Given the central importance of the alliance with France, Churchill faced harrowing decisions regarding British military support for its foundering partner across the Channel as the German invasion gathered pace. Despite French appeals, he decided not to overcommit British air power lest it be lost, leaving Britain bereft of fighter cover should the Luftwaffe venture in strength across the Channel. A crucial, and as it was to transpire, correct decision (though the RAF actually sustained greater losses during the Battle of France than during the Battle of Britain). Meanwhile he sought to steel the resolve of the French government and show Britain’s shoulder-to-shoulder commitment. During the agonizing weeks of French collapse, Churchill demonstrated his imperial instincts, using language that contributed to a sense of involvement throughout the British world. His thought and speech were instinctively suffused with an awareness of the British Empire, and he was the most empire-minded politician of his age. Regarding the question of sending more aircraft to France, he said that “we should hesitate before we denude still further the heart of the Empire”; during the fighting before Dunkirk, he signaled the local commander, exhorting him to “hold Calais for the good of the British Empire” (this was on May 26, a black day on which, with Whitehall waiting anxiously for news of the first wave of Dunkirk evacuations, Churchill had intervened to issue a “fight to the death” instruction, which silenced him at dinner and made him feel physically sick).
In the fateful days of May, as French military power and political will wilted, Churchill strove to gauge the truth of the situation and rally French spirits. These days were “extraordinary, in some ways unreal, phases in the history of the nation . . . one beautiful summer’s day succeeded another.”44 He flew to France on four occasions, rekindling memories of his frequent cross-Channel flights during the final year of the First World War and presaging the summitry that was to characterize his approach to the strategic planning of the war. But his efforts to bolster the French were to little avail. The Dutch army capitulated on May 14, and large parts of the French army (and almost the entire British Expeditionary Force) looked as if they would be cut off by a German dash for the Channel. With the British commander in France recommending an evacuation by sea on May 22, Churchill’s hopes were momentarily raised as General Weygand, newly appointed to command the armies, spoke resolutely about military recovery. But the plan was not put into action, and four days later, the British government ordered the execution of Operation Dynamo, the attempt to evacuate the British army, then massing on the French coast and threatened with death or capture. To the surprise and relief of a watching world, over the next nine days, this epic maritime feat, involving a mass of vessels from the Royal and Merchant Navies, fishing fleets, yacht clubs, and pleasure boats, embarked over 338,000 British and French soldiers and brought them safely to England. The RAF, though largely unseen, performed heroically as it kept the full might of the Luftwaffe away from the chaotic evacuation beaches.
On May 31, Churchill flew to France for a third time and observed at first hand the fatal equivocation at the heart of the French government. Reynaud supported the continuation of the struggle but his vice premier, Marshal Pétain, appeared to favor an armistice while terms could still be negotiated from a position short of abject defeat. Feelings were running high, as everyone shared a sense of terrible history in the making. Reynaud’s mistress, who supported an armistice, tried to physically attack Churchill in the courtyard at Tours, only to be fought off by the faithful bodyguard Walter Thompson. Back in Britain, on June 4, Churchill apprised the House of the magnificent achievements of Dunkirk and went on to intone his famous national manifesto:
We shall defend our Island,
Whatever the cost may be,
We shall fight on the beaches
We shall fight on the landing grounds
We shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
We shall fight in the hills;
We shall never surrender.
Resolution, defiance, and an inspiring, romanticized vision of the “island story” that had reached, after a thousand years, its most dramatic page. “Where the people of this country might have been depressed by the brute facts of Dunkirk,” wrote Aneurin Bevan, “Churchill was persuading them to think about Queen Elizabeth and the defeat of the Armada.”45 But he was also reminding them that “wars are not won by evacuations.”
As France fell, problems mounted on other fronts; on June 10, Italy chose its moment to join the victor-elect in sharing the spoils, declaring war on the British Empire. Further east, in a theater that would remain inactive for the better part of another eighteen months, the British closed the Burma Road—a lifeline to Chinese forces resisting Japanese invasion. It was an ignoble act, though one based on the sound, stark strategic assessment that risking war with Japan at this stage was folly. On the day that Italy became an enemy, threatening Britain’s manifold interests in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Mediterranean, Churchill made his fourth visit in a month to France to attend a meeting of the Supreme War Council at a château on the Loire. He returned to London on June 13 and then flew out again the following day, already established as the most peripatetic national leader of the war, entrusting to no one but himself the high-level diplomacy that, he believed, could only be conducted through personal meetings. This visit confirmed for Churchill that the French were ready to be defeated—and that the young and relatively junior Charles de Gaulle was the only person prepared to fight on. On June 14, General Sir Alan Brooke, commanding Britain’s remaining 150,000 troops in France, was given permission to evacuate across the Channel, and two days later, the War Cabinet agreed to France seeking terms with Germany (though on condition that the French fleet sailed for British ports).
Even as the minute hand approached the midnight hour and French sovereignty was about to be extinguished, de Gaulle was in London drawing up, with Desmond Morton, a declaration of union between Britain and France. The War Cabinet approved the text, and it was telephoned through to Reynaud. Another Churchill trip to France was planned but abandoned when the British ambassador warned of a crisis in the French government and Reynaud’s resignation. De Gaulle broadcast to the French people on the BBC. Seizing upon de Gaulle as leader of Free France was an astute move on Churchill’s part, even if supporting him was often a thankless task. As Churchill wrote to Roosevelt, “I am no more enamoured of him than you are. But I would rather have him on the committee than strutting about as a combination of Joan of Arc and Clemenceau.”46 All the time, Churchill was trying to get Roosevelt to make a commitment to the Allied cause that might steel the French to carry on, even hoping for an American declaration of war. From the start of his premiership, Churchill viewed America as the key to ultimate and absolute victory. But it was all to no avail. With the fall of France, things looked grim for Britain and Churchill’s government, and there were murmurings from within his Cabinet about the need for a change at the top. Churchill’s speech on the fall of France shored up his position with its powerful appeal beyond the Cabinet circle to the House of Commons and the British nation it represented. It scotched all thoughts of Britain seeking terms with the enemy and ensured that Britain would fight on. The Battle of France was over. The Battle of Britain was about to begin. “Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire.” Churchill’s position was strengthening to such an extent that senior ministers no longer dared air their criticisms and concerns in public.
Churchill achieved an extraordinary level of communication with the British people, holding out hope when despair seemed more fitting, offering the spectacle of military success as defeats mounted. Though Churchill’s voice was heard on the radio less frequently than is sometimes thought, and many of the famous “wartime” broadcasts were actually recorded after the war had ended, his speeches were numerous and of great importance. Most of his renowned wartime speeches were deliv
ered from the dispatch box in the House of Commons, some recorded thereafter for radio. On June 18, the 125th anniversary of Waterloo, Churchill told the House of Commons “the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. . . . Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, 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.’”47 Reluctantly, Churchill repeated this speech later in the day for a radio broadcast, which meant that his brilliant words were heard by millions across the world.
At this moment of crisis, Churchill demonstrated his quality and became the embodiment of national defiance and resolve. French warships in British ports around the world were seized; the powerful squadron at Oran in French North Africa was given the option of sailing for neutral or British ports or of being destroyed. The French admiral refused, and there followed a short bombardment from Admiral Sir James Somerville’s Force H based at Gibraltar, in which the warships of the French squadron were either destroyed or badly damaged and over 1,300 French sailors killed. To sanction this presented Churchill with a terrible decision, but one that he did not shirk. It was imperative that the French fleet did not fall into German hands. It was also imperative that the watching world, particularly America, was left in no doubt as to Britain’s resolve to carry on the fight, whatever disasters might befall continental Europe, particularly given the fact that the American president had tired of the defeatism that pervaded Chamberlain’s administration.
On July 4, Churchill received an ovation as he explained the action against the French navy to the House of Commons: “A large proportion of the French Fleet has, therefore, passed into our hands or has been put out of action or otherwise withheld from Germany by yesterday’s events. . . . I leave the judgment of our action, with confidence, to Parliament. I leave it to the nation, and I leave it to the United States. I leave it to the world and history.”48 This speech also made optimistic comments about Britain’s capacity to resist a German invasion, as the contours of what would become known as the Battle of Britain began to emerge. Churchill sat down at the end of his speech “with tears pouring down his cheeks,” but it was a significant parliamentary triumph. Aneurin Bevan wrote that “he was tremendous. History itself seemed to come into the chamber and address us. Nobody could have listened and not been moved. This was his forte. There has never been anybody who could speak for history as Churchill could.”49
It was crucial at this moment of European disaster that Churchill exerted himself to define Britain’s war aims. Others in his Cabinet advocated, or considered, seeking an immediate end to the war. Beaverbrook favored a negotiated peace, an “honorable” settlement that would allow Britain to retire behind its imperial frontiers. What, they asked, could Britain hope to do without an ally on the European mainland? But Churchill remained immovable, and sent a telegram to Roosevelt assuring him that Britain would never parley, setting out a strident and defiant national policy that his Cabinet had not agreed to. In arguing his case in Cabinet and in his speeches to Parliament and the nation, Churchill held out the possibility of American aid and a hope for the future. What was at stake, in the glorious vision sketched by Churchill, was civilization itself. Connecting with a thousand years of history, Churchill saw a battle and a hope beyond the ken of men like Halifax. For his part, Halifax thought that Churchill talked “the most frightful rot” about the terms on which he would listen to a peace offer from Hitler—after he had relinquished all of his conquests. Even at this stage, Churchill’s position was vulnerable, and he could not afford Halifax’s resignation. But Churchill exuded rocklike resolution. There could simply be no peace with Hitler, and it was better to fight and lose than not fight at all. He passionately believed in decency, and that British influence in the world promoted it. To compromise with Nazi Germany, therefore, was impossible—“What justification was there for the Empire and British power, if not to fight against Hitler and all he stood for?”50
With France now defeated and German forces on the other side of the Channel, the prospect of invasion and national defeat, not experienced since Napoleon’s planned invasion of 1803, dominated the high summer of 1940. Though the threat of Napoleonic invasion had been viewed with the utmost seriousness and elaborate measures taken for home defense, as long as Britain remained master of the Channel, there had been no chance whatsoever of Napoleon’s transporting the large army he had amassed at Boulogne across the water to the Kent and Sussex coast. In 1940, however, there was the entirely novel threat of more than 2,500 German bombers and fighters, mostly operating from airfields in nearby Belgium and France. Against this force, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding mustered only 650 RAF Spitfires and Hurricanes. Adolf Hitler, master of continental Europe since the armistice with France, could now turn his attention to the one remaining problem—the offshore kingdom, its empire, and its navy. Air power would neutralize the threat of the RAF; German transports would then brave the perilous Channel and the might of the Royal Navy and transport German troops to British shores. On July 16, Hitler issued his order for Operation Sealion, the invasion of Britain.
In the face of mounting military disasters, the British desperately needed to rebuild their armed strength after the losses suffered at Dunkirk, when so much precious equipment had been lost (2,000 heavy guns, 60,000 vehicles, 70,000 tons of ammunition, and 600,000 tons of fuel). To make matters worse, the army had been the poor relation in interwar defense spending, greater priority having been given to the RAF. So there was much work to be done, and this included the formation of the Local Defence Volunteers (renamed the Home Guard on Churchill’s initiative). Defence Regulation 18b gave the government a range of emergency powers, and enemy aliens were rounded up on Churchill’s orders. On August 20, during his Commons speech praising the gallant efforts of “the Few,” Churchill also summarized the work of the army and the Home Guard, stating that “nearly 2,000,000 determined men have rifles and bayonets in their hands tonight. . . . We have never had armies like this in our Island in time of war. The whole Island bristles against invaders, from the sea or from the air.”51 Meanwhile, Lord Beaverbrook, as minister for aircraft production, was working frantically to increase the frontline strength of Fighter Command, the navy was prepared to defend the coast, likely landing sites were fortified, and the army drew up its plans of defense should the invader come. Barrage balloons, antitank trenches, dragon’s teeth, and pillboxes sprouted across Britain. Churchill traveled to inspect as much as he could, and the country braced itself, literally, to fight on the beaches and landing grounds.
The Battle of Britain developed into a dramatic war of attrition as the vapor trails of skirmishing fighters crisscrossed the summer skies and Göring’s bombers targeted RAF airfields. But despite German advantages, the RAF was fighting at home, and the Luftwaffe felt its losses (of aircraft, but particularly of aircrew) even more keenly than its opponent. Of even greater consequence was Hitler’s strategic blunder in switching the attention of his bombers to London and other major cities from September 7 and ceasing to target the RAF and its airfields in an attempt to sweep Fighter Command from the sky. This change in strategy came about when Churchill ordered an attack on Berlin following a mistaken Luftwaffe raid on central London on August 24, which incensed Hitler. Despite Göring’s claims, RAF Fighter Command never reduced in strength, largely because of the prodigious efforts of Beaverbrook’s Ministry of Aircraft Production, nearly 352 new fighters being rolled out each month during this crucial period.
The new German strategy was intended to wear Britain down by blitz bombing (“cruel, wanton, indiscriminate bombings” of cities, as Churchill put it),52 and this meant that by late September, the Battle of Britain had been won. During this period, Churchill tended to work from 10 Downing Street, sleeping in the Downing Street Annex and regularly watching the action from rooftops. He and Clementine had moved out of Downing Street and into the annex flat, which had been special
ly constructed from former government offices on the first floor at Storey’s Gate overlooking St. James’s Park. The flat, built at the height of the Blitz, was directly above the underground War Rooms, which themselves had been built in 1938 as the likelihood of enemy bombers appearing over London escalated. Churchill made special efforts to inspect bomb damage and in the War Cabinet advocated a more generous compensation scheme for the victims. This, as Clement Attlee noted, showed his “gift of immediate compassion for people who were suffering.”53
While all of this was going on, Churchill had to attend to affairs of state relating to the global war effort and the cultivation of key allies. In September, he quietly and wisely assumed the leadership of the Conservative Party upon Chamberlain’s retirement (he died the following month), securing his power base. Given the visceral hatred with which many in the party had viewed Churchill, this was a remarkable personal triumph.
The American Connection
Churchill believed that America was crucial to victory. He thus set about wooing the reluctant superpower-in-waiting in any way he could. Despite some jaundiced remarks in the 1920s when he had been chancellor, his well-documented enthusiasm for his mother’s native country stood him in good stead and was in marked contrast to Chamberlain’s views on America. It showed an intellectual suppleness and pragmatism, as in his heart of hearts and despite his bombastic assertion of British might and the continuing relevance of the British Empire, Churchill knew that America was outstripping Britain in terms of raw power. It was, furthermore, not a new or circumstantial move. As early as June 1903, he had told the Commons that “I have always thought that it ought to be the main end of English state-craft over a long period of years to cultivate good relations with the United States.”54
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