The war without an end
By late 1943, Allied leaders knew they would win the war – they just didn’t know when. This uncertainty dogged the final stages, writes Dan Todman
On 7 December 1943, the men in charge of the Anglo-American alliance dined in a Cairo hotel. It had been an exhausting few weeks: ill-mannered discussions with the Chinese leader, Chiang Kai-shek, in the Egyptian capital; a tense conference with the Soviet leader, Josef Stalin, in Tehran; then back to Cairo to finish their own disputes.
Stage-managed by the Americans to avoid any British challenge, the conferences had demonstrated to the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, how calamitously his country’s international power had declined. As the prime minister put it: “A bloody lot” had “gone wrong.” Having got what he wanted, the US president, Franklin Roosevelt, had left that morning. The remaining participants – including Churchill and the top servicemen from both sides of the Atlantic – were all sick of the sight of each other, but glad the wrangling was over. The drink flowed and Churchill began to recover his equilibrium. Over dinner, he got the generals to place bets on when the war against Germany would end. The most optimistic gave him 6/4 odds on March 1944; the most pessimistic, that November.
This anecdote highlights the difference between how the war was experienced, even by those most in the know about strategic planning, and how we think about it in historical perspective. We know the outcome and the timing. They knew they were going to win, but not how long it would take. If we want to understand what happened in those closing years of the conflict, we have to restore the uncertainties that shaped decisions at the time.
Unlike the First World War, this time the Allies knew well before the end that they were going to win. Between the winter of 1942 and the summer of 1943, a series of Axis reverses made it clear that Allied victory was inevitable. It was also apparent that there would be two ends: one in Europe, against Germany (Italy having surrendered in September 1943); and one in Asia and the Pacific, against Japan. How long there would be between the two remained unclear, but well into 1945 the assumption was that what the British called ‘Stage II’ of the war would last years, not months. The Americans, bearing the brunt in the Pacific, hoped that once Hitler was defeated, the Soviets would turn east and attack Japanese forces in Asia. This commitment would be given only once the war in Europe was settled to Stalin’s satisfaction.
Why – even given the Allies’ intelligence advantages – were the timings of this double end so difficult to predict? Partly because of the concertinaing effect on time and space of contemporary weapons systems, and the demands they placed on maintenance and supply, which allowed both rapid victories and stubborn defence. Superimposed on the vast areas conquered by the Axis powers from 1940–42, these generated uncertainty about when decisive power could take effect.
The British had long been over-optimistic about their ability to crack the German people’s willingness to continue the war. They underestimated how far plundered resources, indoctrination and control would sustain the Nazi war machine. In contrast, new technological capabilities rapidly extended the reach and impact of American sea and air power across the Pacific from the end of 1943. Brought to bear against the Japanese home islands, they ensured a quicker end to the far eastern war than anyone had anticipated.
The timing of peace had particular implications for the UK. British leaders grappled with the paradox that, even as the military power of the Commonwealth and empire reached its wartime peak, their ability to shape the peace fell away. As Churchill had experienced at Tehran, for all the firepower Britain could command on the battlefield, in
Even as Britain reached peak military power, KVU|CDKNKV[ VQ UJCRG the peace fell away