With Nazi invaders trying to tighten their vise around His Majesty’s land forces across the English Channel, Winston Churchill waited anxiously as a massive movement to save the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) —Operation Dynamo—swung into high gear at the French port of Dunkirk.
At the same time, Churchill had to stave off deep uneasiness about the course of the war, both from the British public—which had just learned that its Belgian allies were capitulating—and from inside his own Cabinet, where Lord Edward Halifax, the foreign secretary he inherited from Neville Chamberlain, took issue with the Prime Minister’s policy of fighting Adolf Hitler to the bitter end.
The six-month “Phony War”—the illusory calm following the invasion of Poland in September 1939—had been abruptly broken in April 1940 by Hitler’s decision to invade Denmark and Norway. The next month, the situation deteriorated at a frightening rate, as General Heinz Guderian now took the innovative mechanized warfare he had employed, to devastating effect, in Poland—the tank, backed by airpower—to advance 30 to 40 miles a day, seizing whole chunks of territory in Western Europe in no time.
All of a sudden, not only were the Netherlands and Belgium overrun, but France’s supposedly impregnable Maginot Line had been pierced, as Nazis forces punched a hole in the Ardennes forest. By May 23, with Boulogne taken, Guderian was on the brink of annihilating the British and French forces pushed into the land pocket against the French coast.
One of the two “fearsome alternatives” facing Churchill and his inner circle of “War Cabinet” members—to move south toward the Somme, with or without French and Belgian cooperation—had been set aside as no longer feasible. But the other choice was as perilous in its own way: evacuate from Dunkirk, leaving behind virtually all artillery and equipment, and get as many soldiers back as they could, given the Germans’ superiority in the air.
Hitler’s order the next day to halt Guderian’s advance, in order to allow German troops to refit before breaking another French line to the South, gave the BEF a crucial 48 hours to prepare to evacuate. At a little before 7 pm on May 26, the final order had been given to start getting at least a relatively small contingent out of Dunkirk.
In the early days of what would become one of the great legends of the war, expectations for how many British soldiers could be transported to safety were miniscule. Churchill himself believed that no fewer than 50,000 men would make it home.
By May 27, Herculean efforts were being made to locate all manner of small craft—lifeboats from liners, tugs, yachts, fishing craft, pleasure boats—that could help transport the men from the beaches of Dunkirk. Many of these ships weren’t serviceable, but this was a moment when every possible ship counted, and enough were useable to get more men out than virtually anyone dreamed possible initially.
Two of the eventualities that Churchill feared—loss of materiel and the soldiers’ exposure to withering fire from the sky—did come to pass. But by June 4, 338,000 troops—one-third French—managed to make it to England.
Churchill’s six-volume memoir of The Second World War is one of the best ever written by a statesman, but it can’t be relied on as the first and last word about events, since he glossed over some behind-the-scenes deliberations. In particular, the threat posed by Halifax—invisible to the public as a whole, but looming large at Whitehall—has to be reconstructed from other sources.
A useful supplement to Churchill’s version is John Lukacs’ short but incisive Five Days in London: May 1940, concerning May 24-28, when the British Cabinet deliberated whether to enter peace negotiations with Hitler.
In Their Finest Hour, the second volume of his wartime memoir, Churchill left the distinct impression that the Cabinet was of one mind. For instance, in describing one such meeting on May 28, of 25 members of his “Outer Cabinet,” he describes how, after stating his intention—“Of course, whatever happens at Dunkirk, we shall fight on”—“Quite a number seemed to jump up from the table and come running to my chair, shouting and patting me on the back.”
From other accounts of that meeting, we know that this was true, as far as it goes. But, as Lukacs demonstrates, the Prime Minister was silent on just why this particular meeting was so crucial. Earlier in the day, at a meeting of the smaller, more influential War Cabinet at the core of diplomatic and military strategy, Halifax—one of the arch-appeasers in Chamberlain’s government—had wondered aloud whether Benito Mussolini’s offer to mediate between Germany and the U.K. should be explored.
The challenge from Halifax—the original choice of Chamberlain and the King to become Prime Minister when the Labour and Liberal Parties mounted a no-confidence vote against the Conservatives—was significant. Had he quit the Churchill Cabinet on the spot, it was a real question whether Churchill would have been able to survive at the top. At this point, Halifax and his old chief retained more loyalty among Conservatives than Churchill, still regarded as a politician of brilliance but also unsteady (and sometimes bibulous) judgment.
The positive reaction of the Outer Cabinet, Lukacs argues, enabled Churchill to return in the evening to the War Cabinet and demonstrate that he had his own solid core of followers behind him. In addition, Chamberlain—now, through hard experience, disabused of any notion that Hitler’s word could be relied on in solemn treaties—sided, in his post as Lord President of the Council in the coalition government, with Churchill and against Halifax.
German Reichmarshal Herman Goering sent the might of the Luftwaffe down on the English and French forces struggling to survive on the beach and in the sea, but in the end he couldn’t make good his promise to the Fuehrer that his airforce would finish off the Allies. An Englishwoman at my local library, noticing my books on World War II, observed: “We were all saved by boys in the air.”
The utter abandonment of artillery and equipment and a hasty retreat should have made, by normal calculations, one of the most ignominious defeats in British military history.
But this was not an ordinary military encounter. The British had lived to fight another day, stretching their resistance out long enough for the Americans and Russians to join forces with them a year later in the Grand Alliance against Hitler.
For a long time, historians agreed virtually unanimously with Churchill that only a British victory, no matter how long and tough the odds, could keep the nation from falling under the sway of Hitler. In 1993, John Charmley’s Churchill: The End of Glory not only undercut overblown claims for the PM’s greatness, but sought to argue something far more controversial: that, by not sounding out the chance for a separate peace with Hitler, Churchill ensured that he would be presiding over the end of the British Empire.
This latter contention, I believe, is untenable. The British public—all of Europe, in fact—had learned, time and time again, that Hitler’s promises not to make more demands or take over more territory could not be trusted. Who is to say that, with a peace treaty in hand, he still would not have invented a pretext for invading a country whose institutions were diametrically opposed to all his dictatorship represented?
At the same time, Churchill had to stave off deep uneasiness about the course of the war, both from the British public—which had just learned that its Belgian allies were capitulating—and from inside his own Cabinet, where Lord Edward Halifax, the foreign secretary he inherited from Neville Chamberlain, took issue with the Prime Minister’s policy of fighting Adolf Hitler to the bitter end.
The six-month “Phony War”—the illusory calm following the invasion of Poland in September 1939—had been abruptly broken in April 1940 by Hitler’s decision to invade Denmark and Norway. The next month, the situation deteriorated at a frightening rate, as General Heinz Guderian now took the innovative mechanized warfare he had employed, to devastating effect, in Poland—the tank, backed by airpower—to advance 30 to 40 miles a day, seizing whole chunks of territory in Western Europe in no time.
All of a sudden, not only were the Netherlands and Belgium overrun, but France’s supposedly impregnable Maginot Line had been pierced, as Nazis forces punched a hole in the Ardennes forest. By May 23, with Boulogne taken, Guderian was on the brink of annihilating the British and French forces pushed into the land pocket against the French coast.
One of the two “fearsome alternatives” facing Churchill and his inner circle of “War Cabinet” members—to move south toward the Somme, with or without French and Belgian cooperation—had been set aside as no longer feasible. But the other choice was as perilous in its own way: evacuate from Dunkirk, leaving behind virtually all artillery and equipment, and get as many soldiers back as they could, given the Germans’ superiority in the air.
Hitler’s order the next day to halt Guderian’s advance, in order to allow German troops to refit before breaking another French line to the South, gave the BEF a crucial 48 hours to prepare to evacuate. At a little before 7 pm on May 26, the final order had been given to start getting at least a relatively small contingent out of Dunkirk.
In the early days of what would become one of the great legends of the war, expectations for how many British soldiers could be transported to safety were miniscule. Churchill himself believed that no fewer than 50,000 men would make it home.
By May 27, Herculean efforts were being made to locate all manner of small craft—lifeboats from liners, tugs, yachts, fishing craft, pleasure boats—that could help transport the men from the beaches of Dunkirk. Many of these ships weren’t serviceable, but this was a moment when every possible ship counted, and enough were useable to get more men out than virtually anyone dreamed possible initially.
Two of the eventualities that Churchill feared—loss of materiel and the soldiers’ exposure to withering fire from the sky—did come to pass. But by June 4, 338,000 troops—one-third French—managed to make it to England.
Churchill’s six-volume memoir of The Second World War is one of the best ever written by a statesman, but it can’t be relied on as the first and last word about events, since he glossed over some behind-the-scenes deliberations. In particular, the threat posed by Halifax—invisible to the public as a whole, but looming large at Whitehall—has to be reconstructed from other sources.
A useful supplement to Churchill’s version is John Lukacs’ short but incisive Five Days in London: May 1940, concerning May 24-28, when the British Cabinet deliberated whether to enter peace negotiations with Hitler.
In Their Finest Hour, the second volume of his wartime memoir, Churchill left the distinct impression that the Cabinet was of one mind. For instance, in describing one such meeting on May 28, of 25 members of his “Outer Cabinet,” he describes how, after stating his intention—“Of course, whatever happens at Dunkirk, we shall fight on”—“Quite a number seemed to jump up from the table and come running to my chair, shouting and patting me on the back.”
From other accounts of that meeting, we know that this was true, as far as it goes. But, as Lukacs demonstrates, the Prime Minister was silent on just why this particular meeting was so crucial. Earlier in the day, at a meeting of the smaller, more influential War Cabinet at the core of diplomatic and military strategy, Halifax—one of the arch-appeasers in Chamberlain’s government—had wondered aloud whether Benito Mussolini’s offer to mediate between Germany and the U.K. should be explored.
The challenge from Halifax—the original choice of Chamberlain and the King to become Prime Minister when the Labour and Liberal Parties mounted a no-confidence vote against the Conservatives—was significant. Had he quit the Churchill Cabinet on the spot, it was a real question whether Churchill would have been able to survive at the top. At this point, Halifax and his old chief retained more loyalty among Conservatives than Churchill, still regarded as a politician of brilliance but also unsteady (and sometimes bibulous) judgment.
The positive reaction of the Outer Cabinet, Lukacs argues, enabled Churchill to return in the evening to the War Cabinet and demonstrate that he had his own solid core of followers behind him. In addition, Chamberlain—now, through hard experience, disabused of any notion that Hitler’s word could be relied on in solemn treaties—sided, in his post as Lord President of the Council in the coalition government, with Churchill and against Halifax.
German Reichmarshal Herman Goering sent the might of the Luftwaffe down on the English and French forces struggling to survive on the beach and in the sea, but in the end he couldn’t make good his promise to the Fuehrer that his airforce would finish off the Allies. An Englishwoman at my local library, noticing my books on World War II, observed: “We were all saved by boys in the air.”
The utter abandonment of artillery and equipment and a hasty retreat should have made, by normal calculations, one of the most ignominious defeats in British military history.
But this was not an ordinary military encounter. The British had lived to fight another day, stretching their resistance out long enough for the Americans and Russians to join forces with them a year later in the Grand Alliance against Hitler.
For a long time, historians agreed virtually unanimously with Churchill that only a British victory, no matter how long and tough the odds, could keep the nation from falling under the sway of Hitler. In 1993, John Charmley’s Churchill: The End of Glory not only undercut overblown claims for the PM’s greatness, but sought to argue something far more controversial: that, by not sounding out the chance for a separate peace with Hitler, Churchill ensured that he would be presiding over the end of the British Empire.
This latter contention, I believe, is untenable. The British public—all of Europe, in fact—had learned, time and time again, that Hitler’s promises not to make more demands or take over more territory could not be trusted. Who is to say that, with a peace treaty in hand, he still would not have invented a pretext for invading a country whose institutions were diametrically opposed to all his dictatorship represented?
A final word about Halifax. By the end of the year, Churchill asked him to yield his post in favor of the man he had succeeded as Foreign Secretary after the Munich Agreement: Anthony Eden. Halifax was sent packing to Washington, where, by general agreement, he served his boss--and onetime rival for power--loyally and ably through the end of the war as the British ambassador to the U.S.
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