The issue was raised in parliament on 5 April 1939, where we saw the intervention of Megan Lloyd George, daughter of the former prime minister. Her statement was extraordinarily prescient:
There are certainly areas in this country where the risk of air raids is so great that shallow shelters cannot reduce it to tolerable dimensions. I think that that is a view which is very generally held. Whether it is the view of the Government we do not know, because they have not yet expressed any specific opinion on the matter, but there are certain parts of the East End of London, certain parts of the City of London, certain parts even of Greater London where the industrial concentration is very great, and where it would be of enormous advantage to an enemy if damage were done and great dislocation of the industrial life of the country were created. That is the case also in cities like Coventry, which are almost completely target areas.26
Nevertheless, on 14 April 1939, Anderson’s policy committee recommended “the rejection for technical and general reasons of any attempt to provide deep ‘bomb proof’ shelters on a widespread scale for the protection of the civil population”. With something close to breathtaking arrogance, the committee acknowledged that their scheme “may fall short in some respects of the anticipation entertained in some quarters as to the character of the protection which the Government should undertake to provide”.27
This opened the way for Anderson to announce to the House on 20 April his idea of a definitive shelter policy. Not only did he exclude the use of the Underground, he also rejected the idea of building a network of deep shelters. Referring to what was termed “deep shelter mentality”, he had decided that if shelters were too safe (and comfortable) workers would retreat to them and not re-emerge. War production would suffer. Shelters would be proof only “against blast, splinter and the fall of debris”.
Rather than allow people to congregate in large shelters – where they could possibly challenge authority – they were to be kept dispersed, in manageable packets. Instead of proper protection, they were given the prefabricated, corrugated steel structures which could be erected in gardens, which came to be called Anderson shelters. This was perhaps appropriate – like their progenitor, they were cold, dark, damp and lonely. They were incredibly noisy through the raids, amplifying the sounds of the bombs and guns, and therefore frightening. They were widely detested and many people chose not to use them. But with these and a ramshackle network of so-called surface shelters, and diverse other protection which included trenches built in public parks, the people were forced to go to war.28
Still, there were some MPs and others who were not satisfied. But, with less than three months to go before the East End was to be so heavily bombed, Anderson contemptuously brushed them aside. On 12 June 1940, he told the House: “I am devoutly thankful that we did not adopt a general policy of providing deep and strongly protected shelters”. In this war, he said, “we must avoid at all costs what I may call the deep-shelter mentality”.29
That position remained in September when the bombers headed towards London. Yet even though The Times had agreed there had been an “insufficiency of the present provision”, the Prime Minister’s only recorded contribution in resolving the shelter crisis was to urge “strong action” against demonstrators seeking better protection. After the War, Churchill said that he had sought from the Cabinet an explanation as to why the Tubes could not be used. He was “deeply anxious about the life of the people in London”, he said.30 But the War Cabinet minutes do not support his claims. It is perhaps germane to note that, at the time of his making them in 1949, Cabinet records were not routinely published. Publication was not introduced until 1958 and the 30-year rule did not come into force until 1967.
At the height of the crisis, upon which the fate of the nation quite obviously turned, the evidence suggests that Churchill concerned himself with “trivia”: the need for a new flag for the Admiralty building; the problem of glass stocks to replace shattered windows; and post office queues. He had every opportunity to explain his role in resolving the shelter crisis – one which even the rigorously censored news media made clear was a vital political issue. But he chose not to record it, neither at the time nor after the war.
The people were left to find their own solutions, thereby saving the government from the consequences of its own indifference and folly. In the short period from 7 to 19 September, after which the government resolve crumbled and it decided not to enforce its own shelter policy, the war could have been lost. A significant number – many thousands – of Londoners rebelled against the government. And although it was a passive rebellion, it might not have taken much to have turned it into violent revolution. Fortunately, the government, or more particularly, the police, soldiers and the officials on the ground, had the sense to cave in. By 20 September, the moment had passed. The people settled down to a bloody war of attrition.
As to the consequences of the bombing, it was not only shelter policy that failed. Public administration in some East End local authority areas broke down, episodes which were dealt with at length and in great detail by Angus Calder.31 He also records – as indeed did the War Cabinet and MPs at the time, the latter during several debates in the Commons – that central government had been slow to recognize the collapse, and even slower to do something about it. Sometimes, thoughtless action by central and local government had made things worse, for instance drafting in troops to help clear up the debris from the bombing and then requiring the hard-pressed local authorities to find billets for them.
Local initiatives, organized by people ranging from priests to the monstrous legion of women, individuals, groups, charities and officials acting on their own initiatives, collectively saved the day. The record shows that the input from the centre was minimal. Even at the height of the Blitz in London, it was the Salvation Army, with other agencies – even the Canadian Red Cross – which supplied refreshments to battling firemen who were collapsing through lack of sustenance – lacking even drinking water while they fought fires on twelve-hour shifts. The official mind had never thought of the need.
FADING AWAY
The air battle over Britain – or this phase of it – effectively ended on or around 10 May 1941 with the “Moonlight Blitz” on London, although there were sporadic raids in the days and weeks afterwards. Towards the end of the month, the newspapers were talking about a “lull” in the bombing, and thus did it fade away. Before that, on 13 May, news broke of the capture of Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess, who had parachuted into Scotland, ostensibly on a peace mission. Even to this day, aspects of his story are shrouded in mystery. But one thing is absolutely clear. Hess did bring a peace offer, which he asserted that Hitler would accept immediately, and which differed little from the earlier proposals.32 Had Hitler actually approved the mission, it would have been entirely in character, and rather appropriate.33 The Battle of Britain having been launched with a flurry of peace offers, ended as it started, with another peace offer.
Back in 1941, the Hess affair dominated the headlines for a short while but it was soon displaced by the German adventure in Crete – where its airborne invasion was narrowly successful, but at huge cost. In an example of what might have happened if Sealion had ever been launched, the Royal Navy over the night of 21–2 May 1941 decisively beat off a seaborne invasion, with a force of three cruisers and three destroyers, sinking twenty-two of twenty-five vessels. This was despite the Luftwaffe having complete air superiority in the daylight hours.34
Soon enough, another disaster for British arms was replaced, in the English media, by the drama of the sinking of the Bismark – for once a small victory and a cause for celebration after the stunning loss of HMS Hood. In time, all that was left of the Battle of Britain were the memories. But who was to claim the credit for a battle won?
15.
To the victor the spoils
In previous years a Civil Defence Day has been organised in the autumn. A suggestion has now been made that a “Battle of Britain Sunda
y” should be held in September, to celebrate the Battle of Britain in 1940.
War Cabinet minute, 19 July 1943
On the question of who should take the credit for “winning” the Battle of Britain, the blunt answer could be, as already addressed, the Russians. In their heroic and unexpectedly successful defence of the motherland, they prevented the Luftwaffe returning in force to northern Europe for Battle of Britain, round two.
A more sterile debate, however, rests with the narrow definition of the battle, with the focus on who can claim credit for preventing the invasion – assuming it was ever going to happen. There, the argument veers between RAF Fighter Command and the Royal Navy, with even the mighty RUSI (Royal United Services Institute) intervening in the debate.1 But even to entertain that debate is to miss the point. The Battle of Britain – agreed by both sides, and evaluated exhaustively here – was a three component battle, fought over supplies, territory and morale – the blockade, invasion and attack on morale (the Blitz). Any one of the components could, potentially, have been decisive.
We have argued here, that Britain was never seriously at risk from an invasion, and the blockade could not have forced a decision in 1940 because the Germans did not have the means to make it happen. In the sense that the battle for morale could have been lost, the decisive battle was the Blitz – which was an integral part of the Battle of Britain. In that limited sense, the people won the battle.
Whether there is any agreement with that view or not, however, no one who has any familiarity with the events in Britain during the latter half of 1940 – and indeed the early months of 1941 – could fail to be moved by them. Nor can it reasonably be denied that the people played a heroic and central part in those events. But, of those who wish to argue that RAF fighter pilots played an important role, many seem to feel the need to do so at the expense of the people. The people must be written out of the script, awarded only places in the supporting cast, in order that the heroism of the airmen can shine through.
Much of this is the result of intellectual laziness. It is easier to present a simplistic “shoot ‘em up” narrative than it is properly to describe and analyse a series of complex historical events. But there seem to be other, more profound reasons why history should have been distorted, and why that distorted account should have prevailed – reasons which suggest that our history was stolen rather than simply lost. The “airmen as victors” was a deliberate artefact, created for a number of reasons.
The first and most obvious is that the fighter battle made good propaganda. And, at the time, that was very much needed by the government’s propaganda chief – Duff Cooper. He was the man, it will be recalled, whose inept and provocative “Silent Column” campaign had alienated both the public and the media, while his other attempts to tighten censorship, his information gathering exercises and then his poor judgement in sending his son to the safety of America made him the story.
Then the ineptitude of his Ministry, in its cumbersome and insensitive censorship, excluding important information and slowing down the publication of other material, eventually had more people turning to Lord Haw-Haw’s German radio propaganda station for their information than tuned into the BBC News. Cooper’s efforts in the early stages of the battle were, to put it mildly, disastrous.
Just as public and media tension over the “Silent Column” campaign was at its highest, though, the air war erupted, offering what appeared to be spectacular victories. Home Intelligence indicated that reports of RAF achievements went down well and one then saw the Ministry of Information enthusiastically publicize the air battle. Over sixty years before Jo Moore observed that the 9/11 disaster had been “a good day to bury bad news”, the MoI had discovered its own ways of driving unwelcome headlines off the front pages.
Crucially though, the battle and “the few” had another strong propaganda dimension, linked as they were so intimately to the German invasion. Churchill, right from the beginning of the battle, was extremely doubtful that the invasion would be launched, and was then confident that it would be repelled if troops were ever landed. But, as he confided to his private secretary, he needed the threat to focus the minds of the people and to inject a note of urgency into the formation of a new Army, the one which he hoped would take Britain back to France.
With morale fragile, however, the perception of the threat had to be managed. Thus, Churchill had to have a winning battle, an ongoing drama to which he could point as demonstrating Britain’s continued and successful resistance. Initially, according to Home Intelligence, the Royal Navy served that function, with the RAF gaining little public profile. But Navy anti-invasion routines lacked glamour and were largely invisible. Churchill first sought to employ the RAF’s bombing campaign, but that too was invisible. By contrast, the fighters were wheeling and cavorting over the heads of the people, their gunfire audible, their vapour trails etched in the sky. They provided the necessary theatre, and the high-profile evidence of resistance.
There was, however, a third dimension. Focusing on the “shoot ‘em up” narrative served to obscure the political and diplomatic manoeuvring. The British Government, with the approval of Churchill, entertained multiple German diplomatic approaches. These appear to be far more important than has been acknowledged. Through the early stages of the battle, there was continuous dialogue between the parties while Hitler sought to bring the UK to the negotiating table and discuss peace terms.
That reflected Hitler’s dilemma. Although Britain’s land defences were weak, and she had yet to organize and re-equip her Army, his own forces were unprepared for a major amphibious assault. And, while the Wehrmacht made its preparations, the British Army was strengthening by the day. The RAF had been perilously weakened by the campaign in France, but it was relatively well organized and was also strengthening. The Navy was already strong, highly motivated and well prepared. In all probability, by the time Germany was ready to mount an invasion, Britain would be strong enough to resist it.
Thus, far from seeking to “break us in this island” – which was Churchill’s framing – Hitler’s best strategy was to undermine British resolve with a series of peace offers. This was a means of destabilizing the fragile political coalition which formed the Churchill Government, and weakening the home front, with a view to achieving regime change. And he had good reason to believe that Britain might respond to a suitably couched offer, if backed by a raft of threats.
In the first stages of the battle, there seem to have been five substantive efforts by the Nazis to seek negotiations – the two via David Kelly in Berne, the contacts with Lord Lothian in Washington after Hitler’s “appeal to reason”, through Victor Mallet in Stockholm, and then the Hoare contacts in Madrid. There are also claims of attempts to suborn the Duke of Windsor. Then there were the Dahlerus and Plesman initiatives, conducted via Göring.
The fact that Hitler made his appeal in the first place, and the responses to the “feelers”, strongly suggests that he believed Britain might have been prepared to negotiate. The issue is not whether Britain would have negotiated, but whether Hitler believed she might. And it is clear that he did. From the British perspective, in the early days, there was every advantage to be gained from playing along. And the intention expressed by Kelly was precisely that, in order to delay the German offensive.
At the time, there were many reasons why the manoeuvres could not have been revealed. Churchill, who had made his reputation on a “no appeasement” platform, could hardly be seen to be talking to the enemy. Moreover, on 4 July 1940, the day of the shelling of the French fleet at Mers-El-Kebir in Morocco, he had specifically told the House – and the nation – that there would be no negotiation. There could be no misunderstanding his message:
The action we have already taken should be, in itself, sufficient to dispose once and for all of the lies and rumours which have been so industriously spread by German propaganda and Fifth Column activities that we have the slightest intention of entering into negotiation
s in any form and through any channel with the German and Italian Governments. We shall, on the contrary, prosecute the war with the utmost vigour by all the means that are open to us until the righteous purposes for which we entered upon it have been fulfilled.2
On 14 July, in his BBC broadcast, he had actually gone further: “we shall seek no terms, we shall tolerate no parley”. He could not be seen to be going back on words so publically and openly declared. And had his reputation survived such a breach of faith, once it had been learned that negotiations were in hand, pressure on him to come to terms might have been irresistible. Thus, it was vitally important to suppress details of the ongoing contacts and present the public with the straightforward message of unyielding resistance.
What applied on a domestic level also applied to America. Had Roosevelt – and the American public – seen negotiation with Germany as a realistic proposition, the President might have encouraged that endeavour, and withdrawn support for the prosecution of the war. Thus, only when the rejection of peace feelers had been immediate and unequivocal, as on 11 September, did the British feel it safe to tell Roosevelt of an approach.
For these reasons, therefore, there was also sense in keeping attention focused on the daylight air war, the by-product of which was to strengthen what was to become the Battle of Britain myth.
Many Not the Few: The Stolen History of the Battle of Britain Page 45
