Their Finest Hour (2 page)

I
MUST AGAIN ACKNOWLEDGE
the assistance of those who helped me with the previous volume, namely, Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Pownall, Commodore G. R. G. Allen, Colonel F. W. Deakin and Sir Edward Marsh. I must also thank the very large number of others who have kindly read these pages and commented upon them.

Lord Ismay has continued to give me his aid, as have my other friends.

I again record my obligations to His Majesty’s Government for permission to reproduce the text of certain official documents of which the Crown copyright is legally vested in the Controller of His Majesty’s Stationery Office. At the request of His Majesty’s Government on security grounds, I have paraphrased some of the telegrams published in this volume. These changes have not altered in any way the sense or substance of the telegrams.

In War: Resolution
In Defeat: Defiance
In Victory: Magnanimity
In Peace: Good Will

How the British people
held the fort
ALONE
till those who
hitherto had been half blind
were half ready

The Beginning and the End
—
The Magnitude of Britain’s Work for the Common Cause
—
Divisions in Contact with the Enemy Throughout the War
—
The Roll of Honour — The Share of the Royal Navy — British and American Discharge of Air Bombs
—
American Aid in Munitions Magnifies Our War Effort
—
Formation of
the New Cabinet
—
Conservative Loyalty to Mr. Chamberlain — The Leadership of the House of Commons
—
Heresy-hunting Quelled in Due Course
—
My Letter to Mr. Chamberlain of May
11
— A Peculiar Experience
—
Forming a Government in the Heat of Battle — New Colleagues: Clement Attlee, Arthur Greenwood, Archibald Sinclair, Ernest Bevin, Max Beaverbrook
—
A Small War Cabinet
—
Stages in the Formation of the Government, May
10
to May
16
— A Digression on Power
—
Realities and Appearances in the New War Direction — Alterations in the Responsibilities of the Service Ministers — War Direction Concentrated in Very Few Hands
—
My Personal Methods
— The Written Word
—
Sir Edward Bridges
—
My Relations with the Chiefs of the Staff Committee — General Ismay — Kindness and Confidence Shown by the War Cabinet
—
The Office of Minister of Defence —
Its Staff: Ismay, Hollis, Jacob
—
No Change for Five Years — Stability of Chiefs of Staff Committee
—
No Changes from
1941
till
1945
Except One by Death
—
Intimate Personal Association of Politicians and Soldiers at the Summit
—
The Personal Correspondence
—
My Relations with President Roosevelt
—
My Message to the President of May
15
— “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat.”

N
OW AT LAST
the slowly gathered, long-pent-up fury of the storm broke upon us. Four or five millions of men met each other in the first shock of the most merciless of all the wars of which record has been kept. Within a week the front in France, behind which we had been accustomed to dwell through the long years of the former war and the opening phase of this, was to be irretrievably broken. Within three weeks the long-famed French Army was to collapse in rout and ruin, and the British Army to be hurled into the sea with all its equipment lost. Within six weeks we were to find ourselves alone, almost disarmed, with triumphant Germany and Italy at our throats, with the whole of Europe in Hitler’s power, and Japan glowering on the other side of the globe. It was amid these facts and looming prospects that I entered upon my duties as Prime Minister and Minister of Defence and addressed myself to the first task of forming a Government of all parties to conduct His Majesty’s business at home and abroad by whatever means might be deemed best suited to the national interest.

Five years later almost to a day it was possible to take a more favourable view of our circumstances. Italy was conquered and Mussolini slain. The mighty German Army surrendered unconditionally. Hitler had committed suicide. In addition to the immense captures by General Eisenhower, nearly three million German soldiers were taken prisoners in twenty-four hours by Field Marshal Alexander in Italy and Field Marshal Montgomery in Germany. France was liberated, rallied and revived. Hand in hand with our allies, the two mightiest empires in the world, we advanced to the swift annihilation of Japanese resistance. The contrast was certainly remarkable. The road across these five years was long, hard, and perilous. Those who perished upon it did not give their lives in vain. Those who marched forward to the end will always be proud to have trodden it with honour.

* * * * *

LAND FORCES IN FIGHTING CONTACT WITH THE ENEMY
“
EQUIVALENT DIVISIONS
”

In giving an account of my stewardship and in telling the tale of the famous National Coalition Government, it is my first duty to make plain the scale and force of the contribution which Great Britain and her Empire, whom danger only united more tensely, made to what eventually became the common cause of so many states and nations. I do this with no desire to make invidious comparisons or rouse purposeless rivalries with our greatest ally, the United States, to whom we owe immeasurable and enduring gratitude. But it is to the combined interest of the English-speaking world that the magnitude of the British war-making effort should be known and realised. I have therefore had a table made which I print on this page, which covers the whole period of the war. This shows that up till July, 1944, Britain and her Empire had a substantially larger number of divisions
in contact with the enemy
than the United States. This general figure includes not only the European and African spheres, but also all the war in Asia against Japan. Up till the arrival in Normandy in the autumn of 1944 of the great mass of the American Army, we had always the right to speak at least as an equal and usually as the predominant partner in every theatre of war except the Pacific and Australasian; and this remains also true, up to the time mentioned, of the aggregation of all divisions in all theatres for any given month. From July, 1944, the fighting front of the United States, as represented by divisions in contact with the enemy, became increasingly predominant, and so continued, mounting and triumphant, till the final victory ten months later.

Another comparison which I have made shows that the British and Empire sacrifice in loss of life was even greater than that of our valiant ally. The British total dead, and missing, presumed dead, of the armed forces, amounted to 303,240, to which should be added over 109,000 from the Dominions, India, and the colonies, a total of over 412,240. This figure does not include 60,500 civilians killed in the air raids on the United Kingdom, nor the losses of our merchant navy and fishermen, which amounted to about 30,000. Against this figure the United States mourn the deaths in the Army and Air Force, the Navy, Marines, and Coastguard, of 322,188.
*
I cite these sombre rolls of honour in the confident faith that the equal comradeship sanctified by so much precious blood will continue to command the reverence and inspire the conduct of the English-speaking world.

On the seas the United States naturally bore almost the entire weight of the war in the Pacific, and the decisive battles which they fought near Midway Island, at Guadalcanal, and in the Coral Sea in 1942 gained for them the whole initiative in that vast ocean domain, and opened to them the assault of all the Japanese conquests, and eventually of Japan herself. The American Navy could not at the same time carry the main burden in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Here again it is a duty to set down the facts. Out of 781 German and 85 Italian U-boats destroyed in the European theatre, the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, 594 were accounted for by British sea and air forces, who also disposed of all the German battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, besides destroying or capturing the whole Italian Fleet.

U-BOAT LOSSES

The table of U-boat losses is shown in the table on this page.

In the air superb efforts were made by the United States to come into action — especially with their daylight Fortress bombers — on the greatest scale from the earliest moment after Pearl Harbour, and their power was used both against Japan and from the British Isles against Germany. However, when we reached Casablanca in January, 1943, it was a fact that no single American bomber plane had cast a daylight bomb on Germany. Very soon the fruition of the great exertions they were making was to come, but up till the end of 1943 the British discharge of bombs upon Germany had in the aggregate exceeded by eight tons to one those cast from American machines by day or night, and it was only in the spring of 1944 that the preponderance of discharge was achieved by the United States. Here, as in the armies and on the sea, we ran the full course from the beginning, and it was not until 1944 that we were overtaken and surpassed by the tremendous war effort of the United States.

It must be remembered that our munitions effort from the beginning of Lend-Lease in January, 1941, was increased by over one-fifth through the generosity of the United States. Through the materials and weapons which they gave us we were actually able to wage war
as if we were a nation of fifty-eight millions instead of forty-eight.
In shipping also the marvellous production of Liberty Ships enabled the flow of supplies to be maintained across the Atlantic. On the other hand, the analysis of shipping losses by enemy action suffered by all nations throughout the war should be borne in mind. Here are the figures:

Of these losses eighty per cent were suffered in the Atlantic Ocean, including British coastal waters and the North Sea. Only five per cent were lost in the Pacific.

This is all set down, not to claim undue credit, but to establish on a footing capable of commanding fair-minded respect the intense output in every form of war activity of the people of this small island, upon whom in the crisis of the world’s history the brunt fell.

* * * * *

It is probably easier to form a cabinet, especially a coalition cabinet, in the heat of battle than in quiet times. The sense of duty dominates all else, and personal claims recede. Once the main arrangements had been settled with the leaders of the other parties, with the formal authority of their organisations, the attitude of all those I sent for was like that of soldiers in action, who go to the places assigned to them at once without question. The party basis being officially established, it seemed to me that no sense of Self entered into the minds of any of the very large number of gentlemen I had to see. If some few hesitated, it was only because of public considerations. Even more did this high standard of behaviour apply to the large number of Conservative and National Liberal Ministers who had to leave their offices and break their careers, and at this moment of surpassing interest and excitement to step out of official life, in many cases forever.