Churchill 1940-1945: Under Friendly Fire

by Walter Reid

  Ahead of French capitulation the Prime Minister shuttled indefatigably backwards and forwards from England to France, trying to put heart into his allies. He made no less than six exhausting trips across the Channel, always at some risk of being shot down. Two of the visits involved overnight stays.

  Pre-war planning had long envisaged that opposition to Germany would consist of a close alliance with France. To an even greater extent than in the First World War, the French military contribution was to exceed that of Britain, whose participation would largely be in the air. Despite the knowledge that there must be the closest cooperation between one small British Army and the eight French ones, there was in fact extraordinarily little liaison. It thus came as a chilling surprise for Churchill, on 16 May, when he asked, ‘Ouù est le masse de la manœuvre?’ to be told ‘There is no reserve’. Churchill recorded,

  I admit this was one of the greatest surprises I have had in my life. Why had I not known more about it, even though I had been so busy in the Admiralty? Why had the British Government, the War Office above all, not known more about it? It was no excuse that the French High Command would not impart their dispositions to us or to Lord Gort except in vague outline. We had a right to know. We ought to have insisted.5

  Perhaps they should have insisted, but the fact is that requests for military information from the French were usually unavailing. French officers frequently declined to tell their British counterparts what their dispositions consisted of.6 The net result was that the British had no knowledge of their Allies’ – their only Allies’ – Order of Battle.

  In the absence of a reserve, the British and French armies separated and Britain fell back on Dunkirk. Reynaud had drafted an order, which said that French troops were to make their way to the embarkation beaches, ‘the British forces embarking first’. Churchill intervened explosively: ‘Non! Partage: bras-dessus, bras-dessous’.7 But Weygand placed obstructions in the way of evacuation of French troops, and some ships sailed off empty.

  At Calais, where British and French forces were also pinned down, the French General Fagalde threatened to use force to stop the British from embarking – a disappointing reaction in view of the fact that the British were only at Calais to demonstrate solidarity with the French. For flawed and symbolic reasons Churchill chose to compound the mistake, by ordering the British Calais troops to hold out and refrain from surrendering.

  After Dunkirk there was a wave of Anglophobia in France. While that was to be expected among those who did not know the detail of events, it was not confined to such people. Weygand accused the BEF of ‘a refusal to fight’,8 and Pétain, recalling the moment when the Kaiserschlacht threatened to break the Anglo-French line in 1918, said to the British that he had given them forty divisions then. ‘Where are your forty divisions now?’ There were particularly bitter attacks on Britain for not contributing a greater air element to the defence of France. Account was not taken of the fact that in just two months Britain had lost 959 aircraft and 435 pilots, and that she had only 331 modern fighters left.9 France’s plight was not the fault of Britain or France alone – it was a joint responsibility for failing to think through their preparations for a war that they knew was coming.

  The series of historic meetings held in the shadow of France’s collapse were of necessity rushed and ill planned. The political complexities on the French side were subtle and it was often difficult to know how far French remarks were to be taken at face value and how far they were designed to stimulate changes of position among colleagues in an uneasy coalition. Churchill was magnificent in English and in French, but the French generals, especially Weygand, the Commander-in-Chief, and Pétain and even Churchill’s old friend, Georges, were full of gloom. Only Reynaud, the Prime Minister, showed much inclination to fight on.

  Churchill returned to London from his 10 June excursion and wrote to Roosevelt, urging him to stiffen French resolve. He was back at Weygand’s headquarters on 11 and 12 June, and left with confirmation that France would not make peace without consulting him. On 13 June, he returned to France to meet Reynaud at Tours. By this stage, the effects of war on France were very evident. Churchill’s aircraft had to find a landing between craters. No one was at the airport to meet him, and the conference took time to assemble. Weygand had said that an armistice must be asked for at once. Reynaud was still resisting, but he, too, had asked Roosevelt for help and now intended to send a final request for American intervention, spelling out that otherwise the consequences would be Roosevelt’s responsibility.

  The British were taken aback by how fast the situation had changed, and it took them some time to realise that Reynaud was now telling them that France could resist no more. He asked them to release France from the reciprocal commitment not to make a separate peace. Churchill replied with great sympathy and understanding and did not underestimate the consequence of the loss of the British Army in the north of France, but he did not give the consent that Reynaud sought and he ended by looking hard at him and saying, ‘that is my answer to your question’. Unqualified as that answer was, Reynaud asked for clarification. Churchill spoke with tears in his eyes: ‘I have already said we would refrain from reproaches and recriminations. The cause of France will always be dear to us, and if we win the war we will one day restore her to all her power and dignity. But that is a very different thing from asking Great Britain to consent to a departure from the solemn undertaking binding two countries’.10

  The meeting then broke up so that the British could talk together in the garden. When it resumed, de Gaulle had arrived uninvited and took the liberty of joining the meeting. He had not heard the earlier exchanges and does not appear to have understood what was now being said. Churchill started by saying explicitly that ‘Nothing in the discussion he had just had with his colleagues had led any of them to change their views. Lord Halifax and Lord Beaverbrook had expressed their approbation with what he had said just now, and it could therefore be assumed that the Cabinet would also agree,’11 but for some inexplicable reason de Gaulle understood Churchill to be agreeing to release France from her commitment.

  All the evidence available makes it totally clear that he was wrong.12 Churchill was of course profoundly sympathetic to the predicament of France, whose historic role he recognised and respected, and de Gaulle may have been misled by his compassion, his failure to bluster, his respect for his allies in their disaster. In any event, he was quickly told he was mistaken. Spears told him so almost immediately and when de Gaulle replied that Baudouin was saying something different, Spears ran after the Prime Minister’s car. Churchill confirmed the position to Spears: ‘Churchill had said “Je comprends” to indicate that he understood what Reynaud was saying: not that he approved of it. “Comprendre means understand in French, doesn’t it?” Churchill asked Spears. “Well”, said Winston, “when for once I use exactly the right word in their own language, it is going rather far to assume that I intended it to assume that I meant something quite different. Tell them my French is not so bad as all that.” ’13 But despite the correction, de Gaulle continued to believe that Britain had connived in a turnaround by Reynaud which he could not accept. Whatever he thought of Reynaud, he was unfair to Churchill.

  In London on 16 June with Jean Monnet, de Gaulle was told by the ambassador, Corbin, that Reynaud had sent a telegram to Churchill making a final request to allow France to ask for an armistice and implying that he would resign if Britain refused.

  Corbin and Monnet then told de Gaulle of the remarkable proposal for a union between France and Britain which they had worked out with Sir Robert Vansittart, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office from 1938 to 1941 and now Chief Diplomatic Adviser to the Foreign Secretary. De Gaulle was very doubtful about the feasibility of the scheme but endorsed it in the hope that it would strengthen Reynaud’s position against his less stalwart colleagues. It is interesting that the proposal originated in France – as did the similar proposal which is now known to have been made in
1956 by the French Prime Minister Guy Mollet.

  When Churchill heard of the proposal he was not impressed and indeed had little opportunity to consider it as he negotiated to hold the French from capitulating. He was deeply involved in an attempt to persuade the United States to lend support to France. He had sent telegrams to Roosevelt on 13, 14 and 15 June, reminding him that without American support France would cease to resist. Eventually, however, he was persuaded by de Gaulle that the union offer should be made, and the Cabinet too agreed that the proposal might as well be issued. The proposal was relayed by Churchill to Reynaud by telephone: ‘Hello, Reynaud! De Gaulle is right! Our proposal may have great consequences. Il faut tenir! Well, see you tomorrow! At Concarneau’. It was only when Chamberlain had an audience that evening that the King learned about the adjustment to his territories.14

  Before Churchill could leave for Concarneau the following day he heard that Reynaud had resigned and that Pétain had been asked to form a government. Churchill was not on metropolitan French soil again until after D-Day. Pétain’s response to the union proposal was ‘Why fuse with a corpse?’ The corpse he was referring to was Britain’s. The Council of Ministers equally failed to rise to the level of events, and there were references to not wishing to be subjects of His Britannic Majesty or to see France become one of the Dominions of the British Empire. Many leading British statesmen were hardly more enthusiastic, but that did not mean that Britain was not hurt by the speedy rejection of a morally costly offer, and the entente cordiale died with it.15

  That was the end of France. It had been spelled out on the evening of 16 June, when Roosevelt’s response to France’s pleas had arrived, essentially negative. Right up to the last minute, Britain continued to provide material support to France. It is often forgotten that after Dunkirk fresh British troops were sent back to France. But the French political and indeed military command was now in pieces. Weygand was flatly refusing to obey Reynaud’s orders. There were violent rows between the two men. Reynaud was now in a minority in arguing against an armistice. He resigned and the President, Lebrun, called in the presidents of the two Chambers of Parliament for their constitutional advice on who Reynaud’s successor should be. They recommended that Reynaud should be reappointed. Lebrun, however, felt there was no alternative but to appoint Pétain. France was no longer at war. George VI spoke for many of his countrymen when he reacted to the fall of France by saying that things would be a lot easier now that Britain did not have to bother about her allies.

  What was Britain now to say to the renewed request that France be released from her undertaking? Churchill was aghast at the proposal: ‘Tell them that if they let us have their fleet we shall never forget, but that if they surrender without consulting us we shall never forgive. We shall blacken their name for a thousand years!’ Then he added ‘Don’t, of course, do that just yet’. The gravity of the situation did not overwhelm him: he was in particularly good spirits that evening, reciting poetry, murmuring ‘Bang, bang, bang, Goes the farmer’s gun, Run, rabbit, run, rabbit, Run, run, run’ before taking a turn in the garden, telling one or two dirty stories to his staff and bidding them good night at 1.30: ‘Goodnight, my children.’16

  There was little point in refusing point blank to agree to what was going to happen anyway and the best that could be done appeared to be to accede, subject to the condition that the French fleet moved to British ports. The final British response to France’s request that she might sue for a separate peace was given in a telegram sent on 16 June. It pointed out that the agreement forbidding separate negotiations had been made with the French Republic, and not with any particular administration: ‘It therefore involves the honour of France’. Britain wholly excluded itself from any part in an enquiry about terms but consented to France’s doing so, ‘provided, but only provided, that the French fleet has sailed forthwith for British harbours pending negotiations’.17 Churchill sent a personal telegram, recording that he could not believe that ‘the illustrious Marshal Pétain and the famous General Weygand will injure their ally by delivering over to the enemy the fine French fleet. Such an action would scarify their names for a thousand years of history.’ For the moment, that did the trick.

  The consequences of the fall of France were immense. Mussolini, who had been hesitating on the sidelines, was reassured that there were opportunities to be exploited. When he declared war on France on 10 July the Mediterranean was no longer Britain’s. Indeed, with Italy in the war and the French fleet out of it, Britain had to make a choice between Mediterranean and Far Eastern strategy. As early as 28 June the Australian and New Zealand governments were told that it was not practical for Britain to send a fleet to defend Singapore. There were thus direct repercussions in both the Far East and in the Mediterranean. There was to be debate about whether Britain’s Mediterranean Strategy was the creation of Brooke or of Churchill. Perhaps it was Pétain’s.

  The consequences of the nature of the fall of France were also hugely significant. Defeated France, Vichy France, remained to an extent an unknown quantity until the unoccupied area was taken over by the Germans in 1942. On several occasions Vichy came close to entering the war on the German side. Vichy France had to be humoured, principally to avoid precipitating a transfer of its fleet to Germany. America and Britain interpreted this need in different ways, and there were serious differences between the allies about who represented Free France and indeed how far Free France should be recognised.

  A deficiency in French morale undercut all that had been done to prepare for war at a material level. France had rearmed strongly ahead of the war, and there was a confident belief in France as in Britain that the superior vitality of the economies of the allies would enable them to survive a prolonged war and to defeat Germany, whose economy was believed to be overstretched and precarious. In 1938 defence spending equalled a third of all French government spending and by 1940 France had more tanks (at 2,900) than Germany – even allowing for seized Czechoslovak tanks. French artillery also substantially outnumbered German – 11,200 guns to 7,710. In aircraft she was not nearly so well off. Britain’s role was to be primarily naval, but the military contribution was also expected to assist18 – to some extent, but not a lot. At the time of the Munich Crisis the British army numbered just 180,000 men, with a Territorial Army of 130,000. Germany had 550,000, with a further 500,000 in reserve. Gort, as CIGS, said, ‘In the circumstances, it would be murder to send our forces overseas to fight a first-class power’.

  Diplomatic preparations for the war had been less than satisfactory: France’s attempts to secure allies against the Nazi menace (in which she was not assisted by Britain) had been remarkably unsuccessful and such allies as she had were those countries which fell to Hitler in the years that led up to 1939.

  The alliance between Britain and France itself was not a particularly cordial one. After the First World War the two countries had drifted apart. Among military men in Britain there were many who thought that the First World War had been a temporary aberration from the tradition of fighting against the French, and even among senior politicians there was often a surprisingly crude dislike of Gallic neighbours. Liberal British thinkers felt that since 1918 France had adopted a militaristic and aggressive spirit. France was equally un-enthusiastic about Britain. Many Frenchmen felt that they had borne the brunt of the fighting in the First World War and that Britain was now, more than ever, prepared to fight to the last Frenchman.

  Efforts had been made to overcome this mood of hostility. The King and Queen visited France for four days in 1938 and the following year President Lebrun paid a return state visit to London. ‘Chips’ Channon sourly referred to the visit as a ‘Frog week’ organised for the sake of ‘pro-frog boys’ like Eden and Churchill. Chamberlain was not a ‘pro-frog boy’, but he enjoyed the entertainment after Lebrun’s speech so much that he got hiccups.19

  Even at this distance, even with the benefit of hindsight and seventy years of research, the speed and profund
ity of France’s collapse is difficult to understand. The reaction to the defeat of France in so short a space was generally one of amazement. Rebecca West said that it ranked as a tragedy ‘as supreme in history as Hamlet and Othello and King Lear rank in art’. The Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King said ‘It is midnight in Europe’. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was stunned: ‘Surely I must be dreaming’. Churchill: ‘I was dumbfounded. What were we to think of the great French Army and its highest chiefs?’20

  9

  The Constable of France

  Although France could no longer support Britain’s war, she could still affect it, especially through the agency of the man who came increasingly to personify his country. De Gaulle and Churchill first met in May 1940. The Frenchman was impressed by Churchill and made an equally good impression on him.1 De Gaulle had no interest in making peace. He spoke of guerrilla warfare: capitulation was out of the question. As Spears put it, ‘His bearing, alone among his compatriots, matched the calm, healthy phlegm of the British … No chin, a long, drooping, elephantine nose over a closely-cut moustache, a shadow over a small mouth whose thick lips tended to protrude as if in a pout before speaking, a high receding forehead and pointed head surmounted by sparse black hair lying flat and neatly parted. His heavily hooded eyes were very shrewd. When about to speak he oscillated his head slightly like a pendulum, while searching for words’.2

  On one occasion, when Churchill came across de Gaulle standing apart from the others, he greeted him as ‘L’homme du destin’. Later he charged the meeting with romance, talking of de Gaulle as ‘The Constable of France’. But even at the time he saw this junior officer as a significant figure.