DAY 86 – THURSDAY 3 OCTOBER 1940
Overnight had seen much reduced Luftwaffe activity, clearing the way for the newspapers to concentrate on Neville Chamberlain’s resignation. Worn down by the stress of office and age, and now aware that he had a terminal illness, he had resigned from the government.
Headlined on the front page of the Daily Express, before the details had been formally released, the reshuffle brought in Labour MP Herbert Morrison as Home Secretary and Minister of Home Security. He replaced Sir John Anderson, who took Chamberlain’s vacated post as Lord President of the Council, and joined the War Cabinet as a permanent member.
Morrison, a one-eyed son of a policeman – having lost an eye as a baby, due to infection – had been a Hackney councillor and Mayor, and leader of London County Council. During the First World War, he had been a conscientious objector and he was to become grandfather to Peter Mandelson. One of his first acts in his new post was to appoint Miss Ellen Wilkinson (“Red Ellen”) as Parliamentary Secretary, responsible for shelter policy.43 Formerly a member of the Communist Party, she had walked with the Jarrow Hunger Marchers of 1936 and had spoken passionately for their cause in parliament. As a people’s representative, she could not have been a better choice.
Back in the war, autumnal weather prevented any concerted air attacks. The Luftwaffe resorted to its standard bad weather operating pattern, despatching single aircraft on raids throughout the country. One Ju 88 found the de Havilland works at Hatfield. From a height of 50ft, it machine-gunned workers as they ran for shelter and then dropped a stick of four bombs on the plant, killing twenty-one and injuring seventy. Anti-aircraft fire brought the aircraft down. Fighter Command losses for the day were limited to one Blenheim, crashing in driving rain during a patrol, killing the whole crew. The Luftwaffe lost nine aircraft, including two to accidents.
Alan Brooke wrote to his diary that he was “beginning to think that the Germans may after all not attempt it [the invasion]”.44 He might have been intrigued to have read the War Cabinet minutes, in which the Foreign Secretary drew attention to two telegrams. They reported that the German Government “did not now expect to succeed in invading England”, but hoped “by bombing the Midlands and South to bring about the collapse of the present Government and its replacement by a more amenable one”.45
This identified the German objective as “regime change”, another phrase yet to be invented. But that was the essence of Douhet theory being played out, even if there were no indications of how serious were German expectations. However, Field Marshal von Leeb entered in his diary the comments from General Phillip Zoch, the Luftwaffe Commander attached to Army Group C. Over the September fighting, he claimed RAF losses at 1,100 aircraft, as against 350 Luftwaffe. As a result, the British were flying older types of aircraft. It was thought that their reserves were running low and the losses could no longer be replaced by new production. Zoch believed that the English could be forced to give up the fight.46
But of far greater immediate significance was the sustained attack on Allied shipping. To add to the already considerable losses, a merchant ship of 4,600 tons had been lost on the previous day, and belated reports had been received of three other merchant ships sunk far out in the Atlantic. Joining the First Lord of the Admiralty, the C-in-C Home Fleet and the Shipping Minister now came Minister of Food, Lord Woolton. He submitted a memorandum to the War Cabinet. During the last few weeks, he wrote, “I have been seriously disturbed by the extent of our food losses at sea”. If the current rate of loss was sustained, imports would have to be increased, taking up a much larger proportion of shipping, with serious effect on other supplies.47
Alongside Woolton’s paper was yet another memorandum from Alexander. He repeated the point so heavily emphasized by Forbes that the only short-term way of improving the situation was “the return to trade protection of the forces which were withdrawn for anti-invasion duties”.48 Invasion was no longer a threat, if it ever had been. The response to the perceived threat was now itself threatening the very survival of Britain.
DAY 87 – FRIDAY 4 OCTOBER 1940
Trailing in the wake of its competitor, the Daily Mail led with the reshuffle, focusing on John Reith being moved from the Ministry of Transport and given the job of planning for post-war reconstruction. Reith was also charged with organizing immediate repairs for those buildings which could not wait, and “in all probability” starting an immediate investigation into the question of providing “more and better air-raid shelters”. The other big change the paper highlighted was the promotion of Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour, into the War Cabinet in order to “represent the trade unions”.
In Berlin, reported the Daily Express citing Nazi radio, Hitler had ordered the authorities to rush the construction of deep shelters under Berlin’s big public buildings, which were to be reserved for young children and expectant mothers.
Effective confirmation of the diminishing invasion threat came from the Italian press. It, like the rest of the world’s media – including the Daily Express, which gave the story the front-page lead – was monitoring a much advertised meeting between Hitler and Mussolini. This was at the Brenner Pass, where the two dictators spent three hours together in an armoured train, a gift from the Führer to the Duce. And what was particularly noteworthy was that Hitler was no longer talking about invading Britain.49 In Rome, the newspaper, Il Popolo di Roma, spoke of a long war in prospect, with Germany unable to invade Britain this year. That may have been unwelcome to Hitler, who had wanted a short war, but it spelled grave danger for Britain, which could not sustain its current shipping losses.
The line in Berlin from Foreign Office spokesmen was that the two leaders had discussed an appeal to the British to call off the war. Shirer covered the meeting from Berlin. “The best guess here,” he wrote to his diary, “is that Mussolini is sore because the Germans apparently have abandoned the idea of invading Britain this fall, leaving him holding the bag with his offensive in the Egyptian desert”.50 AP writer Kirke L. Simpson wrote that “[t]he battle of England seems slated to bog down into a tragic winter stalemate of attrition”. Yet it also meant that England “will enjoy surcease from fears of the worst – successful Nazi invasion”. On the other hand, it faced new fears – of increasing shortages and grave economic stress.
The productive Simpson also wrote of Spain that it had voted to stay out of the war. General Franco was not convinced Britain was beaten. He was apprehensive that an airtight British blockade of Spain would invite starvation-bred disorders that could unseat him as military dictator. He had no intention of stepping in to grasp at the Axis-preferred Gibraltar prize until it was far more certain that Britain had been beaten.
Mrs Churchill had been out and about in Chingford, the Prime Minister’s constituency, accompanied by Jock Colville. It had not been all sweetness and light. One woman, who had been bombed out, looked at the party, and complained: “It is all very well for them, who have all they want; but we have lost everything”.51
Meanwhile, Winston appeared to be responding to the chorus of concerns about the shipping situation when he addressed the War Cabinet. He had, he told his ministers, discussed the matter with the Defence Committee. Their view was that suitable weather for an invasion “was not likely to prevail on many occasions during the winter months”, so it would be right to divert a number of destroyers and anti-submarine trawlers from anti-invasion duties, to reinforce shipping escorts. He also hoped to have ten further destroyers and six corvettes available for service in the next four weeks, including vessels received from the USA.52 The growing crisis, though – as was shortly to become apparent – had not been resolved.
DAY 88 – SATURDAY 5 OCTOBER 1940
Admiral Evans, the newly appointed shelter “dictator” told the Evening Standard that he “should be quite happy to snuggle down for the winter in a properly-built Anderson shelter”, although he admitted to sleeping under his own kitchen table. Herbert Morrison, in his new ro
le of Minister of Home Security, inspected Bethnal Green Tube Station, declaring that it could be used as a shelter. The building “is considered absolutely safe by experts of London Transport who have examined it”, reported the Standard.
The “sensational” domestic news of the day was the appointment of Air Marshal Sir Charles Portal, Chief of Bomber Command to Chief of the Air Staff. Newall had been sent to New Zealand as its governor general. The Daily Mail gave it front-page treatment, noting the relative youth of Portal, and his replacement, Air Marshal Sir Richard Peirse, 47 and 48 respectively. Correspondent Noel Monks emphasized the experience of the two men. Both were great believers in offensive operations. Both strongly maintained that the winning of the war would be greatly assisted by large-scale bombing offensives against the Nazis in their own territory
However, the meeting between Hitler and Mussolini continued to dominate most newspapers, with the Daily Express reporting an Axis “boast” of a “Suez-to-Thames blitz”. The Hamburger Frendemblatt, in a report picked up by the English-language press, asserted that the war had changed from a European dispute into a great final struggle of a new world. It would not only be carried out in the regions of the British Isles, but also on African soil. This was something the Express correspondent developed. “Hitler has not quite abandoned his dreams of a Blitzkrieg against the British Isles,” he wrote, “and wants to engage Italy in an intensive campaign of divertive (sic) action”.
Shirer, monitoring Italian comment, told of a Duce angry that the plan to invade Britain had been abandoned. It could have reduced pressure on Italian forces in Africa. Now the Italians were the only Axis partner confronting British ground forces. Shirer further wrote that the Germans were “in a great state of mind because the British won’t admit they’re licked”. They cannot, he said, “repress their rage against Churchill for still holding out hopes of victory to his people, instead of lying down and surrendering, as have all Hitler’s opponents to date”. In Shirer’s view, the Germans could not understand a people with “character and guts”.53
The Times, on the other hand, had the measure of the beast. In a leading article headed, “The mood of Britain”, it noted that “the Nazi tactics of indiscriminate bombing for the purpose of mass terrorisation have established beyond all possibility of doubt that this is, in the current phase, a people’s war”. We know now the meaning of total war, the paper said, and we know that we, as a people, can face it without flinching. “The truly remarkable thing about this determination is that it has generated and maintained itself without any appeal to the highly coloured emotions of jingoism.”
For “the few”, though, it had also been a busy day. Despite patchy weather, the Luftwaffe had returned in considerable strength, launching five major raids and a number of diversionary attacks. Fighter Command was forced to fly 1,175 sorties, losing eight aircraft. Bomber and Coastal Commands together lost seven of their aircraft, the combined loss of fifteen exactly matching the Luftwaffe – whose losses included three accidents, and several in overnight raids, one from flak damage. The British were still overclaiming. The Air Ministry announced twenty-three raiders downed during the day, for a loss of nine fighters.
13.
The widening war
We are seeing more and more clearly that the Battle of Britain is only a part of the world war. And within the Battle of Britain, conflict between the German Air Force and the civilian population is itself only a part. But what a vitally important part it is! How the whole fortune of war turns upon it!
Herbert Morrison, Draft Ministerial Broadcast (script), 31 October 1940.1
Some regard 6 October as the start of the fourth and final phase of the ”official” battle, for others, the phase started a few days earlier, for others it was the fifth phase. Variously described as the Luftwaffe in retreat and “the anti-climax”, it marked the progressive reorientation of the Luftwaffe effort to night bombing, with high-level daylight fighter sweeps escorting fighter bombers. Churchill called it the battle of attrition. But, for the people, there was a victory in the offing. The new Home Secretary and Security Minister, Herbert Morrison, was about to give them a deep shelter policy.
DAY 89 – SUNDAY 6 OCTOBER 1940
Overnight, London had been lit up by anti-aircraft fire. At times the barrage had seemed to be far greater in intensity than anything reported since the attack on London began. Thus reported the Sunday Express, telling its readers: “Viewed from a distance of twelve miles, the barrage appeared a terrific affair. It was like a great curtain of leaping flames”.
The big story of the day though – apart from the US mobilization of 27,000 naval reserves – was a “retrospective” on “How the RAF smashed the invasion”. Assembled from “facts given … by people who reached London last week from Hitler’s battered invasion ports”, it detailed how RAF bombing had smashed the fleet and its environs. Boulogne, it claimed, “has practically ceased to exist as a port, so serious is the damage. Neither is Dunkirk of much use today. Nearly all the port equipment has been put out of action”.
Nevertheless, the paper was at pains to emphasize that the Germans would like to lull the British into a false sense of security, creating a slackening of the war effort and decreased vigilance. “One possibility must not be overlooked”, it said. “While the Germans have suffered a most serious setback, it does not follow that the High Command have abandoned their hope of invading Britain.” Playing to a different script, however, German shortwave broadcasts were stoking up the invasion threat, claiming that “maybe” the waves of German bombers flying towards England would be followed “soon” by hundreds of thousands of troops.
The Express, at least, however, seemed to understand the Nazi tactics. In an article headed “Watch for the peace offer”, it warned that “[a]nother peace move, accompanied by the usual threat that the British Empire must accept it forthwith or be obliterated, is expected almost immediately from Hitler and Mussolini”. This was believed to be one the outcomes of the Brenner talks. Hitler would make the offer, “because he is still under the delusion that the bombing of London has made the people of this country hanker for peace even on his terms”. The offer, though, was likely to come in a roundabout way and be in rather non-committal form as neither Hitler nor Mussolini wanted to risk a public rebuff from Britain. And, according to the Basler Nachrichten, the offer was “extremely likely” to come via a Spanish intermediary.
This day being a Sunday, another double dose of J. B. Priestley was on offer, making him easily the most influential commentator of the period. In the Sunday Express, he wrote of decentralization, asking “Is this the end of the lure of London?” The threat of invasion and the London bombing had compelled the government to think in terms of decentralization of power and authority in many different departments of life. This, to Priestley, seemed “all to the good”. The war was doing for us what we had not the sense before to do for ourselves.
Come the evening, he was delivering his evening Postscript on BBC radio. Recalling recent travels where he had found hotel rooms almost impossible to get because they had been taken up by long-term moneyed residents, escaping the bombing, he tartly observed:
This has, for a long time now, been a country in which there are far too many pleasant, able-bodied persons who, because of private incomes or pensions and all kinds of snobbish nonsense, are condemned to yawn away their lives, forever wondering what to do between meals; in startling contrast to the other people who wonder how to get it done between meals.
His criticism of the “private incomes or pensions” was to provoke a storm of protest from the Right, with complaints that his broadcast might have been “calculated to set rich against poor and to annoy country districts”.2 Priestley’s days with the BBC were numbered.
With newspapers this day carrying for the first time pictures of people sheltering in the Underground, even sleeping between the rails on the track bed, the weather intervened to make the shelters, for one night only, almost redun
dant. Atrocious conditions over the Channel and northern France prevented almost all air operations. London was visited by a mere seven bombers – the lightest attack since the offensive had begun on 7 September. Come the night, when the sirens sounded, nothing happened: no aircraft, no bombs, no gunfire. Cautiously, people emerged into the night and the pubs and restaurants were soon doing a roaring trade. Many slept in their own beds for the first time in over a month.
DAY 90 – MONDAY 7 OCTOBER 1940
The Daily Mail announced: “RAF preparing a great new bomber offensive”, with “powerful new RAF bombers now being produced in great numbers”. Portal was getting down to work. “Hitler’s people can look forward to more than a taste of the medicine their Luftwaffe is administering over here”, the paper declared. The Daily Express headlined, “Strangest night for a month”, thus announcing the “Blitzpause”. Göbbels, on the other hand, bemoaned the fact that that air was “slowly grinding to a halt”.3
This “Blitzpause” marked the eve of the annual congress of the Trades Union Council (TUC) in Southport, where representatives of five million union members were meeting. The Mirror, noting that the Westminster Parliament had disappeared for the moment, awarded it the title of “the voice of democracy”. Two members of this “Workers’ Parliament” were also in the War Cabinet, Labour MPs Clem Attlee and Ernest Bevin, former General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU). The paper asked whether they were doing enough to make this a People’s War; a war fought “for the people by the people”.
Addressing the War Cabinet that day, Churchill was more interested in taking the war to the newspapers – particularly the Mirror and its stable-mate the Sunday Pictorial. With the daily having called the Dakar affair a “blunder”, the Sunday newspaper had repeated the jibe. Now, the Pictorial had published an article by H. G. Wells, contained a slashing attack on Field Marshal Sir Edmund Ironside and General Viscount Gort, the leader of the British Expeditionary Force in France. According to H. G. Wells, until the Army was better led, we stood no chance of beating the Germans. Ironside was “a model of incompetence” and Gort our “praying general”.
Many Not the Few: The Stolen History of the Battle of Britain Page 36
