At five o’clock that evening I reported to the War Cabinet the results of my mission. I described the condition of the French armies as it had been reported to the conference by General Weygand. For six days they had been fighting night and day, and they were now almost wholly exhausted. The enemy attack, launched by a hundred and twenty divisions, with supporting armour, had fallen on forty French divisions. The French armies were now on the last line on which they could attempt to offer an organised resistance. This line had already been penetrated in two or three places. General Weygand evidently saw no prospect of the French going on fighting, and Marshal Pétain had quite made up his mind that peace must be made. He believed that France was being systematically destroyed by the Germans, and that it was his duty to save the rest of the country from this fate. I mentioned his memorandum to this effect, which he had shown to Reynaud but had not left with him. “There can be no doubt,” I said, “that Pétain is a dangerous man at this juncture: he was always a defeatist, even in the last war.” On the other hand, M. Reynaud had seemed quite determined to fight on, and General de Gaulle, who had attended the conference with him, was in favour of carrying on a guerrilla warfare. He was young and energetic and had made a very favourable impression on me. I thought it probable that if the present line collapsed Reynaud would turn to him to take command. Admiral Darlan also had declared that he would never surrender the French Navy to the enemy: in the last resort, he had said, he would send it over to Canada; but in this he might be overruled by the French politicians.
It was clear that France was near the end of organised resistance, and a chapter in the war was now closing. The French might by some means continue the struggle. There might even be two French Governments, one which made peace, and one which organised resistance from the French colonies, carrying on the war at sea through the French Fleet and in France through guerrillas. It was too early yet to tell. Though for a period we might still have to send some support to France, we must now concentrate our main efforts on the defence of our Island.
CHAPTER VII
HOME DEFENCE AND THE APPARATUS OF COUNTER-ATTACK
THE reader of these pages in future years should realise how dense and baffling is the veil of the Unknown. Now in the full light of the after-time it is easy to see where we were ignorant or too much alarmed, where we were careless or clumsy. Twice in two months we had been taken completely by surprise. The overrunning of Norway and the break-through at Sedan, with all that followed from these, proved the deadly power of the German initiative. What else had they got ready—prepared and organised to the last inch? Would they suddenly pounce out of the blue with new weapons, perfect planning, and overwhelming force upon our almost totally unequipped and disarmed Island at any one of a dozen or score of possible landing-places? Or would they go to Ireland? He would have been a very foolish man who allowed his reasoning, however clean-cut and seemingly sure, to blot out any possibility against which provision could be made. “Depend upon it,” said Dr. Johnson, “when a man knows he is going to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” I was always sure we should win, but nevertheless I was highly geared up by the situation, and very thankful to be able to make my views effective.
My colleagues had already felt it right to obtain from Parliament the extraordinary powers for which a Bill had been prepared during the last few days. This measure would give the Government practically unlimited power over the life, liberty, and property of all His Majesty’s subjects in Great Britain. In general terms of law the powers granted by Parliament were absolute. The Act was to “include power by Order in Council to make such Defence Regulations making provision for requiring persons to place themselves, their services and their property at the disposal of His Majesty as appear to him to be necessary or expedient for securing the public safety, the defence of the Realm, the maintenance of public order, or the efficient prosecution of any war in which His Majesty may be engaged, or for maintaining supplies or services essential to the life of the community”.
In regard to persons, the Minister of Labour was empowered to direct anyone to perform any service required. The regulation giving him this power included a Fair Wages clause, which was inserted in the Act to regulate wage conditions. Labour supply committees were to be set up in important centres. The control of property in the widest sense was imposed in equal manner. Control of all establishments, including banks, was imposed under the authority of Government orders. Employers could be required to produce their books, and Excess Profits were to be taxed at 100 per cent. A Production Council, to be presided over by Mr. Greenwood, was to be formed, and a Director of Labour Supply to be appointed.
This Bill had been presented to Parliament on the afternoon of May 22 by Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Attlee, the latter himself moving the Second Reading. Both the Commons and the Lords with their immense Conservative majorities passed it unanimously through all its stages in a single afternoon, and it received the Royal Assent that night.
For Romans in Rome’s quarrel
Spared neither land nor gold,
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,
In the brave days of old.
Such was the temper of the hour.
This was a time when all Britain worked and strove to the utmost limit and was united as never before. Men and women toiled at the lathes and machines in the factories till they fell exhausted on the floor and had to be dragged away and ordered home, while their places were occupied by newcomers ahead of time. The one desire of all the males and many women was to have a weapon. The Cabinet and Government were locked together by bonds the memory of which is still cherished by all. The sense of fear seemed entirely lacking in the people, and their representatives in Parliament were not unworthy of their mood. We had not suffered like France under the German flail. Nothing moves an Englishman so much as the threat of invasion, the reality unknown for a thousand years. Vast numbers of people were resolved to conquer or die. There was no need to rouse their spirit by oratory. They were glad to hear me express their sentiments and give them good reasons for what they meant to do, or try to do. The only possible divergence was from people who wished to do even more than was possible, and had the idea that frenzy might sharpen action.
Our decision to send our only two well-armed divisions back to France made it all the more necessary to take every possible measure to defend the Island against direct assault. The swift fate of Holland was in all our minds. Mr. Eden had already proposed to the War Cabinet the formation of Local Defence Volunteers or “Home Guards”, and this plan was energetically pressed. All over the country, in every town and village, bands of determined men came together armed with shot-guns, sporting rifles, clubs, and spears. From this a vast organisation was soon to spring. It presently approached one and a half million men and gradually acquired good weapons.
My principal fear was of German tanks coming ashore. Since my mind was attracted to landing tanks on their coasts, I naturally thought they might have the same idea. We had hardly any anti-tank guns or ammunition, or even ordinary field artillery. The plight to which we were reduced in dealing with this danger may be measured from the following incident. I visited our beaches in St. Margaret’s Bay, near Dover. The Brigadier informed me that he had only three anti-tank guns in his brigade, covering four or five miles of this highly-menaced coastline. He declared that he had only six rounds of ammunition for each gun, and he asked me with a slight air of challenge whether he was justified in letting his men fire one single round for practice in order that they might at least know how the weapon worked. I replied that we could not afford practice rounds, and that fire should be held for the last moment at the closest range.
This was therefore no time to proceed by ordinary channels in devising expedients. In order to secure quick action, free from departmental processes, upon any bright idea or gadget, I decided to keep under my own hand as Minister of Defence the experimental establishment formed by Major Jefferis at Whitchu
rch. Since 1939 I had had useful contacts with this brilliant officer, whose ingenious, inventive mind proved, as will be seen, fruitful during the whole war. Lindemann was in close touch with him and me. I used their brains and my power. Jefferis and others connected with him were at work upon a bomb which could be thrown at a tank, perhaps from a window, and would stick upon it. The impact of a very high explosive in actual contact with a steel plate is particularly effective. We had the picture in mind that devoted soldiers or civilians would run close up to the tank and even thrust the bomb upon it, though its explosion cost them their lives. There were undoubtedly many who would have done it. I thought also that the bomb fixed on a rod might be fired with a reduced charge from rifles. In the end the “sticky” bomb was accepted as one of our best emergency weapons. We never had to use it at home; but in Syria, where equally primitive conditions prevailed, it proved its value.
For the first time in a hundred and twenty-five years a powerful enemy was now established across the narrow waters of the English Channel. Our re-formed Regular Army, and the larger but less well trained Territorials, had to be organised and deployed to create an elaborate system of defences, and to stand ready, if the invader came, to destroy him—for there could be no escape. It was for both sides “Kill or Cure”. Already the Home Guard could be included in the general framework of defence. On June 25 General Ironside, Commander-in-Chief Home Forces, exposed his plans to the Chiefs of Staff. They were of course scrutinised with anxious care by the experts, and I examined them myself with no little attention. On the whole they stood approved. There were three main elements in this early outline of a great future plan: first, an entrenched “crust” on the probable invasion beaches of the coast, whose defenders should fight where they stood, supported by mobile reserves for immediate counter-attack; secondly, a line of anti-tank obstacles, manned by the Home Guard, running down the east centre of England and protecting London and the great industrial centres from inroads by armoured vehicles; thirdly, behind that line, the main reserves for major counter-offensive action.
Ceaseless additions and refinements to this first plan were effected as the weeks and months passed; but the general conception remained. All troops, if attacked, should stand firm, not in linear only but in all-round defence, whilst others moved rapidly to destroy the attackers, whether they came from sea or air. Men who had been cut off from immediate help would not have merely remained in position. Active measures were prepared to harass the enemy from behind; to interfere with his communications and to destroy material, as the Russians did with great results when the German tide flowed over their country a year later. Many people must have been bewildered by the innumerable activities all around them. They could understand the necessity for wiring and mining the beaches, the anti-tank obstacles at the defiles, the concrete pillboxes at the cross-roads, the intrusions into their houses to fill an attic with sandbags, on to their golf-courses or most fertile fields and gardens to burrow out some wide anti-tank ditch. All these inconveniences, and much more, they accepted in good part. But sometimes they must have wondered if there was a general scheme, or whether lesser individuals were not running amok in their energetic use of newly-granted powers of interference with the property of the citizen.
There was however a central plan, elaborate, co-ordinated, and all-embracing. As it grew it shaped itself thus: the overall Command was maintained at General Headquarters in London. All Great Britain and Northern Ireland were divided into seven Commands; these again into areas of Corps and Divisional Commands. Commands, Corps, and Divisions were each required to hold a proportion of their resources in mobile reserve, only the minimum being detailed to hold their own particular defences. Gradually there were built up in rear of the beaches zones of defence in each divisional area; behind these were similar “Corps Zones” and “Command Zones”, the whole system amounting in depth to a hundred miles or more. And behind these was established the main anti-tank obstacle running across Southern England and northwards into Nottinghamshire. Above all was the final reserve directly under the Commander-in-Chief of the Home Forces. This it was our policy to keep as large and mobile as possible.
Within this general structure were many variations. Each of our ports on the east and south coasts was a special study. Direct frontal attack upon a defended port seemed an unlikely contingency, and all were made into strong points equally capable of defence from the landward or the seaward side. Obstacles were placed on many thousand square miles of Britain to impede the landing of air-borne troops. All our aerodromes, Radar stations, and fuel depots, of which even in the summer of 1940 there were three hundred and seventy-five, needed defence by special garrisons and by their own airmen. Many thousands of “vulnerable points”, bridges, power-stations, depots, vital factories, and the like had to be guarded day and night from sabotage or sudden onset. Schemes were ready for the immediate demolition of resources helpful to the enemy if captured. The destruction of port facilities, the cratering of key roads, the paralysis of motor transport and of telephones and telegraph-stations, of rolling stock or permanent way, before they passed out of our control, were planned to the last detail. Yet despite all these wise and necessary precautions, in which the civilian departments gave unstinted help to the military, there was no question of a “scorched earth policy”; England was to be defended by its people, not destroyed.
There was also another side to all this. My first reaction to the “Miracle of Dunkirk” had been to turn it to proper use by mounting a counter-offensive. When so much was uncertain, the need to recover the initiative glared forth. June 4 was much occupied for me by the need to prepare and deliver the long and serious speech to the House of Commons of which some account has been given, but as soon as this was over I made haste to strike the note which I thought should rule our minds and inspire our actions at this moment, and I accordingly sent the following minute to General Ismay:
We are greatly concerned—and it is certainly wise to be so—with the dangers of the Germans landing in England in spite of our possessing the command of the seas and having very strong defence by fighters in the air. Every creek, every beach, every harbour has become to us a source of anxiety. Besides this the parachutists may sweep over and take Liverpool or Ireland, and so forth. All this mood is very good if it engenders energy. But if it is so easy for the Germans to invade us, in spite of sea-power, some may feel inclined to ask the question, why should it be thought impossible for us to do anything of the same kind to them? The completely defensive habit of mind which has ruined the French must not be allowed to ruin all our initiative. It is of the highest consequence to keep the largest numbers of German forces all along the coasts of the countries they have conquered, and we should immediately set to work to organise raiding forces on these coasts where the populations are friendly. Such forces might be composed of self-contained, thoroughly-equipped units of say one thousand up to not more than ten thousand when combined. Surprise would be ensured by the fact that the destination would be concealed until the last moment. What we have seen at Dunkirk shows how quickly troops can be moved off (and I suppose on to) selected points if need be. How wonderful it would be if the Germans could be made to wonder where they were going to be struck next, instead of forcing us to try to wall in the Island and roof it over! An effort must be made to shake off the mental and moral prostration to the will and initiative of the enemy from which we suffer.
Ismay conveyed this to the Chiefs of Staff, and in principle it received their cordial approval and was reflected in many of the decisions which we took. Out of it gradually sprang a policy. My thought was at this time firmly fixed on tank warfare, not merely defensive but offensive. This required the construction of large numbers of tank-landing vessels, which henceforward became one of my constant cares. As all this was destined to become of major importance in the future I must now make a retrogression into a subject which had long ago lain in my mind and was now revived.
I had always been fasci
nated by amphibious warfare, and the idea of using tanks to run ashore from specially-constructed landing-craft on beaches where they were not expected had long been in my mind. Ten days before I joined Mr. Lloyd George’s Government as Minister of Munitions on July 17, 1917, I had prepared, without expert assistance, a scheme for the capture of the two Frisian islands Borkum and Sylt. It contained the following paragraphs which have never yet seen the light of day:
The landing of the troops upon the island [of Borkum or Sylt] under cover of the guns of the Fleet [should be] aided by gas and smoke from torpedo-proof transports by means of bullet-proof lighters. Approximately one hundred should be provided for landing a division. In addition a number—say fifty—tank-landing lighters should be provided, each carrying a tank or tanks [and] fitted for wire-cutting in its bow. By means of a drawbridge or shelving bow [the tanks] would land under [their] own power, and prevent the infantry from being held up by wire when attacking the gorges of the forts and batteries. This is a new feature, and removes one of the very great previous difficulties, namely, the rapid landing of [our] field artillery to cut wire.
And further:
There is always the danger of the enemy getting wind of our intentions and reinforcing his garrisons with good troops beforehand, at any rate so far as Borkum, about which he must always be very sensitive, is concerned. On the other hand, the landing could be effected under the shields of lighters, proof against machine-gun bullets, and too numerous to be seriously affected by heavy gunfire [i.e., the fire of heavy guns]; and tanks employed in even larger numbers than are here suggested, especially the quick-moving tank and lighter varieties, would operate in an area where no preparations could have been made to receive them. These may be thought new and important favourable considerations.
The Second World War Page 39
