Among those who were critical of Churchill's Munich speech was a senior Conservative member of his constituency, Sir Harry Goschen, who wrote to the constituency chairman: 'I cannot help thinking it was rather a pity that he broke up the harmony of the House by the speech he made. Of course he was not like a small ranting member, and his words were telegraphed all over the Continent and to America, and I think it would have been a great deal better if he had kept quiet and not made a speech at all.'
Another of Churchill's former constituency supporters, Colin Thornton-Kemsley, who had been active during the Munich debate drumming up an anti-Churchill lobby, later recalled, 'We wanted him to support the Conservative administration, not to discredit them.'
Despite vociferous local criticism, which Conservative Central Office encouraged, and which culminated in a public meeting at Winchester House in the City of London, Churchill's constituents gave him a vote of confidence on November 4. But Churchill sensed a mood of restraint among many MPs who might have been his allies; when, on November 12, the Secretary of the Anti-Nazi Council, A.H. Richards, suggested inviting Eden to one of its luncheons, Churchill replied, 'I doubt if Mr Eden would come. He is very shy at present.'
To the editor of the Sunday Referee, R.J. Minney, who had written to Churchill urging him to embark on a national speaking campaign to rouse public opinion from its 'state of apathy', he replied pessimistically on November 12: 'I am afraid that making speeches in the country no longer has the old effect. In the first place they are not reported or replied to as they used to be before the War. I did five or six meetings in March and April, in order to warn the country of what was coming this autumn, and everywhere had very large meetings in the best halls and platforms representative of all three parties, but while the labour entailed was enormous, it did not seem to produce the slightest result.'
Speaking at Weimar on November 6, Hitler warned the democracies of the 'dangers' of free speech, especially 'freedom for war-mongering'. Referring to Churchill's appeals to the opponents of Nazism inside Germany to make their voices heard, he declared, 'If Mr Churchill had less to do with traitors and more with Germans, he would see how mad his talk is, for I can assure this man, who seems to live on the moon, that there are no forces in Germany opposed to the regime-only the force of the National-Socialist movement, its leaders and its followers in arms.'
That same evening Churchill issued a reply to Hitler, who had gone on to abuse the other 'gentry' in British politics who had criticised him. 'I am surprised that the head of a great State should set himself to attack British Members of Parliament who hold no official position and who are not even the leaders of parties,' Churchill avowed. 'Such action on his part can only enhance any influence they may have, because their fellow-countrymen have long been able to form their own opinions about them, and really do not need foreign guidance.'
On November 17, a week after Kristallnacht, the night of anti-Jewish violence throughout Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland, Churchill asked the Commons, 'Is not this the moment when all should hear the deep, repeated strokes of the alarm bell, and when all should resolve that it shall be a call to action, and not the knell of our race and fame?' He went on to urge support for a Liberal amendment calling for the setting up of a Ministry of Supply. Chamberlain decided to use sarcasm to try to lessen the impact of Churchill's call. 'I have the greatest admiration for my right hon. Friend's many brilliant qualities,' he said. 'He shines in every direction. I remember once asking a Dominion statesman, who held high office for a number of years, what in his opinion was the most valuable quality a statesman could possess. His answer was, judgment. If I were asked whether judgment is the first of my right hon. Friend's many admirable qualities I should have to ask the House of Commons not to press me too far.'
Churchill did not know that in Cabinet on October 31 Chamberlain had told the Cabinet: 'A good deal of false emphasis had been placed on rearmament, as though one result of the Munich Agreement had been that it would be necessary for us to add to our rearmament programmes. Acceleration of existing programmes was one thing, but increases in the scope of our programme which would lead to a new arms race was a different proposition.' Chamberlain's proposition was not to abandon the Munich policies, but to continue with them, 'aimed', as he told his colleagues, 'at securing better relations'.
Nor did Churchill know that in a secret memorandum for the Cabinet, circulated on October 25, the new Secretary of State for Air, Sir Kingsley Wood, had told his colleagues, 'It is clear that in our previous programmes of expansion we have not taken a sufficiently long-range view and have underestimated both the capacity and intentions of Germany.'
In advocating a Ministry of Supply on November 17, Churchill called upon the Conservative backbenchers to join him in supporting the Liberal amendment. 'Hon Gentlemen above the gangway,' he said, 'pledged loyal, faithful supporters on all occasions of His Majesty's Government-must not imagine that they can throw their burden wholly on the Ministers of the Crown. Much power has rested with them. One healthy growl from those benches three years ago-and how different to-day would be the whole lay-out of our armaments production! Alas, that service was not forthcoming.' To vote for a Ministry of Supply would not affect the life of the Government, he said, but it would make the Government act. 'It would make a forward movement of real energy.' It was not a Party question, it had 'nothing to do with Party it was 'entirely an issue affecting the broad safety of the nation'.
Churchill's call was a complete failure. Not fifty, but only two, MPs went into the Lobby with him: Brendan Bracken and Harold Macmillan. Bitterly, Churchill wrote to Duff Cooper five days later: 'Chamberlain has now got away with everything. Munich is dead, the unpreparedness forgotten, and there is to be no real, earnest, new effort to arm the nation. Even the breathing space, purchased at hideous cost, is to be wasted.'
***
On December 1, the day after his sixty-fourth birthday, Churchill finished the first volume of his history of the English-Speaking Peoples. Four days later he was in the Commons to criticise the state of London's anti-aircraft defences. Then, still stung by Chamberlain's rebuke in the Ministry of Supply debate, he told his constituents on December 9:
The Prime Minister said in the House of Commons the other day that where I failed, for all my brilliant gifts, was in the faculty of judging. I will gladly submit my judgment about foreign affairs and national defence during the last five years, in comparison with his own.
In February the Prime Minister said that tension in Europe had greatly relaxed. A few weeks later Nazi Germany seized Austria. I predicted that he would repeat this statement as soon as the shock of the rape of Austria passed away. He did so in the very same words at the end of July. By the middle of August Germany was mobilising for those bogus manoeuvres which, after bringing us all to the verge of a world war, ended in the complete destruction and absorption of the Republic of Czechoslovakia.
At the Lord Mayor's banquet in November at the Guildhall, he told us that Europe was settling down to a more peaceful state. The words were hardly out of his mouth before the Nazi atrocities on the Jewish population resounded throughout the civilised world.
Churchill also spoke of Chamberlain's predecessor:
In 1934 I warned Mr Baldwin that the Germans had a secret Air Force and were rapidly overhauling ours. I gave definite figures and forecasts. Of course, it was all denied with all the weight of official authority. I was depicted a scaremonger. Less than six months after Mr Baldwin had to come down to the House and admit he was wrong and he said, 'We are all to blame' and everybody said, 'How very honest of him to admit his mistake.'
He got more applause for making this mistake, which may prove fatal to the British Empire and to British freedom, than ordinary people would do after they rendered some great service which added to its security and power. Well, Mr Chamberlain was, next to Mr Baldwin, the most powerful Member of that Government. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer. He knew all the facts. His judgment failed just like that of Mr Baldwin and we are suffering from the consequences of it today.
Next Churchill referred to Lord Samuel, his colleague in the Liberal Government before the First World War. 'Four years ago,' he reminded his listeners, 'when I asked that the Air Force should be doubled and redoubled-more than that is being done now-Lord Samuel thought my judgment so defective that he likened me to a Malay running amok. It would have been well for him and his persecuted race if my advice had been taken. They would not be where they are now and we should not be where we are now.'
'It is on the background of these proved errors of judgment in the past,' Churchill ended, 'that I draw your attention to some of the judgments which have been passed upon the future, the results of which have not yet been proved.'
Four days after Churchill's speech, A.H. Richards wrote to him: 'I feel that for you, it has been a year of great exertion, but not a labour in vain. There are indications that around you are gathering resolute and dynamic forces in your valiant and unsparing efforts for the preservation of our precious heritage, freedom.' Eight days later Richards wrote again, telling Churchill that fifteen different towns had written to ask if Churchill could speak in their main halls. Richards added, 'In moving among people of all classes I find more than ever that the general feeling is that had we heeded in time your very wise counsel in the matter of Rearmament and the Covenant-so oft and so resolutely repeated during the past five years, we should not have drifted into such dire peril.'
To Clementine, who was on a cruise in the West Indies, Churchill wrote on December 22, 'Everything goes to show that our interests are declining throughout Europe, and that Hitler will be on the move again in February or March, probably against Poland.' On Christmas Day, Halifax's Principal Private Secretary, Oliver Harvey, wrote in his diary that the Government, in particular Inskip, was not pressing on with rearmament 'fundamentally, as the situation demands'. Harvey added: 'A much more vigorous and imaginative personality should be there. Winston is the obvious man, but I believe the PM would rather die than have him.'
Remaining at Chartwell, Churchill wrote about the Wars of the Roses and Joan of Arc. One morning, reading of the death, at the age of sixty-eight, of the man who had fallen in love with Clementine in 1903, he wrote to her: 'My dearest Clemmie, you will be saddened to know that Sidney Peel has died. I do not know the cause. Many are dying now that I knew when we were young. It is quite astonishing to reach the end of life & feel just as you did fifty years before. One must always hope for a sudden end, before faculties decay. But that is a lugubrious ending to my letter. I love to think of you in your sunshine. But I hope & pray that some solid gains are being made in your poise & strength.'
A week later, Churchill's first granddaughter, Edwina, was born, the daughter of Diana and Duncan Sandys. She came 'most unexpectedly,' Churchill wrote to Clementine, 'was less than eight months old and weighed just over four and a half pounds. She was perfectly well in the afternoon, sitting up and could see me. The baby is tiny but perfect, and by my latest news, thriving.'
***
On 7 January 1939 Churchill flew to Paris, where he lunched with Reynaud, saw the former Prime Minister Leon Blum, and took the night train to the South of France, for two and a half weeks with Maxine Elliott at the Château de l'Horizon. From there he wrote to Clementine about his talks with French politicians in Paris: 'They all confirm the fact that the Germans had hardly any soldiers at all on the French frontier during the crisis. And Blum told me, (secret) that he had it from Daladier himself that both Generals Gamelin and Georges were confident that they could have broken through the weak unfinished German line, almost unguarded as it was, by the fifteenth day at the latest, and that if the Czechs could have held out only for that short fortnight, the German armies would have had to go back to face invasion. On the other side there is their great preponderance in the air, and it depends what you put on that how you judge the matter.'
Churchill added, 'I have no doubt that a firm attitude by England and France would have prevented war, and I believe that history will incline to the view that if the worst had come to the worst, we should have been far better off than we may be at some future date.'
Of his Cabinet prospects, Churchill wrote to Clementine, 'I do not think it would be much fun to take these burdens and neglects upon my shoulders, certainly not without powers such as they have not dreamed of according.' And in a reflection prompted by a silver cup sent to him by the former Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Sir James Craig, with quotations on it from his father, himself and his son, he wrote: 'I wish some of these dirty Tory hacks, who would like to drive me out of the Party, could see this trophy.' Life on the Riviera was a mixture of work and play. 'Just as at Chartwell I divided my days between building and dictating,' he told Clementine on January 18, 'so now it is between dictating and gambling. I have been playing very long, but not foolishly, and up to date I have a substantial advantage.'
Churchill returned to England in the last week of January. 'Never have I seen you in such good form,' Maxine Elliott wrote after he had gone, 'and we rocked with laughter continually. Your joie de vivre is a wonderful gift and on a par with your other amazing gifts-in fact you are the most enormously gifted creature in the whole world and it is like sunshine leaving when you go away.'
Within Churchill's constituency, despite the vote of confidence in November, critical voices had continued to denounce his hostile attitude towards Munich. Unless the 'mood of intolerance in some Party circles at the present time' were firmly resisted, he warned his constituents on January 25, it would 'destroy the quality of the House of Commons'. Much remained to be done before the country was secure; both with regard to Air Raid Precautions, and the setting up of a compulsory register of those liable for military service in war-time, he feared there was still insufficient 'clarity of thought or vigour of execution', and he went on to tell his constituents: 'Nearly five months have passed since the trenches in the parks were dug; yet there has not been found the mental and moral grip either to fill them in, or make them permanent. They gape, a discreditable advertisement of administrative infirmity, and I am afraid that they are not the only instance which could be cited in this sphere.'
Churchill reminded his constituents that at the time of the Munich Agreement there were those who had hoped that Britain had purchased even at a great price, a 'lasting peace', while others felt that at least a 'breathing space' had been gained. 'Let us make sure that this breathing space is not improvidently cast away.' But the 'breathing space' was being lost; on January 26, in rejecting Hore-Belisha's proposed Army increases for the coming year, Chamberlain told the Cabinet: 'Finances could not be ignored since our financial strength was one of our strongest weapons in any war which was not over in a short time'. As a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, the financial position looked to him 'extremely dangerous.'
This cautious attitude to defence spending revealed itself in several ways. On 1 January 1939 an Advisory Panel of Industrialists, set up in the previous month to report on delays and problems in the rearmament programme, stressed in its report to Chamberlain that industry was still 'operating, it must be remembered, on a peace-time basis'. In suggesting that this phrase should be omitted from the final report, the head of the Civil Service, Chamberlain's confidant Sir Horace Wilson, minuted on January 27: 'There are previous references to the peace-time basis and I do not see any point in rubbing it in quite so much. Repetition rather invites the comment that it might be a good thing to put the country on a war footing and we do not want to do that just yet.'
'How indescribably bloody everything is,' Churchill wrote to his sister-in-law Lady Gwendeline on January 30. That week, Inskip left the Ministry for Co-ordination of Defence and went to the Dominions Office. Churchill was widely canvassed for the vacant post, but it went elsewhere, to Lord Chatfield, the former First Sea Lord.
Chamberlain was still confident that Munich had been a step, not on the path of rearmament and preparation for war, but of conciliation and negotiation for peace. On February 19 he wrote to his sister: 'I myself, am going about with a lighter heart than I have had for many a long day. All the information I get seems to point in the direction of peace & I repeat once more that I believe we have at last got on top of the dictators. Of course that doesn't mean that I want to bully them as they have tried to bully us; on the contrary I think they have had good cause to ask for consideration of their grievances, & if they had asked nicely after I appeared on the scene they might already have got some satisfaction. Now it will take some time before the atmosphere is right but things are moving in the direction I want. I think we ought to be able to establish excellent relations with Franco who seems well disposed to us, & then, if the Italians are not in too bad a temper we might get Franco-Italian conversations going & if they were reasonably amicable we might advance towards disarmament. At any rate that's how I see things working round, & if I were given three or four more years, I believe I really might retire with a quiet mind.'
On February 18 the British Ambassador to Berlin, Sir Nevile Henderson, had informed the Foreign Office that Marshal Goering, head of the German Air Force, had asked him, 'What guarantee had Germany that Mr Chamberlain would remain in office and that he would not be succeeded by "a Mr Churchill or a Mr Eden" Government?' This question, Goering added, 'was Germany's main preoccupation'. On February 22, during a debate in which Churchill again called for a Ministry of Supply, Chamberlain referred to him as 'Bogey No. 1 in some parts of Europe'. The hint was quickly taken up by some of Churchill's constituents, who now tried to have him replaced by someone more enthusiastic about appeasement.
In a speech to his constituents on March 10, Churchill defended both his record, and his belief that any attempt to do a deal with Hitler would fail. 'I am carrying on no factious opposition,' he said. 'I have no axe to grind in the matter. I am simply engaged in trying to get this country strongly armed, properly defended, and to have a foreign policy that will arrive at peace with honour.'
It was no use sending Members to Parliament 'to say the popular things of the moment', Churchill told his constituents in a second meeting four days later. 'What is the value of our Parliamentary institutions, and how can our Parliamentary doctrines survive, if constituencies tried to return only tame, docile, and subservient members who tried to stamp out every form of independent judgment? I have been out of office now for ten years, but I am more contented with the work I have done in these last five years as an Independent Conservative than of any other part of my public life. I know it has gained for me a greater measure of goodwill from my fellow countrymen than I have ever previously enjoyed.'
One of Churchill's constituency critics, Colin Thornton-Kemsley, expressed the view of Conservative Central Office, telling the meeting, 'I think that unless Mr Churchill is prepared to work with the Conservative Party, National Government, and our great Prime Minister, he ought no longer to shelter under the goodwill and name which attaches to a great Party'. But Churchill's constituents rallied to his support.
On March 9 Chamberlain told a meeting of Lobby Correspondents that 'the international situation now seems to give less cause for anxiety than for some time past.' On the following day Hoare told the Chelsea Conservative Association that 'confidence, almost suffocated in the late autumn by defeatism, had returned; hope had taken the place of fear', and if the three dictators were to work with the Prime Ministers of Britain and France 'with a singleness of purpose', Europe might be at the dawn of a new 'Golden Age'. Four days later the Germans began troop movements towards the borders of the already truncated Czech State as a prelude to further annexation. 'The Czechoslovakian Republic is being broken up before our eyes,' Churchill told his constituents that day.
On the following morning German troops crossed into Czechoslovakia. That night Hitler slept in the Presidential Palace in Prague, and on the following morning proclaimed a Protectorate over Bohemia and Moravia. Czechoslovakia had ceased to exist, its Slovak region proclaiming full independence and total support for Nazi Germany. 'It seems to me,' Churchill wrote on March 19 to the former British Ambassador to Berlin, Sir Horace Rumbold, 'Hitler will not stop short of the Black Sea unless arrested by the threat of a general war, or actual hostilities.'
On March 21 Churchill was visited by a senior Home Office official, Forbes Leith Fraser, the Chief Intelligence Officer of the Air Raid Precautions Department, who gave him details of deficiencies in his department. Churchill wrote at once to Chamberlain, urging an immediate state of 'full preparedness' for Britain's anti-aircraft defences, and explained why he believed action was essential: 'Such a step could not be deemed aggressive, yet it would emphasise the seriousness of the action HMG are taking on the Continent. The bringing together of these officers and men would improve their efficiency with every day of their embodiment. The effect at home would be one of confidence rather than alarm.'
In wanting Britain's anti-aircraft defences manned at once, and publicly, 'it was of Hitler I am thinking mostly,' Churchill explained to Chamberlain. 'He must be under intense strain at this moment. He knows we are endeavouring to form a coalition to restrain his further aggression. With such a man anything is possible. The temptation to make a surprise attack on London or on the aircraft factories about which I am even more anxious would be removed if it was known that all was ready. There could, in fact, be no surprise, and therefore, the incentive to the extremes of violence would be removed and more prudent counsels might prevail. In August 1914 I persuaded Mr Asquith to let me send the Fleet to the North Sea so that it could pass the Straits of Dover and the narrow seas before the diplomatic situation had become hopeless. It seems to me that manning the anti-aircraft defences now stands in a very similar position, and I hope you will not mind my putting this before you.'
'My dear Winston', Chamberlain replied that same day, 'thanks for your note. I have been spending a lot of time on the subject you mention but it is not so simple as it seems.' Ten days later, shocked by the German occupation of Prague, Chamberlain gave a British guarantee to Poland. Did the guarantee include the predominantly German-speaking Polish Corridor, which had been detached from Germany in 1919? On April 1 a leading article in The Times stated: 'The new obligation which this country yesterday assumed does not bind Great Britain to defend every inch of the present frontiers of Poland. The key word in that statement is not integrity but "independence".'
Churchill was alarmed. 'There was a sinister passage in The Times leading article on Saturday,' he told the Commons on April 3, 'similar to that which foreshadowed the ruin of Czechoslovakia, which sought to explain that there was no guarantee for the integrity of Poland, but only for its independence.' His suspicion was well founded; that same day Chamberlain explained to his sister that the British guarantee to Poland was 'unprovocative in tone, but firm, clear but stressing the important point (perceived alone by The Times) that what we are concerned with is not the boundaries of states, but attacks on their independence. And it is we who will judge whether this independence is threatened or not.'
On April 7, Good Friday, Italian troops invaded Albania. That day Churchill was at Chartwell, where Harold Macmillan was one of the guests. He later recalled Churchill's search for maps and the frequent telephone calls to find out the location of all British warships in the Mediterranean. 'I shall always have a picture of that spring day,' Macmillan later wrote, 'and the sense of power and energy, the great flow of action, which came from Churchill, although he held no public office. He alone seemed to be in command, when everyone else was dazed and hesitating.' On the following day Churchill telephoned Chamberlain several times to urge the summoning of Parliament for the next day, a Sunday. He also urged Chamberlain to order a British naval occupation of the Greek island of Corfu, to indicate to Mussolini, thus far and no farther. 'Hours now count,' he said, 'to recover the initiative in diplomacy.'
Chamberlain took no such action. In the Commons on April 13 Churchill criticised the Government for what he considered its mistaken attitude to the situation in Europe and the Mediterranean. 'How was it that on the eve of the Bohemian outrage Ministers were indulging in what was called "sunshine talk", and predicting the dawn of a golden age? How was it that last week's holiday routine was observed at a time when, quite clearly, something of a very exceptional character, the consequences of which could not be measured, was imminent? I do not know. I know very well the patriotism and sincere desire to act which animates Ministers of the Crown, but I wonder whether there is not some hand which intervenes or filters down or withholds Intelligence from Ministers.' Many of Churchill's listeners believed that this was a reference to Sir Horace Wilson.
A similar process of 'sifting and colouring and reducing' had taken place, Churchill said, in 1934, with the figures of German air strength. 'The facts were not allowed to reach high Ministers of the Crown until they had been so modified that they did not present an alarming impression.' There was a 'tremendous risk' if Ministers only attached importance to those pieces of information 'which accord with their earnest and honourable desire that the peace of the world shall remain unbroken.' He had two practical suggestions to make; the first was the 'full inclusion' of the Soviet Union in a defensive bloc with Britain, France and Poland; and second was the promotion of a 'self-protective union' in the Balkans, including Roumania, to which Britain had just given a guarantee similar to that given earlier to Poland. 'The danger is now very near. A great part of Europe is to a very large extent mobilised. Millions of men are being prepared for war. Everywhere the frontier defences are manned.'
When the debate was over, Churchill went to see the Chief Whip, David Margesson. He did not go to complain about naval dispositions or preparedness, but, Margesson told Chamberlain, to express a 'strong desire' to enter the Cabinet. This suggestion, Chamberlain told his sister, 'caught me at a moment when I was certainly feeling the need of help, but I wanted to do nothing too quickly. The question is whether Winston, who would certainly help on the Treasury Bench in the Commons, would help or hinder in Cabinet or in Council. Last Saturday for instance he was on the telephone all day urging that Parliament should be summoned for Sunday & that the Fleet should go and seize Corfu that night! Would he wear me out resisting rash suggestions of that kind?'
On April 18, pressed to do so by the Advisory Panel of Industrialists, Chamberlain at last agreed to establish a Ministry of Supply. 'Winston has won his long fight,' Brendan Bracken wrote to a friend. 'Our Government are now adopting the policy he advised three years ago. No public man in our time has shown more foresight, and I believe that his long, lonely struggle to expose the dangers of the dictatorships will prove to be the best chapter in his crowded life.'
***
The new Minister of Supply was the former Minister of Transport, Leslie Burgin, who had entered Parliament in 1929, almost thirty years after Churchill. His appointment led to a demand in many newspapers for Churchill's inclusion in the Cabinet. On April 22 the Evening News suggested that Churchill should be appointed either First Lord of the Admiralty or Secretary of State for Air. On April 26 Percy Cudlipp, editor of the Sunday Pictorial, wrote to tell him that 'only 73 out of the growing total of 2,400 letters are against you joining the Cabinet'. Some of those who objected were cranks, 'The more serious objectors blame you for Gallipoli.'
On April 27 Churchill criticized in the Commons Chamberlain's reluctance to introduce compulsory military service, something Hore-Belisha had unsuccessfully pressed in Cabinet. The national service register then being introduced, whereby people indicated their willingness to serve when the Government eventually decided to institute a call-up, was not enough: 'A gesture was not sufficient; we wanted an army and might want it soon.' Even the register ought to have been introduced immediately after Munich. The impulse to resist the Nazi principles, Churchill declared, 'comes from the mass of the people'. The Times called Churchill's speech 'one of the finest of his Parliamentary performances', to which MPs had flocked.
On May 10 the News Chronicle published a survey in which 56 per cent of those questioned said that they wanted Churchill in the Cabinet, 26 per cent were against, and 18 per cent did not know. Four days earlier Emery Reves had told him that his fortnightly articles were no longer allowed to appear in Poland, Roumania or Greece 'through fear of Germany'. Nor was he confident that appeasement was over; the Government's recent decision to curtail Jewish immigration into Palestine seemed to him an indication of a similar mood, and in the Commons on May 22, speaking of the proposed Arab veto on all Jewish immigration after 1944, he declared, 'Now, there is the breach; there is the violation of the pledge; there is the abandonment of the Balfour Declaration; there is the end of the vision, of the hope, of the dream.'
His fear, Churchill told the House, was that this 'violation' of the pledge to the Jews might now embolden Britain's potential enemies in Europe 'to take some irrevocable action and then find out, only after it is all too late, that it is not this Government, with its tired Ministers and flagging purpose, that they have to face, but the might of Britain and all that Britain means.' Turning to the Government Ministers on the front bench, Churchill warned: 'Never was the need for fidelity and firmness more urgent than now. You are not going to found and forge the fabric of a grand alliance to resist aggression, except by showing continued examples of your firmness in carrying out, even under difficulties, and in the teeth of difficulties, the obligations into which you have entered.'
That summer Churchill was among the leading advocates, with Eden and Lloyd George, of bringing the Soviet Union into a binding alliance with Britain and France. Chamberlain not only had doubts, however, about the Soviet military capacity, but, he told his sister, 'worse than that was my feeling that the Alliance would definitely be a lining up of opposing blocs & an association which would make any negotiation with the Totalitarians difficult if not impossible'.
Negotiations with the Soviet Union were begun but with no sense of urgency; not Halifax, but a senior diplomat, was sent to Moscow to lead the talks. The Russians, suspicious of Western intentions, and concerned to acquire a protective band of Baltic and Polish territory, began secret negotiations with Germany. As the summer progressed, Churchill became increasingly worried about the sense of defeatism and despair which he began to feel around him. On June 11 Halifax spoke in the Lords about Anglo-German relations. At one point in his speech he referred to 'the really dangerous element in the present situation, which is that the German people as a whole should drift to the conclusion that Great Britain had abandoned all desire to reach an understanding with Germany and that any further attempt at such a thing must be written off.'
Churchill wrote to Halifax that same day to explain why he had been 'a little disturbed' by this speech: 'I am sure you realise that to talk about giving back colonies, or lebensraum, or any concession, while nine million Czechs are still in bondage, would cause great division among us. Very bad reports are coming from Bohemia and Moravia about the oppression and terrorism of the Nazi regime upon these conquered people, and similar conditions are developing in Slovakia. At any moment bloody episodes may occur, and it is even said that many executions by the Gestapo have already taken place. Therefore, it seems to me quite impossible even to enter into discussions with Hitler at the present time.'
At dinner two days later, sitting next to the American columnist Walter Lippmann, Churchill was shocked to learn from Lippmann that the United States Ambassador, Joseph Kennedy, was telling his friends that when war came Britain, facing defeat, would surrender to Hitler. Harold Nicolson who was present at the dinner recalled that the moment Churchill heard the word 'surrender' he turned to Lippmann and declared: 'No, the Ambassador should not have spoken so, Mr Lippmann; he should not have said that dreadful word. Yet supposing (as I do not for one moment suppose) that Mr Kennedy were correct in his tragic utterance, then I for one would willingly lay down my life in combat, rather than, in fear of defeat, surrender to the menaces of these most sinister men. It will then be for you, the Americans, to preserve and to maintain the great heritage of the English-Speaking peoples.'
On June 22 Churchill wrote in the Daily Telegraph that the Germans were intensifying their demands on Poland, and that their demand for the Free City of Danzig and the Polish Corridor would cut Poland off from the sea. Five days later his collected newspaper articles for 1938 and 1939 were published in book form, entitled Step by Step. 'It must be a melancholy satisfaction to see how right you were,' Clement Attlee wrote to him, and from Eden came the comment, 'The reading of it is somewhat painful, but no doubt salutary.'
There was now an intensification of calls for Churchill's inclusion in the Cabinet. On June 21 Halifax spoke privately of the need 'for having Churchill in'. Malcolm MacDonald later recalled that several Junior Ministers urged Chamberlain to make Churchill 'a war minister, or war-to-be minister, but Neville was reluctant'. According to the Star, the Chief Whip, David Margesson, had been told by many backbenchers that bringing Churchill in 'to one of the key posts in the Cabinet would create fresh confidence'. On July 2 the Sunday Graphic reported speculation that he would soon be made First Lord of the Admiralty. In the Observer, J.L. Garvin commented, 'That one who has so firm a grasp of European politics should not be included in the Government must be as bewildering to foreigners as it is regrettable to most of his own countrymen.'
Chamberlain was not convinced, telling Lord Camrose, one of the newspaper proprietors pressing hardest for Churchill's inclusion, that he did not feel he would 'gain sufficiently from Winston's ideas and advice to counterbalance the irritation and disturbance which would necessarily be caused'. During his talk with Camrose, Chamberlain also expressed the view that if Hitler were to ask for Danzig 'in the normal way' then 'it might be possible to arrange things'. On July 2 Chamberlain told his sister that he could not believe Hitler really wanted war, or that he would be sorry to compromise 'if he could do so without what he would feel to be humiliation'.
On the far left, Stafford Cripps now joined those urging Churchill's inclusion in the Cabinet, but Chamberlain would not yield. 'If Winston got into the Government,' he told his sister on July 8, 'it would not be long before we were at war.'
Two days before Chamberlain wrote this letter, the Foreign Office had heard from the British Military Attaché in Berlin that Hitler's Finance Minister, Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk, had advised a visiting British General: 'Take Winston Churchill into the Cabinet. Churchill is the only Englishman Hitler is afraid of. He does not take the PM or Halifax seriously, but he places Churchill in the same category as Roosevelt. The mere fact of giving him a leading Ministerial post would convince Hitler that we really meant to stand up to him.'
Chamberlain still hoped that Poland might agree to let Hitler acquire Danzig, and that this would satisfy him until more wide-ranging talks could begin. He was also convinced that the 'Bring Back Churchill' campaign had petered out. But it continued to gain momentum; on July 13 a Liberal candidate, T.L. Horabin, won a by-election in North Cornwall largely on a 'Bring Back Churchill' platform, defeating the Conservative candidate.
Churchill remained at Chartwell, working on his history of the English-Speaking Peoples. 'It has been a comfort in this anxious year to retire into past centuries,' he wrote to his publisher, Sir Newman Flower. When Ironside visited him on July 24, Churchill told the General that it was now 'too late for any appeasement. The deed was signed, and Hitler is going to make war.' Three days later Ironside wrote in his diary: 'I keep thinking of Winston Churchill down at Westerham, full of patriotism and ideas for saving the Empire. A man who knows you must act to win. You cannot remain supine and allow yourself to be hit indefinitely. Winston must be chafing at the inaction. I keep thinking of him walking up and down the room.'
It was now announced that Parliament would be adjourned from August 4 until October 3. During an angry debate on August 2, Attlee, Sinclair, Eden, Macmillan and Churchill were among those who protested against such a long break, and asked for Parliament to reassemble in the third week of August. 'This is an odd moment,' Churchill said, 'for the House to declare that it will go on a two months' holiday. It is only an accident that our summer holidays coincide with the danger months in Europe, when the harvests have been gathered, and when the powers of evil are at their strongest.'
Churchill continued: 'At this moment in its long history, it would be disastrous, it would be pathetic, it would be shameful for the House of Commons to write itself off as an effective and potent factor in the situation, or reduce whatever strength it can offer to the firm front which the nation will make against aggression. It is a very hard thing, and I hope it will not be said, for the Government to say to the House, "Begone! Run off and play. Take your masks with you. Do not worry about public affairs. Leave them to the gifted and experienced Ministers"-who, after all, so far as our defences are concerned, landed us where we were landed in September last year, and who, after all-I make all allowances for the many difficulties-have brought us in foreign policy at this moment to the point where we have guaranteed Poland and Roumania, after having lost Czechoslovakia, and not having gained Russia.'
Not only did Chamberlain reject the appeal for a shorter break, he said that the vote would be treated as a Vote of Confidence. As a result, the Government had its way. After the vote a young Conservative MP, Ronald Cartland, who within a year was to be killed in action during the retreat to Dunkirk, said to Churchill, 'Well, we can do no more,' to which Churchill replied: 'Do no more, my boy? There is a lot more we can do. This is the time to fight-to speak-to attack!'
On August 8, as Parliament prepared for a two-month adjournment, Churchill made a fifteen-minute broadcast to the United States. 'Holiday time, ladies and gentlemen!' he began. 'Holiday time, my friends across the Atlantic! Holiday time, when the summer calls the toilers of all countries for an all too brief spell from the offices and mills and stiff routine of daily life and bread-winning, and sends them to seek if not rest at least change in new surroundings, to return refreshed and keep the myriad wheels of civilised society on the move. Let me look back-let me see. How did we spend our summer holidays twenty-five years ago? Why, those were the very days when the German advance guards were breaking into Belgium and trampling down its people on their march towards Paris! Those were the days when Prussian militarism was-to quote its own phrase-"hacking its way through the small, weak, neighbour country" whose neutrality and independence they had sworn not merely to respect but to defend.'
All over Europe, Churchill told his American listeners, there was a hush. 'It is the hush of suspense, and in many lands, it is the hush of fear.' One could also hear the tramp of armies; the armies of Germany and Italy. 'After all, the dictators must train their soldiers. They could scarcely do less in common prudence, when the Danes, the Dutch, the Swiss, the Albanians-and of course the Jews-may leap out upon them at any moment and rob them of their living space.'
Two days after this broadcast, Churchill visited the Royal Air Force station at Biggin Hill, not far from Chartwell, where, at Kingsley Wood's invitation, he watched Fighter exercises. Then, on August 14, he flew to Paris, before going to the Maginot Line, where, in a gesture of confidence by the French military authorities, he was shown sections no other foreign politician had been allowed to see, including underground railways in the sector facing the Siegfried Line.
When he asked what was the nature of the French defences from the point where the Maginot Line came to an end, to the coast at Dunkirk, Churchill was told by General Georges that there were 'field works' guarding the two-hundred-mile gap. Churchill's face 'had ceased smiling', Louis Spears, who accompanied him, later recalled, 'and the shake of his head was ominous when he observed that he hoped these field works were strong, that it would be very unwise to think the Ardennes were impassable to strong forces. 'Remember,' Churchill said, 'that we are faced with a new weapon, armour in great strength, on which the Germans are no doubt concentrating, and that forests will be particularly tempting to such forces since they will offer concealment from the air.'
Three days later Churchill was back in Paris. On August 17 he went to Dreux to paint once more at the Château St Georges Motel. That day The Times published an appeal signed by 375 members of the staffs of British universities, urging his inclusion in the Government. In the Strand, a large poster had appeared, bearing the three words,
'WHAT PRICE CHURCHILL?'
For four days Churchill painted at St Georges Motel. To the artist Paul Maze, who worked alongside him, he remarked, 'This is the last picture we shall paint in peace for a very long time.' Talking of the size and quality of the German Army, he told Maze, 'They are strong, I tell you, they are strong.' Then, Maze recalled, 'his jaw would clench his large cigar, and I felt the determination of his will. "Ah," he would say, "with it all, we shall have him".'
On August 23 Churchill returned to London, where he learned of an impending agreement between Russia and Germany. On the following day Chamberlain recalled Parliament, and the Fleet was ordered to its war stations. On August 25 Britain signed a formal Treaty of Alliance with Poland.
For five days, Hitler hesitated. Churchill worked at Chartwell on his history of the English-Speaking Peoples. 'I am, as you know, concentrating every minute of my spare life and strength upon completing our contract,' he told Newman Flower. He had still not 'cleared away the Queen Elizabeth block', he wrote to the historian G.M. Young on August 31, but he added proudly that he already had 530,000 words in print: 'It is a relief in times like these to be able to escape into other centuries. Happily there are good hopes that Chamberlain will stand firm.'
That night Hitler's armies invaded Poland. At 8.30 on the following morning, September 1, the Polish Ambassador, Count Raczynski, telephoned Churchill to give him the news. The House of Commons was summoned for six o'clock that evening. Churchill drove up to London; at Chamberlain's request he went first to Downing Street, where Chamberlain invited him to join the War Cabinet. 'I agreed to his proposal without comment,' Churchill later recalled, 'and on this basis we had a long talk about men and measures.'
Chamberlain and Churchill agreed that there should be a small War Cabinet of six members, from which the three Service Ministers would be excluded. Churchill would join this War Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio. But no such appointment was made. Nor was any ultimatum sent to Germany, despite Britain's new Treaty of Alliance with Poland. When Chamberlain spoke in the Commons that evening, he explained that Britain had not sent an ultimatum, but a note seeking 'satisfactory assurances' that the German Government had 'suspended all aggressive action against Poland' and was prepared promptly to withdraw its forces from Poland.
The Germans did not reply. Shortly after midnight Churchill wrote to Chamberlain from Morpeth Mansions, 'I remain here at your disposal.' He waited at Morpeth Mansions throughout the next morning, September 2, expecting to be asked to go to Downing Street to join the War Cabinet. No such message came; Kathleen Hill later recalled how he was 'pacing up and down like a lion in a cage. He was expecting a call, but the call never came.' During the morning Maurice Hankey, who had also been invited to join the Cabinet, went to see Churchill. 'As far as I can make out,' he wrote the next day to his wife, 'my main job is to keep an eye on Winston! I spent 1½ hours with him yesterday morning. He was brimful of ideas, some good, others not so good, but rather heartening and big. I only wish he didn't give one the impression that he does himself too well!'
The Cabinet met that afternoon without Churchill. Its members were unanimous that an ultimatum should be sent to Germany, to expire at midnight. But when Chamberlain spoke in the Commons that evening, it was not to announce any ultimatum, for none had been sent, but to speak of a compromise formula whereby a British declaration of war might be avoided. 'If the German Government should agree to withdraw their forces,' the formula read, 'then His Majesty's Government would be willing to regard the position as being the same as it was before the German forces crossed the Polish frontier.'
The House was 'aghast', Amery later recalled: 'For two whole days the wretched Poles had been bombed and massacred, and we were still considering within what timetable Hitler should be invited to tell us whether he felt like relinquishing his prey!' Churchill later recalled: 'There was no doubt that the temper of the House was for war. I deemed it even more resolute and united than in the similar scene on August 3, 1914, in which I had also taken part.'
Five members of Chamberlain's Cabinet, Simon, Hore-Belisha, Sir John Anderson, Walter Elliot and Earl De La Warr, went immediately to a room in the Commons, where they agreed that, unless their earlier decision for a midnight ultimatum were adhered to, they would resign. Meanwhile, a number of MPs, including Duff Cooper, Eden and Bracken, went to see Churchill at Morpeth Mansions to express, Churchill later recalled, 'their deep anxiety lest we should fail in our obligations to Poland'. 'We were all in a state of bewildered rage,' Duff Cooper wrote in his diary. Churchill told his visitors that he had agreed the previous evening to join the War Cabinet, but that since then he had not heard a word from Chamberlain. Had he not felt himself already 'almost a member of the Government', he said, he would have spoken out in the Commons after Chamberlain had read out the formula for a possible compromise.
Churchill discussed the crisis with his visitors until after midnight, their talk punctuated by the thunder-claps of a fierce autumnal storm. Then, with their approval, he wrote to Chamberlain: 'It seems to me that entirely different ideas have ruled from those which you expressed to me when you said "the die was cast".' He felt entitled to ask the Prime Minister to let him know 'how we stand, both publicly and privately' before the debate began at noon the next day. 'It seems to me,' he continued, 'that if the Labour Party, and as I gather the Liberal Party, are estranged, it will be difficult to form an effective War Government.'
Conveying the unease not only of his friends, but of almost all those who had heard Chamberlain's statement announcing further delay, Churchill went on, 'There was a feeling tonight in the House that injury had been done to the spirit of national unity by the apparent weakening of our resolve.' He therefore asked Chamberlain to make no announcement of the composition of the War Cabinet, or of his own place in it, 'until we have had a further talk'. This was not a threat to pull out. 'As I wrote to you yesterday morning, I hold myself entirely at your disposal, with every desire to aid you in your task.'
Unknown to Churchill, that very midnight Chamberlain had been visited by the group of Cabinet Ministers who had agreed among themselves to demand that the British ultimatum be sent to Germany without further delay. He bowed to their demand, having had no answer from Hitler that the British condition for starting negotiations, a withdrawal of German troops to the frontier, was acceptable. The British ultimatum was sent to Berlin at nine in the morning of September 3, giving the Germans two hours to halt their advance into Poland. No reply came by eleven. Britain and Germany were at war.
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