Meanwhile, under German onslaught, the French had withdrawn most of their troops and were re-forming to await an attack on the Somme. Churchill made four flights to France to encourage resistance, and the King sent President Lebrun a telegram sympathizing with French losses and exhorting France to continue the struggle. Over the next week the French army launched an attack on a broad front in northern France, and appealed for more help; the British prepared to send out two more divisions, including the 1st Canadian Division. On 8 June the King and Queen went to see the Canadians at Aldershot; the King recorded that Canada was fielding the only division with all its equipment and artillery. Then, as the German armies poured across France and bombed Paris for the first time, French resistance faltered.
Everywhere the news was terrible. On 10 June Italy declared war on the Allies and immediately bombed the British island of Malta. On 12 June Churchill reported to the King that the French were outnumbered three to one and might have to surrender very soon. However, as the King noted, ‘A young General de Gaulle is ready to carry on a “war of columns”, mobile units against German tanks. Marshal Pétain is a defeatist, & says all is lost. Aged 84.’92
On Friday 14 June, the day on which the Germans entered an undefended and almost deserted Paris, the Queen broadcast – in French – a message of encouragement to the women of France. ‘Je voudrais ce soir dire aux femmes de France, de cette France héroïque et glorieuse qui défend, en ce moment, non seulement son propre sol, mais les libertés du monde entier, les sentiments d’affection, et d’admiration, que leurs souffrances et leur courage éveillent en nos coeurs,’ she began. She praised the ardour with which the French army was fighting, but her thoughts were primarily with the women who were watching in anguish the immense struggle in which their sons, husbands and brothers were engaged. ‘Pour moi qui ai toujours tant aimé la France, je souffre aujourd’hui comme vous.’ She recalled the enthusiasm and generosity with which she and the King had been received in Paris in 1938 and she saluted the sacrifices Frenchwomen were now prepared to make to save their country. ‘Une nation qui a, pour la défendre, de tels hommes, et pour l’aimer, de telles femmes, doit, tôt ou tard, forcer la victoire’ – a nation defended by such men and loved by such women must sooner or later attain victory.
Finally, she spoke of her recent conversations with wounded French soldiers who had come over from Dunkirk, and whom she had visited at the Wellhouse Emergency Hospital on 6 June. She had talked to each in French, and asked how they were feeling. All, even the most severely wounded, she said, had replied almost gaily with one short phrase: ‘Ça va.’ She was sure that the time would come when the two peoples, British and French, would be able to exchange the same words: ‘Maintenant, ça va.’93
The Queen had been helped to draft the speech by the anglophile French writer André Maurois, who had been Churchill’s interpreter on the Western Front in 1916, and was in unhappy exile in London.94 After the broadcast Maurois wrote to her praising the way she had delivered it.95 He acknowledged that the broadcast probably came too late to help stiffen French resolve not to surrender. But he felt that it would give his countrymen hope for the future. The British government was sufficiently impressed for Anthony Eden, who was foreign secretary once again, to write to the Queen in January 1941 asking her to make another, similar broadcast (although in the event the idea was shelved), as her message had ‘created a profound impression in France’.96
The day after the Queen’s broadcast, General Charles de Gaulle arrived in Britain and set himself at the head of a campaign to rally French forces outside France, shortly to become the Free French movement. On 22 June the French government surrendered. Britain was now on her own and the prospects were terrible – Churchill warned Roosevelt that if Britain were defeated, ‘you may have a United States of Europe under Nazi command far more numerous, far stronger, far better armed than the New World.’97
In response to a sympathetic letter from Eleanor Roosevelt,98 the Queen wrote,
Sometimes one’s heart seems near breaking under the stress of so much sorrow and anxiety. When we think of our gallant young men being sacrificed to the terrible machine that Germany has created, I think that anger perhaps predominates, but when we think of their valour, their determination and their great grand spirit, pride and joy are uppermost.
We are all prepared to sacrifice everything in the fight to save freedom, and the curious thing is, that already many false values are going, and life is becoming simpler and greater every day.99
Despair would have been understandable. But the country’s solitary stand gave rise to a single-minded determination and, almost, elation. The King wrote to Queen Mary, ‘Personally I feel happier now that we have no allies to be polite to & pamper.’100 Many British people appeared to agree with this sentiment. Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, Air Officer Commanding Fighter Command, remarked ‘Thank God we’re alone now’ – he would no longer have to deploy his limited number of fighters over the continent.
Churchill, knowing how vital the battle in the air would be, had appointed his friend Max Beaverbrook, the newspaper proprietor, to be minister for aircraft production. By the middle of June Beaverbrook had managed to raise the number of aircraft being manufactured every week from 245 to 363.101 In the Commons on 19 June Churchill made two more of his historic declarations, announcing that the Battle of France was over and he now expected the Battle of Britain to begin. ‘Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation,’ he insisted. ‘Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.” ’102 Such rhetoric induced optimism which seemed astonishing if not downright foolish to onlookers abroad. As the New Yorker’s London correspondent Mollie Panter-Downes wrote, ‘It would be difficult for an impartial observer to decide today whether the British are the bravest or merely the most stupid people in the world.’103
Brave or stupid, in these circumstances it was entirely proper that the bond between King and Prime Minister grew ever stronger. One impediment had long since gone. ‘I am getting to know Winston better, & I feel that we are beginning to understand each other,’ the King wrote to Queen Mary. ‘His silly attitude over D. in 1936 is quite over … Winston is definitely the right man at the helm at the moment.’104 Churchill had indeed reconsidered his initial support of King Edward VIII. Malcolm MacDonald later recalled a conversation during the Battle of Britain when Churchill told him that ‘King George and Queen Elizabeth are a far finer, more popular and more inspiringly helpful pair than the other would have been. We could not have a better King and Queen in Britain’s most perilous hour.’105 The King began to look forward keenly to their weekly meetings, and by the autumn of 1940 these had changed from formal audiences into private Tuesday lunches. The Queen was generally present.*
Churchill commented that the intimacy which developed between him and the King was unprecedented since the days of Queen Anne and his own ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough.106 Just as unprecedented, however, was the presence of the Queen at these private conversations between the King and his Prime Minister. The King’s diary does not record any interventions by the Queen. Nevertheless she said, many years later, that she felt very much a part of a team with the King, and he ‘got on terribly well, like a house on fire’, with Churchill.107 By now the King and Queen symbolized resistance to Hitler not only in Britain but also in all the occupied nations of Europe.
Britons were now organizing to resist invasion. In the south-east, there was widespread fear of Germans parachuting or gliding down from the skies, perhaps even disguised as nuns. Locals sabotaged possible landing sites: golf courses, sports fields, downland and fields were scattered with junk – old cars, old cookers, ploughs, tree trunks – anything to prevent an aircraft from touching down. Road signs were removed, so as not to assist any enemy who did arrive. The names of villages and even railway station
s were taken down.108
The government had called for all able-bodied men between the ages of fifteen and sixty-five who were not already engaged in the war effort to step forward and become Local Defence Volunteers. (Thus was born the Home Guard, eventually to be portrayed as ‘Dad’s Army’, in the affectionate television series which became one of Queen Elizabeth’s favourite programmes in later years.) Immediately, over a quarter of a million people offered their services and began to gather in pubs and meeting rooms across the country to discuss how they could serve. By the end of June the ‘force’ had grown to a million and a half. Men and boys began to drill with broomsticks instead of rifles, pitchforks instead of anti-aircraft guns.
In Windsor Castle Owen Morshead became the head of the Castle’s Home Guard. He wrote to Queen Mary to tell her how the King and Queen were coping and said that they had talked to the night patrols in the Castle, which was a great encouragement to them. He thought the King ‘seemed rather oppressed and tired – sick of reading & reading the endless stream of Cabinet papers and war reports sent daily to him, and waiting & waiting. It is a misfortune for him in these days that he has to know so much of what is going on – where ignorance is bliss. Happily the Queen is a perpetual tonic, with her sunny and buoyant nature.’109
The King and Queen were determined to protect themselves. Both of them took shooting lessons (the King was already an accomplished shot) and the King carried a rifle as well as a revolver in his car. Joseph Kennedy noted in his diary a story told him by Brendan Bracken, now a minister in the government. On one of Churchill’s weekly visits to the King at Buckingham Palace he found him in the garden shooting at a target with a rifle. The King told his Prime Minister that ‘if the Germans were coming, he was at least going to get his German and Churchill said if he felt that way about it, he would get him a Tommy Gun so he could kill a lot of Germans and he is getting him one’.110*
The Queen was equally resolute. She told Harold Nicolson that she was taking instruction every morning in firing a revolver. ‘I shall not go down like the others,’ she said. ‘I should die if I had to leave.’111 Nicolson was much cheered by her pluck and the resolution and good sense of both King and Queen. He wrote to his wife Vita, ‘he was so gay and she so calm. They did me all the good in the world … We shall win. I know that. I have no doubts at all.’112
Through these months thousands of children were being evacuated from the major cities in anticipation of German bombing. Most were sent to the country but others, especially children of the well-to-do, were dispatched for safety to the United States or to the Dominions. The King and Queen had discussed with Churchill the threat to their own children; on 18 June the King had asked Churchill if he thought the Princesses would be a liability in the event of invasion. ‘No,’ the Prime Minister replied.113 The Queen had no doubts. She made it clear that evacuation was not what she wanted for herself or for her children. She has been often quoted (though the precise moment is obscure) as saying, ‘The children could not go without me, I could not possibly leave the King, and the King would never go.’
That being so, the security of the Royal Family was a major concern. On one occasion, King Haakon asked the King what would happen if German parachutists suddenly descended into the grounds of the Palace. The King’s biographer explained what happened next:
Obligingly King George pressed the alarm signal and, together with the Queen, they went into the garden to watch the result. There followed an anti-climax; nothing happened at all. An anxious equerry, dispatched to make inquiries, returned with the report that the officer of the guard had been informed by the police sergeant on duty that no attack was pending ‘as he had heard nothing of it’. Police co-operation having been obtained, a number of guardsmen entered the gardens at the double and, to the horror of King Haakon but the vast amusement of the King and Queen, proceeded to thrash the undergrowth in the manner of beaters at a shoot rather than of men engaged in the pursuit of a dangerous enemy. As a result of this incident precautions were revised and strengthened.114
The most important of these was the Coats Mission, a hand-picked body of officers and men from the Brigade of Guards and the Household Cavalry who, equipped with armoured cars, stood always ready to spirit the King and Queen into a secret place of safety in the country should the Germans really threaten them.115*
At Buckingham Palace the first royal air-raid shelter was somewhat amateurish and probably afforded little or no protection against a direct hit. It was a basement room which had been used by the housekeeper. The ceiling was reinforced by steel girders and there were steel shutters across the high window. The furniture was somewhat eclectic – it included gilt chairs, a regency settee and a large Victorian mahogany table. The shelter was decorated with many of the valuable small Dutch landscapes which had been brought downstairs. Hating the shelter as she did, the Queen said later that she had developed an unreasonable dislike for these little scenes of cows and bridges over canals.116
There were emergency steps to reach the window, axes on the wall, oil lamps, electric torches, a bottle of smelling salts and a pile of glossy magazines to help while away the hours. In the room next door, the Household took shelter – they were blessed with a piano, but the King was not amused when one of the refugee courtiers attempted a rousing singsong. The Queen’s dressers and other staff had another nearby room, to which many of the Palace’s priceless clocks had been moved for safe keeping. Their loud ticking provided a useful distraction to those awaiting bombardment. Rats provided another, less welcome diversion.117
Throughout that summer, as daily dogfights took place across the skies, the Queen continued her visits to troops, hospitals, voluntary services, factories, aerodromes and training centres, carrying out more than twenty solo engagements in June and July and another ten jointly with the King. On 31 July she visited the Free French troops under the leadership of General de Gaulle at Olympia. De Gaulle did not prove an easy ally, but he soon became something of a favourite with her. On the same day she went to see another group of French soldiers, waiting to be repatriated, at White City. A Breton soldier to whom she spoke was impressed by her calm and smiling face, and wrote afterwards, ‘cette Reine ne peut pas être vaincue car elle est la justice même et la vraie conception de la vie démocratique.’118
For the first time in their married life there was no holiday in Scotland that year, and the Queen celebrated her birthday on 4 August in a low-key manner.
*
INEVITABLY HITLER’S dash across Europe led to new, more serious concerns with regard to the Duke of Windsor. With the approval of the British Military Mission to which he was attached, he left Paris as the Germans advanced in May; he and the Duchess paused briefly in the south of France before having to flee the advancing Germans into Spain on the night of 20 June.
Berlin had ambitions for the Duke. Ribbentrop, the former Ambassador to London and now the German Foreign Minister, knew that the Duke had been sympathetic to Germany and that he considered the war unnecessary. The fascist government of General Franco was aligned with Berlin and the Germans now tried to have the Duke detained in Spain. Churchill, concerned, telegraphed the Duke asking him to move at once to neutral Lisbon, whence a flying boat would carry him and the Duchess back to England. The Duke’s reply ignored the fact that Churchill was leading Britain in its most perilous hour – he insisted that before he returned he be given guarantees that he and the Duchess would be royally treated in England, and would be extended regular invitations to Buckingham Palace. To badger the Prime Minister on such matters at a time when Britain faced imminent invasion was, as his biographer put it, ‘conduct that cannot be condoned’.119
The Windsors did then move on to Lisbon, but even there they were subject to German conspiracies. Ribbentrop first sent men to flatter the Duke with praise and promises and then an SS officer with the mission to cajole and if necessary force the Duke back to Spain. At Buckingham Palace Alec Hardinge made notes on an intelligence r
eport: ‘Germans expect assistance from Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Latter desiring at any price to become Queen. Germans have been negotiating with her since June 27th.’120
Churchill then devised the idea of getting the couple far from German reach by making the Duke governor of the Bahamas. The Royal Family were not keen – the King wrote to his mother, ‘I at once said that “she” would be an obstacle as D’s wife.’ But none of the family wanted the Windsors in England at this time and, as the King put it to Queen Mary, ‘it was imperative to get him away from Lisbon.’121 Queen Mary was equally unenthusiastic but she replied, ‘Under the circumstances I think this is the best arrangement for D.’122
The Queen, perhaps, had the greatest misgivings, and she expressed them very clearly in a handwritten memorandum. Although she knew that the appointment had already been decided, she asked Alec Hardinge to send her notes to the Colonial Secretary, Lord Lloyd. The language she used about the Duchess was strong, and undoubtedly reflected the feelings that she had harboured since 1936. But her views on the Windsors’ suitability for public office were shared not only throughout the Royal Family* and Household, but also by members of the public, some of whose letters criticizing the Duke and Duchess she sent on to Lord Lloyd.123
She wrote that she was certain that, if the Duke was made governor of the Bahamas, ‘a very difficult situation will arise over his wife.’ Home and marriage ties were ‘sacred’ to the average Briton and the fact that the Duchess ‘has three husbands alive, will not be pleasing to the good people of the Islands’. Britons were used to ‘looking up’ to the King’s representatives, but ‘The Duchess of Windsor is looked upon as the lowest of the low – it will be the first lowering of the standard hitherto set, and may lead to unimaginable troubles, if a Governor’s wife such as she, is to lead and set an example to the Bahamas.’ Her objections, she stressed, were ‘on moral grounds, but in this world of broken promises and lowered standards, who is to keep a high standard of honour, but the British Empire … These few words are written from the point of view of general policy – they are not personal. I feel strongly that such an appointment may lead to great troubles.’ She thought, moreover, that it would displease the Americans, which might be dangerous.124
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