Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941 Read online

  The sense that Churchill, despite his manifold talents, was not to be trusted in political judgement ran through much of the Conservative Party. More than a few would have agreed with the private verdict of Stanley Baldwin, then Prime Minister: ‘When Winston was born lots of fairies swooped down on his cradle gifts–imagination, eloquence, industry, ability, and then came a fairy who said "No person has a right to so many gifts’’, picked him up and gave him such a shake and twist that with all these gifts he was denied judgement and wisdom.’26 Churchill’s supposed untrustworthiness long swayed views within his own party. As late as July 1939, four-fifths of Conservative backbench Members of Parliament did not want Churchill in the Cabinet.27

  Churchill had indeed been of independent mind. He had freely used his many contacts, his rhetorical and journalistic skills, and his parliamentary standing to denounce, regularly and with increasing effect, British defence and rearmament policy. His warnings about the re-emerging danger from Germany had proved prophetic. His implacable enmity towards Nazism, consistent since Hitler’s takeover of power, had made him a strong opponent of appeasement, one of the few in his party. His condemnation of the ignoble and humiliating Munich Agreement had contrasted strongly with Chamberlain’s hapless concession to Hitler’s demands. As Hitler’s destruction of what remained of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 finally opened British eyes to the fact that he was not seeking to incorporate ethnic Germans into a Greater German Reich, but was set upon imperial conquest, with war in Europe a certainty, Churchill had again vainly advocated, as he had done during the growing crisis the previous year, a ‘grand alliance’ uniting Britain with the Soviet Union as well as France as the last chance to head off a new great conflagration.28 When, despite all the appeasers had tried, war nonetheless came, Churchill had been proved right. His return to the Cabinet, to his old office as First Lord of the Admiralty, on 3 September 1939, the day of the British declaration of war on Germany, was, therefore, welcomed in many quarters, even among his own former political opponents. Churchill was back in the inner circles of political power. It seemed to offer some reassurance.

  It would be well, however, not to exaggerate Churchill’s power-base at this time. Chamberlain remained firmly in control and was still hugely popular within his own party during what he called the ‘twilight war’. During these months, Britain’s war aims, beyond getting rid of Hitler, were left undefined. There were exaggerated hopes that internal economic crisis or a power-struggle would bring Hitler down. The way would then be open, it was optimistically imagined, for a restoration of borders and an end to the conflict. Chamberlain was, even so, more realistic than many in reckoning with a long war: three years or so, he thought. He doubted that there would be outright victory. But he did not think Hitler could win in the long run, and hoped he would be toppled from within when the German people came to full realization of this. There were those who wanted to end the conflict before it began in earnest by negotiating with the Hitler government. In autumn 1939 Chamberlain received thousands of letters from individuals wishing to stop the war through a negotiated peace.29 Though there was no ‘peace party’ as such, disparate individuals–mostly Conservative, and a number of peers of the realm with good contacts to persons in high places–voiced hopes of a negotiated settlement.30 But the government showed no readiness to go down this route; the ‘peace offer’ made by Hitler on 6 October 1939, following his triumph in Poland, was turned down without hesitation.31

  So the ‘sinister trance’ (as the restless Churchill later called it) of the shadowy war continued over the dark winter months.32 The strange optimism of the British government that Hitler would in the end fall from power or be defeated–at any rate would not ultimately prevail–continued. But there was also an underlying unease, a sense that the eerie calm would be followed by a great storm. Hitler’s next move, it was felt, could not be long in coming. When it did, in April 1940, it was to pre-empt British plans, which Churchill had repeatedly pressed, to mine Scandinavian waters. On 4 April Chamberlain had tempted fate by announcing that in not invading France and Britain by this time Hitler had ‘missed the bus’.33 The foolish boast immediately backfired. Five days later the Germans invaded Denmark and Norway. The disastrous British campaign in Norway followed. The main responsibility lay with Churchill, but it was Chamberlain who paid the political price. The knives were now sharpened for the Prime Minister who had tried to appease Hitler. Churchill, whose warnings from the wilderness now appeared so prophetic, had gained in stature. By early May much of Chamberlain’s own party had lost confidence in him as the leader Britain needed in war. The opposition parties were adamant that they would not work with him in a war cabinet. On 10 May, after faring badly in a vote of confidence in the House of Commons, he resigned.

  The two contenders to succeed him were Churchill and Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary and, since 1937, the leading figure in the Cabinet after the Prime Minister himself. Chamberlain favoured Halifax. So privately (since they had no constitutional opinion in the matter) did King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. Parliament, too, would apparently have backed a Halifax premiership. To move from the House of Lords to the Commons, which would probably have been necessary, was awkward, though it would not have posed an insuperable problem. But Halifax declined. There has been speculation about his reasons.34 Most likely, the depth of animosity shown towards Chamberlain at the point of his resignation encouraged the recognition in Halifax that he, too, was not temperamentally equipped to be a war leader. Thus the path was clear for the more pugnacious, more dynamic, more determined and more strong-willed–though more unpredictable–Churchill. What the future would have held had Halifax accepted the premiership that was his for the taking is impossible to say. But without doubt his decision to stand back at this point was of enormous importance for the British prosecution of the war. By the evening of 10 May, Winston Churchill was Prime Minister. In his perhaps overdramatized reflections some years later, Churchill described his emotions: ‘At last I had the authority to give directions over the whole scene. I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.’35

  The magnitude of the trial would rapidly become clear as, within a fortnight, the fate of France hung in the balance while almost the entire British Expeditionary Force was in the deepest peril, on the verge of captivity or destruction. With his premiership scarcely begun, Churchill was faced with the most serious threat to his country in the whole of her long history. The impending danger now forced upon the War Cabinet one of the most momentous decisions the British government had ever taken: whether to open up channels leading to a negotiated peace with Hitler, or whether to fight on. There was no shortage of opinion, some of it in influential quarters, which looked, reluctantly, to a negotiated settlement based upon honourable peace terms as the only sensible course of action for Britain in such a grave situation.36 The outcome of the War Cabinet’s deliberations was far from obvious in the days that the bulk of the British army was stranded on the Dunkirk beaches.

  III

  It is not easy to imagine, in the light of later events, how insecure Churchill’s position was in the middle of May 1940. His hold on authority, soon to become unchallengeable, was still tenuous. No raptures on the Conservative benches greeted his first appearance in the House of Commons as Prime Minister on 13 May. The cheers that day, apart from those from the opposition side, were for Chamberlain, not Churchill.37 The latter’s speech that day, later seen as epitomizing Churchillian rhetoric, promising ‘blood, toil, sweat and tears’, met with a cool reception among Conservatives. The distrust remained. Some thought it would be a short-lived premiership.38 Many Conservatives would have been happy to see Chamberlain back in office. Churchill himself recognized that, with only the conditional backing of his party, he could not afford to alienate his predecessor, still the Conservative Party leader.39

  Churchill brought a number of leading Labour figures into g
overnment, though, with some reshuffling of offices, most of the old faces remained. The War Cabinet was a more radical departure. It was reduced in size to only five members. Three were Conservatives. Churchill himself also took on responsibility for the Ministry of Defence. Neville Chamberlain was given the title of Lord President of the Council, effectively overseeing domestic policy. And Lord Halifax was still retained as Foreign Secretary. They were joined by two Labour representatives. Clement Attlee, leader of the party since 1935, in his late fifties, a small, dapper, undemonstrative man, unusual among socialists as a former officer in the war, was appointed Lord Privy Seal. His deputy, Arthur Greenwood, aged 60, an affable York-shireman with, like Churchill, something of a fondness for alcohol, whose brief experience in government just before the Depression had shown him to be a competent though undistinguished Minister of Health, became Minister without Portfolio. Churchill was soon to dominate the War Cabinet, his position greatly strengthened through his control of defence. But there was no such dominance in May 1940, as the crisis worsened. Churchill could not override or impose his will on the other members of the War Cabinet. He recognized his dependence, in particular, on Chamberlain and Halifax. As Chamberlain had written privately of his successor the day after he took office: ‘I know that he relies on Halifax and me and as he put it in a letter "My path depends largely on you.”’40

  The magnitude of the crisis facing Churchill’s War Cabinet became more evident with every day that passed. The speed of the German advance was breathtaking. Every report indicated that a calamity of major proportions was unfolding. There was increasing concern for the fate of France. With that went the worry, often unspoken, that Britain might be unable to carry on the war if her ally were to fall. Though he later steadied, Chamberlain expressed precisely such an anxiety on the very day that the German offensive began.41 A few days later, Sir Samuel Hoare, a member of Chamberlain’s War Cabinet but now on the point of departure to take office as British ambassador in Madrid, remarked that the former Prime Minister was ‘completely knocked out. Everything finished. The USA no good. "We could never get our army out, or if we did, it would be without any equipment.”’42 The gloom did not stop with Chamberlain. Observers spoke of ‘a mood of panic’43 and ‘defeatism’ among London’s upper classes,44 while General Sir Edmund Ironside, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, feared the onslaught would mean ‘the end of the British Empire’.45 Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, Commander-in-Chief of Fighter Command, expressed the view on 16 May that if an adequate fighter force were kept within the country, and the navy remained in existence, Britain could continue the struggle. But if fighter squadrons were sent across the Channel, as the French wanted, then defeat for France would also mean the final defeat of Britain.46 Churchill, initially reluctant to accept the message relayed to him on 15 May by the French Prime Minister, Paul Reynaud, that ‘we are beaten’, was left in no doubt of the scale of the disaster and of the desperation felt in Paris after he had flown there next day to meet French leaders.47 The British Prime Minister gave a bravura performance, impressing upon his hosts the intention of Britain to fight on until the United States came to her aid and Germany was defeated.48 At the same time, however, through a fog of cigar smoke and deep into the night, he conjured up ‘an apocalyptic vision of the war’, seeing himself ‘in the heart of Canada, directing, over an England razed to the ground by high explosive bombs and over France whose ruins were already cold, the air war of the New World against the Old dominated by Germany’.49 ‘French evidently cracking, and situation awful’, noted Sir Alex Cadogan, head of the Foreign Office, on hearing of Churchill’s account of his visit. By 21 May Cadogan was confiding to his diary: ‘A miracle may save us: otherwise we’re done.’50

  Those who did not share the insights into high politics and have access to the depressing reports of military leaders–the mass of the ordinary people–were in no position to grasp the full gravity of the situation.51 There was general calm, at least on the surface. Many heads were simply buried in the sand. Chamberlain recounted his own impressions of the public mood in a letter to his sister Hilda on 17 May: ‘The public don’t in the least realise the gravity of the situation. Walking round the lake [in St James’s Park] today it was heartbreaking to see the people enjoying the sunshine as they lolled in their chairs or watched the little ducklings darting about in the water. We shall try and bring them a little nearer to a sense of reality, though I daresay events will do more towards that end than anything we can think of.’52 Chamberlain’s surmise was accurate. Bland reportage on the BBC or in newspapers could not disguise the threat posed by the German advance, or the weakness of the Allied forces to halt it. There was mounting and most justifiable anxiety about events across the Channel. Stiff upper lips did not altogether conceal the worry just below the superficial calm.53

  Churchill’s faith in the ability of the French to hold out had been badly shaken by his visit to Paris on 16 May. A second visit, on 22 May, left him momentarily more optimistic at the prospects of a counter-offensive which he had urged upon the French.54 But alternative plans had to be made for the possibility, perhaps likelihood, of failure. In such an event Churchill, as he explained to the King on the morning of 23 May, would have only one course of action: to order the British Expeditionary Force to return home. All its arms would have to be left behind. Immense loss of life was to be expected.55 By nightfall on 23 May, a quarter of a million British troops were caught in the tightening German vice. Calais was unlikely to hold out for long, and meanwhile the forward spear of German tanks was heading closer to Dunkirk, the last accessible port in Allied hands.

  When Hitler visited the headquarters of his western commander, Colonel-General Gerd von Rundstedt, on the morning of 24 May, the panzers of the German spearhead were no more than fifteen miles to the south of Dunkirk. After reviewing the military situation with Rundstedt, Hitler gave the order that the advance should be halted at that point and not proceed towards Dunkirk itself. The decision soon came to be regarded as a crucially missed chance to finish off the defeated forces of the British army. Attempting to justify an evident major military error, Hitler later suggested that he had not wanted to destroy the British army, the backbone of the Empire.56 This was no more than a face-saving rationalization. In fact, he was merely following the military advice of his field commander, Rundstedt, who had wanted to preserve his motorized units for the final push to the south to conclude the campaign. Far from wanting to preserve the British army, Hitler was led to believe by Göring, Commander-in-Chief of the German air force, that the Luftwaffe would finish it off.57

  Back in London, the War Cabinet was preoccupied with the fate of British troops in Calais, now under siege; and with the likely capitulation in the near future of the Belgians. Boulogne had by then already fallen, and the last remaining British troops there, about a thousand in all, had been taken off by sea. Churchill was adamant, however, that the troops encircled at Calais should continue to fight, to hold up the Germans as long as possible. Any gain in time would be valuable, either for the proposed counter-offensive (which, though Churchill did not know it at this point, was ‘never more than a paper scheme’,58 already given up by French military leaders prepared, even at this stage, to consider capitulation59), or for evacuation of as much as possible of the British Expeditionary Force. As yet, on 24 May, no British troops had been sent to Dunkirk, where the port was still functioning, though there was a sizeable garrison there of French troops.60

  The counter-offensive never started. It had simply not been a feasible proposition. Instead, there was a withdrawal of British troops, followed by misunderstandings and recriminations between Paris and London about blame for the fiasco. Once the offensive was finally abandoned on the evening of the 25th, and with Belgian capitulation imminent, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force, General Lord Gort, decided (on his own initiative, later approved in London) to withdraw to the coast, form a bridgehead around Dunkirk and seek to evacuate as
many troops as possible. Dunkirk was a name little known to the British public at this stage. Very soon it would be upon everyone’s lips.

  For the War Cabinet, the increasingly probable fall of France, and with it the likelihood of the loss of the vast majority of British troops within the German encirclement, had to be reckoned with. General Ironside, admittedly given to pessimism, wrote gloomily on 23 May: ‘I cannot see that we have much hope of getting any of the B[ritish] E[xpeditionary] F[orce] out.’61 Two days later he still thought it would be possible to evacuate only ‘a minute proportion’ of the army. And all the equipment, in such short supply, would have to be abandoned.62 The British commander, General Lord Gort, agreed that ‘a great part of the B.E.F. and its equipment will inevitably be lost even in best circumstances’.63 On 26 May, the day that the evacuation from Dunkirk, ‘Operation Dynamo’, was ordered, there was talk of rescuing no more than about 45,000 men.64 The loss of almost the entire British Expeditionary Force would have been a fearful blow.65 There was no army to speak of at home ready to replace them. There would have been little to fend off a German invasion which, British intelligence was indicating, could be imminent.66 In such bleak circumstances, it was scarcely surprising that some thoughts were turning to the options facing Britain if the worst were to happen.