CHAPTER 7
The Battle of Britain and the Blitz were the first major military campaigns fought entirely in the air. The battle for daylight air supremacy over southern Britain was fought from early August to the end of October 1940, and the attempt to break British resolve by night bombing ran through the following winter and spring until Hitler redeployed the Luftwaffe against the Soviet Union in May 1941. During the Battle of Britain the Royal Air Force (RAF) enjoyed the decisive advantage of defending against attacks launched from widely separated airfields (thus profiting from what strategists call 'interior lines'), optimised by Britain's system of radar tracking and guidance, with the added comfort of fighting over friendly territory so that pilots who crash-landed or parachuted out of their aircraft could return to battle. The Luftwaffe had been built around the concept of close air support for ground forces (which had worked so well in France) and was singularly ill-suited for the task Hitler and Göring called upon it to perform over England. There was no outstanding difference in the technical characteristics of the fighter aircraft employed by the two sides, and the tactical advantage that the German fighters had developed in earlier conflicts was negated once they were ordered to provide close escort to the bomber formations, which had expensively discovered they were unable to defend themselves. Even so, had the Luftwaffe persisted in attacking British airfields it is likely a transient air superiority would have been won, but once the German bombers were turned against London the RAF quickly recovered and established daylight air supremacy. It was Britain's very great good fortune that the Luftwaffe had never subscribed to the concept of strategic bombing, because anti-aircraft and civil-defence preparations were entirely inadequate and if the German bombers, which roamed the night skies almost at will, had been capable of carrying more significant payloads the results might have been as devastating as they were to be for Germany when the boot was on the other foot. During the Blitz more German bombers were lost to flying accidents than to British anti-aircraft guns or night-fighters.
ANTHONY EDEN
British Secretary of State for War
Winston rightly called it our finest hour and it was true, but it was also our grimmest hour, without question. And there must have been moments for all of us – there certainly was in my mind – when I didn't see how we are going to find a way through, just couldn't see it. There were moments when I thought the only thing that might be left for us to do would be to take a German with us into another world.
FLIGHT LIEUTENANT ROBERT WRIGHT
Personal Assistant to Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, C-in-C RAF Fighter Command
Dowding was the supreme realist, knowing his job was to defend the United Kingdom and prevent the possibility of the Germans launching an invasion. He said he knew full well he could never win the war but he was very conscious of the fact he was the one man who could easily lose it. By the time of the Fall of France, Fighter Command had been depleted in strength because of the squadrons going to France to support the battle there. Dowding's initial establishment was fifty-two squadrons – that was the absolute minimum that was considered necessary for the defence of the United Kingdom. He was way down in strength when the time came for fighting the battle and that was a thing he was always fighting for, to maintain at least his basic, initial establishment of fifty-two squadrons.
ANTHONY EDEN
Personally I think Hitler was right not to attempt the invasion. I suppose the only outside chance would have been in June/July, before we got anything in order as far as the Army was concerned, if he could have then put one hundred thousand men ashore and attempted to march on London or something. But then how could he do that? He hadn't the ships to take them. If you think it took us four years of tremendous effort with all the resources of the United States behind us to prepare for the invasion of France, it's hard to see how Hitler, occupied still with defeating the main enemy on land – France – could find the resources to switch quickly to attack Britain. He could only succeed if he had command of the air, which he never got, and if he got command of the sea, which he never got either, and, thirdly, if he could build such an armada of ships that he could bring all the supplies and munitions and artillery and all the rest across with him. And none of those things were possible for him.
COLONEL ADOLF GALLAND
Luftwaffe Jagdgruppe 26
Göring's task, as he felt it, was to establish the Luftwaffe's superiority over the intended invasion area, and he had influence in all the steps of the various phases of the Battle of Britain. In the first phase he ordered that only fighter units should overfly England and force the RAF pilots to attack fighters against fighters. This did work for a short period, but then the Fighter Command held back British units from fighting. The next step was that the High Command ordered that some bombers should go along with us and should drop bombs, and, by doing so, would force the RAF Fighter Command to present itself in the air. This also worked for a certain time. Also at this time we made some low-level attacks on British bases. But the big step would have been the whole strength of our bombers escorted by our fighters attacking the British fighter bases, and I believe that this was a quite successful operation but it was a mistake that we did not continue for a longer time, attacking bases, depots, plants for engines and for fighter fuselages.
FLIGHT LIEUTENANT WRIGHT
The last week in August, the first week in September were the worst for us because that last week in August the Germans had been pounding the airfields mercilessly and 31st August was probably our worst day. Fighter Command was very nearly on its knees and Dowding was very conscious of that, and he was wondering how much longer he could hold out, because he was still having to face the problem of denying the Germans air superiority and yet here they were knocking the airfields to pieces. Any man under that strain would start to show it, and by the first week in September he was showing signs of strain although he was in complete control of himself. The day after the visit of the King and Queen, 7th September, an invasion alert was issued and all that day things were remarkably quiet and all of us were beginning to wonder what the devil was going to happen next. Then, late afternoon, the Germans launched the heaviest attack we had ever known – but the attack didn't go to the airfields, it went to London. So we were able to pull ourselves together, repair things and, most important of the lot, it gave the pilots more of a chance for a little rest.
WING COMMANDER 'MAX' AITKEN
601 Squadron RAF
We didn't think the Germans had a chance. We had fought them over France, over their own aerodromes. We knew that the Hurricane and Spitfire were as good as anything they had got, we knew our morale was as good or better than theirs and when it came to fighting over our own homeland, if we had to get out we'd be all right by parachute. And of course we had the biggest asset any Air Force ever had, which was radar. Radar really won the Battle of Britain because without it we would have been doing standing patrols and with the limited number of aircraft and limited number of pilots you couldn't have done it. As it was we could wait on the ground and then radar would watch and through various controls we'd be told to take off when the Germans were over Calais or over Boulogne and so we wasted no petrol, no time, no energy. In fact we could sleep in between sorties and then we'd take off and would be directed towards the German formation and given height, distance and their numbers, which was very important. So we'd go into battle feeling fine and fresh and fit and we would be at an immense advantage, we'd have the advantage of height, we'd have – well, we didn't have larger numbers, naturally they were far greater in number than us – but each squadron knew exactly what it was doing. We were controlled from the ground; we were never lonely.
FLIGHT LIEUTENANT WRIGHT
As soon as he knew where the aircraft were coming from and how many there were, he would immediately pass instructions to the sector stations for them to be scrambled. 'Scramble' being the code word that was used for just getting to the air, they would immediately take off without any instructions about what they were to do, but the moment they were airborne the sector controllers would then give them instructions, where they were to go and the height at which they were to fly. The pilots still were under control by the sector command and the very elaborate and sophisticated radio telephone called the RT. RT control from the ground and the fighters that were airborne were strictly under control until the leader of the formation could see what he was being directed towards. The moment he saw the incoming raid he would say the famous word 'tally-ho' and everyone would shut up and get on with it. The Germans came sailing in and always found something in their way; it might be a very small formation, but something was always there.
COLONEL GALLAND
The first fact was that the RAF losses we reported were from time to time overestimated. And our High Command made the mistake of discounting all these losses from the inventory of the RAF, and very soon there came these negative figures. Secondly we were confronted very soon by the British fighter-control system based on radar, which we didn't have at the time, and this radar system and fighter control were very effective. The next argument can be used that the defence on central lines is easier than attack from a wide radius. The defence took place over their territory and we had the Channel with a lot of water in it between our bases and the targets. Secondly our range was very limited and could only cover a small part of the British Isles, including London. But over London we could only stay for ten minutes to come back to our bases. So this limited range of our fighters, the escort, was perhaps the main point which prevented an effective air offensive against Britain. Without any doubt the British fighter pilots fighting over England defending their own country showed extreme bravery, and their experience was very high: their morale, and the material performance of their fighters was about equal to ours.
SERGEANT PILOT RAY HOLMES
504 Squadron RAF
I think we were just getting on with the war as one would play a game of rugby or cricket – to win. That was all and if you just played your hardest the other man had to come down. I don't think there was any worry about losing at all – we were out to win.
WING COMMANDER AITKEN
Although there were a lot of aircraft about suddenly, when you were fighting a particular man, him in his machine and you in your machine, the sky became empty and you didn't see anyone else, you saw nothing except this one man you were trying to shoot down and he was trying to shoot you. It was just one against one and sometimes you knew he was very good, sometimes you knew he wasn't so good and so you could assess the situation fairly closely as to whether he might be lucky to hit you but otherwise you can get him.
SERGEANT PILOT HOLMES
We used to say we must shoot down these German bastards and I think we built up a sort of synthetic hate against them, but I think it was a bit artificial. We were after the aeroplanes, at least personally that was my view. I wanted to shoot an aeroplane down but I didn't want to shoot a German down, I really did not. We did hear stories of Germans shooting at our fellows in parachutes and we thought that was pretty horrible, but we weren't sure whether it was true or not. I know I had an experience of a German aircrew getting draped over my own wing; he baled out of a bomber and got caught on my wing with his parachute and I was jolly careful to get him off as easily and as quickly as I could by banking the aeroplane and shaking him off. I was very glad when I heard he'd dropped down in Kennington Oval safely. So I had no feeling of wanting to kill that fellow personally.*21
WING COMMANDER AITKEN
I'd say there was no chivalry at all – you mean between the German Air Force and the British? I'd say absolutely none at all, not as far as I was concerned. I hated them, they were trying to do something to us, to enslave us, and I wasn't going to have anything of that if I could possibly avoid it. I would say there was none, but I know there seems to be some of it about now, these days. But not from me – never.
SERGEANT PILOT HOLMES
I don't think anyone ever considered that he would be killed, that was something which was just put at the back of your mind. If it was not, then you'd have got the jitters and have been very worried. If a fellow did go missing it was just, 'poor old so-and-so's had it' and that was that. Inwardly of course you'd feel it tremendously if you lost a pal but you didn't dwell on the subject at all. It couldn't happen to you.
WING COMMANDER AITKEN
LMF [Lack of Moral Fibre] was a very unfortunate situation, a horrible thing which was that a pilot really packed it in and said I can't go on. They all said may I go to training. Well, no – if a fellow said I don't want to do any more fighting there was only one thing to do and it was done with absolutely no thought at all. He was taken away from his squadron that day, he was taken away from the Air Force that day, if he was an officer he was stripped of his rank and he was put into another service or into the Home Guard or something. We could never keep on anybody who faltered for one moment, because you know faltering is a very catching business and if that had happened in any way it would have been quite wrong. Therefore there was this horrible thing LMF – it became a bit of a joke, you know people saying I think I'm suffering from it, but the fact of the matter was that it could have become a disease unless it was stopped. Sometimes you could tell a fellow was going to get killed. Yes, you could – he sort of lost it. When you're tremendously keen on something you're much better than when you're rather holding back, and the fellows who were tremendously keen generally came through.
COLONEL GALLAND
We didn't know at the time why he changed to London: we had only to obey orders. I believe today that Hitler and Goring wanted to make use of their advantage of having the capital of the enemy in the range of their fighters, which could therefore escort the bombers. On the other side Berlin was far out of the effective range of the RAF at this time and in addition the effect of an air raid against a big town has been overestimated. Nobody knew at the time how much was needed to destroy a great part of the town. Perhaps Hitler and Goring hoped that they would force England to negotiate after these attacks. It is difficult to decide which motive really had priority, but it is a matter of fact that this switch to London from military targets changed the situation of Great Britain and Fighter Command considerably.
SERGEANT PILOT HOLMES
After your first attack if you're lucky enough to see one or two that you can go for, and if you've broken them up then that's what happened, you chase them and if they turn for home you let them go because our strict instruction was that we mustn't chase anybody over the Channel because if we came down in the Channel there's a pilot and an aircraft gone. The main thing was to break up the raids and save our own aircraft. And so thirty-six Dorniers very quickly became two or three on which you're focusing your attention. I followed two or three and made attacks on each one of them and ultimately used up all my ammunition. Then I hit the tail of the last one and he came down on Victoria Station and I came down on a rooftop in Chelsea.*22
COLONEL GALLAND
The Battle of Britain during daytime became more disorganised and finally it was stopped. After a short time the Luftwaffe Command changed over to night attacks by the bombers only and the fighters were ordered to carry a bomb, and about a third of our fighters had to drop bombs in daylight, while the other two-thirds were escorting the bombers. Both fighter bombing and night bombing had never been practised, and therefore the effects were very low.
ANONYMOUS MALE EAST ENDER
Pub interview in Canning Town, east London
My flat overlooked all this area, looked down the river and across the river to the City, 'cos there's the Surrey Dock there, and I'm going to say this much – in my opinion he should have continued that type of bombing in daylight 'cos he was hitting everything of consequence, shipyards, gasworks, oil farms, everything of consequence, you know, all the bombs were dropping in the proper target area. So he only wasted his time when he came of a night-time, when he couldn't see what he was throwing them at.
ANONYMOUS MALE EAST ENDER
Pub interview in Canning Town
Just over the road from here was an oil bomb that set the house on fire and more or less blew it to pieces – the house is now rebuilt, as you can see for yourself over the road. From there we had other duties and went to the pub, the Liverpool Arms in the Barking Road, where we found that the proprietor had had his head chopped off with the glass and was laying in the forecourt, and big hole in the road where an ambulance had gone down and killed the ambulance driver and attendant. And I would like to say this – bombs were streaming about this particular area and the old women and people went out to put those bombs out, even in the road which was a silly thing to do, they could have let them burn themselves out. But they just had the spirit in them that they had to do something about it, and the old women – some of them are in this pub tonight – went out and they did a magnificent job of work.
MR OVERLANDER
Pub interview in Canning Town
They expected a tremendous number of civilian casualties, dead, and all the schools and playgrounds were turned into emergency mortuaries with stretchers and things of that sort to put the bodies on. But the thing that surprised the authorities, owing to the policy of Anderson shelters and things of that sort, was that very few of the people themselves were injured but there was a tremendous damage to property, all these little houses at the least blast fell down, and it was a question of putting people in schools and things of that sort, of turning out the auxiliary fire brigades and people of that type to give the people, where they could, at least sleep.
ANONYMOUS MALE EAST ENDER
Pub interview in Canning Town
Many of the casualties that happened in the early part of the Blitz need not have happened if they had accepted the help and advice of the authorities. There must have been thousands and thousands of Anderson shelters stacked up in depots up and down the country where people said they weren't going to have their gardens destroyed, they weren't going to have them in the house at all.
ANONYMOUS MALE EAST ENDER
Pub interview in Canning Town
The day I was hit was October 13th, 1940. About ten to eight I said to my wife and my in-laws, 'Well, I'll be off now,' and I just walked out the door. Lovely, big three-floor houses they were and I just walked up the approach road about twenty yards from the church which was our air-raid post and suddenly there was – shh – nothing, I heard nothing and I fell flat on my face. I picked myself up, I turned around and all I could see was just a grey curtain hanging down the middle of the road, about twice as wide as this pub. It was just a brownish-grey curtain hanging there and I thought, My God, something's happened. So I staggered down to the post and I said to the post warden, 'Jim, I think something's happened up at the Prince of Wales.' When we went up there and when we saw it I said, 'Christ almighty, the family's down there!' And there it was – we were there, about fourteen of us all on this big row of houses, and it was just one bloody great hole.
ANONYMOUS MALE EAST ENDER
Pub interview in Canning Town
The whole of Holborn was ablaze; the buildings were falling down. Cheapside was not so bad but all around St Paul's there were buildings ablaze. One thing that struck me as absolutely typical, the Lord Mayor of London was walking along, quite unconcerned with his umbrella and bowler hat, along Cheapside.
ANONYMOUS FEMALE EAST ENDER
Pub interview in Canning Town
The shelter where we used to go used to be what we call 'under the arches' and at the end of under the arches was a bigger archway and there'd be a canteen in there and this was run by Father John Groser of Stepney He used to run this canteen and run dances so we all used to have half an hour, an hour up there and all. He used to come through selling coffee or cocoa or tea and what have you and keep us all happy in the shelters, it was one big, happy family.
ANONYMOUS MALE EAST ENDER
Pub interview in Canning Town
It was a very light attack on the first day and in this small and very narrow street the bomb sort of slid down the front of the houses and we went down there all in our newness ready to serve and we got some of them out, and then we saw this dear old lady sort of staggering around and all she had on was just half of what should have been a nightdress. It was the top half and she was completely in a daze and we said, 'Go and get something on, Ma,' and we didn't want to go and help her, obviously So she said, 'Oh, I'll go in and get something,' and when she came out she'd got her hat on.
ANONYMOUS MALE EAST ENDER
Pub interview in Canning Town
One of the biggest morale builders in the East End of London was Joyce, Lord Haw-Haw. He used to come on the radio every night about eight o'clock and predict where the bombs were going to be dropped. He'd say, 'Well, tonight we're not going to Stepney, we may drop a few on somewhere else,' or something of that sort, and it so infuriated the people, the people were so angry about him, I mean, he actually done more good than he did harm.*23
ANONYMOUS MALE EAST ENDER
Pub interview in Canning Town
A big morale booster was the Women's Voluntary Service – the WVS. These ladies came down to the town hall in 1939 and the town clerks and people of that sort were very perplexed what to do with them and they found them an office, but when the Blitz started they certainly proved their worth. They went out with mobile canteens right in the middle of the Blitz; the following day they had their clothing centres open. People who had lost everything were fitted up with clothes and then taken along by the WVS and be given a cup of tea and a bun, then taken along to the assistance people who doled them out £10 or £20, whatever the size of the family was. Really, from the start these ladies done an excellent job. For example one lady from Poplar was a Miss Gretton, she was one of the brewery family and she'd led a very, very sheltered life – but she had guts, that woman.
J B PRIESTLEY
English author and broadcaster
One interesting thing, you know, is that on the whole women took it better than men. I think because men hated their helplessness – they couldn't do anything back – whereas women are more used to this extra suffering without any aggression following it, so the thing didn't get on their nerves as it did on men's nerves.
MR BUTLER
London air-raid warden
Some of the worst things I think was when there'd been a direct hit and someone had blown into little pieces and you had to pick that up, put it in sandbags, label it where it came from, where we found it, and by that they used to more or less identify all these people, who they were and where they came from. Sometimes we'd get two hands, two left hands, or two right feet. Well, you'd know full well that if you got two on the same side there were two people that had been killed there. I think that's about one of the worst things that you had to do and it took a man with a very strong stomach to do it, I can assure you on that.
GEORGE HODGKINSON
Coventry town councillor
People seemed to choose the kind of shelter that suited their disposition. Some favoured going under the stairs or the domestic surface shelters which were made available to them and of course there were the street shelters made for the purpose of affording protection for people on the move, in the street, they could dive into these shelters. One old lady when her priest went round to comfort her said, 'Well, I just read my Bible a bit and I says bugger them and I goes off to bed.'
FLIGHT LIEUTENANT WRIGHT
We had no defence against the night bombing. The night-fighters, although they had a wonderful promise and this AI – Aircraft Interception, which was an airborne form of radar – fitted into night-fighters, we hadn't had it for a long time and at the time of the Blitz it was not working. We had it first in Blenheims, a comparatively sedate aircraft, the magic box, the black box, all sorts of mysterious names we had for it, because it was a great secret. But during the Blitz itself we had no defence. Heavy demands were made on the single-engine fighters trying to see in the dark, they couldn't see anything at all, it was very much a hit-or-miss proposition.
COLONEL GALLAND
The night raids of our bombers were sometimes very successful, as in Coventry; on other occasions they had a minimum of navigation equipment, they didn't have radar and they were forced to navigate in daylight, and weather conditions always changed. It depended mainly on the first attack by the leading unit: when this unit hit the target, the following bombers could easily hit the target also. It was almost by accident whether night-fighters would be effective or not.
GEORGE HODGKINSON
As chairman of my own street fire-guard organisation I had to go on the street to be ready with buckets and stirrup-pump and so on, ready to snuff out any incendiaries that were round about. We lost one neighbour and her mother and we were under the bombs all night, our family, eleven solid hours. We got a landmine exploded within a few yards of the house: it ripped through the house hooking the curtains to the window frames, took the roof off, the tiles falling on to the pavement and you could see the stars through the building. We were in a rather desperate state at the end of the night.
MR BUTLER
There was an Anderson shelter and apparently there was a little girl inside. Her parents had gone round the corner to visit their friends or relations or something and the shelter was more or less caved in and covered with soil. I got down into the shelter and there was this little girl about fifteen or sixteen and her mouth was full of soil. Naturally I got hold of her hand, which is our job to console these people and try to quieten them down. She was in a pretty bad state and I cleaned her mouth out; she laid back and as she was catching her breath, sort of breathing heavily, some stupid devil walked over the top of the shelter, soil came down and went back in this girl's throat and as she squeezed my hand like that she just faded out. Now I had the feel of that girl clenching my hand for weeks and weeks and weeks. I could never forget it and I don't forget it now.
FLIGHT LIEUTENANT WRIGHT
I remember one time Dowding was going through a built-up area that had been very badly blitzed and houses and flats hanging out in all directions and things flung around, it was then that he expressed a feeling that might sound a little stilted – he said he was appalled at what he considered was a dreadful intrusion into the privacy of the lives of these people.
COLONEL GALLAND
Hitler decided to attack Russia, but nevertheless he continued with this attacks against London and Great Britain with reduced strength. In April 1941 Hitler assembled all the commanders in France and he told my friend and myself that it was done in order to camouflage the offensive against Russia; so the last raids can only be considered as a cover for the beginning of the Russian campaign.
GWEN BUNT
Plymouth housewife, night of 22–23 April 1941
The children, Raymond and Sheila, were both asleep. I usually put them into bed about seven. When the sirens went I called my mother, she came down the stairs and said, 'I'll take Raymond up.' 'All right,' I said, 'I'll take Sheila.' And we called Mrs Todd, that was the lady upstairs, and she came down with her three children and we went to our respective cupboards. I sat on a little tiny chair, put Raymond at my side and I held Sheila in my arms. They were still asleep; they never woke up. When the bombs fell I'm sure I heard the one that hit us – I could hear the screeching of it as it fell and then I knew no more. I must have rallied round because I heard my father say, 'Oh, I think your mother's had it.' I didn't answer him, I said, 'Oh, Sheila's all right, she's in my arms.' I went to put my hand out to see if Raymond was all right but I couldn't feel him, my arm was high up like and of course we was buried, and I said, 'Oh, I can't move.' Anyway, someone took Sheila from me – I could feel that – and then I felt whoever it was carrying me put me over his shoulder and I seemed to rally round again and I could feel myself being carried out into the air and the next time I knew I was in hospital when I came to. Later I learned that my mother was dead, and the two children were, and Mrs Todd was killed – she was expecting a baby any hour – and two of her children. One of her children must have run out but I never heard of him from that day to this.
EMILY THOMAS
Plymouth housewife, night of 22–23 April
The children had been with us and then, like children do, they wanted to run around, and they ran to another part of the shelter – you know, the shelter runs into different compartments. They hadn't been gone not five minutes before that shelter had a direct hit where the children were. That's one of the awfullest things I remember and of course we were stunned, we were shocked, and there were several men there, my son-in-law was there with my husband, and of course all the men dived to try to get the children but they couldn't because there was too much masonry. My husband went back to our place and got some crowbars that were lying in the garden and they tried to lift this heavy masonry but they couldn't. By the time they got through to them, well, by the time they got through to the children, they had died.
ARTHUR BOTTOMLEY
Trade-union leader and Walthamstow borough councillor
There was a Captain Blaney who was a bomb-disposal man and one night when I was the Civil Defence Controller he came to me and he said there was a parachute mine that had come down. Well, the instruction given us was that we shouldn't touch them, it was a matter for the Navy. And Blaney said, 'Look, I'm going to tackle it,' and I said, 'It's not your duty, you must leave it alone.' He called me a white-livered cur and this rather challenged me and very foolishly the Chief Inspector of Police, Captain Blaney and myself went to this power mine and he defused it. Everybody else who's approached one was blown up, so we were jolly lucky. But he was reprimanded – he was reduced to the rank of lieutenant and he became very troubled and upset about it, as you can imagine. Not long afterwards he borrowed my car and I saw his sergeant and said, 'Is my car back?' and he said, 'I'm sorry to say Captain Blaney is not coming back.' 'What happened?' He said he was defusing a bomb and he failed to notice two others there and it exploded – up he went.
ANTHONY EDEN
Foreign Secretary from December 1940
President Roosevelt sent his Republican opponent Wendell Wilkie over to this country in 1941 at the time when there had been a good deal of Blitz activity. And I remember he came to see me at the Foreign Office and he asked me what advice I could give him as to how to find out what people in this country really thought about the war. 'Well,' I said, 'ask them.' And it so happened that we were coming out of the Foreign Office there was a man working away at windows which had been broken in the night, on top of a ladder, and Wilkie went up to him and said, 'How do you feel about the war?' The man looked slightly astonished and said, 'What do you mean?' Wilkie said, 'Well, do you want to go through with it,' and the man said, 'Hitler ain't dead yet, is he?' If I'd have laid it on it couldn't have been a better answer. And that, Wilkie told me long after, was a view found throughout the country and therefore if Britain did hold on and did work her way through, immense credit of course to Winston and his leadership. But immense credit is also due to the British people, because it was their victory.