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This is a brilliant study of the wartime cooperation between Prime Minister Churchill, President Roosevelt, and their military commanders, General George C. Marshall and General Sir Alan Brooke. Roberts makes good use of the previously unused verbatim notes of War Cabinet meetings taken by Lawrence Burgis (assistant secretary to the Cabinet office) and the reports of Cabinet meetings made by deputy Cabinet secretary Norman Brooke, released in 2007. Roberts also uses the diaries of 27 senior figures and the unpublished papers of another 60.
After the battle of Britain, the USA and Britain had the luxuries of time and space. With Britain no longer under threat of imminent invasion, they could choose when and where to deploy their forces. The Soviet Union had no such freedom. The US and British governments were relying on the Soviets to win the war for them, or at least to weaken the German army enough to make D-Day possible.
Marshall and the US Chiefs of Staff wanted to concentrate the entire US-British war effort on the key point of the battlefield, Northwest Europe, as soon as possible, that is, in 1942 or 1943. But Churchill and Brooke saw a premature landing in France as the greatest danger.
So Churchill said that he agreed, writing to Roosevelt in April 1942 of a Second Front in September 1942 or even `before then'. Instead though, he continually proposed other operations, in North Africa, Italy, the Balkans, Norway ...
Marshall said that Torch, the North African campaign of 1942-43, `represented an abandonment of the strategy agreed in April'. Roberts adds, "and of course he was right." Roberts writes, "Churchill and Brooke had deliberately misled Roosevelt and Marshall into thinking that if the United States poured troops into the United Kingdom in 1942 they might be used to attack France that year, when in fact they had no intention of allowing that to happen."
In June 1942, Churchill and Roosevelt promised Molotov, in writing, the Second Front: "we expect the formation of a Second Front this year." After his meeting with Molotov, Roosevelt issued a communiqué: "Full understanding was reached with regard to the urgent task of creating a Second Front in Europe in 1942." On 3 February 1943, Churchill said to Stalin, "We are aiming at August [1943] for a heavy operation across the Channel."
Yet there was no D-Day until 6 June 1944. But there were plenty of diversions. As Roberts points out, the Italian campaign of 1943-44 was `largely a waste of effort after Rome'. Operation Anvil, the invasion in the south of France in June 1944 was also a waste of time - the Allies should have focused on freeing Antwerp, not Marseilles.
Roberts sums up the Soviet Union's decisive role, "it was the Eastern Front that annihilated the Nazi dream of Lebensraum (`living space') for the `master race'. Four in every five German soldiers killed in the Second World War died on the Eastern Front, an inconvenient fact for any historian who wishes to make too much of the Western Allies' contribution to the victory."
