The Grand Alliance (101 page)

It also seemed possible that the German Air Force could very rapidly be made to shift its weight back again from the East to the West. At any rate, we must be ready for such a sudden change. Sir Alan Brooke, Commander-in-Chief of the Home Forces, was responsible for representing this vital need. He was quite right to set forth the claims of Home Defence, and this was certainly done by him and his powerful staff in a most vigorous fashion. They demanded large numbers of men and confronted us with grisly reductions of fighting units if these were not forthcoming. It fell on me as Minister of Defence with the Chiefs of Staff to decide the true apportionment of our already heavily strained man-power and woman-power.

Prime

Minister

to

4 Oct. 41

Secretary of State for

War and C.I.G.S.

I was greatly disturbed by the statement of C.-in-C.

Home Forces that he would have to reduce his
standard divisional formations to eleven fully mobile
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divisions, apart from three in Ireland, by the spring. This
destruction of more than half our Army would be
intolerable, and the Cabinet should certainly have been
warned by you before any such situation even approached the limits of discussion.

2. There is no sort of warrant or necessity for such
mutilation of the Army. Apart from active operations, the
impending losses in the winter through normal wastage
cannot exceed sixty thousand men, and an intake of
more than that number has been arranged. The twenty-six standard divisions and the nine county divisions and
the seven armoured divisions, including the Guards
(forming), are not on any account to be reduced. If new
units are required, easement may be found in the four
or five independent brigades and the twelve unbrigaded
battalions.

3. Please investigate the Commander-in-Chief “s
statement at once, and give me your report upon it. In
the meantime the following rule must be observed: No
existing divisional formation is to be reduced in
standard or converted to a different form without my
express authority, obtained in each case beforehand in
good time. I must also be informed of any new units
you wish to create in substitution for existing units, and
any important changes in the establishments, whether
in personnel or equipment. Let me have a list of any
that are now in progress or in prospect.

At the same time I did all in my power to uphold the efficiency of the Home Forces, and to ward off from them the many specious and plausible demands that were made upon them by the civil departments.

Prime

Minister

to

5 Oct. 41

Secretary of State for

War.

I do not approve the idea of using the Army to dig
land drains or for other work of this character during the
winter. It is not the case that the air force have a similar
scheme. Their proposal is to send eight thousand

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616

skilled technicians of the R.A.F., in uniform, on loan to
the factories for about six months. Their case is entirely
different from that of the Army, and I think their plan is a
good one.

2. Military considerations should rule your thoughts,
and you should not yield to the weak elements in the
country who do not understand that quality, efficiency,
smartness of bearing, high discipline, are the vital
characteristics of an armed force that may have to meet
the Germans.

3. In any emergency like heavy air raids or the
harvest, the Army should of course give immediate and
generous aid. But we shall want all our men in the
spring, and every unit in the highest state of readiness.

There may even be operational demands before the
spring. Your responsibility is to have them all ready like
fighting cocks, in accordance with the directions which I
give as Minister of Defence. Parades, exercises, and
manoeuvres, the detailed development of the individual
qualities of sections, platoons, and companies,
continual improvement and purging of the officers of
middle rank, courses and competitions of all kinds,
should occupy all ranks. There should be plenty of
marching with bands through towns and industrial
districts. The monotony should be relieved by more
generous leave being granted both to officers and men.

Facilities for transport to the towns for amusement
should be elaborated, as a little fun is the counterpart of
the hard training which must be exacted. We need
regular units of the highest type, and not a mudstained
militia that is supposed to turn out and take a hand in
the invasion should it come. I pointed out to the House
last week the dangers of yielding to soft, easy, and
popular expedients, and the dark places into which we
have been led thereby.

The main source from which our man-power for mobile fighting troops could be sustained was of course the The Grand Alliance

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antiaircraft batteries and other air defence units under General Pile’s command. The fear of renewed air attacks on an even larger scale had led to demands for actual increases in our Air Defence. I resisted these tendencies, and began again to argue the case against the invasion danger, which nevertheless always lurked in my mind.

AIR DEFENCE OF GREAT BRITAIN

Directive by the Prime Minister
Prime

Minister

to

8 Oct. 41

Colonel Hollis, for C.O.

S. Committee

We cannot state how severe the air raids will be this
winter or what the danger of invasion will be in the
spring. These two vultures will hang above us to the
end of the war. We must be careful that our precautions
against them do not unduly weaken our Mobile Field
Army and other forms of our offensive effort.

2. It would seem reasonable to fix the total of Air
Defence of Great Britain (A.D.G.B.) personnel at its
present figure of 280,000, plus any additional recruitment of women that they can attract. This will give them
at least 30,000 more than what we got through the air
raids with last year. The proposed addition of 50,000,

[making] a total of 330,000, cannot be supplied. Many
more high-and low-ceiling guns are coming to hand
now. Some of these might be mounted in additional
batteries, but unless A.D.G.B. can contrive by praise-worthy thought and ingenuity to man them within the
limits of the personnel mentioned, they will have to be
kept in care and maintenance.

3. Having regard to the parity now existing between
the British and German Air Forces, and the Russian
factor, it is unlikely that the enemy will make heavy and
continuous air attacks on Great Britain in combination
with or as a prelude to invasion. He would need to save
up for that….

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4. A.D.G.B. must therefore become as flexible as
possible and keep static defence at a minimum. For this
purpose as large a proportion as possible of A.D.G.B.

should be in a mobile form. General Pile should
prepare schemes for giving the utmost reinforcement of
mobile flak to General Brooke’s army. Sometimes they
must take their guns from the site. In other cases a
duplicate set of mobile guns may be made available.

Thus we can shift the weight from one leg to the other
as the need requires….

5. Above all, we cannot go on adding gun to gun
and battery to battery as the factories turn them out,
and so get an ever larger proportion of our limited
trained man-power anchored to static and passive
defence.

6. General Pile should be assisted in every way to
prepare schemes for increasing the mobile flak of the
Army and reinforcing the coast batteries, while at the
same time, without any addition (apart from women) to
his numbers (280,000), maintaining the indispensable
minimum which served us so well last year.

7. The Chiefs of Staff Committee is requested to
advise, and consider what proposals should be made to
give effect to the foregoing principles.

Our air fighter strength had now made an immense advance, and not only gave increased security against invasion but opened other prospects to strategic planning.

Prime Minister to C.A.

1 Sept. 41

S.

I was delighted to see in the last return that we have
practically one hundred fighter squadrons (ninety-nine
and a half) in the Metropolitan Air Force. The vast
changes in the war situation arising from the arrival of
Russia as a combatant, and the improvement of our
position in the Middle East, including Persia, make me
inclined to a large further reinforcement of the Middle
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619

East to influence Turkey and/or sustain Russia on her
southern flank. My thought is turning to the dispatch of
as many as twenty fighter squadrons complete to the
Iraq-Persia and Syrian theatre. It may be these
squadrons would come into action against German
bombers and dive-bombers while defending territories
under our control or that of our allies, and that we
should then reproduce the favourable conditions of
fighting which enabled us to inflict such heavy losses
upon the Germans when they made their air attack
upon us last year in the Battle of Britain. This might be
a more paying business than the very hard struggles in
France, which of course we must continue as occasion
serves. This force would have to go by long sea route
round the Cape, and could not come into action till the
end of the year. It should take with it the effective
organisation of one or two control centres (like Number
11 Group), so that the full power of the fighter defence
could be manifested. It would not leave the country till
the invasion period is over. It is of course additional to
all you have in hand for the East.

I shall be obliged if you will have this situation
examined in all its bearings, and let me know about
numbers of personnel required, what demands on
shipping, and what you think of this important transference of war power. Such forces operating north and
south of the Caspian would be a gigantic contribution to
Russia’s war effort, and allied with bomber forces might
long dispute the eastward advance of the Germans.