Five Days in London, May 1940

by John Lukacs

  There were differences between the two men of the Right — between a pragmatist and a visionary, between a Whiggish conservative and a traditionalist reactionary. That “visionary” and “reactionary” (especially the latter) are not necessarily positive adjectives in the English political language is true, but in May 1940, in confronting Hitler, neither pragmatism nor Whiggism would do.

  The differences between Churchill and Halifax were not merely tactical. Nor were they owing principally to their very different temperaments. According to another British scholar of the period, David Reynolds, Churchill had no plan in May 1940, save the hope that, with the help of the United States, Britain could somehow go on. This was suggested too by Halifax’s excellent biographer Andrew Roberts at least by the title of his otherwise mostly unexceptionable chapter about these dramatic days: “Churchill as Micawber,” the character in David Copperfield who keeps hoping that “something may turn up.” But Churchill was no Dickensian character. Nor was he an incarnation of John Bull — not in his personality, in his character, or in his wide interest and knowledge of the world beyond England. To Churchill a “general European settlement” in May 1940, or even any sign of a British inclination to elicit such proposals, would be a deadly danger for British morale. In this Greenwood and Attlee and perhaps Chamberlain too would agree. Unlike Halifax, Churchill was convinced that such a settlement, under any conditions, could not be counterbalanced by a maintenance, let alone a guarantee, of British liberty and independence. To him these were not separable issues. Any British acceptance of a German domination of Europe would inevitably mean the reduction of Britain to some kind of a minor partner or even a satellite of Germany. That was, and remained, the essence of Churchill’s vision.

  From the perspective of retrospect, Churchill was surely right. But that was hardly the end of the matter at the time. One must keep in mind that in May 1940 Churchill’s position as prime minister was not as strong as it would become later that summer, and he knew that, too: the tenure of the Belligerent Premier may, after all, be a transitory one. Not that Churchill clung to power for predominantly personal ambitions. A difficult argument, some may say, for isn’t every human ambition essentially personal? Still, to employ two figures of speech, he had climbed to the top of the greasy pole (Disraeli’s metaphor), but with the purpose of holding up the flag. But: he was not blinded by the breadth of his ambition or by a narrowness of his vision — which is how Hitler believed him to be. He was aware not only of the potential fragility of his power but of that of Britain, too. His knowledge of the former appeared, on more than one occasion, during the three cabinet sessions of that day, when he felt that he should not, because he could not, oppose Halifax’s proposals entirely. But he knew that not only was the greasy pole swaying but the flag itself was in danger because of the power of the German storm. If he and Britain were to break, someone other than he would have to hold on to the flag. He thought of Lloyd George. He knew that Lloyd George admired Hitler; he knew that Hitler knew that, too; he knew that Lloyd George thought that Britain had no chance of winning this war against Hitler’s Third Reich. Lloyd George was wrong; he was very old,30 but at least he was not an ideologue; he was someone whom Hitler respected. As early as 13 May Churchill had invited Lloyd George to become a member of the cabinet, as minister of agriculture. Lloyd George refused; he hated Chamberlain. Twice more, in June, Churchill approached Lloyd George and talked to Chamberlain about this. But Lloyd George refused again, mostly because of Chamberlain, and Churchill knew that his loyalty to Chamberlain had to prevail. During the crucial days of late May Lloyd George’s name did not come up. Yet I could not forego mentioning this matter, if only to indicate that Churchill was indeed aware of Britain being at the edge of the abyss. If worse came to worst, Churchill thought, Lloyd George rather than someone like Mosley.

  Years after the war someone asked Churchill which year of his life he would like to relive. “1940,” he said, “every time, every time.” Yes — and no. There were some moments that he would not have wanted to revisit. On this Sunday, 26 May, two hours after the last cabinet, he dined with Eden, Ironside, and Ismay. He knew that he had to abandon Calais, where the last guns had fallen silent earlier that afternoon. Yet he had to urge Brigadier Nicholson to fight to the very end — all in vain. For once Churchill’s legendary appetite was gone. He ate and drank almost nothing. He sat in silence throughout the dinner. Afterward he stood up and told his friends that he felt physically sick. Lord Ismay remembered: “As we rose from the table, he said: I feel physically sick.’ He has quoted these words in his memoirs but he does not mention how sad he looked when he uttered them.”31 We know that he was thinking of Calais,

  but he knew, too, that through three cabinets that day, against Halifax he did not quite have his way.

  A few hours after the guns had fallen silent at Calais, the order for Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force fom Dunkirk, was issued. There was no connection between these two events. We have seen that Gort’s decision to retreat toward Dunkirk was made days before; so was the order of the Admiralty to collect all available seaworthy craft for an eventual largescale evacuation. Earlier that day Hitler lifted the halt order, though that could not be implemented until a few hours later. From the south the Germans advanced slowly, as yet with little resistance from the French and British units withdrawing into Dunkirk. By next day certain German spearheads were less than five miles from the town. The port was still largely unvexed by German shelling or air bombardment. During the last six or seven hours of Sunday, 26 May, twenty-eight thousand British nonfighting personnel were off the piers, evacuated, sailing for Dover. A promising sign, but only in retrospect. More than 300,000 were still left around Dunkirk. No one, including Churchill, was optimistic about the prospects of their safe withdrawal to England.

  Startling, again, in retrospect, is that nothing of the War Cabinet deliberations filtered through to the public. There was no sign of any division in the War Cabinet and no sign of the gravity of the crisis in any of the newspapers — not in the Monday (27 May) editions, nor in the days that followed. Only in the Daily Express was there a fair amount of space devoted to the prospect of Italy entering the war, and even there only a short passage about Reynaud’s visit to London on Sunday. There was no sense of the crisis in the letters to the editors. There exists no evidence, again, that this was the result of self-censorship or of self-discipline. The influential owners of the British newspapers were unaware of the gravity of the discussions in the War Cabinet. This is evident from some of their later reminiscences and also from the scattered letters and diaries of other influential British personages, men and women, of the time. (One interesting, if amusing, item: in late May the radio column of the Times still printed the times of broadcasts in English from abroad, including Hamburg, Bremen [also Rome and Milan]. In a private letter to the editor, Geoffrey Dawson, Lady Astor complained about this. Soon this kind of information was withdrawn. Until mid-June the Times still referred to “Herr Hitler” and “Signor Mussolini.”) In both the published and unpublished diaries and letters of Harold Nicolson (by then a junior minister of the government), there is no indication that he knew anything about the Halifax-Churchill division. In a letter to his wife on 22 May he had already written about his and her preparations for suicide if the Germans were to land in England and overrun them: “To think that we should come to this! … Anyhow you know I have always seen the possibility of defeat since the beginning of the war and even before that. Darling … the dots represent all the things I can’t say.” At night on 26 May he wrote: “What makes it worse is that the blue-bells are still smoking in the woods and that boys of Cranbrook school have a holiday and are plashing around naked in the lake. … I look around the garden feeling I may never see it again.” He went on: “It is strange to record the emotions of the last ten days. My own experience is as follows: (a) The first realisation that the Germans had by their superior air and tank power br
oken through and separated the two armies filled me with despair and fear, (b) I then passed to the conclusion that the next thing would be the invasion of these islands and especially of Kent. (c) I then faced the fact that if that succeeds I should personally be shot and that Vita [his wife] would or might be exposed to persecution. (d) I then saw that I must be prepared to commit suicide. And help Vita do the same. But when I found that she took it so calmly and agreed a great calm descended upon me and I saw that it was really most unlikely that this might occur. I therefore returned [to London, that night] in high spirit.… We are not in the least beaten but we must prepare for the worst.”32

  Nicolson’s mood seems to have been in accord with that of the British people in general. According to the “Secret” report (summary) of the Ministry of Information, “Public Opinion on the Present Crisis”: “Reports show a certain steadiness of morale over the weekend. This is partly due to acceptance of what is believed to be a deliberate policy of restricting news. One gets the impression that opinions are being withheld and emotions held in suspense deliberately. … By the withholding of news the public has been given a mandate to delay judgment and not to worry.… On the other hand, the continued detailed publication of German claims and communiqués in the press has an effect of cancelling out this relief and detachment.” Again the report compared the morale in London with that in the provinces and countryside, where spirits continued to be “noticeably higher”: “Reports from the Regions indicate some satisfaction over the development of plans for the mobilisation of man power. ‘The wHitler the collar the less the assurance’ is the report of our Regional Information Officer at Reading.” In Newcastle: “19 members of Durham Light Infantry are telling alarming stories of wiping out of a D.L.I battalion in Boulogne, and confusion among the wounded, etc. at the quayside; the result is some public anxiety and anger” Leeds: “‘We’re alright, but people at the top are wrong.’” Reading (southern): “Church attendance up. Bitterness towards Germany increases, thanks to refugee stories. Allied counteroffensive anxiously awaited. Oxford optimistic.” Manchester: “Excellent spirit in factories. Rumours still growing. Nicholson’s [sic] broadcast thought not to have had enough punch.” Belfast: “German violation of Eire as a possibility has made people nervous. Division of opinion over Conscription: majority against it for fear of disloyalist section” London: “Suspense: people getting on with their own affairs; some fatalism while waiting for news.… Undercurrent of anxiety is present especially among women who realise the sacrifice of life: ‘we shall win — but at what price.’ Sunday services well attended; some emotionalism displayed.… Working-classes … listen regularly to Haw Haw at 9.15. Cinema audiences thin. Comedies and musicals preferred to serious and war pictures. New internment of aliens approved. Mistrust of the French expressed.”33

  Most of this is in accord with the Mass-Observation reports of morale as reported on Sunday and Monday.34 “Intensive investigation carried on over the weekend shows a general levelling up and steadiness in morale, but this is partly at the expense of interest and identification with the events in France. The cut-down of news … give people, as it were, an excuse for not carrying on with the process of facing up to the facts, a process which has been steadily increasing in recent days. Today in particular, there is noticeable a small, but significant increase in fatalism again, in general interest and quality of opinion.… Off setting possible disadvantages arising from this, is the definite advantage that the violent day to day swings and short-time anxiety is automatically relieved for many people by the slackening of the news tempo.… Opinion is that on the whole the news is a little better, although opinion is not very certain of itself.”35

  We began this reconstruction of this grave day, 26 May 1940, with an account of the National Day of Prayer in Westminster Abbey. Allow me now to end it with a poem by the gentle English poet John Betjeman. In “In Westminster Abbey” his ironic stanzas portray a somewhat frivolous Englishwoman of a certain class, not of course on that deeply dramatic day of 26 May but most probably earlier, during the Reluctant War.

  Let me take this other glove off

  As the vox humana swells,

  And the beauteous fields of Eden

  Bask beneath the Abbey bells.

  Here, where England’s statesmen lie,

  Listen to a lady’s cry.

  Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans.

  Spare their women for Thy Sake,

  And if that is not too easy

  We will pardon Thy Mistake.

  But, gracious Lord, whate’er shall be,

  Don’t let anyone bomb me.

  Keep our Empire undismembered

  Guide our Forces by Thy Hand,

  Gallant blacks from far Jamaica,

  Honduras and Togoland;

  Protect them Lord in all their fights,

  And, even more, protect the whites.

  Think of what our Nation stands for,

  Books from Boots’ and country lanes,

  Free speech, free passes, class distinction,

  Democracy and proper drains.

  Lord, put beneath Thy special care

  One-eighty-nine Cadogan Square.

  Although dear Lord I am a sinner,

  I have done no major crime;

  Now FU come to Evening Service

  Whensoever I have the time.

  So, Lord, reserve for me a crown,

  And do not let my shares go down.

  I will labour for Thy Kingdom,

  Help our lads to win the war,

  Send white feathers to the cowards

  Join the Women’s Army Corps,

  Then wash the Steps around Thy Throne

  In the Eternal Safety Zone.

  Now I feel a little better,

  What a treat to hear Thy Word,

  Where the bones of leading statesmen.

  Have so often been interr’d.

  And now, dear Lord, I cannot wait

  Because I have a luncheon date.36

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Monday, 27 May

  What was happening at Dunkirk. – The Belgians surrender. – American considerations. – Three War Cabinets and a walk in the garden. – “You’d have been better off playing cricket.”

  In the last days of May 1940 the fate of Britain — indeed, the outcome of the Second World War—depended on two things. One was the division between Churchill and Halifax. The other was the destiny of the British army crowding back into Dunkirk. These two matters were of course connected. But this appears only in retrospect. Churchill said that he would fight even if the BEF were lost (“our greatest military defeat for many centuries”). The final order to begin evacuation, Operation Dynamo, was issued a few minutes before seven o’clock on Sunday, 26 May, and Gort had been pulling back toward Dunkirk for several days before that; but no one thought that anything beyond a fraction of the almost half million British and French troops, now surrounded and squeezed by the Germans, could escape to England. It was not until about 31 May, more than five days later, that the prospect of a truly large-scale evacuation — including many of the French troops in and around Dunkirk — arose. It was certainly not foreseen earlier. This should appear from the first instructions of the Admiralty to Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey, who was in charge of the operation in Dover: “It is imperative for ‘Dynamo’ to be implemented with the greatest vigour, with the view of lifting up to 45,000 of the B.E.F. within two days, at the end of which it is probable that evacuation will be terminated by enemy action.” These instructions were drafted by Sir Dudley Pound, a notably cautious First Sea Lord; but there was not much reason to think or to estimate otherwise. In the end Dunkirk was not occupied by the Germans until nine days later, and nearly eight times more British and French soldiers were landed in Britain than what Pound had estimated. No one could have predicted this on 26 May, nor indeed for some time thereafter.

  We have seen that Hitler had lifted the halt order on 26 May. Later that afternoon the a
dvance of the German units from the south toward Dunkirk began. The siege of Dunkirk (if it can be called that) began in earnest early the next morning, on Monday, the twenty-seventh. At 7:15 A.M. Vice Admiral Somerville woke Churchill with a telephone call. The Germans had advanced their guns north of Calais and had begun to shell ships approaching Dunkirk.

  Much worse than this shelling were the German bombs that started to rain on Dunkirk and the troops retreating thereto. In more than one way this day, 27 May, was the worst of the entire Dunkirk saga. The Germans ruled the air, with relatively little interference from the Royal Air Force. This was partly because the chiefs of the air staff had decided to preserve as much of the RAF as possible for the event of a German onslaught on Britain. When British fighters over Dunkirk attacked the slower German bombers they were often successful, but there were not many of them — something that filled the mass of British troops throughout the Dunkirk days and nights with outspoken bitterness and something that Churchill himself had to admit and explain in his speech on 4 June, after Dunkirk. As bad as the bombing raids on Dunkirk, if not worse, were the German dive-bomber attacks on the columns of the British and the French retreating along the dusty roads and lanes toward the town and port. Within the port the first attempts to organize the evacuation of masses of troops were only beginning. Two developments were fortunate that day. One was the achievement of a British officer, Captain W. G. Tennant, in making one of the two main piers of the port of Dunkirk serviceable for landing, loading, and pulling away. The other was the realization of the advantages of the long, sandy beaches north of the town, reachable also by small craft. Yet, all in all, on this shattering twenty-seventh day of May, not more than 7,700 British troops were able to leave for England. Next day there would be 18,000, but that was not much, either. Indeed, the two-day total was far less than the maximum of 45,000 stated by the first sea lord in his initial orders.1