The World at War (16 page)

MAJOR GENERAL WARLIMONT

I started from headquarters in a small plane on 14th June 1940; I only knew that our troops were about to come close to the French capital. Only when arriving at the air space over Paris I observed that the large columns of German infantry were already entering the inner districts of the town. Remembering then the vain efforts to reach this highest goal during the First World War, my feelings of joy and exaltation became as strong that leaning forward I tapped the pilot on his shoulder and asked whether it would be possible to perform a landing on the place de la Concorde. After circling around a while and observing that there was no traffic at all in the centre of Paris we soon came down at the base of the Champs-Elysées.

GORDON WATERFIELD

The French government went to Bordeaux. There was terrible confusion because all the refugees landed up there eventually. There was a tremendous battle going on within the government and eventually of course Pétain came to the top and agreed to accept the German terms. It was a terribly depressing time and my French journalist friends were bitter against us for leaving. They said we ought to stay and see what happens and to report it. But we felt, well, there will be another battle, from England, and we'd better get back and join up or do whatever we can do.

LIEUTENANT COMMANDER McBEATH

I had on my ship everything from the highest to the lowest. On the second to last trip, the night of 2nd to 3rd of June, we had on board General
Harold Alexander and General Arthur Percival, who subsequently gained much more fame in North Africa and Malaya respectively. But quite a lot of colonels and people less than that would come up on to the bridge and they said, 'Do you mind me being up here? I'd like to see what's going on.' And you'd say no and when you spoke to them you got the impression that although they were naturally dejected at having been kicked out of Europe, there was no sort of idea that they'd been beaten. It was just, 'Well, we'll get them next time' sort of business.

J B PRIESTLEY

English novelist and broadcaster

It was just after Dunkirk so I took the theme, the idea of victory coming from defeat, which is a very English thing, I believe. We're great improvisers, we English. I'm not sure about the
British but the English are, and that was important. Then, the feeling was very strong that now everything had happened we could really start, if you know what I mean, we're by ourselves now and really we can get on with this war, which was very strong after Dunkirk. And incidentally, which I didn't mention in the broadcast but I knew about, the way in which working people in the factories and so on worked till they dropped, after Dunkirk.

CHRISTABEL BIELENBERG

Englishwoman married to an anti-Nazi German lawyer

I think one could say that the actual defeat of France in six weeks came as a complete surprise to the generality of the German people. I found that there was a difference between my attitude to this defeat of France, and England being left alone. I didn't really ever feel that England was going to lose the war, even in those days when it looked as if it was absolutely certain that a landing would take place and they would be defeated. I couldn't believe that and realised afterwards that it was because I had been brought up in a feeling of victory after the First World War. I'd been brought up in the atmosphere of victory; all the Germans of my age had been brought up in the atmosphere of defeat. They were all therefore immensely surprised that they had, that victory was theirs. They were immensely surprised about the victory over France and equally worried about what was going to happen with England – could they win, couldn't they win – it was quite a different atmosphere.

LIEUTENANT PAOLO COLACICCHI

Italian Tenth Army in Africa

The Italian Air Force, even more than the Army, certainly felt that its equipment was bad and we were certainly not ready to go to war in 1940. It was a purely political movement by Mussolini who felt that Hitler was winning too much, too quickly and that if he didn't make some sort of gesture, take some sort of initiative, he would not be able to sit at the conference table. There was a rumour going round that he said, 'I want one thousand Italian dead to sit at the conference table,' and of course it cost many more than that.

MAJOR GENERAL SPEARS

The matter of the French fleet is a very, very big question, the French Navy being violently anti-British anyhow. Admiral Jean-François Darlan said, 'We'll never allow our ships to fall into German hands' – sounds very well and they probably believed it. But when I got back to London I said to Churchill that the one thing that's absolutely essential is to get the French fleet out of the hands of the French government because the day the Germans get hold of the fleet we've lost the war; we can't control the seas. On the day the Germans want the French fleet they'll say to the French government, 'We demand that the French fleet should be in such and such a harbour on such and such a day, if not we'll burn Marseilles on Monday, Lyons on Tuesday and so on, and we burn Paris on Saturday.' And who would resist that?

ANTHONY EDEN

So then we had to rebuild the Army at home, at least that was the responsibility of the War Office and of the munitions factories. And looking back it's quite extraordinary to register the attitude of the country at the time, and not least of the Army. I had, as Secretary of War, to go down and see the troops back from Dunkirk and I was expecting that there would certainly be some criticisms of the equipment, which was wanting, and the tanks, which had been very much wanting, and a rather general lack of preparedness in many respects. There was nothing of the kind, and even in the brigades which had been badly knocked about morale was extraordinarily high, and I think this applied to the whole country. So far as the Army was concerned I would think that this was really due to the fact that the soldiers felt that they'd measured the enemy, and all things being equal, in the form of equipment and so forth, and training, they were sure that they could defeat him. I don't suppose they'd put it into so many words, but that was the instinct I felt was there at the time.

J B PRIESTLEY

It was actually a feeling of relief, rather like – now you hadn't got to mess about with foreigners, you were on your own and this would really be much better. This goes back a long time in English history and I happened to be writing a book about the English at the time. In 1940 we felt – I think partly as a reaction from the Phoney War – everybody was miserable; I was intensely miserable, because nothing was happening and yet you knew something was happening behind the scenes, and it came at the time as a relief that it was all out in the open. Now we know what's going on and we had a lot of foreigners here because a lot of governments were here and good luck to them – but we're on our own. This gave people . . . there was almost a point of gaiety in it that was missing in, say, 1941 and 1942. I think the determination went right to the end of the war but a certain almost mad gaiety which you had in the spring of 1940 disappeared.

CHAPTER 6
WINSTON CHURCHILL

In his obituary for the man with whom his own life was so closely intertwined – almost unbelievably, as children they had the same nanny – Labour Party leader Clement Attlee wrote: 'He was, of course, above all a supremely fortunate mortal. Whether he deserved his great fate or not, whether he won it or had it dropped in his lap, history set him the job that he was the ideal man to do. I cannot think of anybody in this country who has been as favoured in this way so much, and, into the bargain, at the most dramatic moment in his country's history. In this, Winston was superbly lucky. And perhaps the most warming thing about him was that he never ceased to say so.' Many of Attlee's political persuasion have not been as generous in their estimation, and even among Conservatives there have been many who have sniped at Churchill's memory. The interviews confirm that one way or another Britain faced ruin in the summer of 1940 and any objective analysis must conclude that the most likely outcome with Churchill removed from the equation would have been a capitulation. Fighting on made financial bankruptcy inevitable, but it salvaged popular faith in Britain as a worthwhile enterprise. It may indeed have been the Channel that spared Britain the trauma suffered by France, where the deep divisions in society were pitilessly revealed by defeat and occupation, but it took a duke's grandson with decidedly pre-modern views on honour, courage and leadership to kick the somnolent bureaucracy into action, to bridge political divides in Parliament and to rally an uncertain populace. He was distrusted by his own party and by the King, had been demonised by the Labour movement, and was regarded (not without good
reason) as a loose cannon by the Civil Service, but when the moment came he was unquestionably the man of the hour, and rose to its formidable challenge as if, one might say, to the manner born.

RAB BUTLER

British Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs 1938–40

It was completely different training between Chamberlain and Churchill. Churchill, probably alone in our history, had more apprenticeship in war himself and in the study of war than any other living man. On the American Civil War alone Churchill was one of the greatest experts, studying its strategy. The whole of Chamberlain's background has been specific in dealing with internal policy and therefore he hadn't got an immediate idea as to what should be our course of action.

ROBERT BOOTHBY

Conservative MP

The great crisis was when Churchill reached his greatest heights, but he wasn't very popular even after he became Prime Minister. The first time he and Chamberlain appeared in the House of Commons, Chamberlain got a bigger cheer from the Conservative Party. Churchill took some time to settle down and to become the hero that he was very soon to become. But when the real crisis came, the Fall of France and the crack of Europe, and we were left absolutely alone in the world, facing the Germans, it was Churchill's voice which said we will fight on the hills, the seas, on the beaches and everywhere else at the time of the Battle of Britain; he became almost overnight a national hero. This was undoubtedly his greatest hour of his life. There were many disasters to follow and his strategic direction of the war was not always wise; he made grave mistakes and suffered many disasters. But 1940 was supreme because he voiced the determination of this nation not to submit. He once said to me, 'I had to consult the Cabinet as to whether I should come to some land of terms with this evil man Hitler. And I looked up and I said, "Gentlemen, what do you think?" And they all rose to their feet and said, "Never!" and the tears came to my eyes.' He rallied the nation, he rallied public opinion, people listened to him on the radio, in the pubs, everywhere. He revived their confidence, their optimism, their hope when everything seemed hopeless and whole world thought we were defeated.

ANONYMOUS MALE EAST ENDER

Pub interview in Canning Town, east London

When he visited, east Londoners, they couldn't have cared tuppence for Winston Churchill as a man or a politician. But the man who filled Chamberlain's place, he was a leader, there's no doubt about it, he was a leader, and I think every time he opened his mouth he inspired confidence into the people. Whether or not they accepted him as a Conservative it was there, he was for 'em and he was against the common enemy. Now he'd only have to open his mouth and say black was white and they would have believed him, such was their faith in him and such was the way in which he inspired confidence. You only had to listen to his broadcasts about fighting them in the fields and you could imagine people rolling up their sleeves.

JOHN COLVILLE

Assistant Private Secretary to the Prime Minister 1939–43

Immediately Churchill became Prime Minister the pace in Whitehall changed: people started to think faster and to act fast. Distinguished civil servants could be seen running down the passages, Churchill's ministers went out in all directions with his label
'Action this day' on them and the tempo became such that life was almost intolerable. There were no holidays, no weekends, no hours off. Churchill himself worked up to eighteen, nineteen hours a day with a little sleep in the afternoon, which less fortunate mortals were unable to do. And he also was physically very energetic, although he was working either in bed or at the Cabinet table most of the day, he would suddenly make the most extraordinary and energetic sorties. He would inspect troops marching at great speed down the ranks and outpacing the young men who were following him. I remember one evening he said he must go and inspect some new works that were taking place in the basement of one of his government departments where they were shored up against air raids. And the next evening he did the same thing, and the third, he'd got to know this pretty well and he was advising workmen about how to build traverses and so on. And although he was sixty-five years old he vaulted over a brick wall, a traverse which had been built at his instruction, and landed feet first in a pool of liquid cement and with impertinence, in retrospect, I said to him, 'Well, I think you've met your Waterloo,' because he was stuck in the cement. And he turned to me and said, 'How dare you! Anyhow, try Blenheim' – his energy was indeed remarkable at this time.

RAB BUTLER

Brendan Bracken was always running somewhere to another and if you wanted to consult him, it meant that you were really consulting Churchill; so it was very convenient. He was a genius: he never did very much in a ministerial way except become Minister of Information, his genius was running around, especially in Churchill's earlier days, to help him and in everything he sat in with him. He had bright red hair, he educated himself, he went up to a school and offered them the money which he pulled out of his chest, which he brought from Australia where he was a young man – most independent and extraordinary man.
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