Five Days in London, May 1940

by John Lukacs

  There exists a photograph of Baldwin and Chamberlain walking together to Parliament in early 1937. Their clothes are black and rumpled; with their stiff high collars, umbrella, and cane, Baldwin topped with a high bowler, Chamberlain with a shiny top hat, they look like surviving incarnations of an entirely outdated Victorianism — as outdated as Hugenberg or Hindenburg or Schacht in 1933 or 1934, when seen (and not only when read), and in contrast to the Hitler of “The Triumph of the Will”; prototypical figures of an old — though not very old — Right.

  We must understand that the great conflict of the 1930s, of the period before June 1941 (when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union) and even well after that in many places, was not between Right and Left but, rather, one between two Rights. In one sense, “Right” and “Left” were becoming less and less useful as categories or definitions. Was Hitler to the Right or to the Left of Churchill? Either of these designations would be incorrect. Hitler was a revolutionary and not a traditionalist, but in many ways he superseded these increasingly antiquated categories. More important, for our purposes, was the recognition that throughout the 1930s, especially in Europe, the Left was weak. Except for the Soviet Union, there was no Communist regime anywhere on the globe; except for small minorities and some intellectuals, Communism did not attract masses of people. In Germany the socialist and Communist opposition to Hitler melted away in the sun of his National Socialist successes, and this was not very different from what happened in other nations. In England, too, support for the Labour Party did not really increase even after most Labourites abandoned their more or less traditional pacifism and opposed appeasement. The most principled opponents

  “Baldwin [right] and Chamberlain walking together to Parliament in early 1937. Their clothes are black and rumpled; with their stiff high collars, umbrella, and cane, Baldwin topped with a high bowler, Chamberlain with a shiny top hat, they look like surviving incarnations of an entirely outdated Victorianism…”

  of Hitler and the Third Reich were traditionalist patriots like Churchill or de Gaulle—and, in Germany, the handful of aristocratic conspirators who finally tried to kill Hitler in 1944. In Britain the real chasm existed between Churchill and his followers on one side and Chamberlain and his followers on the other; in France, between de Gaulle and Pétain; in Italy and in Spain, too, between fascists and royalists. In these as in many other European countries, the main conflict was between Right and Right rather than between Right and Left. (In the United States, too, the most dangerous and popular challengers of Franklin Roosevelt were men of the Right, not of the Left: Huey Long and Father Coughlin.) In one sense, it may be said, the division was between patriots and nationalists, or between traditionalists and pragmatists — but we must not let ourselves get involved in a sump of definitions. Perhaps it would be closer to the truth to say that the division was between reactionaries and conservatives; indeed, on many occasions Churchill was criticized as a “hopeless reactionary” or an “extreme rightist,” and not only by Hitlerites or by Communists but by many of the Chamberlain conservatives (which is why I wrote that Chamberlain did represent an old, but not very old, Right). Was Chamberlain to the Right or to the Left of Churchill? Both designations are arguable, but perhaps we should rest with the wisdom of Samuel Johnson, to the effect that “definitions are tricks for pedants.”15

  In any event: in the 1930s Neville Chamberlain was prototypical, the leading figure of British conservatism. His reputation was “steady” (very much unlike that of Churchill before 1940). He was steady in his dislike of flamboyance, of intellectualism, of extremism, of irresponsibilities political or fiscal — steady in his narrow but strong vision of the path that Britain must take and follow. He was steady in his abhorrence of war,16 of Communists and leftists, of the Soviet Union, of press propaganda; steady in his unwillingness to become involved in European politics and in his distrust of the French (and of Americans) ; and, consequent to all this, steady in his willingness to grant the Germans, including Hitler, a more than considerable benefit of the doubt. That last inclination may have been fortified by two other elements in his mental makeup, one late Victorian, the other modern. His Midland, nonconformist, Victorian tendency to trust Germans rather than French was not unlike that of his father, the master politician Joseph Chamberlain, who in 1899 had proposed that the world ought to be governed by the Teutonic nations: Britain, America, Germany. More timely, in the 1930s, was Chamberlain’s recognition of the failure of parliamentary-liberal democracy in many countries, though not of course in England. He, as indeed did many others (including Churchill),17 saw the new kind of order established by Mussolini (and, in Chamberlain’s case, even the one by Hitler) as having certain positive features, especially their determined anti-Communism. Chamberlain, unlike Churchill, did not have a quick mind (which is not always a handicap), but this meant that he was unwilling to change his mind about matters even after contrary evidence had begun to accumulate. Chamberlain’s opponents therefore regarded him as small-minded and obstinate; his supporters as steady and stubborn — and for many years there were many more of the latter.

  But in 1939 Chamberlain was forced to change his views—because of Hitler. His opponents thought that he was changing his mind too late; his supporters did not think so. We need not concern ourselves with that. But a change of mind does not mean (or, at least, very seldom means) a change in character. He was not made to be a war leader. He was, as Churchill would say at Chamberlain’s funeral in November 1940, “an English worthy,” and so he was in August 1939, when he knew that Britain must keep its word and go to war, however reluctantly. Yet on 23 August 1939 — the day when the news of Hitler’s pact with Stalin had come and the day when Hitler gave the order to set the day for the invasion of Poland — Chamberlain said to the American ambassador Joseph Kennedy, “I have done everything that I can think of and it seems as if all my work has come to naught.” According to Kennedy, Chamberlain was deeply depressed: “[He] says the futility of it all is the thing that is frightful; after all they cannot save the Poles; they can merely carry on a war of revenge that will mean the destruction of the whole of Europe.”18 (Chamberlain also, at least partially, shared Kennedy’s anti-Semitism.)19 There followed the eight months of the Reluctant War. Chamberlain was still prime minister. “The fact that the early stages of the war were ones of inactivity was not merely because there was little that could be done, but in addition because Chamberlain wanted little to be done.”20 That was why Churchill succeeded him, on 10 May, after the debate in the House of Commons when a portion of conservative members had temporarily deserted Chamberlain, though without really conferring their full allegiance on Churchill.

  But in addition to supporters of Chamberlain and to the conservative majority in Parliament, there were other influential elements in the ranks of government and society whose dislike of Churchill did not of course vanish entirely in May 1940. Extreme elements — such as the Mosleyites, British Fascists, Germano-maniacs, obsessive anti-Semites, and so on—were without considerable influence, and, as we shall see, by 24 May they were safely put away by the government through the instrument of a draconian regulation about which Chamberlain fully concurred with Churchill. But in Britain (unlike almost anywhere else in Europe), there were many members of the aristocracy who, at least before May 1940, expressed their rather definite sympathies for Hitler — or, at least, for the then Germanophile inclinations of Chamberlain.21 Such tendencies were shared by members of the royal family and, what was more important, by high civil servants of considerable influence.22 One of these was Sir Horace Wilson, who before 1940 was Chamberlain’s closest and most trusted adviser. R. A. Butler, in a letter in 1939, somewhat facetiously referred to Wilson as “the uncrowned ruler of England.” The reminiscences of Kenneth Clark would seem to support Butler’s assessment: “Mr Chamberlain was not an imaginative man and was singularly devoid of ‘antennae.’ Decisions involving these qualities were made for him by an extraordinary character called Sir Hor
ace Wilson. He sat in a small office outside the Prime Minister’s room in Downing Street, and everyone with an appointment had to pass through this office and have a few minutes’ conversation with Sir Horace. … I enjoyed my occasional conversations with him, and said so to Mr Chamberlain. His eyes lit up, he turned to look at me and said: ‘He is the most remarkable man in England. I couldn’t live a day without him.’”23 After 10 May he had to: one of the first things that Churchill did was to tell Horace Wilson to get out.

  R. A. Butler was Halifax’s undersecretary at the Foreign Office and, in some ways, Halifax’s Wilson, though Halifax was less dependent on Butler than Chamberlain had been on Wilson. Like Wilson, Butler was a consummate intriguer and wire-puller. He was also rich and a believer in social hierarchy, in a compound of aristocracy mixed with some democracy as being the essence of Britain. One indication of his inclinations may be gathered from his handwritten letter to Chamberlain and Halifax on 18 March 1938, only a few days after Hitler’s invasion and annexation of Austria, recommending an account by E. W. D. Tennant, chairman of the Anglo-German Fellowship: “He is quite discreet and sincere. … I am not telling him that I have shown this to you and Halifax.” Tennant’s “account” (here and there laced with anti-Jewish remarks) accused the hapless Austrian chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg of having imposed “brutal cruelties” on the Austrian Nazis. Its essence:

  England is still mainly governed by an aristocracy with ancient traditions basically unchanged for centuries. Germany is governed by one comparatively young man risen from low beginnings with no personal experience of other countries and surrounded by advisers of similar type, all men of vital, dynamic energy who have gone through an incredibly hard school, … who are tough, ruthless but immensely able and who believe themselves to be governed by very high ideals. I still believe that it should not only be possible, but easy, to make friends with them.… Hitler is determined as ever by any means, fair or even foul, to prevent Communism overrunning Europe.

  To this Butler added: “I think you will find his account remarkably true.”24

  Like Horace Wilson, who pulled many kinds of wires (at least in one case literally—he was behind the tapping of Winston Churchill’s telephone conversations in 1938), Butler had a talent for intriguing.

  In April 1938 he devised a plan to influence the British press, “aware of the German anger at some [of the British papers].” “What we really want to organize is a little publicity committee for our work in the Foreign Office: … (a) see that our case [of appeasing Germany] is well represented, (b) see that the correspondence columns everywhere are well stacked with arguments written by our friends, (c) see that our speeches are better (as well) heard and known to our opponents’ or semi-opponents’, e.g. Winston’s campaign should be watched.”25 When it came to appeasement, Butler was closer to Chamberlain than to his chief, Halifax; on occasion he even said so. “He took to appeasement with an unholy glee not shared after Anschluss by anyone else in the Foreign Office. His extreme partisanship against members of his own party, his relish for back-room deals and his almost messianic opposition to Churchill make Butler, as even his heavily weeded papers are unable to prevent, seem a thoroughly unattractive figure.”26

  Enough of this. During the Black Fortnight neither Wilson nor Butler were dramatis personae. On 11 May 1940 Churchill got rid of Horace Wilson. But he did not, because he could not, get rid of R. A. Butler in Whitehall. This was significant, because Butler was, after all, Halifax’s undersecretary of state, and by 24 May a new alignment had begun to appear in the War Cabinet. Churchill’s principal opponent was not Chamberlain; it was Halifax.

  Edward Wood, Lord Halifax, is the subject of an excellent biography by Andrew Roberts — superbly proportioned and composed, with a very impressive variety of sources. Valuable portions of it deal with Halifax’s relations with Chamberlain and with Churchill.27 Since that triangular relationship was crucial to the events of May 1940, we must, at the risk of imprecision, essay a short sketch of Halifax’s character and his career leading up to the Black Fortnight and eventually to his decision to oppose Churchill.

  This is not easy. The personality of Halifax was very much unlike that of Churchill, but he was also unlike Chamberlain. His appearance was unusual: very tall, very gaunt and erect, he had a stance marked by his unusually large, splayed feet; he was born without a left hand, the prosthetic substitution for which (a fist) he managed exquisitely, as indeed he wore his unobtrusive but exquisitely cut clothes. His aristocratic appearance accorded well with his character: calm and cool, perhaps even cold; shy rather than sensitive; always in control of his emotions and, perhaps more admirably, of his ambitions. He had a faint (rather than weak) sense of humor, an English quality of which Chamberlain had almost none and Churchill (at least so it seemed to some people) had perhaps too much. His main interests — indeed, addictions — were foxhunting, High Anglicanism, and high government service. The first ran to such an extent that he would often use hunting and shooting figures of speech when wishing to illustrate quite different and even weighty matters; as for the second, he was the quintessential churchman, rather than an introspective man of faith; as to the third, “his career [was] an uninterrupted tale of achievement and promotion.”28 Churchill called him the Holy Fox, which, according to Roberts, was “a rather weak pun” (we do not think so). Perhaps the highest of his honors was his viceroyalty of India (as Lord Irwin), from 1925 to 1931; he was instrumental in the offer of dominion status to India, which Churchill violently opposed. After his return from India Halifax was offered the foreign secretaryship in Ramsay Mac-Donald’s National Government, which he refused. He became Viscount Halifax on the death of his father in 1934 and accepted high positions in the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments. For five months in 1935 he was secretary of state for war—opposing rearmament. In February 1938, as we saw, Chamberlain dismissed Anthony Eden and appointed Halifax as his foreign secretary.

  Halifax was an appeaser—indeed, a quintessential, if not an altogether extreme, one. This is not the place to cite his many unfortunate and lamentable judgments about Hitler’s Germany in the years before and during most of 1938; there are innumerable examples of these in his biographies, in those of his opponents, and in various private papers and in public archives. “If not altogether extreme”: because in his particular case there are evidences when his proverbial coolness and calmness of judgment were overpowered by illusions, when in that otherwise so determinedly pragmatic mind his wishes were the father of his thoughts — indeed, they were his thoughts, as when he found Goering “frankly attractive” and Goebbels very “likable.” His understanding of Hitler was for a long time very wanting. On one occasion he compared Hitler’s “mysticism” to that of Gandhi. Upon his return from his most unfortunate meeting with Hitler in November 1937, he wrote to Chamberlain that the colonial issue was “the only vital question” remaining between Germany and Britain. This was a vast misreading, not only of Hitler but of the entire world situation.29 Hitler’s main ambitions were in Europe, not elsewhere. But then Halifax — this was one of the things he had in common with Chamberlain — was not much interested in Europe. That is why Churchill had his sleepless night after Chamberlain dismissed Eden and appointed Halifax. There is a typical Halifaxian reaction to Hitler’s annexation of Austria in March 1938: “Was any useful purpose served by treading on the landslide and being carried along with it?”30 There is a significant coincidence to this phrase. We shall see that on 27 May 1940 Churchill would choose a similar figure of speech, but one with a very contrary implication: when he told Halifax and the War Cabinet that any suggestion of an attempt to negotiate with Hitler would mean that Britain was stepping onto a “slippery slope.” Roberts cites Oliver Harvey as saying, in 1938, that Halifax “easily blinds himself to unpleasant facts and is ingenious and even Jesuitical in rounding awkward corners of his mind,” but Roberts adds that Harvey’s “damning assertion” was incorrect.31 Yet during the spring and summer o
f 1938 Halifax was not above engaging in many kinds of clandestine contacts and trickeries, including attempts to manipulate the press and some strange statements made to intermediaries of Hitler.32

  On a night in September 1938 there came a change. On the fifteenth, Chamberlain suddenly flew to Berchtesgaden to meet Hitler, seeking an agreement with him — an unprecedented journey by a British prime minister. He had the full support of Halifax, as he did again a week later, when Chamberlain flew to Hitler again, this time to Godesberg, where Hitler ratcheted up his demands and showed his ability to threaten. Loath to make any British commitment to Czechoslovakia and France, Chamberlain was willing, perhaps even eager, to go along with what Hitler wanted. There was a cabinet meeting after Chamberlain’s return. Halifax supported Chamberlain to the hilt. His undersecretary Alec Cadogan wrote in his diary: “Still more horrified to find [Chamberlain] had hypnotized [Halifax] who capitulates totally.… I gave [Halifax] a note of what I thought, but it had no effect.” There were two cabinets that evening; after the second “[Halifax] completely and quite happily defeatist-pacifist.… Drove him home and gave him a bit of my mind, but didn’t shake him.”33 Well, he did shake his mind. Next morning he told Cadogan: “Alec, I’m very angry with you. You gave me a sleepless night. I woke at 1 and never got to sleep again. But I came to the conclusion that you were right.” So, almost exactly seven months from the day when his appointment to the foreign secretaryship had given a sleepless night to Churchill, Halifax had his sleepless night. At the next cabinet he suddenly spoke up. Hitler was not to be trusted; eventually Nazism had to be eliminated. Chamberlain was stunned and disappointed. Later that day Halifax told Chamberlain about his sleepless night. Chamberlain answered him acidly, with a humorless sally about the dubious value of night thoughts. But from that time on there was a divergence between Chamberlain’s and Halifax’s views. Churchill, among others, noticed this: “I don’t think [Halifax] is as far gone as the Prime Minister,” he said in February 1939.34 In the summer of 1939, during the last months before the war, Chamberlain (and behind him Horace Wilson) still encouraged all kinds of dubious and dangerous contacts with some of Hitler’s minions; Halifax did not. But once the war began there were no grave clashes among Halifax and Chamberlain and Churchill, all three of them in the cabinet now.