Finest Years

by Max Hastings

  Next morning, 12 June, Churchill told Spears to stay with the French, and to do everything possible to sustain them: ‘We will carry those who will let themselves be carried.’ Yet Britain had no power to ‘carry’ France. Pétain absented himself from the ensuing meeting of the Supreme War Council. His own decision was reached. Churchill raged at news that a planned RAF bombing mission to Italy the previous night had been frustrated by farm carts pushed across the runway by French airmen. Reynaud said that any further such missions must be launched from England. At Briare airfield, Ismay observed encouragingly that with no more allies to worry about, ‘We’ll win the Battle of Britain.’ Churchill stared hard at him and said: ‘You and I will be dead in three months’ time.’ There is no reason to doubt this exchange. Churchill claimed later that he had always believed Britain would come through. He certainly had a mystical faith in destiny, however vague his attachment to a deity. But it is plain that in the summer of 1940 he suffered cruel moments of rationality, when defeat seemed far more plausible than victory, when the huge effort of will necessary to sustain the fight was almost too much for him.

  Six months later, Eden confessed to the prime minister that during the summer he and Pound, the First Sea Lord, had privately acknowledged despair to each other. Churchill said: ‘Normally I wake up buoyant to face the new day. Then, I awoke with dread in my heart.’ In the fevered atmosphere of the time, some MPs panicked. Harold Macmillan was among the prime movers in the so-called ‘undersecretaries’ revolt’ by Tories demanding that the old ‘men of Munich’ should be summarily expelled from the government. ‘All this,’ in Leo Amery’s words, ‘on the assumption that France is going out altogether and that we shall be defeated.’ The young turks were squashed.

  When so many others were dying, Churchill could scarcely take for granted his own survival. A German bomb, a paratroop landing in Whitehall, an accident by land, sea or air such as befell many other prominent wartime figures, could extinguish him at any time. His courage, and that of those who followed and served him, lay in defying probability, sweeping aside all thought of the most plausible outcome of the struggle, and addressing each day’s battles with a spirit undaunted by the misfortunes of the last. That Wednesday morning of 12 June, his Flamingo hedgehopped home over the lovely countryside of Brittany. Near the smoking docks of Le Havre, the pilot dived suddenly to avoid the attentions of two German planes which were strafing fishing boats. The Flamingo escaped unseen, landing safely at Hendon, but this was one of Churchill’s closest calls. Later in the afternoon he told the war cabinet that it was obvious French resistance was approaching an end. He spoke admiringly of De Gaulle, whose resolution had made a strong impression on him.

  Churchill had been back in London less than thirty-six hours when Reynaud telephoned, soon after midnight, demanding a new and urgent meeting at Tours, to which he had now retreated. The prime minister left next morning, accompanied by Halifax and Beaverbrook, driving through the incongruous London summer shopping crowds. He was greeted at Hendon with news that bad weather required a take-off postponement. ‘To hell with that,’ he growled. ‘I’m going, whatever happens. This is too serious a situation to bother about the weather!’ They landed at Tours amid a thunderstorm, on an airfield which had been heavily bombed the previous night, and solicited transport from a jaded rabble of French airmen. Churchill, Beaverbrook and Halifax crowded with difficulty into a small car which took them to the local prefecture, where they wandered unrecognised through the corridors. At last a staff officer escorted them to a nearby restaurant for cold chicken and cheese. This was black comedy. It is not difficult to imagine Halifax’s disdain for the ordeal to which Churchill had exposed him.

  Back at the prefecture, the British waited impatiently for Reynaud. It was essential that they take off again in daylight, because the bombcratered and unlit runway was unfit for night operations. At last the French prime minister arrived, with Spears. He told the English party that while Weygand was ready to surrender, it was still possible that he could persuade his colleagues to fight on – if he received a firm assurance that the Americans would fight. Otherwise, would Britain concede that it was now impossible for France to continue the war? Churchill responded with expressions of sympathy for France’s agony. He concluded simply, however, that Britain would sustain its resistance: no terms, no surrender. Reynaud said that the prime minister had not answered his question. Churchill said he could not accede to a French capitulation. He urged that Reynaud’s government should make a direct appeal to President Roosevelt before taking any other action. Some of the British party were dismayed that nothing was said about continuing the fight from France’s North African empire. They were fearful that Reynaud’s nation would not only cease to be their ally, but might join Germany as their foe. They were acutely aware that, even though the French leader still had some heart, his generals, excepting only De Gaulle, had none.

  In the courtyard below, a throng of French politicians and officials, emotional and despairing, milled around Churchill as he left. Hands were wrung, tears shed. The prime minister murmured to De Gaulle: ‘L’homme du destin.’ He ignored an impassioned intervention by the comtesse de Portes, who pushed forward crying out that her country was bleeding to death, and that she must be heard. French officials told the assembled politicians that Churchill at this last meeting of the Supreme War Council had shown full understanding of France’s position, and was resigned to her capitulation. Reynaud did not invite Churchill to meet his ministers, as they themselves wished. They felt snubbed in consequence, though the omission changed nothing.

  Churchill landed back at Hendon after a two-and-a-half-hour flight. At Downing Street he learned that President Roosevelt had responded to an earlier French appeal with private promises of more material aid, and declared himself impressed that Reynaud was committed to fight on. Churchill told the war cabinet that such a message came as close to an American declaration of war as was possible without Congress. This was, of course, wildly wishful thinking. Roosevelt, on Secretary of State Cordell Hull’s advice, rejected Churchill’s plea that he should allow his cable to be published.

  On 12 June, the 51st Highland Division at Saint-Valery was forced to join a local capitulation by troops of the French Tenth Army, to which the British formation was attached. Had an order been given a few days earlier, it is plausible that the troops could have been evacuated to Britain through Le Havre. Instead, they became a sacrifice to Churchill’s commitment to be seen to sustain the campaign. That same day, Gen. Sir Alan Brooke arrived with orders to lead British forces to the aid of the French. Reinforcements were still landing at the Brittany ports on the 13th.

  When Ismay suggested that British units moving to France should hasten slowly, Churchill said: ‘Certainly not. It would look very bad in history if we were to do any such thing.’ This was of a piece with his response to chancellor Kingsley Wood’s suggestion a few weeks later, that since Britain was financially supporting the Dutch administration in exile, in return the government should demand an increased stake in the Royal Dutch Shell oil company. ‘Churchill, who objected to taking advantage of another country’s misfortunes, said that he never again wished to hear such a suggestion.’ At every turn, he perceived his own words and actions through the prism of posterity. He was determined that historians should say: ‘He nothing common did or mean upon that memorable scene.’ Indeed, in those days Marvell’s lines on King Charles I’s execution were much in his mind. He recited them repeatedly to his staff, and then to the House of Commons. Seldom has a great actor on the stage of human affairs been so mindful of the verdict of future ages, even as he played out his own part and delivered his lines.

  On 14 June, the Germans entered Paris unopposed. Yet illusions persisted in London that a British foothold on the Continent might even now be maintained. Jock Colville wrote from Downing Street that day: ‘If the French will go on fighting, we must now fall back on the Atlantic, creating new lines of Torres Vedras behind
which British divisions and American supplies can be concentrated. Paris is not France, and…there is no reason to suppose the Germans will be able to subdue the whole country.’ Colville himself was a very junior civil servant, but his fantasies were fed by more important people. That evening, Churchill spoke by telephone to Brooke in France. The prime minister deplored the fact that the remaining British formations were in retreat. He wanted to make the French feel that they were being supported. Brooke, with an Ulster bluntness of which Churchill would gain much more experience in the course of the war, retorted that ‘it was impossible to make a corpse feel’. After what seemed to the soldier an interminable and absurd wrangle, Churchill said: ‘All right, I agree with you.’

  In that conversation, Brooke saved almost 200,000 men from death or captivity. By sheer force of personality, not much in evidence among British generals, he persuaded Churchill to allow his forces to be removed from French command and evacuated. On the 15th, orders were rushed to Canadians en route by rail from the Normandy coast to what passed for the battlefront. Locomotives were shunted from the front to the rear of their trains, which then set off once more for the ports. At Brest, embarking troops were ordered to destroy all vehicles and equipment. However, some determined and imaginative officers laboured defiantly and successfully to evacuate precious artillery. For the French, Weygand was further embittered by tidings of another British withdrawal. It seems astonishing that his compatriots did nothing to impede the operation, and even something to assist it.

  Much has been written about Churchill’s prudence in declining to reinforce defeat by dispatching further fighter squadrons to France in 1940. The contrary misjudgement is often passed over. Alan Brooke understood the prime minister’s motive – to demonstrate to the French that the British Army was still committed to the fight. But he rightly deplored its futility. If Dunkirk represented a miracle, it was scarcely a lesser one that two weeks later it proved possible to evacuate almost all of Brooke’s force to Britain through the north-western French ports. There were, in effect, two Dunkirks, though the latter is much less noticed by history. Churchill was able to escape the potentially brutal consequences of his last rash gesture to Reynaud, because of Brooke’s resolution and the Germans’ preoccupation with completing the destruction of the French army. Had not providence been merciful, all Brooke’s men might have been lost, a shattering blow to the British Army’s prospects of reconstitution.

  On 15 June, at Churchill’s behest Dill telephoned Brooke on a weak, crackling line, and told him to delay evacuation of 52nd Division from Cherbourg. In London there were renewed hopes of clinging to a foothold in France, though these had no visible foundation in reality. The French anyway discounted all such British aspirations. Brooke was exasperated. He told the CIGS: ‘It is a desperate job being faced with over 150,000 men and a mass of material, ammunition, petrol, supplies etc, to try to evacuate or dispose of, and nothing to cover this operation except the crumbling French army…We are wasting shipping and precious hours.’ Next day, London grudgingly agreed that the 52nd Division could continue returning to Britain. Yet administrative confusion persisted. Some troops were embarked at Le Havre for Portsmouth, only to be offloaded at Cherbourg and entrained for Rennes. A ship arrived at Brest on the morning of the 18th, bearing artillery and ammunition from England. At a dozen north-west French ports, tens of thousands of British troops milled in chaos, many of them lacking orders and officers.

  German preoccupation with the French army alone made it possible to get the men and a few heavy weapons away, amid chaos and mismanagement. There were skirmishes between British and enemy forces, but no fatal clash. Between 14 and 25 June, from Brest and Saint-Nazaire, Cherbourg and lesser western French ports, 144,171 British troops were successfully rescued and brought home, along with 24,352 Poles and 42,000 other Allied soldiers. There were losses, notably the sinking of the liner Lancastria at a cost of at least 3,000 lives;* but these were negligible in proportion to the forces at risk – two-thirds of the numbers brought back from Dunkirk.

  It is hard to overstate the chaos of British command arrangements in France during the last three weeks of the campaign, even in areas where formations were not much threatened by the Germans. Two trainloads of invaluable and undamaged British tanks were gratuitously abandoned in Normandy. ‘Much equipment had been unnecessarily destroyed,’ in the angry words of Maj.Gen. Andrew McNaughton, commanding 1st Canadian Division. Though the war had been in progress for almost nine months, Lt.Gen. Sir Henry Karslake, commanding at Le Mans until Brooke’s arrival, wrote in a report: ‘The lack of previous training for our formations showed itself in many ways.’ Men of the 52nd Division arrived in France in June with equipment issued two days earlier, never having fired their anti-tank guns or indeed seen a tank. Karslake was appalled by the perceived indiscipline of some regular units, even before they were engaged: ‘Their behaviour was terrible!’ Far more vehicles, stores and equipment could have been evacuated, but for administrative disorder prevailing at the ports, where some ships from England were still being unloaded while, at nearby quays, units embarked for home. The commitment to north-west France represented a serious misjudgement by Churchill, which won no gratitude from the French, and could have cost the Allies as many soldiers as the later disasters in Greece, Crete, Singapore and Tobruk put together.

  While the horror of Britain’s predicament was now apparent to all those in high places and to many in low, Churchill was visibly exalted by it. At Chequers on the warm summer night of 15 June, Jock Colville described how tidings of gloom were constantly telephoned through, while sentries with steel helmets and fixed bayonets encircled the house. The prime minister, however, displayed the highest spirits, ‘repeating poetry, dilating on the drama of the present situation…offering everybody cigars, and spasmodically murmuring: “Bang, bang, bang, goes the farmer’s gun, run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run.” ’ In the early hours of morning, when US ambassador Joseph Kennedy telephoned, the prime minister unleashed upon him a torrent of rhetoric about America’s opportunity to save civilisation. Then he held forth to his staff about Britain’s growing fighter strength, ‘told one or two dirty stories’, and departed for bed at 1.30, saying, ‘Goodnight, my children.’ At least some part of this must have been masquerade. But it was a masquerade of awesome nobility. Churchill’s private secretary Eric Seal thought him much changed since 10 May, more sober, ‘less violent, less wild, less impetuous’. If this was overstated, there had certainly been an extraordinary accession of self-control.

  On 16 June the war cabinet dispatched a message to Reynaud, now in Bordeaux, offering to release France from its obligation as an ally to forswear negotiations with Germany, on the sole condition that the French fleet should be sailed to British harbours. De Gaulle, arriving in London, was invited to lunch with Churchill and Eden at the Carlton Club. He told the prime minister that only the most dramatic British initiative might stave off French surrender. He urged formalising a proposal for political union between France and Britain over which the cabinet had been dallying for days. Amid crisis, these desperate men briefly embraced this fanciful idea. An appropriate message, setting forth the offer in momentous terms, was dispatched to Reynaud. Churchill prepared to set forth once more for France, this time by sea, to discuss a draft ‘Proclamation of Union’. He was already aboard a train at Waterloo with Clement Attlee, Archibald Sinclair and the chiefs of staff, bound for embarkation on a destroyer, when word was brought that Reynaud could not receive them. With a heavy heart, the prime minister returned to Downing Street. It was for the best. The proposal for union was wholly unrealistic, and could have changed nothing. France’s battle was over. Reynaud’s government performed one last service to its ally: that day in Washington, all the French nation’s American arms contracts were formally transferred to Britain.

  During the night, it was learned at Downing Street that Reynaud had resigned as prime minister and been replaced by Marshal Pétain, who was seek
ing an armistice. Pétain’s prestige among the French people rested first upon his defence of Verdun in 1916, and second upon an ill-founded belief that he possessed a humanity unique among generals, manifested in his merciful handling of the French army during its 1917 mutinies. In June 1940 there is little doubt that Pétain’s commitment to peace at any price reflected the wishes of most French people. Reynaud, however, probably committed a historic blunder by agreeing to forsake his office. Had he and his ministerial colleagues chosen instead to accept exile, as did the Norwegian, Belgian and Dutch governments, he could have prevented his nation’s surrender of democratic legitimacy, and established French resistance to tyranny on strong foundations in London. As it was, he allowed himself to be overborne by the military defeatists, led by Pétain and Weygand, and denied himself a famous political martyrdom.