Six Minutes in May

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  At the end of this long and often tense conversation, Davies sent a relieved note to Bob Boothby. ‘Attlee & Greenwood are unable to distinguish between the P.M. & Halifax and are not prepared to serve under the latter.’57

  Later in the evening, Boothby conveyed a message to Churchill. ‘Opinion is hardening against Halifax as Prime Minister.58 I am doing my best to foster this, because I cannot feel he is, in any circumstances, the right man.’ A mightily lubricated Greenwood by and by gave Chamberlain his forthright reason why not. ‘Lord Halifax is a God-fearing Christian gentleman, but he’s no bloody good for a war.’59

  With their minds freshly made up, Attlee and Greenwood entered the Cabinet Room. They had no idea of the discussion that had taken place here less than an hour before. They sat where Halifax and Churchill had sat, with the latter two now seated on either side of Chamberlain.

  Chamberlain began. He said that there was a paramount need for a National government, and he asked if they would join it and serve under him.

  Attlee afterwards confessed surprise that the Prime Minister showed no sign that he was finished. ‘He appeared calm.60 He was hardly worried and still seemed to think he could carry on.’

  Churchill, to Attlee’s further surprise, ‘vigorously supported’ everything the Prime Minister had just said.62 He urged Attlee and Greenwood to come in under Chamberlain, telling them ‘what a splendid fellow Neville is to work under’, and delivering an eloquent eulogy on the Prime Minister’s efficiency and personal charm.63

  Attlee was so ‘completely flabbergasted’ that he did not know how to respond.64

  Unable to stomach more of this, Greenwood broke in. He glared through his spectacles at Churchill, his dank fair hair falling on either side of his forehead, swaying a little in his chair. In his cigarette-furred, north-country voice, he said: ‘We haven’t come here to listen to you orating, Winston.65 Whatever we ourselves wish to do in these circumstances, we’ve no choice but to refuse because Members of our Party have got absolutely no confidence in the Prime Minister.’ They not only disliked Chamberlain, but regarded him as something evil.

  It was now that Attlee opened his mouth. He could understand Churchill’s loyalty – ‘Winston had Norway on his back’ – but he thought it best to be frank.66 ‘It is not pleasant to have to tell a Prime Minister face to face that he must go, but I thought it the only thing to do.67 I said: “Mr Prime Minister, the fact is our Party won’t come in under you. Our Party won’t have you and I think I am right in saying that the country won’t have you either.”’

  Chamberlain remained silent, ‘apparently startled and hurt’.68 It was the second significant silence to fall in the Cabinet Room that afternoon. Attlee wrote: ‘Until that moment I think Chamberlain believed it would be possible for him to remain as Prime Minister.’69

  Then Chamberlain asked if Attlee would serve under someone other than himself. Chamberlain later explained to his sister: ‘I did not name the someone else to them, but I understood that they favoured Halifax, and I had him in mind.’70 Even though Halifax had now declined three times, Chamberlain was doggedly keeping the door ajar for him. He had not yet learned that the Labour leaders had a short time ago changed their minds.fn2 71

  Attlee responded positively. ‘I said I thought yes, but of course I could not answer for my Party without consultation.’72 He would have to put the matter to his National Executive, and it was possible to do so quickly as they were meeting at Bournemouth the next day for the usual Whitsuntide conference. Attlee was travelling there with Greenwood in the morning.

  Chamberlain pointed out with a streak of impatience ‘that it was perfectly impossible in the middle of a great war, and with the prospect of an immediate German attack, to debate this subject publicly at Bournemouth’.73

  Attlee said that the matter would be discussed in private session with the Executive. ‘In order that there should be no doubt I said I would put to them two questions 1) Are you prepared to serve under Chamberlain? 2) Are you prepared to serve under someone else? and would wire or telephone back.fn3 74, 75 On that we parted politely.’

  The meeting had lasted forty-five minutes.

  The rest of the day passed in a tense limbo, everything up in the air until Attlee telephoned from Bournemouth. Cadogan wrote in his diary: ‘There it is – waiting on Labour decision.’76 When Chips Channon left at 8 p.m. after picking up what gossip he could from Chamberlain’s typist, he was not optimistic. ‘Neville still reigns, but only just.’77

  Chamberlain’s Principal Private Secretary, Arthur Rucker, was meanwhile fulfilling his promise to keep the Palace informed. Rucker arrived at Hardinge’s flat in St James’s Palace just as the King’s Private Secretary was settling down for dinner, and he told him that Churchill was coming to be viewed as the most favoured candidate. Hardinge, conscious of George VI’s historic lack of appetite for Churchill, said that the King ‘might want to try, once Chamberlain had resigned, to persuade Lord Halifax to reconsider his position, and I suggested that Rucker should mention this to the Prime Minister’.78

  Halifax’s stomach ache had cleared up. Even as Rucker acted behind the scenes to salvage a Halifax premiership, the Foreign Secretary was writing to Baba Metcalfe from his hotel suite. He wrote on Foreign Office paper, but ‘Foreign Office’ was crossed out and ‘Dorchester 9 May Secret & Burn’ was written in its place. ‘My dear Baba, a line to tell you that I have hopes of things working out so that you will not be more frightened of me than you have hitherto! And at the same time procuring good broad results.’79 He went on: ‘Your [illegible word: perhaps ‘understanding’] and encouragement have been of great support these days. Bless you. E.’

  Churchill had returned to the Admiralty. He telephoned Clementine at Huntington Park and asked her to c0me back to London as soon as possible, ‘sensing that events were moving towards a climax’.80 She said that she would be on the 4 p.m. train from Hereford the following afternoon, and conveyed how anguished she had felt not to be with him ‘during these days’. He dined that night with Anthony Eden, their third meeting since breakfast. ‘W. quiet and calm,’ Eden wrote in his diary.81 ‘He told me he thought it plain N.C. would advise King to send for him.’ After dinner, Churchill’s son Randolph telephoned from Kettering, where his Territorial unit was still based, wanting to know if there was any news. Churchill told him: ‘I think I shall be Prime Minister tomorrow.’82

  In Berlin, the Dutch military attaché Colonel Gijsbertus ‘Bert’ Sas had finished eating a ‘funereal’ dinner in Zehlendorf with ‘his intimate friend for many years’, Colonel Hans Oster, a close associate of Admiral Canaris in the Abwehr and an important anti-Nazi who already on several occasions had leaked German military secrets to the Allies.83 Oster had learned that A-Day (‘Angriffstag’) was 10 May, though he took care to remind Sas that so often in the last eight months there had been a last-minute deferral, as in April when Hitler had put everything on hold to invade Norway. Sas waited round the corner in the shadows while Oster called in at the OKW headquarters. Oster returned to confirm that Hitler had departed in his train, ‘the Führer Special’, to the Western Front, and there had been no cancellation of Operation ‘Gelb’. Sas hurried back to his Legation to make an urgent call to the Hague. There was no time to send a coded message. He took the risk of talking on an open telephone line, telling the young Dutch officer who answered, ‘Tomorrow morning at dawn …’

  In Buckingham Palace, George VI was writing up his diary for 9 May. ‘An unprofitable day.’84

  23

  HINGE OF FATE

  ‘Well, I suppose they had to make someone carry the can after the balls-up in Norway.’1

  EVELYN WAUGH, Men at Arms

  ‘Norway was Winston’s adventure and poor Neville was blamed for it.’

  CHIPS CHANNON MP, 11 May 1940

  Mary Churchill was dancing at the Savoy – ‘gaily & so unheedingly’ – when in the cold grey dawn General Guderian and 1st Panzer Division rolled over the Lu
xembourg border near Viandin.2 Further north, General Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division crossed the Belgian frontier and sped towards Dinant. Overhead, Ju-52s of 22nd Airborne Division carried 4,000 paratroopers.

  General Ismay was woken by a telephone call from the Cabinet Office. The same officer was on duty who had rung him following the invasion of Norway. ‘But this time there was no doubt about his meaning; nor did his message come as a surprise.3 The German attack on the Low Countries had started.’

  Ticker-tacker, ticker-tacker. A tape machine jerked into life in the office that Peter Fleming had occupied until he was ordered to Namsos. Major Denzil Batchelor had come in early to finish his report on the Norway Debate. The Intelligence officer thrust himself from his chair to pick up a page that had fallen to the floor, and read: ‘Hotler’s troops have overrun Luxembourg; Dutch and Belgian cabinets appeal to France; Hotler proclaims fall of Belgium and Holland; Hotler says he will crush Britain; Hotler says …’ The machine paused.4 Then out rolled another sheet. ‘Correction for Hotler; read Hitler and the meaning will immediately become apparent.’

  On receiving a call to say that German parachutists were falling from the Dutch sky ‘like flocks of starlings’, Frances Partridge stood immobilised in her Wiltshire farmhouse.5 ‘I felt a grip of fear and excitement mixed, as if a giant’s hand had seized me round the waist where I stood by the telephone, picked me up and dropped me again.’ In Wales, Henry Morris-Jones did not budge from his wireless as the announcer talked of a ‘possible invasion of England by air’.6 German bombs were said to have fallen on Chilham in Kent. In the capital, the Labour peer John Sankey wrote in his diary: ‘Intense excitement.7 London threatened.’ Peter Fleming caught sight of a confidential message, sent from the Air Ministry to the Admiralty and the War Office, describing how enemy parachutists had behaved a month before in Stavanger, and were expected to act in Britain. ‘Information from Norway shows that German parachute troops when descending hold their arms above their heads as if surrendering.8 The parachutist, however, holds a grenade in each hand. These are thrown at anyone attempting to obstruct the landing.’ Charles Peake received an internal memo from the Ministry of Information concerning reports received from Norway of a new secret weapon used by the Germans called ‘Nerve Gas’. ‘The effect of this is to paralyse nerves and muscles, so that the victim cannot control his movements.’9

  Hitler had signed off his orders for 10 May: ‘The battle beginning today will decide the future of the German nation for the next thousand years.’10 He had thrown everything into Operation ‘Gelb’. This time there was no disguising the danger that the Allies were in. In his office at Buckingham Palace, Hardinge felt ‘that the greatest battle in history had broken out, on which the future of civilization depended’.11

  Alerted at 6 a.m. by the US State Department, Joseph Kennedy called the Admiralty and was put through to the Map Room. ‘It struck me that they didn’t have the slightest idea of what was going on.’12 Moments later, the Dutch Ambassador knocked on Halifax’s door at the Dorchester. The two men had a cup of tea while the Ambassador made a formal appeal for help. Soon afterwards, the Belgian Ambassador arrived on a similar mission. Halifax telephoned Cadogan, who reassured him that the Allied armies in France were responding smoothly and were, this time, ‘prepared to the last gaiter button’.13

  Political in-fighting ceased. The Air Minister, Samuel Hoare, until December one of the favourites to succeed Chamberlain, and someone the First Lord only days before had regarded as a snake, arrived at the Admiralty at 6.30 a.m. with the War Minister, Oliver Stanley, to discuss the situation with Churchill. ‘We had had little or no sleep and the news could not have been worse,’ wrote Hoare.14 ‘Yet there he was, smoking his large cigar, and eating fried eggs and bacon, as if he had just returned from an early morning ride.’

  John Colville had been dancing at the Savoy in the same party as Mary Churchill, and had gone riding in Richmond Park. ‘As I dismounted the groom told me that Holland and Belgium had been invaded.’15

  A meeting of the Military Coordination Committee was held at 7 a.m. in the Admiralty’s Upper War Room, and ordered the immediate execution of Operation ‘Royal Marine’. It was too late to divert the two Hurricane squadrons already en route to Narvik, but a decision was taken to send two fighter squadrons to France without delay. General Ironside ‘sat for half an hour listening to rumours that were coming in’.16 There was little detailed news.

  At 7.30 a.m. Randolph Churchill rang his father, having heard on the BBC that forty-one had been killed and eighty-two injured in a bombing raid on Brussels. ‘What’s happening?’

  Churchill passed on the latest information which the French Ambassador had rung through minutes earlier. ‘Well, the German hordes are pouring into the Low Countries, but the British and French armies are advancing to meet them and in a day or two there will be a head-on collision.’17

  ‘What about what you told me last night about you becoming Prime Minister?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that. Nothing matters now except beating the enemy.’ When recalling this conversation with his father, Randolph swore that ‘about the big job … he was not even interested’.18 Churchill was ‘only thinking of armies and military matters’.

  Blundering about downstairs, General Ironside and the other Chiefs of Staff were trying to leave the Admiralty after the MCC meeting. The doors were treble-locked, and they could find no nightwatchmen with keys. ‘I walked up to one of the windows and opened it and climbed out.19 So much for security.’

  Outside, it was the beginning of another beautiful spring day with bluebells and primroses in flower everywhere.

  Ironside tramped across Horse Guards Parade to Downing Street where the War Cabinet was assembling for the first of its three meetings that day. His irritation soon yielded to exasperation. ‘The P.M. at once began asking where the Germans had landed and seemed quite surprised to know that everything was uncertain.’

  Chamberlain’s ignorance confirmed to Ironside the ‘measly’ nature of a Cabinet ‘which doesn’t know if it is on its head or its heels’. The situation was not much clearer by the time the Cabinet broke up thirty-five minutes later, with Churchill airily telling photographers as he left: ‘Plenty happened last night, and something is happening today.’20 When Halifax attempted with Amery to build a chronology for 10 May, he failed to recall at the 8 a.m. meeting ‘any discussion at all of Neville’s intimation that he thought the domestic situation must stand still for the moment’.21 No one knew whether the Prime Minister planned to stay in office; or, were he to resign, who would take over. The same confusion paralysed the Foreign Office where Chips Channon found many ‘downhearted’ Mandarins.22 ‘It was the popular view this morning that Neville was saved.’

  Chamberlain seems to have taken his cue from the French Prime Minister. In Paris, news of Hitler’s attack on the Low Countries had persuaded Reynaud to withdraw the resignation that he had submitted the afternoon before. For eight electrifying hours on 10 May, Operation ‘Gelb’ convinced Chamberlain that the crisis in Europe made it his duty to remain in power too.

  The earliest intimation that Chamberlain had decided to stay firm came moments after the War Cabinet ended, when he told Hoare, who supported him warmly, that his ‘first inclination was to withhold his resignation until the French battle was finished’.23 Chamberlain then wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury: ‘Hitler has, I think, now put domestic quarrels out of our minds.’24 And, famously, to Beaverbrook: ‘Hitler has seized the occasion of our divisions to strike the great blow and we cannot consider changes in the Government while we are in the throes of battle.’25

  The occasion of our divisions. Chips Channon and John Simon were not the only Conservative MPs to suspect that Hitler had acted in response to the Norway Debate. Sir George Broadbridge spoke for many backbenchers when he wrote to Chamberlain evincing ‘not the slightest doubt that the disgraceful episode in the House of Commons on Wednesday and continued again yeste
rday’ had been the signal for the Germans ‘to start their blitzkrieg immediately’.26

  All morning, the Transport Minister Euan Wallace watched Conservative MPs who had voted against Chamberlain going to see him to apologise, as if they had suddenly recognised ‘the dangers of having an entirely new set of people in the middle of a crisis’.27 And not merely rebel Conservatives like Roy Wise. The already conflicted Liberal leader Archie Sinclair met in hurried conclave with his Chief Whip Percy Harris, who recorded the outcome in his diary. ‘Decided in light of this new threat Neville better carry on & after discussion sent communication to Press that though radical change of the Government wanted NOW is not the time for it.’28

  In a dramatic gesture, Sinclair called on Chamberlain in person to apologise for ‘any insolence or rudeness’ that he had shown him, and said that he would be ready to work under Chamberlain ‘should the composition of the Government be sufficiently altered’.29, 30 Long black hair, deepset greenish-brown eyes, a ghostly pallor – Sinclair’s matinée-idol looks compelled one contemporary to describe him as ‘the complete tragic actor’.31 His performance won over Chamberlain, who up till that morning had dismissed Sinclair as a stuttering conspirator without ‘consequence or value’.32 Sinclair’s offer of reconciliation was proof that Churchill, too, was on board.