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Churchill, in spite of honest differences with Ike, always backed him up. During the campaign in France, says Ike, "Prime Minister Churchill and Field Marshal Brooke took occasion to inform me that they also were prepared, at any moment I expressed dissatisfaction with any of my principal British subordinates, to replace him instantly." This unity of command, says Eisenhower, was one of the great achievements of the war.
But Ike's differences with Churchill were continuous and lasted until the end of the war. At first they arose over Churchill's coolness toward the cross-Channel invasion. Eisenhower, in fact, said that Churchill feared the bloodletting of a direct thrust at the Germans. Almost up to D-day itself, and while all plans for it had long since been put in motion, the Prime Minister plumped for an all-out attack against the "soft underbelly" of Europe (Italy, the Balkans, southern France). In this contest Ike proved just as stubborn as Churchill, and won every exchange.
Ike sometimes seems a little stiffly polite, though always an officer and a gentleman, in paying his respects to Churchill. In conferences before the European invasion, Churchill repeatedly said: "General, if by the coming winter you have established yourself ... on the Continent, and have . . . freed beautiful Paris from the hands of the enemy, I will assert the victory to be the greatest of modern times." Long before that winter was over, Ike's armies had done much more: they were poised on the frontiers of Germany.
For Dday, Churchill demanded a spectator's place on one of the supporting naval vessels. Ike, afraid that Churchill might become a casualty, refused to give his permission and the Prime Minister threatened to ship as a crew member. King George personally settled that one by telling Churchill that he would go along himself to lead the landing troops, if the Prime Minister persisted. That ended the argument.
Geniuses & Gadflies. Crusade in Europe should also be close to the final word on the Montgomery and Patton controversies, if not on the Battle of the Bulge. Patiently and logically, in terms of command and the necessities of logistics, Ike knocks down Monty's argument in favor of a single ground commander in Europe (Monty wanted the job) and a single punch against the Ruhr and Berlin (again by Monty) instead of a broad crossing of the Rhine. The same logic and logistics dispose of Patton's claim that, given the men & supplies he needed, he could have rushed Germany off its feet in 1944. Both Montgomery and Patton were dazzled by what seemed their individual opportunities, says Eisenhower.
As Sir James Grigg (British Secretary of State for War, 1942-45) has written, Eisenhower had to put up with "not one but two geniuses—Patton as well as Montgomery . . . [not] an entirely unalloyed blessing." Ike leaves no doubt that he valued them both. He also leaves no doubt that they could, each in his own way, be irritating. Each time Patton made a boner, Blood-and-Guts would come to Ike close to tears, and promise not to do it again. Writes Eisenhower: "His emotional range was very great and he lived at either one end or the other of it."