by John Kelly
Greta Garbo–like cartoon character: Calder, The People’s War, 32.
Countdown to war: Chamberlain speaks of “gravest possible conditions” and Halifax describes talks with Theo Kordt and Count Ciano and of Mussolini’s desire to play role of peacemaker, Cab 47 (39) September 1, 1939.
“The big thing was a European settlement”: David Nasaw, The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy (New York: Penguin, 2012), 405.
Evacuation and other war precautions: David Cameron Watt, How War Came (New York: Pantheon, 1989), 591–95; Calder, The People’s War, 35–37.
“The road [was] alive”: Vera Brittain, England’s Hour (London: Continuum, 2005), 3.
Halifax and Cadogan in palace garden: Dilks, The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 212.
The day before the day of the dead: Halifax gave a brief description of the last-minute efforts to save the peace at the afternoon cabinet on September 2. A more comprehensive description of the final day of negotiations can be found in two cables Halifax sent Sir Eric Phipps, the British ambassador in France, on September 11, 1939: British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Viscount Halifax to Sir E. Phipps, Document 271, C13081/G, and Document 272, C13088.
Description of events in House of Commons Smoking Room, September 2: Sir Edward Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe, vol. 1, July 1939–May 1940 (London: William Heinmann, Ltd., 1954), 11–22.
“All those bands of sturdy Teutonic youths”: Winston Churchill, Hansard, House of Commons debate, November 23, 1932, vol. 272, 221.
“fine true thing”: Jon Meacham, Franklin and Winston (New York: Random House, 2003), 51.
“Mr. Churchill constantly prefers”: R. A. C. Parker, Churchill and Appeasement (London: Macmillan, 2000), 13.
“When he was wrong, well, my God”: Meacham, Franklin and Winston, 13.
Biography of Henry Channon: Robert Rhodes James, ed., Chips: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon (London: Penguin, 1970), 7–22.
Channon’s observations: James, Chips, 261–62.
“I am speaking under very difficult circumstances”: Arthur Greenwood, Hansard, House of Commons debate, September 2, 1939, vol. 351, 280–86.
“Speak for England”: Leo Amery, My Political Life, vol. 3 (London: Hutchinson, 1955), 324.
Channon’s observation about House debate of September, 2, 1939: James, Chips.
“all the old Munich rage”: Ibid., 261.
“It must be war, Chip, old boy”: Ibid., 263–64.
Cruise up Amazon: Times of London, September 4, 1939.
“strength of feeling”: Cab 49/39, September 2, 1939, 11:30 p.m.
Chamberlain declares war: Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe, 23–24.
Air raid sirens: Ibid., 25.
“Thus we tumbled into Armageddon”: Robert Boothby, I Fight to Live (London: Gollanez, 1947), 190.
Pace of rearmament: M. M. Postan, British War Production (London: H. M. Stationary Office and Longmans, Green & Co., 1952), 53–54.
Hitler and the Working Man: Ian McLaine, The Ministry of Morale (London: Allen & Unwin, 1979), 141.
British and German production: Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (New York: Penguin, 2008), 310–12.
Antagonism between Lloyd George and Chamberlain: Anthony Lentin, Lloyd George and the Lost Peace (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 108.
Profile of Lloyd George: Paul Addison, “Lloyd George and Compromise Peace in the Second World War,” in A. J. P. Taylor, ed., Lloyd George: Twelve Essays (New York: Athenaeum, 1971), 361–84.
“Artful as a cartload of monkeys”: Colin Cross, ed., Life with Lloyd George: The Diary of A. J. Sylvester, 1931–1945 (London: Macmillan, 1975), 244.
Lloyd George speaks to All Party Group: Taylor, Lloyd George, 367.
Lloyd George’s speech on a compromise peace: Hansard, House of Commons, October 3, 1939, vol. 351, 1875–79.
Attack on Lloyd George’s speech: Cooper, Old Men Forget, 267.
Public reaction to Lloyd George’s speech: Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, 455; Lentin, Lloyd George and the Lost Peace, 115–16.
“Peacock with his tail in full show”: Cross, ed. Life With Lloyd George, 242.
Dominions complain Chamberlain’s reaction to Hitler’s speech is too harsh: Lentin, Lloyd George and the Lost Peace, 120.
Chamberlain’s war aims: “Conversation with Sumner Welles,” March 7, 1940, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1940, vol. 1, 87; Guy Nicholas Esnouf, British Government War Aims and Attitudes Toward a Negotiated Peace, September 1939 to July 1940, unpublished PhD thesis, King’s College London, 76, 77, 100–101.
“Don’t believe [the war] will go beyond spring”: November 8, 1939, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1940, vol. 1, 526–27.
“Put in some war regulation”: Nasaw, The Patriarch, 404–5.
“They [the British] have no intention of fighting”: Joseph Kennedy to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, September 25, 1939, Foreign Relations of the United States, vol. 1, 454.
“Tweak the lion’s tail”: Nasaw, The Patriarch, 404–5, 418.
“Keep the US out of War” sign: Olson, Troublesome Young Men, 54.
a 95 to 5 percent margin: Meacham, Franklin and Winston, 50.
“consistent in his inconsistencies”: Watt, How War Came, 125.
Background of Spears: Max Egremont, Under Two Flags: The Life of Major General Sir Edward Spears (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997), 10–50.
Only two Union Jacks on map: Eleanor M. Gates, End of the Affair: The Collapse of the Anglo-French Alliance, 1939–40 (Oakland: University of California Press, 1981), 27.
Bastille Day Parade: May, Strange Victory, 288.
Maginot Line: Alastair Horne, To Lose a Battle: France 1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1969), 25–30.
French political class: Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe, 43–46, 56–72.
Paris in autumn: Horne, To Lose a Battle, 102.
Spears told Jean Giraudoux: Ibid., 62–63.
Disparity in sacrifice between British and French: Gates, End of the Affair, 28–31.
Mandel’s joke: Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe, 59–60.
“Ever seen the French monument to the dead”: Brittain, England’s Hour, 19.
CHAPTER THREE: EUROPE IN WINTER
Origins of Finnish war: Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 480–85.
Soviet invasion of Finland: Tom Shachtman, The Phony War (New York: Universe, 2001), 121–22.
“A real war, a man’s war” and maps of Finland: Horne, To Lose a Battle, 134.
Western Front: Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man (London: Penguin, 2006), 17–20; Horne, To Lose a Battle, 101–2.
Profile of Gort: Arthur Bryant, The Turn of the Tide: A History of the War Years Based on the Diaries of Field-Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1957), 59–60; John Colville, Man of Valour: The Life of Field Marshal The Viscount Gort (London: Collins, 1972), 20–40.
“Queer kind of war”: Shirer, Berlin Diary, 224.
“War of nerves”: Susan Briggs, The Home Front: The War Years in Britain 1939–1945 (New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., 1975), 28.
“The British people are”: Ibid., 39.
Nanny state: Peter Lewis, A People’s War (York, UK: Methuen, 1986), 16–21.
“Galaxy of footmen”: John Colville, The Fringes of Power: 10 Downing Street Diaries 1939–1955 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), 42.
In the East End: Olson, Troublesome Young Men, 243.
Reclaiming their evacuated children: Calder, The People’s War, 35–50.
“Don’t do it, mother”: Wartime Posters, Pinterest, http://www.pinterest.com.
Bitter winter weather: Monthly weather report of the Meteorological Office, January 1940, His Majesty’s Stationary Office, London.
“An elderly statesman with gout”: Max Hastings, Win
ston’s War (New York: Vintage, 2011), 319.
Nearly a third of the public favors immediate discussions: Esnouf, British Government War Aims, 127.
“People call me defeatist”: Cecil King, With Malice Toward None: A War Diary (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1970), 13.
Belgians capture German plan: Sebag-Montefiore, Dunkirk, 27–33.
“Telegram from Brussels”: Dilks, The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 245.
Generals meet Hitler, description of Führer’s office: May, Strange Victory, 16–20.
German steel production: Harold Deutsch, The Conspiracy against Hitler in the Twilight War (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1968), 190.
Germany would be incapable of launching a decisive offensive: Horne, To Lose a Battle, 140.
Four hundred thousand dead: Deutsch, The Conspiracy against Hitler, 191.
Aim of Allies to obliterate Germany: Ibid., 193–94.
German offensive plan develops: May, Strange Victory, 225–30; Horne, To Lose a Battle, 139–41.
German plot to unseat Hitler: May, Strange Victory, 218–23; Deutsch, The Conspiracy against Hitler, 222, 228–29.
Gestapo cable to London after Venlo incident: Shachtman, The Phony War, 108.
Indefinite postponement of Case Yellow: Ibid., 133.
Allied Supreme Council meeting: J. R. M. Butler, Grand Strategy, vol. 2 (London: Stationary Office Books, 1957), 108.
Sumner Welles fact-finding trip to Europe: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1940, vol. 1.
Opposition to the Welles mission: Christopher O’Sullivan, Sumner Welles, Postwar Planning, and the Quest for a New World Order, 1937–1943 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 110–30.
Welles visits Mussolini, February 28, 1940: Ibid., 27–33.
Welles visit with Hitler, March 2, 1940: Ibid., 43–50.
Welles exchanges views with French politicians, March 7–9: Ibid., 58–72.
Welles meets with Chamberlain, Churchill, Halifax, and other leading politicians, March 11–13, 1940: Ibid., 72–91.
Welles profile of Churchill: Ibid., 83–84.
Welles returns to Rome for talk with Mussolini, March 16, 1940: Ibid., 100–106.
CHAPTER FOUR: SEARCHING FOR SOMETHING SPECTACULAR
Hélène de Portes and Madame de Crussol: Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe, 90–92.
“du Barry of France”: Clare Boothe, Europe in the Spring (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940), 148.
Reynaud: Horne, To Lose a Battle, 176–78; Spears. Assignment to Catastrophe, 89–91.
Welles’s assessment of Reynaud: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1940, vol. 1, 70–72.
drôle de guerre: May, Strange Victory, 328.
Simone de Beauvior on Phony War: Horne, To Lose a Battle, 102–3.
Chamberlain was also feeling the need to do something spectacular: Colville, The Fringes of Power, 96–97; Robert Mackay, Half the Battle: Civilian Morale in Britain During the Second World War (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2003), 55.
Reynaud proposal for allied action: “Note by the French Prime Minister on the French Government’s Views on the Future Conduct of the War,” March 26, 1940, W.P. (40) 109; Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1983), 198–99.
Reynaud’s war aims: Esnouf, British Government War Aims, 140–50.
Chamberlain “went through the ceiling”: Roderick Macleod and Denis Kelly, eds., Time Unguarded: The Ironside Diaries, 1937–1940 (New York: David Mackay, 1963), 234–35.
“The lack of spectacular military events”: Report by Chiefs of Staff on Certain Aspects of the Present Situation, March 26, 1940, W.P. (40) 111.
War cabinet criticizes Reynaud plan: Cab, March 27, 1940, 65/6 W.C. 76 (40).
the new French Premier arrived in London amid a swirl of rumor: Nick Smart, British Strategy and Politics During the Phony War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 195.
“Little Reynaud sat there”: Macleod and Kelly, Time Unguarded, 237.
Reynaud speaks of French morale at Allied Supreme Council: Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 514–15.
Allied plan of attack in Norway: Butler, Grand Strategy, vol. 2, 109–11.
Warnings Germans eyeing Norway: Gilbert, Finest Hour, 197; Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 520.
Animosity between Reynaud and Daladier: Smart, British Strategy and Politics During the Phony War, 198; Gates, End of the Affair, 47.
Daladier refused to dine with him: Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe, 99–100.
Growth of antiappeasement political block: Olson, Troublesome Young Men, 263–74.
In the March Gallup poll: British Institute of Public Opinion, British Institute of Public Opinion Polls 1938–1946, March 1940 (Storrs, CT: Roper Center, University of Connecticut, 1984). Significantly, the March Gallup poll also showed that nearly a quarter of the British public favored talks with Germany.
Cabinet reshuffle: Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe, 202; Smart, British Strategy and Politics During the Phony War, 202.
“Hitler missed the bus”: Times of London, April 5, 1940.
Letter to Hilda Chamberlain: Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, 516.
Churchill believes German government will take no retaliatory actions: Confidential Annex, Cab, April 3, 1940, 65/12 W.M. (40).
Chamberlain also says Germans will take no retaliatory action: Cab, April 3, 1940, 65/6, W.C. (80) 40.
German attack in Norway and British response: Gilbert, Finest Hour, 213–14; Colville, The Fringes of Power, 96–98; David Reynolds, In Command of History (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 122–23; Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 525–30.
Attack on Glowworm: J. L. Moulton, The Norwegian Campaign of 1940 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1967), 74–78.
“Demoralizing effect of surprises”: Hastings Ismay, The Memoirs of General Lord Hastings Ismay (New York: Viking, 1960), 119.
Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim captured: Cab, April 9, 1940, 65/6 W.C. 85 (40).
Warned that due to “acute differences . . . on private and personal matters”: Ronald Campbell, British ambassador to France, to Confidential Annex, Cab, April 8, 1940, 65/12 W.M. (40) 84; Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe, 110.
“Will it be Holland or Belgium [next]?”: Colville, The Fringes of Power, 101–2.
“These will be fateful days”: Macleod and Kelly, Time Unguarded, 249.
Press and public reaction to Norway news: Olson, Troublesome Young Men, 281.
“Tales of victory and triumph” . . . “A cold wave of disappointment”: Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters 1939–1945 (London: Faber, 2009), 70.
Many people expected: Mass Observation, Morale Now, April 30, 1940. (Mass Observation was a social research organization that tracked public opinion daily during the spring and early summer of 1940.)
General Mackesy, Admiral Cork, and the confusion of command: Macleod and Kelly, Time Unguarded, 254; Gilbert, Finest Hour, 224–25.
Churchill visits General Ironside: Macleod and Kelly, Time Unguarded, 253, 257–58.
Almost immediately: Gilbert, Finest Hour, 242–43.
“For God’s sake, tell them”: Olson, Troublesome Young Men, 280.
Plight of 146th and 148th brigades: David Fraser, And We Shall Shock Them (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012), 50–52.
“We had always thought”: Allingham, The Oaken Heart, 165–66.
For the first time: Mass Observation, Morale Now, April 30, 1940; Mass Observation, The Norway Crisis, May 15, 1940.
“An expedition against the Zulus”: Gates, End of the Affair, 50.
“Considering the prominent part I played”: Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 579.
In the unedited version of that sentence: Reynolds, In Command of History, 125.
“Norway might well have ruined you”: Ibid. See also Gilbert, Finest Hour, 287.
“I don’t think my enemies will get me this time”: Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, 524.
CHAPTER FIVE: CHAMBERLAIN MISSES THE BUS
March of Old Contemptible: Manchester Guardian, Times of London, Daily Mirror, May 5, 1940.
“All the boys felt”: Machester Guardian, May 6, 1940.
“There was never a break in the [bombing] attacks”: Daily Mail, May 6, 1940.
Chronic shortage of tanks, munitions, etc.: Gilbert, Finest Hour, 288.
Warning about effect of bombing, Turkey, attack from Norway, mining Thames, Tyne River: Cab, May 1, 1940, 65/7, (40) 109.
“If I were the first of May”: Colville, The Fringes of Power, 115.
Review of the Strategical Situation: Cab, May 4, 1940, 65/7 (40) 145.
Lord Salisbury demands more vigorous pursuit of war: Larry Witherell, “Lord Salisbury’s Watching Committee and the Fall of Chamberlain, May 1940, English Historical Review 115, no. 469 (November 2001): 1134–46.
Salisbury warns Halifax: Foreign Office Papers, 800/236.
“Oh! The excitement”: James, Chips, 299.
Origins of Norway debate: Harold Macmillan, The Blast of War, 1939–1945 (New York: HarperCollins, 1968), 54; Amery, My Political Life, 358.
Lobbying for Norway debate: James, Chips, 297; Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 74–75.
Nancy Dugdale: Andrew Roberts, Eminent Churchillians (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994), 141–42.
More lobbying for Norway debate: Nicolson, Diaries and Letters. 297.
Winston “is too apt to look the other way”: Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, 527.
“Winston was being loyal”: Colville, The Fringes of Power, 118–19.
Churchill offers Lloyd George post in his government: Taylor, Lloyd George, 372; A. J. Sylvester, The Real Lloyd George (London: Cassell and Company, 1947), 243.
“People call me a defeatist”: King, With Malice Toward None, 25.
“We have no chance of avoiding defeat”: Julian Jackson, The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004), 204.
Press barons pledge to support pro-peace Lloyd George: Taylor, Lloyd George, 371–72.
Meeting with Nancy Astor: Tom Jones, Lloyd George (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951), 253–55.
Profile of David Margesson: Daily Mail, May 7, 1940.
“You utterly contemptible”: Olson, Troublesome Young Men, 305.