by John Lukacs
“Front may be beaten in…” Churchill was becoming aware that the Germans were cautious, that they were not making a direct thrust into Dunkirk proper. On 31 May General Fedor von Bock wrote in his diary, “When we finally arrive in Dunkirk [the English] will be gone!” He was inclined to blame Rundstedt; he thought that, wishing to spare his armor, Rundstedt had influenced Hitler. Perhaps their influences were reciprocal. There is a minute by Churchill on 2 June to the chiefs of staff suggesting that he recognized some of this: the returning British troops were men ‘Svhose mettle [the Germans] had already tested, and from whom they have recoiled, not daring seriously to molest their departure.”6 Ironside wrote in his diary on the same day: “I still cannot understand how it is that the Bosches [sic] have allowed us to get the B.E.F. off in this way. It is almost fantastic that we have been able to do it in the face of all the bombing and gunning.”7
Hitler was a secretive man. We shall never know what were the purposes (let alone the motives) of his halt order, on 24 May, to allow the siege of Dunkirk to depend first on Goering’s air force. We saw that he gave several explanations — or, rather, justifications — to his own circle later, the last time before the end of the war, in 1945, when he said that he had given Churchill “a sporting chance” which the latter failed to appreciate. That was surely a rationalization.8 Hitler could be outspoken; but he was not honest. On 31 May he wrote to Mussolini, who had informed him that Italy would enter the war on 5 June; he did not say a word about how he hoped to influence the British. To the contrary. He said that the British were being destroyed in Flanders: “Only a very small percentage of defeated men … reach the English coast.” He also asked Mussolini to postpone Italy’s entry into the war by a few more days.9 He wanted to achieve his victory alone.
Churchill was less secretive, more honest. “Having survived a most serious challenge to his leadership,” I wrote in The Duel, “and then having avoided a British catastrophe at Dunkirk, his resolution (perhaps more than his confidence) was as strong, if not stronger, than before” — while Hitler’s “confidence was stronger than his resolution. He was still speculating about what the English might do.” Churchill telegraphed to Keyes late on 28 May, after the Belgian king’s decision to surrender to Hitler: “What can we do for him? … Our only hope is victory and England will never quit the war whatever happens till Hitler is beat or we cease to be a state. “10 The italics are mine. Churchill had survived Halifax’s challenge. But his real opponent was not Halifax but Hitler. His hands were, perhaps temporarily, free. Yet one’s hands may be free, but one’s arm might not be strong enough. Churchill knew that very well. His mind was now preoccupied with the question, Would the Germans attempt to invade England even before their conquest of France? He thought no; in that he was right. But he was wrong in thinking — or, rather, hoping—that the French might still hold the Germans, somewhere in France, no matter where. That would not happen. Still he was prepared for the worst. One example of that appears in his detailed minute to General Ismay on this very busy day of 29 May, where he is impetuous about the need for a reorganization of the army in England and sets forth a detailed and radical proposal summed up in four short paragraphs.11
Within the War Cabinet not much of grave importance happened on this day. There was a long discussion about instructions to Gort at Dunkirk and also about the evacuation of Narvik in northern Norway. Halifax spoke only once: “He was not altogether happy over the very definite instructions that had been given [to Gort]. He agreed that the grim struggle must continue, but he would like a message sent to Lord Gort expressing the implicit trust that the Government placed in him and on any action that he would see fit to take in the last resort. It would not be dishonourable to relinquish the struggle in order to save a handful of men from massacre.” Churchill said “that in a desperate situation any brave man was entided, in the absence of precise orders to the contrary, to use his own discretion, and that therefore he would not modify the instructions to Lord Gort. Our object was to ensure the evacuation of every possible man, and then the infliction of the maximum possible damage to the enemy. A day gained might well meant a further 40,000 men taken off. A Commander, in circumstances as desperate and distressing as those in which Lord Gort now found himself, should not be offered the difficult choices between resistance and capitulation.”12 That was the last flicker of open conflict between Churchill and Halifax in the War Cabinet.
Cadogan was present and wrote a bleak account in his diary: “News unpleasant. We have got off 40,000 men and taking them, at present, at the rate of 2,000 an hour. But the end will be awful. A horrible discussion of what instructions to send to Gort. W.S.C. rather theatrically bulldoggish. Opposed by [Chamberlain and Halifax] and yielded to a reasonable extent. Fear relations will become rather strained. That is Winston’s fault.… theatricality…” Yet two days later: “By noon we have taken off 164,000 men — a miracle!” The next day: “Cabinet 11:30, evacuation marvellous.”13
There is no question that the ultimate result of Dunkirk was a great boon to Churchill’s prestige. Had the Germans captured the bulk of the British army there, forcing it to surrender, the blaze of such a great Hitlerian triumph would have cast a large dark shadow on the island people, involving hundreds of thousands of prisoners of their own, and perhaps on Churchill’s position and prospects, too. Yet, as we have seen, he had declared that he and Britain would fight on, no matter what happened at Dunkirk; and he seems to have had the majority of the British people behind him. Something of the same happened when France finally fell; it did not really affect his leadership and his prestige. He of course knew that Dunkirk was not a victory. As he said as early as 4 June, “Wars are not won by evacuations.” Around that time he first met the later-famous General Bernard Law Montgomery, who was angry at how many people saw Dunkirk as a victory: “He criticized the shoulder ribbons issued to the troops, marked ‘Dunkirk.’ They were not ‘heroes’ ‘If it was not understood’ that the army suffered a defeat at Dunkirk, then ‘our island home was now in grave danger.’”14 Churchill saw things in much the same way. He understood the unpreparedness of the army, facing a possible invasion. He was worried, too, about British morale. Since that time many people (and a few then, too) have seen Dunkirk as a necessary myth. Others have seen it as something like the Battle of the Marne in 1914. The truth may be somewhere in between.
In any event, on 29 May 1940 the unfolding of the eventual result of Dunkirk was only at its begimiing. Neither the War Cabinet nor the British people knew that. The reactions of the latter ran, as so often, behind the course of events. For the purposes of this book, which is not a military history, their reconstruction is as essential as a summation of what was happening at Dunkirk; probably more so.
We have seen that until the late afternoon of 29 May Churchill himself was not confident about the survival of most of the army closed in at Dunkirk. Among the British people, opinion and the press that day showed a grim pessimism; it took two or three days for them to catch up with the development of events, to recognize the first brightening news from Dunkirk. The newspapers of 29 May (keep in mind that most of their texts had been composed the night before) reflected this. The lead article of the 29 May News Chronicle was typical: “It is time to face up to the facts, to admit the worst. With the surrender of the Belgian Army the B.E.F. seems to be cut off. Escape by the sea is the slenderest of hopes. A break through the south is a possibility equally remote.”15 The front page of the Daily Mail carried the headline “How the B.E.F. Was Trapped.” The accompanying article, written by the paper’s correspondent with the BEF, began: “The British Expeditionary Force today is almost surrounded. That is the very grave position caused by the surrender of the Belgian Army.” Many of the papers still gave considerable space to the Belgian news of the day before. The Daily Express: “We must keep all our anger for our one enemy, Hitler.”16 The leading article in the Daily Telegraph: “Nothing is gained by blinking facts or mincing words. The Britis
h Expeditionary Force and the French divisions with it are beset on three sides and from the air. All are in danger of being cut off from Dunkirk.” On the same page were two articles praising the French: “The effect of the disastrous break of the line [that is, the Belgian capitulation] is a hardening of resolution”; France “had stood up heroically to the hard knock of the Belgian surrender.… The Paris public is showing a stoicism of a kind often described as Anglo-Saxon.” (Perhaps this was whistling in the dark. However, it is true that morale in Paris did not crack until about 10 June.) The Yorkshire Post, like other newspapers in the counties, were emphatic in praising national unity and the new government.
The Mass-Observation analysis of Morale gave this summary: “Roughly speaking, people are at present calm but exceedingly anxious.… For whereas before people were more confident in victory, without a glimmering of what the struggle for victory might mean, now they realise to a considerable extent what they are up against. They do not realise fully, especially those, the majority, who left school when they were fourteen and have never crossed the channel or spoken to a German. But at least the period of utter wishful thinking is over.”17
At night on 29 May Harold Nicolson wrote his diary, “We are creating a Corunna Line along the beaches around Dunkirk and hope to evacuate a few of our troops.” (This shows that Nicolson, now in a high position in the Ministry of Information, did not quite comprehend the situation: what had happened at Corunna in 1809 bore little similarity to Dunkirk in 1940, and when Nicolson wrote these lines many more than a few troops had been lifted off to England.)18 Two days later Nicolson wrote to his wife: “My darling how infectious courage is. I am rendered far stronger in heart and confidence by such bravery.” The same day, in Oxford, C. S. Lewis wrote to Owen Barfield: “And oddly enough, I notice that since things got really bad, everyone I meet is less dismayed.… Even at this present moment I don’t feel nearly so bad as I should have done if anyone had prophesied to me eighteen months ago.”19
Recalling those days, Margery Allingham later wrote to her American friends: “You are warm people; we are cold people who have been warm and still have warmth in places. Our heart is old and hard and true still, in spite of surface rot.” About 29-30 May she mused: “Let me see. Somebody complained about the quality of the knitting of the comforts. Somebody else thought the pig club must be a twist. Somebody refused to take in evacuees. Somebody said we were cowards to retreat to Dunkirk and ought to have gone on and beaten up everybody. Somebody said they would rather let their fruit rot than let the Women’s Institute lay hands on it. And so on. Now I come to look at it, nobody did anything un-cooperative. It was all talk and we are fighting to say what we like. Unimportant remarks all of them and the devil’s own job to remember after a month or two, as I can testify.”20
Vera Brittain later recalled the last days of May in London: “Martin and I walk in Regent’s Park amid shaded mauve pansies and pale pink lupins. ‘It’s just like a Sunday,’ I remark to him, for the Park is so deserted that it suggests a hot summer holiday when everyone who possesses something on wheels has gone into the country. Since most of the iron railings have now been removed from London’s parks and squares for conversion into armaments, Regent’s Park resembled a vast green field, very fresh and vivid. A few elderly people are sitting in chairs, a few young ones sailing in boats with striped sails. Again … comes the strange illusion of peace, due largely to the beauty of the summer and its scents and sounds. We feel as though we are watching the funeral of European civilisations elegantly conducted. Just so the Roman Empire must have appeared before the barbarians marched in.”21
Hitler did have some snippets of intelligence about what was or what was not going on in London in May 1940. He was hoping and planning, and then hoping, and, after July, hoping against hope, that there would be a break in London and that the British would get rid of Churchill. This was the essential matter: for never, throughout the entire war, were Hitler’s hopes more warranted then during those five days — that is, before the ending of Dunkirk, before the surrender of France, and before the air offensive against Britain. But there was a time lag involving his intelligence and information. It was only in early June that he began to request and collect and read every kind of intelligence information concerning London. (Contrary to accepted views, he read much, and quickly.) Churchill was aware of this; on occasion (especially in July) he allowed the feeding of odd kinds of ambiguous information to German agents abroad, with the purpose of making Hitler hesitate and delay his invasion preparations. To this we may add that the British achievement of breaking into German military codes (“Enigma” and, later, “Ultra”) was but fragmentary and fledgling in the summer of 1940. But all of that belongs to the later months of their duel, not to May.
For Churchill, Dunkirk, while not a victory, was of course a relief. But that relief was short-lived, soon to be overcast by the vast meaning of the fall of France. Immediately after Dunkirk Churchill made one of his greatest speeches, on 4 June. Immediately after the collapse of the French government he made another famous one, on 18 June. Yet the immediate effect of these speeches on the British people was limited. Their effect was cumulative (or, to use Cardinal Newman’s favorite adjective, illative).
On 28 May a paper from the Foreign Office suggested that “‘most secret plans’ should be considered both for the evacuation of the Royal Family and the government ‘to some part of the Overseas Empire, whence the war could continue to be waged if circumstances prevented their continuation from the United Kingdom,’ and for the removal now from Britain ‘to another part of the Empire’ of the Crown Jewels, the Coronation Chair, gold bullion, securities and precious stones.” On 1 June Churchill rejected this in a memorandum: “I believe we shall make them rue the day they try to invade our island. No such discussion can be permitted.”22 Yet General Pownall recollected that “sometime in early June” Winston said, in this connection, “I wonder if we can hold them”: “An insight into his real thoughts. Great morale-raising speeches, necessary as they are, do not necessarily, or even often, reflect the inward opinions of those who make them.”23
Except for a few unimportant occasions, Edward Halifax no longer chose to oppose Churchill in the War Cabinet. (Indeed, on 13 June, on one occasion he adopted Churchill’s own phrase “the slippery slope”: if the French were to ask for an armistice “they would embark on a slippery slope, which would lead to a loss of their fleet, and eventually of their liberty”24 Yet in his diaries (written, as we know, for circulation within his family) he was on occasion still very critical of Churchill.25 Then there was the incident on 17 June — the darkest day, the morning after Pétain had replaced Reynaud in France, when the French capitulation became a certainty. “Rab” Butler, Halifax’s undersecretary, met the Swedish minister to London, Björn Prytz, in St. James’s Park. He asked Prytz to come up to his office. There he told Prytz that “no opportunity would be neglected for concluding a compromise peace if the chance offered of reasonable conditions.… the so-called diehards [suggesting Churchill] would not be allowed to stand in the way of negotiations.” Prytz was still in Butler’s office when Butler went over to see Halifax. When he came back to the room, Butler told Prytz that Halifax had a message for him: “Common sense and not bravado would dictate the British government’s policy” — even though Prytz should not interpret that to mean peace at any price. In his urgent telegram to Stockholm, Prytz added that his conversation with other prominent Englishmen (mostly certain members of Parliament) suggested that Halifax might replace Churchill at the head of the government in about ten days. The Italian minister to Stockholm, learning of this in a few hours, exaggerated the importance of this news, reporting (wrongly) that the British minister to Stockholm had approached the Swedish government with an inquiry about peace proposals. This was not so. A day later Prytz himself corrected the meaning of his first telegram. These details are known by diplomatic historians of the period.26 To this we may add a letter from Chu
rchill to Halifax, now available in the Churchill Archives, dated 25 June: “My dear Edward. It is quite clear to me from these telegrams and others that Butler held odd language to the Swedish Minister and certainly the Swede derived a strong impression of defeatism. In these circumstances would it not be well for you to find out from Butler what actually he did say. [In the Secret Session of the House of Commons I gave] assurances that the present Government and all its members were resolved to fight on to the death, and I did so, taking personal responsibility for the resolve of all.”27 Halifax answered three days later, defending Butler. There the case rested. When Hitler made his grand peace offer to England in his speech of 19 July, Churchill chose not to answer, asking Halifax to do so instead, which the foreign secretary calmly and coolly did.
In December 1940 Churchill asked Halifax to become ambassador to the United States, replacing him at the Foreign Office with Anthony Eden (who was not the best choice, Churchillian though he was). Lady Halifax was abashed. Yet Halifax turned out to be an excellent ambassador. (That was also largely true of other anti-Churchillians, such as Samuel Hoare, whom Churchill virtually exiled from London in May, appointing him ambassador to Spain. The patriotism of these Englishmen — unlike that of many ambassadors of many other countries at critical posts — unquestionably prevailed over their political or ideological inclinations.)
It is interesting to note that what his biographer Andrew Roberts has called Halifax’s Whiggism — or his inclination to think in pragmatic political terms — predominated throughout, surpassing his personal or ideological or even religious beliefs. In July 1944 Hugh Dalton noted in his diary a conversation with Halifax: “He was quite sure that we must never let ourselves get into the state of mind of asking whether it was better to co-operate with the Americans or with the Russians. We must do our utmost with both and, in particular, must always treat the Russians with the greatest consideration, and never let them think that we were having secrets with the Americans from which they were excluded.”28 Halifax was still ambassador to Washington in March 1946, when Churchill made his famous Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri. Halifax was down with influenza and dictated a message to his wife for Churchill, the gist of which was that Churchill should not have been so tough about Soviet Russia, that Stalin “completely misunderstood what you said at Fulton,” and that because of their wartime relationship Churchill should think of going to Moscow to talk to Stalin.29 (So much from a pillar of the Church of England. Someone once asked Churchill about his relationship to the church. Was he a pillar of the church —perhaps like Halifax? No, said Churchill: but he was a flying buttress.)