BRITAIN AND STRATEGIC PLANNING TOWARDS A SECOND FRONT, JUNE 1940-JANUARY 1944. A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in History in the University of Canterbury by David G. Miller University of Canterbury 2005 Contents page Contents Acknowledgements Abstract 1 Introduction Historiographical Review and Thesis Outline 3 2. Historiography 7 Chapter 1 The Inter-War Years: New Tactics, Old Policies and the effect on Britain's Military Capability 1.1 1918-1940: New Ways in Warfare 22 1.2 Prelude to 1940: Britain's Unlimited Liability 32 1.3 1940: The Consequence of Inaction 36 Chapter 2 June 1940-December 1941: The Aftermath of Defeat 41 Chapter 3 Britain's Policy on the Second Front 3.1 Churchill in Washington, December 1941 50 3.2 Marshall and Hopkins in London 52 3.3 Questioning the Cross-Channel Enterprise 59 3.4 The Consolidation of the British Strategic Plan 69 3.5 No Second Front in 1942, Doubts Over 1943 72 Chapter 4 From Casablanca to Teheran: The Compromise of 1943 Casablanca 80 Stalin's Reaction to the Casablanca Conference 86 Maintaining the Status Quo 90 The Ill-Wind from the East 99 Chapter Five Towards Teheran The Widening Schism 106 Presenting the Status Quo at Teheran 112 Conclusion Britain's Commitment to the Second Front 119 Britain's Commitment to the Mediterranean and Challenges throughout the Inter-War Years 120 'No' Second Front Now 126 Bibliography 134 Acknowledgements. To those people who gave their time and the expertise to help me research and write this thesis I offer my thanks and appreciation. First to Graeme Dunstall who was most encouraging and helpful in late 2002 and early 2003 in arranging my supervision, enrolment and he continued to express interest in the paper as it progressed. My deepest gratitude is for the efforts of my supervisors, Dr. Campbell Craig and Professor John Cookson, both of whom were influential in determining the course of this thesis, pointed me towards valuable sources of research material, checked my drafts and were always available to offer assistance, advice and support when required. I consider it a pleasure and a privilege to have been under the supervision of both men without whom this thesis would not have been started, let alone completed. I would like to thank my parents for their encouragement and assistance without which I would not have been able to return to university in the first place and finally to all the people I have met here and have become friends with. This includes those with whom I played sport and my fellow members of the Thesis Writers Group, 2003-2004, who provided the support network inside and outside of the department and who were always around to offer advice, share problems with and who contributed to a most enjoyable and rewarding two years. David G. Miller February, 2005. 1 Abstract. In its original proposal, this thesis aimed to examine the wartime policies of Winston Churchill and his influence on Britain's decision to campaign throughout North Africa and the Mediterranean region and to assess whether his motivation was to preserve what remained of the British Imperial System following the military reversals of the Second World War. However, the problem with this original idea was that there was not enough primary material available on Churchill in New Zealand and it would have been difficult to import material from the United Kingdom and elsewhere within the timeframe allowed for a Masters thesis and at to great a cost. Therefore, a new direction was required and in 2003, the focus began to shift towards the Second Front because the literature on British and Allied campaigns in the Mediterranean so often referred to it and due to the amount of primary sources that are available at the University of Canterbury and that allowed for detailed research on this subject. Although the Second Front opened in 1944, it has its origins following evacuation of the British Expeditionary Forces and units of the French military from the Continent in 1940. Even in defeat and faced with the prospect of invasion, the British began to examine the possibility of their forces re­ deploying across the English Channel and the circumstances under which an operation of this kind could prove successful against the Wehrmacht. The prospect of a re-deployment to North-West Europe became central to Britain's strategic planning throughout the fours years that followed yet Churchill and his military commanders devised alter~ative plans and sought to prevent the Axis forces from taking control of the Indian Ocean region and the Middle East. The purpose of this thesis is to ascertain the British stance towards the Second Front between 1940 and 1943 and to determine whether they were in favour of it or not and if so, what reasons did they have for not committing forces. It also addresses how the divisions between London and Washington concerning the Second Front influenced the dynamics of their alliance and how it came to symbolise the transforming international political and military 2 landscape, the decline of British power and the ascendancy of two countries that would shape the post-war environment known as the Cold War. 3 INTRODUCTION. Historiographical Review and Thesis Outline. The Second Front in North-West Europe, codenamed Operation 'Overlord', opened on the morning of 6 June 1944. Following naval and aerial bombardment of the German defences, nine Allied infantry divisions 1 disembarked along a 50-mile stretch of Normandy coastline between the Cotentin Peninsula and the Orne River. Overlord not only marked the beginning of the Allied ground campaign to liberate Western Europe from German occupation but it was also the first time that large-scale British infantry divisions had fought in France since the evacuation of the Expeditionary Force and remnants of the French Army four years earlier. In his book, Second Front Now - 1943,2 Dunn argues that political considerations rather than military ones influenced the timing of the Second Front and that the United States and Britain had assembled superior forces to the Germans by 1943. Yet they sought not only a German defeat and fewer casualties amongst their own troops but the operation had to commence at a time when they believed that the German offensives had sufficiently weakened the Soviet Union as not to pose a threat to them in the post-war era. Hence, the West delayed opening the Second Front for twelve months as "Politically, 1944 was the best year - the initial landing involved little loss of life or material on the part of the West, and yet the West was left in control of nearly half of Europe when Germany collapsed. On the basis of military capability, according to American military leaders, the second front was possible in 1943, if not in 1942. A German surrender in late 1943 would have saved Germany from the heavy bombing of 1944 and 1945 and spared Russia much of the devastation that resulted from the battles of those years". 3 Consequently, the delay provided the Germans with a vital twelve-month window of opportunity in which to rebuild their forces stationed in Western Europe and they "gained relatively more military capability than did the 1 The assault force that landed in Normandy on D-Day consisted of five American, three British and one Canadian Division. 2 Walter Scott Dunn. Second Front Now- 1943. (Alabama, University of Alabama Press, 1980). 4 Western Allies during that period. The German army in France was very weak from April 1943 until February 1944. By June 1944, the Germans had increased their strength in the West considerably, while the Allies had fewer troops on hand, insomuch as there were fewer British divisions available. The Germans moved men to the West during 1944, but no new American divisions were formed after 1943. In effect, while the Allies sat for a year, the Germans rebuilt".4 While proposing that the Western Allies sought an emaciated Russia, Dunn also questions their justification that shortfalls in the number of landing craft they possessed, the lack of training for their divisions and equipment shortages prevented them from deploying forces to North-West Europe in 1943. He claims that the British High Command formulated this argument based on estimates of Allied military strength in 1942 and it failed to take into consideration the future capability of American industry. The result was that a lack of confidence developed among British generals as to the quality of their forces and this served to increase their opposition to a cross-Channel enterprise. By the end of 1942, the United States and Britain had overtaken Germany in their military production as the Reich had made little use of the industries within the occupied countries in the first two years of the war. However, under the direction of Albert Speer, "German production improved both in quantity and in quality, because the captured nations' industry was utilised and millions of non-Germans were recruited into the war effort as workers, service troops, and even combat soldiers. Even though Germany could not overcome the preponderance of the Allies, the invasion of 1944 was more difficult that it would have been a year earlier''.5 The pressure on the Churchill Government to commit to the Second Front increased as the Soviet Union and the United States entered the war. Both countries favoured it as the means best suited to defeating Germany but each held their own reasons. For the Americans, the Second Front offered a strategy through which they believed the Allies could inflict a swift defeat on Germany before turning their attention to campaigning against Japan in the 3 Ibid.