Peden G.S. Arms, Economics and British Strategy From Dreadnoughts to Hydrogen Bombs
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an advanced base for six British capital ship s, provided it could be made
secure from air attack.
145
In the event, the necessary dispositions had
not been made by December.
Britain’s Far Eastern strategy quickly coll apsed. Hong Kong fell on 25
December. The largely inexperienced British, Australian and Indian
troops in Malaya were no match for Japanese veterans of the Sino-
Japanese war who landed in the north of the peninsula, where they
quickly seized airfields built for the RAF. The surrender of Singap ore on
15 February, and the loss of 140,000 men, mostly take n prisoner, to a
numerically inferior Japane se force, was a shock that Churchill blamed
on the failure of those responsible for the defence of the base there to
turn it into the fortress of his imagination.
146
He did not explain how
even a fortified Singapore could have been held once the numerically
inferior RAF had been defeated. The conquest of Malaya gave Japan 75
per cent of the world’s natural rubber and 66 per cent of the tin, and the
subsequent loss of the Dutch East Indies provided her with enough oil
for her needs. The loss of Burma between December 1941 and March
1942, and Japanese naval raids on Ceylon in April, accompanied by the
sinking in the Indian Ocean of a British aircraft carrier and two cruisers,
reinforced the sense of British powerlessness. Fortunately the Japanese
did not press home their advantage. On 5 May British forces landed in
Madagascar to deny the Japanese bases on that Vichy-controlled island.
Even so, the preservation of communications across the Indian Ocean
depended on the success of the US Navy in the Pacific.
The priority given to the defence of Egypt had disappointing results.
British Commonwealth forces built up there engaged in a series of
battles in the Western Desert from 18 November 1941, eventually
ending the siege of Tobruk on 8 December, and driving the Afrika Korps
out of Cyrenaica. However, Romme l counter-attacked in January–
February 1942 and recovered most of Cyrenaica. In late May he
mounted another offensive, driving the Eighth Army back into Egypt,
where it made a successful stand at El Alamein in July. Most dis-
appointing to Churchill was the fall of Tobruk on 20 June. He heard the
news while he was in conference with Roosevelt in Washington and,
when asked by the President what the United States could do to help,
145
Ian Cowman, ‘Main fleet to Singapore? Churchill, the Admiralty, and Force Z’,
Journal of Strategic Studies, 17 (1994), no. 2, 79–93. Bell, ‘The ‘‘Singapore strategy’’’
shows that Cowman’s belief that the Admiralty sought to conceal its plans from
Churchill is unfounded.
146
Reynolds, In Command of History, pp. 296–7. For an illuminating account of the
campaign, see Masanobu Tsuji, Singapore: The Japanese Version (London: Constable,
1962).
The Second World War 215
replied: ‘give us as many Sherman tanks as you can spare’.
147
Once
more Britain had to turn to the United States for help.
British strategy from the fall of France to July 1942 was ambitio us
with regard to defeat of Germany, but was not, on the whole, a success
after the Battle of Britain. The Germans were able to offset the effects of
blockade by plunder of conquered countries and by putting pressure on
neutrals to supply raw materials. The strategic air offensive against
Germany was not decisive because Bomber Command lacked the
technology and numbers to damage German industry. Moreover, stra-
tegic bombing had its opportunity cost. Air power might have been used
to greater advantage against U-boats and in support of the army and
navy in the Middle East and, especially, the Far East. British agents and
commandos helped to inspire the European resistance, but the pro-
spects for widespread revolt against the Germans in Europe seemed
remote, except in Yugoslavia and Greece, and even in these countries
the resistance was wea kened by conflict between Communist and non-
Communist forces.
The defeat of the German army would depend upon the operations of
Britain’s allies as well as on those of an enlarged British army. Here sea
power could make a contribution: munitions sent to Murmansk could
encourage the Soviet Union to soldier on, even if some of the equip-
ment was inferior to Soviet models, and the responsibility for ensuring
that the Arctic convoys got through fell to the British Home Fleet. The
Luftwaffe, U-boats and German surface vessels posed such a threat in
1942 that the Admiralty wanted to suspend the convoys during the long
summer days. Roosevelt insisted that the convoys continue; Churchill
promised Stalin that they would; but when two-thirds of the merchant
ships in convoy PQ 17 were lost in July, even Churchill had to agree
that no more convoys would sail to Murmansk until the autumn.
148
July
1942 was not a good time to suspend aid to the Soviet Union, for in that
month the Germans took the Russian fortress of Sevastopol and were
advancing towards the oilfields of the Caucasus, and Stalin was bitterly
reproachful of the British decision. Fortunately there was another route
by which supplies could reach the Soviet Union, through Iran,
which British and Soviet forces had occupied in August 1941 to sup-
press German influence. However, the German advance in the Cau-
casus in 1942 raised doubts about the security even of this route, or
147
Churchill, Second World War, vol. IV, p. 344.
148
James P. Levy, The Royal Navy’s Home Fleet in World War II (Basingstoke: Palgrave,
2003), pp. 108–25.
Arms, economics and British strategy216
indeed about the northern flank of the British position in the Middle
East.
149
Grand strategy: coalition warfare July 1942–August 1945
The entry of the United States into the war as a combatant had, as
Churchill had foreseen, a huge, if delayed, impact on all aspects of grand
strategy. American support helped to make the blockade more complete
as regards overseas supplies to Germany, although it was only after
neutrals close to Germany had confidence in imminent Allied victory
that supplies such as Swedish ball-bearings, Spanish wol fram and
Turkish chrome were denied to the enemy in 1944.
150
Germany’s
chances of seizing the oilfields of the Middle East and the Caucasus, and
of shipping Romanian oil via the Eastern Mediterranean, faded in late
1942 as a result of the battles of El Alamein and Stalingrad, but it was
the arrival of American forces that swung the balance of power in North
Africa decisively in favour of the Allies. The appearance of strategic
bombers of the USAAF’s Eighth Air Force over Western Europe from
August 1942 meant that it was no longer necessary for Bomber Com-
mand to attempt to have a decisive impact on its own. In September
1941 the Air Staff had estimated that Bomber Command would require
4,000 frontline heavy bombers to defeat Germany by area bombing.
This figure was beyond what British industry could achieve, especially if
the needs of the other services were to be met, but by September 1944
Bomber Command and the American Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces
had a combined average daily operational strength of 4,609 bombers, of
which two-thirds were American.
151
Moreover, the huge output of
aircraft from the United States meant that it was no longer necessary to
starve Coastal Command of long-range aircraft for the benefit of
Bomber Command, and a War Cabinet Anti-U-boat Warfare Com-
mittee chaired by Churchill reached agreement on 18 November 1942
on strengthening Coastal Command.
152
As regards the liberation of
Europe, resistance movements could be expected to gain more popular
support once the prospects of Allied victory improved, and the combi-
nation of the American and British Commonwealth armies would be big
149
Gwyer and Butler, Grand Strategy, vol. III, pp. 446–7, 589–91; Michael Howard,
Grand Strategy, vol. IV (London: HMSO, 1972), pp. 34–6, 51, 53–4.
150
Medlicott, Economic Blockade, vol. II, pp. 638–9.
151
Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air Offensive, vol. I, p. 182; Craven and Cate (eds.),
Army Air Forces, vol. III, p. 596. The Eighth Air Force was based in the United
Kingdom and the Fifteenth in Italy.
152
Roskill, War at Sea, vol. II, pp. 77–90.
The Second World War 217
enough for an invasion, given that most of the German army was on the
Russian front.
The strategic problems of making the best use of scarce resources
were thus eased by the resou rces becoming less scarce, but choices still
had to be made. Grand strategy had to be worked out within the frame-
work of a coalition, in which the three principal members necessarily
had different priorities. Stalin was understandably anxious that the
burden of war against Germany on land should not be borne almost
entirely by the Soviet Union. The United States might have been
expected to settle scores first with Japan, and indeed the US Navy did
give priority to the Pacific war, although Churchill and Roosevelt agreed
in Washington in December 1941 that the Allies should aim to defeat
Germany first. Britain’s interest s were world-wide and her manpower
was limited, and Churchill hesitated to commit the British army to open
a second front in France before Germany had been significantly wea-
kened by air power and economic warfare. Britain’s relativ e contribution
to the war compared with that of the United States was declining: by
December 1944 the British army was only about one-half of the
American, and Churchill expected that it would soon be little more than
a third.
153
In February 1945 he spoke of Britain as a ‘small lion’ in the
company of a ‘huge Russian bear’ and a ‘great American elephant’.
154
British strategy depended very much upon what the Americans could be
persuaded to agree to.
The British government had to take decisions in the autumn of 1942
on how to allocate manpower between the services and munitions
production, since the demands of the services far exceeded what the
Ministry of Labour and National Service could find. In September
Churchill had told the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair,
that the strength of Bomber Command must be increased, and the Air
Ministry had secured approval of a large increase in production of
bombers that would require an increase of 850,000 workers in the air-
craft industry. In view of the increased scope of the war, Churchill had
also recently issued a directive stating that the Ministry of Supply shoul d
equip the equivalent of 100 divisions, 23 of them armoured, including
Commonwealth and Allied forces attached to the British Army, by April
1943. The Admiralty, in view of the heavy losses being incurred in the
Battle of the Atlantic, wanted a great er proportion of national output to
go to naval construction, and required crews for the additional ships due
to be completed in 1943. The Lord President, Anderson, survey ing the
153
Churchill, Second World War, vol. VI: Triumph and Tragedy (1954), p. 233.
154
Colville, Fringes of Power, p. 564.
Arms, economics and British strategy218
manpower budget for the eighteen months ending December 1943,
concluded that it would not be possible to meet the essential needs of
the navy, build up an army of 100 divisions, and equip an air force
of 600 squadrons. Churchill decided on 28 November that the Battle of
the Atlantic should for the time being have overriding priority, and also
suggested that aircraft production should have priority over increasing
the RAF’s manpower, and that the reduced threat to the United
Kingdom from the Luftwaffe should make possible reductions in air
defences. The final allocation agreed by the War Cabinet on 11
December gave the army and air force little more than half of their
estimated additional manpower requirements, and manpower for the
Ministry of Supply was reduced.
155
This allocation reflected the Chiefs
of Staff’s agreement that strategic bombing was required to undermine
Germany’s military power before an invasion, but that two-thirds of the
bombing force would be American, and that the resources allocated to
Bomber Command should not impair the navy’s ability to secure supply
by sea or the army’s ability to mou nt an invasion of Europe in 1943. The
army, however, would have to rely increasingly on American sources for
its equipme nt.
156
As regards how Allied forces should be deployed, Churchill had
wished as early as Decem ber 1941 to secure French North Africa to
forestall a German occupation of naval bases on the Atlantic coast, and
to add the French army there to the Allied forces.
157
On his second visit
to Washington in June 1942 he dismissed the possibility of a cross-
Channel invasion of France before 1943, but argued that the Allies
could not remain idle in 1942. The conclusion of his talks with Roose-
velt was that preparations for a landing in France in 1943 should go
ahead and the possibilities of French North Africa, Norway and the
Iberian Peninsula in the autumn and winter of 1942 should be studied
by the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff.
158
North Africa was
chosen at an Anglo-American conference in the following month for
what would be the first major seaborne invasion. The size of Allied
forces that could be deployed in the autumn of 1942 was subject to the
degree of success that could be achieved in the Battle of the Atlantic.
However, it was equally true that the Royal Navy and the RAF,
155
Gwyer and Butler, Grand Strategy, vol. III, pp. 546–7; Hancock and Gowing, British
War Economy, pp. 441–7; Howard, Grand Strategy, vol. IV, pp. 6–7; Postan, British
War Production, pp. 221–5; Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air Offensive, vol. I,
p. 343.
156
Howard, Grand Strategy, vol. IV, pp. 197–208; Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air
Offensive, vol. I, p. 366, 372–4.
157
Churchill, Second World War, vol. III, pp. 574–8.
158
Churchill, Second World War, vol. IV, pp. 342–5.
The Second World War 219
operating from Malta and Egypt, were successfully limiting supplies to
Axis forces in North Africa. By 23 October the new commander of the
Eighth Army, General Bernard Montgomery, was ready to take the
offensive at El Alamein, forcing Rommel to retreat from Egypt and
Libya. The opposition of Vichy forces to the Anglo-American landings
in Morocco and Algeria on 8 November was slight, but hopes of a
complete occupation of the North African coast were deferred by a
German invasi on of Tunisia.
Matters stood thus when future strategy was discussed with the
Americans at the Casablanca conference in January 1943. It was com-
mon ground between the American an d British chiefs of staff that most
resources should be devoted to the defeat of Germany, but whereas the
Americans wanted to devote 30 per cent to the Pacific, instead of the
existing proportion of 15 per cent, so as to prevent the Japanese digging
in, the British thought in terms of finding out what minimum would be
necessary to prevent further Japanese expansion. No figures appeared in
the document setting ou t Allied strategy, and in any case nearly all the
resources to be used in the Pacific were under American control. It was
decided that a beginning should be made in 1943 to retaking Burma,
with the aim of reopening land links with China. Wit h regard to Eur-
opean operatio ns in 1943, the main choice to be made was between
exploiting the Allies’ success in North Africa by knocking Italy out of the
war, an d perhaps bringing Turkey in on the Allied side, or invading
France from the United Kingdom, since it was unlikely that landing
craft used in the Mediterranean could be transferred to the Engli sh
Channel before the weather broke in the autumn. The British Chiefs of
Staff preferred the Mediterranean strategy, as did Churchill, although
the Prime Minister wanted the possibility of a cross-Channel operation
in August or September left open. General George Marshall, the chief of
staff of the US Army, was opposed to indefinite opera tions in the
Mediterranean and believed that the decisive effort must be made in
France. The British argued that a Mediterranean strategy would divert
more Germans from the Russian front than a cross-Channel operation
would, since, if the Italians surrendered, the Germans would be forced
to occupy Italy and to replace Italian troops in the Balkans. The
Germans already had forty-four divisions in France, more than enough
to cope with anything that the twenty-one to twenty-four divisions that
the Allies could assemble in the United Kingdom in 1943 could do. It
was agreed, therefore, to invade Sicily once the Axis forces in Tunisia
had been dealt with, and to weaken Germany by strategic bombing
while a force large enough to invade France was assembled in the United
Arms, economics and British strategy220
Kingdom. The Battle of the Atlantic was to remain the first charge on
resources.
159
The strategic air offensive began to have a decisive impact in 1943.
The Casablanca conference failed to resolve the issue of whether it was
better to attack selected targets, particularly submarine construction
yards, aircraft factories, transport systems and oil plants, or whether
weakening German morale through destroying housing was a more
realistic objective. The Americans preferred the selective approach by
day; the British preferred area bombing by night. At least this division of
labour made co-ordination of the efforts of Bomber Command and the
USAAF Eighth Air Force based in Britain easier. Bomber Command
did considerable damage to the towns of the Ruhr and to Berlin.
Especially devastating were the fire raids on Hamburg from 24 July to 3
August, which permanently reduced production in that city. The fact
that German production of strategic goods such as steel, petroleum and
synthetic rubber, and also aircraft, rose in 1943 might suggest that
Germany was not much weakened by the strategic air offensive in that
year, but inc reased output was possible because the German economy
had had spare capacity earlier and production would have been even
greater in the absence of bombing. Both Bomber Command and the
USAAF suffered heavy losses. However, they were not alone in this.
The German day-fighter force suffered an unsustainable attrition rate,
especially after the Americans increased the numbers of escort fighters
late in the year. The inability of the Luftwaffe to oppose the Allied
invasion of France, when it came, showed that Germany had been
weakened by the strategic air offensive, although not in the way that the
British Air Staff or Harris had expected.
160
The Russians also benefited
from the Germans being forced to devote 41 per cent of their munitions
output to aircraft in 1943, compared with 6.27 per cent to tanks. As
Phillips O’Brien has argued, in material terms, if not in military man-
power, the decisive theatre was in the west rather than the east.
161
Meanwhile, the Axis armies in Tunisia had surrendered in May; Sicily
fell between 10 July and 17 August, and the invasion of Italy followed on
3 September, after the Italian government that had replaced Mussolini
had indicated a wish to surrender. However, the Germans held most of
159
See Michael Howard, The Mediterranean Strategy in the Second World War (London:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968).
160
Alan S. Milward, War, Economy and Society 1939–1945 (London: Allen Lane, 1977),
pp. 79, 298–302; Overy, Air War, pp. 123–5; Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air
Offensive, vol. II, pp. 10–16, 236–7, 244–300; Murray, Luftwaffe, pp. 186–211.
161
Phillips P. O’Brien, ‘East versus West in the defeat of Nazi Germany’, Journal of
Strategic Studies, 23 (2000), no. 2, 89–113.
The Second World War 221
the country, and there followed a long and arduous campa ign that was
not concluded until 29 April 1945. There were major debates between
the British and the Americans on how far to take the Mediterranean
strategy. British planners considered options from Sardinia to the
Aegean, but the American chiefs of staff made clear at the second
Washington conference in May 1943 that they were opposed to any-
thing that might detract from or delay a cross-Channel attack. It was
agreed that forces would be concentrated in Gre at Britain ready to
mount an operation by 1 May 1944, but at the first Quebec conference
in August 1943 the British succeeded in incorporating the principle of
flexibility regarding Mediterranean operations in the Combined Chiefs
of Staff’s conclusions.
162
Churchill was keen to take advantage of the opportunities apparently
offered by the Italian surrender to seize the Dodecanese Islands and
perhaps bring Turkey into the war. However, once more the Germans
had anticipated events and sent rei nforcements, while the supply of
landing craft available to the British in the Eastern Mediterranean had
been reduced in August by a decision at the Quebec conference to
transfer them to the Indian Ocean ready for operations against the
Japanese. Small British units landed on Kos, Leros and Samos in the
middle of September, but only the first of these islands had an airfield
from which the RAF could operate, and the Germans quickly took it on
4 October. After that date air support depended on aircraft based in
Egypt or Italy. Churchill appealed on 7 October to Roosevelt for landing
craft that had been earmarked for preparations for the cross-Channel
invasion of France to be diverted temporarily to the Aegean to enable
the British to recapture Kos and take Rhodes. However, the President
refused to allow any delay in the timetable that had been settled in May,
or to agree to any diversion of forces from Italy for what might prove to
be the beginning of a Balkan campaign. Nor did Churchill have support
from his own CIGS, Brooke, who thought that commitments in Italy
precluded serious operati ons in the Aegean, and believed that the Prime
Minister was unbalanced on the subject of Rhodes. Churchill was bit-
terly disappointed at the lack of American support, and efforts in
November to bring Turkey into the war fared no better, since the British
could not promise the Turks as much air support as they demanded.
Lack of air cover led to the loss of the remaining British footholds in the
Aegean by 27 November, by which time the British had lost six
destroyers and two submarines sunk and four cruisers and two
162
Howard, Grand Strategy, vol. IV, pp. 411–20, 425–32, 561–70.
Arms, economics and British strategy222
destroyers damaged.
163
The operations were on a small scale, involving
only a few thousand men, but the whole affair illust rated Britain’s
inability to conduct an independent strategy in the Mediterranean.
The Cairo and Tehran conferences in November and December 1943
underlined the point. The British managed to fend off an American
proposal that a single supreme commander should be appointed for
operations in the Mediterranean and North-West Europe, and also to
control the strategic air forces in the Mediterranean and the United
Kingdom. Instead there would be one commander for the Mediterra-
nean, who would be British, and one for North-West Europe, who
would be American, and the que stion of control of the strategi c air
forces was left open. At Tehran, Stalin pressed the British to commit
themselves firmly to a cross-Chann el operation in May 1944; the
Americans naturally agreed with him, and all that Churchill could
secure was agreement that operations in the Aegean would be desirable,
provided that they could be fitted in without detriment to landings in
France.
164
The British did return to Greece in October 1944, but on ly
after the Germans had evacuated the country to avoid being cut off by
the Russian advance across the Balkans. Notwithstanding the fact that
the Allied Commander in the Mediterranean, General Sir Harold
Alexander, was British, American views prevailed over those of
Churchill on the relative importance of a landing in the south of France
and an all-out offensive in Italy. Against the advice of the British Chiefs
of Staff, three American and four French divisions were transferred from
Italy to attack Toulon and Marseilles on 15 August and to link up with
the Allied forces advancing from Normandy, leaving only twenty divi-
sions to continue the Italian campaign.
165
The commitment of a large part of the British army to the Medi-
terranean and elsewhere meant that of the thirty-five divisions required
for the cross-Channel invasion of France, only sixteen would be British,
and that subsequent reinforcements would have to come from the
United States. The overriding impo rtance of the cross-Channel opera-
tion was such tha t from April to September 1944 the direction of
Bomber Comma nd was transferred to the American Supreme Com-
mander of the Allied Forces in North-West Europe, General Dwight
Eisenhower. The appointment of Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder
as deputy supreme commander, with his experience of air co-operation
in North Africa, ensured that optimal use was made of Allied air power.
163
Churchill, Second World War, vol. V: Closing the Ring (1952), pp. 186–200;
Alanbrooke, War Diaries, pp. 458–9; John Ehrman, Grand Strategy, vol. V (London:
HMSO, 1956), pp. 91–103.
164
Ehrman, Grand Strategy, vol. V, pp. 168–83, 189.
165
Ibid., pp. 348–58, 361–7.
The Second World War 223
Preparation for what became the D-Day landi ngs in Normandy on 6
June involved air attacks by heavy bombers on German communications
in France, especially railway marshalling yards, as well as targets
hitherto the preserve of tactical air units: coastal batteries, ammunition
dumps and military camps.
The Normandy campaign was the last time that the British Com-
monwealth and the United States could be regard ed as equals: 83,000
British and Canadians, and 73,000 Americans, landed on the Nor-
mandy beaches on D-Day. Eisenhower was in overall command but
Montgomery, as 21st Army Group commander, directed land opera-
tions until 1 September, when Eisenhower took over. The balance of the
opposing land forces in Western Europe in June 1944 was quite even:
thirty-seven Allied divisions in the United Kingdom, plus seven in Italy
earmarked for the landings in the south of Franc e, faced fifty-eight
German divisions, but there were about forty more Americ an divisions
in reserve in the United States. Moreover, German units were frequently
delayed in reaching the front by air attac ks and sabotage, the latter often
organised by SOE. Even so, it was not until 19 August that the Germans
were in headlong retreat.
After the victory in Normandy, Montgomery saw the task of the 21st
Army Group as the destruction of the enemy forces in northern France,
the clearance of the Pas de Calais with its V-bomb sites, and the capture
of Antwerp. He also believed that the Allies should make a single,
powerful thrust with about forty divisions on a narrow front over the
Rhine into Germany, under his command. Eisenhower rejected the plan
on 23 August, preferring to advance on a wide front, linking up with the
American Seventh Army advancing from the south. From 1 September
Montgomery was in charge of only one of three army groups. He
believed that an oppor tunity to end the war in 1944 had been lost, and
subsequently let his views be known to Chester Wilmot, whose Struggle
for Europe (1952) stated that Montgomery’s advance from the Seine to
Antwerp in nine days ‘amply demonstrated that the Ruhr was vulnerable
to just such a stroke as he had proposed to Eisenhower’.
166
American
critics of Montgomery claimed that he was at fault in allowing the
German army that had been guarding the Pas de Calais to escape and in
failing to clear the approaches to Antwerp before the Germans could
establish themselves at the mouth of the Scheldt, with the result that the
Allies were unable to use the port until 28 November. Montgomery was
also blamed for the failure of the British Fi rst Airborne Division to
166
Chester Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe (London: Collins, 1952), p. 476.
Arms, economics and British strategy224