by Lynne Olson
When it came time to organize the book, I decided to focus only on the six occupied European nations whose governments escaped to London in the spring and summer of 1940, along with General Charles de Gaulle and his Free French forces. In the spring of 1941, two additional European countries—Greece and Yugoslavia—were invaded and occupied by Germany. The Greek government fled to Cairo and set up its wartime base there. The Yugoslav government, headed by King Peter II, arrived in London in June 1941. Although the British gave substantial aid to Yugoslav partisans resisting the Germans, the king and his government had little influence with the British or, for that matter, within their own country. For that reason, among others (including the sheer unwieldiness of adding another country to an already complex narrative), I decided to leave Yugoslavia out of the story.
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FINALLY, I’D LIKE TO express my deep appreciation to the dozens of librarians and archivists who have so generously helped me in my research over the years. Some work for institutions that I consider to be special treasures, including the UK’s National Archives at Kew, the Churchill Archives at Cambridge University, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York. Another jewel is Georgetown University’s Lauinger Library, which has been my home away from home for the last two decades. With its extraordinary collection of books and other material on every aspect of international affairs you can think of, it has made my research incomparably easier.
A word of thanks as well to the many historians whose work I learned from and drew on in writing Last Hope Island. I’d like to single out Christopher Andrew, Asa Briggs, Max Hastings, François Kersaudy, David Stafford, and Robert and Isabelle Tombs.
Thanks to everyone at Random House, especially my brilliant editor, Susanna Porter, and her immensely talented associate, Priyanka Krishnan. A shout-out, too, to Henry Rosenbloom, Philip Gwyn Jones, Molly Slight, and the other folks at Scribe, who are publishing Last Hope Island in the UK and Australia. And to my longtime friend Gail Ross, for all that she’s done for me and the other authors who are fortunate enough to have her as their agent.
And of course, to my husband, Stan Cloud, and my daughter, Carly. Words cannot express how much I owe to both of you. You are my everything.
INTRODUCTION
“outgrown the continent”: Jeremy Paxman, The English: A Portrait of a People (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2000), 32.
“sustained by a peculiar”: Murrow manuscript, undated, Edward R. Murrow Papers, Tufts University.
“How horrible”: Times (London), Sept. 28, 1938.
“After gallant France”: Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 7: Road to Victory, 1941–1945 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 1344.
“It’s impossible to explain”: Tangye Lean, Voices in the Darkness: The Story of the European Radio War (London: Secker & Warburg, 1943), 149.
“Occupation had descended”: Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, Soldier of Orange (London: Sphere, 1982), 38.
“drunk with happiness”: Mrs. Robert Henrey, The Incredible City (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1944), 2.
“Together, we have formed”: M. Lisiewicz et al., eds., Destiny Can Wait: The Air Force in the Second World War (Nashville, TN: Battery Press, 1949), 343.
“No matter our”: Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, In Pursuit of Life (Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton, 2003), 110.
“all those insane”: Eve Curie, Journey Among Warriors (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1943), 481.
CHAPTER 1: “MAJESTY, WE ARE AT WAR!”
“full dress and orders”: Florence Jaffray Harriman, Mission to the North (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1941), 248.
“to defend them”: Ibid.
“Majesty”: François Kersaudy, Norway 1940 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 68.
“If Hitler comes”: Ibid., 12.
“It was very difficult”: Richard Petrow, The Bitter Years: The Invasion and Occupation of Denmark and Norway, April 1940–May 1945 (New York: William Morrow, 1974), 71.
“my old bathtubs”: Kersaudy, Norway 1940, 11.
“so that Norwegian”: Ibid.
“war was the kind”: Sigrid Undset, Return to the Future (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942), 6.
“I actually have plans”: Julia Gelardi, Born to Rule: Five Reigning Consorts, Granddaughters of Queen Victoria (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005), 64.
“so socialistic”: Ibid., 148.
“Vermont offhandedly trying”: John van der Kiste, Northern Crowns: The Kings of Modern Scandinavia (Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton, 1996), 57.
“Herre Konge”: Gelardi, Born to Rule, 148.
“You don’t know me”: van der Kiste, Northern Crowns, 87.
“All the small nations”: Tim Greve, Haakon VII of Norway: Founder of a New Monarchy (London, Hurst, 1985), 117.
“We are fighting”: Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 6: Finest Hour, 1939–1941 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983), 106.
“at all costs”: Kersaudy, Norway 1940, 49.
“how completely senseless”: Halvdan Koht, Norway: Neutral and Invaded (New York: Macmillan, 1941), 68.
“the nation that bowed”: Ibid., 71.
“Reservists and volunteers”: Kersaudy, Norway 1940, 101.
“in flight again”: Willy Brandt, In Exile: Essays, Reflections and Letters, 1933–1947 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), 22.
“the cause of a free Norway”: Ibid., 165.
“I think we all”: Harriman, Mission to the North, 258–89.
“hysterical half-men”: Undset, Return to the Future, 8.
“could not appoint”: Kersaudy, Norway 1940, 103.
“The government is free”: Ibid., 104.
“That instant”: Ibid.
“this ridiculously small”: Jack Adams, The Doomed Expedition: The Norwegian Campaign of 1940 (London: Leo Cooper, 1989), 31.
“The king”: Kersaudy, Norway 1940, 106.
“not good haters”: C. J. Hambro, I Saw It Happen in Norway (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1940), 150.
“an army of marauders”: Undset, Return to the Future, 5.
“With the weak”: Hambro, I Saw It Happen in Norway, 161.
“The idea of”: Lord Ismay, The Memoirs of General Lord Ismay (New York: Viking, 1960), 119.
“There were no”: Kersaudy, Norway 1940, 141.
“elementary knowledge”: Magne Skodvin, “Norwegian Neutrality and the Challenge of War,” in Britain and Norway in the Second World War, ed. Patrick Salmon (London: HMSO, 1995), 16.
“We’ve been massacred!”: Leland Stowe, No Other Road to Freedom (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941), 143.
“one of the costliest”: Philip Knightley, The First Casualty (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), 227.
“Always too late”: John Keegan, ed., Churchill’s Generals (London: Cassell, 2007), Kindle edition, loc. 632.
“So Norway is”: Kersaudy, Norway 1940, 170.
“Please tell me”: Ibid., 171.
“You are killing”: Ibid., 178.
“blame should be attached”: Ibid., 88.
“The strict observance”: Gilbert, Finest Hour, 228.
“considering the prominent part”: Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 1: The Gathering Storm (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), 649–50.
“You ask what”: William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932–1940 (New York: Dell, 1988), 678.
CHAPTER 2: “A BOLD AND NOBLE WOMAN”
“They have come”: Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, Soldier of Orange (London: Sphere, 1982), 15.
“had been expecting”: Ibid.
“who is so popular”: Roger Keyes, Outrageous Fortune: The Tragedy of Leopold III of the Belgians, 1901–1941 (London: Secker & Warburg, 1984), 212.
“an immoral system”: Roelfzema, Soldier of Orange, 16.
“no one has given”: “Worried Queen,” Time, November 27
, 1939.
“I raise a fierce”: H. R. H. Wilhelmina, Princess of the Netherlands, Lonely but Not Alone (London: Hutchinson, 1960), 151.
“make a bold”: Ibid., 37.
“great deeds”: Ibid., 50.
“the cage”: Ibid., 42.
“any kind of initiative”: Ibid.
“If you are naughty”: “Caged No More,” Time, Dec. 7, 1962.
“In certain respects”: John Wheeler-Bennett, Friends, Enemies, and Sovereigns (London: Macmillan, 1976), 158.
“I fear no man”: Roelfzema, Soldier of Orange, 113.
“By the spring”: Wilhelmina, Lonely but Not Alone, 147–48.
“Our little speck”: Roelfzema, Soldier of Orange, 10.
“a great new power”: Keyes, Outrageous Fortune, 86–87.
“bewildered and dazed”: Lord Ismay, The Memoirs of General Lord Ismay (New York: Viking, 1960), 126.
“Even if the troops”: Ibid.
“haggard and worn”: Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 6: Finest Hour, 1939–1941 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983), 309.
“was her”: Sarah Bradford, The Reluctant King: The Life and Reign of George VI, 1895–1952 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), 315.
“calm and unruffled”: Keyes, Outrageous Fortune, 209.
“be the last man”: Wilhelmina, Lonely but Not Alone, 154.
“She was naturally”: Bradford, The Reluctant King, 315.
CHAPTER 3: “A COMPLETE AND UTTER SHAMBLES”
“When it is a question”: “Leopold Goes to War,” Time, May 20, 1940.
“inviolability of Belgian territory”: Roger Keyes, Outrageous Fortune, 4.
“carry the conflict”: Ibid., 109.
“a determined”: Brian Bond, Britain, France and Belgium, 1939–1940 (London: Brassey’s, 1990), 98.
“fought like lions”: Keyes, Outrageous Fortune, 190.
“if the quality”: Bond, Britain, France and Belgium, 98.
“We have been defeated!”: Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2: Their Finest Hour (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949), 42.
“It is so much”: Janet Teissier du Cros, Divided Loyalties (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), xxiv.
“The real truth”: John C. Cairns, “A Nation of Shopkeepers in Search of a Suitable France: 1919–1940,” American Historical Review, June 1974.
“America is far away”: Robert Tombs and Isabelle Tombs, That Sweet Enemy: Britain and France: The History of a Love-Hate Relationship (New York: Vintage, 2008), 502.
“France wanted revenge”: Margaret MacMillan, Peacemakers: The Paris Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War (London: John Murray, 2001), 39.
“the English have”: Tombs and Tombs, That Sweet Enemy, 541.
“A genuine alliance”: Marc Bloch, Strange Defeat (Important Books, 2013), 68.
“learners in the military arts”: Martin S. Alexander, “Dunkirk in Military Operations, Myths, and Memories,” in Britain and France in Two World Wars: Truth, Myth and Memory, ed. Robert Tombs and Emile Chabal (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 95.
“Ever since 1907”: François Kersaudy, Churchill and de Gaulle (New York: Atheneum, 1982), 26.
“stew in her own juice”: Tombs and Tombs, That Sweet Enemy, 571.
“the French will look”: Ibid., 528.
“the finest in Europe”: Kersaudy, Churchill and de Gaulle, 31.
“utter dejection”: Churchill, Their Finest Hour, 46.
“There are none”: Ibid.
“one of the greatest”: Ibid., 47.
“Although there were”: Bond, Britain, France and Belgium, 294.
“We had only”: Keyes, Outrageous Fortune, 107.
“this inhuman monster”: Charles Glass, Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation (New York: Penguin Books, 2009), 78.
“a complete and utter shambles”: Norman Gelb, Scramble: A Narrative History of the Battle of Britain (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985), 10.
“This is like”: Tombs and Tombs, That Sweet Enemy, 553.
“In all the history”: Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 6: Finest Hour, 1939–1941 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983), 377.
“the Belgian Army might”: Ibid., 362.
“We don’t care”: Bond, Britain, France and Belgium, 92.
“Belgian morale”: Keyes, Outrageous Fortune, 214.
“rotten to the core”: Ibid., 324.
“lesser breeds”: Ibid., 187.
“after assisting the BEF”: Gilbert, Finest Hour, 407.
“The Belgian Army has”: Keyes, Outrageous Fortune, 338.
“Never would King Albert”: James H. Huizinga, Mr. Europe: A Political Biography of Paul Henri Spaak (New York: Praeger, 1961), 121.
“an idle refugee monarch”: Keyes, Outrageous Fortune, 308.
“For the duration”: Ibid., 360.
“Defeat arouses”: Irène Némirovsky, Suite Française (New York: Knopf, 2006), 313.
“When one is fighting”: Huizinga, Mr. Europe, 140.
“good thing”: Keyes, Outrageous Fortune, 372.
“the Belgian Army, virtually”: Ibid., 187.
“There has never”: Bond, Britain, France and Belgium, 95.
“suddenly and unconditionally”: Keyes, Outrageous Fortune, 362.
“treating with the enemy”: Ibid., 363.
“for the space”: Mollie Panter-Downes, London War Notes: 1939–1945 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971), 63–64.
“The king’s capitulation”: Keyes, Outrageous Fortune, 378.
“savage and lying attacks”: Ibid., 242.
“the truth should not”: Ibid.
“vilification of a brave king”: Ibid., 402.
“fought very bravely”: Churchill, Their Finest Hour, 95.
“completed the full circle”: Keyes, Outrageous Fortune, 399.
“Suddenly, without”: Ibid., 402–3.
“Seldom can a prime minister”: William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932–1940 (New York: Dell, 1988), 677.
“the public interest”: Keyes, Outrageous Fortune, 455.
“a very grave injustice”: Ibid., 459.
“K.C. Clears King”: Ibid.
“one of hideous complexity”: John W. Wheeler-Bennett, King George VI: His Life and Reign (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1958), 452.
“mon cher Bertie”: Keyes, Outrageous Fortune, 310.
“To act otherwise”: Ibid., 309.
“mixed up”: Wheeler-Bennett, King George VI, 455.
CHAPTER 4: “WE SHALL CONQUER TOGETHER— OR WE SHALL DIE TOGETHER”
“One feels”: Richard Collier, 1940: The World in Flames (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1979), 98.
“on further reflection”: François Kersaudy, Norway 1940, 221.
“unable to help”: Ibid.
“God save Norway!”: Halvdan Koht, Norway: Neutral and Invaded (New York: Macmillan, 1941), 126.
“I am so afraid”: Kersaudy, Norway 1940, 223.
“extremely depressed”: Ibid.
“So long as”: Richard M. Ketchum, The Borrowed Years, 1938–1941: America on the Way to War (New York: Random House, 1989), 352.
“We shall fight”: Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2: Their Finest Hour (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949), 118.
“So you are admitting”: Robert Tombs and Isabelle Tombs, That Sweet Enemy: Britain and France: The History of a Love-Hate Relationship (New York: Vintage, 2008), 555.
“the gutless collapse”: Martin S. Alexander, “Dunkirk in Military Operations, Myths, and Memories,” in Britain and France in Two World Wars: Truth, Myth and Memory, ed. Robert Tombs and Emile Chabal (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 98.
“the French war effort”: John C. Cairns, “A Nation of Shopkeepers in Search of a Suitable France: 1919–1940,” American Historical Review, June 1974.
“as bravely as”: Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940�
��1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 98.
“very few British divisions”: P.M.H. Bell, A Certain Eventuality: Britain and the Fall of France (London: Saxon House, 1974), 68.
“our contribution”: Lord Ismay, The Memoirs of General Lord Ismay (New York: Viking, 1960), 142.
“on and on and on”: Sir Edward Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe, vol. 2: The Fall of France, June 1940 (London: Heinemann, 1954), 150.
“then in the provinces”: Ibid., 206.
“her neck wrung”: Churchill, Their Finest Hour, 213.
“This was the great”: Tombs and Tombs, That Sweet Enemy, 559.
“like an anthill”: Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 100.
“all the ugliness”: Charles Glass, Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation (New York: Penguin Books, 2009), 79.
“too few arms”: Robert Tombs, “Two Great Peoples,” in Britain and France in Two World Wars: Truth, Myth and Memory, ed. Robert Tombs and Emile Chabal (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 10.
“shamefully feeble”: Tombs and Tombs, That Sweet Enemy, 567.
“deliberate estrangement”: Ibid., 568.
“The fact is”: Ibid., 600.
“They seemed almost happy”: Eric Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream (New York: Atheneum, 1976), 155.
“not to remain”: Alexander, “Dunkirk in Military Operations,” 107.
“a lifetime steeped”: Spears, The Fall of France, June 1940, 48.
“Now we are all alone”: Brian Bond, Britain, France and Belgium, 1939–1940 (London: Brassey’s, 1990), 117.
“Personally I feel”: Alexander, “Dunkirk in Military Operations,” 107.
“Certainly everything”: Sir Alexander Cadogan, The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 1938–1945, ed. David Dilks (New York: Putnam, 1971), 308.