The Gathering Storm: The Second World War (67 page)

(
a
) To secure the maximum fertility and economy of freights in accordance with the war policy of the Cabinet and the pressure of events.

(
b
)
To provide and organise the very large shipbuilding programme necessary as a safeguard against the heavy losses of tonnage we may expect from a U-boat attack apprehended in the summer of 1940. This should certainly include the study of concrete ships, thus relieving the strain on our steel during a period of steel stringency.

(
c
) The care, comfort, and encouragement of the merchant seamen who will have to go to sea repeatedly after having been torpedoed and saved. These merchant seamen are a most important and potentially formidable factor in this kind of war.

The President of the Board of Trade has already told you that two or three weeks would be required to disentangle the branches of his department which would go to make up the Ministry of Shipping from the parent office. It seems to me very wise to allow this period of transition. If a Minister were appointed and announced, he would gather to himself the necessary personal staff, and take over gradually the branches of the Board of Trade which are concerned. It also seems important that the step of creating a Ministry of Shipping should be taken by the Government before pressure is applied in Parliament and from shipping circles, and before we are told that there is valid complaint against the existing system.

* * * * *

This Ministry was formed after a month’s discussion and announced on October 13. Mr. Chamberlain selected Sir John Gilmour as its first head. The choice was criticised as being inadequate. Gilmour was a most agreeable Scotsman and a well-known Member of Parliament. He had held Cabinet office under Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Chamberlain. His health was declining, and he died within a few months of his appointment, and was succeeded by Mr. Ronald Cross.

As I shall be away till Monday, I give you my present thought on the main situation.

It seems to me most unlikely that the Germans will attempt an offensive in the West at this late season…. Surely his obvious plan should be to press on through Poland, Hungary, and Rumania to the Black Sea, and it may be that he has some understanding with Russia by which she will take part of Poland and recover Bessarabia….

It would seem wise for Hitler to make good his Eastern connections and feeding-grounds during these winter months, and thus give his people the spectacle of repeated successes, and the assurance of weakening our blockade. I do not, therefore, apprehend that he will attack in the West until he has collected the easy spoils which await him in the East. None the less, I am strongly of opinion that we should make every preparation to defend ourselves in the West. Every effort should be made to make Belgium take the necessary precautions in conjunction with the French and British Armies. Meanwhile, the French frontier behind Belgium should be fortified night and day by every conceivable resource. In particular the obstacles to tank attack, planting railway rails upright, digging deep ditches, erecting concrete dolls, landmines in some parts and inundations all ready to let out in others, etc., should be combined in a deep system of defence. The attack of three or four German armoured divisions, which has been so effective in Poland, can only be stopped by physical obstacles defended by resolute troops and a powerful artillery…. Without physical obstacles the attack of armoured vehicles cannot be effectively resisted.

I am very glad to find that the mass of wartime artillery which I stored in 1919 is all available. It comprises 32 twelve-inch, 145 nine-inch, a large number of eight-inch, nearly 200 six-inch, howitzers, together with very large quantities of ammunition; in fact it is the heavy artillery, not of our small Expeditionary Force, but of a great army. No time should be lost in bringing some of these guns into the field, so that whatever else our troops will lack, they will not suffer from want of heavy artillery….

I hope you will consider carefully what I write to you. I do so only in my desire to aid you in your responsibilities, and discharge my own.

The Prime Minister wrote back on the sixteenth, saying:

All your letters are carefully read and considered by me, and if I have not replied to them, it is only because I am seeing you every day, and, moreover, because, as far as I have been able to observe, your views and mine have very closely coincided…. To my mind the lesson of the Polish campaign is the power of the air force, when it has obtained complete mastery in the air, to paralyse the operations of land forces…. Accordingly, as it seems to me, although I shall, of course, await the report of the Land Forces Committee before making up my mind, absolute priority ought to be given to our plans for rapidly accelerating the strength of our air force, and the extent of our effort on land should be determined by our resources
after
we have provided for air force extension.

I am entirely with you in believing that air power stands fore-most in our requirements, and indeed I sometimes think that it may be the ultimate path by which victory will be gained. On the other hand, the Air Ministry paper, which I have just been studying, seems to peg out vast and vague claims which are not at present substantiated, and which, if accorded absolute priority, would overlay other indispensable forms of war effort. I am preparing a note upon this paper, and will only quote one figure which struck me in it.

If the aircraft industry with its present 360,000 men can produce nearly one thousand machines a month, it seems extraordinary that 1,050,000 men should be required for a monthly output of two thousand. One would expect a very large “reduction on taking a quantity,” especially if mass-production is used. I cannot believe the Germans will be using anything like a million men to produce two thousand machines a month. While, broadly speaking, I should accept an output of two thousand machines a month as the objective, I am not at present convinced that it would make anything like so large a demand upon our war-making capacity as is implied in this paper.

The reason why I am anxious that the Army should be planned upon a fifty- or fifty-five division scale, is that I doubt whether the French would acquiesce in a division of effort which gave us the sea and air and left them to pay almost the whole blood-tax on land. Such an arrangement would certainly be agreeable to us; but I do not like the idea of our having to continue the war single-handed.

There are great dangers in giving absolute priority to any department. In the late war the Admiralty used their priority arbitrarily and selfishly, especially in the last year when they were overwhelmingly strong, and had the American Navy added to them. I am every day restraining such tendencies in the common interest.

As I mentioned in my first letter to you, the layout of the shell, gun, and filling factories, and the provision for explosives and steel, does not compete directly while the plants are being made with the quite different class of labour required for aeroplane production. It is a question of clever dovetailing. The provision of mechanical vehicles, on the other hand, is directly competitive, and must be carefully adjusted. It would be wise to bring the army munitions plants into existence on a large scale, and then to let them begin to eat only as our resources allow and the character of the war requires. The time factor is the regulator which you would apply according to circumstances. If, however, the plants are not begun now, you will no longer have the option.

I thought it would be a wise thing to state to the French our intention to work up to an army of fifty or fifty-five divisions. But whether this could be reached at the twenty-fourth month or at the thirtieth or fortieth month should certainly be kept fluid.

At the end of the late war, we had about ninety divisions in all theatres, and we were producing aircraft at the rate of two thousand a month, as well as maintaining a Navy very much larger than was needed, and far larger than our present plans contemplate. I do not, therefore, feel that fifty or fifty-five divisions and two thousand aircraft per month are incompatible aims, although, of course, the modern divisions and modern aircraft represent a much higher industrial effort – everything having become so much more complicated.

* * * * *

I wonder if you would consider having an occasional meeting of the War Cabinet Ministers to talk among themselves without either secretaries or military experts. I am not satisfied that the large issues are being effectively discussed in our formal sessions. We have been constituted the responsible Ministers for the conduct of the war; and I am sure it would be in the public interest if we met as a body from time to time. Much is being thrown upon the Chiefs of the Staffs which falls outside the professional sphere. We have had the advantage of many valuable and illuminating reports from them. But I venture to represent to you that we ought sometimes to discuss the general position alone. I do not feel that we are getting to the root of the matter on many points.

I have not spoken to any colleague about this, and have no idea what their opinions are. I give you my own, as in duty bound.

On September 24, I wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer:

I am thinking a great deal about you and your problem, as one who has been through the Exchequer mill. I look forward to a severe budget based upon the broad masses of the well-to-do. But I think you ought to couple with this a strong anti-waste campaign. Judging by the small results achieved for our present gigantic expenditure, I think there never was so little
“value for money,”
as what is going on now. In 1918, we had a lot of unpleasant regulations in force for the prevention of waste, which after all was part of the winning of victory. Surely you ought to make a strong feature of this in your Wednesday’s statement. An effort should be made to tell people the things they ought to try to avoid doing. This is by no means a doctrine of abstention from expenditure. Everything should be eaten up prudently, even luxuries,
so long as no more are created.
Take stationery, for example – this should be regulated at once in all departments. Envelopes should be pasted up and redirected again and again. Although this seems a small thing, it teaches every official, and we now have millions of them, to think of saving.

An active “savings campaign” was inculcated at the Front in 1918 and people began to take a pride in it, and look upon it as part of the show. Why not inculcate these ideas in the B.E.F. from the outset in all zones not actually under fire?

I am trying to prune the Admiralty of large schemes of naval improvement which cannot operate till after 1941, or even in some cases [when they cannot operate] till after the end of 1940. Beware lest these fortification people and other departmentals do not consume our strength upon long-scale developments which cannot mature till after the climax which settles our fate.

I see the departments full of loose fat, following on undue starvation. It would be much better from your point of view to come along with your alguazils
as critics
upon wasteful exhibitions, rather than delaying action. Don’t hamper departments acting in a time of crisis; give them the responsibility; but call them swiftly to account for any failure in thrift.

I hope you will not mind me writing to you upon this subject, because I feel just as strongly about the husbanding of the money power as I do about the war effort, of which it is indeed an integral part. In all these matters you can count on my support, and also, as the head of a spending department, upon my submission to searching superintendence.

* * * * *

In every war in which the Royal Navy has claimed the command of the seas, it has had to pay the price of exposing immense targets to the enemy. The privateer, the raiding cruiser, and above all the U-boat, have in all the varying forms of war exacted a heavy toll upon the life-lines of our commerce and food-supply. A prime function of defence has, therefore, always been imposed upon us. From this fact the danger arises of our being driven or subsiding into a defensive naval strategy and habit of mind. Modern developments have aggravated this tendency. In the two Great Wars, during parts of which I was responsible for the control of the Admiralty, I have always sought to rupture this defensive obsession by searching for forms of counter-offensive. To make the enemy wonder where he is going to be hit next may bring immeasurable relief to the process of shepherding hundreds of convoys and thousands of merchantmen safely into port. In the First World War I hoped to find in the Dardanelles, and later in an attack upon Borkum and other Frisian islands, the means of regaining the initiative, and forcing the weaker naval power to study his own problems rather than ours. Called to the Admiralty again in 1939, and as soon as immediate needs were dealt with and perils warded off, I could not rest content with the policy of “convoy and blockade.” I sought earnestly for a way of attacking Germany by naval means.

First and foremost gleamed the Baltic. The command of the Baltic by a British Fleet carried with it possibly decisive gains. Scandinavia, freed from the menace of German invasion, would thereby naturally be drawn into our system of war trade, if not indeed into actual co-belligerency. A British Fleet in mastery of the Baltic would hold out a hand to Russia in a manner likely to be decisive upon the whole Soviet policy and strategy. These facts were not disputed among responsible and well-informed men. The command of the Baltic was the obvious supreme prize, not only for the Royal Navy but for Britain. Could it be won? In this new war the German Navy was no obstacle. Our superiority in heavy ships made us eager to engage them wherever and whenever there was opportunity. Minefields could be swept by the stronger naval power. The U-boats imposed no veto upon a fleet guarded by efficient flotillas. But now, instead of the powerful German Navy of 1914 and 1915, there was the air arm, formidable, unmeasured, and certainly increasing in importance with every month that passed.