by Erik Larson
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IN THE MEDITERRANEAN OFF Mers el-Kébir, Admiral Somerville at last gave the order to open fire. The time was 5:54 P.M., nearly a half hour past his deadline. His ships were positioned at “maximum visibility range” of 17,500 yards, just shy of ten miles.
The first salvo fell short. The second struck a breakwater, blasting loose chunks of concrete, some of which struck the French ships. The third was on target. A large French battleship, the Bretagne, with a crew of twelve hundred men, exploded, sending a great orange plume of fire and smoke hundreds of feet into the sky. A destroyer also blew up. Smoke filled the harbor, blocking the view of British spotters aboard their ships and in the air.
One minute after the British began firing, the French began to fire back, using big shipboard guns and other heavy guns on shore. Their shells fell closer and closer to the British ships, as their gunners adjusted their aim.
Somerville sent a message by wireless to London: “Am being heavily engaged.”
At 10 Downing, Churchill told First Lord Alexander that “the French were now fighting with all their vigor for the first time since war broke out.” Churchill fully expected France to declare war.
British shells struck another French battleship, drawing forth a cascade of orange flames. A large destroyer received a direct hit as it tried to flee the harbor.
In all, the ships of Force H fired thirty-six salvos of shells, each fifteen inches in diameter and packed with high explosives, until the French guns went quiet. Somerville gave the order to cease fire at 6:04 P.M., just ten minutes after the action began.
As the smoke cleared, Somerville saw that the battleship Bretagne had disappeared. The attack and the secondary actions killed 1,297 French officers and sailors. To the statistically inclined, that worked out to roughly 130 lives per minute. Nearly a thousand of the dead had been aboard the Bretagne. Somerville’s Force H suffered no casualties.
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AT 10 DOWNING, news of the fighting began to arrive. Churchill paced his office, and kept repeating, “Terrible, terrible.”
The battle affected him deeply, as daughter Mary observed in her diary. “It is so terrible that we should be forced to fire on our own erstwhile allies,” she wrote. “Papa is shocked and deeply grieved that such action has been necessary.”
Strategically, the attack yielded obvious benefits, partially crippling the French navy, but to Churchill what mattered just as much or more was what it signaled. Until this point, many onlookers had assumed that Britain would seek an armistice with Hitler, now that France, Poland, Norway, and so many other countries had fallen under his sway, but the attack provided vivid, irrefutable proof that Britain would not surrender—proof to Roosevelt and proof, as well, to Hitler.
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THE NEXT DAY, THURSDAY, July 4, Churchill revealed the story of Mers el-Kébir to the House of Commons, telling it as a kind of maritime thriller, recounting the battle as it had unfolded, in direct terms, not shying from details. He called it a “melancholy action” but one whose necessity was beyond challenge. “I leave the judgment of our action, with confidence, to Parliament. I leave it to the nation, and I leave it to the United States. I leave it to the world and to history.”
The House roared its approval, rising in a wild tumult, Labour, Liberals, and Conservatives alike. Churchill’s great trick—one he had demonstrated before, and would demonstrate again—was his ability to deliver dire news and yet leave his audience feeling encouraged and uplifted. “Fortified” is how Harold Nicolson put it in his diary that day. Despite the grim circumstances, and the grimmer potential that France might now declare war on Britain, Nicolson felt something akin to elation. “If we can stick it,” he wrote, “we really shall have won the war. What a fight it is! What a chance for us! Our action against the French Fleet has made a tremendous effect throughout the world. I am as stiff as can be.”
The applause lasted for several minutes. Churchill wept. Amid the tumult, John Colville overheard him say, “This is heartbreaking for me.”
The public applauded as well. The Home Intelligence survey for July 4 reported that news of the attack “has been received in all Regions with satisfaction and relief….It is felt that this strong action gives welcome evidence of Government vigor and decision.” A Gallup Poll for July 1940 found that 88 percent of Britons approved of the prime minister.
Within the Admiralty itself, however, there was condemnation. The senior officers involved in the attack called it “an act of sheer treachery.” French naval officers sent Somerville a scathing letter that, according to Pug Ismay, accused the admiral “of having brought disgrace on the whole naval profession.” Outwardly, Somerville seemed to brush off the rebuke, but, wrote Ismay, “I am sure it cut him to the quick.”
The episode caused a tense moment over lunch at 10 Downing Street soon afterward. Word came to Clementine that one of the expected guests, General Charles de Gaulle, now lodged in England, was in an even more obstreperous mood than usual, and that she should make sure everyone at lunch was on their best behavior. Pamela Churchill was among those invited.
At Clementine’s end of the table, the conversation lurched into dangerous territory. She told de Gaulle that she hoped the French fleet would now join with Britain in the fight against Germany. “To this,” Pamela recalled, “the General curtly replied that, in his view, what would really give the French fleet satisfaction would be to turn their guns ‘On you!’ ” Meaning against the British fleet.
Clementine liked de Gaulle, but, keenly aware of how deeply her husband grieved having to sink the French ships, she now rounded on the general and, in her perfect French, took him to task “for uttering words and sentiments that ill became either an ally or a guest in this country,” as Pamela put it.
Churchill, at the far side of the table, sought to dispel the tension. He leaned forward and, in an apologetic tone, in French, said, “You must excuse my wife, my General; she speaks French too well.”
Clementine glared at Churchill.
“No, Winston,” she snapped.
She turned back to de Gaulle and, again in French, said, “That is not the reason. There are certain things that a woman can say to a man that a man cannot say. And I am saying them to you, General de Gaulle.”
The next day, by way of apology, de Gaulle sent her a large basket of flowers.
CHAPTER 20
Berlin
HITLER WAS SERIOUS ABOUT SEEKING an agreement with Britain that would end the war, though he grew convinced that no such thing could be achieved while Churchill was still in power. Britain’s attack on the French fleet at Mers el-Kébir had proved that beyond doubt. In July, Hitler met with his deputy, Rudolf Hess, and told him of his frustration, conveying his “wish” that Hess find a way of engineering the removal of Churchill as prime minister so as to clear a path for negotiations with a presumably more pliable successor. As Hess saw it, Hitler was assigning him the great mandate of securing peace in the west.
To Hess, it was a welcome honor. For a time, he had been closer to Hitler than any other party member. For eight years he served as Hitler’s private secretary, and, following the abortive Nazi putsch of 1923, was incarcerated with Hitler at Landsberg Prison, where Hitler began writing Mein Kampf. Hess typed the manuscript. Hess understood that a central tenet of Hitler’s geopolitical strategy set out in the book was the importance of peace with Britain, and he knew how strongly Hitler believed that in the prior war Germany had made a fatal mistake in provoking Britain to fight. Hess considered himself so much in tune with Hitler that he could execute his will without being commanded to do so. Hess hated Jews, and orchestrated many restrictions on Jewish life. He cast himself as the embodiment of the Nazi spirit and made himself responsible for perpetuating national adoration of Hitler and ensuring party purity.
But with the advent of war, Hess began to lose prominence, and men like Hermann Göring began to ascend. To have Hitler now assign so important an undertaking must certainly have reassured Hess. There was little time, however. With France now fallen, Britain must either agree to stand down or face extinction. One way or another, Churchill had to be removed from office.
In his conversation with Hess, Hitler expressed his frustration at England’s intransigence in a way that, given events soon to occur, would seem at least superficially prophetic.
“What more can I do?” Hitler asked. “I can’t fly over there and beg on bended knee.”
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THE ATTACK AT MERS EL-KÉBIR had indeed taken Nazi leaders by surprise, but Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels now saw that the incident opened a new path for waging Germany’s propaganda war against Britain. At his morning meeting on July 4, he told his lieutenants to use the incident to show that once again France was bearing the brunt of the war, even as Britain claimed that the attack was in France’s interest. “Here,” he told the group, “Britain has really revealed herself without her mask.”
All efforts were to be made to continue stoking hatred of Britain, and of Churchill in particular, but not to the point of sparking popular demand for an all-out attack. Goebbels knew that Hitler remained ambivalent about invasion and still favored a negotiated resolution. “It is therefore necessary to mark time, since we cannot anticipate any decisions by the Führer,” Goebbels said. “The mood, as far as possible, must be kept on the boil until the Führer himself has spoken.”
And Hitler did plan to speak, soon, as Goebbels knew. Anticipating his remarks, Goebbels, at a meeting two days later, emphasized that for the time being the ministry’s propaganda should promote the idea that the English “should be given one last chance of getting off comparatively slightly.”
Goebbels believed that Hitler’s coming speech could alter the course of the war, possibly even end it—and, failing that, would at least offer a rich new avenue for igniting public hatred of Churchill.
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AT 10 DOWNING STREET THAT WEEK, anxiety intensified as to whether the French might yet declare war against England, and whether Germany would now invade. On July 3, a report by the chiefs of staff warned that “major operations against this country either by invasion and/or heavy air attack may commence any day from now onwards.” It listed ominous developments detected by reconnaissance and intelligence sources, among them certain “secret sources,” a reference undoubtedly to Bletchley Park. In Norway, German forces were requisitioning and arming vessels; the country had eight hundred fishing boats. The Luftwaffe was transferring troop-carrying aircraft to its first-line air bases. The German navy held an amphibious-landing exercise on the Baltic coast, and two regiments of parachute troops moved to Belgium. Perhaps most ominous: “Information from a most reliable source is to the effect that the Germans will hold a parade of their armed forces in PARIS some time after 10th July.” Hitler, it seemed, considered victory to be certain.
“I have the impression,” John Colville wrote, “that Germany is collecting herself for a great spring; and it is an uncomfortable impression.”
Fueling his concerns was a German action that had taken place a few days earlier, on the day of Churchill’s speech about the battle at Mers el-Kébir. Twenty German dive-bombers had attacked targets on the Isle of Portland, which juts into the channel off England’s south coast. They escaped without interception by the RAF—“a bad look-out for the future if this can be done with impunity in broad daylight,” Colville wrote.
CHAPTER 21
Champagne and Garbo
ON WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, GAY Margesson visited Colville in London. They saw the Strauss operetta Die Fledermaus, performed in English. Most of the audience loved the humor; Colville and Gay did not, and left in the middle of the third act. “In the intervals,” he wrote in his diary, “Gay insisted on talking politics, about which she is as ignorant as she is prejudiced, and indulging in recriminations of Chamberlain and his Government. For the first time since I have known her I found her definitely tedious and puerile.”
As Colville himself admitted, by looking for faults in Gay he hoped to ease the hurt of her steadfast unwillingness to return his affections. But he could not help it: He was still in love.
They moved on to the Café de Paris, a popular nightclub, and there “her charms and real lovableness reasserted themselves and I forgot the somewhat unpleasant impression I had been forming.” They talked, drank champagne, and danced. An impersonator did renditions of Ingrid Bergman and Greta Garbo.
Colville was back in his own bed—alone—at two A.M., content in the belief that Gay might be warming to him at last.
CHAPTER 22
Have We Sunk So Low?
ENGLAND BRACED FOR INVASION. TROOPS piled sandbags and built machine-gun nests near the Palace of Westminster, home to Parliament and Big Ben. In Parliament Square, a small fortified redoubt—a pillbox—was disguised as a W. H. Smith book kiosk. Sandbags and guns adorned the grounds of Buckingham Palace, where the masses of tulips in the palace gardens were, according to New Yorker writer Mollie Panter-Downes, “exactly the color of blood.” The queen began taking lessons in how to shoot a revolver. “Yes,” she said, “I shall not go down like the others.” In Hyde Park, soldiers dug anti-tank trenches and erected obstacles to prevent German gliders from landing troops in the heart of London. A government pamphlet on how to behave during an invasion warned citizens to stay in their homes and not attempt to run, “because, if you run away, you will be machine-gunned from the air, as were civilians in Holland and Belgium.”
Every day, more and more of the English public bore direct witness to the war as German bombers, accompanied by masses of fighters, extended their forays deeper and deeper into the realm. Just that week, a lone bomber attacked Aberdeen, Scotland, dropping ten bombs that killed thirty-five people yet never triggered an air-raid alert. The same night, other bombers struck Cardiff, Tyneside, and near Glasgow. Forty dive-bombers with fighter escorts attacked the harbor at Dover; bombs and incendiaries fell on Avonmouth, Colchester, Brighton, Hove, and the Isle of Sheppey. Churchill made sure that Roosevelt knew about all of them. By now the Foreign Office was dispatching daily telegrams to the president on the “war situation,” matter-of-fact accountings of actions in all theaters, delivered through Britain’s ambassador in Washington. These had a dual purpose: to keep the president up to date and, more importantly, to make sure that Roosevelt understood that Britain’s need for American aid was real and urgent.
Often the German sorties were met by British fighters, which gave the civilians below a close-up look at aerial warfare. The RAF’s fighter pilots were fast becoming the heroes of the age, as were their counterparts in RAF Bomber Command. Established on April 1, 1918, in the waning months of the prior war, the RAF consolidated disparate air units operated by the army and navy in order to better defend against aerial attack. It was now acknowledged to be the first line of defense against Germany.
To Mary Churchill and her friend Judy Montagu, the pilots were gods. The two girls were spending the “high summer” together at Judy’s country home, Breccles Hall, in Norfolk, where nearly every afternoon they flirted with bomber crews from nearby air bases. In the evening they attended squadron dances, which Mary described as “very jolly and noisy and pretty drunken affairs, with sometimes an undercurrent of tension (especially if planes had failed to return).” They made “special friends,” as Mary put it, and Judy invited them back to the house “to play tennis, swim, lark about, indulge in snogging sessions in the hayloft, or just sit in the garden gossiping.” The men were for the most part in their twenties, middle-class, unmarried. Mary found them charming. She delighted in the occasions in which the pilots engaged in bouts of “beating up”—flying over Breccles at treetop level. On one occasion, crews f
rom the nearby base at Watton “gave us the most superb aerial beating up that anyone could possibly conceive,” Mary wrote in her diary. “A flight of Blenheims appeared & one after another swooped down to within 25 or 30 feet of the ground. We all nearly passed out with excitement.”
Every day these same pilots took part in life-or-death sorties that, as far as Churchill was concerned, would determine the fate of the British Empire. Civilians watched air battles unfold from the safety of their gardens or while strolling village streets and picnicking in bucolic meadows, as circular contrails filled the sky above. At dusk these caught the last of the day’s sunlight and turned a luminescent amber; at dawn, they became mother-of-pearl spirals. Aircraft crashed into pastures and forests; pilots tumbled from cockpits and drifted to earth.
On July 14, a mobile BBC radio team stationed itself on the Dover cliffs in hopes of capturing an aerial battle as it occurred, and gave its listeners an account that for some proved too enthusiastic. The BBC announcer, Charles Gardner, turned the battle into a blow-by-blow account that had more in common with a soccer commentary than a report on a mortal encounter over the channel. This struck many listeners as unseemly. A London woman wrote to the News Chronicle, “Have we really sunk so low that this sort of thing can be treated as a sporting event? With cries of glee, we were told to listen for the machine-gunning, we were asked to visualize a pilot, hampered by his parachute, struggling in the water.” She warned, with a degree of prescience, “If this sort of thing is allowed to go unchecked we shall soon have microphones installed in any available front line, with squared diagrams printed in the ‘Radio Times’ to help us follow the action.” Mass-Observation diarist Olivia Cockett also found it repellent. “It shouldn’t be allowed,” she insisted. “It makes play and sport of agonies, not to help people bear them, but to pander to the basest, crudest, most-to-be-wiped-out feelings of cruel violence.”
