by John Kelly
Mr. Churchill is not a sensitive lens which absorbs and concentrates and reflects and amplifies the sentiments of others. . . . He does not play on public opinion like an instrument. In 1940, he assumed an indomitable stoutness and unsurrendering quality on the part of his people and carried on. If he did not represent the quintessence and epitome of what his fellow citizens feared and hoped in their hour of danger, this was because he idealized them with such intensity that in the end they approached the ideal and began to see themselves as they saw him: the buoyant and imperturbable temper of Britain “which I have the honor to express”—it was, indeed, but he had a lion’s share in creating it. So hypnotic was the force of his words, so strong his faith, that by the sheer intensity of his eloquence he bound his spell upon them until it seemed to them that he was indeed speaking what was in their hearts and minds. If it was there, it was largely dormant until he had awoken it in them.
After he had spoken to them in the summer of 1940 as no one had ever before or since, they conceived a new idea of themselves, which their own prowess and the admiration of the world has since established as a heroic image in the history of mankind, like Thermopylae or the defeat of the Spanish Armada. They went into battle transformed by his words. The spirit they found within them, he had created within himself from his inner resources and [he] poured it into his nation.
It needs to be said that many of the Britons who embraced Churchill’s heroic narrative knew, in most cases probably subconsciously, that they were playacting—that when the war ended they would take off their costumes and return to ordinary life. Nonetheless, the British public recognized Churchill’s achievement. The narrative he wove in the summer of 1940 carried the nation through the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, and then, later in the war, through the hill towns of Italy and the bocage of Normandy; through the V1 and V2 attacks; through almost six years of death, deprivation, sorrow, and loss—and, at the end, it delivered Britain into a world where “love and laughter and peace ever after” had become possible again.
Prime Minister Chamberlain arrives in Munich on September 29, 1938, for a conference with Hitler and Mussolini. Chamberlain came to Munich determined to defend the Never Again pledge the publics of the West made after the carnage of the Great War; Hitler and Mussolini arrived at the conference equally determined that there should be an Again.
Prelude to Munich: Chamberlain visits Berchtesgaden on September 15, 1938, to discuss German demands that the Sudetenland, the ethnically German region of Czechoslovakia, be granted self-determination. Chamberlain left the meeting thinking Hitler was “a man who could be relied on”; Hitler left it thinking Chamberlain was “a silly old man with an umbrella.”
Hitler and Chamberlain at the Berchtesgaden meeting on September 15, 1938.
The famous photo of Chamberlain promising “peace in our time” on his return from the Munich conference. Within days of his return, streets in Britain were being named after him, and Chamberlain dolls and Chamberlain bouquets peeked out from a thousand shop windows, proclaiming, “We are proud of you.”
The Chamberlain Cabinet in November 1939, the second month of the war. Standing from left to right are Sir John Anderson, home secretary; Lord Hankey, minister without portfolio; Leslie Hore-Belisha, secretary of state for war; Winston Churchill, first lord of the Admiralty; Kingsley Wood, secretary of state for air; Anthony Eden, secretary of state for dominion affairs; and Eric Bridges, Admiralty. Seated from left to right are Lord Halifax, secretary of foreign affairs; John Simon, chancellor of the Exchequer (Treasury); Chamberlain; Samuel Hoare, lord chancellor; and Lord Chatfield, minister of defense.
King George VI visits Washington in June 1939. Personally arranged by President Roosevelt, the tour was intended to make an isolationist American public more sympathetic to the British cause, but the royal charm did not work on everyone. “The English soap is being poured over Uncle Sam’s devoted head and lathered into his ears and eyes,” warned the antiwar press baron William Randolph Hearst.
Churchill and Halifax on a London street in March 1938. In the summer of 1940, as the fall of France became inevitable, Halifax and Churchill would engage in one of the most consequential debates of the twentieth century: should Britain fight on alone, or seek a compromise peace with Germany?
Lord Halifax and Sir Alexander Cadogan, permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office, on their morning walk to work. The buttoned-down Cadogan had a bit of Dorian Gray in him. By day, he was a reserved and impeccably correct diplomat; by night, an often vicious diarist whose withering portraits of the good and great of his time have proved a treasure trove to generations of historians.
Joseph Kennedy, shortly after his appointment as ambassador to Great Britain in 1938. A State Department official who worked closely with Kennedy believed his greatest flaw as a diplomat was short-sightedness. Because Kennedy was “primarily interested in the financial side of things,” wrote the official, “he cannot, poor man, see the imponderables which in a war . . . will be decisive.”
The price Britain paid for victory in the Second World War is reflected in the life of Sir Harold Nicolson, diplomat, author, politician, and leading opponent of appeasement. Nicolson was born in 1886 into a Britain supreme in all things, and he died in 1968 in a Britain whose greatest boast was that it was the home of the Beatles.
German Messerschmitt 110s bombing gasoline dumps in the Calais-Dunkirk region in early June 1940. Employing the Luftwaffe as flying artillery worked brilliantly in the Battle of France, but it left German pilots ill prepared to fight a strategic air war such as the Battle of Britain.
British soldiers in Calais march into captivity. To keep the twenty-four-mile road between Calais and Dunkirk open for evacuation, the British garrison in the town was ordered to sacrifice itself in a last-man, last-round defense.
Evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk. Dunkirk’s resort-town atmosphere created surreal scenes, such as a five-mile column of men marching through a forest of Ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds down to the sea.
British soldiers wading through the shallows to waiting ships. About the scene on the evacuation ships, one man wrote, “The men lying on the decks looked like sea creatures crawled up to the shore to die.”
Three hundred thirty-eight thousand men, including well over a hundred thousand French troops, were evacuated from Dunkirk at a cost of two hundred twenty-six ships, most of them British. The RAF also lost one hundred forty-five planes during the evacuation, thirteen more than the Germans, who lost one hundred thirty-two.
Paul Reynaud, premier of France, in 1940. Able and intelligent, Reynaud was a true French patriot, but he lacked the spark of greatness that enabled Churchill and Clemenceau, France’s First World War leader, to mobilize the national will and sustain it through a long season of setbacks and defeats.
Comtesse Hélène de Portes’s (here shown posing for Spanish painter Fredrico Masses) flirtation with fame and power ended tragically. She was killed in June 1940 while fleeing the Germans with her lover, Paul Reynaud, the premier of France. Reynaud, who was at the wheel, survived the crash.
General Maxime Weygand assumed command of the Allied armies on May 20, 1940, at the age of seventy-three. Weygand’s greatest talent, however, was for survival, not war. He emerged from two world wars unscathed, despite being arrested by the Nazis during—and by the French after—the Second World War. He was released both times, and died in his bed in 1966 at the age of ninety-eight.
Hitler tours Paris on June 23, 1940. After visiting Napoleon’s tomb, the Führer told a companion that was “the greatest and finest moment of my life.”
After Dunkirk, Britain had only three and a half fully equipped and trained divisions to meet a German invasion. Here Churchill inspects a few of the few on the coast of southern England.
This Daily Mirror headline underscores Churchill’s greatest achievement in 1940: his ability to infuse what one historian has called his “indomitable stoutness and unsurrendering qua
lity” into the British people.
Churchill and Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsay, August 25, 1940. The previous June Ramsay had overseen the Dunkirk evacuation; in this photo, he shows Churchill his plan for defending Dover, which, because it is only twenty miles from the French coast, was thought a likely German invasion site.
Heinkel 111 bombers over Britain at the end of July 1940. The He 111’s heavy bomb load capacity and ability to absorb punishment made it among the most effective of the German bombers; but, at this early stage of the war, it was already becoming apparent that, even with a fighter escort, daylight bombing was an extremely hazardous enterprise for the attacker.
Hawker Hurricanes rising to meet a German attack, July 1940. During the Battle of Britain, the slower Hurricane would typically attack the German bomber stream, while the faster, more nimble Spitfire went after the bombers’ fighter escort.
A dogfight over London in September 1940. In the final stage of the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe attempted to break the will of the British people by pulverizing London and other major metropolitan areas.
Heinkel 111 bombers over London, September 1940. In the first thirty days of the Blitz, which began on September 7, 1940, almost thirty thousand bombs were dropped on London. Six thousand Londoners were killed, and twice that number seriously wounded.
Churchill visits a bombed neighborhood in Bristol. Bristol’s large concentration of war industries made it the fifth most bombed city in Britain during the Second World War.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For their assistance, I would like to thank Christopher Hill, Cambridge University; Richard Overy, University of Exeter; John Charmley, University of East Anglia; David Kaiser, professor emeritus, US Naval War College; and John Tofanelli, Columbia University. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Nigel Hamilton, senior fellow, John McCormick Graduate School of Policy Studies, for pointing me in the right direction, and to the staffs at the British National Archive, London, and the Churchill Archive Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge.
© LAURA PEDRICK
JOHN KELLY is a talented popular historian who specializes in narrative history. He is the author of The Graves Are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People; The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time; Three on the Edge; and more. Kelly lives in New York City and Sandisfield, Massachusetts.
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NOTES
CHAPTER ONE: NEVER AGAIN
foul English weather: Times of London, July 19, 1919.
Victory Day Parade: Hyde Park Review: Times of London, July 20, 1919, Manchester Guardian, Morning Post [London], July 20, 1919; British celebrations: Fielding Star [New Zealand], July 21, 1919; Peace March for Glorious Dead, http://www.royalmunsterfusiliers.org/zllapece.htm.
Great War casualties: http://pbs.org/greatwar/resources/casdeath_pop.html.
Unknown Soldier: Ronald Blythe, The Age of Illusion (London: Faber and Faber, 1964), 7–10.
death ship, The Dying Creeds, etc.: Richard Overy, The Morbid Age: Britain and the Crisis of Civilization, 1919–1939 (London: Penguin, 2010), 18.
“Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past”: Michael Howard, The Continental Commitment (London: Temple Smith, Ltd., 1972), 75.
“This is not a peace”: Brian Bond, British Military Policy Between the Two World Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 79.
“There will be no serious direct consequences”: Overy, The Morbid Age, 68.
British Chiefs of Staff: “Chiefs of Staff Annual Review of Defense Policy,” COS Cab 310, Cab 53/23, 1933.
East Fulham: Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm (New York: Bantam Books, 1961), 100; C. T. Stannage, “The East Fulham By-Election, 25 October 1933,” The Historical Journal 14, no. 1 (March 1971): 165–200.
“Our cities will be rendered uninhabitable”: Chiefs of Staff, “The Potential Air Menace To This Country From Germany,” 335, Cab 52/23, June 1934.
Things to Come: Michael Korda, With Wings Like Eagles (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 20.
Baldwin, Churchill, and Fighter versus Bomber Controversy: Ibid., 20–28; John Terraine, A Time For Courage (New York: Macmillian, 1985), 15–30.
“I dread the day”: Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 101.
“When Winston was born”: Andrew Roberts, The Holy Fox: A Life of Lord Halifax (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991).
Expected casualties at beginning of new war: Angus Calder, The People’s War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1969), 22.
Peace Ballot: Martin Ceadel, “The First British Referendum: The Peace Ballot,” English Historical Review 95, no. 377: 810–39.
“Two thousand years after”: Korda, With Wings Like Eagles, 28.
“Altogether, he looks entirely”: Robert Self, ed., The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, vol. 4, The Downing Street Years, 1934–1940 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2005), 346.
“Men of the German Reichstag”: William Shirer, Berlin Diary (New York: Knopf, 1941), 149–53.
Articles of Versailles Treaty: Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 172.
“The country was never told the truth”: Lynn Olson, Troublesome Young Men (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), 102.
“What is honor”: William Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 1, 5.1.
“Public opinion . . . and certainly the Labour Party”: Robert Rhodes James, Anthony Eden: A Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987), 165.
Profile of Chamberlain: Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, vol. 4, 30–48; Ernest R. May, Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France (New York: Hill & Wang, 2001), 170–73.
“This year has seen”: Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, 232.
“The Queen . . . remarked”: Ibid., 252.
Decline of British power: Ibid., 1–15.
“We cannot foresee the time when”: “Comparison of the Strength of Great Britain with that of Certain Other Nations as [of] January 1938,” CID paper, 1366-B.
Halifax visits Hitler: James, Anthony Eden, 184.
“Those d—d Germans”: Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, 323–24.
Blame Czechs: Viscount Halifax to Sir Neville Henderson, No. 169 Telegraphic, May 21, 1938.
Chiefs of Staff’s warning: Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919–1939, Third series, vol. 1, 220.
“appeasement of the world”: Keith Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain (London: Macmillan, 1946), 355; Margery Allingham, The Oaken Heart (London: Michael Joseph Ltd., 1941), 20–23.
Reminders of 1914 during Munich Crisis: Overy, The Morbid Age, 345; Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain, 361.
fresh bouquets on Cenotaph: Alec Douglas Home, The Way the Wind Blows (London: HarperCollins, 1976), 78.
“Well, it’s been a pretty awful week”: Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, 344.
flight to Germany: Ibid., 346.
“It is you who have big rooms in England”: Ibid., 347.
“I’d rather be beat”: David Dilks, ed., The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 1938–1945 (New York: G.P., Putnam, 1972), 104.
“I approve wholeheart
edly”: Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain, 349.
“Hitler has given Chamberlain the double cross”: Shirer, Berlin Diary, 138.
“Like a nightmare”: Olson, Troublesome Young Men, 135.
“Hitler has cast a spell over Neville”: Alfred Duff Cooper, Old Men Forget (London: Faber and Faber, 2011), 235.
Warning of General Hastings Ismay: Cab 21/544, September 23, 1938.
Five days later the Chiefs of Staff issued a similar warning: COS 772, September 28, 1938.
Public reaction to Munich Agreement: German reaction: Shirer, Berlin Diary, 145–49; French reaction: Cooper, Old Men Forget, 243; British reaction: Olson, Troublesome Young Men, 158.
Antiappeasement feeling rises sharply: Olson, Troublesome Young Men, 348.
test the strength of Never Again: October Gallup poll, News Chronicle, October 28, 1938.
Substratum of antiwar feeling in Britain: Cooper, Old Men Forget, 244.
CHAPTER TWO: AGAIN
“We seemed to go to war as a duty”: Allingham, The Oaken Heart, 85.
Defense preparations: Cab 24/288/cabinet paper 188, August 31, 1939.