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During the Second World War, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Chief of the Imperial General Staff General Sir Alan Brooke had a stormy relationship with many angry arguments over the conference table as they wrestled over British military strategy. The stern, humorless, and monk-like Brooke was continually critical of much of Churchill’s military proposals and thwarted many of the schemes that the prime minister brought to the British chiefs of staff. Churchill complained that, “I thump the table and push my face towards him, and what does he do? Thumps the table harder and glares back at me.” Despite his many frustrations with Brooke, Churchill never seriously considered replacing him and retained Brooke as his chief military advisor for the duration of the war.
Andrew Sangster in his new book Alan Brooke, Churchill’s Right-Hand Critic: A Reappraisal of Lord Alanbrooke concludes that Brooke was the best man who Churchill could have chosen for the position of CIGS due to the realism he brought to British military planning. He was often a brake on Churchill’s most “fantastic” ideas. Sangster calls Brooke “a powerhouse of energy” and “the driving force of much of the Allied strategy” as he originated most of the Allied strategic thinking, curbed Churchill’s more impetuous ideas, and argued the Americans into agreement.
As Sangster notes the central evidence in a study of Brooke is the diary he faithfully kept throughout the Second World War. The diary created controversy for its scathing criticism of Churchill and others when a highly edited and often misleading version of the diaries was published in two volumes by Arthur Bryant in 1958 (the entire unedited diary was published as War Diaries 1939-1945: Field Marshal Lord Alan Brooke in 2001). In his diary, especially in the later years of the war, Brooke often poured out his disdain for the prime minister, calling him hopeless, rude, and a spoilt child. Beyond Churchill, a long list of Allied leaders were the subject of Brooke’s scorn in his diary, including, among others, Eisenhower, Mountbatten, Pound, Alexander, de Gaulle, Beaverbrook, John Harding, Eden, Andrew McNaughton, and Macmillan. Even General Maitland “Jumbo” Wilson’s wife Hester came in for criticism as being unsuitable to go to Washington. Sangster writes that while reading the diaries might leave the impression of Brooke as “a bad-tempered moaner,” a more reflective interpretation is that the diaries were Brooke’s way of “letting off steam” after exhausting and frustrating days and demonstrate the great pressure he was operating under as CIGS.