The King's War

by The King's War- The Friendship of George VI

  The reality of the Duke’s situation was brought home to him when they docked: no member of his family had come to meet him; they had not even sent a courtier or car to help with the luggage. On 14 September the two brothers met for the first time since the abdication. The encounter went all right, ‘but it was very unbrotherly’, the King told the Duke of Kent, who had always been close to their eldest brother. ‘He was in a very good mood, his usual swaggering one, laying down the law about everything.’41 The description the King gave the Prime Minister of their meeting was even more telling. ‘He seems very well, & not a bit worried as to the effects he left on people’s minds as to his behaviour in 1936,’ he wrote to Chamberlain. ‘He has forgotten all about it.’ Wallis was not invited to come to the Palace, and, just in case, the Queen had made sure she was away while the Duke and Duchess were in Britain.

  The King offered his elder brother a choice of two jobs: either to go to the British military mission in France or to help organize civil defence in Wales. The latter appointment appealed more to the Duke, but the King then had second thoughts and told him there was no choice: he had to go to France. A request by the Duke to set off with Wallis on a month-long tour of troops stationed in Britain was vetoed. The official reason given was that their presence would risk drawing enemy attention to strategic locations. In reality, the King was worried about the enthusiasm with which his brother might be greeted just three years after the abdication. As he remarked ruefully to Hore-Belisha: ‘All my ancestors succeeded to the throne after their predecessors had died. Mine is not only alive but very much so!’42

  Posting the Duke to France nevertheless brought with it problems: chiefly, to what extent could he be entrusted with secret information? His own loyalty was not seriously in doubt, but many – rightly or wrongly – were not convinced that the same could be said of Wallis. The King was also reluctant to have his elder brother visit British troops in France, for the same reason he had been opposed to his proposed tour of the United Kingdom – though for months no one had the courage to tell him directly. The Duke was livid: it was ‘merely fresh evidence of my brother’s continued efforts to humiliate me by every means in his and his courtiers’ power’, he told Churchill.43 Reports of the Duke’s growing disillusionment were seized on by German spies and relayed back to Berlin. This was a problem that would not go away.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The stab in the back’

  Neville Chamberlain was in buoyant mood when he stood to address a Conservative Party gathering at Central Hall, Westminster on 4 April 1940, ‘When we embarked on this war in September I felt we were bound to win, but that we might have to undergo some heavy trials and perhaps severe losses,’ the Prime Minister told his audience.

  That may be so still. But after seven months of war, I feel ten times as confident of victory as I did at the beginning ...

  Long before the war Germany was making preparations for it. The result was that when war did break out German preparations were far ahead of our own, and it was natural then to expect that the enemy would take advantage of his initial superiority to make an endeavour to overwhelm us and France before we had time to make good our deficiencies.

  Is it not extraordinary that no such attempt was made? Whatever may be the reason – whether it was that Hitler thought he might get away with what he had got without fighting for it, or whether it was that, after all, the preparations were not sufficiently complete – however, one thing is certain: he missed the bus.

  General Sir Edmund Ironside, the chief of the Imperial General Staff, struck a similarly defiant tone in a front-page interview with the Daily Express the next day, headlined “‘Come on Hitler!” dares Ironside’. ‘Time is against Germany. She cannot forever keep her armies in the battle area, poised for action, and then make no move. Her morale is certain to suffer,’ the general declared. ‘Frankly we would welcome an attack. We are sure of ourselves. We have no fears.’44

  Ironside did not have to wait long to have his wish fulfilled: a new phase in the war was about to begin, with devastating consequence for Europe and for Britain. Five days later, in the early morning, German forces invaded Denmark and Norway, in Operation Weserübung. The assault on Denmark began just before 4 a.m by land, sea and air. Two hours later, with their country’s forces completely outnumbered and faced with a German threat to bomb Copenhagen, King Christian X and the entire Danish government capitulated. The operation was over within six hours, in what was the shortest Nazi military campaign of the war. Norway’s size and geography made it a much harder nut to crack, and Allied forces came to its aid. By the end of the month, however, the southern parts of Norway were in German hands and by 4 May the Allies were left with nothing more than a precarious foothold in Narvik, which, it was clear, could not be sustained for much longer.

  The Nazis’ successes in Scandinavia brought to a head longrunning frustrations with Chamberlain, who, it was becoming increasingly clear, was no wartime leader. On 7 May, the House of Commons began a heated two-day debate on Norway in which speaker after speaker turned on him. David Lloyd George, ‘the man who had won the war’ of 1914-18, appealed to the hapless Prime Minister to ‘give an example of sacrifice, because there is nothing that can contribute more to victory than that he should sacrifice the seals of office’. Some of the harshest criticism came from within Chamberlain’s own party: Leo Amery, a former Conservative cabinet minister, famously quoted to him the words that Oliver Cromwell had used to the Long Parliament almost three centuries earlier: ‘You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.’

  Chamberlain initially appeared determined to tough it out. When he went to see the King that evening he said, with a smile, that he was not coming to resign. The King was keen to hold on to him, and even offered to speak to Clement Attlee, the Labour leader, to try to persuade his party to join a National Government. ‘I told the P.M. that I did not like the way in which, with all the worries and responsibilities he had to bear in the conduct of the war, he was always subject to a stab in the back from both the H of C and the Press,’ the King wrote.45 Chamberlain was not averse to the idea, but suggested the King wait until the Labour Party conference due to be held that coming weekend, which would give a better sense of feelings within the party.

  Despite the political forces ranged against him, Chamberlain won the vote the next day by 281 to 200, but many Conservative MPs abstained or voted against him. Even so, Chamberlain still held out hopes of remaining at Number 10, provided he could do so at the head of a coalition – which meant persuading Labour to serve under him. He was to be disappointed: the party made clear that while it was prepared to join a Conservative-led administration, it would have nothing to do with one headed by Chamberlain. Matters came to head on 10 May when Hitler’s troops poured into Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France, beginning a dramatic new phase of the war. That afternoon, Chamberlain went to the Palace.

  The King accepted Chamberlain’s resignation, telling him how ‘grossly unfairly’ he thought he had been treated and how ‘terribly sorry’ he was that the crisis had erupted. When it came to a choice of successor, the King made clear his preference for Lord Halifax. One of the era’s most senior Conservative politicians, Halifax had endeared himself to the King as one of the main architects of appeasement since replacing Anthony Eden as Foreign Secretary in March 1938. He was also a personal friend: his family had long served the crown, and the King and Queen would often dine with the Halifaxes at their home in Eaton Square. The King even gave him a key to the gardens of Buckingham Palace, which we would walk through on his way to work.

  But Chamberlain made clear it would be impossible to have a peer at the head of the government and urged him to send instead for Winston Churchill, who, after a decade in the political wilderness, had been brought back into government on the outbreak of war as First Lord of the Admiralty. It was a controversial choice: Churchill, who had cha
nged parties twice in his career – moving from the Conservatives to the Liberals in 1904 and then back again twenty years later – continued to arouse widespread suspicion because of his bloody-mindedness. Thanks to his role at the Admiralty, he bore a major part of the responsibility for the Norwegian debacle – even though, to his own surprise as much as that of others, he managed to escape the blame, which was taken by Chamberlain. The King appears to have shared the widespread view of Churchill as a political adventurer, and during a press campaign the previous summer to have him readmitted to the cabinet, he had left Chamberlain in no doubt as to his opposition to the idea. Nor had he forgotten Churchill’s championship of Edward VIII during the abdication crisis.

  The King had little alternative, however, but to follow Chamberlain’s advice – and summon Churchill to the palace.

  ‘I suppose you don’t know why I have sent for you,’ he told his guest after looking at him searchingly and quizzically for a few moments.

  ‘Sir, I simply couldn’t imagine why,’ Churchill quipped back, playing along with the joke.

  ‘I want you to form a Government.’46

  The King went away from the meeting convinced that Churchill was ‘so full of fire & determination to carry out the duties of prime minister’. Yet he still had his doubts: ‘I cannot yet think of Winston as PM,’ he wrote in his diary the next day, 11 May. ‘I met Halifax in the garden and told him I was sorry not to have him as PM.’47

  Despite such initial misgivings, the King’s relationship with Churchill was to become a powerful and enduring one. By that September the traditional formal weekly audience granted by the monarch to his Prime Minister had been replaced by an informal Tuesday lunch at which the two men would discuss the progress of the war, serving themselves from a side table; the Queen often joined them for conversations that ranged more widely than merely the conduct of the war. The following January, Churchill wrote to the King to say he had been ‘greatly cheered by our weekly luncheons in poor old bomb-battered Buckingham Palace, & to feel that in Yr. Majesty and the Queen there flames the spirit that will never be daunted’.48 The Queen declared many years later that she felt very much a part of a team with the King, who ‘got on terribly well, like a house on fire’, with Churchill.

  Nevertheless the new Prime Minister’s behaviour with the King was very differently from his predecessor’s: while Chamberlain was always generous with his time, Churchill often arrived late, staying for only a few minutes and sharing little information. As Lady Hyde, one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, told John Colville, Churchill’s private secretary:

  Although the King and Queen appreciate Winston’s qualities and see that he is the man for the occasion, they are a little miffed by the off-hand way in which he treats them. They much preferred Chamberlain’s habit of going to the Palace regularly, once a week, and explaining the situation in a careful and unhurried way. Winston says he will come at 6.00 p.m, puts this off by telephone to 6.30 and is inclined to turn up for ten hectic minutes at 7.00.49

  In hindsight, the King’s complaints seem unreasonable given the large number of competing claims on Churchill’s time when Britain’s very existence as an independent country hung in the balance. Yet, despite this difficult start, the King gradually transferred the enormous loyalty he had previously felt towards Chamberlain to his successor. By the New Year, he wrote in his diary: ‘I could not have a better Prime Minister.’ For his part, Churchill ‘valued as a signal honour the gracious intimacy’ with which he was treated. Although, in some ways, a rival to the King as father of a nation, he was also aware of the importance of monarchy in binding together not just the United Kingdom but also the Empire and so went out of his way to praise the King. ‘Winston, however cavalierly he may treat his sovereign, is at heart a most vehement royalist,’ noted Colville.50

  Churchill quickly got down to work, inviting Attlee and the Liberal leader, Sir Archibald Sinclair, to join his government; Chamberlain remained in the war cabinet, leading the House of Commons as Lord President of the Council; Halifax stayed on as Foreign Secretary. Churchill’s first speech to the Commons as Prime Minister on 13 May set the tone of his premiership – which was a complete contrast to Chamberlain’s: ‘I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat’”. Britain’s policy, he declared, was ‘to wage war by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime’. Such dramatic resolve quickly turned Churchill into a source of comfort and inspiration, his refusal to contemplate anything short of outright victory giving his nation the lead it needed. Quentin Reynolds, an American journalist, described how drinkers in a Fleet Street pub fell silent when his voice came on the radio. ‘All eyes were glued on the loudspeaker, almost as if the listeners believed that by concentrating they could see Churchill’s face,’ he wrote.51

  The German forces, meanwhile, were making short work of the Dutch, who had insufficient weapons and equipment, much of it dating from the First World War. Dutch hopes that the British and French would come to their aid were rapidly fading. At 5 a.m. on the day of Churchill’s speech, the King had been woken by a police sergeant who told him he had a telephone call from Queen Wilhelmina. At first he thought it was a hoax, but took the call anyway. To his surprise, it was indeed the Dutch monarch.

  ‘She begged me to send aircraft for the defence of Holland,’ the King wrote in his diary. ‘I passed this message on to everyone concerned, & went back to bed. It is not often one is rung up at that hour, and especially by a Queen. But in these days anything may happen, & far worse things too.’ Even if Britain could have sent the planes, time was running out to save the country. Later that day, Wilhelmina telephoned the King again, this time from Harwich. A special train was waiting to take her to London. She and the King had never met before, but George VI went to Liverpool Street Station to receive his fellow monarch. ‘She was naturally very upset, & had brought no clothes with her,’ he wrote. Given the Queen’s ample frame, finding her suitable replacements proved a challenge.

  Wilhelmina’s initial intention had been to go back and join Dutch forces in Zeeland, in the south-west of the country, which were still resisting, but the military situation had deteriorated so sharply that everyone thought a return was impossible. The next day, the Nazis bombarded Rotterdam from the air; when they threatened to do the same to Utrecht, the Dutch surrendered. Wilhelmina remained in Buckingham Palace, where she attempted to rally resistance at a distance. Britons were horrified by the speed of the German victory. ‘Holland lays down her arms. The Dutch who were such great fighters have capitulated after five days of war. It’s terrifying,’ wrote Myrtle in her diary

  The same day, the German army advanced through the Ardennes and crossed the River Meuse – a feat the French had thought impossible. Paul Reynaud, the French prime minister, telephoned Churchill to tell him his country was defeated. The next day, Churchill flew to Paris to assess the situation for himself.

  ‘Où est la masse de manoeuvre?’ (Where is the strategic reserve?) he asked Gamelin, the French Commander-in-Chief.

  ‘Aucune’ (None), replied Gamelin.

  German forces, meanwhile, broke through the Maginot Line, the supposedly impregnable fortifications along France’s eastern border. The British Expeditionary Force was in danger of being cut off from the sea by the advancing German forces. By 20 May, the first German units reached Abbeville on the English Channel, overran the 25th Infantry Brigade of the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division and captured the town.

  It was against the backdrop of this rapidly deteriorating military situation that the King was scheduled to make a broadcast to mark Empire Day on 24 May, his first such speech since the previous Christmas. Three days earlier at 11 a.m. Logue had received a call from Hardinge asking him to go and see the King that afternoon at 4 p.m. to
help him prepare. Logue arrived fifteen minutes early and was welcomed by Hardinge, who was fretting over the bad news from Abbeville.

  Logue nevertheless found the King in a strangely cheerful mood when he was called up to see him. Standing on the balcony, and dressed in his military uniform, he was whistling to a young corgi sitting under a plane tree in the garden of Buckingham Palace, which could not work out where the sound was coming from. The hair on the side of the King’s temples was a little greyer than Logue remembered it. The strain of war was taking its toll. As Logue approached, the King turned and gave him his usual grin.

  They went into the King’s study. With all the pictures and other valuables put away in storage for the war, it was bare, the only decoration a vase of flowers. Logue was impressed by the text of the speech he was to deliver, but they nevertheless went through it together to see if they could make improvements. While they were doing so, there was a light tap at the door. It was the Queen, dressed in powder grey, with a large diamond butterfly brooch on her left shoulder. As the King noted the changes they had agreed, he talked to Logue about the wonderful effort he thought the RAF was making – and ‘how proud one should be of the boys from Australia, Canada and New Zealand’.

  Soon afterwards, Logue went to leave. ‘It was a wonderful memory as I said goodbye and bowed over the King’s and Queen’s hands, the two of them framed in the large window with the sunshine behind them, the King in field marshal uniform and the Queen in grey,’ he wrote in his diary.

  On Empire Day itself, Logue went to the Palace after dinner. Ogilvie, the BBC Director General, was there, as was Wood, the sound engineer, who had become close to the King in the three years he had been working with him. As well as dealing with the technical arrangements, he would, like Logue, also often chip in with suggestions to modify the text of the speeches to make them easier by removing words that the King might stumble over.* Wood and Logue generally worked well with each other, but they had their disagreements, in particular over Logue’s insistence that the King should make his broadcasts standing up at a high desk because, with his belief in the importance of deep breathing, he thought this made it easier for the King to speak more clearly. Wood disagreed and thought it made him more uncomfortable. Over time Wood prevailed and was able to persuade the King to sit down at a desk like any other broadcaster. ‘It was very difficult for me,’ he recalled. ‘I had to be very tactful because I was not a famous Harley Street specialist; I was only a specialist in microphones, and it took time to overcome this and win his trust. But we did it.’52 On this occasion, Wood, as ever, had done a good job and made sure the room had been properly prepared for the broadcast. He had also run a cable down into the dugout in case the King was forced by an air raid to speak from there. ‘It didn’t matter what happened,’ wrote Logue. ‘The broadcast would go on.’