The Splendid and the Vile

by Erik Larson

  She found it very moving, but also disconcerting. “It is rather frightening how terribly they depend on him,” she wrote.

  The train took them next to an experimental weapons testing station on the Welsh coast, where Churchill and his party were to observe trials of various aerial mines and rocket launchers. The prospect at first delighted Churchill, appealing to the little boy that lurked in his soul, but the tests did not go well. “The firing of the rockets was bad,” John Colville wrote, “and at the first display a childishly easy target was repeatedly missed; but the multiple projectors seemed promising; so did the aerial mines descending with parachutes.”

  It was when the train arrived at Bristol the next day, Saturday, April 12, that the journey turned surreal.

  * * *

  —

  THE TRAIN STOPPED FOR the night on a siding outside the city—a prudent measure, given the recent intensification of German air raids and the fact that the night was clear, the moon at its fullest. And indeed, starting at ten P.M., 150 German bombers, guided both by navigation beams and by moonlight reckoning, began attacking the city, first with incendiaries, then with high explosives, in one of the most severe raids Bristol had suffered thus far. The raid—subsequently dubbed “the Good Friday Raid”—lasted six hours, during which the bombers dropped nearly two hundred tons of high explosives and thirty-seven thousand incendiary bombs, killing 180 civilians and wounding another 382. A single bomb killed ten rescue workers; it blew three of the victims onto the adjacent tarmac road, where they were partially absorbed into its suddenly molten surface. They were later discovered by an unlucky ambulance driver, who had the unenviable task of prying their bodies loose.

  Aboard the train, Churchill and his party heard the distant guns and detonations. Wrote Pug Ismay, “It was clear that Bristol was getting it hot.” The next morning, Saturday, the train pulled into the Bristol station as fires still burned and smoke bloomed from demolished buildings. At least a hundred bombs had failed to explode either because of malfunction or by design, thereby hampering rescue crews and fire squads, and making Churchill’s choice of route through the city a risky and problematic matter.

  The morning was gray and cold, as Mary recalled it, and wreckage was strewn everywhere. She saw men and women heading off to their jobs, as on any other day, but clearly worn by the night’s raid. “Rather strained pale faces—weary—silent,” she wrote.

  First Churchill and company went to the city’s Grand Hotel. The building had survived the night’s raid unscathed, but prior raids had inflicted considerable damage. “It had a sense of lean to it, as if it needed shoring up in order to stay in business,” wrote Inspector Thompson.

  Churchill requested a bath.

  “Yes, sir!” the desk manager said brightly, as if this posed no challenge whatsoever—when, in fact, prior raids had left the hotel with no hot water. “But somehow, somewhere, in but a few minutes,” Thompson said, “an amused procession of guests, clerks, cooks, maids, soldiers, and walking wounded materialized out of some mystery in the back part of the building, and went up the stairs with hot water in all types of containers, including a garden sprinkler, and filled the tub in the Prime Minister’s room.”

  Churchill and the others convened for breakfast. Harriman noticed that the hotel staff seemed to have been up all night. “The waiter serving breakfast had been working on the roof of the hotel and had helped to put a number of incendiaries out,” he wrote in a letter to Roosevelt. After breakfast, the group set out to tour the city, with Churchill seated on the folded canvas top of an open touring car (in British English, this was the “hood”). The devastation, wrote John Colville, was “such as I had never thought possible.”

  Churchill’s visit was unannounced. As he drove through the streets, people turned to watch. First came recognition, Mary saw, then surprise and delight. Mary rode in the same car as Harriman. She liked him. “He has the root of the matter in him,” she wrote. “He feels & works for us so much.”

  The caravan moved past residents who stood in front of their newly ruined houses, examining the remains and retrieving belongings. Upon seeing Churchill, they came running to his car. “It was unbelievably moving,” Mary wrote.

  Churchill toured the worst-hit areas on foot. He walked briskly. This was not the halting meander that might have been expected of an overweight sixty-six-year-old man who spent many of his waking hours drinking and smoking. Newsreel footage shows him charging along at the head of his entourage, smiling, scowling, now and then doffing his bowler hat, even executing an occasional snappy pirouette to acknowledge a remark from a bystander. In his long overcoat, over his round frame, he looked like the top half of a very large bomb. Clementine and Mary walked a few steps behind, both looking happy and cheerful; Pug Ismay and Harriman followed as well; Inspector Thompson stayed close, one hand in his pistol pocket. When engulfed by a crowd of men and women, Churchill took off his bowler and put it on top of his walking stick, then held it aloft so that those outside the immediate crush could see it and know he was there. “Stand back, my men,” Harriman heard him say, “let the others see.”

  Harriman noticed that as Churchill moved among the crowds, he used “his trick” of making direct eye contact with individuals. At one point, believing Churchill to be out of earshot, Harriman told Pug Ismay, “The Prime Minister seems popular with the middle-aged women.”

  Churchill heard the remark. He whirled to face Harriman. “What did you say? Not only with the middle-aged women; with the young ones too.”

  * * *

  —

  THE PROCESSION MOVED ON to Bristol University for the degree ceremony. “Nothing could have been more dramatic,” Harriman wrote.

  The building next door was still in flames. Churchill, in full academic regalia, sat on the dais among similarly attired university officials, many of whom had spent the night helping fight fires. Despite the raid and the wreckage outside, the hall filled. “It was quite extraordinary,” Mary wrote. “People kept on arriving late with grime on their faces half washed off, their ceremonial robes on over their fire-fighting clothes which were still wet.”

  Churchill conferred degrees upon Ambassador Winant and Australian prime minister Menzies, and, in absentia, on Harvard president James Conant, who had returned to America. Before the ceremony, he’d quipped to Harriman, “I’d like to give you a degree, but you’re not interested in that sort of thing.”

  Later in the ceremony, Churchill rose and gave an impromptu speech. “Many of those here today have been all night at their posts,” he said, “and all have been under the fire of the enemy in heavy and protracted bombardment. That you should gather in this way is a mark of fortitude and phlegm, of a courage and detachment from material affairs worthy of all that we have learned to believe of Ancient Rome or of modern Greece.” He told the audience that he tried to get away from “headquarters” as much as possible to visit bombed areas, “and I see the damage done by the enemy attacks; but I also see side by side with the devastation and amid the ruins quiet, confident, bright and smiling eyes, beaming with a consciousness of being associated with a cause far higher than any human or personal issue. I see the spirit of an unconquerable people.”

  Afterward, as Churchill, Clementine, and the others emerged on the steps of the university, a large crowd surged forward, cheering. And at that instant, in a singular moment of meteorological synchronicity, the sun broke through the clouds.

  * * *

  —

  AS THE CARS HEADED back to the train station, the crowd followed. For all the laughing and cheering, it could have been a city festival from more peaceful times. Men, women, and children walked beside Churchill’s car, their faces gleaming with delight. “These are not mere fairweather friends,” Mary wrote in her diary. “Papa has served them with his heart [and] his mind always through peace & wars—& they have given him in his finest & darkest hour
their love & confidence.” She was struck by this strange power of her father to bring forth courage and strength in the most trying of circumstances. “Oh please dear God,” she wrote, “preserve him unto us—& lead us to victory & peace.”

  As the train departed, Churchill waved at the crowd from the windows, and kept waving until the train was out of sight. Then, reaching for a newspaper, he sat back and raised the paper to mask his tears. “They have such confidence,” he said. “It is a grave responsibility.”

  * * *

  —

  THEY ARRIVED AT CHEQUERS in time for dinner, where they were joined by a number of new guests, including Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and his wife and General Dill, chief of the Imperial General Staff.

  The atmosphere was somber—at first—as Churchill, Dill, and Eden grappled with the latest news from the Middle East and the Mediterranean. German forces in Greece were advancing quickly toward Athens, and threatened to overwhelm Greek and British defenders, raising the prospect of yet another evacuation. Rommel’s tanks in Libya continued to pummel British forces, forcing them to retreat toward Egypt and to concentrate in Tobruk. That night Churchill sent a cable to General Wavell, commander of British forces in the Middle East, telling him that he, Dill, and Eden had “complete confidence” in him, and emphasizing how important it was for Wavell to resist the German advance. “This,” Churchill wrote, “is one of the crucial fights in the history of the British Army.”

  He also urged Wavell to “please spell” Tobruk with a k, as opposed to such other spellings as “Tubruq” and “Tobruch.”

  A telegram from Roosevelt dissipated the gloom. The president notified Churchill that he had decided to extend the American naval security zone in the North Atlantic to include all waters between the U.S. coast and the 25th meridian west—roughly two-thirds of the Atlantic Ocean—and to take other measures, which “will favorably affect your shipping problem.” He planned to do so immediately. “It is important for domestic political reasons which you will readily understand that this action be taken by us unilaterally and not after diplomatic conversations between you and us.”

  U.S. ships and aircraft would now patrol these waters. “We will want in great secrecy notification of movement of convoys so our patrol units can seek out any ships or planes or aggressor nations operating west of the new line of the security zone,” Roosevelt stated. The United States would then convey to the Royal Navy the locations of any enemy vessels they encountered.

  Churchill was elated. On Easter Sunday, April 13, from Chequers, he sent his thanks to the president. “Deeply grateful for your momentous cable,” he wrote; he called the move “a long step towards salvation.”

  Colville asked Harriman whether it meant that America and Germany would now go to war.

  Harriman said, “That’s what I hope.”

  * * *

  —

  SO MOVED WAS HARRIMAN by his experience at Bristol that he overcame his pinchpenny nature and made an anonymous donation to the city, in the amount of £100, about $6,400 in twenty-first-century dollars. To keep his role confidential, he asked Clementine to forward the money to the city’s mayor.

  In a handwritten thank-you on Tuesday, April 15, she told him, “whatever happens we do not feel alone any more.”

  * * *

  —

  THAT DAY, TOO, HARRIMAN learned that his daughter Kathy, thanks to the intercession of Harry Hopkins, had at last received approval by the State Department to travel to London.

  “Thrilled,” he telegraphed immediately. “When are you coming—Bring all possible nylon stockings for your friends here also dozen packs Stimudent for another friend.”

  Here he was referring to Stim-U-Dent, a toothpick-like product used to clean between teeth and stimulate blood flow in the gums, once so popular that the Smithsonian eventually acquired a specimen for its permanent collection. In another cable Harriman urged, “Don’t forget stimudents.” He told Kathy to bring whatever lipstick she favored, but also to include a few tubes of “green top” lipstick by Guerlain.

  His insistent pleas for the Stim-U-Dents drew the bemused attention of his wife, Marie. “We’re all dying to know who the peeress with the decayed teeth is who’s in such a lather about her toothpicks,” she wrote.

  She added: “After your third cable about them we decided the situation must be critical.”

  * * *

  —

  GLOOM SETTLED OVER MEETINGS of the War Cabinet. The loss of Benghazi and the seemingly imminent fall of Tobruk were especially disheartening. A melancholy suffused England that was all the more pronounced because of the contrast between the hopes raised by the winter’s victories and the deflation that accompanied the new reversals, and by the intensified German air raids, some of which were even deadlier and more damaging than those of the prior fall. German bombers again struck Coventry, and the next night Birmingham. Darkness continued to stymie the RAF.

  Within the House of Commons, discontent deepened. At least one prominent member, Lloyd George, was growing concerned about whether Churchill was indeed the man to wage this war to victory.

  CHAPTER 85

  Scorn

  AT HIS MORNING MEETING ON Tuesday, April 15, Joseph Goebbels instructed his propagandists to concentrate on deriding Britain for its imminent retreat from Greece. “Churchill should be pilloried as a gambler, as a character more at home at the tables in Monte Carlo than in the seat of a British prime minister. A typical gambler’s nature—cynical, ruthless, brutal, staking the blood of other nations in order to save British blood, riding roughshod over the national destinies of small states.”

  The press was to repeat over and over, “with savage scorn,” the slogan “Instead of butter—Benghazi; instead of Benghazi—Greece; instead of Greece—nothing.”

  He added: “This then is the end.”

  * * *

  —

  HERMANN GÖRING CERTAINLY HOPED that Britain was at last near surrender, and set about making sure that he and his beloved air force would get the credit. But the RAF was causing him grief.

  A week earlier, British bombers had struck at the heart of Berlin, shattering the city’s finest avenue, the Unter den Linden, and destroying the State Opera House, shortly before a much-anticipated guest performance by an Italian opera company. “Hitler was outraged,” wrote Nicolaus von Below, his Luftwaffe liaison, “and as a result he had a furious argument with Göring.”

  Hitler’s fury, and Göring’s resentment, both likely played a part in the ferocity with which Göring now proposed to execute a series of new attacks on London, the first set to take place on Wednesday, April 16.

  * * *

  —

  CHURCHILL WAS ANNOYED.

  Nearly two weeks earlier, he had dispatched a cryptic warning to Stalin hinting at Hitler’s invasion plans—cryptic, because he did not want to reveal that Bletchley Park was the source of his own detailed knowledge about Operation Barbarossa. He sent the message to his ambassador to Russia, Sir Stafford Cripps, with instructions to deliver it in person.

  Now, in that week after Easter, Churchill learned that Cripps had never delivered it. Angered by this apparent act of insubordination, Churchill wrote to the ambassador’s boss, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. “I set special importance on the delivery of this personal message from me to Stalin,” he wrote. “I cannot understand why it should be resisted. The Ambassador is not alive to the military significance of the facts. Pray oblige me.”

  By now it was clear to anyone who worked with Churchill that any request beginning with “pray” was a direct and nonnegotiable command.

  Cripps at last delivered Churchill’s warning. Stalin did not reply.

  CHAPTER 86

  That Night at the Dorchester

  AVERELL HARRIMAN LEFT HIS OFFICE early that Wednesday, April 16, to get a haircut. Barbershops closed at si
x-thirty P.M. He was to attend a formal dinner that night at the Dorchester Hotel, honoring Fred Astaire’s sister, Adele. This had been a big day for the Harriman Mission: In Washington, Roosevelt had signed off on the first transfer of food under the Lend-Lease Act: eleven thousand tons of cheese, eleven thousand tons of eggs, and one hundred thousand cases of evaporated milk.

  Harriman’s early departure from the office gave his secretary, Robert Meiklejohn, a chance to have an early dinner for once. The evening was lovely and clear.

  * * *

  —

  AT NINE O’CLOCK, an hour after sunset, air-raid sirens activated throughout London. They drew little attention at first. The sound of sirens was by now a commonplace event. The only thing that distinguished this alert from those of the prior days was its timing, an hour earlier than usual.

  In Bloomsbury, flares began to fall, flooding the streets with brilliant light. Author Graham Greene, whose novel The Power and the Glory had been published the previous year, was just finishing dinner with his mistress, writer Dorothy Glover. Both were about to go on duty, he as an air-raid warden, she as a fire watcher. Greene accompanied her to her assigned lookout. “Standing on the roof of a garage we saw the flares come slowly floating down, dribbling their flames,” Greene wrote in his journal. “They drift like great yellow peonies.”

  The moon-flushed sky filled with the silhouettes of hundreds of aircraft. Now bombs fell, of all sizes, including giant parachute mines, gargantuan parodies of the Prof’s own aerial mines. There was confusion—dust, fire, broken glass. A mine landed on the Victoria Club, in Malet Street, where 350 Canadian soldiers were sleeping. Greene arrived and found chaos: “Soldiers still coming out in grey blood-smeared pajamas; pavements littered by glass and some were barefooted.” Where the building had stood there was now a jagged, twenty-foot escarpment that seemed to extend deep into the foundation. The bombers overhead droned without interruption. “One really thought that this was the end,” Greene wrote, “but it wasn’t exactly frightening—one had ceased to believe in the possibility of surviving the night.”