Chamberlain had not heeded this advice, but by 10 May 1940 Churchill had decided that, personally, he very much did need this kind of thing. For all his gregariousness, Churchill was, in many ways, something of a solitary figure. He had many colleagues with whom he shared a close working relationship, but very few bosom friends. Most of his greatest pals were gone. Max was the only person in the political world with whom Churchill enjoyed spending considerable time, and whose enormous drive, drama, knowledge and vitality matched his own. Thus it was Beaverbrook with whom Churchill lunched and dined on 10 May; on the 11th they lunched alone together. On the 12th, Beaverbrook spent the afternoon with Churchill and stayed for dinner. Max was Churchill’s intimate adviser, friend, right-hand man; unpopular with most within the Government but, now that Churchill was PM, one of the most powerful men in the country whether they liked it or not.
The political divisions of the past had been swept away. Now Churchill and Beaverbrook were as one on the fundamentals: saving Britain and helping to bring the United States into the war materially, at the very least. In fact, following the outbreak of war, Beaverbrook had given himself a self-appointed mission to travel to America, ostensibly to find out what the President really thought about the war. He learned little new, but did manage to charm Roosevelt, winning his confidence and establishing a firm relationship; Beaverbrook could speak for Britain but, as a Canadian, in the language of an American. Just as Churchill, since the beginning of the war, had opened a dialogue with the President, so too had Beaverbrook. With his understanding of business and finance, this access to Washington was invaluable.
Yet while Beaverbrook was to play a critical role as Churchill’s man behind the scenes, the Prime Minister believed his friend could fulfil an even more important task. Before the war, Churchill had been one of those repeatedly demanding that production of aircraft could and should be speeded up. As in Germany, production was, in early May, still slow. What was needed, he felt, was a new ministry, separate from the Air Ministry. The Ministry of Munitions had been carved out of the War Office in the last war to resolve the shell shortage and had achieved miracles. With Max in charge of aircraft production, he saw no reason why the same could not occur.
He put this proposal to Beaverbrook on 10 May, but his friend did not agree immediately. He was over sixty, and his asthma was bad; he wasn’t sure how much he could take on. Nonetheless, he wasted no time sounding out key personnel. On the 11th, he had a long discussion with Sinclair, the new Secretary of State for Air, and on the 12th spent most of the day interviewing men within the Air Ministry and businessmen whom he might recruit to the new ministry. Later that day, he told Churchill he would accept the job, which was officially announced two days later. On 17 May, the new Ministry of Aircraft Production, with a fanfare of very welcome publicity, came into being. It helped create the sense that something dramatic and dynamic was happening; that Churchill was immediately ringing the changes.
And so he was. It was true that shadow factories had already been set up; it was also true that back in April 1938 the Air Ministry had created a Supply Committee, which had effectively the same remit as the new Ministry of Aircraft Production. At the same time the post of Air Member for Research and Development (AMRD) had also been created with much the same responsibilities as the new minister. And it is also true that the Supply Committee had very sensibly been, since August the previous year, building up stocks of Swedish iron and steel, Perspex sheeting and other key aircraft materials. Furthermore, the Government’s announcement of ‘Scheme L’ in April 1938, its latest programme for aircraft production, had been conceived without regard to financial limitations, the like of which had stymied production up to that point. In other words, no matter what it cost, the 12,000 aircraft planned in the scheme were to be built by the spring of 1940.
While these changes all made a huge difference, however, it was an altogether different kettle of fish bringing someone like Beaverbrook in at the top and unshackled from the Air Ministry, most of whose members still favoured the bomber as the best means of defence rather than the fighter. Beaverbrook wasted no time in going to see Dowding and immediately told him quite emphatically that his priority was to build aircraft for what was needed right now, in Fighter Command, to get Britain out of its immediate jam, rather than to continue with plans for the future. The two would speak every day. Beaverbrook would ask Dowding what he needed and would listen carefully to the answer. Whenever Dowding visited him, Beaverbrook would always personally walk him out of the Ministry building to his car below. The only other person he showed such attention to was Churchill.
On the 15th, Beaverbrook, in discussion with Sir Charles Craven, one of the old AMPD department men to remain in the new ministry, and the Air Ministry, agreed that production should be concentrated on five types of aircraft only, with immediate effect: the Hurricane and Spitfire, the Blenheim, and the Whitley and Hampden bombers. Nothing was to stand in the way of the maximum production of these types. Financial considerations, long-term plans, four-engine heavy-bomber projects – all were to be put to one side.
Within the first few days, Beaverbrook had established a new ministry that was like no other, and which was mostly funded by himself. The Supply Committee had been a sign of progress but it was still yet another committee of multiple people which needed consensus before anything could be agreed. Beaverbrook didn’t like committees. In his office he had two notices. One said, ‘Committees take the punch out of war’, while the second read, ‘Organization is the enemy of improvisation.’ The buck stopped with him; he liked to be informed and then he made his decision. Scientists, businessmen, industrialists – men he respected and trusted – were all brought in and given loose job titles. ‘They are all captains of industry,’ Beaverbrook explained, ‘and industry is like theology. If you know one faith, you can grasp the meaning of another.’ There was little hierarchy, and Beaverbrook used his closeness to Churchill and his force of personality to cut through tedious red tape. Nor did he much like memos and letters for conducting business; the telephone was quicker. And while he was gracious to a point with men like Dowding, he was happy to make enemies should it be necessary. Nothing was to get in the way of speeding up aircraft production. Nothing at all.
Feldmarschall Hermann Göring had put one of his closest buddies in charge of the vitally important job of overseeing aircraft production, and so too now had Churchill. Whether this diminutive press baron, with his great experience, drive and authority, could achieve all that he, Churchill, and Dowding dearly hoped remained to be seen. But one thing was not in doubt: in almost every respect, the Canadian was the German’s superior for the task.
14
Decisions
THE MIRACLE HAD HAPPENED. The gamble had paid off. Late on Monday, 20 May, having advanced more than 250 miles in ten days, troops of Panzer Corps Guderian had reached the Channel coast near Abbeville. Battles and campaigns rarely, if ever, go according to plan, least of all when they are carried out with so many pitfalls and obstacles to overcome, and when so reliant on luck and on the incompetence of the enemy. Yet, to all intents and purposes, that was what had happened.
Now caught in the mightiest encirclement ever in military history were more than 1.7 million men: the Dutch army, already in German hands, the entire Belgian army, one French army and large proportions of four others, and nearly all the British Expeditionary Force of half a million men – all trapped with their backs to the sea. And just ten divisions out of Germany’s 135 available for the offensive were all it had taken to achieve this extraordinary panzer drive to the coast. The stupefied French, stunned to see German tanks and vehicles having advanced so far so quickly, seemed to have been powerless to stop them.
Guderian and his men were euphoric about their incredible achievement, but had no idea what they were supposed to do next. No plan had been made; neither von Kleist, nor von Rundstedt, nor von Brauchitsch or even Hitler himself had dared believe such rapid progress was po
ssible. Thus he and his men had to impatiently twiddle their thumbs while they awaited new orders. Visiting 2nd Panzer Division he had asked an Austrian soldier how they had ‘enjoyed’ the operations to date. ‘Not bad,’ the soldier told him, ‘but we wasted two days.’
While Guderian’s men were kicking their heels near Abbeville on the 21st, the great Allied counter-attack was getting underway – except that it was barely a counter-attack at all; more a kind of demonstration. Only two British columns, each consisting of an infantry and armoured battalion, a battery of field artillery and anti-tank guns, and a few recce motorcycles, and a few French tanks were all that had been allocated for the task. In other words, less than a division, and rather than a pincer movement, it was thrusting south from the north only.
Since the French had planned their war in such a way that speed of movement was anathema to them, it was no real surprise that they had failed to come to the party. Gort had issued orders on the 20th for a thrust south of Arras to protect the town and his exposed right (southern) flank. It had not been intended as a counter-attack or part of any large-scale operation, and neither was he expecting French help. Soon after issuing this order, however, ‘Tiny’ Ironside, the CIGS, had arrived at Gort’s command post with orders from the War Cabinet that the entire BEF should move south-west, ‘attacking all enemy forces encountered’. Gort was incensed by this order. ‘A scandalous (ie Winstonian) thing to do,’ complained Henry Pownall, ‘and in fact quite impossible to carry out.’ Fortunately, once at Gort’s command post, Ironside quickly realized this too, and so with Pownall in tow went off to see Billotte and Blanchard, commander of French First Army, at the latter’s HQ in Lens, to discuss a co-ordinated counter-attack to retrieve the situation.
Although this had been imperative for several days and, since the day before, a matter of utmost urgency, absolutely nothing had been done by the French to prepare for such an action. The biggest sign of pro-action was the sacking of Gamelin, who had been replaced as Supreme Commander by Général Weygand – another Great War commander and now seventy-three years old. Ironside was shocked by Billotte’s increasing hysteria. The French Army Group Commander kept repeating his by now well-rehearsed mantra that there was nothing he could do to stop the panzers. At one point, he became so overwrought, Ironside grabbed him by his tunic and gave him a good shake. While they were there, Gort telephoned and asked the French to help in the planned action for the following day. This was followed by a call from Général Weygand, who equally urged his commanders to pull their fingers out and get a grip of themselves. At last Billotte and Blanchard agreed to contribute two divisions. Since the French had at least eight in the area, this was not much of a contribution. ‘Nobody minds going down fighting,’ noted Pownall after this meeting, ‘but the long and many days of defence and recently the entire lack of higher direction and action, have been terribly wearing on the nerves of us all.’ It was an odd thing to say; after, all the battle was hardly a cricket match. The mayhem was getting to them all.
Despite their assurances, however, it soon became clear that neither Billotte nor Blanchard had any intention of taking part in the counterattack at all. Billotte spent the rest of the day discussing whether an ammunition dump should be saved or blown up to prevent it falling into the hands of Germans, rather than marshalling his troops. At First Army HQ, Blanchard passed the buck to Altmayer, commander of French V Corps, but the latter informed his army commander that his men might be too tired to fight. Captain Reid, Blanchard’s British liaison officer, visited Altmayer and found him sitting on his bed crying silently. Neither Reid nor Archdale at Billotte’s HQ could then get hold of Gort or Pownall, so not until the following morning, a few hours before the attack was to begin, did the British learn that the French would not be contributing, save for a few tanks.
As it happened, the British thrust south of Arras seriously knocked Rommel’s combined force of 7th Panzer and Waffen-SS Totenkopf divisions. At one point, as British armour was threatening to overrun Rommel’s troops, the German general took personal command of an artillery battery sited in a quarry on the crest of a long shallow hill. The British were pushed back after a day of hard fighting, but it had given the Germans a severe shock. For the first time since crossing the Meuse, Army Group A had encountered some serious opposition. Von Rundstedt called it ‘a critical moment in the drive’, adding that, ‘For a short time it was feared that our armoured divisions would be cut off.’ Had the Allies managed to co-ordinate a combined counter-attack from both north and south, and in force, the Germans might yet have been checked. But it was not to be.
Not that Général Weygand, the spry septuagenarian brought in to put some steel back into the French, was giving up just yet – after all, he had not been brought in to do nothing. Nonetheless, matters hardly improved, and once again it was communications – or lack of them – that were one of the biggest problems. On the same day that the British were thrusting south of Arras, Weygand held a conference in the Belgian town of Ypres, now rebuilt since its destruction over twenty years before. By the time Gort finally got there, having been in the middle of a command post move and then struggling through the swathes of refugees clogging the roads, Weygand had already left. Billotte was also late, but, deciding to crack on with the conference anyway, the Belgians eventually agreed to fall back a short way, taking over part of the British northern line. Part of French First Army would also take over part of the British line, thus freeing troops to take part in the proposed counter-attack. By the time Gort eventually turned up, the plan was presented to him as a fait accompli.
It was a hopeless idea, not least because the main British lines of supply from the south had already been cut by the Germans. Gort’s troops were already getting low on ammunition and food. Furthermore, the three British divisions earmarked for the attack were blatantly not enough for the task set them. Gort could have refused, but did not. Nonetheless, how Weygand could have thought that these complicated troop movements could have enabled an attack to be made the following day, only he could have known. As it was, Gort soon put the kibosh on that. First, he insisted that the BEF, which up to then had been keeping the Army Group B at bay quite successfully, should fall back to the French–Belgian border line on the night of 22/23 May. The following night, the Belgians would relieve one British division in the north of the line, and the French two in the south. That meant the three divisions needed for the attack that had been released would not be ready until 26 May at the earliest. No-one was happy. The British felt it was a pig of a plan, the Belgians suspected they were being abandoned, and the French felt not enough was being done. Then, as Billotte was driving back to Lens, he was involved in a car crash and later died. No replacement was found for him until 25 May. Why it took four days to appoint a new Army Group Commander was anyone’s guess.
The next day, Wednesday, 22 May, the French did attempt a counterattack at Cambrai, but it was beaten off, while German infantry was now catching up the panzers and together pressing hard on the beleaguered British units at Arras. The chances of there being any counter-attack at all on the 26th were diminishing rapidly. ‘We are down to about two and a half days’ rations and 3–400 r.p.g. [rounds per gun],’ noted Pownall on the evening of the 22nd, ‘enough for only one defensive battle. A very tight corner indeed.’ By the morning of the 23rd, the BEF, along with the French First Army, were stuck out on a limb, now that the Belgians had fallen back to the River Lys, which ran in a north-easterly direction, and the BEF had fallen back to the border, which ran in a south-easterly direction. German forces were pressing the BEF hard along its front, northern and southern flanks, and with Guderian’s panzers now at the Channel it was in danger of being surrounded before it could fall back to the coast. The situation could hardly have been worse.
Yet it did not stop the Prime Minister, fresh from his latest trip to Paris, ordering Gort to counter-attack not on 26 May, but immediately, with eight British and French divisions and the Belgian Cavalr
y Corps on the right. ‘Here are Winston’s plans again,’ railed Pownall. ‘Can nobody prevent him from trying to conduct operations himself as a super Commander-in-Chief? How does he think we are to collect eight divisions and attack as he suggests? Have we no front to hold (which if it cracked would let in the flood?) He can have no conception of our situation and condition. Where are the Belgian Cavalry Corps? How is an attack like this to be staged involving three nationalities at an hour’s notice? The man’s mad.’
It was true the British and Belgians had been holding off the Germans reasonably well in the north up until then. But, of course, Army Group B was largely infantry and almost completely so now that two of its three panzer divisions had swung south. Thus it had to move mostly on foot and this took time. Unteroffizier Hellmuth Damm and his machine-gun company in the 56th Infantry Division had managed to commandeer some bicycles – they discovered there were many around – and that made life considerably easier for them. As Gruppe leader, he took a baker’s bicycle, which had three wheels and a pannier on which he managed to set his heavy MG08s and ammunition cases.
The division had been part of Sixth Army but on the 19th it was attached to Eighteenth Army instead and so now was advancing almost due west towards Ghent and Dunkirk – and facing the men of the BEF. On the 20th, Hellmuth watched the unusual spectacle of the division’s artillery marching past its infantry to take the vanguard of their advance. It then hammered the Belgian positions and the infantry followed. Hellmuth read this unorthodox practice as a sign of the Germans’ dominance and their mounting confidence. He and his men then found themselves in a ‘resting position’ near Opdorp, some thirty miles east of Ghent, for a couple of days. It gave them a much needed respite. By the 22nd, they were moving forward again, however, this time to attack Ghent. The town fell to 56th Division the following day.
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