The World at War (18 page)

Heinkel 111 over London's East End: the strategic blunder that saved Fighter Command.

Eastcheap ablaze: the London blitz.

Churchill and the heavily bombed London dockers. Most of them disliked his politics, but they dipped their cranes in salute when his body made its last journey up London's river in 1965.

Churchill in the bomb-ravaged shell of Coventry Cathedral.

The only visit by Hitler to a bombed city.

Interviewee U-boat ace Otto Kretschmer in 1940.

Interviewee, then Squadron Leader, Oulton's successful attack on U-440, in the Bay of Biscay, 31 May 1943.

Crew of the carrier
Akagi
cheer the first strike at Pearl Harbor.

The destroyer USS
Shaw
blows up.

be of assistance. And when we went to Bristol it was a very heavy night attack, everyone felt that he arrived because of the attack. He had an enormous welcome everywhere they walked through the streets. Churchill had the idea that he was entirely safe as long as he did things without any advanced notice. An assassin had to plan to take action against him so he walked very openly in the port areas and the dockers and so forth. The devotion of the people was very touching. I happened to be alone with him as [we] were in a railroad carriage leaving Bristol and, having waved to all of the people from the windows, we came to the country and he picked up a newspaper and tears were in his eyes and he said, 'They have such confidence – it is a grave responsibility.' He had a great feeling that it was his responsibility to protect the British people, to get them to put forward the greatest of effort in their own welfare, but he had to make the decisions in their interests. It was a very touching remark.

JOHN COLVILLE

What made the public impact at that time was not Churchill's remarkable energy in the machinery of government and the way in which he speeded up operations in Cabinet and of the Chiefs of Staff and of the government departments, but his
speeches in the House of Commons and on the wireless. Those speeches were not like anything he prepared later, carefully over days, they flowed out of his natural feelings, the way we were all keyed up. He represented what the country was feeling, the sense of resistance at all costs and I remember one of his speeches was due to be broadcast at nine o'clock, and he didn't start preparing it until six and this was one of the great speeches of 1940. This was very much in contrast to Churchill's normal, very slow gestation of speeches in Parliament. I remember too the impact those speeches had on the Commons. Right from the beginning of his government, the very first speech he made, you could hear the silence in the House as he spoke and I walked out that day with Sir Alan Lascelles, who was the King's Private Secretary, and he turned to me and said, 'Time will show how Churchill turns out as a statesman, but of one thing I am quite sure, after listening today, he will go to history as a poet.'

LAWRENCE DURRELL

British novelist and press officer in Cairo

When he arrived he gave us a pep talk and told us what a lot of twerps we were. He looked frightfully tired and he had flown out in that kind of hay box he had invented for himself, and I was very touched because he was wearing a siren suit, smoking an immense cigar, but he had on those old-fashioned dancing pumps that you used to wear in those days with a dinner jacket, with a 'W on one foot and a 'C on the other. He gave us a very good pep talk and it was galvanising because at that time we were completely cut off from England, so you never felt in touch with what was going on at home although you heard it on the radio. And the presence of your Prime Minister suddenly let you have a bite at it, so's to speak. It was a very tonic thing and he played up to it, being a great showman – he did his job.

RAB BUTLER

The Burma Road, according to Churchill, had to be closed and this was regarded as an appeasement of the Japanese. So, very wisely, Churchill decided to have a secret session, so we had no press and all the galleries were cleared, and Halifax was in the Lords and said, 'Now we'll put young Butler over the sticks,' so I had to defend it. I was able to use telegrams and read them and show the reasons why the Americans had agreed with us over this, and Cranbourne, now Lord Salisbury, passed me a note of congratulations afterwards, and said it was I who helped Churchill over one of his leading acts of appeasement and he was very grateful for it.

EMANUEL SHINWELL

Left-wing trade unionist and Labour MP who refused to serve in the wartime government

I think where Churchill failed was at the beginning of the war in association with the shipping position. When Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty under the Chamberlain government I took a delegation of seamen and navigation officers and our purpose was to persuade him to arm merchant ships in order to deal with the U-boats. At first he refused but eventually he agreed that some of them should be armed – but we hadn't the weapons and there was a bit of trouble over that. Then when he became Prime Minister I pressed him over and over again to abolish the convoy system, which was ineffective, because to group a large number of ships together with speed that didn't match the U-boats would be disastrous, and indeed it became disastrous. I suggested to start off by building ships not of nine knots but of fifteen knots or sixteen knots; the answer was, it's too expensive.

MICHAEL FOOT

Left-wing journalist

Churchill was very stupid about the newspapers and resented
criticism. If anyone could see his wartime speeches, he often referred to the 'crustaceans' in the press, people who were trying to 'crab' his war efforts. He used to think we should all bow down and worship him. Well, the people weren't going to have that and I think it was in fact a great assistance that he had
Daily Express
proprietor Lord Beaverbrook in the Cabinet and of course Beaverbrook had a vested interest in ensuring that newspapers were not suppressed and were not interfered with by ministers. But certainly Churchill resented the criticism most bitterly and I remember for example the articles which we published in
Tribune
which was written by Frank Owen under the pseudonym of Thomas Rainborough, which were the first articles published in the British press which criticised the whole of Churchill's conduct of strategy. The whole of the worship of Churchill in 1940 was changing into this criticism following the invasion of Russia in June 1941 and it was first voiced in these articles written when Frank Owen was serving in the Forces. These were pretty well the first criticisms of Churchill that had been put in the press because in 1940 pretty well everybody in the country – and I think rightly – regarded the part that Churchill had played then as absolutely magnificent and beyond criticism. But as the war was going from bad to worse, as it appeared, and as we suffered during 1941 and 1942 these heavy setbacks, criticism started. Those articles in
Tribune
were the first that asked, 'Now what about Churchill's strategy, what about Churchill as Defence Minister?' Those articles were bitterly resented by Churchill and I'm sure he would have suppressed
Tribune
if he had been allowed to do so by his fellow Cabinet Ministers.