The Second World War

by Antony Beevor

  In London on 14 May, even the War Cabinet had little idea of the situation west of the Meuse. Purely by coincidence Anthony Eden, the secretary of state for war, announced that day the creation of the Local Defence Volunteer Corps (soon renamed the Home Guard). Some 250,000 men put down their names in under a week. Yet Churchill’s government started to appreciate the scale of the crisis only when Reynaud sent a signal from Paris late on that afternoon of the 14th. He requested ten more fighter squadrons from Britain to protect his troops from Stuka attacks. He admitted that the Germans had broken through south of Sedan, and said he believed that they were heading for Paris.

  General Ironside, the chief of the imperial general staff, gave orders to send a liaison officer to the headquarters of either Gamelin or Georges. Little information was forthcoming, so Ironside concluded that Reynaud was being a ‘little hysterical’. But Reynaud soon found that the situation was even more catastrophic than he had feared. Daladier, the minister of war, had just heard from Gamelin, who had been shaken out of his complacency by a report on the disintegration of the Ninth Army. Information also came in that Reinhardt’s panzer corps had reached Montcornet. Late that night, Reynaud called a meeting at the ministry of the interior with Daladier and the military governor of Paris. If the Germans were heading for Paris, they had to discuss how to avoid panic and maintain law and order.

  At 07.30 hours the next morning, Churchill was woken by a telephone call from Reynaud. ‘We have been defeated,’ Reynaud blurted out. Churchill, still half asleep, did not immediately respond. ‘We are beaten; we have lost the battle,’ Reynaud emphasized.

  ‘Surely it can’t have happened so soon?’ Churchill said.

  ‘The front is broken near Sedan; they are pouring through in great numbers with tanks and armoured cars.’ According to Roland de Margerie, Reynaud’s foreign affairs adviser, he added: ‘The road to Paris is open. Send us all the planes and all the troops you can.’

  Churchill decided to fly to Paris to stiffen Reynaud’s resolve, but first he called a War Cabinet meeting to discuss the request for ten more fighter squadrons. He was determined to do all in his power to help the French. But Air Chief Marshal Dowding, the head of Fighter Command, resolutely opposed the despatch of any more aircraft. After a heated argument, he walked round the table and placed a paper in front of Churchill showing the likely rate of loss based on current casualties. Within ten days, there would be no Hurricanes left either in France or in Britain. The War Cabinet was impressed by his arguments, but still felt that another four squadrons should be sent to France.

  The War Cabinet came to another decision that day. Bomber Command should at last go on the offensive against German territory. It should mount a raid on the Ruhr in retaliation for the Luftwaffe attack on Rotterdam. Few of the aircraft found their targets, but this still marked the first step towards the strategic bombing campaign.

  Deeply disturbed by the possibility that France might collapse, Churchill sent a telegram to President Roosevelt in the hope of shocking him into action on behalf of the Allies. ‘As you are no doubt aware, the scene has darkened swiftly. If necessary, we shall continue the war alone and we are not afraid of that. But I trust you realise, Mr President, that the voice and the force of the United States may count for nothing if they are withheld too long. You may have a completely subjugated, Nazified Europe established with astonishing swiftness, and the weight may be more than we can bear.’ Roosevelt’s reply was friendly, but he offered no commitment to intervene. Churchill composed another letter emphasizing Britain’s determination ‘to persevere to the very end whatever the result of the great battle raging in France may be’, and again urged the need for rapid American help.

  Still feeling that Roosevelt did not appreciate the urgency, he wrote yet another message on 21 May, which he hesitated to send. Although he insisted that his government would never consent to surrender, he raised another danger. ‘If members of the present administration were finished and others came to parley amid the ruins, you must not be blind to the fact that the sole remaining bargaining counter with Germany would be the fleet, and if this country was left by the United States to its fate no one would have the right to blame those then responsible if they made the best terms they could for the surviving inhabitants. Excuse me, Mr President, putting this nightmare bluntly. Evidently I could not answer for my successors who in utter despair and helplessness might well have to accommodate themselves to the German will.’

  Churchill did send this signal, but, as he later realized, his shock tactics, implying that the Germans might even obtain the Royal Navy’s warships to challenge the United States, proved counter-productive. They were bound to weaken Roosevelt’s confidence in Britain’s determination to fight alone, and the President raised with his own advisers the possibility of the British fleet being moved to Canada. He even contacted William Mackenzie King, the Canadian prime minister, to discuss the matter. Churchill’s mistake was to have a tragic influence some weeks later.

  On 16 May in the afternoon, Churchill flew to Paris. He was unaware that Gamelin had rung Reynaud to tell him that the Germans might reach the capital that night. They were already approaching Laon, less than 120 kilometres away. The military governor advised that the whole administration should leave as soon as possible. Ministries began to burn bonfires of files in their courtyards, with civil servants throwing armful of papers out of the windows.

  ‘The wind in eddies’, wrote Roland de Margerie, ‘blew away sparks and fragments of paper which soon covered the whole district.’ He noted that Reynaud’s defeatist mistress, the Comtesse de Portes, made a caustic comment about ‘the idiot who gave this order’. The chef de service replied that it was Reynaud himself: ‘C’est le Président du Conseil, Madame.’ But at the last moment Reynaud decided that the government should remain. This did little good, since word had spread. The population of Paris, kept in total ignorance of the disaster by strict press censorship, was soon seized by panic. La grande fuite had started. Motorcars with cases piled on the roof began to cross to the Porte d’Orléans and the Porte d’Italie.

  Churchill, accompanied by General Sir John Dill, the new chief of the imperial general staff, and Major General Hastings Ismay, secretary of the War Cabinet, landed in his Flamingo aircraft to find that ‘the situation was incomparably worse than we had imagined’. At the Quai d’Orsay, they had a meeting with Reynaud, Daladier and Gamelin. The atmosphere was such that they did not even sit down. ‘Utter dejection was written on every face,’ Churchill wrote later. Gamelin stood by a map on an easel on which a bulge at Sedan was shown and tried to explain the position.

  ‘Where is the strategic reserve?’ Churchill asked, and then repeated in his idiosyncratic French: ‘Où est la masse de manoeuvre?’

  Gamelin turned to him and, ‘with a shake of the head and a shrug’, replied: ‘Aucune.’ Churchill then noticed smoke drifting up outside the building. From the window he saw foreign ministry officials carting piles of dossiers in wheelbarrows to dump them on the large bonfires. He was dumbfounded that Gamelin’s plan had not allowed for a large reserve to counter-attack a breakthrough. He was also shocked by his own ignorance of the danger and the lamentable state of inter-Allied liaison.

  When he directly asked Gamelin about preparations for counter-attacks, the commander-in-chief could only shrug hopelessly. The French army was bankrupt. They now expected the British to bail them out. Roland de Margerie quietly warned Churchill that the situation was even worse than Daladier or Gamelin had said. And when he added that they might have to withdraw to the River Loire or even continue the war from Casablanca, Churchill looked at him ‘avec stupeur’.

  Reynaud asked about the ten fighter squadrons he had requested. Churchill, with Dowding’s warning fresh in his ears, explained that to strip Britain of its defences would be disastrous. He reminded them of the terrible losses the RAF had suffered trying to bomb the Meuse crossings and said that another four squadrons were coming and that ot
hers based in Britain were in action over France, but his audience was far from satisfied. That evening, Churchill sent a message from the British embassy to the War Cabinet asking for the other six squadrons. (For security purposes on an open line, it was dictated in Hindustani by General Ismay and taken down by a fellow Indian Army officer in London.) When their agreement was obtained shortly before midnight, Churchill went round to see Reynaud and Daladier to restore their courage. Reynaud received him wearing a dressing gown and slippers.

  In the event, the extra squadrons had to be based back in Britain and fly across to fight on a daily basis. With the German advance there were insufficient airfields, and they all lacked repair facilities. Altogether, 120 Hurricanes based across the Channel which had been damaged in combat had to be abandoned in the headlong retreat. The pilots were totally exhausted. Most were flying up to five sorties a day, and because the French fighters stood little chance against the Messerschmitt 109, the Hurricane squadrons had to shoulder the brunt of a very unequal battle.

  More and more reports came in of disintegration in the French army and bad discipline. Attempts were made to force units to stand and fight by executing some officers accused of abandoning their commands. Spy-mania took over. Numerous officers and soldiers were shot at random by frightened troops convinced that they were Germans in Allied uniforms. Panics were set off by wild rumours of German secret weapons and invented fears of a fifth column. Treachery seemed the only way to explain such a bewildering defeat, with the angry cry: ‘Nous sommes trahis!’

  Chaos mounted with the growing volumes of refugees in north-east France. Including Dutch and Belgians, some eight million refugees are said to have taken to the roads that summer, hungry, thirsty and exhausted, the rich in cars, the rest in farm-carts or pushing loaded bicycles, prams or hand-carts with their pitiful possessions. ‘They are the most pathetic sight,’ wrote Lieutenant General Sir Alan Brooke, commander of the BEF’s II Corps, in his diary, ‘with lame women suffering from sore feet, small children worn out with travelling but hugging their dolls, and all the old and maimed struggling along.’ The fate of Rotterdam had struck fear into many. The vast majority of the population of Lille abandoned the city as the Germans advanced. Although there is no evidence that the Luftwaffe issued orders to its fighter pilots to strafe refugee columns, members of the Allied forces witnessed such incidents. The French army, which had relied on a static defence, was even less able to react to the unexpected with the roads jammed by terrified civilians.

  7

  The Fall of France

  MAY–JUNE 1940

  German morale could hardly have been higher. Tank crews in their black panzer uniforms cheered their commanders whenever they saw them as they charged on towards the Channel through deserted countryside, refuelling their tanks at abandoned petrol stations and from French army fuel dumps. Their own supply lines were completely unprotected. Delays to their headlong advance came mainly from roads blocked by broken-down French vehicles and refugee columns.

  As Kleist’s panzers raced towards the Channel coast, Hitler became increasingly alarmed that the French might attack their flank from the south. Usually the great gambler, he could not believe his luck. Memories of 1914, when the invasion of France had been thwarted by a counter-attack in their flank, also haunted the older generals. Generaloberst von Rundstedt agreed with Hitler, and on 16 May he ordered Kleist to halt his panzer divisions to allow the infantry to catch up. But General Halder, a late convert to the audacity of Manstein’s plan, urged him to keep going. Kleist and Guderian had another row the next day, with Kleist quoting Hitler’s order. But a compromise was reached, allowing ‘battleworthy reconnaissance formations’ to probe towards the coast while XIX Corps headquarters stayed where it was. This gave Guderian the chance he wanted. Unlike Hitler in his Felsennest, he knew that the French were paralysed by the audacity of the German strike. Only isolated pockets of resistance remained, with the remnants of some French divisions fighting on in the face of disaster.

  By coincidence, on the same day that the panzer divisions were halted (and took a much needed opportunity to rest and service their vehicles), a French counter-attack took place from the south. Colonel Charles de Gaulle, the foremost proponent of armoured warfare in the French army (who had thus made himself very unpopular with the elderly, fixed-line generals), had just been given command of the so-called 4th Armoured Division. De Gaulle’s passionate advocacy of mechanized warfare had led to his nickname of ‘Colonel Motors’. But the 4th Armoured was an ill-assorted collection of tank battalions, with little infantry support and almost no artillery.

  General Georges briefed him and sent him on his way with the words: ‘Go on, de Gaulle! For you who have so long held the ideas which the enemy is putting into practice, here is the chance to act.’ De Gaulle was longing to attack, having heard of the insolence of German panzer crews. As they charged past French troops on the road, they simply told them to throw down their weapons and march eastward. Their casual parting cry, ‘We haven’t got time to take you prisoner,’ outraged his patriotism.

  From Laon, de Gaulle decided to strike north-east towards Montcornet, an important road junction on Guderian’s supply route. The 4th Armoured Division’s sudden advance took the Germans by surprise and nearly overran the headquarters of the 1st Panzer Division. But the Germans reacted with great speed, using a few tanks which had just been repaired and some self-propelled guns. Air support from the Luftwaffe was called in, and de Gaulle’s battered force, lacking any anti-aircraft guns and fighter cover, was obliged to withdraw. Guderian, needless to say, did not inform Rundstedt’s army group headquarters about the action that day.

  The BEF, which had fought off German attacks on its sector of the Dyle, was astonished on the evening of 15 May when it heard by chance that General Gaston Billotte, the First Army Group commander, was preparing to withdraw to the line of the River Escaut. This meant abandoning Brussels and Antwerp. Belgian generals only discovered the decision the following morning and were furious at the lack of warning.

  Billotte’s headquarters were in a state of psychological collapse, with many officers in tears. Gort’s chief of staff was so horrified by what he had heard from the British liaison officer that he rang the War Office in London to warn them that the BEF might have to be evacuated at some point. For the British, 16 May marked the start of a fighting retreat. Just south of Brussels, on a ridge near Waterloo, Royal Artillery batteries with 25-pounders took up position. This time their guns were aimed towards Wavre from where the Prussians had come to help their forebears in 1815. But by the following night German troops were entering the Belgian capital.

  That day, Reynaud sent a signal to General Maxime Weygand in Syria, asking him to fly back to France to take over the supreme command. He had decided to get rid of Gamelin, whatever Daladier said. He also intended to change his ministers. Georges Mandel, who had been the former prime minister Georges Clemenceau’s right-hand man and was determined to fight on to the end, would become minister of the interior. Reynaud himself took on the ministry of war, and planned to bring in Charles de Gaulle, now with the temporary rank of a junior general, as under-secretary of state. Reynaud was confirmed in his decision when he heard next day from the writer André Maurois working as a liaison officer that, although the British were fighting well, they had lost all confidence in the French army and especially its senior commanders.

  Yet Reynaud made a fatal mistake at the same time, probably influenced by his capitulard mistress, Hélène de Portes. He sent a representative to Madrid to persuade Marshal Philippe Pétain, then France’s ambassador to Franco, to become his deputy prime minister. Pétain’s prestige, as the victor of Verdun, had given him heroic status. But the eighty-four-year-old marshal, like Weygand, was more preoccupied by a fear of revolution and of the disintegration of the French army than by the prospect of defeat. He, like many on the right, believed that France had been unfairly pushed into this war by the British.


  On the morning of 18 May 1940, just eight days after Churchill had become prime minister and while the Germans were threatening to encircle the BEF in northern France, Randolph Churchill visited his father. The prime minister, who was shaving, told him to read the paper until he had finished. But then he suddenly said, ‘I think I see my way through,’ and returned to scraping away. His astounded son replied: ‘Do you mean that we can avoid defeat?… or beat the bastards?’

  Churchill put down his razor and turned round. ‘Of course I mean we can beat them.’

  ‘Well, I’m all for it, but I don’t see how you can do it.’

  His father dried his face before saying with great intensity: ‘I shall drag the United States in.’

  By chance, it was also the day on which the government, at Halifax’s urging, sent the austere socialist Sir Stafford Cripps to Moscow to seek better relations with the Soviet Union. Churchill felt that Cripps was a bad choice, on the grounds that Stalin hated socialists almost more than he hated conservatives. He also thought that the high-minded Cripps was hardly the person to deal with a rough, suspicious and calculating cynic like Stalin. Yet Cripps was a good deal more far-sighted than the prime minister in some directions. He had already predicted that the war would bring an end to the British Empire and introduce fundamental social change afterwards.

  On 19 May, the Panzer Corridor, as the German salient became known, now extended across the Canal du Nord. Both Guderian and Rommel needed to rest their crews, but Rommel persuaded his corps commander that he should push on that night towards Arras.

  The RAF contingent in France was now completely cut off from British forces on the ground, so the decision was taken to return the sixty-six remaining Hurricanes in France back to Britain. The French, of course, felt betrayed by this move, but the loss of airfields and the exhaustion of the pilots made it unavoidable. The RAF had already lost a quarter of its total fighter force in the Battle of France.