Notes

Introduction

1.Stephen Bungay, The Most Dangerous Enemy: A History of the Battle of Britain (London: Aurum, 2001); Juliet Gardiner, The Blitz: The British Under Attack (London: Harper, 2011); John Lukacs, The Duel: 10 May–31 July 1940; Five Days in London; Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat (all published by Yale University Press, London, in 1991, 2001 and 2009 respectively). The publisher missed an opportunity with the last of these volumes. It could have been called Five Minutes in London.

2.Lawrence Thompson, 1940: Year of Legend, Year of History (London: Fontana, 1968).

3.Clive Ponting, 1940: Myth and Reality (London: Cardinal, 1990).

4.Malcolm Smith, Britain and 1940: History, Myth and Popular Memory (London: Routledge, 2000).

1. Half-Hearted War

1.War Cabinet Conclusions 4/9/39, CAB 65/1/2. The conclusions are abbreviated minutes of the War Cabinet meetings.

2.Ibid., 5/9/39, CAB 65/1/3.

3.Ibid.

4.See N. H. Gibbs, Grand Strategy, vol. 1 (London: HMSO, 1976), pp. 229–64, for a discussion of this issue. For Chamberlain’s veto see Robert Self, Chamberlain: A Biography (Farnham: Ashgate, 2006), p. 254.

5.Michael Howard, The Continental Commitment (London: Penguin, 1971), p. 117.

6.Talbot Imlay, Facing the Second World War: Strategy, Politics and Economics in Britain and France, 1938–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 86; Gibbs, Grand Strategy, vol. 1, pp. 510–13. The Territorials were part-time soldiers who trained on weekends and at annual camps but on the positive side were officered by Regular soldiers and in many cases had exactly the same equipment as the Regulars.

7.War Cabinet Conclusions 6/9/39, CAB 65/1/5.

8.Malcolm Smith, British Air Strategy between the Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 253–7. Smith’s extensive account of the development of the Fairey Battle is well worth reading.

9.Ibid., pp. 257–8.

10.The British air staff realised that their bomber force hardly amounted to a strategic weapon. In 1936 they began a programme of designing four-engine bombers, which would result in the Halifax, the Stirling and the Lancaster bombers. None would be ready in numbers until 1943. The Germans, however, never reached this conclusion.

11.Richard Overy, The Bombing War (London: Allen Lane, 2013), p. 246.

12.J. R. M. Butler, Grand Strategy, vol. 2 (London: HMSO, 1954), Appendix 1, ‘Bombing Policy’, p. 567.

13.Ibid.

14.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 9/9/39, CAB 65/3/2. The Confidential Annexes of the War Cabinet consist of those sections of the meetings that were deemed too secret for wider circulation. Although they have a different TNA number, they should be read in conjunction with the War Cabinet Conclusions because they are continuations of the same meeting.

15.Ibid.

16.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 14/9/39, CAB 65/4/13.

17.Ibid., 14/12/39, CAB 65/3/26.

18.Ibid.

19.See War Cabinet Conclusions 16/11/39, CAB 65/2/19, for a discussion of German atrocities in Poland.

20.So said Chamberlain in the War Cabinet 3/9/39, CAB 65/1/1.

21.Ibid.

22.Ibid., 8/9/39, CAB 65/1/8.

23.War Cabinet Conclusions 16/9/39, CAB 65/1/17.

24.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 29/1/40, CAB 65/11/22.

25.M. Middlebrook and C. Everett, The Bomber Command War Diaries (London: Penguin, 1980), pp. 22–4, 28.

26.The quotation is the title of Uri Bialer’s important book. See The Shadow of the Bomber: The Fear of Air Attack and British Politics (London: Royal Historical Society, 1980).

27.George Peden, Arms, Economics and British Strategy: From Dreadnoughts to the Hydrogen Bomb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), Table 3.9, p. 152.

28.Stephen Roskill, The War at Sea, vol. 1 (London: HMSO, 1954), Appendix E, pp. 583–4. There were many other warships in the nearby Mediterranean Fleet.

29.Ibid., Appendix D, p. 577.

30.Ibid., Table 3.6, p. 141.

31.Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm (London: Cassell, 1951), pp. 550–2.

32.W. N. Medlicott, The Economic Blockade, vol. 1 (London: HMSO, 1952), p. 51.

33.Imlay, Facing the Second World War, pp. 113–14; Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (London: Allen Lane, 2006), p. 309.

34.Medlicott, Economic Blockade, vol. 1, p. 254. A bizarre Buchanesque plan was hatched by a committee under Hankey to sabotage the Romanian oilfields and to block the Danube so as to prevent any remaining supplies from reaching Germany via this route. The one snag was that Romania would have to cooperate in destroying its own oilfields. To the consternation of the British they refused to have anything to do with the scheme. See Medlicott, Economic Blockade, vol. 1, pp. 254–9.

35.Tooze, Wages of Destruction, p. 321.

36.Imlay, Facing the Second World War, pp. 315–16.

37.Minister of Supply Speech to the House of Commons 19/5/39, quoted in ibid., p. 325.

38.W. Hancock and M. Gowing, British War Economy (London: HMSO, 1949), p. 85.

39.War Cabinet Conclusions 19/10/39, CAB 65/1/20.

40.The source of the table is Hancock and Gowing, British War Economy, p. 136.

41.War Cabinet Conclusions 9/9/39, CAB 65/1/9.

42.H. M. D. Parker, Manpower: A Study of War-time Policy and Administration (London: HMSO, 1957), pp. 62–3.

43.Hancock and Gowing, British War Economy, p. 122; Parker, Manpower, pp. 62–3.

44.War Cabinet Conclusions 22/9/39, CAB 65/1/23.

45.Indicated by his reference to total outlays possibly exceeding £2,000 million. See Simon in Hansard 27/9/39, vol. 351, Columns 1362–80.

46.Ibid.

47.For those unfamiliar with the British taxation system in this period, the ‘standard’ rate of tax was the amount paid on the bulk of a taxpayer’s income. That is, a person earning £500 per annum would pay 2/4d on the first £135 and 5/6d on the remainder. Those with incomes of say £2,000 would pay a surtax over and above the standard rate on the last £500 of that income. For these details see B. E. V. Sabine, British Budgets in Peace and War, 1932–1945 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1970), Appendices A and B, pp. 304–5.

48.Hansard 27/9/29, vol. 351, Columns 1372–3.

49.Ibid., Column 1377.

50.Keynes to The Times, 28/9/39, quoted in Donald Moggridge (ed.), The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, vol. XXII: Activities 1939–1945: Internal War Finance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 30–1.

51.Ibid., p. 31.

52.Sabine, British Budgets in Peace and War, pp. 162–3.

53.Simon in Hansard 23/4/40, vol. 360, Columns 74–86.

54.J. M. Keynes, How to Pay for the War (London: Macmillan, 1940), p. 10.

55.Amery in Hansard 24/4/40, vol. 360, Columns 290–5.

56.Dalton in Hansard 25/4/40, vol. 360, Columns 411–12.

57.Crookshank in Hansard 25/4/40, vol. 360, Columns 411–12.

58.Davies in Hansard 25/4/40, vol. 360, Column 412.

59.Ibid., Column 423.

60.Chamberlain in Hansard 3/9/39, vol. 351, Column 292.

61.The quotation is from Compton Mackenzie. See Terry Charman (ed.), Outbreak 1939: The World Goes to War (London: Imperial War Museum, 2009), p. 166. Many other listeners that day agreed with Mackenzie.

62.Quoted in Keith Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain (London: Macmillan, 1946), p. 419.

63.Chamberlain to Hilda 10/9/39, quoted in Robert Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, vol. 4 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2005), p. 445.

64.Chamberlain to the Archbishop of Canterbury 25?/12/39, quoted in Feiling, Chamberlain, p. 430.

65.Chamberlain to Hilda 8/10/39, in Self, Chamberlain Diary Letters, vol. 4, pp. 455–6.

66.Chamberlain to Ida 5/11/39, in ibid., p. 466. In can be said with some confidence that Chamberlain was not afflicted in this way.

67.Chamberlain to Hilda 9/2/40, in ibid., p. 498.

68.War Cabinet Conclusions 30/9/39, CAB 65/1/32.

69.Chamberlain to Hilda 9/2/40, in Self, Chamberlain Diary Letters, vol. 4, p. 498.

70.War Cabinet Conclusions 16/11/39, CAB 65/2/19.

71.Ibid., 28/11/39, CAB 65/2/31.

72.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 23/10/39, CAB 65/3/32.

73.Ibid., 27/10/39, CAB 65/3/34.

74.Chamberlain to Hilda 19/11/39, in Self, Chamberlain Diary Letters, vol. 4, p. 472.

75.War Cabinet Conclusions 29/9/39, CAB 65/3/17.

76.Christopher Hill, Cabinet Decisions on Foreign Policy: The British Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 111.

77.War Cabinet Confidential Annex, 5/10/39, CAB 65/1/43.

78.Ibid.

79.Ibid.; Hill, Cabinet Decisions, p. 112. Hill’s dissection of this episode is a model of forensic analysis.

80.War Cabinet Conclusions 9/10/39, CAB 65/1/43.

81.See Churchill’s note on 9 October (in effect a draft reply to Hitler) and his covering letter to Chamberlain in Chartwell 19/2.

82.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 12/10/39, CAB 65/3/24.

83.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 25/10/39, CAB 65/3/27; Hill, Cabinet Decisions, p. 140.

84.Ibid.; War Cabinet Confidential Annex 17/1/40, CAB 65/11/16.

2. The Parliamentary Crisis

1.A. R. Peters, Anthony Eden at the Foreign Office (Aldershot: Gower, 1986), p. 359.

2.N. Crowther, Facing Fascism: The Conservative Party and the European Dictators (London: Taylor & Francis, 2002), p. 84.

3.David Dutton, Anthony Eden: A Life and Reputation (London: Edward Arnold, 1997), p. 127.

4.Lynne Olson, Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels who Brought Churchill to Power in 1940 and Helped Save Britain (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), p. 177.

5.Larry L. Witherell, ‘Lord Salisbury’s “Watching Committee” and the Fall of Neville Chamberlain’, English Historical Review, 116, November 2001, pp. 1,139 and 1,136.

6.Olson, Troublesome Young Men, p. 178.

7.Both Robert Rhodes James in Bob Boothby: A Portrait (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1991), p. 185, and Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 5: 1922–39 (London: Heinemann, 1976), p. 1002, put the size of the group at 30. Crowther in Facing Fascism, p. 100, says that the consensus figure is 25 but his estimate is 40. He lists some members outside the Eden or Churchill groups such as John Gretton, Ernest Makins, Victor Raikes and J. J. Stanton as abstainers. These are credible names.

8.Salisbury to the Daily Telegraph and the Morning Post 8/7/39, quoted in Witherell, ‘Lord Salisbury’s “Watching Committee”’, p. 1139.

9.See Witherell, ‘Lord Salisbury’s “Watching Committee”’, for these details. He has a list of members on pp. 1,165–6.

10.Ibid.

11.See John Barnes and David Nicholson (eds), The Empire at Bay: The Leo Amery Diaries, 1929–1945 (London: Hutchinson, 1980), p. 585, for the details. Hereafter, Amery Diaries.

12.Quoted in Olson, Troublesome Young Men, p. 286. The delegation member was Paul Emrys-Evans.

13.Witherell, ‘Lord Salisbury’s “Watching Committee”’, p. 1,153.

14.James, Boothby, p. 238.

15.Paul Addison, The Road to 1945: British Politics and the Second World War (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1975), p. 69. See also Robert Rhodes James, Victor Cazalet: A Portrait (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1976), p. 213, for Cazalet’s ambivalent attitude towards Chamberlain.

16.Lord Croft, My Life of Strife (London: Hutchinson, n.d). See in particular chapter 37, ‘Peril Through Weakness’.

17.This section is based on the excellent article, ‘The Old Tories and British War Policy 1939–40’, by Aaron Krishtulka in Brian Farrell (ed.), Leadership and Responsibility in the Second World War, 1939–1940 (Quebec: McGill-Queens University Press, 2004).

18.Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds, Attlee: A Life in Politics (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010), p. 82.

19.Ben Pimlott, The Second World War Diary of Hugh Dalton (London: Jonathan Cape, 1986), p. 269.

20.Ibid., pp. 272–3.

21.All references to the debate come from the House of Commons Debates (Hansard) 5th Series, vol. 360, May 1940. The column numbers in Hansard are given after particular references.

22.Robert Rhodes James (ed.), ’Chips’: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967), p. 244.

23.Hansard 7/5/40, Columns 1074–5.

24.Ibid., Column 1082.

25.Christopher Tomlin Diary 7/5/40, quoted in Simon Garfield (ed.), We Are At War: The Diaries of Five Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times (London: Ebury Press, 2005), p. 212.

26.Tilly Rice Diary 7/5/40, quoted in ibid., p. 212.

27.Hansard 7/5/40, Column 1084.

28.Pimlott, Dalton Diary 8/5/40, p. 340; James, ’Chips’ Diary, 7/5/40, p. 245.

29.Hansard 7/5/40, Column 1189.

30.Ibid., Column 1189.

31.For Jones see Hansard 7/5/40, Columns 1130–35, and for Southby, Columns 1151–60.

32.Harold Nicolson Diary 7/5/40, Balliol College, Oxford.

33.Hansard 7/5/40, Column 1116.

34.Ibid., Columns 1191–6.

35.Harold Nicolson Diary 7/5/40.

36.Hansard 7/5/40, Columns 1093–4.

37.Hansard 7/5/40, Columns 1094–1106.

38.Ibid., Column 1172.

39.Ibid.

40.For Wedgewood see ibid., Column 1124, and for Bellinger, Columns 1136 and 1139.

41.Hansard 7/5/40, Columns 1126–30.

42.Harold Nicolson Diary 7/5/40.

43.Pimlott, Dalton Diary, p. 341; James, ’Chips’ Diary, p. 245.

44.Harold Nicolson Diary 7/5/40.

45.Hansard 7/5/40, Columns 1140–1150.

46.Bernard Donoughue and George Jones, Herbert Morrison: Portrait of a Politician (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973), p. 272; Thomas-Symonds, Attlee, p. 93.

47.Hansard 8/5/40, Column 1263.

48.Ibid., Column 1265.

49.Ibid., Columns 1265–66.

50.Ibid., Columns 1261–76.

51.For Lambert see ibid., Column 1286. For the interjection, see Column 1321.

52.Ibid., Column 1301.

53.Ibid., Columns 1322–23.

54.Ibid., Column 1298.

55.Ibid.

56.Harold Nicolson Diary 8/5/40.

57.James, ’Chips’ Diary, 8/5/40, p. 246.

58.Hansard 8/5/40, Column 1349.

59.Hansard 8/5/40, Column 1351.

60.Ross McKibbon, Parties and People: England 1914–1951 (Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 121–2. As far as I am aware Mr McKibbon is the first historian to draw attention to this important passage in Churchill’s speech. This remarkable book gives an excellent exposition of the Norway debate from the left, a perspective much needed.

61.Major General Sir Edward Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe (London: Reprint Society, 1956), pp. 132–3.

62.N. Smart, ‘Four Days in May: The Norway Debate and the Downfall of Neville Chamberlain’, Parliamentary History, 17, no. 2, 1998, p. 221. The actual majority enjoyed by the government is not easy to calculate. After the 1935 election the National Government (Conservatives, National Liberals, National Labour and Nationals) enjoyed a majority of 254 over all other parties. Between 1935 and 1940 there were 99 by-elections. But of these only 20 had resulted in a change from one party to another. In all the Conservatives lost 14 by-elections, the National Liberals 5 and the Nationals 1. Labour had gained 13 seats, Independent Conservatives 2, Nationals 2, Independent Progressive 1, Independent 1 and National Liberals 1. Probably this reduced the government majority to 213, but because the voting behaviour of the independents was variable this is only an approximation.

63.The numbers given by various authorities are: Harold Macmillan, The Blast of War, 1939–1945 (London: Macmillan, 1967), 43; Herbert Morrison, Autobiography (London: Odhams, 1960), 43; Clement Attlee, As It Happened (London: Heinemann, 1954), 40; Ronald Tree, When the Moon Was High: Memoirs of Peace and War, 1897–1942 (London: Macmillan, 1975), 44; The Times 10/5/40, 21; Smart, Four Days in May, 38; Nicolson Diary 8/4//40, 44; Jorgen Rasmussen, ‘Party Loyalty in War-Time: The Downfall of the Chamberlain Government’, Journal of Politics, 32, no. 2, May 1970, 42.

64.For non-voters see Smart, ‘Four Days in May’, p. 226, and Rasmussen, ‘Party Loyalty’, p. 384. On abstentions Smart’s calculations are on p. 226 and Rasmussen’s on pp. 384–5.

65.This is the figure given by Harold Nicolson in his diary on 8/5/40. A note in the diary by his son and editor reduced it to 30. However, Nigel Nicolson seems to be following A. J. P. Taylor’s English History 1914–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), not the most reliable source.

66.James, ’Chips’ Diary, p. 247.

67.W. S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm (London: Cassell, 1951), p. 233.

68.Nicolson Diary 8/5/40.

69.Andrew Roberts, Eminent Churchillians (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994), p. 145.

70.Churchill, Gathering Storm, p. 233.

71.Anthony Eden, The Reckoning (London: Cassell, 1965), p. 96. Eden says that the time of this meeting was 9.30 a.m. This was early for Churchill, who to arise at this hour must have been aware that large events were to be played out that day.

72.Halifax Diary 9/5/40, Churchill College, Cambridge.

73.R. A. Butler, The Art of the Possible (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1971), p. 94.

74.A. J. P. Taylor, Beaverbrook (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972), p. 409.

75.Olson, Troublesome Young Men, p. 309.

76.Eden, The Reckoning, pp. 96–7. According to Lord Moran, Bracken had given Churchill the same advice on the evening of 8 May. See Lord Moran, Churchill: The Struggle for Survival (London: Constable, 1966), p. 323.

77.Amery Diary 9/5/40, p. 611.

78.Note by Lord Salisbury 9/5/40, quoted in Witherell, ‘Lord Salisbury’s “Watching Committee”’, p. 1162.

79.David Dilks (ed.), The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 1938–1945 (London: Cassell, 1971), 9/5/40, p. 280.

80.Halifax Diary 9/5/40.

81.Ibid.

82.Lawrence Thompson, 1940: Year of Legend, Year of History (London: Fontana, 1968), p. 88.

83.Churchill, Gathering Storm, pp. 522–3. This account may have been massaged in keeping with Churchill’s decision in his memoirs to play down party divisions during the crisis.

84.Amery Diary 9/5/40, p. 612. Halifax, Dalton and Cadogan confirm the questions to be put to the Labour Executive, but Cadogan has Chamberlain posing the questions. The crisp directness of the questions, however, suggests Attlee’s style rather than the Prime Minister’s.

85.Dalton told Butler (if the latter, who was implacably hostile to Churchill, can be believed) that Labour would prefer Halifax. But Dalton was not on the Labour Executive. Attlee and Greenwood gave no indications during the Norway debate that they would not serve under the First Lord.

86.Amery Diary 10/5/40, p. 612.

3. The Cabinet Crisis

1.Churchill to Chamberlain 11/5/40, Chartwell 20/11.

2.Handwritten note on Admiralty paper in ibid. I have been unable to decipher the portfolio offered to Greenwood. Minister without Portfolio seems a reasonable guess.

3.Undated list in ibid.

4.Chamberlain to Mary Chamberlain 11/5/40, Chamberlain Papers NC1/20/1/198.

5.Amery Diary 11/5/40, p. 615.

6.Ibid., 12/5/40, pp. 616–17.

7.Andrew Roberts, The Holy Fox: The Life of Lord Halifax (London: Phoenix, 1997), p. 210.

8.Robert Self, Neville Chamberlain: A Biography (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), p. 432.

9.Churchill to Chamberlain 10/5/40, Chartwell 19/2.

10.Churchill to Halifax 10/5/40 in ibid.

11.See the exchange of letters between Churchill and Chamberlain in Chartwell 20/11.

12.Harold Nicolson Diary 13/5/40.

13.Davidson’s remarks are quoted by Martin Gilbert in Winston S. Churchill, vol. 6: 1939–41 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 332.

14.John Colville, The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries 1939–1955 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985), 10/5/40. Hereafter, Colville Diaries.

15.Hankey to Hoare 12/5/40, quoted in Martin Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, vol. 2: Never Surrender, May 1940–December 1940 (New York: Norton, 1995), pp. 14–15.

16.‘Crooks’ comes from Davidson and is quoted in Roberts, Holy Fox, p. 208. ‘Gangsters’ is Halifax’s contribution and is quoted in the same source, p. 209. ‘Despicable jackals’ etcetera comes from Self (Neville Chamberlain, p. 431).

17.Hansard, 13/5/40, vol. 360, Column 1502.

18.The meetings of the War Cabinet are to be found for this period in the series CAB 65/7 in the National Archives. The meetings of the five permanent members, which were usually continuations of these meetings, are to be found in the series War Cabinet Confidential Annex in CAB 65/13.

19.War Cabinet Conclusions 12/5/40, CAB 65/7/14.

20.Ibid., 15/5/40, CAB 65/7/18.

21.Churchill to Mussolini 16/5/40 in Gilbert, Churchill War Papers, vol. 2, p. 50.

22.W. S. Churchill, Their Finest Hour (London: Cassell, 1955), pp. 107–8.

23.Churchill to Chamberlain 17/5/40 in Gilbert, Churchill War Papers, vol. 2, p. 68.

24.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 18/5/40, CAB 65/13/10.

25.War Cabinet Conclusions 19/5/40, CAB 65/7/24.

26.Ibid., 24/5/40, CAB 65/7/32.

27.Ibid., 25/5/40, CAB 65/7/33.

28.Ibid.

29.Defence Committee Minutes 25/5/40, CAB 69/1.

30.‘British Strategy in a Certain Eventuality’, COS Paper 25/5/40, CAB 80/11.

31.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 26/5/40, CAB 65/13/20. The discussion that follows comes from this meeting except where indicated.

32.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 26/5/40, CAB 65/13/20.

33.This section owes much to the excellent account of these events by Christopher Hill in Cabinet Decisions on Foreign Policy: The British Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). See p. 155.

34.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 26/5/40, CAB 65/13/20.

35.Ibid.

36.The full document can be found in CAB 80/11.

37.This is my interpretation of the minutes, which appear to contain a contradiction. They state that after the circulation of the Aide-Memoire, Halifax said that ‘as he read the Chiefs of Staff paper’ Britain’s ability to continue the war hinged on air superiority’. However, at the end of the meeting the minutes note that the report of the Chiefs of Staff ‘was being circulated’. To which paper was Halifax then referring? It could not have been the Aide-Memoire, which made no reference to air superiority. The only other paper was ‘British Strategy in a Certain Eventuality’. I can only assume that Halifax had already obtained a copy of this paper. It is possible that Halifax’s pessimistic demeanour at this meeting derived in part from his having read the Chiefs’ gloomy assessment. No authority (Lukacs, Roberts, Bell or Hill) has noted this apparent paradox in the minutes.

38.Eleanor M. Gates, End of the Affair: The Collapse of the Anglo-French Alliance, 1939–40 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), p. 144. Reynaud told his Under-Secretary of State, Paul Baudouin, when he returned to France that he found himself unable to put the question of France leaving the war to Churchill.

39.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 26/5/40, CAB 65/13/21. All subsequent quotations are taken from this meeting.

40.Cadogan Diary 26/5/40, p. 290. Cadogan says he was ‘summoned to the Admiralty at 5’.

41.These notes have the same Cabinet file number as that above.

42.The Halifax–Bastianini discussions are attached to the War Cabinet Confidential Annex of 26/5/40.

43.Ibid.

44.The usually precise John Lukacs suggests this. See Five Days in London (London: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 113, 116–17.

45.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 27/5/40, CAB 65/13/22.

46.COS, ‘British Strategy in the Near Future’, 26/5/40, CAB 80/11.

47.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 27/5/40, CAB 65/13/22.

48.Quoted in Roberts, Holy Fox, p. 218. Roberts claims that the document is to be found in the War Cabinet’s Confidential Annex of 26 May. I cannot find it. A copy is to be found, however, in the War Cabinet Papers in CAB 66.

49.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 27/5/40, CAB 65/13/23.

50.Ibid.

51.John Lukacs has ‘falling ally’ (Five Days in London, p. 147), which certainly conveys the sense of the situation.

52.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 27/5/40, CAB 65/13/23. Emphasis added.

53.Ibid. Emphasis added.

54.Ibid. Emphasis added.

55.Ibid.

56.Cadogan Diary 27/5/40.

57.Halifax Diary 27/5/40.

58.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 27/5/40, CAB 65/13/23.

59.John Lukacs states that David Dilks said the following in an article in the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society: ‘Here was Churchill, of all people, prepared to think of a peace which would inevitably leave Germany master of Europe and would also involve the loss of some British territory. The traditional belief that Churchill, from the moment of his accession as Prime Minister, was determined to fight until the whole of Europe was liberated can no longer be sustained in pure form.’ Lukacs does not give an exact reference and I cannot find this quotation in the article.

60.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 27/5/40, CAB 65/13/23.

61.Ibid.

62.Ibid.

63.Cadogan Diary 27/5/40; Halifax Diary 27/5/40.

64.War Cabinet Conclusions 28/5/40, CAB 65/7/39.

65.Ibid.

66.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 28/5/40, CAB 65/13/24.

67.Ibid.

68.Ibid.

69.Ibid.

70.Churchill, Finest Hour, p. 88.

71.Ben Pimlott, The Second World War Diary of Hugh Dalton (London: Jonathan Cape, 1986), 28/5/40, p. 28.

72.Amery Diary 28/5/40.

73.Churchill to Reynaud 28/5/40, War Cabinet Confidential Annex 28/5/40, CAB 65/13/24.

4. A Close-Run Thing

1.Major L. F. Ellis, The War in France and Flanders, 1939–1940 (London: HMSO, 1953), p. 77. The British Official History.

2.Ibid., p. 7.

3.Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, War Diaries 1939–1945, ed. Alex Danchev and David Todman (London: Phoenix Press, 2002). Entries for 21 and 22 November 1939, p. 19. Hereafter Brooke Diaries.

4.Meeting at Chateau Casteau 12/5/40, in GHQ War Diary 12/5/40, WO 167/5.

5.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 9/11/39, CAB 65/4/8, statement by the Chief of the Imperial General Staff.

6.Ellis, France and Flanders, p. 23.

7.Many thought the Germans had changed their plan because the original plan had been compromised by a German aircraft crash in Belgium in January 1940, from which Belgian intelligence retrieved its main outline. Gamelin thought the Germans would persist with this plan. He was wrong, but the crash was not the reason for the German decision. Manstein and eventually Hitler thought the new plan superior. Halifax was one on the British side who thought the plan a ruse, but he did not draw the obvious conclusion that if the Germans were not to attack across Belgium they must attack elsewhere.

8.For these details see Karl-Heinz Freiser, The Blitzkrieg Legend: The 1940 Campaign in the West (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2005), p. 86, and K. Maier et al., Germany and the Second World War, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 247–9.

9.Montgomery Diary 14/5/40, Montgomery Papers, BLM 19, Australian Defence Force Academy Library.

10.GHQ War Diary 15/5/40, WO 167/5.

11.Ibid.

12.For the whole sorry story of the brief Dutch resistance to the Germans see P. L. G. Doorman, Military Operations in the Netherlands from 10th–17th May, 1940 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1944).

13.GHQ War Diary 16/5/40, WO 167/40 and Advanced Brassard War Diary for the same date, WO 167/82. Advanced Brassard was the rather weird name given by Gort to his forward headquarters.

14.Brooke Diaries 16/5/40.

15.Montgomery Diary 16/5/40; 3 Division War Diary 16/5/40, WO 167/218.

16.4 Division War Diary 17/5/40, WO 167/230.

17.12 Lancers War Diary 16–18/5/40, WO 167/452.

18.Brian Bond (ed.), Chief of Staff: The Diaries of Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Pownall, vol. 1 (London: Leo Cooper, 1972). Hereafter Pownall Diaries. The locations of Gort’s Command Post can be found on pp. 307–50.

19.I Corps Telephone Log and War Diary 16/5/40, WO 167/124.

20.Pownall Diaries, 14/5/40, p. 315.

21.Brooke Diaries, 21/11/39, p. 18.

22.GHQ War Diary 16/5/40, WO 167/5.

23.Ibid. 17/5/40.

24.Ibid.

25.‘Account of Operations of Petre Force in the Area of Arras 18th–25th May, 1940’, WO 197/118.

26.50 Division War Diary 19/5/40, WO 167/300.

27.Ellis, France and Flanders, p. 72.

28.GHQ War Diary 19/5/40, WO 167/5.

29.Ibid., night of 18–19 May 1940.

30.Pownall Diaries 19/5/40, p. 323.

31.War Cabinet Conclusions 16 and 17 May 1940, CAB 65/7/19–21; Churchill to the War Cabinet 16/5/40, Chartwell 4/149.

32.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 19/5/40, CAB 65/13/12.

33.GHQ War Diary 20/5/40, WO 167/5.

34.R. Macleod and D. Kelly (eds), The Ironside Diaries 1937–1940 (London: Constable, 1962), 20/5/40. The editors have done their best to make these diaries unusable by splitting them into subject areas and by providing commentary that is often intermixed with the diary entries.

35.Command Post War Diary 20/5/40, WO 167/29.

36.Ellis, France and Flanders, pp. 103–5.

37.Gort to Eden 20/5/40, GHQ War Diary WO 167/5; Dill to Churchill 20/5/40 in Anglo-French Liaison Folder, CAB 21/1289.

38.Command Post War Diary 21/5/40, WO 167/29.

39.Ibid.

40.Gregory Blaxland, Destination Dunkirk (London: Kimber, 1973), pp. 136–7.

41.Command Post War Diary 21/5/40, WO 167/29.

42.12 Lancers War Diary 21/5/40, WO 167/452.

43.Rommel Diary 21/5/40, in B. H. Liddell Hart (ed.), The Rommel Papers (London: Collins, 1953), pp. 32–3.

44.This account has been taken from ‘Summary of Events May–June 1940’ in CAB 106/284. This folder contains summaries of the actions of the 4th and 7th Royal Tank Regiments that took part in the Arras counter-attack.

45.See the Report of the 4th RTR in ibid.

46.6 Panzer Division War Diary 21/5/40 in CAB 146/452.

47.XXXIX Corps War Diary 21/5/40 in ibid.

48.Army Group A War Diary 21/5/40 in IWM 19757 M.I.I.T.

49.Ibid.

50.Ibid. Underlining in the original.

51.Ibid., 22/5/40.

52.Ibid.

53.Churchill to Keyes 21/5/40, Chartwell 20/14.

54.Transcripts of the various meetings at Ypres on 21 May are to be found in CAB 106/862.

55.Churchill to Gort 22/5/40, Chartwell 22/14.

56.Pownall Diaries 22/5/40, p. 325.

57.For these moves see GHQ War Diary entries between 21 and 23 May 1940, WO 167/5.

58.Ibid.

59.Ellis, France and Flanders, pp. 121 and 123.

60.Major General Franklyn, ‘Report on Operations of Frank Force 20th–24th May 1940’, WO 197/118.

61.These dispositions have been gleaned from the German Corps War Diaries in CAB 146/452 for 23 May and from the folder ‘Maps of German Divisions in the West’, CAB 146/453.

62.Extract from Kleist Group War Diary in CAB 146/452.

63.See XXXIX Corps War Diary in ibid.

64.Fourth Army War Diary 23/5/40 in ibid.

65.Army Group A War Diary 23/5/40.

66.Ibid.

67.Ibid., 24/5/40.

68.H. R. Trevor-Roper, Hitler’s War Directives, 1939–1945 (London: Pan, 1966), p. 67.

69.GHQ War Diary 24/5/40, WO 167/5.

70.XIX Corps War Diary 24/5/40, CAB 146/452.

71.Ibid.

72.Ellis, France and Flanders, p. 159.

73.Ibid., p. 161.

74.XIX Corps War Diary 26/5/40, CAB 146/452.

75.Churchill to Ironside and Eden 25/5/40, Chartwell 4/150; Churchill to Ironside 25/5/40 in ibid.

76.See Airey Neave, The Flames of Calais (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1972), chapter 21. Neave was in Calais and subsequently taken prisoner. However, writing 30 years after the event he had no doubt as to the usefulness of its defence.

77.2 Division War Diary 24/5/40, WO 167/203.

78.XXXIX Corps War Diary 24/5/40, CAB 146/452.

79.‘Report on the Operations of Polforce 20–25 May and of 46 Div 25 May–1 June 1940’, WO 167/286.

80.XXXIX Corps War Diary 24/5/40, CAB 146/452.

81.See the 6th Army Order No. 12, 24/5/40, in Battle Post War Diary WO 167/27.

82.See Battle Post War Diary 25/5/40, WO 167/27, and the 12 Lancers report 25/5/40 in ibid.

83.Battle Post War Diary entry for 1800 hours, 24/5/40, WO 167/27.

84.Dill to Churchill and Eden 25/5/40 in ibid.

85.Battle Post War Diary 26/5/40.

86.Eden to Gort 26/5/40 in ‘Telegrams: Secretary of State–BEF’ in WO 106/1689.

87.Eden to Gort 26/5/40 in ibid.

88.‘Operations of II Corps during the Retreat from Louvain to Dunkirk’ (written by Brooke) in CAB 106/252.

89.Ibid.

90.M. H. R. Piercy, ‘The Manoeuvre that Saved the Field Force’, in Brian Bond and Michael Taylor, The Battle for France and Flanders: Sixty Years On (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 2001), p. 57.

91.13 Brigade War Diary 28/5/40, WO 167/372.

92.150 Brigade War Diary 26/5/40, WO 167/402. The Germans commented on the ferocity of the British counter-attacks. See ‘Experiences Gained in Action against English Troops’, in CAB 106/281.

93.Gort to Eden 26/5/40 in CAB 106/1689.

94.Brooke, ‘Operations of II Corps’, CAB 106/252.

95.Keyes to Gort, GHQ War Diary 27/5/40, WO 167/5.

96.Defence Committee Minutes 27/5/40, CAB 69/1.

97.Army Group B War Diary 27/5/40. It is interesting to reflect that it was Hitler who first used the term ‘unconditional surrender’ in this war. He would not be the last.

98.12 Lancers War Diary 28 and 29/5/40, WO 167/452.

99.Brooke, ‘Operations of II Corps’.

100.4 Division War Diary 28 and 29/5/40, WO 167/230.

101.XXXIX Corps War Diary 27/5/40, CAB 146/452.

102.See the 4, 5 and 6 Brigade War Diaries for this day. It is obvious from the scanty nature of the entries that headquarters had little idea of what was unfolding at the front. The diaries are to be found in WO 167/352, 354 and 356 respectively.

103.2 Division War Diary 27/5/40, WO 167/203.

104.Ibid.

105.XXXIX Corps War Diary 27/5/40, CAB 146/452.

106.‘Note on the 61st [2 Gloucesters] in France with Sketch Map, May 1940, collated by Captain E. Jones – adj 2 Bn Glosters’, in CAB 106/292.

107.Ibid.

108.Army Group A War Diary 27/5/40.

109.XIX Corps War Diary 23/5/40, CAB 146/452.

110.Ibid., 26/5/40.

111.XXXXI Corps War Diary 27/5/40, in ibid.

112.Ibid., 28/5/40.

113.Ibid.

114.XIX Corps War Diary 28/5/40 in ibid.

115.Ibid.

116.XXXXI Corps War Diary 28/5/40, CAB 146/452.

117.XXXIX Corps War Diary 28/5/40 in ibid.

118.XXXXI Corps War Diary 29/5/40 in ibid.

119.Ibid.

5. The Great Escape

1.An account of Adamforce 20/6/40, WO 197/19.

2.Ibid. Adam’s report claims that the 15 Grenadier Guards occupied the Canal Line to the east of Bergues. There is no such unit and it is not clear which unit is meant.

3.Colonel Whitfield Report 8/6/40, WO 197/118.

4.John Colville, Gort: Man of Valour (London: Collins, 1972), p. 204.

5.War Cabinet Conclusions 20/5/40, CAB 65/7.

6.‘Notes on Conference Held at Dover, 20 May, and at War Office, 21 May’, WO 167/5.

7.Stephen Roskill, The War at Sea, vol. 1 (London: HMSO, 1954), p. 216. Oddly, a call had been made via the BBC on 14 May for the owners of small craft to send particulars of them to the navy. Perhaps someone in the navy was taking a gloomier (or more realistic) view of the military campaign in France than most. See Robert Jackson, Dunkirk: The British Evacuation 1940 (London: Cassell, 1976), p. 73.

8.‘Operation Dynamo – Narrative of Events’, ADM 199/792.

9.Ibid.

10.Captain Tennant, ‘Evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force’, ADM 199/789.

11.Ibid. Signal sent at 8.05 p.m.

12.Williamson Murray, Luftwaffe (London: Allen & Unwin, 1985), p. 42.

13.Vincent Orange, Dowding of Fighter Command: Victor of the Battle of Britain (London: Grub Street, 2008), p. 169.

14.T. C. G. James, The Growth of Fighter Command, 1936–1940, ed. Sebastian Cox (London: Frank Cass, 2002), pp. 94–6.

15.Air Historical Branch, ‘The Campaign in France and the Low Countries’, AIR 41/21.

16.‘Dunkirk Evacuation Figures’, CAB 106/271.

17.These details have been taken from ‘Dynamo – Narrative of Events’.

18.AHB, ‘Campaign in France and Low Countries’.

19.‘Dynamo – Narrative of Events’; Dunkirk Evacuation Figures.

20.Roskill, The War at Sea, vol. 1, p. 219.

21.Patrick Wilson, Dunkirk: From Disaster to Deliverance (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 1999), p. 142.

22.Major L. F. Ellis, The War in France and Flanders, 1939–1940 (London: HMSO, 1953), pp. 216–19.

23.See, for example, the account of the 4/7 Dragoons in CAB 106/231.

24.Ellis, France and Flanders, pp. 210–11.

25.Quoted in Jackson, Dunkirk, pp. 102–3.

26.‘Extract from the Diary of Maj-Gen R. A. Osborne’ – attached to 44 Division War Diary, WO 167/275.

27.44 Division War Diary 29/30 May, WO 167/275.

28.Adam Report, WO 197/19.

29.Julian Thompson, Dunkirk: Retreat to Victory (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 2008), p. 233.

30.3 Division War Diary 29/5/40, WO 167/218.

31.Army Group B War Diary 29/5/40 states that these were the Luftwaffe priorities.

32.‘Dynamo – Narrative of Events’.

33.Commander Ellwood Beach Report in ‘Evacuation of Troops from Dunkirk – Various Beach Party Reports’, ADM 199/788A.

34.Tennant Report 29/5/40, ADM 199/789.

35.‘Dynamo – Narrative of Events’.

36.Ibid.

37.Tennant Report 29/5/40.

38.Ibid.

39.‘AHB Narrative – France and Flanders 29/5/40’, AIR 41/21.

40.‘Dynamo – Narrative of Events’.

41.Ibid.

42.Ibid.

43.Ibid.

44.‘Dunkirk – Evacuation Figures’.

45.‘Dynamo – Narrative of Events’.

46.Lecture by Brigadier W. Robb on Operations in Belgium, May 1940, 3 Division War Diary 30/5/40, WO 167/218; Army Group B War Diary 30/5/40.

47.4th Army War Diary 30/5/40, CAB 146/452.

48.Ibid.

49.Ibid.

50.Ibid.

51.6th Army War Diary 30/5/40, in ibid.

52.4th Army War Diary 30/5/40 in ibid.

53.Ibid.

54.Army Group B War Diary 30/5/40. Underlining in the original.

55.Ibid.

56.Commander Richardson, ‘Situation on the Beaches’, in Beach Party Reports, ADM 199/788A.

57.Dover War Diary 29/5/40, ADM 199/360.

58.Tennant Report 30/5/40.

59.‘Dynamo – Narrative of Events’.

60.Tennant Report 30/5/40.

61.1 Division War Diary 30/5/40, WO 167/190.

62.Ellwood Report, in Beach Party Reports, ADM 199/788A.

63.Dunkirk – Evacuation Figures.

64.‘AHB Narrative – France and Flanders’.

65.War Office to British Liaison Missions 30/5/40, in Dunkirk Telegrams, WO 106/1478.

66.Thompson, Dunkirk, p. 241.

67.Churchill to Ismay 29/5/40, Chartwell 20/14.

68.Telephone conversation between Gort and Dill 30/5/40, in Dunkirk Telegrams, WO 106/1478.

69.There is some controversy surrounding the choice of Alexander. Montgomery stated that Gort had chosen Barker and had to be taken aside and told that the I Corps Commander was on the brink of collapse, and it was after this conversation that Alexander got the command. However, in a telephone conversation between Gort and Ironside on the night of 30/31 May, the CIGS made the point that there was no need to leave a Corps Commander in charge of the dwindling BEF – a divisional commander would be sufficient and he suggested Alexander because he had seniority over the others. For Monty’s version see Nigel Nicolson, Alex: The Life of Field Marshal Earl Alexander of Tunis (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973), p. 103. For the telephone conversation see GHQ War Diary 30/31/5/40, WO 167/5.

70.GHQ War Diary 31/5/40, WO 167/5.

71.For the best discussion of these events see Nicolson, Alex, pp. 105–8.

72.‘Arm in Arm’. Supreme War Council Minutes 31/5/40, CAB 99/3.

73.War Office to Alexander, in Dunkirk Telegrams, WO 106/1478. It took a second telegram from Alexander to clarify the issue about when the 50:50 evacuation should commence.

74.Nicolson, Alex, pp. 108–9.

75.4 Division War Diary 31/5/40, WO 167/230.

76.‘AHB Narrative – France and Flanders’.

77.Thompson, Dunkirk, p. 249.

78.Wilson, Dunkirk, pp. 85–6.

79.Wake-Walker Report 31/5/40, ADM 199/792.

80.‘Narrative of Events 28th May 1940 to 5th June 1940, Evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk and Beaches to the Eastward by H. M. S. Sutton, Fourth Minesweeping Flotilla’ in ‘Various Ships’ Reports’, ADM 199/786.

81.‘Dynamo – Narrative of Events’.

82.Ibid.

83.Dunkirk – Evacuation Figures.

84.These are rough estimates gleaned from the War Diaries. It is often not clear which troops remained and which had gone in the confused conditions under which the war diaries were written.

85.Army Group B War Diary 1/6/40.

86.Ibid.

87.Ellis, France and Flanders, p. 242.

88.‘Dynamo – Narrative of Events’.

89.Ibid.

90.Wake-Walker Report 1/6/40, ADM 199/792.

91.‘Dynamo – Narrative of Events’.

92.Dunkirk Evacuation Figures.

93.‘AHB Narrative – France and Flanders’.

94.‘Dynamo – Narrative of Events’.

95.Ibid.

96.Army Group B War Diary for these dates.

97.See Ellis, France and Flanders, pp. 244–5; Tennant Report and Dunkirk Evacuation Figures.

98.Ibid., p. 246.

99.See Defence Committee Minutes 14/6/40, CAB 69/1, and Brooke’s much more colourful account in his diary for 14 June. The whole episode of the Breton Redoubt is dealt with in a report by Brooke in WO 167/4.

100.Dunkirk – Evacuation Figures.

101.Ellis, France and Flanders, p. 327.

102.Orange, Dowding, p. 168.

6. Alone

1.Churchill: Telephone conversation with Paul Reynaud 15/5/40, Prem [Premier] 3/188/1.

2.Ibid.

3.Chief of Staff Committee Minutes 15/5/40, CAB 79/4.

4.War Cabinet Conclusions 15/5/40, CAB 65/7/18.

5.Chiefs of Staff [COS] Committee Minutes 16/5/40, CAB 79/4; War Cabinet Confidential Annex 16/5/40, CAB 65/13/10.

6.Ismay recollection, Chartwell 4/44.

7.Supreme War Council Minutes 16/5/40, CAB 99/3.

8.Lord Ismay, Memoirs (London: Heinemann, 1960), p. 126; Winston S. Churchill, Their Finest Hour (London: Cassell, 1955), pp. 42–3.

9.War Cabinet Conclusions 16/5/40, CAB 65/7/19.

10.Eleanor M. Gates, End of the Affair: The Collapse of the Anglo-French Alliance, 1939–40 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), p. 79.

11.War Cabinet Conclusions 20/5/40, CAB 65/7/26.

12.Supreme War Council Minutes 22/5/40, CAB 99/3.

13.Churchill to Reynaud 23/5/40, Chartwell 20/14.

14.War Council Confidential Annex 26/5/40, CAB 65/13/21.

15.Supreme War Council Minutes 31/5/40, CAB 99/3.

16.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 2/6/40, CAB 65/13/30.

17.COS Appreciation 3/6/40, Cabinet Papers, CAB 66/8.

18.‘Support for France’: General Sir H. L. Ismay’s Correspondence, CAB 21/1488.

19.Only fighter aircraft will be discussed here because those were the type of aircraft the French constantly sought from the British.

20.François Fonville-Alquier, The French and the Phoney War, 1939–40 (London: Tom Stacey, 1973), pp. 197–8.

21.Most of the information about the French Air Force has been taken from an extremely useful article, ‘The French Air Force in 1940’, by Lt-Col. Faris B. Kirkland in Air University Review, September–October 1985, pp. 1–14.

22.Patrick Facon, L’Armée de l’air dans la tourmente: La bataille de France, 1939–1940 (Paris: Economica, 1997), p. 259.

23.Churchill to Reynaud and Weygand 5/6/40, Chartwell 20/14.

24.Campbell to Halifax 5/6/40, War Cabinet Confidential Annex 65/13/33.

25.Churchill to Reynaud and Weygand 5/6/40, Chartwell 20/14.

26.Gates, End of the Affair, pp. 165–6.

27.Churchill to Reynaud and Weygand 7/6/40, Prem 3/188/1.

28.Churchill to Roosevelt 11/6/40, Prem 3/468/1.

29.Churchill to Roosevelt 11/6/40, Chartwell 20/14.

30.Major General Sir Edward Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe (London: Reprint Society, 1956), p. 444.

31.Ibid., p. 449.

32.Ismay, Memoirs, pp. 138–9.

33.It is certainly more readable than the Supreme War Council Minutes from which the gist of this meeting has been taken. See the minutes for 11/6/40 in CAB 99/3.

34.Supreme War Council Minutes 12/6/40, CAB 99/3.

35.War Cabinet Conclusions 12/6/40, CAB 65/7/57.

36.Churchill to Roosevelt 12/6/40, Prem 3/468/1.

37.Gates, End of the Affair, p. 190.

38.Supreme War Council Minutes 13/6/40, CAB 99/3.

39.Warren F. Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, vol. 1 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 45–6. The whole matter of Anglo-American relations in this period will be discussed in another chapter.

40.War Cabinet Conclusions 13/6/40, CAB 65/7/59.

41.Churchill to Roosevelt 13/6/40, Kimball, Complete Correspondence, vol. 1, p. 47.

42.Roosevelt to Churchill 14/6/40, in ibid., p. 48.

43.War Cabinet Conclusions (12.30) 14/6/40, CAB 65/7/61.

44.Churchill to Roosevelt 15/6/40, Kimball, Complete Correspondence, vol. 1, pp. 49–51.

45.Avi Shlaim, ‘Prelude to Downfall: The British offer of Union to France, June 1940’, Journal of Contemporary History, 9, no. 3, July 1974, pp. 40–1. The pre-history of the union, which goes back to the beginning of the war, can be found in this lucid exposition.

46.Ibid., p. 41.

47.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 16/6/40, CAB 65/13/45; Churchill to Reynaud 16/6/40, Chartwell 20/14.

48.Quoted in ibid., p. 50.

49.Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe, p. 589.

50.Ibid.

51.The name of the minister should be recorded; it was Ybarnegaray.

52.Shlaim, ‘Prelude to Downfall’, p. 53.

53.Gates, End of the Affair, p. 247.

54.‘Record of Conversation Held at Bordeaux on 18th June, 1940, Between First Lord, First Sea Lord and Admiral Darlan, First Sea Lord’s Records 1939–1945’, ADM 205/4.

55.Quoted in Gates, End of the Affair, pp. 278–9.

56.Ibid., pp. 288–92.

57.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 24/6/40, CAB 65/13/48 and 49.

58.War Cabinet Conclusions 23/6/40, CAB 65/7/30; Cadogan Diary 23/6/40, p. 314.

59.Hansard 25/5/40, vol. 362, Column 304–5.

60.Ibid.

61.The terms to be offered to the French regarding the fleet were discussed many times by the War Cabinet. A useful summary of the alternatives to be offered to Darlan can be found in the Conclusions for 27/6/40, CAB 65/13/53.

62.Andrew Roberts, The Holy Fox: The Life of Lord Halifax (London: Phoenix, 1997), p. 231. Roberts has by far the best account of this affair. I am afraid, however, I take his view that this was a chance meeting with a grain of salt.

63.Churchill to Halifax 25/6/40, quoted in Martin Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, vol. 2: Never Surrender, May 1940–December 1940 (New York: Norton, 1995), pp. 419–20.

64.Roberts, Holy Fox, pp. 232–6. Ironically, Butler’s move to Education would rehabilitate his reputation.

65.Joint Planners Report on French Fleet 29/6/40, COS Papers, CAB 80/14.

66.COS Report on French Fleet 30/6/40, CAB 79/5.

67.The details of French naval dispositions can be found in A. J. Marder, ‘Oran, 3 July 1940’, in his From the Dardanelles to Oran (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 200–5.

68.Marder, Oran, p. 228.

69.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 30/6/40, CAB 65/13/56.

70.These instructions are attached to the COS paper of 30th June. See CAB 80/14.

71.Marder, Oran, pp. 231–2.

72.See ADM 1/10321.

73.The details can be found in Marder, Oran, pp. 230–68.

7. Hitler at the Door

1.Chiefs of Staff Committee, ‘Invasion of the United Kingdom’, 25/5/40, CAB 80/12.

2.German Naval Staff (Operations Division) War Diary 15/11/39, vol. 9. The copy used here is a microfilm edition published by Scholarly Publications. The volumes refer to those used by the publishers. Hereafter this source will be referred to as German Naval Staff War Diary.

3.German Naval Staff War Diary 21/5/40, vol. 10.

4.Ibid., 20/6/40.

5.OKW Directive 2/7/40 in Führer Directives and Other Top-Level Directives of the German Armed Forces, 1939–1941 (United States and British Intelligence Services: Washington and London, 1948; republished by Partizan Press, Nottingham), pp. 105–6. Hereafter Führer and Other Top-Level Directives.

6.German Naval Staff War Diary 9/7/40, vol. 11.

7.OKW, ‘Artillery Protection for Transports to Britain’, 10/7/40, in Führer and Other Top-Level Directives, pp. 106–7.

8.German Naval Staff War Diary 2/7/40, vol. 11.

9.J. P. Mallmann Showall (ed.), Führer Conferences on Naval Affairs, 1939–1945 (London: Chatham Publishing, 2005), p. 114. Hereafter Führer Naval Conferences.

10.Ibid., p. 115.

11.Führer and Other Top-Level Directives, pp. 107–11. The directive was issued on 19/7/40.

12.Ibid.

13.German Naval Staff War Diary 16/7/40, vol. 11.

14.Ibid. 17/7/40. See also the account by Admiral Assmann, ‘German Plans for the Invasion of England 1940: Operation Sea Lion’, in ADM 223/484. Assmann wrote this account for the British while a prisoner of war. He had access to a wide range of documents from military and political sources as well as naval.

15.Ibid.

16.German Naval Staff War Diary 19/7/40, vol. 11.

17.Stephen Roskill, The War at Sea, vol. 1 (London: HMSO, 1954), p. 249.

18.Jodl’s notes in Martin Marix Evans, Invasion! Operation Sea Lion, 1940 (London: Longman, 2004), p. 84.

19.Führer Naval Conferences 21/7/40, p. 119, emphasis added.

20.Ibid., p. 120.

21.German Naval Staff War Diary 22/7/40, vol. 11.

22.Ibid., 25/7/40.

23.Ibid.

24.Ibid.

25.Führer Naval Conferences, 26/7/40, p. 121.

26.German Naval Staff War Diary 29/7/40.

27.Führer Naval Conferences, 31/7/40, p. 122.

28.Ibid.

29.Ibid.

30.German Naval Staff War Diary, vol. 12 5/8/40.

31.Führer Naval Conferences, 13/8/40, p. 125.

32.Führer Directives, ‘Operation Seelöwe’, 16/8/40, in ibid., p. 113.

33.‘Army Group Operation Order No. 1’, 14/9/40, quoted in Marix Evans, Invasion!, pp. 129–36.

34.Ronald Wheatley, Operation Sea Lion: German Plans for the Invasion of England, 1939–1942 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), pp. 158–9.

35.Walter Schellenberg, Invasion 1940: The Nazi Plan for Britain (London: St Ermine’s, 2001). The title is a contemporary one.

36.For the number of soldiers in Britain see ‘Manpower in the Army’ – Memorandum by the Adjutant General 17/6/40 in WO 163/48.

37.Memorandum by the C-in-C Home Forces (Ironside), ‘Forces for the Defence of the United Kingdom’, 31/5/40, CAB 80/12.

38.Army Council Minutes 19/7/40, WO 163/48.

39.Admiralty to C-in-C Home Fleet 13/6/40, ADM 116/4469.

40.GHQ Home Forces, ‘Preparations for Defence’, 4/6/40 in Invasion – General Policy, ADM 116/4469.

41.Basil Collier, The Defence of the United Kingdom (London: HMSO, 1957), p. 129.

42.Army Council Minutes 17/6/40, WO 163/48.

43.Brooke Diaries, p. 93.

44.Ibid., entries for 26 and 27 July respectively.

45.Churchill to Brooke 15/7/40, COS Papers, CAB 80/14.

46.War Office Progress Report July 1940 in the Army Council Minutes, WO 163/48.

47.War Office Progress Report August 1940 in ibid.

48.Selected Equipment numbers 16/8/40, Army Council Minutes, in ibid.

49.For the exact locations of these forces see Map 15, which is taken from Map 17 of Collier, Defence of the United Kingdom, facing p. 219.

50.Brooke Diaries 15/9/40.

51.‘The State of the Army in England’, 1/9/40, WO 106/2795B.

52.Ibid.

53.Roskill, War at Sea, Appendix L, p. 603.

54.See the weekly Pink Lists, which show the distribution of warships in home waters in ADM 187/8, and Roskill, War at Sea, p. 242.

55.For a short account of the Dakar expedition (Operation Menace) see Roskill, War at Sea, pp. 308–20.

56.Note by Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff (ACNS) 29/8/40 in ADM 223/484.

57.‘Possible Invasion of the U.K. by Germany’, C-in-C’s Appreciation, 27/5/40, ADM 1/10566.

58.Notes on the above paper 27/5/40.

59.See the correspondence between Forbes and the Admiralty in ADM 1/10566. The order to Forbes was issued on 4 June.

60.Ibid.

61.Note by ACNS in ADM 1/10566.

62.Note by Vice Chief of the Naval Staff 24/6/40 in ibid.

63.Note in ibid.

64.Admiralty Training and Staff Duties Division, ‘The Navy and the Threat of Invasion 1940’, ADM 234/436.

65.Ibid.

66.Ibid.

67.The Pink List 21/8/40, ADM 187/9.

68.Collier, Defence of the United Kingdom, p. 132.

69.Home Fleet War Diary 13/8/40, ADM 199/361.

70.Ibid. 7/9/40.

71.F. H. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War: Its Influence on Strategy and Operations, vol. 1 (London: HMSO, 1979), p. 185.

72.Home Fleet War Diary 13/9/40, ADM 199/361.

73.‘Invasion – The Role of the RAF’, Draft Minutes of the Meeting to Discuss Inter-Service Co-operation, 3/7/40, ADM 199/1202.

74.Ibid.

75.Drax to Dowding in ibid.

76.Dowding to Drax 5/7/40 in ibid.

77.COS Committee Paper 15/7/40.

78.Brooke note on diary 29/7/40.

79.Churchill to Ismay 30/6/40, Chartwell 20/13.

80.All these letters can be found in the Ismay file of correspondence, Chartwell 20/13.

81.Churchill to A. V. Alexander (First Lord of the Admiralty) 8/8/40; Churchill to A. V. Alexander and Pound 25/8/40, both in Chartwell 20/13.

82.Churchill to A. V. Alexander and Pound 1/9/40, Chartwell 20/13.

83.Roskill, War at Sea, p. 256.

84.Churchill to Ismay 30/6/40, Chartwell 20/13.

85.Ibid.

86.War Cabinet Confidential Annex 2/7/40, CAB 65/14/2.

87.Ibid.

88.Churchill to Eden 7/7/40, Chartwell 20/13.

89.Churchill to Eden 3/7/40, Chartwell 20/13.

90.Most of these matters can be found in Churchill’s correspondence with Ismay in Chartwell 20/13.

91.Churchill to Ismay 30/6/40, Chartwell 20/13.

92.‘Gas Policy’, WO 199/328.

8. The Battle of Britain: The Antagonists

1.Air Defence Research: Radio Direction Finding, CAB 21/1099. The method was called Radio Direction Finding (RDF) because that was a suitably opaque name for a scientific breakthrough. Radar was the name given to it by the Americans and this name came into such popular use that RDF will be shortened to Radar in this account.

2.Air Defence of Great Britain, Night Operations, AIR 41/17. This long document gives an excellent summary of Fighter Command intelligence methods.

3.Ibid.

4.Ibid. Thousands of miles of this cable were laid by the GPO from 1936 to 1940.

5.Vincent Orange, Dowding of Fighter Command: Victor of the Battle of Britain (London: Grub Street, 2008), p. 102.

6.This information is largely taken from the document mentioned in footnote 635 in AIR41/17.

7.Orange, Dowding, p. 153.

8.Tangmere was an exception. Its operation room was made of concrete. See Stephen Bungay, The Most Dangerous Enemy: A History of the Battle of Britain (London: Aurum, 2001), p.67.

9.This information has been taken from the excellent biography by Vincent Orange, Park: The Biography of Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park (London: Grub Street, 2000). There is as yet still no statue of Park in London.

10.This discussion of Schmid relies on Nigel Dempster and Derek Wood, The Narrow Margin: The Battle of Britain and the Rise of Air Power, 1930–1940 (London: Hutchinson, 1961), pp. 103–8.

11.There are many sources for the capabilities of the aircraft in the Battle of Britain. I have relied on Richard Townshend Bickers, The Battle of Britain: The Greatest Battle in the History of Air Warfare (London: Salamander, 1999), chs 3–5, and the excellent Bungay, The Most Dangerous Enemy, chs 5 and 6. Also note the diagram in Bungay, chapter 30, for the turning circles of the Me 109 and Spitfire and Hurricane. These have been calculated by engineers and must supersede all other figures for this crucial measurement of performance. In particular, Bungay’s figures must render obsolete those used by Len Deighton in Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain (London: Pan, 1979), p. 83, where it is claimed that the Messerschmidt had the smaller turning circle.

12.Luftwaffe Strength and Serviceability Tables, compiled from the records of VI Abteilung Quartermaster General Department of the German Air Ministry and translated by the Air Historical Branch, AIR 20/7706.

13.These figures are based on an unreferenced source in Dempster and Wood, Narrow Margin, p. 229, where they give the German air strength actually deployed against Britain on 10/8/40. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a series of these figures.

14.States of Aircraft in Fighter Command, AIR 16/943. The serviceability rates for British fighters were about 90 per cent, so there were about 75 additional Hurricanes and Spitfires ready within seven days.

15.Ibid.

16.Comparative Study of RAF and Luftwaffe Striking Power, 16/7/40, quoted in Dempster and Wood Narrow Margin, pp. 106–8.

17.Hinsley, British Intelligence, p. 177.

18.German Quartermaster General’s Return.

19.Hinsley, British Intelligence, p. 177.

20.Ibid., p. 178.

21.Orange, Dowding, p. 147.

22.Size of German Air Threat 1/8/40, AIR 25/197 (11 Group Appendices September 1939–September 1940.) The paper also overestimated the number of German fighters available, but only by about 20 per cent.

23.Peter Dye, ‘Logistics and the Battle of Britain’, Air Power Review, 3, no. 4, Winter 2000, p. 29.

24.Ibid., pp. 22–4.

25.Ibid., p. 28.

9. The Battle of Britain: Overture

1.Interview with Goering by an American journalist Mr von Wiegand 28/7/40, reproduced in the West Australian 29/7/40.

2.Goering memorandum 30/6/40 quoted in Nigel Dempster and Derek Wood, The Narrow Margin: The Battle of Britain and the Rise of Air Power, 1930–1940 (London: Hutchinson, 1961), pp. 220–2. The italics are mine.

3.Many German accounts do not accept this date. They mark the commencement of the battle from the date that they first sent over 1,000 aircraft against Britain on 13 August. However, the British had been enduring raids of up to 200 aircraft since 10 July and this represented intensification from earlier German efforts. Perhaps the battle began on different days for the two air forces.

4.The figures are from ‘State of Aircraft in Fighter Command’, AIR 16/943. I have decided to use the figures for serviceable aircraft only, on the grounds that Fighter Command was open to attack in force on any day of the battle and that therefore only those aircraft immediately airworthy might count.

5.Ibid.

6.‘Record of Enemy Air Activity Over the United Kingdom’, AIR 40/1642.

7.Fighter Command HQ Record Book, AIR 24/525.

8.Richard Townshend Bickers, The Battle of Britain: The Greatest Battle in the History of Air Warfare (London: Salamander, 1999), p. 43.

9.11 Group Record Book 10/7/40, AIR 25/193.

10.Fighter Command Combat Report, 66 Squadron, 10/7/49, AIR 16/955.

11.See the combat reports from 74, 111 and 609 Squadrons, and in addition T. C. G. James, The Battle of Britain, ed. Sebastian Cox (London: Frank Cass, 2002), pp. 26–7, and Dempster and Wood, Narrow Margin, pp. 239–40.

12.James, Battle of Britain, p. 27.

13.This is probably an overestimate. Reports of numbers of enemy aircraft in combat reports are not always reliable. Other figures suggest that there were 20 Dorniers, 30 Me 110s and 30 Me 109s present that day (Dempster and Wood, Narrow Margin, p. 239). The fact that the British were heavily outnumbered is unaltered, however.

14.De Wilde ammunition was an incendiary bullet that left no flame trace or smoke. ‘As Al Deere explained, its greatest value lay in the fact that it produced a small flash on impact thus providing confirmation to the attacking pilot that his aim was good.’ Quoted in Leo McKinstry, Spitfire: Portrait of a Legend (London: John Murray, 2007), p. 173.

15.74 Squadron Intelligence Report 10/7/40, AIR 16/955. The language of the original report has been kept.

16.AIR 16 contains the overwhelming number of combat reports filed during the Battle of Britain. The consolidated reports were compiled by the Group and were designated Form F. Some reports are obviously missing because squadrons with no reports are sometimes noted as being in combat by the official narrative or other sources. Where I have come across reliable reports of combat I have added them to those in AIR 16. While the totals given in this account may not be 100 per cent accurate, I am satisfied that I have obtained as close an approximation of the number of combats on any given day of battle as is reasonably possible.

One statistic, often used in accounts of the battle, can cause confusion about the intensity of the fighting. That statistic is the sortie, which may be defined as one flight by one aircraft but not necessarily a flight that results in combat. On 10 July Fighter Command flew between 600 and 650 sorties but most of these were routine patrols, or practice flights where skills such as formation flying and gunnery might be developed.

17.The most accurate figures for lost and damaged aircraft have been compiled from the daily lists in Winston G. Ramsey (ed.), The Battle of Britain: Then and Now (London: Battle of Britain International, 1989). The claims made by each side will be dealt with later.

18.Karl Maier et al., Germany and the Second World War, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 378.

19.The statistics have been compiled from combat reports in AIR 16. The numbers represent the number of days that the Luftwaffe was brought to battle in the area indicated.

20.Ibid.

21.T. C. G. James, The Growth of Fighter Command, 1936–1940, ed. Sebastian Cox (London: Frank Cass, 2002), p. 43.

22.Ibid., p. 44.

23.11 Group Instructions to Controllers No. 4, AIR 16/842.

24.Compiled from Fighter Command combat reports in AIR 16/955.

25.See State of Aircraft in Fighter Command, AIR 16/943.

26.Pilot Officer Wissler Diary 29/7/40, Imperial War Museum (IWM) 91/41/1.

27.Ibid., 21/7/40.

28.Ibid., 27/8/40 and 7/8/40.

29.See Wissler’s Diary for the period 12 July to 7 August for these incidents.

30.All figures for aircraft casualties are taken from Ramsey, Battle of Britain: Then and Now.

31.‘Weekly Output of Aircraft’, AIR 22/293.

32.‘German Aircraft Production During WW2’, http://members.aol.com/for country/ww2/gma.htm Accessed 26/8/2011. For other aircraft the Germans lost 189 bombers and added 238, lost 31 Me 110s and added 90, and lost 36 dive-bombers for 50 gained.

33.Air Commodore Alan Deere (72 Squadron) quoted in Richard Townshend Bickers, The Battle of Britain: The Greatest Battle in the History of Air Warfare (London: Salamander, 1999), p. 97.

34.‘Air Fighting Tactics’, HQ 13 Group, 7/7/40, AIR 16/281; “Single Seater Fighter Tactics, 19 Squadron, Duxford’, 22/6/40. AIR 16/281.

35.These figures have been compiled from the lists in Ramsey, Battle of Britain: Then and Now.

10. The Battle of Britain: The Crisis

1.Karl Maier et al., Germany and the Second World War, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 380.

2.‘Situation Reports Issued by Luftwaffe Fuhrungsstab 1C’, Part 3, 1 August–15 August 1940 (translated by Air Ministry, A.H.B.6, April 1953, AIR 20/7708).

3.‘Appreciation of the Effect of Air Attacks’, 1/8/40 in ibid.

4.Ibid.

5.Weekly Output of Aircraft, AIR 22/293.

6.Luftwaffe Situation Report 1/8/40.

7.‘Total and Regional Employment by M.A.P (Ministry of Aircraft Production) in the Munitions Industries in Great Britain’, AVIA 10/311.

8.Ibid.

9.Stephen Roskill, The War at Sea, vol. 1 (London: HMSO, 1954), p. 325.

10.145 Squadron Intelligence Report 8/8/40, AIR 16/956.

11.238 Squadron Intelligence Report in ibid.

12.The statistics have been compiled from Winston G. Ramsey (ed.), The Battle of Britain: Then and Now (London: Battle of Britain International, 1989).

13.It is clear from the combat reports of 145, 601 and 609 Squadrons that they attacked a purely fighter force. See their reports in AIR 16/956.

14.T. C. G. James, The Battle of Britain, ed. Sebastian Cox (London: Frank Cass, 2002), p. 62.

15.11 Group, ‘Instructions to Controllers No. 4’, 19/8/40, AIR 16/842. Emphasis added.

16.Stephen Bungay, The Most Dangerous Enemy: A History of the Battle of Britain (London: Aurum, 2001), has a useful discussion of KGr 210. See pp. 203–4.

17.The combat reports of 610 and 54 Squadrons make it clear that they engaged no bombers. See AIR 16/954. For the airfields see James, Battle of Britain, ed. Cox, Appendix VIII, part III, p. 347.

18.James, Battle of Britain, ed. Cox, p. 347.

19.Bungay, Most Dangerous Enemy, p. 203.

20.Ibid., p. 206, states that Ventnor was out of action for three days, but other authorities are agreed on 11 days. See James, Battle of Britain, ed. Cox, p. 70.

21.Williamson Murray, Luftwaffe (London: Allen & Unwin, 1985), p. 52.

22.Cajus Bekker, The Luftwaffe War Diaries (New York: Doubleday, 1966), pp. 146–7.

23.Luftwaffe Situation Reports 12/8/40, AIR 20/7708.

24.609 Squadron Combat Report 13/8/40, AIR 19/956.

25.Figures from the combat reports and Ramsey (ed.), Battle of Britain: Then and Now.

26.Bekker, Luftwaffe War Diaries, pp. 154–5.

27.Nigel Dempster and Derek Wood, The Narrow Margin: The Battle of Britain and the Rise of Air Power, 1930–1940 (London: Hutchinson, 1961), pp. 276–7.

28.‘Final Evaluation of Photographic Reconnaissance Carried out on 12 August’, in Luftwaffe Situation Reports, AIR 20/7708.

29.Ibid.

30.James, Battle of Britain, ed. Cox, p. 111. Surprisingly, James does not list Kenley in his table of airfields attacked in Appendix VIII of his book.

31.There were other smaller attacks on Biggin Hill, but I am only dealing with assaults which caused damage to the fabric of the station.

32.This account has been compiled from James, Battle of Britain ed. Cox, Dempster and Wood, Narrow Margin, and the article in Ramsey (ed.), Battle of Britain: Then and Now, by Peter Halliday.

33.David Ross with Bruce Blanche and William Simpson, The Greatest Squadron of Them All: The Definitive History of the 603 (City of Edinburgh) Squadron, vol. 1 (London: Grub Street, 2003), p. 212.

34.The combat reports in AIR 16 are the vital source for Luftwaffe targets.

35.605 Squadron Combat Report 15/8/40, AIR 16/ 956.

36.Figures from Ramsey (ed.), The Battle of Britain: Then and Now.

37.Wissler Diary 20/8/40.

38.It might be thought that the cratering of runways would have been given some thought by Fighter Command as well as the Air Ministry. The fact that eventually this matter was easily dealt with owed little to either of them. On 28 August Churchill visited Manston, which had been cratered so often that it had been abandoned. The Prime Minister was shocked to learn that just 150 staff were available to fill in craters. He immediately ordered that four crater-filling companies be established, with 250 personnel, the latest equipment and motor transport to make them highly mobile. In addition he insisted that airfields have on hand dumps of gravel and other filling material sufficient to fill 100 craters.

39.Park, ‘German Attacks on England – 6th Aug–10th Sept’, 12/9/40, AIR 16/635.

40.Dowding to the Air Ministry 13/11/40, AIR 16/667.

11. The Battle of Britain: The Battle Won

1.Nigel Dempster and Derek Wood, The Narrow Margin: The Battle of Britain and the Rise of Air Power, 1930–1940 (London: Hutchinson, 1961), p. 330.

2.Schmid Report, quoted in ibid., p. 115.

3.Ibid., p. 116.

4.54 Squadron Combat Report 7/9/40, AIR 16/943.

5.These statistics are derived from the total number of combat reports on 7/9/40, in ibid.

6.See T. C. G. James, The Battle of Britain, ed. Sebastian Cox (London: Frank Cass, 2002), p. 238, and Dempster and Wood, Narrow Margin, p. 339.

7.Losses have been calculated from Winston G. Ramsey (ed.), The Battle of Britain: Then and Now (London: Battle of Britain International, 1989).

8.Park, Instructions to Controllers No. 16, 11/9/40, AIR 25/198.

9.Figures are compiled from Ramsey (ed.), The Battle of Britain: Then and Now.

10.Ibid.

11.This account largely relies upon the combat reports from the squadrons in AIR 16/943, supplemented by James, Battle of Britain, ed. Cox, pp. 258–60.

12.Combat Report 213 Squadron 15/9/40, AIR 16/943.

13.Figures calculated from Ramsey (ed.), The Battle of Britain: Then and Now.

14.Memoir of Feldwebel Rolf Heitsch, quoted in Chris Gross, The Luftwaffe Bombers’ Battle of Britain (Manchester: Crecy, 2000), p. 151.

15.Hurricane, Spitfire, Strength, Production, Wastage, AIR 20/2307.

16.Ibid. All the above figures come from this source. Other tables list slightly different losses and production rates but the tendency is the same.

17.Park to Dowding 7/11/40, ‘First Phase (September 11th–October 5th)’, AIR 16/635.

18.Ibid.

19.Certainly at times the ratios were high only because the number of serviceable aircraft had dropped at a faster rate than the number of available pilots. That was the case in the weeks ending 10 and 17 September. The converse could also be the case – serviceable aircraft could increase faster than pilot replacement. This happened in the weeks ending 12 and 26 August.

20.Stephen Bungay, The Most Dangerous Enemy: A History of the Battle of Britain (London: Aurum, 2001), p. 103.

21.These and other statistics for pilots come from AIR 16/903, a document which records many conferences and statistics on pilots during the Battle of Britain.

22.Evill to Dowding 17/8/40, AIR 16/490.

23.Minutes of a meeting HQFC 7/9/40, AIR 16/330.

24.Figures taken from the Quartermaster General’s Return.

25.For a lucid and detailed account of this incident see Leo McKinstry, Spitfire: Portrait of a Legend (London: John Murray, 2007), pp. 248–55.

26.‘Conference on Fighter Tactics – held at Uxbridge 21st September 1940’, AIR 25/197.

27.Park, ‘Instructions to Controllers No. 31’, AIR 16/198.

28.41 Squadron Combat Report 1/10/40, AIR 16/943.

29.74 Squadron Combat Report 22/10/40, AIR 16/943.

30.James, The Battle of Britain, ed. Cox., p. 322.

31.Park to Dowding ?/9/40, AIR 16/330.

32.‘Policy of Maintenance of Fighter Squadrons in Pilots’, 8/9/40, AIR 16/903.

33.The number of British aircraft in combat has been calculated from the combat reports of squadrons plus additional sources such as Ramsey (ed.), The Battle of Britain: Then and Now. The number of German aircraft over Britain has been taken from James or Dempster and Wood, The Narrow Margin. While the figures may not be precise down to the last plane, I am confident that the overall picture they provide is accurate.

12. Terror by Night

1.Dietmar Suss, Death from the Skies: How the British and Germans Survived Bombing in World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 48.

2.Tom Harrisson, Living Through the Blitz (London: Collins, 1976), p. 282.

3.Suss, Death from the Skies, p. 382.

4.Ministry of Information Daily Morale Report 23/5/40, INF 1/264. These reports have been conveniently published by the excellent Paul Addison and Jeremy Craig. See their Listening to Britain (London: Vintage, 2010). The reports used here are the originals in The National Archives, but there are no discrepancies between them and those published. The quotation above comes from the General Introduction to such reports, which were written by the head of the Home Intelligence Department, Mary Adams.

5.W. Hancock and M. Gowing, British War Economy (London: HMSO, 1949), p. 85. It has been pointed out that the act was in practice less draconian than it seemed. See W. I. Jennings, ‘The Emergency Powers (Defence) (No. 2) Act 1940’, in Modern Law Review, 132, 1940, pp. 132–6. This was not how it was viewed by the general public at the time.

6.MOI Morale Report 23/5/40, INF 1/264.

7.MOI Morale Report 20/6/40 in ibid.

8.MOI Morale Report 14/6/40 in ibid.

9.MOI Morale Report 19/6/40 and 29/6/40 in ibid.

10.MOI Morale Report 14/6/40 in ibid.

11.Hancock and Gowing, British War Economy, p. 327.

12.MOI Morale Report 24/7/40, INF 1/264.

13.MOI Morale Report 25/7/40 in ibid.

14.MOI Morale Report 1/8/40 in ibid.

15.MOI Morale Report 6/7/40 in ibid.

16.MOI Morale Report 21/8/40 in ibid.

17.MOI Morale Report 5/8/40 in ibid.

18.MOI Morale Report 21/8/40 in ibid.

19.MOI Morale Report 31/5/40 in ibid. On the evidence before me I am unable to agree with Richard Toye’s more downbeat assessment of the reception of Churchill’s speeches. See his The Roar of the Lion: The Untold Story of Churchill’s World War II Speeches (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) for his interpretation.

20.MOI Morale Report 12/6/40, INF 1/264.

21.MOI Morale Report 18/6/40 in ibid.

22.MOI Morale Report 8/7/40 in ibid.

23.MOI Morale Report 9/7/40 in ibid.

24.MOI Morale Report 24/9/40 in ibid.

25.Mass Observation, Second Weekly Report for Home Intelligence 18/10/40, File 459, Mass Observation Archive. The online version of this archive published by Adam Matthew and held by the University of Adelaide Library has been accessed.

26.Mass Observation, Seventh Weekly Report for Home Intelligence 15/11/40, File 493.

27.MOI Morale Report 23/7/40, INF 1/264. There is some irony in the reference to the Burma Road. It was closed by a War Cabinet decision to appease Japan. Halifax had spoken against its closure.

28.Ibid.

29.Weekly Home Intelligence Report, INF 1/292.

30.MOI Morale Report 22/8/40, INF 1/264.

31.MOI Morale Report 23/8/40 in ibid.

32.MOI Morale Report 26/8/40 in ibid.

33.MOI Morale Report 27/8/40 and 28/8/40 in ibid.

34.MOI Morale Report 4/9/40 in ibid.

35.John Ray, The Night Blitz (London: Arms and Armour, 1996), pp. 28–9.

36.‘Record of Enemy Air Activity Over the United Kingdom’, AIR 40/1642.

37.‘Air Defence of the United Kingdom’, AIR 41/17.

38.Leo McKinstry, Spitfire: Portrait of a Legend (London: John Murray, 2007), p. 246.

39.Ray, Night Blitz, p. 80.

40.Peter Stansky, The First Day of the Blitz: September 7, 1940 (Melbourne: Scribe, 2007), pp. 32, 38 and 48.

41.‘Chronicle of Main Air Attacks on Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of their Effects on the Vital National War Effort (1939–1945)’, HO 201/42.

42.The above paragraph is taken from the incomparable account in Juliet Gardiner’s The Blitz: The British Under Attack (London: Harper, 2011), pp. 13–24. The human side of the Blitz has never been better described than in this superb book.

43.Mass Observation, ‘The Isle of Dogs: Effect of Air Raid’ 12/9/40, File 403.

44.The information in this paragraph has been compiled from ‘Chronicle of Main Air Attacks on Great Britain and Northern Ireland’, HO 201/42; Home Security Weekly Appreciations, HO 202/8; Home Security Daily Appreciations, September–October, HO 202/1. Occasionally the above sources have been supplemented from Winston G. Ramsey (ed.), The Blitz: Then and Now, vol. 1 (London: Battle of Britain International, 1987).

45.See the sources listed above.

46.Richard Titmus, Problems of Social Policy (London: HMSO, 1950), pp. 270–2.

47.Jerry White, London in the 20th Century (London: Viking, 2007), p. 26.

48.Williamson Murray, Luftwaffe (London: Allen & Unwin, 1985), p. 53, Table XI.

49.Ramsey (ed.), The Blitz: Then and Now, pp. 147–9.

50.Martin Middlebrook and C. Everett, The Bomber Command War Diaries (London: Penguin, 1990), p. 410.

51.Jo Oakman, Diary and Incident Book, Imperial War Museum, 91/20/1.

52.Phyllis Warner’s account in the Imperial War Museum, 95/14/1.

53.Sidney Bernstein Reports for Home Intelligence, Imperial War Museum SLB MOI.

54.Titmus, Problems of Social Policy, p. 271, note 2.

55.Gardiner, The Blitz, p. 71; Harrisson, Living Through The Blitz, p. 131.

56.Mass Observation, Fourth Weekly Report for Home Intelligence 24/10/40, File 406.

57.Warner, ‘Journal Under the Terror’, 19/9/40.

58.Queenie (Anne) Shepperd, Blitz Diary, Imperial War Museum, 95/13/1.

59.Ibid.

60.G. Thomas Diary, Imperial War Museum, 90/30/1.

61.Stansky, First Day of the Blitz, p. 181. See also p. 81. It is not my intention to criticise this excellent book in any other way. It is the best book written on this subject.

62.Chandler to a friend 27/6/40 quoted in A Mysterious Something in the Light: Raymond Chandler: A Life by Tom Williams (London: Aurum, 2012), p. 166.

63.Vere Hodgson, Few Eggs and No Oranges: A Diary (London: Dennis Dobson, 1976), p. 96.

64.Naish letter 8/9/40, Imperial War Museum, 99/66/1.

65.Bowman Letters, Imperial War Museum, Misc.

66.Brinton-Lee Diary P178, Imperial War Museum.

67.Phyllis Warner, ‘Journal Under the Terror’, Imperial War Museum, 95/14/1.

68.G. Thomas Diary 15/9/40, Imperial War Museum, 90/30/1.

69.Ann Shepperd Diary 17/9/40.

70.MO, ‘Weekly Report for Home Intelligence’, 4/10/40, File 439.

71.See daily reports from Home Security for these nights in HO 202-1-4.

72.Harrisson, Living Through the Blitz, p. 74.

73.See, for example, ‘Shelter in London’, 3/10/40, File 436.

74.Gardiner, The Blitz, p. 88.

75.Winston G. Ramsey (ed.), The Blitz: Then and Now, vol. 2 (London: Battle of Britain International, 1988), pp. 120–1; see also Home Intelligence Daily Reports for October to see the gradual decline in those using the Underground as shelters.

76.Ismay to Churchill 1948, Chartwell 4/198.

77.Samuel Battersby to Martin Gilbert 6/4/77 in Martin Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, vol. 2: Never Surrender, May 1940–December 1940 (New York: Norton, 1995), p. 788.

78.Churchill to Bridges, Anderson and Reith 21/9/40, CAB 21/773, ‘Air Raid Precautions: Use of the Tube Railway System as Shelters’. The whole file is an interesting study of bureaucrats at work on a matter which required instant decision.

79.Winston S. Churchill, Their Finest Hour (London: Cassell, 1955), pp. 308–9. Churchill introduced the scheme in Parliament on 5 September.

80.‘Chronicle of Main Air Attacks’, HO 201/42.

81.Ibid.

82.Home Security Daily Report, 14–15 October, HO 202/1.

83.Ibid., 15–16 October.

84.‘Chronicle of Main Air Attacks’, HO 201/42.

85.Ibid.

86.Ray, Night Blitz, pp. 152–3.

87.Ibid., pp. 153–7; The Coventry Blitz: Some Blitz Statistics; http://www.historiccoventry.co.uk/blitz/stats.php. Accessed 11/11/2013.

88.MO, ‘Coventry’, 18/11/40, File 495.

89.Home Security, ‘Air Raid On Coventry’, in Home Security Weekly Reports, HO 202/8.

90.Ibid.

91.Ray, Night Blitz, p. 157.

92.Air Defence of Great Britain Narrative, AIR 41/17. Also quoted in Ray, Night Blitz, p. 157.

93.Home Security, ‘Daily Appreciations’, April 1941, HO 201/4.

94.The British authorities did learn from Coventry. Operational researchers descended on the city and rapidly established that high-explosive bombs to blast openings in buildings, then incendiaries to burn them out, and then more high explosive for total destruction was the best pattern. They also developed the idea of dropping bombs in such a way as to create high winds or firestorms. The lessons of Coventry were to be visited on many a German city, most notably Hamburg, in the years to come.

95.Dudley Seward, Victory Denied: The Rise of German Air Power and the Defeat of Germany, 1920–45 (London: Buchan & Enright, 1985), pp. 207–8.

96.Jerry Curtis, Humanities360.com: The Clydebank Blitz, online site accessed 11/11/13.

97.Home Security Daily Report 15/3/41, HO/201/4.

98.Ibid.

99.Home Security Daily Report 15–16 March, HO 201/4.

100.Mass Observation, ‘Report on Plymouth’, 1/4/41, File 626.

101.Neil Holmes, Liverpool Blitzed: Seventy Years On (Wellington, Somerset: Halsgrove, 2011), p. 96.

102.Ibid., pp. 8–13.

103.See the Home Security Daily Reports for these nights, HO 202/3.

104.These statistics are taken from the Home Security Daily Reports, HO 202/6.

105.Holmes, Liverpool Blitzed, p. 104.

106.Mass Observation, ‘Report on Liverpool’, 22/5/41, File 706.

107.Ramsey (ed.), The Blitz, vol. 2, pp. 579–602, for these statistics.

13. A Little Help from Our Friends

1.Churchill to Roosevelt 15/5/40, Warren F. Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, vol. 1 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 37. I have read all the Roosevelt–Churchill letters in the Roosevelt Presidential Papers and in the Churchill Papers. Where possible, however, I have used the excellent edition of the letters edited by Warren Kimball to enable readers to check the references with ease.

2.Ibid.

3.Roosevelt to Churchill 16/5/40, Kimball, Complete Correspondence, vol. 1, pp. 38–9.

4.Colville Diary 19/5/40, p. 136.

5.Churchill to Roosevelt, Kimball, Complete Correspondence, vol. 1, p. 40.

6.David Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance: A Study in Competitive Co-operation (London: Europa, 1981), p. 115. This is the definitive account of the establishment of this alliance.

7.The Presidential Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt, BACM Research, Disc 1. Speech 10/6/40.

8.Churchill to Roosevelt 11/6/40, Kimball, Complete Correspondence, vol. 1, p. 43.

9.Colville Diary 12/6/40, p. 153.

10.Reynolds, Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, p. 146.

11.Morgenthau Note 18/6/40, Presidential Papers of FDR, Disc 1.

12.Harold L. Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes, vol. 3: The Lowering Clouds, 1939–1941 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1955), p. 233. Hereafter Ickes, Secret Diary.

13.Churchill to Lothian 28/6/40, Chartwell 20/14.

14.Churchill to Baruch 28/6/40, Martin Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, vol. 2: Never Surrender, May 1940–December 1940 (New York: Norton, 1995), p. 436.

15.Churchill to Ismay 17/7/40, Prem 3/475/1.

16.Churchill to Roosevelt 5/7/40, Kimball, Complete Correspondence, vol. 1, p. 54.

17.Churchill to Roosevelt 30/7/40, Prem 3/462/2. There is a different and toned-down version in Kimball, Complete Correspondence, vol. 1, pp. 56–7. The version quoted was sent through the Foreign Office and it is possible that Halifax and Lothian toned it down to match the Kimball version. There is no evidence that this was the case and so I have preferred to use the cable in the Prem Papers. Kimball is usually assiduous in noting amendments such as this, but there is nothing in this volume to indicate that he is quoting a toned-down version.

18.Ickes, Secret Diary, vol. 3, 4/8/40, p. 283, reporting a meeting between Knox and Lothian.

19.Ibid., p. 292.

20.Colville Diary 6/8/40, p. 210.

21.Reynolds, Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, p. 131.

22.The New York Times headline on its front page for 4 September 1940 included ‘Britain Pledges Never to Yield or Sink Fleet’; War Cabinet Conclusions 2/9/40, CAB 65/9/1.

23.War Cabinet Conclusions 14/8/40, CAB 65/8/39.

24.H. Duncan Hall, North American Supply (London: HMSO, 1955), p. 212.

25.W. Hancock and M. Gowing, British War Economy (London: HMSO, 1949), p. 107.

26.Ibid., p. 117.

27.Stephen Roskill, The War at Sea, vol. 1 (London: HMSO, 1954), Appendix R, p. 617.

28.Ibid.

29.Duncan Hall, North American Supply, p. 305.

30.Mark Harrison, ‘Resource Mobilisation for World War II: The U.S.A., U.K., USSR and Germany, 1938–1945’, Paper given at the Department of Economics, University of Warwick, 1988, p. 16.

31.Duncan Hall, North American Supply, p. 289.

32.Reynolds, Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, pp. 148–50. The margins were 268 to 167 in the House and 66 to 30 in the Senate.

33.Ibid.

34.Churchill to Roosevelt 6/1/40, Kimball, Complete Correspondence, vol. 1, p. 81.

35.Colville Diary 12/11/40, pp. 291–2.

36.Churchill to Roosevelt 29/11/40 (not sent), Colville Papers, quoted in Gilbert, Churchill War Papers, vol. 2, p. 1,157.

37.Robert Skidelsky in John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Britain, 1937–1946 (London: Macmillan, 2000), p. 96, seems in no doubt. Reynolds in his book on Lothian is not so sure. See Lord Lothian and Anglo-American Relations (New York: American Philosophical Society, 2007), p. 50.

38.The New York Times, 24/11/40, p. 1.

39.John Morton Blum (ed.), From the Morgenthau Diaries, vol. 3: Years of Urgency, 1938–1941 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), p. 199. Hereafter Morgenthau Diaries.

40.Churchill to Lothian 26/11/40, Prem 4/17/1.

41.Churchill to Roosevelt 7/12/40, Kimball, Complete Correspondence, vol. 1, pp. 102–9.

42.Ibid.

43.Morgenthau Diaries, vol. 3, 3/12/40, p. 202.

44.Ibid., pp. 202–3.

45.Ibid., pp. 28–9.

46.Skidelsky, Keynes, p. 100.

47.Adam Berinsky et al., ‘Revisiting Public Opinion in the 1930s and 1940s’, Political Science, July 2011, Fig. 5, p. 519.

48.Reynolds, Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, p. 158.

49.Prem 4/17/1 has several drafts of this letter.

50.Churchill to Roosevelt 31/12/40, Prem 4/17/1.

51.Ibid. Deleted paragraphs.

52.Skidelsky, Keynes, vol. 3, p. 103.

53.Morgenthau Diaries, vol. 3, p. 210.

54.Ibid.

55.Duncan Hall, North American Supply, p. 262.

56.Morgenthau Diaries, vol. 3, p. 237. Lord Lothian had died in December of an easily treatable complaint. As a Christian Scientist, however, he had refused all medical treatment.

57.Duncan Hall, North American Supply, p. 275, note 1.

58.Ibid., p. 276.

59.Hancock and Gowing, British War Economy, p. 237.

60.Duncan Hall, North American Supply, p. 288.

61.Ibid., p. 39.

62.Ibid., p. 240.

63.Roskill, War at Sea, vol. 1, Table II, Appendix R, pp. 617–18.

64.Churchill to Roosevelt 1/12/40, Kimball, Complete Correspondence, vol. 1, p. 92.

65.Churchill to Roosevelt 7/12/40 in ibid., p. 106.

66.Roskill, War at Sea, vol. 1, p. 455.

67.Churchill to Roosevelt 23/3/41, Kimball, Complete Correspondence, vol. 1, p. 151.

68.Roosevelt to Churchill 25/3/41, in ibid., p. 151. Roosevelt asked the press not to publicise this or to take pictures of the British ship. The press complied. See Ickes, Secret Diary, vol. 3, p. 474.

69.Roskill, War at Sea, vol. 1, pp. 454–5.

70.Churchill to Roosevelt 6/4/41, Kimball, Complete Correspondence, vol. 1, p. 164.

71.Morgenthau Diary, 10/4/41, p. 252.

72.Ibid., p. 251.

73.This information is taken from a huge compilation of American public opinion polls; see Hadley Cantrill (ed.), Public Opinion 1935–1946 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1951). The straightforward question about the US immediately entering the war can be found in Poll 60, p. 971. The series of polls on entering the war if there was no other way of defeating the Axis powers is in Poll 70, p. 974. Helping Britain at the risk of war is in Poll 69 on the same page. In a recent book on the Bretton Woods Agreement, The Summit (New York: Little Brown, 2014), the author (Ed Conway) uses this compilation to show that Roosevelt was hobbled by public opinion. On p. 104 he quotes an opinion poll in the above compilation (p. 973) taken in September 1940, which he says shows that 80 per cent of Americans did not wish to enter the war. In fact the only poll with that date on p. 973 indicates that American opinion on entering the war shows that 53 per cent were for keeping out of the war and 47 per cent were for helping England at the risk of war. Where the 80 per cent figure comes from is a mystery. In any case, in an area such as public opinion it is safer to use a variety of polls as I have done above.

74.Ickes, Secret Diary, vol. 3, pp. 481–2.

75.Ibid., 10/5/41, p. 511.

76.Churchill to Roosevelt 23/5/41, Kimball, Complete Correspondence, vol. 1, pp. 192–5.

77.See Kimball’s comment in ibid., p. 196.

78.Ickes, Secret Diary, vol. 3, 30/5/41, p. 526.

79.Churchill to Roosevelt 29/4/41, Kimball, Complete Correspondence, vol. 1, p. 201.

80.Roskill, War at Sea, vol. 1, p. 613. An American merchantman, the Robin Moor had been torpedoed on 21 May in the South Atlantic. No one seems to count this ship as a sinking because it was not a warship. See Reynolds, Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, pp. 203–4, who does count it.

81.Kimball, Note in Complete Correspondence, vol. 1, p. 236.

82.Kimball, Note in ibid., p. 264.

83.Churchill to Roosevelt 2/11/40 in ibid., p. 265.

84.Ickes, Secret Diary, vol. 3, 12/4/41, p. 470.

85.Ibid., 8/6/40, p. 538.

86.War Cabinet Conclusions 25/8/41, CAB 65/19/22.

87.Churchill to Hopkins 28/8/41, Chartwell 20/42.

88.Colville Diary 30/8/41, p. 434.

Conclusion

1.Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis, vol. 1 (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1923), p. 255.

2.Robert Rhodes James, Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, vol. 6 (New York: Chelsea House, 1974), includes this speech. However, I have not used this edition for Churchill’s 1940 speeches. It is littered with errors and I have where possible preferred Hansard. See Hansard 13/5/40, vol. 360, Column 1502.

3.David Reynolds, In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (London: Allen Lane, 2004), pp. 259–64.

4.Speech to the House of Commons 3/9/39, Hansard vol. 351, Columns 295–6. These rights did not extend, in Churchill’s view, to the right to express the wish to leave the British Empire.

5.Ibid., Broadcast 12/11/39, quoted in Charles Eade (ed.), The War Speeches of the Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill, vol. 1 (London: Cassell, 1951), p. 119.

6.Ibid., Broadcast 19/5/40, pp. 184–5.

7.Speech to the House of Commons (later broadcast) 18/6/40, Hansard vol. 362, Column 57–60.

8.Speech at the Mansion House 9/11/40, in Eade (ed.), War Speeches, vol. 1, p. 296.

9.Broadcast 14/7/40, in ibid., p. 230.

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