by John Kelly
By January 1940, the absence of a real war was making many of the nanny state’s rules almost impossible to enforce. Hardly anyone carried a gas mask anymore, the blackout was honored more often in the breach, and tens of thousands of parents were reclaiming their evacuated children. Alarmed by this latter development, the Ministry of Health rushed out a cautionary poster, which depicted Hitler whispering into the ear of a British mother: “Take them back, take them back.” “Don’t do it, Mother,” a banner line at the bottom of the poster warned. The logic behind the poster was obscure. First, Hitler and the Working Man; now Hitler, the champion of maternal love? By January, most of the eight hundred thousand children evacuated in September were home; but with the schools still closed, the children had nothing to occupy them. Eventually the government would cobble together a home school network, but food, gasoline, and heating fuel shortages were left unaddressed, as were the dangers of the blackout, which caused four thousand civilian injuries in its first several months of operation and produced headlines such as “He Stepped from Train, Fell 80 Feet.” The harsh winter of 1939–40, the worst in decades, further soured the public mood. In Blackpool the snowdrifts were fifteen feet high; in Sheffield, four feet high; in London, where the Thames froze over, “snow lay deep and hard as iron beneath 25 degrees of frost”; and on January 21, the coldest day ever recorded in England, ice storms snapped tree branches and brought down telephone wires. “As the harsh days slowly [pass],” Vera Brittain wrote one day that winter, “my author friend writes me from the country that she is working with numb fingers in a room where in spite of the fire, there is ice inside the windows. ‘It is bitterly cold here,’ she reports. ‘So cold my brains seem frozen in my head.’ ” The fifteen-day blackout on weather news meant that technically the snow and freezing temperatures remained a state secret for two weeks, but in a concession to reality, officialdom allowed plows to clear the roads in the meanwhile.
In January 1940, Giuseppe Bastianini, the Italian ambassador in London, told Rome that there was “constant talk [here] of how the war could be liquidated. If severe military reverses were sustained, the social situation in this country might become serious.” Bastianini was overstating the fragility of British morale, but the government intrusions into everyday life, the shortages, the cold, and the confusion about what Britain was fighting were eroding support for the war. As a reward for their sacrifices, the British public wanted to be inspired, wanted to hear Nelson at Trafalgar: “England expects that every man will do his duty.” Instead they got
An elderly statesman with gout
When asked what the war was about
Replied with a sigh
My colleagues and I
Are doing our best to find out.
In October 1939, when the British Institute of Public Opinion asked, “Would you approve or disapprove if the British government were to discuss peace proposals with Germany now?,” only 17 percent of the public had approved. In early 1940, when the institute asked the question again, 29 percent, nearly a third of the public, favored immediate discussions.
“People call me defeatist,” Lloyd George told a journalist at the turn of the year. But “tell me how we can win! Can we win in the air? Can we win at sea, when the effect of our blockade is wiped out by . . . Russia? How can we win on land? When do you think we can get through the Siegfried Line [Germany’s version of the Maginot Line]? Not until the trumpet blows, my friend.”
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On the Continent, the winter of 1939–40 was also severe. By early January, weeks of heavy snow had transformed northwestern Europe into an icy white plain where sky, earth, and river blended seamlessly into one another. In this almost featureless landscape villages, market towns, and tree lines became navigational aids for aircraft, tank crews, and lorry drivers. On the rare warm days when fog formed over the snow, the villages and towns would also disappear, and navigation often broke down completely. January 10, 1940, was such a day. That morning, the Essen–Cologne road was so fogged over that Major Erich Hoenmanns, a Luftwaffe pilot, turned his plane west and began searching for the Rhine, which also ran up to Cologne, where his wife was awaiting him. At some point Hoenmanns realized the river beneath him was not the Rhine, it was the Meuse; he was flying west toward the Allied lines, not north toward Cologne. Panicked, he began fumbling with the controls of the Messerschmitt BF-108 Taifun. The engine stalled, and a moment later the ground was coming up at Hoenmanns at several hundred miles an hour. A pair of trees sheared off the Taifun’s wings, and the plane landed in a snowy Belgian field with a hard thump. In the next few moments, danger and absurdity would intersect in a way that only happens in war. Hoenmanns was standing in the snow, worrying what would happen if he was interred and the Luftwaffe mistakenly sent his mistress’s belongings to his wife, when his passenger, Major Helmuth Reinberger, announced that he was carrying one of the greatest secrets of the war—the plan for the long-rumored German offensive in the West.
By the time the plan arrived at the Belgian High Command that evening, it had survived two attempts by Reinberger to burn it, but, even scorched, it still had an important story to tell. The German offensive in the West would begin with a variation of the Schlieffen Plan, which had shaped the encounter battles of the Great War—a thrust through Belgium and into northern France. Four days later, the phone rang in the flat of Alexander Cadogan, Halifax’s number two at the Foreign Office. Cadogan looked at the clock: it was 3:45 a.m. When he picked up the receiver, the voice on the other end said, “Telegram from Brussels. Belgians expect invasion of Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg today.” Cadogan was unable to fall back to sleep.
In its brief four and a half months of existence, the plan the Belgians retrieved from Hoenmanns’s plane had unnerved almost everyone who had come into contact with it, starting with the German High Command, who were first introduced to the plan on September 27, the day Warsaw fell. The setting was the new German Chancellery, whose austere lines and monumental size spoke of the Roman and Greek influences on its architect, Albert Speer; and its 480-foot-long Grand Hall, 17-foot-high bronze doors, and statues of nude Aryan athletes spoke of the Wagnerian influence on its principal occupant, Adolf Hitler. The old Chancellery next door had been preserved, but only for its metaphorical value. Entombed in decades of Berlin grime, it stood as a symbol of defeat and humiliation, of Versailles and French occupation, of breadlines and runaway inflation, while its glittering successor proclaimed “ein volk, ein reich, ein Führer.”
The first car to arrive at the Chancellery that morning held Hermann Göring. The reichsmarschall, who was colossal in everything—girth, ego, ambition, even bad taste—was wearing a gold-trimmed white uniform and a cap whose chinstraps disappeared into the folds of his neck fat. The other lead cars held General Walther von Brauchitsch, commander in chief of the German Army, and his naval opposite number, Grosadmiral Erich Raeder; von Brauchitsch was dressed in standard army field gray, Raeder in navy blue. The cars in the rear held a bevy of aides and advisers, their shoulders adorned with gold braids, their chests spangled with medals. For a moment the Chancellery courtyard echoed with the sound of car doors slamming shut; then the assemblage gathered itself up and marched down the marble corridors to Hitler’s office, which Life magazine had recently called the largest office in the world. Inside, the Führer awaited his guests in a simple gray uniform, under a mural illustrating the capital virtues—Wisdom, Prudence, Fortitude, and Justice.
During the meeting, Hitler introduced his guests to what was still the germ of an idea with a lecture on “general time.” Every day of quiet in the West gives Britain and France another day to mobilize their industries, to build up their armies, to cut further into Germany’s superiority in the air and on the ground. Therefore, said Hitler, Germany must strike in the West this year—1939. General George Thomas, director of the War Economy Department, was appalled. German steel production was currently running tens of thousands of tons below target each month, and there
were serious shortages of gunpowder, vehicles, ammunition, and spare parts. Many of Hitler’s other guests agreed with Thomas; the plan was recklessly audacious. The armored and motorized divisions returning from Poland would take months to refit; airpower could not be brought fully to bear in autumn, due to the uncertainty of the weather; and the army was not ready to face a professional, well-equipped Western army. In Poland, some machine-gun units had refused to fire for fear of giving away their positions, and some platoons and companies had refused to attack unless goaded by an officer. These deficiencies would have to be corrected before the Wehrmacht could undertake a major campaign. In the collective opinion of the Supreme Command, Germany would be incapable of launching a decisive offensive in the West until the spring of 1942. Strike now, warned one general, and the cost will be four hundred thousand dead.
At a second meeting, on October 10, Hitler reframed his offensive plan for the generals. It was no longer just a clever strategic move designed to catch the Allies off guard. The offensive was now fundamental to Germany’s survival in a struggle with a Britain and France bent on its obliteration. Evoking “general time” again, Hitler warned that unless Germany struck soon, the Allies would press neutral Belgium and Holland into the war and, from bases in the Low Countries, Britain and France could mount an annihilating air campaign on the industrial Ruhr, the engine of the German war machine. Over the next six weeks, what had begun as a relatively modest offensive plan—an enveloping movement through Belgium and southern Holland—grew steadily more ambitious. Responding to the Luftwaffe’s demand for airfields on the Channel coast, the plan was expanded to include the occupation of all of Holland. The role of German forces in the Ardennes region was expanded as well. Instead of supporting the main thrust through the Low Countries with a limited penetration into eastern France, the Ardennes force would sweep westward across France and capture the Channel coast. Chamberlain’s rejection of Hitler’s peace offer on October 12 may also have had an effect on German planning. Five days later, on October 17, Hitler told the army’s commander in chief, General von Brauchitsch, and his chief of staff, Colonel General Franz Halder, that “the British will only be ready to talk after a beating. We must get at them as quickly as possible. No use holding back.” A week later the offensive had a name, Case Yellow, and a starting date, November 12, but still not much support from senior German commanders.
In early November, General Halder compressed the army’s objections to Case Yellow into three points. One, “At the moment, we cannot launch an offensive with a distant object.” Two, “None of the higher headquarters think that the offensive . . . has any prospect of success.” And three, “On the whole, the assessment of the enemy is the same as that of the Army High Command.” (The Allies were also aware of the German Army’s shortcomings.)
On November 5, General von Brauchitsch presented Hitler with a memo on Case Yellow that drew heavily on Halder’s conclusions. As head of the army, von Brauchitsch was the logical choice to confront Hitler, but he was perhaps not the best choice. Blandly handsome and apolitical, he had demonstrated great physical courage at Verdun, but physical courage is not the same as moral courage, and Halder had reservations about his superior on that score. The meeting began well enough. Hitler was almost playfully ironic when von Brauchitsch complained about the logistical problems created by the autumn rains: he reminded the general that “it rains on the enemy, too.” But an ominous silence greeted von Brauchitsch’s request that the Army Supreme Command be allowed to run the war without interference, and when von Brauchitsch criticized the army’s performance in Poland, Hitler erupted: The army had always opposed him. The army was cowardly. One day he would crush the army! Then, abruptly, the outburst ended and Hitler asked, “What are you planning?” in a voice that carried the insinuation of holding cells, midnight interrogations, and rubber truncheons. An hour later, when he met Halder outside the old Chancellery building, von Brauchitsch was chalk white. The two men talked for a while; then von Brauchitsch told Halder about Hitler’s question “What are you planning?” That is all that is known about their conversation, but both men must have wondered what Hitler knew or suspected about their ties to the German opposition.
Contacts between the German opposition and the British government dated back to at least 1938. On the eve of the Munich crisis, word reached London that Colonel Hans Oster, a member of the Abwehr, the German intelligence service, was organizing a coup against Hitler; but, reluctant to lose a last chance to preserve peace, Chamberlain ignored the reports and flew to Germany. When he returned, promising “peace in our time,” the Oster coup collapsed. In the autumn of 1939, London was more welcoming when news of a new opposition coup arrived. Oster and Colonel Helmut Groscurth, another Abwehr officer, had been in contact with Halder and von Brauchitsch, and both men had expressed an interest in implementing “fundamental changes” in the German government. On October 31, three weeks after Hitler’s peace offer, Chamberlain was so confident a coup was imminent, he told a colleague the Wehrmacht was about to “take the leading part in the formation of a new government” that would return Germany “to peaceful, friendly, tranquil relations with the world.” If it sounded too good to be true, it was.
Whatever remaining faith London had in the German opposition was destroyed by the Venlo incident. A few weeks after von Brauchitsch’s talk with Hitler, Gestapo agents masquerading as opposition members kidnapped two British agents in the Dutch town of Venlo and dragged them across the border to Germany. Shortly thereafter, London received a note from the kidnappers: “Negotiations for any length of time with conceited and silly people are tedious. You will understand therefore that we are giving them up. You are hereby bidden a hearty farewell by your affectionate German opposition, [signed] the Gestapo.”
* * *
On November 17, General Winter finally achieved what the German High Command could not. Heavy snows postponed Case Yellow from the seventeenth to the twentieth, then to December 3, December 11, December 17, and December 27. As a precaution, the offensive was postponed yet again, after the Belgians retrieved a signed copy of the plan from Major Hoenmanns’s crashed plane. Case Yellow would not become a reality until May 10, but during the late winter and early spring of 1940 rumors about a German offensive in the West would undermine the last serious attempt to reach a negotiated peace and make a war in distant Finland look ever more attractive to the British and French governments.
Throughout December and into January 1940, the Finns continued to more than hold their own in a war that ranged northward into the Arctic, southward into the Gulf of Finland, and eastward across the high forest of the Karelian Isthmus. But except for the dramatic light and the snow-covered high forests, the war possessed none of the “Nordic charm” that the British, French, and American supporters of Finland imagined. At Suomussalmi, at Ousul, and in a hundred places in between, the pattern of battle was always the same: wave after wave of half-trained Soviet troops attacked into volleys of machine-gun fire to little or no profit except for driving the occasional Finnish machine gunner mad from all the killing. Visiting the battlefield at Suomussalmi before the snows had an opportunity to tidy it up, James Aldridge, an American war correspondent, was shocked. “It was the most horrible sight I’ve ever seen. There were two or three thousand Russians and a few Finns, all frozen in a fighting attitude. Some [of the dead] were locked together, their bayonets within each others’ bodies, some were frozen with their arms crooked, holding the hand grenades they were throwing. . . . Fear was registered in their faces. Their bodies were like statues of men throwing all of their muscles and strength into some work, but their faces recorded something between bewilderment and horror.”
Finally, in the latter part of January 1940, the weight of Soviet power began to tell. The Finns were losing a thousand men a day, an unsustainable casualty rate for a nation of four million. On the morning of February 1 an artillery barrage swept across the Karelian Isthmus, the key front in the Winter War. Si
x days later, the Russian guns were still firing. On the seventh day, three Soviet divisions attacked. Behind the soldiers came the tanks—150—and above the tanks flew squadron after squadron of Soviet planes. Machine-gun fire crackled. Entire Soviet battalions fell dead in the snow, but half an hour later a fresh battalion would emerge from the tree line, pick up the rifles of the dead, and charge into the machine guns again. This would continue until the guns ran out of ammunition or a lucky shot from an eighteen-year-old Soviet recruit killed the machine gunner. Facing defeat, the Finns turned to Britain and France for assistance—and the British, eager to seize the Swedish iron ore fields adjacent to Finland, and the French, eager to relocate the German offensive from France to Scandinavia, promised Helsinki twenty-five thousand troops and then fifty thousand troops. Strategically, the decision made little sense at the time, and in the long light of history, it makes even less.
Writing about the February 5 meeting, where the Allied Supreme Council decided to send troops to Finland, J. R. M. Butler, author of the official British history of the Second World War, could barely hide his exasperation. “An air of unreality pervaded the proceedings . . . as shown in the readiness to lock up troops in Finland that were so urgently needed elsewhere, in the underestimation of the administrative difficulties of such a campaign, in the slight regard paid to the danger of Soviet hostility, in the miscalculation of German efficiency and resources and . . . in the wishful thinking which discounted the determination of the neutral governments [Sweden and Norway] to maintain their neutrality.”
In the midst of the Finnish crisis, Washington made a surprise announcement: At the end of February Sumner Welles, a prominent State Department official, would visit Rome, Berlin, Paris, and London “for the purpose of advising the President and the Secretary of State as to the present conditions in Europe.” This bland announcement in the February 10, 1940, edition of the New York Times failed to do justice to the brief given to Welles, a well-born, discreetly ambitious New Yorker. Welles’s assignment was to assess the prospect of ending the war peacefully before serious fighting in Scandinavia or France made a negotiated settlement impossible. Welles also carried several subsidiary briefs, including instructions to counter Hitler’s influence on Mussolini. The Duce had kept Italy out of the war the previous September, but he had ten battleships, two aircraft carriers, and more than seventy divisions, and whenever he came within Hitler’s orbit, his desire to use them increased noticeably.