to the last man. Von Below
accordingly emerged from the bunker at midnight and reached the
Havel, from where he was escorted by guides of the Hitler Youth.*
By April 28th Spandau and Potsdam had been prised from the
defenders tenuous and slipping grasp. By the morning of the
29th Zhukov s advance tanks were slowly rumbling three abreast
over the debris that had once been the Unter Den Linden. There
was panic and desperation. Deserters were shot on the spot by
fanatical SS men, who began to go berserk. SS men delved into the
underground stations and picked out people at random from among
those sheltering there and shot them for no reason whatever.
Walloon SS and White Russian detachments who had been recruited
by the SS years before, and even French SS, fought in the streets
beside the Wehrmacht and Hitler Youth. Drunken orgies took place
at night. Bread and water was doled out in ever-decreasing portions;
military doctors with makeshift surgeries in the cellars ran out of
anaesthetics; bodies were left lying in the streets. Meanwhile, in the
shattered Ministries, those civil servants who had not been evacuated
to the south continued with their work as best they could. While
Russian tanks clattered past the Party Headquarters, the Fuehrer s
faithful were actually working out paper-clip requirements for the
third quarter of 1 945 .

Now Hitler s rule and the days of Nazism were nearly at an end.
In the west fighting had practically ceased except in small pockets

* Von Below failed to deliver his message, and was next heard of in January 1946
when he was discovered reading law at Bonn University.

132

THE AGONY OF BERLIN

where fanatical youths and children fought fiercely on; in the east
the line had disintegrated everywhere. Only on the coast of East
Prussia, in Czechoslavakia and at Breslau was the defence as
determined as at Berlin. In East Prussia the army which had been
cut off many weeks before had now been pushed back to the coast,
together with hundreds of thousands of refugees. What remained
of the German fleet had been assembled to conduct a vast Dunkirk
operation. An extraordinarily dramatic evacuation, that is still
little known in the west, ensued. Seemingly endless lines of fugitives
streamed down the roads to Konigsberg and Pillau. Earlier in the
year the International Red Cross had discovered that several
thousands of these refugees had literally been frozen to death in the
exceptionally severe winter. Civilians, animals, troops, cars and
trucks could be seen from the range-finder of the Admiral Scheer^
in long treks, approaching across the countryside. Russian artillery
followed and fired into the columns and towns at close range. The
German Navy, close to the coast in order to cover the evacuation in
merchant and naval vessels, were bombed by Russian raiders, and
many of them were sent to the bottom.* Hundreds of craft came from
Norway, Denmark and Germany to rescue the soldiers now with
drawing to the quays of the two ports and other smaller harbours.
The Navy was ordered to evacuate 250,000 military and 25,000
civilians in the last few days of April, having already organized the
evacuation of 1,500,000 from East Prussia, Latvia and Danzig.
Russian fighters and bombers roared over the ports and craft,
casting their shadows on those who looked up, and hurtling down
death. Piers were constructed and ships packed so that every inch
was crammed with standing refugees. In one day alone 43,000 were
taken away. Somebody remembered, in all the confusion, to stow
aboard one ship the coffins of Field-Marshal von Hindenburg and
his wife Gertrud, which had been rescued by a pioneer detachment a
few hours before the Russians had reached the Tannenberg Mem
orial, and which had been brought by lorry to Konigsberg. Thus the
old soldier who had witnessed Germany s ambitions collapse to
nothing in 1918 was now rudely plucked from his rest to participate
in the demented collapse of yet another Reich in yet another world
war.f When the Russians reached Konigsberg the ships were rushed

* The Admiral Scheer was hit and sunk in Kiel dockyard while undergoing repairs;
the dock was filled with rubble after the war, and every day people now walk over the
famous warship unawares.

f The coffins were discovered by the Americans in August 1946 and were buried
beside Frederick I and Frederick II at Marburg.

133

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

by the flocks of terrified peasants and townspeople, while the
German troops retreated, still firing, on to the vessels; but only
two harbour tugs did not get away. An extraordinary armada made
its way across the Baltic to Germany and Denmark: minesweepers,
speed-boats, fishing-boats, cabin cruisers, ferries, river-boats, even
a floating crane to say nothing of the destroyers and warships.
There were detachments of troops; children picked up in some
street or other in East Prussia and brought along; old bodies with
six weeks foot-slogging behind them; young mothers who had en
dured their worst hours on the icy roads, and now carried their new
born babies with them all with fears and privations plainly written
on their faces . Their tribulations were not over, for Russian sub
marines and planes sent several ships down (and continued to do
so up to six hours after the end of the war); in one sinking 400 were
drowned.

If the evacuation from East Prussia of 2,022,600 people was one
of the most remarkable in history, it was no repetition of Dunkirk.
For when the shivering, hungry refugees arrived once more behind
the German lines, they were not in a land which could any longer
overcome its defeats and arise, phoenix-like, to victory. They were
in a land where there was nothing but the stench of defeat.

Himmler, who had been the main liaison officer between the
bunker and the north, had already tried to make peace overtures to
the West through Count Folke Bernadotte, head of the International
Red Cross in Germany. But Bernadotte had felt unable to act as an
intermediary without some better indication that Himmler was in
fact acting on behalf of Germany and not just on behalf of himself.
He suggested that Himmler should launch a putsch (and the latter
did once hint at ways of liquidating the Fuehrer). Bernadotte,
however, kept in touch with Himmler through Walter Schellen-
berg, Head of Intelligence, a lawyer still in his thirties who was
making some attempt to salvage Germany s honour and to combat
the bestialities of the Gestapo. Bernadotte s main interest was in
getting Norwegians and Danes released from the concentration
camps, a task with which he had some success in conjunction with
Felix Kersten, Himmler s doctor, until Hitler discovered what was
going on. (The Swiss ex-President, Musy, had already succeeded in
getting a similar concession out of Himmler, only to have it cancelled
by Hitler.) Bernadotte s missions were extremely dangerous. He
took two chauffeurs, one of whom travelled outside the car and
banged on the roof whenever aircraft were sighted, whereupon the

134

THE AGONY OF BERLIN

car halted and everyone jumped into a ditch. He was actually in
Berlin on Eider s birthday, seeking an interview with Himmler.
He met him again at the Swedish legation at Liibeck, where their
conference partly took place in a cellar to flickering candlelight while
Allied bombs fell all around. Himmler, like Goering in the south,
sought an agreement whereby the line in the east could be maintained
through a capitulation in the west. Bernadotte doubted whether the
Allies could deal with a man of Himmler s terrible reputation.
Himmler himself, who was sensitive to the foreign Press, had to
admit: As for me well, of course, I am regarded as the cruellest
and most sadistic man alive. Himmler now met the Swede again.
He explained that Hitler s end was near, that the High Command
had abandoned Berlin to its fate, and that he wished to convey to
Eisenhower an offer of capitulation. He seems still to have believed,
as did Doenitz, that Germany could continue after the war with
some sort of semi-Nazi government, descended from Hitler s, in
which he no doubt would have a part to play. Bernadotte was
doubtful if Britain and America would recognize his authority,
or would agree to a separate capitulation. In that case, Himmler
said, he would take a battalion and die fighting the Bolsheviks.
Bernadotte also met Ribbentrop, the Foreign Minister and Himm
ler s personal enemy, who shouted at him for about an hour to no
particular purpose, saying that Bolshevism threatened Europe,
India and China, and something would have to be done immediately.
Himmler s efforts met with failure for the reasons that Bernadotte
had expected. The news reached the world s public via a
Reuters news-agency message; a message which Churchill later
seemed to deny. Himmler s Anglo-American approach caused the
predictable embarrassment between the West and Moscow, which
resulted in the first telephone conversation between Churchill and
the new President. Churchill, who seemed to accept that Himmler
was now the German head of state, was in an excited and some
what incoherent mood (the talk was recorded). The call lasted
about a half-hour, during which time Truman managed to squeeze
in a few short sentences. Himmler, far from leading a battalion into
battle, now hung around in Doenitz s headquarters, such prestige
as he had ever had among his colleagues having suffered a fatal blow.

In the bunker itself Hitler prepared for the end.

On the afternoon of April 2Qth he had his dog Blondi poisoned.
During the evening he said good-bye to all the staff in the bunker,
shaking hands with each in turn. He appeared to be in distant

135

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

mood, perhaps drugged. The following morning there was the
usual conference on the state of the defence of Berlin. After lunch
Hitler and Eva Braun emerged from the Fuehrer s room into the
central corridor-room of the bunker. They had been married during
the night of 28th-29th at a short ceremony witnessed by Goebbels
and Bormann. The final testament had been written: My wife and I
choose to die in order to escape the shame of overthrow or capitula
tion. It is our wish that our bodies be burnt immediately in the place
where I have performed the greater part of my daily work during the
course of my twelve years service to my people. * Another farewell
took place. Frau Goebbels, who had learnt that her six children
were shortly to be poisoned by their father, was, however, unable to
be present. These children, scampering about in the passageways,
had been the one ray of brightness in the oppressive bunker. They
referred to Hitler, who was fond of them, as their Uncle Fuehrer .
Frau Goebbels remained all day in her own room, and was only
seen once again. Hitler shook hands all round once again, and then
the couple returned to their room. (The fact that Hitler said little
or nothing at both farewells, and appeared dazed or drugged,
gave some credence to the theory that it was in fact a double who
had been especially kept for such an event, and that the real Hitler
may thus have escaped after all; a report in The Times of June 20th,
1945, gave the statement of one of the first Russian officers on the
scene, who declared that some charred remains which had been
discovered were of an obvious double of Hitler.f) There was a
silence of a few minutes. A single shot was heard. After a pause
those waiting outside entered the private suite. They found Adolf
Hitler, soaked in blood, lying on the sofa. Eva Braun was on the
same sofa; dead with poison. Thus diedj the man who only three
years before had wielded a power greater and more extensive than
any man s since Caesar; a man whose personal empire stretched
throughout most of Europe and even beyond; a man who surely
had a more evil influence on the course of the history of mankind
than any other single human; and who died like a cornered rat in a
world it had set ablaze.

* He also said that his personal possessions, *in so far as they are worth anything ,
should go to the state ( if the Party no longer exists ). His considerable royalties now
seem to go to his family.

f At Potsdam Stalin impressed American diplomats with his conviction that Hitler
was still alive.

I According to Trevor-Roper s superb and definitive account, which must be
accepted, if not as a proven fact, at least as the nearest thing to a factual account that the
world is ever likely to get in the matter.

136

THE AGONY OF BERLIN

Hitler s body was wrapped in a blanket, concealing the shattered
face, and was taken up to the Chancellery garden; Braun s, carried
by Bormann, followed. In accordance with Hitler s instructions, the
two bodies were placed side by side a few feet from the entrance,
and petrol was poured over them. A Russian artillery barrage was in
progress, and with splinters and debris falling in the vicinity the
mourners withdrew to the entrance of the bunker, from where a
lighted rag was tossed on to the bodies. The two corpses were im
mediately enveloped in leaping flames, and the small group stood to
attention and gave the Nazi salute. They then scurried below once
more.

Bormann sent off two radio telegrams to Doenitz hinting that the
Grand Admiral was now the Fuehrer; but he was not quite able to
bring himself to admit Hitler s death. That evening he and Goebbels
decided to make a peace move towards the Russians, in the hope
that a safe passage to Doenitz s headquarters could be arranged for
those in the bunker, and an officer was accordingly sent off to
Zhukov s headquarters under the white flag. He returned about
noon the following day with the answer that there were to be no
safe passages or privileges, only unconditional surrender. That
being so, only an attempt to make a mass escape remained. This
Bormann now hastily organized.

Goebbels, who had taken his decision long before, had no in
tention of joining any escape. Suspecting that Bormann was up to
some intrigue, he sent off a message to Doenitz informing him
bluntly of Hitler s death, and then arranged for himself and his
wife to be shot by an SS orderly, after having first carefully poisoned
all his children. The imitative funeral-pyre for which he had wished
was not efficiently conducted, and the two bodies were left smoulder
ing in the garden while the remainder busied themselves with
frantic plans of escape.

At ii p.m. a party of officials, soldiers and women gathered in
the bunker (some had come from the shelters near by). Having
been briefed as to the route to be taken, they left at intervals in
small groups, while the flames were still flickering around the
bodies of Goebbels and his wife. By the time they reached the
Friedrichstrasse Station they were already in an unrecognizable
maze of ruins, with blazing buildings lighting up the night sky
and shells falling and exploding all around. The groups became
scattered and broke up as individuals tried to continue alone.
Some followed the railway line, dodging Russian patrols, others,

137

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

including Bormann and Axmann, went eastwards down the Invalid-
enstrasse. Most were killed or captured by the Russians. At least
one reached the American lines. And a number, including Axmann,
escaped altogether. (Axmann eventually reached a group of the
Hitler Youth in a secret hide-out in the Bavarian Alps, where he re
mained for six months.) Bormann was last seen beside a blazing
tank on the Weidendamm Bridge. He may have got away.

The Red Flag had already been hoisted over the ruins of the
Reichstag. The battle reached its climax in the Tiergarten district
and on the banks of the Spree, the surface of which was whipped
into an angry storm by the hail of lead. At 3 p.m. on May 2nd
Weidling and his staff surrendered to the Russians. Six hours later
the battle for Berlin was officially over and 70,000 of the surviving
German troops in the city had been taken prisoner. But some large
groups of the Wehrmacht refused to give in and vainly attempted to
break out, fighting on for at least three more days.

(v)

The news of Hitler s death was announced to the German people by
Doenitz, on Radio Hamburg, at 10.37 P- m - on May Ist - The
announcer warned that a grave and important announcement was
shortly to be made, and after an interval during which Bruckner s
Seventh Symphony was played, Doenitz spoke. Our Fuehrer,
Adolf Hitler, has fallen. The German people bow in deepest
mourning and veneration. He recognized beforehand the terrible
danger of Bolshevism and devoted his life to fighting it ... his
battle against the Bolshevist flood benefited not only Europe but the
entire world. The Fuehrer has appointed me his successor. Fully
conscious of the responsibility, I take over the leadership of the
German people at this fateful hour. It is my first task to save the
German people from the Bolshevists, and it is only to achieve this
that the fight continues. As long as the British and Americans hamper
us from reaching this end we shall fight and defend ourselves against
them as well. The British and Americans do not fight for the inter
ests of their own people, but for the spreading of Bolshevism. The
news of Hitler s death was greeted with considerable joy in most
countries of the world. In Portugal, however, two days mourning
were ordered, and all flags hung at half-mast. In Eire, the Premier,
Mr de Valera, called on the German Ambassador to express his

138

LAST DAYS OF THE REICH

condolences. The Swiss and Swedes were quick to point out that
they had no intention of following his example. Not everyone was
prepared to take Doenitz s word for it that Hitler was dead, and
rumours abounded. The Daily Express speculated that Hitler,
Goebbels and Himmler were, in fact, on their way to Japan in a
U-boat.

The new Fuehrer had followed in his speech the line of all the
leading Nazis since Goebbels and Hitler, many weeks before, had
seen a clash between East and West as the only possible escape for
Nazi Germany. As could have been predicted, this proud and
straightforward naval officer, who had been completely under the
spell of Hitler and the Nazi political movement, acted, at first, as a
single and unquestioning disciple; and that, no doubt, is why
Hitler had chosen him as his successor instead of the more compli
cated Himmler. Doenitz, in his memoirs, attempted to give a
different interpretation to his actions, but his pronouncements at
the time speak for themselves. Speaking to the Wehrmacht^ the
same evening, he said: The oath pledged by you to the Fuehrer now
applies for each one of you to me. German soldiers! Do your duty!
The life of our nation is at stake! Although he wrote later that the
only thing that now mattered was to prevent a reign of chaos, which
would inevitably lead to further bloodshed , he acted for the first
two days of his hopeless rule as if he intended to carry on till the last
round had been fired. All down the Western Front, or what was left
of it, German battalion and brigade groups were surrendering at
confusing speed. At the news of Hitler s death, divisional com
manders joined them. The army commanders begged Doenitz, at
the northern headquarters, which had now retreated to the village
of Ploen, half-way between Liibeck and Kiel, for permission to
capitulate at once to avoid further chaos, but they were refused and
informed that the Fuehrer himself was planning a surrender bit by
bit, in order to keep the fight going as long as possible. For Doenitz
realized that the best policy for himself and the remaining Nazi
leaders was to keep the war going in order to give him time to find
room for diplomatic manoeuvre between East and West. His
advisers assured him that such manoeuvring was still possible. Even
if this were so, which it was not, such efforts were doomed since
the political intitiative had passed to the northern sector, which
could not hold out for more than a few hours, instead of the Alpine
sector, which, if it had been organized with determination, could
have lasted some weeks.

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INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

On May 2nd, after the failure of a feeble German counter
attack, the advanced troops of the British Sixth (Airborne) Division
reached the Baltic coast at Wismar. Within hours the Eleventh
Armoured Division carried their famous sign, the fighting bull, into
Liibeck. Organized resistance had ceased. A British tank officer
wrote: Through this carnival of chaos the Wehrmacht in enormous
numbers, bewildered and glum, either sat by the roadside waiting
for orders or walked vaguely down the road. At one point the
advance was brought to a standstill by a general marching his
entire division in to surrender. Soon the fields around Moelln
began to fill with vast herds of field-grey, like cattle, silent, tired and
beaten. Panthers, all brand new, were abandoned by the crews at
crossroads; gunners manning their 88s watched the tanks go by
with their hands in their pockets. The SS was pretending to be
something else, and trying to slip away without any idea where to go.

Doenitz was now cut off in the narrow strip of Schleswig-Holstein,

pressed up against the Danish border. He withdrew his capital to

Flensburg, the furthest town still on German soil from the British

lines. Churchill was delighted that the Danish peninsula, for which

he had greatly feared, was now safely isolated from the Russian

advance. In a telegram to Eden, at San Francisco for the world

organization conference, he said: In the north, Eisenhower threw in

an American corps with dexterity to help Montgomery in his advance

on Liibeck. He got there with twelve hours to spare. British troops

now began to fill up the whole area south of Hamburg to Hanover.

Almost the entire western bank of the Elbe between Hamburg and

Torgau was manned by Anglo-American forces. But on the far side,

where the Russian advance was much slower than that of the

Western allies, there were two large pockets of German troops; one

south of Rostock and one west of Berlin. Practically every human

being in these two areas now attempted to cross the Elbe, so effective

had been the final propaganda of that perverse genius Goebbels. The

Germans, troops and civilians, were hampered in getting across by

the mass of their own slave labour, who were equally terrified of the

advancing Russian armies. A British reporter watched as ant-like

humans fled across the river: Russian mortar shells burst in the

midst of German soldiers and civilians waiting to cross the Tanger-

munde Bridge to the American side of the Elbe. Scores of women

and children were killed or wounded. German soldiers pushed old

women out of the boats in which they were trying to cross the river.

German officers, stripped naked, paddled a rubber boat loaded with

140

LAST DAYS OF THE REICH

soldiers and three women, with their baggage and bicycles. A girl
drowned in midstream, screaming for help. Soldiers swam the river
in their vests, climbed up the west bank and were sent straight to the
prisoners cages. German troops panicked and rushed in waves
towards the river as Russian tanks burst out from the woods. In the
past five days 50,000 Germans have walked into our lines across a
catwalk they built along the blown bridge which lies awash in the
Elbe. Today, about noon, Russian tanks arrived only a thousand
yards from the river bank. 5 Another British reporter, Stanley Baron
of the News Chronicle , in his dispatch from Konev s headquarters,
vividly described the hectic Russian advance so clearly lagging
behind the Anglo-Americans who had been patiently waiting on the
Elbe. Tens of thousands of Russian troops have been pouring in to
fill up the vacuums between the Soviet and US First Army lines. . . ,
The Russian infantry moves on whatever it can gather on the way,
and it gathers everything on wheels with only one consideration
that the wheels are still capable of turning. Traps and incredibly old
landaus, horse and ox-drawn farm carts, civilian motor cars, motor
cycles, sidecars, saddle horses any and all of these may travel
among marching men in any given column. "We are not proud, * a
Red Army major told me. "There is one golden rule keep going."*
All that remained of the Reich, apart from the two areas east of
the Elbe, were the tiny pocket in Schleswig-Holstein; Breslau, where
the defenders, besieged since February, were still holding out;
Denmark and Norway; a portion of Holland where Seyss-Inquart
still remained by means of his blackmail; the Channel Islands and a
few French ports; a large pocket around Zagreb in Yugoslavia; the
whole of Western Czechoslavakia and some of Austria; and a small
portion of Bavaria south of Munich, in which was the southern *capi-
taP of Berchtesgaden, from where Goering, who had broken free
from a brief period of house arrest by the SS, attempted to contact the
Americans, apparently with some confidence (he managed to get a
message through to Doenitz informing him that he hoped soon to be
taken to see Eisenhower, where he and the American would discuss
matters as one Marshal to another ). Communications had broken
between most of these areas, and Doenitz was unaware of the full
situation. The atmosphere at Flensburg was tense, to say the least.
Doenitz had informed Himmler, who vehemently denied his
separate efforts to surrender through Bernadotte, that he would not
require him in his government. Himmler, as head of the SS, which
amounted to his private army, had taken it for granted that he would

141

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

be a man of power after Hitler s death, if not indeed Hitler s
successor. When Doenitz handed him the message from the bunker
naming the Grand Admiral as the new Fuehrer, c an expression of
astonishment, indeed of consternation, spread over his face. He went
very pale. Finally he stood up and bowed. "Allow me," he said, "to
become the second man in your State." I told him that it was out of
the question/ The tenseness of this meeting can be judged by the
fact that Doenitz had placed a pistol, with the safety-catch off,
beneath some papers on his desk. Ribbentrop arrived in Doenitz s
office soon afterwards and demanded to be appointed Foreign
Minister, to which he said he had c a legal right . He suggested that
he was the right man for the task, as the British knew him and had
always got on with him. Goebbels final message from the bunker
had instructed Doenitz that his Foreign Minister was to be Seyss-
Inquart. A worse choice than this universally detested man as
Foreign Minister at this juncture of Germany s affairs could scarcely
be imagined. Doenitz decided to ignore this instruction and,
ignoring Ribbentrop too, he appointed Count Schwerin von
Krosigk, who had been a Rhodes scholar. The absurdity of this
intrigue and ambition for non-existent power in the corridors of the
sixteenth-century castle at Flensburg was not apparent at the time,
for many of the actors believed that they still might be able to play a
part during an Allied occupation. Doenitz realized that there was no
hope of his government surviving if it contained names as loathsome
to the Allies as Himmler and Seyss-Inquart. The irony was that it
was Himmler who wanted to end the war immediately, and Doenitz,
supported by Keitel and Jodl, who was thinking of ways of con
tinuing hostilities, especially as regards to the strategically well-
placed Norway.*

On May 3rd the local German forces had surrendered Ham
burg, ignoring demands from Doenitz s staff to delay giving up
the city. To the amazement of the British at the surrender, one of the
German officers who had come out to hand over the city was sporting
a Brasenose College, Oxford, scarf, to which it turned out he was
perfectly entitled. At Hamburg the Allies gained control of Doenitz s
last big radio transmitter. At lunch-time that day Radio Hamburg
had been in a state of obvious emotional distress. An announcer said:
It is doubtful whether we shall broadcast news any more. We there
fore say good-bye to you all. Long live Germany. He was followed at

* Doenitz s Adjutant, Ludde-Neurath, and others, have denied this; but. in the early
days at least, the evidence seems incontrovertible.

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LAST DAYS OF THE REICH

1.15 by a woman who said: 4 I wish Hamburgers whatever one can
wish at this hour. . , . She could be heard weeping. Then came the
national anthem, Deutschland Uber Alle$ y followed by passages from
Beethoven s Fifth Symphony. British troops began rolling into the
city, which, although one of the most devastated of the war, had
managed to maintain a more ordered existence than some of the
cities of the Ruhr. Alan Moorehead reported: When the first
soldiers got in they found the trains running, the shops open, tens of
thousands of people in the streets people who as yet do not know
the full magnitude of the disaster that has hit them and the appalling
chaos of the German Army around them. The city was plastered
with notices telling the people to get indoors and stay there, and by
the time the main British columns entered, the city appeared
deserted. Although Doenitz s government managed to make some
announcements by means of a radio station in Holland (The Voice
of the Reich ), one at Flensburg and one at Wilhelmshaven, the
taking over of Radio Hamburg by the British had the effect of
convincing the German people that the end had arrived. When they
tuned in at nine that night they were astounded to hear the deep
tones of Big Ben giving the time signal; the same booming strokes
that had become a symbol of freedom among resistance workers and
secret wireless-listeners throughout Europe. Nothing could have
been more dramatic; nothing more convincing of Germany s defeat.
On the same day a delegation from Keitel arrived at Montgomery s
headquarters on Liineburg Heath, for Doenitz had now decided to
cut off this useless portion of his dying estate, like a cancerous limb,
as a kind of offering to gain a few more days to argue and nervously
ponder with his advisers in Flensburg Castle. The delegation, which
arrived in a Mercedes flying a white flag, was headed by Admiral von
Friedeburg, whom Doenitz had appointed to replace himself as
Naval Commander-in-Chief; there were three other officers.*
Montgomery had prepared a tent and a Union Jack on a flag-pole
for the occasion. He was in his most intimidating mood, and kept
the delegation waiting outside for some time. When he appeared, the
four Germans saluted under the flag. Montgomery then uttered his
well-known phrase: Who are these men? Von Friedeburg asked to
surrender to Montgomery the three armies south of Rostock which
faced the Russians. This Montgomery refused to accept, and when
von Friedeburg followed this up by describing at length the plight of

* One of them, Rear-Admiral Wagner, became a senior official in the West German
Ministry of Defence. Friedeburg and one of the other two later committed suicide.

143

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

German civilians in that and other areas, Montgomery remained
unmoved. C I said the Germans should have thought of all these
things before they began the war, and particularly before they
attacked the Russians in June 1941 . Montgomery did offer to accept
the surrender of all German forces facing, or in support of those
facing, his command, i.e. in Holland, Schleswig-Holstein and
Denmark. Von Friedeburg was unable to agree to this. Montgomery
then took the German delegation to his map-room so that they could
see how hopeless their position was (a move of the utmost confidence
from a commander to his enemies), and the German quartet showed
plainly by their expressions that it was worse than even they had
expected. The Field-Marshal cannily sent them off to have lunch, to
talk things over among themselves, with only one British officer
present. During lunch von Friedeburg wept. Afterwards Mont
gomery, speaking very toughly, demanded an immediate surrender
on his front or he would order the battle to recommence. At this von
Friedeburg returned for further instructions to Doenitz. He
convinced the new Fuehrer that Montgomery would accept no
conditions, and he was* told to return, accept the ultimatum and then
fly on to Eisenhower at Rheims and to try to organize another
separate surrender of the German forces facing American troops in
the southern sector. On Liineberg Heath, on a windy, overcast day,
the wretched German delegation was once more paraded beneath
the fluttering Union Jack. Montgomery had already prepared a
surrender document (typed on a sheet of foolscap), and he and the
Germans filed into the tent, where they sat at a trestle table covered
with an army blanket, on which were an ink-pot and a scratchy
Service pen. The Germans were extremely nervous, and one of them
pulled out a cigarette; Montgomery, who did not smoke, looked at
him coldly, and he put the cigarette away. Montgomery then asked
them to sign the document immediately, and they did so; although,
being in English, they could not understand it. There was consider
able criticism in American quarters of this separate surrender, but
this has never worried Montgomery, for he had every right to accept
a battlefield surrender whenever it was offered him in order to save
useless loss of life and property; just such a surrender had, indeed,
been the object of his endeavours for some years.*

* In 1962 the author visited the spot where the surrender to Montgomery took place.
It was discovered, after half a day s searching, in a wood-clearing off a main road out
side the village of Wendisch-Evern, near tie East German border. There was no
notice or sign to identify this historic place, and no memorial of any sort; only some
overgrown trenches and a mound of stones.

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LAST DAYS OF THE REICH

This surrender, signed on May 4th, brought to an end the Anglo-*
German war that had begun on September 3rd, 1939, and which had
lasted for exactly five years and eight months; through the doubt and
unpreparedness of the early days; the trance-like weeks of the
Phoney War; the disasters of Norway and France; the escape at
Dunkirk; through two years of perilous danger from invasion by air
and sea; through the Blitz; and through the battles of the Atlantic,
the Desert, the Mediterranean and Western Europe. It had been a
long time, and that it was now over British troops and civilians found
it difficult at first to fully appreciate. A war correspondent, Chris
topher Buckley of the Daily Telegraph, wrote in his dispatch that
night: The familiar procession of transport vehicles passes up the
roads as units take up fresh positions; possibly their final positions
of the war. But the tanks and guns that move up the roads in steady
rhythm will fire no more shots. The ambulances which drove for
ward this morning will, blessedly, be empty again when they return.
One feels as though the mighty engine of war, so steadily developed
during these past six years, is running and will continue to run on
its own impetus. One feels that even when the cease-fire has sounded
battery commanders will still, from habit, prospect good sighting for
their guns, the sappers will automatically continue to test the roads

for mines For though a war is ending, it is always difficult to

believe that tomorrow will be radically different from today. That
night Very lights and mortar signals lit up the sky above the British
lines in North-East Europe. A victory salvo of twenty-one rounds
was fired by twenty-four AA guns on Liineberg Heath. The follow
ing morning another war correspondent reported from the British
line: When I arrived, on the stroke of eight this morning, at a for
ward platoon of the Dorsets, of the 43rd (West Country) Division,
they were mostly having a lie-in. Those who were awake talked of
only one thing: What is your age-group number? And when do you
get that bowler hat?

At an RAF station the mood was sombre, and comrades lost and
gone for ever were remembered. That evening, in the mess, was
like some extraordinary vigil over a corpse. The pilots were slumped
in their chairs no one spoke a word, or sang, or anything. ... It
was all over. No more would I see my flight of Tempests line up
behind [me], clumsy looking on their long legs, offering the yawning
hole of their radiators to the wind from their propellers, with the
trustful faces of their pilots leaning out of the cockpits, waiting for
my signal. The Big Show was over. The public had been satisfied.

145

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

The programme had been rather heavy, the actors not too bad/
Thus wrote a Frenchman serving with the RAF. The Chief of the
Imperial General Staff, Sir Alan Brooke, wrote in his diary: So
this is at last the end of the war! It is hard to realize. I can t feel
thrilled; my sensation is one of infinite mental weariness.

(vi)

The surrender of the forces facing the American and Russian
armies remained, but after this mass capitulation of over 1,500,000
troops, which consisted of the whole northern sector, the end had
clearly arrived. Already German leaders were falling into Allied
hands. In one day twenty generals walked into the Allied lines. Von
Rundstedt had been taken prisoner in a hospital near Munich.
Marshal Petain and Pierre Laval had been arrested on passing into
France from Switzerland. A rather bewildered Crown Prince
Wilhelm, sixty-three years old, Little Willie of the First World
War, had been plucked off the street and taken into captivity by the
First French Army. A few companies of the Wehrmacht began a
revolt in Munich as the Seventh US Army raced for the city. In
Britain, America and France, arrangements were being made for
victory celebrations. The end of the war was at hand.

Von Friedeburg had proceeded as planned to Rheims. Here,
however, he found that Eisenhower would not even listen to a
surrender on a separate front. Eisenhower s attitude was that if von
Friedeburg came from Doenitz, then he had the power to offer total
unconditional surrender, and this was what the Supreme Com
mander demanded. By now the German attempts to cast a wedge
between Anglo-American interests and Russian had, in face of con
tinued failure, been replaced by a sulky clinging to what they
considered was a righteous cause an attempt to convince the
Americans of the dangers to the Western World of the Russian
advance. They clung to this final strand of self-justification to the
end. Doenitz wrote in his memoirs: The fact is that Eisenhower s
final operational moves showed that he had no proper appreciation
of the new turn of events in world affairs. Once the Americans had
crossed the Rhine at Remagen their strategic aim, the conquest of
Germany, had been accomplished. It should at once have been
replaced by the political aim of occupying as much German territory

146

THE CAPITULATION AT RHEIMS

as possible with British and American forces before the Russians
marched in. General Jodl was now sent to Rheims to reinforce von
Friedeburg, who was rapidly wilting under the continual humilia
tion. After much argument, Eisenhower still refused to accept a
separate surrender. He stated that his alternative to total uncondi
tional surrender would be to close his lines to all surrendering
Germans. Eisenhower, annoyed at Montgomery (he had demanded
the Liineberg Heath surrender document, but Montgomery had no
intention of parting with such a souvenir and sent a copy instead),
was in unyielding mood, and his faultless determination at this
stage put an end to the plans of Doenitz s advisers. It appears that
Bedell Smith leant some support to the German request for a day s
grace, and this was granted. The instrument for surrender was thus
signed by Jodl with an American gold fountain pen at Rheims at
2.41 a.m. on May yth, 1945, to take effect at midnight the following
day. Eisenhower was not present. After the signing, Jodl, who
seemed to have fortified himself with a few drinks, rose from the
table and delivered a plea for the German people. Bedell Smith
looked him straight in the eye and made no comment whatever.
When Jodl eventually petered out, the meeting broke up in complete
silence. Jodl and von Friedeburg were allowed to return to Flens-
burg, and they took with them a copy of the American Forces
newspaper, the Stars and Stripes^ which contained pictures of
Buchenwald. Doenitz claims that they were all horrified by these
terrible indications of the perversity of Nazi rule. Right up to the
signing, Doenitz had been broadcasting that he intended to continue
fighting the Russians to save as many Germans as possible from the
Bolshevik terror . But, impressed at the way Jodl had wilted under
American pressure, he had given up hope of gaining time or
concessions. He refused to consider the idea of continuing the fight
in Norway, urged on him by staff officers, and a cease-fire was
announced for all fronts at midnight on May Sth-Qth. The last com-
muniqu6 of the German armed forces stated: *A heroic fight that
has lasted for nearly six years thus comes to an end. It has brought us
resounding victories but also heavy defeats. Ultimately the German
armed forces have succumbed to overwhelming superior strength.*
Doenitz and his colleagues sat waiting for they knew not what in
their handsome castle. In an area still unoccupied by Allied troops,
Doenitz reminded himself that we were living in sovereign terri
tory . In a remarkable broadcast, von Krosigk, who was to some
extent a moderating influence on Doenitz and expedited the capitu-

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

lation, said: We must now shoulder and loyally carry out our
obligations. But we must not despair, either, or fall into dumb
apathy. We must light and guide our path through the dark future.
Then we may hope that our freedom will be restored to us without
which no nation can lead a bearable and dignified existence. We
wish to devote the future of our nation to the return of the inner
most and best forces of German nature which have given to the
world imperishable works and values. We view with pride the heroic
struggle of our people, and we shall combine with our pride the will
to contribute, as a member of Western culture, honest peaceful
labour a contribution which expresses the best traditions of our
nation. May God not forsake us in our distress and bless us in our
heavy task. This speech, almost contrite in places, was the first
really diplomatic statement to have been made since the formation
of the Flensburg government; the first, indeed, from Germany for
many years. But few people were interested in what von Krosigk
said, or what was said by anyone in an utterly discredited nation.
The thirteen years of the Third Reich were at an end, and most
people were ready to take a long vacation from anything to do with
Germany.

In many of the capitals of the Western World the people, over
joyed at the end of the terror and bloodshed that Germany had
brought, were gaily pouring into the streets.

(vii)

Since the news of the surrender to Montgomery, people had been
waiting, with diminishing patience, to celebrate the end of the
German war. In New York, particularly, the tension was great. The
Associated Press had come out with unofficial news of the Rheims
signing a day early* (it had made a similar announcement two weeks
previously, acting on inaccurate confidential 5 information, which
had caused a premature outburst of rejoicing and a hasty telephone
call from Truman to Eisenhower). On May yth the office buildings
of New York disgorged their hundreds of thousands into the streets,
there was much uncontrolled excitement, and the traditional cloud
burst of ticker-tape. Some time during the afternoon New York

* The reporter in question, Edward Kennedy, who appears to have misunderstood
the embargo on the news until the next day, suffered professional abuse and was dis
credited by his colleagues and employers.

148

REJOICING ON VE DAY

became aware that it was acting on its own; the celebrations eased.
Throughout the rest of the United States it had been a quiet,
normal working day. That night Churchill, in a frenzy of excitement
and indecision, telephoned Washington and told Leahy that the
announcement of the signing would have to be made immediately;
the news having been leaked by AP, he could no longer contain the
public, who were gathering in the streets. What is the use of me and
of the President looking to be the only two people in the world who
don t know what is going on? 5 he asked. Newspapers in America,
Britain and France revealed the following morning, May 8th, that
the end of the war would be announced at 3 p.m. that afternoon,
London time (8.15 a.m. Washington time). The same news was not
announced in Moscow until more than eight hours afterwards.

In a simple statement, Harry Truman, whose sixty-first birthday
it was, made a moving reference to Roosevelt, who had not lived to
see the victorious result of so much of his effort. But the main
keynote of his speech, and of the mood of the whole nation, was:
When the last Japanese division has surrendered unconditionally,
then only will our fighting job be done.* In New York, Washington,
Los Angeles, Chicago and in most cities the population went to
work as usual. War plants worked through the day.

In Paris there were scenes of communal joy in the crowded
boulevards; but not comparable to those at the Liberation. The
French Army paraded through the centre of the city, led by the
Republican Guards, on horseback and in their traditional colourful
uniforms. In Moscow, where a statement was somewhat reluctantly
issued (Stalin was not convinced that fighting would actually
stop on the Eastern Front and his doubt was well founded), a
crowd, mostly of students, heard a brief announcement over the
public address system in Red Square. Moscow Radio said: This is
the victory of all freedom-living nations, but first and foremost it is
our victory. It was on our own soil that our great people and its Red
Army, led by Marshal Stalin, broke the back of the Fascist beast. We
have suffered indescribable hardships. The Allied advance in the
west facilitated the Red Army s task, but our troops were still faced
by the main German forces. A great historic task has been accom
plished. But there was little rejoicing. Radio Tokyo was equally
adamant in its views on the occasion: The end of the war in Europe
has created a serious situation for Japan. It is obvious that the
British-US enemy will concentrate their forces for an intensified
attack on Japan, but . . . with unshakeable faith in the righteousness

149

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

of her cause, Japan is determined to overcome all obstacles until
final victory. 5 In most capitals of the United Nations and of neutral
nations there were scenes of celebration at the end of the war,
although there were few in which a holiday was given or in which
business and industrial activity did not continue. In Germany itself
it was a day that began and ended with few people even aware that it
had passed. The military were busy with attempts to inject some
order into chaos, the civilian population stunned into silence. Alan
Moorehead was driving down the autobahn, c the long, white ribbons
of road stretching for mile after mile between green banks of trees.
And there, just for a moment, one had a glimpse of peace. A fleet of
British bombers went over carrying our wounded and released
prisoners homeward. Suddenly one realized: There is nothing for
them to bomb any longer. In all Europe no single target. In Rome
there were not many scenes of great excitement; a few Italian flags
appeared in isolated windows, but the poverty, squalor and disillu
sion of the time was not conducive to celebration. During the
evening the military authorities declared a curfew.

In the recently liberated cities and capitals it was a different
matter. There were wild scenes in Oslo and Copenhagen, where
German soldiers, ill-at-ease and bewildered, were still wandering
around. In Oslo no Allied troops had arrived, and German patrols
actually guarded some buildings to prevent damage in the rejoicing
over their own defeat. In Brussels the gaiety was tempered by a
serious political and constitutional crisis. In Holland, into which
Canadian troops were advancing, it was a day of unbounded emotion
and relief. The population had been saved from famine by supplies
dropped by parachute from Allied planes, and they were clearly
overcome with gratitude for that and for the release from the goose-
stepping conqueror. A British correspondent with the Canadians
wrote: We are on the road to Amsterdam, and it is a road of laughter
and tears. The laughter is that of a people wild with excitement and
the tears spring from an emotion that is too great to bear. We drove
into Utrecht this morning with a reconnaissance squadron of the
Fortieth Division to meet a welcome that was a deluge. Only by
going into hiding and locking myself up can this message be written.

At the approaches to the town the deluge began Here were great

crowds of people so massed that the armoured cars had to halt. Our
halting was a signal, and in a moment we were overwhelmed. We
were embraced and thumped and handshaken. Women and even
men, with tears streaming down their cheeks, said over and over;

150

REJOICING ON VE DAY

"We have waited five years for you. Five years we have waited and
now you are here." So we rolled slowly into Utrecht, where the flags
could be measured only by the acre. Without measure was the joy
of these people. . . . Only those who had lived without freedom
under Nazi rule knew what the sight of the Canadians meant; five
years is a long period of human life.

But there was no outburst of rejoicing more ardent and more
deeply felt than that which occurred in London. Many who saw both
consider VE Day to have surpassed even the extraordinary mass
emotion of Armistice Day, 1918. There had been a special relation
ship between Londoners during the war, as they were frequently
being told, and this had continued up till the very end because of the
flying bombs and rockets, which the provincial cities had for the
most part escaped. Now, as a kind of last act of some vast congress,
they joined together once more, not as millions of strangers living
together in a sprawling metropolis, but as friends who had suffered
together in emergency first-aid centres, who had seen each other s
most private belongings rudely blasted into the street, who had
slept beside each other in the c Tube .

Already during the waiting days since May 4th there had been a
good deal of abandon in the streets and public places. Flags had
appeared (including, perhaps for the first and last time, an enormous
Red Flag from the building in Fleet Street of the Daily Telegraph).
Arrangements for VE Day, which was so obviously and so happily
coming, had been made; floodlighting was hastily put in place, fire
works mysteriously appeared in the shops, bonfires were prepared,
licensing hours extended to midnight, the ban on street-lighting
(which had been reimposed for economy) temporarily lifted, civic
processions and celebrations organized, and street parties (especially
in the poorer districts of the large cities) arranged. May 8th was
announced a public holiday; and the following day as well. The
British people, who had been in the German war from the start,
intended to have a real c do . No matter how many pronouncements
were made about the continuing war against Japan, few people could
forget that Britain only a few years before was itself near to total
defeat; no one felt like disciplining themselves unduly at this great
moment in the country s history. The Times printed one of the
longest leading articles in its history, taking up three columns. It
finished: Finally, on a day that will stand as a solemn date in history,
it is not possible to celebrate so great a deliverance without the sense
that a larger design has been fulfilled than is comprehended in the

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

calculations of strategy. Now that the danger is passed, it may be
acknowledged that there was a time when, had the enemy s mastery
of the art of war matched the immense superiority of his material
power, no human valour or effort could have thwarted his deadly
purpose. In the last resort, that which has sustained resistance
when all seemed lost, not only in England but in all the enslaved
lands, is the faith that in the order of the Universe the just cause,
provided that the last measure of devotion and sacrifice is offered to
it will not be allowed to fail. It is right to affirm today that that faith
stands justified. The length of The Times editorial was not the
only surprise in the newspapers that morning. Nearly all proudly
displayed on their front pages, under large headings, the day s
weather forecast, a service that had been stopped, for security
reasons, five years before. It was: Weather will continue warm and
thundery, with bright intervals in most districts. Further outlook:

little change.

The day started on a note of confusion. Thousands ot people
reported as usual to their places of work, not having seen the early
morning papers and unaware of the national holiday. They found
factories, offices and shops closed; crowds rapidly assembled in
central London during the morning. By the time Churchill made a
broadcast a large crowd had assembled outside Buckingham Palace
(above which flew the vast full-size Royal Standard for the first time
since the Coronation in 1937), the Houses of Parliament, and in
Trafalgar Square. His broadcast, which was also heard in America,
was relayed by loudspeakers. A straightforward (strangely so for
him) announcement of the act of unconditional surrender by the
enemy was followed by a dramatic ending: We may allow ourselves
a brief period of rejoicing; but let us not forget for a moment the
toil and efforts that lie ahead. Japan, with all her treachery and
greed, remains unsubdued. ... We must now devote all our strength
and resources to the completion of our task, both at home and
abroad. Advance, Britannia. God save the King. The Prime
Minister then went immediately to the House of Commons; some
difficulty was encountered in getting his open car through a tightly
packed crowd in Parliament Square. Churchill, enjoying the public
mood, stood up as the car slowly pressed forward and, smoking a
giant-sized cigar, made his V-sign, like a blessing, far above the
wildly cheering crowd. On arrival at the Commons (which was
sitting, as it had done since its own chamber was bombed, in the
Lords), all the members sprang to their feet immediately he appeared

REJOICING ON VE DAY

from behind the Speaker s Chair. It was some time before order was
resumed sufficiently for him to be heard. He repeated his broadcast
speech, finishing with a few words of personal gratitude to the
House, which he said had been proved the strongest foundation for
waging war that has ever been seen in the whole of our long history*.
Then, following the precedent set by Lloyd George, Prime
Minister at the end of the First World War, he led the Members out
through the crowd to a Service of Thanksgiving at St Margaret s
Church, Westminster. At this service the twenty-one Members of
Parliament who had given their lives in the war were recalled, each
being mentioned by name.

Churchill s broadcast, relayed in the main squares of all the great
cities, had initiated everywhere riotous scenes which continued well
into the following day. In Manchester an illuminated tramcar
toured the city all night, clanging through the crowds. In Liverpool
sirens of ships and liners on the Mersey provided a background to
the singing by 20,000 people of Land of Hope and Glory 5 outside
the Town Hall. In Glasgow ships played their searchlights over the
murky Clyde while thousands danced in the streets, beneath fairy
lights, to the playing of pipes. In Belfast the streets were smothered
in flags and emblems; in some districts even the lamp-posts were
painted red, white and blue. In Nottingham bells of all the churches
rang victory peals throughout the day. In Folkestone the all-clear
was sounded on the city s air-raid sirens immediately after Churchill s
speech.

By the time the King made his broadcast a vast crowd in London
estimated at 100,000 had assembled in the area between the Palace
and the Strand, and Piccadilly and Westminster. A silence fell
across it as the familiar tones of Big Ben rang out nine o clock. Then
the King s voice, its sincere and hesitant tones so well known to his
people, drifted across Green Park and over the heads of the multi
tude. His message, less triumphant than Churchill s had been,
dwelt on the losses the country had sustained. He said: We shall
have failed, and the blood of our dearest will have flown in vain, if
the victory which they died to win does not lead to a lasting peace,
founded on justice and established on good will. To that, then, let
us turn our thoughts on this day of just triumph and proud sorrow;
and then take up our work again, resolved as a people to do nothing
unworthy of those who died for us and to make the world such a
place as they would have desired for their children and for ours. It
was perhaps the best speech of his reign. By now the huge crowd

153

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

was incessantly chanting for the Royal Family to appear on the
balcony of Buckingham Palace, and the King, sometimes with
members of his family, sometimes with members of the Government,
appeared until late into the night. The same demand, for Churchill,
was made time and again in Whitehall. By now the Prime Minister
had changed into his famous blue siren-suit , and was assembled
with his Cabinet colleagues, Service chiefs and others at the
Ministry of Health. Soon after 5 p.m. he appeared on the balcony,
and after a tremendous roar that was heard the other side of the
Thames, he spoke into a microphone, his words thundering down
Whitehall. There had been nothing quite like it before in British
history. Speaking slowly and with great emphasis, he said: This is
your victory! It is the victory of the cause of freedom in every land.
In all our long history we have never seen a greater day than this.
The ovation he was accorded cannot have been given to any other
British public figure this century. He appeared again, in answer to
continuous chanting of his name, several times during the evening.
A reporter, Macdonald Hastings of Picture Post, roamed among the
dancing, singing, laughing crowds. Just outside the inner ring of
London the streets on VE Day were quite empty. Inside it all
London was sardined together in a solid mass that spread, so far as I
could calculate in the thick of it, over a square mile. Among the
crowds, hopelessly bogged down, were the remains of the London
traffic. The drivers just sat at their wheels and grinned, or did their
best to prevent the crowds from smothering their vehicles completely
(I saw the roof of one car collapse under the weight of six guards
men). It was impossible to walk freely. All you could hope to do was
to move with the natural rhythm of the crowd. ... All this VE Day
I ve been saying to myself: This is it. This is what we ve all been
waiting for. No more bombs. No more nights in the air-raid shelter.
No more sudden death out of the sky. No more black-out. This is
peace in Europe. Peace But you can t efface six years by waving a
flag and putting your head in a paper hat. Peace is something you
need time to get used to, like a new house. On the night of VE Day it
still looked wrong, somehow, to see naked lights blazing through the
windows. And, when the rockets hissed and banged overhead, when
the skyline was picked out by the glow of victory bonfires, I, for one,
had to make a conscious effort to remind myself that everything now
is different; the fires and explosions in the night can be friendly.
Thinking peace again is going to be as difficult as it was to think war,
far away in September 1939. Remember?

154

FIRST DAYS OF PEACE IN EUROPE

(viii)

During the next few days it was indeed difficult for many people to
realize that Europe was at last at peace. Confusing reports came from
Yugoslavia, where Marshal Tito appeared to be mopping-up not
only the Germans but also the rival, anti-Communist group of
partisans. There were indignant complaints in the British and
American Press of the ill treatment of repatriated British and
American prisoners returning home from Poland via Russia; a
number of British women were raped by Russian soldiers in Odessa.
Counter-charges from Moscow claimed that Russian refugees were
being held in three camps in Britain under close American guard,
and that Soviet citizens had been transported to the United States
against their will. (These latter were half-truths; the State Depart
ment admitted that 4,300 German prisoners of war, who turned out
to be Russians, had been taken to the US.) There were disturbing
reports from Trieste. In Prague the German Commander-in-Chief
refused to acknowledge the unconditional surrender, and furious
street fighting broke out between resistance fighters and the
Wehrmacht. General Patton was reported to be only fifteen miles
away, but was held back by Eisenhower, despite Churchill s
objections ( I am hoping that your plan does not inhibit you to
advance to Prague if you have the troops ), while a Russian army
encircled the city. Churchill had already approached Truman on
this subject: There can be little doubt that the liberation of Prague
and as much as possible of the territory of Western Czechoslovakia
by your forces might make the whole difference to the post-war
situation in Czechoslovakia, and might well influence that in near-by
countries. On the other hand, if the Western allies play no significant
part in Czechoslovakian liberation, that country will go the way of
Yugoslavia. Truman, somewhat curdy, replied that the Supreme
Commander s decision met with his approval. He was, at this stage,
still leaning heavily on the State Department in such matters.

From Flensburg, the so-called Fuehrer spoke to the disinterested
world once more, hopefully suggesting that a place might be found
for him and his government in the new scheme of things, whatever
they were to be. I do not yet know, he said, what I shall be able to

do in these hard times With the occupation of Germany power

has passed into the hands of the occupation forces. It depends on

155

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

them whether I and the Reich Government formed by me will be
able to continue in office or not. If it can be of assistance to the
Fatherland by continuing in office, it shall continue to do so, ... If
my duty calls me to remain in office, I shall try to help you all I can/
The diplomatic correspondent of the London Times said that the
exact standing of Doenitz, and his pretensions to speak on behalf of
Germany, were being examined. Meanwhile, with no sign of any
Allied troops at Flensburg, the Fuehrer and his government held
court. Goering was found by the US Seventh Army near Salzburg,
with a few Luftwaffe officers, and told everyone at hand that he had
done his best to persuade Hitler to resign so that peace negotiations
could have begun earlier. He found plenty of willing listeners, and
as he was dined and wined by his captors at Kitzbuhel he must have
thought that his well-known charm was going to win the day for him
once more. His champagne days, however, came to a rude halt after
an outcry in the American Press, and he was taken to Augsburg
prison camp with his two cases of drugs (he was taking a hundred
mild paracodeine tablets daily), his leather toilet-case with its
assorted face-creams and body powders, his silk underclothing, his
three enormous rings of ruby, emerald and diamond, his gold pen,
pencil and cigar-case, the unset emerald which he always carried
with him, and his four watches everything, in fact, which was most
dear to him. He was entertained liberally at Augsburg in the officers
mess, and drank heavily with the Americans, while still patiently
waiting for the summons from Eisenhower that never came. He was
taken away to a more hardy captivity on May 2ist; a bare cell in
which he had to stand naked beside his bed during the frequent
inspections.*

In Ireland there had been a series of sudden and unpleasant blows
to the conscience of this uncomfortable neutral nation. De Valera s
action in sympathizing over the death of Hitler had caused a violent
reaction in Dublin the following day, when outraged students of
Trinity College raised the flags of the Allies over the main gate of the
college, in the heart of the city. They were joined on the roof over
looking the large throng gathering below by members of the staff,
and sang Rule Britannia . Townsmen thereupon attempted to force
their way into the college to take down the flags, and disorder was

* Goering was taken to Nuremberg prison in September. With Keitel, Frank, Jodl,
Seyss-Inquart and others he was sentenced to death in October 1946. Two hours
before the execution he took poison, probably given him by his American guards. In
1962 Hess, Speer and von Schirach were still in Spandau prison; Doenitz had been
released in 1956, and at the time of writing was living in Schleswig-Holstein and
drawing on a State pension.

156

FIRST DAYS OF PEACE IN EUROPE

increased rather than diminished when the police made repeated
baton charges in attempts to disperse the crowds. It was the most
serious riot in Dublin since Independence. The atmosphere was not
relaxed when de Valera agreed, in contrast to the other neutral
nations, that the Irish Government would look after the German
Embassy until an envoy of the new Government should arrive. The
Irish Premier s attitude was raised in the House of Commons. Sir
Herbert Williams, Conservative, asked the Under-Secretary for
Dominion Affairs whether a protest had been made against the
action of the Prime Minister of the Irish Free State, one of His
Majesty s Dominions, in tendering to the German Minister in
Dublin his regret at the death of the chief British enemy, Adolf
Hitler. A similar question was asked from the other side of the
House. Mr Emrys Evans, replying to both questions, said: *No, sir.
Mr de Valera can safely be left to realize for himself the universal
feeling of indignation which his action has aroused in this country
and throughout the United Nations. A few days later the Irish
received another jab, when the Buchenwald pictures were issued
there for the first time, some weeks after the rest of the world.
Nothing till then had been allowed in the Irish newspapers about
the concentration camps.

At Dunkirk and the besieged French Atlantic ports still held by
the Germans the garrisons, a total of about 50,000 men, surrendered
promptly. There was also a quick surrender in Holland, which was,
however, marred by German Marines firing from upstairs windows
on the large crowds in the streets below. Several people were killed,
and there was some panic. The German Marines were sent to one of
the concentration camps. In Denmark the first Allied officer to
arrive in Copenhagen was a British major who entered from
Sweden. He was followed by a parachute battalion and British
warships. Over 300,000 German troops surrendered in Norway, and
men of the Norwegian Resistance gradually took control from the
German troops until the arrival of the British First Airborne
Division two days later.

In most of the liberated countries the govemments-in-exile
resigned on return to their homelands, and made way for Socialist
administrations in which ex-Resistance fighters were well repre
sented. In Belgium there was a great deal of bitterness. King
Leopold had been found by the Americans near Salzburg. The
Socialist Party issued a declaration that it would support any action
to obtain the King s abdication, thus incensing the Catholic Party.

157

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

After five years of exile, King Haakon of Norway returned to his
country and a moving reception; a new government was formed with
Trygve Lie as Foreign Minister. In Denmark the population was
quickly settling down to the needs of peace; agricultural productive
capacity was almost intact, and the larder was full. In Holland the
German occupation had created greater difficulties; food supplies
were pouring in, but infant mortality had risen to 60 per cent. Queen
Wilhelmina had returned to a poor and desolate country before the
Allied occupation was even complete.

A long-awaited event was the freeing of the Channel Islands, the
only United Kingdom territory occupied by the Germans during the
war. A force of twenty-two artillerymen arrived off Guernsey in the
destroyer HMS Bulldog. The German officer who came to meet
them, however, refused to sign an unconditional surrender, and
sulkily said he had come to receive Armistice terms. This came as a
shock as the twenty-two gunners, without any artillery, were clearly
no match for the powerful German garrison of 10,000 men. The
German Commander-in-Chief, Major-General Heine, was sent for,
and, in full-dress uniform, eventually signed the surrender on an
up-ended rum barrel. Although it was already late at night, the
artillerymen went ashore. A police inspector and a sergeant,
Guernsey men, were the reception party at the dock and both of
them, according to the official account, were choking back tears when,
speechless, they shook hands. The tiny force formed up on the
dockside, fixed bayonets, and marched into the town, to the tumul
tuous ringing of church bells and the cheers of the inhabitants. The
throng hurled themselves on the artillerymen with embraces and
handshakes, and they re-formed before the Court House with some
difficulty. The Union Jack was unfurled and the crowd sang the
National Anthem. Douglas Willis of the BBC reported on the
radio: The people had been drying blackberry leaves for pipe
tobacco, or to use as tea. A packet of cigarettes made with locally-
grown tobacco cost 2 Ss. Butter, bought on the black market, cost
3 a pound.

In the ruins of Berlin yet another total surrender, this time for the
benefit of the Russians, was signed by von Friedeburg. There
appears to have been no practical reason for this ceremony, as the
total surrender had already been signed at Rheims, except to im
press the Russian people. The Western allies were persuaded to
send a party, under Tedder, to witness the signing, and at the vodka
banquet which followed many senior officers collapsed and three

158

FIRST DAYS OF PEACE IN EUROPE

generals had to be carried from the room. The Western deputation
were aghast at the still smoking ruins of the city. Russian troops
went wild and raided cellars and shelters in search of women. There
was, by all accounts, an orgy of rape, from which neither young
children nor elderly women were safe. Looting was also the order of
the day, and for a few days the Russian officers, who themselves
appeared to British and American observers to be permanently in
toxicated, seemed to have lost control of their troops. A few Berliners
began to appear from underground and stumbled about over the
ruins. There was practically no water. But gradually some order
was restored. One of the first places to start functioning again was
the famous Adlon Hotel, once well loved by Goering, Goebbels,
foreign correspondents and diplomats, but now a shattered ruin
apart from one wing, which, sticking up like a monument, had
somehow survived the desolation all around. While Russian officers
carried up bottles from the cellar, the skeleton staff, which had
returned to work for want of anywhere better to go, began preparing
rooms from what bedding they could find. The staff were told that
the hotel, or what remained of it, no longer belonged to the Adlon
family. It would be run by the authorities c on behalf of the people*.
The war was not over a week when their first civilian guest arrived.
He was a Count from Saxony who had always visited Berlin at that
time of year. Stepping over the rubble, he entered the hallway.
The boy who was told to take his bag said: It was just as though
nothing had happened. I wanted to weep. *

In London, Parliament was assembled with the lantern behind
Big Ben shining forth once more as a signal that the House of
Commons was sitting. After lighting the lantern from a switch
behind his chair, the Speaker said: C I pray that, with God s blessing,
this light may shine not only as an outward and visible sign that the
Parliament of a free people is assembled in free debate, but also as a
beacon of fresh hope in a sadly torn and distracted world. On May
1 5th the Prime Minister expressed the deep feeling of the whole
country towards the King. C I remember well, he said, how in the
first months of this Administration the King would come in from
practising with his rifle and tommy-gun in the garden at Bucking
ham Palace, and if it had come to a last stand in London, a matter
which had to be considered at one time, I have no doubt that His
Majesty would have [remained in London].

The BBC, which during the past five years had deservedly won

* The surviving wing of the Adlon still functions as a small guest-house.

159

INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

universal respect and extraordinary prestige, burst out in a veritable
flood of Victory broadcasts. The bands of Geraldo, Albert Sandier
and Jack Payne vied with one another in the playing of old wartime
tunes like Johnny Got a Zero , The White Cliffs of Dover ,
Comin in on a Wing and a Prayer , Roll out the Barrel , and,
especially, When The Lights Go On Again . The famous Music-
While-You-Work programme, that had been relayed for years to
countless head-scarfed factory workers, became a little less martial
in tone. This Week s ENSA Artist was Frances Day. The Western
Brothers and Evelyn Laye were among the stars, supported by
Charles Shadwell and the BBC Variety Orchestra, in a Victory
Music Hall programme. During the afternoons there were com
mentaries from the Victory Cricket Match at Lord s between the
RAAF and a British Empire XL The key word, all the time, was
Victory. Bebe Daniels, Vera Lynn, Sandy Macpherson and the
Archbishop of Canterbury all made special Victory broadcasts. So
did J. B. Preistley. He said: At home here we ve done things, often
desperate things, our way, and on the whole it s a very good way.
We ve built machines but never lost ourselves inside them. People
have had to be pushed about, and we ve all got grievances, but
they ve been left space enough to be human and individual in, to
feel fairly free. The notion that people cannot devote themselves
to the community without feeling like ants in an ant-heap has been
proved to be false.

On the night of Thursday, May loth, there was V-Itma, the
victory edition of the country s most irreverant and popular weekly
variety show. It was perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the
nation, even perfectly apt, that this raucous and sometimes lewd
show should have immediately preceded the Victory broadcast of
Winston Churchill on the anniversary of his fifth year of office.
Repeated on broadcasting networks around the world, this speech
had one of the widest audiences in the history of radio. For the
occasion Churchill had prepared what was perhaps his most re
sounding performance. After a long and bitter denunciation of
Ireland s neutrality in the war, which surprised everybody by its
severity, he spoke about the recent victory. For us in Britain,
he later wrote, and the British Empire, who had alone been in the
struggle from the first day to the last and staked our existence on
the result, there was a meaning beyond what even our most powerful
and most valiant allies could feel. Weary and worn, impoverished
but undaunted, and now triumphant, we had a moment that was

160

FIRST DAYS OF PEACE IN EUROPE

sublime/ He said in his broadcast: I wish I could tell you tonight
that all our trials and troubles were over. Then, indeed, I could
end my five years service happily, and if you thought that you had
had enough of me and that I ought to be put out to grass, I would
take it with the best of grace. But, on the contrary, I must warn you,
as I did when I began this five years task and no one knew then
that it would last so long that there is still a lot to do, and that you
must be prepared for further efforts of mind and body and further
sacrifices to great causes if you are not to fall back into the rut of
inertia, the confusion of aim, and the craven fear of being great.
You must not weaken in any way in your alert and vigilant frame of
mind. . . . There would be little use in punishing the Hitlerites
for their crimes if law and justice did not rule, and if totalitarian or
police governments were to take the place of the German invaders.
We seek nothing for ourselves. But we must make sure that those
causes which we fought for find recognition at the peace table in
fact as well as words, and above all we must labour to ensure that
the World Organization which the United Nations are creating at
San Francisco does not become an idle name, does not become a
shield for the strong and a mockery for the weak. . . . We must
never forget that beyond all lurks Japan, harassed and failing, but
still a people of a hundred millions, for whose warriors death has
few terrors. . . . [The] Dominions came to our aid in our dark times
and we must not leave unfinished any task which concerns their
safety and their future. I told you hard things at the beginning of
these last five years; you did not shrink, and I should be unworthy
of your confidence and generosity if I did not still cry: Forward,
unflinching, unswerving, indomitable, till the whole task is done
and the whole world is safe and clean.

161

5 Widening Chasm

Russian ambitions

Further Anglo-American differences

Immediate post-European war crises; the Yugo
slavs and Trieste; the French and Syria;
the Franco-Italian frontier

The occupation of Germany

The end of the Doenitz affair

Problems of supply and administration

Occupation of Czechoslovakia and Austria

The domestic scene in Britain and the United
States

The end of the Coalition Government

The Lend-Lease controversy

The Japanese war: Okinawa, Burma, China,
Luzon and elsewhere

The San Francisco conference

The iron curtain falls

More Anglo-American divergencies

The British General Election

The Potsdam conference

The first atomic explosion

The Labour Government

The end of the Potsdam conference

5 WIDENING CHASM

While the victorious and liberated nations were thus basking in the
joys of victory, and while the conference of the United Nations at
San Francisco, which carried so many of the hopes of ordinary men
and women everywhere, assembled, the chasm between East and
West, only dimly suspected by the public at large, continued to
grow. Each day seemed to make its closure more difficult.

During the collapse of Germany the Polish question in particular
had been dragging on, with the Russians stubbornly sticking to their
position and the Western allies being powerless to move them. A
joint protest from Truman and Churchill met with no success. Eden
and Stettinius met in Washington and agreed to press again for the
entry of Western observers into Poland. They also agreed that the
Soviet Government should be pressed to delay their intended treaty
with the Lublin Poles. Before they could do so, news arrived that the
treaty had been concluded. The two Foreign Secretaries met
Molotov the following day and protested in vain. At length,
Churchill decided on a long, detailed, personal and indignant appeal
to Uncle Joe 5 . Among other points raised in this very long message
was: We are all shocked that you should think that we favour a
Polish government hostile to the Soviet Union. This is the opposite

163

WIDENING CHASM

of our policy. There has grown up throughout the English-speaking
world a very warm and deep desire to be friends on equal and
honourable terms with the mighty Russian Soviet Republic and to
work with you, making allowances for our different systems of
thought and government. . . . We have given repeated instructions
that your interest in Rumania and Bulgaria is to be recognized as
predominant. He concluded by saying that: There is not much
comfort in looking into a future where you and the countries you
dominate, plus the Communist parties in many other states, are all
drawn up on one side, and those who rally to the English-speaking
nations and their associates or Dominions are on the other. It is
quite obvious that their quarrel would tear the world to pieces and
that all of us leading men on either side who had anything to do with
that would be shamed before history. Even embarking on a long
period of suspicions, of abuse and counter-abuse, and of opposing
policies would be a disaster hampering the great developments of
world prosperity for the masses which are attainable only by our
trinity. Stalin s reply to this carefully worded appeal was cold and to
the point: the Prime Minister s attitude excludes the possibility of
an agreed solution of the Polish question . Churchill was bitterly
disillusioned by the disappearance of sixteen representatives of the
non-Communist Polish resistance, who had gone to Moscow under
a safe conduct to negotiate about representation in the Lublin
Government.* With all this in mind, Churchill decided that nothing
more could be done about Poland except at a meeting of the Big
Three. On May 6th he proposed to President Truman that such a
meeting should be held as soon as possible.

Meanwhile the Russians were creating obstacles in Vienna, which,
like Berlin, was to be controlled, as had already been agreed, by the
four major Allies, while Austria was to be split into zones of occupa
tion similar to those in Germany. By the end of the war, however,
the Russians had already announced that a Provisional Government
had been formed in Vienna, and they were now refusing to let
Western missions fly in.

To Churchill s relief and pleasure, Truman needed no prodding
to send off a strong protest to the Soviet Government on the Vienna
situation. Indeed, in the last weeks of April, and throughout May,
the British found an encouraging tightening of American policy
towards the Polish and Austrian questions; especially after Harriman,

* They appeared later in the year at a trial in Moscow, at which they all admitted*
being guilty of espionage and subversion.

164

RUSSIAN AMBITIONS

over from Moscow for the San Francisco conference, met the new
President and warned him that the world was now faced with a
barbarian invasion of Europe . The decision to take an uncom-
promisingly firm line with Russia over the Polish question was made
at an important meeting on April 22nd at the White House, attended
by Truman s principal advisers, including Harriman. Leahy has
written: The concensus of opinion among the group Truman had
called together was that the time had arrived to take a strong attitude
towards the Soviet Union. This decision, taken under the lead of
the new President, can be seen to be a turning point in United States*
policy with regard to the USSR. It was, however, only in these two
spheres that the British and American policy was at last beginning to
harmonize. It other matters the views of the State Department as yet
still held sway. This view was, according to Churchill, as follows:
The United States must be careful not to let herself be drawn into
any antagonism with Soviet Russia. This, it was thought, would
stimulate British ambition and would make a new gulf in Europe.
The right policy should be for the United States to stand between
Britain and Russia as a friendly mediator, or even arbiter. A rather
different British view of the State Department s policy was that it
was considered there that the efforts of the war had turned Britain
into a second-class power, and that the United States therefore
thought it would be well advised to c go it alone in dealings with
Russia and not get encumbered with British attempts to retain
world influence.

The most noticeable Anglo-American divergence at this time was
over the question of the German occupation zones. The Americans
were making it plain that they intended to withdraw from the Elbe
to the zone already agreed upon as soon as it was practicable; a
withdrawal of some 120 miles. Churchill protested vehemently about
this, considering it folly to give away to the Russians an enormous
chunk of territory while the occupation of Vienna was still unsettled.
He realized that for the first time the Western powers had a bargain
ing counter that might be of great use. But the Americans, who
seemed to have a predilection for going to the conference table
unarmed, remained unimpressed by British pleadings. The influence
of Eisenhower on Truman over this question seems to have been
decisive. In a long cable to the President, the Supreme Commander
said he was determined to withdraw as soon as possible as he
refused to have the American forces badly embarrassed . He said:
I do not quite understand why the Prime Minister has been so

WIDENING CHASM

determined to intermingle political and military considerations. . . .
The President was anxious to try to stick to a policy of good faith
with the Russians as far as Germany was concerned. The only
practical thing to do was to stick carefully to our agreement/ he
has said.

Churchill was now more anxious than ever for a meeting of the
Big Three, but on pressing for this he was startled to be told by a
special envoy of Truman s, Joseph E. Davies, that the President
would like to meet Stalin first at such a meeting; it would* be more
convenient if the British arrived later. Churchill was outraged. His
note to Truman on the subject was the least friendly he ever
personally directed to Washington: The Prime Minister declares
that London, the greatest city in the world, and very heavily battered
during the war, is the natural and appropriate place for the Victory
meeting of the three great powers. However, if this is refused, His
Majesty s Government will none the less discuss with the United
States and with Soviet Russia what is the best place to be appointed.
The Prime Minister received with some surprise the suggestion . . .
that a meeting between President Truman and Premier Stalin should
take place at some agreed point, and that the representatives of His
Majesty s Government should be invited to join a few days later. It
must be understood that the representatives of His Majesty s
Government would not be able to attend any meeting except as
equal partners from its opening. ... It must be remembered that
Britain and the United States are united at this time upon the same
ideologies, namely, freedom, and the principles set out in the
American Constitution and humbly reproduced with modern
variations in the Atlantic Charter. The Soviet Government have a
different philosophy. . . . *

Concurrently with this move in London, Truman was also probing
in Moscow. He had sent Harry Hopkins, the faithful but sick
emissary whom he had inherited from Roosevelt, to see Stalin on a
number of matters, particularly the Polish question. According to
the verbatim record of one of their meetings as given in Sherwood,
Hopkins and Stalin talked at length on the differences between
Russia and Britain on the Polish question. Stalin laboured his point
that it was not American policy he was suspicious of, but British, and
Hopkins intimated that there was also a rift between the two

* Truman has denied he wanted a separate meeting with Stalin at this time, only a
private conversation at the conference. He must have known that such conversations
invariably took place at the Big Three conferences, and would hardly have sent a
personal emissary to raise such a point.

1 66

POST-EUROPEAN WAR CRISES

Western allies. Apparently satisfied about American goodwill, if not
British, the Russian dictator showed signs that he might shortly
agree to break the deadlock over the Lublin Government negotia
tions.

Churchill was not impressed. There was extremely bad news still
coming in from Rumania and Bulgaria, where all opposition to the
Communists was being indiscriminately labelled Fascist . The situa
tion in Yugoslavia was not much better, and the Czechs were also
under Russian pressure. The position was complicated by the fact
that in the Balkan countries it was not entirely a matter of Red
Army domination; there was also an increase in the popularity of
local Communist Parties, stemming from war-weary peoples who
hoped in a wave of idealism to thrust aside for ever the regimes and
conflicts of the old order. Europe, it seemed, was coming to the
boiling-point. Churchill had already sent out a series of instructions
to his Chiefs of Staff. All reduction of Bomber Command was to be
stopped. Demobilization in the RAF and in the army was to be
slowed up and even halted. In a memorandum of May 2yth,
Churchill wrote: You cannot at this moment throw yourselves
heartily into the business of demobilization. I had hoped that this
would be so, but I am sure that we had better get some solution in
the main field of international relations. The only classes to whom
Churchill permitted instant release were doctors and women.
German rifles were not to be destroyed. Not a single German
aircraft or spare that fell into British hands was to be destroyed
without express Cabinet permission. No matter what illusions were
still harboured in Washington as to the honourable settlement of the
Polish and other questions with Soviet Russia, the Prime Minister,
exactly three months after the end of the Yalta conference, wrote to
President Truman on May 12, 1945: c An iron curtain is drawn down
upon [the Russian] front.

As the war ended, there were crises nearly every day, not only
between Russia and Britain, and America and Britain, but between
many other nations as well. For the collapse of Germany had left
parts of Western Europe and the Mediterranean in a dangerous
vacuum. Newly liberated countries rushed like greedy old crones to

167

WIDENING CHASM

grab a few square miles here and there, and nations that had once
been proud allies bickered and snapped at each other as in a nursery.
Thus had Eisenhower s Crusade , which had at times been bound
with ties of almost religious fervour in quest of the common goal,
been replaced by the national self-interests that had lain only just
beneath the surface for so long.

The Yugoslav forces of Marshal Tito had arrived at the ancient
port and trouble-spot of Trieste almost simultaneously with the
Second New Zealand Division under General Sir Bernard Freyberg.
The fact that the New Zealanders were there at all was due to the
ceaseless urgings-on of Alexander by Churchill, who, despite all the
various areas of crisis, was well aware of potential dangers to British
or Western interests in any corner of the globe. Freyberg took the
surrender of the German garrison and occupied the all-important
dock area of the city. This quick and determined action by Churchill
and Alexander frustrated Tito to the point of making difficulties in
every way short of open hostilities. He had hoped to snatch the port
and the surrounding area, to which he laid claim as the proper outlet
for Yugoslavia on the Mediterranean. However, the Americans, too,
were anxious for the port of Trieste; it was the obvious and most
convenient entry for supplies for the occupation zone they hoped to
have in Austria. The same applied to the British (although Truman
gives, without evidence, a baser British motive: control of the Eastern
Mediterranean). Reports soon began to reach the Western Press of
atrocities and widespread looting in Trieste by the Yugoslavs.
There was no doubt a great deal of truth, and of propaganda, in these
reports, but it is unlikely that the looting was any more widespread
than in Western Germany. The effect of this publicity, however,
was to change Tito s standing in the West almost overnight. He had
previously been regarded as a romantic leader, who, partly through
his own successes and partly through the well-intentioned efforts of
a number of left-wing or gullible writers, had become a popular
figure in the English-speaking countries. Now he became the ogre of
the Balkans who was threatening the peace that had only just been
won. Truman was as annoyed at Tito s refusal to return behind his
own border, as was Churchill. He felt strongly that here was a case of
a country acquiring assets by force; just the kind of thing that the
United States had been fighting a war to stop. The new President
was, however, extremely apprehensive of the Balkans and was most
reluctant to become involved in a controversy in an area which had
long been a source of trouble and war . He made it plain that, while

168

POST-EUROPEAN WAR CRISES

he tacitly supported the British stand in Trieste, he could not
consider material support. He said he was unable to involve the
United States in a war in the Balkans. Although the atmosphere in
Trieste had become extremely tense, with both New Zealand and
Yugoslav troops fingering their triggers, Churchill replied that there
was no question of war with the Yugoslavs, but that immediate
action was necessary if the British and Americans were not to be
held up before the world as unable to maintain the observance of the
principles for which they had just been fighting a European war.
With the Russians beginning to exert pressure on behalf of Tito s
claims, the situation remained explosive and grave.

In the far eastern end of the Mediterranean, which was becoming
increasingly overshadowed by Arab-Jewish suspicions and hatreds in
Palestine, the Anglo-Americans were having trouble with their
French allies. Worried about the prospects for continued French
interest in the traditionally French areas of Syria and the Levant,
de Gaulle had sent troops into Syria. Britain had already guaranteed
post-war Syrian independence, and was thus placed in a difficult
position by her ally. As French troops began landing at Beirut and
pouring into the Lebanon and Syria, it was clear that here, like
Trieste, was another test of will for Britain and the United States,
The wotfld watched to see whether they would let the ally that had
been closest to them get away with such a blatant use of force. The
San Francisco conference was threatened, as the smaller countries,
particularly the Arab nations, believed that if the French escaped
with this action the major countries, protected by the veto, would be
able to get away with anything. The French, despite protests from
Churchill and Truman, proceeded to behave in the same proud and
stubborn way as they were to do in territorial matters for more than
a decade to come. De Gaulle seemed to cherish the delusion that
what Britain had achieved with Egypt in 1936 France could obtain
by force with the Levant States in 1945. Riots, demonstrations and
disturbances in Syria inevitably became all-out fighting. De Gaulle
remained totally insensitive to protestations from the British and
American Ambassadors in Paris. It was, he said, a matter of prestige.
Fierce street fighting broke out in Damascus between Syrians and
French troops. French artillery opened fire, and their troops occu
pied the Syrian Parliament buildings. There were about 2,000
casualties in the city in forty-eight hours. Clearly this was the most
ruthless and cynical form of colonialism. At this point Churchill
ordered British troops into Syria in order to restore order. He gave

169

WIDENING CHASM

as his reason the theory that the Middle East, being an important
link in communications to the Japanese theatre of war, had to be
kept free from disturbance. De Gaulle immediately gave way,
explained that he had already ordered a cease fire, and that the
presence of British troops was unnecessary. A large part of the
French force was escorted to the coast by British troops, and the
Governments of Syria and Lebanon were guaranteed, by the
British, against further French pressure. There was an outcry of
hurt French pride in the National Assembly. Speaking in the House
of Commons, Churchill said of this sordid episode: The less said the
better/

But this was not the only area in which the French leader was
causing grave embarrassment to the Western allies. Unbearably
humiliated by the debacle of 1940, and obsessed with the idea of
restoring French prestige and influence, he saw the best way of
doing so by using his troops, entirely American equipped and sup
plied, for presenting zfait accompli and then daring the British and
Americans to do something about it. During the advance into
Germany it had fallen to the French army of General de Lattre de
Tassigny to move south through the city of Stuttgart. Having
reached Stuttgart, however, the French troops stopped, and then
showed no signs of moving out. On being ordered to move on, the
local French Commander stated that he had been ordered by de
Gaulle to remain in the city, and thus was unable to comply with the
order from SHAEF. It seemed that de Gaulle was, in fact, deter
mined to force the Allied hand by staking out an occupation zone
of his own. Truman was outraged. Discussions about a French zone
were already under way, and, as he says, land-grabbing was out of
order . Like Roosevelt, Truman was unable to get on any kind of
terms at all with de Gaulle. With personal intervention by Eisen
hower and then by the President failing to move the French troops,
Truman ordered the cutting of their supplies. The French troops
moved out.

An even more serious clash with de Gaulle occurred over the
Franco-Italian frontier. In the closing days of the war, the French
First Army, instead of chasing Germans, went over the border into
Italy and occupied a part of the Italian province of Cunio. This area
was under Alexander s command, and not Eisenhower s. The latter,
therefore, ordered the French to withdraw. This they showed no
signs of doing, and within days reports appeared in newspapers of
French efforts to take over the area on a permanent basis. French

170

POST-EUROPEAN WAR CRISES

currency was introduced. Italian flags were removed. In less than a
week the whole area was bristling with French troops, who seemed
even to outnumber the civilians. De Gaulle answered American
protests by declaring he was merely arranging minor frontier
adjustments*. The local French Commander, General Doyen,
answered attempts to set up Allied military government in the area
with two written threats that any such moves could result in hostil
ities between French troops and the American troops occupying
north-west Italy. On both occasions he made it plain that he was
acting under the direct orders of de Gaulle. Churchill, on being
shown these messages, was astounded. He wrote to Truman: Is it not
rather disagreeable for us to be addressed in these terms by General
de Gaulle, whom we have reinstated in liberated France at some
expense of American and British blood . . . ?* Truman was even
more outraged. For de Gaulle had chosen this very moment to
suggest that he should be invited to the pending Big Three con
ference and, as proof of American recognition of France s status as a
great power, he asked that French troops should be allowed to join
in the final blow to Japan. Their weapons, equipment, supplies and
transport were still to be provided by the United States. Infuriated,
Truman received the French Foreign Minister, Georges Bidault. He
explained that only if French troops were prepared to obey Allied
commands, and they plainly were not, could he possibly furnish the
planes and other supplies that would be needed to get them to, and
to operate in, the Pacific theatre. It was an extremely frigid meeting.
As the French still showed no signs of evacuating the area of Italy
they had penetrated, the President, after a meeting with the US
Chiefs of Staff and the State Department, ordered that issues of
ammunition and equipment to the French be stopped. He prepared
a statement for the American Press explaining that he had been
forced to this decision as there was a threat by the French that they
would use such supplies against American soldiers. He asked for
Churchill s concurrence, and the Prime Minister agreed. At the last
minute Truman decided to hold up the statement to the Press to see
what action de Gaulle would take. In a message to de Gaulle he
described the French action as extremely churlish . . . and in
complete contradiction of the principles [for] safeguarding a hardly
won peace: namely to abstain from military action for political ends .
He pointed out, in high indignation, that the French action had
taken place on the anniversary of the Normandy landings, which
had begun the liberation of France. He threatened to tell the

171

WIDENING CHASM

Ainerican people of the whole situation unless there was an immed
iate French withdrawal Churchill told Truman that c the publication
of your message would have led to the overthrow of de Gaulle ,
whom he considered one of the greatest dangers to European peace*.
He said that although no country needed French friendship more
than Britain, he was convinced that in the long run no real Anglo-
French understanding would ever be achieved under de Gaulle. The
French leader, however, reacted immediately on receipt of the
American ultimatum, and the statement was never released to the
Press. De Gaulle said that there had never been any intention to
oppose by force the presence of American troops in the small
corner of Italy in question. In a cold and formal reply to the Presi
dent, he said: Our expulsion from this district and what the English
are at present doing to us in Syria is a coincidence which is displeas
ing to French feelings. Having failed to force the issue, de Gaulle
fell back on diplomacy. The squabble with the Italians continued
behind the scenes for many months, and on one occasion de Gaulle
offered to support the return of Libya to the Italians if they would
agree to review the demarcation of the Franco-Italian frontier.

The affair ended in another defeat for de Gaulle s ambitions; but
not before suspicions that had been deeply laid on all sides cracked
still further the thin veneer of the so-called Alliance .

In Germany there was an extraordinary situation. The government
of Doenitz continued to put up every appearance of taking itself
seriously, as, for a time, did the British and Americans. Both the
Western allies were reluctant to dismiss this powerless authority,
believing it might be of use in enforcing law and order. In a memor
andum to the Foreign Office, Churchill said: I neither know nor
care about Doenitz. He may be a war criminal ... the question for us
is, has he any power to get the Germans to lay down their arms and
hand them over quickly without any more loss of life? We cannot go
running round into every German slum and argue with every
German that it is his duty to surrender or we will shoot him. ... I
deprecate the raising of these grave constitutional issues at a time

when the only question is to avoid sheer chaos It must of course

be remembered that if Doenitz is a useful tool to us that will have to

172

THE OCCUPATION OF GERMANY

be written off against his war atrocities for being in command of
submarines. Do you want to have a handle with which to manipulate
this conquered people, or just to have to thrust your hands into an
agitated ant-heap? This tolerance of Doenitz, and also that extended
to Goering by the Americans in the south, was regarded with acute
suspicion by the Russians. In an attempt to dispel these suspicious
two statements were made at SHAEF on May i6th. Lieutenant-
General Lucius Clay, the American Deputy Military Governor in
Germany, said that both Doenitz and Goering were to be treated as
prisoners of war; both men were on the list of war criminals, He said
that Doenitz and his government were being used temporarily to
carry out duties connected with the feeding, disarmament and
administration of the German armed forces, Mr Robert Murphy,
Eisenhower s political adviser, said on the same occasion that there
would be no more broadcasts from Flensburg in the name of the
Doenitz Government, but not before Speer, Minister for Recon
struction , had made a somewhat self-pitying broadcast in which he
stated that never before has a land been laid so waste by the fury of
war as has Germany . A Russian party arrived at Flensburg shortly
after the American statements in order to see for themselves that
nothing underhand was being done there. It was their arrival which,
no doubt, expedited the end of this remarkable episode. Doenitz was
placed under arrest on May 23rd, having been summoned to an
Allied ship in the harbour. At the same time two battalions of the
Cheshire and Herefordshire Regiments, and men of the 15/igth
Hussars, moved in on the castle. All officers, officials and troops
were captured. Special squads of searchers removed documents and
records found there. Extraordinary scenes followed. German
Marines were marched away through the ancient courtyard, singing
Wir fuhren gegen England as von Friedeburg took the salute. Jodl
bade farewell to his staff with stiff formality. The various Ministers,
including von Krosigk and Speer, were whisked away in a procession
of staff cars, with German troops springing to the salute as they
passed.

The three-week regime of the Second Fuehrer had come to an
abrupt end,

A skeleton German military framework was kept up for the time
being in order to facilitate Allied rule. The German commanders
were able to do this well enough without the Doenitz organization,
which made Anglo-American excuses for retaining that self-styled
government somewhat limp. Even now, however, the senior

WIDENING CHASM

German commanders attempted to cause a rift between the Russians
and the West. Montgomery has said: The German military leaders,
having been saved from the Russians, were only too willing to be
friends with the British and do whatever was wanted. But in return
for this co-operative attitude they expected to be treated as allies of
the British against the Russians. He had to send for Field-Marshal
Busch, the German Commander-in-Chief in North-West Europe,
and severely reprimand him for maintaining this attitude.

The documents which had been seized at Flensburg were only a
small part of the mass of secret information and records about the
Reich now being collected by a special staff especially trained for
this task. The men had advanced into Germany immediately behind
the forward troops, at places already earmarked by Intelligence, and
commandeered everything of interest. They were particularly
responsible for preventing the destruction or concealment of
research work and plants. In one instance the managing director of a
company engaged in secret production was actually disturbed while
giving instructions on the disposal of research. In this manner an
entirely unsuspected infra-red searchlight, for blinding tank crews,
was discovered. Other things now discovered, on which the Germans
had been working, were non-inflammable synthetic rubber for car
tyres, indestructible by bullets; piloted flying bombs; controlled
torpedoes which could follow the course of a zig-zagging ship;
jet-submarines; half-track tanks with extremely low fuel consump
tion; and air-to-ground controlled projectiles. Whereas most of the
Flensburg documents fell into British hands, those of the Berlin
departments that had fled to the south were confiscated by the
Americans. Much of the rocket research, and some of the scientists,
also came into the hands of the Americans, and both were swiftly
transported across the Atlantic, but not before the British had
succeeded in firing two German V.2S from Cuxhaven into the North
Sea.

Throughout May the Allies wrestled with the problem of restoring
normal life to Germany, but the problem was so immense that the
result of their efforts was hardly noticeable. The three Allied
representatives on the Control Council were named as Zhukov,
Eisenhower and Montgomery. These three men had, in effect,
absolute rule over their respective areas. Their problems were
immense. The total devastation in the cities caused by saturation
bombing stretched in many cases for mile after mile. But an official
observer, Wing-Commander John Strachey, summed up prevailing

THE OCCUPATION OF GERMANY

opinion about this in a BBC broadcast: It would have been an
unpardonable crime to withhold a single bomb, the bursting of
which on Germany could shorten the Nazi tyranny over Europe by
an hour/

In one of his most vivid dispatches, Alan Moorehead reported:
All around us are things too monstrous to grasp. Starvation. Fifty
great cities in ruins. Ten million people roaming helplessly through
the countryside without homes, their relatives lost, and all normal
hope gone out of their lives. For the next year the prospects are the
starvation of anything up to five million people, the spread of

disease The Third Reich is simply a dead carcass and there is no

need for any of our generation to think that we will again be hurt by
it in our lifetimes. Hitler has taken his country with him to the

grave I have tramped through twenty towns where the debris of

three-year-old bombings has long since returned to its original dust;
locomotives and churches and city halls lie tossed aside in the streets.
That is the normal background of life here now. You live in the
cellars. Gas, running water, electric light, windows? Oh, no, you
cannot expect those luxuries any more. And you walk. If it s three
blocks or a hundred miles, it s all the same. You walk. The women
are ugly. No new clothes; precious few cosmetics. They dress to keep
warm. The men are grey-faced and dirty. Speak to them and they
run to answer obsequiously. 5

The food situation became so serious that the Americans cut by
10 per cent the rations of their own troops and of their prisoners of
war. The needs of the homeless masses in Europe were so great that
a severe food shortage seemed inevitable over the world. In order to
keep up exports the meat ration in Australia was cut by 12% per cent.
Canada also reduced its meat consumption.

By the end of the month the majority of the Allied prisoners-of-
war were either home or on their way home a considerable feat in
itself. Work was begun in clearing ways through the ruins of the
great cities. German servicemen were being discharged according to
their trades and occupations, with priority for farm workers. Dis
placed persons were passing through camps, on their way home,
fairly speedily, although Polish slave labourers and German
refugees from the Russian sector were mainly refusing to go.
According to Montgomery large areas east of the Elbe had been
completely denuded of Germans, so total had been the migration
before the advancing Russians. Some experts began to ask what was
to become of these people. But everyone else was too busy to care;

WIDENING CHASM

ftdfy occupied in moving the hundreds of thousands who were only
too willing to go to their homes. The Russian slave labourers moved
away to the east with special speed. Of those of all nationalities who
could be accounted for, about 5,800,000 persons, nearly 3,300,000
had been sent home by the end of June. In twenty-five days half a
miUkm people left Germany. As they passed through camps, each
person was sprayed with a new insecticide called DDT. But there
were many more who avoided all control and authority and made
their own ways, as best they could, across frontiers and through
armies. George Orwell, reporting on the problem for the London
Obxrvcrj wrote that more and more displaced persons simply
escape and take to the roads, often with the idea of walking back to
their own countries by the shortest route . Some of the gangs that
these people had formed themselves into before the end of the war
continued to run riot through the countryside raping, robbing and
murdering.

The Allied commanders frequently broke from their labours
during these days in order to pin their country s highest honours on
each others chests. General Bradley pinned the Legion of Honour
on Konev s uniform, and then presented him with a brand new jeep.
Rokossovsky invited Montgomery to his headquarters, having first
gone to great trouble to find out the British leader s tastes in wine
and cigars. On being told that the Field-Marshal cared for neither,
an envoy discreetly informed the British that in that case a party of
beautiful women would be provided for Montgomery s pleasure. It
was explained that this would not be necessary. The Russian envoy
who had been sent to inquire into these matters is said to have
exclaimed at this point: What the devil does he do all day? The
meeting with Rokossovsky took place, despite all these disappoint
ments, and one British officer got so drunk that he fired off his
revolver in answer to the Russian twenty-one gun salute. The
apparently indestructible Montgomery met his own undoing a few
days later when he received the freedom of Antwerp. He was offered
course after course in an enormous banquet in the Hotel de Ville.
The food was, for him, unaccustomedly rich. As Field-Marshal
Montgomery was afterwards driven through the streets packed with
wildly cheering Belgian crowds, he was prostrate on the floor of his
open car being violently sick; he has been one of the most honoured
citizens of Antwerp ever since.

At Eisenhower s headquarters, which had now moved from
Rheims to the I. G. Farben works at Frankfurt, Montgomery

176

THE OCCUPATION OF GERMANY

received the Distinguished Service Medal from Eisenhower. Zhukov
came to Frankfurt and distributed a large number of Russian
medals among American officers there, and presented Eisenhower
and Montgomery with the Order of Victory. As the latter remarked,
this was not only a great honourit being the first time the decora
tion had been accorded to a foreigner it was also of great intrinsic
value, being set with rubies and diamonds. After this presentation
the Americans produced a luncheon cabaret for their Russian guests;
the most striking feature of this was a dance by girls stripped to the
waist.

All this conviviality, however, did not hide the marked differences
already appearing between the Allied zones. The lack of any com
mon economic policy was inviting criticism in the Press. In the
British sector trade unions were being dissolved: in Berlin trade
unions were being proclaimed. The most dramatic difference was in
the policy of non-fraternization. Although during these weeks there
was a complete shut-down on news from the Russian sector in
Germany, and from the Russian-occupied countries no foreign
correspondents or observers being allowed in Scandinavian visitors
brought back enough information to make it clear that the Russians,
far from practising non-fraternization with the Germans, were mix
ing with them and inculcating them with the tenets of Communism.
In the western area of Germany, on the other hand, the non-
fraternization rule was strictly applied; this was especially the case in
the American Zone. All contact was forbidden apart from that
absolutely necessary for officers of the military administration. On
June 5th the three Allied commanders, with General de Tassigny,
met in Berlin to discuss their mutual problems. Zhukov insisted
that nothing could be done until the British and Americans had
withdrawn to the areas already set out for them. Montgomery, on
ChurchilPs advice, resisted this suggestion; he knew that the Prime
Minister was determined that the Anglo-Americans should go to the
pending Big Three conference in a position of strength. The
Americans were not anxious to stay on the Elbe, and, after some
haggling, Montgomery got Ted-up and sent word to Churchill that
he thought the Anglo-American forces should move back. Churchill
did not agree, and the conference broke up after a long declaration
had been signed. The basis of this declaration had already been long
agreed, first at Casablanca and then at Yalta. A Control Council was
to be set up, and the four zones of Germany were delineated (the
French one having been largely carved out of that allotted to the

177

WIDENING CHASM

Americans). The area of Greater Berlin was to be occupied by forces
of each of the four powers. The first American troops arrived in
Berlin on July 3rd, and the first British, the famous Seventh
Armoured Division (the Desert Rats ), arrived the following day.
SHAEF was distended on July I4th; Montgomery thought this a
major nationalistic* error on the part of the Western allies. By that
act Eisenhower lost all authority outside the American Zone.

The British and American commanders agreed at this time that
their troops were to be allowed to play with and speak to small
German children.

On May 24th it was announced that Himmler had been captured
wandering about in Bremervoerde on May 2ist. He had been dis
guised with a black patch over his eye, and he had shaved off his
moustache. With him had been two of his adjutants. They were not
at first recognized by their British captors, but after Himmler
revealed his identity he bit open a phial of cyanide, concealed in his
mouth, during the final stages of a medical examination at Liineburg.
It took him fifteen minutes to die. Among other leading war criminals
arrested was William Joyce (known as Lord Haw-Haw ), who had
achieved notoriety by broadcasting for the Germans. During
capture, near the Danish frontier, he was wounded by a British
officer. He was duly remanded at Bow Street on June 25th and
committed to trial under the Treason Act of 1351.*

The only other countries in which the Germans had recently
capitulated, and in which the Western allies had occupying forces,
were Austria and Czechoslovakia. In the latter there had been a rapid
and encouraging movement towards some normality, and there were
few disturbances. In comparison with the cities in Germany, both
Prague and Pilsen were relatively undamaged. Dr Benes arrived in
Prague on May i6th and a government under M. Fierlinger was set
up. The two most serious difficulties the country had to face in its
early days of freedom were the breakdown of discipline among
Russian troops and Russian territorial demands. In a hopeful gesture
of appeasement, the Czech Government agreed to cede the tip of
their country, Ruthenia, to the USSR. The Russian frontier thus
passed beyond the Carpathians for the first time in that country s
history. There was considerable looting in the small American-
occupied area of Czechoslovakia, but this was brought under some
control after a week. By the end of the month discipline had been
restored in the Soviet Army (but not until the sale of alcohol had

* He was found guilty of treason and executed on January 3rd, 1946.

178

DOMESTIC SCENES

been banned to Russian troops); little information reached the West
from the Russian-occupied area.

In Vienna the horrors of battle had left the once-gay population in
misery. The Russian troops there almost excelled those in Berlin for
their savagery, and for two weeks the Viennese lived in constant
terror. Requisitions , especially of machinery and fuel, began to
pour eastwards. Agreement about the zones of occupation in
Austria was eventually reached. The arguments between the Anglo-
Americans and the Russians as to the occupation of Vienna, how
ever, continued, while the Russian-sponsored Government began to
impose its will. The Americans were in Upper Austria and the
Tyrol, and the British, having first pushed back a force of Tito s
partisans (who laid claim to the area), were in Carinthia. It was clear
that a clash between East and West was possible.

In the British sector of Austria was the picturesque town of Linz.
It was here that Adolf Hitler had planned his grandiloquent new
opera house. But Linz in the spring of 1945 was not a place that
Hitler would have wanted to visit A BBC correspondent reported:
There are in Linz many urgent things to be done. The purification
of the water supplies, the restoration of gas supplies, for instance.
But the matter which I found the newly elected council debating
when I arrived was the rechristening of the Town Square, which had
inevitably been called Adolf Hitler Square. In fact the history of
Austria was written in this problem. It had originally been called
Emperor Franz Josef Square; and then, after the collapse of the
Hapsburgs, the Square of the Twelfth November; then the Doifuss
Square; and latterly Adolf Hitler Square. As I left the Town Hall I
learnt that the council had decided to take no risks in the future and
was calling it simply the Main Square/

(iv)

In Britain there was still a widespread mood of relaxation, which the
constant urgings to further effort in the war against Japan were not
able to diminish. The King and Queen visited their newly liberated
islands of Jersey and Guernsey, amid scenes of great enthusiasm.
On Whit Monday, the first carefree Bank Holiday in Britain since
1939, the King attended Ascot races, accompanied by Princess
Elizabeth. The first garden-party at Buckingham Palace since before

179

WIDENING CHASM

the war was almost entirely given over to 1,800 British and Dominion
repatriated prisoners-of-war. The King took the salute in Hyde
Park at a farewell parade of representatives of all the Qvil Defence
Services. But the ceremony which affected London s heart most was
the conferring of the Freedom of the Qty of London on General
Eisenhower. Having already been mobbed in Hyde Park in the
morning, when he had gone from the Dorchester Hotel for a quiet
stroll in order to compose his speech, he spoke to an admiring and
receptive audience of 30,000 outside the Mansion House. The
criticisms of the Sppreme Commander that had appeared in the
British Press only a few months before were all forgotten. It was an
occasion of some emotion. After the Prime Minister had praised
Eisenhower s undoubted and valuable capacity for making the
Allies co-operate although few in the crowd could have been aware
just how close to failure he had sometimes been Eisenhower said:
* Whether you know it or not, I am now a Londoner myself. I have as
much right to be down in the crowd yelling as you have. From then
on Ike Eisenhower, whose open smile and quiet manner had
already won over most of the British public, was Britain s favourite
American.

For the first time in five years Parliament was able to concern
itself chiefly with domestic affairs. There was a great deal of argu
ment about financial matters. Everyone wanted to know when the
unbearable burden of taxation could be eased. In his Budget speech
Sir John Anderson, one of the most widely respected of the wartime
Coalition Ministers, had already held out a definite promise: The
present level of taxation is unquestionably oppressive to the spirit
of enterprise and industry. It is of the first importance that when the
compelling incentive of working for victory is no longer present there
should be an early alleviation of the existing heavy obstacles to the
normal incentive to work. He had revealed that in the financial year
1944-45 tota l national expenditure had exceeded 6,000 million.
Five and a half years of war had involved an expenditure of 27,400
million, more than 50 per cent of which it had been impossible to
meet out of current revenue. Now a little more was revealed about
where the money had come from. A great deal had been raised by
savings, which had reached extraordinary and unprecedented
levels; c a striking record , as Anderson said, of individual sacrifice
and effort . It had, however, been necessary to dispose of the greater
part of the country s foreign investments. In some areas, such as in
South America, where British investments and holdings had for long

180

DOMESTIC SCENES

predominated, the loss was practically total. Not only that, but
heavy liabilities had accumulated overseas. Excluding aid from the
United States and Canada, this, it was said, would amount to
4,000 million or more. Less easily defined than these estimates,
but perhaps more serious still, was the indirect cost through lack of
investment in capital goods that had occurred during the war. The
tremendous finances had been channelled into war goods instead of
into building houses, making good wear and tear, and adding to
factories and machinery. Already there were isolated incidences
reported in the newspapers of the hardships caused by the lack of
housing, but few people were prepared to face the problem as a
whole what the war had cost and what was going to be done about
it. The Chancellor of the Exchequer stated that the purchasing
power of the had declined by more than 50 per cent since 1939.
But The Economist declared that the war had been largely paid for
already. The influential City column in the News Chronicle said:
The war has not ruined us ... we can be better off than ever before/

The public found other revelations more interesting than financial
statistics and economic matters. It was revealed that during the
European war the Royal Navy had lost 730 ships through enemy
action, including five battleships, eight aircraft-carriers, twenty-
six cruisers and 128 destroyers. For the first time the population
heard of the wartime experiences of Parliament. It was revealed
that early in the war plans for the evacuation of the Houses of
Parliament to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-
Avon had been made. But when the air-raids had reached their
pitch there became a growing conviction, indeed wish, shared by
Members of Parliament of all parties, that Parliament should meet
its fate at Westminster; and, despite the bombing of the House of
Commons, there it had remained.

Overriding all other parliamentary factors, however, was the
future of the Coalition. This Government, which had successfully
steered the nation from the brink of defeat to victory, was beginning
to show cracks even before the end of the war. The Government
had been completely dominated by Churchill, and the record of
Cabinet members, even those from the Labour Party (with the
exception, perhaps, of Stafford Cripps), was not good in that
respect. Even in the House itself only a very few, and notably
Aneurin Bevan, had either felt like criticizing or dared to criticize
Churchill in the previous two years or so. Now some of the Labour
leaders, especially Herbert Morrison, began to itch for open party

181

WIDENING CHASM

strife. Churchill himself, much to his later regret, had sounded the
death-knell of the Coalition the previous October when he had
virtually promised in the House that an election would follow the
defeat of Germany. An election was clearly needed; no one under
the age of thirty had ever cast a vote. The last election, in 1935,
had been in a dim, distant age which bore no relation to present
circumstances. The only question was, which was more important:
holding an election, or maintaining the Government to win the war
against Japan without any distraction or delay?

Morrison had little difficulty in rallying support to his view.
It was obvious that Labour were in a strong position. Results at by-
elections had been encouraging, and it seemed more than likely
that a wave of brave-new-world thinking, similar to that after the
previous war, would be attracted to Socialism. Above all, the
Labour Party election machinery was, for the first time, better
prepared than that of the Conservatives. The core of the party
was in the trade unions, and many of their organizers, through their
vital importance to war production, had not been called up for
military service. Nearly all the Conservative agents, on the other
hand, were in the Services, with their constituencies unattended.
Churchill was utterly against holding the election at all, but not for
this tactical reason. He had come to think of the Coalition Govern
ment as the personification of One Nation 5 ; this united aspect of the
country at war moved him greatly. He dreaded the return to out-
and-out party politics, knowing that it would abolish this national
unity and that it would also cause him much personal pain. He also
had a natural feeling that his grasp and knowledge of contemporary
world affairs, especially in the matters of Soviet ambitions and
American suspicions, were indispensable at least till the war against
Japan was over. His principal advisers on party matters, although
not on governmental, were the two powerful adventurers Lord
Beaverbrook and Brendan Bracken, men greatly feared, disliked and
distrusted by the Labour politicians, to whom they were known as
*M and B*. They advised him that if Labour insisted on an election,
then it was imperative to have it as soon as possible, probably in
July, rather than to wait until October, which Morrison was now
offering to do; for by October a new electoral roll, which it was
thought would benefit the Labour candidates, would be in
operation.

The Labour Party Conference was held at Blackpool, and there
Morrison manoeuvred with gusto and spirit. Attlee, leader of the

182

DOMESTIC SCENES

party, managed to gather the reins, but not, apparently, without
some difficulty. He, like Hugh Dalton and Ernest Bevin, having
served in the special atmosphere of the wartime Cabinet, was not
altogether anxious to bring it to an end. Bevin had particularly
appreciated the historical feel of ChurchilPs Government; he was
even willing to consider a Churchill proposal that the Coalition
should continue for two years after the end of the war. Aligned
with Morrison was the fiery Sevan, seen by many as a *reaP Socialist,
unlike Attlee, and as a future leader of the party who would lead
it to the promised land. Bevan, however, went even further than
Morrison. He wanted, like some of the Conservatives, to have an
election immediately, for he had absolutely no doubt whatever that
Labour would win no matter when the election was held. After a
half-hearted effort, led by Harold Laski (the new Chairman of the
Party Executive) and Ellen Wilkinson, to replace Attlee with
Morrison, the party leader came out strongly on the side of an
election. This may well have been in an effort to consolidate his
own position, as he was not the man to be swayed by arguments from
Morrison and Bevan, and he had previously let it be known that
he was in favour of continuing the Coalition until the conquest of
Japan, as Churchill wished. The whole affair is now clouded under
contradictory assertions and denials. Years later Attlee wrote:
There was never any question of either Bevin or myself being
opposed to Labour fighting the election on its own or favouring a
post-election Coalition. Churchill, however, was under the definite
impression that Attlee wanted the Coalition to continue for a while.
Attlee replied to Churchill s request in unfriendly tones, accusing
him of departing from the position of a national leader by yielding
to the pressure of the Conservative Party , by suggesting an election,
if there were to be one, in July rather than October. There is no
doubt that Attlee was bitter at the thought of this tactic (using
the out-dated electoral role). After this letter there was no future for
the Coalition. On May 23rd, being confronted by a complete breach
between the two most important parties, Churchill reluctantly
tendered his resignation to the King, having first replied to Attlee:
*I have concerned myself solely with trying to create tolerable
conditions under which we could work together. It is clear from the
tone of your letter and the feelings of your party that these no longer
exist, and it is odd that you should accompany so many unjust
allegations with an earnest request that we should go on bickering
together till the autumn. Thus ended the Coalition Government,

WIDENING CHASM

an administration which by any test had deserved the appellation
great*.

Winston Churchill set about forming another government to take
over affairs during the short interim period before the election.
The Conservatives held a majority of a hundred over all other
parties combined, but Churchill strove to make the basis of the
Caretaker Government, as it was known, as broad as possible. A
number of people now found themselves in responsible positions
for apparently little other reason than that they happened to be un
attached to any of the parties. Ten of the twenty-four Ministers of
Cabinet rank were not Conservative Members of Parliament. All
those non-party members of die Coalition, such as Sir John
Anderson, remained at their posts. Ministers in the Caretaker
Government included the redoubtable Lord Beaverbrook, Lord
Privy Seal, and Brendan Bracken, First Lord of the Admiralty.
Duncan Sandys was Minister of Works and Leslie Hore-Belisha was
Minister of National Insurance much to everyone s surprise as,
throughout the war, he had been one of Churchill s few outspoken
critics in the House. R. A. Butler, Minister of Labour, Oliver
Lyttelton, President of the Board of Trade, and Harold Mac-
millan, Secretary for Air, replaced respectively Ernest Bevin,
Hugh Dalton and Sir Archibald Sinclair, leader of the Liberal
Party.

The Labour Party ended its conference on a challenging note.
It endorsed the executive s policy for the post-war period, em
bodied in a pamphlet entitled Let Us Face the Future, which had been
prepared by Morrison (who was entrusted with running the
campaign). The drastic policies contained in this would, it was said,
win the peace for the people. The whole economy was to be over
hauled and a large dose of Socialism injected into it. There was to
be nationalization of the gas, coal and electricity industries; of air,
land, road and canal transport; and of the iron and steel industries.
The Bank of England was to be taken over by the State, there was
to be public supervision of monopolies and cartels, and general
economic and price controls. There was bitter criticism at the con
ference of the rejection of the nationalization of land. The conference
rejected a suggestion to combine forces with the Communist Party.
There was much class bitterness at the root of many speeches, and
those who traditionally voted Conservative had observed the
proceedings with deep misgivings and some disbelief. Could it
really be, they asked, that Socialists, their own countrymen, were

184

DOMESTIC SCENES

going to turn the whole country upside-down just when it was at its
greatest peak?

Churchill held a tea-party for the members of the Coalition at
Downing Street on May 28th. Here, for a brief moment, the enmity
that had recently crept back into political affairs dispersed for an
hour or two, and there was an atmosphere of friendliness and good
will. Men who had served the country in its time of greatest danger,
with no feelings of political rivalry, parted with dignity. Many of the
Labour ex-Ministers spoke to Churchill personally, expressing their
pride at having served in the wartime Government. Standing be
hind the green baize Cabinet table, the Prime Minister addressed
the forty or fifty people present. He said that he intended inviting
*my good friend Clem Attlee to go with him to the Big Three
conference so that he would be well briefed in the latest moves if
there were a change in government. With tears streaming down his
cheeks, he said that they had all come together, at a very difficult
time, as a band of friends. If a similar danger ever presented itself
to the country, he was sure the same thing would happen again. Their
united stand would be recognized by history: The light of history
will shine on all your helmets/

Attlee and Sinclair made brief replies, and then everyone went out
into the garden to be photographed together; but it began to rain.

The following afternoon the parties faced each other across the
House once more as Government and Opposition. To many the
traditional arrangement felt uncomfortable and strange; to others it
felt refreshing and exciting. Attlee formally accepted the Prime
Minister s invitation to accompany him to the Big Three con
ference, an action which was the cause of querulous comment by
Harold Laski. Parliament was dissolved on June i5th; it had been
the fourth longest in British history, and the longest since 1679.
Polling day was to be July 5th, but owing to the vast amount of
servicemen s votes that had to be sent home from abroad a further
twenty-one days were to elapse before the counting and declaration,
fixed for July 26th. When it was learnt that the ballot-boxes would
be in the custody of the British Government for three weeks, the
opinion was voiced in some countries abroad that there could be
little doubt as to the result.

But the renewal of party warfare and the forthcoming General
Election were only a part of the kaleidoscope which made up the
domestic scene in Britain immediately after the end of the German
war. In early June there was an acute shortage of bread, and bread

185

WIDENING CHASM

queues were more noticeable than they had been since 1940.
Military bakers and Italian prisoners-of-war were called in to ease
the shortage of labour in the bakeries. The cooking-fats ration was
cut from 2 oz a week to i oz, and the weekly bacon ration was
reduced from 4 oz to 3 oz. The price of potatoes went up by 3^.
per 7 Ib. In London there was talk of a bus strike. In Wales, despite
every effort, coal production continued to decrease. An ominous
note for the future was sounded when the News Chronicle reported:
Many evacuees from the East Coast areas who have been told by the
Ministry of Health that they can now return home will find it
difficult to qualify for a free voucher they have no homes to go to.
Nowhere is the housing shortage so acute as in the East Coast
towns/ There were also many hundreds of child evacuees, trace of
whose parents had been lost; they were causing a worrying social
problem. Another matter that was interesting many was the future
of the 500,000 uniformed women. After their experience, training
and responsibilities, could they be expected, it was asked, to go
straight back to the kitchen sink or the comparatively humble jobs in
which women before the war had mostly been employed? As the
London Evening Standard said: Any day now they will be throwing
away their low-heeled shoes, dressing themselves in the best civilian
clothes that their 12 los. grant will buy, and looking about for a
job.* It was pointed out that girls who had done such highly special
ized work as manning searchlights, coding messages, and important
Intelligence duties, were going to be an awkward responsibility on
society. Not least important for these women was the question of
civilian clothing. High-heeled shoes and silk stockings were virtually
unobtainable except on the Black Market. It was stated that: The
Board of Trade and the Ministry of Supply have this question very
much to the fore. These women will not be at a disadvantage with
those who have remained in civilian life. A special allotment of
clothing coupons was to be allowed ex-servicewomen. A typical
programme on the weekly BBC Women s Page consisted of: Extracts
from A Bride s Guide to the USA recently published to help the
20,000 British girls who have married American servicemen; a talk
on the new Education Act; and answers to problems sent in by
women war-workers/ The Education Act of the previous year,
presented in the House of Commons by R. A. Butler, was on
everyone s lips; establishing free secondary education for all, most
people agreed that it was a brilliant piece of legislation that reflected
much credit on the Coalition Government. Typical of the surge of

186

DOMESTIC SCENES

interest in social matters that had been increasing like a great wave
since the start of the decade were the books being published in
Britain during the late spring and early summer of 1945. They
included such titles as Nutrition and Relief Work, Rebuilding Britain,
Civil Aviation and Peace, The American Senate and World Peace,
How Should We Rebuild London? and Making a Better World. All
these books appeared within a few weeks of each other. The top-
selling book was Odd Man Out, by F. L. Green, a story of the IRA
in Belfast which had enjoyed critical success as well as wide popular
ity. The Sunday Times said: A fine piece of imaginative writing*;
the Observer: A tour deforce and a brilliant one ; the Spectator:
Of unusual interest and distinction*. Other popular books were
Green For Danger by Christianna Brand, The Island by Francis
Brett Young, Maquis by George Millar, The Next Horizon by Douglas
Reed, and Left hand, Right Hand by Sir Osbert Sitwell.

At the London theatre the most popular shows were Ivor Novello s
Perchance to Dream at the Hippodrome, Terence Rattigan s Love in
Idleness at the Lyric, Sweeter and Lower & very successful revue
at the Ambassadors, Gay Rosalinda at the Palace, The Shop at Sly
Corner at the St. Martins, Sid Field in Strike It Again at the Prince
of Wales, and Tommy Trinder in the patriotic variety-show Happy
and Glorious at the Palladium.

Among the leading films were Laurence Olivier s Henry V, which
had been running in the West End for over six months, Noel
Coward s Blithe Spirit , A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and The Picture
of Dorian Gray, with Edward G. Robinson and Joan Bennett. The
theory that the social history of an age can be best found in its
films was amply sustained in Perfect Strangers, in which a hum
drum married couple (Robert Donat and Deborah Kerr) are jolted
out of domesticity by the war. He joins the Navy, she becomes a
Wren. With new outlooks on life, both dread going back to their
partner; the film dealt in some depth with the post-war readjustments
common to many marriages. It was the golden age of British
documentary films, and among those on release, the first two with
scripts by Dylan Thomas, were A City Reborn, Our Country, The
True Glory, and Western Approaches.

But the radio remained, as it had during the worst days of the
war, the main source of relaxation and entertainment for millions.
For the first time since 1940 the nine o clock news, which had a vast
audience, was being read by anonymous news-readers. Among the
most popular shows, apart from the beloved ITMA, were Merry-

187

WIDENING CHASM

go-Round (an entertainment for all in khaki and two shades of blue ),
The Jot k Benny Programme , with Mary Livingstone, Rochester and
Phil Harris, and Here s Wishing You WellAgam, with Bebe Daniels.

There was a brisk market in second-hand cars (there having
been no new ones for five years). Many private cars had been laid
up since 1939, and now that an increase in the petrol ration seemed
likely, many people looked around in search of a vehicle. A 1934
Vauxfaall drophead coupe fetched 70, a 1939 Triumph Dolomite
300, a 1938 SS Jaguar 585, a 1939 Rover 12 900, and a 1938
Lagonda 1,500. Sporting events began to revive, and cricket
matches attracted large crowds. At the Queensberry Club in London
a young heavyweight boxer called Bruce Woodcock attracted some
notice by knocking out a Canadian flight-sergeant in three rounds.
At the Royal Academy Exhibition the exhibits which caused most
comment were the two drawings of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott s plan
for a new Coventry Cathedral. In the personal columns of the
newspapers, especially those of The Times and Daily Telegraph,
there were long lists of notices, from which returned prisoners-of-
war asked for news of missing relatives. At a session of the Brains
Trust the question was asked; Are women drinking more and, if so,
how can the trend be stopped? Mr Emanuel Shinwell said he saw no
harm in women drinking in moderation, and Commander A. B.
Campbell said his only objection was that they helped make whisky
and gin shorter than ever.

In Ireland, Eamon de Valera had replied to the bitter comments
made by Winston Churchill in his Victory broadcast. He said he
was not going to retaliate in a similar tone. Allowances can be made
for Mr Churchill s statement however unworthy in the first
exuberance of his victory. No such excuse could be found for me in
this quieter atmosphere. Apologies were made to the British and
American representatives in Dublin for the damage done to their
offices during the rioting at the announcement of the end of the war.
De Valera announced in the Dail that for the remainder of the year
clothing and food to the value of 3,000,000 would be sent to
Europe; this gesture would mean reductions in the rations of sugar
and butter. His announcement did something to soothe sensi
bilities elsewhere in the Commonwealth, which had been con
siderably roused, especially in Canada (where there had been a
widespread demand to curtail diplomatic relations with Eire). In
that Dominion a Federal General Election was held on June nth,
resulting in a victory for Mackenzie King s Liberal Party. Canada,

188

DOMESTIC SCENES

at any rate, was clearly not ready for even the mild form of Socialism
advocated by some of the opposition parties. In New Zealand,
the Prime Minister, Walter Nash, revealed that the war had cost the
Dominion over 500,000,000, of which by far the greater part had
been borrowed. On June 2nd an air service between Britain and
Australia was inaugurated when a Lancastrian aeroplane converted
to civilian use did the journey in eighty hours. The Australian
Prime Minister, John Curtin, became ill in June, and his condition
deteriorated; he died on July 5th.

In the United States, the atmosphere was vastly different from
that in Britain, Europe and the Dominions. The war had not made
America as drab as it had Britain, and thus relief and jubilation
had been less noticeable and less dramatic. There was nothing in
America like the switching on of the lights in Piccadilly Circus;
the two main non-war talking points were the extraordinary run on
Broadway of Life With Father, which had now completed well over
2,000 performances, and the phenomenal best seller, Forever Amber.
The Japanese war was still, it seemed, a long way from completion.
The bloody battle of Okinawa, with an ever-lengthening casualty
list, continued amid mounting public criticism. President Truman
was now well settled into his office at the White House, and his
administration was beginning to function less haphazardly and more
smoothly. He was even beginning to see that the Presidential post
had its enjoyable side after all He had sent the Presidential plane,
the Sacred C00&gt;, to bring his mother to Washington for Mothers
Day, It was her first trip by plane; the elevator, which had been
fitted for Roosevelt s use, stuck while letting her down. The
President s mother, by all accounts a remarkable and formidable
woman, was not amused. The President had also spoken, with
some glee, to his old schoolmistress on the telephone to ask her
what she thought of her ex-pupil now.

However, as Harry Truman had feared, being President was by
no means all fun. He was beset not only by problems in Europe,
but also by troubles at home. The organization for rationing and
price-control was causing great resentment and criticism in the
community, and sugar supplies were so short that consumption
had to be cut still further. Chester Bowles, the Administrator of
OPA, told the President that his office was so unpopular that it
was becoming almost impossible to keep it functioning. Many of his
staff wanted to resign; some had already done so. To make matters
worse, about 50,000 men were out on strike in various industries

WIDENING CHASM

throughout the United States; and when the head of the United
Mine Workers, John L. Lewis, called a strike, the industrial situation
became a matter of the greatest urgency. Truman was angered.
Here we were/ he later wrote, *in the midst of one of the gravest
conflicts in the history of civilization. Men were dying in battle.
Oar citizens were tightening their belts and making every sacrifice
to help save the world from tyranny. . . . But John L. Lewis, un
disturbed by what it would do to the nation, ordered his coal-
miners to strike.* Truman brought the mines under the direction of
the Secretary of the Interior, which meant that the mineworkers
were for the time being working for the Government. This bold
tactic was subject to much adverse comment. Truman had also
done much to reorganize the executive machinery of the Govern
ment, and especially that of his own office, which he had found in
an unsatisfactory state. The White House organization was re
shaped and its channels of communication with the other branches
of the Government reviewed. Late in June Stettinius, on being
appointed United States representative to the United Nations
Security Council, was replaced as Secretary of State by James F.
Byrnes, a move that had been widely predicted. The State Depart
ment had thus had three Secretaries in less than a year: Cordell
Hull, Stettinius and Byrnes.

European problems continued to loom large in the minds of
America s policy-makers. Not only were there the constitutional
and territorial problems, there was also the worrying matter of food
and supplies for weak and crippled nations. What responsibility did
the United States bear in such matters? Henry Wallace, Secretary
of Commerce, said during a speech in New York: The United
States has the responsibility of world leadership for the first time.
It is much the same kind of leadership as that which England

gradually assumed after the Napoleonic Wars We are the only

great nation with industries unbombed and with highways and
railways in good working condition. Our economy is ready not only
to give our own people a higher standard of living than they have
ever had, but also, through a programme of sensible investment in
those nations who want to help themselves, to bring about a restora
tion of world productivity/ A leading article in the Kansas City Star
noted that Europe is hungry and will have to be fed ... the con
clusion is inescapable that staggering responsibilities will fall on the
Allied powers with the possibility that the United States will be
called upon to shoulder a heavy part of the load. But these were,

190

DOMESTIC SCENES

on the whole, voices in the wilderness. Most people considered
that the United States had done its share in Europe and could not be
expected to act as fairy-godmother indefinitely. Truman invited ex-
President Herbert Hoover, responsible for food relief after the
First World War, to the White House (it was his first visit there
since 1932) to discuss the situation. When Leo Crowley, Foreign
Economic Administrator, and Joseph C. Grew, Acting Secretary of
State, arrived in the President s office one afternoon and asked him
to sign a piece of paper diminishing Lend-Lease supplies, Truman
signed. It had already been tacitly agreed, during a visit to Washing
ton by Lord Keynes the previous year, that Britain would receive
Lend-Lease until the end of the Japanese war; at the time, however,
the American negotiators had refiised to sign a protocol to that effect.
Truman has since said that he very much regrets having signed the
cancellation; and he is convinced that if he had read what he was
putting his signature to he would never have done so. The result was
immediate and dramatic. The Anti-Lend-Leasers had, it seemed,
won a notable victory. Ships actually on their way to Europe were
turned about in mid-ocean. There was an outburst of surprised
indignation from abroad. Truman, shocked by the reaction, said
in a radio and Press conference on May 23rd that his intention was
not so much a cancellation as a gradual readjustment of supplies
following on the defeat of Germany. Supplies would continue;
allocations would be completed. Russia, especially, was to receive all
shipments already agreed upon. (Truman was always mindful of the
Soviet s promise to join the war against Japan.) Five days after his
reassurances he received an appeal from Churchill, in the form of a
personal telegram. The Prime Minister ended: C I hope that your
people can be told that the principles your predecessor and I agreed
on at Quebec will stand, and in particular that the appropriations
given your War Department will be enough to provide for our needs
as finally worked out between us. Truman made his position clear
in a reply to a letter from five eminent Congressmen. C I am in full
agreement, he said, that the Lend-Lease Act does not authorize
aid for purposes of post-war relief, post-war rehabilitation, or post
war reconstruction, and that in the liquidation of any Lend-Lease
war supply agreements articles transferred after they are no longer
necessary for the prosecution of the war should be disposed of only
on terms of payment. Lend-Lease was at an end for all those
countries not actually at war with Japan; but a special grant of
$10 million was given to Italy for the prevention of disease and un-

191

WIDENING CHASM

rest Some of the President s advisers maintained that Lend-Lease
could be continued legally even in Europe. The issue was kept very
much alive by the many public figures who feared that the supplies
would continue to pour out of the country as freely in time of peace
as in war. These suspicions were directed particularly towards
Britain. The fact that the Lend-Lease budget submitted to Con
gress for the year following VE Day included a sum of $935 million
for Soviet Russia, if the USSR entered the war against Japan,
brought forth little commend.

At the isolated air base of Andover Field, in the desert of Utah, a
force of Tlying Fortresses , known as the 509* Composite Group,
were endlessly rehearsing the dropping of a secret weapon. Only
their Commanding Officer, Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, had even the
sketchiest idea of what the weapon was to be; but he was forbidden
to impart even this knowledge to his men, who referred to the weapon
as The Gimmick . Their planes had aU the turrets and guns
stripped from them except for tail guns, and had been modified to
carry an outsize device of some kind in the bomb-bays. Exceptionally
strict discipline was maintained in the unit, and Colonel Tibbets
insisted on instantaneous obedience to all orders. During May the
unit, with a number of scientists, began leaving for the air base of
Tinian, in the Marianas, within striking distance of Japan.

(v)

While the remaining defenders of Iwo Jima were dying of starvation
in their sealed-up caves, their comrades on Okinawa were still
putting up a fierce and powerful resistance. Supported by planes
from Japan, many of them on suicide missions, they fought literally
for every yard of ground. An average of twenty to thirty suicide
planes attacked every day, and the Japanese also tried human
suicide-torpedoes, but with less success. The Tokyo Government
attached great prestige value to the retention of the island. The
decisive stage of the struggle, which took place in the last week of
May and during June, centred round the height known as Sugar-
Loaf or Conical Hill During the previous seven weeks of fighting
an advance of only seven miles had taken place. The defence had not
only been determined, it had also been skilful. Despite almost cease
less bombardment from naval guns, artillery and aircraft, the main
line of defence had not been broken. The American infantry found

192

THE JAPANESE WAR

it very difficult to take advantage of their superior fire-power. The
Japanese did not hesitate to use cold steel, and were psychologically
and emotionally hardened to facing death. At last, after it had
changed hands eleven times, Sugar-Loaf Hill was finally secured by
the Americans towards the end of May. Shortly afterwards a
desperate Japanese air effort met with some success, but a success
out of all proportion to the 166 machines shot down. One bomber
made a belly-landing on a US airfield and disgorged a number of
frenzied Japanese airmen who destroyed some American aircraft
with hand-grenades before they committed suicide. To add to their
difficulties, the Americans had to concern themselves with the
jurisdiction and welfare of the 135,000 civilians crowded into then-
part of the island. During the first week in June a further serious
obstacle to American progress appeared in the presence of deep and
glutinous mud, in which all those engaged in the battle became
caked; thirteen inches of rain had fallen during May. All supplies
had to be carried forward by hand. Nevertheless, the advance
continued more rapidly after the capture of the heights, and by the
end of the second week in June only sixteen square miles of Okinawa
were left to the Japanese. But the defenders continued to fight
furiously, and attacks from their supporting aircraft were as desperate
as ever. In one day Washington announced the loss of three warships
at Okinawa from air attack. On June iyth Lieutentant-General S. B.
Buckner, commanding the Tenth US Army, was killed by shell-fire
while watching Marines go forward. Two days later Brigadier-
General C. M. Easley, commanding the g6th Division, was killed.
By June aist the defence was in its last stage, packed tightly into two
small pockets backing on to the shore of the southern coast. Scores
of Japanese threw themselves off the cliffs 150 feet high. As was
their wont, the Americans announced that day the end of battle
before it was over. The final defenders clustered around a series of
caves, and fought on with bitterness although there was no hope of
success or relief, and despite American leaflets and radio broad
casts pointing out the uselessness of further loss of life. While one
of the caves was being stormed, the Commander of the Okinawa
naval base cut his throat. With the Americans only a few yards
away, the Japanese Commander-in-Chief, General Mitsuru Ushi-
jima, emerged at the mouth of his cave with his Chief of Staff,
followed by orderlies and staff. The two Generals were in parade
uniform, with medals. They knelt down on white sheets; each
thrust a knife into his own abdomen, and was then skshed across the

193

WIDENING CHASM

back of the neck by an adjutant. Most of the rest of the garrison
died in hopeless charges or by suicide with their own grenades.
The remainder, pressed back on the sea, walked out into the water
and drowned.

Thus ended the bloody and horrible battle for the island of
Okinawa. There were 102,000 Japanese dead, almost total annihila
tion of their entire force. There were only 8,000 prisoners. The US
military casualties were 39,420, a high proportion of the six divisions
which took part. Naval casualties were 9,724; thirty US ships had
been sunk, mostly by kamikaze action. The shock and anger of the
American public was so great that Admiral Nimitz felt obliged to
defend the campaign in American newspapers.

The Chiefs of Staff were now more than ever convinced that an
Allied invasion of the mainland would result in such terrible
fighting that the casualties could hardly be perceived.

In Burma, meanwhile, the victorious Fourteenth Army was
unable to rest on its laurels. Actions officially described as mopping-
up*, but in reality a lot more than that, continued until July.
Between 60,000 and 70,000 Japanese troops, cut off in Burma,
remained unconquered. Many of them roamed about in small
groups, and to deal with these tactics the British force was split into
various columns which were sent off to track down the hostile
units in sweltering, soaking monsoon weather. The strongest
Japanese force, estimated to be 44,000 strong, was in the east of the
country preparing to launch a break-out. Elsewhere, guerrilla activity
was combatted successfully by Karens, who had risen against the
Japanese conqueror, and by the Burmese National Army. The
commander of the latter, Aung San, made it clear to Slim that he was
determined to keep his army in existence after hostilities had ceased,
indicating just one of the many political difficulties with which the
British administration were being presented by those whom they
had just released from the Japanese yoke. Many British units were
engaged in stiff jungle fighting while elaborate victory celebrations
were taking place in Rangoon. The large forces of Japanese in in
accessible areas were proving very difficult to overcome, but the
authorities continued to act as if the Burma campaign was over.
On May 3ist the long-threatened withdrawal of the US Air Force
from the area was finally announced. Churchill congratulated
Mountbatten upon the culminating victory of your Burma cam
paigns . In honour of Slim s great advance a special decoration was
announced, and the ribbons were flown out to SEAC. No other

194

THE JAPANESE WAR

campaign ribbon of the 1939-45 War is more proudly worn than
the Burma Star.

The Japanese policy, despite its lack of success everywhere, was
still to try to cling on to all the newly won acquisitions in the East.
Pride, recklessness and Allied domination of the seas precluded
the wiser course of a concentration on pre-war territory. In Japan
itself a tremendous US aerial onslaught, only slightly less than
that which had been showered on Germany, was under way. These
raids caused great loss of life, as Japanese precautions were rudi
mentary in comparison with those that had been adopted in Britain
and Germany. Discontent over this, and over the loss of Okinawa
and the defeat in Burma, brought criticism and pressure to bear on
the new Prime Minister he had been appointed on April 5th
the seventy-seven-year-old Admiral Suzuki, Both the Emperor and
Suzuki, speaking in the Diet, referred to the struggle as a holy war,
and Suzuki admitted that an invasion of the homeland* was to be
expected. If such an assault was to occur, the Japanese people,
with death-defying courage and the advantages of geography, would
bring the war to a successful conclusion. An evacuation of Tokyo by
all but 200,000 essential workers was prepared. Behind all this
bellicose talk, the new government began considering ways and
means of procuring peace. It was decided that efforts might be made
through Moscow, a move which it was thought (as the Germans had
hoped before) might somehow cause a split between the Allies, and,
if territorial concessions were made, might produce a powerful and
influential friend for Japan in Soviet Russia. Meanwhile, the
capital was being battered from the air. One night 334 US bombers,
from Guam, Saipan and Tinian, took part in what was politely
known to American commanders and planners as area bombing ,
i.e. the saturation bombing of areas picked for the density of
population and regardless of military installations. This force con
centrated on the Asakusa area of Tokyo, in which 103,000 persons
lived to the square mile. The force met no fighter opposition, and
very little flak. Some 30,000 Japanese were killed. On the way home
the American tail-gunners reported seeing the glow of the burning
city 150 miles away. Two days later a force of 313 6-295 visited the
city of Nagoya, causing similar destruction. Kobe, Osaka, Yokahama,
Kawasaki ... all suffered equally from saturation bombing and the
resulting fire-storms which, owing to the wood-bamboo-plaster
construction of most of the small buildings in tightly packed
Japanese urban areas, raged uncontrollably. Conditions were in-

195

WIDENING CHASM

tolerable; not only from the bombing &gt; but also from the shortages
caused by the successful Anglo-American blockade, especially the
US submarines omnipotent in the Pacific. Few people were able
to find enough food to use up all their ration points. Beef was un
obtainable, so was fish. There was widespread eating of dog and
horse-meat. Chicken and eggs were reserved for children, expectant
mothers and hospital patients. Beer and sake were practically im
possible to obtain except on the high-priced black market. Typhoid
and tuberculosis were both rampant. Malnutrition had become so
serious that bottles of vitamin pills were being issued to night-
workers, miners and naval personnel A Home Guard, armed with
bamboo spears, was formed. Shipping had practically ceased; only
about a sixth of the pre-war merchant fleet remained, and its move
ment was hopelessly restricted. There had been no import of fuel oil
since April.

There seemed little hope of success in any of the remaining out
lying areas of the Empire. Even in China, where the Chinese were
beset with domestic squabbles, things were going badly for the
Japanese. Although, as was not uncommon, there had been several
large-scale and inexplicable surrenders of Chinese Nationalist
troops during the spring and early summer, the Japanese forces
were on the retreat. Although information as to the fighting was ob
scure and scanty, it was clear that American assistance in arms,
supplies, advice and air-power was having an effect. The position,
however, was confused by the existence of provincial armies, osten
sibly part of the Nationalist forces, but mostly parochial in objectives
and operations. There was also the matter of the Communist army in
the north, with which military co-operation was intermittent and
tenuous. The Communist army was certainly the most effective in
China, and it was achieving the most success. The Americans had
made efforts to bring about a reconciliation between Chiang Kai-
shek s Kuomintang regime, centred at Chungking, and the Com
munists. These had met with some unpublicized success. The
Yenan Government, run by the Communists, had offices in Chung
king, and its newspaper was printed there. Some of the Communist
officials were drawing their salaries from the Nationalist Govern
ment. And it was agreed that the Chinese delegation to the San
Francisco conference should include a representative of the Com
munists. Much of this success was due to the unceasing efforts of
Chiang s great admirer, General A. C. Wedemeyer, StilwelPs
successor as American adviser and Chief of Staff in China. But

196

THE JAPANESE WAR

already voices could be heard in the United States saying that
America was not providing Chiang with enough help in the face of
the Communist threat from the north. All this was somewhat off
set by propaganda and harsh attacks on the Kuomintang regime from
Russia. Moscow associated itself with the Communist demands for a
coalition government, and social reforms in free China; and it
accused Chiang Kai-shek of preparing to wage a civil war. The con
fident and devious Chiang Kai-shek seemed to some American
observers to spend more efforts on intrigue, in consolidating his
own position, and in keeping the Americans and the Communist
Army mutually antagonistic, than he was in freeing China, much of
which was still in Japanese hands.

To the south a lonely French army, practically unsupported by the
Allies, was fighting a savage war against strong Japanese forces in the
interior of Indo-China and near the Chinese border. In the Philip
pines ferocious last-ditch stands were being conducted on Luzon
and the smaller islands. The conquest of the archipelago was a
remarkable feat of amphibious warfare. As MacArthur s land com
mander, General R. L. Eichelberger, said: c ln one forty-one-day
period alone these troops conducted fourteen major landings and
twenty-one minor ones, thus rolling up a landing every day and a
half. . . . There has never been another army just like it.* The Japan
ese were shooting their own women and children before committing
suicide, and hospital patients were being killed rather than let them
fall into American hands. On June 28th MacArthur announced that
the entire island of Luzon is now liberated . This was not strictly
accurate, but congratulatory messages from the world s leaders
poured in, and Douglas MacArthur was at the pinnacle of his fame.
General Yamashita continued to hold out with a large force in
northern Luzon. Also in MacArthur s theatre was the invasion of
Borneo, begun by the seizure of the off-shore islands of Labuan and
Tarakan by Australian and Dutch troops. The capture of Tarakan,
rich in oil, was especially welcome to the Allied forces in the South
Pacific. MacArthur waded ashore with the assault troops at Labuan,
with the Australian Commander, Lieutenant-General Sir Leslie
Morshead,* and came under fire; ignoring protestations, he refused
to drop face-down in the water. The Japanese force hastily dis
appeared into the steaming jungle and rocky gorges of Borneo,
some of it hardly explored, where it was obviously going to be ex
cessively difficult to defeat it.

* The heroic commander of the Tobruk garrison in 1941.

197

WIDENING CHASM

There was heavier fighting on Bougainville Island, where the
invading Australian Third and Eleventh Divisions were engaged
in fearful combat throughout June. Everywhere the ring was closing
round the stubborn and fanatical Japanese military hierarchy.

(Vi)

While the war was still raging in the Pacific and the East, the
attention of the peoples of the world was being held by the efforts at
San Francisco to secure a lasting peace. The conference to agree on a
charter for the new world organization had dragged on through May
as one difficulty after another had been encountered. There were
wide diversities of opinion on nearly every subject, and the various
nations had splintered off into small groups. In this atmosphere the
high hopes and idealism that had typified the start of the conference
had gradually deteriorated. But although there was considerable
disillusion in some delegations, especially those from small nations,
by and large the main representatives were all aware of the oppor
tunity that was now presented to them, and of the importance of a
strong world authority for the post-war years. There was much
talk of the failure of the League of Nations, especially from the
Russians and the Americans. President Truman followed the
deliberations closely; Stettinius had to report to him every day. The
President studied in great detail Woodrow Wilson s failure after the
First World War to get the United States into the League. He was
determined that the United Nations organization should be set up,
even if it meant compromising on many points, and that America
should be part of it. He has written: Throughout the long discussions
I was always trying to work out a way to keep Russia and Great
Britain in harmony.

The White Russian and Ukrainian Republics were admitted to
membership unanimously. But the membership of Poland was not
so easily solved. Czechoslovakia, indicating how much that country
had come under the sway of the Soviets, proposed that the Lublin
Government should be invited to the conference. Eden, however, was
adamant that Britain could agree to no Polish representation until
the Yalta agreements on Poland had been respected by the Russians.
He was supported by Stettinius. On the other hand, the Argentine,
to the disgust of many of the Allied nations, was voted into the con-

198

THE SAN ERANCISCO CONFERENCE

ference notwithstanding the widely held suspicion that the Argen
tine had pro-Nazi sympathies. It seems that Truman, on the advice
of the State Department and the Under-Secretary of State, Nefeoe
Rockefeller, had insisted on the Argentine s membership for the
sake of Western hemisphere solidarity . This decision so annoyed
Molotov that he left the conference on May Qth, leaving Grornyko
in charge of the Russian delegation. It soon became clear after
his departure that the Russians were no longer able to take decisions,
and everything was held up for days on end while matters were
referred to Molotov in Moscow. For various reasons, which were no
doubt strengthened by the Russian tardiness and the consequent
inability of the conference to move at anything but the most sluggish
speed, many of the other leaders of delegations returned home. One
of the most important was the Belgian Foreign Minister, M. Spaak,
who had played a significant role in the first days. He was followed
by Eden and Attlee, who returned home because of the imminence
of the General Election, as did Mackenzie King of Canada. Eden
had made a great impression on the conference; many of the
delegates from the smaller countries, being mostly statesmen who
had emerged during and since the war, had never before met him.
His opening speech had been received by a respectful audience.
Referring to the conference as c the world s last chance , he had said
that the only alternative to an organization for the peaceful settle
ment of international disputes was another war, which would mean
the utter destruction of civilization . This prophecy had been
received in startled silence; no one could quite understand what it
meant.

One of the main problems was the fight for special rights by the so-
called Middle Powers, led by Canada and Holland. Their dele
gations felt they could not return to their native countries without
gaining some recognition for national prestige. They were supported
by Britain in these ambitions, but after much argument all they won
was the recognition that in election to non-permanent places on the
Security Council their claims should receive special consideration.
France, .of course, was unable to accept the position of a Middle
Power, and eventually achieved recognition as one of the Big Five.
Another issue was that of trusteeship. During the deliberations on
this Britain came under fire from many quarters, including from her
allies and from other colonial powers. It was widely accepted that
Britain was the most dangerous of the imperialist nations. The recent
intervention on behalf of the Syrians had made little difference to

199

WIDENING CHASM

this view. These insinuations were effectively silenced by a brilliant
speech by Lord Cranborae* after a long session on June 2oth. He
said that the general principles of self-determination which the
conference was so anxious to recognize were mainly of British con
ception* He pointed out that if it had not been for the loyalty and
support to Britain of the various nations and colonies of the Empire
during the period of the war when they had stood alone, and while all
the other nations present at the conference were either defeated, dis
engaged or neutral, it was most unlikely that the present conference
would be sitting at all*

The main problem that the San Francisco conference had to face
was the voting procedure in the Security Council. Britain, Russia
and the United States all came in for a great deal of criticism for up
holding the veto principle, which seemed to give the great powers a
protection that was not afforded the smaller countries. The Austral
ian delegate, Dr Herbert Evatt, led the condemnation, strongly
supported by Peter Fraser of New Zealand. The debate on the
subject was world-wide. Speaking in the House of Commons, Sir
William Beveridge said that if a small power were deprived of the
support of the world organization in a dispute with a great power, it
would inevitably seek security in an alliance with or dependence
upon one of the other great powers; this would lead to two great
blocs and a Third World War. Under pressure the British in
clined to a modification of the voting procedure, but the Russians
held fast to the original agreement. The Americans took up the
intermediate position that was now becoming their almost traditional
place. Truman, however, knew that c our experts, civil and military,
favoured it, and without such a veto no arrangement would have
passed the Senate . It was the Senate which had killed Wilson s
hopes for the League of Nations. I told Stettinius that we would
stand by the Yalta formula on voting in the Security Council 5 The
veto was imperative to the national interests of the great powers, and
they intended to stick to it even if it meant wrecking the organiza
tion. The only point at issue was what was exactly meant by the
veto. Gromyko, acting as Molotov s mouthpiece, insisted that even
the discussion of a dispute could be stopped by the veto. The
State Department began to suspect, not for the first time in recent
months, that Stalin was not fully aware of the stalemate that negotia
tions had reached. Hopkins, who had been sent to Moscow, put the
position fairly before Stalin, whom it was clear had not been kept

* Later the Marquess of Salisbury.

200

THE IRON CURTAIN FALLS

fully informed by Molotov. Stalin at once overruled JMolotov, and
agreement on the veto was reached. No angle power would be able
to prevent the hearing of a dispute by the Security Council. This
gesture made on behalf of the smaller powers did litde to soothe their
fears, and Dr Evatt remained an embarrassment to the Big Five
until the very end. He found little comfort in the fact that the dangers
to small nations could be discussed without any action being taken
to protect them.

The final session of the conference was held on June 26th,
starting at 6 a.m. The signing of the Charter by about 200 dele
gates lasted well into the afternoon. The best speech was by the
South African delgate, General Jan Christian Smuts. He said:
Our Charter is not a perfect document. It is full of compromises
over a very difficult and tangled plan for peace/ Smuts had written
the long-winded preamble to the Charter, blatantly inspired by the
American Constitution. President Truman spoke to the conference
at the Opera House, and also stressed the element of compromise
in the Charter. This view, suggesting that the United Nations
Organization was the best that could be expected in the circum
stances and that it was a near miracle that it at least appeared to have
a chance of making itself a success, typified the view of most people.
The President finished: Let us not fail to grasp this supreme
chance to establish a world-wide rule of reason, and to create an
enduring peace under the guidance of God. The Opera House rang
with enthusiastic cheers for many minutes after he had finished.

(vii)

While many fine sentiments were being uttered for public hearing
at San Francisco, the yawning rift between the Allies was widening
still further behind the scenes. After firm Anglo-American pressure
on Moscow, Tito finally agreed to withdraw his troops from Trieste.
This was a gratifying victory for Truman and Churchill, and served
to show how, when presented with a determined and united front
from the West, the Russians were prepared to give way. Un
fortunately this lesson was not very well learnt in Washington.
Truman, who, when he acted more on his own instincts than on the
advice of the State Department, presented a tough and, in this in
stance, successful approach to Stalin, had by no means entirely shaken
off the anti-British and pro-Russian advice and pressure he had in-

201

WIDENING CHASM

berited from Roosevelt. The Yugoslav forces left Trieste without
incident, and with a dignity that surprised British and American
observers. The dispute about Tito s regime, however, continued.
Twice Churchill wrote to Stalin complaining about the lack of
recognition of the fifty-fifty agreement that had been made in con
nection with that country: I must say that the way things have
worked out in Yugoslavia certainly does not give me the feeling of a
fifty-fifty interest as between our countries. Stalin complained of the
attitude of Field-Marshal Alexander, who was publicly referring to
Tito in derogatory terms. Stalin said that the Yugoslavs had played a
part in the war against Germany, and their territorial and consti
tutional wishes should be accepted. Churchill replied: We do not
see why we should be pushed about everywhere, especially by
people we have helped, and helped before you were able to make
any contact with them/* Meanwhile, the Tito regime, encouraged
by the Russians, and with but few gestures towards the royalist
opposition, consolidated its position with cynical disregard for
democratic processes. Of the thirty members of the Tito-Subasic
Government which had been formed in March under pressure from
Churchill and Stalin, only three were not closely associated with
Tito. In Vienna, too, the Russians were maintaining their awkward
ness. British and American missions, which had been allowed into
the city, were suffering intolerable restrictions. Even the Americans
were now beginning to question whether the decision to with
hold Patton s advance had been the right one.

Meanwhile, Hopkins visit to Moscow had ended in a blaze of
glory for the sickly but indefatigable American emissary. Not only
had Stalin agreed to admit, at long last, some non-Communists into
the Lublin Government, he had also confirmed his Yalta agreement
to join in on the war against Japan. He left no doubt in Hopkins
mind that Russia intended to attack Japan in August. He also agreed
to use his influence to promote unification of China under Chiang
Kai-shek. Hopkins cabled Truman: c He further stated that this
leadership should continue after the war because no one else was
strong enough. He specifically stated no Communist leader was
strong enough to unify China. What Hopkins did not know was
that Stalin, although still the source of ultimate decisions, was no
longer in a position of widespread power. Towards the end of the

* The message to Stalin from which this is taken is given in Triumph and Tragedy,
p. 488, but is not in the Moscow collection of the Churchill-Stalin correspondence. A
much milder note is substituted (No. 497). It may be that Churchill s note was, un
known to him, toned down hi London before dispatch.

202

THE IRON CURTAIN FALLS

war he had given over much of his time to the conduct of miEtary
matters. Now, in a thoroughly exhausted condition, he was slowly
becoming less active and more of a figure-head. Molotov was not
only in charge of foreign affairs, but was also taking increasing
responsibility for domestic matters as well. By the time of Yalta a
small group of men, mostly anti-MoIotov, had begun to have some
influence. One of them was the strangely titled Marshal Bulganin,
an unmilitary intellectual who had acquired his high rank without
ever having been in command of armed forces. Bulganin advocated
a new Soviet policy, differing in some respects from that of Molotov,
for the post-war world. Its main object was to prevent the creation of
an irresistible world bloc antagonistic to the USSR. Bulganin had
said in February: c As soon as the war is ended the USSR will be
subjected to encirclement; the countries in its zone of influence will
be torn from it one by one, thanks to the economic and financial
superiority of the USA. . . . Thus, despite its dazzling victory, the
USSR may very soon find itself in a very menaced position/
Among the measures he recommended to combat this were a
divided Germany and immediate Soviet control of all Russian-
occupied countries. The fact that this would undoubtedly increase
the likelihood of an anti-Soviet bloc, which he said was inevitable
anyway, was countered by the fact that without Germany and
Eastern Europe such a bloc would be weakened and well-cushioned
from Russia. To further weaken the anti-Soviet position it was
imperative to prevent the unification of China under Chiang Kai-
shek. These general theses had been adopted by the Politburo
before Hopkins arrival in Moscow. Stalin, well aware of all this,
was therefore engaging in idle talk with Truman s special emissary.
The old dictator, however, was not talking idly when he suggested
that the Allies had no need to insist on the unconditional surrender
of Japan. A modified surrender should be acceptable, he said, so long
as the destruction of Japanese military might was ensured.

With the questions of Poland, China and Russian entry into the
Japanese war apparently well on the way to being solved, Hopkins
returned to the United States in some triumph. It certainly looked
as if he had justified once and for all the American contention that
they could get on best with the Russians when left to themselves.
Churchill, having concurred with the proposals at the Stalin-Hopkins
talks ( for what they were worth ), sent a cable of hearty congratu
lations to the American a man whom he personally much admired.

Talks between the Chinese and the Russians now took place.

203

WITHDRAWAL OF

THE WESTERN POWERS,

July, 1945.

MILES
50 50 100

BoufwcT/ of Zones,
National Frontivs,l937,

S BELGIUM

I T A L

minister

PRUSSI

sh|f
Administered

WIDENING CHASM

Chiang Kai-shek, however, did not prove quite as obliging as the
Americans had hoped over the concessions to Russia that had been
agreed without his approval at Yalta; namely the questions of Port
Arthur, Dairen and Outer Mongolia. When the Chinese General
issimo requested American diplomatic help in the matter, Truman
curtly told him to reach complete understanding 5 with the Russians
forthwith. Stalin had hinted that Russia would be reluctant
to enter the Japanese war until the talks had been satisfactorily
concluded.

On the departure of Hopkins from Moscow, the Polish talks were
renewed with more hope of success than for many weeks. The
influential Micolajczyk went to Moscow, and he and others were
admitted to the Lublin Government despite the protestations of their
erstwhile friends in the London Polish Government.* According
to Harriman, they joined owing to their fears of what was happening
in Poland while they deliberated; fears so great that they were
prepared to accept any compromise in the hope of exerting some
influence for freedom of the individual and Polish independence
later on. After five months of constant arguing, during which the
Russians had fought every inch of the way, a Polish government that
bore some pretensions to a broad basis had therefore been formed
although elections were still not in sight. Having achieved this much,
Harriman now strongly recommended that the new government
should be recognized. Truman, deciding that c no useful purpose
would be served by further delay , informed Churchill that he
intended to recognize the Polish Government immediately.
Churchill, somewhat taken aback by the speed of events (for better
or worse things were moving much more rapidly under Truman
than under Roosevelt), asked for a delay in order to warn the Poles
in London, who had an army (mostly still in Italy) of 170,000, all of
whom would probably demand three months* salary upon disband-
ment. The unpleasant news was conveyed to the wretched remains
of the once-proud descendants of the 1939 Warsaw Government. On
July 5th, recognition was announced in Washington and London of
the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity.

The Potsdam conference was now being prepared, and Churchill
saw little reason in further international activity before the Big
Three met. The military and diplomatic advisers to the President,
however, were still pressing Truman to agree to withdrawal of US

* Micolajczyk s wife had just arrived in London, a number branded on her hand,
after her release from Oswiecim concentration camp; their son was at Harrow.

206

THE BRITISH GENERAL ELECTION

troops to the occupation zone in Germany before the conference. It
seemed to them that the United States ought to go to the conference
table with a clean record of having fulfilled all her obligations. In
that way the goodwill of the Russians would be procured. Churchill
still clung to the opposite view. He felt that Russian actions in
Europe since the zones had been drawn up had created an entirely
different situation; no action should be taken until matters of differ
ence with the Russians had been straightened out. Truman,
however, heeded his own advisers rather than the voluble English
statesman. Churchill wrote to the President: I view with profound
misgivings the retreat of the American Army to our line of occupa
tion in the central sector, thus bringing Soviet power into the heart
of Western Europe and the descent of an iron curtain between us and
everything to the eastward. I hoped that this retreat, if it has to be
made, would be accompanied by the settlement of many great
things which would be the true foundation of world peace. Nothing
really important has been settled yet, and you and I will have to bear
great responsibility for the future/ The British forces in Germany
were not as concerned as were the Americans, but they, too, occupied
some of the Russian Zone. Churchill was presented with a fait
accompli. As always in 1945, the British, who found themselves in a
totally different position in the world of power politics than that in
w r hich they had been before the war, followed the American example.
Churchill, in one of his most sombre messages, told Truman:
Obviously we are obliged to conform to your decision. He made it
plain that he was convinced that a grave error had been made. He
has written: Thus in the moment of victory was our best, and what
might prove to have been our last, chance of durable world peace
allowed composedly to fade away. 5 Churchill s agreement was
received with amazement in Washington, where, according to
Leahy, it had been entirely unexpected.

The evacuation began on July ist. American trucks rolled back
along the roads up which they had come less than three months
previously, watched from the roadside by the great mass of trudging
refugees who were on the move westwards once more.

(viii)

In Britain, the General Election got under way during the first week
of June, although party politics had been returning to the boil before

207

WIDENING CHASM

that. On the whole, in the constituencies, it was a quiet election.
There was a widespread feeling that in the Japanese war there was a
task still unfinished. Nearly all observers remarked on the thought-
fulness of the electorate, the willingness to listen and the desire to
question intelligently at local meetings. Morrison wrote: Their
silence was remarkable. It was not the silence of lethargy but the
quietness of thoughtfulness. Dalton noted an identical mood: There
was much evidence of a serious mind among the electors and of a
thoughtful interest in many questions; much more thoughtful and
intelligent than before the war/ But in the national area it was far
from quiet, and characterized by bitterness unusual in Britain even
at election time. It came as a surprise to many people to realize that
the fount of this bitterness was the speeches of the Prime Minister
himself, who had been so anxious to preserve the front of national
unity; now he was in the forefront of violent and unpleasant
exchanges although many believed he was acting on the advice of
Beaverbrook and Bracken. These two men had great influence over
the conduct of the campaign, especially the former, who revelled in
a fight. Certainly Churchill was preoccupied with preparations for
the conference at Potsdam, and was unable to give full attention to
the direction of the Conservative Party s campaign. His lieutenant,
Anthony Eden, was ill and was unable to take much part in the
election. Churchill was annoyed at the Labour decision to leave the
Coalition, which he took as a personal affront; above all, he was
tired.

Broadcasting played an important part in the election. The first
and last broadcasts in the campaign, on June 4th and June 30th,
were made by the Prime Minister. The country listened to the
famous voice that had so recently been the unchallenged, authentic
voice of Britain, in its renewed partisan role, with some discomfort.
It seemed indecent to hear Winston Churchill talk of Labour
leaders almost as he had once spoken of the Nazis. The opening
broadcast was controversial to a degree. He said that a Socialist
policy was inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism; liberty in all
its forms was challenged by the fundamental concepts of Socialism.
A Socialist state could not afford to suffer opposition; a free parlia
ment \was odious to the Socialist doctrinaire. No Socialist system
could be established without a political police, and such a system
would therefore have to fall back on some form of Gestapo.

The word Gestapo 5 reverberated through the country. It was
heard with astonishment. Only the most die-hard and single-

208

THE BRITISH GENERAL ELECTION

minded Conservatives were able to believe Churchill s long list of
warnings. For during the war there had been a great leavening of the
classes; men from all walks of life had fought side by side. Service
men listened to Churchill and wondered. They listened to Con
servative charges that Harold Laski had advocated achieving
Socialism by violence.* They listened, too, to the level tones of Mr
Attlee, who spoke quietly and in calculated contrast to Churchill
about the Labour Party s policy for the post-war age, Morrison
insisted that this policy should be presented with complete honesty;
there were to be no bones about it, the Party was offering unadulter
ated Socialism. He has said: *My feelings in drafting the programme
were inspired by one major factor: the changed nature of the elec
torate. I knew that victory would go to the party which recognized

and served this mature and thoughtful public The very honesty

and simplicity of the campaign helped enormously. We had not been
afraid to be frank about our plans. While the Conservatives,
following Churchill s lead, hit hard, the Labour candidates played a
more muted note; their programme spoke for itself. Morrison him
self was perhaps the hardest-hitting of the Labour Party leaders. In
a broadcast he attacked c private enterprise as Churchill had done
Socialism. He said the election was about whether *the speculators,
the buccaneer barons of Fleet Street, the sluggish leaders of big-
business monopolies and cartels, are to sit comfortably on the
backs of the people for another shameful period of national
decline . Attlee s speeches were calmer, patiently appealing to reason.
He refused to be drawn by Churchill s charges, on one occasion
going so far as to say that they were not really the Prime Minister s
own words at all: The voice we heard last night was that of Mr
Churchill, but the mind was that of Lord Beaverbrook.* Ernest
Bevin, apparently appalled by the whole business, refused to take
much notice of what he called these libels on our party . Unable to
draw the Labour leaders, Churchill s speeches became more and
more far-fetched. Men like Cripps and Morrison, he said, would use
a Labour majority to stifle or curtail the right of Parliament. The
Labour leaders themselves were not personally concerned about
these serious charges; they knew Churchill of old. Morrison, Dalton
and others later put down the whole affair to political simulation,
which it certainly was, inspired and directed by the Conservative
hierarchy. But the country at large was amazed. Similar accusations
to those voiced by Churchill were displayed in the popular Daily

* Laski lost a libel action about this assertion in November 1 946.

20Q

WIDENING CHASM

Express^ while the Daily Mirror evolved a clever slogan for the
Labour cause from a reader s letter: Vote For Him! This catch-
phrase undoubtedly influenced a large number of women voters
whose husbands were in the Forces overseas. Another Labour
slogan was: You Can t Trust the Tories. The Conservative campaign
was crude and confident; that of Labour was shrewd and careful.

What few people noticed were the many similarities in botA
parties programmes; the prosecution of the war against Japan, close
co-operation with the United States and the USSR to further the
United Nations Organization, the maintenance of the Common
wealth, Indian self-government, emergency measures for housing
needs, the expansion of exports, and the resettlement of servicemen
and women all these figured prominently on the programmes of
both the major parties. The main issue was nationalization, and
most other things were forgotten. Churchill tried to present his
Government as a National one, not as Conservative.* *I shall stand
myself as a Conservative and National candidate, he said on the
radio. There was much talk by the Liberals of a Liberal
Revival . The Liberal Party, which was backed by a 200,000
fighting fund, was hampered by a lack of active support from the
younger generation, it was elbowed out of the contest. The party
laid much stress on the plan for social security and full employment,
supported by all parties, but which had been elaborated by Sir
William Beveridge, who was a leading Liberal. While the two major
parties were allotted ten broadcasts each, the Liberals were only
allowed four. But however handicapped they were by this fact, they
were entirely discounted as being of any influence when their
leader, Sir Archibald Sinclair, in a broadcast on June I3th, went to
laborious lengths to plead that the election was not just a private
fight between Conservatives and Socialists; from then on everyone
knew that indeed it was.

In the constituencies the hasily improvised or rejuvenated party
organizations fought an election that in many ways was different to
any other that had occurred before. Many regulations were still in
force. For the first time in history candidates had to be rationed for
the paper with which to conduct their campaigns; one ton of paper
for each candidate in a constituency of 40,000 voters, with a propor
tionate increase for electorates over 40,000. One of the chief prob
lems was that a vast migration of population had taken place in the
recently past years; there had never been anything like it in Britain,

*i.e. descended from Baldwin s National Government of 1935.

210

THE BRITISH GENERAL ELECTION

traditionally a country of parochial people, before. Conscription,
evacuation from bombed towns and cities, direction of industrial and
agricultural labour, and the establishment of munitions factories in
new areas all combined to baffle the political experts and organ
izers. A total of 1,683 candidates was nominated for the 640 seats;
622 Conservatives and supporters, 603 Labour, 307 Liberal,
twenty-three Common Wealth (the party led by Sir Richard
Adand), twenty-one Communists, and assorted Welsh, Scottish and
Irish Nationalists, and Independents. About one-third were
servicemen (or recent ex-servicemen); only eighty-eight were
women. The chief surprise was the appearance of an Independent
to oppose Mr Churchill at Woodford.

One of the most publicized features of the election was the tour
the Prime*Minister made from London to Scotland, stopping at
many places en route, and during which he made over forty speeches.
Everywhere he went he was received by rapturous crowds, a fact
which caused some dismay to the Labour officials. But it was the
progress of a triumphant national hero, one of the most popular and
well-loved in British history, not of a party political leader. Through
the Midlands, Lancashire and Yorkshire he went, and on into
Scotland; everywhere he raised his fingers in his familiar Victory
sign, everywhere he was seen to be smoking one of his enormous
cigars. The cheering was so great and so continuous that few could
hear what he had to say; even fewer cared. A similar tour in London
was less rapturous. At an open-air rally at Walthamstow Stadium,
attended by nearly 20,000 people, the Prime Minister was subjected
to heavy heckling. At Lewisham, where Morrison was standing, his
reference to the insinuations of local Conservatives that the Home
Office (Morrison had been Home Secretary) had not acted as
promptly as it might have done during some of Lewisham s bombing
disasters, was greeted with shouting and jeers.* Morrison had
deliberately chosen to stand at Lewisham, regarded as one of the
country s safest Conservative strongholds, in an extraordinary show
of confidence. Churchill himself, who in the past had not been averse
to the cut and thrust of political life, was not enjoying the election.
He wrote: Strenuous motor tours to the greatest cities of England
and Scotland, with two or three speeches a day to enormous and, it
seemed, enthusiastic crowds, and, above all, four laboriously

* This accusation caused a personal rift between Churchill and Morrison; it was
satisfactorily healed some months later. Despite the apparent bitterness of the campaign,
this was one of the very few instances in which personal relationships were affected.

211

WIDENING CHASM

prepared broadcasts, consumed my time and strength. All the while
I felt that much we had fought for in our long struggle in Europe
was slipping away and that the hopes of an early and lasting peace
were receding. The days were passed amid the clamour of multi
tudes, and when at night, tired out, I got back to my headquarters*
train, where a considerable staff and all the incoming telegrams
awaited me, I had to toil for many hours. The incongruity of party
excitement and clatter with the sombre background which filled my
mind was in itself an affront to reality and proportion.

The campaign reached its peak over the question of Attlee s
authority and responsibility at Potsdam, Harold Laski had raised the
point that the Labour Party could not be committed to decisions
arrived at by the conference, even if Attlee were present, as the con
ference would be discussing matters not yet considered by the Labour
Party executive (of which he was chairman). This statement of
LaskTs, made without consultation with Attlee the two Labour men
did not get on well together seemed to cast some doubt on where
power ky in the Labour Party: with the party leader or with Harold
Laski. At any rate, the Conservatives, sensing a valuable debating
point, immediately began to voice this doubt. Churchill referred to
Attlee as the titular Socialist leader*. He said that Laski c has re
minded all of us, including Mr Attlee, that the final determination of
all questions of foreign policy rests with this dominating Socialist
executive 3 . In his final broadcast he spoke of the revelation that the
chairman of the national executive committee should have the right
to ky down the law to the publicly proclaimed leader of the Labour
Party*. Attlee was more annoyed with Laski than with Churchill. He
asserted that: The chairman has not the power to give me instruc
tions.* The debate continued in the columns of the Press, in the
form of a correspondence between Churchill and Attlee. Despite the
kte arrival of Churchill s letters, Attlee always contrived to get his
answer in the same day s newspaper, which even the Conservative
newspapers were perforce obliged to print in full. He argued in the
restrained and reasoned tones that he had maintained throughout the
election. One of the features of the election had been Attlee s
touring the country in his own car with his wife driving; this
unostentatious method of travel had contrasted brilliantly with the
entourage that, of necessity, accompanied Churchill. Attlee noted
with satisfaction that his modest travelling arrangements were given
a great deal of prominence in the Press*.
The election was closely followed in the United States; more so

212

THE BRITISH GENERAL ELECTION

perhaps than any previous British election. The campaigning
received a great deal of space in the American Press. The general
opinion was that Churchill would win, although many commen
tators felt that an autumn election would have suited the Conserva
tives better. The New York Daily News, which had been extremely
critical of some of the Prime Minister s political statements in the
past, said: We would say that if he and his party do not win this
election there is no gratitude in England. He has steered Great
Britain through its most perilous passage since Napoleonic times/
The Detroit Free Press said that Churchill had placed his country
men under a greater debt than they have owed to any man since
William Pitt the Elder . The Cleveland Plain Dealer said: Perhaps at
no time since we achieved our independence has a British General
Election been as worthy of wide American interest. The British
Labour Party [has] presented a platform which, if approved by the
British electorate, would make the United Kingdom virtually a
Socialist State and leave the United States the lone remaining
powerful capitalist democracy in the world. On an international level
a Labour Party victory would seem at first to make for close relations
between Russia and Britain, which might very well leave the United
States politically isolated/ The St Louis Globe Democrat gave as its
opinion that it would be a calamity if the man who rallied the world
to fight Hitler is rejected now by his own people . On the radio
William L. Shirer said: c lt is not surprising that Churchill decided to
have an election immediately when the Coalition refused to carry on
till the end of the Japanese war. But Labour is accusing Churchill of
having a rush election similar to the Khaki Election after the last

war. ... I do not see how Churchill can lose this election We can

scarcely criticize Britain for holding it when we held ours in the
heat of battle. One of the few more cautious notes was sounded in
the Wall Street Journal, which printed the headline: Churchill may
squeak through in British vote despite trend to Left.

It was with some relief that Britain went to the Poll on July 5th.
Many of the politicians were able to relax for the first time in six
years, as the servicemen s votes were collected in the three-week
interval before the count and declaration. The country returned to
the war effort. The mood of election fever died away. There was
nothing to do but work and wait; the country had made its decision,
but no one knew how. Winston Churchill, thoroughly exhausted,
went to south-west France for a short holiday before going straight
to the Potsdam conference.

2*3

WIDENING CHASM

(ix)

The Potsdam conference lasted from July i7th to August 2nd, with
a brief interruption from July 26th-28th while the British delegation
returned to London for the result of the General Election. The three
delegations were quartered in large mansions in the not inaptly
named town of Babelsberg, about twelve miles south-east of Berlin
in a wooded area on the way to Potsdam. The President s quarters
were No. 2 Kaiser Strasse, which had formerly been the residence of
a leading film producer; the producer s wife now served the American
party. As all the large houses in Russian-occupied Germany had
been stripped of their furnishings, the houses for the delegation, and
the palace at Cetilienhof near by where the meetings were to take
place, had to be entirely refitted. This had been done, and conditions
were an improvement on those at Yalta earlier in the year, although,
owing to bad water, all three delegations suffered abominably from
diarrhoea. The atmosphere throughout the conference was more
strained than it had been on the Crimea or at Tehran in 1943.
Truman, although by now full of confidence and in command of his
job, was uncomfortable. He did not enjoy all the fuss that went with
a President of the United States travelling abroad; as he said: I had
always been in the habit of making my own travelling arrangements
buying my own railroad tickets carrying my own bags. He tried
hard to achieve the same cordiality with Stalin and Churchill as his
predecessor had done, joking with them and entertaining them on
the piano* But Churchill, who was impressed with Truman s
Obvious power of decision , was disillusioned with the Russians, and
to a lesser extent the Americans, and was vaguely depressed through
out. He knew Truman s inexperience gave him the chance to snatch
leadership of the West for Britain and present the Russians with a
tougher line, but he knew, too, that Britain, economically and
financially weak, depended on the goodwill and support of America.
He, too, tried hard to recapture the conviviality of old, but, some
how, without one of the founder members of what he had always
liked to look on as the world s most exclusive club, things were not
the same. Stalin, also, missed T.D.R. ; he was strangely subdued, in
comparison with the previous conferences. He suffered a minor
heart attack shortly before the conference was due to begin, and was
thus late in arriving. When he did so, he tried to capture a grandeur

214

THE POTSDAM CONFERENCE

and style befitting the occasion of a victorious meeting by turning up
in an ornate railway carriage that had been used by the Czar and
had been kept in a museum ever since. Because of his health he
was unable to show off his drinking abilities, and had to confine
himself to sips of wine; this made him irritable. General Hollis
recalled: c ln the eighteen months since Teheran his hair had gone
as white as the tunic he wore/ During the conference sessions,
however, he was his usual courteous and unruffled self. The
emergence of Bulganin as a policy-maker, and of other members of
the Politburo, made it possible for him to leave day-to-day matters
in the Soviet delegation to the many hands only too anxious to
relieve him. Molotov continued to behave with arrogant indepen-
dpnce, and once again the State Department officials were convinced
that Stalin was not always being given the full story. Occasionally,
when approached direct, Stalin would agree to something that had
been blocked by Molotov at Foreign Ministers meetings. At
Potsdam, Molotov, known as Molly to the Western delegates, did a
great deal of the talking at the conference table. There was some
indication that Molotov, Vyshinski and their advisers were intoxi
cated by their recent diplomatic successes and their exciting
victory over Germany. Their attitude at the conference table, in
contrast to that at Yalta, was often openly teasing or hostile. The
new Secretary of State, James F. Byrnes, found Vyshinski particu
larly implacable ( he sits across the table looking at you with his cold,
grey, piercing eyes ).

Russo-British relations had deteriorated to such an extent that
even the old convivial rivalry of Stalin and Churchill was dimmed.
American policy was still much the same as it had been under
Roosevelt; to steer a middle course, to make the most of the un
precedented conditions to secure the trust of the Soviets, and to
build a permanent and satisfactory relationship with them, even if it
meant concessions to them and friction with Britain. Byrnes three
chief advisers, Bohlen, Cohen and Matthews, had all enjoyed
influence under the Roosevelt regime. Byrnes has stated that the
words of Roosevelt s last message to Churchill were still fresh in
the minds of the American delegation; he also says that at the time
the Soviet Union benefited from a feeling of more goodwill in the
United States than any other country probably enjoyed. Truman s
influence, however, resulted in a slight hardening towards the
Russians.

Truman quickly summed up the two other men. He was impressed

215

WIDENING CHASM

with Churchill, perhaps a little overawed by his reputation. He liked
to sit and listen to Churchill talk, and the Prime Minister was a man
who was always happy to talk. He was also relieved to find that
Stalin was quite human. He was surprised at the Marshal s short
stature, noticing with some satisfaction that when the two of them
stood together to have their photograph taken Stalin took care to
stand on one step higher (not much escaped the eyes of the man
from Missouri). He found Stalin "extremely polite .

At the first private lunch of Churchill and Truman the Prime
Minister did a great deal of talking. Churchill always liked plenty of
time to develop his theme to his own satisfaction, and Truman,
feeling his ground, was at this point willing to accommodate him.
Churchill pointed out that Britain, as a result of her effort during the
war, was in a dire financial position; a great deal of her foreign
investments had been sold; there was an external debt of some
thousands of million pounds. Truman, without making any
promises about Lend-Lease, said he appreciated the sacrifice
Britain had made and would do his best for her.

At a dinner attended only by Stalin, Churchill and the inter
preters, Stalin tried to reassure the Prime Minister about Soviet
ambitions. He said he was personally against Sovietization of the
countries occupied by the Red Army; he insisted that they would all
have free elections. He spoke of the continuity of Russian policy; if
anything were to happen to him, there would be a good man to step
into his shoes. Churchill complained once more about Yugoslavia,
referring to the fifty-fifty arrangement that had been made concern
ing that country. Stalin said that Russia also had not got its 50 per
cent; often he did not know what Tito was going to do. They then
spoke about Germany. They agreed that the danger from the Ger
mans was that they were like sheep, and Stalin recounted his
favourite story, which he had told Churchill before, about the time
in Germany in 1907 when he had seen 200 Germans miss a Com
munist meeting because there was no one at the station barrier to
take their railway tickets.

Although there were the usual number of private lunch and dinner
parties (on one occasion Truman ate two lunches on the same
day; first with Churchill, then with Stalin), to say nothing of the
banquets, they played less part in the conference than hitherto.
With a new member of the club, it was not so easy to divide up the
world with such informality without some awkwardness; besides,
Marshal Stalin was no longer the potentate he had once been.

216

THE POTSDAM CONFERENCE

Perhaps the most extraordinary event at any of the banquets was
when the formidable Generalissimo jumped to his feet and went
round the table collecting autographs on his menu-card, much to the
astonishment of all the Western guests.

One such behind-the-scenes meeting, however, was very impor
tant. On July iTth the message Babies satisfactorily born* had
arrived at the American delegation s headquarters; it signified that
an atomic bomb had been exploded in New Mexico. The explosion
had taken place at 5.30 a.m. on July i6th, about thirty-five miles
from the village of Carrizozo, the 1,500 inhabitants of which had
been awakened in terror by a sudden intense lighting of the early
morning, followed nearly two minutes later by an enormous roar.
Observers had been stationed twenty miles from the hundred-foot
tower on which the bomb had been mounted, and, half-blinded
despite thick goggles, most were convinced they had been far too
near. Up till that moment there had been many who had doubted the
success of this project, which had cost the United States vast sums of
money. About 100,000 persons were employed, under the direction of
General Leslie R. Groves, by what was known as the Manhattan
Engineer District, with its tentacles at the vast plant at Oak Ridge,
in Tennessee, at a disused stadium field in Chicago (where in
December 1942 Enrico Fermi, an Italian refugee, had set off the
first controlled nuclear reaction in a squash court), at Harford, in
Washington, and especially at the enormous plant which stretched
across the New Mexican desert at Los Alamos. At the latter,
assembled under the direction of a thin young theoretician named J.
Robert Oppenheimer, were the finest physicists in the world; men
like Fermi, Niels Bohr, Hans Bethe, Otto Frisch, James Chadwick;
most of them had (or would shortly have) the Nobel Prize. Never
before had there been a gathering comparable to them. They had
worked, not in scientific abstract (as some have tried to claim), but
on the distinct problem of producing a bomb of incredible destruc
tive power.

More from an enormous relief that the success of the test meant
vindication of the administration in spending this fortune than from
any other reason, there was considerable excitement and jubilation
among the American delegation at Potsdam. It had been agreed by
Roosevelt and Churchill years before that neither Britain nor
America should use an atom bomb without the consent of the other,
and Churchill was immediately informed and the strategic impli
cations discussed. It was at this Anglo-American conference that

217

WIDENING CHASM

Truman, having heard all of the argument for using the bomb but
not all of the argument against its use, agreed that it was to be used
at an early date against Japan. British consent to use the bomb had
already been given on July 4th, and thus the final decision rested
with Truman alone. Neither President nor Prime Minister was
aware of the exact nature of the bomb, although their scientific
advisers had done their best to explain it to them, and neither was
able to envisage much more about it except that it was a giant bomb
capable of enormous destruction. It was immediately realized that
with this new weapon the whole situation in the Japanese war was
changed. In the first place, the Americans, and to a lesser extent the
British, would very likely be able to avoid the terrible slaughter to
their own troops that an invasion of the Japanese mainland implied.
The casualties at Okinawa had been very much in Truman s
thoughts. Secondly, it was no longer necessary to cajole the Russians
to enter the war against Japan, and thus the Russians had at a stroke
lost their best bargaining power. The decision lay with the President
as whether or not to use the new weapon. It does not seem to have
occurred to anyone that the decision could be anything but in the
affirmative; after all, the bomb had cost two and a half billion
dollars. Churchill has said of this secret meeting at Potsdam: The
decision . . . was never even an issue. There was unanimous, auto
matic, unquestioned agreement around our table; nor did I ever
hear the slightest suggestion that we should do otherwise. * There
had, in fact, been considerable pressure to do otherwise in the
United States, but Churchill would not have known of this. Britain,
which had played an all-important part in initial research for the
atom bomb, had, even before Pearl Harbour, agreed to combine in
development of the bomb with the United States in America.
British scientists like Chadwick, John Cockcroft, William Penney
and M. L. E. Oliphant had gone to America with their secrets.
Since then, to Churchill s extreme chagrin, the United States had
been clamping down on information about the bomb to Britain in a
rather dubious interpretation of the original Churchill-Roosevelt
agreement on the subject. This had been yet another cause of Anglo-
American mistrust and bitterness, minor only in the sense that so
few people knew about it. Because of this the Anglo-American
atomic committee was unworkable, with the British demanding
information and the Americans refusing to give it. As early as 1943

* At least two present at the conference, Eisenhower and Leahy, were against using
the bomb.

218

THE POTSDAM CONFERENCE

Churchill had complained to Hopkins: The War Department is
asking us to keep them informed of our experiments while refusing
altogether any information about theirs. 7 Although some informa
tion was granted on a military-need-to-know basis , there was a
complete clamp down on peaceful and post-war applications. To the
British, whose scientists had pkyed a more important role than
those of any other nation, and who had volunteered to part with
their secrets for the common cause on the distinct understanding
that there would be full collaboration between the two nations, this
attitude was infuriating and dishonourable. At length the main
source of British information was through the Canadians, who had
been brought into the secret as being the possessors of almost the
only available uranium (discovered by a French-Canadian from
Haileybury, Ontario, in 1930). After years of this squabbling (the
background of which was not known to Truman), Churchill was
somewhat disgusted by the whole affair, and had pretty well
washed his hands of the whole business.*

The main question at Potsdam was what to do about the Russians,
Truman decided to casually inform the Generalissimo that the
United States had a bomb of exceptional and unusual power and
to leave it at that. It was also decided to convey an ultimatum to the
Japanese calling for an immediate unconditional surrender of
Japanese armed forces; Churchill and Stalin had suggested forgoing
surrender so long as the Allies could obtain this in fact if not
in so many words, but the President and the US Chiefs of Staff
could not agree to this. The ultimatum was published on July 26th.
It contained the pregnant sentence: The might that now con
verges on Japan is immeasurably greater than that which, when
applied to the resisting Nazis, necessarily laid waste the lands, the
industry and the methods of life of the whole German people.
After one of the plenary sessions, when they were walking out to
their cars, Truman mentioned the new weapon to Stalin. Stalin
seemed pleased, but asked no more about it, much to the President s
relief. Churchill sidled up to the President while they were waiting
for their cars and asked how it had gone. He never asked a question,
Truman replied. As it happened, Stalin felt he had no need to ask
questions, as he knew about the bomb already through the extensive
Soviet espionage system in the United States and Canada (including
Klaus Fuchs, who was a senior member of the Manhattan group,

* Truman later agreed that British scientists had initiated the project and were
contributing much of the original atomic data*.

219

WIDENING CHASM

Harry Gold and David Greenglass; Nunn May was also active at
this time). The expert opinion in the USSR was that the American
attempt to produce an atomic weapon would not succeed.

Such was the background to the Potsdam conference.

At the first proper session of the conference, Truman was in
vited by the other two leaders to take the chair. Almost immediately
the lack of agreement that was to characterize the conference began
to emerge. The United States wanted Italy to be allowed to join
the United Nations, but Churchill protested that Britain, on her
own, had fought Italy in a desperate struggle in North Africa, and the
British people were not yet ready to forget that. The Russians, more
over, were determined that no favour should be granted to Italy
that was not acceded Rumania, Bulgaria and Hungary. The Anglo-
Americans, on the other hand, insisted that no agreements could be
reached about these countries until Western Press representatives
were allowed in, and until some gesture had been made about the
large amount of British and American-owned capital in the Ruman
ian oil-fields which had been confiscated by the Russians. The
Americans, however, put forward a plan to set up a Council of the
Foreign Ministers of Britain, France, China, the USSR and the
United States to draft the peace treaties and settle boundaries.
Neither Churchill nor Stalin was happy about this; Churchill pre
ferring to thrash out matters first in the Big Three meetings,
and Stalin objecting to the inclusion of China. However, they
eventually agreed, and an increasing number of subjects concerning
.the enemy countries were passed on to the Foreign Ministers. As
session succeeded session, very little seemed to be getting settled.
Churchill and Stalin argued and bantered for hours on end, not
always on points on the agenda, and Truman, with hidden but
increasing impatience, tried to speed things up. The President,
whose previous experience of such affairs had been restricted to the
more mercurial world of domestic American politics, and who was
not imbued with the leisurely patience of the patrician as his prede
cessor had been, became increasingly edgy.

Stalin raised the question of Spain. Franco had recently approached
Churchill with the suggestion that their two countries should join
forces to promote a Western alliance against Russia; Churchill
had sent a frosty reply, a copy of which he had sent to Stalin.
The Russians now demanded the outlawing of Spain. The Anglo-
Americans, while expressing a distaste for the Franco regime, flatly
refused to do anything about it. This appeared to be a defeat for the

220

THE POTSDAM CONFERENCE

Russians, but it was customary at conferences for them to raise
matters in which they did not expect to succeed in order to be able
to demand concessions on other matters the success of which con
cerned them much more. When the discussion turned to Yugoslavia,
and Churchill and Stalin continued their well-worn arguments,
Truman at last exploded. He said that he did not wish to waste
time listening to grievances. If they did not get to the main issues
he intended packing up and going home. Nothing quite like it
had ever happened at a meeting of The Club before. Stalin said
that he would like to go home, too.

There were informal discussions between the Americans and
British on the question of Palestine. Truman told the British, who
had for long recognized Jewish ambitions in that territory, that he
favoured as many Jews as possible being allowed to enter it; but he
had no desire to send American troops to maintain peace there.

The arguing and squabbling at Babelsberg continued. There
seemed to be nothing on which the three powers could agree. What
annoyed Truman was Russian intransigence and British volubility.
Churchill s policy was to put decisions off till after the election
result was known, and then, if he returned, to bring matters to a
head and have a show-down with the Russians (in the event, it was
the Americans who had to bring matters to a head), In the American
camp, even among Byrnes staff, there seemed to be a growing
awareness that the curtain that Churchill had mentioned was in
deed falling.

As far as the public were concerned, the main question settled
at Potsdam was what to do about Germany, although this had, in
fact, been largely agreed on before the conference met. The four
zones were formally set up; disarmament and demilitarization of
Germany was to be carried out; all Nazi and quasi-Nazi associ
ations were to be abolished c in such a manner as permanently to
prevent the revival or reorganization of German militarism ; all
Nazi laws which established discrimination were to be abolished;
the judicial and educational systems in Germany were to be re
moulded.^ was stated that: It is the intention of the Allies that the
German people be given the opportunity to prepare for the eventual
reconstruction of their life on a democratic and peaceful basis. If
their own efforts are steadily directed to this end, it will be possible
for them in due course to take their place among the free and peace
ful peoples of the world. It was also agreed that Nazi criminals,
including leaders, supporters and high officials, were to be brought

221

WIDENING CHASM

to judgment; the stage for the Nuremberg trials was thus set,
despite the warnings and advice given by Churchill at Yalta, where
he had suggested immediate execution without formal trials.

Other points of discussion were Iran, where the Russians
demanded an Anglo-American withdrawal (it was agreed that Allied
troops should leave Tehran), and Syria and Lebanon. With regard
to the latter countries, Churchill said it was impossible to withdraw
British troops because that would result in the undoubted massacre
of all French civilians in the area; Stalin withdrew his demand.
There was also a discussion about Vienna, where the British and
Americans were at last installed. Churchill complained that the
half-million Viennese in the British zone could not be fed because
the feeding grounds of the city lay to the east, and the Russians
there were clamping down an unnatural barrier. Stalin promised to
look into the matter. There was also the question of the Black Sea
Straits. The Russians wanted their own fortifications in that area in
order to protect their approach to the Mediterranean. Churchill and
Truman protested that they could not agree to such an affront to
Turkish sovereignty, but they both supported an internationally
guaranteed freedom of the Straits. In this argument, Molotov had
blandly referred to Russo-Turkish treaties of 1805 and 1833.
Churchill made the point that Britain, though her losses had been
terrible, was not expecting any gain out of the war; but the Russian
delegation was not interested in British scruples, and asked for, and
got, the East Prussian port of Konigsberg (already occupied by the
Red Army).

The two main issues of the conference were the questions of
reparations and of the Polish boundaries. The former controversy,
which had been studied by a three-power committee in Moscow
after the Yalta conference with no agreement, dragged on day after
day. Russia demanded a great deal, and the American objection
was that it was evident that they had already taken a great deal.
Churchill was prepared to barter and bargain, but the Russians, it
seemed, would never be satisfied. Stalin now demanded one-third
of the German merchant and naval fleet. Molotov insisted on the
original Yalta demand of 50 per cent of total reparations to go
to the USSR, and still stuck to the sum of ten billion dollars in
kind. The American delegation was not at all keen on the reparatibns
idea; after the First World War the United States had provided
Germany with loans which had been used to buy raw materials
which had then been converted into goods offered as reparations

222

THE POTSDAM CONFERENCE

America was not anxious to repeat the performance. Molotov admit
ted to Byrnes that a great deal of material, including even domestic
household goods, had already been taken away to Russia; but he in-
sisted on a definite figure for more formal and official reparations.
Without any prior and definite policy on the matter, the Anglo-
Americans hedged and postponed a decision.

Another difficult problem was the Polish frontier; difficult to the
Anglo-Americans but not to the Russians, who had presented thdr
allies with zfait accompli. It had been agreed at Yalta that Russia
should advance her western frontier to the Curzon Line, and it had
been recognized that Poland, in turn, should receive as consolation a
chunk of Germany. The only question was how much of Germany
should Poland receive. The Anglo-Americans had said as far as the
Eastern Neisse, but the Russians insisted on the Western Neisse.
The Red Army was now in control of the entire area, and the new
Polish Government was claiming land up to the Western Neisse.
Churchill was particularly disturbed, as he knew that much of this
area was inhabited by Germans; he knew they would have to be
moved in a mass migration. He also believed that: One day the
Germans would want their territory back/ Molotov and Stalin,
however, were absolutely adamant in claiming that there were no
Germans left in the area; they had all fled before the Red Annies.
The area was important for feeding the Poles and the Russian
troops; there was nobody left to cultivate the land except the Poles,
and the Poles had therefore poured in without the Russians being
able to stop them. There was nothing Churchill could say, and he
tried hard, that would make either Molotov or Stalin deviate from
this somewhat unlikely story. Churchill was disinclined to believe
it, and Truman s opinion was that the Russians had either killed
off all the Germans in the area or had forced them into the western
zones. Stalin insisted that not a single German remained in the area .
As for the resulting difficulties of the population of West and Central
Germany, who had formerly greatly relied on these important agri
cultural lands, Stalin said lie did not mind creating difficulties for
the Germans. If the East Germans had to supply the West Germans
with farm produce, then the West Germans ought to supply the
East Germans with coal from the Ruhr. Churchill said that Britain
was acutely short of coal, but was exporting to Holland, Belgium
and France. Stalin said that the situation in Russia was even worse
than that in Britain. He suggested passing the matter on, as so much
else, to the Foreign Ministers, but Churchill would not agree to this,

223

WIDENING CHASM

arguing that in the meantime the Poles would be settling themselves
in. He asked for the leading figures of the Polish Government to
come to the conference at once.

This was arranged, and two days later Churchill met the Polish
President, Bierut. In a private talk he gave the Polish leader what
amounted to a thorough telling-off. He pointed out that Britain
had taken a great interest in Poland, which had cost her much.
The British people now expected that there would be free and un
fettered elections in Poland, and that the Poles would not cause a
rupture between the Allies by demanding too much territory.
Bierut protested that Poland was going to develop along the lines of
Western democracy; that the Russian Army was leaving Poland;
that there was no attempt to suppress religions; that elections in
Poland would be even more democratic than British elections.

The Russian delegation had meanwhile demanded that all the
assets and armed forces of the old emigre government in London
should now be transferred to the new Provisional Polish Govern
ment. Churchill agreed that this would be done, but he asked for
time. The British Government, he pointed out, was in a delicate
situation. The Poles had 20,000,000 in gold frozen in Britain and
Canada, and this had not been touched during the war. The British
Government had paid for the army, diplomatic service and other
expenditure of the exiled government. It had cost Britain about
120,000,000; they had even paid the three months salary due to
the government employees in London.* The Polish Army, of
180,000 men, now in Italy and Germany, was in a highly excited
state. They did not like what was happening to their country. If the
Polish Government could make their country more attractive, then,
Churchill said, he would be better able to persuade these men to
return to their own country.

When the news was leaked that Poland had been represented at
the Potsdam conference, de Gaulle and the French were by no
means pleased.

On July 25th Churchill and Attlee returned to London for the
result of the election, and the conference was adjourned. It was
confidently expected by most delegates that Churchill would return
alone; few people had taken much notice of Attlee in his unusual
position of holding a watching-brief at the conference. Stalin told
Churchill that all his information, from Communist and other

m * Churchill s figure was a little high. The Poles agreed to pay 13,000,000 of this sum
in instalments; in December 1962 ^4,000,000 was still outstanding.

22 4

THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT

sources, confirmed that the Conservatives would be returned with a
majority of about eighty.

(x)

ChurchilFs wife met him at Northolt Airport, and after a quiet
family dinner the Prime Minister went to bed confident that the
results which would begin coming in the following morning would
keep him in power. He based his view on the assurance of his party
advisers. Just before dawn, however, he woke with a sudden start
of almost physical pain, convinced that he was beaten. Late in the
morning he went to the Map Room, where the staff had prepared a
complicated chart to illustrate and analyse the results as they came in.
He was with his brother Jack, who had a room at 10 Downing
Street, and who had looked after the Prime Minister s personal
affairs throughout most of the war. The two men had no sooner sat
down than news came in of the defeats of Harold Macmillan and
Brendan Bracken. Already there were a surprising number of
Labour gains, although some of these had been expected by the
Conservative Central Office, By midday the results were flooding in,
and nearly every other one seemed to be a Labour gain. The Prime
Minister was joined by Lord Beaverbrook, who sat with him for
much of the day leaning back in his chair with his legs comfortably
crossed and betraying no visible sign of surprise or emotion,
although the voting was running completely counter to all the
predictions of his newspapers*. The result for Woodford came in,
and it was learnt with a shock that the completely unknown Inde
pendent who had stood there, A. Hancock, who had campaigned
for a one-day working week, had polled 10,488, well over a third of
the Prime Minister s poll. Labour gains had by now mounted to
forty-four; there was one gain for the Conservatives. Mrs Churchill,
who had been at Woodford for the declaration, rushed up to
London to be with her husband. As she arrived at the Map Room
she was told: It s a complete debacle. The shocks came in one after
the other. Lord Beaverbrook made his apologies and departed for
lunch with his son, Group Captain Max Aitken, who had been
elected with a majority of 925 for Holborn (the previous Conservative
majority in the constituency had been 7,329). Bracken had now
joined Churchill, who sat in silence staring blankly at the wall in

225

WIDENING CHASM

front of him. L. S. Amery Out; Sir James Grigg Out; Hore-
Belisha-Out; Colonel J. J. Llewellin Out; Geoffrey Lloyd
Out; Duncan Sandys-Out; Captain Peter Thorneycroft Out;
Lord Dunglass Out; Miss Horsbrugh Out. These were less
than half of the Ministers and Under-Secretaries who had lost
their seats. Churchill got up and began to wander about the room.
By six o clock the Labour Party had a clear majority. Winston
Churchill ordered drinks and cigars. He then departed for Bucking
ham Palace to tender his resignation to the King. Constitutionally
he could have waited till Parliament met, but, as he said, 4 the verdict
of the electors had been so overwhelmingly expressed that I did
not wish to remain even for an hour responsible for their affairs .

A small crowd had gathered at the gates of Buckingham Palace,
and the resigning Prime Minister, shocked and immeasurably hurt,
gave them his Victory sign, presumably as an unthinking habit.
He was with George VI for a quarter of an hour, during which
time he recommended that the King should send for Attlee to form
a government. As far as he was concerned, the choice of Attlee,
the recognized leader of the Labour Party, was a mere formality.
Five minutes after Churchill was driven away through St. James s
Park, a small black car drove up to the Palace unnoticed by the
growing crowd. At the wheel was Mrs Attlee, and beside her was
the man who was going to be the next Prime Minister of the United
Kingdom. The King conversed with Attlee for some time, while
Mrs Attlee sat waiting in the car outside; among other things, he
questioned him about his Ministerial appointments. Attlee,
who had undergone a hectic day at the Labour Party s headquarters
at Transport House but who, despite everything, had not for
gotten to honour a prior engagement to meet his wife for tea at the
Great Western Hotel, Paddington had been putting his mind to
this, but had been unable to come to any decision. Clearly he would
have to make an immediate choice as to Foreign Secretary, as
Stalin and Truman were waiting to resume the Potsdam conference.
It was between Dalton and Bevin, and at that moment Dalton
seems to have been uppermost in Attlee s mind. The King made it
clear that he would much prefer Bevin.

Churchill returned to the Map Room, where he learnt that the
election was a landslide comparable only with the great Liberal
victory of 1906, when the Conservatives had won only 157 seats.
He then called together a few of his ex-Cabinet colleagues and they
discussed in bewilderment what had happened. For Churchill him-

226

THE LABOUR GOVEIWMENT

self it was a blow of acute and subtle agony. All around him, in the
Cabinet Offices and the Map Room, was the organization for waging
war that he had built, an organization that through custom and
association over the years he had begun to consider almost his own.
He had been acclaimed as one of the greatest and most popular
leaders in the history of the country. It had been through him alone
that the nation had found a new defiance and vigour when it had
been on the brink of almost unthinkable disaster. Now he had not
only lost an election, he had been rudely thrown out. There had
been nothing like this rebuttal of a victorious leader in modem
history. He issued a statement from 10 Downing Street, which, in
its dignity, humility and grace, might well serve as a model for all
democratically defeated leaders. The decision of the British people
has been recorded in the votes counted today. I have therefore
laid down the charge which was placed upon me in darker times. I
regret that I have not been permitted to finish the work against
Japan. For this, however, all plans and preparations have been
made, and the results may come much quicker than we have hitherto
been entitled to expect. Immense responsibilities abroad and at home
fall upon the new government, and we must all hope that they will be
successful in bearing them. It only remains for me to express to the
British people, for whom I have acted in these perilous years, my
profound gratitude for the unflinching, unswerving support which
they have given me during my task, and for the many expressions of
kindness which they have shown towards their servant/

The last result, which came in by ten o clock, gave Labour a clear
majority over all other parties of 153.* The Government had gained
eight seats and lost 199; Labour had lost four and gained 214.
The Labour Party had formed governments twice before, in 1924
and 1929, but only with the help of the Liberals. This was the first
occasion since Keir Hardie the first Socialist MP had taken his
seat fifty-three years before that Labour had won a clear mandate
from the country to socialize the nation. For the Liberals the
election had been humiliating. They were left with only eleven
seats in the House of Commons, the smallest representation in the
party s history. Among their prominent former MPs who had been
defeated were the party leader himself, Sir Archibald Sinclair,
Lady Violet Bonham-Carter, Sir William Beveridge, Sir Percy
Harris, Dingle Foot and Honor Balfour. The Communists had

* The final overall majority, after thirteen late declarations, was 146. Labour secured
11,992,292 votes against 9,960,809 for the Conservatives and 2,239,668 for the Liberals.

22 7

WIDENING CHASM

gained one seat (giving them a total of two). Their leader, Harry
Poilitt, said that they pledged their full support in assisting the
Labour Party in its aims. Perhaps the most remarkable Labour
victory had been that of Morrison himself. He had turned the
6,449 Conservative majority at Lewisham into a majority of 15,219
for Labour. Bevin, who had fought his first election (he had pre
viously been unopposed), had won Central Wandsworth by 5,174
from Brigadier J. Smythe, VC. All the other Labour leaders were com
fortably returned, although Attlee s majority in Limehouse had been
reduced. Among the new members were H. T. N. Gaitskell (a
brilliant young economist, who had increased the Socialist majority
at South Leeds tenfold although seriously ill with an undiagnosed
illness), G. A. Brown and J. H. Wilson. In many ways it was a
Parliament quite different from the one it had superseded. More
than 300 of the MPs were newcomers to Westminster. There
was a significant decrease in the number of trades union MPs among
the Labour members; 119 compared to 164 in the old House.
About 200 of the new Labour MPs came from the professional
classes, or from middle- and upper-class backgrounds.

Back at Transport House, Attlee found himself being lobbied
by sundry Socialists anxious for a job in his Government. There was
some confusion, and much excitement; there was even talk that
Attlee was not to be the Prime Minister at all. After all, it was
pointed out, the new Parliamentary Labour Party had not yet met
to pick its leader. Once again Laski and others promoted Morrison.
Morrison, too, no doubt sensing that there was a real chance for
him here (he denies it), insisted, at a hurried meeting at Transport
House, that no one could be Prime Minister until the party leader
had been elected. Attlee says: I recall that he expressed reluctance
to serve under me as he thought the party might want him as
Prime Minister. In a crowded room at Transport House, Attlee,
who considered himself Prime Minister since the King s summons,
held a Press conference. He said: *We are facing a new era and I
believe that the voting at this election has shown that the people of
Britain are facing that new era with the same courage as they faced
the long years of war. We have no illusions as to the difficult tasks
which face this country and the world in the next few years, but I am
convinced that we can carry the thing through to success to get into
a world in which we shall not agaiij. be faced with periodical world
wars and periodical world slumps. I believe we are on the eve of a
great advance of the human race. 5 Morrison spoke after Attlee;

228

THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT

he referred to the Conservative campaign at the election. Mr
Churchill joined in the stunts, cultivated the red herrings, and was
as good as anybody in inventing irrelevancies, as was shown by his
statement about the Gestapo. He accepted a lot of bad advice from
his political advisers ... a feature of the election was the swing of the
middle-class votes to Labour, The Labour Party has held the bulk of
the manual workers* votes for many years, but hitherto they have
not really had a grip of the middle-class voters.*

The Labour Party held a jubilant rally at the Central Hall,
Westminster. Harold Laski, referring to himself as the temporary
head* of the party, made a triumphant speech: At long last we
have made possible full friendship with the Soviet Union ... we
shall give no help either to decaying monarchs or obsolete social
systems.* Laski, the man who had been most bitterly attacked by
Churchill and the Conservatives, in the midst of his excited speech
gave tribute to the resigning Prime Minister. On the day his rule
as Prime Minister draws to a close, I want in the name of the
British Labour Party to thank Mr Churchill for the great service"
he has rendered to this nation. To the bewilderment of the foreign
correspondents present, this brought forth an enormous roar of
cheering, easily the greatest of the rally. Attlee spoke more soberly.
He began by saying: We have great tasks before us.* He was heard
with some impatience. Then Ernest Bevin got up. Speaking with
laborious and booming care, he said: When I saw the results I had a
feeling that the British people had put an end to the very conception
of personal government in this country. It is a grand thing to have
lived to see the day when the British electorate cast their votes for
policy, not personality. Morrison, speaking at another meeting,
just outside the hall, said: We have lifted aloft the torch of progress
the torch of enlightenment. We will build a fine Great Britain
and a prosperous world.

While these bold and rousing sentiments were being voiced
to the happy Socialist and Labour-voting crowds, Winston Churchill
was sitting with his daughters Sarah and Mary (who had dressed
in their smartest evening dresses in an attempt to please their
father) in the drawing-room at 10 Downing Street. His initial
shock was now giving way to a wider depression; the realization
that his recent intense preoccupation with, and involvement in,
world affairs was suddenly cut off as if by a pair of scissors through a
cord. His daughters were entertaining two friends, one of whom was
Robin Maugham. Churchill told the two young men, We must give

229

WIDENING CHASM

them a chance let s see what they can do. After a long and
unpleasant day, he retired to bed.

The following day was one of hectic manoeuvring by Labour
politicians. Overwhelmed by events, Attlee, who had not expected
a victory (according to Francis Williams), let alone a landslide, sent
off a message to Stalin at Potsdam saying that he would not be
able to arrive until the following day. I . . . should be much obliged
if provisional arrangements could be made accordingly, if this
would suit your convenience. I greatly regret the inconvenience
caused by this postponement/ Potential Ministers searching for
Attlee were unable to find him. Even Transport House did not
know where he was. He was, in fact, in a room in the Cabinet
Offices in Great George Street. During that day, July 27th, 1945,
Attlee became the centrepiece in what were to become two con
troversies that were to rage for many years.

The pro-Morrison group gathered strength during the morning,
and by the time Dalton met Bevin at noon Laski had written to
Attlee on the matter of the leadership. Attlee had replied with the
splendid words: Dear Laski, thank you for your letter, contents
of which have been noted/ Morrison also was still arguing that
Attlee should not accept the King s commission to form a govern
ment until the new Parliamentary Party had a chance to elect a
leader. He said the decision should be delayed for forty-eight hours.
According to Dalton, he also wrote a note to Attlee. Cripps and
Maurice Webb had apparently joined Laski and Ellen Wilkinson
in this move. Morrison, who admits asking for the delay in order to
elect a leader, denies that he wanted the Premiership himself. To
complicate matters, the prominent trade unionist, Arthur Deakin,
had been canvassing for Bevin as the leader, with Morrison as his
deputy. Bevin, however, would hear of none of these suggestions.
With some prescience, he had great faith in Attlee as the only man
who would be able to weld the Labour leaders into a team. We re all
bloody prima donnas? he said, with some accuracy. According to
Dalton, Bevin said to Deakin, How dare you come and talk to me
like this? ; and to Morrison, c lf you go on mucking about like this,
you won t be in the bloody government at all/ (Morrison has denied
that this was said.) There was a meeting at Transport House at
3 p.m. and all went smoothly. Morrison, on this occasion, made no
challenge for the leadership, and as the day wore on Attlee who
had never himself been in the slightest doubt as to who was Prime
Minister was secure. It seems more than likely that Morrison s

230

THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT

part in this affair (he says he was pressed*) was, not for the only
time in his career, misunderstood by even his closest colleagues.
Laski, however, appears to have been under the impression that he
possessed more power than he did; there also seems to have been a
surprising miscalculation among some people as to the kind of man
they were dealing with in Clement Attlee.

While the brave new world was being ushered in, in this somewhat
unseemly way, Attlee was still struggling with his Ministerial
appointments. He decided to fill only the major posts and to leave
the rest until he returned from Potsdam. He saw Dalton and told
him that he was almost certainly going to offer him the Foreign
Office. He said they would be leaving the following morning, and
advised Dalton to get a bag packed. Dalton asked whether he would
need evening dress. Attlee said, No, Stalin did not dress, but
advised Dalton to take a light-weight suit as it was hot in Berlin.
But at four o clock Attlee rang Dalton up and said he was going to
send him to the Treasury after all. He had decided to give Bevin the
Foreign Office. Dalton, somewhat confused, was disappointed; he
had always wanted the Foreign Office, and Bevin had always wanted
the Treasury. This switching of appointments began another con
troversy that lasted many months. It was alleged that George VI had
enjoyed unconstitutional influence. Although he certainly made his
preference perfectly clear,* the King was meticulous in his respect
for constitutional procedure; moreover, Attlee had made it clear to
Dalton that he wanted him for the Foreign Office after he had seen
the King. Other names mentioned were Sir Alan Lascelles (Private
Secretary to the King), Sir Edward Bridges (Permanent Secretary
to the Treasury), and Churchill himself. It was strongly rumoured
that Attlee had lunched with Churchill that day. Whatever the
background to the matter, Attlee was saved from making an unwise
decision; for Dalton, a recognized authority on public finance, was
not known for either tact or patience, and to have had Bevin and
Morrison together on home affairs would have caused difficulties.
Attlee has stated that it was his own initiative that prompted him to
change his mind; but it would seem likely that there was more to it
than that. Whatever the background to the affair, only one man
knows the full story, and he has never revealed it (there is no
mention of it in Attlee s biography).

The following morning the new Prime Minister s first Cabinet
appointments were announced in the Press: Morrison Lord

* As stated in the official biography by J. W. Wheeler-Bennett.

231

WIDENING CHASM

President of the Council; Bevin Foreign Secretary; Dalton
Chancellor of the Exchequer; Cripps President of the Board of
Trade; Arthur Greenwood Lord Privy Seal; Jowitt Lord
Chancellor.

In America the news of ChurchilPs defeat had been greeted with
astonishment; there was a widespread desire to hear more about
Clement Attlee, which the American newspapers found it difficult
to satisfy. But in Washington there was a feeling, once the shock of
Churchill s dramatic departure wore off, that the change might well
be advantageous to United States policy. It was not forgotten that
Westminster under Churchill had been almost as much of a problem
to the State Department as had Moscow. This prevalent mood was
summed up by H, V. Kaltenborn, commentator of the National
Broadcasting Company, in the following words: There is a feeling
here, justified or not, that the Churchill Government represented
old-time British Imperialism. There is also a feeling, justified or not,
that the Labour Party has a more constructive attitude towards the
aspirations of the underprivileged people of the world. For those
reasons I feel confident that the emergence of Labour as a dominating
force in British politics will favour rather than hinder those good
relations between Britain and the United States which are so
essential to the making of a sound peace. Democratic Senator
Joseph Guffey said: I am not surprised. Franklin Roosevelt told me
this would happen three years ago/

On the whole, there was a feeling of strange calm throughout
Britain; a widespread sense of the half-bashful revelation of a
secret; a sense of a difficult job safely accomplished. There was not a
great deal of excitement; people got on with their work. In some
quarters there was a natural apprehension as to what Labour s
policies would mean personally; the British Medical Association
happened to be meeting in London, and there was some consterna
tion when its Secretary, Dr Charles Hill, interrupted business to
read out the result. A number of doctors and surgeons spoke to the
Press in violent criticism of the proposed National Health Service
(although this was not, in fact, a measure peculiar to Labour it was
supported by all parties). There had been a rapid fall in prices on the
Stock Exchange; the worst since the fall of France in 1940. But, on
examination, this turned out to be not from widespread selling
indeed, there was practically none but merely a pessimistic pre
caution of the jobbers in marking down their prices to discourage
selling. There was no panic in the Conservative Press. The Times, in

232

THE END OF THE POTSDAM CONFERENCE

its top leader, blamed the Conservative failure fairly and squarely &lt;m
the conduct of the election itself. Mr Churchill himself introduced
and insisted upon emphasizing the narrower animosities of the
party fight. As a result the great national programme was allowed
to slip into the background; the Prime Ministers own stature was
temporarily diminished; and the voters, who were deeply interested
in real, urgent and essentially non-party subjects such as the
housing of the people, seem to have visited their disappointment
on the side which could be represented, on this showing, as taking
but a perfunctory interest in the reconstruction programme, and as
relying for success rather upon charges against tlie probable mis
conduct of their opponents than upon any creative virtues of their
own. Attlee later said: *I always thought Churchill was led away by
Beaverbrook and Brendan Bracken in the election. He had a great
opinion of Beaverbrook, who had brought down two governments^
and I think he listened to him and Bracken on how to fight the
election and they completely misjudged the public mood. . . .
Even those who would have liked Churchill weren t prepared to
have him if it meant having the Tories too/ ChurchilPs mistake
appears to have been that he did not appreciate that Beaverbrook, a
brilliant political manoeuvrer, was only good at bringing down
governments, not at setting them up. In the new Conservative
Party that was to struggle from this defeat, there was to be little
heeding of the advice of C M. and B. ever again^But it was typical of
British democracy that on the morning that the Conservative Party
was seen to have sunk so low in public esteem the very newspaper
which had campaigned so vigorously and sensationally against the
Labour Party, the Daily Express, said in its leader column: There
will be no captious criticism of the new Government, no attempt to
turn the nation s discontents into party capital. The new Govern
ment must be given its chance in this difficult period of the aftermath.
Mr R. K. Law, who twenty-four hours previously had been
Minister of Education and had now lost his seat at Hull, had a more
jaundiced reaction. The British people, he said, will have a very
unpleasant Awakening.

(xi)

On arrival at Potsdam, Attlee took Bevin to be introduced to Truman,
Byrnes and other members of the American delegation. Truman,

233

WIDENING CHASM

who had spent much of the short recess with Eisenhower at Frank-
fiirt &gt; was longing for home. He was, owing to the late hours favoured
by Churchill and Stalin and to his own early rising habit, tired out;
an unusual condition for him. Throughout the conference he had
been dealing with countless other matters, both domestic and
foreign, that had been sent from Washington for his attention.
With the return of the British, and of two left-wing men at that, he
hoped to be able to finish off the conference in a day or two. Both
Byrnes and he, however, immediately gained a very bad im
pression of Bevin. Here, it seemed, was a man even more stubborn
than Churchill had been; what was more, his manner, blunt and
blustery, they found rather unpleasant. The conference reassembled
on Saturday, July 28th, at 10.15 p.m., only forty-eight hours after
Attlee had been elected. The new Prime Minister apologized once
again for the inconvenience he had caused through domestic
occurrences*, and the conference then returned to the subject of the
recognition of Italy, Rumania, Hungary and Bulgaria. Like Truman,
Stalin had tired of the conference; faced now by two Western leaders
he did not know, he no longer felt the enjoyment he had experienced
at previous Big Three conferences. Molotov became more than
ever in evidence; he had been astonished at Churchill s defeat,
apparently convinced that the elections would be fixed . Leahy has
written that there was a noticeable coolness from the Soviet
delegation towards Attlee and Bevin, which surprised the Americans,
who had hoped a left-wing British Government would find favour
with the Russians. After Byrnes had complained that the United
States found it impossible to agree with both the Soviet Union and
Great Britain at the same time, the question of recognition was
passed over. When the discussion turned to reparations, Bevin
immediately began to curtly and brusquely cross-examine Stalin,
who was clearly taken aback by this kind of treatment. The Ameri
cans and the Russians were surprised by the continuity of the
British policy. Attlee and Bevin, whose appearance at the table had
been such a dramatic demonstration of the way a democracy changes
its government, were carrying on as if they were reinvigorated
versions of Churchill and Eden who had returned from London; the
effect was the more uncanny as in manner and appearance the two
men were about as unlike Churchill and Eden respectively as
any two men could be. Byrnes was clearly disappointed. Bevin was
now the dominant personality of the conference. He picked up all
the threads of the various subjects that had been under discussion,

234

THE END OF THE POTSDAM CONFERENCE

and appreciated the various national attitudes on them, with remark
able speed. He was highly suspicious of all Russian intentions, and
did not bother to hide it. Whenever on unsure ground, he relied on
the goodwill of the Americans, and supported them.

The following day Truman, on his return from church service,
found Molotov and his interpreter waiting for him. Molotov was
obviously anxious to do a deal on Poland behind the British backs.
Truman called for Byrnes, who said that the United States was
definitely prepared to accept Polish influence up to the Eastern
Neisse and the Oder, including Danzig, and all of East Prussia.
This was a concession, but Molotov stuck out for the Western
Neisse. The British were informed of this meeting later in the day.

On the morning of July 3ist Byrnes told Molotov that the United
States wanted the three outstanding issues Poland, reparations
and the ex-Axis countries membership of the United Nations
all considered together. He was offering, in fact, a bargaining session
over what became known as a package deal*. Molotov tried to
prevent this, but Byrnes made it plain that the Americans were only
prepared to agree on all or none, and intended leaving for home
either way. At the plenary session that afternoon, the United States
put this proposal forward, despite the protests of Stalin. The three
problems were quickly settled. Stalin, persisting in his demand for a
definite figure for reparations (the Americans were tired of ex
plaining to him that such figures were virtually meaningless),
eventually agreed to accept c io per cent* outright reparations from
the three Western zones, as well as 15 per cent which the Russians
were to pay for with food and raw materials. This gave them, as
well as anything they wished in their own zone, 25 per cent of all
capital goods in West Germany unnecessary for the peace economy
of that area. Bevin argued, with some justification, that this gave
them more than the overall 50 per cent agreed on at Yalta. This
agreement was reached after a long fight by Bevin reparations
would mainly come from the Ruhr, which was in the British Zone.
Byrnes then read out the proposal that Polish, influence was to
extend to the Western Neisse, thus reducing the old German terri
tories of 1937 by a quarter. This was a complete reversal of his view
expressed to Molotov the previous day. According to Byrnes*
own account, he had only agreed to the reparations figure if the
Russians would make no demands on the other two matters; but he
was now giving way also on the question of the Polish frontier. He
maintains and so does Truman that as the conference Protocol

235

WIDENING CHASM

declared that the final delimitation of the western frontier of Poland
should await the peace settlement , and that the intention was merely
to establish temporary administration of the area, there was no
concession at all. This is a weak argument. The Poles, backed by
the Red Army, were already in control of the area; all that they
needed was international recognition of their fait accompli this
they had now gained. Bevin was taken aback. He said that his
instructions were to hold out for the Eastern Neisse. Truman and
Byrnes appear to have competed with each other in soothing Bevin s
fears, pointing out that no permanent cession of territory was in
volved. Reluctantly, Bevin concurred. The third part of the deal,
the terms of entry to the United Nations, was quickly agreed.
Arrangements for peace treaties with Italy and the Balkan countries
were to be prepared by the Foreign Ministers in London.

At the final meeting, the Protocol to be issued to the waiting world
was examined. To the disgust of the increasingly impatient Truman,
the Russians and the British still found points over which to argue.
Molotov suggested an amendment to the text concerning the
Polish frontier. It was granted. He then suggested another. Instead
of the words subject to examination by experts , he suggested
exact line on ground should be established by experts of the USSR
and Poland . At this point Bevin, supported by Attlee, put his foot
down. He said this was asking too much altogether, and he would
not countenance such a suggestion. This was described by Truman
as prolonged and petty bickering . Nevertheless, Molotov withdrew
his suggestion.

Truman stated that there was no further business and that the
conference was ready to adjourn. He expressed the hope that the
next conference would be held in Washington, to which Stalin
replied, apparently in English, God willing . He was no doubt
thinking of his health and the younger men, greedy for power, who
seemed to be rising everywhere around him. Thus ended the second
great international conference of the year; a conference which
proved once more that it is no good in a world of nationalism to go
to the conference table unarmed; but if US politico-strategic think
ing had been abreast of the sudden new advance in weapons, the
Western allies would have been well armed indeed.

On the way home to the United States, Truman met George VI
on board a British battleship at Plymouth; the King held out his
hand to him and said: Welcome to my country , although in truth
the President hardly had time to set foot in it. The Captain of the

236

THE END OF THE POTSDAM CONFERENCE

USS Augusta was ordered by the President to steam his ship as
fast as she would go for the United States; the maximum speed
possible of 26 5 knots was set for the crossing. A homing cable was
sent to Mrs Truman.

Byrnes believed that the Potsdam conference had been a success;
Truman inclined to the same belief, but in a nationwide broadcast
on his return he admitted that nearly every international agree
ment had in it the element of compromise. The agreement on
Poland is no exception. As few people knew of the sudden and
tremendous increase in America s power deriving from a new
weapon, few similarly questioned the necessity or reason for such
compromises. Attlee and Bevin, however, were not happy about
what seemed to them to be a number of unnecessary concessions
to the Russians. The general public, who knew no more than what
was contained in the Protocol, relaxed under the belief that the three
great powers seemed to be settling the post-war world in full
accord.

In London, meanwhile, the new House had met briefly for the
election of the Speaker. Mr Churchill s appearance had been greeted
by prolonged applause, and the Government had risen to its feet
en masse and sung the Red Flag.

The final structure of the Cabinet was announced after Attlee s
return. A. V. Alexander resumed his wartime post of First Lord of
the Admiralty; J. J. Lawson was given the War Office; Viscount
Stansgate received the Air Ministry; the rebellious *Nye Bevan
was given the Ministry of Health (the exact position he had wished
upon himself) at forty-seven, he was the youngest member of the
Cabinet; George Isaacs, who had been Chairman of the Trades
Union Congress General Council, was to be Minister of Labour;
Emanuel Shinwell, one of the few outspoken critics of the Coalition,
became Minister of Fuel and Power, which was clearly going to be
one of the most difficult political tasks; Ellen Wilkinson became the
only woman member of the Cabinet as Minister of Education. A
proposal from Laski that he should be sent to Washington, pre
sumably as Ambassador, was ignored. It was noticeable that among
the junior Ministers there were many peers, and three MPs who
were new to the House of Commons. These appointments were
announced on August 4th, not long after the preoccupied Attlee
had returned from Berlin. On that same day, across the surface of
half the globe, at the small Pacific island of Tinian, the crew of the
United States 8-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, were briefed about a

237

WIDENING CHASM

secret mission they were to undertake to the Japanese city of
Hiroshima.

238

6 Momentous Decision

The dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima

The effect of the bomb

After the bomb in Japan

The world scene after the bomb

American and British reaction

World-wide reaction

The end of the war

The Russian declaration of war

Nagasaki

The Japanese capitulation

The VJ Day celebrations

The formal Japanese surrenders

6 MOMENTOUS DECISION

While still at Potsdam, Truman had authorized the order to 509^
Composite Group to deliver its special bomb* on one of the
four, somewhat arbitrarily selected targets of Hiroshima, Kokura,
Niigata and Nagasaki. This brought to a head many months of
soul-searching and argument as to the use of the atomic bomb.
Whether any other decision than the one arrived at was possible,
bearing in mind the extraordinary cost of the new weapon in which a
whole new industry had been built up from nothing on the tax
payers money without the elected representatives of the people
knowing anything about it, is debatable. If thousands of American
servicemen had been killed as a result of not using the bomb, the
President would (as Groves pointed out) have been crucified ; later
knowledge shows us that it is unlikely that they would have been.
The atomic-bomb project in the United States had been born in
1939 when Albert Einstein was persuaded to write a warning letter
to the President, by other scientists, who were aware that the
nature of recent discoveries in nuclear physics made an atomic
bomb a possibility. In Britain and in Germany research had already
been reaching a crucial stage. It was eventually decided that the
United States would launch a research programme, especially as
many of the world s leading physicists happened to be in America
owing to the war in Europe. On May 6th, 1940, an extraordinarily
well-informed report had appeared in the London Daily Telegraph
describing a new substance, and a potential source of vast power
Already the implications the effect of this discovery might have on

239

MOMENTOUS DECISION

the outcome of the war have been discussed. An article in the
Sunday Dispatch on January nth, 1943, was headed, One Little
Bomb That Would Destroy The Whole Of Berlin . The article
mentioned a bomb that would blast a hole twenty-five miles in
diameter and wreck every structure within a hundred miles. . . .
The explosive in this bomb would be the energy contained in the
uranium atom.

It was the last that the public heard about the new source of
power until August 1945. Strict censorship was imposed on both
sides of the Atlantic, while British scientists and those now working
in America began to co-operate. In 1942 German and Anglo-
American progress was about level (Japan was also engaged in
similar research), but during the summer of that year Speer made
the decision that the German atom-bomb project under Otto
Hahn would not get priority; Hitler favoured the V-weapons.
German research and production had been hindered by the sabotage
of resistance workers and by Allied bombing of their heavy-water
plant in Norway. An entirely contrary decision was made by the
Allies, and the Manhattan project was founded by Churchill and
Roosevelt in the same month as Speer made his fateful decision. It
was preferred to such other scientific weapons as bacteriological
destruction of the Japanese rice crop, put forward by some of
Roosevelt s advisers. By 1944 the American atomic programme had
taken on a huge size and vast expense. Many of the scientists en
gaged in it began to have doubts as to whether the military-politico
executive power behind the project was aware of all the impli
cations. Among a section of the scientists involved there were
distinct feelings of fear and guilt; this was the section which were
not themselves closely involved with the military-politico machine.
One of the leaders and spokesmen of this group was James Franck.
A Committee on Social and Political Implications was formed by
the scientists themselves, and Franck was made its chairman.
During the spring of 1945 Franck and others worked on a state
ment a document that became known as the Franck Report. At
the same time a committee had been set up by Truman to study the
use and implications of the bomb. The chairman of this committee
was Henry Stimson, the Secretary for War; a man who had taken the
closest interest in the Manhattan project since its earliest days;
no non-scientist had given the matter more thought, and certainly
no one better understood the implications. Stimson s growing con
cern about the whole project was the result of remarkable and

240

THE ATOM BOMB ON HIROSHIMA

creditable foresight. Many of his juniors and contemporaries, such as
Admiral Leahy, had little rime for the project. Many others, such as
Eisenhower (earlier on) and MacArthur, knew nothing of it. Even
the State Department knew nothing about it until the arrival of
Byrnes (Stettinius was completely in the dark). In a memorandum
to Truman, Stimson stated: Within four months we shall in all
probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in
human history . . . various segments of its discovery and production
are widely known among many scientists in many countries. ... It
is extremely probable that the future will make it possible for atomic
bombs to be constructed by smaller nations ... the world in its
present state of moral advancement, compared with its technical
development, would be eventually at the mercy of such a weapon.
In other words, modern civilization might be completely destroyed.
Truman s committee met on May 3ist and June ist in the
Pentagon. On it the military-politico men were completely out
numbered by the scientists, who were of a different group from that
led by Franck. The two most prominent scientists were Fermi and
Oppenheimer, both men who had been involved with and had
worked with civil servants, politicians and soldiers for some years.
Oppenheimer expressed the opinion that 20,000 people would
probably be killed by an atomic bomb. The question was raised
whether the first bomb should be used to kill or just as a demon
stration. There were a number of drawbacks to a demonstration;
the Japanese might fill a given area, if warning were made, with
American prisoners-of-war. It was also apparent that there would be
long intervals between the completion of each bomb; besides, none
of the scientists on the committee was apparently convinced that a
demonstration would inevitably be a technical success (they had
been warned by Groves to expect a life-time of congressional
investigations if it were not). A British scientist, Sir Geoffrey Taylor,
has described the betting at Los Alamos among scientists as to
whether the bomb would work. The scientist-dominated committee
struggled with the question, and eventually voted for military use
and against demonstration. Oppenheimer has since said that the
committee knew nothing of other plans to defeat Japan, such as
prolonged blockade, but all took it for granted that invasion was the
inevitable alternative to the bomb. American strategy had, indeed,
developed along those lines, and a two-phase strike at the main
Japanese islands was now favoured. But American strategy at the
time was not well defined; no doubt because the Secretary for War

241

MOMENTOUS DECISION

and others knew so well of the atom bomb. An invasion date of
November ist for the first stage had been fixed, and the Army had
asked for nine atom bombs to be dropped in conjunction with the
invasion. It had been agreed that British troops would be there, and
the Dutch, French and Australian authorities had also been clamour
ing to take part. General Marshall estimated that a force of 190,000
combatant troops would be necessary, of whom less than 63,000
would be casualties.

Stimson was not entirely happy about the committee s decision;
nor was Joseph C. Grew, an Under-Secretary of State, who had once
been US Ambassador to Japan, and who was pleading with Truman
to modify the doctrine of unconditional surrender. Many other
Japanese experts, both in America and Britain, were worried by this
same point. If such a surrender meant the death or removal of the
Japanese god-emperor Hirohito, which it clearly could, then it was
possible that many Japanese, perhaps even the majority, would never
give in. In Britain the implications of this fact had been accepted by
Churchill, who was more anxious to stop the war on harsh but
acceptable terms than to continue until the Japanese were annihi
lated. The unconditional surrender policy, the pros and cons of
which were now openly discussed in American newspapers, was,
however, close to American hearts. Truman, supported by Byrnes,
was reluctant to climb down, or even to appear to do so, on this
point.

Some time early in June the Franck Report was delivered to
Stimson s office. It stated that although in the past science had been
able to devise protection for new weapons, this could not be expected
for the atom bomb. It was suggested that Japan should be given an
ultimatum or the chance to evacuate threatened regions. The report
was in favour of a clear warning to the Japanese. It doubted whether
American public opinion would approve of our own country being
the first to introduce such an indiscriminate method of wholesale
destruction of civilian life . It was pointed out that the decision to
introduce such a weapon into warfare might later be regretted by the
United States, which, through its concentrated areas of population,
was itself particularly vulnerable to such attack. This warning ran
contrary to the advice of Truman s committee which had recom
mended the use of the bomb, without specific warning, as soon as
possible, and against such a target as to make clear its devastating
strength .

By this time the soQth Composite Group were well established at

242

THE ATOM BOMB ON HIROSHIMA

Tinian and making practice runs. Exactly what happened to tibe
Franck Report is not clear; it is doubtful if it ever reached the
President. As no action seemed to be coming from the report, one of
the Manhattan* scientists who had worked on it, Leo Szikrd,
organized a petition pointing out the dangers of setting a precedent
by using the bomb. He collected the support of sixty-seven scien
tists. The petition was delivered in Washington about the middle of
July, and the names on it and its content remained secret. A number
of other scientists organized a counter-petition pointing out h0w
American lives would be saved if the war were brought to a sudden
end. Another Manhattan scientist, Farrington Daniels, on July I2th
conducted a poll of 150 of his colleagues; only 15 per cent said they
wanted the weapon initially used for foil military effectiveness. But,
owing to the extremely ambiguous form of questioning, the scien
tists on the Truman committee tried to argue that the majority of the
poll were in favour of immediate military use . Admiral Leahy,
Chief of Staff to the President, had already spoken out strongiy
against use of the bomb, as he had done of the invasion alternative:
It was my opinion at the time that a surrender could be arranged
with terms acceptable to Japan and that would make fully satisfactory
provision for America s defence. But by the time of the Potsdam
conference the President was taking more note of the advice of
Stimson and Byrnes than of anyone else. Byrnes, who was not
himself happy about using the bomb, felt that it was the lesser of
evils and that it would have to be used ruthlessly. Marshall too was
for using it. Besides the vacillating Stimson and the dogmatic
Leahy, Generals Arnold and Eisenhower (now that they knew of it)
were also dubious about using the weapon without a demonstration.
In the end Stimson agreed with Byrnes. It was at Potsdam that.
Truman decided that the bomb was to be used on a Japanese city if
there was an unfavourable answer to his ultimatum.

Such is the brief background to the order given to the 509^1
Composite Group on July 24th.

This order was delivered before the answer to the Potsdam
ultimatum; but Truman s supporters claim that it could easily have
been rescinded. It was, they say, necessary in order to set the wheels
turning. He himself, on inquiry, has insisted that he gave another,
final, order after the ultimatum, when on the Augusta (but he omitted
to mention this order in his memoirs, and there is no record or
mention of it elsewhere). His critics claim that the warning contained
in the ultimatum was not the kind that Stimson and others had been

THE WAR IN THE PACIFIC

AUSTRAL

THE ATOM BOMB ON HIROSHIMA

urging, and that it was not in the least specific; that there was no
mention of an exceptional weapon. In Leahy s opinion it contained
c no hint* of such a weapon. The order, devised by Groves and
senior Pentagon staff, read in part: The scxjth Composite Group,
20th Air Force, will deliver its first special bomb as soon as weather
will permit visual bombing after about August 3, 1945, on one of the
targets: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata and Nagasaki. . . . Additional
bombs will be delivered on the above targets as soon as made ready.*
All the order needed was Truman s authorization, and this it got.
Thus even the final wording of this fateful message, as so much else
regarding the whole Manhattan project, was done not by the half-
aware President himself, but by a few of the countless obscure
people all of whom were involved and played their part. In effect,
the decision had already been made, and not by any human being
but by the project itself, which had grown so vast and cost so much
that no one seemed to know how to stop it from justifying itself had
they even wanted to. A copy was sent to MacArthur and Nimitz
for their information*; the two commanders were preparing for the
invasion of Japan. In a reorganization of the Far East theatre,
MacArthur had been given command of all land forces, and Nimitz
of all naval; the Air Force was directed from Washington by Arnold,
with General Carl Spaatz about to take up local command.

By now Japan was in a hopeless state of split personality; while the
military hierarchy were sternly bracing their forces for a long last-
ditch stand, the diplomats were involved in a frenzy of desperate
peace-making. In Switzerland two Japanese officials contacted the
Swedish economist Per Jacobsson, who was in close touch with
Allen Dulles. They, and the Japanese Naval Attach^ at Berne,
attempted to discover whether the Americans would modify the
unconditional surrender demand, especially in regard to the position
of the Emperor. Dulles dashed hither and thither, reporting to
Stimson, but at length it appeared that his cloak-and-dagger efforts
were all in vain; the Japanese in Switzerland did not have the backing
of the Japanese in Tokyo. Togo, the Foreign Minister, concentrated
his efforts to secure a peace through Moscow. While Russia was
hastily arranging to declare war before it was too late in order to
get the benefit of the Far East concessions made at Yalta the
Japanese Ambassador in Moscow was anxiously trying to get
Molotov to act as go-between with the Americans. On July 28th, the
military wing still holding the upper hand in Tokyo, the Japanese
Government at last announced the rejection of the American ultima-

245

MOMENTOUS DECISION

turn from Potsdam, in the form of an informal news item on the
radio. Four days later an enormous force of US bombers delivered
what was officially described as the greatest air attack ever 5 ; five
cities were struck, almost entirely with incendiaries. The damage
was worse even than anything known in Germany.

By now most of the material for the first atomic raids had arrived
at the island of Tinian not without mishap. Some of the most vital
parts had been in a plane which had encountered technical trouble
and had been forced to crash-land at Sacramento. Another consign
ment had been aboard the battleship Indianapolis, which had been
sunk, with the loss of over i ,000 lives, by an enemy torpedo four days
after discharging its cargo on July 26th. If it had been sunk before,
the atom bombing might very well have been delayed so long that
peace would have come first. The final consignment of U-235 (from
uranium) was split into three particles, each in a suitcase carried by a
security agent. They travelled from Oak Ridge, via Los Alamos, to
San Francisco, accompanied by a guard armed with tommy-guns,
shot-guns and carbines. They then flew to Tinian by way of
Honolulu. At Honolulu observers were amazed to see the plane of
General Spaatz, on his way to Guam to assume command of the new
Strategic Air Force, being held up on the runway while the three
security men were given priority. Spaatz had the delicate task of
shortly having to go to Luzon to explain the Manhattan project to
MacArthur, and to tell him that his plan to invade Japan would very
likely not be needed. In his pocket Spaatz carried the written order
for the use of the atom bomb; he had refused to accept it when given
verbally. Meanwhile the planes of the sogth had been out on
frequent practice runs over Japan, launching on each mission only a
single bomb (to the astonishment of Japanese Service experts and
civilians alike). The plane which was to drop the first bomb was the
Enola Gay. On August 5th the crew found that they could not enter
their own plane for routine inspection as it was surrounded all day
by security guards. After a briefing which succeeded in bewildering
the crew even more than they were already, the Enola Gay rumbled
down the runway at Tinian and took off at 2.45 a.m., August 6th.
Cradled in a steel brace in its bomb-bay was the large, cumbersome-
looking bomb, known as the Gimmick . The bomb had been
assembled in an airfield hut on August ist and was about fourteen
feet long and five feet in diameter. The plane was followed at two-
minute intervals by two other 6-295, which were to observe the
bombing.

246

THE ATOM BOMB ON HIROSHIMA

As the plane gained altitude and thundered through the night sky,
its engines breathing out the familiar angry-looking blue and red
flames, a Navy scientist, Captain William Parsons, fiddled with the
detonating system of the bomb. He had only discovered how to do
this satisfactorily the previous day. The intention had been to
prepare the bomb ready for delivery before take-off, but Parsons and
others were alarmed at the thought of what would happen if the
plane crashed on take-off. On his own initiative, Parsons had decided
to arm the bomb in flight. An expert on ballistics, he had been the
chief scientist on the bomb delivery group at Los Alamos. He now
worked alone with 4 The Gimmick as the Enola Gay headed across
the Pacific towards Japan. By 4 a.m. the first grey light of dawn was
beginning to light the interior of the plane. About an hour later
Colonel Paul Tibbets, at the controls, informed the other eleven men
on the plane (the normal crew plus Parsons) that from then cm the
intercom conversation was to be recorded. This is for history/ he
said, *so watch your language. We re carrying the first atomic bomb/
Most of the crew had never before heard of the atomic bomb, and
they were still none the wiser. Down below, through breaks in the
clouds, they could see the coastline of Japan, Tibbets orders were
to approach Hiroshima first and, if the weather was ted, to go cm to
Kokura and Nagasaki in turn (Niigata had been dropped as being
too far away from Tinian). Somewhere high along the chain of
command it had been decided that visual aiming was more sure than
radar, with which the planes were equipped. To help Tibbets in his
decision, three weather planes had preceded the Enola Gay and
reported on conditions at the cities; the report from Hiroshima was
that the area was covered in thick cloud but above the city itself
there was, strangely, a gap in the clouds about ten miles across.*

The city of Hiroshima was known throughout Japan for its
exceptionally beautiful willow trees. While practically every other
city in Japan had received devastating attention from US bombers,
Hiroshima had been almost unscathed during three and a half years
of war. (It is believed that only twelve bombs had hitherto been
dropped on the city.) It was a port and manufacturing centre
(mainly of light industry), but a place that was not often heard of
outside Japan. Its population was over 250,000 but many more
people, perhaps 50,000, came into work each day from the surround-

* The pilot of the plane which reported on conditions at Hiroshima was Major Claude
Eatherly often mistakenly thought to have been the pilot of the Enok Gay, convinced
that there should have been a demonstration, he has been in and put of mental hospitals
for some years. Tibbets went on in the Air Force to achieve high command.

247

MOMENTOUS DECISION

ing countryside. The Army had recently established their southern
headquarters in an ancient moated castle in the city, and there was a
large military garrison. By 7.30 a.m. local time the life of Hiroshima
had already begun. Early morning sunlight streamed down on the
city and bathed it in gentle warmth. Children were on their way to
school from the outskirts of town, and commuter trains were rattling
in from the country behind. In the city itself women in nearly every
home were cooking breakfast over the customary charcoal burners.
All over the town work-parties of old men, women and children were
gathering for their day s duty in patriotic tasks; their main occupa
tion that day was to help in making the firebreaks in the city centre,
which were to combat the incendiary-bomb attacks the authorities
were expecting. At 7.9 the air-warning system had sounded, and
in the break of the clouds over the city a single plane had been seen
crawling along in the sky far above. No one had taken much notice,
as lone US planes over the city had become quite frequent in recent
weeks, and eventually the plane had disappeared and the all-clear
had sounded at 7.3 1 . At 8.06 a look-out station in the hills east of the
city reported sighting two planes, and three minutes later reported
another. A few minutes after that the same report was made by
a searchlight unit, and then by an anti-aircraft battery. No warning
was sounded, and people, bathed in bright sunlight in the streets,
gazed up and could plainly see and hear the three planes high in the
blue sky.

In the Enola Gay Tibbets was staring down at the city laid out
below. Only a few wispy clouds hindered the expansive view, and
these marked the city with scattered dark patches of shadow. There
were no fighters to be seen and no flak. Tibbets asked Parsons, who
had completed his task and was now standing at his shoulder,
whether he agreed that it was Hiroshima. Parsons said he agreed.
Tibbets ordered everyone to put on the goggles with which they had
been issued (even these had been especially designed and made
under the giant Manhattan project), and he then gave over control of
the plane to Major Thomas W. Ferebee, a veteran of European
bombing missions who had been personally selected by Tibbets
months before to be the bomb-aimer.* For a few moments the
glistening plane above and the basking city below hung suspended in
time as their now-inevitable destinies reached out the one for the
other. The aiming point, the centre of a bridge, moved towards the
cross-hairs of Ferebee s bombsight, just as he had seen it in countless

* Ferebee also rose to high command in the Air Force.

248

THE EFFECT OF THE BOMB

examinations of aerial photographs. At 8.15 phis seventeen seconds
the Enola Gafs bomb-doors sprang open and the uranium bomb
tumbled out broadside, its guiding parachute opened, and it
plummeted for the earth nose first.

The Enola Gay and the two accompanying planes broke off
sharply and veered away in sixty-degree turns.

The bomb exploded exactly on target, i ,000 feet above the ground;
it turned into a ball of white-hot fire 1,800 feet across with a
temperature at its centre of about one hundred million degrees. It
was precisely 8.16 a.m. on Monday, August 6, 1945, and the world
had entered into a new age.

(ii)

Those few who survived and could remember anything of the first
instant of explosion, speak only of a blinding light. But most people
within a mile of the explosion did not even see that; they wore burnt
to nothing in a flash. A few of them left testimony to their deaths in
the form of shadows burnt into the roads and on walls, but most just
disappeared. In the city trams blackened corpses sat on the frames
of what had been benches a split second before. Everywhere, in
houses and out, black bodies lay where they had fallen. Those who
had survived the explosion started in horror and were then released
from their agony of burning flesh by the hurtling of millions of
pieces of shattered glass, wood, material and metal that shredded
their bodies into many pieces; for the centre of Hiroshima had
literally disintegrated. Tiny fragments of every conceivable object
flew outwards with enormous force. Workers in the fields outside the
town were peppered with grass and straw. Buildings lay in a heap of
smouldering rubble; only a few concrete walls of buildings especially
constructed to withstand earthquakes were left standing. For two
miles across the centre Hiroshima had become a pile of debris.
Survivors looked around in their pain and found themselves, mostly
naked or in tattered clothes, in unrecognizable surroundings; the
black skins of women were covered in accurate detail with the
patterns of the kimonos they had been wearing. Those who had been
farther off found themselves cruelly and terribly marked by burns;
the marks of braces, which had afforded some protection, were
visible on men s chests; men who had been wearing caps were

249

MOMENTOUS DECISION

disfigured up to a neat line on the forehead; people who had been
sitting at windows were mutilated and burnt on one side only. Some
lost their faces, with the rest of their bodies intact, others their
hands.

Dr Hachiya had been resting on the floor of his home after a night
on duty at the hospital. His first knowledge of the bomb was the
sudden disappearance of shadows from the garden through the
window. Next he found himself naked in the garden, with a piece of
wood protruding from his thigh and his cheek torn away. Running
towards the street, he tripped over a man s severed head. A group of
soldiers who had been wearing caps had their hair neatly parted and
undisturbed, but had lost their faces; eyes, mouths and noses had
been burned away. The doctor was able to do nothing for them but
pray. Thousands of maimed and dying commuters lay in the mam
station, screaming for succour and water. Within a few minutes a
rain of black ash began to fall on the ruined city, gently descending
on survivors and rubble. A few people started to collect together,
dazed and bewildered, in small groups. Those on the outskirts of
town began running out towards the fields and the hills. What had
happened? Just as the remaining inhabitants of what had once been a
city called Hiroshima were beginning to ask themselves this question,
they were struck by a further disaster; a huge gust of hot air blew
bade towards the centre. Most of those who had jumped into the
seven delta rivers of the town in an attempt to soothe their bodies
were drowned in giant waves; others were killed by yet more hurtling
debris. As nature, outraged by the injury that had been done to her,
gradually subsided, the survivors of the atomic explosion and its
immediate after-effects at Hiroshima fled the city. Within a half-hour
the whole place was ablaze; the fire continued until the evening, and
when it went out Hiroshima as a city for human habitation had
ceased to exist.

About 90,000 men, women and children were killed outright or
shortly afterwards; about 25,000 of them were babies or boys and
girls under the age of eighteen.* The figure was thus more than four
times as much as Oppenheimer s estimate. There were half as many
permanently injured and disfigured. These figures are little more
reliable than a Japanese fatality figure of 150,000. (By 1962 survivors
were still dying at the rate of two a week from causes directly
attributable to the explosion.)

* These are the generally accepted, approximate figures, although the US Atomic
Energy Commission downgrades the fatality to 68,000. The first official figure, issued on
February $rd, 1946, was 78,150.

250

THE EFFECT OF THE BOMB

The crew of the Enola Gay knew nothing of what was happening
far below. The whole area was hidden by an enormous bet tidy
cloud that presently began to take on a familiar and homely shape.
There was excited comment over the intercom as the crew realized
that the cloud looked like an elongated mushroom. As it was clearly
impossible to make a report on the effect of the bomb, there being
nothing apart from the cloud to see, the three planes headed for base
carefully keeping a good distance from the mysterious cloud as
they circled. The somewhat self-conscious comments of the crew

were all faithfully recorded; Holy Moses, what a mess My God,

what have we done? . . . The war s over! . . . Don t fly so close to that
mushroom. . . .* Someone expressed the opinion that Ferebee had
missed the city altogether, as it was nowhere to be seen. Another
said the reason they could not see the city was because it did not
exist any more. During the homeward run the crew philosophized.
Tibbets sent off a message to Tinian saying that the mission had been
successful. From Tinian the news was flashed to Groves in Washing
ton, who received it shortly before midnight local time. He decided
not to disturb Marshall and Stimson at that late hour, and the two
men did not receive the news from Groves until more than seven
hours later. An hour or so after that a message was sent to the
President aboard the Augusta; he was bored and homesick and
spending most of his time playing poker and swapping stories over
bourbon with the Press. Truman, in fact, received news of this
momentous event, for which he has taken entire responsibility, over
twelve hours after its occurrence; jubilant and excited, he went
around the messes on the ship announcing the explosion of an
atomic weapon to an uncomprehending crew. We won the gamble!*
he told them, with evident relief. A statement from Truman had
already been prepared, and orders were now given for its release.

By this time the Enola Gay had arrived back at base, roared down
the runway more than 10,000 Ib lighter than it had left, and taxied
to a standstill. As the last propeller turned slowly to a halt, a crowd
of emotion-charged men crowded round the plane; admirals and
generals jostled with clerks, scientists and mechanics. As Tibbets,
unshaven and tired-eyed, climbed down, General Spaatz stepped
forward and pinned the Distinguished Service Cross on his overalls.*
In the interrogation hut the crew were given an oversize measure of
whisky each. There was a great deal of joking and natural relief at
the successful termination of an important mission.

* Every other serviceman who had participated in the mission was later decorated.

251

MOMENTOUS DECISION

(iii)

In Tokyo, shortly after the explosion, the control operator of the
Japanese Broadcasting Corporation noticed that his telephone line to
the radio station at Hiroshima had gone dead. He tried to re-establish
a connection, but without success. Twenty minutes later the railways
signals centre at Tokyo realized that the main telegraph line to
Hiroshima had stopped functioning. There was a certain amount of
confusion as the previous day the US Air Force had launched a mass
raid, of 820 bombers, on various cities, including Kobe; reports of a
great deal of damage from incendiaries and heavy demolition bombs
were pouring in, and there were a number of uncontrollable fires.
Shortly afterwards news came in, from villages north of Hiroshima,
that some kind of huge explosion had taken place in the city. About
three-quarters of an hour after the bomb had dropped, army head
quarters in Tokyo received news of a mysterious disaster at Hiro
shima; it was unable to contact southern command headquarters. It
was not until well after midday that a message was received from the
army shipping depot on the waterfront at Hiroshima. It stated
simply that the city had been annihilated by one bomb. Similar
information was beginning to arrive at the newspaper offices, and in
mid-afternoon the editors of the five big Tokyo newspapers and the
manager of the Domei news agency were called to the Information
and Intelligence Office and told that the bomb dropped on Hiroshima
was different in conception to an ordinary one, but that until more
information had become available the story was not to be treated in
any way as exceptional. Tokyo Rose, the famous propaganda
broadcaster, mentioned, without referring to the bomb, that train
services to Hiroshima had been temporarily discontinued. The
authorities were, in fact, almost certain that this had been the first
atomic bomb; their own scientists had examined the possibility of
such a bomb, and their extremely competent naval Intelligence
service had reported US work on such a bomb in 1944. As the news
began to filter through government departments, those politicians
and diplomats, backed by the Emperor, still free of the military
wing knew that at last the crisis they had feared and put off so long
had come; there were only two alternatives a complete show-down
with the military, or national suicide.
In Hiroshima those survivors who had been unable to leave the

252

WORLD SCENE AFTER THE BOMB

centre of the city had crawled and staggered to one of the few
ruined buildings of which parts of the walls were still left standing;
that of a newspaper. They lay about, screaming for help; the empty
shell, stripped of furniture and windows, acted as a vast sounding-
box, and the noise that the five hundred suffering peopk who
gathered there put up was clearly heard on the outskirts, for three
days, like a mourning wail over the gutted city. The remnants of the
southern army headquarters had fled their shattered casde and, in
rags, were attempting to reorganize from a hill-side cave. After
twelve hours a few soldiers could be seen doing their best to relieve
the dying. Trucks pounded over the debris, collecting corpses,
which were thrown into pits; there were no discernible roads in the
centre of the city.

The first people to arrive at Hiroshima from the outside world
were a Major Hirano and a team of official investigators who flew
from Tokyo in a light plane. The officer who came out to meet them
as their plane landed presented a horrifying spectacle; his face was
sharply and neatly divided straight down the middle, one side
smooth and unhurt, the other black and a mass of blisters.

In the United States there had been fine and enjoyable weather
throughout the nation. There was wide interest as to the way the
war was going, but few people expected an invasion of Japan before
the autumn. To most people it had been a working Monday just like
any other. The musical Oklahoma!, which had been a tremendous
success, was about to set up a milestone when its touring company
earned the show s millionth dollar at its performance that night in
Philadelphia. In Los Angeles there had been a slight sensation in the
morning when a popular crooner, Frank Sinatra, had dived into the
harbour to save a three-year-old boy from drowning. In New York
there had been scenes almost reminiscent of pre-war days when the
Queen Mary had sailed with nine hundred passengers of whom some
were actually civilians, with trunks, boxes and flowers instead of
kit-bags and rifles. On loan to the United States, she was returning to
Europe to pick up more American troops being sent home from
Germany. As people began to drift home or to the cinema, they
glanced at the afternoon newspapers. There were a number of good
new films including Anchors Aweigh^ and Danny Kaye in Wonder

253

MOMENTOUS DECISION

Man. In automobiles radios were switched on and the popular tunes
of the moment were played by the popular bands, like those of
Tommy Dorsey and Les Brown; tunes like "Don t Fence Me In*,
The Trolly Song , Sentimental Journey , and June is Bustin Out
All Over . And then, suddenly, on the front pages of the newspapers
and on news flashes on the radio, there was an unexpected and
electrifying announcement: Sixteen hours ago an American plane
dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese army base.
That bomb has more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. It had more
than 2,000 times the blast power of the British Grand Slam, which
was the largest bomb yet used in the history of warfare. ... It is a
harnessing of the basic power of the Universe. 5 The announcement
bore every sign of having been carefully prepared from a propaganda
and justification point of view; although issued in Truman s name,
and authorized by him before he had left Potsdam, it was not written
by him. The mention of the horrific Grand Slam, not an American
weapon, seemed on the face of it to be somewhat beside the point;
there were also careful mentions of Pearl Harbour and of the German
V-rockets. The statement was not entirely honest; it was said that
the Germans had been working feverishly to build such a bomb,
although American Intelligence knew that this was not so; it was
also said that the ultimatum from Potsdam had been a clear warning
to the Japanese people to save them from utter destruction . If they
did not accept the ultimatum now they could expect a rain of ruin
from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth .
Finally, it stated that under present circumstances it had been
decided, contrary to the habit of scientists of this country or the
policy of this Government , to withhold the secret of the bomb s
manufacture. At Oak Ridge, Tennessee, an enterprising newsdealer
sold i, 600 copies of a local newspaper at one dollar each in half an
hour to the amazed workers who had helped produce the bomb
without knowing it. The following afternoon the Augusta entered
Chesapeake Bay after a record run from Europe, and late in the
evening the President was considerably gratified to be back in the
White House once more, after having been away for a month. There
he waited anxiously, like millions of others throughout the world, to
hear what had happened to Hiroshima.

In Britain the news had been announced late on Monday, but was
not widely known until the morning papers of August yth were read.
It had been the traditional August Bank Holiday, the first in peace
time for six years. In some ways it had been the happiest day for all

254

WORLD SCENE AFTER THE BOMB

that time; even more satisfying than VE Day itself. For there had
been a prevailing mood of back to normal* about the day to which
many people had contributed and many enjoyed. There had been
racing at Ascot, where the King and Queen had arrived in time to
see the King s horse win the fourth race. Apart from a brief thunder
storm in mid-afternoon, it had been a fine summer s day with blue
skies over which occasional white clouds leisurely passed. Atten
dances at sporting events had seldom, if ever, been surpassed.
At Lord s cricket ground, in London, the fourth Victory Test
between England and Australia had drawn a crowd of 34,000, a
record for the ground; a young Australian Air Force officer, K. R.
Miller, had scored a scintillating 107 not out. The gates had been
closed soon after the start of pky. At the White Qty Stadium there
had been what The Times described as the most important athletics
meeting held there for many years . In the mile Arae Anderson, of
Sweden, had come in first, in 4 min 8 . 8 sec, with Corporal Sidney
Wooderson second. The two miles had been won by the great
Swedish runner Gundar Haegg. The stadium was closed by the rime
the meeting had begun, with an attendance of 52,000, the largest
crowd ever assembled until that time for an athletics meeting in
Britain; throughout most of the day over 50,000 more waited
patiently, in well-ordered queues, outside, although there was no
hope of getting in some people said that, after the regimentation of
the war, queues had become such a habit to the British that they
could not resist joining them whenever they were sighted. Long
queues at Odeon cinemas throughout the country waited to see one
of the most popular British films ever made, The Way to the Stars,
with leading film stars like John Mills, Trevor Howard and Michael
Redgrave, and a haunting theme tune. It was the age of the cinema;
other popular films on general release were A Song to Remember,
Meet Me in St Louis, Wilson, and The Constant Nymph with
Charles Boyer and Joan Fontaine, and National Velvet with
Elizabeth Taylor, a twelve-year-old discovery. In the world of
variety and music-hall a flood of popular new personalities were
emerging from the disbanded concert-parties of the Services. Boats
and bathers had appeared on the Thames; and the seaside resorts,
still littered with rusty barbed wire and ugly concrete blocks, were
crowded with sunbathers and visitors, most of whom arrived by
train, there still being comparatively few cars on the roads. The 5ist
season of the Promenade Conceits was to begin the following day at
the Albert Hall.

255

MOMENTOUS DECISION

It was late on that Bank Holiday night that the new Prime
Minister made his announcement; he took a very easy way out of a
difficult problem, and after a brief introduction he frankly issued the
statement that had been prepared by and for Churchill some weeks
previously. Many of the words were obviously ChurchilFs. Typically,
Churchill kept all sign of the Anglo-American breach over the bomb
from public view: The smoothness with which the arrangements for
co-operation which were made in 1943 have been carried into effect
is a happy augury for our future relations. These words were, as he
has since revealed, almost the exact opposite to what he was thinking.
He explained why British work on the project had been transferred
to America: Great Britain at this period was fully extended in war
production, and we could not afford such grave interference with the
current munitions programmes on which our warlike operations
depended. Moreover, Great Britain was within easy range of
German bombers. . . . The decision was therefore taken to build the
full-scale production plants in America. Churchill ended in charac
teristic vein: This revelation of the secrets of nature, long mercifully
withheld from man, should arouse the most solemn reflections in the
mind and conscience of every human being capable of comprehen
sion. We must indeed pray that these awful agencies will be made to
conduce to peace among the nations, and that instead of wrecking
measureless havoc upon the entire globe they may become a peren
nial fountain of world prosperity. Churchill at this time did not have
grave doubts as to the use of the bomb, but Attlee, who had
acquiesced in the decision at Potsdam, was more concerned than his
issuing of Churchill s statement would indicate. On August 8th he
sent a personal telegram to Truman in which he noted: When we
were at Potsdam the potentiality of the atomic bomb had not become
actuality and the pressure of immediate problems was too heavy to
give us the opportunity of discussing the implications. . . . There is
widespread anxiety. He urged careful consideration on the problems
of control of atomic weapons.

Among those who heard the Attlee-Churchill statement with great
interest were the group of German nuclear physicists, headed by
Otto Hahn, who had been engaged on the similar German project,
but without material encouragement from the Nazis. They were now
interned at an English country house. Hahn was so depressed at the
thought that the Allies had succeeded in making the bomb, when he
was convinced that he, too, could have done so, that his colleagues
had to sit with him till he fell asleep in case he took his own life.

256

WORLD SCENE AFTER THE BOMB

There was also an announcement in Canada in which the important
contribution of Canada as the supplier of the raw material, and the
provider of research facilities at Montreal and elsewhere, was
stressed. It was not made clear whether Canada, in its strong position
as virtually the only practical supplier of uranium ore, had been
consulted over the dropping of the bomb.

While the world waited to hear what the Japanese reaction to the
atomic bomb was to be, newspapers and authorities of all kinds gave
their views as day after day went by and no Japanese surrender was
announced. In Britain, which had suffered so heavily itself from the
destruction of war, the news was received sombrely and with cold
appraisal; one of the major reactions was a desire to know precisely
how much Britain had been responsible for the scientific achieve
ment; there were conflicting reports about this. The London Times
wrote of a revolution in earthly affairs , and its Scientific Corres
pondent, in an article Atomic Bombs Explained , warned that such
bombs could lead to wars which, in twenty years* time, can only
have one end, the total extinction of civilization . Niels Bohr,
writing in the same newspaper, reflected on the present crisis of
humanity . Dean Inge, in an article in the Sunday Dispatch^ was in
particularly pessimistic vein. He wrote: It may well be that we have
come to the parting of the ways. The spectacle of a possible suicide
of civilization, to be followed by a long Dark Age, is now before our
eyes. In his column in the same newspaper, the popular philosopher,
C E. M. Joad, had a more encouraging prediction: There is the
hope that fear and horror may do what wisdom and decency have
always failed to do stop war. He also said: Will nobody stop these
damned scientists, put them in a bag and tie them up? A few days
kter Sir Arthur Harris, of Bomber Command, said: The atomic
bomb has put invasions out of date. Coupled with the scientific
direction of missiles, the possibilities do not bear contemplation. We
are at the end of a thousand-year phase of stability in weapons.
Clearly the next war, if it occurs, will be the atomic war. No country
will be able to remain outside it. All that is required now is range.*

In America, on the other hand, there was a feeling of shock and
uncertainty throughout the country; the reaction to the news sur
prised the administration. It seemed that the Franck Report, in
warning that the American public would not be pleased to know that
it had been the United States which had introduced this weapon to
war, was proving to be correct. A critical statement was issued on
behalf of the Federal Council of Churches by a leading Republican

257

MOMENTOUS DECISION

and lawyer, John Foster Dulles: c lf we, a professedly Christian
nation, feel morally free to. use atomic energy in this way, men
elsewhere will accept the verdict ... the stage will be set for the
sudden and final destruction of mankind. 5 The New York Times
said: c ln the bewilderment that such a stupendous announcement
must bring one consequence stands clear: civilization and humanity
can now survive only if there is a revolution in mankind s political
thinking/ The paper s military specialist said: We have been the
first to introduce a new weapon of unknowable effects which may
bring us the victory quickly but which will sow the seeds of hate
more widely than ever; we may yet reap the whirlwind. The
Herald Tribune said that, in comparison with the unlocking of the
atom , defeat and victory in the war were merely tiny ripples on the
surface of history. The Baltimore Sun revealed that there had been a
secret committee which had reported unfavourably on the use of the
bomb; why the authorities had decided to go against the advice of
the committee was a matter of conjecture .

During the week Japanese broadcasts began admitting the extent
of the damage at Hiroshima, and the fact that the United States
possessed a new, powerful weapon. One broadcast said that the
damage was so great that the authorities had been unable to ascertain
its full extent. This was the first news the world by now acutely
inquisitive as to what had happened at the city had received of the
damage. It was not until Thursday that the United States announced
the results of a reconnaissance flight; 4* 1 square miles of the city had
been obliterated. Japanese broadcasts became more indignant; one
said that the employment of the bomb was sufficient to brand the
enemy for ages to come as the destroyer of mankind and as the
public enemy of social justice . The horrified world learnt from
another, which was widely reported, that the impact of the bomb
was so terrific that practically all living things were literally seared to
death by the tremendous heat and pressure engendered by the blast .
It was stated at Strategic Air Force headquarters on Guam that dead
and wounded might exceed 100,000. Millions of people, the world
over, read and pondered.

The Swedish newspapers were second only to the Japanese in
denouncing the use of the bomb. The important Stockholm evening
paper Aftonbladet said in a leading article: Although Germany
began bomb warfare against open towns and civilian populations, all
records in this field have been beaten by the Anglo-Saxons. The
so-called rules of war which were hailed in 1939 must brand the

258

WORLD SCENE AFTER THE BOMB

bombing of Hiroshima as a first-class war crime. It is all very wdB if
atom raids can shorten the war, but this experiment with the popula
tion of an entire city as guinea-pigs reflects no martial glory on its
authors. The Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano said that this
incredibly destructive instrument remains a temptation for
posterity .

Still the world waited anxiously for the announcement of a
Japanese surrender.

The Anglo-American allies displayed their confidence by revealing,
shortly after the release of the Smyth Report, which gave some aQ-
secret data about the atomic bombs, yet another of the great secrets
of the war: radar. The whole story of this technique and its secret
use in the war was described in long articles in the newspapers and
magazines. In America, it was an American achievement; Time
magazine attributed it to two US Navy scientists, Albert Taylor and
Leo C. Young. Officially it was said that radar had been pioneered in
the United States in the 19205 and 19305. In Britain, it was a British
achievement, attributed to Sir Robert Watson-Watt. As with most
scientific discoveries, it was difficult to prove any one person s
contribution as the decisive one, but it was certainly Watson-Watt
who had produced the first practical proposals for locating aircraft by
radio beams. The facts were that, while the United States, Britain
and Germany had all been working on the principles of radar in the
19308, the British were the first to evolve the high-powered
magnetron that made it a workable proposition; the design was
brought to America in great secrecy in the autumn of 1940 by a
British engineer who delivered a small black bag, containing design
and model, to an official of the Bell Telephone Company. By that
time Britain was completely covered by radar defence; the first radar
station (the first in the world) had been set up as long before as 1935,
and in Easter 1939 a twenty-four-hour radar watch along the whole
British coast from Scapa Flow to Portsmouth had been instituted.
The radar defence system had been the winning card in the Battle of
Britain; without it there is grave doubt as to whether the battle could
have been won. The rather cross British attitude was summed up by
Sir Stafford Cripps, the new President of the Board of Trade, in a
Press conference on August i4th: The Americans will be announcing
the great part they had played, he said. There is no competition for
glory between the two countries, for they have worked hand in hand.
He then went on to give a long and exhaustive history of the work of
Watson-Watt and other British scientists.

259

MOMENTOUS DECISION

(V)

The Russian leaders, sensing it would soon be too late, had hurried
their country into a war with Japan two days after Hiroshima,
although it had been thought this action would not be possible until
mid-August, and although the Russo-Chinese talks were still not
completed. Harriman saw Molotov and Stalin, and the Marshal
mentioned casually to him that he had heard of the Hiroshima
bombing with great interest, and that Soviet scientists had been
working on the same problem but had been unable to solve it.
Haniman promptly reported this interesting piece of information
direct to Truman. The American administration had now got what it
had been angling for, despite the advice of Eisenhower, Leahy and
others, for so long, and for which it had made so many concessions:
Russian participation in the Japanese war. But now, far from being
a blessing, it was an embarrassment. A statement by Molotov
explained the declaration of war as follows: Taking into considera
tion Japan s refusal to capitulate, the Allies have addressed to the
Soviet Government a proposal to join in the war against Japanese
aggression, thereby shortening the duration of the war, reducing the
numbers of victims, and assisting in the speediest restoration of
general peace. True to its duty to the Allies, the Soviet Government
has accepted the proposal of the Allies and has associated itself with
the Allied declaration of July 26th. The implication was plain; only
by Russia entering the war, albeit somewhat reluctantly, would the
Allies be able to end it quickly. The suggestion that the Allies had
asked Russia to join in the war only after the rejection of the ulti
matum was incorrect. There had been no such request since
Potsdam; and, since the successful atom explosion test, no need for
one. Within hours Red Army mechanized units were pouring into
Japanese-held Manchuria in four main thrusts, and were also
threatening to move southwards down the island of Sakhalin.
Within forty-eight hours, meeting only spasmodic opposition, they
had already covered about sixty miles on all fronts. (Japanese
Intelligence had correctly forecast an American invasion at
Hangchow Bay planned for the autumn, and had built up a force in
that area at the expense of their forces on the Russian border.)
During all this time US Air Force units kept up a daily battering
of cities and towns in Japan, concentrating on the ports of the main

260

THE END OF THE WAR

islands of Kyushu and Honshu. On the day after Hiroshima, 130
planes had bombed Japan; the following day 420 took part in day
and night attacks. Admiral Halsey s Third Fleet had readied
Japanese home waters and was steaming up and down the coast
bombarding the shore with almost complete impunity. As early as
July nth the Secretary of the Navy had stated that the Allks had
complete control of all Pacific waters right up to the Japanese coast.
There was little opposition from any quarter. The planes received
scant attention from the defenders, and the ships, although attacked
by an occasional kamikaze (by now there were few airworthy
planes left in Japan), suffered no serious losses after the sinking of
the Indianapolis.

The plan to launch the second atom bomb, the plutonium one
known affectionately by its makers as Tat Man , had been brought
forward from August nth to August gth, it being believed that a
swift one-two ploy would have the best psychological effect on the
Japanese, and that bad weather expected shortly might delay the
bombing. Spaatz s command also requested permission to use a
third bomb, shortly to be available, on Tokyo. It was desired to use
the bomb on the capital at night-time, but Washington was unable
to come to a decision on this point. The campaign requesting the
citizens of the big cities to leave them immediately was stepped
up; many thousands of leaflets had already been dropped, but
not, unfortunately, on Hiroshima. Truman and Marshall both took
an interest in this matter. New leaflets were now dropped, including
one with a picture of the cloud over Hiroshima taken by one of the
crew of the Enola Gay. It read in part: You should take steps now to
cease military resistance. Otherwise we shall resolutely employ this
bomb and all our other superior weapons to promptly and force
fully end the war. Evacuate your cities now! Some millions of these
were printed, and a few hundred thousands found their way to
Japan. It was agreed that they should be dropped on the city of
Nagasaki.

Tat Man left Tinian at 3.49 a.m. on August Qth. Unlike Little
Boy , it was not possible to arm it in flight and, fearful of a crash on
take-off, fire-fighting and fire-engines, perhaps a little puny in the
circumstances, had lined the runway as the 6-29 roared off into the
night. On board one of the two observation planes were two British
observers, Group Captain Leonard Cheshire, VC, late of 617
Squadron RAF, and a scientist, William Penney. They had been at
Tinian for a month, and with some difficulty London had persuaded

261

MOMENTOUS DECISION

Washington to let them go as official British observers. A reporter
from the New York Times, William L. Laurence, also went along.
Kokura was found to be completely covered by cloud. After three
passes over the city innocently going about its morning business
below, the planes reluctantly went on to Nagasaki. It, too, lay
hidden beneath a layer of cloud. Countermanding Washington s
orders, the bomb run was begun on radar; the captain being some
what anxious about shortage of fuel. It has always been insisted that
at the last minute a hole was found in the clouds and that the bomb
was aimed through this. The bomb exploded three miles off target,
near one of the best hospitals in the Far East; although a greater
explosion even than that of the uranium bomb, it caused less
damage, but it was still the second greatest man-made catastrophe
the world had known.* As at Hiroshima, no one really knows the
exact figures of casualties and fatalities, or anything like them, but
it is probable that about 40,000 people were killed outright or died
shortly after, and about 25,000 permanently blinded, afflicted or
crippled; it seems that there were more immediate deaths from
burning and less from flying debris than at Hiroshima. Among those
who died were British and Dutch prisoners-of-war in the prison
camp at the city; it was the presence of this camp that had made the
inhabitants of Nagasaki confident that they would not suffer a fate
similar to that of Hiroshima. Also killed were 40 per cent of the
city s Christian community, which had always been the largest in
Japan. About one-third of the city was obliterated, including six
hospitals, a prison, two schools, a home for the blind and dumb, and
two war plants. Laurence, watching from the plane above, described
the cloud that rose above the town as c a living totem pole, carved
with many grotesque masks grimacing at the earth . As Nagasaki
groaned and suffered in its agony, it had a further visitation from
the Strategic Air Force; this time the planes dropped thousands of
fluttering leaflets urging the population to evacuate their ruined
city it was possible, said the leaflets, that Nagasaki would be
attacked by a new and devastating bomb.f

Leonard Cheshire was soon flying on his way to Attlee to report
what he had seen.

*The largest unnatural explosion before Hiroshima was when the Mont Blanc,
carrying TNT and 2,300 tons of lyddite, blew up at Halifax, NS, in 1917.

f Both cities have recovered from the devastation; Hiroshima s main occupation is a
macabre tourist industry, one of the biggest in the wprld (2,000,000 visitors a year).
Survivors carry green cards authorizing them free medical attention anywhere in
Japan; there are deformed births and cases of leukaemia.

262

THE END OF THE WAR

It was a few hours after the bombing when President Truman
went on the air to say: *I urge Japanese civilians to leave the in
dustrial cities immediately and save themselves from destruction,
He said that atom bombs would be dropped on Japan one after the
other until she surrendered, apparently unaware that it would be
many months before the bombs could be manufactured at more
than a tiny trickle. After the bomb expected to arrive sfaordy at
Tinian, only the fourth to be made, there was no telling how tog it
would take before another would be available. One of the most
striking features of the whole episode is the clear indication that the
left hand of the US administration was strangely out of contact
with the right hand. It is almost as if the bombs, guided by seme
evil force, had thrust off human control altogether. It is dear that
final control, and thus responsibility, was not being placed on any
single person. Neither Spaatz, Groves, Arnold, Marshall, nor even
Stimson was holding firm control over events; because of the unique
nature of the weapon, and the circumstances, they were all looking
elsewhere, mainly towards the President, who in turn failed to
grasp the reins and stared back at them once the order of July
24th had been authorized by him. That order can be seen now to
have been far from satisfactory, permitting as it did the use of four
bombs when the effects on a city of one had not been seen; circum
stances after the first bomb were certainly going to be different
from those existing before it.

Intense political and diplomatic activity took place in Tokyo
after Hiroshima. Togo, the Foreign Minister, had made desperate
efforts to get the Russians to mediate; but with no success. At least
one of the leading Tokyo newspapers was writing openly of die
advisability of surrender. For the first time some of the militarists
began admitting that Japan faced defeat, but they still insisted that
the country would find glory and honour in fighting till the last
despite the atom bombs. They were prepared to negotiate for peace,
but were too proud to accept unconditional surrender. Togo, with
the backing of the depressed and dispirited Prime Minister, Suzuki,
called on Hirohito and explained the atom bomb to him; he said he
believed the only possible course was surrender. The Emperor
agreed. He had been prepared to sue for peace for some time
(according to one source since February 1944), and had formally
proposed it at an Imperial conference on June 22nd. The only
question had been how much of the conquered territory could be
retained for Japan s crowded and seething millions. He now ordered

MOMENTOUS DECISION

that all time-wasting negotiating for advantageous conditions should
stop, and the war should be ended immediately. This, however,
was easier said than done because the militarists were still powerful,
although they were now without the support of the Emperor.
When the Supreme War Council met on August gth, word had just
been received of the disaster at Nagasaki. Coupled with the news
the previous day that Russia had entered the war, it was now clear
to even the most fervent patriots that Japan was finished. The
Council argued all day, with only short breaks for refreshments.
The War Minister held his bloc together, and Togo his; the
voting was even. Suzuki was reluctant to break the stalemate by
casting a vote himself, but solved the situation honourably for
all, and avoided taking the ultimate responsibility on himself, by
a brilliant manoeuvre; in the early hours of the morning he proposed
that the decision should be left to the Emperor himself. The
War Minister and his colleagues agreed. Hirohito, who had been
in touch with the deliberations through his Lord Privy Seal,
himself went to the Council chamber and said that the surrender
was to be accepted. Acceptance of the Potsdam terms, on condition
that the Emperior was to be retained, was announced on the radio
later that day, and was picked up on short-wave radio by a San
Francisco engineer. But the Allies refused to accept this as official,
and hostilities did not cease, especially in outlying theatres (such as
New Guinea, where the Australians were still advancing) and in
Manchuria (where the Russians were collecting as much territory as
possible in the time available). Nimitz ordered: Offensive action
shall be continued. In China there were reports that the Communist
armies were approaching Peking.

While approaches were made through Switzerland and Sweden
(for great nations at war do not correspond directly, even when
they want the war to end), the world waited.* Press comment on
the news of Nagasaki had become a little hysterical. The London
Times said: It is believed that a large part of Nagasaki, a city of
250,000 people, no longer exists/ There were few people in the
world who wanted any more atomic bombs. But Japan s answer, in
diplomatic code, took a long time to creak through the uncertain
radio channels between Tokyo and Berne. Everyone knew the war
was over, but nobody could quite believe it until the President
said it was really true. In London, street celebrations on the night

* The war imposed a heavy strain on the Swiss diplomatic service; a staff of sixty
was required in London to look after German interests. The Swiss had been unable to
relieve their Legation in Tokyo since 1942.

264

THE END OF THE WAR

of the loth fizzled out in the early evening; but London, with its
mass of American and British troops on leave from Europe, had
been a celebrating city for over three months. For weeks it had been
practically impossible to get a taxi, which were all packed with
American troops sightseeing in the city. On nearly all West End
streets, and at all the famous meeting places, vendors with Allied
flags and rosettes had long been doing a bride and apparently in
exhaustible trade. A statement was issued from Downing Street,
saying; *No official confirmation has yet been received of the many
rumours at present circulating, ... It is in the national interest that
work should continue.

In America there was a great surge of excitement and relief.
Truman held a meeting to discuss the offer. The difficult question
of the Emperor had been discussed many times before, but no
decision had ever been reached; public opinion regarded Hirofako
as a war criminal, but the British and some of Truman s own
advisers and experts considered him essential for maintaining kw
and order in Japan. Many considered that Japan would have
surrendered already if his safety had been made plain in the Potsdam
declaration. Stimson and Leahy felt that the Japanese should be
allowed to keep their Emperor. Forrestal thought that a carefully
worded reply should be made, accepting in practice, but insisting
on a rigid interpretation of the Potsdam ultimatum in theory.
Byrnes favoured total unconditional surrender. Truman asked
Byrnes to prepare a reply along the lines suggested by Forrestal.
This, in turn, had to be shown to the other allies: Britain, China
and Russia. It was agreed by all, except by the British, who sug
gested that Hirohito should not himself be made to sign the sur
render, only to authorize it. Truman agreed to this, despite Chinese
pressure. Molotov insisted that the peace communiqu6 should
include an announcement implying joint Allied occupation of
Japan, but Harriman protested vehemently, and after Stalin inter
vened Molotov retracted.

For four days the world waited in an agony of half-suppressed
joy and excitement.

In Japan there was near-chaos; the military attempted a coup
fttat, and there was some fighting. Another huge bomber raid was
launched on the morning of August i4th; over four hundred
bombers took part in the assault, one of the main targets of which
were the railway yards near Hiroshima. Rebels raided the Imperial
Palace, but somehow, after three days, a reply to the American note

265

MOMENTOUS DECISION

was delivered in Washington by the Swiss Charge d? Affaires. Like
the Allied statement, it neither indicated whether the Emperor
would remain or whether he would go.

On the evening of August i4th the White House correspondents
were assembled and briefly told that the war was over, and the world
started to hear very soon afterwards; as soon as he had told the
correspondents, the President did not forget to telephone the good
tidings to his mother. New York had already accepted a news
broadcast earlier in the day as being authoritative (it had been based
on a false report from Berne), and was celebrating hard. As on VE
Day, the first spectacular celebrations had occurred on the subway.
In the packed trains office workers and young people shouted, sang,
waved flags and streamers, and blew whistles. The holiday mood had
increased during the day, and by early evening the jostling, cheering
crowd was estimated by the police to be 100,000 strong. Truman,
for ever cautious, announced to the correspondents that an official
VJ Day would not be held until the surrender document was
actually signed. There was evidence that Americans were not
prepared to heed this further delay. Dancing, singing and every kind
of noise continued in many streets throughout the night. The
correspondent of the Daily Telegraph wired to London: It is difficult
to imagine to what heights this celebration will reach. It promises to
be the wildest New York has experienced. It was the same story of
riotous crowds in all other major cities.

In London it was late at night when the news came through. A
great melody of wailing rose from ships 5 sirens on the Thames. In
many parts of the country bonfires blazed as far as the eye could see.
The Prime Minister made a broadcast at midnight. His attitude was
different from that of the President. He said: Here at home you have
earned a short rest from the unceasing exertions which you have all
borne without flinching or complaint for so many years. I have no
doubt that throughout industry generally the Government s lead in
the matter of victory holidays will be followed, and that tomorrow
and Thursday will everywhere be treated as holidays. That was
enough, and two more days of boisterous and uninhibited celebration
were ushered in with official blessing. By the time it was over most
people were to be well sated with Union Jacks, Land of Hope and
Glory , rattles, beer and paper-hats on which were written Kiss Me
Quick ; but it was with such ritual that the greatest war the world
had ever known ended in many a city and town in Britain, the United
States and the Dominions.

266

THE END OF TOE WAR

By coincidence the following day, August i&h, had previously
been arranged as the occasion of the opening of the first new
Parliament for ten years. The drive of the King and Qiteeu from
Buckingham Palace to Westminster, in the Royal coach, had over
night become a victory procession watched and cheered by a Tasl
crowd that assembled with gaiety, singing and fireworks during the
night and morning. During the drive, as was only to be expected, it
began to rain. The Queen, in a light blue costume and delicate tot,
sat bolt upright, soaking wet, and acknowledged the madly cheering
and waving crowds with a happy and glowing smite. In Parliament,
George VI read out his speech, which, as tradition demanded, wis s
declaration of the new Government s policy; never before had a
British sovereign formally uttered measures of such strong Social
ism. There had been some talk of how long the monarchy could bst
in the new era being brought in, and the Prime Minister obliquely
referred to this. 4 We have had a General Election which has brought
great alteration in the composition of this House. (Cheers,) We have
had a change of government, but in the midst of change there are
things which remain unaltered. Among them is the loyalty and
devotion of the House to His Majesty. It is the glory of oar demo
cratic constitution that the will of the people operates, and the
changes which in other countries are brought about only through
civil strife and bloodshed, here in these islands proceed through the
peaceful method of the ballot-box. The institution of monarchy in
this country, worked out through long years of constitutional
development, works free from many of those evils which we have
seen arise in other countries. The peaceful transfer of power from
one political party to another works very smoothly, and its acceptance
has been a demonstration to the world of the workings of a real
democracy. This was followed by a moving tribute to the King
from William Gallacher, Communist. The Kbg returned to
Buckingham Palace, having heard that the monarchy was as safe as it
had ever been, something which he had himself never for a moment
doubted. That it was, in his own modest person, perhaps more
popular than ever before in its long history was amply demonstrated
throughout the next two days when huge crowds assembled outside
Buckingham Palace and repeatedly called for and cheered King
George VI. That same night the King broadcasted to his people
throughout the world, and the speech, spoken in the familiar, soft,
, struggling, slightly slurred tones that were so strangely hypnotic,
was relayed to a crowd of nearly a quarter of a million in St James s

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MOMENTOUS DECISION

Park (probably the largest gathering in British history). He finished
with these words: In many anxious times in our long history the
unconquerable spirit of our peoples has served us well, bringing us
to safety out of great peril. Yet I doubt if anything in all that has
gone before has matched the enduring courage and the quiet

determination which you have shown during these last six years

The world has come to look for certain things, for certain qualities,
from the peoples of the Commonwealth and Empire. We have our
part to play in restoring the shattered fabric of civilization. It is a
proud and difficult part, and if you carry on in the years to come as
you have done so splendidly in the war, you and your children can
look forward to the future not with fear, but with high hopes of a
surer happiness for all It is to this great task that I call you now, and
I know that I shall not call in vain. In the meantime, from the bottom
of my heart I thank my peoples for all that they have done, not only
for themselves but for mankind.

In Whitehall the great throng chanted outside the Ministry of
Health building, as it had just over three months before, for
Winston Churchill. But Churchill was not there, and a new leader
came out on the balcony to speak to the crowd. But Clement Attlee
was not this time the man the crowd wanted, and his speech, in
comparison to the tremendous and breathless silence in which the
VE crowd had listened to Churchill, was half lost in explosions,
rattles, laughter and songs. The crowds in London and the provinces
on VJ night were, if anything, a little larger than those of VE night,
but the abandon was, if anything, a little less; some observers
noticed a prevailing feeling of guilt due to the atom bombings.

In Australia there were scenes described as the wildest in the
Dominion s history. There were celebrations of varying intensity in
all Allied capitals, and there was some rather half-hearted rejoicing
in Germany.

In New York and other American cities the day was a little quieter
than the preceding one, many people still recovering from too little
sleep and too much drink. Most of the population of the country
took the day off, although the President had specifically announced
that there was to be no holiday yet except for government employees.
The centres of many cities resembled minor battlefields. In San
Francisco street-cars were wrecked, shop windows broken, and
liquor stores looted; five people had been killed and three hundred
injured. In Chicago paper and confetti was ankle deep; many people
had been injured by trampling. New Orleans had gone wild , and

268

THE END OF TOE WAR

public transport in Detroit had come to a standstill as thousands of
workers had flocked from war plants on hearing of Troniaa s
announcement in the White House. The scene at Pearl Harbour was
described as bedlam*, every ship in the harbour firing off" gun and
signals despite urgent commands to stop from Naval HQ; the some
what alcoholic celebration ^continued for three or four days*. On
Okinawa there was a similar outburst, with as many guns going off
as in the height of battle; six men were killed and thirty wounded.
During August i5th it was announced in Washington that the
Army s munitions programme was being cut back immediately by
94 per cent; that seven million men would be demobilized during
the next year; that petrol rationing would cease immediately.

In the East, spasmodic fighting continued for a few days in
Bougainville, in New Guinea (where the 14,000 starving troops had
received no supplies from Japan since April 1944) and in Burma^
where local Japanese commanders were loathe to believe the Allied
leaflets announcing the surrender. In Malaya an invasion of the
peninsula, that had been planned, anyway, for September 9th, took
place peacefully. In Japan, Hirohito dismissed the Suzuki Govern
ment, and crowds lay prostrate outside the Imperial Palace. The
expected mass suicides did not occur, but there were a number of
individuals who took their own lives, including the War Minister,
the Chief of Staff and his wife, and the Commander of the kamik&Z y
who left a message saying: You have died as human bullets, con
vinced of final victory which did not come true. I wish my death to
express my regret and sorrow to you and to your loved ones left
behind. The Emperor had made his first broadcast, in which he
said: . . . What is worse, the enemy, who has recently made use of an
inhuman bomb, is incessantly subjecting innocent people to grievous
wounds and massacre. The devastation is taking on incalculable
proportions. To continue the war under these conditions would
lead to the annihilation of our nation.* His subjects listened
to the Imperial voice, many of them on their knees, with won
der but little understanding as the Emperor spoke in court
Japanese.

MacArthur, who had been appointed Supreme Allied Commander
for Japan, and Mountbatten organized the urgent problem of
occupying and relieving such Japanese-held territories as the -Dutch
East Indies, Borneo, Indo-China, Hong Kong (where sniping
continued till September 2nd), Luzon (where Yamashita offered to
surrender on August 25th in a message written in immaculate and

269

MOMENTOUS DECISION

formal English), and the remaining occupied islands of the Philippine
Archipelago and the Pacific. A British officer reached Hong Kong on
August 30th, more than two weeks after the capitulation, to the
extreme annoyance of Chiang Kai-shek who had been hoping his
own troops would reach the colony first in order to accept the
Japanese surrender. British warships arrived off Singapore on
September 3rd and a force landed from HMS Sussex on September
5th; the take-over took place peacefully. The Union Jack with which
Lieutenant-General A. E. Percival had gone to surrender to the
Japanese three and a half years before, and which had been hidden
by prisoners-of-war in Changi Jail, was raised over the city. The
released prisoners at Singapore, as elsewhere, presented a horrifying
spectacle. Slim wrote of them: All emaciated, many walking
skeletons, numbers covered with supurating sores, and most naked
but for the ragged shorts they had worn for years or loin cloths of
sacking.* Relief teams were parachuted into these foul camps, but it
was many days before all were relieved.

The war was over. What people wanted to know was: How had it

been won? Churchill later wrote: It would be a mistake to suppose

that the fate of Japan was settled by the atomic bomb. Her defeat

was certain before the first bomb fell, and was brought about by

overwhelming maritime power/ The debate has lasted ever since,

and is not likely to be ever finalized. Truman will always be open to

criticism for failing to insist on a real warning of revolutionary

weapons in the Potsdam ultimatum; a warning which many advisers

had urged him to make and to which he had agreed. The bombs

were used, and some Americans* lives were saved by shortening the

war; about 130,000 died in order to accomplish that. How much was

the war shortened? The evidence now would suggest by two or three

weeks; not only were Hirohito and Togo gaining ascendancy over

the militarists, a process which would have been, anyway, increased

when Russia declared war, but Japan was physically unable to

continue effective operations much longer due especially to shortage

of fuel, food and raw materials for which she relied to a great extent

on overseas supplies; as J. F. C. Fuller has pointed out, Japan s

strategical centre of gravity lay in her Navy and Merchant Service ,

and she was unable to use either. United States submarines played

the major role in the defeat of Japan. But instead of hastening this

process by bombing docks and shipping, the Air Force acted

independently of the main strategic theme and concentrated, as in

Europe, on industrial and terror bombing that succeeded in

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THE END OF THE WAR

completely burning out more than 100 square miles in the five major
cities (General Arnold s own figure), the main effect of which, again
as in Europe, was to make the first years of peace in Japan almost as
difficult and expensive for the United States as the war had been. In
the end this air-minded strategy, seemingly so much easier and
simpler than the original strategy of isolation or the Army project of
invasion, won the day in the use of the atom bombs. American
Intelligence, so busy in Europe, was, in the East, either inefficient or
unheard.* Japan had been probing for peace since early June. It has
been said that the atom bombs were really aimed at Russia and not at
Japan, in an attempt to warn Russia of American might. There is no
evidence at all to support this view; United States policy at the time
was still to try to live with Russia as an ally. Finally, there is no firm
evidence that the Nagasaki bomb had any effect on the course of the
war whatever. Truman s Chief of Staff, Leahy, has said: It is my
opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon was of no material
assistance in our war against Japan. One of the strongest critics of
area bombing and of the atomic bombing of August 1945 has been
the US Strategic Bombing Survey itself, in which the categoric
opinion is given supported by the testimony of the surviving
Japanese leaders involved that Japan would have surrendered
(with the proviso about the Emperor which was eventually granted)
not long after August i4th, without invasion, even if the bombs had
not been dropped and Russia had not entered the war; the militarists
in Tokyo had lost confidence, face and power. This has been con
firmed by Suzuki.

The cost of the war had been inestimable; Britain, Russia and
Germany had suffered most. From the fifty-seven belligerent
nations, about thirty million people had died as a result of the war.
Britain had lost 397,762 servicemen killed, to say nothing of civi
lians; half a million homes had been destroyed, the merchant fleet
had declined by nearly one-third, the national and foreign debt had
grown to colossal proportions. France had lost 210,671 of her armed
forces killed (the number of homes ruined was about equal to that in
Britain). The United States suffered 293,986 deaths. The US
National. Debt had increased by over two hundred billion dollars.
Russian losses, even taking account of their unreliable figures, were
enormous; 6,115,000 military deaths and over ten million civilians
killed. More Russians had died in the defence of Stalingrad than had

* Although Wedemeyer states that his own Intelligence reports early in 1945 proved
that the end in East Asia was a matter of weeks .

271

MOMENTOUS DECISION

Americans in the entire war. Japan had 1,506,000 military losses
(including missing); Italy 144,496; Germany 2,850,000.

On August i gth a sixteen-man Japanese delegation arrived at
MacArthur s headquarters, in Manila, to receive his orders for the
transfer of power. They returned to Tokyo the following day, and on
August 28th the first American troops landed at an airfield in Japan.
Two days later the main occupation force arrived, 4,200 troops being
landed by nightfall. The operation continued for many days. On
August 3Oth, MacArthur himself arrived with the first main body of
troops, and was driven into Tokyo, stern-faced and glaring, with
thirty thousand immaculate and motionless Japanese soldiers lining
the route. MacArthur was, of course, well acquainted with the
Oriental mind.

The surrender ceremony took place on September 2nd; a dull,
overcast day. It was six years and one day since the start of the
Second World War, when German panzer divisions had burst across
the Polish frontier and a German battleship, on a goodwill 5 visit to
Danzig, had begun bombarding the town. After strong and angry
representations by the Navy, the ceremony was held, not on land,
but aboard the USS Missouri. The Japanese emissaries, formally
dressed in silk top hats, frock-coats and striped trousers, were
brought alongside in a launch. The new Foreign Minister had a
wooden leg, and only managed to clamber up the ladder to the
battleship with extreme difficulty. The delegation were not met on
deck, and stood waiting in humiliation for about a quarter of an hour
before being sent for. The Japanese authorities had brought the war
on themselves, and many of their countrymen had fought it with
extreme cruelty. The actual ceremony took about twenty minutes.
The setting was dramatic and sombre; grey British and American
battleships clustered around in the dim light, their guns pointing
towards the shore. As MacArthur signed he called for Generals
J. M. Wainwright and A. E. Percival, of the stands at Bataan and
Singapore respectively, both just released from captivity, to stand at
his shoulders. He then pronounced the following carefully composed
statement: We are gathered here, representatives of the major
warring powers, to conclude a solemn agreement whereby peace may
be restored. The issues, involving divergent ideals and ideologies,
have been determined on the battlefields of the world and hence are
not for our discussion or debate. Nor is it for us here to meet,
representing as we do a majority of the people of the earth, in a
spirit of distrust, malice or hatred Let us pray that peace be

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THE END OF THE WAR

now restored to the world, and that God will preserve it always.

These proceedings are closed.*

But were they? Not for the countless relatives and loved-ones of
those Allied servicemen who had been killed in the war. Not, cer
tainly, for those still struggling for life at Hiroshima and Nagasaki;
who picked their ways through the miles of debris, looking for a
familiar sign or object to tell them they were at their homes; who
lay in the corridors, toilets and offices of the patched-up hospital;
who found comfort in the rumour, which they refused to dis
believe, that Japan had also possessed the secret weapon and had
dropped one on Los Angeles before the war had ended; who were
still dying in thousands more than two weeks after the explosions.
They had just been joined by the first detachments of the Inter
national Red Cross, journalists and newsreel cameramen to arrive
on the scene. One of the Red Cross workers described his arrival:
Everything had disappeared. It was a stony waste littered with d6bris
and twisted girders. We got out of the car and made our way slowly
through the ruins into the centre of the dead city. Absolute silence

reigned in the whole necropolis In what remained of the station

fa?ade the hands of the clock had been stopped at 8.15. It was
perhaps the first time in the history of humanity that the birth of a
new era was recorded on the face of a clock.*

7 Uneasy Peace

The occupation of Japan: China, the Dutch East

Indies and India

The visit of de Gaulle to Washington
The council of Foreign Ministers in London
Early post-war problems in Britain
Demobilization

The United States return to peace
The US Loan

Attlee s visit to Washington
The control of atomic power, and Russia
The situation in Europe and elsewhere
The Moscow Foreign Ministers conference
The end of the year

7 UNEASY PEACE

Whatever may be said, from a strategic or moral point of view, of the
means the United States employed to end the Japanese war, one
thing is certain: the war was brought to an end with almost complete
confusion and ineptness. It is equally certain that the United States
began the peace in the Far East with complete confidence, brilliance
and accuracy. The lessons of Europe had been learnt, and the Amer
ican commander on the spot was of a vastly different temperament
one more suitable for the task from the commander in Europe.
The leaders of the United States slowly began to appreciate that at
the start of the new age their country was in a position of tremen
dous and absolute power; the only pity, from a Western point of
view, is that they did not realize it earlier. On August zoth Time
magazine summed up the situation with its customary succinctness:
The new political era that began at Hiroshima will break into two
parts: (i) the years when the bomb remains the exclusive posses
sion of three close allies, the US, Britain and Canada; (2 ) the years

after other nations develop it This was a new room, rich with

hope, terrible with strange dangers. The door that slammed behind
man at Hiroshima had locked. There was no choice but to grope
ahead into the Atomic Age/

The occupation of Japan, carried out in masterful fashion by
Douglas MacArthur, was beset with diplomatic snares, all of them
unsuccessful and all of them set in Moscow. The Soviets still
claimed a part in the occupation of Japan. Other countries had agreed

275

UNEASY PEACE

to American handling of the occupation, although Australia and
New Zealand demanded roles more decisive than the United States
were willing to grant. MacArthur s own representations to the
Russians about a quarter of a million Japanese prisoners taken in the
brief campaign in Manchuria met with no success. There was also
the question of Korea, where the 38th parallel had been fixed as a
dividing line for the purposes of accepting the Japanese surrender.
The Russians were attempting to make this a permanent, and closed,
frontier.

In Japan itself, Hirohito expressed in the Diet his desire that a new
national policy would win the confidence of the world 5 . Members of
the Diet left the Chamber openly weeping. Addressing both Houses,
the new Premier said that Japan had given up against an over
whelming coalition when it was impossible to cany on; the situation
was hopeless even before the atomic-bomb attacks. The country had
been defeated c by May or June . MacArthur was well aware that by
using existing institutions in Japan he would be avoiding the
difficulties being encountered in Germany. But Hirohito s plea was
not helped by the release, on September sth, of a State Department
document on Japanese atrocities; filled with details of bestial and
inhuman treatment of American prisoners, it made sickening read
ing, and there was a wave of disgust directed against Japan and the
Japanese that was felt in all Allied countries. The release of emaciated
Allied prisoners from camps received priority from the occupying
forces. Eighty per cent were suffering from severe malnutrition.
Within three weeks most of those who were not seriously ill
veterans of Wake, Bataan and Malaya were on their way home.

MacArthur s first act on arrival at his new headquarters in Tokyo
was to order the unfurling of the Stars and Stripes that had flown
over the White House on the day of Pearl Harbour; it had already
flown in Rome and Berlin. As the days went on the country began to
be properly garrisoned with American soldiers, much to the relief of
the first to arrive, who had been outnumbered by armed Japanese
troops about a hundred to one; of this MacArthur said: There
probably was no greater gamble taken in history than the initial
landings. By the end of September there were 232,379 US troops in
Japan.* Although the Japanese demobilization went ahead with
extraordinary speed, and although MacArthur soon had an executive
organization functioning in Tokyo, there were no dramatic scenes of
national humiliation and the American public was uneasy and

* At the end of the war there were 2,576,085 Japanese troops on the home island*.

276

THE OCCUPATION OF JAPAN

disappointed. Criticism of MacArthur, and his "soft handling of the
Japanese, began to appear in the American Press, to which he felt it
necessary to reply at length on several occasions. Nevertheless it was
true that the friendly disposition of US troops and MacArthur s use
of the existing government, and his recognition of the Emperor, did
much to reassure the nervous Japanese and alienate the American
public; but although Hirohito continued to reign, it was MacArthur
who ruled. His greatest problems were the recovery and maintenance
of essential services, the repatriation of nearly four and a half million
Japanese troops overseas, the establishment of civil reforms, and the
purging of militarists from Japanese society. For the time being he
decided to concentrate on the former two. The surprising absence of
rancour in Japan in the early days of the occupation, and the good
American-Japanese relations, were commented on by several
observers. But Truman, uneasy at MacArthur s apparently growing
and uncontrolled authority, suggested he should go home for a short
visit. MacArthur refused to accept both this and a stronger note
urging a brief trip to the United States. In October the Japanese
Government was forced to resign when MacArthur demanded the
dismissal of the Home Minister. A new Prime Minister, Shidehara,
was appointed. It was announced that nearly seven million Japanese
troops would be disarmed and demobilized within two months.

On September gth the final indignity took place with the formal
surrender of a million Japanese troops to the Chinese in Nanking;
the eight years war in the Far East was over. Conversations took
place at Chungking between representatives of the Communists and
the Kuomintang, but they made no headway; the Communists
refused to surrender control of their army. China remained in a
chaotic condition, with American and European missions in Peking
attempting to send home the prisoners-of-war sent to camps in that
area by the Japanese, and relying on Japanese troops to maintain law
and order. Washington, which had long striven to prevent civil war,
began to support more openly the Kuomintang regime s efforts to
gain control over the country (although continuing to deplore as
imperialism similar British, Dutch and French efforts elsewhere).
The Russo-Chinese treaty was at last signed after the resignation
of T. V. Soong, the Chinese Foreign Minister. Its most surprising
feature was that the Russians appeared to have come out in favour of
the Kuomintang Government and abandoned the Yenan Com
munists. As well as promising moral and material help to Chiang
Kai-shek, Russia agreed to evacuate Manchuria, into which the Red

277

UNEASY PEACE

Army had so recently burst, and recognize it as Chinese. In return
China concurred to most of the Soviet Eastern rights agreed to by
Roosevelt at Yalta. Chiang Kai-shek had thus, it seemed, some
reason to congratulate himself and his negotiators for having salvaged
a great deal when it had looked as if they were being sold down the
river by the United States.

Meanwhile two colonial powers were having some difficulty in
enforcing their claims to their former territories. In Indo-China the
French found themselves in the somewhat ridiculous situation of
having to agree to a Chinese column accepting the Japanese sur
render at Hanoi, as their own small force had been chased away by
the Japanese into the wilderness; the local French commander
refused to attend the ceremony as the place reserved for him was
unacceptable . The southern part of Indo-China was occupied for
France by troops of the British Fourteenth Army, flown in after
disorder and anti-French disturbances. British troops had to
intervene in fierce fighting between Annamese and French in
Saigon. The situation was not calculated to please General de Gaulle,
and after some diplomatic activity the Chinese assured him that they
would respect French rights in the area. In the Netherlands East
Indies the Dutch were in an even more embarrassing position.
About a quarter of a million Japanese were estimated to be in the
islands, and the Dutch only had a force of about 6,000 men available
to go there. The most prominent local leader was Dr Soekarno, who
had expressed his loyalty to the Dutch Government at the outbreak
of war, had befriended the Japanese during the occupation, and was
now making advances to the British and Americans in the hope of
receiving aid from them in the cause of independence for the islands.
While the Japanese on Java awaited the arrival of Allied troops, who
showed no signs of arriving, they equipped and trained a local
Indonesian army. Liberated Dutch prisoners were murdered by this
undisciplined force, who soon appeared to have broken free from
Soekarno s control. On September 2Qth a British force, a battalion
of the Seaforth Highlanders, landed on Java. It was stated by the
officer commanding these and other British troops shortly to arrive
that their only purpose was to rescue prisoners-of-war and disarm
the Japanese: We have no interest in internal politics; British and
Indian troops will not become involved. The Viceroy of India,
Earl Wavell, said: Our troops are not there to suppress the Indo
nesians; they went there on an errand of duty and mercy to dismiss
the Japanese and rescue Allied prisoners. No one quite knew what

278

THE OCCUPATION OF JAPAN

to think, for the British commander, Lieutenant-General Sir Philip
Christison, then said he intended to bring Indonesian leaders and
Dutch officials together at a conference, and that something must
happen at once . The situation deteriorated rapidly. Christison came
in for heavy criticism for apparently supporting Indonesian desires.
Outbreaks of fighting became frequent, and the thousand Scottish
troops, and the 5th Indian Division which joined them, found
themselves in a thankless and bewildering situation incurring the
wrath of Indonesians, Japanese and Dutch alike.

In India the advent of the Labour Government had met with
general approval, as the constitutional reform for which politicians
and agitators had pressed so long, and about which they had received
so many promises, seemed more likely to take place with a Socialist
Government at Westminster. The demand for self-government,
already promised, was becoming irresistible. The Viceroy did his
best to bring all conflicting interests together; it was clear, however,
that he was gradually sinking in the morass of endless talk, religious
bitterness and indecision that bedevilled Indian affairs. Although he
accepted his task of preparing for the end of the British Raj as
inevitable, his heart was not in it; he was pessimistic about the
outcome. Wavell, a man of outstanding character and great talents,
had experienced a long and disappointing war, and had been given
many thankless tasks to perform. He was essentially a tired man. In
September he visited London to meet the new Government.
Ministers and friends found him dispirited and depressed. He had
been in London only a few months before for discussions with
Churchill, but had been kept hanging around and had accomplished
little, as everyone had been busy with the election. Wavell pondered
on his guiding hero Allenby, who had faced the problem of complete
independence in Egypt after the First World War and had encouraged
the Government to hasten its plans; now he found himself in a
similar predicament. Attlee was uneasy about Wavell s ability to
handle the situation: I did not think that he and the Indians could
really understand each other. As it turned out, he was wrong; many
Indians have written that they understood Wavell well enough and
that he understood them only too well which no doubt accounted
for his depression. But Attlee s instinct was right, as it was so often
to be, if not his reasoning. On his return to India, Wavell put for
ward a new plan giving Indians complete autonomy in Foreign
Affairs, Police and Finance, with final power resting in a pre
dominantly Indian Viceroy s Council. But Jinnah would not agree.

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While Wavell continued to labour ceaselessly with Jinnah, Ghandi
and others to bring an end to the bickering and procrastination of the
factions in India, Attlee was discussing in London the future of
India with such experts as Stafford Cripps and Lord Pethick-
Lawrence. There were riots in Calcutta, and the Governor of
Bengal, the Australian R. G. Casey, alerted the Army to be ready to
intervene. Casey wrote in his diary: It was difficult to discover what
it was all about. But India was not the only problem in the disturbed
and troubled British Empire. The end of the war also acted as a spur
to discontent and agitation in Ceylon and Burma. At the year s end
the brave but despairing Wavell appealed to all these peoples to
avoid violence and strife when they stood at the gate of political and
economic opportunity .

Immediately after the war s end de Gaulle visited President Truman
in Washington. In the course of a number of conversations the
Frenchman attempted to exert his influence, but with no success. At
the opening meeting Truman insisted on confining the discussion to
the French fuel situation. This did not please the General at all. The
President promised to see that all French requests for mining
machinery would receive absolute priority, although it is not clear
whether the French had asked for any. In a later meeting de Gaulle
managed to bring the discussions round to Germany. He said that
the unity of Germany would be dangerous; it would lead to a new
Reich which would end by allying itself to the Slav bloc that had
been brought into being by the decisions made at Yalta and Potsdam
to which he had not been party. He would like to see the inter
nationalization of the Ruhr. The President remarked that the
Russian representatives to the Potsdam conference had also urged
this course.

On the question of boundaries, de Gaulle denied that France had
ever wished to annexe the Val D Aosta. All that France insisted upon
was that the frontier should be slightly adjusted . But France did not
support the Italian-frontier claims of other powers, such as Yugo
slavia. The General regretted the fact that the United States had
given moral support to the deplorable British, intervention in the
Levant. Truman admitted that the United States had been over-
influenced by Britain.

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The London Times reported: Tolitically and militarily the talks
Were not as broad or as thorough as the highest French hopes. This
was a fine example of British understatement. Somewhat frigid, and
not a little irritated by the apparent American unwillingness to treat
his views- coming as they did from the liberator and leader of
France with the respect that they deserved, de Gaulle went off to
New York. There, somewhat to his and everyone else s surprise, he
received a tumultuous reception.

(Hi)

The Council of Foreign Ministers to draw up peace treaties with
Italy and the Nazi satellite states, in response to the decision made at
Potsdam, met at Lancaster House, in London, from September i ith.
The Foreign Ministers were those of the Big Three countries and
France and China. The first treaty to be discussed was that with
Italy, and right away the conference was faced with numerous and
seemingly insurmountable difficulties. The conference had no
sooner opened than the British Dominions, led by the Australians
(whose External Affairs Minister, Dr Evatt, was in London),
demanded to be heard; it was pointed out that many Australian and
New Zealand troops had fought and died in Italy. As they had
earlier in the year, the Dominions seemed to be questioning whether
the Big Three had the right to settle the world s affairs on their own.
As a concession to these demands, the Dominions, and Italy and
Yugoslavia, were invited to the conference to give their views on the
Yugoslav-Italian frontier. Eventually it was agreed that Trieste
should become a free port in one form or another, but Molotov
insisted that it should be under Yugoslav sovereignty. He refused to
alter this opinion. On most other Italian problems, such as the future
of her former colonies and reparations to be demanded from her,
Molotov found himself in a four-to-one minority. He claimed that
Russia should have a trusteeship over Tripolitania; a claim which
Bevin rejected with some heat. The conference dragged on with no
agreement being reached. While Byrnes (supported by John Foster
Dulles, now a Republican spokesman on foreign affairs) and Bevin
tried to keep the discussions to Italy, the French tried to bring in the
question of Germany, and the Russians tried to open up a reappraisal
of the occupation of Japan.

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DE GAULLE S VISIT TO WASHINGTON

It seemed that the Russians were not prepared to make concessions
with regard to their excessive demands about Italy until the Anglo-
Americans were prepared to recognize the existing puppet govern
ments in Rumania and Bulgaria. This neither Byrnes nor Bevin was
prepared to do not, an any rate, until there had been free elections
in those countries. They said that the United States and Britain
could not contemplate making peace treaties with governments
which they considered undemocratic. Molotov retorted that at
Yalta and Potsdam the Anglo-Americans had insisted that they
wanted to see governments friendly to the Soviet Union in the
Balkans. Byrnes said that this was so, but they had to be democratic,
too. This simple argument continued for some days; Molotov always
charging that the United States was anxious to see governments
hostile to Russia in all countries adjoining Soviet territory, and
Byrnes denying it absolutely. As for Soviet troops, Molotov insisted
that these were essential in the area in order to protect Russian lines
of communication to the occupying forces in Austria. Byrnes said
that the American objective was a government in Bulgaria and
Rumania that was both democratic and friendly to the Soviets.
Molotov, who was proving to be more difficult than ever before, said
he did not believe it. He said that electoral or governmental dis
turbances in Rumania might lead to civil war. Byrnes was to some
extent sympathetic to Russian fears, but neither he nor Bevin wilted
in the face of constant and bitter pressure from the Soviet delegation.
Bevin s attitude towards the Russians was much harder than that of
the Secretary of State. Molotov was apparently bewildered at their
obstinacy, for he could not understand how they could profess to
want pro-Soviet governments while demanding elections which
were out of the question as such elections might return anti-Soviet
governments. The only certain way to ensure Russian security, he
said privately, was for Russia to nominate her own governments in
these countries. At length Molotov, imprisoned, as always, in his
own suspicions, realized that the Americans and British were not
going to give way on this point, and the Russians, convinced that any
further discussion was a waste of time, decided to end the conference
with a cynicism that was to become familiar in later years, but which
on this occasion deeply shocked the world. On September 22nd
Molotov told Byrnes that he could no longer agree to the inclusion
of France and China in all conference sessions; in future they should
only be admitted when matters were being discussed which closely
affected them. This was, he said, the correct interpretation of the

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COUNCIL OF FOREIGN MINISTERS, LONDON

ruling which had been agreed upon at Potsdam, but which had been
abused during the conference so far. China should be excluded from
all European treaties and France from all but German and Italian
treaties. When this was discussed at a later meeting, Bevin, angry
and disappointed, compared Molotov s action to the Hitler theory .
Molotov got up and walked out; although he came back, the
conference was over. No compromise could be reached, as the
Americans and the British were not prepared to cynically abandon
their partners in front of a watching world.

As a last attempt to save the conference, the two Western Foreign
Ministers decided to approach Attlee and Truman to discuss with
Stalin what had actually been agreed on at Potsdam in the hope that
the old Generalissimo would, as so often before, overrule his
Foreign Minister. Attlee s message to Stalin on this matter was, in
fact, the only one he sent during the year, apart from mere formal
ities which well illustrates how Britain, since the fall of Churchill,
had lost much of such little initiative in international matters as she
had possessed, and how her foreign affairs were once more being
conducted in the traditional way, at Foreign Secretary level.
Truman s message was actually written by Byrnes and sent by
Leahy, in the President s absence from the White House, thus
illustrating how much American foreign affairs, since the decline of
Roosevelt, were also being carried out below the highest level. Both
messages received a cold reply from Stalin, backing Molotov s stand.

The conference broke up on October 2nd. At a Press conference
Byrnes denied that it had ever been thought possible to draft the
peace treaties at the meeting; there were bound to be further
conferences. In the House of Commons, Ernest Bevin said: We
should have had to say in effect to the representatives of France and
China: Now you must leave the room while we are discussing these
matters. And when we came to the Finnish treaty we should have
had to invite the United States to withdraw as well. Such a request
by some of the powers to their partners would obviously have
created international difficulties which the United States and
British delegations did not feel they should be called upon to face.*
By far the strongest public statement given about the background to
the ending of the conference was given by John Foster Dulles. He
said that the reason for public dismay was that for more than four
years all conferences between the great powers had been followed by
statements giving the impression that complete harmony had been
achieved. He described this as a diet of soothing syrup . The

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UNEASY PEACE

differences which had in fact always existed were now coming to
light. The Russians at the conference had tried to get the United
States to agree to peace treaties with governments which were not
democratic by threatening to break off the conference altogether with
unreasonable demands. They also knew that we were anxious
quickly to conclude peace with Italy. They wanted to find out how
much of our principle we would sacrifice to attain these goals. They
found out that the United States was not willing to sacrifice its
principles or its historic friendship with China and France. In every
important negotiation there comes a moment when the negotiators
test one another out. It was inevitable that the time would come

when the Soviet Union would want to test us out We are at the

beginning of long and difficult negotiations which will involve the
structure of the post-war world. We are emerging from six years of
war during which morality and principle have increasingly been put
aside in favour of military expediency. The war has now ended and,
with that ending, principle and morality must be re-established in
the world. The United States ought to take the lead.

Very few people indeed outside the United States, and not all that
many in it, had ever heard of John Foster Dulles before. Certainly
not since before the war had they heard such strong words directed
against Soviet Russia, which most people looked upon as a noble if
difficult ally which was led by the gruff but kindly Uncle Joe*. It was
a far cry from the kind of thing another American adviser of foreign
affairs, Harry Hopkins, had been saying earlier in the year. Even
now, in notes for a book he intended to write, Hopkins was saying:
*The Russians trust the United States more than they trust any
power in the world. I believe they ... are determined to take their
place in world affairs in an international organization. In an
impassioned speech in the House of Commons, Bevin denied
vehemently the creation of an anti-Soviet pact, which he took to be
the reason for the fear and suspicions that might have been behind
the Russian action in bringing the conference to an end.

The London conference marked the end of the Grand Diplomacy
of the war. The once-ceaseless flow of messages between the three
heads of state had practically dried up. Two of Truman s five
messages to Stalin for the remainder of the year concerned a signed
photograph that the Generalissimo had sent him ( C I shall always
treasure the picture as a happy reminder of very pleasant associa
tions ) and a vain attempt to get him to sit for his portrait. Contact
between heads of state was fading away. Churchill s most-exclusive-

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BRITISH POST-WAR PROBLEMS

club was no more; Attlee was disinterested t and submerged in
domestic problems, Truman was disillusioned, and Stalin was tired,
pestered by ambitious sycophants and unimpressed with the new
leaders in the West. Dulles words marked the beginning of the end
of all pretensions to Allied unity. Informed people began to speak
of the post-war world as being a confrontation between two great
blocs the Soviet and the American. In London, J. L. Garvin asked
the question: Does Russia want war? He came to the conclusion that
it did not. The war was over; but there was a strangely cold nip in
the air of peace.

(iv)

While the conference had dragged on, life in London, and in Britain
generally, had not noticeably changed with the sudden arrival of
peace and a Socialist Government. Things were much as they had
been for six years. Everyone, rich and poor, was shabbily or plainly
dressed. The appearance of the country, compounded from its cities,
villages and people, was distinctly dowdy. Food was meagre and
unattractive. There were no sudden increases or abolition of
rationing; on the contrary, matters were becoming steadily worse. It
was announced that only one domestic pack of dried egg would be
allowed per person every two months. The marmalade ration was
reduced to i Ib for a four-week period. It was warned that the milk
ration might have to be reduced to two pints a week. The new Food
Minister, Sir Ben Smith, said that he could hold out no prospect of
any immediate improvement in rations. He asked the public to be
patient. He made a similar pronouncement every few weeks, and he
was not the only Labour Minister who found himself issuing pleas
to the public rather than ushering in the promised land of Socialism.
Every day the Ministry of War Transport was besieged by between
seventy-five and a hundred people begging and shouting for car
permits, without which it was impossible to purchase one of the new
cars, a few of which were beginning to role off production lines
hastily converted from wartime use. Many thousands of postal
applications arrived each day; they were treated strictly on a basis of
priority a phrase which had been voiced so often in the years
recently passed that many people believed it meant absolutely
nothing. The advent of a Labour Government did not seem to have

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UNEASY PEACE

noticeably improved labour relations. There was a dock strike in
October which infuriated the public; many food-ships had to wait
days before they could be unloaded. Troops were called in to unload
ships; the dockers were eventually granted a minimum wage of 195 a
day. The railways were in dire circumstances, suffering from acute
need of capital investment and overloading during the war; one of
the very first pay increases after the war was awarded to the railway-
men, who received an extra 75 a week, bringing their basic wage to
875 in the London area and 855 in the provinces. The state of the
railways could be judged by two bad crashes before the end of the
year: at Bourne End, where thirty-nine passengers lost their lives,
and at Northwood, where three died; on January 2nd, 1946, fifteen
more died in a rail accident at Lichfield. There was trouble in the
mines, where production showed no signs of improving now that
nationalization was about to take place. The Minister of Fuel,
Emanuel Shinwell, seemed to spend a great deal of his time issuing
appeals to the coal-miners. He said: c We can see in the immediate
future the realization of our long-sustained demand for the national
ownership of the coal-mining industry; let us now make our best
contribution to the short-term problem/ The problem was that
British coal stocks for the coming winter looked like being the lowest
for any winter even during the war. The situation was critical. The
colliery owners issued the following important statement: The
colliery owners believe that private enterprise is the right basis for
the efficient conduct of the coal-mining industry in the national
interest. But in view of the fact that legislation for the transfer of the
industry from private enterprise to public ownership is to be
proceeded with, and having regard to the statement made on behalf
of the Government that the industry would be fairly treated so far as
compensation is concerned, the colliery owners, through the Mining
Association, place themselves at the disposal of the Government in
connection both with the working out of the necessary organizations
to be created on the basis of public ownership and with the
arrangements that will be necessary to facilitate the transfer. ... In
the interim period it is of vital national importance that the output of
coal should be increased, and the colliery owners will co-operate
with the Government in the fullest possible manner. The Mine-
workers Union mounted an intensive propaganda campaign in every
coalfield in conjunction with Labour MPs representing mining
constituencies. Speeches, posters and pamphlets bombarded the
miners. But they were not the only section of the public to be urged

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BRITISH POST-WAR PROBLEMS

on to greater efforts for the sake of the nation. Posters everywhere
begged people to save for peace, just as only recently they had been
begging them to save for war. The London Thanksgiving Week
Savings Campaign raised 125,000,000 for the nation in one
week. The Chancellor of the Exchequer made a strong plea for the
continuance of saving. He explained: If a large number of people
all try to spend their money at the same time while supplies are so
short, the only result would be to drive up prices or, where these
are subject to price control, to encourage large-scale black-market
operations. The King appealed for more savings. The Queen
appealed for more savings. The Prime Minister appealed for more
savings. There was a great deal of talk about Britain having to
export to live . Few people took much notice of Sir Patrick Hannon,
President of the National Union of Manufacturers, when he said:
The strength and efficiency of our export trade depends entirely
on a sound and flourishing home market. It is not economic to
manufacture for export only. If the Government insist upon us
doing this, we will be pushed off all the markets by the US.

There was much agitation for an increase in the rate of demobiliza
tion which, because of the truculence of Britain s allies, had been
secretly slowed down by Churchill earlier in the year, and which
seemed to most servicemen to be scandalously slow. There was a
great and widespread longing to throw off battle-dress and uniforms
and return to homes, families, local communities and the jobs of
what seemed a distant past. To men who had dreamed for years of
walking down the High Street on a Saturday morning, and going to
a football match (Charlton were top of the League) in the afternoon,
as free men once more, any further delay was unbearable. But
although men were being demobbed at a fair speed, the new
Government found itself faced with many undreamed-of responsi
bilities throughout the world; in Indo-China, in Java, in Germany
and elsewhere there seemed no escape for British troops. At Alder-
shot there was rioting and mutiny among Canadian troops waiting
to go home. The worried Prime Minister personally wrote to Truman
asking for the return of the Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary and
Aquitania, which had been loaned to the United States during the
war for troop transportation. These ships were now being used for
the return of American soldiers to the United States. There was
some angry correspondence on this matter. Attlee called Truman s
attention to the fact that many British soldiers had been on active
service and away from their homes for over five years; owing to the

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UNEASY PEACE

sudden termination of the Japanese war, the conditions in which
they had been loaned no longer existed. The US Chiefs of Staff,
however, refused to let them go, owing to the necessity to return
US forces from Europe as expeditiously as possible". Not only that,
but they were, as Attlee then suggested, unable to provide equivalent
American transport facilities. Attlee persisted: I must ask you most
earnestly to provide us in the immediate future with an equivalent
lift for these three ships. In the end Truman, who had seen
Attlee s point all along, directed the Chiefs of Staff to provide the
British with equivalent shipping, although nothing could be as
convenient and speedy as the two Queens themselves. The two
great liners had already transported over r,ooo,ooo American
servicemen home. MPs received thousands of letters of protest
about demobilization from indignant servicemen and their families.
The TUC, flexing its muscles with a Labour Government in power,
demanded acceleration in demobilization. The Minister of Labour,
George Isaacs, had the unenviable task of standing up to constant
harassing and pestering from all quarters.

The men who found themselves in the longed-for civvy life
once more, found the High Street at home a very different place
from the one they had left six years before. Not only was it grubbier
and grimier, but whole chunks of it had been cut away as if by a
giant with some huge knife. Through the rubble of bomb-sites,
weeds and tufts of grass were already sprouting; on bared and
lonely walls tattered wallpaper flapped idly in the breeze like the
flags of defeat more than of victory. The people in the High Street
were faced with problems different from those of 1939. The BBC
had initiated a weekly series of trans-Atlantic broadcasts, Here
Comes the Bride, the object of which was to enable English brides of
GIs to talk to their in-laws. A distinct crime-wave, especially
among young people, was apparent; to combat it Scotland Yard
introduced a fleet of 200 cars equipped with radio telephones,
directed from a plotting table similar to that used by the RAF ,
which would, it was hoped, make it almost impossible for smash-
grab raiders and car thieves to operate successfully . The problems
of marriage, many of which had suffered from the stresses and
demands of war, seemed to be disturbingly touched on in the new
film Brief Encounter, the story of a married woman s love for a
man she meets on a murky wartime railway station. Another new
film, Caesar and Cleopatra, gave further evidence that the British
film industry had reached a peak that could not at the time be rivalled

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BRITISH POST-WAR PROBLEMS

anywhere in the world. Further cause for national satisfaction was
found during November in the new world air-speed record estab
lished by the Gloster Meteor jet, which attained a speed of 606 mph.
As they settled into civilian life with all its problems, men contem
plated that even war, like all human existence, was not entirely
bad. They remembered with gentle nostalgia the comradesip of
service life; the dusty roads of Burma; bathing in the warm,
blue waters of the Mediterranean with the rolling desert stretching
away behind; the Sunday bells of great cathedrals in France. And to
remind them of the places they had been to and the things they had
seen, souvenirs and relics like old cartridges, Japanese swords and
Nazi daggers were set up at home in places of honour.

In Parliament party politics were quickly returning to their
pre-war intensity, with the dramatically outnumbered Conservatives
sitting uncomfortably on the Opposition benches. The first day s
ordinary business was intense and highly charged. One of a group of
brilliant young men who were all new Labour MPs had been
chosen by the party to make the first speech. In the dark green
uniform of a major in the Rifle Brigade, John Freeman, who had
been awarded the MBE in 1943, and who had taken the surrender
of Hamburg, wearing a number of decorations, erect and dramatic
ally handsome, spoke in his maiden speech in clear and pleasant
tones of the spirit of high adventure that illumined his party and of
the magnificent venture of rebuilding our civilization . It was a
stirring and exciting speech which seemed to sum up the fine hopes
and ideals of all the young socialists he represented. It remained to
be seen whether practicalities would be kind, whether politics would
corrupt ideals, and whether disillusion would set in. He ended:
Today we go into action. Today may rightly be regarded as D-Day
in the Battle of the New Britain. Attlee later took Freeman to
Churchill in the Smoke Room. Meeting this upstanding young
man, who might well have been expected to be Conservative by
background and inclination, and who seemed to have just spoken on
behalf of his generation, Churchill broke down and wept. Attlee
himself made a fine tribute to Churchill in the House: C A General
Election has resulted in Mr Churchill being on the Opposition
benches at a time when the fruits of his long leadership of the
nation in war are being garnered. However we may be divided
politically, I believe I shall be expressing the views of the whole
House in making acknowledgement here of the transcendant
services rendered by Mr Churchill to this country, to the Common-

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wealth and Empire, and to the world during his tenure of office.
There is a true leadership which means the expression by one man
of the soul of a nation, and its translation of the common will into
action. In the darkest and most dangerous hours of our history
this nation found in him the man who expressed supremely the
courage and determination never to yield which animated all the
men and women of this country. It was a speech unusual not only
in the generosity of its terms to someone sitting across the House,
but also in that it was delivered by a man not given to emotion and
high-sounding phrases. In a short speech, Churchill said he had
faith in the new Parliament, and promised to help make it work. He
pointed out that many of the measures put forward in the King s
Speech would also have been taken by the Conservatives had they
been returned to power. He spoke of the atom bombings, and
defended the decision to use them, which he said was that of
President Truman and myself at Potsdam . (In his war memoirs he
acknowledges that the final decision was Truman s alone.) He was
surprised that worthy people, who had no intention of proceeding
to the Japanese front themselves, should argue that rather than
use the bomb 1,000,000 American and 250,000 British lives should
have been sacrificed in the desperate battles of an invasion of
Japan.

On moving out of Downing Street, Churchill had moved into
Claridges Hotel, and later into the flat of his son-in-law, Duncan
Sandys. After a few weeks he entered into negotiations for buying a
house in Hyde Park Gate. Everywhere he went he was received
with unconstrained applause, more so even than during the war;
this, contrasting with his rebuff at the election, genuinely puzzled
him. At a performance of Noel Coward s Private Lives the entire
audience rose and applauded him for some minutes immediately he
entered the theatre. At the end of the play John Clements made a
speech about him, and once more the cheering continued for
several minutes. It was the same on every occasion he appeared in
public. He became increasingly active as Leader of the Opposition,
attacking the Government with venom on tardy demobilization
(notwithstanding that this was largely due to his own measures)
and on plans to nationalize industry. Rumours were heard from
time to time that Attlee was about to see, or had seen, the ex-Prime
Minister; they no doubt originated among those people who
doubted whether the country could survive at all without him.
When he went for a holiday to Cap d Antibes in the South of

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BRITISH POST-WAR PROBLEMS

France, reports even appeared in the newspapers that Attlee was
preparing to visit him to seek his advice on the many problems
facing the new and inexperienced Government.

Attlee had, in fact, settled down very quickly, although the same
could not be said for all of his Ministers. He was a firm believer in
the value of the committee, and the kind of governing with which
he was later to become identified was already in evidence; valuable
and argumentative Cabinet meetings at which he himself said little;
and a tendency to concentrate most of his energies on keeping his
more ebullient Ministers on the rails, to act as a co-ordinator rather
than as a leader. Already he seemed to be encouraging an inner
circle of senior Cabinet Ministers to act as Co-ordinating Ministers,
or Overlords ; some sceptics began saying that he would finish up
with nothing to do himself, but they underrated the task of making
a team out of a group of volatile, brilliant, touchy and mutually
suspicious men. For the first time for some years the Foreign
Secretary enjoyed great freedom. Attlee has said: Except for a
couple of occasions, I was content to leave foreign affairs in the
competent hands of my Foreign Secretary.

Plans were already under way for loosening the links of Empire,
not only with India but elsewhere, and as Britain had apparently
no intention of seeking instead a close relationship with Europe,
and sought complete independence from the United States, her
future as a great power was becoming arguable. As for nationaliza
tion, an order of priority had been adopted. It was clear that the
coal industry was in more urgent need of Socialist attention than
was that of iron and steel. National Insurance was already in an
advanced state of preparation; a national health service was not.
But most Ministers found urgent immediate problems facing them,
which were inclined to use all the energies of themselves and their
Ministries and left little opportunity for planning and preparing
Utopias. That there were no widespread second thoughts on the
part of the public was confirmed by the first two by-elections of the
Parliament, at Smethwick and Ashton-under-Lyne, both of which
were comfortably held by Labour. One who worried about the new
Government more than Attlee did was King George VI. This was
not because of its left-wing nature, but because of its inexperience.
The King s biographer has written: He himself was a progressive in
political thought and a reformer in social conscience, but he was
distrustful of undue haste and of political extremism in any form.
Lord Mountbatten, one of his closest personal advisers, had told

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the King that the senior Labour Ministers might well look to him
for advice and guidance. To some extent this turned out to be true,
and George VI now played a more active role in affairs, although
always discreetly, than had been the case with the monarchy since
the time of Queen Victoria. This was partly due to the increasing
discussions and difficulties over India in which, being the so-called
Emperor, he naturally took a close interest. The early meetings at
the Palace between the King and Attlee were awkward and un
comfortable, both being essentially reserved men, but soon a good
relationship developed between them. Early in the Parliament the
King urged Attlee to take drastic action to increase housing, and to
do something about making new clothing more readily available
( c my family are down to their lowest level 5 ).* He got on very well
indeed with Bevin, whom he had, of course, strongly suggested for
the Foreign Office. There is little doubt that at this time the King
was worrying increasingly, and often unnecessarily, about public
affairs. There are frequent mentions in his diary as to his worries.
His official biographer has written: The mantle of elder statesman
lay heavily upon the King s shoulders. In his talks with Ministers
he was not infrequently successful in presenting arguments which
caused them to reconsider decisions at which they had already
arrived. But he was exhausted physically and mentally. "I feel
burned out" was his frequent remark.

(v)

With many convulsions and difficulties, the United States, too, was
taking the first uncertain steps to returning to peacetime conditions.
VJ Day, in America, when it was at last announced on September
2nd, had been something of an anti-climax; everyone had known a
week and more before that the war was over, and there were few
celebrations. In some ways the rich and varied mozaic of American
life seemed already to be back to normal. In California an escaped
convict took to the highway, thumbed a ride, and was arrested by
the driver: the prison warden. In Toledo, Mrs Margaret Cook s
car blew a tyre at a railroad crossing, careered down the tracks and

* Churchill had earlier made strenuous but apparently unavailing efforts to ease the
clothing shortage, which in a memo to the Board of Trade he had described as intoler
able .

2 9 2

UNITED STATES RETURNS TO PEACE

struck a signal switch that stopped an approaching train. In Cedar
Rapids, Iowa, James F. Williams, sixty-one, got his thirteenth
divorce and promptly married for the fourteenth time.

Travel in the United States was becoming increasingly difficult.
Never before had train, plane and hotel reservations been harder
to get. Most hotels refused to accommodate people for more than a
week, and lines of people waited every evening at reception desks.
It seemed that this was to do with the flurry in civilian activity
accompanying demobilization and reconversion from war produc
tion. There was a critical shortage of housing owing to a sharp de
crease in building during the war. In October 320,000 government
housing units and 35,000 trailers were sold at cost.

On September 6th Truman had sent the twenty-one points of his
intended domestic legislation to Congress. Sixteen thousand words
long, it was the longest Presidential platform sent to Congress since
Theodore Roosevelt s in 1901. The programme in it was of careful
but progressive liberalism. It was the beginning of what came to be
known as the Fair Deal. As servicemen began returning to the
nation s labour force, unrest became evident in many industries.
Workers who had not been in the Services were faced with re
deployment, reductions in overtime pay, and competition for jobs;
they demanded assurances that their earnings would be main
tained now that war contracts were ending. Demobilized service
men naturally demanded and expected their old jobs back; they were
not so worried about hours and pay. Feelings ran high. By the end of
September railway workers were seeking a thirty-six-hour week at
the same rates of pay they had been paid for a forty-eight-hour week.
Steel workers were asking for an increase in the basic wage of
twenty-five cents an hour. In the automobile industry, where the
end of the war had suddenly made 300,000 people idle, workers
were asking for an increase of 30 per cent in wages. To add to the
administration s problems, there were dangerous inflationary
trends; by the end of the year it was clear that the decontrol of
prices was not practicable, and an unpopular decision faced the
Democratic Government.

As demobilization was speeded up and the labour force rapidly
expanded, the situation deteriorated. Nevertheless, as in Britain
and the Dominions, the demobilization programme was not going
nearly quickly enough for the public s liking. Many troops would
still be needed for a while, especially for the occupation of Japan
(that of Germany was not expected to last long), and a points system

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was established to determine the order in which troops should be
released. On the whole the organization of this complicated scheme
was too much for the administration, and as the protests grew and
the releases became more and more numerous the operation of the
scheme became more and more haphazard. It was hoped to return
5,500,000 men from the Army to civilian life by July ist, 1946;
the Navy intended demobilizing at the rate of 260,000 a month.
Within a month of the Japanese surrender soldiers were being sent
home at the rate of 15,200 a day. Truman has said that despite the
dangerous speed with which the programme was being carried out,
pressure on him and the heads of the Services to speed it still
further became intense. Organizations pleaded for the release of
various professions and groups; Members of Congress, over
whelmed by telegrams and letters from constituents, spoke on
behalf of individuals; in patient statements the President and
the Services did their best to explain the difficulties. At a Press
conference on November 29th Truman said that 3,500,000 men
and women had been demobilized, and that the amazing figure of
93 per cent of Government war plant had been reconverted from
wartime to peacetime production. Unemployment was not as
serious as had been expected, and had recovered from the slump
after VJ Day. Reconversion had been brutally enforced by the
Government, for within a week of the Japanese surrender 30,000
telegrams had gone out cancelling nearly all war contracts. Industry
had thus had to set up peacetime assembly lines and sometimes
obtain different raw materials at breakneck speed; fortunately it
had been long preparing for such a crisis. The Goodyear Tyre &
Rubber Co had begun producing tyres and plastics for civilian use
immediately. The Bendix Corporation was producing civilian
radio sets almost from the first day. General Motors had their
Pontiac assembly lines mapped out. Westinghouse Electric Corpora
tion had prepared two new post-war products a home deep
freeze unit and a dishwashing machine. Du Pont were able to switch
to civilian nylon stocking production on receipt of the cancellation
telegram. Towards the end of the war American businesses, which
had often grown to gross proportions during the war, had not
neglected to prepare for peace.

The war was over; the stations and bus terminals were jammed
with happy, smiling GIs going back to the dream world that had
existed in their minds for so long. In New York the bars had seldom
done such business as parties of comrades-in-arms, returned in

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the boats from Europe, had their farewell parties with many a
promise to write and keep in touch.

All over the world the mass homecoming was taking place; a
migration of amateur soldiers, sailors and airmen. For many it
ended with the happiest days of their lives; but for many there was a
hangover that was not easily or quickly eased.

The world was hungry. The UNRRA organization, which had
been set up especially to cope with the immediate post-war task of
providing liberated areas that were unable to pay in foreign ex
change, was unable to cope with the task. Only in Greece was it
able to mount operations on the necessary scale. Although it poured
in shiploads of medical supplies, food, wool, raw cotton, agri
cultural machinery, animals, seeds and fertilizers, it still was not
nearly enough. The Director-General, Herbert Lehman, said that
although he had knocked on every door, the supplies were nothing
like enough. These peoples who fought in the underground armies/
he said, who struggled under the Axis yoke, do not ask us that we
create for them a Utopia of ease and comfort. They ask only that
we give a small part of our own substance so that they may live to
start their own lives anew. If the contributing countries fail to
implement their promise rapidly, efficiently and generously, the
name of the United Nations will be a mockery in Europe this winter.
But it was already clear that such nations were not willing, and in
some cases not able, to support UNRRA on the necessary scale.
It was also clear that there would be widespread famine unless
something on a much grander scale was launched; and only one
nation in the world was in a position to undertake such a task: the
United States. The only question that remained was whether the
United States would accept this terrible but inevitable responsi
bility.

The answer that was to come so clearly and so generously was
not at first easily discernible. Truman has said: The threat of
famine became almost global during the winter. More people faced
starvation and even death for want of food during the year following
the war than during all the war years combined. America enjoyed a
near-record production of food and a record crop of wheat. By the
end of the year Attlee was pleading with the President for his
personal and active interest in the crisis, which he said threatened
widespread famine in Europe and Asia.

Lend-Lease had finally ended on August 2ist. It had ended
absolutely, and no room was left for any Allied illusions. The

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statement had declared that all outstanding contracts were cancelled,
and could only be completed if the governments concerned were
prepared to pay for them. The abruptness of the statement caused
some dismay in several capitals, although it had already been made
plain that such a move was inevitable with the ending of the war.
Few Americans were able to find fault with the decision. In the
House of Commons both Attlee and Churchill spoke of the an
nouncement in the gravest words. It was immediately announced
that Lord Keynes, the Government s economics adviser, was
leaving with a team of experts to discuss the matter in Washington.
Lend-Lease had already accounted for forty-six billion dollars of
the American taxpayers money. Britain, however, had already
returned four billion dollars of her share. Russia had received 25 per
cent of the Lend-Lease total, and the United States had supplied
that country with complete rolling-mills, petroleum refineries,
electric power-plants, chemical factories, vehicles and locomotives,
and tyre plants, among many other items. In his report to Congress
on Lend-Lease aid, President Truman urged the United States to
write off the whole sum as a part of the price of victory. He had not
forgotten Churchill s long warning at Potsdam on the seriousness of
the British post-war financial position. Truman was here brilliantly
served by his economic advisers, if not always by his foreign
affairs advisers. The report stated: c lf so huge a debt were added to
the enormous financial obligations already incurred by foreign
governments, it would have a disastrous effect on our trade with
the United Nations, and hence on employment and production at
home. Any attempt to enforce the payment of the debt would
repeat the mistakes of the last peace, would result in desperate
international financial rivalry, and help to sow the seeds of a third
world war. Britain had received by far the largest share of Lend-
Lease (69 per cent), but it was pointed out that Britain s part in the
war, by bearing the brunt in the early years, had greatly benefited
the United States, and that such aid could not be measured in
monetary terms. An eloquent chart accompanied the report showing
how Britain had spent a far greater percentage of her national
income to pay for the war than any other Allied country. Attention
was also drawn by the President to inventions which had been
passed on to the United States by Britain, such as Pluto, the oil
pipe-line under the sea, and Fido, the fog-dispersal technique.
The sole purpose of Lend-Lease has been to make the most
effective use against the enemy of the combined resources of all the

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United Nations, regardless of the origin of the supplies or which of
us used them.

From the beginning the United States-United Kingdom econ
omic negotiations became enmeshed in considerable disagreement.
Whereas the American negotiators agreed that a loan to Britain was
essential for international stability, they could not agree with the
British negotiators, headed by Lord Keynes and Halifax, on what
form it should take. Keynes had decided not to dwell on the
dangers of Communist Russia running riot across an impoverished
Europe in the absence of a strong Britain. His biographer, R. F.
Harrod, has pointed out: The American people did not regard
Russia at that time as a potential threat to the Western democracies. 5
The atmosphere was totally different from that in 1947, when
General Marshall propounded his European Recovery Programme.
Keynes argued that the loan would help world prosperity by re
newing and expanding British trade. Britain could not trade with
the world if she were bankrupt. The Britons argued that it would
be to the benefit of the United States and the world in general,
as well as to the United Kingdom, if the loan was generous in its
terms. The Americans did not agree with this; while agreeing with the
necessity for a loan, they saw no reason why it should not be on the
best possible terms for the United States. The Americans were in
far the strongest position, for, no matter what terms they asked, the
British would still have to accept. There was also disagreement on
the seriousness of the British position. Towards the end of Sep
tember Keynes said that his country needed six billion dollars but
would accept five. The American delegation disagreed among
themselves, but eventually it was stated that they had decided on
three and a half billion dollars, with four billion as a maximum.
Truman took the initiative at this stage and personally decided on
three and three-quarters billion dollars. This was a disappoint
ment to the British, but they nevertheless accepted it with alacrity
when it became apparent that the United States was prepared to go
no higher. There were a number of strings attached to the loan,
especially on how the money was to be spent. The British requested
that two billion should be interest-free, but this was turned down
and a rate of interest of 2 per cent per annum was fixed. In return
for the loan, the United States demanded that Britain relinquish
many of the Commonwealth trade agreements by which the United
States had been placed at a disadvantage in the sterling-bloc area.
Altogether the negotiations had been unsuccessful for Keynes and

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Halifax; the Americans had driven a much harder bargain than they
had been prepared for, and there was nothing much they could do
about it. The British Government was bitterly attacked in Parlia
ment for not having fought harder for easier terms. The Opposition
said it had been presented to the country as zfait accompli (Keynes
himself admitted as much). Mr Robert Boothby described the loan
as c one of the most formidable obligations ever undertaken in the
country s history . In the Lords, the Opposition challenge was led
by Lord Beaverbrook, making one of his rare appearances; his son,
Max Aitken, spoke against the loan in the Commons. There were
also misgivings, and some dismay, among Labour MPs. Hugh
Dalton parried critics by a short speech in which he posed a question
not easy to answer: What is the alternative? 5 On his return from
America, Keynes went straight to the House of Lords and made a
brilliant speech defending the loan which did much to soothe fears
that the Government was putting the country into everlasting
debt.

By the time Clement Attlee went to Washington in November,
primarily to discuss the problems arising from the splitting of the
atom, there was little or nothing that could be done to improve the
British position.* Attlee, calling for the meeting, had written to
Truman that: We have, in the light of this revolutionary develop
ment, to make a fresh review of world policy and a new valuation
of what are called national interests.

The responsibility of being the sole possessors of the atomic
bomb weighed heavily on the United States. The percipient Stim-
son, before retiring on September 2ist, had pressed for an im
mediate agreement with Russia about the future use of atomic
weapons. He believed that such an approach would be more success
ful than a general international scheme; it would seek to stop im
provement in, and manufacture of, atom bombs; existing bombs
could never be used unless all three governments agreed to such use.
Dean Acheson, Under-Secretary of State, agreed with much of
this. It was realized that, in order to get the Russians to agree to
such a treaty, some information would have to be given them about
secret American techniques; it was hoped that these could be
restricted to peaceful uses of atomic power. The British Minister in
charge of atomic matters, Sir John Anderson, prompted by Niels
Bohr, had suggested a similar scheme of Russian co-operation as
early as the summer of 1944; he had received a sharp rebuff from

* The British Loan Bill became US law on July i5th, 1946.

UNITED STATES RETURNS TO PEACE

Churchill. Byrnes also seemed to be in favour of a direct agree
ment with Russia on atomic policy, although he seemed to some to
be working more and more on his own, and it was often difficult to
discover precisely what he did think. Others insisted that the
United States could initiate an agreement on atomic control with
the Soviet Union without actually giving away any secrets; and that
the opportunity should be grasped immediately. The Joint Chiefs of
Staff, on the other hand, recommended that any pact in which
information had to be given to the Russians should not be contem
plated. Another holding this view was Fred M. Vinson, Secretary
of the Treasury. While the discussions continued, the existing
atomic plants started to slow down, and leading scientists began
leaving for other employment. This worried Truman, who was
urging Congress to enact legislation to set up an Atomic Energy
Commission and to retain existing plants. By the time Attlee
arrived with the Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, the
arguments were in full sway. Truman himself was inclined to doubt
the wisdom of the Stimson suggestion, as his suspicions of the
Russian leaders and their motives were thoroughly aroused, despite
reassurances from the remaining Roosevelt clique at the State
Department and the warnings of Byrnes about being over-suspicious.
To his disappointment, Attlee s main preoccupation was not how
much should be told the Russians, and what, if anything should be
done about international control, but how much should be told to
the British. If anything, Attlee felt even more outraged at the way the
result of British discoveries were being kept from Britain than
Churchill had done.

It was eventually agreed that the wartime atomic collaboration
between the three countries should be continued; this was no com
fort to the British, who had discovered that such collaboration
was almost entirely in one direction. Attlee decided shortly after
wards that Britain would have to cut its losses and go ahead alone
in production of the bomb. As for what to do about Russia, it was
agreed that there should be no revealing of secret information and
that the whole problem of international control should be passed
to the United Nations. The three statesmen said: We are of the
opinion that at the earliest practicable date a Commission should be
set up under the United Nations Organization to prepare recom
mendations for submission to the Organization. Thus was passed
over what may have been one of mankind s greatest opportunities
for peace; for already Soviet agents and scientists were working

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furiously to make up for the sudden weakening of the might of the
Red Army which had recently been all-powerful.*

Stalin, all of whose calculations had suddenly gone awry, had
been shocked by the success of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.
He had set up a Committee of Atomic Research, with himself as
President, and Russian and German nuclear scientists were given
priority over all other research. Stalin s ill health and lassitude
continued, causing some concern to Soviet theorists, who had built
up a kind of deification of the Generalissimo. Extraordinary measures
were taken to protect his life. In September he had retired to
Sochi for the remainder of the year, having been advised to avoid
the Muscovite winter. Meanwhile, Malenkov, Beria and Khruschev,
as well as Bulganin, were all jostling for power and attempting to
unseat Molotov in a vicious and bitter struggle. A new era was
beginning in Russia.

(vi)

In Europe a cold and harsh winter was setting in. On October 2jth
Bevin said in the House of Commons that there were between
twenty and twenty-five million homeless people on the move in
Europe. In every country there was a severe shortage of coal; all
food supplies were at the bare minimum. The most satisfactory
situation, apart perhaps from that in Denmark, was in Belgium,
which had suffered comparatively little from bombing and bom
bardment during the war, and where economic problems had been
tackled with energy and success. There was, however, still consider
able political unease. King Leopold had refused to give up his
throne, but had decided, on the advice of the Government, not to
return to his country. In France the policies of General de Gaulle
were arousing much discussion, not always favourable; the Com
munist Party was strong and threatening. But elections on October
2ist gave overwhelming support to de Gaulle and his new consti
tution. De Gaulle asked for a vote of confidence in the National
Assembly on November 6th, and was elected unanimously as Presi
dent of the Provisional Government on November i3th. Four days
later, in one of the emotional broadcasts that were becoming a

* The first Russian atomic explosion took place in September 1949, by which time
the United States had conducted five peacetime nuclear tests.

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feature of French life, he threatened to resign. The Communists had
demanded from him either the Foreign Office, the War Office or the
Home Office. This he was unprepared to grant, as it would ruin his
policy *of maintaining the balance between two very great powers, a
policy which I believe to be essential to the interests of France and
even to those of peace . He managed to form a government without
the support of the Communists. Among its members were Vincent
Auriol, Maurice Thorez, Pierre-Henri Teitgen, Georges Bidault
(still Minister of Foreign Affairs), Rene Pleven, Jules Moch,
Jacques Soustelle and Andr6 Malraux. The disagreements with
Britain continued, and grew worse during December. An Anglo-
French agreement on the Levant was reached in London on
December i3th, by which French and British troops would with
draw from Syria together, but de Gaulle revoked it when he learnt
that British troops intended to stay in the Lebanon until the French
left there also ( c a result which the English have always worked
towards ). At the end of the year the forces of both countries found
themselves in an extremely delicate situation; there was considerable
animosity.

The trial of Marshal Petain had ended at the time of the Japanese
surrender. Efforts had been made to try French war criminals in a
civilized way, in contrast to the scenes of sidewalk justice after the
liberation the previous year, when women who had committed the
heinous crime of fraternizing with German soldiers had been shorn
and marched through the streets, carrying placards, to be spat
upon by their countryfolk. Petain had been found guilty on all the
charges brought against him, including treason. His defence,
summed up in the sentence, *I became heir to a catastrophe of
which I was not the author , had not been accepted. Admiral Leahy,
who had been US Ambassador to Vichy, sent a letter saying that he
knew the Marshal had taken action favourable to the Allied cause
whenever possible and whenever such action would not result in
further oppression of Frenchmen. There was no doubt that Petain
had struggled to maintain autonomy for the Vichy Government,
on one occasion even dismissing Laval. Throughout the trial
he had treated the court with contempt. He had been sentenced to
death, but many Frenchmen believed that the execution of a vain
and weak old man, ninety years old, who had once been the hero of
Verdun, would bring little credit on the new r6gime; de Gaulle
commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. There had been some
criticism, especially in the foreign Press, of the conduct of the trial,

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but this was forgotten when the trial of Pierre Laval followed
shortly afterwards. The shameful handling of Laval s trial shocked
the world; some people began to wonder whether France s reputa
tion as the home of justice and modern democracy was not a myth.
Neither the prosecution nor the defence had received sufficient
time to acquaint themselves with all the evidence. Public revulsion
against Laval was widespread, and few people dared to suggest
that he had seen his duty to France as one of compromise rather
than resistance. Only his wife (like Mme Petain, under arrest)
said that her husband believed his policies were best for France,
and that she believed her husband. There had been nothing quite
like the scandalous scenes in court since the French Revolution,
and it was clear from the start that there was no intention of de
priving the thirsty public of its blood. The trial has been described
thus: The conduct of the hearings was outrageous and the court
room was frequently in a state of uproar which the President was
unable to control. The jury was openly biased. Laval was con
ducting his own defence, but in protest against the farcical proceed
ings he and his lawyers refused to attend after the third day. On
October gth, after hearing only six witnesses, some of whom said
practically nothing, Laval was sentenced to death. Some leaders of
French opinion, such as Leon Blum, were by then even more dis
gusted with the trial than they had been with Laval; a request for a
retrial was made to de Gaulle, who icily turned it down. There was
much talk of Laval s death being necessary for France s soul ,
which, no doubt under the influence of de Gaulle s speeches and
broadcasts, apparently took precedence over the impartiality of
individual justice. Laval s execution, on October i5th, was as sordid
as his trial had been; he had taken cyanide and was revived just
long enough to be shot dead. The trial, in Oslo, of Vidkun Quisling,
who was executed on October 24th, was a striking contrast; it was
fair, exhaustive and dignified. The protracted trials, in London, of
William Joyce and John Amery, son of L. S. Amery, former
Secretary of State for India, were also dignified. Amery was
sentenced to death on December igth and hanged at Wandsworth
Prison. The leading American suspect-traitor was the poet Ezra
Pound; with him the authorities took an easy way out, and on
December 2ist Pound was pronounced insane.

In Holland post-war difficulties were immense. Crippled trans
port, grave shortage of machinery, wrecked factories and flooded
agricultural land made the task of recovery long and painful.

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Throughout the autumn feverish activity succeeded in closing
most of the gaps in the important dykes. Because the Netherlands
had suffered exceptional loss and damage*, a strong claim was
made by the Government for German reparations, and it was sug
gested that the annexation of some neighbouring German territory
would be agreeable.* By far the most important matter was the
return to normal activity of the Rotterdam docks, which, as the
outlet of the Rhine and one of the main inlets for Western Germany
and Continental Europe, were the basis of the Dutch economy and
essential to the recovery of Europe. Many of the quays had been
blown up by German troops at the end of the war, and dozens of
ships had been sunk in the channels. A Times report said: c Where
quays were still intact, it was discovered that there was no coal
available to supply power for cranes and elevators, and when that
was forthcoming it was clear that the half-starved dock workers
lacked the necessary strength to get the vital cargoes of food and
fuel ashore. The British authorities then set up special canteens in
the dock area where the workers could be sure of getting one good
hot meal a day, and within a short time the workers, revitalized,
were answering all the demands made of them. 5 An Anglo-Dutch
monetary agreement was signed to help Dutch sterling payments,
and despite the troubles in the East Indies the two countries, which
had for long been close by temperament and sentiment, were
clearly destined for a further long period of mutual trust and under
standing. Anglo-Dutch discussions on Indonesia took place in
London in an atmosphere of mutual goodwill, in sharp contrast to
Anglo-Dutch relations on the scene itself.

In Germany the occupation was continuing to progress along
different lines in the four zones. Political parties, including the
Communists, were sanctioned in the British Zone, and civilians
were allowed to make applications to publish newspapers, books and
plays. Free movement between the Western zones was permitted,
but the frontier of the Russian Zone was closely guarded by
all occupying powers; nevertheless, large numbers of refugees and
displaced persons continued to cross in both directions. Forty
thousand refugees infiltrated into the British Zone every week. The
Russians had allowed a road, rail and air route for the Western
allies to reach their sectors in Berlin, but no deviation was permitted.

* This was granted; but in February 1963 the Netherlands Parliament agreed to sell
the territory back to West Germany for 25 million. The area, and population of
10,000, were returned to Germany at midnight on July 3ist, 1963.

3&lt;&gt;3

UNEASY PEACE

Reports coming from the Russian Zone indicated that the whole
territory had been stripped bare in reparations. It was thought that
up to 5,000,000 Germans removed from the lands given to Poland
were wandering aimlessly around in the Russian Zone in great
distress.

In August Montgomery had narrowly escaped death when his
plane had crashed; the plane had been written off, but the wiry Field-
Marshal had escaped with two broken lumbar vertebrae. His deputy,
General Sir Ronald Weeks, had been replaced by General Sir
Brian Robertson during the summer, and both men were constantly
involved in inter-zone troubles, as much with the French as with
the Russians. The Control Council machinery came up against
deadlock through French insistence on vetoing the creation of any
central German administrations. Every time one of the other allies
suggested inter-zonal co-operation on any subject, the French
fought against it. While the French clamoured for international
control of the Ruhr, it was announced in London that Britain was
taking over the Ruhr mines and that the German owners would be
dispossessed and receive no compensation. Russian-American
relations in Germany were comparatively good. But the Russian
political suspicions of Britain, which had grown steadily through
the year, had percolated down to the military. The Soviet command
accused Britain of retaining in its zone a large Wehrmacht army
in open custody. The charge was true. Seven hundred thousand
German soldiers were still in camps awaiting disbandment, and
this caused acute Russian suspicion. Some of these German troops,
nearly 250,000, had been earmarked by the British Government as
possible reparation labour, and Montgomery anxious to retain his
excellent relations with Zhukov asked for the release of all these
men. He disbanded them all before receiving authorization.
Relations between himself and the Labour Government were not
entirely satisfactory; Montgomery s speed in allowing political and
trade union growth in the British Zone was considered to be un
necessarily slow by many Labour critics. By the end of the year
62,000 pro-Nazis had been removed from public and business posts
in the British Zone, but this process had been pursued with even
more fervour in the American and French zones. Eisenhower took
a keen personal interest in this matter himself. When General
Patton made an unguarded statement about Nazis being politicians
in the same way as were Republicans and Democrats in the United
States, he was summoned to Eisenhower s headquarters and given a

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less important command. (Patton died on December 2ist, 1945.) In
November General Eisenhower, after triumphant visits to most
European Allied capitals, including Moscow, was recalled to
Washington as Chief of Staff, US Army.

A number of military courts were set up, and Germans were
executed for various war crimes. One of the most sensational was
that of forty-five men and women, including the notorious Irma
Grese, charged with running the Belsen and Auschwitz concentration
camps. The court martial, convened at Liineburg Town Hall by
Montgomery, moved slowly because of language difficulties and the
frequent breakdowns of key but sick witnesses. The evidence called
by the prosecution was widely reported and increased the sense of
blackness and disillusion that had swept the world since the camps
had been revealed early in the year. Harold le Druillenac, a British
subject from Jersey, described how prisoners at Belsen had been
reduced to eating flesh from black and rotting corpses. During the
last five days before his rescue he had kept himself alive by eating
grass. One in every ten of the corpses at Belsen was discovered to
have been partly eaten. Agreement had been reached at a conference
in London on the trial of the major German war criminals at
Nuremberg, despite the doubts of some legal experts, and the
proceedings began on November 2 1 st with the American prosecution
presented by Justice Jackson. It was soon clear that the trial was
going to be a long affair. Everything had to be read in four languages.
The case for the prosecution, which amounted to a detailed history
of the German part in the war, went back as far as Munich and the
events of 1939, and considered such questions as what would have
happened if Germany had won the war. But evidence, including
film, of the concentration camps, and the question of responsibility
for them, was high in the prosecution s case. Many people found
the trial, with its pictures of Goering, von Ribbentrop, von Papen,
Doenitz and others sitting in the dock, strangely unreal. Among the
British lawyers taking part were Sir Hartley Shawcross, Sir David
Maxwell Fyfe and Sir Frank Soskice. Lord Justice Lawrence and
Sir Norman Birkett represented Britain on the Tribunal. Of the
twenty-three defendants, one, Robert Ley, committed suicide before
the trial began, and another, Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, head
of the steel and armaments works, was declared too ill to attend. By
the end of the year the prosecution was still presenting its case.

In Japan MacArthur ordered the arrest of eleven war leaders, on
November i9th, to stand trial for war crimes. Two of them immed-

305

UNEASY PEACE

iately committed suicide, but Tojo, the former Premier and leader of
the militarists, succeeded only in shooting himself through the chest
(he and six others were executed more than three years later). The
trial of Yamashita opened on October 2gth, in Manila. The General,
considered by some to be the most brilliant of the war, insisted that
he knew nothing of atrocities, and had issued no orders that could
have resulted in them. If the defence was weak, the prosecution was
weaker; but it was not till years later that the trial was to become
controversial. The sentence was announced on the anniversary of
Pearl Harbour, and the death sentence was not a surprising
verdict.

There was every sign that the Germans, despite efforts by the
Allies, were in for a long period of disinterest and despair. In
Hamburg twenty-one people died from methylated alcohol poisoning
during the last six weeks of the year. Stockholm s Tidningen news
paper reported a suicide wave in Germany; three hundred people
had taken their own lives in Cologne, and many more in Berlin. On
October iyth Eisenhower said that venereal disease constituted the
most extreme hazard to troops in the US Zone . Prostitution was
blatant and rampant, and the night-life, particularly in the cellars of
Berlin, abandoned. Nevertheless, under the effect of Allied energy
and money, Western Germany at least was being injected with the
seeds of normalcy. An almost lone voice in the wide pessimism was
that of a report in December by the Institute of International
Affairs. It said that Germany s agriculture was in an exceptionally
healthy condition at the time of her collapse, and her present position
is largely due to transport breakdown, political partition, and the
withdrawal of foreign labour; it is therefore capable of relatively
swift recovery if she can be kept going until next harvest . Earlier in
the year Eisenhower had noted that, From the day we entered Ger
many the willingness of the ordinary citizen to work from dawn to
dark for a meagre living was noticeable. Even before we crossed the
Rhine I had seen German women and their children in the fields,
.under sporadic gunfire, spading the ground and planting seed.
Meanwhile the black market, oblivious of military and political
zones, reigned supreme.

In Austria progress had been more satisfactory, but there, too,
movement between the Russian and Western zones was restricted.
In Czechoslovakia an agreement had been reached between Truman
and Stalin to withdraw troops by December ist. The Americans
were anxious to go, but the Russians seemed in less of a hurry, and

306

SITUATION IN EUROPE AND ELSEWHERE

at the end of the year Soviet forces were still present. In Rumania
King Michael still clung to his throne despite a G&gt;mmunist
Government. In December he appealed to the three great powers to
instigate free elections. In Poland the Provisional Government,
Communist-dominated, was well established and ambassadors with
the United Kingdom and the United States had been exchanged. In
Yugoslavia the Tito Government was also well established after one-
party elections which King Peter described as a farce but which the
London Times considered to be fair and well conducted. There was
no doubt as to Tito s popularity. King Peter had given up his hope
less quest to influence events there. Appeals to Truman had proved
fruitless. The American President had replied: Tou are no doubt
aware that it has consistently been the policy of the Government of
the United States not to favour one faction in the political life of
Yugoslavia. The King had dismissed the three Regents, who were
meant to be guarding the monarchy s interests in Belgrade, but from
whom he had not heard since they left London some months before.
He gave up all attempt to continue the co-operation with Tito that
Churchill had always urged on him, and pinned his hopes instead on
the band of hunted royalists led by Mihailovic.* Tito declared a
republic.

Throughout the remainder of Europe, apart from the countries
which had been happily neutral during the war, the end of the war
had produced turbulence and problems the end and result of which
no one could foretell. In Greece recovery was endangered by the
disastrous financial morass, which Truman was not anxious to enter,
and by feuds between Left and Right. In Italy there was much
Communist activity, but no one could be sure of the strength of the
party until elections were held. There were serious outbreaks of
rioting, and armed bands broke into prisons to free or murder
political prisoners; groups of bandits armed themselves with the
weapons that littered the countryside. Two coalition governments
failed to solve the many domestic problems during the year, and a
third was formed under De Gasperi in December. Already De
Gasperi showed signs of being much the ablest politician on the
scene. Victor Emmanuel III sat uneasily and insecurely on his
throne. In the Argentine the late arrival of the country into the war
had done nothing to liberalize the regime there. The Vice-President,
War Minister and Secretary of Labour and Welfare, Colonel Peron,
seemed to be increasing his power and gaining wide support among

* Mihailovic was captured, and executed on July 26th, 1946.

307

UNEASY PEACE

both rural and city workers. During October Buenos Aires was in a
state of turmoil. The US Assistant Secretary of State, Nelson
Rockefeller, bitterly attacked the Argentine Government for failing
to keep its promises on entry to the United Nations. Rockefeller had
been one of the most persistent advocates for the friendly attitude
towards the Argentine, and now resigned. In China two massive
armies, the one disciplined and dedicated, the other disintegrating
and corrupt, faced each other and manoeuvred for position like
clumsy wrestlers, while Chiang Kai-shek visited as much of his
country as he safely could, including Peking and Nanking, receiving
polite ovations from his inscrutable people.

During the latter half of the year a large number of British visitors
had gone to Dublin, where steaks and smartly dressed women were
to be seen in profusion; to them it seemed incredibly gay and relaxed,
a reminder of what life had once been like. There was some doubt as
to Ireland s theoretical position relative to Britain and the monarchy,
although the actual position had been made clear enough during the
war. Mr Dillon finally asked in the Dail: Are we or are we not a
republic, that is what I want to know? To which Mr de Valera
replied: Eire is a republic, if that is all the deputy wants to know.
Like the other neutral countries, Ireland remained comparatively
and blissfully free of major upheaval, although financial difficulties
prompted an economic mission to London.

(vii)

The final diplomatic activity of 1945 took place, appropriately
enough, in the city from which the diplomatic stage had been set
throughout the year: Moscow. Byrnes had suddenly recalled , while
meditating on Thanksgiving Day, that it had been agreed at Yalta
that the Foreign Ministers should meet every three months. He
promptly suggested a meeting of the Foreign Ministers in Moscow.
He did so against considerable advice, it being expected that little
else could be gained from the Russians for the time being. Byrnes
offered an important concession regarding the drafting of the peace
treaties; after the full peace conference had considered the draft
treaties and made recommendations, he said, the final drafts would
be prepared and signed only by the states primarily concerned.
Apart from the fact that France and China would still be admitted to

308

FOREIGN MINISTERS CONFERENCE, MOSCOW

the discussions, this seemed to be a complete reversal of the Anglo-
American stand against the Russian demand at London. This new
position had been agreed by Stalin and Harriman in the interval
between conferences, but now Molotov refused to accept even this
American withdrawal. Byrnes, unabashed, continued his efforts in
other spheres, while Bevin, increasingly dubious about the worth of
the conference, took less and less part in the proceedings. Eventually
Molotov, apparently after pressure from Stalin, agreed to the Amer
ican proposal and it was decided that the next peace conference
should be held in Paris not later than May ist. Byrnes cabled
Bidault, but there was no indication from Paris as to whether the
French would support such a set-back to their prestige and claims.
The Bulgarian and Rumanian argument received another round of
fruitless discussion. Molotov refused to hear doubts as to democratic
institutions in Bulgaria, blandly and repeatedly referring to the
elections which had been held there; in any case, he said, the Soviet
Union would never countenance anything but friendly nations in
that area again. There was also the question of Iran, which the
Russians were beginning to describe as a hostile nation. The large
number of Russian troops in the country still showed no sign of
withdrawing. Iran had become one of Truman s major worries. He
suspected a thrust into Iran concerted with a Communist coup in
Greece which would develop into a giant pincers movement against
the Middle East oilfields. But Truman was not in touch with Byrnes
during the conference, and no progress was made on this or other
issues. Byrnes, on his own initiative, raised the question of atomic
energy, although Truman had already decided, in conjunction with
Attlee and Mackenzie King, against an approach to the Soviet Union.
Byrnes asked the Russians to sponsor the resolution of the United
States, Canada and Britain regarding giving the United Nations
Organization authority over atomic energy. It was agreed that the
three Foreign Ministers would take up in stages the question of
international control of atomic power, and this was revealed in a
communique issued after the conference.

This discussion of atomic affairs with the Russians horrified many
of Truman s advisers, and on Byrnes return to the United States on
December 28th he received a peremptory summons to the President s
office. There he received a wigging perhaps unique from President
to Secretary of State. Truman was infuriated at Byrnes complete
independence of action during the Moscow conference. C A Secretary
of State should never have the illusion that he is President of the

UNEASY PEACE

United States. Like many of his advisers, he had recently become
most apprehensive of the consequences of the Soviet Union gaining
access to the secrets of the atomic bomb. He said he would not
support the agreement made about atomic power in Moscow, and
considered it shocking that such a communique should have been
issued without his knowledge. C I said that I would not tolerate a
repetition of such conduct. Truman was particularly incensed over
Byrnes failure in the Iran question. It seems that he expected the
Secretary of State to resign, but at this time Byrnes showed no
inclination to do so. There was an unfortunate clash of personalities
between Truman and Byrnes that had not been evident in the early
days of the administration, but that had now come to a head. By
appointing Byrnes, Truman had originally made a brilliant but
purely political move to strengthen his position. But now that he felt
strong enough to stand on his own feet, Byrnes was clearly dis
pensable. Byrnes was not the only Roosevelt man to feel the cold
wind of Truman s growing confidence, and a number of resignations
took place the following year. Truman s anger was not entirely fair,
because Byrnes had at least returned from Moscow with agreement
on representation at the peace treaties,* and would presumably have
kept in closer touch with the President if Truman had stressed this
before rather than after the conference. There was also some agree
ment on the control of Japan, the future of Korea, and the continued
need to support Chiang Kai-shek in China at the expense of the
Communists (something which the Russians were still more than
willing to do; they had already benefited territorially from Chiang s
weak Government). There was also agreement at last on Bulgaria
and Rumania, the governments of which were to include two non-
Communist members before Anglo-American recognition. Not only
Byrnes, but Bevin also, was well satisfied with the meeting. But
Truman was no longer impressed with promises. He wrote in a
memo to Byrnes: Only one thing do they understand "how many
divisions have you?" Thus had American presidential policy turned
almost a complete somersault in twelve months; from a position of
refusing to suspect the worst to a position of refusing to suspect
anything but the worst. On the other hand, Byrnes seems to have
made the foolish mistake of drastically underestimating Truman.
The division between these two men on their attitude towards the

* Peace treaties with Italy, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary and Finland were finally
signed in Paris on February icth, 1947. Each had to pay large reparations and all except
Bulgaria suffered territorial loss. The treaty with Austria was signed on May 5th, 1955;
that with Japan (the USSR abstaining) on April 28th, 1952.

310

THE END OF THE YEAR

Soviet Union can be plainly traced in American public life down to
today: the one always on guard and not frightened to take a tough
and determined line; the other always trying to understand the
Russian viewpoint, and anxious to reach some agreement rather than
none at all.

( **\
vni)

As the year drew inevitably to its close there were many signs of a
return to normality and conditions of peace. In Britain things were,
perhaps, particularly deceptive. For most families Christmas had
been the first happy, united one for many years. The Prime Minister
himself was surely not alone when years later he recalled: Of many
happy Christmasses which I can remember, perhaps the best was
that of 1945. The war was over. My eldest daughter was demobbed.
The family was reunited. My wife and I, with four children, spent
Christmas at Chequers, a delightful house. ... On Boxing Day we
had a large party with lots of boys and girls, the children of colleagues
and civil servants. A secret stair in the old house provided for a
surprise appearance of Father Christmas. . . . No red boxes arrived.
The cold war had hardly begun. All was peace/ Great hope was
placed in the first meeting of the General Assembly of the United
Nations, which was to open in London in the first week of the New
Year.

On December 3ist the Lord Mayor of Bristol, wearing his red
civic robes, officially welcomed at Avonmouth docks the arrival of
the first banana boat to the United Kingdom since December 1940.
Sale was to be restricted to those under eighteen years old. Many
children had never seen a banana; others could not remember what
one looked like. On the same day the Home Guard, which had
prepared to meet the German invasion with pitchforks and scythes
in 1940, was disbanded. There was no parade on this occasion; no
ceremony of any kind. For nearly six years over a million men had
served in this army without pay. The War Office said: They pass
out of existence. It s just cheerio and thanks, Home Guard.*

In the United States two recent announcements had done little
to offset the general feeling of relief and constrained joy at the ending
of the war; there was a great urge to accelerate with ever-increasing
rapidity to full peacetime conditions. Few people took much notice

UNEASY PEACE

when the President announced a greatly strengthened National
Guard and reserve because of new national responsibilities in the
world; and in the last week of the year the War Powers Act, by
which price controls were maintained, was extended for six months
by Congress to combat growing inflation.

In Jerusalem at Christmas-time a number of outrages* had taken
place; as the year closed British troops attempted to maintain law and
order to a background punctuated by the spatter of rifle fire and the
explosions of home-made bombs. At Hiroshima parties of American
servicemen on local furlough, the first tourists, were carefully picking
their steps over the rubble and taking photographs to send home. In
London, New Year s Eve was cold and foggy; celebrations were
subdued, but here and there in the West End small groups of
merrymakers emerged for a few moments from the swirling fog only
to be swallowed up again shortly after. As usual, the occasion of
New Year s Eve prompted a number of the world s statesmen to
voice their thoughts, both important and trivial, on the year that was
passing; a year that had seen more glory, more horror and more lost
opportunity than most that had gone before it. Some used the
occasion to make political announcements. A New Year s Message
from Hirohito denied that he was divine; one from Chiang Kai-shek
agreed to a coalition with the Communists and a cease-fire. In South
Africa Jan Christian Smuts, calling for renewed faith in idealism,
said: c The international community has at last come to life. That is
the thought I would like us to carry forward into 1946. Once more
Winston Churchill issued his annual message to the Primrose
League. We shall only win the peace, as we have won the war, by
character and hard work. Confident in the tightness of our point of
view, let us devote ourselves in the coming year to the service of our
country, and let us make ourselves effective advocates and defenders
of our free and progressive civilization. His words were redolent
of the emerging spirit of the time. For in many other nations the
people were being asked, by governments locked in their commit
ments and suspicions, to be vigilant and to be prepared to defend
their ways of life. The very suspicions of the Russian hierarchy,
since Yalta and before, of the emergence of a post-war distinct anti-
Soviet bloc was helping to rapidly create it just as Roosevelt had
feared. Stalin, no doubt, believed he was no more responsible for the
break-up of the alliance, so essential for stability and peace, than the
British, and especially Churchill, thought they were. The State
Department and the surviving Roosevelt men like Byrnes no doubt

312

THE END OF THE YEAR

felt they had been on the right path all along in trying to preserve the
alliance by taking a central position between Russia and Britain.
Churchill no doubt considered he had acted in the only possible way
in attempting to get the United States to line up against Russia, in
the cause of individual freedom, before a rigid Iron Curtain settled
across Europe.

But now the curtain was down. Across it the USSR and the
United States faced each other, not as allies but as rivals, and
everyone had a different view as to why and exactly when it had
happened. No one could tell, although some professed to know,
whether or not the next act would be the final one in the world s
tragedy. Certainly the forces of history seemed to be moving with
ever-increasing and apparently uncontrollable rapidity. How would
mankind fare in its ancient quest seemingly unattainable, but now
totally imperative of directing those forces along the channels of
peace? Some believed that while the Anglo-American alliance lived,
and despite all the stresses and strains of the past year it had indeed
survived, there would be hope for the world. Other statesmen
prepared to face the new age on the assumption that Britain was no
longer a great power; that the world had entered the Second World
War with six great powers but had emerged from it with only two.
They believed that the question now was how the United States
would react to a thankless and unrewarding responsibility: as well or
worse than Britain, which had formerly carried out the same task?
Others believed that all depended on what occurred in the Kremlin;
they waited with anxiety and fear for the removal or death of Stalin.

Already nations were kicking and struggling to free themselves
from the tangled net that their interlocking and interplaying
ambitions and suspicions had weaved around them. Could they
disentangle themselves before it was too late and rigor mortis had
set in? Would a period of calmness and cool common sense slowly
free them at last?

There was hope perhaps in the undoubted fact that no one
believed, as so many had done in 1918, that the end of the war had
heralded in a millennium of peace; that it had been a war to end all
wars . At the time of the Hiroshima bomb many commentators and
public figures had spoken with pessimism of the possibility and
effects on civilization of a third world war. As the chimes of Big
Ben which to millions of people in Europe had in the past six years
become the clarion call of individual dignity and liberty reverber
ated over Westminster and the dimly-seen Thames, all kinds of

313

UNEASY PEACE

ordinary men who had, it seemed, little or no control over human
destiny found a strange comfort in the very fear that swelled in their
hearts. The last chime died away; there was peace, but there was no
complacency. It was the Age of Anxiety.

SOURCES AND NOTES

A list of all the source books that refer to the events of 1945 would fill a
small book in itself, and I make no claim to have read them all. Some
aspects and events of the year have been very much more written-up than
others; mentioned below are the principal sources used in compiling this
book. Considerable use has been made of newspaper reports, but some
care has been taken to avoid the snares of propaganda; even in the final
year of the war the propaganda experts were glossing over or exaggerating
the facts, as much for the sake of domestic consumption as for confusing
the enemy. This was particularly the case in the Pacific and in Asia, where
rather than admit to the depressing facts of months of inconclusive and
unimportant fighting in remote areas, communiques frequently referred
to islands as having been conquered , much to the surprise and ire of the
men still fighting there. Newspapers have been useful from another point
of view: the events in everyday life for the ordinary person. For, as well as
attempting to give a serious account of the manoeuvres of great nations
during the year, and to describe the problems and characteristics of the
world s great leaders, I have tried, too, to recapture something of what it
was like to be alive in 1945, especially in Britain and the United States,

Owing to a lack of reliable information, the events from a Soviet point
of view have been only lightly painted in; observations of Western
diplomats and official communiques and messages published at the time
being preferred to the great deal of conjecture written ever since around
Russian motives and behind-the-scenes activities at the end of the war.
Unfortunately the ways of international Communism and the writing of
frank autobiographies by its leaders are not compatible. The version of the
story as told by Stalin, and (perhaps even more fascinating) by Molotov,
will never be fully known. Apart from this, three major works have
been particularly missed. The relevant volumes of Anthony Eden s auto
biography, and of Professor Alan Bullock s biography of Bevin, were
unpublished at the time of writing. And the memoirs of Franklin
Roosevelt, which he did not have the opportunity to write, would no doubt
have thrown much powerful and revealing light on corners still shrouded
in darkness or at the best in dim light; for there are some questions on the
Grand Disalliance of 1945 to which only he knew the answer.

There are many quotations in this book. I hope I have acknowledged
each one in turn in the Sources and Notes that follow, but if I should have
inadvertently omitted any owner of copyright I apologize now in advance.

315

SOURCES AND NOTES

For permission to quote longer extracts I am particularly indebted to the
following:

The Controller of Her Majesty s Stationery Office for extracts from
official documents, especially those written by Sir Winston Churchill,
which are Crown Copyright; Cassell & Co Ltd for extracts from Defeat
Into Victory by Sir William Slim, The Testament of Adolf Hitler, and
The Second World War by Sir Winston Churchill; Wm Collins Sons & Co
for extracts from Triumph in the West by Sir Arthur Bryant; Macdonald
Hastings for an extract from an article on VE Day; A. M. Heath & Co Ltd
for extracts from The White House Papers by Robert E. Sherwood,
published by Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd; Hodder & Stoughton Ltd and
Emery Reves for extracts from Year of Decisions by Harry S. Truman;
Hutchinson & Co Ltd for an extract from My Yesterday, Your Tomorrow
by Lord Boothby; Lawrence & Wishart Ltd for extracts from the pub
lished letters and telegrams of Stalin; Frank Owen for an extract from a
broadcast talk on Burma; Laurence Pollinger Ltd for extracts from
Eclipse by Alan Moorehead, published by Hamish Hamilton Ltd; The
Roosevelt Trust for extracts from the letters and telegrams of Franklin D.
Roosevelt; Seeker & Warburg Ltd for extracts from Defeat in the West by
Milton Shulman; and the proprietors of the Daily Express, Daily Mail
(for extracts from the News Chronicle), the Daily Telegraph and The
Times, for extracts from reports and articles.

I am also indebted to the Imperial War Museum for all the illustrations
in this book, except those of the soldier returning home and the VE Day
celebrations in Piccadilly Circus, which appear by permission of Fox
Photos Ltd and the Radio Times Hulton Picture Library respectively.

Books and publications acknowledged as having been quoted are also
in general those that have been used as sources. Authors, publishers and
dates of publication are mentioned only in the first instance. Other
acknowledgements are made in the text itself.

(i) Churchill s New Year Message to the Primrose League, of which he was
Grand Master, from the Daily Telegraph, December 31, 1945; expectations
from The Second World War: Vol VI, Triumph and Tragedy by Winston
S. Churchill (Cassell, 1954), Appendix C, in a memorandum to General
Ismay and Sir Edward Bridges, January 14, 1945. This work is elsewhere
referred to as Triumph and Tragedy. Hitler s broadcast from the Daily
Telegraph, January 2, 1945. Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart s comment on
Stalin from a Foreword to The Private Life of Josif Stalin by J. Fishman
and B. Hutton (W. H. Allen, 1962). Material for the short resum6 of the
war situation from Encyclopaedia Britannica and from newspapers of
January 1945.

316

SOURCES AND NOTES

(ii) Quotation from Battle: The Story of the Bulge by John Toland (USA
1959, Muller, 1960). De Guingand s remark from Operation Victory by
Major-General Sir Francis de Guingand (Hodder & Stoughton, 1947).
There is an extract from Soldier by General Matthew B. Ridgway
(Harper, 1956). Some information from The Battle of the Ardennes by
Robert E. Merriam (USA, and Souvenir Press, 1958). Defeat in the West
by Milton Shulman (Seeker & Warburg, 1947) was also most helpful.
Churchill s message to Stalin, You yourself know . . . , from Stalin s
Correspondence with Churchill^ Attlee, Roosevelt and Truman (Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, Moscow, 1957, and Lawrence & Wishart, 1958)
elsewhere referred to as Stalvfs Correspondence. Correspondence between
Alan Brooke and Montgomery about Eisenhower from Triumph in the
West by Sir Arthur Bryant (Collins, 1959), based on Field-Marshal Lord
Alanbrooke s diaries. Eisenhower s remark about Rundstedt s rushing out
of fixed defences is from an Order of the Day, December 22, 1944, quoted
by Chester Wilmot in his essential work The Struggle for Europe (Collins,
1952). Montgomery s Press conference on January 7th is also quoted in
Wilmot. Bradley s views on his staff and on Montgomery from A Soldier s
Story (Holt, 1951, and Eyre & Spottiswoode). Eisenhower s opinion of
Montgomery s Press conference from Crusade in Europe by Dwight D.
Eisenhower (Doubleday, 1948, and Heinemann, 1948), perhaps the most
literate and thoughtful of all the generals memoirs of the Second World
War, in contrast to Eisenhower s memoranda, etc, at the time. Mont
gomery s view from his Memoirs (Collins, 1958). Hitler s speech to the
generals from The Struggle for Europe. Churchill s speech in the House of
Commons from Triumph and Tragedy. Also used: Report by the Supreme
Commander to the Combined Chiefs of Staff on the Operations in Europe of
the Allied Expeditionary Force June 6, 1944, to May 8, 1945 (HMSO,
1946).

(iii) Churchill s remark about the Hitler monster from a memo to the
Foreign Office, April 8, 1945, printed in Triumph and Tragedy. The
Goebbels remark is quoted in The Real Stalin by Yves Delbars (Paris, and
Allen & Unwin, 1953). The quotations from Hitler s conference on
January 27th are from The Fuehrer Conferences quoted in Wilmot (op cii).
Churchill s agreement with Stalin in Moscow, October 1944, is from
Triumph and Tragedy. Stalin s observation to Eden is from The Real
Stalin. The correspondence over Poland between Stalin, Roosevelt and
Churchill in December and January is from Stalin* $ Correspondence and
Triumph and Tragedy. Sherwood s words are from The White House
Papers of Harry L. Hopkins by Robert E. Sherwood (Harper, 1948, and
Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1949). Roosevelt s words to his son are from As He
Saw It by Elliott Roosevelt (New York, 1946); his words to Stettinius
from Roosevelt and the Russians by Edward R. Stettinius (USA, and Cape,
1950). Eisenhower s words from Crusade in Europe. All the correspondence
between Churchill and Stalin over Yugoslavia is from Stalin s Corres-

SOURCES AND NOTES

pondence (pages 296-302). King Peter s words from A Kings Heritage by
King Peter II (Cassell, 1955). Sherwood s description of American
distrust of British motives in Europe is from The White House Papers, as
are Hopkins own words. The exchange between Roosevelt and Churchill
regarding a meeting at Malta is from Triumph and Tragedy^ as is
Churchill s message describing his pessimistic view of the forthcoming
conference at Yalta. Roosevelt s being brutally frank from The Second
World War: VolIV, The Hinge of Fate by Winston S. Churchill (Cassell,

(iv) Admiral Halsey s words are from The Great Sea War by E. B. Potter
and Chester W. Nimitz (Prentice-Hall, 1960, and Harrap, 1961). The
story about General Kenney and MacArthur is from MacArthur
1941-1951 by C A. Willoughby and J. Chamberlain (USA, and Heine-
mann, 1956). Also used: The War: A Concise History by Louis L. Snyder
(USA, 1960, and Robert Hale, 1962).

(v) London s casualty statistics from Triumph and Tragedy. Duncan
Sandys words are from Rocket by Air Chief Marshal Sir Philip Joubert
(Hutchinson, 1957). Details of V.2 disasters from reports in the Daily
Telegraph and The Times. Admiral Ingram s words are from the Daily
Telegraph. Lord Beaverbrook s letter is from The White House Papers.
Also used: V.2 by W. Dornberger (Germany, 1952, and Hurst & Blackett,

1954)-

(vi) Panzer Leader by Heinz Guderian (Germany, and Michael Joseph,
1952); official communiques and newspaper reports, especially the Daily
Telegraph; the relevant entry in Encyclopaedia Britannica by B. H. Liddell
Hart; The Struggle for Europe. Stalin s conference is from Delbars (op cit).
(vii) Churchill s views on the Italian Front are from Triumph and Tragedy.
Byrnes recollections about Roosevelt on the journey to Malta from
Speaking^ Frankly by James F. Byrnes (Harper, and the James F. Byrnes
Foundation, 1947). Also used: Crusade in Europe; The Struggle for Europe;
Triumph in the West.

The account of Yalta has been pieced together from the various first-hand
accounts, and other works, mentioned below.

All Churchill s memories of and sayings at the Yalta conference are
from Triumph and Tragedy, as is Stalin s speech at the Yusupov dinner.
Byrnes recollections are from Speaking Frankly. Some of the details of
arrangements at Yalta are from War at the Top by James Leaser and
General Sir Leslie Hollis (Michael Joseph, 1959). There are a number of
small contradictions between the various accounts of Yalta, and Sher
wood s The White House Papers (for Hopkins note to F.D.R., Hopkins
views on the success of the conference, and the congratulatory telegrams)

318

SOURCES AND NOTES

particularly has slightly different versions of conversations and facts to the
others, and there is some disagreement between Sherwood, Churchill and
Byrnes, who took copious short-hand notes, on detail. Parts of the picture
are far from clear. The best account is perhaps that in / Was There by
Admiral William D. Leahy (Curtis, 1950, and Gollancz, 1950). There are
important accounts in Roosevelt and the Russians, and in The Real Stalin,
from which Stalin s confidences to Roosevelt about Molotov are quoted,
and from which the likelihood that Stalin was under some supervision
from the Politburo committee.

Other accounts are in: Triumph in the West; Memoirs by General Lord
Ismay (Heinemann, 1960), from which Lord Ismay s remark; Eight Years
Overseas by Field-Marshal Lord Wilson (Hutchinson, 1948); Stalin: A
Political Biography by I. Deutscher (Oxford, 1949); Churchill, Roosevelt ,
Stalin: the War They Waged and the Peace They Fought by Herbert Feis
(Princeton, 1957, and Oxford, 1957); The Conferences at Malta and Yalta
(US Dept of State, Foreign Relations of the US, Diplomatic Papers,
No 6199, 1955). The Yalta Betrayal; Data on the Decline and Fall ofF. D.
Roosevelt by F. Wittmer (Idaho, 1954) is a somewhat one-sided version.
General Anders view is from the Daily Telegraph, February 1945.
Churchill s and Roosevelt s speeches on returning home from The Times,
February 1945. Other publications quoted: Time Magazine, The Christian
Science Monitor, the Herald Tribune all February 1945.

(i) Eisenhower s remark on the Siegfried Line from Crusade in Europe;
Patton s from War As I Knew It (Houghton, Mifflin, 1947, and W. H.
Allen, 1948). Sgt Drabik s memory from The War: A Concise History.
For start of the offensive in the West: Triumph and Tragedy, The Struggle
for Europe, Triumph in the West, Montgomery s Memoirs, and The Battle
for the Rhineland by R. W. Thompson (Hutchinson, 1958). Daily
Telegraph (quoted). There is an extract from Eclipse by Alan Moorehead
(Hamish Mamilton, 1945).

(ii) Defeat in the West; and Hitler: A Study in Tyranny by Alan Bullock
(Odhams, 1952). The eye-witness account of refugees in Poland is from
the Daily Telegraph, February 7, 1945. German News Agency reports
from The Times and Daily Telegraph. Churchill s doubts about saturation
bombing, and the AP report, from The History of the Second World War:
The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939-4$, Vo1 ni &gt; b Y Sir
Charles Webster and Noble Frankland (HMSO, 1961). The First and the
Last by Adolf Galland (Methuen, 1955) for the effects of saturation
bombing. Hitler s activity and life in the Bunker from the magnificent
reconstruction given in The Last Days of Hitler by H. R. Trevor-Roper
(Macmillan, 1947), and revised edition (Pan Books, 1962). Information

319

SOURCES AND NOTES

about Doenitz and the German Navy from Wilmot (op cii) and Swastika
at Sea by C. D. Bekker (Germany, 1953, and Kimber, 1953). Hitler s
words from The Testament of Adolf Hitler, with an Introduction by H. R.
Trevor-Roper (Librarie Artheme Fayard, 1959, and Cassell, 1961), the
Hitler-Bormann documents deposited in a bank at Bad Gastein at the end
of the war by Bormann s bearer.

(iii) The quotation from Robert Sherrod on the Iwo Jima beach-head is
from On To Westward quoted in History of US Naval Operations in
World War II, Vol XIV, by S. A. Morison (Little, Brown and Oxford,
1960). Much else of the information from Morison. The simile about the
advance of troops from The United States Marines and Amphibious War by
J. A. Isely and P. A. Growl (Princeton, 1951). Kuribayaski s final messages
from Morison. Casualties from Morison, and from The Great Sea War by
Potter and Nimitz (qv above).

(iv) Patton s statement on crossing the Rhine from Wilmot (op cii).
Churchill as a student of military history from Triumph and Tragedy.
Churchill and the red coats from Eclipse. The story about the washing
on the Siegfried Line from a report in the Daily Telegraph, March 1945.
Simpson s warning to Churchill under shell-fire from Triumph in the
West. Lord Montgomery s Memoirs, The Struggle for Europe, and Crusade
in Europe. For the Eisenhower-Stalin contact seeming to derive from
Tedder s visit to Moscow see Three Years with Eisenhower by Capt Harry
C Butcher (USA, and Heinemann, 1946), page 639. Butcher was Eisen
hower s naval aide; his book, although dedicated to the Supreme Com
mander, caused Eisenhower perhaps more embarrassment than any
other (when it was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post he hastily sent
off placatary letters to Churchill, Montgomery and others). The Private
Papers of Hore-Belisha by R. J. Minney (Collins, 1960). The Churchill-
Eisenhower correspondence from Triumph and Tragedy, as also Chur
chill s politic message to Roosevelt and his views on the US Chiefs of
Staff. Fuller s view from his The Second World War (Eyre & Spottis-
woode, 1948). Ralph Ingersoll s from his Top Secret (Partridge, 1946).
(v) The CO of 41 Volkssturm, and General Blumentritt, from Milton
Shulman s definitive work (op cii) , he interviewed them both. The Struggle
for Europe. Churchill s views on bombing from Triumph and Tragedy.
(vi) The definitive work on the Burma Campaign is Defeat into Victory by
Field-Marshal Sir William Slim (Cassell, 1956). It is one of the military
classics of the war, and is twice quoted here. Also newspapers for
Fourteenth Army campaign. The British correspondent on the road to
Meiktila reported in the Daily Telegraph, February 1945. Frank Owen s
broadcast was on the BBC Home Service, December 12, 1944; the condi
tions it described apply equally to those existing a few weeks later, although
by then the air supply was perhaps as important as the railway. Mac-
Arthur s speech and quotation from Willoughby and Chamberlain
(op cit). Also used: The Great Sea War, Morison (op cif) y The Magnificent

320

SOURCES AND NOTES

Mitscher by Theodore Taylor (W. W. Norton, 1954), and The Army in
World War II: Okinawa^ The Last Battle, by Appleman, Burns, Gugeler
and Stevens (Washington, 1948).

(vii) The fact that Roosevelt wanted to delay announcing the veto voting
agreement in UNO until a favourable moment, from The White House
Papers. Churchill s, Roosevelt s and Stalin s correspondence on Poland
and the peace moves in Switzerland from Stalin s Correspondence and
Triumph and Tragedy. Also used: The Struggle for Europe.

(i) Truman gives a fascinating and detailed account of his taking over the
office of President in Memoirs, Vol /, Year of Decisions (Doubleday, and
Hodder & Stoughton, 1955). Also used: Speaking Frankly, Crusade in
Europe, Triumph and Tragedy (for the messages from Washington), and
especially When F.D.R. Died by B. Asbell (USA, and Cape, 1961), an
extremely detailed montage of all the events around Roosevelt s death.
Daily Express quoted, December 31, 1962, Other newspapers quoted:
New York Times, Kansas City Star (both April 1945), and the Observer,
April 15, 1945.

(ii) Report by the Supreme Commander quoted (op cit). Bradley s astonish
ment about the Redoubt from A Soldier** Story. Eisenhower s remark to
his naval aide from My Three Years With Eisenhower. Lord Mont
gomery s phrases from his Memoirs. Alan Moorehead s description of
looting from Eclipse, as also the relief of Fallingbostel camp. Hitler s
orders about Belsen from the Fall of the Curtain by Count Folke Berna-
dotte (Cassell, 1945). The testimony about Dachau is that of Dr Franz
Blaha as given in The Trial of German Major War Criminals: Proceedings
of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (HMSO, 1946).
Cadman s report from his Drive: A Chronicle of Pattorfs Army (Little,
Brown, 1957). Edward Murrow s broadcast was heard in the United
States and on the BBC Home Service, April 1945. Also used: The Struggle
for Europe, Triumph and Tragedy , and Crusade in Europe.
(iii) Triumph and Tragedy (Churchill s message to Alexander quoted) for
the later Italian campaign; also The War Memoirs of Field-Marshal Earl
Alexander (Cassell, 1962), and Calculated Risk by General Mark Qark
(New York, and Harrap, 1951). For the last days of Mussolini I am
greatly indebted to The Brutal Friendship: Mussolini^ Hitler and the Fall
of Italian Fascism by F. W. Deakin (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962), and
to Mussolini: An Intimate Life by Paolo Monelli (Italy, and Thames &
Hudson, 1953), which contain magnificent reconstructions of Mussolini s
last hours. Also used: Benito Mussolini by Christopher Hibbert (Long
mans, 1962), which also has a detailed account of the execution, and
Mussolini by Laura Fermi (Chicago, 1961). A Times reporter was present

321

SOURCES AND NOTES

at the garage scenes in Milan. Alexander s communique from The Times,
April 1945.

(iv) Fall of Berlin from the official reports published in The Times; Flight
in the Winter by J. Thorwald (Hutchinson, 1953); Follow My Leader by
L. Hagen (Germany, and Wingate, 1951). The Schellenberg Memoirs
(Germany, and Deutsch, 1956) and The Fall of the Curtain for Himmler s
peace overtures. More background on this and the end of the war in
Germany from The Kersten Memoirs by Felix Kersten (Hutchinson, 1956);
Kersten was Himmler s doctor. Swastika At Sea for the earlier evacuation
of East Prussia. The death of Hitler from H. R. Trevor-Roper s indis
pensable account (op cit). Hitler: A Study in Tyranny and Defeat in the
West for background information. The Churchill-Truman recorded
telephone conversation is reprinted at length in Year of Decisions.
(v) In the following sections considerable use is made of the reports of
British war correspondents. No excuse is offered for this; the war report
ing of the Second World War reached the peak of the reporter s task in
contrast to that of the First World War. Some of the correspondents, such
as Moorehead, Wilmot (both Australians), Leonard Mosley and Ian
Colvin, who with their colleagues reported the war with grace, accuracy,
bravery and sense of history, later became documentary historians in their
own right. Buckley was killed in Korea.

Doenitz s broadcast is from The Times, May 2, 1945; that to the
Wehrmacht from Defeat in the West. His later explanation, and for much
of the general background, including his show-down with Himmler, from
his Memoirs (Germany, 1958, and Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1959).
British tank officer from History of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders,
yh Battalion, 1939-45 by Desmond Flower (Nelson, 1950). Churchill s
message to Eden from Triumph and Tragedy. The report from the banks
of the Elbe was from James Wellard in the Daily Express, May 8, 1945.
Stanley Baron s report for the News Chronicle of May 7, 1945. Moore-
head s report from Hamburg for the Daily Express, May 4, 1945. Chris
topher Buckley s to the Daily Telegraph of May 5, 1945, and the corres
pondent with the Dorset Regt was Paul Holt in the Daily Express,
May 7, 1945. Communiques and statements from Flensburg from The
Times. Also used: Hermann Goering by Roger Manvell and Heinrich
Fraenkel (Heinemann, 1962), Lord Montgomery s Memoirs, and Crusade
in Europe. There is an extract from page 252 of The Big Show by Pierre
Clostermann, DFC (Paris, 1950, and Chatto & Windus, 1951); the second
part of the extract is from a slightly later entry in his diary. Alan Brooke s
remark on the end of the war from Triumph in the West.
(vi) Official statements from Flensburg from The Times and Daily
Telegraph, May 1945. Doenitz s Memoirs, Lord Montgomery s Memoirs,
Crusade in Europe, A Soldier s Story, and My Three Years With Eisen
hower.
(vii) Official statements on the end of the war from Flensburg, London,

322

SOURCES AND NOTES

Tokyo, Moscow and Washington from The Times and The Listener,
May 1945. Churchill s telephone conversation with Leahy from / Was
There. Alan Moorehead s reflections while driving on the autobahn from
Eclipse. The report from Utrecht was by Ronald Walker to the News
Chronicle, May 8, 1945. Excerpt from editorial in The Times, May 8, 1945.
Churchill s and George VI s speeches on VE Day from The Times, May 9,
1945. The report by Macdonald Hastings, quoted at length, was in
Picture Post, May 19, 1945. Newspapers used as sources for reconstruction
of VE Day in Britain: Daily Express, Daily Telegraph, The Times, Daily
Sketch, Evening Standard.

(viii) The Churchill-Truman correspondence over Prague from Triumph
and Tragedy and Year of Decisions. Doenitz s broadcast from The Times,
May 9, 1945. The contemporary newspapers consulted for the early post
war scene in Europe and elsewhere were: Daily Express, News Chronicle,
The Times, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Express, Daily Sketch. The official
account referred to in the Channel Islands surrender was a release from
the Ministry of Information. Douglas Willis s report from The Listener,
May 17, 1945. The drunken generals at Berlin from My Three Years With
Eisenhower. The rape and destruction of Berlin from Follow My Leader
and Soviet Staff Officer by I. Krylov (Moscow, and Falcon, 1951). The
story about the Adlon Hotel from interviews with two of the old hotel
staff, in Berlin. Information about the BBC programmes, from the Radio
Times, May 10, 1945. J. B. Priestley s broadcast from The Listener JAzy 17,
1945. Churchill s victory broadcast on May 10 from Triumph and
Tragedy.

(i) Churchill s messages to Truman and Stalin from Triumph and Tragedy,
as are his views of US diplomacy. Leahy s assertion about Truman s
important conference from / Was There. Eisenhower s message to
Truman, and Truman s view on the withdrawal from the Elbe, from
Year of Decisions. See The White House Papers for a record of the Stalin-
Hopkins discussions. Triumph and Tragedy, Appendix C, for Churchill s
memo to the Chiefs of Staff on demobilization. Also used: Lord Mont
gomery s Memoirs, and Crusade in Europe.

(ii) Churchill s sayings about the various spheres of Mediterranean
immediate post-war squabbling from Triumph and Tragedy, except those
about Truman s unpublished statement and about de Gaulle, which are
from Year of Decisions, as are the Truman quotes in this section. The
President s ultimatum to de Gaulle, and de Gaulle s reply, from War
Memoirs: Salvation 1944-46; Documents by General de Gaulle (Paris, 1959,
and Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1960). The Times for background and
details of the Trieste and Levant affairs. A number of first-hand reports

SOURCES AND NOTES

in the Daily Telegraph, especially one of May 14, 1945, from the Franco-
Italian frontier.

(Hi) ChurchilFs memo, of May I4th, to the Foreign Office on the Doenitz
Government from Triumph and Tragedy, Appendix C. Speer s broadcast
from the Daily Telegraph., May 5, 1945. The capture of the Doenitz
Government from a Reuter s report. Montgomery s words, and the
story about his being entertained, from his Memoirs. John Strachey s
view of the bombing of Germany from a broadcast on the BBC Home
Service, May 9, 1945, and reproduced in Voices For Britain, ed H.
Krabbe (Allen & Unwin, 1947). Moorehead s vivid dispatch was to the
Daily Express, May 7, 1945. The BBC correspondent at Linz was Patrick
Smith; his report was printed in The Listener, May 17, 1945. The Observer
(quoted). Occupation problems and inter-allied entertaining, etc, from
The Times, and A Record of the War: The 24th Quarter by Philip Graves
(Hutchinson, 1947).

(iv) Eisenhower s words at the Mansion House from Butcher (op cit).
Sir John Anderson s statements from The Times (and much of the post-
European war picture and statistics from that newspaper). The Economist.
The News Chronicle (quoted, May 8, 1945). Triumph and Tragedy (from
which Churchill s letter to Attlee quoted). As It Happened by C. R.
Atdee (Heinemann, 1954) (from which Attlee s letter to Churchill quoted).
The Fateful Years by Hugh Dalton (Muller, 1957), and Lord Morrison s
An Autobiography (Odhams, 1960) for background to the election con
troversies and the Labour Party Conference. Dalton for the Prime
Minister s tea party. Attlee s denial of a preference for the Coalition from
the Observer, October 21, 1962, in a review of Aneurin Sevan, Vol I, by
Michael Foot (MacGibbon & Kee &gt; 1962) in which it is said that Attlee and
Bevin had to be hauled out by the scruif of their necks from the Coalition.
Many British newspapers. Those quoted: News Chronicle (May 7, 1945),
Evening Standard (May 8, 1945), Radio Times (May 10, 1945). Book
reviews from: Sunday Times, Observer, Spectator. Film Review by F.
Maurice Speed (Macdonald, 1945). De Valera s broadcast from The
Times. Truman s view of John L. Lewis s strike from Year of Decisions,
as also the telegram from Churchill, and the answer to the five Congress
men. Henry Wallace s speech from a Reuters report. Kansas City Star
(quoted). The Life ofj. M. Keynes by R. F. Harrod (Macmillan, 1951).
(v) The Magnificent Mitscher for suicide attacks at Okinawa. Also The US
Army in World War II: Okinawa, The Last Battle. Description of
Ushijima s suicide from The War: 1939-4$ (Cassell, 1960), ed Desmond
Flower and James Reeves. Defeat Into Victory. Churchill s quoted
message to Mountbatten on the end of the Burma campaign from The
Times. The note on conditions in Japan from a description given by a
neutral visitor quoted in Time magazine, August 20, 1945. MacArthur s
announcement of the end of fighting in Luzon from Willoughby and
Chamberlain (op cit). The comment about amphibious warfare in the

3*4

SOURCES AND NOTES

Philippines from Jungle Road to Tokyo by Lieutenant-General Robert L.
Eichelberger (Viking, and Odhams, 1951). The Times and Daily Telegraph
for the smaller campaigns.

(vi) Truman s comments on, and words at, the San Francisco conference
from Year of Decisions. The quoted speeches of Eden and Smuts from
The Times. Speaking Frankly.

(vii) Churchill s messages to Stalin on Yugoslavia from Triumph and
Tragedy. A King s Heritage was also most useful. Hopkins* cable to
Truman from Year of Decisions. Bulganin s thesis from Revue Bokhevique
quoted in The Real Stalin. Churchill s views on the withdrawal in
Germany from Triumph and Tragedy. Speaking Frankly.
(viii) All personal reflections, etc, in this section from the previously
mentioned works of Churchill, Morrison, Dalton and Atdee. Public
statements from The Times, Daily Telegraph and News Chronicle. Daily
Express and Daily Mirror are quoted. Quotes from American newspapers:
New York Daily News, Detroit Free Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer,
St Louis Globe Democrat, Wall Street Journal. William Shirer s broadcast
from the Daily Telegraph, May 25, 1945. Harold Laski by Kingsley
Martin (Gollancz, 1953). The British General Election of 1945 by R. B.
McCallum and A. Readman (Oxford, 1947).

(ix) There is an excellent account of the Potsdam conference in Year of
Decisions; also Triumph and Tragedy, Speaking Frankly, and As It
Happened. The various quotations are from Churchill, Truman, The
White House Papers, and, for the formal communiques, etc, The Times.
General Hollis s recollection from War at the Top. The Russian and
Stalin background mainly from The Real Stalin and Stalin: A Political
Biography. The Conference has been more carefully written-up than
Yalta, and there is a detailed reappraisal in Between War and Peace: The
Potsdam Conference by Herbert Feis (Princeton, and Oxford, 1960); in
this a different view as to Stalin s health and vigour at the conference is
given. For the background to the atom bomb: Atomic Energy For Military
Purposes: US Official Report by H. de W. Smyth (1945), and the authorita
tive No High Ground by Fletcher Knebd and Charles Bailey (USA, and
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1960).

(x) The description of Lord Beaverbrook in the Map Room is from The
War and Colonel Warden by Gerald Pawle (Harrap, 1963), which gives a
detailed account of Churchill s day of defeat Churchill s view of the
verdict from Triumph and Tragedy; his statement from The Times, July 27,
1945. Attiee s recollection from A Prime Minister Remembers by Francis
Williams (Heinemann, 1961); a book which fills in many but not all of the
important gaps in Attiee s autobiography, As It Happened, which was also
useful. The Press conference at Transport House, and the speeches at
Caxton Hall, from The Times and Daily Telegraph, July 27, 1945. Attiee s
message to Stalin from Stalin s Correspondence. Bevin s words from
Dalton s The Fateful Years. Kaltenborn s view from the Daily Telegraph,

325

SOURCES AND NOTES

July 27, 1945, and also R. K. Law s. Also Daily Express, July 27, 1945
(quoted), The British General Election of 1945, and George VI by J. W.
Wheeler-Bennett (Macmillan, 1958), and Aneurin Sevan. The Times view
quoted from the issue of July 27, 1945.

(xi) Words from the Potsdam Protocol from The Times. Truman s
phrases from Year of Decisions, which with Byrnes Speaking Frankly
was again most helpful; both men make plain their discomfort with Bevin.
As It Happened; Between War and Peace; The Potsdam Conference; I Was
There; and Staling Correspondence.

The fact that the US Army intended using atom bombs in the invasion of
Japan from an authoritative statement in US News & World Report^
November 2, 1959 (quoted hi Feis, see below). Extracts from the Franck
Report, and the report of the Truman committee into atomic energy, and
other information, from the excellent No High Ground. Truman s order
of July 24 from Year of Decisions. Sir Geoffrey Taylor s reminiscence
was in a broadcast in August 1945, printed in Voices From Britain.
Leahy s opinions from / Was There. Recorded inter-com talk on the
Hiroshima plane from No High Ground. Atdee s message to Truman on
August 8 from A Prime Minister Remembers. Japanese broadcasts from
Time magazine, The Times and the Daily Telegraph. Dulles s statement
from Time magazine, August 20, 1945; Sir Arthur Harris s from the
Daily Sketch, August 28, 1945. All other speeches, official announcements
and statements on the atom bomb, radar and the end of the war were
widely reported in the newspapers at the time. The testament of the
commander of the suicide pilots from Bridge to the Sun by Gwen Terasaki
(University of North Carolina Press, and Michael Joseph, 1958). Field-
Marshal Slim s words from Defeat Into Victory. Churchill s opinion from
Triumph and Tragedy; J. F. C. Fuller s from The Second World War.
MacArthur s speech from Willoughby and Chamberlain (op cit\ which is
also the source of Hirohito s peace moves starting as early as 1944. There
is a good account of the surrender on the Missouri in The War in Malaya
by Lieutenant-General A. E. Percival (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1949). The
aftermath at Hiroshima, and the clock at the station, from Warrior
Without Weapons by Marcel Junod (Paris, and Cape, 1951).

Other sources consulted and used for this chapter: British Official
History: Grand Strategy, Vol VI, by John Ehrman (HMSO, 1956);
Atomic Energy For Military Purposes: US Official Report; The Army Air
Forces in World War 77, The Pacific, June ig^-Augmt 1945 by W. F.
Craven and J. L. Gate (USAF, 1953); Japan Subdued by Herbert Feis
(Princeton, and Oxford, 1961); Japarfs Decision to Surrender by R. J. C.
Butow (USA, and Oxford, 1945); On Active Service in Peace and War by

326

SOURCES AND NOTES

Henry L. Stimson and McG. Bundy (USA, and Hutchinson, 1949); Air
Bombardment by Air Marshal Sir Robert Saundby (Chatto & Windus,
1961), which supports the unpopular view that air bombardment was the
major factor in Japan s defeat; Hiroshima Diary by M. Hachiya (Gollancz,
I 955); The Great Decision by Michael Amrine (Putnam, NY, 1959, and
Heinemann, 1960); Here To Stay by John Hersey (USA, and Hamish
Hamilton, 1962); Burning Conscience letters of C Eatherly (USA, and
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1961); Formula For Death by Fernand Gigon,
translated by Constantine Fitz Gibbon (Paris, and Wingate, 1958); The
Sun Goes Down, ed J. Larteguy (Kimber, 1956); The Wedemeyer Reports
(Holt, 1958); We Of Nagasaki by T. Nagai (Gollancz, i95i)--although
there are many accounts of Hiroshima, strangely little has been written of
Nagasaki. The entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica by Robert Ross
Smith on the smaller campaigns in the Pacific. The various national war
casualty figures from The War: A Concise History, and Encyclopaedia
Britannica. The Face of Victory by Leonard Cheshire VC (Hutchinson,
1961). Many contemporary newspapers; those quoted and not mentioned
above being Sunday Dispatch^ New York Times, Herald Tribune,
Baltimore Sun\ and Aftonbladet and Osseroatore Romano, both of which
were quoted in American newspapers.

(i) MacArthur s words in this section from Willoughby and Chamberlain
(op cit); General Christison s as reported by Renter s; Wavell s from The
Times, December 1945; Casey s from Personal Experience 1939-46 by
Lord Casey (Constable, 1962); Attlee s from As It Happened. Life of
Mahatma Ghandi by Louis Fischer gives a delicate and well-drawn
portrait of Wavell at this time. Philip Graves (op cit). Newspapers,
especially the Daily Telegraph and The Times.

(ii) Report from The Times, August 31, 1945. War Memoirs: Salvation
1944-46^ Documents.

(iii) Speaking Frankly; Year of Decisions; the statements of Bevin and
Dulles were reported in the newspapers. Truman s message to Stalin
from Stalin s Correspondence. Hopkins* notes for a book he was writing
late in 1945, apparently at the instigation of Lord Beaverbrook, from The
White House Papers. Harry Hopkins died in January 1946.
(iv) Compiled mainly from newspapers, September-December 1945. The
speeches and statements of Shinwell, the colliery owners, Dalton and
Sir Patrick Hannon were reported in the main newspapers. Year of
Decisions for Attlee s and the US Chiefs of Staff words about the Queens .
The police statement from the Daily Telegraph, August 30, 1945. John
Freeman s speech and the story about Churchill from Dalton (op cit).
The Times for the other speeches in the House of Commons. The abridged

3*7

SOURCES AND NOTES

version of The Second World War by Sir Winston Churchill (Cassell,
1959) contains an Epilogue of material continuing from the General
Election with which Triumph and Tragedy ends. Lord Attlee s words on
his Foreign Secretary from a speech in the House of Lords, February 2,
1962. The King s political views from George VI, the official biography
(quoted). The War and Colonel Warden, As It Happened, and Lord
Morrison s An Autobiography. A Record of the War: The 24th Quarter.
(v) Year of Decisions (quoted). Herbert Lehman s statement from The
Times, August 9, 1945. Keynes attitude in the economic negotiations
from The Life ofj. M. Keynes by R. F. Harrod (Macmillan). The debate
on the US loan, and Sir Robert Boothby s speech, from the relevant
report in The Times. Time magazine for the post-war scene in the United
States, and the situation in various firms. Attlee s words from A Prime
Minister Remembers. Also used: John Anderson by J. W. Wheeler-Bennett
(Macmillan, 1962); The Real Stalin; Stalin: A Political Biography.
(vi) De Gaulle s words from War Memoirs: Salvation 1944-46; Documents.
Description of Laval s trial from The Decline and Fall of Pierre Laval by
Geoffrey Warner (History Today, December 1961 quoted), and Two
Frenchmen: Laval and de Gaulle by David Thomson (Cresset Press, 1951).
Montgomery s Memoirs. Peace and War by Lieutenant-General Sir
Frederick Morgan (Hodder & Stoughton, 1961) for relief work in Ger
many. The Nuremberg Trial by R. W. Cooper (Penguin, 1947). Tidningen
(Stockholm), quoted in Time magazine. Eisenhower on the hazards facing
US troops from The Times, October 1945. Report of Institute of Inter
national Affairs, The World Today, Vol II, No i. Eisenhower s observa
tions on German industriousness from Crusade in Europe. Extract from
Truman s message to King Peter from A King s Heritage. A Record of the
War: The 2fth Quarter, from which the exchange in the Dail, and much
other information.

(vii) Speaking Frankly. Truman s view on the power of the Secretary of
State, and other remarks, from Year of Decisions. Official statements, and
background reporting (by now much freer than during the war), from the
newspapers.

(viii) Attlee s reminiscence from the Sunday Times, December 23, 1962.
The arrival of the banana boat at Avonmouth from the Bournemouth Daily
Echo, December 31, 1945. The War Office statement on the Home Guard
from the Sunday Chronicle, December 30, 1945; there had been a stand-
down parade the previous autumn. New Year statements of Smuts and
Churchill from The Times, January i, 1946, as for the New Year s Eve
scene in London and elsewhere.

328

INDEX

Acheson, Dean, Under-Secretary of
State, 298

Acland, Sir Richard, 211

Adlon Hotel, Berlin, 159

Admiral Scheer, 133

Aftonbladet) quoted 258

Agno River, Luzon, 30

Agriculture, in Germany, 306

Air raids: on Berlin, 2, 73-4; V.2 roc
kets and flying bombs on S.E. Eng
land, 31-4; flying bombs on Ant
werp and Lifege, 31; V.2 rockets
on Antwerp and Brussels, 33; on
German rocket sites, 33; saturation
bombing of Germany, 74-5; ton
nage of bombs in one week on Ger
many, 75; saturation bombing of
Japan, 83, 107, 195-6, 246, 252,
260-1, 265, 270-1; on the Ruhr, 95;
casualties in raids on London, ufr-
17; on heavy-water plant in Nor
way, 240

Air-speed record, 289

Air-to-ground controlled projectiles,

174

Airey, General T., 104

Aitken, Group Captain Max, 225, 298

Aldershot, 287

Alexander, A. V., First Lord of the
Admiralty, 237

Alexander, Field-Marshal Sir Harold,
Commander-in-Chief in Italy, 3, n,
47, 125, 128; his order of the day on
German surrender, 129; sends
troops to Trieste, 168; and Tito, 202

Alexandria, 62

Algeria, n

Algiers, 63

Allenby, Field-Marshal Viscount, 279

Allied Army: Sixth Army Group in

N.W. Europe, 7, 9; Fifteenth Army
Group in Italy, 125; Twenty-first
Army Group in N.W. Europe, 39,
69

Allied Control Council. See Control
Council

Amery, John, 302

Amery, L. S., 226, 302

Anders, General, 66

Anderson, Arne, 255

Anderson, Sir John, 180, 184; sug
gests co-operation with USSR over
atomic power, 298

Andover Field, Utah, atom bomb air-
base, 192

Antonov, General, Russian Chief of
Staff, 48

Antwerp: flying bombs on, 31; V.2
rockets on, 33; honours Montgom
ery, 176

Aquitania y 287

Arab-Jewish tensions, 169

Area bombing, in Japan, 195

Ardennes, Battle of the Bulge at, 69,
89; coldness of weather, 4; Hitler s
offensive, and initial German suc
cess, 4-5, 76; the weather improves,
5; air activity, 5-6; confusion in the
American lines, 6; danger of a static
front, 7; strained Anglo-American
military relations, 9-15; Eisen
hower s masterly assault, 10-11;
German withdrawal, 13-14; casual
ties, 14

Argentina, 53; admitted to UN, 198-9;
rise of Peron, and differences with
USA, 307-8

Armies. See Allied Army; British
Army; Red Army; and under
countries

329

INDEX

Arnhem,85

Arnold, General H. H., 38, 243, 245,

263, 271
Ascot, 255

Ashton-under-Lyne, 291
Associated Press report, on terror

bombing, 75
Athens, 61
Atlantic Charter, 65
Atlantic Charter meeting, 21
Atomic bomb: air base in Utah, 192;
first explosion, in Mexico, 217; the
Manhattan project, 217, 239-40;
Anglo-American conference on, at
Potsdam, 217-18; the Anglo-Ameri
can atomic committee, 218-19;
Russian knowledge of, 219-20;
briefing of the aircraft crew, 237-8;
Truman authorizes delivery of, 239;
research on, in various countries,
240, 260; pros and cons on use of,
240-1, 242-3; Truman s ultimatum
to Japan, 243-6; preparations for re
lease of first (uranium) bomb, 246-
7; Hiroshima the selected target (see
Hiroshima); first bomb release an
nounced in USA and Europe, 254,
256-9; Smyth Report on, 259; plan
to release the second (plutonium)
bomb, 261; Nagasaki the selected
target (see Nagasaki); threat of more
bombs on Japan, 263; question of
Japan s defeat before the bomb,
270-1; Churchill defends its use,
290; USA, UK and Canada confer
on policy, 298-9; development by
USSR, 299-300; discussed at Mos
cow conference of Foreign Minis
ters, 309, 310

Atomic Energy Commission, 299

Atrocities, Japanese, 276, 306

Attlee, Clement R., 55, 182-3, 185,

262, 283, 285, 287, 309; and

Churchill, 183-4; at San Francisco

conference, 199; and the General

Election, 209, 212; differences with

Laski, 212, 230; asked to form a

Government, 226; and Morrison,

228; message to Stalin, and the

Labour Party leadership, 230; his
Cabinet appointments, 231-2, 237;
on Churchill s defeat, 233; mis
givings about Potsdam, 237;
announces Hiroshima bombing,
256; anxiety about atomic bomb,
256; announces Japan s surrender,
266; on the monarchy, 267; VJ Day
speech, 268; and Wavell, 279; and
India, 279, 280; asks Truman to re
turn British liners, 287-8; tribute to
Churchill, 289-90; alleged to have
sought Churchill s advice, 290-1;
qualities as Prime Minister, 291;
relations with George VI, 292; ap
peals to Truman about famine re
lief, 295; and the end of Lend-
Lease, 296; confers with Truman
on the atomic bomb, 298-9; his
Christmas at Chequers, 311

Attlee, Mrs, 226

Augsburg Prison Camp, Goering de
tained in, 156

Aung San, Commander of the Bur
mese National Army, 194

Auriol, Vincent, 301

Auschwitz concentration camp, 305

Australia, VJ Day celebrations in,
268

Australian Army: Third Division on
Bougainville, 198; Eleventh Divi
sion on Bougainville, 198; in New
Guinea, 264

Australian Navy: at battle of Leyte
Gulf, 27; at battle of Lingayen Gulf,
29; HMAS Australia, 29

Austria, 125, 141; Russian advance
into, 130; zones of occupation
agreed for, 164; zones delineated,
179; Russian and Western differ
ences on, 202; progress towards re
covery, 306; signs peace treaty,
3100

Austro-Bavaria, 49

Autobahn, 37

Avonmouth, first banana boat arrives
at, 311

Axmann, leader of Hitler Youth, 131,
138

330

INDEX

6.29 bombers. See Flying Fortresses
Babelsberg, scene of Potsdam confer
ence, 214, 221
Balaclava, 61
Balfour, Honor, 227
Balkans: Churchill-Stalin agreement
on, 17-18; Truman s attitude to,
168-9. $ ee a l $0 Bulgaria; Greece;
Hungary; Rumania; Yogoslavia
Baltic Sea, 39, 78, 119, 134
Banana boat, the first, 311
Baltimore Sun^ quoted 258
Bank of England, 184
Baron, Stanley, quoted 141
Barrage balloons, 31
Bastogne, 5, 12
Bataan, 272, 276
Battle of Britain, 259
Bavaria, 141
Bavarian Alps: alleged Nazi hideout in,

118; Hitler Youth hideout in, 138
BBC: Victory broadcasts, 159-60;
Women s Page programme, 186;
popular programmes after end of
war, 187-8; trans- Atlantic broad
casts, 288

Beaverbrook, Lord, Lord Privy Seal,

184, 225; on the V.2 rockets, 34; and

the General Election, 182, 208; and

the US loan, 298

Bedell Smith, Lieut.-General Walter,

Eisenhower s Chief of Staff, 147
Beirut, 169

Belfast, YE Day rejoicings in, 153
Belgium, 20, 24, 223; question of
King s abdication, 157; economic
recovery, 300
Belgrade, 22, 307
Bell Telephone Company, 259
Below, Colonel Nicolaus von, 132
Belsen concentration camp, 122, 305
Bendix Corporation, 294
Benes, Dr, 178
Berchtesgaden, 118
Beria, L. P., 44, 300
Berkeley, Allen W., 63
Berlin, 15, 37, 38, 47, 72, 276; im
mense air raids on, and the scenes
in, 2, 73-4; Hitler s bunker in, 75-9,

130; Eisenhower not interested in
capture of, 118; encircled, 129; at
tacked by two Russian armies, 130;
Hitler s last grand conference in,
131; shells fall on the Chancellery,
131-2; the Russians in, 132; Hitler s
death in, 135^7; Goebbels* death in,
137; escape of Nazi leaders and
others from, 137-8; von Friedeburg
signs total surrender in, 158-9;
trade unions permitted in, 177;
Greater Berlin occupied by Allied
powers, 178; Russian sector of, 304;
suicide wave in, 306

Bernadotte, Count Folke, 134-5, 141

Bethe, Hans, 217

Bevan, Aneurin, 181, 183; Minister of
Health, 237

Beveridge, Sir William, 200, 210,
227

Bevin, Ernest, 183, 184, 209, 228;
Foreign Secretary, 226, 231, 232; on
Labour election victory, 229; and
Labour leadership issue, 230; at
Potsdam, 233-5, 3 3^; misgivings
about Potsdam, 237; at London
Council of Foreign Ministers, 281-
3; on difficulties of treaty-making,
283; denies anti-Soviet pact, 284; and
George VI, 292; on homeless people
in Europe, 300; at Foreign Minis
ters meeting in Moscow, 309, 310

Bidault, Georges, French Foreign
Minister, 171, 301

Bierut, Polish President, 224

Birkett, Sir Norman, 305

Bismarck, Otto von, 37

Black market: in UK, 186; in Japan,
196; in Germany, 306

Black Sea, 43, 45

Black Sea Straits, freedom of guaran
teed, 222

Blackheath, V.2 rocket on, 33

Blackpool, 182

Blockade of Japan, 196

Blondi, Hitler s Alsatian dog, 76,

135

Blum, Leon, 302
Blumentritt, General G., 94

331

INDEX

Bohlen, Charles E., Roosevelt s adviser
on Russian affairs, 48, 59, 114, 215

Bohr, Niels, 217, 257, 298

Bombing. See Air raids; Atomic bomb

Bonham-Carter, Lady Violet, 227

Books published in UK, 187

Boothby, Robert, 298

Bor-Komorowsky, 35

Bonnann, Martin, 131, 132; virtual
ruler of collapsing Reich, 76; Hit
ler s testament recorded by, 78, 79,
129; and Rider s last hours, 136,
137; makes peace overture to Rus
sians, 137; escapes from Berlin, 138

Borneo: MacArthur s invasion of, 197;
Allied occupation of, 269

Borotra, Jean, 121

Bougainville Island: invaded by Aus
tralians, 198; fighting in, after
Japan s surrender, 269

Bourne End, 286

Bowles, Chester, Administrator of
OPA, 189

Bracken, Brendan, 208, 225; influence
on Churchill, 182; First Lord of the
Admiralty, 184

Bradley, General Omar, 9, 85, 112; in
command on southern side of the
Bulge, 10; differences with Mont
gomery, 11-13; excellent tactician,
12; awarded the Bronze Star, 12-13;
his Twelfth Army Group, 69; com
mands main thrust to Berlin, 88, 90;
Ingersoll s criticism of, 91; on the
alleged Nazi redoubt, 118; his bril
liant tactics against a crumbling
enemy, 119; honours Marshal
Konev, 176

Braun, Eva, 76-7, 136, 137

Braun, Werner von, 32

Brazilians, in Italian campaign, 125

Bread shortage, in UK, 185-6

Bremervoerde, 178

Breslau: Russian attack on, 37-8; be
sieged, 73, 130, 133, 141

Bridges, Sir Edward, 231

British Army: Second Army in N.W.
Europe, 84; Eighth Army in Italy,
125; Fourteenth Army in Burma, 4,

27, 96-8, 194; XXX Corps in N.W.
Europe, 1 1, 70; First Airborne Divi
sion in Norway, 157; Sixth Air
borne Division on Baltic coast, 140;
Seventh Armoured Division ( Desert
Rats ) in Berlin, 178; 43rd (West
Country) Division on Luneburg
Heath, 145; Cheshire and Hereford-
forshire Regiments and is/rgth
Hussars at Flensburg, 173

British Empire, loosening of its links,
291

British Intelligence Service: discounts
possibility of German retreat to
Tyrol and S. Germany, 90; searches
for German documents, 174

British Medical Association, 232

Broadcasting, much used in the Gen
eral Election, 208. See also BBC

Brooke, Field-Marshal Sir Alan, Chief
of Imperial General Staff, n; criti
cal of Eisenhower, 9-10; witnesses
Rhine crossing, 87; reaction at end
of war, 146

Brooke, Rupert, 61

Brown, G. A., 228

Bruenn, Commander H. G., Roose
velt s doctor, 1 08

Brussels: V.2, rockets on, 33; VE Day
rejoicings in, 150

Bucharest, 101

Buchenwald concentration camp, 121-
2, 123-4, 147, 157

Buckingham Palace, 152, 179-80, 226,
267

Buckley, Christopher, quoted 72, 145

Buckner, Lieut.-General S. B., 193

Budapest: Germans in, encircled by
Russians, 4, 35; falls to Russians, 73

Buenos Aires, 308

Bulganin, Marshal, 44, 203, 300

Bulgaria, 17, 164, 220, 234; overture
to Allies, 3-4; expels British Charge
&lt;T affair es y 18; Russian pressure in,
167; discussed at London Council
of Foreign Ministers, 282; discussed
at Foreign Ministers meeting in
Moscow, 309, 310; signs peace
treaty, 3107*

332

INDEX

Bulge, Battle of the. See Ardennes
Burma, 21, 289; Fourteenth Army ad
vances in, 4, 27, 95-8; mopping-up
operations, 194-5; fighting con
tinues after Japan s surrender, 269;
discontent in, 280
Burma Star ribbon, 195
Burmese National Army, 194
Busch, Field-Marshal, German Com-
mander-in-Chief in N.W. Europe,

i?4

Butler, R. A., 184, 186

Byrnes, James R, Director of War
Mobilization, 24, 44, 53**, 109, 116,
241, 312; on Roosevelt, 41; briefs
Truman, 113-14; becomes Secre
tary of State, 190; at Potsdam, 215,
223, 233-6; considered Potsdam a
success, 237; and unconditional sur
render for Japan, 242, 265; and the
atomb bomb, 243; at London Coun
cil of Foreign Ministers, 281-3;
favours agreement with USSR on
atomic policy. 299; at Foreign Min
isters meeting in Moscow, 308-10;
differences with Truman, 309-11

Cabinet Office, predicts date for end
of war, 2

Calcutta, riots in, 280

California, 292

Campbell, Commander A. B., 188

Canada: financial aid to UK, 181; and
Eire, 188; General Election in, 188-
9; uranium from, 219; Polish gold
in, 224; Hiroshima bomb an
nounced in, 257; and atomic energy
under control of UN, 309

Canadian Army: the First Army in
N.W. Europe, 39, 69, 71, 87, 120;
and VE Day hi Netherlands, 150-1;
in riot at Aldershot, 287

Canterbury, Archbishop of, 75, 160

Caretaker Government (UK), 184

Carinthia, 179

Carpathians, 178

Carrizozo, Mexico, 217

Cars: demand for second-hand, in
UK, 1 88; demand for car permits in

UK, 285; wage demand in US
industry, 293

Casablanca conference, 177

Casey, R. G., Governor of Bengal, 280

Casualties. See Cost of the war; War
death rate

Catholic Party, Belgian, 157

Cecilienhof palace, Babelsberg, 214

Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 293

Ceylon, 280

Chadwick, James, 217, 218

Chamberlain, Neville, 71

Channel Islands, 141; liberation of,
158, 179

Chequers, Bucks, 311

Cheshire, Group Captain Leonard,
VC, 261, 262

Chiang Kai-shek, 59, 95, 97-8, 196-7,
202, 203, 270, 277-8, 308, 310 312

Chicago, 149, 217, 268

Chichi Jima, 82-3

Chiefs of Staff, British: object to
Eisenhower s strategy, 89; directed
to delay demobilization, 167

Chiefs of Staff, German, Hitler s final
message to, 132

Chiefs of Staff, Joint, and suggested
atomic pact, 299

Chiefs of Staff, US, 171; support
Eisenhower s strategy, 89; and the
invasion of Japan, 194; and uncon
ditional surrender of Japan, 219; re
fuse to return British liners, 288.
See also Combined Chiefs of Staff

China, 27, 52, 98; discussed at Yalta,
58; Japanese retreat in, 196; USA
supports Chiang Kai-shek, 196-7,
277; and USSR, 203, 206, 277-8;
discussed by Foreign Ministers in
London, 281-4; struggle for power
in, 308; Chiang Kai-shek agrees to
coalition with Communists, 312

Chindwin, River, 4

Christian Science Monitor, quoted 65

Christison, Lieut.-General Sir Philip,
279

Chungking, 196

Churchill, Jack, 225

Churchill, Mary, 229

333

INDEX

Churchill, Mrs, 225

Churchill, Winston, 34, 59, 78, 79,
107, 119, 188, 234, 279, 296; pre
dicts date for end of war- 1-2; repri
mands Chief of Air Staff, 6; presses
Stalin to resume offensive, 7; sends
another 250,000 men to the front,
7; desires one overall field comman
der for thrust into Germany, 13;
anxiety over Russian advance into
Eastern Europe, 15; confers with
Stalin on the Balkans (1944), 16-18;
and the Polish problem, 18-19, 102-
4, 163-4, 206; US suspicions of his
reactionary policies, 20-1; offers
USA help in Pacific, 21; and Yugo
slavia, 22-3, 168-9, 201, 202, 216,
307; wishes Combined Staffs and
Foreign Secretaries to meet, 25-6;
pessimistic note to Roosevelt, 27;
meets Riosevelt at Malta, 38-41; at
Yalta, 43^; visits Athens, 61; at
Middle East conference, 61-3; on
terror bombing, 75; witnesses Rhine
crossing, 86-7; and Eisenhower s
strategy, 88-91; criticizes American
strategy, 91, 93; on the ruin of Ger
many, 95; and Russian action in
Rumania, 102; presses Roosevelt to
act over Polish question, 102-4; and
Stalin s anger over alleged separate
peace treaty, 105; and Roosevelt s
death, 112, 114, 117; and pilotless
bombers, 116; on Truman, 117;
and the Italian campaign, 125-6;
and Mussolini s death, 128; and
Himmler s peace overtures, 135;
and the end of war in Europe, 149;
VE Day broadcast, 152-3, 268; pub
lic acclaim of, 154; wishes Ameri
cans to capture Prague, 155; tribute
to George VI, 159; his Victory
broadcast, 160-1; view of the State
Department vis-d-vis USSR, 165;
angry with Truman over rebuff on
Big Three meeting, 166; delays de
mobilization, 167, 287, 290; and the
Iron Curtain . 167, 313; sends NZ
troops to Trieste, 168-9; orders

British troops to Syria, 169-^70; and
Truman s ultimatum to de Gaulle,
172; on Doenitz, 172-3; and the
zone difficulty in Germany, 177;
promises General Election after
German defeat, 182; and Attlee,
183-4; forms Caretaker Govern
ment, 184; entertains Coalition col
leagues, 185; appeals for continua
tion of Lend-Lease, 191; congratu
lates Mountbatten, 194; congratu
lates Hopkins, 203; agrees to US
troops in Germany withdrawing to
their own zone, 207; his General
Election speeches, 208-10; Election
tour, 211-12; and Laski, 212; US
comment on his election prospects,
213; at Potsdam, 214^; agreement
with Roosevelt on atom bomb, 217,
218, 240; agrees to use atom bomb,
218; on American secrecy over
atomic research, 218-19; an ^ terms
for Japan s surrender, 219, 242; de
feated in General Election, 225-7,
229-30; Laski s tribute to, 229;
Attlee on his electioneering, 233;
prepares Hiroshima bomb an
nouncement, 256; considers Japan
defeated before atomic bomb, 270;
Attlee s tribute to, 289-90; defends
atom bombings, 290; as Leader of
the Opposition, 290-1; and the
clothing shortage, 292??; and the
end of Lend-Lease, 296; rebukes
Anderson, 298-9; message to Prim
rose League, 312

Cinema. See Films

Civilian life, the return to, 288-9,
292-5,311

Claridges Hotel, 290

Clark, General Mark, Commander of
Fifteenth Army Group, 125

Clay, Lieut.-General Lucius, Ameri
can Deputy Military Governor in
Germany 173

Clemenceau, Georges, 53^

Clements, John, 290

Cleveland Plain Dealer, quoted, 213

Clothing shortage, in UK, 186, 292

334

INDEX

Coal: German production, 73; UK
shortage, 186, 223, 286; the industry
in need of overhaul in UK, 291;
shortage throughout Europe, 300
Coalition Government (UK), 181-4
Cockcroft, John, 218
Codman, Colonel Charles, 124
Cohen, adviser to Byrnes, 215
Cologne: Americans enter, 72; suicide

wave in, 306

Combined Chiefs of Staff: meet at
Malta, 26; differences on strategy in
Germany, 39-40; agree to assaults
on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, 80;
ignored by Eisenhower in approach
to Stalin, 88. See also Chiefs of Staff
Common Wealth party (UK), 211
Communist Party, French, 300, 301
Communist Party, of Great Britain,

174, 211, 227-8

Communists: try to seize power in
Greece, 3; Goebbels terror cam
paign against, 94; the Yenan Gov
ernment in China, 196, 277, 312; as
candidates in British General Elec
tion, 211, 227-8; sanctioned in
British Zone of Germany, 303; in
Italy, 307

Como, Mussolini in, 126-7
Como, Lake, 128
Concentration camps, 121-4, I 34&gt;

147, 157, 305

Congress, US, 293, 294, 312
Conservative Party (UK), 182, 184,
289; and the General Election, 208-
12; effect of Churchill s electioneer
ing, 208-9, 2 33; losses of seats &gt;
225-6

Control Council, Allied, 49, 174-5*
304. See also under Austria; Ger
many, etc.

Controlled, torpedoes, 174
Copenhagen, 150, 157
Cost of the war, to main belligerents,

271-2

Courland, 37, 72, 78
Cracow, 35, 37

Cranborne, Lord (later Marquess of
Salisbury), 200

Crime-wave, in UK, 288

Cripps, Sir Stafford, 181, 209, 230,
280; President of the Board of
Trade, 232; on radar, 259

Crowley, Leo, Foreign Economic Ad
ministrator (USA), 191

Cunio, Italian province of, 170-2

Curtin, John, Australian Prime Minis
ter, 189

Curzon, Lord, 53**

Curzon Line, 19, 53-5, 60, 223

Cuxhaven, 174

Czechoslovakia, 73, 133, 141; Chur
chill desires Allies to liberate Wes
tern part, 155; cedes Ruthenia to
USSR, 178; under Soviet influence,
198; Truman-Stalin agreement on
withdrawal of troops from, 306-7

Dachau concentration camp, 122,

123
Daily Express, 114/1, 139, 210; quoted

233

Daily Mirror, 210
Daily Telegraph, 145, 151, 188; quoted

65, 72, 239. 2 ^6
Daladier, Edouard, 121
Dalston Public Library, V.2 rocket on,

Dalton, Hugh, 183, 184, 209, 226; on
the General Election, 208; Chan
cellor of the Exchequer, 231, 232;
and the US loan, 298

Damascus, street fighting in, 169

Damaskinos, Archbishop, Regent of
Greece, 3

Daniels, Bebe, 160, 188

Daniels, Farrington, 243

Danube, River, 35

Danzig, 37, 78, 133, 235, 272

Das Reich, 15,74

Davies, Joseph E., Truman s special
envoy, 166

Deakin, Arthur, 230

Death sentence, widened by the
Nazis, 94

De Gasperi, A. See Gasperi

de Guingand, Major-General Francis,
quoted 5-6, 89

335

INDEX

Demobilization: dekyed by Churchill,
167, 290; in USA, 269, 293; in
Japan, 276, 277; agitation in UK for
increase of, 287-8, 290

Democratic Party (USA), 109

Dempsey, General M. C, Comman
der of British Second Army, 84

Denmark, 14, 78, 119, 133, 134* HI&gt;
300; liberation of, 157, 158

de Tassigny, General, 177

Detroit, 269

Detroit Free Prcss^ quoted 213

de Valera, Eamon: and Hitler s death,
138-9, 156, 157, 188; declares Eire a
republic, 308

Dewey, Thomas E., 117

Dillon, Mr, 308

Displaced Persons, 121, 175-6, 300,

304

Doenitz, Grand Admiral Karl, 14,
135, 305; in favour with Hitler, 77-
8; appointed to command in the
north, 131; informed of and an
nounces Hitler s death, 137-9; tries
to keep war going for diplomatic
manoeuvring, 139; sets up his gov
ernment in Flensburg, 140; refuses
Himmler office, 141-2; decides to
surrender, 143, 144, 147; on Ameri
can strategic and political aims,
146-7; attempts to woo Allies, 155-
6; released from prison, 156*1; end
of his government, 172-3

Dominions, 293; seek influence in
world affairs, 281

Dornberger, Colonel, 32

Downing Street, No. 10, 225, 226-7,
229, 265, 290

Doyen, General, 171

Drabik, Sergeant Alexander, 71

Dresden, air raid on, 74

Dublin, disorders in, 156-7

Duisburg, 70

Dulles, Allen, 104, 245

Dulles, John Foster: on the atomic
bomb, 258; at London Council of
Foreign Ministers, 281; on Allied
disunity, 283-4, 285

Dumbarton Oaks conference, 52

Dunglass, Lord (kte Lord Home), 66

226
Dunkirk, 121, 145; German garrison

surrenders, 157
Du Pont firm, 294
Dusseldorf, 70
Dutch East Indies, 21, 269, 278

Early, Steve, Presidential Press Secre
tary, no

Easley, Brig.-General G. M., 193

East Chinese and Manchurian rail
roads, 58

East Indian Islands, 27

East Prussia, 78, 235; Russian advance
in, 35; Germans cut off in, 72, 133;
evacuation of Germans, 133-4

Eastern Front, 76, 78; the great Rus
sian advance, 15, 34-8; reasons for
halt of previous autumn, 34-5; Rus
sians nearing Berlin, 72-4; Germans
pushed back from Oder, and Berlin
attacked, 129-30; disintegration of
the German line, 133; the evacua
tion from East Prussia, 133-4

Economist^ The, 181

Ecuador, 53

Eden, Anthony, 22, 25, 26, 40, 62,
103, 117, 208, 234; meets Stalin
(1944), 16, 17-18; at Yalta, 45, 54,
59, 61; on Truman, 117; and the
Polish problem, 163; at San Fran
cisco conference, 198, 199

Education Act (1944), 186

Egypt, 52-3, 61

Eichelberger, General R. L., Mac-
Arthur s land commander, quoted
197

Einstein, Albert, 239

Eire, 156-7, 160, 188; becomes a
republic, 308

Eisenhower, General Dwight D.,
Supreme Commander of Allied
Forces in Europe, 135, 141, 144,
146, 148, 156, 168, 170, 234, 241,
260; presses for resumption of Rus
sian offensive, 7; orders Sixth Army
Group to Ardennes, and then re
vokes order, 7, 9; Montgomery and

336

INDEX

Alan Brooke critical of, 9-10; angry
with Montgomery, 10; masterly
handling of Ardennes assault, 10-
n; on Montgomery, 12; fails to dis
cipline generals, 13; on Anglo-
Soviet friendship, 22; plan for de
feat of Germany, 39, 69; on the
Siegfried Line, 70; and the Rhine
crossing, 84-5, 86-7; his limited
strategic objective, 88; communi
cates his plan to Stalin, 88-9; criti
cisms of, in British Press, 89; semi-
secret visit to Paris, 89; defends his
strategy to Churchill, 90; Ralph
Ingersoll s and J. F. C. Fuller s
criticisms of, 91; his masterly opera
tions across the Rhine, 91; and
Roosevelt s death, 112; pushes on
towards Elbe, 118; not interested in
capture of Berlin, 118; supports
southern drive at expense of the
north, 119; orders halt at the Elbe,
119; and the concentration camps,
123; refuses to accept separate Ger
man surrender, 146-7; refuses to
capture Prague, 155; influences
Truman regarding zones of occupa
tion, 165-6; American representa
tive on Allied Control Council, 174;
moves his HQ_to Frankfurt, 176;
honours Montgomery, 176-7; re
ceives freedom of City of London,
180; against use of atom bomb,
2i8, 243; and the removal of
Nazis, 304-5; becomes Chief of
Staff, 305; on venereal disease in
Germany, 306; on German ability
for hard work, 306

Eks, 102

Elbe, River, 165, 175, 177; Allied
armies advance towards, 87, 89,
1 18; Allies halted at, 1 19; Americans
and Russians link up at Torgau,
130; German soldiers and civilians
flee across, 140-1

Electro-submarines, 77, 126

Elizabeth, Queen (consort of George
VI), 267, 287

Elphinstone, Captain theMaster of, 121

Enola Gay (B.29 bomber), carries first
atomic bomb, 237-8, 246-9, 251,
261

Entertainments, 187-8, 253-4, 2 55&gt;
288

Evacuees, 186

Evans, Emrys, 157

Evatt, Dr Herbert, Australian Minis
ter of External Affairs, 200, 201, 281

Evening Standard, quoted 186

Exports, British need for, 287

Fair Deal, the (USA), 293

Fallingbostel, prisoner-of-war camp
at, 1 20-1

Famine, threat of, 84, 295

Far East theatre of war: the Central
Pacific and S.W. Pacific Com
mands, 80; reorganization of com
mands, 245. See also Iwo Jima;
Japan; Okinawa, etc.

Farouk, King of Egypt, 61

Farringdon Market, V.2 rocket on,

Fayoum oasis, 62

Federal Council of Churches, 257

Ferebee, Major Thomas W., 248, 251

Fermi, Enrico, 217, 241

Fido (Fog Investigation and Dispersal
Operation), 296

Fierlinger, M., 178

Films, 187, 253-4, 255, 288

Finland, signs peace treaty, 3108

Fire-guard duties, 31

Flensburg, Doenitz s government at,
140-3, 148, 155-6. J 73, 174

Flying bombs, 31, 32

Flying Fortress (6.29) bombers, 74,
107, 192, 195, 246, 261. See also
Enola Gay.

Folkestone, 153

Food: situation in Germany, 175;
bread shortage in UK, 185-6; sugar
shortage in USA, 189; Europe s
great need of, 190; severe shortage
in Japan, 196; meagreness in UK,
after Japan s defeat, 285; general
world shortage, 295

Foot, Dingle, 227

337

INDEX

Foreign Ministers meetings: at Yalta,
56-8; at Potsdam, 215, 220; in
Londo^ 281-5; in Moscow, 308-11

Formosa, 99

Forrestal, James, Secretary of the
Navy, 113,265

France, i, 135, 223; her share in con
trol of Germany discussed at Yalta,
49-50, 64; and the Levant States,
169-70; and the province of Cunio,
170-2; her zone in occupied Ger
many, 177-8; and Indo-China, 197,
278; cost of war to, 271; and the
London Foreign Ministers meet
ing, 281-4; de Gaulle s Provisional
Government, 300-1; difference with
UK over the Levant, 301; trials of
P&ain and Laval, 301-2; and the
Foreign Ministers in Moscow, 308,

309
Franck, James, 240, 241; his Report

on atomic bomb, 240, 242, 243, 257
Franco, General, 220
Frank, Hans, 1560
Frankfurt, 39, 176, 234; captured by

Americans, 87; Eisenhower s HQ_

in, 176-7
Fraser, Peter, NZ delegate at San

Francisco conference, 200
Fraternization and non-fraternization,

177

Freeman, John, 289
French Army: in Germany, 87, 146;

occupies province of Cunio, 170
Freyburg, General Sir Bernard, 168
Friedeburg, Admiral von, Comman-

der-in-Chief of German Navy: at

Luneburg Heath, 143-4; at Rheims,

147; signs total surrender, 158
Frisch, Otto, 217
Fuchs, Klaus, 219
Fuerstenberg, northern capital of

Germany, 132
Fuller, Major-General J. F. C,

quoted 87, 91, 270

Gaitskell, H. T. N., 228
Galkcher, William, 267
Gamelin, General, 121

Gandhi, Mahatma, 280

Garvin, J. L., 285

Gas chambers, 122

Gasperi, A. de, Italian Prime Minis
ter, 307

Gaulle, General Charles de, 47, 50;
objects to Strasbourg being left
open, 9; offended at not being asked
to Yalta, 26; meets Roosevelt at
Algiers, 63; and the Levant, 169-70,
301; and the occupation of Stutt
gart, 170; and the province of
Cunio, 17(^-2; and Libya, 172; and
the Potsdam conference, 224; and
Indo-China, 278; and Truman,
280-1; in Washington and New
York, 281; sets up Provisional Gov
ernment, 300-1; and Petain, 301;
and Laval s trial, 302

General Election, in UK. See under
Conservative Party; Labour Party;
United Kingdom

General Motors, 294

Generals: in the firing line, 6-^7; high
standard of generalship, 7; receive
honours, 176-7

Genoa, 125

George VI, King, 23, 159, 179, 255,
287; VE Day broadcast, 153-4; ^d
Attlee s Cabinet appointments, 226,
231; meets Truman, 236; popularity
of, and Attlee s tribute to, 267; VJ
broadcast, 267-8; relations with
Labour Government, 291-2

German Air Force (Luftwaffe): in
Ardennes battle, 5; favours flying
bombs, 32; fails to protect Ger
many, 76; ineffective at Allied cross
ing of the Rhone, 85; Goering at-
temps to collect its scattered rem
nants, 131

German Army: casualties in Ardennes
battle, 14; number of divisions in
the field, 14; awards and other at
tempts to keep up its fighting
spirit, 94; surrenders in the Ruhr,
95; final days of fighting in Berlin,
132, 138; its remaining pockets of
resistance, 141; the surrender on

338

INDEX

Luneburg Heath, 143-5; tne sur
render at Rheims, 146-7; disbanded
in British Zone, 304. Units of: SS
Army Group, 76; Model s Army
Group, 94; Sixth Panzer Army, 37;
Ninth Army, 131^ 132
German High Command, 73, 93, 135
German Intelligence service, dis
covers Allied dissensions, 15
German Navy: comparative success
of, 77; its remnants evacuate East
Prussia, 133

German News Agency, quoted 74
Germany, 41, 125, 287, 293; research
on rocket bombs, 32; interior lines
of communication, 37; her future dis
cussed at Yalta, 49-51; condition of
the people, 71-2; military situation
in April, 93-5; peace overtures by,
131, 134, 135; the evacuation from
East Prussia, 133-4; tne en ^ of Hit
ler, 135-7; Doenitz the new Fueh
rer, 138-43; migration of Germans
from advancing Russians, 140-1,
175; the surrender on Luneburg
Heath, 143-4; the surrender at
Rheims, 146-7; the end of the Third
Reich, 147-8; reaction of popula
tion to end of war, 150; Anglo-
American differences on zones of
occupation, 165-6; end of the Doe
nitz government, 172-3; German
military framework used by Allied
government, 173-4; Allied rule
tries to restore normal life in, 174-
7; lack of common economic policy
among Allies, 177; Control Council
set up, and four zones delineated,
177-8; American forces withdraw
to their own zone, 206-7; discussed
at Potsdam conference, 221-3; re "
search on atom bomb in, 239, 240;
research on radar, 259; VJ Day re
joicing in, 268; cost of war to, 271,
272; discussed by Truman and de
Gaulle, 280; zonal government of,
303-5; suicides, alcoholics and
prostitutes in, 306
GI brides, 186, 288

Glasgow, 153

Goebbels, Frau, 76, 136, 137

Goebbels, Joseph, 15, 131, 132, 139,
140, 159; on Germany being de
serted, 74; in Hitler s bunker, 76;
and the Volkssturm, 94; campaign
against the Communists, 94; and
Roosevelt s death, 112; poisons his
children, 136, 137; peace overture
to Russians, 137; orders SS orderly
to shoot him, 137

Goering, Reichsmarschall Hermann,
*35&gt; *59&gt; J 73, 305; on the Russian
advance, 16; discredited, 76, 131;
attempts to negotiate with Ameri
cans, 131, 141; captured, 156;
poisons himself, 156/1

Gold, Harry, 220

Goodyear Tyre & Rubber Co., 294

Grand Slam bomb, 254

Graziani, Marshal, Italian Minister of
War, 126

Great Britain. See United Kingdom

Great Bitter Lake, 61

Greece, 17, 24, 25, 309; civil war in, 3;
Churchill-Stalin agreement on, 17,
1 8; UNRRA aid for, 295; financial
straits, and Left-Right feud, 307

Greenglass, David, 220

Greenwood, Arthur, Lord Privy Seal,
232

Grese, Irma, 305

Grew, Joseph G, Acting Secretary of
State, 191, 242

Grigg, Sir James, 226

Gromyko, Mr, 117; at San Francisco
conference, 199, 200

Groves, General Leslie R., director of
atom bomb project, 217, 239, 241,
245, 251, 263

Guam, 246, 258

Guderian, General Heinz, 38, 46, 73

Guernsey, 158, 179

Guffey, Joseph, Democratic Senator,
232

Haakon, King of Norway, 158
Hachiya, Dr, 250
Haegg, Gundar, 255

339

INDEX

Hague, The, V.2 rockets fired from, 33

Hahn, Otto, 240, 256

Haig, Captain Earl, 121

Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia,

Haileybury, Ontario, 219
Half-track tanks, 174
Halifax, Lord, British Ambassador in

Washington, 24, 117, 297-8
Halsey, Admiral William R, Com
mander of US Third Fleet, 29, 261
Hamburg, 39, 138, 140; surrender of,
142-3, 289; deaths in, from alco
holic poisoning, 306
Hancock, A., 225
Hangchow Bay, 260
Hannon, Sir Patrick, 287
Hanoi, 278
Hardie, Keir, 227
Harding, Warren, 116
Harford, Washington, 217
Harriman, Averell, i6tf, 102, 114; at
Yalta, 44, 50, 59; on the barbarian
invasion of Europe, 164-5; recom
mends recognition of Lublin Gov
ernment, 206; and Russian declara
tion of war on Japan, 260
Harris, Sir Arthur, chief of Bomber
Command, 75; on the atomic
bomb, 257

Harris, Sir Percy, 227
Harrod, R. R, quoted 297
Hassett, William D., Secretary to

Roosevelt, 107

Hastings, Macdonald, quoted 154
Havel, River, 131, 132
Hearst Press, 83

Heavy-water plant, in Norway, 240
Heine, Major-General, German Com-
mander-in-Chief in the Channel
Islands, 158
Herald Tribune, New York, 103;

quoted 65, 258
Hess, Rudolf, 156/1
Hill, Dr Charles, 232
Himmler, Heinrich, 131, 139; out of
favour, and in charge of SS Army
Group, 76; makes peace move
through Bernadotte, 134-5; re

jected by Doenitz, 141-2; capture
and suicide of, 178
Hindenburg, Field-Marshal von, 133
Hirano, Major, 253
Hirohito, Emperor of Japan, 242, 263,
265, 266, 270; decides to surrender,
264; dismisses Suzuki Government,
269; his broadcast on Japan s sur
render, 269

Hiroshima, 757*, 239, 245, 260, 300,
313; comparatively unscathed from
bombing, 247; industries and popu
lation, 247-8; atom bomb dropped
on, 248-9; effects of the bomb,
249-50; reactions of plane crew,
251; reactions in Japan, 252; plight
of survivors, 252-3; reactions in
USA and Europe, 254, 256-9;
Japanese admit extent of damage,
258; not warned by leaflet, 260;
tourist industry in, 262^, 312;
International Red Cross in, 273
Hiss, Alger, quoted 64
Hitler, Adolf, 112, 175; broadcasts
that Germany is winning the war, 2;
and the Ardennes battle, 4-5, 13-
14; rejoices at Allied dissensions,
15; hopes for overture from Western
Allies, 16; and the V.2 rocket, 32,
240; and the Eastern Front, 37; in
Berlin bunker, 75-9, 130; plans
opera house in Linz, 76, 130, 179;
no intention of surrendering, 83;
and the Volkssturm, 94; orders that
Ruhr must be held, 94; orders re
moval of Belsen camp, 122; and the
Italian campaign, 125; regrets alli
ance with Italy, 129; refuses to
leave Berlin, and his last conference
with Nazi leaders, 131; his recrim
inations to Chiefs of Staff, 132; his
death, 135-7; reactions to his death,

138-9

Hitler Youth, 94, 130-2
Hodges, General C. H., Commander

of US First Army, 84, 85, 87
Holborn, 225
Hollis, General Sir Leslie, 46; quoted

215

340

INDEX

Home, Lord. See Dunglass, Lord
Home Guard: Japanese, 196; dis
banded in UK, 311
Homeless people, in Europe, 300. Sec

also Displaced Persons
Hong Kong, 52, 53, 59, 269; relief of,

270

Honolulu, 246

Honshu, 80; air raids on, 261
Hoover, Herbert, 63, 191
Hopkins, Harry L., 34, 62, 63, 99,
206, 219; his special assignments,
24; mission to Churchill, 26; at
Yalta, 44-5, 50, 56, 60-1; on Stalin,
1 1 6; missions to Stalin, 166-7, 200,
202, 203; on Russian trust in the
USA, 284

Hore-Belisha, Leslie, 226; visit to
Eisenhower, 89; Minister ofNational
Insurance, 184

Horrocks, Lieut.-General B. G., 70
Horsburgh, Miss Florence, 226
House of Commons. See Parliament
Housing shortage: in UK, 292; in

USA, 293

Hull, Cordell, 24, 190
Human suicide-torpedoes, 192
Hungary, 17, 47, 73, 220, 234; the
struggle for Budapest, 4, 35, 73;
signs peace treaty, 310/1

Ibn Saud, King of Saudi Arabia, 61,
62

I.G. Farben works, Frankfurt, 176

India, 135; on the eve of Independ
ence, 279-80, 291, 292

Indian Army: in Italy, 125; in Java,
279

Indo-China, 287; Franco-Japanese
conflict in, 197; Allied occupation
of, 269; Japanese surrender in, 278

Indonesia, Anglo-Dutch discussions
on, 303

Industry in USA: unrest in, 293; re
conversion problems, 294

Inflation, in USA, 293

Infra-red searchlight, for blinding
tank crews, 174

Inge, Dean, quoted 257

Ingersoll, Ralph, quoted 90, 91
Ingram, Admiral, Commander of US

Atlantic Fleet, 33

Institute of International Affairs, 306
Intelligence services: See British In
telligence; German Intelligence;
Japanese Intelligence; US Intelli
gence
Interior lines of communication,

German, 37
International Red Cross, 19, 133, 134,

Iran: Potsdam agreement on evacua
tion of Anglo-American troops, 222;
USA and, 309

Ireland. See Eire

Irish Nationalists, 211

Iron Curtain, 167, 313

Irrawaddy, River, 95

Isaacs, George, Minister of Labour,
237,288

Islington, V,2 rocket on, 33

Ismay, Lord, quoted 64-5

Italian partisans, 125-7

Italians, under Alexander s com
mand, 125

Italy, 14, 20, 23, 24, 47, 78; Allied ad
vance halted, 3; peace moves from
Germans in, 104, 125; Allied ad
vance resumes, 124-6; the end of
Mussolini, 126-8; the German sur
render in, 129; US financial grant
to, 191-2; Polish army in, 206,
224; discussed at Potsdam, 234,
236; total war casualties, 272; and
the London Foreign Ministers
meeting, 281; serious unrest in,
307; signs peace treaty, 310;*

ITMA programme, 160, 187

Iwo Jima, 99, 192; strategic import
ance, 79-80; naval bombardment of,
80-1, 82; the landing on, 81-2; the
island secured, 82-3

Jackson, Justice, 305

Jacobsson, Per, 245

Japan: the war situation in January, 4;
USSR decides to enter war against,
59, 191, 192; determined to fight to

341

INDEX

the last, 79; bombing of, 83, 107,
195-6, 246, 252, 260-1, 265, 270-1;
official reaction to Roosevelt s death,
112; reaction to end of war in
Europe, 149-50; attaches prestige
value to Iwo Jima, 192; retreats in
China, 196; the Allied ring closes
round, 197-8; Stalin considers her
unconditional surrender unneces
sary, 203; use of atom bomb
against, discussed at Potsdam, 218,
219; atom bomb research in, 240;
pros and cons on use of atomic
bomb against, 240-1, 242-3; Tru
man s ultimatum to, 243-5; peace
feelers by, 245, 264, 271; rejects
Truman s ultimatum, 245-6; the
atomic bomb on Hiroshima (see
Hiroshima); USSR declares war on,
260, 264; the Allied fleets in Japan
ese home waters, 261; US Air Force
drops warning leaflets about bomb
ing, 261; the atomic bomb on Naga
saki (see Nagasaki); decides to sur
render, 263-6; the military attempt
a coup tftM, 265; Suzuki Govern
ment dismissed, and the Emperor s
broadcast, 269; question of her de
feat before atomic bomb, 270-1;
cost of war to, 272; the surrender
ceremony, 272-3; the Allied occupa
tion of, 275-7, 293; arrest and exe
cution of war leaders, 305-6; dis
cussed at Moscow Foreign Minis
ters meeting, 310; signs peace
treaty, 310*1

apanese Army: spread out over vast
area, 27; increase of Iwo Jima
garrison, 80

Japanese Navy, defeated at Leyte
Gulf, 27

Japanese Intelligence service, 252, 260

Java, 278-9, 287

Jersey, 179, 305

Jerusalem, disorders in, 312

Jet fighter planes, 77, 78, 93

Jet-submarines, 174

Jewish scientists and writers, released
by Allies, 121

Jews, 78, 169, 221

Jinnah, Mohammed Ali, 279-80

Joad, C E. M., quoted 257

Jodl, Colonel-General Alfred, 16, 131,

173; wishes to continue hostilities,

142; signs German surrender, 147;

sentenced to death, 156/1
Jowitt, Lord, Lord Chancellor, 232
Joyce, William ( Lord Haw-Haw ),

178, 302

Kaltenborn, H. V,, quoted 232

Kamikazes. See suicide-bombers

Kansas City Star, 115; quoted 190

Kassel (Germany), 39

Katyn, Poland, mass graves at, 19

Kawasaki, Japan, 195

Keitel, General, 131; wishes to con
tinue hostilities, 142; sends delega
tion to Montgomery, 143-4; sen
tenced to death, 156/1

Kennedy, Major-General, 30

Kerr, Sir Archibald Clark, 104

Kersten, Felix, Himmler s doctor, 134

Kesselring, Field-Marshal Albrecht,
German Commander-in-Chief in
the West, 76, 91, 125; replaces
Rundstedt, 86; unable to stem
Allied advance, 94; falls back on
southern mountains and northern
ports, 118; appointed to command
in the south in emergency, 131

Keynes, Lord, 191; negotiates loan in
Washington, 296, 297-8

Khruschev, N., ii4, 300

King, Admiral Ernest J., US Navy
Chief of Staff, 21, 40, 44

King, Mackenzie, Prime Minister of
Canada, 188, 199, 309

Kobe, air raids on, 195, 252

Kokura, 239, 245, 247, 262

Konev, Marshal, 35, 44, 129, 130, 141,
honoured by General Bradley, 176

Konigsberg, 133; ceded to USSR,
222

Korea, 59, 310; the 38th parallel fixed,
276

Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, 305

Kuomintang regime, 196-7, 277

34 2

INDEX

Kuribayaski, Lieut.-General Tada-
michi, Commander on Iwo Jima,
80,82

Kurile Islands, 59

Kyushu, air raids on, 261

Labour Government: formation of,
226, 231-2, 237; and domestic
difficulties, 285-8; and Mont
gomery, 304

Labour Party: its record in the Coali
tion Government, 181; feelings
within, about the General Election,
182-3; programme for the election,
184-5; * ts campaign, 208-12; lead
ership issue, 212, 230-1; election
victory, 225-8; victory rally, 229;
the Labour Cabinet, 231-2, 237

Labour relations, in UK, 286; in
USA, 190, 293, 294

Labuan, invaded by Australians and
Dutch, 197

Lancaster House, 281

Lascelles, Sir Alan, 231

Lascelles, Lieutenant Lord, 121

Laski, Harold, 183, 185, 209; and the
Labour leadership issue, 212, 228-
31; tribute to Churchill, 229; pro
poses himself as Ambassador to
USA, 237

Latvia, 133

Laurence, William L., 262

Laval, Pierre, 146, 301, 302

Law, R. K., Minister of Education,

233

Lawrence, Lord Justice, 305
Lawson, J. J., Minister of War,

237

League of Nations, 198, 200

Leahy, Admiral William D., Chief of
Staff to Roosevelt and Truman,
113, 149, 260, 283; at Yalta, 59,
6 1, 64; and a strong American atti
tude towards USSR, 165; at Pots
dam, 234; opposes use of atomic
bomb, 2i8#, 241, 243, 271; and
Truman s ultimatum to Japan, 245;
and surrender terms for Japan, 265;
on Ptain, 301

301; French troops in, 169;

Potsdam agreement on, 222
le Druillenac, Harold, 305
Lehman, Herbert, Director-General

ofUNNRA,295

Leiden, V.2 rockets fired from, 33
Lemnitzer, General L., 104
Lend-Lease Agreement, 21, 191, 216;

end of, 295-7

Leopold, King of Belgium, 157, 300
Let Us Face the Future (Labour Party

pamphlet), 184
Levant States: French action in, 169;

Truman-de Gaulle discussion on,

280; Anglo-French differences on,

301

Lewis, John L., head of the United
Mine Workers, 190

Lewisham: Churchill heckled in, an;
Morrison s election victory in, 228

Ley, Robert, 305

Leyte, 27

Leyte Gulf, naval battle of, 27

Liberal Party (UK), 210, 211, 227

Libya, 172

Lichfield, 286

Lie, Trygve, Danish Foreign Minis
ter, 158

Liege, flying bombs on, 31

Lincoln, Abraham, 117

Lingayen Gulf, battle of, 28-9, 99

Linz,76, 130, 179

Lippstadt, captured by Americans, 94

Lithuania, 55

Livadia Palace, Yalta, 44, 45, 48, 60

Liverpool, 153

Llewellin, Colonel J. J., 226

Lloyd, Geoffrey, 226

Lloyd George, Earl, 4, 153

Lodz, 35

London: flying bombs and V.2 rockets
on, 31-2, 33; casualities from air
raids on, 116-7; VE Day celebra
tions in, 151-4, 159-60; the City
honours Eisenhower, 180; prema
ture celebrations in, over Japanese
surrender, 2645; VJ celebrations,
266, 267-8; Council of Foreign
Ministers in (see Foreign Ministers);

343

INDEX

Anglo-Dutch discussions on Indo
nesia in, 303; conference on trial of
German war criminals, 305; Irish
economic mission to, 308; UN
General Assembly in, 311; New
Year s Eve in, 312

London Polish Government. See
Polish Government in London

Looting: by Allied troops, 120; by
Russians, 159; by Yugoslavs, 168;
by Americans, 178

Los Alamos, New Mexico, 217, 246,
247

Los Angeles, 149, 253

Lubeck: Montgomery races for, 119-
120; Himmler-Bernadotte meeting
at, 135; entered by Eleventh
Armoured Division, 140

Lublin Government. See Poland

Luftwaffe. See German Air Force

Luneburg, 178, 305

Luneburg Heath, German surrender
at, 143-5, 147

Luqa airfield, Malta, 38, 41

Luzon, 246; American invasion of,
28-31, 79; MacArthur s three-
pronged attack, 99; the Japanese
hold out in the north, 197; the
Japanese surrender, 269-^70

Lvov, 54

Lyneham aerodrome, Wiltshire, 63

Lyttelton, Oliver, 184

MacArthur, General Douglas, Com-
mander-in-Chief, S.W. Pacific, 80,
241; returns to the Philippines, 4;
invades Luzon, 28-31, 79; captures
Manila, 48-9, 98; his three-pronged
attack in Luzon, 99; announces
liberation of Luzon, 197; lands at
Labuan, 197; prepares to invade
Japan, 245, 246; organizes occupa
tion of Japan, 269; receives Japanese
surrender, 272-3; orders arrest of
war leaders, 305-6

McCain, Admiral John S., 28

McCormick press, 83

Mclntire, Admiral Ross, US Navy
Surgeon-General, 108

Macmillan, Harold, 184, 225
Magdeburg, 119
Maisky, I. M., 50, 51
Malaya, 21, 276; relief of, 268
Malenkov, G. M., 44, 300
Malraux, Andre, 301
Malta, 85; Amglo-American confer
ence in, 38-41
Manchester, 153

Manchuria: Russian troops enter, 260,
264; Japanese prisoners-of-war in,
276; USSR agrees to evacuate, 277;
railroads, 59
Mandalay, 4, 95-7
Manhattan project, 217, 219, 240,

243-6, 248

Manila, 28, 30, 31, 47, 306; captured
by Americans, 48-9, 98; Japanese
surrender delegation in, 272
Manila Bay, 99
Marriage problems, 288
Marshall, General George C., US
Army Chief of Staff, 90, 113, 251;
opposes British strategy in Europe,
39-40; at Yalta, 48; and Burma, 95,
98; and the proposed invasion of
Japan, 242; and the atomic bomb,
261, 263; his European recovery
programme, 297

Matthews, adviser to Byrnes, 215
Maugham, Robin, 229
Maxwell Fyfe, Sir David, 305
May, Nunn, 220
Me.262 (German jet fighter), 93
Meiktila, 96
Meuse, River, 12
Michael, King of Rumania, 101,

307 m

Micolajczyk, Stanislaw, Prime Minis-
ter in London Polish Government,
19, 206

Middle East conference, 61-3

Middle Powers, at San Francisco con
ference, 199

Migration: of Germans from advan
cing Russians, 140-1, 175; in UK,
210-11

Mihailovic, 307

Mikoyan, A. I., 44

344

INDEX

Milan, 128, 129; American forces ad
vance towards, 125; Cardinal Arch
bishop of, 125, 126; Mussolini s
puppet government in, 126

Military courts, set up in Germany,

305

Military Government, Allied, its first
proclamations, 120. See also Ger
many

Miller, K. R., 255

Mineworkers* Union, 286

Minsk, 38

Moch, Jules, 301

Model, Field-Marshal Walter, 6, 94, 95

Moelln, 140

Molotov, V. M., Russian Foreign
Minister, 104, 114; at Yalta, 43, 44,
48, 55, 575 and Rumania, 102; and
Poland, 102, 163; and Roosevelt s
death, 112; leaves San Francisco
conference, 199; increase of his
power, 203; at Potsdam, 215, 222,
223, 234-6; and the Russian declara
tion of war on Japan, 260; and the
Japanese surrender, 265; at London
Foreign Ministers meeting, 281-3;
attempt to oust him from power,
300

Montgomery, Field-Marshal Bernard
Law, 77, 148; criticizes Eisen
hower, 9-10; letter to Eisenhower,
10; brilliant manoeuvre in Ardennes
battle, n; differences with Ameri
can generals, 11-13, 39, 84, 88; de
sires a powerful narrow front, 13,
91; his Twenty-First Army Group,
69; prepares to cross the Rhine, 84;
crosses the Rhine, 85-6; orders a
drive for the Elbe, 87; fear of care
less planning, 119; races for Lubeck,
119; receives German surrender on
Luneburg Heath, 143-4; refuses to
give up surrender document, 147;
on German desire to be treated as
allies, 174; British representative on
Allied Control Council, 174; enter
tained and honoured, 176-7; ad
vises Churchill that Anglo-Ameri
can forces move back, 177; on the

disbandment of SHAEF, 178; in
plane crash, 304; disbands German
troops, 304

Moorehead, Alan, quoted 71-2, 84,
120, 143, 175

Morell, Professor Theodor, Hitler s
physician, 77

Morgenthau, Henry, Secretary of the
Treasury, 115-16

Morrison, Herbert: and the General
Election, 181-4, 208, 209; wins at
Lewisham, 211, 228; and the
Labour leadership issue, 228, 230-1;
on the election victory, 228-9; ap
pointed Lord President of the
Council, 231-2

Morshead, Lieut.-General Sir Leslie,
Australian Commander at Labuan,
197

Moscow, 45, 46, 89; end of war in
Europe announced in, 149; three-
power committee in, 222; Foreign
Ministers conference in, 308-11

Mountbatten, Admiral Lord Louis,
Supreme Commander in S.E. Asia,
95, 97-9, 194, 2 9 J ; organizes occu
pation of Japan, 269

Munich, 305; German Army revok
in, 146

Murphy, Robert, Eisenhower s poE-
tical adviser, 173

Murrow, Edward, 124

Music-While-You-Work programme,
1 60

Musso, Mussolini in, 127

Mussolini, Benito: his puppet govern
ment in Milan, 126, 129; leaves for
Como, 126-7; captured and exe
cuted by partisans, 127-8

Musy, former President of Switzer
land, 134

Nagasaki, 75*, 239, 245, 247, 264, 271,
273, 300; atomic bomb on, 261-2

Nagoya, air raid on, 195

Nanking, 308

Nash, Walter, Prime Minister of New
Zealand, 189

National Assembly, French, 300

345

INDEX

National Guard, US, 312
National Health Service, 232, 291
National Redoubt, of the Nazis, 118,

"9&gt; I3i

Nationalization, 210, 291

Nazi Party: administration and lead
ers retire to National Redoubt, 118;
Allied Military Government pro
clamations regarding, 120; eradica
tion of, and punishment of crim
inals, discussed at Potsdam, 221-2;
members of, removed from public
and business positions, 303, 304

Negro combat units, 7

Neisse, River, 56, 223, 235, 236

Netherlands, 21, 143, 144, 223; V.2
rockets fired from, 33; likelihood
of famine in, 84; Germans cut off in,
87, 141; penetrated by Canadians,
120; VE Day celebrations in, 150-1;
liberation of, 157, 158; post-war
difficulties, 302-3

New Guinea, 264, 269

New Orleans, 268

New Year s Eve, 312

New York, in; excitement in, at end
of war in Europe, 148-9; the social
scene, near end of Japanese war,
253-4; VJ celebrations in, 266, 268;
de Gaulle in, 281; the busy bars in,

294-5

New York Daily News, quoted 213

New York Times, 262, quoted 114-15,
258

New Zealand: war death rate in, 32;
war expenditure, 189

New Zealand Army: in Italy, 125;
the Second Division in Trieste, 168

News Chronicle, 141, 181; quoted 186

Niigata, 239, 245, 247

Nimitz, Admiral Chester W., Com-
mander-in-Chief Central Pacific:
and the proposed invasion of Iwo
Jima and Honshu, 80; prepares to
invade Japan, 245; continues offen
sive after unofficial news of Japan
ese surrender, 264

Normandy, 1 1

North Sea, 39, 120

Northolt Airport, 225

Northwood, 286

Norway, 14, 78, 133, 141, 142, 145;
liberation of, 157, 158; heavy-
water plant in, 240

Nottingham 153

Nuremberg Prison, Nazi leaders in,
156?*

Nuremberg Tribunal, 123, 222, 305

Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 217, 246, 254

Onersalzber, Nazi emergency capi
tal , 131, 141

Observer, 115, 176, quoted 187

Occupation zones, of Germany: dis
cussed at Yalta, 49-50; Kesselring
secures lay-out of, 76; Anglo-
American differences on, 165-6.
See also under Germany

Oder, River, 37, 56, 234; German de
fence line on, 38, 72; Russian
bridge-heads over, 46; reached by
Russian tank vanguards, 73; Rus
sians held up at, 119

Odessa, 155

Okinawa, 112, 189, 195, 218; strategic
importance of, 79-80; Japanese pre
parations for American invasion, 99-
100; the naval action, 100-1; the
struggle for Sugar-Loaf Hill, 192-3;
the end, and the casualties, 193-4;
VJ rejoicings in, 269

Oldendorf, Admiral Jesse, 29

Oliphant, M. L. E., 218

Oliver, Sarah Churchill, 38, 44, 62, 229

Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 217, 241, 250

Orwell, George, quoted 176

Osaka, air raid on, 195

Oslo, 150, 302

Osmena, President, of the Philip
pines, 117

Osservatore Romano, quoted 259

Oumansky, Soviet Ambassador to
Washington, 61

Outer Mongolia, 59

Owen, Captain Frank, quoted 96

Palestine, 62, 169; discussed at Pots
dam, 221

346

INDEX

Pantellaria, 38

Papen, Fritz von, 305

Paraguay, 53

Paris, 115; Eisenhower s secret visit
to, 89; victory celebrations in, 149;
peace treaties signed in, 310^

Parliament, of the UK: the Commons
adjourns for Roosevelt s death, 1 14;
and VE Day, 152-3; the Speaker of
the Commons expresses his hopes,
159; returns to domestic affairs,
180-1; plan for evacuation of, 181;
opening of the first for ten years,
267; the return to party politics,
289; and the US loan, 298

Parsons, Captain William, 247, 248

Partisans: in Yugoslavia, 3, 155; in
Italy, 125-7; in Norway, 157; in
Poland, 164; the Karens in Burma,
194

Patton, General George S., Comman
der of US Third Army, 112; at
Ardennes, n, 12; on the Siegfried
Line, 70; advances to the Rhine,
70; crosses the Rhine, 85; in Frank
furt, 87; drives into southern Ger
many, 91; reaches Czech frontier,
119; near Prague, 155; statement on
Nazis, 304-5

Paullin, Dr James E., 108

Peace treaties: discussed at Foreign
Ministers meetings, 281-3, 38
310; signature of 3 ion

Pearl Harbour, 28, 218, 254, 276, 306;
VJ rejoicings in, 269

Peenemunde, rocket experimental
station at, 32

Peking, 308

Penicillin, 77

Penney, William, 218, 261

Percival, Lieut.-General A, E., 270,
272

Peron, Colonel, Vice-President of
Argentina, 307

Peru, 53

Petacci, Claretta, Mussolini s mistress,
127, 128

P&ain, Marshal, 146, 301-2

Petain, Mme, 302

Peter, King of Yugoslavia, 18, 22, 23,
307

Pethick-Lawrence, Lord, 280

Petrol rationing in USA, end of, 269

Philadelphia, 253

Philippines, 30, 197, 270; General
MacArthur returns to, 4; the Japan
ese on the defensive in, 27; Com
monwealth Government restored
in, 99. See also Luzon; Manila

Phoney War, 145

Picture Post, 154

Pillau, 133

Piloted flying bombs, 174

Pilotless bombers, Roosevelt s sugges
tion for, 116-17

Pilsen, 178

Pleven, Rene, 301

Ploen, 139

Pluto (Pipe-Line-under-the-Ocean),
296

Po, River, 125, 126, 129

Poland, 15, 41, 49, 304; Red Army
temporarily halted in, 4; the Lublin
Government set up by Stalin, 18-
20, 35&gt; 54-7, 60, 65, 102, 104, 163,
164, 167, 198, 202, 206; East-West
differences on, 19-20; Red Army
races across, 35; freed from Nazi
rule, 37; her future discussed at
Yalta, 53-9, 60, 64-6; pockets of
German troops left in, 72; British
and American prisoners-of-war re
turned from, 155; Anglo-American
protest to USSR on subject of, 163-
4; question of admission to UN,
198; Provisional Government estab
lished, 206, 307; discussed at Pots
dam, 223-7

Poles, in Italian campaign, 125

Polish Army, 206, 224

Polish Government in London, 18-
19, 55, 206, 224

Politburo, 44, 114, 203, 215

Pollitt, Harry, 228

Port Arthur, 59

Port Dairen, 59

Portal, Sir Charles, Chief of Air Staff,
6,46

347

INDEX

Portugal, official mourning, in, for
Hitler s death, 138

Potsdam, 132

Potsdam conference, 13671, 212, 213,
226, 239, 244, 280, 282, 283, 296;
preparations for, 206, 208; the set
ting and social preliminaries, 214-
17; the conference adjourned, 224;
the conference resumed, with new
UK delegation, 233-4; the Proto
col, 235-7; Byrnes s and Truman s
comments on, 237; Attlee s and
Bevin s misgivings, 237; Truman s
ultimatum from, to Japan, 243-6,
254. Subjects discussed: Anglo-
American discussion on atomic
bomb, 217-18; membership of
UN, 220; Spain, Yugoslavia, Pales
tine, 220-1; Germany, 221-2; Mid
dle East, Vienna, Bkck Sea Straits,
Konigsberg, 222; reparations, 222-
3; Poland, 223-4

Pound, Ezra, 302

Poznan, 37,

Prague: Eisenhower decides not to
capture, 119, 155; relatively un
damaged, 178

Press, the: in UK criticizes Eisen
hower, 89; comment on Hiroshima,
257-9; comment on Nagasaki, 264

Price-control, in USA, 189

Priestley, J. B,, quoted 160

Primrose League, 2, 312

Prisoner-of-war camps, relief of, 120

Prisoners-of-war: ill-treatment of
British and American by Russians,
155; Russian, taken to USA, 155;
majority of Allied home by end of
May, 175; garden party at Bucking
ham Pakce for, 179-80; Italian, em
ployed in British bakeries, 186;
British and Dutch killed in Naga
saki, 262^; released at Singapore,
270; Allied, in Japan, 276

Promenade Concerts, 255

Prostitution, 306

Prussia, 15, 49

Queen Elizabeth, 287

Queen Mary, 253, 287
Queues, in UK, 255
Quisling, Vikdun, 302

Radar, 259

Radio. See BBC; Broadcasting

Railways, in dire straits in UK, 286

Rainbow Club, 112

Rangoon, 97, 98, 194

Rangoon River, 98

Rape, by Russian soldiers, 155, 159

Rastenburg, Hitler s HQat, 76

Rationing, in USA, 189

Rawlings, Admiral Sir Bernard, 101

Rayburn, Sam, Speaker of the House
of Representatives, 109

Red Army: overruns Rumania and
Bulgaria, 4; temporarily halted in
Poland, 4, 7; begins the great ad
vance, 15; occupies Warsaw, 35, 37;
drive Germans from the Oder, and
attacks Berlin, 129-30; behaviour in
Berlin, 159; restoration of discip
line, 178-9; occupies Konigsberg,
222; occupies Poland, 223, 236; en
ters Manchuria, 260; relative weak
ness, in view of Allied possession of
atomic bomb, 300

Red Cross. See International Red
Cross

Refugees, 72-3, 74, 133, 155, 175, 303

Reichswald forest, 70

Remagen: captured by Americans,
70-1, 84, 86; the Rhine crossed at,
87, 146

Reparations: discussed at Yalta, 50-1;
discussed at Potsdam, 222-3, 22 5
Dutch request for, 303; paid by
losing belligerents, 310/1

Republican Guards, their victory
parade in Paris, 149

Resistance movements. See Partisans

Reuter 135

Reynard, Paul, 121

Rheims, Eisenhower s Forward HQ_
at, 9, 10, 144, 176; German surren
der signed at, 146-7, 158

Rhine, River, i, 37, 39, 69, 120; Allied
advance to, 69-70; US Ninth Army

348

INDEX

reaches it, 70; a bridgehead estab
lished, 70-1; Americans enter
Cologne, 72; the Siegfried Line
overrun, 83; preparations for Allied
crossing, 84-5; the bombardment,
and the crossing, 85-6; Churchill
witnesses the crossing, 86-7; Eisen
hower s masterly operations across,
91; Allied rail bridge at Wesel, 118
Ribbentrop, J. von, Nazi Foreign
Minister, 135, 305; rejected by
Doenitz, 142

Ridgway, Major-General Matthew, 6
Roberts, Roy, quoted, 115
Robertson, General Sir Brian, 504
Rockefeller, Nelson, Under-Secretary

of State, 199, 308
Rocket battery, the first British, 32
Rocket bomb. See V.2 rocket bomb
Rocket research plant, etc. captured

by Americans, 174
Roer, River, 70

Rokossovsky, Marshal, 35, 44; enter
tains Montgomery, 176
Rome, 276; reactions in, to end of

war in Europe, 150
Roosevelt, Mrs Eleanor, 108, 109
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 2, 16, 28, 59,
78, 166, 170, 202, 206, 215, 278;
312; and Poknd, 18-20, 102-4; and
Socialist movements in Europe, 21;
and British colonialism, 21; and
Holknd, 21; desire for friendship
with USSR, 21-2; fourth inaugura
tion speech, 24-5; anxious to handle
Stalin on his own, 25-7; confers
with Churchill in Malta, 38-41; at
Yalta, 43^; at Middle East confer
ence, 61-3; meets de Gaulle in
Algiers, 63; speech to Congress,
66-7; and the UN, 103; pressed by
Churchill on Polish question, 102-
4; and Stalin s anger over alleged
separate peace treaty, 105; death of,
107-8; and choice of Truman as
Vice-President, 109; reactions to
his death, 111-12, 114; his funeral,
1 1 6, 117; suggests pilotless bom
bers, 116; Truman s tribute to, 149;

agreement with Churchill on atom
bomb, 217, 218, 240

Roosevelt, Theodore, 293

Rosenthal,Joe, 82

Rostock, 140, 143

Rotterdam, 303

Royal Air Force, 6; saturation and
terror bombing by, 74-5

Royal Australian Navy. See Australian
Navy

Royal Navy: HMS Bulldog at Guern
sey, 158; total number of ships lost,
181; HMS Sussex lands force at
Singapore, 270

Ruhr, the, 39, 49, 69, 223, 235, 280;
encircled by Allied armies, 87, 88,
91, 94-5; surrender of German
armies in, 95; mopping-up opera
tions, 1 1 8; Anglo-French differ
ences on, 304

Rumania, 17, 164, 220, 234; overture
to Allies, 3-4; Communists seize
power in, 101-2; Russian pressure
in, 167; discussed at Foreign Minis
ters meetings, 282, 309, 310; King
Michael requests free elections in,

307

Rundstedt, Field-Marshal Gerd von,
German Commander-in-Chief in
the West; his Ardennes offensive, 5,
6, 10, 14; forced back to the Rhine,
70; replaced by Kesselring, 86;
taken prisoner, 146

Russia. See USSR

Russian Zone, American forces in
side, 119

Ruthenia, ceded to USSR

Sacramento, 246
Saigon, 278

St James s Park, London, 267-8
St Louis Globe Democrat, quoted 213
Sakhalin Island, 59, 260
Saki airport, Crimea, 41, 43, 61
San Francisco, 79, 246; proposed con
ference on UN at, 56, 103, in, 114;
United Nations conference at, 161,
163, 169, 196, 198-201
Sandys, Major Duncan, 226; on rocket

349

INDEX

artillery, 32; Minister of Works, 184
Saturation bombing, 28, 74, 195-6
Savings campaign, in UK, 287
Schellenberg, Walter, Head of

German Intelligence, 134
Schirach, Baldur von, 1567*
Schleswig-Holstein, Doenitz in,

140-2

Schreier, Lieutenant H. G., 82
Schwerin von Krosigk, G)unt: ap

pointed Foreign Minister by Doen

itz, 142; arrested, 173
Scotland Yard, 288
Scott, Sir Giles Gilbert, 188
Scottish Nationalists, 211
SEAC, 194
Seaforth Highlanders, land in Java,

27 8

Sebastopol, 46

Secret Service, British, 77

Security Council. See United Nations

Seyss-Inquart, Artur von, Nazi Com
missar for the Netherlands, 120,
141; named by Hitler as Foreign
Minister, 142; sentenced to death,

Sforza, Count Carlo, 24
SHAEF, 170, 173, 178
Shawcross, Sir Hartley, 305
Sherrod, Robert, quoted, 81-2
Sherwood, Robert E., 166, quoted 20,

23&gt;44
Shidehara, Japanese Prime Minister,

277
Shinwell, Emanuel, 188; Minister of

Fuel and Power, 237; appeals to

coal miners, 286

Shirer, William L., 63; quoted 213
Shoumatoff, Madame, 107
Sicily, 129

Siegfried Line, 70, 83
Silesia, 35; the coal-field captured by

Russians, 73
Simmons, Bill, Roosevelt s reception

ist, no
Simpson, General, Commander of US

Ninth Army, 84, 87
Sinatra, Frank, 253
Sinclair, Sir Archibald, 184, 210, 227

Singapore, 272; relief of, 270

Skyros, 61

Slave-labourers, 121, 140, 175

Slim, Lieut.-General Sir William,
Commander of the Fourteenth
Army, 4, 96, 97, 194; on the
prisoners-of-war released at Singa
pore, 270

Smethwick, 291

Smith, Sir Ben, Minister of Food, 285

Smith, Lieut.-General Holland,
quoted 83

Smuts, General Jan Christian, 201,
312

Smyth Report, on atomic bomb, 259

Smythe, Brigadier J., 228

Sechi, 300

Socialist Party, Belgian, 157

Soekarno, Dr, 278

Soong, T. V., Chinese Foreign
Minister, 277

Soskice, Sir Frank, 305

Soustelle, Jacques, 301

South Africa, 312

South America, British investments in,
180-1

Spaak, M., Belgian Foreign Minister,
199

Spaatz, General Carl, 245, 246, 251,
261, 263

Spain, discussed at Potsdam, 220

Spandau, 132

Spandau Prison, Nazi leaders in, 156/1

Spectator^ The, quoted, 187

Speer, Albert, Minister of Armaments
and War Production, 94, 131, 156^,
173, 240

Spilsbury, Sir Bernard, 123

Spitfire fighter planes, 93

Spree, River, 138

SS (Schutz StafFel), 132, 140, 141

Stalin, Josef V., 7, 25-6, 59, 78, 102,
119, 226, 230, 231, 283, 313; ignores
niceties of diplomacy, 2-3; Western
view of, 3; jockeys for positions in
Europe, 15; confers with Churchill
and Eden on the Balkans (1944),
16-18; and Poland, 18-20, 104,
163-4, 202; and Yugoslavia, 22, 23,

350

INDEX

202, 216; on reason for halt on
Eastern front, 34; and the crossing
of the Vistula, 35; addresses his
generals, 38; at Yalta, 44$; Eisen
hower s contact with, 88-9; and the
UN, 103; anger over alleged separ
ate peace treaty, 104-5; an&lt; ^ Roose
velt s death, 114; Harry Hopkins on,
116; believed Hitler still alive, 136/2;
and the end of war in Europe, 149;
rapprochement with USA, 166-7;
and the San Francisco conference,
200-1; undertakes to attack Japan,
202; and China, 202; diminution of
his power, 202-3; at Potsdam, 214-
17, 220-4, 234-6; and the atomic
bomb, 219, 260, 300; predicts re
sult of British General Election,
224-5; an d the surrender of Japan,
265; Truman s five messages to,
284-5; decline of health, 300; agree
ment with Truman on Czecho
slovakia, 306; and the Foreign Min
isters meeting in Moscow, 309;
and break-up of Allied unity, 312
Stalingrad, 73, 271
Stansgate, Viscount, Air Minister, 237
Stars and Stripes (American Forces

newspaper), 147
Stassen, Harold, 117
Stepney, V.2 rocket on, 33
Stettinius, E. R., Secretary of State,
21, 23-6, 103, no, 113, 114,
241; at Yalta, 46, 48, 61; and the
Polish problem, 163; US represen
tative on UN Security Council,
190; at San Francisco conference,
198

Stilwell, General J., 196
Stimson, Henry L., Secretary of War,
113, 251, 263; interest in atomic
bomb project, 240-1; vacillates on
use of bomb, 243; and surrender
terms for Japan, 265; on agreement
with USSR about atomic bombs,
298, 299

Stock Exchange, London, 232
Stone, Harlan R, Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court, no

Strachey, Wing-Commander John,
quoted 174-5

Strasbourg, 7, 9

Strategic Air Force, See under United
States Air Force

Strategy, Anglo-American differences
on, 9-15, 39-40, 88-91, 93. See also
under Chiefs of Staff; Churchill;
Eisenhower; Montgomery

Stratford-on-Avon. 181

Strauss, H. G., 66

Strikes: in USA, 190; in UK, 286

Stuttgart, 39; occupied by the
French, 170

Subasic, Dr, 22-3

Submarines: German electro-sub
marines, 77, 78; German jet-sub
marines, 197; US submarines block
ade Japan, 196; major role in de
feat of Japan, 270

Suez Canal, 52

Sugar shortage, in USA, 189

Suicide wave, in Germany, 306

Suicide-bombers (kamikazes), 27-9,
loo, 192, 194, 261; suicide of Com
mander of, 269

Sunday Dispatch, quoted 240, 256

Sunday Times, quoted 187

Super-submarines. See Electro-sub
marines

Suribachi, Mount, Iwo Jima, 80, 82

Suzuki, Admiral, Japanese Prime
Minister, 195, 263-4; dismissed, 269

Sweden: reactions in, to atomic
bomb, 258-9; Japanese peace moves
in, 264

Switzerland: German peace moves in,
125; Japanese peace moves in, 245,
264

Sydney, 101

Synthetic rubber, 174

Syria, 301; de Gaulle sends troops to,
169; UK sends troops to, 169-70;
Potsdam agreement on, 222

Szilard, Leo, 244

Tannenberg Memorial, 133
Tarakan, Australians and Dutch in
vade, 197

351

INDEX

Taylor, Albert, 259

Taylor, Sir Geoffrey, 241

Tedder, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur,

7&gt; I5 89&gt; 158

Tehran: the conference at, 52, 65, 214;
Potsdam agreement on evacuation
of Anglo-American troops from,
222

Teitgen, Pierre-Henri, 301

Terror bombing, 75

Thompson, Dorothy, quoted 115

Thorez, Maurice, 301

Thorneycroft, Captain Peter, 226

Tibbets, Colonel Paul W., 192, 247,
248, 251

Tidningen^ 306

Time magazine, 259; quoted 65, 275

Times, The: 136**, 156, 188, 307;
leader on VE Day, 151-2; on Chur
chill and the General Election, 232-
3; on Nagasaki, 264; on Rotterdam,
303; quoted 255, 257, 281

Tinian, atomic bomb base on island
of, 237, 243, 246, 247, 251, 261

Tito, Marshal, 216; partisan activities,
3, 155, 179; and King Peter, 18;
agreement with Subasic, 22-3; and
the British occupation of Trieste,
168-9; withdraws from Trieste,
201-2; declares Yugoslavia a re
public, 307

Tito-Subasic agreement, 22-3, 202

Togo, Admiral, Japanese Foreign
Minister, 245, 263-4, 2 7

Tojo, Japanese Prime Minister, 306

Tokyo, 31, 112, 253; air raids on, 83,
107, 195; Radio Tokyo s announce
ment of end of war in Europe, 149-
50; receives news of Hiroshima,
253; selected as target for third
atomic bomb, 261; diplomatic activ
ity in, after Hiroshima, 263-4;
surrender ceremony in, 272-3

Tokyo Rose, 252

Toledo, 292

Torgau, 140; Americans and Russians
link up at, 130

Trade unions: differences of Control
policy on, 177; in British zone, 304

Transport House, London, Labour
Party HQ.at, 226, 228, 230

Travel in USA, increasing difficulties
of, 293

Trevor-Roper, H., 136**

Trieste, 125, 155; occupied by N.Z.
troops, 168-9; Tito withdraws from,
201-2; designated as a free port, 281

Trinity College, Dublin, 156

TripoHtania, 281

Truman, Harry S., 135, 148, 201,
226, 283; as Vice-President, 2, 25,
108-9; and Roosevelt s death, 109-
10; sworn in as President, and first
Cabinet meeting, in; briefed by
Ministers and others, 113-16; a
little-known figure, 114-15; at
Roosevelt s funeral, 116; and pilot-
less bombers, 116-71; Churchill,
Halifax and Eden on, 117; an
nounces end of war in Europe, 149;
difference with Churchill over
Czechoslovakia, 155; and Poland,
163, 1 66; sends probing mission to
Stalin, 166-7; and Yugoslavia, 168-
9, 307; and de Gaulle, 170-2, 280-1;
and domestic difficulties in USA,
189-90; cancels Lend-Lease agree
ment, 191-2; and the San Francisco
conference, 198-201; withdraws
American troops in Germany to
their own zone, 206-7; at Potsdam,
214-16, 219-23, 233-6; agrees to
use atom bomb, suspicious of
USSR, 221, 223, 299; meets George
VI, 236-7; broadcast on Potsdam
conference, 237; authorizes de
livery of atomic bomb, 239; and
the unconditional surrender for
Japan, 242, 265; his Potsdam ultim
atum to Japan, 243-6, 270; receives
news of Hiroshima, 251; and the
second atomic bomb, 261; warns
Japanese of further atomic bomb
ing, 263; delays VJ celebrations, 266,
268, 269; and MacArthur, 277;
his five messages to Stalin, 284-5;
and the return of British liners, 287-
8; his domestic legislation, 293;

352

INDEX

and demobilization, 294; and the
threat of world famine, 295; and the
loan to UK, 297; confers with
Attlee on the atomic bomb, 298-9;
agreement with Stalin on Czecho
slovakia, 306; and Greece, 307; and
Iran, 309, 310; differences with
Byrnes,309-i i;strengthensNational
Guard, 312

Truman, Mrs, 237

Truman, Margaret, 1 1 1

Truman Report , 115

Trusteeship, discussed at San Fran
cisco conference, 199-200

TUG, demands speedier demobiliza
tion, 288

Turin, 125

Tyrol, 90

Ukrainian Republic, 4, 48, 55; ad
mitted to UN, 198

Unconditional surrender, 48, 83, 87,
137, H7, 152, 203, 219, 243

Unemployment, in USA, 294

UnitedKingdom: intervenesin Greece,
3; differences with USA over Euro
pean policies, i$jfc 163-^7, 312-13;
differences with USA, over Far
East, 21 ; and Yugoslavia, 22, 23,
49, 157, 221; and the future of Ger
many, 49-51, 221-2; and repara
tions, 50-1, 222-3, 235; and the
UN, 51-3, 55-6, 220; and the
Polish problem, 53-9, 60, 64-6,
163-4, 223-6; VE Day celebrations,
151-4; and the Levant, 169-70,
199, 301; and French occupation of
Stuttgart and Cunio, 170-2; return
of relaxation, 179-80; economic
affairs, 180-1; the end of the Coali
tion Government, 181-5; bread and
other shortages, 185-6; introduces
free secondary education, 186-7;
entertainment, 187-8; supports veto
principle in UN, 200; and Austria,
202; recognizes Lublin Govern
ment, 206; the General Election,
20 7~ I 3 22 5~33; and the atomic
bomb, 218, 239, 240; and Spain,

220; and Palestine, 221; and Middle
Eastern problems, 222; reaction in,
to Hiroshima, 256, 257; research
on radar, 259; VJ rejoicings in, 266-
8; cost of war to, 271; and the
London Council of Foreign Minis
ters, 281-5; drabness of life in, and
industrial difficulties, 285-7; agita
tion in, for speedier demobilization,
287-8; problems of the return to
civilian life, 288-9; and the end of
Lend-Lease, 296; obtains loan from
USA, 297-8; and the Moscow
meeting of Foreign Ministers, 308-
10; at Christmas time, 311. See also
British Army, Royal Air Force,
Royal Navy

United Nations, 52, 53, 56, in, 150,
190, 210, 220, 295, 296, 297, 299,
308; discussed at Yalta, 51-3, 55-6;
conference at San Francisco, 161,
163, 169, 196, 198-201; countries
admitted to membership, 198-9;
question of the Middle Powers, 199-
200; the Security Council, 52, 103,
190, 199-201; question of voting
procedure in Security Council, 200-
i; the Charter signed, 210; dis
cussed at Potsdam, 220, 236;
General Assembly of, 311
United States: and British interven
tion in Greece, 3, 20; differences
with UK over European policies,
*5ff&gt; 163-7, 312-13; and the
Churchill-Stalin agreement on the
Balkans, 18; differences with UK
over Far East, 21; and Yugoslavia,
22, 23, 168-9, 22I &gt; 37&gt; war death
rate in, 32; alarm in, about rocket
bombs, 33; and the future of Ger
many, 49-51, 221-2; and repara
tions, 50-1, 222-3, 2 355 and the
UN, 51-3, 55-6, 220; and the
Polish problem, 53-9, 60, 64-6,
163-5, 22 3"4&gt; 2 35~6; reaction to
terror bombing, 75; and Russian ac
tion in Rumania, 102; and Syria.
169; and French occupation of
Stuttgart and Cunio, 170-2; and the

353

INDEX

Doenitz government, 172-3; finan
cial aid to UK, 181; the atmosphere
in, on return of peace, 189; short
ages and strikes in, 189-90; and
hunger in Europe, 190; cancels
Lend-Lease agreement, 191-2; sup
ports Chiang Kai-shek, 196-7; and
the San Francisco conference, 198-
201; and Austria, 202; recognizes
Lublin Government, 206; and the
British General Election, 212-13,
232; and the atomic bomb, 217-19
(see also Atomic bomb); and Spain,
220; and Palestine, 221; and Middle
Eastern problems, 222, 309, 310;
the social scene at time of Hiro
shima bombing, 253-4; announce
ment of atomic bomb, and the re
action, 254, 257-8; research on
radar, 259; popular reaction to
Japan s surrender, 265; VJ cele
brations in, 268-9, ^9 2 ; announces
demobilization, 269; cost of war to,
271-2; confusion in policy at end of
war, 275; and the London Council
of Foreign Ministers, 281-5; tne re ~
turn to civilian life, 292-5, 311;
demobilization problems, 293-4;
reconversion of industry, 294; and
UNRRA, 295; and the end of Lend-
Lease, 296; grants loan to UK, 297-
8; and Czechoslovakia, 306; and
Argentine, 308; and Iran, 309; and
the Moscow meeting of Foreign
Ministers, 308-11; strengthens
National Guard, and retains price
controls, 311-12; rivalry with
USSR, 313

United States Air Force: bombs Ger
many, 74-5, 95; bombs Japan, 83,
107, 195-6, 246, 252, 260-1, 265
(see also Hiroshima; Nagasaki);
509th Composite Group, 192, 239,
242-6; withdrawn from Burma, 194;
the Strategic Air Force (Far East),
246, 258, 262

United States Army (units of):
Twelfth Army Group in N.W.
Europe, 69, 70; First Army in N.W.

Europe, n, 14, 70, 84, 87, 94, 130,
141; Third Army in N.W. Europe,
ii, 14, 70, 84, 87, 121; Fifth Army
in Italy, 125; Seventh Army in
N.W. Europe, 87, 146, 156; Ninth
Army in N.W. Europe, 11, 70, 71,
84, 85, 87, 94, 107, 119; Tenth
Army at Okinawa, 100, 193; Fifth
Infantry Division in N.W. Europe,
85; Ninth Armoured Division in
N.W. Europe, 70; Eightieth Divi
sion in N.W. Europe, 94; 96th
Division at Okinawa, 193; 273rd
Regiment at Torgau, 130

United States Marines: Third, Fourth
and Fifth Divisions in assault on
Iwo Jima, 80-3

United States Navy: in Battle of Leyte
Gulf, 27; in Battle of Lingayen
Gulf, 28-9; bombards Iwo Jima,
80-1; at Okinawa, 100-1, 194; the
Third Fleet in Japanese home
waters, 261; SHIPS: Augusta, 237,
243, 251; Busk 100; Calhoun, 100;
California, 29; Columbia, 29; Hull,
28; Indianapolis, 100, 246, 261;
Louisville 29; Mississippi, 29;
Missouri, 272; Monaghan, 28; New
Mexico, 29; Ommaney Bay, 29;
Quincy, 26, 38, 40, 61, 62; Spence,
28

UNRRA organization, 295

Uranium: in Canada, 219; U-235
from, 246

US Intelligence service, 5, 104, 254,
271

US Official Naval History, on Iwo
Jima,8i

US Strategic Bombing Survey, criti
cizes area and atomic bombing of
Japan, 271

Ushijima, General Mitsuru, Japanese
Commander-in-Chief at Okinawa,

193

USSR: and Yugoslavia, 17, 18, 22, 23,
49, 201-2, 221; severs relations with
London Polish Government, 19;
and the future of Germany, 49-51.
221-2; and reparations, 50-1, 222-

354

INDEX

3, 235; and the U.N., 51-3, 55-6,
220; and the Polish problem, 53-9,
60, 64-6, 223-4, 235-6; and
Rumania, 101-2; and Austria, 164,
306; rapprochement with USA, 166-
7; applies pressure in the Balkans,
167; and the Doenitz government,
173; Lend-Lease supplies for, 191,
192, 296; and China, 197, 203, 206,
277-8, 310; and the San Francisco
conference, 198-9, 200-1; and
Trieste, 201 ; shifts of power in, 202-
3; and Spain, 220-1; and Middle
Eastern problems, 222; declares war
on Japan, 245, 260, 264, cost of
war to, 271-2; claims part in occu
pation of Japan, 275-6; and the Lon
don Council of Foreign Ministers,
281-5; insists on puppet govern
ments in Eastern Europe, 282;
develops the atomic bomb, 299-300;
and Czechoslovakia, 306-7; rivalry
with USA, 313
Utrecht, 150, 151

V.2 rocket bomb, 31-4, 78, 126, 240,
254; sites captured by Canadians,
120; research plant, etc. captured by
Americans, 174

ValD Aosta,28o

Valletta Harbour, Malta, 38

VE Day celebrations, 148-54, 266

Venereal disease, 306

Venice, 125

Veto principle, in UN, 200-1

Vichy Government, 301

Victory cricket matches, 160, 255

Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy,

307
Vienna, 47, 119, 202; falls to Russians,

130; question of its occupation, 164,

165, 179; British and American

troops in 222
Vinson, Fred M., Secretary to the

Treasury, 299
Vistula, River, 35
VJ Day celebrations, 266-9, 2 9 2
Vladivostock, 99
Volkssturm, 37, 46, 73, 74, 93~4&gt; *3&lt;&gt;

Vorontzov Palace, Yalta, 45-7, 60
Voroshilov, Marshal, 44
Vyshinsky, Andrei, 48, 101, 215

Wainwright, General J. M., 272

Wake Island, 276

Walcheren Island, V.2 rockets fired
from, 33

Wales, decrease of coal production in,
186

Wall Street Journal^ quoted 213

Wallace, Henry A., 109, 116; Secre
tary of Commerce, 190

Walloon SS, 132

War criminals, Japanese, 305-6. See
also Nuremberg Tribunal

War death rate, 32

War Powers Act (USA), 312

Warm Springs, Georgia, 24, 107, 108

Warsaw: rising in, crushed by Ger
mans, 4; occupied by Russians, 35,

37
Washington, 48, 89, 237; de Gaulle

in, 280; Attlee in, 298
Watson-Watt, Sir Robert, 259
Wavell, Field-Marshal Earl: on the

Java situation, 278; and India,

279-80

Webb, Maurice, 230
Wedemeyer, General A. C, American

adviser and Chief of Staff in China,

196

Weeks, General Sir Ronald, 304
Wehrmacht. See German Army
Weidling, General, Commandant of

Berlin 132
Welles, Sumner, 24
Welsh Nationalists, 211
Wendisch-Evern, 144*1
Wesel: the Canadians at, 70; captured

by Allied commandos, 85; Allied

rail bridge at, 118
Westinghouse Electric Corporation,

294

Westphalian plain, 88
Weygand, General, 121
White House, Washington, 108-11,

113, 114, 116, 165; its organization

reshaped, 190

355

INDEX

White Russian Republic, 4, 55; ad
mitted to UN, 198

Wilhelm, Crown Prince, 146

Wilhelmina, Queen of the Nether
lands, 21, 158

Wilhelmshaven, 143

Wilkinson, Ellen, 183, 230; Minister
of Education, 237

Williams, Francis, 230

Williams, Sir Herbert, 157

Willis, Douglas, quoted 158

Wilson, J. H., 228

Wilson, Woodrow, 198, 200

Wilson, Mrs Woodrow, 117

Winant, Lieutenant John, 121

Winan, John G., 24

Women: British Government compels
servicewomen to go abroad, 7; prob
lem of ex-servicewomen, 186; prob
lems of GI brides, 186, 288

Woodcock, Bruce, 188

Wooderson, Corporal Sidney, 255

Woodford, Churchill s constituency,
225

Woolworth s, New Cross, 33

World Instrument for Peace (UN,
q.v.\ discussed at Yalta, 51-3, 55-
6; Security Council proposed for,
103

Yalta conference, 25, 38, 101, 109,
118, 167, 177, 206, 222, 223, 245,
278, 280, 282, 308, 312; the delega
tions, and their accommodation, 43-
7; Roosevelt presides, 47; end of

conference speeches and hospitality,
56-9, 60-1; the communique^ and
reactions to, 63-7. Subjects dis
cussed: military affairs, 48; future of
Germany, 49-51; reparations, 50-1;
World Instrument for Peace (UN),
51-3^55-6; Poland, 53-9, 60, 64-6

Yamashita, General Tomoyuki, Com
mander of Japanese Army on
Luzon, 28-30, 197, 269-70; tried
and executed, 306

Yenan Communist Government, 196,
277

Yokohama, air raid on, 195

Young, Leo C, 259

Yugoslavia, 14, 47, 49, 167; partisan
activity in, 3, 155; Churchill-Stalin
agreement on, 17, 18; Tito-Subasic
agreement, 22-3; discussed at Pots
dam, 221; question of her frontiers,
281; Tito Government established,
and republic declared, 307. See also
Trieste

Yusupov Palace, Yalta, 44, 56

Zagreb, 141

Zhukov, Marshal, 35, 37, 44, 73, 130,
132, 137, 304; Russian representa
tive on Allied Control Council, 174;
distributes medals to American offi
cers, 177; insists on British and
Americans moving back to their
zones, 177

Zuider Zee, 120

Zurich, 73, 104

356

(continued from front ft&p)

pointers to the years ahead, to the disas
trous break-up of the wartime alliance
which made way for the return to self-
interest, land-grabbing and belligerent
nationalism among the victors.

Many of Mr. Gardner s views will
cause controversy, but no one will ques
tion his reportorial genius. An enormous
amount of research went into the writing
of THE YEAR THAX CHANGED THE
WORLD and the result is a lucid, im
mediate and gripping book recapturing
brilliantly the mood of the times and
giving a solid analysis of the events that
ushered in the cold war and the age of
anxiety during the pivotal year in modern
history, 1945.

The Author

Brian Gardner attended Trinity Col
lege in Dublin and received his M.A.
degree with honors in 1953. He began his
writing career as a journalist. His first
book, The Big Push, was chosen by the
Book Society of England as its non-fiction
choice and was a best-seller in England
for several months. Of his latest work
The (London) Literary Supplement has
this to say: "Mr. Gardner writes compe
tently and evocatively about wars, as he
has shown more than once already. His
material is always well presented, and
his books take a grip on the reader in a
way which, in the conventional phrase,
makes them difficult to put down."

Jacket design by Chibbaro &. K.lauber

COWARD-McCANN, INC.

2OO Madison Avenue
New York 16, N. Y.

02186

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