Chamberlain’s confidence in his policy refused to wilt in the face of reality. Much to his irritation, the Foreign Office was prepared to abandon wishful thinking about the dictators’ honesty. At the end of January 1939, it warned the Australian government that intelligence sources indicated that Hitler was now poised to undertake fresh ‘foreign adventures’ in eastern Europe, possibly with an eye to the occupation of the Ukraine. Alternatively, and this was a reminder to the Australians how much their fate was tied to Britain’s, he might overrun Holland and afterwards deliver the Dutch East Indies to Japan.29 At the same time, fears persisted that Hitler might suddenly order a pre-emptive aerial strike against Britain.
In the event, Czechoslovakia was Hitler’s next target. On 15 March his army occupied the rump of that country. The jackal followed the lion, and on 7 April Mussolini invaded Albania. Chamberlain was stunned; he had been hoodwinked and took the dictators’ actions as a personal affront. ‘Musso has behaved to me like a sneak and a cad,’ he complained to his sister.30 Reluctantly, after much agonising, and under intense parliamentary and public pressure, he reversed the course of British foreign policy. On the last day of March, he pledged Poland every support if Germany threatened its independence. If Britain went to war, it would be in response to Hitler’s aggression. Chamberlain was never a wholehearted convert to a policy which, in effect, dared Hitler to begin a war. He kept his blind faith in the possibility that further compromises might be contrived which would postpone a general European conflict until Britain was strong enough to deter Hitler. This was a forlorn hope from a statesman whose nostrums had manifestly failed and whose authority was consequently diminished. Having played the leading part in British diplomacy since May 1937, Chamberlain slipped into the sidelines during the late spring and summer of 1939 when Britain was busy seeking allies, most notably the Soviet Union.
Commonwealth solidarity was now vital, but the dominions remained nervous about following Britain into a European war. According to Smuts, there was ‘no enthusiasm’ for Poland in South Africa, even at the end of August when its invasion seemed imminent.31 Canada had refused to add its name to the Anglo-French guarantee of Polish integrity, although Mackenzie King promised he would recommend his parliament to declare war if Britain was directly attacked. A spiritualist, King did try to invoke occult powers in an effort to penetrate Hitler’s mind, but without success. He was luckier during a visit to London in 1942, when he made contact with Florence Nightingale (who advised him about his health), Anne Boleyn and Queen Victoria during a séance.32
Australia was in a quandary: her government had to choose between delivering a blank cheque to Britain to be cashed on a European battlefield or consolidating resources to deal with a peril closer to home, Japan. Conservatives favoured the former course. ‘Either we go forward,’ argued Sir Earle Page, leader of the Country Party, ‘with the rest of the Empire, secure and prosperous, because of the Empire’s strength or we are to turn aside upon some lonely road … never to be free from the menace of covetous peoples.’33 John Curtin, the Labour party leader, was unconvinced by this classic imperial argument. ‘Australia First!’ was his party’s slogan, which in practical terms meant devoting all the country’s wealth and manpower to defence, in particular the reinforcement of the RAAF.34
Behind this debate lay anxieties about British strategy in the Far East. The start of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937, and early Japanese successes, had driven Australia and New Zealand to rearm rapidly. Both dominions became more and more frantic in their demands for reassurances that Singapore would be relieved come what may. On the eve of his pledge to Poland, Chamberlain personally affirmed that, ‘in the event of war with Germany and Italy, should Japan join in against us it would still be His Majesty’s Government’s full intention to despatch a fleet to Singapore.’35 His message disturbed Australians and New Zealanders, for it failed to answer the question that mattered most to them; how many ships were to be sent? Chamberlain’s subsequent refusal to send a battlefleet to the Far East as a demonstration of power, on the grounds that its departure might tempt Mussolini to precipitate action in the Mediterranean, confirmed the unspoken fear that in the event of a war, European fronts would always have first call on Britain’s resources.36 With this in mind, the new Australian prime minister, Robert Menzies, broadcast to his people at the end of April that when war came they would fight alongside Britain, but, as things then stood, ‘not on European battlefields, but defending our own shores’.
Even so, Australia still needed the Royal Navy’s battleships and aircraft carriers. When this matter was raised in June by the Australian high commissioner in London, H. A. Bruce, he found Admiral Chatfield, the new coordinator of defence, hard to pin down on just how many battleships would be available for the relief of Singapore. He was told that, despite recent clashes over British interests in China, Britain expected Japan to keep out of a general war. In which case, the destruction of the Italian navy would have priority.37
The strategy of which Singapore had been the lynchpin had been overtaken by events which left it in disarray. In February, the Japanese had seized Hainan Island, 250 miles south of Hong Kong, and a month later occupied the Spratly Islands, 650 miles to the north-east of Singapore. Taking these developments into account, Anglo-French staff planners concluded in June that Singapore was no longer the Gibraltar of the Far East. Its future security would depend upon a network of airfields across the Malay Peninsula which would have to be defended by infantry and antiaircraft batteries.38
For the first time since the American War, Britain clearly lacked the wherewithal to defend its empire adequately. The safety of Britain’s possessions in the Indian and Pacific oceans depended upon a battlefleet based at Alexandria, which had to stay there as long as the Italian navy could put to sea. Menzies foresaw disaster, and, in September, pleaded with Chamberlain to persuade the French to release Tunis and Djibouti and so keep Mussolini quiet.39 He seemed to have learned nothing from the lessons of the past eighteen months, which had proved beyond doubt that limited concessions merely whetted the dictators’ appetites for bigger prizes.
The urgent demands of Australia’s security had taken High Commissioner Bruce to the United States, the country which now held the key to the Pacific. He had questioned President Roosevelt as to how America might react if a Japanese battlefleet steamed south across the Equator, and was told, ‘You need not worry.’40 In Britain, Churchill had already concluded that the preservation of Britain’s Far Eastern and Pacific territories rested in the hands of the United States. At the outbreak of war, Smuts expressed the hope that America, which now held ‘the last resources of our human causes’ would soon intervene.41
The United States and Britain were not natural partners, despite a common language and attachment to democratic principles. Their relations after 1919 had been polite, frosty and tinged with mutual suspicion. Chamberlain, disheartened by the United States’s unwillingness to make common cause with Britain over China, believed that Americans were unreliable in all things. State Department policy-makers were always on their guard against becoming ensnared in the schemes of a power whose rulers were imagined to be exceptionally self-seeking and devious.42 There was, however, a deeply-felt Anglo-American concern for international stability, but no way was found to translate this into joint action.
The largest stumbling block to Anglo-American cooperation was trade. Since the 1932 Ottawa Conference, Britain had stuck to the protectionist policy of imperial preference, which was wormwood to Cordell Hull, Roosevelt’s Secretary of State. Hull was a passionate believer in international free trade and he channelled his considerable energies into the negotiation of what he called (he spoke with a lisp) a ‘wecipwocal twade agweement pwogam to weduce tawiffs’.43 Britain with its imperial trading block, and Japan, Germany and Italy, whose economic policies were based on autarky, were not interested for fear that they might be overwhelmed by American competition.
A further impediment to
an Anglo-American partnership was the isolationist tradition which had been strengthened by memories of the United States’s involvement in the First World War. ‘Any question of intervention in Europe was always connected with enormous loss’ by American public opinion, reported H.A. Bruce after his visit in 1939. As Roosevelt appreciated, Americans needed to be educated about Europe, and myths about its cynical power-broking diplomacy dispelled. This was far from easy in the wake of Britain’s recognition of Italy’s dominion in Abyssinia and the partition of Czechoslovakia.
Furthermore, there existed in America a widespread distrust of colonial powers, which tended to be directed against Britain since its empire was the one most familiar to Americans. Roosevelt was not immune from this anti-imperialism; when, during 1941, the Japanese took over Indo-China, he remarked, ‘Anything must be better than to live under French colonial rule.’44 On the other hand, naval and military men regarded the British empire as a source of international stability and therefore not to be tampered with.
These sources of misunderstanding, together with the American peoples’ unwillingness to get involved in the chaotic and dangerous affairs of distant countries, rendered an Anglo-American understanding impossible before 1939. Ideological enmity and hesitant diplomacy ruled out the inclusion of Russia in the Anglo-French front. Hitler also needed the Soviet Union, although he was no more frightened of its power in the summer of 1939 than he was two years later when he attacked Russia. What he did need was a cooperative, neutral Soviet Union, which would leave him free to deal with Britain and France and allow him access to Russian raw materials. He got both in the German-Soviet Pact at the end of August. The way across Poland was now open and the German army launched its invasion on 1 September.
* * *
Britain declared war on 3 September with a BBC broadcast by Chamberlain in which he harped on about the personal slights he had suffered from the man he had trusted. More inspiring, perhaps, was the legendary cable which arrived in London from the West Indies: ‘Don’t worry; Barbados is with you.’ So too were the rest of the colonies which, of course, had no choice, and India, where, as has been seen, the Viceroy’s declaration of war upset the Congress party.
Australia had followed events in Europe closely, despite having had some difficulty in extracting secret documents from the British government. On 25 August, Menzies had broadcast to the people, reminding them that, ‘We in Australia are involved, because the destruction or defeat of Great Britain would be the destruction and defeat of the British Empire, and leave us with a precarious tenure of our own independence.’ The same arguments had prevailed in 1914 and again swung Australia and New Zealand behind Britain.
In South Africa the ruling United party (formed in 1934 to reconcile Boers and British) favoured benevolent neutrality. When this was put to the parliament, eighty members voted against and sixty-seven for, forcing the Prime Minister, General Hertzog, to resign on 5 September. His deputy, Smuts, took power after the governor-general had rejected a call for a general election, and South Africa entered the war. Boer extremists were bitter; many openly sympathised with Naziism and one, the future architect of apartheid, Dr Malan, proclaimed that, ‘The Union of South Africa has sunk to the level of a vassal state of Europe.’ Fears that French Canadians would strenuously oppose the war quickly evaporated. Mackenzie King gave notice of his emotional support for Britain in a broadcast on 3 September, and seven days after sought parliamentary approval for a declaration of war, which was accepted without a division. Maurice Duplessis, the Quebec Nationalist leader, dissolved his province’s assembly and called a general election in October. It proved a damp squib; pro-war candidates took sixty-eight of the eighty-six seats.
The Commonwealth and empire went to war in the first week of September, but its unity had by no means been unquestioning or instantaneous. There was none of the emotional, patriotic shenanigans of August 1914; rather the mood of the public was sober and businesslike. A hard task lay ahead, and those about to get down to it rolled up their sleeves rather than unrolling and waving flags. They were about to fight the ‘People’s War’, and, when it was over the people, not only in Britain but throughout the empire, would expect a reward for their toil.
10
Finest Hour: The Empire at War, 1939–41
In a talk entitled ‘What the Empire Means for Us’, broadcast in October 1940, the Colonial Secretary, Lord Lloyd, warned his audience that the Axis ‘gangsters’ wanted to get their hands on the ‘glittering prizes’ of Britain’s colonies. But they would not be easily taken; a West African chieftain had lately written to the Colonial Office describing how he had disinterred an ancient flintlock musket for use against the king’s enemies. The old warrior added: ‘In the day of rejoicing such as Coronation, my country is representing in London, so why not now Europe is at agony, my country must share it also. Being a poor man I can only bring my service.’1 It was a touching statement of loyalty, which must have struck a chord with most listeners in a country that was desperately fighting for its life, and where Home Guard volunteers drilled with antique shotguns.
The past year had witnessed the ‘phoney war’, that interlude of watchful inertia between the collapse of Poland and Hitler’s lightning attack in the West. During May and June 1940 the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe had swept through Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Norway. Seeing which way the wind was blowing, Mussolini had declared war on 11 June. Four days after, the French government opened negotiations which ended with its unconditional surrender on the 18th. Britain’s position was now extremely perilous. For the first time since 1806 it lacked allies and faced a Europe whose manpower and industry were at the disposal of a tyrant intent on the destruction of Britain and the eventual dispersal of its empire. During the earlier crisis the imperial base had been relatively safe, thanks to an unbeaten and superior battlefleet, but in the summer of 1940 Britain was vulnerable to aerial attack and a cross-Channel invasion. The situation seemed hopeless, and in Washington General George C. Marshall, the US Chief of Staff, and many others predicted that Britain would be knocked out of the war within six weeks.2
What followed was the British people’s ‘finest hour’. The phrase was Churchill’s and part of a stirring call to arms delivered on 18 June, just over a month after he had become prime minister: ‘Let us therefore be braced to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say: “This was their finest hour.”’ Among the listeners may have been the Geordie workman, overheard in a pub describing Churchill as one of ‘them pig-sticking buggers from India’ who had at last found the fight he had been looking for throughout his career. Nevertheless, the speaker was prepared to get stuck in with him.
As the Tynesider and everyone else knew, Churchill’s long military and political career had been bound up with the empire. In 1897 he had fought Pathans on the North-West Frontier; a year later he had charged with the 21st Lancers at Omdurman; and then he had waged war against the Boers, who briefly held him prisoner. The imperial beau sabreur became the imperial statesman, and Churchill twice occupied the Colonial Office, first as a Liberal under Asquith and later under Lloyd George.
Churchill’s imperialism was complex and at times contradictory. On a broad level, he never wavered in his belief that the empire gave Britain its international power and authority, and imperial government bestowed peace and prosperity on peoples who could not achieve either unaided. In this he was, as Lord Moran, his physician and chronicler of his indiscretions, observed, a child of his age. ‘It is when he talks of India or China that you remember he is a Victorian,’ Moran noted in 1943. Churchill thought in terms of a carefully graded racial hierarchy, once remarking, ‘When you learn to think of a race as inferior beings it is difficult to get rid of that way of thinking; when I was a subaltern the Indian did not seem to me equal to the white man.’3 In fact, his racial attitudes were not as simple as this, for he swung between extremes of harshness and human
ity when it came to the treatment of the empire’s subjects. In 1903 he praised the Tibetans for defending their native soil against Curzon’s invading army; sixteen years later he approved the use of poison gas against Kurds and Pathans who were doing the same thing; and in 1921 he accused Dyer of callousness at Amritsar. Churchill the Victorian liberal was a staunch champion of Zionism, and had wanted to improve the lot of the Egyptian fellahin, but not the Kikuyu, for he supported Kenya’s white settlers.
On India his views were fixed and fearsome. When, in 1921, an Indian delegation from Kenya attempted to explain how they had helped develop the colony, they were put down with the remark, ‘You would not have invented the railway let alone constructed it.’4 His subsequent outbursts on Indian self-government had been so intemperate that Eden wondered whether they might disqualify him from ever becoming prime minister.
In June 1940 the empire which Churchill so vigorously upheld was fighting for its existence against what seemed overwhelming odds. He ignored these, and declared that he would wage war with the utmost energy, resolution and, when necessary, ruthlessness. His willingness to persevere come what may made him the equal of the two Pitts and Lloyd George at his best. Churchill’s rhetoric, like Henry V’s at Harfleur and Agincourt, set the tone of Britain’s war. His words summoned up the blood and stiffened the sinews of men and women in factories and mines, on farms and battlefields. He could also provide that ‘little touch of Harry in the night’ which enkindled hope and courage. General Lord Ismay recalled how, when Churchill toured Bristol in 1941 after an air raid, he entered a rest centre where an old woman, whose house and possessions had been destroyed, sat weeping disconsolately. When the Prime Minister appeared, ‘she took her handkerchief from her eyes and waved it wildly shouting, “Hooray, hooray.”’
The Rise and Fall of the British Empire Page 59