Never Surrender

by John Kelly

  In an analysis of Norway’s impact on civilian morale, Mass Observation wrote:

  For the first time there is a real clear doubt about whether we have not underestimated [Hitler] and overestimated ourselves . . . if this skepticism continues and expands as it is now, a really difficult problem for leadership will be produced. Apathy would be increased. Apathy toward revolution, apathy toward aggression. A general feeling that the whole thing is a waste of time and that the whole effort is not worthwhile.

  In France, public reaction to Norway went through three stages. In mid-April, when Clare Boothe arrived in Paris, almost none of her French friends had a good word to say about the Anglais. The British were the senior partners in the Norwegian campaign, but the Parisians Boothe spoke to complained that they were not acting that way. “Where [was British] intelligence when the Germans were planning [the invasion]? Where was the [Royal] Navy? Where was the British Expeditionary Force?” Then, one morning, French radio announced the British assault on Trondheim, and Union Jacks sprouted up across the capital like some wild new jungle growth. They hung from balconies, windows, storefronts, and flagpoles. In the streets, French soldiers who had previously refused to salute British officers started saluting them smartly. “At last we are real allies,” a French captain said. “Not since the affair of Joan of Arc have the English and French so well understood each other.”

  “Oh, isn’t it wonderful!” Boothe said to Colonel Horace Fuller, whom she met during a visit to the American embassy in Paris in late April.

  “What? What’s wonderful?” asked Fuller, who was the military attaché at the embassy.

  “Norway!”

  “Oh, sure,” Fuller replied. “Hitler missed the bus, all right, but he caught the transport plane instead.”

  Then Fuller took Boothe into his office, unfolded a map of Norway on his desk, and explained “what it meant to force an enemy-held fjord in ships, how much tonnage and how many men it would take and how many guns. Norway . . . was the kind of country which if you got there first and with the most, you could not be got out in a day or a year or perhaps ever,” Fuller said. “And Hitler got there first.”

  The cancellation of the Trondheim operation initiated the third stage of French feeling about Norway, a French officer who served in the campaign summed up the change in a coy little parable about the Zulus. The British, he said, had planned Norway as if it were “an expedition against the Zulus, but unhappily, we and the British [turned out to be] the Zulus, armed with bows and arrows against the onslaught of modern scientific war.”

  * * *

  In The Gathering Storm, the first volume of his war memoirs, Churchill was frank about his good fortune in escaping political ruin after Norway. “Considering the prominent part I played in these events . . . it was a marvel that I survived and maintained my position in public esteem.” In the unedited version of that sentence, Churchill was franker. “It was a marvel—I really do not know how—I survived and maintained my position in public esteem while all the blame was thrown on poor Mr. Chamberlain.” In a note on the galleys of The Gathering Storm, Clementine Churchill told her husband why he survived: “Had it not been for your years of exile & repeated warnings re: the German peril, Norway might well have ruined you.” Chamberlain had no such history to shield him from criticism.

  By early May, a majority of the British public agreed with the young lieutenant, who told a reporter on the road to Trondheim, “I’ll tell you what’s wrong. It’s that bloody Chamberlain.” Chamberlain’s favorability rating, which had stood in the high fifties in March, was now in the thirties, and in the press and in the House of Commons there was much noisy speculation about whether he would still be prime minister at the end of May.

  Chamberlain himself was confident that he would be. “I don’t think my enemies will get me this time,” he told his sister Hilda in a May 4 letter.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAMBERLAIN MISSES THE BUS

  Early on the Sunday morning of May 5, 1940, a large crowd of middle-aged men could be seen gathering around the fountain in Finsbury Square, an acre and a half of treeless London lawn enclosed in a cheerless rectangle of commercial buildings just south of the Wesley Chapel burial grounds. Except for the bowling green and easy access to the numbers 21 and 43 buses, the fountain—fifteen feet high, constructed of gray and white stone, and built in the shape of a church steeple—was the square’s only notable feature. Erected by two Victorian worthies, Thomas and William Smith, to honor the memory of their mother, Martha, the fountain was for many years the sole province of the neighborhood birds; but after the Great War the birds were forced to share it with the Old Contemptibles, who, on the morning of their annual march to St. Paul’s Cathedral, would gather around the fountain to drink, smoke, and tell old war stories.

  The first British troops to arrive in France in 1914, the Old Contemptibles owed their name to Kaiser Wilhelm, who dismissed them as that “contemptible little army,” and their special place in the heart of the British nation to the honor of being the first British troops to the fight in 1914. During the 1920s and 1930s, the Contemptibles’ parade became a highlight of London’s spring season. Every May, through slumps and booms, coronations and abdications, international crises and international peace conferences—through pacifist protests and Mosleyite marches (Oswald Mosley was leader of the British Union of Fascists)—the old soldiers would gather in Finsbury Square and march down to St. Paul’s Cathedral: the Scots Guards band in front, piping out the old tunes of glory, and the crowds singing along. Now, nearly thirty years on, the lean bodies and hard faces of war had given way to fleshy, middle-aged jowls and expanding waistlines, which made the old warriors as unrecognizable as the nation of their young manhood: the old Edwardian Britain, supreme in all things.

  At 9:00 a.m. the trumpets of the Life Guards blared; the marchers snuffed out their cigarettes, slipped their whiskey casks into a coat pocket, and fell into line; on the far side of the square, a Manchester Guardian reporter took out his pen and described the scene forming before him. “In caps, bowlers and silk hats, tweeds and morning coats, the men were still regimental in their way of marching and it was hard to believe that these were the same men who were at Mons and the first Ypres twenty six years ago. All wore at least three medals and some six or seven.” By the time the reporter closed his notebook, the old soldiers had vanished into the crowd below the square and the Scots Guards band was beating out “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” for all they were worth.

  Normally, the parade would receive a big write-up in the following day’s papers, but May 6 was an unusually busy news day. The two-day parliamentary debate on the Norwegian campaign would begin the next day, and the Times, the Manchester Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, and the other major papers were full of speculation about the fate of Chamberlain, Churchill, and other members of the government. The other big news story of the day was the return of the 146th and 148th Territorials, who had made the “death march” to Trondheim. Readers looking for tales of valor and self-sacrifice could find them in the soldiers’ accounts, as could readers looking for explanations of why Norway had gone so wrong. “All the boys felt that if only we had some fighters to deal with their bombers, we could have smashed the Germans,” an infantry captain told a Guardian reporter. A sergeant who fought in central Norway told a similar tale to the Daily Mail’s man. “There was never a break in the [bombing] attacks. . . . If we had had tanks and fighter air craft we could have done really good work.” In interview after interview, the soldiers spoke of inferior British airpower, inferior British tactics, inferior British organization, leadership, and equipment, or of no equipment at all.

  During a visit to Downing Street the previous Wednesday, May 1, Major Millis Jefferis, newly returned from Norway, told Chamberlain that another factor had also contributed to the poor British performance. Being bombed was a new experience, and some units had not stood up well to it. At the sound of an airplane, the troops would fl
ee into the woods or into a cellar. The first day of May also brought a stream of other worrying news to Downing Street: from Turkey came a warning that the Germans planned to follow up their victory in Norway with a massive air strike on Britain, followed by a landing; from the Admiralty came a report that German planes had begun mining the Thames and the Tyne River; and from Yugoslavia came news of an imminent German attack on Holland. The first of May also brought Churchill to Downing Street; he arrived at about six in the evening, dripping wet and in a foul mood. “If I were the First of May,” he said, gazing out at the pelting rain, “I should be ashamed of myself.” Jock Colville, who was aware of Churchill’s four changes of mind over Trondheim, bristled at the remark: “Personally, I think he [Churchill] ought to be ashamed of himself.” The intelligence reports that arrived on Chamberlain’s desk the following day, May 2, included one particularly intriguing item: during a discussion of Anglo-Italian relations with an English acquaintance, Signor Giuseppe Bastianini, the Italian ambassador to Britain, had suddenly burst into tears. The ambassador’s behavior remained a puzzle for two days. Then, on May 4, a report from Myron Taylor, the American envoy to the Vatican, suggested a possible explanation. According to Taylor, Mussolini planned to enter the war on Hitler’s side as soon as he was confident that Germany would win.

  On the fourth, the Chiefs of Staff submitted a new report to the war cabinet. Review of the Strategical Situation on the Assumption That Germany Has Decided to Seek a Decision in 1940 examined the three options open to Hitler if he made an attempt to win the war that year. Of the three, the chiefs rated as most likely the one the Turkish report mentioned: “a major offensive against Great Britain,” starting with an air campaign and culminating in an invasion aimed at knocking Britain out of the war. Less likely—though not to be discounted, said the chiefs—was the second option: Germany seeks military and economic hegemony in Scandinavia and in parts of the Balkans, severs Britain’s sea routes, then calls for a peace conference in which the German conquests allow Hitler to dictate the terms. The chiefs rated a German offense in France, the third option, as least likely. Attacking the Allies at their strongest point would produce unacceptable losses. Chamberlain scanned the report, but not very attentively. By early May he was engaged in two wars: one against Germany, the other against his critics in Parliament.

  * * *

  It is impossible to say when Chamberlain’s fall became inevitable. Opposition to appeasement had been growing in fits and starts since Churchill’s 1932 warning about a rearming Germany—and opposition to Chamberlain personally, at least since the Munich conference in 1938. Yet if one had to choose a moment when the prime minister’s fall became inevitable, it would probably be his talk with Lord Salisbury the day after the Norway invasion. Salisbury was a member of one of the most influential and storied families in England. For four hundred years the Cecils had tumbled down through English history like the notes of a particularly sparkling tune. There had been Cecil prime ministers, Cecil secretaries of state, Cecil lord privy seals, and Cecil ambassadors and proconsuls. Salisbury, the current leader of the family, was seventy-eight and had a commanding presence that owed something to breeding, something to the old-fashioned Victorian frocks he favored, something to personal rectitude, and something to a stare of displeasure that carried such moral weight that even brave hearts withered under it.

  Salisbury was also the leader of the Watching Committee, which he founded, not to unseat Chamberlain but to help him and his ministers execute the war more effectively. A few bomb throwers had managed to slip by Salisbury’s watchful gaze and become members of the committee, but in the main its members were like him: thoughtful public men of steady temperament who believed that differences between the government and its critics could be resolved if the prime minister adopted three measures, which Salisbury laid out for Chamberlain during his visit to Downing Street the day after the Norway invasion. None of the measures was particularly novel. For months, critics had been urging Chamberlain to bomb Germany, to create a smaller, more nimble war cabinet, and to bring more new faces into the government. And for months Chamberlain had resisted the advice. Perhaps because he was tired of hearing it, after Salisbury finished, the prime minister forgot who he was talking to and snapped: “If people did not like the present administration of the government, they could change it.”

  On April 29, during a talk with Lord Halifax at the Foreign Office, Salisbury again pressed for a more vigorous pursuit of the war. From Argentina to Sweden, Germany was viewed as always swift and daring, Britain as always too late with too little. “A formidable air offensive against German military targets . . . would have a profound and . . . favorable effect on neutrals, including the United States,” Salisbury said. Lord Halifax, who also had grown weary of unsolicited advice from uninformed notables, thanked Salisbury and his companions, Leo Amery, Edward Spears, and Harold Nicolson, for their concern, and assured his guests that the government was aware of the dangers facing the country. “Lord Halifax, we are not satisfied,” Salisbury said with the sharpness of a man unaccustomed to being patronized. Then he rose from his chair and walked out of the foreign secretary’s office, taking with him his colleagues and whatever remaining hopes he had of working with the Chamberlain government.

  “Oh! The excitement, the thrills, the ill concealed . . . nervousness, the self interest . . . when there is a crisis on.” So wrote Henry Channon of the intoxicating blend of political intrigue, deception, backbiting, phone taps, and war that was London in the first week of May 1940. Sensing that Norway had made Chamberlain politically vulnerable, on May 2, the day the government announced the Trondheim failure, Clement Davies and Leo Amery, two of the most influential opposition leaders, decided to mount a challenge to the government. Every May before adjournment for the Whitsunday holiday (the Feast of Pentecost), Parliament held an adjournment debate, an unstructured session during which MPs could introduce almost any subject for discussion and debate. Amery and Davies arranged to have the Norwegian campaign put on this year’s debate schedule. Next, Davies asked Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood, the leader and deputy leader of the Labour Party, to request a confidence motion—a vote of confidence—at the end of the debate. The Labour men refused. Without the support of Conservative MPs, the motion would fail, and Attlee and Greenwood found it impossible to imagine any set of circumstances under which rank-and-file Conservative MPs—those business-friendly go-getters from the suburbs and upright Tory knights of the squire—would vote a Conservative prime minister out of office.

  Meanwhile, the prime minister’s supporters, sensing a challenge to his leadership, began to plot a defense. In late April, Alec Douglas-Home, a senior Chamberlain aide, collared Henry Channon in the House and “pumped” him for information: “Did I think Winston should be deflated? . . . Ought he leave the Admiralty?” Douglas-Home’s interrogation was one of the first indications that Chamberlain’s allies planned to mount a whispering campaign against the first lord, who was widely viewed as the prime minister’s most probable challenger. Harold Nicolson, a Churchill supporter, also noticed that “the Tapers and Tadpoles [Chamberlain’s operatives] were putting it around that the whole Norwegian episode is due to Winston.” Out in the Conservative Party heartland, the home counties, where people spoke of England rather than Britain, the anti-Churchill campaign grew vehement. “W. C. they regard with complete mistrust,” Nancy Dugdale wrote her soldier husband, Tommy, in Palestine. “They hate his boasting broadcasts. W. C. is really the counterpart of Göring in England, full of the desire for blood—blitzkrieg and bloated with ego and over feeding, the same treachery running through his veins, punctuated by heroics and hot air. I can’t tell you how depressed I feel about it.”

  As the Whitsun debate approached, Churchill’s supporters mounted a whispering campaign of their own. “Winston is being lauded by both the Socialist [Labour] and Liberal opposition and being tempted to lead a revolt against the PM” the ever-watchful Henry Channon no
ted in his diary. “Tonight, [he] sat joking in the smoking room surrounded by A. V. Alexander [a Labour Party official] and Archie Sinclair [leader of the Liberal Party], the new Shadow Cabinet. A Westminster war added to the German one.” Chamberlain was also suspicious of Churchill’s intentions. Winston “is too apt to look the other way while his friends exalt him,” he complained to his sisters in a letter. In the debate over Churchill’s loyalties, the final word is usually given to John Colville, who had heard from a trusted source that “Winston was being loyal to the P.M. but his satellites (e.g., Duff Cooper, Amery etc.) were doing all in their power to create mischief and ill feeling.” Perhaps, but at the very least, it is likely that Churchill was aware of his friends’ politicking. In early May, a time when Chamberlain was still expected to survive the Whitsun debate, Churchill felt confident enough about his own political future to ask Lloyd George if he would accept a post in a Churchill government. Unsurprisingly, the former prime minister refused to give him a straight answer.

  The March Gallup poll had indicated that fully a quarter of the British public favored “a discussion of peace proposals with Germany now,” and, as Lloyd George was the only politician of national standing who represented that point of view, he was also spoken of as a possible successor to Chamberlain. “People call me a defeatist,” Lloyd George told Cecil King, editor of the Sunday Pictorial, a 1940s version of People magazine. “But what I say to them is this: Tell me, how can we win? Can we win in the air? Can we win at sea, when the effect of our naval blockade is wiped out by Germany’s connections with Russia? . . . Hitler cannot win any more than we can. . . . The Germans cannot get through the Maginot Line. . . . The war will drag wearily on.”

  Other well-informed Britons agreed. In March, when a reporter asked Basil Liddell Hart, Britain’s leading military analyst, what the government should do, he replied, “Come to the best possible terms as soon as possible. . . . We have no chance of avoiding defeat.” Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail and the Sunday Pictorial, also favored a quick end to the war and was willing to say so in public. “When the moment comes, I intend to campaign for your recall as PM,” Rothermere told Lloyd George in late April. Lord Beaverbrook, another propeace press magnet, also promised to support the former prime minister in his papers. By early May, a majority of the Watching Committee believed that Lloyd George would succeed Chamberlain. And Nancy Astor, an influential Virginia-born MP, considered the old Welshman’s return to Downing Street probable enough to arrange a sit-down to see if Lloyd George still had the “root of the matter” in him.