Prague Winter

by Madeleine Albright

  The first bombs hit the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich, the surrounding rail stations and factories, whole rows of houses, and the Surrey docks. In the words of one witness:

  Suddenly we were gaping upwards. The brilliant sky was criss-crossed from horizon to horizon by innumerable vapor trails. . . . Then, with a dull roar, which made the ground around London shake as one stood upon it, the first sticks of bombs hit the docks. Leisurely, enormous mushrooms of black and brown smoke shot with crimson climbed into the sunlit sky. There they hung and slowly expanded, for there was no wind, and the great fires below fed more smoke into them as the hours passed.

  So it went through that tumultuous Saturday night. The all clear sounded at 6:30; two hours later, the air raids resumed. The rattling of gunfire was followed by ear-popping explosions; bombs slammed into houses along Pond and Victoria Streets, Westminster, and the East End; 1,000 fires were ignited; 430 people were killed and more than 1,600 injured. On the night following, another round of raids caused heavy damage to rail stations and track lines; by dawn, hundreds more lay dead.

  From September 7 until the end of October, over fifty-seven consecutive days, an average of two hundred bombers assaulted London. The globe’s leading city had become a battlefield. Great buildings were no more. Streets were impassable because of the countless shards of shattered glass. Each morning, rescue workers scurried about the charred cinders, methodically bandaging survivors, practicing triage on the badly wounded, and trying to piece together the remains of neighbors for burial. These efforts were made more perilous by delayed-action bombs, which had to be defused or carted carefully away. There was no reliable place of refuge. The shelters, whether in home gardens or public parks, provided protection only against collateral blast and debris. Families who retreated to basements were often crushed or suffocated by the collapse of buildings above. In the first six weeks, 16,000 houses were destroyed and another 60,000 seriously damaged; more than 300,000 people were displaced.

  Bombing of Surrey docks, September 7, 1940

  National Archives (306-NT-901F-2743V)

  Londoners, however, proved an adaptable species. Knowing that they might be stranded for days between trips home, office workers arrived at their desks with toothbrushes, pillows, blankets, and extra clothes. As evening approached, the parade of mattresses began into cellars, shelters, and the Underground. Weather data were classified, so people made their own forecasts—fair skies meant a favorable day for Hitler; clear nights at certain times of the month provided a bomber’s moon. The social divisions that defined British culture momentarily melted away as people from all walks of life wished one another well. Defiant shopkeepers displayed signs: “Shattered, not shuttered” or “Knocked, not locked.” Banks and the postal service promised “business as usual”; enterprising streetwalkers did the same.

  Some disruptions, however, seemed only prudent. Senior members of the Foreign Office were under strict orders to retreat to an air-raid shelter near Berkeley Square as soon as the siren, known as “Weeping Willie,” began to scream. On the morning of September 13, a prestigious group of middle-aged men sat huddled together, impatiently awaiting the all clear. Hours passed without any work being done. Suddenly there came a loud rapping on the door. Outside was a teenage Czech girl who wished to deliver a letter from President Beneš to the Foreign Office. Her mission complete, she turned and walked unhurriedly back across the exposed streets of London. The mandatory shelter order was soon rescinded.

  FROM NEWSBOYS TO members of Parliament, the British pondered the ominous implications of the attacks. Was this the final shoe falling before the invasion? Churchill warned the cabinet that a German force was gathering; large concentrations of enemy barges had been sighted along the French coast.

  On September 22, the prime minister received a call from an unusually excited Franklin Roosevelt. The United States had received word that Germany planned a surprise military landing on British soil. When? That very day. As soon as he rang off, Churchill was on the phone again to Anthony Eden, who was in the southeast of England within walking distance of the Dover cliffs. Eden made a rapid reconnoiter and reported back that the seas were rough and the fog impenetrable. An invading force, he informed his boss, would either become lost or arrive in an advanced state of seasickness. The next morning, Roosevelt phoned back. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Our codes got mixed. The invasion was of Indo-China, not England, and by Japan, not Germany.”

  Londoners camp out in the Tube, October 21, 1940.

  Associated Press

  More than once that month, bombs fell on or near Buckingham Palace, causing significant damage to the historic building but no harm to the residents. The attacks helped to cement a love affair that had sprung up between the British people and the royal couple. King George’s brave attempt to overcome his stuttering was well known and deeply admired—as were visits by the king and queen to areas that had been bombed. Occasional remarks made over the wireless by the young Princess Elizabeth struck a chord as well. Historians have noted that the Nazis would have been smarter to confine their attacks to London’s grittier neighborhoods, thus aggravating the divide between rich and poor. Instead the opposite took place. A popular song from the period went “The King is still in London, in London, in London; and he would be in London Town if London Bridge was falling down.”

  I WAS BY then a full-fledged toddler. My family’s routine, when the warning sounded, was to hurry down the cramped gray concrete stairwell of Princes House to the cellar, which was divided into several small rooms and one larger. There were about two dozen of us at any one time, occasionally more when buildings nearby had to be evacuated. We sipped tea or coffee prepared by the air-raid wardens and shared snacks of bread and biscuits. We slept—when we could—on camp beds or mattresses in the biggest room. Although the building was structurally sound, the basement had large hot-water and gas pipes suspended from the low ceiling; they warmed the rooms, but had a bomb fallen nearby, we’d have been scalded or asphyxiated even if uncrushed. As a child, I did not think of such possibilities, instead relishing the excitement. In the morning when the all clear sounded, we burst into the street or climbed to the roof to survey the damage.

  Lacking any strategic value, Notting Hill Gate was hardly a prime target for the Luftwaffe, but bombs still struck more than a dozen locations and killed fifty people. One of our neighbors was Orlow Tollett, an original tenant at Princes House who would still be there at the turn of the century. In 2011, at the age of 103, Mrs. Tollett kindly consented to be interviewed for this book. She remembered that there was a degree of separation between the refugees and the Britons who lived in our building, but that it was “generally a very pleasant kind of group with a friendly warmth between the two sides; the people were very supportive of one another. They used to play great bridge games and share out their supplies.” In the full bloom of youth and still single, Orlow rarely went down to our basement; she thought that, if the worst happened, it would be healthier near the top of the rubble than underneath. One evening at the height of the Blitz she tempted Fate and went with a friend to the Freemasons Arms, a small Portobello Road pub, for a game of darts and whatever liquid concoctions might be available. She recalled:

  The pub had a direct hit that night. I fell under the counter. I was squashed there and couldn’t get out. Then the fire brigade came and they were ever so kind and pulled me through. By the time they did, I hadn’t much on; they took me to the convent.

  Orlow recalled that her mother was less upset about the terrible danger than about the lack of clothing.

  Another time, a bomb landed nearby but did not detonate, so all the buildings in the area were evacuated and an emergency team arrived. After a careful investigation, the crew members told us not to worry; the explosive was a dud. Inside the casing they had found a note written by Czech factory workers. “Don’t be afraid,” it said. “The bombs we make will never explode.
”

  One morning in mid-September, the Germans came early. My father and Mr. Drtina decided to ignore the sirens and remain in our apartment working on a radio script. It would be quieter up there, they thought, than in the crowded shelter. This was a fair assumption but—as it developed—an overly optimistic one. Drtina remembered:

  The whizz of a flying bomb was so loud that we both threw ourselves down and Dr Körbel quickly jumped under the table. The airborne assault was deafening and our house swayed so much that it reminded me of a ship on the high seas. I would never have believed a huge iron and concrete building could vibrate that dramatically and still not fall to pieces. When we felt ourselves out of danger, we could not resist a laugh of relief.

  Bombs continued to fall; for the intrepid pair, enough was enough. Together, they descended the dust-filled staircase to join the rest of us.

  THE CZECHOSLOVAK 310 Fighter Squadron was formed at Duxford on July 10 and became operational five weeks later. Based in central England, the squadron chose as its emblem a sword and lion, and as its motto “We fight to rebuild.” The commander was Major Alexander Hess, a veteran of World War I who, on the last day of August, had crippled an enemy bomber, forcing it to land in a field. His blood up, Hess put his Hurricane into a dive with every intention of shooting the three-man crew, then hesitated to fire his gun when he saw the men waving up at him. Taking another pass, he steeled himself, resolved that there should be no survivors. Again the Hurricane dove. This time the downed airmen had found something white to hold aloft, and Hess, cursing, restrained his trigger finger once more. Reporting on the incident, the commander complained, “I have become too bloody British!”

  Stanislav Fejfar, a ruggedly handsome graduate of the Czechoslovak Military Academy, shot down his first enemy plane on the ninth of September. As he related the story:

  We were flying at 27,000 feet and it was very cold. As we came through some clouds, we could see Luftwaffe bombers escorted by many fighters. We were given the order to attack but had to be aware of the German fighters since they spotted us and were above us. I found a ME-110 to attack and promised myself that this German swine would not sleep in his bed that night. I maneuvered behind him and fired all my machine guns. He tried to escape by climbing steeply and turning but I managed to deliver three more bursts and he began to smoke, then went down.

  Fejfar was a native of Štikov, a small town in the northern reaches of the republic, near the border with Poland. His father had died in the Great War, fighting on behalf of Austria-Hungary. The twenty-nine-year-old pilot was a cheerful sort, loved to fly, and would continue doing so until May 17, 1942, when his Spitfire was hit during a daytime raid over France. His remains were recovered by the Germans and buried in Calais. Fejfar’s mother, never accepting his fate, died in 1960. Her last words were a plea to leave the front door unlocked because “Stanislav did not take a key.”

  When not aloft, the Czech and Slovak airmen occupied their time reading newspapers and books, listening to the gramophone, and playing games of cards and chess. Sleep came at odd hours and in irregular positions on metal benches, cots, and chairs. The pilots were never without their yellow life preservers, called Mae Wests in honor of the vests’ inflatable attributes. The planes were always ready for takeoff, and everyone had an ear alert for when the scramble call might come.

  Of the Czechoslovak pilots not assigned to the squadron, the most accomplished was Sergeant Josef František. Like many of his colleagues, František had fled to Poland at the time of the Nazi invasion and campaigned there in an obsolete Pulawski fighter. After Poland fell, he escaped from an internment camp in Romania and made his way via Syria to France. There he flew brilliantly with the French air force. Following the Dunkirk evacuation, he was assigned to the Polish squadron training in England. František—who had a boyish face, thick black eyebrows, and a piercing stare—was known for his bravery and for what the British referred to as “bottle.” That September, he shot down seventeen German planes, more than any other Allied airman of any nationality. On October 8, his plane disappeared from the view of his fellow pilots and was later found, smashed up, in Surrey. František’s body, its neck broken, was discovered in a nearby hedge.

  EVEN BEFORE THE end of September, Hitler had concluded that the primary goals of the bombing campaign were beyond his reach. The RAF had not been destroyed; an invasion was impractical; the enemy’s will to fight had, if anything, increased. Nonetheless, he ordered that bombing continue. In October, more than seven thousand tons of explosives were dropped on London. Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and other cities were also hit. In November, devastating raids were directed against Coventry. In December, it was London’s turn once again.

  Christmas 1940 is remembered by all who spent that holiday in or around the British capital. Although the nightly bombing had stopped, the raids that did occur forestalled any sense of celebration. In our minds, if not in Hitler’s, the prospect of a German invasion still loomed. There were no lights on in our home in Notting Hill Gate, but seasonal decorations still went up; we had our tree. At year’s end, I am sure that my parents’ thoughts were there with me, but also with their loved ones in Podĕbrady and Prague.

  Despite the sadness and worry, there was also a note of satisfaction. Hitler wasn’t losing at that juncture, but neither had he rolled over the British as he had the French. A joke circulated among my father’s friends in which the führer telephones Mussolini to chide him for the shoddy battle record of his troops. “You promised that you would be in Athens by now and in Cairo the following month,” he complains. “Those dates have long since past, and still you sit in Rome.” Mussolini is quiet for a bit, then replies, “Sir, I am having trouble hearing you. The connection must be weak.” Hitler, with raised voice, repeats his criticisms. “My apologies, sir, but I still can’t hear you,” says the Italian dictator. “You sound so far away. May I inquire from where you are calling? Is it London?”

  14

  The Alliance Comes Together

  Early in the second week of 1941, Franklin Roosevelt’s confidential emissary Harry Hopkins flew to London to consult with Churchill. The idiosyncratic Hopkins was less a diplomat than an all-purpose problem solver who acted as FDR’s eyes, ears, and—because of the president’s limited mobility—often his legs. In May of the previous year, Hopkins had moved into the White House where he would continue to live until Roosevelt’s death. More than any other official, Hopkins could be counted on to speak for the U.S. commander in chief.

  During the visit, Hopkins spent hours with the prime minister, reviewing Great Britain’s keenly felt need for replacement ships and aircraft. The meetings went well. In November, Roosevelt had won reelection, based in part on his pledge to keep the United States out of war. Though he was not ready to renounce that promise, he was determined to help England. In mid-December, he unveiled his innovative lend-lease program, under which—in return for minor military basing considerations—a portion of U.S. defense production would be loaned to the British and other allies for the duration of the conflict. When pressed by reporters about the cost, he observed that “a man would not say to a neighbor whose house was on fire, ‘Neighbor, my garden hose cost me fifteen dollars; you have to pay me fifteen dollars for it.’ He would lend the neighbor his hose and get it back later.”

  Although most Americans remained wary of direct involvement in the European conflict, they were gradually coming to share FDR’s sentiments. From New England to California, they had followed the Blitz closely and admired England’s resolve. Correspondents such as James Reston, Edward R. Murrow, and John Gunther dipped into a palette of colorful adjectives to paint a flattering picture of Great Britain under siege.

  Some of their pieces were melodramatic:

  They’re sustained in part by folklore, the tradition, and the history of Britain; but they’re an undemonstrative lot. They don’t consider themselves to be heroes. . . . These
black-faced men with bloodshot eyes who were fighting fires; the girl who cradled the steering wheel of a heavy ambulance in her arms; [and] the policeman who stands guard over the unexploded bomb down at St. Paul’s tonight. . . . There is humor in these people, even when disaster and hell come down from heaven.

  Some were reflective:

  There is a tremendous vitality behind the quiet thoughts of the people of this country. . . . All the popular time killers of modern civilization have been crippled by the war. It is hard to get to the movies. There are no dances, football, or dog racing. The people have time on their hands now. They are reading more and like all sad men they are thinking hard. A new England is being born in the subways and shelters of this brave island.

  And some were just stories:

  “Please pass the marmalade,” said the little old lady. I was having a breakfast in a small hotel in an English south coast town a very few hours ago. At this moment the air raid sirens began to wail, and the man at my elbow looked up at the clock. “A little ahead of himself this morning,” he remarked. . . . I drank my coffee and tried not to gulp it. No one around me budged. “Would you please pass the marmalade?” said the little old lady again, more firmly this time, as the warbling siren died away.

  Tributes from U.S. journalists were reinforced by the BBC’s own American broadcasts, which ran for six hours each afternoon. The programming featured firsthand accounts of the Blitz and dramatizations accompanied by sound effects. The scripts were designed to nudge the United States toward war but without advertising that intention. Instead, commentators found suggestive links between the Magna Carta and the U.S. Constitution, between Parliament and Congress, and between the struggle for freedom in Europe and its survival in America. Participating celebrities included Gone with the Wind star Leslie Howard, who told heart-tugging anecdotes with just the right accent, and the left-leaning novelist J. B. Priestley, who spoke not of war’s glamour but of working-class grime and guts: