by Erik Larson
Still, being away from the house made her uneasy. “I wish I could go over & see what is happening,” she told him. “I am delighted to have evacuees as I can do so little to help anybody in my present state, but I would like to be running it myself, & secretly hope they’re not pigging up our lovely home.”
As cheap as the rent was, the house was expensive to operate. The curtains alone were slated to cost £162, or roughly $10,000 today. Happily, Clementine had agreed to contribute the full cost. Financial pressures mounted. “Please darling pay the telephone account,” Pamela wrote to Randolph.
His own spending while in Scotland became a worry as well. He lived and trained with the very wealthy members of his club, White’s, who had formed the commando unit together, and therein lay danger. “Darling,” Pamela wrote, “I know it is difficult now you are living with so many rich people, only do try & save a bit on your messing bills, etc. Remember baby Winston & I are willing to starve for you, but we would prefer not to.”
* * *
—
ON THE EVENING OF Monday, October 14, 1940, while Churchill was dining with guests in the newly fortified Garden Rooms at 10 Downing Street, a bomb fell so close to the building that it blew out windows and destroyed the kitchen and a sitting room. Soon after the bombing, Clementine, in a letter to Violet Bonham Carter, wrote, “We have no gas or hot water and are cooking on an oil stove. But as a man called to Winston out of the darkness the other night, ‘It’s a grand life if we don’t weaken!’ ”
The same night 10 Downing was struck, bombs also caused major damage to the nearby Treasury building, and a direct hit destroyed the Carlton Club, popular with senior members of Churchill’s government, some of whom were present in its dining room when the blast occurred. Harold Nicolson got a full account from one guest, future prime minister Harold Macmillan. “They heard the bomb screaming down and ducked instinctively,” Nicolson recorded in his diary on October 15. “There was a loud crash, the main lights went out and the whole place was filled with the smell of cordite and the dust of rubble. The side-lights on the tables remained alight, glimmering murkily in the thick fog which settled down on everything, plastering their hair and eye-brows with thick dust.” There were about 120 people in the club when the bomb detonated, but none was seriously hurt. “An astonishing escape,” wrote Nicolson.
With Britain’s seat of government seemingly under fire, prudence dictated a fresh retreat to Chequers. Cars and secretaries were marshaled. The usual convoy set off, moving slowly through rubble-strewn streets. A dozen or so miles out, Churchill abruptly asked, “Where is Nelson?” Meaning, of course, the cat.
Nelson was not in the car; nor did he appear to be in any of the other vehicles.
Churchill ordered his driver to turn around and go back to No. 10. There, a secretary cornered the terrified cat and trapped him under a wastebasket.
With Nelson safely aboard, the cars resumed their journey.
* * *
—
IN LONDON THAT FOLLOWING Saturday night, October 19, John Colville experienced firsthand the Luftwaffe’s apparent new focus on bombing Whitehall. After having dinner at his home, he set out to return to work, riding in a car the army had lately made available to Churchill’s staff. Up ahead, the sky was suffused with an orange glow. He directed the driver to turn onto the Embankment, along the Thames, and saw that a warehouse on the far bank was wholly aflame, just beyond County Hall, the immense Edwardian escarpment that housed London’s local government.
Colville understood at once that the fire would serve as a beacon for the bombers above. His driver headed for Downing Street at high speed. The car entered Whitehall just as a bomb exploded on the Admiralty building, which fronted the Horse Guards Parade.
The driver stopped the car near the entrance to a passage that led to the Treasury building. Colville leapt out and headed toward No. 10 on foot. A few moments later, incendiaries began to land all around him. He dropped to the ground and lay flat.
The roof of the Foreign Office building caught fire. Two incendiaries fell into the already heavily damaged Treasury building; others landed on open ground.
Colville, heart pounding, raced to No. 10 and entered through an emergency exit. He spent the evening in Churchill’s reinforced dining room, on the basement level. The rest of the night was peaceful, despite an electric fan that sounded to Colville exactly like a German airplane.
* * *
—
WHILE COLVILLE WAS DODGING incendiaries in Whitehall, Churchill was at Chequers, in a dispirited mood. He and Pug Ismay sat alone in the Hawtrey Room, neither speaking. Ismay often found himself in this role, serving as a quiet presence, ready to offer advice and opinions when asked, or to listen as Churchill tried out ideas and lines for upcoming speeches, or simply to sit with him in companionable silence.
Churchill looked tired, and was clearly deep in thought. The Dakar episode weighed on him. When would the French stand and fight? Elsewhere, U-boats were taking a staggering toll in ships and lives, with eight ships sunk on the previous day alone, and ten more that day. And the continuing cycle of air-raid warnings and bombs, and the disruption they brought, appeared for once to be wearing him down.
It was hard for Ismay to see Churchill so tired, but, as he recalled later, a positive outcome also occurred to him: Maybe, at last, just this one night, Churchill would go to bed early, thereby freeing Ismay to do likewise.
Instead, Churchill suddenly jumped to his feet. “I believe that I can do it!” he said. In an instant, his tiredness seemed dispelled. Lights came on. Bells rang. Secretaries were summoned.
CHAPTER 55
Washington and Berlin
IN AMERICA, THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION turned ugly. Republican strategists persuaded Willkie that he was being too much the gentleman, that the only way to increase his standing in the polls was to make the war the central issue; he needed to portray Roosevelt as a warmonger and himself as an isolationist. Willkie assented with reluctance but plunged in with enthusiasm, waging a campaign designed to spike fear throughout America. If Roosevelt was elected, he warned, the country’s young men would be on their way to Europe within five months. His poll numbers improved immediately.
In the midst of this, on October 29, just a week before Election Day, Roosevelt presided over a ceremony at which the first lottery number of the new draft was selected. Given America’s isolationist bent, it was a risky thing to do, even though Willkie also endorsed selective service as an important step in improving America’s ability to defend itself. In a broadcast that night, Roosevelt chose his words carefully, avoiding altogether “conscription” and “draft,” using instead the more neutral, historically resonant term “muster.”
But otherwise, Willkie abandoned all restraint. One Republican broadcast aimed at America’s mothers said, “When your boy is dying on some battlefield in Europe—or maybe in Martinique”—a Vichy French stronghold—“and he’s crying out, ‘Mother! Mother!’—don’t blame Franklin D. Roosevelt because he sent your boy to war—blame YOURSELF, because YOU sent Franklin D. Roosevelt back to the White House!”
Willkie’s sudden strength in the polls prompted Roosevelt to counter with an adamant declaration of his own wish to avoid war. “I have said this before,” he told an audience in Boston, “but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” The official Democratic platform added the phrase “except in case of attack,” but now he left it out, an omission surely meant to appeal to isolationist voters. Challenged on this by one of his speechwriters, the president replied testily, “Of course we’ll fight if we’re attacked. If somebody attacks us, then it isn’t a foreign war, is it? Or do they want me to guarantee that our troops will be sent into battle only in the event of another Civil War.”
The results of Gallup’s final “presidential trial heat” for 1940,
conducted October 26–31 and released the day before the election, showed Roosevelt leading Willkie by only four percentage points, down from twelve points earlier in the month.
* * *
—
IN BERLIN, THE LUFTWAFFE prepared to execute a new shift in strategy ordered by its master, Hermann Göring, that would bring an even greater swath of England’s civilian population into its bombsights.
A month earlier, after reviewing the Luftwaffe’s failure to bring Churchill to heel, Hitler had postponed Operation Sea Lion, without setting a future date, though he contemplated revisiting the idea in the spring. He and his commanders had always been uneasy about the prospect of such an assault. Had Göring’s beloved Luftwaffe achieved air superiority over the British Isles as promised, invasion might have seemed a more comely prospect, but with the RAF still in control of the air, it would be foolhardy.
England’s resilience raised a forbidding prospect for Hitler. As long as Churchill stood fast, intervention by the United States on England’s behalf seemed increasingly likely. Hitler saw Churchill’s destroyer deal as concrete evidence of the growing bond between the two. But he feared worse: that once America entered the war, Roosevelt and Churchill would then seek an alliance with Stalin, who had demonstrated a clear appetite for expansion and was fast strengthening his military forces. Although Germany and Russia had signed a nonaggression pact in 1939, Hitler harbored no illusions that Stalin would honor it. An alliance between England, America, and Russia would create, Hitler said, “a very difficult situation for Germany.”
The solution, as he saw it, was to eliminate Russia from the equation, and thereby protect his eastern flank. War with Russia also promised to fulfill his longtime imperative, espoused since the 1920s, to crush Bolshevism and acquire “living space,” his cherished Lebensraum.
His generals were still concerned about the dangers of a two-front war, the avoidance of which had always been a bedrock principle in Hitler’s strategic thinking; now, however, he appeared to cast aside his own misgivings. Compared to a cross-channel invasion of England, war against Russia seemed easy, the kind of campaign at which his forces had thus far demonstrated great proficiency. The worst of the fighting would be over in six weeks, he predicted, but he stressed that the attack on Russia must begin soon. The longer he put it off, the more time Stalin would have to bolster his forces.
In the meantime, to block Churchill from interfering, he ordered Göring to step up his air campaign. “The decisive thing,” he said, “is the ceaseless continuation of air attacks.” He still held out the hope that the Luftwaffe would at last deliver on its promises and by itself drive Churchill to seek peace.
Göring fashioned a new plan. He would still hammer London but would target other urban centers as well, with the intent to annihilate them and, in so doing, crush England’s resistance at last. He himself selected the targets and issued the code name for the first attack, “Moonlight Sonata,” playing off the popular name for a haunting piano work by Beethoven.
What he prepared to launch now was a raid that the RAF, in a later report, would describe as a milestone in the history of air warfare. “For the first time,” the report said, “air power was massively applied against a city of small [proportions] with the object of ensuring its obliteration.”
CHAPTER 56
The Frog Speech
AT CHEQUERS, DESPITE THE LATE hour, Churchill began dictating at once. His plan: to speak directly to the French public, in both English and French, in a broadcast from the BBC’s new radio studio at the Cabinet War Rooms in London. Uneasy about the possibility that the Vichy government in charge of unoccupied France might formally ally its armed forces with Germany’s, Churchill hoped to assure French people everywhere, including in France’s colonies, that England was wholly on their side and to rouse them to acts of resistance. For the time being, to his great frustration, he could offer nothing more. He proposed to write the French version himself.
He dictated slowly, without notes. Pug Ismay stayed with him, the hoped-for early bedtime lost. Churchill spoke for two hours, well into Sunday morning. He notified the Ministry of Information that he planned to make his broadcast the following night, Monday, October 21, and would speak for a total of twenty minutes—ten in French, ten in English. “Make all necessary arrangements,” he directed.
On Monday, while still at Chequers, he continued working on the speech, still intent on drafting the French version himself but finding the going harder than his ego had led him to expect. The Ministry of Information dispatched to Chequers a young staff member with an academic competence in French to translate the text, but the man made no headway. He was “terrified,” according to John Peck, the private secretary on duty at Chequers that day. The would-be translator found himself confronting a prime minister who had again changed his mind and was trying anew to work up his own French draft, and was adamant about doing so. The young man was shipped back to London.
The ministry sent a new translator, Michel Saint-Denis, “a charming, avuncular, truly bilingual Frenchman…unearthed from the BBC,” according to Peck. Churchill acknowledged the man’s obvious expertise, and relented.
By now Churchill had begun referring to the text as his “frog speech,” “frog” being an unhappy nickname for a Frenchman. The speech was of sufficient importance that Churchill actually rehearsed it. Ordinarily this would have drawn forth his streak of stubborn childishness, but translator Saint-Denis, to his relief, encountered a tolerant, mostly obedient prime minister. Churchill had difficulty with certain French linguistic maneuvers, in particular rolling his r’s, but Saint-Denis found him to be a willing student, later recalling, “He relished the flavor of some words as though he was tasting fruit.”
Churchill and Saint-Denis drove to London. The speech was now scheduled for nine o’clock that night. This being the BBC’s accustomed news hour, Churchill was guaranteed a vast listenership in England and France and, via illicit radios, in Germany.
* * *
—
AN AIR RAID WAS underway when Churchill, wearing his pale blue siren suit, left 10 Downing Street to head for the war rooms, followed by various staff members and Saint-Denis. Ordinarily the walk was a pleasant one, but the Luftwaffe once again seemed to be targeting government buildings. Searchlights sabered the sky, illuminating the condensation trails of bombers above. Anti-aircraft guns blasted away, sometimes with a single report, sometimes a brisk sequence, at two rounds a second. The shells exploded far overhead, showering the streets with steel splinters that whistled as they fell. Churchill walked briskly; his translator ran to keep up.
Inside the BBC’s broadcast chamber, Churchill settled in to begin his speech. The room was cramped, with a single armchair, a desk, and a microphone. The translator, Saint-Denis, was to introduce him to listeners, but found he had no place to sit.
“On my knees,” Churchill said.
He leaned back and patted his thigh. Wrote Saint-Denis, “I inserted a leg between his and next moment had seated myself partly on the arm of the chair and partly on his knee.”
“Frenchmen!” Churchill began. “For more than thirty years in peace and war I have marched with you, and I am marching still along the same road.” Britain, too, was under attack, he said, referring to the nightly air raids. He assured his audience that “our people are bearing up unflinchingly. Our Air Force has more than held its own. We are waiting for the long-promised invasion. So are the fishes.”
What followed was a plea for the French to take heart and not make things worse by impeding Britain’s fight—this clearly a reference to Dakar. Hitler was the true enemy, Churchill stressed: “This evil man, this monstrous abortion of hatred and defeat, is resolved on nothing less than the complete wiping out of the French nation, and the disintegration of its whole life and future.”
Churchill urged resistance, including within “so-called unoccupied F
rance,” another reference to Vichy-administered territory.
“Frenchmen!” he declaimed. “Rearm your spirits before it is too late.”
He promised that he and the British Empire would never give up until Hitler was beaten. “Good night, then,” he said. “Sleep to gather strength for the morning. For the morning will come.”
At Chequers, Mary listened with great pride. “Tonight Papa spoke to France,” she wrote in her diary. “So frankly—so encouragingly—so nobly & tenderly.
“I hope his voice reached many of them, and that its power & richness will have brought them new hope & faith.” She felt moved to inscribe in her diary the chorus to “La Marseillaise,” in French, which begins, “Aux armes, citoyens…” To arms, citizens.
“Dear France,” she ended, “—so great & glorious be worthy of your noblest song and of that right cause you twice bled for—Liberty.”
In the Cabinet War Rooms, when the broadcast came to an end, there was silence. “Nobody moved,” translator Saint-Denis recalled. “We were deeply stirred. Then Churchill stood up; his eyes were full of tears.”
Churchill said, “We have made history tonight.”
* * *
—
IN BERLIN, A WEEK later, Goebbels began his morning meeting by bemoaning the fact that the German public appeared to be listening to the BBC “on an increasing scale.”
He ordered “heavy sentences for radio offenders” and told his propaganda lieutenants that “every German must be clear in his mind that listening in to these broadcasts represents an act of serious sabotage.”
As it happened, according to an RAF report summarizing intelligence gathered from captured Luftwaffe airmen, this injunction “in the long run worked in the opposite sense to that which was intended; it produced an irresistible urge to listen to them.”
