Their Finest Hour (74 page)

Prime Minister to Marshal Pétain.

31.XII.40.

If at any time in the near future the French Government decide to cross to North Africa or resume the war there against Italy and Germany, we should be willing to send a strong and well-equipped Expeditionary Force of up to six divisions to aid the defence of Morocco, Algiers, and Tunis. These divisions could sail as fast as shipping and landing facilities were available. We now have a large, well-equipped army in England, and have considerable spare forces already well trained and rapidly improving, apart from what are needed to repel invasion. The situation in the Middle East is also becoming good.

2. The British Air Force has now begun its expansion, and would also be able to give important assistance.

3. The command of the Mediterranean would be assured by the reunion of the British and French Fleets and by our joint use of Moroccan and North African bases.

4. We are willing to enter into Staff talks of the most secret character with any military representatives nominated by you.

5. On the other hand, delay is dangerous. At any time the Germans may, by force or favour, come down through Spain, render unusable the anchorage at Gibraltar, take effective charge of the batteries on both sides of the Straits, and also establish their air forces in the aerodromes. It is their habit to strike swiftly, and if they establish themselves on the Moroccan coast the door would be shut on all projects. The situation may deteriorate any day and prospects be ruined unless we are prepared to plan together and act boldly. It is most important that the French Government should realise that we are able and willing to give powerful and growing aid. But this may presently pass beyond our power.

A similar message was sent by another hand to General Weygand, now Commander-in-Chief at Algiers. No answer of any kind was returned from either quarter.

* * * * *

At this stage we may review the numerous tasks and projects for which plans and in most cases preparations had been made and approval in principle obtained. The first was of course the defence of the island against invasion. We had now armed and equipped, though not in all cases at the highest standard of modern equipment, nearly thirty high-class mobile divisions, a large proportion of whom were Regulars, and all of whose men had been under intense training for fifteen months. Of these we considered that, apart from the coastal troops, fifteen would be sufficient to deal with oversea invasion. The Home Guard, now more than a million men, had rifles and some cartridges in their hands, apart from our reserve. We therefore had twelve or fifteen divisions available for offensive action overseas as need and opportunity arose. The reinforcement of the Middle East, and especially of the Army of the Nile, from Australia and New Zealand and from India, had already been provided for by shipping and by other arrangements. As the Mediterranean was still closed, very long voyages and many weeks were required for all these convoys and their escorts.

Secondly, in case Vichy or the French in North Africa should rally to the common cause, we had prepared an Expeditionary Force of six divisions, with an air component, for an unopposed and assisted landing in Moroccan Atlantic ports, principally Casablanca. Whether we could move this good army to Morocco or to Ceuta, opposite Gibraltar, more rapidly than the Germans could come in equal numbers and equipment through Spain depended upon the degree of Spanish resistance. We could however, if invited, and if we liked it, land at Cadiz to support the Spaniards.

Thirdly, in case the Spanish Government yielded to German pressure and became Hitler’s ally or co-belligerent, thus making the harbour at Gibraltar unusable, we held ready a strong brigade with four suitable fast transports to seize or occupy some of the Atlantic islands. Alternatively, if the Portuguese Government agreed that we might for this purpose invoke the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance of 1373, “Friends to friends, and foes to foes,” we might set up with all speed a base in the Cape Verde Islands. This operation, called “Shrapnel,” would secure us the necessary air and refueling bases to maintain naval control of the critical stretch of the route round the Cape.

Fourthly, a French de Gaullist brigade from England, with West African reinforcements, was to be sent round the Cape to Egypt in order to effect the capture of Jibouti in case conditions there became favourable (“Operation Marie”).
⁶

Preparations were also being made to reinforce Malta, particularly in air power (“Operation Winch”), with the object of regaining control of the passage between Sicily and Tunis. As an important element in this policy, plans had been made for the capture by a brigade of commandos, of which Sir Roger Keyes wished to take personal command, of the rocky islet of Pantellaria (“Operation Workshop”). Every effort was ordered to be made to develop a strong naval and air base in Crete at Suda Bay, pending the movement thither of any reinforcements for its garrison which a change in the Greek situation might require. We were developing airfields in Greece both to aid the Greek Army and to strike at Italy, or if necessary at the Rumanian oilfields. Similarly, the active development of airfields in Turkey and technical assistance to the Turks was in progress.

Finally the revolt in Abyssinia was being fanned by every means, and respectable forces were based on Khartoum to strike in the neighbourhood of Kassala, on the White Nile, against the menace of the large Italian army in Abyssinia. A movement was planned for a joint military and naval advance from Kenya up the East African coast towards the Red Sea to capture the Italian fortified seaports of Assab and Massawa, with a view to the conquest of the Italian colony of Eritrea.

Thus I was able to lay before the War Cabinet a wide choice of carefully considered and detailed enterprises which could at very short notice be launched against the enemy, and certainly from among them we could find the means for an active and unceasing overseas offensive warfare, albeit on a secondary scale, with which to relieve and adorn our conduct of the war during the early part of 1941, throughout which the building up of our main war strength in men and munitions, in aircraft, tanks and artillery, would be continuously and immensely expanded.

* * * * *

As the end of the year approached both its lights and its shadows stood out harshly on the picture. We were alive. We had beaten the German Air Force. There had been no invasion of the island. The Army at home was now very powerful. London had stood triumphant through all her ordeals. Everything connected with our air mastery over our own island was improving fast. The smear of Communists who obeyed their Moscow orders gibbered about a capitalist-imperialist war. But the factories hummed and the whole British nation toiled night and day, uplifted by a surge of relief and pride. Victory sparkled in the Libyan Desert, and across the Atlantic the Great Republic drew ever nearer to her duty and our aid.

At this time I received a very kind letter from the King.

S
ANDRINGHAM
,
January
2, 1941.

My dear Prime Minister,

I must send you my best wishes for a happier New Year, and may we see the end of this conflict in sight during the coming year. I am already feeling better for my sojourn here; it is doing me good, and the change of scene and outdoor exercise is acting as a good tonic. But I feel that it is wrong for me to be away from my place of duty, when everybody else is carrying on. However, I must look upon it as medicine and hope to come back refreshed in mind and body, for renewed efforts against the enemy.

I do hope and trust you were able to have a little relaxation at Christmas with all your arduous work. I have so much admired all you have done during the last seven months as my Prime Minister, and I have so enjoyed our talks together during our weekly luncheons. I hope they will continue on my return, as I do look forward to them so much.

I hope to pay a visit to Sheffield
⁷
next Monday. I can do it from here in the day….

With renewed good wishes,

I remain,
Yours very sincerely,

G
EORGE
. R. I.

I expressed my gratitude, which was heartfelt.

January
5, 1941.

Sir,

I am honoured by Your Majesty’s most gracious letter. The kindness with which Your Majesty and the Queen have treated me since I became First Lord and still more since I became Prime Minister has been a continuous source of strength and encouragement during the vicissitudes of this fierce struggle for life. I have already served Your Majesty’s father and grandfather for a good many years as a Minister of the Crown, and my father and grandfather served Queen Victoria, but Your Majesty’s treatment of me has been intimate and generous to a degree that I had never deemed possible.

Indeed, Sir, we have passed through days and weeks as trying and as momentous as any in the history of the English Monarchy, and even now there stretches before us a long, forbidding road. I have been greatly cheered by our weekly luncheons in poor old bomb-battered Buckingham Palace, and to feel that in Your Majesty and the Queen there flames the spirit that will never be daunted by peril nor wearied by unrelenting toil. This war has drawn the Throne and the people more closely together than was ever before recorded, and Your Majesties are more beloved by all classes and conditions than any of the princes of the past. I am indeed proud that it should have fallen to my lot and duty to stand at Your Majesty’s side as First Minister in such a climax of the British story, and it is not without good and sure hope and confidence in the future that I sign myself “on Bardia Day,” when the gallant Australians are gathering another twenty thousand Italians prisoners,

Your Majesty’s faithful and devoted
servant and subject,

W
INSTON
S. C
HURCHILL

* * * * *

We may, I am sure, rate this tremendous year as the most splendid, as it was the most deadly, year in our long English and British story. It was a great, quaintly organised England that had destroyed the Spanish Armada. A strong flame of conviction and resolve carried us through the twenty-five years’ conflict which William II and Marlborough waged against Louis XIV. There was a famous period with Chatham. There was the long struggle against Napoleon, in which our survival was secured through the domination of the seas by the British Navy under the classic leadership of Nelson and his associates. A million Britons died in the First World War. But nothing surpasses 1940. By the end of that year this small and ancient island, with its devoted Commonwealth, Dominions and attachments under every sky, had proved itself capable of bearing the whole impact and weight of world destiny. We had not flinched or wavered. We had not failed. The soul of the British people and race had proved invincible. The citadel of the Commonwealth and Empire could not be stormed. Alone, but upborne by every generous heartbeat of mankind, we had defied the tyrant in the height of his triumph.

All our latent strength was now alive. The air terror had been measured. The island was intangible, inviolate. Henceforward we too would have weapons with which to fight. Henceforward we too would be a highly organised war machine. We had shown the world that we could hold our own. There were two sides to the question of Hitler’s world domination. Britain, whom so many had counted out, was still in the ring, far stronger than she had ever been, and gathering strength with every day. Time had once again come over to our side. And not only to our national side. The United States was arming fast and drawing ever nearer to the conflict. Soviet Russia, who with callous miscalculation had adjudged us worthless at the outbreak of the war, and had bought from Germany fleeting immunity and a share of the booty, had also become much stronger and had secured advanced positions for her own defence. Japan seemed for the moment to be overawed by the evident prospect of a prolonged world war, and, anxiously watching Russia and the United States, meditated profoundly what it would be wise and profitable to do.

And now this Britain, and its far-spread association of states and dependencies, which had seemed on the verge of ruin, whose very heart was about to be pierced, had been for fifteen months concentrated upon the war problem, training its men and devoting all its infinitely varied vitalities to the struggle. With a gasp of astonishment and relief the smaller neutrals and the subjugated states saw that the stars still shone in the sky. Hope and within it passion burned anew in the hearts of hundreds of millions of men. The good cause would triumph. Right would not be trampled down. The flag of Freedom, which in this fateful hour was the Union Jack, would still fly in all the winds that blew.

But I and my faithful colleagues who brooded with accurate information at the summit of the scene had no lack of cares. The shadow of the U-boat blockade already cast its chill upon us. All our plans depended upon the defeat of this menace. The Battle of France was lost. The Battle of Britain was won. The Battle of the Atlantic had now to be fought.

END OF BOOK TWO

The following changes in the text were received too late for inclusion in the first edition, but will appear in their proper places in future editions:

Page 45, line 1

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Page 102, correction of official list

B
RITISH
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HIPS

Page 115, footnote added with reference to table:

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for: November

read: December

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