The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz (55 page)

“a succession of wild shrieks”
:
Soames,
Clementine Churchill,
264.

“very effervescent”
:
“World War II Diary,” 342, Meiklejohn Papers.

“She’s a very intelligent girl”
:
Kathleen Harriman to Mary Harriman Fisk, July 7, 1941, Correspondence, W. Averell Harriman Papers.

“Mary the mouse”
:
Purnell,
Clementine,
152.

“England’s greatest security risk”
:
Daily Mail,
Sept. 4, 2019.

“No hell could be so bad”
:
Ibid. The
Daily Mail
uses “this bad,” but a number of other published sources agree it was “so bad.”

“London social life”
:
Soames,
Daughter’s Tale,
143.

“Emerging from streets”
:
Ibid., 145–46.

“rather fancied”
:
Ibid., 153. Decades later, Major Howard’s ancestral home, Castle Howard, in Yorkshire, would be the setting for a popular public television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s
Brideshead Revisited
.

“Danced almost exclusively”
:
Diary, May 9, 1940, Mary Churchill Papers.

“While Mark & I were dancing”
:
Ibid., May 10, 1940.

“A cloud of uncertainty”
:
Ibid.

“The Happy Zoo”
:
Soames,
Daughter’s Tale,
111–12.

“I suspected him—rightly”
:
Ibid., 153.

“I thought the Churchill girl”
:
Colville,
Fringes of Power,
1:140.

Colville had been schooled
:
For details about Colville’s upbringing, see his
Footprints in Time
.

“One of Hitler’s cleverest moves”
:
Colville,
Fringes of Power,
1:129.

“He may, of course”
:
Ibid., 141.

“There seems to be”
:
Manuscript Diary, May 11, 1940, Colville Papers. Colville’s original entry differs greatly from that published in
Fringes of Power,
143–44. This reference is omitted.

“I am filled with amazement”
:
Dockter and Toye, “Who Commanded History?,” 416.

“I cannot yet think”
:
Wheeler-Bennett,
King George VI,
446.

“I hope Winston”
:
Lukacs,
Five Days in London,
67.

“I have seldom met”
:
Ibid.

“W.C. is really the counterpart”
:
Olson,
Troublesome Young Men,
328.

“If I had to spend”
:
Lukacs,
Five Days in London,
81.

“My wish is realized”
:
Gilbert,
War Papers,
2:2–3.

The second letter
:
Ibid., 3.

“Sit down, dear boy”
:
Gilbert,
War Papers,
2:70–71.

“Apparently,” Ickes said
:
Lukacs,
Five Days in London,
72n.

“When I was shown into his office”
:
Sumner Welles, Memorandum, March 12, 1940, FDR/Safe. Clearly Welles was exaggerating when he called it a twenty-four-inch cigar. At least one hopes so.

At one point Kennedy repeated
:
Maier,
When Lions Roar,
213. Chamberlain phrased it differently: “His judgment has never proven to be good.”

“I could have killed him”
:
Andrew Roberts,
“Holy Fox,”
268.

“Heaven help us”
:
Gilbert,
War Papers,
2:13.

“It was as though”
:
Wheeler-Bennett,
Action This Day,
220.

To Colville’s astonishment
:
Ibid., 50.

In the course of transcribing
:
Nel,
Mr. Churchill’s Secretary,
37.

“There’s always that cigar”
:
Ibid., 29.

“It is slothful”
:
Ismay,
Memoirs,
169. Churchill paid particular attention to the code names chosen for secret operations, according to Ismay. The names could not be glib or frivolous. “How would a mother feel if she were to hear that her son had been killed in an enterprise called BUNNY HUG?” Ismay wrote. Ibid., 187.

“Anything that was not”
:
Wheeler-Bennett,
Action This Day,
24–25.

The effect, Brooke observed
:
Ibid., 22.

“The eyes, wrinkling nose”
:
Colville,
Winston Churchill and His Inner Circle,
161.

“Poor people, poor people”
:
Ismay,
Memoirs,
116.

“bleed and burn”
:
Wheeler-Bennett,
Action This Day,
198.

The raid killed four people
:
Overy,
Bombing War,
239.

“I have nothing to offer”
:
Gilbert,
War Papers,
2:22.

“a brilliant little speech”
:
Colville,
Fringes of Power,
150.

“if possible today”
:
Gilbert,
War Papers,
2:30–31.

First would come
:
Shirer,
Berlin Diary,
274.

“We have been defeated”
:
Winston Churchill,
Their Finest Hour,
42.

“if necessary, we shall continue”
:
Churchill to Roosevelt, cable, May 15, 1940, FDR/Subject.

“I am not certain”
:
Gilbert,
War Papers,
2:69.

“The best of luck to you”
:
Kennedy,
American People in World War II,
21.

“none of us could believe it”
:
Gilbert,
War Papers,
2:54.

“It would not be good”
:
Winston Churchill,
Their Finest Hour,
50. Also in Gilbert,
War Papers,
2:62.

“This means denuding”
:
Colville,
Fringes of Power,
1:154.

Upon their engagement
:
Wrigley,
Winston Churchill,
113.

“finished, flawless beauty”
:
Carter,
Winston Churchill,
171.

She and Churchill kept
:
Purnell,
Clementine,
48.

It was to Bonham Carter
:
Carter,
Winston Churchill,
173.

“flayed him verbally”
:
Soames,
Daughter’s Tale,
156.

“Clemmie dropped on him”
:
Purnell,
Clementine,
177.

“I was most ashamed”
:
Soames,
Daughter’s Tale,
156.

“You ought to have cried”
:
Colville,
Fringes of Power,
1:157.

“Whatever Winston’s shortcomings”
:
Ibid.

“I speak to you”
:
Gilbert,
War Papers,
2:83–89. See also Toye,
Roar of the Lion,
45–47. Toye’s book provides the often-surprising backstory to Churchill’s greatest speeches.

“Of 150 house-to-house”
:
Toye,
Roar of the Lion,
47.

“It was terrible flying weather”
:
Diary, May 22, 1940, Mary Churchill Papers.

“I have become his doctor”
:
Moran,
Churchill,
5.

“dressed in the most brilliant”
:
Colville,
Fringes of Power,
1:162.

He was about to take
:
Purnell,
Clementine,
162.

“the inevitable, egregious Sawyers”
:
Colville,
Fringes of Power,
2:216.

“so pneumatic as to suggest”
:
Thompson,
Assignment,
173.

“The one firm rock”
:
Andrew Roberts,
“Holy Fox,”
211.

“The object of this paper”
:
“British Strategy in a Certain Eventuality,” May 25, 1940, War Cabinet Papers, CAB/66/7, UKARCH.

“the greatest target”
:
Clapson,
Blitz Companion,
27.

“Take a good look”
:
Dalton,
Fateful Years,
329.

As one American visitor put it
:
Memorandum, May 6, 1943, Writings File, Memoirs, W. Averell Harriman Papers.

“Beaverbrook enjoyed being provocative”
:
Cowles,
Looking for Trouble,
112.

“a violent, passionate, malicious”
:
Lee,
London Observer,
79. Lee also, on page 54, refers to Beaverbrook as looking “dwarfish and prickly.” After meeting him in the spring of 1941, Kathleen Harriman likened him to a caricature from the satirical magazine
Punch:
“Small, baldish, big stomach and from there he tapers down to two very shiny yellow shoes. His idea of sport is to surround himself with intelligent men, then egg them on to argue and fight among themselves.” Kathleen Harriman to Mary Harriman Fisk, May 30, 1941, Correspondence, W. Averell Harriman Papers.

“the Toad”
:
Andrew Roberts,
“Holy Fox,”
265.

“the Beaver”
:
I came across this nickname in numerous sources, for example, in Chisholm and Davie,
Beaverbrook,
339, 356, 357, 371, and Colville,
Fringes of Power,
2:83.

“My darling”
:
Smith,
Reflected Glory,
66.

“Max never seems”
:
Moran,
Churchill,
7.

“He’s like a man”
:
A.J.P. Taylor,
Beaverbrook,
411.

“Some take drugs”
:
Purnell,
Clementine,
194.

“believe in the Devil”
:
Maier,
When Lions Roar,
211.

“It was as dark a picture”
:
Farrer,
Sky’s the Limit,
11.

“They are all captains”
:
Ibid., 33.

“Tell Thomson that Hitler”
:
A.J.P. Taylor,
Beaverbrook,
424.

“For god’s sake, hurry up”
:
Farrer,
G—for God Almighty,
53.

“But there is one thing”
:
Minute, Churchill to Beaverbrook, [date barely legible, but appears to be July 8, 1940], Prime Minister Files, BBK/D, Beaverbrook Papers.

From time to time
:
Thompson,
Assignment,
129. It is perhaps worth noting that Thompson in 1943 shot himself in the leg accidentally, after his pistol snagged a piece of upholstery. He recovered, and Churchill accepted him back. “I have no doubts about you whatever, Thompson,” Churchill said, by Thompson’s account. “You are a most careful person. Carry on as before.” Ibid., 214–15.

he embedded a capsule
:
Manchester and Reid,
Defender of the Realm,
124.

“You will have to get the Buick”
:
Nicolson,
War Years,
88.

“unstained heaven of that perfect summer”
:
Ziegler,
London at War,
82.

“In the case of air raids”
:
Hinton,
Mass Observers,
191.

27,074 soldiers dead
:
Boelcke,
Secret Conferences of Dr. Goebbels,
59.

“fatal error”
:
Kesselring,
Memoirs,
60. See also the head of Army High Command General Franz Halder’s incredulous diary entry, which concludes, “Finishing off the encircled enemy army is to be left to air force!!” Halder,
War Diary,
165.

“The task of the Air Force”
:
Trevor-Roper,
Blitzkrieg to Defeat,
27–29.

“When I talk with Göring”
:
Speer,
Inside the Third Reich,
211.

“In his childhood games”
:
Air Ministry Weekly Intelligence Summary, No. 51, Aug. 23, 1940, AIR 22/72, UKARCH.

On the side, Göring ran
:
“The Göring Collection,” Confidential Interrogation Report No. 2, Sept. 15, 1945, Office of Strategic Services and Looting Investigative Unit, T 209/29, UKARCH. This is an impressive and detailed account of Göring’s personal looting campaign. The breadth of the operation, and the depth of his corruption, is breathtaking. Material cited in this paragraph can be found on pages 7, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 25, 28, 35.

Paintings hung from the walls
:
Speer,
Inside the Third Reich,
214.

Every year his underlings
:
Ibid., 385.

One German general
:
Dietrich von Choltitz Interrogation, Aug. 25, 1944, WO 208/4463, UKARCH.

“despite rumors to the contrary”
:
“Hermann Göring,” Interrogation Report, Military Intelligence Service, U.S. Ninth Air Force, June 1, 1945, Spaatz Papers.

“Where Hitler is distant”
:
Shirer,
Berlin Diary,
468.

“We swore by the
Führer
”
:
Baumbach,
Life and Death of the Luftwaffe,
55.

“small clique of sycophants”
:
“The Birth, Life, and Death of the German Day Fighter Arm (Related by Adolf Galland),” Interrogation Report, 28, Spaatz Papers.

“Göring was a man”
:
Ibid.

“Beppo Schmid,” Galland said
:
Conversation between Galland and Field Marshal Erhard Milch, June 6, 1945, transcript, Spaatz Papers.