Air University Review, May-June 1968

With Prejudice, Without Malice

Dr. Alfred Goldberg

Wars of the past have been of dimensions that the mind of man could grasp. Above all, they had a human dimension that could be readily seen and understood. In the great conflicts of modern history—the American Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, the American Civil War, World War I—man in the singular or the mass was still the measure of events and achievements. This was true even in World War II, in spite of the enormous impact of the machine and the vast scope and intense violence.

Perhaps of equal importance in creating a kind of near-nostalgia for wars of the past is the common revulsion from a vision of warfare in the future—technological, dehumanized, enormously destructive, full of unknown terrors—that is too frightening for all but a few to contemplate. So terrifying is this specter that it has made past wars seem not only bearable but almost attractive by comparison.

There are other compelling reasons for continued interest in World War II apart from strong romantic and escapist impulses. It remains a huge and impressive event in the affairs of men, connected with the present and the future by a continuous chain of circumstance. It provides us an opportunity to observe and ponder the thoughts, attitudes, decisions, and actions of men in a time that still has great relevance in today’s world. Because its effects are still visibly with us, it is the stuff from which real learning and understanding may be derived.

For this reason, the enormous literature on World War II that has emerged in the short space of two decades constitutes a treasure trove for those concerned with current and future problems of war and peace. No portion of this literature has attracted more attention—from layman and scholar alike—than the revelations of the political leaders and the military captains who bore the burdens of the higher direction of the war. These men, most of them of moderate intelligence and normal prejudices, endowed with great power but possessing limited information, made the fateful decisions that affected the lives and fortunes of most of the people of the world. Their recollections and judgments of men and events and their explanations of the whys and wherefores of great decisions, even if they are not destined to be as enduring as Thucydides, have meaning for us now and in the foreseeable future.

This literature—autobiographies biographies, memoirs, diaries—should be required reading for the games theorists, computer simulators, and model makers who are so influential in politico-military thinking and planning. Our tremendous advances in science and technology, our great triumphs over our physical environment, do not obscure the inescapable evidence that the greatest and most baffling of our problems is still man and his relations to his fellow men. We still have a great deal to learn about the human element in war that cannot be gotten from the immense impersonal collections of data that have been amassed for the computers. Man is chiefly responsible for many of the uncertainties—the chance, the accidental, the irrational, the uncontrollable—that continue to make war an art rather than a science.

The British leaders of World War II—true to the long-established literary tradition among British politicians and soldiers—have been especially prolific in taking up the pen when they put down the sword. For this we should be grateful, for of all the nations engaged in the war the British have told more and they have told it better. Many of their politicians and generals have written with verve, candor, and an eye for the meaningful that few Americans have matched.

The latest and best of the great British military leaders to speak his mind about the war is Marshal of the RAF Lord Tedder.*  Among the surviving leaders only Portal, head of the RAF and Tedder’s friend and supporter during the war, has not yet been heard from. The others who have published—”Bomber” Harris, Alanbrooke, Montgomery, Alexander, Cunningham, Ismay, Slim—have made contributions that help greatly to round out the record as it was seen and understood by those who helped to make it. To be able to see the same great events and issues described, elaborated, and interpreted by many firsthand participants provides the historian and the analyst greater opportunities for understanding, insight, and perspective than the individual participants could have had. Accordingly, the composite historical accounts and analyses add up to much more than the sums of the parts from which they have been constructed. This is more than sufficient justification for the publication of personal accounts, even for the more self-serving ones, for these too have something to offer, if only insights into the character of the authors.

In this postwar outpouring, Churchill’s six volumes have been a touchstone against which to test the others; but it has become increasingly clear that he is sometimes wrong, not infrequently biased, and often knows or tells less than he should. This is not to be held against him. It is simply impossible for any one person—even Churchill—to comprehend, reconstruct, and present objectively the manifold and intricately complex affairs in which he played such an important part. The effect of the publications of the military leaders has been to diminish greatly Churchill’s role as a military strategist and leader and to reveal the shortcomings that were not apparent outside the inner circles.

Tedder makes a particularly important contribution to the continuing re-evaluation of Churchill, and he does it soberly, candidly, most explicitly, and without malice. He was not overawed or bedazzled by the bright sun of Churchill’s intellect and wit; he resented and opposed judgments, analyses, and ideas from the great man himself when they seemed to him to prejudge the issues or to be lacking in merit. Nor was Tedder impressed by the Prime Minister’s penchant for rhetorical exhortations to his field commanders on occasions when sober reflection and second thoughts would have brought better results. Such an occasion was the launching of the abortive campaign to conquer the Dodecanese in the fall of 1943 after the Italian surrender. To the commander in the area, General Wilson, beset by great problems of making do with resources that Tedder and others had pointed out were inadequate to the task, Churchill sent stirring words: “This is a time . . . to think of Clive and Marlborough, and of Rooke’s men taking Gibraltar.” More pertinently, it was a time for Wilson to think of the soldiers, the landing craft, the support ships, and the aircraft that he desperately needed but did not have.

Among the military men, Montgomery and Alanbrooke wrote intensely egocentric versions of their own roles and, too often, denigrating versions of the role of others in the campaigns against Germany. Their favorite whipping boys were Eisenhower and the Americans, but Tedder came in for his share, too. In his account Harris, who fought his own war, concerned himself with a justification of his conduct of the RAF bombardment campaign against Germany. Of all the leading British commanders, only Slim appears to have had qualities comparable to those of Tedder as a man and commander. He, too, was successful in leading Allied forces, including Americans and Chinese, and in triumphing over terribly ambiguous command arrangements. While character, personality, and intellect were no doubt major elements in the success of both men as leaders of Allied forces, there is ample evidence from their performances that they also possessed political instinct—in which a capacity for survival is fundamental—in the best sense of the term. Without the inclination and the capacity to submerge national and service instincts in the broader requirements of coalition warfare, neither man could have been as successful.

Tedder’s book contributes strikingly and accurately to the data available for study of the impact of politics and personalities on the conduct of a great war. The notion that the political and the military are separate realms is of course long since discarded. It was not true in the United States, where some of the generals would have preferred it to be so and seemed to believe that it was. There was no doubt on this score in Great Britain, not only because Churchill participated so compulsively in the making of military decisions but also because of the prolific and complicated British political connections in every part of the world. Maintenance of the Pax Britannica over much of the globe for generations had required a skillful blend of the political and military in which the former had properly predominated. Military men had become sensitive to if not appreciative of the relationship.

It was in an area where the British had long been deeply involved that Tedder came to his first high wartime command. The Middle East was normally an exceptionally complex and unstable area of the world; in wartime the political and strategic problems of the region must have seemed like a Chinese puzzle to the British commanders who had responsibility for the immense reaches from Malta to the frontiers of India. From command headquarters in Cairo over a period of two years, 1941-43, Tedder had a key and sometimes dominant role in the series of campaigns against the Italians and Germans under Rommel in the North African desert; the liberation of Ethiopia and the conquest of Italian Somaliland; the long and bitter battle of Malta; the hopeless defense of Greece against the Germans; the battle of Crete; the capture of Syria from the Vichy French; the repression of a pro-Nazi revolt in Iraq; air cover for the Navy in the Mediterranean; the policing of Iran; establishment of indispensable air routes across Africa; negotiations with the Russians about RAF air support in the Caucasus; reinforcement of India to meet the Japanese onslaught; the Dodecanese campaign; air attacks against Italy and Axis-held areas in the Mediterranean. The list could be longer, but it suffices to suggest the dimensions of the problems and the pervasiveness of the political element. Political considerations were often paramount, as in the Greek and Dodecanese campaigns and in the policing of Iran.

In all these events, some of them life-and-death issues for the British in the Mediterranean and many of them happening concurrently, Tedder was a central figure who helped shape major decisions and actions. His stature grew with the passage of time as events—disasters as well as victories—much more often than not vindicated his judgments and predictions. Many of his troubles stemmed not from the enemy but from the British Army and Navy commanders with whom he was associated in Cairo and elsewhere in the area. A convinced and avowed apostle of air power, Tedder succeeded eventually in gaining the respect and confidence of the other services. It required much firmness, plain speaking, and persistence, an immense practical grasp of problems, and refusal to be bound by accepted doctrines, customs, and red tape. By the end of the North African campaign in 1943 he had forged, tested, and secured acceptance of the concept of unified control by the RAF of air operations either in combination with the other services or independently. Montgomery added his personal endorsement, and the Americans, profiting from their own North African experience as well as that of the British, promptly adopted the concept and enunciated it as official doctrine.

The way toward unified control of air power had thus been clearly pointed by Tedder and his chief operational commander, Air Marshal Coningham. This was no small achievement in the crucible of Middle Eastern and North African warfare in 1941-43, when British ground and naval commanders, and American too, fought frantically to control or direct the use of portions of the always limited and often inadequate resources of men and airplanes which too often were all that stood between them and defeat or stalemate.

By the time Tedder joined forces With Eisenhower early in 1943 in Algiers, as commander of the Allied air forces in the Mediterranean, he had already demonstrated the qualities of leadership, imagination, and practical wisdom that had gained him the respect and confidence of his colleagues, including the Americans who had fought under his command against Rommel. It was at this time that he first came under the surveillance of a shrewd judge of men, Harold Macmillan, then British political representative in French North Africa. After a meeting with Tedder in February 1943, Macmillan wrote in his diary:

Tedder is really a most interesting man. He has the rare quality of greatness (which you can’t define but you sense). It consists partly of humor, immense common sense and a power to concentrate on one or two simple points. But there is something more than any separate quality—you just feel it about some people the moment they come into a room. And Tedder is one of those people about whom you feel it. **

The establishment of the combined Anglo American command in the Mediterranean under Eisenhower in 1943 marked the beginning on a grand scale of the close military collaboration that helped so much to make possible final victory over the Germans. It was not immune to the strains that inevitably affect politico-military collaboration between countries; it suffered the individual and national jealousies, suspicions, fears, and selfish motivations that affect most human and international relationships. Tedder was most sensitive to these differences and makes clear what a delicate thing such a close coalition is. The success of the military collaboration unquestionably owes a great deal to the ability of the military leaders of both countries to transcend their service and national interests and to accept the higher loyalty.

Tedder stands with Eisenhower as pre-eminent among those who made the coalition work from the beginning. The experience he had acquired during the Middle East campaign of 1941-42 in dealing with British commanders, with the Americans, and with British and American political representatives constituted a rich and unusually edifying political education. From the beginning of his association with Eisenhower and with Eisenhower’s perennial chief of staff and alter ego, Walter Bedell (“Beetle”) Smith, Tedder showed his understanding of the total environment, including the political, and how it affected and shaped not only the use of air power but the use of the overall military capabilities. This acute comprehension, his capacity for intellectual persuasion that made him exceedingly effective in high-level conferences, and the objectivity that often caused him to side with the Americans against his British colleagues in some of the great strategic issues of the war gained for him more respect, cooperation, and admiration from the Americans than was accorded any other British military leader. It also gained him the distrust and criticism of some British military leaders, especially Montgomery, with whom he differed frequently, and also Alanbrooke, who usually supported Montgomery. Some of his British critics went so far as to hint at lack of loyalty to his own country and his own service. Early in 1945 Alanbrooke and Montgomery preferred that Tedder’s role as Eisenhower’s deputy be even more circumscribed than it was. Churchill also was sometimes annoyed with Tedder and on one occasion abused him in a note to the British Chiefs of Staff for not properly representing British interests at Supreme Headquarters. There is reason to doubt that Tedder would have been Portal’s successor as head of the Royal Air Force after the war had Churchill instead of Attlee been Prime Minister.

When Tedder became Deputy Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in January 1944, one member of Eisenhower’s immediate staff described the position as being like that of an ambassador without portfolio. It was a particularly difficult and trying post, for if the Allied command arrangements in the Mediterranean had seemed complicated, the arrangements in Europe must often have seemed like a maze. This was especially true of the air forces, which were the object of a tug-of-war between the Americans and the British at several levels—the Combined Chiefs of Staff and SHAEF, the British Air Ministry and SHAEF, and the tactical air commanders versus the bomber barons. It was here that Tedder made great contributions by helping to bring order to a situation that was potentially chaotic and by exercising strong direction of the diverse and sometimes conflicting elements of Anglo-American air power. His great ability in organizing and directing large-scale Allied air forces could not be matched by anyone.

Tedder deserves also the major share of the credit for driving through, against the doubts and disinclination of Churchill and the British War Cabinet, the plan for bombing the French and Belgian rail systems in the months immediately preceding the landings in Normandy. This was a major political issue which was resolved in Tedder’s favor only with the support of President Roosevelt, but Tedder had persisted when it might have been the better part of discretion to defer or compromise. Events proved him right, for there can be no doubt that the interdiction campaign contributed immensely to the success of the landing and the subsequent buildup, without incurring the heavy French and Belgian civilian casualties that had been predicted.

Although he insisted on the priority of the demands of the land battle, Tedder wholeheartedly supported the strategic air campaign against Germany. His chief concern was to secure the best balance in the allocation of air resources among the missions assigned. Unlike the strategic and tactical air commanders, he viewed the air battle as a whole and related it to the land battle. He understood the interaction of the different air missions and sought to mesh them in the pursuit of larger objectives than their immediate ones. Thus, although he insisted that the strategic bombers give priority to transportation targets over oil targets during the pre-assault and assault phases of Overlord, he readily acceded to and even encouraged the opportune use of the bombers against German oil targets on several occasions during the month before D-Day. Tedder had no doubts that strategic bombardment played an indispensable role in the defeat of Germany.

Once the land battle was joined on the Continent, Tedder became involved in the major strategic issues that were chief sources of disagreement between the British and the Americans. Most of the issues centered on Montgomery and had political repercussions with nationalistic overtones. The most important of these included the timing and proper use of forces in efforts to break out of the Normandy beachhead; a southern France landing versus an invasion of the Balkans; the allocation of resources to securing the approaches to Antwerp; priorities for the thrust into Germany; and control of the land forces during the Battle of the Bulge. On most of these issues, Tedder sided with the Americans against Montgomery, who was generally supported by Alanbrooke and less directly by Churchill.

By this time Montgomery had become a national hero in Britain. He dealt directly with the British Chiefs of Staff and on occasion the Prime Minister. It is worth noting that Bomber Harris, too, enjoyed a personal relationship with the Prime Minister during most of the war that undoubtedly enhanced his prestige and afforded him a degree of independent action unusual for a subordinate commander. Tedder had neither the standing nor the influence of Montgomery among his countrymen. Yet he not only supported the Americans—Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, and Beetle Smith—against Montgomery, he often urged Eisenhower to stronger measures to bring Montgomery into line. Tedder’s courageous persistence in his views and advice in the face of certain disapproval from most of his British political and military superiors must be regarded as the measure of the man.

One cannot help being struck by the strength of Tedder’s feelings about his Mediterranean experience as compared with his European experience. In part it was a matter of the scale of the conflict. The war in the Mediterranean, in spite of its complexities, could be comprehended and was within the grasp of the commanders. It was Tedder’s conviction that “but for the lessons learnt . . . [in the Mediterranean] victory in Europe would not have been gained so speedily or at such little cost.” (pp. 687-88) In western Europe in 1944-45, not only was the war on a far vaster scale but the political and personal issues were greatly complicated and exasperating. Moreover, the opportunities for an individual, even one so bold and clever as Tedder, to exercise controlling influence were much less than they had been in the Mediterranean.

The role of Deputy Supreme Commander was much less satisfying to him than being air commander in the Mediterranean. The vibrant, confident buoyancy of the Mediterranean years is missing; there is a feeling that he was not entirely at ease as the No.2 man, that the ambiguities of the position precluded enjoyment of it. As Tedder himself put it, there “was little that was cheerful or exhilarating about the last stages of the war.” (p. 688) The proportions of the book itself are the best evidence of this feeling: more than two-thirds is devoted to the Mediterranean, and that is by far the livelier, more personal, more open, and more interesting part. There is also a feeling of purpose, of doing, and of accomplishment that must have been exhilarating to a man at the peak of his professional and intellectual powers.

Although the title is characteristic of the witty, ironic, and sometimes cynical Tedder, the book is anything but exposé. Tedder is indeed critical of many of his contemporaries, including Roosevelt, Alanbrooke, Harris, De Gaulle, and Wavell. But he is almost diffident and often oblique, and his criticisms are almost always in the context of particular events and issues. Accordingly, with only a few exceptions, he does not give us assessments of men in the round but rather glimpses of them in the toils of a crisis or a military operation. To be sure, his scrupulous regard for chapter and verse, eschewing generalities, makes for responsible, hardheaded criticism, but it may also deprive us of some broader judgments that could be helpful to a better understanding of the men and the war. But Tedder’s technique in this regard is consistent with his overall approach and his intellectual integrity. Moreover, his judgments of people, although deliberately narrow in focus, represent strong essences, for he had strong feelings about them and these feelings sometimes transcend his restrained, underwritten sentences. Thus we have Tedder’s opinions “with prejudice” but without malice.

This perceptive account of great events has the ring of truth about it. Tedder relied little on memory. He was able to reconstruct events, sometimes in detail, from contemporary sources, including his journal, his messages to and from the Air Ministry, and his correspondence with his RAF chief, Portal. Because he also used much of the pertinent literature that had appeared by the time he wrote, he was able to document what he did not know firsthand, and he very carefully did so. We have, therefore, the Tedder of World War II, not some scrubbed and dressed-up version of the man and the events concocted twenty years after.

Oscar Wilde said that “to be understood is to be found out.” Many are the men of World War II who have been found out—often from their own words. Tedder reveals much about himself in his book, and the findings are greatly to his credit. There is none of the self-justification, vainglory, and posturing that mar the works of many of his contemporaries. There is a detached and dispassionate quality that underscores his basic objectivity and sincerity. He is genuinely deserving of sober respect and admiration for a superb job done under exceptionally trying circumstances. There are exceptions to Emerson’s epigram that “every hero becomes a bore at last.” Tedder, who would have been the first to disclaim the hero’s role, is such an exception.

Santa Monica, California

*Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Tedder, With Prejudice (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967, $10.00), 692 pp.

**Harold Macmillan, The Blast of War, p. 221.

Contributor

Dr. Alfred Goldberg (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University) is a staff member of the Social Science Department of the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, California. He was formerly Chief of the Current History Branch of the USAF Historical Division. He has been a lecturer at the University of Maryland and the University of Southern California. He is the editor and coauthor of A History of the U.S. Air Force, 1907-1957 and coauthor of The Army Air Forces in World War II. He has also contributed articles and reviews to International Affairs, American Historical Review, Journal of Modern History, Survival, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, and Encyclopedia Britannica. In 1962-63 he was a Visiting Fellow at Kings College, University of Landon.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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