The Last Lion

by William Manchester

  The Second World War, by Winston S. Churchill (Boston, 1983), is cited as follows:

  WSC 1 Volume 1. Gathering Storm

  WSC 2 Volume 2. Their Finest Hour

  WSC 3 Volume 3. The Grand Alliance

  WSC 4 Volume 4. The Hinge of Fate

  WSC 5 Volume 5. Closing the Ring

  WSC 6 Volume 6. Triumph and Tragedy

  Preamble

  1. WM/Sir Ian Jacob, 11/12/80.

  2. John Wheeler-Bennett, Action This Day: Working with Churchill (London, 1968), 140; Cv/3, 267, 387; Kay Halle, Irrepressible Churchill: Stories, Sayings and Impressions of Sir Winston Churchill (London, 1985), 171.

  3. Wheeler-Bennett, Action, 53–56; PFR/Winston S. Churchill, 5/04 (“summer sunshine”); GILBERT 6, 1214–15 (recollection of Elizabeth Layton).

  4. John Colville, The Fringes of Power: 10 Downing Street Diaries 1939–1955 (New York, 1985), 406; Lord Moran, Churchill: Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran (Boston, 1966), 451; Halle, Irrepressible Churchill, 133; Cv/3, 1309, 1471 (Baldwin family); TWY, 307.

  5. Mary Soames, Clementine Churchill: The Biography of a Marriage (New York, 2003), 383.

  6. Wheeler-Bennett, Action, 79, 140.

  7. WM/Jock Colville, 10/14/80; Colville, Fringes, 434; WSCHCS, 7912; Winston Churchill, My Early Life: 1874–1904 (New York, 1996), 112.

  8. Colville, Fringes, 170–71; Wheeler-Bennett, Action, 93.

  9. Moran, Diaries, 265.

  10. Anthony Montague Browne, Long Sunset (London, 1996), 118; Walter H. Thompson, Assignment: Churchill (New York, 1953), 84.

  11. Thompson, Assignment: Churchill, 84; WM/Sir Robert Boothby, 10/16/80.

  12. WM/G. M. Thompson, 10/24/80; Colville, Fringes, 217; WSC 6, 752.

  13. WM/G. M. Thompson, 10/24/80.

  14. WM/G. M. Thompson, 10/24/80; Colville, Fringes, 136, 142–43, 231; E. L. Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe, 2 vols. (New York, 1955), 1:154; WM/Kathleen Hill, 11/4/80; WM/Jock Colville, 10/14/80.

  15. Wheeler-Bennett, Action, 153; Colville, Fringes, 195–96; WSC 6, 733 (“foreign names were made for Englishmen…”).

  16. Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York, 1948), 688.

  17. Wheeler-Bennett, Action, 182–83; WM/Cecily (“Chips”) Gemmell, 7/10/80 (Johnnie Walker Red and daily routine); PFR/Winston S. Churchill, 3/04.

  18. Colville, Fringes, 417; Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 24; WM/Sir Ian Jacob, 11/12/80.

  19. Colville, Fringes, 319; Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman, eds., Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke: War Diaries 1939–1945 (Berkeley, 2003), 637.

  20. Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (New York, 1984), 42–44; WM/Cecily (“Chips”) Gemmell, 7/10/80; NYT, 5/5/09; Warren Kimball, Finest Hour, spring 2007, 31–33.

  21. WM/Oscar Nemon, 1980.

  22. WM/Kathleen Hill, 11/4/80; Colville, Fringes, 163–65.

  23. WM/Kathleen Hill, 11/4/80; WM/John Martin, 10/23/80; Thompson, Assignment: Churchill, 179; WM/Cecily (“Chips”) Gemmell, 7/10/80; Moran, Diaries, 360.

  24. John H. Peck, “The Working Day,” Atlantic Monthly, 3/65.

  25. F. H. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War, 5 vols. (London, 1979).

  26. Wheeler-Bennett, Action, 20, 23.

  27. Colville, Fringes, 130.

  28. Tom Hickman, Churchill’s Bodyguard (London, 2005), 130; Colville, Fringes, 223.

  29. WM/Jock Colville, 10/14/80; WM/John Martin, 10/23/80.

  30. WM/Sir Ian Jacob, 11/12/80; Wheeler-Bennett, Action, 185.

  31. PFR/Lady Mary Soames, letter of 9/3/07; Moran, Diaries, 100; Colville, Fringes, 416.

  32. WM/William Deakin, 1980; Thompson, Assignment: Churchill, 178.

  33. Colville, Fringes, 416; Halle, Irrepressible Churchill, 263.

  34. Colville, Fringes, 481; Moran, Diaries, 111, 604; WM/Pamela Harriman (“wollygogs”), 8/22/80; Browne, Long Sunset, 220–21 (Sinatra).

  35. WSCHCS, 6307.

  36. Moran, Diaries, 604; Winston Churchill, Thoughts and Adventures (New York, 1991), 204.

  37. R. V. Jones, The Wizard War (New York, 1978), 106.

  38. Halle, Irrepressible Churchill, 345, 346; Moran, Diaries, 444.

  39. H. Chartres Biron, ed., “Sir,” Said Dr. Johnson (London, 1911), 112, 213.

  40. Biron, “Sir,” 216; Colville, Fringes, 341; W&C-TPL, 111, 213.

  41. WSC 5, 704; Anthony Montague Browne, speech to Churchill Society; Roy Jenkins, Churchill: A Biography (London, 2011), 702n; Colville, Fringes, 239, 578; Moran, Diaries, 781.

  42. Colville, Fringes, 482; Richard Langworth, ed., Churchill by Himself: The Definitive Collection of Quotations (London, 2008), 463.

  43. Randolph S. Churchill, Winston S. Churchill: Youth, 1874–1900 (Boston, 1996), 208.

  44. GILBERT 7, 348; Colville, Fringes, 526; Danchev and Todman, War Diaries, 690–91.

  45. WSCHCS, 5818.

  46. WM/Viscount Antony Head, 1980.

  47. H. H. Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, edited by Michael Brock and Eleanor Brock (Oxford, 1982), 267; WM/John Martin, 10/23/80.

  48. Violet Bonham Carter, Winston Churchill: An Intimate Portrait (New York, 1965), 4; WSCHCS, 6250, 6264.

  49. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 729; WSC 4, 796–97.

  50. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 241.

  51. Colville, Fringes, 158; WM/Jock Colville, 10/14/80; WM/John Martin, 10/23/80.

  52. Moran, Diaries, 158; WSC 6, 115; Halle, Irrepressible Churchill, 257.

  53. WM/Jock Colville, 10/14/80; WM/John Martin, 10/23/80; Browne, Long Sunset, 114.

  54. GILBERT 7, 1322 (“This wicked man…”); WSCHCS, 6277; Langworth, Churchill by Himself, 137.

  55. WM/William Deakin, 1980; WM/Jane (Portal) Williams, 1980.

  56. WM/William Deakin, 1980; WM/Jane (Portal) Williams, 1980.

  57. WM/Jane (Portal) Williams, 1980; GILBERT 6, 1156; Thompson, Assignment: Churchill, 183; Daily Telegraph, 3/18/09.

  58. WM/Jane (Portal) Williams, 1980; WM/Jock Colville, 10/14/80; Colville, Fringes, 285.

  59. WM/Cecily (“Chips”) Gemmell, 7/10/80.

  60. Vincent Sheean, Between the Thunder and the Sun (New York, 1943), 260; Wheeler-Bennett, Action, 146–47.

  61. WM/John Martin, 10/23/80.

  62. Wheeler-Bennett, Action, 139.

  63. Anthony Storr, Churchill’s Black Dog, Kafka’s Mice, and Other Phenomena of the Human Mind (New York, 1973), 5, 27, 49–50.

  64. W&C-TPL, 53; Moran, Diaries, 179.

  65. Moran, Diaries, 112; PFR/Dr. Ron Pies (clinical psychiatrist, professor, Tufts University School of Medicine), 2007; PFR/Dr. David Armitage (Col. U.S. Army, ret.), 2007; Dr. Michael First (editor, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed., text rev. [DSM-IV-TR], lead author, Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV-TR [SCID], electronic and telephone communications, 3/07, 10/08; Browne, Long Sunset, 119.

  66. Hastings Lionel Ismay, The Memoirs of General Lord Ismay (London, 1960), 155; Colville, Fringes, 215.

  67. WM/Jock Colville, 10/14/80; Colville, Fringes, 578; Moran, Diaries, 827; Langworth, Churchill by Himself, 58.

  68. John Keegan, The Mask of Command (New York, 1987), 236–38.

  69. David Rising, “Hitler’s Final Days Described by Bodyguard,” AP, 4/24/05.

  70. Hugh Dalton, Memoirs 1931–1945: The Fateful Years (London, 1957), 335–36.

  71. David Dilks, ed., The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 1938–1945 (New York, 1972), 267.

  72. Mollie Panter-Downes, London War Notes, 1939–1945 (London, 1972), 62.

  73. Dilks, Diaries, 267, 272, 283; WM/Jock Colville, 10/14/80.

  74. Clare Boothe, Europe in the Spring (New York, 1941), 127.

  75. WSC 1, 558–59.

  76. Vincent Sheean, Thunder, 83.

  77. Général André Beaufre, Le Drame de 1940 (Paris, 1965).

  78. Charles de Gaulle, Lettres, Notes et Carnets, vol. 2: 1942–May 1958 (Paris, 1980), 486.<
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  79. BBC broadcast, 3/30/40; WSCHCS, 6201.

  80. Colville, Fringes, 25–26.

  81. William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary (The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934–1941) (New York, 1941), 329–30.

  82. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, edited by John Chamberlain et al. (New York, 1939), 766.

  83. René de Chambrun, I Saw France Fall (New York, 1940), 54–55.

  84. De Chambrun, France, 54–55.

  85. Alphonse Goutard, 1940: La Guerre des Occasions Perdues (Paris, 1956), 131; Boothe, Europe, 1941.

  86. William Bullitt, Foreign Relations of the United States, vol. 1: 1945–1950, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment (Washington, DC, n.d.), 469.

  87. WSC 1, 454.

  88. F. W. Winterbotham, The Ultra Secret (New York, 1974), 50.

  89. GILBERT 6, 305.

  90. Len Deighton, Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk (New York, 1979), 191.

  91. Général Maurice Gustav Gamelin, Servir, 3 vols. (Paris, 1947), 3:389.

  92. Boothe, Europe, 241–42.

  93. Adolf Heusinger, Befehl im Widerstreit: Schicksalsstunden der deutschen Armee 1923–1945 (Tübingen, 1950), 88.

  94. Panter-Downes, War Notes, 56–57.

  95. Dilks, Diaries, 277.

  Cyclone

  1. GILBERT 6, 313; John Colville, The Fringes of Power: 10 Downing Street Diaries 1939–1955 (New York, 1985), 121–22.

  2. John W. Wheeler-Bennett, King George VI: His Life and Reign, 1865–1936 (New York, 1958), 443; GILBERT 6, 307, 317.

  3. WM/Lady Mary Soames, 10/27/80.

  4. W&C-TPL, 412; Ernst Hanfstaengl, Hitler: The Missing Years (London, 1957), 193–96.

  5. WM/Lady Mary Soames, 10/27/80; Brian Roberts, Randolph: A Study of Churchill’s Son (London, 1984), 181.

  6. Colville, Fringes, 256.

  7. Lord Moran, Churchill: Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran (Boston, 1966), 5.

  8. Mollie Panter-Downes, London War Notes, 1939–1945 (London, 1972), 61.

  9. Colville, Fringes, 736.

  10. WSC 1, 475.

  11. Brian Gardner, Churchill in Power: As Seen by His Contemporaries (Boston, 1970), 6; Colville, Fringes, 121–22; Max Plowman, Bridge into the Future: Letters of Max Plowman (London, 1944), 710.

  12. John Wheeler-Bennett, Action This Day: Working with Churchill (London, 1968), 48; WM/Jock Colville, 10/14/80.

  13. Wheeler-Bennett, Action, 51–53; WM/Jock Colville, 10/14/80; WM/John Martin, 10/23/80; WSC 2, 17.

  14. Wheeler-Bennett, Action, 161, 195–97; Colville, Fringes, 289, 436.

  15. Wheeler-Bennett, Action, 193–96; WM/Sir Ian Jacob, 11/12/80.

  16. John Rupert Colville, Footprints in Time (London, 1976), 75–76; Wheeler-Bennett, Action, 147; Ian Jacob, “His Finest Hour,” Atlantic Monthly, 3/65.

  17. WSC 2, 28; GILBERT 6, 325; WM/Sir Ian Jacob, 11/12/80; Virginia Cowles, Winston Churchill: The Era and the Man (New York, 1953), 317.

  18. TWY, 85, 99; Hansard 5/13/40 (WSC statement to House).

  19. Arthur Bryant, The Turn of the Tide: A History of the War Years Based on the Diaries of Field-Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, 1939–1943 (New York, 1957), 21.

  20. WSCHCS, 6232; Henry Pelling, Winston Churchill (Conshohocken, PA, 1999), 437; WSC 2, 10–11; Wheeler-Bennett, Action, 49.

  21. Colville, Fringes, 196.

  22. GILBERT 6, 328–29; WSC 2, 13.

  23. Laurence Thompson, 1940 (New York, 1966), 94.

  24. GILBERT 6, 342; C&R-TCC, 1:38.

  25. Thompson, 1940, 118.

  26. CAB 65/7.

  27. Général C. Gransard, Le 10e Corps d’armée dans la bataille (Paris, 1949), 141.

  28. William L. Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic (New York, 1969), 664; Charles de Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle (New York, 1964), 39.

  29. Alistair Horne, Seven Ages of Paris (New York, 2002), 381–402.

  30. WSC 2, 42.

  31. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight from Arras (New York, 1942), 116–33 passim.

  32. WSC 2, 43; de Saint-Exupéry, Flight, 120.

  33. Hastings Lionel Ismay, The Memoirs of General Lord Ismay (London, 1960), 127; Horne, Seven Ages, 381; Vincent Sheean, Between the Thunder and the Sun (New York, 1943), 142.

  34. Ismay, Memoirs, 128.

  35. WSC 2, 47.

  36. Paul Reynaud, In the Thick of the Fight (New York, 1940), 323–24.

  37. WSC 2, 42–43; de Saint-Exupéry, Flight, 120.

  38. Len Deighton, Fighter (New York, 1977), 58; Ismay, Memoirs, 128.

  39. Ismay, Memoirs, 128–29.

  40. GILBERT 6, 334, 358; Colville, Fringes, 135.

  41. John Rupert Colville, Man of Valour: The Life of Field Marshal the Viscount Gort (London, 1972), 204; Anthony Eden, Earl of Avon, The Reckoning: The Memoirs of Anthony Eden (New York, 1965), 106.

  42. WSCHCS, 6222–23.

  43. Jones, Diary, 460; W. M. James, The Portsmouth Letters (London, 1946), 15.

  44. Panter-Downes, War Notes, 67.

  45. William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary (The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934–1941) (New York, 1941), 437–38.

  46. WSC 2, 56; Général Maurice Gustav Gamelin, Servir, 3 vols. (Paris, 1947), 3:417.

  47. WSCHCS, 6232.

  48. Roderick Macleod, ed., Time Unguarded: The Ironside Diaries, 1937–1940 (London, 1974), 327; Premier (Prime Minister) Papers, Public Record Office, Kew, 3/188/3, folio 18; WSC 1, 375.

  49. Ismay, Memoirs, 131; Colville, Fringes, 137–38.

  50. WSC 2, 64–65; Macleod, Time Unguarded, 328.

  51. William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (New York, 1960), 728.

  52. Colville, Fringes,139; GILBERT 6, 385.

  53. Colville, Fringes, 139; GILBERT 6, 385; WSC 2, 69–70.

  54. E. L. Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe, 2 vols. (New York, 1955), 2:120–21.

  55. L. F. Ellis, The War in France and Flanders 1939–1940 (London, 1953), 368; Macleod, Time Unguarded, 331–32.

  56. Ellis, France and Flanders, 208, 389.

  57. Len Deighton, Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk (New York, 1979), 265.

  58. B. H. Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War (New York, 1971), 77; David Dilks, ed., The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 1938–1945 (New York, 1972), 289–90; CAB 65/7; Macleod, Time Unguarded, 332; WSC 1, 393.

  59. Spears, Assignment, 2: 202, 236–37; WSC 1, 389; Bryant, Tide, 90; Macleod, Time Unguarded, 321.

  60. Time, 1/23/41, 23; Roger Keyes, Outrageous Fortune: The Tragedy of King Leopold of the Belgians 1901–1941 (London, 1984), 308–10, 396.

  61. CAB 65/13.

  62. Dilks, Diaries, 290; ChP 80/11.

  63. Dilks, Diaries, 291.

  64. WSC 2, 99.

  65. Thompson, 1940,137–38.

  66. NYT, 5/30/40; TWY, 91; Thompson, 1940, 133–34, 139.

  67. Ellis, France and Flanders, 368.

  68. Ellis, France and Flanders, 162–69; Macleod, Time Unguarded; WSC 2, 82; Ismay, Memoirs, 133.

  69. Bryant, Tide, 101–2 passim.

  70. Ellis, France and Flanders, 326.

  71. Ellis, France and Flanders, 182; Macleod, Time Unguarded, 340; WSCHCS, 6225.

  72. Macleod, Time Unguarded, 333ff.; Ismay, Memoirs, 134.

  73. WSC 2, 100; Hugh Dalton, Memoirs 1931–1945: The Fateful Years (London, 1957), 335–36.

  74. WSC 2, 101.

  75. Thompson, 1940, 133–36.

  76. Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman, eds., Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke: War Diaries 1939–1945 (Berkeley, 2003), 72.

  77. WSC 2, 428; War Office papers 106/1708; John Spencer Churchill, Crowded Canvas (London, 1961), 162–63; WM/Sir Ian Jacob, 11/12/80; Jacob, “Finest,” 3/65.

  78. Macleod, Time Unguarded, 354; Harold Macmillan, The Blast of War: 1939–1945 (New York, 1967), 81.

  79. Panter-Downes, War Notes, 63–66.

 
80. WSCHCS, 6230.

  81. Colville, Fringes, 147–48; News Chronicle 6/5/40; TWY, 93; Gardner, Churchill in Power, 55.

  82. WSCHCS, 6228.

  83. George Bilainkin, Diary of a Diplomatic Correspondent (London, 1942), 102.

  84. Chief sources for the last three meetings of the council (Paris, Briare, Tours): Spears, Assignment; de Gaulle, War Memoirs; Ismay, Memoirs; S. Petrie et al., The Private Diaries of Paul Baudouin (London, 1948).

  85. Spears, Assignment, 1:293–94.

  86. Ismay, Memoirs, 134.

  87. Spears, Assignment, 1:295.

  88. Spears, Assignment, 1:295.

  89. Spears, Assignment, 1:295; Petrie, Diaries, 53–54.

  90. Spears, Assignment, 1:314–15.

  91. Spears, Assignment, 1:316, 2:113.

  92. Panter-Downes, War Notes, 68; Colville, Fringes, 151–53.

  93. Spears, Assignment, 2:138–39; Ismay, Memoirs, 139.

  94. Spears, Assignment, 2:141–44; Eden, Reckoning, 133. The French minutes of the Briare meeting are given textually in Paul Reynaud, Au Coeur de la mêlée, 1939–1945 (Paris, 1951), 823–24.

  95. Spears, Assignment, 2:145–47; Eden, Reckoning, 115.

  96. Spears, Assignment, 2:149ff.

  97. Reynaud, Au Coeur.

  98. Ismay, Memoirs, 140.

  99. Ismay, Memoirs, 140–41.

  100. Ismay, Memoirs, 140–41.

  101. Les Événements survenus en France de 1933 à 1945, 2:343; Horne, Seven Ages, 546n; Shirer, Collapse, 618; Histoire de l’Aviation Militaire Française (Paris, 1980), 379–80; Deighton, Blitzkrieg, 269–70.

  102. WSC 2, 156–57; Ismay, Memoirs, 142–43.

  103. Spears, Assignment, 2:163.

  104. Ismay, Memoirs, 141.

  105. WSC 2, 158; Walter H. Thompson, Assignment: Churchill (New York, 1953), 194.

  106. CAB 99/3; Colville, Fringes, 152–54.

  107. Earl of Birkenhead, Life of Lord Halifax (London, 1965), 459; Dilks, Diaries, 297; Ismay, Memoirs, 143–44.

  108. Eleanor M. Gates, End of the Affair: The Collapse of the Anglo-French Alliance, 1939–40 (Berkeley, 1981), 250; Gordon Wright, “Ambassador Bullitt and the Fall of France,” World Politics 10, no. 1, 87.

  109. Horne, Seven Ages, 573.

  110. Spears, Assignment, 2:210–13.

  111. James Leasor, War at the Top (London, 1959), 91; Colville, Fringes, 152.

  112. Spears, Assignment, 2:218–20.

  113. Colville, Fringes, 155; C&R-TCC, 1:48.