Miklós Lojkó

The Failed Handshake over the Danube
The Story of Anglo-American Involvement in the Liberation of Central Europe at the End of the Second World War

Throughout the years of the ideological isolation of Eastern Europe, a shroud of mystery hung over the details of Anglo-American designs for the liberation of the lands of Central and South-East Europe during the Second World War. With the hindsight of the consequences of the post-war division of Europe, a sense of guilt has grown in the West, and, in turn, a sense of having been betrayed has developed in the East. In the light of old controversies and material that has become available since the fall of Communism, two questions may be asked in this connection:
(a) Was there a genuine desire among British and American political and military leaders after 1942 to stage major campaigns in the Eastern Mediterranean region as a possible continuation of the operations in Italy, or were hints to this effect only part of a ploy to divert German divisions from the vital battlegrounds of Normandy? And (b), Was such a venture feasible in the contemporary military and political situation? This brief study offers the outlines of an inquiry into these elusive questions.

 

In 1942/43, operations code-named "Torch" (the Allied invasion of French North Africa) and "Husky" (the subsequent landings in Sicily) were implemented as the only means for the Western allies to engage the Axis in active fighting. At the same time, they also served as rehearsals for the decisive invasion of Normandy in mid-1944. The two operations, however, evolved from an earlier British plan, conceived before the Soviet and American entry into the war. Furthermore, as the various strands of the North African and Italian campaigns developed, a new, clandestine, function came to be associated with them as well. The latter aspect came to light only recently since documents relating to strategic deception have been released for public scrutiny in the archives, or published in the British Intelligence in the Second World War series.¹

Before the Soviet and American entry into the war, British strategic thinking concentrated on survival rather than on the means of actually winning. As far as there was a strategy, it consisted of a somewhat far-fetched, but not inconceivable, theory that the German Reich would eventually be brought down by mass uprisings in occupied Europe, instigated and assisted by the British. Such a plan required a prolonged war of attrition, resulting in the depletion of the enemy's resources, and a build-up of British resources, and those of the Resistance in Europe. Large-scale air attacks, and the creation of an ever tightening ring around the Continent were envisaged. The centre of gravity of any military activity would also, of necessity, have to be the peripheries, rather than the hub, of the new German Empire. It was essential to construct an elaborate and sophisticated intelligence gathering network, a web of agents who would "set Europe ablaze", to compensate for British lack of matériel. As one of his last acts in public office on 19 July 1940, Neville Chamberlain signed a secret paper authorising that "a new organisation shall be established forthwith to co-ordinate all action, by way of subversion and sabotage, against the enemy overseas. [...] This organisation will be known as the Special Operations Executive."²

A Mediterranean strategy, based on existing facilities in the Levant, and focusing on the Balkans, did not emerge only because British possibilities were limited. It made positive strategic sense as well. The loss of Romanian oil would have caused irreparable damage to the Germans; the eastern Mediterranean, the route to the oil installations of the Persian Gulf, was a traditional British sphere of interest, and the British also had equipment in place in the Middle East. The fact that the area was held down by Italy, the junior partner in the Axis, made operations seem all the more practicable. Finally, strong partisan activity, in Greece and Yugoslavia, provided the British with some of their earliest Continental allies. The fact, however, that the British were ignominiously ejected from Crete in May 1941 by the Germans was a portent of the difficulties that lay ahead.

It is arguable that a strategy based on the eastern Mediterranean alone could never have won the war against Germany, and that the German attack on Russia was inevitable, and consequently any Russian counter-offensive would have clashed with British activity aimed at establishing, or maintaining, a sphere of influence in the Near East. However, these considerations did not arise at this stage of the conflict. With Festung Europa an accomplished fact, the future was inscrutable. For a considerable period following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Russians did not appear to be able resist the onslaught. At this time "[a victorious counter-attack] was not the role for which the Russian Army was cast in the calculations of the British Chiefs of Staff".³

With the American entry into the war, a Joint Chiefs of Staff was established, and American strategic planning, commensurate with their material input into the war effort, gradually began to carry more weight than that of the British. From as early as December 1941, the time of the first Washington Conference, the plan of a north-western assault on the heart of Europe enjoyed primacy among Allied strategies. "Bolero" and "Round-up", as the build-up of troops and equipment in the United Kingdom and the planned landing operations were initially code-named, took precedence over all other commitments. If the Far East temporarily became a subsidiary theatre, the Balkans, with its, for the Americans, frightening connotations of a Byzantine quagmire, became even more subsidiary. The principle was not "un-European". Engaging the enemy at the decisive point with decisive force was an old Clausewitzian approach to war. Gradually the British Chiefs of Staff and Churchill himself came round to accepting the new plan, not least because it seemed to serve as a guarantee of American adherence to the "Germany first" principle. By the time of the Teheran Conference in December 1943, no-one openly dissented from this strategy. In addition, the fact that Roosevelt and George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the US Army, argued (like Stalin) for providing, as soon as possible, effective relief for the Russians by opening a second front in Western Europe, and that they, among other American leaders, shared a propensity to suspect the British Mediterranean strategy of not being entirely disinterested, of being part of some imperial design, lay heavily in favour of an exclusively north-west European strategy. Churchill's known preference for a southern European solution also created the impression that he hoped to put right, as it were, his failure at the Dardanelles during the First World War. Now, as then, he spoke of attacking the "soft underbelly" of Europe. The attachment of the British to action in the eastern Mediterranean died hard.

An Allied amphibious attack on north-west Europe turned out to be logistically impossible in 1942. Ironically, it was American eagerness to engage the Axis in 1942 which gave the impetus to reviving the old British plans for a landing in French North Africa, Operation "Gymnast", (subsequently renamed "Torch"). At Casablanca, in December 1942, Churchill and Roosevelt discussed the logical sequel to the North African Allied advance, that is, plans for landing on the island of Sicily. Beyond that, however, they did not attempt to formulate policy. Only after spectacular success in Sicily was it decided that the Allies should press on to knock Italy out of the Axis. It was in the course of the execution of this opportunistic strategy in late 1942 and in 1943 that the appetite of Churchill, Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Henry Maitland Wilson, Commander-in-Chief in the Middle East in 1943, Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean in 1944, and of General Sir Harold Alexander, Commander-in-Chief of the 8th Army, Supreme Allied Commander in Italy, came to shift the emphasis onto the Mediterranean theatre to a larger extent than it had been agreed upon by the Combined Chiefs. Though hard fought, the campaign in Italy bore fruit. Mussolini was dismissed by the King of Italy a fortnight after the landings in Sicily. Encouraged by these events, Churchill argued that "The flank attack may become the main attack, and the main attack a holding operation in the early stages. Our second front will, in fact, comprise both the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of Europe, and we can push either right-handed, left-handed, or both handed as our resources and circumstances permit."⁴ On 26 October, one month before the Teheran Conference, he wrote to President Roosevelt: "We must not let this great Italian battle degenerate into a deadlock. At all costs we must win Rome and the airfields to the north of it. [...] I feel that Eisenhower and Alexander must have what they need to win the battle in Italy, no matter what effect is produced on subsequent operations."⁵ Churchill's confidant, Field Marshal Smuts, and King George VI also shared the enthusiasm for this strategy. Smuts hoped "to go on fighting" in the Mediterranean "and not switch over to a new front like 'Overlord' ". The King wrote to Churchill in October 1943:

I have always thought that your original idea of last year of attacking the "underbelly" of the Axis was the right one [...] The present situation as we know has turned out even better than we could have ever hoped [...] we command the Mediterranean Sea [...] Italy is at war with our enemy Germany; Roumania & Hungary are trying to get in touch with us. [...] may be we shall see the 3 great powers, Great Britain, USA & USSR fighting together on the same front!!⁶

Keeping the Eastern Mediterranean operations as the single line of attack was not a realistic or expedient strategy. However, it later became clear that the resources for pursuing Churchill's vision of two second fronts would never be adequate either, even though, through the activities of the secret deception unit, "A" Force, the Germans were led to believe and fear the opposite.

 

At the third Washington Conference, held in May 1943, the British delegation proposed to press ahead to exploit the achievements of the Italian campaign by landings eastward on the Balkans, rather than transferring these troops to the UK. It was argued that from the newly occupied bases the Allies could reach previously inaccessible parts of Central and South-Eastern Europe. If the Germans reacted strongly, so much the better, as this would also keep large numbers of their forces pinned down, away from both North-Western Europe and the Russian front. In July 1943, Churchill spoke to the Chiefs of Staff Committee about a "post-Husky" strategy, which had the River Po, or Vienna, among its possible aims, even to the detriment of "Overlord". The Americans were not impressed. Correctly they argued that the British proposals contradicted previous agreements. At Teheran, still wishing to retain the Balkans option, Churchill supported the primacy of the build-up for a North-Western attack, and accepted a definite plan for an invasion of Southern France in the wake of the advance in Italy, believing that landing craft would also become available for a move into the Balkans. This, however, never had the chance to become significantly more than theoretical as the operations bogged down on the Pisa- Rimini Line, and did not move much further north until the spring of 1945, by which time Soviet forces had come to dominate the Balkans and Central Europe, with the exception of Greece, in adherence to the terms of the Churchill-Stalin "percentage agreement".⁷

From the summer of 1944, Churchill began to see the Soviet advance as a threat, rather than as a relief. Backed by General Alexander, he renewed his plea for a diversion to the east, especially as an alternative to "Anvil", landings in the south of France, originally planned to coincide with, and provide dynamic diversionary assistance to, the D-Day operations. Plans for an Adriatic alternative were put forward on 7 June 1944 by General Alexander. Describing his plans to a meeting of the British War Cabinet on 7 July, he said they represented a chance for "the historical entry into Europe".⁸ In his memoirs he wrote: "Once through the so-called Ljubljana Gap the way led to Vienna, an object of great political and psychological value."⁹ This time, however, even the British chiefs were opposed to the idea. More significantly, American denial of logistic support sealed the fate of the inchoate plans. Even though "Anvil" was not carried out, the operations through the Rhône Valley, renamed as "Dragoon", only started in August 1944 and were therefore too late to assist in the initial days of "Overlord",¹⁰ the Americans were adamant that their landing craft, essential for any amphibious operation across the Adriatic, could only be used in "Dragoon", and not in an, in their view, strategically and politically dubious diversion to the east. Churchill's support for a move to the east stemmed from political considerations which were no longer consistent with his pledges made in the percentage agreement. The Prime Minister and his commander had to yield to the majority opinion, both American and British, arrayed against them.

The story is not complete without yet another addition to our knowledge of wartime Allied diplomacy. In sharp contrast to what had been the standard thinking until the mid-nineties about British-American-Soviet co-operation and joint planning, British and American sources recently made accessible reveal that, by the late autumn of 1944, East-West relations had undergone a temporary improvement. This atmosphere is likely to have been created so that Stalin could approach the Western powers to seek the further easing of the burdens on the Russian front. It was at this time, in mid-December 1944, that the Soviet leader

even suggested to the U.S. ambassador [Averell Harriman] that the West should land forces on the Dalmatian coast (Churchill's favorite invasion prospect in his dream of attacking the soft underbelly of Europe) so that they could drive north to clasp hands with their Russian ally in Vienna, or perhaps even Budapest.¹¹

However, even if, for some reason, the Americans could have been brought around to support the strategy, their commitment would have been short-lived. Western commanders became uncomfortably aware of the limitations of their overall capacity when Hitler's so-called "Bulge" offensive halted their advance through the Ardennes, also in mid-December. This time, it was the British and American officials who appealed to Stalin to bring forward his spring offensive to take the German pressure off the Western troops. Though the American and British forces eventually were the victors of the Battle of the Bulge, Stalin also advanced the date of the Soviet spring offensive to mid-January, which drew significant numbers of German units to the Eastern Front.

However, the greatest flaw in the plan was that Alexander, its only senior military advocate, never really explored its logistic feasibility. It envisaged the crossing, in a short space of time, of very difficult and hostile terrain, much of which had been killing fields in the First World War. The vistas opened up were enticing indeed: the Danube, rather than the Elbe, could have been the line on which the Western and Eastern Allies finally met, which would certainly have made a difference to the distribution of power on the Continent after the war. But the Ljubljana Gap, the valley of the Save, and the Klagenfurt Valley, en route to Vienna, would have held unpleasant surprises in store for a war-weary British 8th Army. The "underbelly" may not have been so soft after all. Although the plans were never put to the test, it is highly doubtful that they could have been executed within the time frame available, given the fact that both the Yugoslav partisans and the Russian armies, partly due to Western prodding, were progressing speedily in a similar direction. In any case, the opportunity was lost after "Dragoon" had been staged and Soviet forces had advanced through Romania, Hungary, and parts of Yugoslavia from August 1944 to April 1945. At the same time, it is important to point out, especially in the context of the ensuing Cold War, that the original British pressure for a Mediterranean strategy was meant to counter American opposition to the "Europe First" principle, and that its continued exploitation served to give immediate succour to the Soviet war effort, rather than to forestall it. Its last minute transformation to serve the latter purpose was not a viable alternative, either strategically or politically, at the time.

 

In the foregoing I have discussed the points raised in my original questions, except for the aspect of secret intelligence, which, I believe, needs to be discussed separately.

The hidden side of the Mediterranean strategy was strategic deception. In March 1941 "Advanced HQ 'A' Force" was established under a British officer, Lieut Col Dudley Clarke. As part of the "Double-Cross System", this British intelligence network of agents, double agents and their controllers, "A" Force was originally a "notional" Brigade of the Special Air Service, itself also initially a notional body. Having become the centre for strategic deception in the Middle East, and then in the whole Mediterranean area, its task was to create and keep in service notional, i.e. imaginary, agents, military formations, sometimes whole divisions, threats, intended to mislead and disadvantage the enemy in that theatre, especially in preparation for particular planned real operations. Though largely independent in choosing its methods, this "rumour factory", as Sir Michael Howard has called it, worked under the loose supervision of an organisation called the London Controlling Section. The main headquarters of "A" Force was in Cairo and served, for most of the story covered above, to provide camouflage for factual operations under the command of General Alexander.

The notional operation code-named "Barclay" helped to secure the success of "Husky" by pinning down large numbers of German troops through implanting the idea of an impending Allied attack on the Balkans via Greece in the early summer of 1943. The most successful of all bogus operations, code-named "Mincemeat", designed to confuse the Germans about future Allied operations, resulted in the German penetration of the Balkans in March-July 1943. "Zeppelin", among other objectives, carried a notional plan to attack Istria and the Dalmatian coast by a US contingent in early 1944. "The strategic task laid down for "A" Force under the overall plan, Zeppelin, was to keep German reserves away from the Normandy battlefields until D + 25; that is, until the beginning of July."¹² "Turpitude" comprised notional attacks on Salonica and Varna with Russian participation in June 1944. Another very successful bogus operation, "Ferdinand", promoted in August 1944, at the time of the genuine Operation "Dragoon", practically concurred with the unrealistic strategy campaigned for by Churchill and Alexander at the time to concentrate on Italy and achieve an eastward diversion later. All these imaginary plans implied action in the Eastern Mediterranean, and were ultimately designed to assist "Overlord". The Germans proved to be remarkably susceptible to them. By the spring of 1944 the impression was created in some German intelligence analysts that plans for an Allied north-western attack were abandoned altogether for an assault on Dalmatia or Southern France. Accurate reports of the unfeasibility of a Balkan strategy were drowned out by the "intelligence noise". By the time the credibility of any Eastern Mediterranean strategy to be pursued by the Western Allies diminished, the Soviets appeared on the horizon after a successful drive across the Ukraine, drawing ever more German formations away from the West. On 19 March 1944, in order to protect their lines of communication, the Germans occupied Hungary, their ally, and on 15 October, by staging a fascist coup, destroyed the remnants of constitutional government there. By this time, with its aims accomplished, "A" Force began to close down shop. The illusions of an "Anglo-Saxon" landing also vanished, both amongst the retreating Germans, and amongst the liberal opposition in Central and South-Eastern Europe.

Strategic deception is a cool and effective device. As the details of its role in the Mediterranean in 1942-44 began to emerge in the 1980s, Gyula Juhász, renowned Hungarian expert on European diplomacy during the Second World War, expressed his bitterness about its cold logic.¹³ Hungary's precarious participation in the Hitler alliance was a disaster from the start. Soon after the very heavy losses sustained by the Hungarian 2nd Army on the southern Russian front in 1942, the Prime Minister, Miklós Kállay, supported by the more liberal elements of the political spectrum, introduced policies which were meant to steer the country out of the German clasp. Prominent among such policies were circumventing German demands for the deportation of Hungary's Jews by assigning them to work units assisting the Hungarian army, and sending peace feelers to neutral capitals to negotiate terms for a possible surrender. The negotiators, and through them the Hungarian government, were lulled into believing in the existence of an active Allied policy in South-Eastern Europe, and the misconception that they only needed to bide their time, and change sides when the Western Allies came near to Hungary's borders. For historical and political reasons, until the very last moment, the Hungarians, like the Polish and unlike the Czechoslovak governments-in-exile, were very reluctant to negotiate with the Russians. Therefore it is not an exaggeration to say that from early 1943 till October 1944, the whole of Hungarian policy hinged on the expectation that Western troops would appear near Hungary's borders, and the country might safely withdraw from the war, or change sides. What happened instead was that, partly due to the danger posed by the advancing Russians, but also because of fears of a Western offensive across the northern Balkans, engendered in the German leadership through Allied deception. Hungary, whose wavering leadership was no longer trusted in Berlin, was occupied by the Nazis, its "autocratic-liberal" administration was removed, and 600,000 of its citizens were deported to face death or untold suffering. The validity of the policy to provide all possible buttress to "Overlord" cannot be questioned. It is evident that the victims of 1944/45 in Hungary were the victims of the Nazis, and not of the Allies. At the same time, acquaintance with ancillary parts of the western strategy, such as the above, enriches our understanding of the global conduct of the war, and the way it affected a particular microcosm, like that of Hungary, at the end of the war.

It is therefore possible to argue that a), although there was a short-lived desire at the highest level among British leaders for military involvement in liberating parts of Central Europe and the Balkans, no agreement could be reached for its execution; and b), that the above was the result of American reluctance to be associated with such a project, and that the plans were most probably logistically unfeasible in the available time frame. The role of deception in this story has not yet been sufficiently analysed. Nonetheless, it may be observed that many authors who have dealt with the subject have, in my view, failed to draw a firm line between deliberate deception by notional threats, and the fact that certain actors in the service of the Axis powers were deceived as a result of receiving information on factual plans subsequently not carried out, or as a result of factual operations, some of which may in fact have been intended as ruses. The overall strategy benefited from all three. As I pointed out earlier, in this war of both nerves and matériel, these phenomena may have temporarily come very close, in the field, or in the minds of the authors of strategy. However, I believe that in resolving the questions I put at the beginning, it is important to keep them apart. By realising that the decisive majority of plans relating to the Eastern Mediterranean only existed in the realm of fantasy, i.e. as part of deception, one can understand how little chance they ever had of becoming an alternative to the strategy which was actually pursued by the Western Allies.

 

NOTES

1. F.H. Hinsley, et al, British Intelligence in the Second World War, 5 vols, London, 1967-1990. Back to text
2. M.R.D. Foot: SOE in France, London, 1968, pp. 8-9, as quoted in M.R.D. Foot, "Was SOE Any Good?", Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 16 (1981), pp. 167-81. Back to text
3. Michael Howard: The Mediterranean Strategy in the Second World War, London, 1968, pp. 15-16. Back to text
4. J.M. Gwyer and J.R.M. Butler: Grand Strategy, vol. III, London, 1964, pp. 637-8, quoted in M. Howard, The Mediterranean Strategy, p. 34. Back to text
5. Winston S. Churchill: The Second World War, vol. V, p. 220, quoted in M. Howard, The Mediterranean Strategy, p. 56. Back to text
6. Martin Gilbert: Road to Victory, Winston Churchill 1941-45, vol VII of The Churchill Biography, London, 1986, quoting Churchill Papers 20/92. Back to text
7. In a notorious agreement, also referred to as the "naughty document", reached in Moscow in October 1944, Churchill and Stalin divided Central and South-Eastern Europe into Russian and British-American spheres of interest in which the future influence of the two sides in the individual countries were expressed in percentages. E.g. Romania was deemed to come under 90 per cent Soviet influence and 10 per cent western, Greece 90 per cent Western and 10 per cent Soviet control. Influence in Hungary was supposed to be shared 50-50 per cent. Back to text
8. David Hunt: "British Military Planning and Aims in 1944", in William Deakin, Elisabeth Barker, Jonathan Chadwick, eds., British Political and Military Strategy in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe in 1944, London, 1988, p. 14, quoting from PRO CAB 65/47. Back to text
9. Field Marshal Earl Alexander of Tunis: The Alexander Memoirs 1940-45, London, 1962, p. 138, quoted in Michael Howard: The Mediterranean Strategy, p. 62. Back to text
10. The lateness of "Dragoon" was, however, partially compensated by the spreading of the false rumours of an attack in the region to coincide with "Overlord", known to its creators in "A" Force as Operation "Vendetta". Back to text
11. Bradley F. Smith: Sharing Secrets with Stalin, How the Allies Traded Intelligence, 1941-1945, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, 1996, p. 230. Back to text
12. Michael Howard: British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. V, Strategic Deception, London, 1990, p. 148. Back to text
13. Juhász expounded his views on this sub- ject in his Inaugural Lecture at the Hungarian Academy, subsequently published as A háború és Magyarország: 1938-1945 (The War and Hungary: 1938-1945), Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1986. Back to text

---

Miklós Lojkó
is Assistant Lecturer in Modern British and Central European History at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, currently completing his Ph.D. thesis on British foreign policy in the 1920s at the University of Cambridge.