I have concluded that the British fighting man was not good during World War II. Not as good as the Soviet and, I am not sure in my mind on this point, maybe not as good as the American. The British heroically fought on the defensive, as they must needs have done before Pearl Harbor. They kept the Great Beast at bay, although barely and with unintended aid from its war makers. I have further concluded that Winston Churchill knew that his nation, and the entire United Kingdom, would not and could not win a war alone against Nazi Germany. Thus his constant entreaties to Franklin Roosevelt to get the United States involved on her side. And still further I have concluded that once the Allies were together and Churchill knew that the Nazi regime would be beaten he reverted to being an avaricious imperialist. I take these conclusions from Churchill himself in his The Second World War.
-Churchill wrote in an earlier volume "that it could be said that before [I forget the battle] the British had never won a battle but that after they had never lost."
-Churchill tried a nauseating number of times to get Roosevelt, especially Roosevelt, and Stalin to allow him to capture the "prize" of Rhodes.
-Churchill's mind and heart and gut were not as wholeheartedly committed to Overlord as were Roosevelt and Stalin. Churchill wanted his "prizes", too and would have been content to let the Soviet fighting man do the heavy lifting against Hitler--provided, a big proviso, that Stalin did not out-imperialist him in Eastern and Central Europe.
-When Churchill did not get what he wanted he foot-dragged and in the spirit of George McClellan, over-estimated enemy capabilities and underestimated his own. I am reading "Cairo Again, The High Command" in Closing the Ring, Volume 5, and Churchill finally has FDR all to himself without Stalin. Churchill again presses Roosevelt on Rhodes and the president rejects the parry. They discussed the Bay of Bengal operation known as "Buccaneer", an enterprise that Churchill opposed, because it relied exclusively on the debatable qualities of the British fighting man under command of Mountbatten from Delhi. In their discussions Roosevelt said that a force of 14,000 British soldiers, a ratio of 2.8 British to 1 Japanese, should be sufficient to carry the Andaman Islands, the objective of "Buccaneer." Just then came a report from British South East Asia Command, Mountbatten, who delivered the estimate that 50,000 soldiers, a ratio of 6.5-1, would be required. That "certainly broke the back of the Andamans expedition so far as this meeting was concerned." "Thus we parted, leaving Mr. Roosevelt much distressed." I wrote in the margin of p326, "Mountbatten deliberately overinflated force needed for Buccaneer-->bc that was what WSC wanted." I believe that. Churchill:
...the President, in consultation with his advisers, decided to abandon the Andaman Islands plan. He sent me a laconic private message: '"Buccaneer" is off.'
It was "welcome news" to Churchill (p327).
I further believe that Churchill's reprinted telegram to Mountbatten of Dec. 9 1943 informing him of Roosevelt's decision was more tongue-in-cheek than it was upbraiding. First writing that "the abandonment of 'Buccaneer', with which, as you know, I am in entire agreement" Churchill then goes on to chide Mountbatten for the 6.5-1 soldier ratio that directly produced the "welcome news". I believe as I wrote in the margin that that goose had been cooked beforehand. Then on p328 Churchill quotes a post-war assessment of the operation that immediately recalled Churchill's own "before we only lost, after we only won":
Admittedly the 'teeth' part of the force outnumbered the estimated Japanese garrison by about four to oneIt cannot be overlooked that we had been uniformly unsuccessful against the Japanese for the previous twelve months. Lord Mountbatten undoubedly wished to make his first assault a success, if only for the sake of theatre morale.
In the event, Mountbatten's "first assault" was not "a success"; he had successfully seen to it that it would never occur.
