Winston’s War (49 page)

Businesses affected by the war were closing or making desperate appeals for support. The Orchard Hotel at Marble Arch ran advertisements proclaiming: “Hitler must not sink this ship, or put the crew out of commission. Rally round! Terms made to suit all nice people.” Elderly matrons pleaded through the classified columns for domestic help—housemaid wanted, good references essential, not over forty-five, any nationality, but no Germans…Everything was for sale or for barter, not just pianos.

And rationing began to bite—meat, ham, bacon, sugar, gaso-line…although restrictions on electricity and gas were temporarily lifted to fight the cold. They simply put the price up.

It was, perhaps, an unfortunate time to release a new set of carefully posed photographs of the Queen, taken by Mr. Cecil Beaton, which captured her amongst the marble columns, silk-clad sofas, and glittering crystal chandeliers of Buckingham Palace, resplendent in “a gold dress embroidered with pearls and diamonds,” as
The Times
reported. The Queen is in good heart, they proclaimed. It might have been better to imply that the suffering was, at least, being shared.

After a hundred days of war, Britain seemed to have lost the will to fight. The RAF was largely grounded by the weather, the British Expeditionary Force in France did battle armed with shovels in fields that had frozen to rock. Only the Royal Navy seemed keen to pursue the issue of war in the distant gray seas beyond the shores.

And the United States, it seemed, had no will to fight at all…

(The Times, Tuesday, December 12, 1939)
MR. KENNEDY'S ADVICE TO U.S.

WARNING TO KEEP OUT OF THE WAR

From our own correspondent
NEW YORK, December 11

Mr. Kennedy, United States Ambassador to Great Britain, speaking yesterday at Boston, earnestly warned the United States against getting into the war.

Speaking extemporaneously at a parishioners' meeting in the church where he was once an altar boy he said: “As you love America don't let anything that comes out of any country in the world make you believe that you can make a situation one whit better by getting into the war. There's no place in the fight for us. It is going to be bad enough as it is.”

…He said that one of the chief influences that might involve the United States in the war was the American people's “sporting spirit” in “not wanting to see unfair or immoral things done,” but he reiterated: “This is not our fight.”

But it was Churchill's fight and, at times, it seemed exclusively Churchill's fight. When he presented his proposal to mine the Norwegian coastal waterways to the Cabinet, it was turned down flat. Halifax expressed his horror at the violation of international law implied in an attack on neutral territory, and there was no sign of support for Churchill's eagerness to extend the war. The word “Dardanelles” could be heard muttered in every corner. The most he was able to squeeze from his colleagues was their approval to submit the proposal to the military chiefs
for “further study,” a Whitehall euphemism for being told to bugger off. He was isolated and overruled.

Yet not for the first time, it was Hitler and his war machine that came to Churchill's rescue.

In early December the pocket-battleship
Graf Spee
arrived in the southern Atlantic intent on preying upon the rich traffic in the sea lanes off the River Plate. Instead of discovering defenseless merchantmen, however, she ran straight into a British task force. The
Exeter
, the
Ajax
, and New Zealand-manned
Achilles
were much more lightly armed than the
Graf Spee
, but they confronted her nonetheless. On the early morning of December 13 a battle began in which all four ships fought and maneuvered inside thick clouds of camouflaging oil smoke. An hour and twenty minutes later, the
Exeter
was crippled. She had been hit more than a hundred times by the
Graf Spee's
huge guns, her bridge was destroyed and her forward guns out of action. She was burning fiercely amidships; many of her crew were dead. The other British ships had also been hit, but so had the
Graf Spee
. Her commander, Captain Langsdorff, decided to withdraw to the neutral port of Montevideo, three hundred miles away, only to discover that the battle was not yet over. The British ships, despite their serious damage, limped in pursuit like bloodied hounds.

In Montevideo, the
Graf Spee
faced a desperate dilemma. She could stay only seventy-two hours—otherwise under the rules of neutrality she would be interned for the duration of the war. Yet outside the port lay a British pack, wounded but still desperately dangerous. And by seeking refuge in Montevideo, the
Graf Spee
had thrown away all element of surprise and maneuverability. She would run headlong into the waiting enemy.

As Langsdorff deliberated, the world took the battle to its heart. The harbor at Montevideo was mobbed by crowds, the world's media flew in journalists to report on the hour-by-hour developments, radio links were set up. The Battle of the River Plate was about to become the first modern media battle.

For the first time in weeks, the headlines in the British press were dominated not by doom and depression but by news that the Germans were at bay and the British flag was flying tattered but high. For four days the nation watched, and waited.

As soon as Langsdorff had unloaded his wounded, he tried to squeeze more time out of the Uruguayans. He failed. Seventy-two hours was it, and all of it. He would not allow his ship to be interned, to wallow in some foreign backwater as a rotting symbol of Nazi failure, yet neither would he risk having the pride of the German Navy blown to pieces before the mocking eyes of the world. There was only one way out—which was not a way out at all. At sunset on December 17, with only a skeleton crew, the
Graf Spee
weighed anchor and made its way six miles into the estuary of the River Plate. Spotter planes flew overhead, reporting back to the waiting ships of the Royal Navy. A resumption of battle seemed imminent but, before the British ships could engage her, Langsdorff himself decided the fate of the
Graf Spee
. Scuttled her. Blew her guts out. Destroyed her with his own hand. She burned, then listed, and finally sank.

Two days later, in the privacy of a Montevideo hotel room, Captain Langsdorff blew out his own brains.

The Royal Navy—Winston's Royal Navy—had won the first great engagement of the war.

Chamberlain flew back to Heston and into a world that was the color of cold steel. It was the same airport he had used on his return journey from Munich, but this time there were no crowds, no cheering throng tussling to lay palm leaves in his path, no summons to share the spotlight on the palace balcony. There was only Horace Wilson, struggling beneath his overcoat to retain some trace of body heat.

“You heard it?” Wilson inquired as the Prime Minister stepped down the ladder from the De Havilland. No pleasantries.

“Why didn't you stop him?” Chamberlain snapped.

“I was in the country, knew nothing about it until I turned on the radio. Winston's like Hitler. Mounts his attacks at weekends.”

“While my back is turned. How dare he? Damn him! I freeze for days in French fields inspecting the front line and he wallows in his glory like a pig in his sty.”

“Nevertheless…”

“He made it sound as if he'd fired the guns himself. Sunk the
Graf Spee
all on his own.”

“Nevertheless…”

“Lies. He lies through his teeth. One whiskey and he's away, exaggerating, inventing. Conjuring up mythical U-boats he claims to have sent to the bottom.” The shallow breaths came forth in swirling clouds of condensation as they walked the short distance to the terminal. Chamberlain's pace was slower than normal, as though he were afraid of slipping on ice.

“Nevertheless,” insisted Wilson, “we can't retract a word he said. The press and public loved it.”

“What?”

“And his announcement that the first Canadian troops had arrived.”

“The Devil take him! What's that got to do with the Admiralty? Did they swim here, for God's sake? Can't he keep his interfering fingers from grabbing any morsel of good news?”

“Not in his nature.” Chamberlain was white, a mixture of fury and exhaustion. The intense cold of France had dogged him, cut to his bones, he wasn't a young man any more and his resistance to physical hardships was noticeably on the wane. Yet he had persevered, motoring hundreds of miles along the front over several days to greet the troops and consult with his generals, uttering no
word of complaint, only to discover he had been stabbed in the back—because that was what it felt like. The body of an exhausted politician is sustained by praise, yet now Winston had stolen it, grabbed it all for himself, and the applause still clung to the ice in the wind.

“I can't stand this any longer. He's got to go,” Chamberlain declared, his breath escaping in a rush, as though it were his last.

Wilson considered this for a moment, then stopped. They had not quite reached the terminal building and the frost had climbed right through the soles of his feet and was eating every one of his toes, yet something more important than his comfort seemed to have gripped him.

“We can't. Not now. Not yet, at least.”

Chamberlain turned on him but Wilson continued, cutting off the inevitable protests.

“We're at war, and so far as the general public is concerned Winston appears to be almost the only Minister fighting it. In Whitehall he may be something of a joke, but in the country he's a figure of defiance. Destroy him, and you destroy any chance of continuing the fight.”

“But don't you understand, I don't want to fight!” Chamberlain exploded.

“But you can't make a peace either, not now, not if you want to survive in office.”

“Sometimes I wonder whether—”

“So you need to reassert your authority. Not a direct broadside aimed at him, but perhaps more of a shot across the bows. Get him to think twice, watch his back. Let him know he's living on borrowed time.”

“And how do you suppose I am to achieve that considerable miracle?” Chamberlain demanded from the middle of a swirling, frost-nipped cloud of anger.

“Send for Leslie.”