The British Are the Pay-Off

TOP SECRET (373 pp.)--Ralph Ingersoll --Harcourt, Brace ($3).

Field Marshal Montgomery, says Ralph Ingersoll (The Battle Is the Pay-Off), was not only "a very bad general" but also a "boor." Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower was not only a "political general" but succumbed to British pressure and "lost his nerve." Just before Franklin

Roosevelt died there was "very bad blood" between the President and Winston Churchill, because Roosevelt had refused to let British troops beat the Russians into Berlin. For this Churchill "never forgave" him.

These are some of the "secrets" in Top Secret: earnest, shrill World War II history as interpreted by the editor of Manhattan's earnest, shrill daily tabloid PM. The subject is the Anglo-American invasion of Europe and the Battle of Germany. Editor Ingersoll, as a General Staff Corps officer, had a share in making and carrying out some of the plans involved. Top Secret was written after he was released from the Army (as a lieutenant colonel) in August 1945.

The publishers note that the author has "no political or military ax to grind." The statement suggests a very special kind of innocence on somebody's part. There is some straight history in the book, some of it of first interest. But not since the days of Quincy Howe's England Expects Every American To Do His Duty has anyone tried to tie a fancier assortment of knots in the British lion's tail. Stalin and Molotov could hardly have made a balder plea for the U.S. to ditch the British.

Be Charmed, or Get Out. Boiling mad, sarcastic, bitter, Editor Ingersoll warns that the British will try to "manipulate" us into World War III, if it comes and if they can. Although World War II was definitely our business, and the U.S. "did a great and truly glorious thing" in helping to fight it to the end, World War III would be "someone else's war" (an Anglo-Russian war he suggests), and none of our business. Only a few pages in Top Secret lack an argumentative tone--notably a graphic chapter of Ingersoll's own D-day experiences on Utah Beach and beyond. The rest is largely impressions of and reactions to British motives and bad manners, pointed up with notes on high headquarters life and praise for General Omar N. Bradley.

In Anglo-American councils, Ingersoll believes, the British played a particular game. First they tried to "win over each new American officer" by "being charming." If this did not work, they would "manufacture" evidence in order to have the officer removed. When plans for Operation Overlord (the cross-Channel invasion) were drafted in 1943, the British, who had helped to draw them up, tried to stall--for "the British always mix political with military motives." When Operation Overlord was finally forced down their throats, Eisenhower was given the big job, but "of course [he] had nothing whatever to do with leading the invasion." The British had seen to it that they were in actual charge on land, in the air, on the sea. The "Great Montgomery" arrived to take command of the ground forces, "did not even bother to call up American headquarters."

Once D-day had come and the Allies had their foothold in France, Montgomery decided, for reasons of "British credit and prestige," to smash the Germans at Caen without "the efforts of any Americans." He failed. "It was a defeat from which British arms on the Continent never recovered," writes Ingersoll. It was not even "a successful sacrifice play." When Bradley went ahead on his great sweep down through Saint Lo and east and north beyond Paris, the British "simply moved along the coast of France" from Caen to the Belgian border. Had Bradley been given ample fuel supplies, Ingersoll is sure, the European war would have been over in 1944. But Eisenhower, "sympathetic" to the British, listened to Montgomery, who also wanted extra fuel supplies, and the war dragged on through another winter. "History had called for a Supreme Allied Commander . . . making at least horse sense. Such a commander would have believed in his victorious armies."

Perfidious, but like Us. Now & then Editor Ingersoll relents a bit, acknowledges that Eisenhower did a fairly good job as a conciliator, all but cries out that some of his best friends are British. The joint management of World War II, says he, was on the whole "spectacularly efficient . . . the most effective example of management of allied armed forces in the history of warfare." The British, moreover, are at bottom not so bad, and much "like us." The catch is that they always act in what seems to be their national interest, irritating practice to the U.S., which also wants to act that way. "The British did not succeed in imposing their will on us, and the war was won more or less on our own terms." Even so, Editor Ingersoll is in no mood to forget the past or be appeased. Top Secret's top secret: Albion is perfidious.

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