.
Norway 1940 On the outbreak of war, Auchinleck was appointed to command the
Indian 3rd Infantry Division, but in January 1940 was summoned to the United Kingdom to command
IV Corps, the only time in the war that a wholly British corps was commanded by an Indian Army officer. He received promotion to acting
lieutenant general on 1 February 1940 and to the substantive rank of lieutenant general on 16 March 1940. In May 1940 Auchinleck took over command of the Anglo-French ground forces during the
Norwegian campaign, responsible for the defence of
Southern England, where the expected invasion would come from. The recently vacated V Corps was taken over by Lieutenant General
Bernard Montgomery, who disliked Auchinleck intensely, possibly due to his disdain for the Indian Army and its officers. The relationship between the two future field marshals was not easy, with Montgomery later writing: Many of Montgomery's actions in the next few weeks and months could be considered as insubordination, with one incident in particular standing out, when Montgomery went over Auchinleck's head directly to the
Adjutant-General on issues related to officers and men being transferred to and from Montgomery's V Corps. Auchinleck returned to India in January 1941 to assume his new appointment, in which position he was also appointed to the Executive Council of the
Viceroy of India and appointed
ADC General to the King, a ceremonial position he was to hold until after the end of the war. In April he succeeded Lieutenant General Sir
Travers Clarke as colonel of the
Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. In April 1941,
RAF Habbaniya was threatened by the new pro-Axis regime of
Rashid Ali. This large Royal Air Force station was west of Baghdad in
Iraq and General
Archibald Wavell, Commander-in-Chief
Middle East Command, was reluctant to intervene, despite the urgings of
Winston Churchill, because of his pressing commitments in the Western Desert and Greece. Auchinleck, however, acted decisively, sending the 1st Battalion of the
King's Own Royal Regiment (Lancaster) by air to Habbaniya and shipping the
10th Indian Infantry Division by sea to
Basra. Wavell was prevailed upon by London to send
Habforce, a relief column, from the
British Mandate of Palestine but by the time it arrived in Habbaniya on 18 May the
Anglo-Iraqi War was virtually over.
North Africa July 1941 – August 1942 Following the see-saw of Allied and Axis successes and reverses in North Africa, Auchinleck was appointed to succeed General
Sir Archibald Wavell as Commander-in-Chief
Middle East Command in July 1941; Wavell took up Auchinleck's post as Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, swapping jobs with him. As Commander-in-Chief Middle East, Auchinleck, based in
Cairo, held responsibility not just for North Africa but also for
Persia and the Middle East. He launched an offensive in the
Western Desert,
Operation Crusader, in November 1941: despite some tactical reverses during the fighting which resulted in Auchinleck replacing the Eighth Army commander
Alan Cunningham with
Neil Ritchie, by the end of December
the besieged garrison of
Tobruk had been relieved and Rommel obliged to withdraw to El Agheila. Auchinleck appears to have believed that the enemy had been defeated, writing on 12 January 1942 that the Axis forces were "beginning to feel the strain" and were "hard pressed". In fact the Axis forces had managed to withdraw in good order and a few days after Auchinleck's optimistic appreciation, having reorganised and been reinforced, struck at the dispersed and weakened British forces, driving them back to the Gazala positions near
Tobruk. The British Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), General
Sir Alan Brooke, wrote in his diary that it was "nothing less than bad generalship on the part of Auchinleck. He has been overconfident and has believed everything his overoptimistic [DMI] Shearer has told him". Brooke commented that Auchinleck "could have been one of the finest of commanders" but lacked the ability to select the men to serve him. Brooke sent him one of his best armoured division commanders
Richard McCreery, whose advice was ignored in favour of that of Auchinleck's controversial chief of operations, Major-General
Dorman-Smith. and General Sir Claude Auchinleck, Commander-in-Chief Middle East, in the Western Desert.
Rommel's attack at the
Battle of Gazala of 26 May 1942 resulted in a significant defeat for the British. Auchinleck's appreciation of the situation written to Ritchie on 20 May had suggested that the armoured reserves be concentrated in a position suitable to meet both a flanking attack around the south of the front or a direct attack through the centre (which was the likelihood more favoured by Auchinleck). In the event, Ritchie chose a more dispersed and rearward positioning of his two armoured divisions and when the attack in the centre came, it proved to be a diversion and the main attack, by Rommel's armoured formations, came round the southern flank. Poor initial positioning and subsequent handling and coordination of Allied formations by Ritchie and his corps commanders resulted in their heavy defeat and the Eighth Army retreating into
Egypt;
Tobruk fell to the Axis on 21 June 1942. On 24 June Auchinleck stepped in to take direct command of the Eighth Army, having lost confidence in
Neil Ritchie's ability to control and direct his forces. Auchinleck discarded Ritchie's plan to stand at
Mersa Matruh, deciding to fight only a delaying action there, while withdrawing to the more easily defendable position at
El Alamein. Here Auchinleck tailored a defence that took advantage of the terrain and the fresh troops at his disposal, stopping the exhausted German/Italian advance in the
First Battle of El Alamein. Enjoying a considerable superiority of material and men over the weak German/Italian forces, Auchinleck organised a series of counter-attacks. Poorly conceived and badly coordinated, these attacks achieved little. "The Auk", as he was known, appointed a number of senior commanders who proved to be unsuitable for their positions, and command arrangements were often characterised by bitter personality clashes. Auchinleck was an Indian Army officer and was criticised for apparently having little direct experience or understanding of British and Dominion troops. Dorman-Smith was regarded with considerable distrust by many of the senior commanders in Eighth Army. By July 1942 Auchinleck had lost the confidence of Dominion commanders and relations with his British commanders had become strained. Like his foe Rommel (and his predecessor Wavell and successor Montgomery), Auchinleck was subjected to constant political interference, having to weather a barrage of hectoring telegrams and instructions from Prime Minister Churchill throughout late 1941 and the spring and summer of 1942. Churchill constantly sought an offensive from Auchinleck, and was downcast at the military reverses in Egypt and Cyrenaica. Churchill was desperate for some sort of British victory before the planned Allied landings in North Africa,
Operation Torch, scheduled for November 1942. He badgered Auchinleck immediately after the Eighth Army had all but exhausted itself after the first battle of El Alamein. Churchill and the
Chief of the Imperial General Staff,
Sir Alan Brooke, flew to Cairo in early August 1942 to meet Auchinleck, where it emerged he had lost the confidence of both men. He was replaced as Commander-in-Chief
Middle East Command by General
Sir Harold Alexander (later Field Marshal The
Earl Alexander of Tunis). Joseph M. Horodyski and Maurice Remy both praise Auchinleck as an underrated military leader who contributed the most to the successful defence of El Alamein and consequently the final defeat of Rommel in Africa. The two historians also criticize Churchill for the unreasonable decision to put the blame on Auchinleck and to relieve him.
India 1942–1945 in October 1945 from the
King of Nepal, Tribhubana Bir Vikram Sah Churchill offered Auchinleck command of the newly created
Persia and Iraq Command (this having been separated from Alexander's command), but Auchinleck declined this post, as he believed that separating the area from the Middle East Command was not good policy and the new arrangements would not be workable. He set his reasons out in his letter to the
Chief of the Imperial General Staff dated 14 August 1942. Instead he returned to India, where he spent almost a year "unemployed" before in June 1943 being again appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army. General Wavell meanwhile having been appointed
Viceroy, on this appointment it was announced that responsibility for the prosecution of the war with Japan would move from the Commander-in-Chief India to a newly created South East Asia Command. However, the appointment of the new command's Supreme Commander,
Acting Vice Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, was not announced until August 1943 and until Mountbatten could set up his headquarters and assume control (in November), Auchinleck retained responsibility for operations in India and Burma while conducting a review and revision of Allied plans based on the decisions taken by the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff at the
Quadrant Conference, which ended in August. Following Mountbatten's arrival, Auchinleck, as Commander-in-Chief India once more, was responsible for the internal security of India, the defence of the
North West Frontier and the buildup of India as a base, including most importantly the reorganisation of the Indian Army, the training of forces destined for SEAC and the lines of communication carrying men and material to the forward areas and to China. Auchinleck made the supply of Fourteenth Army, with probably the worst lines of communication of the war, his immediate priority; as
Sir William Slim, commander of the
Fourteenth Army, was later to write:
Divorce Auchinleck suffered a personal disappointment when his wife Jessie left him for his friend,
Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Peirse. Peirse and Auchinleck had been students together at the Imperial Defence College, but that was long before. Peirse was now Allied Air Commander-in-Chief, South-East Asia, and also based in India. The affair became known to Mountbatten in early 1944, and he passed the information to the chief of the RAF,
Sir Charles Portal, hoping that Peirse would be recalled. The affair was common knowledge by September 1944, and Peirse was neglecting his duties. Mountbatten sent Peirse and Lady Auchinleck back to England on 28 November 1944, where they lived together at a Brighton hotel. Peirse had his marriage dissolved, and Auchinleck obtained a divorce in 1946. Auchinleck was reportedly very badly affected. According to his sister, he was never the same after the break-up. He always carried a photograph of Jessie in his wallet even after the divorce. ==Partition of India and later years==