Closing the Ring (18 page)

General Smuts to Prime Minister

31 Aug. 43

For your private ear I should like to voice my personal misgivings about the progress of the war. If you don’t agree with me, please forget my grouse. But if in any way you share my feeling, you will take your own initiative in the matter.

While our Middle East campaign was conducted with conspicuous vigour from El Alamein to the end in Tunisia, I sense a slackening and tardiness in operations since then. It took us several months between Tunisia and the Sicilian landing, and there is now another strange pause after Sicily at a stage in our affairs when the urgency is very great. To compare the Anglo-American effort, with all our vast resources, with that of Russia during the same period is to raise uncomfortable questions which must occur to many others. Our comparative performance on land is insignificant and its speed very unsatisfactory. There is much and constant boasting of our production effort, especially of the colossal American production. And after almost two years of war the American fighting forces must be enormous. But still, the Russians account for the vast bulk of the German Army on land. Shipping and other troubles account for this difference in part, but that is not the whole story. I have the uncomfortable feeling that the scale and speed of our land operations leave much to be desired. Our Navy is acting up to its usual high standard, and our Air Force is magnificent. But almost all the honours on land go to the Russians, and deservedly so, considering the scale and speed of their fighting and the magnificence of their strategy on a vast front.

Surely our performance can be bettered and the comparison with Russia rendered less unflattering to us. To the ordinary man it must appear that it is Russia who is winning the war. If this impression continues, what will be our post-war world position compared with that of Russia? A tremendous shift in our world status may follow, and will leave Russia the diplomatic master of the world. This is both unnecessary and undesirable, and would have especially bad reactions for the British Commonwealth. Unless we emerge from the war on terms of equality, our position will be both uncomfortable and dangerous. … I do not yet know what was being planned at Quebec, and assume the best programmes have been worked out and approved. But what about the rate of their execution? There is grave danger in delay, in tardiness of performance on our part.

General Smuts to Prime Minister

3 Sept. 43

After sending my previous message criticising our war progress, I must frankly express my disappointment with this Quebec plan as being an inadequate programme for the fifth year of the war, and especially after the enormous change that has taken place in our war fortunes recently. This plan has only added to my misgivings and fears for the future. It does no justice to the real strength of our position, and may gravely affect public morale as well as future relations with Russia. We are capable of a much greater effort, and should face the position with greater boldness.

In effect, the plan merely proposes to continue and increase the present bombing and anti-U-boat campaigns, to take Sardinia and Corsica and the South of Italy and bomb northward from there. We are then to fight our way northward through Italy over difficult mountainous terrain in a campaign which may take much time before we reach Northern Italy and the main German defence position. Next spring we shall cross the Channel in force if the air and military situation in France is favourable, and we may invade France from the south if only as a diversion. We leave the Balkans to the guerrillas, with air encouragement from us.

So much for the West. In the East we do some island-hopping which may bring us up against the enemy’s main base in the Carolines some time towards the end of next year. The resources of the Dutch East Indies we leave meanwhile to the enemy while we make efforts to open the Burma route and assist China as much as possible by air. Some undefined amphibious operations against Burma are also indicated.

Bombing appears to me the only serious part of this plan. All the rest is still on a small scale, similar to what we have been doing for the last couple of years. Surely this would not be a serious effort for this stage of the war nor a proper use of our greatly improved war position. If by the end of 1944 we have done no better than merely nibble at the enemy’s main positions, we may experience a dangerous revulsion of opinion, and rightly so. It would compare most unfavourably with the grand effort and achievement of Russia, who may conclude that her suspicions of us are justified.

In the absence of inner Staff information, it is difficult for me to suggest alternative plans, but I feel convinced that we can and should do much more and better than the Quebec plan, which would unduly drag out and prolong the war, with all the attendant risks and possibilities I have indicated in my former message. The bombing policy, the anti-U-boat campaign, and the large-scale attack across the Channel I approve. But in the Mediterranean we should take Sardinia and Corsica and immediately attack in North Italy without fighting our way all up the peninsula. We should immediately take Southern Italy and move on to the Adriatic, and from a suitable point there launch a real attack on the Balkans and set its resurgent forces going. This will bring Turkey into the picture and carry our Fleet into the Black Sea, where we shall join hands with Russia, supply her, and enable her to attack Hitler’s fortress itself from the east and southeast. With the vast change in the war situation on the Russian Front, I do not think this too ambitious a programme to work to. …

  After consideration, I replied to Smuts:

Prime Minister to Field-Marshal Smuts

5 Sept. 43

Your two telegrams.

The invasion of the toe of Italy now begun is of course only the prelude to a far heavier attack which is imminent, and will, if successful, produce consequences of a far-reaching character. We hope presently to open a heavy front across Italy as far north as we can get. Such a front will absorb about twenty divisions from the Mediterranean, and may require reinforcement if selected for counter-attack by the enemy.

2. I have always been most anxious to come into the Balkans, which are already doing so well.
²
We shall have to see how the fighting in Italy develops before committing ourselves beyond Commandos, agents, and supplies, but the whole place is aflame, and with the defection of the twenty-four Italian divisions scattered in the Balkans, who have ceased to fight and now only try to get home, it may well be that the Germans will be forced to retire to the line of the Save and the Danube. …

3. I think it better not to demand entry into the war by Turkey at this present time, as the forces with which we should have to fight are more usefully employed in the Central Mediterranean. The question may be put to Turkey later in the year.

4. In spite of these serious needs and projects in the Mediterranean, which strain our resources to the full, we have to find seven divisions from that theatre from November on for the build-up of Operation “Overlord” in the spring of 1944. For this purpose every personnel ship which can be gathered, apart from those used by the United States in the Pacific, is being employed in the ceaseless transportation of American troops and air forces. None of or ships have been idle this year, and yet there are so far only two American divisions in England. It is not physically possible to make a larger concentration by the date mentioned. We shall be able to match the American expedition with a nearly equal force of British divisions, but after the initial assault the build-up must be entirely American, as I am completely at the end of man-power resources, and even now have to ask the Americans to interrupt the movement of field troops in order to send over some thousands of engineers to help make the installations and establishments required for the gathering of their trans-Atlantic army.

5. These projects in Europe, together with the air offensive and the sea war, completely absorb all our resources of man-power and of ship-power. This fact must be faced. There is no comparison with our conditions and those prevailing in Russia, where the whole strength of a nation of nearly two hundred million, less war losses, long-organised into a vast national army, is deployed on a two-thousand-miles land front. This again is a fact which must be faced.

6. I think it inevitable that Russia will be the greatest land Power in the world after this war, which will have rid her of the two military Powers, Japan and Germany, who in our lifetime have inflicted upon her such heavy defeats. I hope however that the “fraternal association” of the British Commonwealth and the United States, together with sea, and air-power, may put us on good terms and in a friendly balance with Russia at least for the period of rebuilding. Further than that I cannot see with mortal
eye, and I am not as yet fully informed about the celestial telescopes.

7. In the East we British have no shortage of forces, but have the same difficulty of coming into action as the United States in the Atlantic and also in the Pacific. The shipping stringency rules all oversea and amphibious action, and for the rest, in Burma there are the jungles, the mountains, and the fact that more than half the year is swamped by the monsoon. However, a vigorous campaign has been set on foot. I brought young Wingate to Quebec, and he is being raised from a Brigadier to a Corps Commander, with powerful jungle forces adapted to the purpose being formed with the utmost speed for an attack in the first month of next year. The appointment of Mountbatten heralds an amphibious operation of novelty and far-reaching scope which I am pressing with all possible energy, the details of which I will unfold to you when we meet.

8. Believe me, my dear friend, I am not at all vexed at your two telegrams of criticism. I am confident that if we were together for two or three days, I could remove such of your anxieties as are not inherent inexorable facts. Night and day I press for greater speed in action and less cumbrousness in organisation. I am waiting this side of the Atlantic pending the Italian
coup
and its repercussions, but I expect to be home when Parliament meets, and hope to find you at least approaching our shores.

  Smuts was to some extent reassured by this full statement. “Your telegram,” he said, “has come as a great relief. It makes clear that the Italian expedition of twenty divisions would cover the whole peninsula and constitute another real front.” But he added a day later:

Field-Marshal Smuts to Prime Minister

9 Sept. 43

I suggest that our victories in the Mediterranean should be followed up in Italy and the Balkans instead of our now adopting a cross-Channel plan, which means switching onto a new theatre requiring very large forces and involving grave risks unless much more air softening has taken place. Preparations for the Channel plan should be slowed down or put into temporary cold storage while the bombing campaign is intensified to prepare for eventual military knock-out.

This last suggestion required immediate correction from me if our two minds were to continue to work harmoniously on the problem from independent angles. Smuts alone, and far from Washington, could not know the atmosphere and proportions which governed our collective thought.

Prime Minister to Field-Marshal Smuts

11 Sept. 43

There can be no question whatever of breaking arrangements we have made with United States for “Overlord.” The extra shipping available in consequence of U-boat warfare slackening and of Italian windfalls will probably enable us to increase build-up of “Avalanche” [the expedition to Italy]. I hope you will realise that British loyalty to “Overlord” is keystone of arch of Anglo-American co-operation. Personally I think enough forces exist for both hands to be played, and I believe this to be the right strategy.

*  *  * *  *

Meanwhile, the invasion of Italy had begun. At dawn on September 3, the 5th British and 1st Canadian Divisions of the Eighth Army crossed the Straits of Messina.
³
Practically no opposition was encountered. Reggio was speedily taken, and the advance began along the narrow and hilly roads of Calabria.

  The Germans [cabled Alexander on September 6] are fighting their rearguard action more by demolitions than by fire. … While in Reggio this morning there was not a warning sound to be heard or a hostile plane to be seen. On the contrary, on this lovely summer day naval craft of all types were plying backward and forward between Sicily and the mainland, carrying men, stores, and munitions. In its lively setting it was more like a regatta in peace-time than a serious operation of war.

In a few days the divisions of the Eighth Army had reached Locri and Rosarno, while an infantry brigade, landed by sea at Pizzo, found only the tail of the retreating Germans. There was little fighting, but the advance was severely delayed by the physical difficulties of the country, demolitions carried out by the enemy, and his small but skilfully handled rearguards.

Prime Minister to General Alexander

7 Sept. 43

Many thanks for your telegrams about operations in the toe of Italy. Please tell me exactly what the move of airborne division to seize Rome involves, and where it fits into your programme. We are all fully in favour of the bold policy proposed, although we have to take details on trust.

2. I am also deeply interested in your mention of Taranto About when do you propose doing this?

3. I am still very much concerned about build-up after “Avalanche.” Surely, if you can get the port of Naples into working order, you should be able to push in two divisions a week. Let me know the order in which you propose to bring our army into Italy. When do the New Zealanders, Poles, 4th Indian, and 1st Armoured, and other really high-class divisions come into action? It seems you will have to hold a front at least as large as that in final stages of Tunis—i.e., about a hundred and seventy miles—and one never can tell if, given time, Germans may not bring a real punch to bear upon that front.