Kemper Lectures
CHURCHILL AND EUROPE IN 1944
Sir William Deakin, D.S.O. , March 18, 1984
The nagging centre of argument between the American and British leaderships was
essentially one of timing and coordination with the subordinate Mediterranean theatre
in which your President and Chiefs of Staff had become reluctantly involved in 1942.
Sir William Deakin, D.S.O. , March 18, 1984
At the Teheran Conference in November 1943, Roosevelt, without prior consultation with Churchill, announced to Stalin that the expedition across the Channel was fixed to take place on 1 May 1944.
Churchill then spoke: ‘It has long been agreed with the United States that we should invade North or Northwest France across the Channel…(and) we were resolved to do it in 1944. The President and I had always regarded Mediterranean operations as stepping- stones to the decisive cross-Channel operation.’ But he continued: ‘I wish to place on record that I could not, in any circumstance, agree to sacrifice the activities of the armies in the Mediterranean in order merely to keep the exact date of 1 May for ‘Overlord.’
In the event, this tremendous combined operation was launched on 5 June 1944. Churchill’s consistent caution about timing has been so perceptively analysed by one of your leading military historians, Professor Kent Roberts Greenfield, that I feel that I should quote his sentences as a model of commentary:
“The British had a grave reason for caution as they counted what it would cost them in basic strength as a World Power. In the course of 1943 their economy and military manpower were mobilized to the limit of endurance. They had far more to lose than the Americans. ‘Overlord’ on a big scale would be their last shot. Even if it succeeded they would be unable to replace the losses it would inflict. The strength of their nation would decline not only relatively to that of the United States, but absolutely, leaving Great Britain a second or third rate power in world affairs. Failure of the invasion would mean, if not ruin, a prolongation of the war beyond their power to sustain.”