*
There followed perhaps Churchill’s finest hour, the time of his one-man stand against the Fascists. In repeated parliamentary and journalistic warnings, he had lashed out against any indulgence of the quick and fatal disease. From his obscure corner seat below the gangway — chosen deliberately to accentuate his solitary humor — he thundered, “I predict that the day will come at some point or other, on some issue or other, when you will have to make a stand, and I pray to God that when that day comes we may not find, through an unwise policy, we may have to make that stand alone.” His steady hammering at the Germans finally wrung a moving cry of pain from the articulate and rising disciple of brotherly love, Joseph Goebbels, who wrote, “Churchill has painted not landscapes but a picture of the German danger. He is the leader of the implacable haters of Germany in England, and even if he is somewhat less dangerous than those sinister wire-pullers in the half-darkness of the Secret Service and of many ministerial quarters, yet nevertheless he sets in motion those waves of gall which are not to be taken too light-heartedly. His disposition for untenable accusations, Munchausen fairy tales and polemics dates presumably from the time when he was a correspondent of the Daily Telegraph.”
In these years of British somnolence, the guilt must be shared by nearly everybody except Churchill. The several leaders went on the inexorable record with their views. The aging Lloyd George had pointed with composure to the “magnificent armies of Czechoslovakia and Poland.” George Lansbury, while leading the Socialists, declared that the only way to persuade Hitler to disarm was for his neighbors to disarm first. Sir Herbert Samuel, who led the Liberals, a Jew who might be expected to show special alarm over the brutal developments in Germany, took violent umbrage at Churchill’s proposal to double the Air Force. “This is rather the language of a Malay running amuck than of a responsible British statesman,” said Samuel. “It is rather the language of blind and causeless panic.” Somewhat previously, Ramsay MacDonald had announced that “after anxious consideration and much regret” the Navy had been strengthened by the addition of two small cruisers. And in 1935 Stanley Baldwin, cornered by Churchill’s vehemence, said proudly, “I give you my word, there will be no great armaments in this country.”
In a nation afflicted by mass blindness, only Churchill could see. The now familiar events moved rapidly. In 1935 Hitler threw out the Versailles clauses limiting the German Army; shortly afterward he began German conscription. In 1936, as the storm gathered, he established his unholy “Axis” with Mussolini, and only a few weeks later he marched on the Rhineland. Austria received his ministrations in due course. In England these actions were met with decision of a pallid order. Neville Chamberlain, succeeding Baldwin as Prime Minister, announced early in 1938 that he was assuming personal charge of England’s foreign affairs, the Foreign Secretary (Anthony Eden) having resigned for failing to accommodate himself to Hitler’s and Mussolini’s ambitions. The celebrated umbrella soon came into play and was brandished like a popgun in the face of the Fascist cannons.
Meanwhile Churchill took unofficial and slightly more robust steps. He crossed the Channel for private talks with the political leaders of France, which country he held to be England’s principal hope. He obtained the views of the Premier, Monsieur Blum; the War Minister, Monsieur Daladier; and the chief of the General Staff, General Gamelin; and he in turn pounded the table for a close concert of effort. Back in London, he made his report, now that only of an elder statesman, to Lord Halifax, whom Chamberlain had finally appointed to succeed Eden. Afterward, Churchill lumbered into Commons and roared out, “Arm — and stand by the Covenant of the League. If the League of Nations has been mishandled and broken we must rebuild it. If the authority in the Covenant is divided we must reinforce it. Here is the practical plan: Britain and France are now united. Together they are an enormous force, which few countries would dare to challenge. I should like to see these two countries go to all the smaller States that are menaced, who are going to be devoured one by one by the Nazi tyranny, and say to them bluntly, ‘We are not going to help you if you are not going to help yourselves. What are you going to do about it?’ ”
His words and his plan were treated precisely as any discredited elder statesman might expect — he was indulgently permitted to close out his address, after which the Members said, in effect, “Hm, ha, to be sure. Now let’s get on with the more pressing domestic concerns.” As the summer of 1938 faded, the war clouds sailed high overhead, like the advance wisps of a hurricane. The atmosphere, to sensitive and alert persons, was perhaps like that described by Sherlock Holmes in the story dealing with his counterespionage of the First World War. “There’s a wind coming from across the channel, Watson,” he said, as the friends peered through the darkness at France from their cottage porch on the Sussex downs. “It will be a terrible and destructive wind while it lasts, but we can hope that when it dies down it will leave a cleaner and brighter England.”
Hitler’s attentions toward Poland and Czechoslovakia became so ugly and forbidding that Chamberlain, umbrella at the ready, made his unsavory visit of propitiation. The foaming maniac at Munich, so like the Kreutze of Churchill’s Savrola, then promised brief leniency for the rest of humanity if Czechoslovakia should be added to his toll. From the side lines, Churchill arose in terrible wrath. “It is necessary,” he shouted, “that the nation should realize the magnitude of the disaster into which we are being led. The partition of Czechoslovakia under Anglo-French pressure amounts to a complete surrender by the Western democracies to the Nazi threat of force. Such a collapse will not bring peace or safety to Great Britain and France. On the contrary, it will bring both countries into a position of ever-increasing weakness and danger.”
In a vein reminiscent of his military predictions of the First Great War, he added, “The neutralization of Czechoslovakia alone means the liberation of 25 German divisions to threaten the Western front. The path to the Black Sea will be laid wide open to triumphant Nazi-ism. Acceptance of Herr Hitler’s terms involves the prostration of Europe before the Nazi power, of which the fullest advantage will certainly be taken. The menace, therefore, is not to Czechoslovakia, but to the cause of freedom and democracy in every country.”
Official Britain’s reaction to this was, briefly, “Pooh, pooh.” It was similar to that, later, of the military forces in Singapore when a frantic report was rushed in that the Japanese were advancing through the city. One general, momentarily breaking off his connection with a Planter’s Punch, was quoted as saying with immense tolerance, “Oh, nonsense — they wouldn’t dare!”
In the years since the war, the heartbroken Chamberlain has been made the popular scapegoat for the deadly and age-old complacency of British officialdom. Churchill, in his account of the struggle that followed, has made it plain that Chamberlain was not much more guilty than his fellows. The public conception of the stringy, corvine minister as a soft, frightened weakling is grossly inaccurate. He was probably several times tougher than any of his detractors, a man who once had lived almost as a savage, on a tiny island owned by his father in the West Indies. “ ... six years of his life were spent in trying to grow sisal in this lonely spot, swept by hurricanes from time to time, living nearly naked, struggling with labor difficulties and every other kind of obstacle, and with the town of Nassau as the only gleam of civilization,” Churchill wrote. “He had insisted, he told us [Churchill and his wife], on three months’ leave in England each year. He built a small harbor and landing-stage and a short railroad or tramway. He used all the processes of fertilization which were judged suitable to the soil, and generally led a completely open-air existence. But no sisal!”
This last, sad exclamation symbolizes many of Chamberlain’s misplaced endeavors. He was a confident, overopinionated man, but his significant traits were more racial than personal. The British, as unyielding as gravity once trouble begins, are reared with an unpunctual awareness of their vulnerability. And it is a tragic mark of democracies in ge
neral that they will sacrifice prodigies of manpower and wealth to be impeccably inscribed in the record.
Although Churchill has always been impatient with mulishness, he conceived a genuine respect for Chamberlain. On one occasion early in 1939, according to Beverley Baxter, a well-known Member of Parliament, he even spoke out against a group of young Tories who had (at last) voiced disgust with Chamberlain’s weak attitude. “It’s all very well for those young fellows,” said Churchill to Baxter, “but it’s Chamberlain who has to press the button. It’s a terrible thing at a time like this to be the one man who has to decide whether the button must be pressed or not.”
All too late, Britain awoke to the fact that Churchill, again, had been right from the start. His ten years of unheeded prophecy were drawing to a close. The warnings, the alarms, the many speeches wasted on the desert air of a fatuous Parliament were echoing back with critical importance. At any of a dozen points, say today’s experts, Hitler could have been stopped without bloodshed. Churchill had pleaded for action in every case. Now the die was cast. Chamberlain’s tardy reversal of policy, involving the proposed alliance with Turkey, the overtures to Russia, and the guarantees to Greece, Poland, and Rumania, was received with understandable scorn in Berlin. The juggernaut was rolling; on the first of September 1939 it rolled with gleaming precision into Poland. On September 3 France and England declared war, and in that evening Churchill was called by the Government to resume his old post at the Admiralty. As the memorable message went out to all units of the fleet, by radio, blinker, and signal flags — “Winston is back” — he arranged his affairs for an extended visit in London. One of his friends says that he moved with calmness and a hint of anticipation. Ever practical, he included several boxes of cigars and a revolver in his luggage. Perhaps because of the gay times in India and the Sudan, Churchill has always seen war as carrying the hopeful chance of personal encounter. “If it comes to hand-to-hand combat,” he said, referring to the revolver, “I mean to get one or two before they finish me.”
Chapter 24
ENGLAND’S quick reaction once the nation was at war offers an interesting study in psychology. Belatedly aroused, the sentiment in favor of stopping the dictators turned incredibly fierce. Just as a reformed alcoholic makes the most intolerant sort of teetotaler, nobody can be quite as pugnacious as a former pacifist. The nation was united in an immovable zeal to do mayhem to the Hun. In the light of postwar records, it is believable that part of Hitler’s sickness was a lifelong sense of inferiority to the British. And in some measure this could be said of his race as a whole. He had often spoken with contempt of the “English public school spirit”; he was now to find it a vexatious and enduring weapon, as tangibly potent as an inventory of tanks and planes. And in the end it proved his undoing.
For England, for the world, this mystic factor was embodied in Churchill. His history of belligerence was noteworthy, but a good percentage of the impact was held to be facial. The arrangement of his features was a continuing setback to tyranny. Experts had searched his countenance and found no suggestion of compromise; they had been obliged to report instead the probability of combat to the death. It was a cheerless prospect. Although Teutonic hysteria is a horrifying urge to destruction, it runs its course like any fever. An insane fighter can perform with superhuman strength, but he seldom triumphs over the stamina of rationality. For Germany, psychiatrists have since recommended the quick, bullying war as being the safest staple of the nation’s martial diet. People close to Hitler have related that, in his last year, either the sight of Churchill’s photograph or the sound of his voice was enough to bring a kind of babbling froth to the Fuehrer’s lips. Correctly or incorrectly, he had settled on the belief that, except for Churchill, he could have had his way with Europe.
England’s reaction included a flood tide of approval for its hero of the previous decade. By-passing his last lean years, the public welcomed him back with shouts of appreciation. During the formal announcement of war, on Sunday, September 3, he walked into Parliament to a standing ovation. Both sides of the House applauded him warmly. Churchill’s expression revealed that this was a congenial improvement: only the week before they had been denouncing him with gusto. He added a few words to the tense debate that followed Chamberlain’s declaration of Britain’s commitment. His statement was, in the main, a generous acknowledgment of the Prime Minister’s equivocal position. “In this solemn hour,” said Churchill, “it is a consolation to realize and dwell upon our repeated efforts for peace. All have been ill-starred, but all have been faithful and sincere. This is of the highest moral value, and not only of moral value, but of practical value at the present time, because of the wholehearted concurrence of scores of millions of men and women whose cooperation is indispensable, whose comradeship and brotherhood is indispensable. That is the only foundation upon which the trials and tribulations of modern war can be endured and surmounted.
“This moral conviction alone affords that ever-fresh resilience which renews the strength and energy of peoples in long and doubtful and dark days. Outside the storms of war may blow and the land may be lashed with the fury of the gale, but in our hearts this Sunday morning there is peace. Our hands may be active but our consciences are at rest.”
As the new First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill put his own hands to work without delay. On the first day, without the usual preliminary settling down, he began his routine desk tasks, calling for the same map upon which he had plotted ship movements in 1914. Curiously enough, it proved to be still on hand, and Churchill picked up his placement of vessels and planes as if the years between 1918 and 1939 had never existed. Also, forgoing union hours, he was on the job until 3 A.M. the night of his appointment. And the next morning he appeared for duty, perfectly fresh, at ten o’clock. Monday, when he took up his official place on the Treasury, or Cabinet, Bench in Parliament, his long banishment was evident in his indecisive actions. Nearly all the important men of the House, those seated on the front benches of Government or Opposition, prop their notes against the jeweled dispatch box that traditionally rests on the broad desk separating the two factions. Churchill, for the first time in the memory of any member, held his notes in his hand. It was thought that the box had been moved slightly and that he preferred not to fumble for it. He arose and gave a straightforward report on the sinking of the Athenia, in which many British and American lives had been lost. Simultaneously, in Berlin, Joseph Goebbels was releasing some hotter news on the subject, in which it was disclosed that Churchill himself had ordered the sinking. Lesser German newspapers, obediently taking up the cry, refined this subtle announcement to the point where much of the population actually had the impression that Churchill had personally pulled the switch that released the fatal torpedo. Unfortunately, Goebbels failed to explain Churchill’s motive for this baffling act, and Churchill did not volunteer any details.
Logic has never been one of the big guns in the German propaganda arsenal. Throughout the war, Hitler and his subordinate demons wallowed in a morass of non-meshing accounts of Churchill’s activities. Their ire was inflamed by his refusal to respond directly to any accusation, defamation, or threat; but they had no sooner cooled down than he released some general blast so ornate and withering that Hitler would spend several days stamping about his costly lair at Berchtesgaden. Chief among the utterances that drove him periodically crazier was Churchill’s use of “Corporal Hitler.” There is reasonable belief that Shicklgruber, the house painter who changed his name but could hardly disguise his rank, smarted under the stigma of having spent four years fighting a war without advancing to a niche more complimentary than corporal. For an ambitious man, it was an odd failure, and Churchill chose to harp on it. “Corporal Hitler says” and “according to Corporal Hitler” became staples of his wartime reports on losses, progress, and the like. While Churchill could move Hitler to inarticulate frenzy, Hitler inspired Churchill to eloquence. In his postwar account of the struggle, the latter introduced
the German leader with a brilliant and memorable stroke: “Thereafter mighty forces were adrift; the void was open, and into that void after a pause there strode a maniac of ferocious genius, the repository and expression of the most virulent hatreds that have ever corroded the human breast — Corporal Hitler.”
The contemptuous flinging of the name and rating at the end typifies Churchill’s attitude toward his antagonist. The words are those of a member of the upper class — descendant of the Dukes of Marlborough and graduate of the King’s Military College — making brief and distasteful mention of an unworthy foe. And they have probably had the usual spinning effect on Hitler’s long sleep.
During the eight months that Churchill remained First Lord of the Admiralty, he was able to report comparatively little news of encouragement. It was a bleak hour in English history. The U-boat sinkings, including the catastrophe to the Royal Oak at Scapa Flow, the sowing of the magnetic mines, the loss of the Rawalpindi — these and similar blows tested British morale in the closing months of 1939. The nation was, of course, ill prepared for war and fighting a holding action until the armament duel could properly be joined. A hoary joke of the British pubs is that the War Office is always preparing for the last war, a mot that Churchill has correctly said is also applicable to other departments and to other countries. But numerically inferior though they were in the beginning, his ships fought savagely enough to provide stimulating headlines on several occasions. The first of these on a large scale was the action at the river Plate, on the east coast of South America. It made a thrilling story at a time when the British badly needed a hint that the armed might of the dictators was vulnerable. Searching for raiders, the 8-inch cruisers Cumberland and Exeter and the smaller cruisers Ajax and Achilles (the last from the New Zealand Navy) got wind of the Germans’ prize pocket battleship, Graf Spee, off Montevideo, after she had sunk the merchant vessel Doric Star. The Cumberland being some distance away, the Exeter and the others closed rapidly, at nearly fifty miles an hour. The collision occurred shortly after dawn on December 13. Instead of running for cover, the Nazi Captain Langsdorff (whom Churchill later described as a “high-class person”) thought his heavier armament would be conclusive and he elected to turn and fight. It was poor judgment, not inconsistent with the German arrogance of the period.
Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness Page 35