The Battle of Britain

by James Holland

  Nonetheless, despite his many favourable attributes, there was much mistrust of Churchill amongst many Conservatives. He was seen as a maverick, inconsistent and hot-headed; a man who drank too much. His methods were unorthodox. There was a lot of mud on him that he had been unable to shake off: he was the architect of the disastrous Dardanelles campaign of 1915, for example, and Chancellor during the General Strike of 1926. In more recent times he had fought hard against the Government over Indian independence, and against Chamberlain’s appeasement policy with Germany; he had sided with Edward VIII during the abdication crisis of 1937, which had further distanced him from the establishment. And although he had largely avoided censure during the two-day debate, he had been the biggest advocate of the Norwegian campaign amongst the Cabinet. Thus for all his enormous energy, drive and undoubted oratorical skills, he was widely regarded as a man lacking sound judgement. And a man unsuited to the highest office.

  Therefore most people assumed that, should Chamberlain go, it would be Halifax who took over. Safe, sound, solid. He could expect wide support from the majority of the Tories, but would also be acceptable to the Opposition in an all-party coalition. Of less importance, but not insignificant, was his close friendship with the King and Queen. Halifax had even been given a key to the Buckingham Palace gardens.

  However, at their meeting that morning, Halifax – already aware that he was Chamberlain’s and most others’ preferred choice and feeling consequently ill with a psychosomatic bout of nausea – told the Prime Minister he would be very reluctant to take over the reins. It would be difficult, he told Chamberlain, for a Prime Minister sitting in the House of Lords to have the necessary contact with the centre of gravity in the Commons. This, Chamberlain argued, could be resolved one way or another, and, in any case, in a coalition government there would be almost no opposition to deal with anyway. Even so, Halifax stuck to his guns, his stomach ache worsening.

  He knew, however, as did Chamberlain, that whoever succeeded as Prime Minister needed to be acceptable to the Conservatives, to Labour and to the King. After this meeting it was obvious that the only other person who could possibly succeed was Churchill. If Labour refused to serve under him, or if the King put his foot down, then, Halifax conceded, he might be forced to think again.

  Later that afternoon, Chamberlain had talks with his unpopular Chancellor, Sir John Simon, who offered to resign and suggested that, if it would help, then Sir Samuel Hoare, the equally unpopular Minister for Air, should also resign. With no final decision yet made, at 4.30 p.m. Chamberlain went into a meeting with the Chief Whip, Captain David Margesson, and also Halifax and Churchill, who had just arrived at No. 10. Margesson had already told Chamberlain that the Commons would prefer Halifax.

  The four sat down and Chamberlain told them he had made up his mind that he should go but that he would be happy to serve under Halifax or Churchill. Margesson added that in the interests of unity he believed Chamberlain was making the right decision, although he did not say which of Halifax and Churchill it should be to succeed. Halifax, whose stomach ache started anew, then repeated his reluctance to take over, again citing the impotence he felt he would have as a peer while Churchill ran defence and, effectively, the Commons.

  This was the nub of it. Halifax, rather than holding no ambition for office, believed that at this point he would merely be a lame-duck Prime Minister while Churchill took effective control. Far better for the country, he believed, if Churchill was PM while he, as Foreign Secretary, acted as a restraining influence from within the Cabinet. Yet while someone who felt sick at the mere thought of becoming PM was possibly not the best candidate, Halifax was aware of his own more pertinent shortcomings: he was not particularly interested in military matters; nor did he know much about them. Churchill, on the other hand, loved war and warfare and all matters military; he always had done and had a fine war record that had prompted talk of Victoria Crosses on more than one occasion. He had served at Omdurman, and in South Africa during the Anglo–Boer War, during which he had daringly escaped from captivity while a prisoner of war. Unlike Halifax, Chamberlain, or even Hoare and Simon, Churchill had served in the First World War too, commanding his battalion on the Western Front after resigning from Government in 1915.

  The first hurdle over the succession was thus decided. Chamberlain left Halifax and Churchill to have a pot of tea together while he waited for the Labour delegation of Attlee and Greenwood to arrive. They did so at 6.15 p.m. Despite what he had said earlier about resigning, Chamberlain, still the Prime Minister, then asked them whether they would serve under him in a full coalition government, and, if not him, then somebody else. He did not name the someone else. Attlee and Greenwood told him they would ask the party’s National Executive, who were in Bournemouth at their annual Party conference, although Attlee confessed bluntly that his own view was that Labour would not have him remain PM, and he added, ‘I think I am right in saying the country won’t have you either.’ They left having promised to telephone through the answers as soon as they had them.

  Meanwhile, Churchill had returned to the Admiralty. Later that evening, his son Randolph rang him from his Territorial unit and asked him the news. ‘I think,’ Churchill told him, ‘I shall be Prime Minister tomorrow.’

  Hitler had managed to maintain a high level of secrecy over his plans for the attack in the west, which was codenamed Fall Gelb – ‘Case Yellow’. Even those in his close entourage had little idea what was afoot when, on the afternoon of 9 May, they were told to prepare to travel. Around 5 p.m., Hitler left the Reich Chancellery, climbing into an open-top Mercedes escorted by only plain-clothes detectives and members of the SD.* Following behind were various members of his staff, including the 32-year-old Christa Schroeder, who had faithfully been serving the Führer as one of his secretaries since 1933, when Hitler had first become Chancellor. At first she thought they must be heading to Staaken, but then they drove on, past the airfield. Eventually, they came to a halt in the forecourt of the small station, where an unusual train stood waiting.

  This was Amerika, the Führer Train – ten extremely long, dark green, armour-plated coaches pulled by two steam locomotives. Hitler was in a relaxed, confident mood still. Over the years, Christa had learned to tell his mood from his tone of voice, and now it was clear and exact, his face often breaking into smiles. The Führer had turned fifty-one just under three weeks before. A chronic hypochondriac, he felt sure his health was slipping away; it was one of the reasons he was in such a hurry – he needed to achieve his ambitions before it was too late. His pale eyes, however, were still bright, and his hair was still mostly dark, as was his distinct moustache, kept partly for its obvious identity value and partly to hide his large nose. ‘My nose is much too big,’ he had once said. ‘I need the moustache to relieve the effect.’

  Still Christa had no idea where they were headed. Nor, it seemed, did her fellow secretary, Gerda Daranowski, or Hitler’s press chief, Otto Dietrich. At dinner in the dining car, Hitler’s army adjutant, Generalleutnant Rudolf Schmundt, joked, ‘Have you all got your sea-sick pills?’ Christa immediately concluded they must be headed to Norway. Hitler then teased, ‘If you are good, you might be able to bring home a sealskin trophy.’

  Christa Schroeder may have been in the dark, literally and metaphorically, as Amerika puffed its way through the wide forests of northern Germany, but along the German border the men detailed to launch the great offensive were finally being briefed. Army Group A had just seven panzer and three mechanized divisions. Eight of those were in the specially formed Panzer Group Kleist, of which Guderian’s corps was to provide the point of main effort. But while Panzer Group Kleist was to mount a second supporting crossing with General Georg-Hans Reinhardt’s three divisions a little further north of Guderian’s corps at Monthermé, a third was planned twenty miles north still, at Dinant, by two panzer divisions that were part of the Fourth Army and quite separate from Panzer Group Kleist.

  One of these was t
he 7th Panzer Division commanded by a thrusting young Major-General named Erwin Rommel, who as an infantryman had won Germany’s highest award for bravery in the First World War, the Pour le Mérite, or, as it was more widely known, the Blue Max. Rommel had been a late convert to mobile armoured warfare but since taking over 7th Panzer that February had embraced the tactics of Guderian and von Manstein wholeheartedly. Key to the operations of such units were the reconnaissance battalions, made up of motorcycles, armoured scout cars and half-tracks. Their role was to push forward some miles ahead of the rest of the division, scouting and probing for signs of resistance and points of weakness that could then be exploited. The emphasis was very much on dash and speed.

  One of the company commanders in the 7th Armoured Reconnaissance Battalion was Hauptmann Hans von Luck, a 28-year-old career soldier from Flensburg. Despite his classical schooling – he could speak both Latin and Ancient Greek as well as English, French and Russian – his was a Prussian family with a long tradition of military service. Having left the Monastery School in Flensburg at seventeen, he had immediately joined the army. There he had remained ever since, serving under, amongst others, General Guderian, and later taking part with the rest of the division in the brief Polish campaign.

  Although Hans and his comrades had been training hard all spring, they were equally uncertain as to when and in what precise form the offensive would take place. Not until a week earlier had they been given some warning that an attack was imminent, when they had been ordered to the Eifel mountains on the border of Germany and Luxembourg. The older and reserve officers amongst them who had served in the last war were quick to warn the younger ones such as Hans that France would not be a walkover like Poland. ‘The French and British,’ they said, ‘are quite different opponents.’ Hans listened but felt sure there neither would – nor could – be a return to the kind of static trench warfare of the Great War. ‘We youngsters thought always of Guderian and his flashing eyes when he explained his tactics to us,’ he noted. During exercises, Hans had soon concluded that Rommel was also the right commander for the task, despite his infantry background.

  That evening, Hans and the other company commanders were summoned to see their commanding officer, Major Erdmann, who told them that in the morning they would be marching into neutral Belgium. Initial resistance at the frontier had to be quickly overcome; their goal was the River Meuse at Dinant. They would be amongst the spearhead through the Ardennes. ‘Our reconnaissance battalion,’ he told them, ‘can take pride in being at the forefront of the division.’ For Hans and all his comrades, that was a singular honour.

  Also stationed in the Eifel region was the 24th Artillery Battalion, part of the 87th Infantry Division. Leutnant Siegfried Knappe, twenty-three years old, was another career soldier. Although his pre-war battalion had served in Poland, Siegfried had been one of 20 per cent of officers who had remained behind to form a new battalion. The forthcoming offensive thus promised to be his first taste of action – not that he had been in the slightest bit aware that an offensive was even imminent. Moving closer to the border a few days earlier had not aroused his suspicions because it was normal for them to move frequently; it helped prevent complacency.

  Even so, Siegfried was one of the first to learn the news when he was summoned to see his CO, Major Raake, that evening, 9 May. ‘Be ready to issue an alert at 5 a.m.,’ Raake told him. ‘This is not an exercise. It is the real thing. We are invading tomorrow.’

  ‘Jawohl, Herr Major,’ Siegfried replied. Although very surprised by this sudden turn of events, he quickly set about his tasks. As adjutant, it was his job to make sure that all the details and orders were correctly worked out and that everything went to plan.

  To the north, the men of Army Group B were also being briefed for battle. Near the town of Walbeck, twenty miles or so west of Duisburg on the German–Dutch border, was the 171st Infantry Regiment, part of the 56th Infantry Division. Thirty-two-year-old Hellmuth Damm, a former teacher and choirmaster from Dresden, was an Unteroffizier – sergeant – in the 4th Machine-Gun Company of the 1st Battalion. Drawn into service as a reservist five years before, he had then been fully mobilized the previous August, three days before war began. Leaving his wife and young daughter in Dresden, he had joined his battalion and soon after found himself marching through Slovakia on his way to Poland.

  As army reserves, they had not taken part in any fighting; the only shot his company had fired during the whole campaign had been when a cook killed a pig. In fact, having marched more than 300 miles, they had then been put on trains and transported back west, all across Poland and Germany until they reached the Eifel region along the Reich’s West Wall. A further march north took them to Walbeck, where they had been training and helping to build border defences ever since.

  Now, on the evening of 9 May, the battalion received the code word that told them they would be going into action. This would be no exercise. Immediately, Hellmuth and the rest of the company gathered their kit and set off, as they had trained to do, across a rough moor that led them to the Dutch border. In Hellmuth’s Gruppe he had two MG08s, water-cooled heavy machine guns that had been the mainstay of the German army in the last war and were little more than a variation on the original Maxim gun, invented more than fifty years earlier. Old and cumbersome it may have been, but the MG08 was reliable, could fire 400 rounds per minute, and had an effective range of more than a mile. That made it a pretty useful weapon, even in the fast-developing world of 1940.

  Reaching their forward positions, Hellmuth and his men halted. No-one was sure when they would be ordered to attack, but dawn the following morning seemed likely. The first big obstacle was the River Meuse – or Maas as it was called by the Dutch – and the task of Hellmuth and his men was to find a building whose first floor had a view of the river, set up their MG, and then provide cover for the assault engineers as they attempted to cross the water in rubber boats. Feeling tense, apprehensive and expectant, Siegfried found sleep hard to come by, even though it was a warm, still night.

  It was now just a few hours until the static Sitzkrieg of the past nine months would be over. The point of no return had arrived. The clash against the might of Britain and France was about to begin.

  * SD was the Nazi abbreviation of the Sicherheitsdienst, the Nazi secret intelligence service. On the whole, Germans preferred abbreviations to acronyms, unlike the British. ‘Nazi’ is also an abbreviation – of National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei, the German National Socialist Workers’ Party.

  3

  The Go-for-Broke Gamble

  AT HALF-PAST MIDNIGHT, the Führer Train seamlessly switched tracks, and instead of continuing north towards Hamburg began steaming west. Hitler had been on sparkling form, which had spread throughout the train creating a lively, buoyant atmosphere. Four hours later, Amerika finally hissed to a stop. It was still dark. The station had been stripped of its place name, but it was Euskirchen, a small German town between Bonn and Aachen, close to the Belgian border. Heading out into the clear, chill morning air, Hitler and his entourage clambered into a six-wheeled Mercedes. Christa Schroeder sat in the car as first light revealed nameless villages as they sped by. Eventually, they halted in a hilly, wooded region before a command bunker dug deep into the side of the hill, which, she soon learned, was to be Hitler’s new temporary Führer Headquarters. Its name was Felsennet, and at some 1,200 feet high the hidden entrance held a commanding view towards the Belgian border less than twenty miles to the west.

  Around the same time as the Führer Train had come to a halt, Siegfried Knappe was already up and ready, mounted on his horse, Schwabenprinz, checking the batteries to make sure the cooks had their fires going and the men were being roused before the alert was given. Half an hour later, at 5 a.m. exactly, Siegfried was able to report to his boss that each battery was in position and ready to move out the moment the orders arrived.

  Siegfried would have a long wait, but for those in the vanguard of th
e advance, the moment had finally arrived. At 5.30 a.m., General Guderian crossed the Luxembourg border near Wallendorf in the company of his lead units in the 1st Panzer Division. Two minutes after that, Hans von Luck, in his armoured scout car and with his motorcycles ahead of him, crossed the Luxembourg border as well. Meanwhile, in the north, Generaloberst Fedor von Bock’s Army Group B was also beginning its thrust into Belgium, supported by Luftwaffe paratroopers and more than 1,500 bombers and dive-bombers. From his position on the Dutch border, Hellmuth Damm heard the reams of bombers droning overhead. It was these aircraft that had done so much to help roll over the Poles the previous autumn, and with newsreels around the world relaying images of screaming Stukas and hordes of dark bombers dropping their loads, the Luftwaffe was very much a symbol of Germany’s new military might. It had been the Luftwaffe, above all, that had shocked and awed the Poles, and it was expected that in the west it would do so again.

  The Luftwaffe could call on 1,272 twin-engine bombers and 307 Junkers Stuka and Henschel dive-bombers as dawn broke that morning. As had been tried and tested, their first task was to neutralize the enemy’s own air forces. Now ripping apart the early-morning quiet with the thunderous roar of aero engines from two air fleets, Luftflotten 2 and 3, these bombers were in the process of carrying out a large number of combined air attacks on airfields and communications throughout Belgium, Holland and northern France.