During the first two years of war, Germany won
a series of victories on the continent of Europe
that staggered the world and made the Wehrmacht
appear invincible. Apprehensive at the
outset, the German people were intoxicated by
military success; all that Hitler had done appeared
justified. The nightmare that the experiences of
the First World War would be repeated seemed
for the Germans no more than a bad dream in
1940. Europe learned the reality of the Blitzkrieg.
The Wehrmacht used the tactics of speedy penetration
by tanks, followed by mechanised infantry
and then more slowly by infantry on foot, supported
closely by the Luftwaffe; towns were subjected
to indiscriminate bombing, and the
terrorised populations jammed the roads to
escape the advancing Germans. The Blitzkrieg
required careful planning, a well-coordinated
command structure and highly disciplined, wellequipped
troops. The armed forces, from the
most senior officers to the newest conscripts,
served Hitler’s cause, which they identified with
Germany’s, with efficiency and the utmost devotion.
The home front supplied the means. It was
their war, too, though Hitler’s lightning wars did
not require the entire mobilisation of the home
front as in Britain. Women were not conscripted
and luxury items continued to be produced to
keep the Germans happy. Military victory alone
made possible the horrors that Hitler’s regime
inflicted on the millions of people who fell into
Germany’s grasp.
In September 1939 Poland was conquered; in
April 1940, Denmark and Norway; during May
the Netherlands and Belgium; and then in June
1940 the greatest victory of all, France was
defeated. With France prostrate, Britain withdrew
from the continent of Europe. Did not the ‘good’
which Hitler had achieved outweigh the ‘bad’? –
so many Germans now reasoned. Hitler even
publicly offered peace to Britain. In July 1940 the
war, so it seemed, was virtually over, an astonishingly
short war rather than the expected long and
bloody struggle, leaving Germany victorious.
Why were these German dreams shattered so
soon?
Hitler was not satisfied with what he had
achieved so far. He had not won sufficient
Lebensraum in the east or the undisputed hegemony
of Europe. Any ‘peace’ for him now would
have been tactical and short-lived. Everything he
said to his associates, either secretly at the time or
in conversations and writings before, points to the
fact that he regarded the victory in the west as
only a prelude to greater conquests. Plans for a
great fleet had been carried forward not with a
view to winning the continental European war
but with an eye to the wars after that, including
the world war with the British Empire and the
US. The struggle would continue as long as
Hitler lived and until Europe was racially transformed
and world power was won; but Hitler
proceeded according to his own timetable. The
Germans were not allowed for long to enjoy the
fruits of victory, the victory parades accompanied
by champagne and other luxuries looted from
France. Hitler’s megalomania was Germany’s
undoing. Its defeat then was so complete that it
is easy to overlook the fact that four years earlier
it had been a much more close-run thing.
Germany’s defeat of Poland was rapid.
Surrounded, Warsaw resisted until 27 September
1939. Badly led, the Poles bravely fought the
Wehrmacht, which enjoyed overwhelming
strength. In the earliest days of the war, the
Luftwaffe destroyed the Polish air force, mostly
on the ground. Any chance the Poles had of
holding out a little longer was lost when the
Russians on 17 September invaded from the east
in accordance with their secret agreement with
Germany of the previous August. Still it was no
walkover. The Poles inflicted heavy casualties and
the Wehrmacht was in no fit state to switch
immediately to the west and to attack France in
November 1939 as Hitler desired.
Hitler’s public ‘peace’ proposals to Britain and
France early in October 1939, after the victorious
Polish campaign, were almost certainly meant for
German public opinion. He would not, of course,
have rejected the idea that Britain should accept
and withdraw from involvement on the continent.
Then France could not have continued the war
on its own and would have been in his power
even without a battle. Did Britain contemplate
any sort of peace? Whatever differences of opinion
may have existed, peace terms involving the eventual
abandonment of France were unthinkable in
1939.
Militarily, on land and in the air, the war
scarcely got started in terms of real fighting on
the western front. The French were not ready to
take quick offensive action against the weak screen
of German troops facing them behind the incomplete
fortifications of the Siegfried Line. By the
time the army was fully mobilised and in a state
of readiness for offensive action – had the
commander-in-chief, Maurice Gamelin, desired
it – the Polish campaign was drawing to its close
and the German high command was rushing
reinforcements westwards from Poland. The military
inaction on land corresponded to the doctrine,
Poland notwithstanding, that the army that
attacked would be forced to suffer huge casualties.
All the advantage was believed to lie with the
defence behind such powerfully constructed fortifications
as the Maginot Line. In preparing the
defence of France, one section of the front – the
Franco-Belgian frontier to the Channel – had
been left ‘open’, designed to act as a limited
region for offensive manoeuvre. But when the
Belgians returned to a position of complete neutrality
in 1936 this strategy was more difficult to
execute. The Anglo-French campaign plan of
1939–40 was nevertheless designed to meet the
expected German advance through Belgium, by a
forward movement of their own into Belgium the
moment the Germans attacked that country; no
earlier move was possible as the Belgians fearfully
clung to absolute neutrality.
These military assumptions about how best to
conduct the war were paralleled by political
assumptions held by Chamberlain about the war
and its likely outcome. It would be ended, if possible,
without great sacrifice of life by imposing a
strict blockade on Germany. The British and
French governments even considered blowing up
the sources of Germany’s oil supplies in Romania
and the Soviet Caucasus. With neutral Scandinavia,
the Balkan states and the Soviet Union delivering
oil and other essential raw materials, the British
blockade by sea was far less effective than during
the First World War. It did not seriously impede
Hitler’s intended lightning strikes against the
West. For fear of massive reprisals, the French and
British dropped nothing more lethal than pamphlets
on the industrial Ruhr. But then
Chamberlain did not believe that the war would be
won by military force. In December 1939 he wrote
to the archbishop of Canterbury, ‘I feel before
another Christmas comes the war will be over, and
then the troubles will really begin!’. What was in
his mind when he wrote that? Was it that he
expected reasonable negotiations and a peace
treaty? He certainly thought that the war would
end in a stalemate and that, once the Germans
were convinced that they could not win, they
would negotiate for peace. The war would be won
on the home front. Chamberlain was certainly anxious
whether the British people would stand for a
long stalemated kind of war. He feared there was
in Britain a ‘peace at any price’ party whose influence
might become powerful. He thought it probable
nevertheless that the German home front
would crack first, forcing Hitler into the wrong
policy of attack.
Whether all aspects of ‘appeasement’ completely
ended after the outbreak of war in
September 1939 poses questions that can, as yet,
be answered only tentatively. From existing evidence
we can reasonably conclude that Chamberlain
would never have consented to peace on
Hitler’s terms; also that Chamberlain thought
Britain and France would not be able to impose
a Carthaginian peace on Germany. He appears to
have thought that some reshuffle of power setting
Hitler aside might offer a solution. ‘Until he disappears
and his system collapses there can be no
peace’, he wrote a week after the outbreak of the
war. Chamberlain’s assumptions were mistaken.
Events turned out very differently, when what was
to him the unthinkable occurred and the French
armies collapsed. Only then did the pre-war illusions
on which policies had been based for so
long finally collapse.
While at sea Britain had the better of the war,
serious fighting on land began not on the frontiers
of France but in Norway. Winston Churchill
had rejoined the Cabinet as first lord of the
admiralty at the beginning of the war and was
anxious that some visible blow be struck at
Germany’s war effort. The attack by the Soviet
Union on Finland on 30 November 1939 seemed
to provide a good opportunity. Swedish iron ore
was vital to the German war machine. During
the winter months it was shipped through the
Norwegian port of Narvik. For weeks, under
Chamberlain’s chairmanship, the Cabinet discussed
the possibility of an operation that would
disrupt its flow. The favourite idea was to help the
Finns against the Russians by sending volunteers
who would, on the way so to speak, control the
railway line from northern Sweden to the coast.
This scheme made use of the public indignation
in the West about Russia’s attack to damage both
Germany and the Soviet Union, which was seen
as Germany’s partner in the European war of
aggression. The Finns successfully resisted the illprepared
Soviet troops for weeks, inflicting heavy
casualties on them in what became known as the
Winter War.
The French, too, were keen to fight, but not
in France. They agreed in February 1940 to a
joint Anglo-French expedition of ‘volunteers’ to
aid the Finns and occupy the strategic northern
railway. British scruples about infringing neutral
rights, and Norway’s terrified adherence to neutrality
– the Norwegians did not wish to give
Germany an excuse for invasion – led to delays,
until finally the British decided to mine the waters
off Narvik through which the ore ships sailed
(though only until spring had opened the other
route by way of the Baltic, blocked by ice in the
winter). Before an expedition could be sent to the
Finns, however, they were defeated, making peace
on 12 March 1940. French politicians were so
outraged at the inability of the government to
help that Daladier’s ministry fell; the more militant
Paul Reynaud became prime minister.
Chamberlain’s own fall was delayed by another
month and historically was far more important.
The public was tiring of the phoney war and
the easy successes of the dictators, Hitler and
Stalin. Poland and now Finland had fallen. Fortunately
the British Cabinet (unlike the French)
never contemplated any steps that might lead to
outright war with the Soviet Union as well, even
though, or perhaps because, the Soviet Union
represented a far greater threat to Britain’s imperial
interests than to France. Chamberlain was singularly
unlucky in some of his public utterances.
After Munich he had rashly repeated the phrase
about ‘peace in our time’. Early in April 1940 he
coined one phrase too many when he told the
nation that Hitler ‘has missed the bus’. After
relatively small forces had secretly begun the
operation at sea on 3 April 1940, the main force
following during the night of 7 and 8 April, the
Germans in a daring move occupied all Norway’s
major ports, including the capital, Oslo, on 9
April. The Norwegians resisted and inflicted casualties,
especially on the German warships making
for Oslo’s harbour. But Germany’s attack was
almost entirely successful, even though it was
not a complete surprise to Britain and France.
The British navy missed the German warships.
Executing the policy decided on by the Cabinet,
the Royal Navy on 8 April was proceeding to lay
mines in Norwegian territorial waters accompanied
by a small force of troops which was ready
to land in Norway should the Germans retaliate
by invading. In fact, they had already anticipated
the British move. The instructions to the British
force were unclear and reveal Britain’s moral
dilemma about landing in Norway if the
Norwegians chose to resist.
Only in the extreme north, in Narvik, were
Anglo-French forces able to inflict a temporary
setback to the small German forces far from their
base. The British navy sank the German destroyers
in the port and a month later Narvik was reoccupied.
After Dunkirk, these forces had to be
withdrawn and the whole of Norway fell under
German occupation. Nevertheless, German naval
losses had been so severe that in July 1940 there
was no surface fleet in active service; only a few
lighter warships were undamaged.
The most important political consequence of acting
too late in Norway was the fall of the
Chamberlain Cabinet, and the outcome – surprising
at the time of the crisis – was that Winston
Churchill became prime minister on 10 May 1940
of a national government joined by Labour and
the Liberals. With the passage of time the adulation
of Churchill as war leader has rightly given
place to a more critical assessment of his role in
policy making at home, in foreign relations and in
military strategy, which together make up the conduct
of the war. Churchill’s shortcomings stand
revealed. By filling in the shadows, showing his
mistakes as well as his successes, Churchill
becomes more real and believable. The shadows
only bring into sharper relief the predominance of
that galvanising spirit, the enormous energy and
undaunted faith in final victory that became an
asset of inestimable value to Britain and to the war
effort of the whole alliance. And, despite wartime
restrictions, Churchill still led a democracy rooted
in Parliament, and was dependent upon the support
of the people. The nation thrilled by the
rhetoric of his radio speeches and sensed that
Britain now had a war leader who was a match for
Hitler. Churchill, more than any single man, sustained
national morale and hope in the future.
It is therefore all the more remarkable that the
secrets now emerging from private papers and
official records reveal how insecure Churchill’s
position really was during the first four months of
his administration. Chamberlain was no broken
reed. His government had actually won what
amounted to a vote of confidence, though many
Conservatives had abstained or voted with the
Opposition. Chamberlain was deeply injured by
so many of his former supporters turning against
him. It was he who decided that for the ‘duration’
what was required was a truly national government.
But he would remain leader of the
Conservative Party and thought that he might
return to power when sanity returned; the time
would come when his unrivalled experience
would be needed to bring back peace. As yet he
had no inkling of the cancer that, within a few
weeks, turned him into an invalid and caused his
death early in November 1940. Churchill was
prime minister, but Chamberlain and Halifax
remained the most powerful Conservatives in the
Cabinet. When Churchill first presented himself
to the House of Commons, it was Chamberlain
whom the Conservatives loudly cheered. Chamberlain
was soon to earn those cheers for far more
than his readiness to accept second place under
Churchill.
Norway was a serious defeat for the Allied war
effort. The Norwegian fjords could now serve as
ideal bases for the German submarines threatening
to sever the lifeline of war supplies crossing
the Atlantic from the US. The most shattering
blow of all was the defeat of France, on whose
armies the containment of Germany overwhelmingly
rested. It seemed unthinkable that a great
power such as France would succumb as quickly
and as totally to the onslaught of the Blitzkrieg
as smaller nations like Poland and Norway had
done. Yet that is what occurred.
The military debacle of the Allied campaign in
France can be briefly summarised. The total
strength of the German army on the one hand
and the French, British, Belgian and Dutch forces
on the other were roughly comparable, as were
the numbers of tanks on each side. Arguably the
French had the edge in the quality of their tanks
and artillery. Germany achieved superiority in the
air but this in itself was not decisive and, contrary
to popular belief, the Maginot Line, to which so
much blame came to be attached, was of advantage
to the Allies: it deterred the Germans from
attacking more than half the frontier and it could
be held by a relatively small force. This meant that
the Allies did not have to concentrate on the
Franco-German border but could predict that the
main battles would occur in the regions not
covered by the Maginot Line. The Allies then had
apparently good reason for quiet confidence
before the Germans opened the offensive.
The Allies thought that the obvious route of
invasion lay through the north, the Netherlands
and Belgium, and made their plans accordingly.
The Germans, when they attacked, should not be
allowed to turn industrial northern France
immediately into a battle zone as they had done in
the First World War. The French and British forces
would, and did, have time to meet the German
thrust in Belgium before it reached France. The
Maginot Line ran alongside the whole frontier
with Germany, alongside that of Luxembourg and
alongside the southern tip of the Belgian frontier.
Just beyond was the heavily wooded Ardennes
region, believed by the Allies to be impassable to
any major German offensive with tanks; this section
of the front was lightly held. Beyond the
Maginot Line to the sea, one careful calculation –
others did not differ appreciably – indicated that
forty French divisions and nine British were facing
two German armies totalling seventy-four divisions.
But alongside the Allies another twenty-two
Belgian divisions were expected to fight, even discounting
ten Dutch divisions which were quickly
overwhelmed. The purely Anglo-French/German
disparity would have disappeared if thirty-five
French and one British division had not been
allotted to the Maginot Line and upper Rhine.
Germany’s success was based not on superiority of
numbers or equipment but on taking and choosing
the offensives and in so distributing the German
divisions that they would appear in overwhelming
strength at the weak point of the Allied front. The
massed, coordinated use of armour would ensure
that the initial breakthrough could be exploited
with great speed.
The Allies had anticipated no major thrust
through the Ardennes and the Germans achieved
complete surprise there. The second unexpected
development was the direction of the thrust. The
French high command thought in terms of 1914.
They expected the Germans would continue
straight from Sedan in a south-westerly direction
for Paris. Instead, in a great arc the massed Panzers
coordinated with aircraft followed by infantry,
turned west towards the Channel coast at
Abbeville, and north-west to Boulogne, Calais and
in the direction of Dunkirk. The BEF (the British
Expeditionary Force) and northern French armies
were now caught in a nutcracker, with one
German army pressing them through Belgium and
the other swinging behind their rear. It was like a
mirror image of the Schlieffen Plan and had the
advantage that the wheel to the coast was a finite
and limited distance, whereas Schlieffen’s arc had
been huge, and of virtually indefinite length. Had
the Wehrmacht attacked in November 1939, the
plan would then have corresponded to Anglo-
French expectations of an offensive predominantly
through Belgium, the old Schlieffen formula.
In short, German victory was due to the brilliance
of the amended war-plan carried out in
May 1940, its successful execution by the German
high command and the fighting qualities of the
well-trained troops, particularly the Panzer divisions.
Obversely, Allied failure was primarily a
failure of strategy. French armies were thrown
into total confusion, their generals lost control
over communications and over the movements of
whole armies. No soldier can successfully fight in
such a situation, except in local actions. Later, the
generals and politicians were quick to blame all
sorts of factors – the communists, sabotage, poor
equipment, low morale – as having greatly contributed
to defeat. The blame must lie overwhelmingly
with Gamelin and the Allied generals
themselves.
The devastating timetable of defeat can be
tersely set out. On 10 May 1940 the Germans
launched the western offensive, simultaneously
attacking the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.
The terror-bombing and destruction of
Rotterdam added a new term to the war vocabulary.
The French and British troops moved
forward according to a plan which, as it turned
out, placed them more securely in the noose. On
13 May the Germans broke through on the
Meuse. The French prime minister Reynaud telephoned
Churchill the following day telling him
that the situation was grave, and on the 15th that
the battle was lost, the way to Paris open.
The first rift now appeared between the British
and French conduct of the war. The French
wanted the outcome of the whole war to depend
on the battle for France. Churchill already foresaw
that if indeed the battle for France was lost the
war would go on. There would then be the battle
for Britain. So 15 May 1940 is an important date.
Reynaud appealed to Britain to throw the whole
of its air force into the battle as the only chance
left to stop the Germans. Churchill and the
Cabinet were ready to send further squadrons of
fighters to France. But twenty-five squadrons
would be retained as indispensable for the defence
of Britain, as the commander-in-chief of fighter
command, Air Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding,
insisted that this represented the minimum necessary
protection. On 15 May, to Reynaud’s desperate
plea, Churchill responded: ‘we would do
everything we could, but we could not denude
England of her essential defences’.
On 16 May Churchill crossed the Channel to
see the situation for himself and to infuse some
of his fighting spirit into Reynaud’s government.
The full disaster became evident, there was near
panic in Paris. Gamelin was dismissed and
replaced by General Weygand on 19 May. But
Hitler had slowed the advance to the Channel.
He did not wish to risk his tanks in unsuitable
terrain; to Göring and his Luftwaffe was to be left
a share in annihilating the trapped British. The
tanks were temporarily halted. General de Gaulle,
of later fame, managed a small-scale counterattack
on 17 May but it could not affect the
outcome of the battle. In the north the BEF and
French divisions were retreating in good order –
much too slowly. On 20 May Reynaud had
brought Marshal Pétain into his new government.
Defeat was in the air. On 24 May the German
Panzers reached the coast at Abbeville on the
mouth of the Somme. The Allied northern armies
were now cut off.
The story of the French capitulation is well
known. Increasingly the French began to blame
the British for not throwing their last reserves into
the battle. They could not conceive how Britain
would continue the war without France. Churchill
was back in Paris on 23 May to discover how the
northern Allied armies including the BEF might
be saved. It was trapped, he reported back to the
War Cabinet in London the next day. On 25 May,
General Lord Gort, the commander of the BEF,
in spite of instructions on the 19th from Churchill
and the chiefs of staff to link with the French,
independently began the manoeuvre, subsequently
approved, that eventually made it possible
to save the British divisions, and many French
troops too, from the beaches of Dunkirk. Weygand’s
planned counter-offensive against the
German flanks never had a chance; there were no
French forces left who could seriously threaten the
Germans. Meanwhile in Paris on the night of 25
May Pétain and other members of the government
were already searching for a way to conclude
a separate peace with Germany. Prime Minister
Reynaud was despatched to London to sound out
British reactions to peace initiatives. That same
day contingency arrangements to evacuate the
BEF were acted on.
The last week of May 1940 was the most
critical and dramatic of the Second World War.
The full account of British Cabinet deliberations
on possible peace negotiations with Hitlerite
Germany only recently came to light, some so
secret that their record was kept in a special file.
Churchill’s ‘finest hour’ was to come: Britain
withstood the German Blitz, later that summer
and autumn. Government and people were determined
to repel invasion from their shores. In
Churchill’s speeches the spirit of resolution and
the will to fight were accurately encapsulated. Yet,
the ‘finest hour’ might never have struck.
The picture of Churchill as the indomitable
war leader towering over colleagues is so deeply
etched in the history of the Second World War
that it comes as a surprise that his position as
prime minister during the first weeks of office
was far weaker than that enjoyed by any of his
predecessors since the fall of Lloyd George.
Chamberlain saw Churchill as the best war leader
for the duration of the conflict and he was also the
one Conservative whom Labour and Liberals
could agree to serve under. Churchill presided
over a small War Cabinet of five. Chamberlain and
Halifax, the two most powerful Conservatives,
were now joined by two Labour Party ministers,
Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood. But
Churchill was regarded with much suspicion by
many Conservatives, who continued to look to
Chamberlain for guidance. Within the War
Cabinet, Chamberlain’s role was still decisive. If
he sided with Halifax against Churchill, given the
continued party loyalty Chamberlain still enjoyed
and the overwhelming strength of the Conservatives
in the House of Commons, Churchill would
not be able to make his views prevail even with the
support of Labour and its two representatives in
the War Cabinet. The government might then
break up – as the French did – with disastrous
results at a moment of crisis. This political reality
has to be borne in mind when assessing what
Churchill, Chamberlain, Halifax, Attlee and
Greenwood said during the long hours of Cabinet
discussion in May 1940. What was at stake was
more than the fate of a government. Whether
Britain would remain in the war, the future of
Western Europe and the course of world history.
Halifax, the foreign secretary, made a determined
bid to persuade the War Cabinet to sanction
peace feelers. The Cabinet had authorised
him on 24 May to try to discover what terms
might keep Mussolini out of the war. But Halifax
went beyond his brief when he spoke to the
Italian ambassador on 25 May. He reported back
to the Cabinet on the morning of Sunday, 26
May, that the Italian ambassador had sounded
him out on whether the British government
would agree to a conference; according to the
ambassador, Mussolini’s principal wish was to
secure peace in Europe, and he wanted Italian and
British issues to be looked at as ‘part of a general
European settlement’. Halifax agreed emphatically
and replied that peace and security in Europe
were equally Britain’s main object and that ‘we
should naturally be prepared to consider any proposal
which might lead to this provided our
liberty and independence were assured’. In this
way efforts to keep Italy out of the war – efforts
that the Cabinet had already sanctioned involved
seeking Roosevelt’s good offices – were being
widened to draw in Germany and France in an
attempt to reach a general peace. Halifax now
wanted to secure the authorisation of the Cabinet
to seek the duce’s mediation for this purpose.
Churchill opposed Halifax; the prime minister’s
instincts were sound. Even if ‘decent’ terms were
offered in May 1940 they would have been no
safeguard against fresh demands later, once
Britain was at Hitler’s mercy. Churchill also knew
that if he consented to the commencement of any
negotiations it might then prove impossible to
fight on. He was therefore determined by any and
all means to block Halifax’s manoeuvres.
After the Cabinet meeting on the morning of
Sunday 26 May, Churchill lunched with the
French prime minister Paul Reynaud, who had
flown over from France. Churchill urged him to
keep France in the war. Reynaud, according to
Churchill, ‘dwelt not obscurely upon the possible
French withdrawal from the war’. Reynaud’s
immediate request was that negotiations should
be started to keep Italy out of the war by bribing
Mussolini with offers including the neutralisation
of Gibraltar and Suez as well as the demilitarisation
of Malta. But Churchill wanted no approach
to Italy. He knew how easily this could slide into
peace negotiations with Germany. He told
Reynaud that Britain would not give up on any
account but would rather go down fighting than
be enslaved to Germany.
After further discussions with the French
prime minister, the British Cabinet reassembled
in the afternoon. Halifax urged that the mediation
of Mussolini be sought; Hitler, he observed,
might not present such unreasonable terms.
Churchill repeatedly opposed such a move. In the
diary Chamberlain kept of these vital hours he
records Churchill as saying:
It was incredible that Hitler would consent to
any terms that we could accept though if we
could get out of this jam by giving up Malta
and some African colonies he would jump at
it. But the only safe way was to convince Hitler
that he could not beat us. We might do better
without the French than with them if they tied
us to a conference into which we should enter
with our case lost beforehand.
What are we to make of Churchill’s remark that
‘he would jump’ at the chance of getting out of
the war? If this one remark is considered out of
context it might appear that not much separated
Churchill from Halifax. But Churchill’s actions
throughout these critical days, and all the arguments
he marshalled, make it absurd to suppose
that he had any other intention but that of defeating
Halifax and of winning over the remaining
Cabinet ministers in order to fight on. An
approach to Mussolini, Churchill warned, would
not only be futile but would involve Britain in
‘deadly danger’; ‘let us therefore avoid being
dragged down the slippery slope with France’.
Nevertheless, in making an effort to appear
reasonable, by apparent concessions to Halifax’s
arguments, Churchill was manoeuvred into a dangerous
corner at the Cabinet meeting on the following
day, 27 May. He reiterated his view that
no attempt should be made to start any negotiations
by way of Mussolini. Halifax, who was a
formidable opponent, now accused Churchill of
inconsistency, saying that when on the previous
day he had asked him whether he were satisfied
that if matters vital to Britain’s independence
were unaffected he would be prepared to discuss
terms, Churchill had then replied that ‘he would
be thankful to get out of our present difficulties
on such terms, provided we retained the essentials
and the elements of our vital strength, even
at the cost of some cession of territory’. Yet now,
Halifax pointed out, Churchill spoke only of
fighting to a finish. Churchill was flustered; he
attempted to reconcile what could not be reconciled
by saying, ‘If Herr Hitler were prepared to
make peace on the terms of the restoration of the
German colonies and the overlordship of Central
Europe, that was one thing. But it was quite
unlikely that he would make any such offer.’
Halifax immediately followed up his advantage,
pressing Churchill by asking him whether he
would be willing to discuss Hitler’s terms.
Churchill rather feebly responded that: ‘He
would not join France in asking for terms; but if
he were told what the terms offered were, he
would be prepared to consider them.’ The
Cabinet ended. Churchill had gained just one
important point: Britain would not initiate direct
negotiations with Hitler.
The Cabinet met again on 28 May. Halifax
once more, on the pretext of starting negotiations
to keep Italy out of the war, was trying to find a
way of discussing peace with Hitler’s Germany.
The War Cabinet well understood this. The real
difference between Halifax and Churchill was simple.
Halifax believed the war already lost; to fight
on would entail useless sacrifice. What he actually
said was that Britain might get better terms before
France left the war and before Britain’s aircraft factories
were bombed by the Luftwaffe. The Italian
Embassy now wanted to know, Halifax said,
whether ‘we should like mediation by Italy’.
Churchill retorted that Britain could not negotiate
from weakness; ‘the position would be entirely
different when Germany had made an unsuccessful
attempt to invade the country’, he added, and
he argued that even if defeated later Britain would
get no worse terms than now. A nation that went
down fighting would rise again whereas those that
tamely surrendered were finished. Any negotiations,
furthermore, would undermine the nation’s
morale. Churchill was supported by both Attlee
and Greenwood. Halifax contemptuously accused
Churchill of indulging in rhetorical heroics. But
the decisive voice was Chamberlain’s.
Chamberlain had been deeply shocked by the
debacle in France. The basis on which he had conducted
the war had been shattered. In his diary a
little over a week before these crucial Cabinet discussions
he had noted that he expected a German
ultimatum, and that it might be necessary to fight
on but that: ‘We should be fighting only for better
terms not for victory.’ Chamberlain thought
with Halifax that realism could only lead to the
conclusion that the war was lost. But he jibbed at
bribing Mussolini while Britain and Germany
remained at war. On the issue of whether
Mussolini’s help should be invoked to bring
Germany, France and Britain to the conference
table his views fluctuated. Halifax worked hard on
him to get him to force Churchill’s hand.
Chamberlain, however, attempted to reconcile
Halifax and Churchill. In addressing the Cabinet,
Chamberlain said on 28 May:
He felt bound to say that he was in agreement
with the Foreign Secretary in taking the view
that if we thought it was possible that we now
get terms, which, although grievous, would
not threaten our independence, we should be
right to consider such terms.
But, he added, he did not think the French idea
of an approach to Mussolini would produce
‘decent terms’, especially with France in Hitler’s
grasp. Chamberlain therefore said he had come to
the conclusion that an ‘approach to Italy was
useless at the present time, it might be that we
should take a different view in a short time, possibly
even a week hence’. Churchill had won, at
least for the time being.
One cannot say with certainty what would
have happened if Chamberlain, not Churchill,
had been prime minister. Halifax might then have
carried the day. The impression the documents
leave is that Chamberlain had acted less from conviction
than out of loyalty to the prime minister.
The Cabinet adjourned at 6.15 p.m. Churchill
had called a meeting of the ministers not in the
War Cabinet to his room in the House of
Commons that evening. He told them that ‘of
course whatever happens at Dunkirk, we shall
fight on’. He reported back to the reassembled
War Cabinet at 7 p.m. that his message had been
greeted with enthusiasm. Churchill then agreed
to a long and tactful message to be sent to
Reynaud explaining that Halifax’s ‘formula’ prepared
on the occasion of Reynaud’s visit two days
previously, which had contemplated asking
Mussolini to act as mediator, was now dead; ‘we
are convinced that at this moment when Hitler is
flushed with victory . . . it would be impossible
for Signor Mussolini to put forward proposals for
a conference with any success’.
Churchill’s victory would not be final as long
as Halifax remained in the Cabinet and could
influence Chamberlain. Indeed the following day
the foreign secretary challenged Churchill’s
fighting despatch to Lord Gort. Halifax wanted a
despatch sent that left to Gort’s judgement the
decision whether to surrender the BEF. ‘It would
not be dishonourable to relinquish the struggle,
in order to save a handful of men from massacre.’
Churchill was not strong enough to offer outright
opposition to such defeatism but evaded the issue
by asking for time to consider the position. The
evacuation from Dunkirk soon made any reconsideration
unnecessary. Churchill was successfully
playing for time.
In mid-June 1940, with the imminent withdrawal
of France from the war, there were more
anxious moments for Churchill. In July Hitler in
a speech finally called on Britain to be reasonable
and to make peace. At the same time he mocked
Churchill, whose position was still far from
assured. On 2 August, the king of Sweden
secretly offered his mediation but the Cabinet on
7 August approved Halifax’s reply which made
Germany’s withdrawal from all its conquests a
precondition. The full story of continuing
attempts by those under Churchill to seek peace
remains to be told but there is no reason to doubt
Chamberlain’s continued loyalty to the prime
minister. It enabled Churchill to survive and to
neutralise his opponents.
Chamberlain was incapacitated in the summer
of 1940. Inoperable cancer was diagnosed. It was
Chamberlain’s terminal illness and resignation
from the government in October 1940 that transformed
Churchill’s position. He now became
leader of the party and in November 1940, when
Chamberlain died, he paid tribute to Chamberlain’s
loyalty. During those critical first weeks of his
administration he had owed much to him. Britain
had survived. The chiefs of staff in a grave report
in May 1940 had not rated Britain’s chances very
highly, concluding that ‘Germany has most of the
cards; but the real test is whether the morale of our
fighting personnel and civil populations will counterbalance
the numerical and material advantages
which Germany enjoys. We believe it will.’
That Britain had fought back was due to a
unified people, to the Royal Air Force, the Royal
Navy and the army, whose morale remained
intact. This unity would have been severely tested
if Churchill’s leadership had been repudiated at
the heart of government. But the doubts and divisions
within the War Cabinet remained a wellkept
secret until long after the war was over. In
December 1940, Churchill reconstructed the War
Cabinet and sent Halifax to Washington as
ambassador, bringing Eden into the Cabinet as
foreign secretary. But we must now retrace our
steps to the course the war took during the last
days of May and the summer of 1940.
On 28 May Leopold, king of the Belgians, capitulated,
ignoring the contrary advice of his ministers.
The evacuation of the BEF had begun the
previous day. Every possible boat, including
paddle pleasure steamers, was pressed into service.
The Royal Navy conducted the evacuation, and
some air cover could be provided by the air force.
Göring’s Luftwaffe strafed the boats and the men
waiting on the beaches. But the calm seas
favoured the Allies. The evacuation went on day
after day until 3 June. A total of 338,226 Allied
troops were snatched from certain capture,
including 139,097 Frenchmen, but all the equipment
was lost. To the south the war went on in
France, and Britain even sent reinforcements to
encourage the French. But Weygand viewed the
situation as nearly hopeless. The French were
given a few days’ grace while the German divisions
redeployed.
On 10 June 1940 Mussolini – having contemptuously
rejected Roosevelt’s earlier offer of
good offices – declared war on an already beaten
France. Even so the French forces along the
Italian frontier repulsed the Italian attacks. But
the Germans could not be held. On 14 June they
entered Paris. The government had fled to
Bordeaux and was seeking release from the British
alliance so that it could negotiate separately with
Germany. Churchill at first replied that Britain
would be willing to grant this wish provided the
powerful French fleet were sent to British ports.
Hard on the heels of this response, General de
Gaulle, who had come to Britain to call on the
French to continue the fight from a base still free
from the enemy, telephoned from London an
extraordinary proposal. Britain, as evidence of
solidarity, was now offering to the French an
‘indissoluble union’ of the United Kingdom and
the ‘French Republic’. Churchill had been sceptical
from the first about whether this dramatic
gesture would have much effect in Bordeaux and
so keep France in the war. Reynaud favoured
acceptance but the French Cabinet never considered
the idea seriously. The final agonies ended
with Pétain replacing Reynaud as prime minister.
He immediately began armistice negotiations. On
22 June the French accepted the German terms
and later signed them in the same railway carriage
in which Marshal Foch had accepted the German
capitulation at the end of the First World War.
France was divided into occupied and unoccupied
areas. The whole Atlantic coast came under
German control. South and south-eastern France
was governed by Pétain from a new capital established
in Vichy. The colonial empire remained
under the control of Vichy. The French sought
to ensure that their fleet would not be used by
Germany against Britain. The armistice provided
that it would be disarmed under German supervision.
Not unreasonably the British Cabinet
remained unsure whether or not the Germans
would in the end seize the fleet. For Britain the
war had become a fight for survival. In one of
the most controversial military actions of the
war, the British navy attacked units of the French
fleet at Mers-el-Kebir on 3 July, after the French
admiral refused a British ultimatum requiring him
to follow one of four courses, each of which
would have denied the Germans use of these warships.
The British action cost the lives of 1,297
French sailors, so recently their allies. It was an
indication that Churchill would pursue the war
with all the ruthlessness necessary to defeat a
ruthless enemy. Vichy’s response was to break off
diplomatic relations with Britain.
In London, General de Gaulle rallied the small
Free French Forces. But the great majority of the
French and most of the colonial empire accepted
the legitimacy of Vichy and Pétain. Vichy France
remained an important strategic factor in Britain’s
calculations, so de Gaulle was not granted the
status of the leader of a French government in
exile, even though such Polish, Dutch and Belgian
governments had been recognised. He deeply
resented this as an insult to the honour of France
as now embodied in his movement.
The course of the war from the fall of France
to December 1941 needs to be followed in three
separate strands. First there was the actual conflict
between Britain and Germany and Italy on
land, sea and air. The most critical of the struggles
was the battle in the air. Hitler believed that
unless he won command of the air he could not,
in the face of the strong British fleet, successfully
mount Operation Sea Lion, codename for his
invasion of the British Isles. On 10 July the preliminary
of the battle of Britain started over the
Straits of Dover, then in mid-August the main
attack switched to British airfields. The Luftwaffe
could use some 2,500 bombers and fighters in the
battle. Britain’s first-line fighter strength was
some 1,200 fighters. The radar stations on the
coast which gave warning of the approach of the
German planes and the cracking of the German
operational code, as well as the superior
Hurricanes and Spitfires, of which 660 could be
used, were to Britain’s advantage. But had the
Germans persisted in their attacks on airfields they
might nevertheless have succeeded in their aim of
destroying Britain’s air strength. Instead the
German attack switched to cities. London was
heavily raided on 7 September in reprisal for an
RAF raid on Berlin. On 15 September it was clear
that the German air force had failed to establish
command of the air and two days later Hitler
abandoned plans for the invasion of England. But
now the night raids against cities were causing
tremendous damage to London and other British
towns. On 14 November 1940 Coventry was
blitzed. The night raids continued, but for all
their damage, for all the loss of life they caused,
they were not a decisive factor in the outcome of
the war. The people emerged from the air-raid
shelters to work in the war factories.
More critical was the war at sea. Although
Britain controlled the surface of the oceans, submarine
warfare once again brought it into desperate
danger by disrupting essential supplies
from America. The submarine threat reached its
most serious peak between March and July 1941.
The losses of British tonnage were heavy, but the
US increasingly assumed a belligerent attitude in
guarding the convoys on its side of the Atlantic.
The Germans never won what Churchill called
the battle of the Atlantic.
On land Britain at first won spectacular victories
in Africa during General Wavell’s campaigns
against the Italians in the spring of 1941. With
the help of Dominion troops from South Africa,
Australia and New Zealand as well as Indian
troops, a much larger Italian army was defeated
and chased out of Libya and Cyrenaica. In East
Africa Abyssinia was freed and Haile Selassie
restored to his throne. Hitler responded by
sending General Erwin Rommel and an Afrika
Korps to assist the Italians in the western desert.
Wavell was forced back to the Egyptian frontier.
Britain had weakened her forces in the
Middle East by sending an expedition to Greece.
Mussolini had attacked Greece in October 1940
to show Hitler that he too could act independently.
Unfortunately he could win no battles
and soon the Greeks were chasing the Italians
into Albania. In April 1941, Hitler came to
Mussolini’s rescue once more. By the end of the
month the Greeks were defeated and the British
expeditionary force withdrew. Britain’s last forces
were defeated in Crete which was spectacularly
captured at the end of May 1941 by German paratroopers,
who, however, suffered heavy casualties
in the operation.
The second strand of the period from June
1940 to the end of 1941 is formed by the
growing informal alliance between Britain and the
US. During Britain’s ‘finest hour’, it did not
stand alone. Besides the forces of its European
Allies who had formed new fighting units in
Britain it enjoyed, from the beginning of the war,
the full support of the Dominions, all of whom
had chosen to stand by Britain. Only Eire
(Ireland) declared its neutrality. The support of
the Dominions and empire was an important
addition to Britain’s ability to wage war. But
without the US Britain’s survival would have been
problematical. Until the fall of France, President
Roosevelt was convinced that to make available
the capacities of American industry to provide war
supplies to Britain and France would be sufficient
to ensure an Allied victory. In the mid-1930s
Congress had attempted to prevent the US from
playing a role similar to that of the First World
War by passing the Neutrality Laws in 1935,
1936 and 1937 so that the US would not be
‘dragged’ into war. This legislation denied belligerents
the right to purchase arms and munitions
or secure American credit for such purposes.
In November 1939, Roosevelt secured the repeal
of some of its provisions. Belligerents could
now obtain arms and munitions provided they
paid for them and transported them home in their
own ships (‘cash and carry’). Britain and France
took immediate advantage of the opportunity.
Germany, lacking the means to transport purchases
to Europe, could not do so.
The collapse of American neutrality was rapid.
Roosevelt was determined to help Britain in every
way possible to continue the war against Germany
once he became convinced in July 1940 that
Britain was not about to be knocked out of the
war. Congress, concerned to keep the US out of
the war, was the major impediment. Bypassing
Congress, Roosevelt agreed in September 1940 to
Churchill’s repeated pleas for fifty First World War
destroyers in return for leases on naval bases in the
British West Indies. He also obtained a formal
promise from the British government never to surrender
the British fleet to the Germans. But he felt
it politically essential during the presidential election
of the autumn of 1940 to promise the
American people simply, ‘Your boys are not going
to be sent into any foreign wars.’ When the votes
were counted in November, Roosevelt’s victory
was decisive.
Following the election, Churchill appealed to
Roosevelt for all-out aid. He wanted arms and
ships and planes if Britain were to match
Germany’s strength. Roosevelt did his best to marshal
American public opinion, declaring in a speech
on 30 December 1940 that the US would become
the ‘arsenal of democracy’. The Lend-Lease Act
(March 1941) made all these goods available to
Britain without payment. By May 1941 Roosevelt
had concluded that the US would have to enter the
war, but given the attitude of Congress and of the
majority of the American people he wanted
Germany to fire the first shot. Hitler did not
oblige. He cleverly avoided treating the US as a
hostile state even though the US navy was now
convoying merchant vessels – British, American
and neutral – halfway across the Atlantic, and was
occupying Iceland. In August 1941 Roosevelt met
Churchill off Newfoundland and they jointly
enunciated the principles on which a post-war
settlement (known as the Atlantic Charter) would
be based after the final destruction of the Nazi
tyranny. Roosevelt and Congress supported all
such non-neutral behaviour partly out of hatred of
Nazi rule but above all because the safety of the US
depended on Britain’s successful resistance.
Roosevelt and Congress had virtually placed the
US in a state of undeclared war against Germany,
but did not cross the Rubicon of declared all-out
war until after the attack by Japan in December
1941 – and then it was Germany that first declared
war on the US.
The third decisive strand of these years was the
transformation of the Nazi–Soviet partnership
into war which Germany launched against Russia
on 22 June 1941. Since 23 August 1939, when
the Nazi–Soviet Non-Aggression Pact had been
concluded, Stalin had avoided being drawn into
war against Germany. Military unpreparedness in
1939 would have made war even more catastrophic
for Russia then than in 1941: the West
would have remained behind their defensive line
leaving Russia to face the full force of the
Wehrmacht. If the Wehrmacht had succeeded in
defeating the Soviet Union, the military picture
of the Second World War would have been totally
different. Stalin in 1939 had no wish, of course,
to save the Western democracies. He wanted to
protect Russia and never lost his belief in the
ultimate hostility of the Western capitalist powers.
From the Soviet point of view the pact with the
Germans had other advantages in enabling Russia
to take on Japan without fear of a German attack
in Europe. The Japanese were stunned by Hitler’s
U-turn of policy. Left isolated, they hastened
their own undeclared war with the Soviet Union
on the borders of Manchuria and Mongolia and
were defeated. The Non-Aggression Pact also
brought other gains for Russia. In a secret additional
protocol the Russians secured German
acknowledgement of the Russian sphere of interest
in Eastern Europe. The Baltic states, Finland,
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, fell into Russia’s
sphere. Russia also expressed its ‘interest’ in
Bessarabia, then part of Romania. Poland was partitioned
‘in the event of a territorial and political
rearrangement’ taking place, a fine circumlocution
for the imminent German attack on Poland.
Germany’s unexpectedly rapid defeat of the
Poles nevertheless alarmed the Russians, who
extensively mobilised and entered Poland on 17
September 1939. But Hitler did not plan to
attack the Soviet Union next. France was to be
defeated first. Stalin in any case was confident that
he could ‘appease’ Hitler. A new Soviet–German
treaty of friendship was concluded on 28
September, adjusting the Polish partition in
favour of the Germans. The Russians also
denounced France and Britain as responsible for
continuing the war. From the end of September
1939 to June 1941, the Soviet Union supplied
Germany with grain, oil and war materials.
In this way the Soviet Union, though officially
neutral, became aligned with Germany. The faithfulness
with which Stalin carried out his part of the
bargain indicates his fear of being exposed to
Germany’s demonstrated armed might and he
expected no real help from the West. Fears of
Allied hostility, especially now that the Soviet
Union was collaborating with Germany economically,
were well founded. Until May 1940, when the
German victories in the West revealed the desperate
weakness of their own position, the British and
French were considering not only sending volunteers
to Finland, but also stopping the flow of oil
from the Baku oilfields by bombing them.
Soviet aggression in 1939 and 1940 was, in
part, pure aggrandisement to recover what had
once belonged to the Russian Empire and more,
but also to improve Russia’s capacity for defence.
The Baltic states were occupied without a war. But
the Finns refused to accept Soviet proposals for
naval bases and a shift of the frontier on the
Karelian isthmus which was only twenty miles
from Leningrad. In return Finland was offered
Soviet territory. The three-month Soviet–Finnish
War that followed from 30 November 1939 to 12
March 1940 did nothing to enhance Russia’s military
prestige. Hitler noted Finland’s military
incompetence, but its turn had not yet come, and
Germany did nothing to help the ‘Nordic’ Finnish
defenders against the Russian Slavs. Stalin was
undoubtedly severely shaken by Hitler’s victory in
France, but he did not show it. On the contrary,
he was in June 1940 unexpectedly tough, demanding
that Romania return Bessarabia to Russia
and, for good measure, the province of Bukovina.
He wished to anticipate German dominance in a
strategic region bordering on the Soviet Union.
Hitler put pressure on Romania to comply. But
secretly he had already made his plans for the
invasion of Russia.
Fears in the Kremlin of German dominance in
the Balkans led to a sharp deterioration of good
relations. This became evident when Molotov,
the Soviet foreign minister, visited Berlin in
November 1940. Molotov’s demands infuriated
Hitler and reinforced his determination to ‘smash’
Russia. Yet at the same time Stalin was anxious not
to give Germany any pretext for attack and loyally
fulfilled to the bitter end all Russia’s economic
undertakings to deliver war materials. When the
Germans struck on 22 June 1941, the Soviet
forces were totally unprepared. Despite all the
information on the impending German onslaught
reaching Stalin from spies and from the Allies, he
either disbelieved it as an Allied plot to involve the
Soviet Union in war or was afraid to take precautionary
military counter-measures for fear of provoking
the Germans. His failure in June 1941 was
one of the most extraordinary displays of weakness
by this hard and ruthless dictator.
Hitler’s decision to launch his war on Russia
marks the second turning point in the Second
World War; the first was Britain fighting on and
made his ultimate defeat certain when he failed to
destroy Russia militarily in this new Blitzkrieg during
the first few months. Previous German military
successes had made him overconfident. The war
with the Soviet Union repeated the ‘war of attrition’
that had brought the First World War to an
end. The Russian war from 1941 to 1945 was a
war of dramatic movement, unlike the trench warfare
on the Western front – but its effect in
destroying millions of soldiers and huge quantities
of material, in the end, bled the Third Reich to
death. Why did Hitler attack the Soviet Union?
After the fall of France, Hitler hoped Britain
would sue for peace. After the failure of the
Luftwaffe in the battle of Britain, Hitler for the
time being abandoned the alternative of subjugating
the British Isles militarily. He also failed in
October 1940 to win Franco’s and Pétain’s support
for a joint Mediterranean strategy for destroying
Britain’s Mediterranean power. Hitler now
reasoned that the war against Russia, which he had
all along intended to wage as the centrepiece of his
ideological faith and territorial ambition, should be
launched before Britain’s defeat. It was to serve the
additional, though not primary, purpose of convincing
Britain that it was useless to continue the
war any longer. Hitler gave the order to prepare
Operation Barbarossa on 18 December 1940.
A series of brief Balkan campaigns in the spring
of 1941 ensured that the invasion of Russia would
be undertaken on a broad front without any possibility
of a hostile flank. Fear of Germany,
together with hostility to Russia, had turned
Romania, Hungary and Slovakia into more or less
enthusiastic junior German partners who all
declared war on Russia, as did Italy and Finland.
They felt safe under Germany’s military umbrella.
Bulgaria, though practically occupied by German
troops, remained neutral. Hitler thought Yugoslavia
too was in the bag when the Regent, Prince
Paul, signed a treaty with Germany in March
1941. But there was a revolt against the Regent
and the new government repudiated the German
alignment. Yugoslavia’s resistance did not last
long. The Germans attacked on 6 April and the
Hungarians faithlessly joined in three days later.
In less than two weeks Yugoslav resistance was
overpowered. Did the diversion in the Balkans,
though minor for Germany, have momentous
consequences by delaying the attack on the Soviet
Union – a delay that meant the Wehrmacht
ground to a halt in front of Moscow in the bitter
winter of 1941–2? The campaign was too slight
to affect significantly the time it took to assemble
the huge build-up of men, equipment and supplies
for the Russian invasion. In the early hours
of 22 June 1941 the Germans launched the attack
with approximately 190 German and satellite divisions.
The Soviet Union had no choice but to
enter into an alliance with Britain and, later, into
alignment with the US as well. The consequences
of this new war unleashed by Hitler proved
momentous for the course of world history.
World History
