The Malta Conference

On 30 January 1945 the Combined Chiefs of Staff – the joint strategic command of Britain and the United States – met at Montgomery House in Floriana, a suburb of Valletta. So began the Malta Conference, code-named Cricket, and, as the first stage of the whole journey to the Crimea, Argonaut. It lasted until 2 February. It was the last top-level British–American meeting before the conference at Yalta, where Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt were to discuss the end of the war and the shape of post-war Europe with Joseph Stalin.

The island, which in 1940–1942 had survived a siege and hundreds of air raids, and in April 1942 had been awarded the George Cross by the King, was now a safe Allied rear base, lying roughly halfway from London and Washington to the Black Sea. The opening day of the conference was also the 63rd birthday of Roosevelt, who ten days earlier had been sworn in for his fourth term.

Outline of the meeting

The statement found in some chronicles that the conference “began with a meeting between Churchill and the Combined Chiefs of Staff” needs to be made more precise. Churchill flew to Malta from England during the night of 29–30 January – suffering, according to those around him, from a cold and a temperature – and took up quarters aboard the cruiser HMS Orion, anchored in the Grand Harbour. On the first day, however, he did not sit at the chiefs of staff’s table: at 10 a.m. on 30 January the Americans met on their own at Montgomery House, and the first session of the combined committee began at noon. The Prime Minister met his own chiefs of staff separately, and in the evening entertained the American ambassador in Moscow, Averell Harriman, aboard Orion. The editors of the American diplomatic papers found no record of that conversation.

The combined committee met four times on Malta: on 30 and 31 January and 1 February without the leaders, and on the evening of 2 February with Roosevelt and Churchill. The British side was represented by the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Air Staff, Marshal of the RAF Charles Portal, the First Sea Lord, Admiral Andrew Cunningham, and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, General Hastings Ismay; also present was Field Marshal Henry Maitland Wilson, head of the British military mission in Washington. The Americans were led by the Army Chief of Staff, General George Marshall, and the commander of the fleet, Admiral Ernest King. General Henry Arnold, who was ill, was represented by General Laurence Kuter. The President’s chief of staff, Admiral William Leahy, was sailing with Roosevelt. The commander of Allied forces in Europe, General Dwight Eisenhower, was represented by his chief of staff, General Walter Bedell Smith, and Field Marshal Harold Alexander flew in from Italy.

The politicians arrived in parallel. By 1 February the Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius, had reached Malta, as had the President’s closest adviser, Harry Hopkins, who had earlier held talks with Churchill in London and with Charles de Gaulle in Paris. Stettinius held talks with the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden.

The dispute over Eisenhower’s plan

The most important and most heated subject was strategy on the Western Front. The Allies had only just repulsed the German Ardennes offensive, and on 16 January they had linked up at Houffalize. In a signal designated SCAF 180, Eisenhower set out his plan for the coming months: first to close up to the Rhine along its whole length, then to seize bridgeheads, and finally to strike deep into Germany – with the main thrust north of the Ruhr and a second, subsidiary one from the Frankfurt area. At the first session on 30 January the plan was presented by General Harold Bull of Eisenhower’s headquarters, and Bedell Smith gave assurances that the Supreme Commander intended to throw into the northern thrust every division that could be supported logistically – eventually 36 divisions, with about 12 in the subsidiary attack and 10 in reserve.

The British were not convinced. Brooke said that the northern thrust was “absolutely essential”, whereas the second, though desirable, might dissipate forces and bridging equipment, causing the main attack to bog down. In his view the plan treated the two axes almost as equals. Behind this dispute lay the disagreements, going back to the autumn of 1944, between Eisenhower and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, who demanded a single powerful thrust under his own command. The session ended with the decision deferred. On 31 January Bedell Smith presented a revised version of the plan, and Eisenhower, in signals of that day (among them SCAF 194), gave an assurance that in the north he would cross the Rhine without waiting for the whole west bank of the river to be cleared of Germans.

The key discussions took place behind closed doors, without secretaries or note-takers. They are known mainly from the recollections of participants, who agree in describing a sharp exchange. In a 1957 conversation with his biographer Forrest Pogue, Marshall recalled a very acrimonious meeting on Malta: Brooke, he said, had told him that the British chiefs of staff were worried about the influence of General Omar Bradley on Eisenhower, and he had replied that the Americans were much more worried about the pressure Churchill was putting on Eisenhower. On 1 February the combined committee formally “took note” of the SCAF 180 plan together with the amendments and clarifications of 31 January. In practice this meant that the main attack in the north would be conducted by Montgomery’s 21st Army Group, reinforced by the US Ninth Army, while Eisenhower would retain freedom of action on the other sectors as well.

Italy, Greece, Asia and the U-boats

The second subject was the transfer of forces from the Mediterranean. After long bargaining it was agreed on 31 January that five divisions – two Canadian and three British – would be moved from Italy to France, together with part of the air forces. Alexander objected that it was hard for him to find any spare British units, since all of them were in the line and had long, hard fighting behind them. The matter was linked with Greece: after the Dekemvriana and the Athens truce of 15 January some British divisions were still stationed in that country, and on 2 February Churchill stressed that there could be no question of withdrawing them until the situation on the ground allowed.

On the Far East the chiefs of staff discussed the tasks of Admiral Louis Mountbatten in Burma and the plans for the liberation of Malaya, while the Americans made sure that their transport aircraft were not diverted from supplying China. The committee took note of the American plans in the Pacific – a landing on Kyūshū in September and on the Kantō plain in December 1945 – and of a working date for the end of the war with Japan, set at 18 months after the defeat of Germany. There was also discussion of the threat from the new German submarines, expected to appear at sea in February, of the shortage of shipping and of the German V-weapons.

The ministers on Poland, Germany and the UN

On 1 February Eden and Stettinius conferred aboard the cruiser HMS Sirius in the Grand Harbour, and in the evening they met Churchill. They agreed a common position on several matters that were to come up again in the talks with Stalin. They decided that the protocols on the occupation zones in Germany prepared in the European Advisory Commission should be approved quickly (the question of an American enclave at Bremen and Bremerhaven, among others, remained open), and that France should be offered a zone of its own, carved out of the southern part of the British zone and the northern part of the American one. The Americans argued that their voting formula for the Security Council of the future world organisation, left unresolved at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, was practically indispensable to its creation. Iran, Yugoslavia and Austria were also discussed.

Poland received the most attention. Since the Moscow Conference of October 1944 the situation had worsened: on 31 December the Polish Committee of National Liberation had turned itself into the Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland, recognised by the USSR on 5 January – although Roosevelt had asked Stalin to hold back until the powers met – and on 17 January the Red Army and the Polish 1st Army had entered Warsaw. Eden and Stettinius agreed that the Lublin government could not simply be recognised. Eden recalled the idea put forward by the former prime minister Stanisław Mikołajczyk of setting up a kind of presidential council made up of people from London, from Lublin and from within Poland. Both ministers agreed that a failure over the Polish question would be badly received by American public opinion. On the frontiers, Eden said with concern that the Lublin government wanted to incorporate such extensive areas of Germany into Poland that some eight million people would have to be resettled. The Americans were willing to see Poland receive East Prussia and an eastern strip of Pomerania, among other areas, but stipulated that population transfers should be gradual.

A common front or separate ways

Roosevelt and Churchill had not seen each other since the Second Quebec Conference in September 1944. The British were anxious to agree a common line with the Americans on all important matters before meeting Stalin. For weeks Churchill had been urging Roosevelt to stay longer on Malta. In one of his telegrams he even broke into rhyme: “No more let us falter! From Malta to Yalta! Let nobody alter!” The President, however, preferred not to give the impression that the two Western leaders were forming a bloc against Stalin, and came for only one day – that is how most historians explain his attitude. Eden, as he noted in his diary, was disappointed: the delegations were going to a decisive conference without having agreed either an agenda or how to deal with the Russians. On Malta the common position was thus worked out mainly by the soldiers and ministers rather than by the leaders themselves.

The crash off Lampedusa

The delegations’ journey was not without casualties. On 1 February one of the RAF transport aircraft – an Avro York of No. 511 Squadron, which had taken off from Lyneham in England and was flying to Malta with members of the British delegation – lost its way over the sea. Because of a failure of a radio navigation aid, the crew circled for about an hour over the Italian island of Lampedusa trying to fix their position, and when they set the right course they ran out of fuel. The aircraft crashed into the sea while attempting to ditch. Fifteen people were killed, including 11 passengers – Foreign Office officials (among them Peter Loxley, a close associate of Eden), War Office officers and staff, and a Scotland Yard officer. Sources differ as to whether several crew members were rescued. Some of the victims were buried in the military cemetery at Imtarfa on Malta.

A day with Roosevelt

At 9.35 a.m. on 2 February the American cruiser USS Quincy entered the Grand Harbour, having brought the President from Newport News, Virginia, after a ten-day voyage. Roosevelt was on deck as the ship came into harbour; Churchill watched from the deck of a British warship. Soon Stettinius, Harriman and Hopkins came aboard Quincy, followed later by Marshall, King and Cunningham, and finally by Churchill with his daughter Sarah, and Eden. After lunch together the President drove round the island, visiting Mdina and Valletta among other places, and at 4.30 p.m. he met the American chiefs of staff.

At 6 p.m. the only session of the combined committee attended by both leaders was held in the President’s cabin. The chiefs of staff presented the conclusions of the previous days: full agreement on Eisenhower’s plans, the transfer of divisions from Italy, Asian matters and the submarine war. Churchill stressed that Eisenhower must have enough divisions to relieve tired troops in the main attack. He added that in his view as much of Austria as possible should be occupied, so that the Russians would not occupy more of Western Europe than necessary. On the Yugoslav claims he made the reservation that any provisions concerning Yugoslav territory could refer only to its existing, legally recognised borders, and he did not prejudge the future of Trieste. After dinner, also attended by James Byrnes and Admiral Leahy among others, Roosevelt left at 11 p.m. for the airfield at Luqa.

From Malta to Yalta

Contrary to some abbreviated accounts, the leaders did not fly “to Yalta”. During the night of 2–3 February aircraft carrying several hundred members of the two delegations took off from Luqa one after another at short intervals. They flew some 2,000 kilometres to the airfield at Saki in the western Crimea. Roosevelt made the journey in the new presidential C-54, known as the “Sacred Cow”. After landing on 3 February the leaders still faced several hours by car across the mountains to the southern coast of the Crimea, where the Americans were quartered in the Livadia Palace near Yalta. The talks of the three powers began on 4 February.

The Malta Conference brought no political breakthrough and did not create, as the British had wanted, a common Anglo-American front towards Stalin. On Poland – although the ministers had agreed several points – the Western Allies went to the Crimea without a common plan, while the Red Army, as a result of the Vistula–Oder offensive, already stood on the Oder, a few dozen kilometres from Berlin. In the view of many historians, it was precisely this disproportion between the position at the front and the strength of the arguments at the table that weighed on the decisions taken at Yalta.

The military agreements proved far more important. The dispute over Eisenhower’s plan ended in a compromise that set the shape of the last campaign in the west: in February the 21st Army Group began its attack through the Reichswald and the Ninth Army across the river Roer; in March the Allies crossed the Rhine at several points, and at the turn of March and April they encircled the Ruhr. Units transferred from Italy, among them I Canadian Corps, reinforced the Western Front. Malta was the last meeting of Roosevelt and Churchill with the chiefs of staff before the Yalta Conference – and one of the last at all, for the President died on 12 April 1945.