In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century

by Geert Mak

  The historical accounts are marked by great discrepancies. ‘My own feelings are rather of disgust,’ a British veteran wrote years later to Walter Lord, one of those who wrote the history of that event. ‘I saw officers throw their revolvers away … I saw soldiers shooting cowards as they fought to be first in a boat.’

  ‘Their courage made our job easy,’ a naval man wrote about exactly the same situation. ‘I was proud to have known them and to have been of their generation.’ According to two officers of the local command, the organisation around Dunkirk was ‘absolute chaos’, a ‘debacle’, a ‘disgrace’. But one liaison officer saw Dunkirk as proof that ‘the British were an invincible people’.

  Today, in 1999, Dunkirk is a seaside resort like any other, with a huge plastic play-castle where ‘Les Colettes’ perform, shrieking children, perspiring mothers, ice-cream parlours and ugly apartment buildings, all of it imbued with a routine breathlessness that goes on day after day, a life off which the past rolls like water off a duck's back.

  The beach at Dunkirk is one of those spots in Europe's history where things were truly touch-and-go, where some little thing, an error of judgement on the part of a single individual, determined the course of history. For what was it that persuaded Hitler to order his troops to halt, at precisely the moment when they could have delivered their opponents the coup de grâce? What are we to think of this order?

  First of all: Dunkirk was crucial for the British, but for the Germans it was only secondary. The eyes of the entire German staff were turned on Paris. After the debacle of 1914, it was that city which they wanted to seize as quickly as possible. Other reasons lay in the military strategy: Guderian's 19th Armoured Division simply moved too fast, there was too little to cover its flanks, provisions became a problem, a brief pause was needed. Furthermore – as shown by survey maps found later – the German high command mistakenly assumed that the area around Dunkirk was extremely swampy, and that their tanks would become hopelessly bogged down there. Hitler was highly susceptible to such warnings: after all, during the First World War he had seen with his own eyes how entire divisions had become stuck in the mud in this part of Europe.

  According to some historians, there was another, psychological explanation for Hitler's actions: he may have consciously wished to allow the British to escape, because in this first phase of the war he was still hoping to strike a compromise with Britain. The British were to get off the continent, no matter what that took, but they were to be allowed their own independence and their empire. He considered a destroyed, disintegrating United Kingdom to be a far greater risk. The evacuation of British troops at Dunkirk, as Runstedt and others concluded, was therefore not Hitler's mistake, but, deep in his heart, his desire.

  What remained was the crushing French defeat, a catastrophe in every way. Hitler's success seduced Mussolini into committing Italian troops to the Second World War as well. (Spain and Portugal remained neutral.) For many Germans, the victory was the definitive confirmation of Hitler's ‘genius’.

  For the French, the debacle meant the fall of the Third Republic and the establishment of a collaborationist government in Vichy. For decades this defeat would determine British and American attitudes towards France. And ruin the French self-image, full of ‘glory’ and ‘honour’ and ‘the fatherland’.

  Chapter TWENTY-SEVEN

  Chartwell

  NOËL COWARD ‘S PLAY PEACE IN OUR TIME WAS FIRST STAGED IN LONDON more than half a century ago, in summer 1947. It was a kind of historical science fiction. It was set in a pub in Kensington in the period between November 1940, right after the German conquest of Great Britain, and May 1945, after the Allies had liberated the island once more. It told the story of the English resistance, the English collaboration and the role of the German occupiers in England – funny, and frighteningly close to the mark.

  The play itself is long forgotten. Today, at the end of the twentieth century, we cherish the story of the ultimate happy ending, of the demonic Hitler who plunged Europe into war, of the grisly struggle between good and evil which he, of course, was doomed to lose.

  There is some sense to that, but at the same time it is too easy. Hitler, in fact, was not at all doomed to lose the war. In summer 1940, peace reigned in Europe. The greatest European conflict, that between Germany and France, had already been settled, and only the British were still fighting a rearguard action against German supremacy. What is more, in 1940 Hitler was still riding on an enormous groundswell of goodwill.

  ‘The fall of France,’ wrote the American journalist Rosie Waldeck from Bucharest in 1940, ‘formed a climax to twenty years of failure of the promises of democracy to handle unemployment, inflation, deflations, labour unrest, party egoism and whatnot. Europe, tired of herself and doubtful of the principles she had been living by, felt almost relieved to have everything settled – not satisfactorily, but in such a way that it absolved her of all responsibility.’

  Countess Rosie Waldeck was the American equivalent of Bella Fromm. The pen name of Rosie Goldschmidt-Graefenberg-Ullstein, she was a Jewish banker's daughter who, after a number of divorces, ended up writing society columns and moving effortlessly in the most select circles, and who beneath all her charm was possessed of clear judgement and great discernment. She committed her European experiences to paper in 1942 under the title Athene Palace, the name then of today's Bucharest Hilton, where she lived and worked for seven months.

  For years Rumania had had its own violent fascist movement, the Iron Guard. From 1938 the country was ruled by strict anti-Semitic legislation. At the same time, King Carol II was trying to make himself Rumania's dictator, as Miklós Horthy had done in Hungary in 1920 and Ioannis Metaxas in Greece in 1936. Since spring 1940, Bucharest had been run by a coalition of fascists and generals led by Marshal Ion Antonescu. In September, Germany more or less took over the country, which was crucially important for the Reich's energy supplies. Rumania ceded large parts of its territory to Hungary, King Carol abdicated, real power was transferred to Antonescu and the Iron Guard was given free rein and organised one bloody pogrom after another. In June 1941, Rumania committed itself completely by joining Germany's foray into the Soviet Union.

  In 1940, however, the country was still neutral, and in June all of Europe was sitting side by side in the lobby of the Athene Palace, as though nothing untoward was going on: the old Rumanian dignitaries, the leaders of the new radical right-wing government, the American journalists and diplomats, the despondent French ambassador. The ‘elegantly bored’ British – diplomats, oil men, journalists and intelligence officers – had their own table, the young Rumanian nobility sat at the bar, there was always a table with a delegation of whispering Wehrmacht officers, industrialists, bank directors and military attachés, another German table was reserved for Nazis, Gestapo agents and boisterous women. Later a table was added for the German generals, all of them equally courteous.

  Rosie Waldeck: ‘Seeing them sit there you would never believe that they were here to plan a war. There was nothing tense or excited about them, nothing that would indicate they sat up all night poring over their maps.’

  Even today, Waldeck's observations are of great interest; despite her American diffidence, she was deeply involved with everything and everyone in the hotel. Night after night she sat talking to Germans in the flush of victory, to generals, diplomats and young officers, without in any way concealing her own Jewish background. What struck her most of all during those months was the enormous élan of almost all the Germans she met, ‘the dynamism of the National Socialist revolution, the dynamism which went through the entire military and bureaucratic machine of Hitler's Germany.’ It was like an intoxication, she wrote. ‘All said that they never felt as free in their work as they did now.’

  At the same time, their diplomacy was less than brilliant. ‘The Nazis were good at conquering, but deplorable at exploiting their conquests, even for their own good, not to speak of the good of the conquered.’ She also k
new full well that this young, intellectual generation of Germans would, sooner or later, end up in conflict with the limitations of party and state.

  But for the time being, in summer 1940, she saw a continent that was genuinely impressed by this unprecedented German vitality:‘Hitler, Europe felt, was a smart guy – disagreeable, but smart. He had gone far in making his country strong. Why not try his way?’

  That was how many Europeans felt, and they all expressed it in their own way. In France they spoke of the ‘Pax Hitlérica’. In the upper circles of society, it quickly became fashionable to invite young SS and Wehrmacht officers to dinner. They represented a dynamism that had never been seen before, that could perhaps breathe new life into stuffy old France.

  The leader of the Dutch Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP), the former prime minister Hendrik Colijn, wrote in June 1940:‘Unless a true miracle takes place, the European continent will be led by Germany. It is healthy, and therefore allowable realpolitik to accept the facts as they present themselves to us.’ He hoped, when things quietened down, for a new European trade system under German leadership, a sort of early predecessor of the EU. In Belgium, the socialist leader Hendrik de Man published a like-minded manifesto in which he depicted the collapse of the decaying democracies as ‘a relief’. A ‘realistic’ alternative – the word ‘realistic’ was bandied about a great deal that summer – was, in his view, an authoritarian government under King Leopold III.

  Similar feelings were expressed in Great Britain. On 13 May Churchill had given his legendary ‘blood, sweat and tears’ speech in the House of Commons: ‘You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.’ Later this speech was generally cited as a classic example of determination and courage, but the reactions at the time were not all that enthusiastic. In his diary, Harold Nicolson noted: ‘When Chamberlain enters the House he gets a terrific reception, when Churchill comes in the applause is less.’ Many of the British, including King George VI and most of the Conservatives, considered Churchill in those days to be a warmonger and a dangerous adventurer. There was a strong undercurrent in favour of reaching an accord with Hitler.

  Five Days in London is the title of John Lukac's careful reconstruction of the British war-cabinet meetings between Friday, 24 May and Tuesday, 28 May, five days that could have changed the world. Lukac's conclusion is inescapable: never was Hitler as close to total control over Western Europe as he was during that last week of May 1940. Britain almost presented him with a peace agreement which he would probably have accepted, and only one man was finally able to stand in the way: Churchill.

  Besides Churchill, the British war cabinet in those days had four other members, at least two of whom could be counted among the ‘appeasers’: Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax. The other two, Clement Atlee and Arthur Greenwood (representing Labour), had no experience in government at that time. On 25 May, as the extent of the French defeat became apparent, Lord Halifax carefully began sounding out the Italian ambassador to find out what concessions would be needed to ‘bribe’ Italy from entering the war. Gibraltar, perhaps, or Malta? He hoped that Italy could provide the initiative for a peace conference with Hitler, leading to a ‘general European arrangement’. England was to keep the sea and its empire, while Germany could do as it pleased on the continent. Hitler would probably have agreed to such a proposal: it was roughly the same division of roles Kaiser Wilhelm II and his ministers had contemplated in 1914. As a result, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark and Norway – the lion's share of Europe – would have been transformed into a federation of Nazi countries under the unyielding rule of Berlin and the discipline of the SS and the Gestapo.

  It was Churchill in particular who opposed all compromise, who talked to his fellow cabinet members for days on end and finally won over Chamberlain, who, after 1938, was also convinced of Hitler's evil intentions. ‘Hitler's terms, if accepted, would put us completely at his mercy,’ Churchill believed. And: ‘Nations which went down fighting rose again, but those which surrendered tamely were finished.’

  In May 1940 it would have been blindly optimistic to think that Great Britain could defeat the Germans without massive support from the Soviet Union and the United States. But the British were persuaded that Germany would once again encounter difficulties due to its lack of natural resources. In that same month, the British general staff came up with a war plan that anticipated a deep crisis in Germany beginning in late 1941, followed by that country's collapse. The British, therefore, did not need to prepare for a war fought in huge battles like those of 1914–18. From 1942 onwards they would be primarily engaged in terminal care for a Nazi empire disintegrating of its own accord.

  In the end, Churchill succeeded in winning over all twenty-five members of his government. ‘I am convinced that every man of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.’

  In his war diaries he described the pandemonium that arose then among these experienced politicians from all parts of the political spectrum. ‘Quite a number seemed to jump up from the table and come running to my chair, shouting and patting me on the back. There is no doubt that had I at this juncture faltered at all in the leading of the nation I should have been hurled out of office. I was sure that every minister was ready to be killed quite soon, and have all his family and possessions destroyed, rather than give in.’

  In Kent, a little less than an hour south of London, lies Chartwell, the estate where Churchill's heart lay and where he spent a large part of his life from 1924–64. This is where he planned his military campaigns, lunched and met with his political allies, where he wrote his memoirs and his works of history, where he withdrew to his painter's studio when tension got the better of him, and where he spent whole summers laying bricks and roofing tiles when the political winds had abated. It is a complex of brick houses on a crest of hills, with a glorious view of the wooded landscape of Kent. The Chart Well, the estate's spring, had formed a lake there, and later Churchill would build a great many things beside, often with his own hand: a swimming pool, dams, marshy gardens and even a second lake.

  He had plenty of time for that in the 1930s, when his political fate was very much up in the air. For a long time, his tirades against the abandonment of the gold standard, the politics of appeasement and against the Indian resistance leader Gandhi – ‘a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir … striding half naked up the steps of the vice-regal palace’ – made him a political outsider. ‘You probably don't realise … that he knows nothing of the life of the ordinary people,’ his wife Clementine once blurted out. ‘He has never been on a bus, and only once on the Underground.’

  When Churchill turned sixty in 1934, he was, in the eyes of his contemporaries, a curiosity, a romantic reactionary who had lost his grip on reality. More than one historian has noted that, had Hitler and Churchill both died before the war broke out, Hitler would probably have gone down in history as the man who, despite his peculiar anti-Semitism, had put a collapsed Germany back on the map. Churchill, on the other hand, would have been dismissed as a footnote, as just one more promising failure in British politics.

  Chartwell is still the reflection of Churchill himself: the playground of an aristocrat with too much energy, the library of a gifted historian, the studio of an amateur painter not devoid of talent, the family home of a man of feeling.

  The building has been restored to as it was in the 1930s, and for the sake of the museum a few rooms have been joined and objects moved. Yet Churchill is still present everywhere: in the much-used library, in a jar of brushes on the windowsill of his studio, in the brick playhouse he built for his daughter Mary, in the flowere
d wallpaper on the top floor, in the bizarre collection of canes in the hall, in a painting of the family at breakfast with the red cat on the table. Churchill's bedroom, behind the study, is one of the smallest in the house. Beside his bedstead hangs his reading board, a handy, pivoting table. In the morning he usually governed the country from this bed, reading, dictating, making telephone calls, dressed in an oversized ‘siren’ suit with big buttons, always with his watery whisky and cigar within reach. When his biographer Martin Gilbert first stepped into this room in 1970, it still smelled of Churchill's tobacco.

  Domestic life at Chartwell had two centres: the low-ceilinged, intimate dining room where the festive and expansive family lunches were usually taken, and the big study on the top floor. Here was Churchill's ‘factory’, as he called this cozy space with its heavy beams, wooden ceiling, bright windows, bookcases and a fireplace, all dominated by a lavish painting of his birthplace, Blenheim Palace. In Churchill's day this same space was occupied as well by the secretaries and assistants who handled his correspondence, did research and converted Churchill's incessant flow of words – he even dictated letters from his bricklayer's scaffold – into more correspondence, memoranda and books. He would proudly receive visitors with the words ‘Do come in and see my factory.’

  Between 1929–39, the decade during which Churchill was only a Conservative MP for Epping, the factory formed the epicentre of his activities. As Martin Gilbert writes, it was there that he carried out a kind of ‘unofficial opposition’, including a ‘cabinet’ of former colleagues, friends, dissatisfied officials and political allies. During those years he was part politician, part journalist, and produced among other things the widely praised, four-volume biography Marlborough: His Life and Times. He did not live in isolation. His knowledge of military matters and foreign affairs was formidable, everyone wanted to hear his opinions and his countless newspaper articles appeared all over Europe. Harold Macmillan, later prime minister, happened to be in the factory on 7 April, 1939 when Churchill heard that Italy had invaded Albania. The energy that news unleashed was amazing, it was as though Chartwell were a centre of government: maps were brought in, the prime minister was called right away, an urgent message was sent to the secretary of the navy, a strategy was developed to keep Mussolini from further aggression. ‘He alone seemed to be in command,’ Macmillan recalled, ‘while everyone else was dazed and hesitating.’