Alone, 1932-1940

by William Manchester

  The necessities of war modify principle; the hand of a country whose existence is threatened is not stayed by the rules of war. Churchill, at this very time, was telling the War Cabinet that “We must violate Norwegian territorial waters”; and Pétain, worried about the stretch of French frontier undefended by the Maginot Line, had told the Conseil Supérieur de la Guerre that if France was to remain faithful to the principle which had saved her in the last war (“the defensive and continuous front”), she must face the fact that the one stretch of her frontier unprotected by the Maginot Line was the classic invasion route followed by Germans for nearly two thousand years. Consequently, he concluded: “Nous devons entrer en Belgique!”—“We must go into Belgium!” Winston agreed that Belgium could not possibly remain neutral, that it was essential to erect “a shield along the Belgian frontier to the sea against that terrible turning movement” which had “nearly encompassed our ruin in 1914.”97

  To the astonishment of the world, tiny Finland threw the Russians back. Beginning with the Japanese conquest of Manchuria eight years earlier, the aggressor powers had repeatedly overwhelmed weak, poorly led defenders. Now a small country with one-fortieth the strength of the Soviet Union was humiliating a great power, sending the invaders reeling from the Mannerheim Line, named for their leader, Field Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil von Mannerheim. The Finn victories seemed miraculous, but there were several explanations. One was Mannerheim himself. Before the Russian Revolution, when Finland belonged to the czar, he had served as a lieutenant general; he had fought the Bolsheviks to a standstill then, and now, aged seventy-two, had come out of retirement to do it again. Stalin was holding his crack divisions in reserve should Hitler strike. He had sent the Red Army’s poorest troops, ill-trained and sorely lacking in fighting spirit, against the Finns. Mannerheim led men fueled by the incentive of soldiers defending their homeland. He blinded the Russians with superior tactics, the use of superbly trained ski troops, a thorough knowledge of the lakes and forests constituting the terrain’s natural obstacles, and a strategy peculiarly suitable to arctic warfare—cutting the enemy’s line of retreat, waiting until the Russians were frozen and starved, and then counterattacking. The paralyzed invaders were not even properly clothed for the bitter Finnish winter. Churchill had spoken for tens of millions when, in his indictment of neutrals, he made an exception: “Only Finland—superb, nay, sublime—in the jaws of peril—Finland shows what free men can do. The service rendered by Finland to mankind is magnificent. They have exposed, for all the world to see, the military incapacity of the Red Army and of the Red Air Force. Many illusions about Soviet Russia have been dispelled in these few fierce weeks of fighting in the Arctic Circle.”98

  The British and the French—seeing the opportunity for a pretext to cross northern Sweden, and, in passing, to seize the Swedish iron mines at Gällivare, vital to the Third Reich’s war effort—were about to send “volunteers” to aid the Finns when the tide turned. After two months of frustration the Russians secured their communications from the Leningrad-Murmansk frontier, which they should have done before the invasion, and launched a major assault on the Mannerheim Line with fourteen divisions of sledge-borne infantry supported by heavy artillery, tanks, and warplanes. The Finns stood up to it for five ferocious weeks, counterattacking the tanks with what Churchill called “a new type of hand-grenade”—bottles filled with gasoline and topped by wick, lit at the moment of hurling—which they audaciously christened Molotov cocktails. They gave ground slowly, but they gave it. Vyborg, vital to the defense, was threatened by frontal assault and, from the rear, by troops crossing the icebound Gulf of Finland and the icebound island of Hogland. On March 6, 1940, the Finns sued for peace and the Allies disbanded their expeditionary force. The repercussions of this—for England, and particularly for Churchill—were almost immediate. Winston felt he now had an excellent precedent for intervention in Scandinavia. The greatest sequel, however, was taking shape in the minds of Hitler and the German General Staff in Zossen. Like Britain’s first lord of the Admiralty, they underestimated Soviet military strength “with,” as Liddell Hart writes, “momentous consequences the following year.”99

  Churchill was not the first man in European public life to exploit the possibilities of radio. Hitler had been doing it for seven years. But Winston was the first British statesman to reach people in their homes and move them even more deeply than Roosevelt had in his fireside chats. Because the BBC had gone to great lengths to avoid controversy, its interwar programs were extraordinarily dull—“Arranging a Garden” and “Our Friends at the Zoo” were typical. So was Churchill’s scheduled talk on the Mediterranean, which had brought Guy Burgess to Chartwell in 1938. Public issues had been discussed over the BBC, and earlier in the decade Winston had managed to get a word in now and then, but as the crises mounted on the Continent and tensions increased, Reith screened participants in debates, approving only those who presented bland views, offending no listeners, particularly those occupying the front bench in the House of Commons.

  Until he entered the War Cabinet, Churchill’s audiences had been largely confined to the House, lecture halls, and, during elections, party rallies. Suddenly that had changed. England was at war; the only action was at sea, and millions whose knowledge of Churchillian speeches had been confined to published versions heard his rich voice, resonant with urgency, dramatically heightened by his tempo, pauses, and crashing consonants, which, one listener wrote, actually made his radio vibrate. Churchill had been a name in the newspapers, but even his own columns lacked the power of his delivery. He found precisely the right words for convictions his audiences shared but had been unable to express. He spoke of “thoughtless dilettanti or purblind worldlings who sometimes ask us: ‘What is it that Britain and France are fighting for?’ To this I answer: ‘If we left off fighting you would soon find out.’ ” His elaborate metaphors, simplistic but effective, fortified his argument, and were often witty: “A baboon in a forest is a matter of legitimate speculation; a baboon in a Zoo is an object of public curiosity; but a baboon in your wife’s bed is a cause of the gravest concern.”100

  After the fall of Poland, when Hitler told the Western democracies to choose between a negotiated peace with him or “the views of Churchill and his following,” Chamberlain gave him the official reply (which Churchill helped draft), but England heard Winston’s, on the evening of November 12, 1939:

  We tried again and again to prevent this war, and for the sake of peace we put up with a lot of things happening which ought not to have happened. But now we are at war, and we are going to make war, and persevere in making war, until the other side have had enough of it…. You may take it absolutely for certain that either all that Britain and France stand for in the modern world will go down, or that Hitler, the Nazi regime, and the recurring German or Prussian menace to Europe will be broken or destroyed. That is the way the matter lies and everybody had better make up his mind to that solid, somber fact.101

  Like a thespian, Churchill began to receive critical notices. When he rose from the front bench to address the House of Commons, Beverley Baxter, an MP and a writer for the Beaverbrook press, compared him to “the old bandit who had been the terror of the mountain passes… the fire in him was burning low. His head was thrust forward characteristically, like a bull watching for the matador. He squared his shoulders a couple of times as if to make sure that his hands were free for the gestures that might come.” When Winston told BBC listeners that “Now we have begun; now we are going on; now with the help of God, and the conviction that we are the defenders of civilisation and freedom, we are going on, and we are going on to the end,” Virginia Cowles wrote that he was “giving the people of Britain the firm clear lead” they needed and “had not found elsewhere.”102

  In December, the war’s fourth month, a public opinion poll reported that barely half of the British people had expressed confidence in Chamberlain—one disillusioned Conservative described him as “hanging onto off
ice like a dirty old piece of chewing gum on the leg of a chair”—and Churchill, right behind him, was gaining. In the House of Commons smoking room, and in the lobby, predictions that Winston would succeed Chamberlain, once shocking, were no longer whispered; they were legitimate speculation. The theme is an undercurrent in Nicolson’s diaries, returning whenever disaster looms. The first cluster of references begins early, as on September 17, when he writes, “At 11 am. (a bad hour) Vita comes to tell me that Russia has invaded Poland and is striking toward Vilna…. It may be that within a few days we shall have Germany, Russia and Japan against us.” At the end of the entry, clearly a frightened man, he writes: “Chamberlain must go. Churchill may be our Clemenceau or our Gambetta. To bed very miserable and alarmed.” Nine days later, in the House, Nicolson watches as “The Prime Minister gets up to make his statement. He is dressed in deep mourning…. One feels the confidence and spirits of the House dropping inch by inch. When he sits down there is scarcely any applause. During the whole speech Winston Churchill had sat hunched beside him looking like the Chinese god of plenty suffering from acute indigestion.” Then Churchill rises. Nicolson is euphoric: “The effect of Winston’s speech was infinitely greater than could be derived from any reading of the text…. One could feel the spirits of the House rising with every word…. In those twenty minutes Churchill brought himself nearer the post of Prime Minister than he has ever been before. In the Lobbies afterwards even Chamberlainites were saying, ‘We have now found our leader.’ ” And then, in early October—at a meeting of the Eden group—Nicolson hears the second Lord Astor tell members that he “feels it is essential that the Prime Minister should be removed and that Winston Churchill should take his place.”103

  In Winston’s place another ambitious politician hearing such praise—and it was coming to him from many sides—might have taken the pulse of the House, seeking to put together a coalition to topple the government and then form one of his own. Although members of this House of Commons, elected in 1935, were no longer reflective of the national mood, they too had built high hopes in the aftermath of Munich only to see them dashed; many felt betrayed; many others had heard from constituents who felt so. But plotting wasn’t Churchill’s style. He owed the Admiralty and his seat on the War Cabinet to the prime minister. Moreover, Chamberlain hadn’t bullied him, called him on the carpet, or interfered in any way with his administration of the country’s naval policy, though he may have been tempted; Winston, being Winston, had critics among naval officers of flag rank.104

  Chamberlain did visit the upper war room frequently, but was always cordial and left expressing gratitude—if he knew that Sinclair and Beaverbrook were also shown the Admiralty maps (though neither was a member of the government), he kept it to himself. In the House Winston loyally supported the government’s policies—was indeed their most forceful advocate—and praised the P.M. from time to time. In one of his broadcasts he said: “You know I have not always agreed with Mr. Chamberlain, though we have always been personal friends. But he is a man of very tough fiber, and I can tell you that he is going to fight as obstinately for victory as he did for peace.” The war had, in fact, brought out an unexpected streak of belligerence in the prime minister. “Winston, for his part,” Colville noted, “professes absolute loyalty to the P.M. (and indeed they get along admirably),” while Chamberlain wrote: “To me personally Winston is absolutely loyal, and I am continually hearing from others of the admiration he expressed for the P.M.”105

  It was the same in Churchill’s private life. Virginia Cowles, lunching at Admiralty House, was startled by Winston’s reaction when one of the children attempted a mild jest at Chamberlain’s expense. In the past, she remembered, jokes at the prime minister’s expense had been featured at almost every meal, but this time she saw “a scowl appear on the father’s face. With enormous solemnity he said: ‘If you are going to make offensive remarks about my chief you will have to leave the table. We are united in a great and common cause and I am not prepared to tolerate such language about the Prime Minister.’ ” Similarly, when he received Lady Bonham Carter, née Violet Asquith—“Well, here we are back in the old premises after a short interval of twenty-five years,” he said in greeting—her criticism of “the old appeasers” still in the government sparked a Churchillian rebuke. In a vehement defense of Chamberlain, he said: “No man is more inflexible, more single-minded. He has a will of steel.”106

  On Friday the thirteenth of October, Churchill recorded, “my relations with Mr. Chamberlain had so far ripened that he and Mrs. Chamberlain came to dine with us at Admiralty House, where we had a comfortable flat in the attics. We were a party of four.” During Stanley Baldwin’s first prime ministry the two men had been colleagues for five years, yet they had never met socially. Churchill, “by happy chance”—one doubts that luck had anything to do with it—mentioned the Bahamas, knowing Chamberlain had spent several years there. Winston was “delighted to find my guest expand… to a degree I had not noticed before.” Out came the long, sad story; Neville’s father was convinced that the family fortune could be enriched, and an Empire industry developed, if his younger son grew sisal on a barren island near Nassau. Neville spent six years trying. Buffeted by hurricanes, struggling with inadequate labor, “living nearly naked,” as Churchill paraphrased him, he built a small harbor, wharf, and a short railroad. But those were ancillary; his objective was to produce sisal, and although he tried every known fertilizer he found it could not be done, or at any rate not by him. “I gathered,” wrote Winston, in one of his wonderfully wry curtain lines, “that in the family the feeling was that although they loved him dearly they were sorry to have lost fifty thousand pounds.” And then a thought flashed across his mind: “What a pity Hitler did not know when he met this sober English politician with his umbrella… that he was actually talking to a hard-bitten pioneer from the outer marches of the British Empire!”107

  But that was not the height of the evening. During dinner an officer came up from the war room immediately below them to report that a Nazi submarine had been sunk. He reappeared during dessert with news that a second U-boat had been sunk, and yet again, just before the ladies left the prime minister and first lord to their brandy, to announce, rather breathlessly, that a third sub had been sunk. Mrs. Chamberlain asked Winston: “Did you arrange all this on purpose?” Her host “assured her,” as he put it, “that if she would come again we would produce a similar result.”108

  As ruler of the King’s navy, Winston was paid £5,000 a year and found; Admiralty House was an absolute defense against creditors. Clementine felt like a young woman again. She hadn’t christened a ship in over twenty-six years, but she remembered the drill when invited to launch the aircraft carrier Indomitable at Barrow-in-Furness. Winston was there, and a photograph—taken at the instant she was gaily waving the ship away—became his favorite picture of her; years later, when he returned to his easel, he sketched an enchanting portrait from it. Lord Fraser, watching him during the launching, observed first “his cheers” as the long vessel slid free of the ways, “and then the grave salute,” perhaps prompted by thoughts of the ordeals Indomitable “would have to face in the future.”109

  Once the first lord and his lady had settled in topside at Admiralty House, Clementine’s friends—and some acquaintances who weren’t—came calling, wide-eyed ladies who could scarcely wait to see how she had done over the attics. Unwilling to offend them, she took them on tour, though she felt martyred; she had good taste, knew it, and didn’t need confirmation. The only one qualified to judge was Diana Cooper, and she confined her criticisms to her diary. Even there she added that she was glad that the Churchills were in Admiralty House: “Winston’s spirit, strength and confidence are… a chime that wakes the heart of the discouraged. His wife, more beautiful now than in early life, is equally fearless and indefatigable. She makes us all knit jerseys, for which the minesweepers must bless her.”110

  Winston hadn’t time to miss Chartw
ell, but something had to be done; it was impractical to keep the mansion open and prodigal to continue paying servants when only maintenance was necessary. In the early days of the war it seemed destined for a humanitarian purpose. In anticipation of heavy, continuous bombing of British cities, the evacuation of over 1,250,000 women and children, particularly those living near London’s East Side docks, had begun in August. Members of the upper class, their attitudes formed in abstract discussion of “the underprivileged” and “depressed areas,” flung open the doors of their great country homes and received the evacuees with a compassion and a hospitality that was frequently, and swiftly, regretted. Two cultures clashed; the young strangers had never seen or even heard of underwear; many would neither eat at tables nor sleep in beds; they were accustomed to doorways and alleys. Others brought lice which often spread to a horrified hostess and her own children. The unbridgeable gap was reflected in the remark of a Whitechapel mother to her six-year-old: “You dirty thing, messing the lady’s carpet. Go and do it in the corner.”111

  Chartwell had welcomed two East End mothers and their seven children. But like most other evacuees they drifted back to the docks, homesick and weary of the green country landscapes. Clemmie conferred with Winston. After two years’ work he had nearly finished Orchard Cottage, to which they intended to retire while Randolph—who had joined his father’s old regiment, the Fourth Hussars, and married the lovely Pamela Digby—moved into the big house. The cottage’s three bedrooms were quite livable; if the first lord yearned for a weekend, they could stay there. Cousin Moppet agreed to serve as caretaker. She moved into what had been the chauffeur’s cottage and was presently joined by Diana’s two small children and their nannie. They had been evacuated but did not miss London, where their mother was serving as an officer in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS). Duncan Sandys, Diana’s husband, had been called up by his territorial unit and was stationed in London with an antiaircraft battery. Sarah and Vic Oliver had taken a flat in Westminster Gardens. “Darling Papa,” Sarah wrote Winston,