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Action This Day

What a difference a day makes. At 5.30 a.m. on 10 May 1940, Churchill was awoken in Admiralty House and told the news that German forces had launched an invasion of Holland and Belgium. Hitler’s long-awaited and much-predicted attack upon the democracies of Western Europe had begun. The Phoney War was over. The real war was on.

Churchill was thrown into a round of urgent meetings as telegrams and messages poured in. The huge French Army was still stationed along the Maginot Line, the string of immensely powerful fortresses constructed along France’s 250-mile border with Germany. Hitler simply bypassed this and threw his armies at neutral Holland and Belgium, bombing airfields and using airborne troops to capture key defensive positions. For the first few days, this was where the action was.

At eight that morning the War Cabinet met and authorised the sending of British troops to assist the Dutch and the Belgians. An hour later, Churchill was back at his desk in the Admiralty. The BBC had been broadcasting news of Hitler’s invasion since seven o’clock and by now the entire country knew that a full-scale war crisis was on. But Chamberlain, having decided the previous day that a national government must be created, wavered again. He spoke with friends and said that maybe a change of government should be delayed until the battle on the continent was over, perhaps now was not the time for a change of leadership in Britain. Wiser colleagues, like Sir Kingsley Wood, a senior figure in the Conservative Party, spoke with Chamberlain and insisted the crisis made it even more important that he form a national government. Still Chamberlain hesitated.

The War Cabinet met again at 11.30 a.m. Ministers were beginning to feel that if a change of government were coming, it should happen sooner rather than later. But the overwhelming military business of the day crowded out any political debate. The news from Belgium was not good. Reports suggested that German airborne troops had seized a key fortress in a daring dawn raid.

In the late afternoon, the War Cabinet met for the third time that day. It heard that German infantry and tanks were now pouring into Belgium near Liège. Finally, the Prime Minister spoke up and told members that he intended to resign that evening and that a national government should be formed urgently. Chamberlain had at last accepted the inevitable and was about to bow out, despite the alarming news from across the Channel. He did not tell the Cabinet whom he would be recommending as his successor.

In accordance with tradition, Chamberlain went straight to Buckingham Palace to hand in his resignation to George VI. The King expressed his preference for Halifax as ‘the obvious man’ to become Prime Minister. When Chamberlain said Halifax had ruled himself out, the King knew that only ‘one person … had the confidence of the country, & that was Winston’. Chamberlain agreed and left.

At about 6 p.m., Churchill was summoned to meet the King. No crowds had gathered as everyone was preoccupied with the news from Belgium, so Churchill slipped quietly into the Palace. According to his account, at this supreme moment in the nation’s history, the King joked for a moment and asked, ‘I suppose you don’t know why I have sent for you.’ Churchill responded wryly, ‘Sir, I simply couldn’t imagine why.’ After a brief discussion, the formalities were completed and in a matter of minutes the meeting was over. In his diary, the King noted, ‘He was full of fire & determination.’¹

Churchill returned to the Admiralty as Prime Minister. The nation was in crisis. Less than three hundred miles away two million men were engaged in a furious battle. Events were moving at a stunning speed. Within weeks, Britain would be standing alone to face one of the most determined and ferocious enemies in its history. The burden on the new Prime Minister stepping up to lead the nation at this critical point was immense. Churchill must have felt doubts about what lay ahead. He confided to his detective in the car on the way back from the Palace: ‘I hope it is not too late.’ But he later wrote that he felt a profound sense of relief, that at last he had the authority to direct the entire operation of the war effort. In his Second World War history he wrote momentously, ‘I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.’²

At nine that evening Chamberlain broadcast to the nation, explaining that recent events made it clear that a national coalition government was needed. He told the British people that he had resigned and that Winston Churchill was their new Prime Minister. He asked everyone to give Churchill their full support. In Barrow-in-Furness, housewife Nella Last was keeping a diary for Mass Observation. In it she wrote that Churchill was a popular figure among the shipyard workers of the town and reflected that if she had to spend her ‘whole life with a man, I’d choose Mr Chamberlain, but I think I would sooner have Mr Churchill if there was a storm and I was shipwrecked’.³ The storm had arrived.

Churchill immediately started putting together his national government. And he set about restructuring the war effort to streamline the complex and cumbersome decision-making system that had been in existence up to this point. Later that same evening, he sent the King a letter outlining his top five appointments to the War Cabinet with Labour, Liberal and Conservative members in key positions. His government would be a true coalition, representing all political viewpoints across the nation. There was no vindictiveness towards Chamberlain, the man who had derided Churchill’s views about the inevitability of war for years, who became Lord President of the Council. But this was not just an act of generosity: Chamberlain was still leader of the Conservative Party and Churchill knew that he could not govern without his support. Looking back at the end of a dramatic day, Churchill later wrote: ‘I thought I knew a good deal about it all, and I was sure I would not fail. Therefore, although impatient for the morning, I slept soundly and had no need for cheering dreams. Facts are better than dreams.’⁴

It’s difficult, knowing what we do today about events of the next few months and years, to realise that Churchill was by no means a universal choice as leader in May 1940. Officials in Whitehall were not at all heartened by his appointment. John Colville, one of Chamberlain’s private secretaries at the time, remembers ‘the mere thought of Churchill as Prime Minister sent a cold chill down the spines of the staff at 10 Downing Street … His verbosity and restlessness made unnecessary work, prevented real planning and caused friction … Our feelings … were widely shared in the Cabinet offices, the Treasury and throughout Whitehall.’⁵ This might be the sentiment of civil servants who feared change at a time of national crisis, but there was widespread suspicion of Churchill. He was thought to be impetuous, hot-headed and interfering. Even Halifax felt that he was led by his emotions rather than by reason. In British politics every Prime Minister has to have a substantial party base. But again, here Churchill was weak. Many Tories did not feel at all comfortable with him and had never forgiven him for deserting the party for the Liberals over thirty years earlier. He was seen as an opportunist and a chancer. Many felt like Lord Davidson that they simply ‘don’t trust Winston’. Old criticisms of him died hard. Alfred Lyttelton had said of him many decades before, ‘He trims his sails to every passing wind.’ Many Conservatives were also suspicious of his policies. He had supported Lloyd George’s radical reforms of the Edwardian era, which had introduced unemployment benefits and state pensions. He had been a controversial Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1920s. He had isolated himself over policy towards self-government in India. And, although his predictions about Hitler and Nazi aggression had been proved right, he had not won many friends in the Conservative Party, which had continued to support the policy of appeasement through the 1930s. Meanwhile, although the Labour Party now supported him as leader of a coalition government, this was more out of opposition to Chamberlain than active support for Churchill. And he was not a friend of the Left. He was still remembered for having threatened the miners at Tonypandy. Some newspapers, such as the Daily Mirror and the Daily Mail, were pro-Churchill. But the establishment paper, The Times, was unhesitatingly anti.

Without doubt, had he wanted to, Halifax could have become Prime Minister in May 1940. But it seems he saw the future as an impossible challenge, what might be described today as a ‘no-win’ situation. Churchill became Prime Minister partly by default, but also because his background, his love of military affairs and his sense of history made him (and others) feel that this was his moment, that his time had come. And he never lacked the confidence that he could govern and drive the country forwards to victory. In his first speech to Parliament as Prime Minister on 13 May, he repeated what he had said to his Cabinet colleagues earlier in the day, ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.’ Then he went on to give his first great speech as a wartime leader. As Hitler’s panzers charged through Belgium, apparently unstoppable, Churchill told the House of Commons:

We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realised. No survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for … But I take up my task with buoyancy and with hope … and I say, ‘Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.’⁶

These were grand words and noble sentiments, but in the face of the rapid advance of Hitler’s forces in Northern Europe they must have sounded hollow to those who heard them. How on earth could Churchill deliver?

Of the many tasks Churchill faced on becoming Prime Minister, first was the need to assemble his government. This was done while the war raged across the Channel. Some key members of what would become the War Lab were now put in place. At the centre of government, Churchill appointed himself Minister of Defence as well as Prime Minister. There was no precedent for this. It gave him unique authority to oversee all matters of military policy. The joint role put him in total control of Britain’s war effort. There was virtually no aspect of war administration he could not influence. And this would be a vital feature of his leadership. There had been no such position as Minister of Defence in the First World War, and no ministry of this name during the 1930s. And, unlike from the 1960s onwards, no great department of state would report to him as Minister of Defence. The key adviser he appointed was General Sir Hastings Ismay, who would lead a small staff of a dozen officers and act like a staff officer, representing Churchill at Chiefs of Staff meetings and acting as his go-between with the military chiefs. Churchill called Ismay his ‘eminence khaki’ and told him that they must be very careful not to define their powers too precisely. He did not want to create a rulebook that hemmed in his authority. He wanted to range widely and without restraint across every aspect of the conduct of the war.⁷ And this he did. Ismay became a faithful supporter and confidant of Churchill and he was one of the few who came into post in May 1940 and stayed with Churchill throughout the next five long and immensely challenging years. Their relationship was good, sometimes strained, but enduring. Churchill’s affectionate nickname for Ismay was ‘Pug’.

The War Cabinet was at the heart of the government. Churchill reduced it from nine to only five members, although later it increased in size. As we have seen, Chamberlain became Lord President of the Council. Clement Attlee, the leader of the Labour Party, was Lord Privy Seal. Halifax remained Foreign Secretary. And Arthur Greenwood, the deputy Labour leader, became Minister without Portfolio. The ministers responsible for each of the services were not permanent members of the War Cabinet – another mark of the centralisation of military power and decision-making to Churchill himself.

The service ministers reflected the coalition nature of the new government. Sir Anthony Eden, the Conservative ex-Foreign Secretary who had resigned in 1938, was appointed Secretary of War. Sir Archibald Sinclair, leader of the Liberals as well as Churchill’s good friend and his second-in-command in the trenches in the First World War, went to the Air Ministry. And Labour’s A.V. Alexander replaced Churchill himself as First Lord of the Admiralty.

In less than a week, Churchill had appointed all thirty-four members of his government. The other key appointments here included Ernest Bevin, a trade union leader and for his day a real ‘man of the people’, as Minister of Labour. This was a brilliantly inspired appointment, and Bevin’s total commitment to the war effort and to national unity helped keep many working people on side throughout the hardships that would follow. Lord Beaverbrook, the close friend of Churchill’s from his ‘court’ at Chartwell, was appointed to the newly created post of Minister of Aircraft Production. The Canadian newspaper magnate was not a popular figure and many people were amazed at his appointment, but Churchill realised the vital need to increase the rate at which aircraft were being built in British factories, particularly the new fighter planes like the Hurricane and especially the Spitfire, which was suffering from huge delays in production. Churchill needed a human dynamo to create a flow of electricity to speed things up, and Beaverbrook provided the necessary spark. Sir John Anderson, an experienced administrator who had organised the evacuation of children at the beginning of the war, became Home Secretary. He gave his name to the corrugated-iron bomb shelters that almost everyone who had access to a garden would construct. Herbert Morrison, who had been the Labour leader of the London County Council and was a rising star within the party, was appointed Minister of Supply. Coincidentally, he gave his name to another type of bomb shelter.

Churchill also gathered around him a group of friends and advisers whose judgement he trusted and whose company he enjoyed. They had various jobs in what now became the court of King Winston, and they came nearest to a sort of central staff. Today, they would all become paid government consultants. Then, they remained on the fringes of government. But in essence Churchill created a private office in Downing Street that reported directly to him and served his interests and curiosity. At the centre of this would be his old friend Professor Frederick Lindemann (who later became Lord Cherwell), the rather pompous Oxford scientist universally known as ‘the Prof’. He would meet with Churchill almost daily and advise him on a broad range of topics over the next few years. Another member of Churchill’s inner team was his son-in-law, Duncan Sandys, who took on various roving missions. Brendan Bracken, another trusted friend from the old days, acted as a wide-ranging political adviser. Desmond Morton, the man who had supplied Churchill with valuable secret information during his wilderness years, became a sort of intelligence supremo. Sitting adjacent to the Cabinet Office, he had direct access to Churchill and acted as the Prime Minister’s go-between with the various intelligence agencies. He was outgoing, with a strong sense of humour, and his raucous laughter echoed down the corridors of Downing Street. John Colville later described how these advisers arrived like ‘Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ in the government set-up.⁸ Churchill’s War Lab was beginning to take shape.

The military heads of the three services, known as the Chiefs of Staff, would meet daily in the morning. They constituted a sort of battle headquarters in London to assess and advise on the strategic direction of the war. Churchill would not attend these meetings as a matter of routine, but as Minister of Defence he could chair them if circumstances required it. Ismay, a member of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, would report daily to Churchill on the meetings and the issues that were discussed. Reporting to the Chiefs of Staff Committee were the Joint Planning Staff and the Joint Intelligence Committee. The latter group assembled and assessed the best intelligence about enemy actions and intentions. This was then distributed to Churchill, the War Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff. This system was designed so that all the major decision-makers should have possession of all the key information.

The Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), a title inherited from the heyday of Empire, was another pivotal figure in the War Lab. When Churchill became Prime Minister, General Edmund Ironside was in the post. He was an impressive, dashing figure who in his youth had provided the model for Richard Hannay in John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps. But he had fallen out with Churchill during the Norwegian debacle because he could not bear what he saw as the constant meddling of a politician who seemed to want to run a military campaign as though he were the field commander. A fortnight after Churchill took power, Ironside was replaced as CIGS by Sir John Dill, a tough Ulsterman greatly valued by Churchill for his abilities and strategic knowledge. But Dill seemed tired and lacked the vigour that was expected of him at this point of the war. Over time, Churchill would drive Dill to distraction with his constant attention to the sort of details the CIGS considered inappropriate for a Prime Minister to concern himself with. And Churchill would grow frustrated with Dill’s slowness to respond, nicknaming him ‘Dilly-Dally’. But this was in the future.

Under Chamberlain, the management of war policy had been confused and poorly thought through. Ironside commented in April 1940: ‘Strategy is directed by odd people who collect odd bits of information. This is discussed quite casually by everyone.’⁹ This was clearly not the way to run a war. Churchill, who had not only been at the heart of the management of war policy in the First World War but who had also seen how decision-making came about (or didn’t come about) in the first eight months of the Second, brought in a new broom to sweep away Chamberlain’s structure and make room for his own. Placing himself firmly in the coordinating chair, he established various groups who reported in with information and advice. The War Cabinet was responsible for the ultimate direction of war policy. The Chiefs of Staff reported to Churchill daily through Ismay. A new group known as the Defence Committee (Operations), consisting of the service ministers and the service chiefs, sent top-level strategic advice up the system. Another group, the Defence Committee (Supply), concerned itself with essential aspects of running and planning the war effort in a way that left the service chiefs free to concentrate on strategic thinking.

This might all sound like administrative game-playing at best or empire-building at worst. But these new structures, creating a new ‘organogram’ of power, were much more than this. One participant described the practical effects as ‘revolutionary’.¹⁰ It was essential that key information should flow in the most sensible way to those who needed to know what was going on and could then make sensible decisions in the light of this knowledge. It was essential to be able to focus first on the macro (or strategic) perspective on how to conduct the war. And then to see this through by attending to the micro (or tactical) detail of how to pursue it wisely. Finally, it was necessary to ensure that supply and logistics were focused on achieving and supporting the strategic war aims. At the centre of this new web of power was of course Churchill himself, in his joint role as Prime Minister and Minster of Defence. On him would fall the burden of understanding the big picture and deciding on myriad details that would make the war effort effective. Churchill now had to show how his years of military experience as a soldier and a deep understanding of military history would make him suitable as war leader for a nation in crisis.

Churchill committed himself to the tasks ahead with immense energy. An endless stream of instructions, requests, exhortations and diktats began to flow from the top, usually in the form of Churchill’s increasingly familiar minutes. Rarely in history have so many orders come from the desk of one man. At no point in the Second World War was there anything comparable – not from Stalin after the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, nor from Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor in December of that year. Churchill’s first few months in office were more akin to President John F. Kennedy’s first ‘Hundred Days’, and although there were grave crises in both, the nation’s survival itself was not at stake when Kennedy took office. Over the next few weeks and months, Churchill was to enquire about and instruct on an enormously wide range of issues. What progress is being made with rockets, with sensitive fuses, with bomb sights and with Radio Detection-Finding? Can Turin and Milan be bombed from England? Can more trees be felled to reduce the reliance on imports and save shipping? Can regular troops be moved from India? Can a better reserve be built up in the Middle East? How are the coastal watches and coastal batteries being organised? How are harbour defences being built up? These minutes were often known by his staff as ‘Churchill’s prayers’, because they usually began: ‘Pray tell me …’ or ‘Pray explain why we cannot …’. To the Chiefs of Staff he would send directives for them to consider. His officials gave these their own names and references. Hence, a long and detailed directive beginning ‘Renown awaits the Commander who first …’ became known simply as ‘Renown Awaits’. It was through these directives that Churchill tried to shape the conduct and strategy of the war.¹¹

As with so much of Churchill’s personal style of leadership, no detail was too small to escape his attention or interest. For instance, after Eden had suggested the creation of Local Defence Volunteer forces across the country – to utilise the skills and enthusiasm of ex-servicemen who were too old or otherwise unable to join the military but who wanted to ‘do their bit’ – Churchill wrote: ‘I don’t think much of the name “Local Defence Volunteers” for your very large new force. The word “Local” is uninspiring … I think “Home Guard” would be better. Don’t hesitate to change on account of already having made armlets, etc.’ And so, with the dash of a minute, Churchill created a name that became legendary in the collective British memory of the war.¹²

Churchill was a hard taskmaster and wanted things done his way. This was his prerogative as Prime Minister. What particularly frustrated a maverick like Churchill was the slowness of officialdom. Fighting a war with the intensity he now was, Churchill wanted action and he wanted it now – better still yesterday. He developed a variety of techniques to push things through and to attribute priorities. His dispatch box always had to have documents filed in a particular way, with the most urgent military matters at the top, and documents for reading at leisure (probably over a weekend) marked with an ‘R’ for ‘Recreation’ at the bottom. Officials had to act on items he had signed or authorised. And nothing typifies his desire to get things moving more than the red sticker he had specially made marked ‘Action This Day’. When he attached this to a document or a minute the instructions or requests within were to be given top priority. Churchill wanted to hear back on it within the day.

Working for Churchill must have been extremely difficult. No doubt many of his minutes sidetracked exhausted officials from other duties. But Churchill also brought an immense, restless energy to the top of government. This had been badly lacking under Chamberlain, and almost certainly would have never happened under Halifax. As all management training makes clear today, change needs to start at the top. The chief executive has to be the model and to set the pace. Churchill instigated a brand of ‘change management’ (to use a phrase that would have meant nothing to the old man himself) that was dramatic, heartfelt and strikingly effective. Just when Britain needed it, the pace of government went up a gear. Lord Normanbrook, a senior civil servant in the Cabinet Office, wrote later:

This stream of messages, covering so wide a range of subjects, was like the beam of a searchlight ceaselessly swinging round and penetrating into the remote recesses of the administration so that everyone, however humble his range or his function, felt that one day the beam might rest on him and light up what he was doing. In Whitehall the effect of this influence was immediate and dramatic. The machine responded at once to his leadership. It quickened the pace and improved the tone of administration. A new sense of purpose and urgency was created as it came to be realised that a firm hand guided by a strong will was on the wheel. Morale was high.¹³

Churchill’s working day reflected this full-on approach, and it soon adopted a particular and rather unusual routine. Of course, every day was different. But even when travelling and working abroad Churchill would try to keep to some of his established routine. He would be woken every morning at about 8 a.m. Breakfast and the day’s papers would be brought to him in bed on a tray. Along with these came the daily report from the Map Room. This was of vital importance to Churchill, who wanted to be kept up to date on the latest movements of armies and ships around the world. The report was often delivered in person by the naval officer in charge of the Map Room, Captain Richard Pim, who had been running it since Churchill’s days at the Admiralty. Then, wearing his favourite dressing gown, which was green and gold with red dragons on it, he would sit in bed, propped up by pillows, and work on his boxes. He would read messages and communications, Cabinet papers, Foreign Office telegrams, military reports and so on. Throughout the morning, a female secretary or typist would be on hand to take down his dictation straight on to a specially made silent typewriter (the sound of punching the keys annoyed him). There was rarely time to take shorthand and then type it up later. It all had to be typed and signed immediately. The typists were led by Kathleen Hill, who knew his fancies and foibles inside out. The secretaries who joined his staff during the war at first found him a terrifying figure who would call out ‘Gimme my box’, ‘Gimme Pug’, which meant call for General Ismay, or ‘Gimme Prof’, which meant call for Professor Lindemann. On other occasions, he would just hold out his hand and say, ‘Gimme’, expecting the poor woman to know exactly what was meant, sometimes to pass a black pen, sometimes a red pen, a paper punch, which he called a ‘Klop’, some blotting paper, or the red ‘Action This Day’ label to stick on the front of a minute.¹⁴

Churchill would stay sitting up in bed, working and dictating, for as long as possible. Most mornings, the Chiefs of Staff would meet without the Prime Minister and Ismay would arrive to report back on their deliberations. Other officials or intimates might attend him in his bedroom. Several cigars would be smoked through the course of the morning, although most went out as Churchill’s thoughts or dictation distracted him, and much fuss and effort would be devoted to relighting them. Often the War Cabinet would meet in the morning, daily in the early stages of the war and twice-weekly later. Half an hour before whatever meeting required his presence, Churchill would take a hot bath and would dress with the assistance of his valet, Frank Sawyers. Throughout the war Churchill kept up the Victorian habit of relying on a valet, and Sawyers was never far from his master, in London, at Chequers or abroad. Sawyers was short, plump, bald and, in the way of old-style servant relationships, utterly devoted to his boss. Churchill would always go out in public dressed immaculately in striped trousers, a black jacket with waistcoat, a spotted bow tie and a puffed handkerchief in his top pocket. However, if there were no meetings scheduled, he would often prefer to wear his siren suit, a one-piece boiler-type suit with a zip up the front, in Air Force blue. His staff called it his romper suit.

Lunch was usually served at 1.30 p.m., and provided an opportunity for Churchill to meet and talk with military personnel, politicians or his close set of advisers and friends. The afternoon was nearly always spent in meetings of one sort or another. Churchill had a private study next to the Cabinet Room in 10 Downing Street. Meetings could be held there or in the Annexe, a specially prepared set of rooms a few minutes’ walk away at Storey’s Gate. The Churchills had a small flat there as well. Below the Annexe, down a spiral staircase, were the Cabinet War Rooms, an underground complex supposed to be secure from bombing. This network of offices, communications, sleeping accommodation and a Cabinet Room were designed to provide all that was needed should central government have to carry on below ground. Churchill’s Map Room was also located there.¹⁵

Every afternoon, as soon as possible after lunch, Churchill would take a nap for about an hour. His closest officials remarked on how quickly he could fall into a sound sleep, even during the most stressful times. This mid-afternoon rest did him immense good, and after it was over he would rise, take another hot bath if there were time, and like a giant awakened would be ready to start almost another full day’s work, with the typists again standing by for dictation and officials hurrying in and out as required.

Dinner was always served around 8.30 p.m. This was another opportunity to meet and talk with senior officials or leading soldiers, sailors and airmen. It was always a big occasion. Reasonable amounts of wine would be served. The meal was four courses, beginning with soup. The soup course was invariably a restorative to Churchill. Whatever frame of mind he was in, no matter how much pressure he was under, his mood would lift as he ate the soup, and dinner usually became a lively, amusing and provocative affair. Most people who describe having dinner with Churchill talk of the countless witticisms and one-liners that he came up with during the meal. Strategy would be openly discussed, new ideas and potential solutions to challenges kicked around, and politics and military affairs freely debated. From about ten o’clock onwards, Churchill would then conduct more formal meetings or conferences, often with his CIGS or the other military chiefs. After these had ended, he would routinely dictate into the early hours – more minutes or directives to the Chiefs of Staff, or outlines for an upcoming speech or broadcast. He enjoyed these late hours and clearly some of his best ideas came to him then. General Sir Alan Brooke later said that Churchill was the sort of man who had ten ideas a day, only one of which was any good, but he never knew which one.¹⁶

The long hours were a strain on his staff. ‘It’s amazing how quickly you get used to going to bed at 2.30,’ Elizabeth Layton, one of the secretaries, was told before she started to work for Churchill. His top military men, none of whom had enjoyed the benefit of a mid-afternoon siesta, often found the late-night sessions exhausting, but sometimes exhilarating too. Churchill would often use the tête-à-têtes as an occasion to make up after a demanding day or to make someone feel wanted who had been bullied or cajoled by his incessant demands. No matter how grumpy or stressed Churchill had been during the day, in the small hours he would always turn to his secretaries with a glowing smile and say, ‘Good night and thank you,’ making them feel appreciated. The working day could end at any time from about two in the morning onwards and sometimes as late as four. This schedule was kept up seven days a week. At Chequers there was often a film show after dinner, but otherwise the routine and the workload at the weekend remained the same. It was not an easy schedule to keep up with.¹⁷

Despite his authoritarian control over affairs, Churchill was no dictator. He dominated conversations, and his ubiquitous role at the centre of the political and military machinery of the war meant that his influence was immense But he listened to his professional advisers. He wanted them to argue their position forcefully and he relished the cut and thrust of debate. Often strong words were used and tempers frayed, but Churchill was well used to this from Parliament and throughout his life he rarely bore a grudge. So if his military chiefs stuck to their guns and opposed him, he would always back down. Not once during the war did he overrule his military advisers on a military question.¹⁸

At last, Britain’s war effort was losing the complacency and hesitation that had characterised the Chamberlain era. At last, the country had a leader with the knowledge, the energy and the determination to get the machinery of war moving. But events now taking place in Belgium, Holland and France would soon show how limited Churchill’s impact could be in this first phase of the war.

A major priority for Churchill as he threw himself into the business of leading the nation was to follow and to give every support to Britain’s ally in the war waging across the Channel. He made five visits to France over the next six weeks, and sometimes these exposed him to considerable personal risk. It was characteristic of Churchill’s style of leadership that he wanted to be in the thick of it. As Prime Minister, he would travel far more extensively than any of the other war leaders. Stalin left the Soviet Union just twice – to attend the Teheran and Potsdam summits. Roosevelt travelled abroad three times during the war, but in the main he expected Churchill to come to him, which was not particularly surprising bearing in mind his own disability and the fact that he was after all a head of state while Churchill was merely head of government. Hitler hardly ever travelled far from his favourite haunts in Bavaria, East Prussia and Berlin. Churchill strained every nerve and tried every trick to support the French in their life-and-death struggle with Germany. But his effectiveness here was severely limited by factors over which he had no control.

In the spring of 1940, French military thinking was still dominated by the experience of the First World War. The French Army was haunted by the memory of one and a half million deaths. It could think only in terms of defence, hence the vast expenditure on and commitment to the Maginot Line. Most of its senior commanders had obtained all their military knowledge between 1914 and 1918. There was little or no coordination between the army and the air force. The French Commander-in-Chief, General Maurice Gamelin, had no radio communication with his senior officers from his command headquarters at the Château de Vincennes. From there he conducted affairs in splendid isolation from day-to-day events, in an echo of Great War generals commanding their armies from comfortable châteaux miles behind the line. There was no clear delineation between the roles of Gamelin and his deputy, General Alphonse Georges, who held executive command over troops along the entire front. The whole French command structure was tangled and confused. At one critical point as the Germans swept into France, Gamelin began one of his orders with the apologetic words: ‘Without wishing to intervene in the conduct of the battle in progress …’ But what else should the Commander-in-Chief be doing?

Politically, too, France was weak and divided. Paul Reynaud had been Prime Minister for only seven weeks. And he had no time for Gamelin, whom he had tried to remove from command the day before the German onslaught overwhelmed them. The French had many skilled troops and some outstanding armoured units. But, as with so much in the French Army of 1940, the tank units were slow, poorly structured and ineffectively deployed on the battlefield.

The German Army, the Wehrmacht, on the other hand, was a thoroughly modern and effective fighting force. It had been almost entirely restructured during the 1930s, learning all the lessons of defeat in 1918. German military thinking incorporated the latest techniques for using fast-moving, armoured units in sharp hammer-blows against a narrow enemy front. Although the highest level of command was full of generals who doubted that France could be knocked out in a single, rapid blow, the middle-ranking officers who led men in battle were both highly motivated and trained to seize the initiative as and when they could. For instance, General Heinz Guderian was a great enthusiast for the armoured-warfare theories proposed by British strategists like Basil Liddell Hart and tank pioneers like Generals Fuller and Hobart (theories largely ignored by the British Army of 1940). Guderian commanded a panzer corps in the assault on Belgium and made it clear to all his senior officers that their overall objective was to force their way to the Channel coast in northern France as quickly as possible. They were to use their own initiative whenever necessary so long as it contributed towards this goal.

The British Army had sent a small expeditionary force to northern France, just as it had in 1914. The troops were well trained and reasonably well equipped. But as in the First World War, they were too few in number to make a substantial difference to the battle. Their commander, Viscount Gort, was a brave, courageous general who had won a Victoria Cross and a host of other commendations during the First World War. But although he had Churchill’s confidence, he could not make up for years of peacetime neglect of the army. There was also confusion over how the British troops should fit into the French operation. Gort did his best to act as a loyal ally, but he was astonished and a little ashamed at how quickly French morale collapsed.

Despite the contrasting strengths and weaknesses of the Allied and Nazi units, the outcome of the battle that unfolded in May and June 1940 was by no means a certainty. The combined troops of the French, British, Belgian and Dutch armies slightly outnumbered the Wehrmacht. And the Allies even had more tanks than the Germans. But the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, far outnumbered the combined Allied air forces, and no French fighter could match the Messerschmitt Me-109. The RAF Hurricanes and Spitfires were formidable flying machines, but as far as the French were concerned there were never enough of them. In addition, the Germans used their Stuka dive-bombers brilliantly in close ground support. These aircraft had a siren fitted below the wings which emitted a screaming sound as they dived to drop their thousand-pound bomb, making them daunting terror weapons. Even the most experienced soldiers broke under bombardment from a wave of Stukas.

Using a strategy of fast-moving armoured units comprising massed phalanxes of panzers, with close air support for the ground advance, and choosing to fight over a narrow rather than a broad front, the German Army now rolled out its techniques for blitzkrieg or lightning war. This combination of surprise, speed, weight and numbers had been used very effectively in Poland. In France and Belgium, the Germans were up against tougher troops in much larger numbers, but the end result was the same. The Wehrmacht had been forged into a brilliant fighting machine with an iron sense of purpose and self-confidence. The Germans totally outperformed the Allies and enjoyed one of the most spectacular victories of the war.

From the beginning of their assault at dawn on 10 May, the initiative lay with the German troops. In a brilliant and daring action, about three hundred glider troops captured the giant, modern Belgian fortress at Eban Emael, reputed to be the strongest fort in the world. The well-defended position was overwhelmed in just a few hours. Simultaneously, a complete army group moved into Holland in the north, drew out the Dutch and Belgian armies and tempted the British forward, too. But this was part of the German master-plan to draw Allied forces away from the main strike, which fell in the centre of Belgium. Here, ten panzer divisions launched a lightning attack through the Ardennes forest, which the French had believed to be impenetrable and had left largely undefended. In a series of actions from 13 to 16 May along the banks of the river Meuse, the panzers crashed through French defences and established bridgeheads on the west side of the river.

After six days, the Dutch government gave in. The royal family escaped on a British destroyer and King George welcomed Queen Wilhelmina at Liverpool Street Station. Soon the Dutch government followed the Queen into exile in London. The breakneck speed of the German advance was beyond the comprehension of French generals who still thought in First World War terms of a few hundred yards lost or gained in a day. Their poor communications and divided command hampered effective resistance. On the eve of the sixth day of fighting, with the panzer breakout along the Meuse threatening to divide his entire army, Gamelin ordered a full withdrawal of all his troops from Belgium. Prime Minister Reynaud gave the order for the government to prepare to evacuate Paris and move to Tours. He rang Churchill in an ‘excited mood’ and said, ‘We are defeated. We have lost the battle. The way to Paris lies open.’ He asked Churchill to send all the troops and planes he could.¹⁹

On the following afternoon, Churchill flew to Paris. At 5.30 p.m. a historic meeting took place at the Quai d’Orsay. Reynaud, his Defence Minister Daladier and Gamelin met with the British Prime Minister, who was accompanied by Generals Ismay and Dill. Gamelin outlined the collapse of the front in a short speech to all those present. The meeting fell silent. In his best French, Churchill asked about the strategic reserve: ‘Ou est la masse de manoeuvre?’ General Gamelin turned to him and with a shrug and a shake of the head replied: ‘Aucune … Aucune’– ‘There is none.’ Churchill wrote later: ‘I was dumbfounded. What were we to think of the great French Army and its highest chiefs?’²⁰

The French pressed Churchill to send more fighter squadrons. This had already been discussed by the War Cabinet. Air Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding was in charge of RAF Fighter Command and had responsibility for the air defence of Britain. He argued against sending fighters to France because this would weaken the British air defensive system. Churchill felt that although it was a grave risk, something had to be done to ‘bolster up the French’. He telegrammed London to say: ‘It would not be good historically if their requests were denied and their ruin resulted.’ The War Cabinet met at eleven o’clock that night to discuss this telegram and agreed to dispatch a total of ten fighter squadrons. Churchill immediately went to Reynaud’s flat to tell him the news. After an interval, the French Prime Minister appeared from his bedroom in his dressing gown. Daladier was called to join them and he shook Churchill’s hand in gratitude. Churchill got to bed at the British Embassy at about 2 a.m.

Over the next few days, the German panzers broke through and began their drive for the coast. The Allied position looked as though it were about to crumble. Gamelin was replaced by the sprightly seventy-two-year-old General Maxime Weygand, who tried to rally the troops but could do nothing to reverse the disasters that had already befallen the dispirited French Army. On 22 May, Churchill flew back to France to meet the French commanders at Vincennes. He was pleased to see that Weygand was reviving the French command, but by now the first German panzers had reached the Channel coast near Abbeville. The Allied armies were cut in two. The advanced panzer divisions moved north along the coast and after some bitter fighting captured first Boulogne, then Calais.

Ironside, the CIGS, was sent by the War Cabinet to visit Gort in the field and tell him to move his troops south-west. Gort carried out a small counter-attack against the advancing panzers near Arras which was successful. This forced even the elite panzers of the 7th Division, led by Erwin Rommel, to pause briefly and regroup. But the planned French support did not appear; and, fearing that his men would be cut off, Gort called off the counter-attack and, in defiance of his orders, began to retreat towards the coast.

At this point, General von Rundstedt, commander of the German army group in the centre of the battle, ordered his panzer units to pause. He was stunned by the speed of their advance, well over two hundred miles in little more than three days, and worried that they were now too exposed. In his diary, he noted that the enemy had been fighting ‘with extraordinary tenacity’, and he wanted to regroup and wait for the infantry to catch up. He was fearful of the very type of counter-attack that Weygand was in fact now planning. The German High Command debated whether to turn south and head for Paris or turn north to mop up the British and French armies first. At this point, Hitler arrived in person at von Rundstedt’s headquarters. For the first time since the Battle of France had started he intervened directly and endorsed von Rundstedt’s order. Maybe he thought it was more likely that the British would seek peace with Germany if their army had not been destroyed in the field. He almost certainly wanted to show his commanders that he was in control.²¹ The panzers came to a halt, a few miles from the French port of Dunkirk.

On 27 May, an evacuation of British and French soldiers began around Dunkirk. The head of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goering, told Hitler that his planes would finish off the Allied armies. And they nearly did so. Soldiers under constant harassment from the air cursed the RAF for not coming to their aid. But this was unfair. The RAF was attacking the German bomber formations as they assembled many miles away from the evacuation beaches. In a foretaste of what was to come later in the summer, the RAF pilots shot down large numbers of Goering’s bombers but suffered substantial losses themselves. After a few days, the weather turned for the worse, the Luftwaffe could not fly, and the evacuation went up a gear. Boats of every shape and size came the twenty-odd miles from the Kent coast to assist the navy in the evacuation. Hundreds of these ‘small ships’ helped to get men off the beaches in what was now called the ‘miracle of Dunkirk’. For several days and nights, the evacuation continued, with exhausted men clambering into fighting ships, trawlers, drifters, fishing boats, tugs, yachts and motor launches. The Admiralty initially estimated that they would be able to evacuate about 45,000 men. By 4 June, when the evacuation was finally called off, 338,226 men had been rescued, two-thirds of them British and one-third French, Belgian and Dutch.

Gort, the commander of British forces in France and Belgium and hero of the First World War, chose to stay with his men in the ever-shrinking defensive perimeter around the Dunkirk beaches, to face death or capture. However, Churchill thought his capture would provide the Germans with too great a trophy, so he ordered Gort to hand over to a deputy and evacuate. This he reluctantly did on 1 June, feeling bad about his escape. He believed that the criticism he later received for deserting his post was not fair as he had only been following Churchill’s orders. But this was not the end of Gort’s career and he would go on, two years later, to be Governor of Malta at a critical point in the war, when the survival of that beleaguered island was of vital importance.

In the last days of May, Churchill had faced another crisis. He had been Prime Minister for only two weeks, and his hold on the reins of power was by no means secure. Hitler thought Churchill would not last long and that the British would soon realise the folly of continuing to fight. Indeed, many in the British establishment were beginning to panic in the face of the disaster unfolding on the continent and the prospect of having to fight on alone. One Tory MP wrote in his diary: ‘“All is lost” sort of attitude in evidence in many quarters.’²² And Halifax, very much a member of the establishment, believed that Britain should at least explore the possibility of negotiation with Hitler before facing the very real likelihood of total defeat. He made an approach to Mussolini, Hitler’s ally, although at this point Italy was still not at war with Britain or France. In the War Cabinet, Halifax argued that Britain’s long-term interests might be better secured by negotiating now before France fell, rather than later, under duress. The War Cabinet was divided. The two Labour members, Attlee and Greenwood, were opposed to any sort of negotiation with Hitler because they thought it would undermine the war effort if news of it ever got out. Chamberlain seems to have sat on the fence. Churchill, unsurprisingly, was instinctively opposed to any sort of parley with Hitler. ‘Nations which went down fighting rose again, but those who surrender tamely were finished,’ he argued.²³

Matters came to a head on the afternoon of 28 May, when the War Cabinet discussed whether to open negotiations. Halifax was now in effect making a direct challenge to Churchill’s leadership, not because he wanted to take over but because he thought the Prime Minister’s thinking was wrong and a new course was needed. After an hour of passionate discussion, the War Cabinet was adjourned. Churchill had called a meeting of the full Cabinet at 5 p.m. In this he gave the twenty-five members of the Cabinet a frank account of the perilous situation in France. Hugh Dalton, the newly appointed Minister of Economic Warfare, wrote that Churchill ‘was quite magnificent. The man, and the only man we have, for this hour.’ He then recorded that Churchill said: ‘I have thought carefully in these last days whether it was part of my duty to consider entering negotiations with That Man.’ Churchill argued that Britain would not get any better terms by making peace with Hitler now than if the country went on and fought it out. Churchill continued: ‘The Germans would demand our fleet – that would be called “disarmament” – our naval bases and much else. We should become a slave state.’ He ended his speech by saying, ‘We shall go on and fight it out, here or elsewhere, and if at last the long story [of British history] is to end, it were better it should end, not through surrender, but only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.’ At this, a cheer went up around the table. Members of the Cabinet went over and congratulated Churchill, shook his hand and patted him on the back. Churchill was delighted by this spontaneous display of support from such a group of men, many of whom had long been his political adversaries. He later wrote: ‘There is no doubt that had I at this juncture faltered at all in leading the nation, I should have been hurled out of office.’ When the War Cabinet resumed its meeting at seven o’clock that evening, Churchill reported back on the strong support he had received. His resolve had been both personally and politically strengthened. There was to be no more talk of a parley with Hitler. Churchill had faced down Halifax. He had won. One historian has described this as a day that changed the course of world history, which would have been so different if Churchill had agreed to negotiate a deal with Hitler: ‘Then and there he [Churchill] saved Britain, and Europe, and western civilisation.’²⁴

On 31 May, in the midst of the Dunkirk evacuation, Churchill flew once again to Paris. He met with Reynaud and, for the first time since 1918, with Marshal Pétain, the legendary Great War hero who had been recalled as Deputy Prime Minister. Churchill repeated his line that Britain would fight on. In a conversation after the main meeting, he began to suspect that Pétain had now become a defeatist, and that he would agree to a separate peace treaty with Germany.

Churchill had not spent much time in the House of Commons since becoming Prime Minister. On 4 June, he reported to the House what he described as the ‘miracle of deliverance’ at Dunkirk. But while celebrating the triumph of withdrawing so many men from the jaws of certain defeat and capture, he admitted: ‘Wars are not won by evacuations.’ Churchill hinted for the first time publicly in the speech that if France collapsed then Britain would fight on alone. In a passage that was partly intended to rally the British people to the struggle ahead, and partly intended to express Britain’s resolve to overseas friends, especially in America, he concluded with some stirring phrases that have gone down in popular memory. He proclaimed:

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight in the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air; we shall defend our island whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing-grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.²⁵

The speech was immensely well received by a packed House of Commons. One MP said it was worth ‘a thousand guns’. In those days, Parliament was not broadcast, but the speech was very widely reported and had a great impact. Vita Sackville-West wrote to her husband, Harold Nicolson, after listening to a report of the speech on the radio: ‘Even repeated by the announcer it sent shivers (not of fear) down my spine.’²⁶

Belgium as well as Holland had now surrendered. The armies in the north had been defeated. Now Hitler’s forces could turn south and move on Paris. On 5 June, the final phase of the Battle of France began. The British Army had evacuated from Dunkirk without most of its heavy weaponry, having abandoned more than 1400 artillery pieces, 38,000 vehicles and over 7000 tons of ammunition. There was precious little left to protect Britain should an invasion come. But Churchill knew that the military defeat of France would bring a political collapse. And the loss of an ally of this importance could be a fatal blow to Britain’s own war effort. So he remained committed to the rapidly disintegrating French Army and sent two new and well-equipped divisions to north-west France.

Churchill requested another meeting with Reynaud to find out what the French were thinking. By now Paris had been abandoned and it was not easy to find a place to meet. On 11 June, Churchill and his small delegation flew to Briare on the Loire River for a meeting of the Supreme War Council. On arrival at the small landing strip, it was immediately apparent to Churchill how bad things had got. He tried to project a confident air. But the French were not responsive. A conference followed that evening in a nearby château that had been temporarily commandeered. It was woefully inadequate for this function and had only one telephone. General Weygand asked that every British fighter squadron should be sent to France. ‘Here’, he said, ‘is the decisive point. Now is the decisive moment. It is therefore wrong to keep any squadrons back in England.’ Churchill erupted. ‘This is not the decisive point and this is not the decisive moment,’ he declared forcefully. ‘That moment will come when Hitler hurls his Luftwaffe against Great Britain. If we can keep command of the air, and if we can keep the seas open, as we certainly shall keep them open, we will win it all back for you.’ In this atmosphere, no progress was made. Churchill heard after the meeting exactly how appalling the situation had become, with troops unable to move along roads packed with refugees and everyone under constant machine-gun fire from German aircraft. He came away from the meeting convinced that a complete French military collapse was imminent. And he feared that Pétain would sign a peace treaty with Hitler. Only a meeting with a young French colonel, Charles de Gaulle, who had been appointed Under-Secretary for National Defence, cheered Churchill. De Gaulle favoured fighting a guerrilla war, and Reynaud seemed to like this approach. Churchill thought that maybe de Gaulle would take over from Reynaud if the latter stood down. But overall he left in a state of despair.

On the flight home, it was too cloudy for the Hurricane escort to accompany Churchill’s plane. He chose to fly back anyway without it as there was much to do back in London. Over the French coast, the clouds cleared and Churchill looked down on Le Havre burning, the battle raging below. At this point, his aircraft dived steeply from eight thousand to about a hundred feet. German fighters had been spotted. The manoeuvre worked, and Churchill’s plane flew on back to Britain, unnoticed and unharried.²⁷

Two days later, the German Army entered Paris. Hitler’s divisions then turned south and west, and within days had finished off the last French resistance. The military battle was over, but the political argument continued. Churchill made one final visit to France on 13 June. This time he flew to Tours to meet the French leaders. Such was the chaos on the ground that no one came out to meet the British Prime Minister. Churchill’s delegation found a car and drove into the town along streets crowded with refugees and cars piled high with family possessions. Churchill couldn’t even find somewhere for lunch. Eventually a café owner was persuaded to open up and serve the British leader a light meal. When Churchill finally met Reynaud and the other French leaders it was obvious that final capitulation was near.

Over the following days, Churchill made it clear to the French leaders that he would not release them from the agreement made earlier in the year that neither country would seek a separate peace treaty. An extraordinary plan of a union between the two countries was suggested, with joint citizenship, so France could fight on. But nothing came of this. Any thought of rescuing France had now gone. Reynaud resigned on the 16th and was replaced by Pétain. Churchill hoped that the French government would move to North Africa and continue to fight from there, taking their fleet with them. He was particularly exercised by the fate of the French fleet, which he didn’t want to fall into Nazi hands as this would give the German Navy a decisive advantage in the Mediterranean. He had obtained a promise from Admiral Darlan, the French naval commander, that he would never hand his fleet over to the Germans.

On taking power on 17 June, Pétain immediately opened negotiations with the Germans for an armistice. This was effectively the surrender of France. After a few days of delays, Hitler made it clear that the French must accept the terms on the table. On 22 June, the French generals signed the surrender at Compiègne. To rub in the humiliation, the Germans made the French sign the document in the same railway carriage in which the Germans had signed the Armistice in November 1918. Events had come full circle. The northern half of France would be occupied by German troops. The southern half would be run by Pétain from Vichy as a semi-independent but pro-German state.

A few days after the fall of Paris, Hitler – accompanied by Albert Speer, his favourite architect, a newsreel cameraman, and his bodyguard of SS troopers – was driven around the sights of the French capital. As he posed for the cameras in front of the Eiffel Tower, Hitler must have reflected on what a stunning victory his soldiers had won for him. For four whole years, from 1914 to 1918, the German Army had advanced only a few miles. Now, in just twelve weeks, since early April, his forces had conquered Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France. In the previous ten months he had routed the Polish, Dutch, Belgian, French and British armies. Where would his triumphant war machine take him next?

Meanwhile, Winston Churchill, barely six weeks into his premiership, had to pick up the pieces after the utter catastrophe, for that’s what it was, of France’s surrender. But that had not been his battle. He had been able only to encourage and cajole from the sidelines. In the drama of the next conflict, the Battle of Britain, Churchill and his War Lab would play a leading role.