Churchill spent that night in Eisenhower's train, before crossing back into Germany on March 4, where he visited the First Canadian Army and then, at the German village of Goch, pulled the lanyard to fire an eight-inch gun. 'Winston fretting because he was not allowed nearer the front,' Brooke noted in his diary. That night he slept in Eisenhower's train as it made its way southward to Rheims, where, at Eisenhower's headquarters just outside the city, he spent the next day watching in the Map Room the course of the battle he had hoped to witness at closer quarters.
He was 'anxious to go full out about Poland', Churchill telegraphed to Eden from Rheims. For this reason he did not want Britain to make any protest about Soviet actions in Roumania, lest, by reference to the Moscow percentages agreement of the previous October, Stalin should reproach Britain 'for breaking our understanding with him about Roumania', at the very moment that strife about Poland came to a head. He had 'every intention', Churchill told Eden in a second telegram that day, 'of working to the utmost for a Poland free to manage its own affairs-and to which Polish soldiers in our service will be glad to return'.
That night Churchill spent his fourth consecutive night in Eisenhower's train, before flying back to London on the morning of March 6. His first letter that day was to a Conservative MP worried about Poland. 'We are now labouring to make sure that the Yalta agreement about Poland and free elections is carried out in the spirit as well as in the letter,' Churchill wrote. Later that day, however, he learned that only Moscow's nominees would be allowed to be members of the Government of Poland. This made it 'clear', Churchill told his colleagues, 'that the Russians were not going to carry out the conditions on which we had agreed'. With these words the Yalta Agreement on Poland was effectively dead, twenty-three days after it had been made.
On March 7 the news from Poland itself was ominous: two sealed trains, each with two thousand Polish priests, intellectuals and teachers on board, had been sent to Soviet labour camps on the Volga. As many as six thousand Polish officers who had fought against the Germans in units loyal to the Polish Government in London had been arrested. Many had been killed. Reading these details, Churchill asked that they should be sent on to Roosevelt.
That same day, as Cologne was abandoned by its defenders, units of the American Army crossed the Rhine at Remagen. But the excitement of these successes was overshadowed by anger that the Soviet military authorities in Roumania were threatening to remove the former Prime Minister, General Radescu, from the sanctuary he had found at the British Military Mission. That evening Churchill told the War Cabinet that it was the intention of the British Military and Air Missions in Roumania to open fire on the Russians if they tried to remove Radescu by force. The War Cabinet agreed that the Missions should 'open fire if necessary' to guard the fugitive.
Churchill was now fully disillusioned with Stalin, and was no longer willing to allow the Russians a free hand in Roumania in return for their acceptance of a non-Communist Government in Greece. The refusal to allow opposition parties, and the deportations of opponents of Communism, had accelerated in the past weeks, making a mockery, he telegraphed to Roosevelt on March 8, of the Yalta Declaration on Liberated Europe. All parties and all classes, he told the President, had set their hearts against a Soviet domination of Poland. 'Labour men are as keen as Conservatives, and Socialists as keen as Catholics.' Once it was seen 'that we have been deceived and that the well-known Communist technique is being applied behind closed doors in Poland, either directly by the Russians or through their Lublin puppets, a very grave situation in British public opinion would be reached'.
Churchill urged Roosevelt to join with him in 'dogged pressure and persistence' to preserve Polish freedom. But Roosevelt was in no position to answer, or even to read, Churchill's telegram. He was dying, his nearness to death hidden even from his closest ally and partner. On March 18, in a personal appeal to Roosevelt, Churchill expressed his hope that the recent 'rather numerous' telegrams on Poland, Roumania and other topics, eight long telegrams in less than three weeks, 'are not becoming a bore to you', and he added: 'Our friendship is the rock on which I build for the future of the world so long as I am one of the builders.' Peace with Germany and Japan 'will not bring much rest to you and me (if I am still responsible). As I observed last time, when the war of giants is over, the wars of the pygmies will begin. There will be a torn, ragged and hungry world to help to its feet.' What would Stalin or his successor say, Churchill asked the President, 'to the way we should both like to do it?'
On the day that Churchill sent this telegram, he learned that 71,000 American troops had been killed in action since the Normandy landings. In the same period there had been 33,000 British and Canadian deaths. Montgomery was meanwhile preparing a new forward assault. On March 23 Churchill flew in a Dakota to Holland, landing at the bomb-scarred aerodrome at Venlo. Then he drove across the German border to Montgomery's headquarters at Straelen. 'It is hoped to pass the river tonight,' Churchill telegraphed that night to Stalin, 'and tomorrow establish the bridgeheads.'
***
In the early hours of March 24, from an artillery Observation Point at Ginderich, Churchill watched Montgomery's offensive begin, as airborne troops went in across the Rhine some four miles to the east.
Cadogan noted in his diary, in London: 'Monty attacked last night and it seemed to go well. PM there, of course.' More than two thousand aircraft flew overhead and across the river to Wesel and beyond. But as Churchill watched, he also saw, as he later recalled, 'aircraft in twos and threes coming back askew, asmoke, or even in flames. Also at this time tiny specks came floating to earth. Imagination, built on a good deal of experience, told a hard and painful tale.'
From Ginderich, Churchill drove with Brooke the full length of Montgomery's line, first into Xanten, then through Marienbaum, and finally to high ground just south of Kalkar, from where they could see the crossing-place of the 51st Highland Division. On the following morning Churchill flew from the airstrip at Straelen, for more than a hour and a half, in Montgomery's tiny Messenger aircraft. In all he flew 140 miles, mostly at 500 feet. His pilot, Flight-Lieutenant Trevor Martin, later recalled seeing flashes of British artillery to the west of them as, from the cramped plane, and with no radio with which to contact the ground, they looked down on German defensive positions east of the Rhine. 'I was worried,' Martin wrote, 'that the Americans in particular would not know that it was one of our aeroplanes.'
Returning safely to Straelen, Churchill was driven to Eisenhower's headquarters further south, near Rheinburg. From there, Churchill, Eisenhower and Montgomery drove to Büderich, on the west bank of the Rhine. After Eisenhower had left, and he and Montgomery prepared to leave, Churchill saw a small launch come close by.
'Why don't we go across and have a look at the other side?' Churchill asked.
'Why not?' was Montgomery's unexpectedly brief reply.
Crossing with several senior American officers, the two men reached the eastern side. 'We landed in brilliant sunshine and perfect peace on the German shore,' Churchill later recalled, 'and walked about for half an hour or so unmolested.' Then, after crossing back, they drove to Büderich, where Churchill clambered over the twisted girders and broken masonry of the road bridge. As he did so, German shells began to fall into the river about a mile away. 'Presently they came nearer. Then one salvo came overhead and plunged in the water on our side of the bridge. The shells seemed to explode on impact with the bottom, and raised great fountains of spray about a hundred yards away.' Several other shells fell among the motor cars which were concealed on the bank not far behind them. At that moment General Simpson, whose front it was, came up to Churchill with the words: 'Prime Minister, there are snipers in front of you; they are shelling both sides of the bridge; and now they have started shelling the road behind you. I cannot accept responsibility for your being here and must ask you to come away.'
As Brooke watched, Churchill put his arms round one of the twisted girders of the bridge. 'The look on Winston's face,' he later recalled, 'was just like that of a small boy being called away from his sand castles on the beach by his nurse!' Churchill returned to Montgomery's headquarters at Straelen, where, with his thoughts on the political future of Europe, he told Colville that he 'hardly liked to consider dismembering Germany until his doubts about Russia's intentions had been cleared away.'
On the following day Churchill crossed the Rhine again, this time by pontoon bridge, to the village of Bislich, and spent more than an hour and a half on the eastern side. It was a moment of deep satisfaction after five and a half years of fierce struggles and setbacks, delayed hopes and ceaseless exertions. From Bislich he drove down the east bank of the Rhine for a while, before recrossing the river in a tank-landing vehicle. Then, after picnicking on the west bank of the river with Brooke and Montgomery, he wrote in Montgomery's special message book: 'The Rhine and all its fortress lines lie behind the 21st Group of Armies. A beaten army, not long ago Master of Europe, retreats before its pursuers. The goal is not long to be denied those who have come so far and fought so well under proud and faithful leadership. Forward on all wings of flame to final Victory.'
That afternoon Churchill flew back from Venlo, accompanied by twelve Spitfires. 'The PM worked in the plane, which was alternatively too hot and too cold,' wrote Colville, 'and we landed at Northolt after an exciting weekend, much the better in health and temper.' That night he dined alone with Clementine, who wrote to Montgomery. 'Winston loved his visit to you. He said he felt quite a reformed character & that if in earlier days he had been about with you, I should have had a much easier life-referring I suppose to his chronic unpunctuality & to his habit of changing his mind (in little things!) every minute! I was very much touched & said I had been able to bear it very well as things are. So he then said perhaps he need not bother to improve? But I said "Please improve becos we have not finished our lives yet".'
Two days later, Clementine flew from London in her husband's Skymaster, first to Egypt, and then to Russia, at the start of a strenuous five-week journey to visit the many hospitals throughout the Soviet Union which had been helped by her Red Cross Fund. Churchill went to Northolt to see her off. 'You are ceaselessly in our thoughts,' he wrote after she had gone. That same evening the nature of Soviet intentions, which had been on Churchill's mind while he was visiting the Rhine, was made crystal clear with regard to Poland when fourteen Polish leaders, representing all the non-Communist political parties, were taken under promise of safe conduct to a Soviet Army base near Warsaw, and then arrested.
Returning at midnight from Northolt to the Annexe, Churchill spent the next two hours dictating his Parliamentary tribute to Lloyd George, who had died on the previous day at the age of eighty-two. 'There was no man so gifted, so eloquent, so forceful, who knew the life of the people so well,' he told the Commons on the following day. 'When I first became Lloyd George's friend and active associate, now more than forty years ago, this deep love of the people, the profound knowledge of their lives, and of the undue and needless pressures under which they lived, impressed itself indelibly upon my mind.' As for Lloyd George's assumption of the Premiership in 1916, Churchill quoted Carlyle's verdict on Cromwell, 'He coveted the place; perhaps the place was his.'
Churchill ended his tribute by referring to Lloyd George's social legislation of earlier times and his leadership in a previous war: 'Much of his work abides, some of it will grow greatly in the future, and those who come after us will find the pillars of his life's toil upstanding, massive and indestructible; and we ourselves, gathered here today, may indeed be thankful that he voyaged with us through storm and tumult with so much help and guidance to bestow.'
From Cairo, Clementine wrote to her husband: 'I loved your speech about LG. It recalled forgotten blessings which he showered on the meek and lowly.'
***
At the end of March, a serious strategic dispute disrupted the harmony of Anglo-American war planning. Eisenhower decided, and informed Montgomery by telegram, that the Anglo-American forces would not advance as hitherto intended direct to Berlin, but in a more southerly direction, through Leipzig, to Dresden. In Eisenhower's view, Berlin was less important as a centre of German industry and resistance than the cities further south, even though his change of plan would leave Berlin as the Russian prize. Eisenhower had even contacted Stalin about this, and had obtained Stalin's approval of the new direction, without previously consulting, or even informing, the Combined Chiefs of Staff.
On March 30 the British Chiefs of Staff protested vehemently at Eisenhower's change of plan. Churchill supported them. 'The idea of neglecting Berlin and leaving it to the Russians to take at a later stage does not appear to me correct,' he wrote on March 31. 'As long as Berlin holds out and withstands a siege in the ruins, as it may easily do, German resistance will be stimulated. The fall of Berlin might cause nearly all Germans to despair.'
Elaborating on his plan, Eisenhower stated that his aim was to join forces with the Russians on the Elbe south of Berlin, but not to cross the Elbe. Churchill was angered by this, telegraphing direct to Eisenhower on March 31, 'Why should we not cross the Elbe and advance as far eastward as possible?' This had 'an important political bearing' as the Russians now seemed certain to be about to enter Vienna. 'If we deliberately leave Berlin to them, even if it should be in our grasp, the double event may strengthen their conviction, already apparent, that they have done everything.'
In a further telegram to Eisenhower on April 2, Churchill urged 'the importance of entering Poland, which may well be open to us', if Eisenhower were to advance east of the Elbe. 'I deem it highly important that we should shake hands with the Russians as far to the East as possible.'
In the midst of his telegraphic exchange with Eisenhower, Churchill learned that the fourteen Polish leaders arrested by the Russians outside Warsaw had disappeared. Churchill protested at once to Stalin, warning him that he would have to raise in Parliament this grave violation of the Yalta Agreement, and reminding the Soviet leader: 'No one has pleaded the cause of Russia with more fervour and conviction than I have tried to do. I was the first to raise my voice on 22nd June 1941. It is more than a year since I proclaimed to a startled world the justice of the Curzon Line for Russia's Western frontier, and this frontier has now been accepted by both the British Parliament and the President of the United States. It is as a sincere friend of Russia that I make my personal appeal to you to come to a good understanding about Poland with the Western Democracies, and not to smite down the hand of comradeship in the future guidance of the world which we now extend.'
Neither Stalin nor Eisenhower was to defer to Churchill's respective appeals. Poland was not to have an independent Government, and the Anglo-American army was neither to cross the Elbe nor enter Berlin. It was 'by no means certain', Churchill told the Dominion representatives on April 3, 'that we could count on Russia as a beneficent influence in Europe, or as a willing partner in maintaining the peace of the world. Yet, at the end of the war, Russia would be left in a position of preponderant power and influence throughout the whole of Europe.'
The end of the war in Europe was clearly close; having crossed the Rhine, Montgomery's forces were taking between 15,000 and 20,000 prisoners every day as they pressed into the Ruhr. In Italy, Alexander's forces launched a renewed assault on April 9. Two days later Eisenhower's forces reached the Elbe. Although they were less than seventy miles from Berlin, they made no move towards the bomb-shattered capital. That same day, as a sign of the new political reality, the Soviet Union signed a treaty of friendship, mutual aid and post-war collaboration with Tito's Yugoslavia.
On April 12 Churchill learned that two close family friends, Clementine's cousin Tom Mitford, and Basil Dufferin, 4th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, had been killed in action. That same day Mary was awarded the MBE for her work with an anti-aircraft battery. Churchill sent these items of news to Clementine, who was still in Russia, in a telegram late on April 12. It was midnight. As he continued his work he was told that Roosevelt was dead. 'I feel a very painful personal loss, quite apart from the ties of public action which bound us so closely together,' he telegraphed to Harry Hopkins. 'I had a true affection for Franklin.'
Churchill made immediate plans to fly to Hyde Park for Roosevelt's funeral. He would leave at 8.30 on the evening of April 13. Everything was made ready for his departure, but by 7.45 he had still not decided whether to go. 'PM said he would decide at aerodrome,' noted Cadogan in his diary. At the last moment Churchill decided not to go, explaining to the King that with so many Cabinet Ministers already overseas, with Eden on his way to Washington, and with the need for a Parliamentary tribute to Roosevelt, 'which clearly it is my business to deliver', he ought to remain in Britain.
On April 17 American forces entered Nuremberg, the scene of Hitler's triumphant pre-war rallies. On the following day, in the House of Commons, Churchill delivered his tribute to Roosevelt. When death came upon him, it had been announced, 'he had finished his mail'. Churchill commented: 'That portion of his day's work was done. As the saying goes, he died in harness, and we may well say in battle harness, like his soldiers, sailors, and airmen, who side by side with ours are carrying on their task to the end all over the world. What an enviable death was his. He had brought his country through the worst of its perils and the heaviest of its toils. Victory had cast its sure and steady beam upon him.'
Churchill had now to build up a relationship with Roosevelt's successor, Harry Truman, whom he had never met. Through their telegraphic exchanges, which were daily and voluminous, Churchill formed an impression, as he told Eden on April 20, 'that the new man is not to be bullied by the Soviets'. But the inexorable advance of Soviet power could not be halted or diverted. On April 21, Soviet troops reached the suburbs of Berlin. That same day, the Soviet Government signed a Treaty of Mutual Assistance with the Lublin Government. As far as Poland was concerned, as twelve days earlier with Yugoslavia, the Yalta Agreement was dead.
The imminence of the defeat of Hitler was bitter-sweet. As American forces penetrated deeper and deeper into Germany, they entered concentration camps in which thousands of corpses, and thousands of emaciated, starving and broken survivors, further testified to the horrors of Nazism. As soon as Eisenhower gave Churchill over the telephone details of what had been found, Churchill sent an all-Party Parliamentary delegation to visit the largest of the camps so far discovered, at Buchenwald, and, on April 24, arranged for photographs of the victims to be circulated to the Cabinet. 'Here we are all shocked by the most horrible revelations of German cruelty in the concentration camps,' he wrote to Clementine.
On April 25 Churchill was told that Hitler's principal partner in terror, Heinrich Himmler, wished to open negotiations with the Allies behind Hitler's back. Churchill at once telephoned Truman. It was the first time that they had spoken together. The two men agreed that there could be no 'piecemeal' surrender by any Germans; the surrender must be made simultaneously to Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union. That same afternoon, American and Russian forces linked up on the Elbe. The Third Reich had been cut in half. On the following day, reading an Ambassador's report that efforts were being made by the British forces in Belgium to capture, or at least to detain, the heir to the Habsburgs, Churchill telegraphed direct to the Ambassador that it was no part of British policy to 'hunt down' the Archduke, or to treat the former Austrian monarchy as 'a criminal organisation'.
Churchill's telegram continued: 'Personally, having lived through all these European disturbances and studied carefully their causes, I am of opinion that if the Allies at the peace table at Versailles had not imagined that the sweeping away of long-established dynasties was a form of progress, and if they had allowed a Hohenzollern, a Wittelsbach, and a Habsburg to return to their thrones, there would have been no Hitler.' For the German military classes in post-Versailles Germany, Churchill added, a 'crowned Weimar', as opposed to the Weimar Republic, would have represented in 1919 'a symbolic point on which their loyalties could have centred'.
***
On April 29 Churchill made one final appeal to Stalin to desist from the unilateral imposition of Soviet will in Poland, and also in Yugoslavia. 'There is not much comfort,' he wrote, 'in looking into a future where you and the countries you dominate, plus the Communist Parties in many other States, are all drawn up on one side, and those who rally to the English-speaking nations and their associates or Dominions are on the other. It is quite obvious that their quarrel would tear the world to pieces, and that all of us leading men on either side who had anything to do with that would be shamed before history. Even embarking on a long period of suspicions, of abuse and counter-abuse, and of opposing policies, would be a disaster hampering the great developments of world prosperity for the masses, which are attainable only by our trinity.'
Churchill hoped that there was nothing in this telegram which would unwittingly give Stalin offence. 'But do not, I beg you, my friend Stalin, underrate the divergencies which are opening about matters which you may think are small to us, but which are symbolic of the way the English-speaking democracies look at life.' That evening Moscow radio announced that, with the entry of Soviet forces into Vienna, a Provisional Austrian Government had been set up. The Western Allies had not been consulted about its composition, and were refused permission to send a delegation to the city. Churchill at once protested, and was joined in his protest by Truman.
That night, after dinner at Chequers, Churchill was watching a film of The Mikado, and singing each of the songs, when there was a telephone call from General Alexander. The film was stopped. The German armies in Italy had surrendered unconditionally. The war in Italy was over. In Central Europe, Eisenhower's troops had reached the Danube at Linz. Churchill urged Truman to allow them to continue into Czechoslovakia. 'There can be little doubt,' he telegraphed to the President on April 30, 'that the liberation of Prague and as much as possible of the territory of Western Czechoslovakia by your forces might make the whole difference to the post-war situation of Czechoslovakia and might well influence that in nearby countries. On the other hand, if the Western Allies play no significant part in Czechoslovakia's liberation, that country will go the way of Yugoslavia.'
Churchill's appeal was again too late; Eisenhower had already informed the Soviet High Command that he would advance no further than Linz. The Americans were also committed to withdraw up to 140 miles from their forward positions in Germany, once the war ended, as these positions were inside the area agreed at Yalta as inside the Soviet Zone. In a telegram to Truman on April 30 Churchill tried to have any such withdrawal delayed; he also urged that the Western Allies occupy Istria, which would otherwise fall to Tito's Communist forces. Truman, while unwilling to go back on the agreement about the future Zones of Occupation in Germany, accepted Churchill's suggestion about Istria. The Western Allies would do their utmost to enter Trieste and to hold it: 'There is no need for obtaining prior Russian consent,' Truman told Churchill. But that very day Yugoslav Partisan forces were fighting inside Trieste; the first New Zealand troops were not to arrive for another forty-eight hours. 'No violence should occur except in self-defence,' Churchill telegraphed to Alexander. A quarrel with Tito, he explained, 'would be a matter for the Peace Table and not for the field'.
Even as the last corner of pre-war Italy came under Yugoslav and Anglo-American control, Mussolini, once the senior partner of the Italo-German Axis, was caught by Italian partisans and killed. Two days later, on the evening of May 1, while Churchill was dining at 10 Downing Street, Radio Hamburg announced that Hitler was dead. The news was brought in to Churchill while he dined. 'As you see,' he telegraphed to Clementine, who was still in the Soviet Union, 'both our great enemies are dead.' Hitler had committed suicide.
On the evening of May 2 Churchill dined quietly with two friends of pre-war years, Lady Juliet Duff and Venetia Montagu. The only other guest was Noël Coward, who later recalled how, towards the end of dinner, during which Churchill had been 'at his most benign', he and the two ladies were suddenly struck by how significant it was that they were in the presence of the man who had contributed 'so much foresight, courage and genius' to the winning of the war. 'Emotion submerged us, and without exchanging a word, as simultaneously as though we had carefully rehearsed it, the three of us rose to our feet and drank Mr Churchill's health.'
On the following day Churchill had several causes for satisfaction. During the morning Captain Pim came in to announce that British forces had entered Rangoon. Later that day, Montgomery's forces, urged to do so as a matter of urgency, reached the Baltic Sea at Lübeck, cutting the Russians off from Denmark, which several Intelligence reports had indicated they would occupy as the culmination of their continuing advance along the Baltic. Montgomery had reached Lübeck, Churchill told Eden, 'with twelve hours to spare'. By evening there was even more dramatic news; Admiral von Friedeburg, representing Hitler's successor Admiral Doenitz, had arrived with three other representatives of the German armed forces at Montgomery's headquarters on Lüneburg Heath, just south of Hamburg, to negotiate the German surrender.
The total defeat of Germany was clearly imminent; on May 3 more than half a million German soldiers surrendered to Montgomery. These were followed, Churchill telegraphed to Clementine on May 4, by 'far more than a million today'. In Italy, Alexander had taken a million prisoners-of-war. All German forces in north-west Germany, Holland and Denmark 'are to be surrendered tomorrow morning'. And yet, Churchill added, 'beneath these triumphs lie poisonous politics and deadly international rivalries'. It was clear that a further meeting of the Big Three would be needed, if these rivalries were to be resolved. 'Meanwhile,' Churchill telegraphed to Truman on May 6, 'we should hold firmly to the existing position obtained or being obtained by our armies in Yugoslavia, in Austria, in Czechoslovakia, on the main central United States front and on the British front reaching up to Lübeck including Denmark.'
That night, as Churchill slept, the German Chief of Staff, General Jodl, signed the German instrument of surrender at Eisenhower's headquarters at Rheims. All fighting was to cease at midnight on May 8. Eisenhower himself telephoned this news to Ismay in the small hours; Ismay at once passed it on by telephone to John Martin at 10 Downing Street. Martin decided not to wake Churchill, but to send the news in to him as soon as he awoke. It was Captain Pim who then brought him the news. 'For five years,' Churchill commented, 'you've brought me bad news, sometimes worse than others. Now you've redeemed yourself.'
During May 7 Churchill encouraged Eisenhower to move his troops forward to Prague. Eisenhower did so, with the result that some American units entered the Czech capital before the Russians. They withdrew, however, as soon as the Soviets arrived. That same day, in urging Alexander to advance eastward from Trieste and southward into Istria, Churchill telegraphed, 'Let me know what you are doing in massing forces against this Muscovite tentacle, of which Tito is the crook.'
Throughout Britain, excitement was rising at the imminence of victory. On the afternoon of May 7 Churchill tried to persuade Truman to declare that same evening that Victory in Europe had arrived. Truman was unwilling to do so, Stalin having asked to postpone the rejoicing until May 9, as his troops were still fighting in parts of Czechoslovakia and along the Baltic. At five o'clock on the afternoon of May 7, Churchill, in his second telephone call to Truman's office in an hour, explained 'that crowds celebrating in the streets of London were beyond control', and that he must make an announcement of victory at the latest at noon on May 8. Meanwhile, he worked on a short victory broadcast which he still hoped to make that evening; he finished dictating it just before six o'clock. But then a telephone call from Washington persuaded him to delay at least until the next day.
In a short break from these telegraphic and telephonic exchanges, and dictation, Churchill led the three Chiefs of Staff into the garden at 10 Downing Street for a group photograph. He had already had put out for them a tray of glasses and drinks, and raised his glass to them as 'the architects of victory'. Ismay, who was present, later wrote, 'I hoped that they would raise their glasses to the chief who had been their master-planner; but perhaps they were too moved to trust their voices.'
On the morning of Tuesday May 8 Churchill worked in bed at his victory broadcast. He also sent out an enquiry to ensure that there was no shortage of beer in the capital for the evening's celebrations. At one moment he slipped out of his bedroom and went along the corridor to the Map Room, carrying with him champagne and a large Gruyère cheese, together with a note, 'For Captain Pim and his officers with the Prime Minister's compliments on Victory Day in Europe.' From Clementine, who was in Moscow, came a telegram of congratulations, 'All my thoughts are with you on this supreme day, my darling. It could not have happened without you.'
Shortly after one o'clock Churchill left Downing Street for Buckingham Palace, where he lunched with the King. 'We congratulated each other on the end of the European War,' the King wrote in his diary. 'The day we have been longing for has arrived at last and we can look back with thankfulness to God that our tribulation is over.' Returning to Downing Street, at three o'clock Churchill broadcast to the British people, describing the various surrender negotiations and telling them, 'The German war is therefore at an end.' At one moment in his broadcast Churchill spoke of 'the evil-doers, who are now prostrate before us'. At these words there was a gasp from the crowds gathered in Parliament Square to hear the speech relayed.
Churchill then warned that the war against Japan had yet to be won, 'Japan, with all her treachery and greed, remains unsubdued,' and he ended his speech with the words 'Advance, Britannia!'
Randolph was flying from Belgrade to Caserta at 8,000 feet when he heard his father's words. 'Was greatly moved by your splendid speech,' he telegraphed on reaching Italy. Clementine listened to her husband's broadcast over a wireless in the British Embassy in Moscow. With her was the former French Prime Minister, Edouard Herriot, who had last seen Churchill at Tours in June 1940, tears streaming down his face when he learned that the French Government intended to give up the fight. Now it was Herriot who wept.
His broadcast over, Churchill was driven through a vast and milling crowd to the House of Commons. 'We have all of us made our mistakes,' he told his fellow MPs, 'but the strength of the Parliamentary institutions has been shown to enable it at the same moment to preserve all the title-deeds of democracy while waging war in the most stern and protracted form.' Churchill then recalled how, twenty-seven years earlier, he had been in the Commons to hear the announcement of the German surrender terms in November 1918. There had then been a service of thanksgiving at St Margaret's; he now proposed the identical motion for an adjournment, and led MPs across Old Palace Yard to the church. Later that afternoon Churchill went on to the balcony of the Ministry of Health, where he spoke briefly to the vast crowds in Whitehall. 'This is your victory,' he told them, at which they roared back, 'No-it is yours.'
That evening, as the celebrations in the streets of London continued, Churchill returned to the balcony and made another short speech: 'A terrible foe has been cast to the ground, and awaits our judgement and our mercy'. Then he returned to the Annexe, where he worked through a pile of telegrams six inches high, his usual evening's burden of work. One of the telegrams was from the British Chargé d'Affaires in Moscow, Frank Roberts, reporting a petulant Soviet complaint about Britain's concern for the fate of the fourteen Polish politicians arrested outside Warsaw while under pledge of safe conduct. 'We are utterly indifferent to anything the Soviets may say by way of propaganda,' Churchill replied. 'It is no longer desired by us to maintain detailed arguments with the Soviet Government about their views and actions.'
This telegram was sent to Moscow at two hours before midnight on that day of celebration. An hour later a telegram arrived from Eden in San Francisco: 'All my thoughts are with you on this day which is so essentially your day. It is you who have led, uplifted and inspired us through the worst days. Without you this day could not have been.'
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