‘This is much the greatest thing we have ever attempted’

Abstract

Following the Quebec Conference, Churchill and Roosevelt intensified their efforts to get Stalin to agree to a meeting of the three heads of government. On 20 October 1943, Churchill telegraphed to Eden in Moscow that the plans for Overlord seemed to him to have very grave defects. Unless there was a German collapse, Hitler could concentrate forty to fifty divisions against the invading force. Churchill did not think the Allies should cross the Channel with less than forty divisions available by the sixtieth day and then only if the Italian front were in strong action against the enemy: ‘I do not accept the American argument that our metropolitan airforce can flatten everything out in the battle zone or on its approaches.’ He warned against being committed to a ‘lawyers’ bargain’ to undertake the invasion in May, ‘for the sake of which we may have to sacrifice the Italian front and Balkan possibilities’ and yet have insufficient forces to maintain the invasion of France.