Five Days in London, May 1940 Read online

  It was Tuesday, May 28, and I did not attend the House until that day week. There was no advantage to be gained by a further statement in the interval, nor did Members express a wish for one. But everyone realized that the fate of our Army and perhaps much else might well be decided by then. “The House,” I said, “should prepare itself for hard and heavy tidings. I have only to add that nothing which may happen in this battle can in any way relieve us of our duty to defend the world cause to which we have vowed ourselves; nor should it destroy our confidence in our power to make our way, as on former occasions in our history, through disaster and through grief to the ultimate defeat of our enemies.” I had not seen many of my colleagues outside the War Cabinet, except individually, since the formation of the Government, and I thought it right to have a meeting in my room at the House of Commons of all the Ministers of Cabinet rank other than the War Cabinet Members. We were perhaps twenty-five round the table. I described the course of events, and I showed them plainly where we were, and all that was in the balance. Then I said quite casually, and not treating it as a point of special significance: “Of course, whatever happens at Dunkirk, we shall fight on.”

  There occurred a demonstration which, considering the character of the gathering—twenty-five experienced politicians and Parliament men, who represented all the different points of view, whether right or wrong, before the war—-surprised me. Quite a number seemed to jump up from the table and came running to my chair, shouting and patting me on the back. There is no doubt that had I at this juncture faltered at all in leading the nation, I should have been hurled out of office. I was sure that every Minister was ready to be killed quite soon, and have all his family and possessions destroyed, rather than give in. In this they represented the House of Commons and almost all the people. It fell to me in these coming days and months to express their sentiments on suitable occasions. This I was able to do, because they were mine also. There was a white glow, overpowering, sublime, which ran through our island from end to end.1

  This is an inspiring passage—Churchillian, imaginative, descriptive, telling. It is not devoid of truthfulness. There is in it, too, a glimmer of what was perhaps Churchill’s finest virtue, his magnanimity: when he suggests that his indomitable resolution to die, if he must, was only a representation of the resolution of others.2 But what is missing is significant. Here, and indeed in all those long chapters of Their Finest Hour, Churchill wrote nothing about the preceding four days, when he had had to struggle to get his way in the War Cabinet. It had been his plan to summon this somewhat extraordinary meeting of the Outer Cabinet, where, as he knew, his supporters were potentially vocal and actually numerous. Moreover, what he said then was not said “quite casually, and not treating it as a point of special significance.”

  There is a fuller description of this meeting in Hugh Dalton’s memoirs and his diary. Their substantial tone does not differ much from Churchill’s. Dalton was an admirer of Churchill. (“He is quite magnificent. The man, the only man we have, for this hour.”) But some of Dalton’s details are worth considering. “He was determined,” Dalton said of Churchill, “to prepare public opinion for bad tidings, and it would of course be said, and with some truth, that what was now happening in Northern France would be the greatest British military defeat for many centuries.” Churchill said, Dalton recalls,

  “I have thought carefully in these last days whether it was part of my duty to consider entering negotiations with That Man.”3

  It was idle to think that, if we tried to make peace now, we should get better terms from Germany than if we went on and fought it out. The Germans would demand our fleet — that would be called “disarmament”—our naval bases, and much else. We should become a slave state, though a British government which would be Hitler’s puppet would be set up — “under Mosley or some such person.” And where should we be at the end of all that? On the other side, we had immense reserves and advantages. Therefore, he said, “We shall go on and we shall fight it out, here or elsewhere, and if at last the long story is to end, it were better it should end, not through surrender, but only when we are rolling senseless on the ground.”4 There was a murmur of approval round the table, in which I think Amery, Lord Lloyd and I [Dalton] were loudest. Not much more was said. No one expressed even the faintest flicker of dissent. … It is quite clear that whereas the Old Umbrella5—neither he nor other members of the War Cabinet were at this meeting—wanted to run very early, Winston’s bias is all the other way.

  Eighteen days before this, on 10 May, Churchill had become prime minister. Late that afternoon, he was driven back from Buckingham Palace to Admiralty House, where he then lived. Behind the driver he sat with Inspector W. H. Thompson, his bodyguard. Churchill was silent. Then Thompson thought it proper to congratulate Churchill. “I only wish the position had come your way in better times for you have an enormous task.” Tears came into Churchill’s eyes. He said to Thompson: “God alone knows how great it is. I hope it is not too late. I am very much afraid it is. We can only do our best.”6 During the next fourteen days came disaster upon disaster. I am compelled to sum them up at the beginning, after which to the five days in London I shall turn.

  “I hope it is not too late. I am very much afraid it is.” Note that Churchill said this at the moment of his personal triumph, and before the battle in Western Europe began to unfold. But then he had never underestimated Hitler. What even he did not know was that the next fortnight would see Hitler’s greatest triumphs: unimaginable, irresistible, perhaps final.

  Nearly sixty years after these events, at the end of the twentieth century, the widespread perception is this: Hitler was a fanatic, a dictator, who started a war and turned most of the world against him, a war in which he was bound to fail. There is some truth in this view but not enough. Its shortcoming may be summed up in six words: he was not bound to fail. He represented an enormous tide in the affairs of the world in the twentieth century. The force of this tide consisted of the energy, the discipline, the confidence and the obedience, and the vitality of the German people whom he succeeded in uniting beyond the accomplishments of any other leader in their history. He could rely on a national army whose achievements turned out to be awesome, the wonder of the world. Moreover—beyond Germany, and in the minds of many people — Hitler’s rule, his regime and his ideas, represented a new primary force, beside the corroding alternatives of liberal democracy and “International” Communism. For ten years the tide rose, pounding and pouring over obstacles that disappeared beneath its foaming might. In May 1940 it not only seemed irresistible: in many places and in many ways it was.

  Hitler became chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933. The significance, let alone the importance, of this event went largely unrecognized. Evidence for this exists in the reporting and the commentaries of virtually every leading newspaper of the world.7 His personal abilities were underestimated, indeed on occasion ridiculed. The German conservative political elite, who helped to arrange his nomination to the chancellorship, thought that they would be able to manage him. The opposite happened. He made them his servitors. More important: soon he became the most popular leader in the history of the Germans, perhaps the most schooled people in the world. The bitterness and the humiliation that had affected most Germans after their loss of the First World War ebbed away; what succeeded it was a rising wave of national self-confidence. To an astonishing degree Hitler won the trust of the great majority of the German people.

  For a while his abilities as a statesman went on being unrecognized. That would change, too, and soon. In three years his Third German Reich replaced France as the leading power in Europe, despite France’s multiple alliances, while Hitler did not yet have a single contractual ally. Treaty after treaty restricting Germany militarily, politically, economically, diplomatically, he flung aside. His prestige—and not only among his own people — did not diminish; it rose. Soon the leaders of many European states were seeking his goodwill — or at least they we
re seeking to avoid any impression that they might be his opponents. Mussolini thought it proper to align himself with this German leader who seemed to be representative of the wave of the future. Less simple were the inclinations of the British governments, of the British Conservative Party, and of many British people. They were inclined to give this new Germany at least the benefit of the doubt. Their policy of appeasing Germany had many motives. We shall have to disentangle some of them later. These inclinations were already apparent during the prime ministership of Stanley Baldwin, but their prototypical representative and proponent was Neville Chamberlain, who became prime minister in 1937. With regard to appeasement his most vocal and determined opponent was Winston Churchill, whose public and political reputation in 1937 stood at what was probably the lowest point in his long career.

  It was at that very time that Adolf Hitler chose to plan the imposition of his power beyond the frontiers of Germany, transforming the map of Europe. There were still people who thought he had no talent for statesmanship. Soon they would be dumbfounded or at least numbed. In November 1937 Hitler told his generals that they might as well prepare for war, even though the contingency was not yet immediate, since England, and France dependent on England, had probably written off Austria and Czechoslovakia. This estimate was accurate. A fortnight later it was strengthened when Chambcrlain (unaware, of course, of what Hitler was planning) chose his confidant Lord Halifax to travel to Germany on a goodwill visit, very much including a meeting with Hitler. Halifax was, as was his wont, cautious (in this case, cautious rather than circumspect), but he did suggest to Hitler that the British government would not oppose Germany as long as Germany would achieve its ambitions without war. In February 1938 Anthony Eden resigned as Chamberlain’s foreign secretary; his place was taken by Halifax. Churchill recorded in his War Memoirs that he instandy recognized the portent of this change: he, a champion sleeper, now spent a largely sleepless night.8

  1938 was Hitler’s year. In March he occupied and annexed Austria without firing a single shot, indeed accompanied by the enthusiasm of the mass of the Austrian people. Immediately he turned on Czechoslovakia, which he succeeded in breaking up, adding a large portion of it, with millions of German-speaking people, to his Greater German Reich and reducing the rest to a near-satellite status. This despite the fact that, unlike Austria, Czechoslovakia had military alliances: with Soviet Russia and, more important, with France, behind which Britain seemed to stand. Seemed to stand: for that was the crux of the matter. France would not go to war except together with Britain, and Britain was not willing to do so. The main reason for this was British unpreparedness — militarily, to be sure; but beyond and beneath such practical calculations there was the unpreparedness of the people, of British opinion, and of the leaders of the Dominions for another European war for the sake of Czechoslovakia. Even that was not all. There was the reasoning of Chamberlain, not merely to delay but to avoid a confrontation with Hitler, to whom he was inclined to give the benefit of the doubt, even in extreme situations. Hence the last-minute conference at Munich when Czechoslovakia was surrendered and when Chamberlain was not only relieved but, at least temporarily, encouraged by the prospect of an Anglo-German understanding which could mean Peace In Our Time. Churchill attacked Chamberlain, but to no avail. In a great speech in the House of Commons, Churchill declared that this was all wrong, that “we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat.” His speech was telling and prophetic, but only in retrospect. Except among a small and anxious minority, Churchill’s reputation and his influence were still at a low ebb; he was nearly censured by his own constituency. To this we may add that in one important respect Churchill was wrong. It would have been disastrous for the Western democracies to go to war in October 1938.9 He may have been right, morally speaking; practically, he was wrong.

  Hitler, at the same time, appeared as the greatest leader and statesman that the German people had had in one thousand years — as well as the most powerful national leader in Europe, perhaps even in the world. But he was not made in the classic stamp of a statesman. He was relentless, pressed by a deep sense that time was working against him. He was not content to digest his conquests and to solidify his triumphs. In March 1939 he made a grave mistake. He marched into Prague, incorporating the broken remnant of Czechoslovakia into his Greater German Empire. Thereby he broke his word of six months before (“my last territorial demand,” and so on) as well as the asseveration of his main purpose, that of the uniting in one Reich all German peoples, to the exclusion of non-German ones, along the principle of national self-determination (a principle that, alas, had been proclaimed and espoused by Woodrow Wilson). The result was a belated, but instant, revolution of British opinion. Chamberlain’s first inclination was to accept the inevitable, that is, Hitler’s occupation of Czechoslovakia, the end result of a process that, after all, had been foreordained in Munich. But the pressure of public opinion and the press was now too much. Even Chamberlain’s foreign secretary, Halifax, was no longer in favor of appeasing Hitler. Halifax’s influence contributed considerably to Chamberlain’s speech at Birmingham, three days after Hitler’s arrival in Prague. It was in effect a declaration of the British government: “thus far and no further” One week after Prague Hitler took another sliver of former German territory from Lithuania, and the German propaganda apparatus started a campaign against Poland. Now the British government advanced a guarantee to Poland, with the aim of deterring Hitler. It did not work; but, in any event, even Chamberlain was now compelled to envision the prospect of a war. And now Churchill’s reputation started to rise. He did not have the habit of saying “I told you so,” but about Hitler he seemed to have been proved right. During the summer of 1939 Chamberlain was still inclined to find some kind of an accommodation with Hitler. But the constraints and conditions were too strenuous for that. On the day that Hitler invaded Poland, Chamberlain invited Churchill into his cabinet, as the first lord of the Admiralty. Until the last moment Chamberlain was reluctant to declare war on Germany. But by 3 September he had no choice.

  Hitler hoped that this would not happen. In this he was wrong. But he was not wrong in knowing that Chamberlain and the British went to war reluctantly—indeed, that apart from their declarations of war, the British and the French would do little or nothing, except perhaps on the seas. The still-accepted idea that while the German armies were fighting in Poland an Allied ground offensive across the so-called Siegfried Line would not only have been possible but decisive is groundless: it was not possible because it was not planned, and it was not planned because it was not possible. The result was eight months of what American journalists dubbed the Phoney War (Reluctant War may have been a better term). During it Churchill’s popularity grew, to the extent that many people were inclined to overlook his mistakes. All this came to a head when Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway in early April 1940 — perhaps his most daring move of the entire war. The British response was miserable. The navy missed the Germans; it was unable to prevent German landings along the long coast of Norway; where British troops were landed, here and there, they soon retreated rather abjectly; they were outmarched and outfought by the Germans nearly everywhere. Churchill was responsible for much of this. It was his attempt to establish a British presence along the Norwegian coast that made Hitler decide to invade that country; and Churchill’s directives to the British fleet were often wrongheaded.

  Still, the defeat in Norway brought down the Chamberlain government. There arose in the House of Commons a heated and confused debate propelled by the rising sentiment that Chamberlain was not the right person to lead Britain through the war. There was a significant vote when dozens of his own Conservative Party members deserted him. Churchill stood by him, unreservedly loyal, though knowing that his own hour might have come. On 9 May Chamberlain concluded that he had to resign. There must be a National Government, including ministers from the Labour Party. His preferred successor was Halifax. Most of the Conservatives preferred H
alifax. The king preferred Halifax. There was still plenty of distrust, (even though momentarily latent) of Churchill. But Halifax demurred. There perhaps were three reasons for this. He was a member of the House of Lords, which presented a constitutional problem, though one that could have been fixed. He may or may not have been acceptable to Labour, though that too was not certain. What decided the matter for him was his own judgment that within a Halifax cabinet Churchill the warrior would be unmanageable. Late in the afternoon of 10 May Churchill went to Buckingham Palace, and returned as prime minister.

  Eight years later he wrote that he was “conscious of a profound sense of relief” : “At last I had the authority to give directions over the whole scene.”10 But: had he not said to Inspector Thompson, “I hope it is not too late”? Behind the horseman sat black care.

  With every reason. There was a fateful coincidence on that historic day. “Coincidences are spiritual puns” (Chesterton). On 10 May 1940 the pun was more than spiritual. Early that morning the German invasion of Western Europe began. Hitler, who had not only planned it but chosen its main design — again he would be underestimated, this time as a strategist and military leader — was at his headquarters, near the German-Belgian border, watching the campaign develop. This thunderclap on 10 May had nothing to do with Churchill’s ascent to the prime ministership; that had been virtually decided the day before. Nor do we have any evidence that, when the news of Churchill’s appointment reached Hitler at the end of the day, he was affected by it. He had a contempt for Churchill because of Churchill’s insistent opposition to him and because of what he knew about Churchill’s character and personal habits; he underestimated Churchill — wrongly, as things turned out, though that would not be apparent until many months later. He thought that Churchill would not last long, that Churchill’s belligerent manner and his warlike instincts were not shared by most people of the British establishment.