Alone, 1932-1940

by William Manchester

  The Foreign Office and Air Ministry experts protested that this was mendacity. The parliamentary under secretary for foreign affairs produced a sheaf of reports demonstrating that German pilots and planes, far from being “behind in training and equipment,” were in the lead. Even if Luftwaffe air expansion ended in 1937, aerodynamic engineers said, Britain might not catch up until 1942, which meant that in the interval German diplomacy could exploit the gap.

  Baldwin considered a cover-up and rejected it. A parliamentary inquiry could destroy him and give Churchill a national forum from which he could emerge as Britain’s hero. So, to the consternation of a majority of his ministers, he announced that he had decided to make a clean breast of things. Addressing the House on May 22, nearly two months after Hitler’s revelation, he quoted his pledge and followed it with what might be called his first confession:

  With regard to the figure I gave in November of German air strength, nothing that has come to my knowledge since then makes me think that figure was wrong. I believed at the time it was right. Where I was wrong was in my estimate of the future. There I was completely wrong…. Whatever responsibility there may be—and we are perfectly ready to meet criticism—that responsibility is not that of any single Minister; it is the responsibility of the Government as a whole, and we are all responsible, and we are all to blame.133

  “The horror of that moment,” the King went on, “I shall never, never forget!”

  “You will, though,” the Queen said, “if you don’t make a memorandum of it.”

  The fact that Stanley Baldwin had made a personal pledge to Parliament and England was ignored. Privately he blamed the Foreign Office. But FO figures which would have alerted him had gone to the Air Ministry. Vansittart recalled: “S.B. did not know the true position, either because the Air Ministry had not given my figures to him, or because it took them with salt, or because it had different ones of its own. Or perhaps they just got into a box and stayed there.”

  Intelligence, Van noted, “was becoming increasingly hard to operate in Germany, because informants, if detected, died slow and horrible deaths. Money was no longer enough for the risk of vastly improved tortures. Yet the facts were there. If S.B. had none, he was the rasher to say that we had a 50 percent margin.”134 The implications of the new situation were profoundly disturbing. Working at maximum capacity, British industry could turn out 1,250 planes in two years. Safety required twice as many.

  Churchill expected a dramatic surge of public opinion, or at the very least a formal parliamentary inquiry. The conviction that he and England had been cheated burned in him. In April he had written Clementine: “How discreditable for the Government to have… misled Parliament upon a matter involving the safety of the country.” Two days later he had written her again: “It is a shocking thing when a Government openly commits itself to statements on a matter affecting the public safety which are bound to be flagrantly disproved by events.”135

  But he had not thought it through. If the government fell, who would succeed? In other circumstances he might have expected a coalition, but both the Labour and Liberal parties had opposed any arms appropriations. Unmoved by Hitler’s disclosures, they continued to plan waging the 1935 election campaign, now imminent, against “Tory armaments.” Sinclair delivered a long speech in Parliament on “the question of private profits being made out of the means of death,” and expressed astonishment at Winston’s “dangerous argument” that vast sums should be spent on the RAF “in view of the financial conditions of the country and the intolerable burdens of our national debt and taxation.” Lloyd George declared that Germany had been treated “as a pariah.” She had, he said, been “driven into revolution” by the architects of Versailles (of whom he had been one) and demanded that her grievances be “put right.”

  Meanwhile, Baldwin was traveling around the country, puffing his pipe and assuring relieved audiences that England was safe. “His statements were wrong,” Churchill wrote in an unpublished memorandum, “but they were everywhere accepted… by the British public.” Winston blamed Fleet Street. His indictment was unjustified; as Lord Londonderry noted, press comment was “vehement.” British reporters entering Germany confirmed the existence of the swelling army and the sense of urgency among the generals. In detailed dispatches the Daily Telegraph reported that the Luftwaffe was “already equipped with practically double the number of firstline military aircraft available in the country for the purposes of home defence.” No sensible man could doubt now that Churchill had been right and Baldwin wrong. Londonderry wrote that the unmasking of the Baldwin pledge “came as a rude shock to the British public.” In an open apology to Winston for having “ignored” his warnings, the Daily Express prophesied: “The reaction of the British public to the Nazi rearmament will be plain and positive.”136

  It wasn’t, though. To a British colonel, a survivor of the Dardanelles expedition twenty years earlier, Churchill wrote that he was “astounded at the indifference” which had been the country’s response to “the fact that the Government have been utterly wrong about the German air strength,” and in a despairing note to Clemmie he said that the Nazis were “not only substantially stronger than we are,” but were “manufacturing at such a rate that we cannot catch them up.”137

  By summer it was clear that the Dear Vicar had not only weathered the rearmament crisis; he was more popular than ever. Later Churchill recalled bitterly: “There was even a strange wave of enthusiasm for a Minister who did not hesitate to say he was wrong…. Conservative Members seemed angry with me for having brought their trusted leader to a plight from which only his native manliness and honesty had extricated him; but not, alas, his country.” He wrote a friend: “When I first went into Parliament the most insulting charge which could be made against a Minister—short of actual malfeasance—was that he had endangered the safety of the country…. Yet such are the surprising qualities of Mr. Baldwin that what all had been taught to shun has now been elevated into a canon of political virtue.”138

  The revelations emanating from Germany—the announcement of the Luftwaffe, the overt rejection of Versailles and the resumption of conscription, the claim of air parity with Britain—had shaken all Europe, and reverberations continued through the spring. Mussolini at that time was committed to neither Germany nor the democracies. The Duce admired Hitler’s style but worried about Austria. He liked it as it was, a buffer between Italy and the Reich, but he knew the Führer had designs upon it. Therefore he had agreed to meet Ramsay MacDonald and Premier Pierre-Étienne Flandin for a three-power conference in Stresa, Italy. There, in April, the three leaders had declared that they would “oppose by all appropriate means any unilateral repudiation of treaties which may endanger the peace of Europe.” This formation of the “Stresa Front” was followed by negotiations between Paris and Moscow for a Franco-Soviet military alliance. Stalin’s foreign commissar then signed a similar pact with Czechoslovakia, though this was odd: the two countries lacked a common border; if Soviet troops were to rescue the Czechs, they would have to cross Poland or Rumania, both of whom historically regarded Russia as their bête noir.139

  Hitler, deciding that Europe needed more reassurance, summoned the Reichstag on May 21 and delivered another Friedensrede, declaring that Germany would never dream of threatening other countries, that the Reich “has solemnly recognized and guaranteed France her frontiers,” including the renunciation of “all claims to Alsace-Lorraine,” and—at a time when Nazi Strassenkämpfer were storming through the streets of Vienna, clubbing Austrian pedestrians who had failed to greet them with the stiff-armed Hitlergruss—that “Germany neither intends nor wishes to interfere in the internal affairs of Austria, to annex Austria, or to conclude an Anschluss.”140

  In London The Times rejoiced. The Führer’s speech was “reasonable, straightforward, and comprehensive. No one who reads it with an impartial mind can doubt that the points of policy laid down by Herr Hitler may fairly constitute the basis of a complet
e settlement with Germany—a free, equal and strong Germany instead of the prostrate Germany upon whom peace was imposed sixteen years ago.” But the only settlement the Führer wanted was one achieved by conquest. On the evening of May 21, a few hours after his Friedensrede, he issued a secret decree reorganizing the Reich’s military establishment. The name Reichswehr, a reminder of the hated Weimar regime, was replaced by the prouder, more aggressive Wehrmacht; the Ministry of Defense was rechristened the Ministry of War. General Blomberg, the war minister, was designated commander in chief of the armed forces. Under Blomberg, Göring headed the Luftwaffe, Raeder the navy, and Werner von Fritsch the army. Beck became chief of the Generalstab. In a few months, the War Academy would ceremoniously reopen, and the men Hitler had chosen to lead Germany in the coming war would speak eloquently of “the spirit of the Old Army.” The tempo of the Reich’s martial music was accelerando.

  Had The Times known of this, Dawson’s enthusiasm might have been tempered, but there can be little doubt that the paper’s course would have remained unaltered. Very likely, excuses would have been found for Hitler. How Dawson and Barrington-Ward remained so blind to developments in central Europe is unfathomable. It is not as though information was withheld from them. Norman Ebbutt, the paper’s Berlin correspondent, filed accurate, perceptive dispatches on Nazi Germany for over three years, until the summer of 1937, when the Nazis, realizing that there seemed to be virtually no limit to the humiliation and intimidation London would accept rather than risk war, expelled him. Ebbutt’s editors read his stories; they knew what was happening in the Third Reich, though their readers often did not; his dispatches were frequently rewritten or suppressed by Dawson, who, after five years of jumping through Hitler’s hoops, merely wondered at the man’s ingratitude. He wrote H. G. Daniels, his Geneva correspondent: “I do my utmost, night after night, to keep out of the paper anything that might hurt their [Nazi] susceptibilities. I can really think of nothing that has been printed now for many months past to which they could possibly take exception as unfair comment.”141

  The Führer, meantime, had made England an offer which any proud government would have rejected. In November 1934 he had told the British ambassador that Germany, in building up her navy, would agree to limit it to 35 percent of the size of the Royal Navy, with parity, or something close to it, in submarines. He had repeated his proposal to Lord Lothian in January, to Simon again in March, and on May 21 before the Reichstag, vowing that there would be no escalation of demands. He recognized “the overpowering importance, and hence the justification of the British Empire to dominate the seas,” and he was determined to “maintain a relationship with the British people and state which will prevent for all time a repetition of the only struggle there has been between the two nations.” He added: “Für Deutschland ist sie endgültig” (“For Germany this is final”).142

  The Times found Hitler’s proposal “sincere” and “well considered,” and the prime minister and his cabinet agreed. Baldwin, at that point still lord president, received Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Reich’s ambassador-at-large, to review the details. In less than two weeks S.B. intended to cast MacDonald aside and move into No. 10 himself. It was time he dealt directly with the Germans. He had negotiations in mind, but it turned out that there was no room for them; Hitler, Ribbentrop explained, had committed himself to the Reichstag and could not retreat. However, he quickly added, the Führer would never dream of naval rivalry with Britain, though submarines were an exception to the 35 percent ratio; there the Germans meant to limit themselves to four vessels for every five British subs, except in cases of “Notwendigkeit” (“necessity”). Baldwin accepted on the spot, then called in a small group of ministers and laid it all before them.143

  Even the most devout parishioner has moments of doubt, and now and then one finds a true believer in appeasement straying, if only a few steps, from the garden path. It happened at this point to Sir John Simon. Usually Simon was among the most devout. But for a moment in 1935 he was shaken; during the opening talks with German naval officers and Wilhelmstrasse diplomats he lost his temper, delivered a heated lecture on the unwisdom of ratios, and stalked from the room. He was the only member of the cabinet who refused to endorse the treaty. His successor as foreign secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, spoke sharply in the House on July 11 about “those people”—he meant Churchill and the Churchillians—“who seem to take a morbid delight in alarms and excursions, in a psychology, shall I say, of fear, perhaps even of brutality.” He called them “alarm-mongers and scaremongers.” The pact with Germany, he noted, had been greeted by the people with glee. It was “an agreement profitable alike to peace and to the taxpayer.”144

  Hoare and the rest of His Majesty’s Government overlooked a great deal. Hitler had driven a wedge between the allied nations on the Reich’s western front, the two powers his generals feared most. At the same time he had ended Germany’s diplomatic isolation, imposed by the rest of Europe after he had quit the League of Nations and abrogated Versailles. And with a stroke of the pen England—which had nothing to gain from the naval pact—was shattering what remained of Versailles’ claims to legitimacy. Germany, as she continued to rearm, could no longer be accused of breaking her word. It was perhaps true, as Eden told the French diplomat Alexis Léger, that the limitations imposed at Versailles no longer meant much. But “it should have been apparent,” Telford Taylor writes, “that for the British to countenance a reborn German Navy, including U-boats, would deeply wound French and Italian feelings.”145 Moreover, with an Anglo-Italian crisis over Ethiopia imminent, the timing of the pact was atrocious.

  Two backbenchers in the House saw this: Lloyd George and Churchill. The Welsh firebrand was very old now, and his flame was flickering low, but Winston was fine, fit, and fierce. Speaking immediately after Hoare, he damned the agreement. Britain, he said, had struck a very poor bargain. The assumption that the Nazis would observe the still untested rules of submarine warfare was, he said, “the acme of gullibility.” He pointed out that Britain had “condoned this unilateral violation of the Treaty [of Versailles]” without conferring with any of “the other countries concerned.” At the very moment when European salvation depended on a “gathering together of Powers” fearing the “rearmed strength of Germany,” England had chosen “to depart from the principle of collective security in a very notable fashion.” The French would moan but cling desperately to Britain, their only sure ally. The Italians could go elsewhere. And, he predicted, they would.

  But the most perilous feature of the pact, said Churchill, was that it took no account of Britain’s worldwide responsibilities. Germany, he reminded Parliament, had no overseas possessions. Britain had an empire. He knew there were men in the chamber who disapproved of the Empire, but it still existed, and until Parliament decided otherwise, the government was obliged to shield the Dominions, Crown Colonies, and protectorates. The 100-to-35 ratio was comforting only if the Royal Navy were confined to the North Sea.

  He paused, scowled, and then lashed out: “What a windfall this has been for Japan! Observe what the consequences are…. The British Fleet, when this [German] programme is completed, will be largely anchored in the North Sea.” Now “the whole advantage of having a great naval base at Singapore upon which a battle fleet can be based”—to protect, he pointed out, imperial domains including Australia and New Zealand—“is greatly affected by the fact that when this German fleet is built we shall not be able to keep any appreciable portion of the British Fleet so far from home.” The path to peace did not lie in bilateral agreements. War could be prevented only by collective security. And now His Majesty’s Government had abandoned that. Admirers of the German regime might rejoice, but he was troubled. Before he rose, he reminded the House, the right honorable gentleman preceding him had talked of alarm-mongers and scaremongers. He accepted those epithets. One could do worse. “It is better to be alarmed and scared now than to be killed hereafter.”146

  The issue rankl
ed. Later he noted that the Daily Herald had quoted Baldwin as saying, “We shall have to give up certain of our toys—one is ‘Britannia rules the waves.’ ” Here Baldwin was attacking, not only Churchill’s position, but also one of the three patriotic anthems Winston treasured most, the other two being “Land of Hope and Glory” and “The British Grenadiers.” Churchill drew attention to the prime minister’s misquotation. “It is, ‘Britannia, rule the waves’—an invocation, not a declaration of fact. But if the idea ‘Rule Britannia’ is a toy, it is certainly one for which many good men from time to time have been ready to die.” Yet at the time he said privately that very few Britons seemed ready to die for anything anymore; the entire country seemed crippled by a national défaillance. He had spoken to them in the tongue of Victoria’s England, itself a dead language, and there were no interpreters.147