A Brief History of the House of Windsor (19 page)

By standing on the balcony with Chamberlain, the king was tacitly endorsing a policy of appeasement that many people found shameful and misguided. When Hitler’s duplicity was discovered, Chamberlain was not forgiven but the public tactfully forgot George’s support of him, a gesture that one historian was to dub ‘the biggest constitutional blunder that has been made by any sovereign this century’.

The euphoria surrounding Chamberlain’s return from Munich evaporated very quickly. Hitler occupied the
remainder of Czechoslovakia, and then set his sights on Poland. It was obvious that he would seek to expand further in the East. His word could not be trusted. All the prime minister had succeeded in doing was buying a little time at the expense of much honour. The more thoughtful among the British public were horrified by his gullibility and at the loss of national integrity. The country resumed its efforts to prepare for all-out war with a renewed sense of determination. When Hitler made a pact with Stalin to divide Poland between them, the pro-communist lobby, especially influential among idealistic young people, felt a sense of betrayal that caused the scales to fall from their eyes. The nation was still not completely united – it would not be even once war had begun, for there was to remain an element that sought to make terms with Hitler when he was poised to invade in the summer of 1940 – but at least now the country and the empire knew how the immediate future would develop.

During the tense months of 1939, the king and queen set about building relations with those who would be their allies in the coming conflict. They exchanged visits with the French Premier. More significantly they made a journey, in May and June, to Canada and the United States. In the former country George was, of course, the head of state. In the latter, he and Elizabeth were simply official visitors, the first British royalty seen by the American public since Edward had been there as Prince of Wales almost twenty years earlier. Their sojourn was brief, lasting less than a week. They visited Niagara Falls, New York and Washington, and the welcome they received was ecstatic. Despite its republican ideals, the United States has always had a fascination with royalty. The American public took to this shy and good-natured man and his pleasant, elegant wife. Surprisingly, perhaps, George and Elizabeth discovered a rapport with President Franklin Roosevelt, who staged for them a supposedly typical ‘hot dog picnic’ at his home, Hyde Park. Roosevelt, a member of an old Dutch-American family and thus of America’s aristocracy,
was genuinely friendly, and somewhat paternal, in his relations with the king. George, for his part, responded to this warmth with sincere admiration, and wished his own politicians had more of Roosevelt’s personable manner. At home, the visit established George and Elizabeth as what might be called ‘players on the world stage’. They were seen to have hit it off with the leader of the world’s most powerful nation, winning the affection of the American public and delighting their own subjects in Canada with their interest and enthusiasm. George, it seemed, could charm crowds in other countries just as his brother had done. The public standing of both king and queen measurably increased as a result of their travels. ‘That trip made us,’ she was later to recall.

They returned home less than three months before the catastrophe. Autumn, when the harvest has been collected, is the traditional time for wars to begin. This one started at 11 a.m. on Sunday 3 September. Hitler had invaded Poland two days earlier, and had ignored a request from Prime Minister Chamberlain to withdraw his troops from a country that Britain had guaranteed to defend. Naturally, nothing could be done to help a nation that was far away on the other side of Germany, but a stand had at least been taken. George, the reluctant and untrained king, now found himself in a situation that few monarchs have faced – that of head of a nation facing absolute disaster. His father had also led the country at the outbreak of war, but the previous one had begun with a sense of optimism, a belief that the conflict would be swift and that Britain was going into it with massive strength. It was now obvious that once again Germany had planned the war for years, though as before its rulers had expected Britain to be willing to stay out of a matter that concerned Continental Europe. The country had acted too late in re-arming and introducing conscription to be a match for the enemy now, especially a Germany bloated by adding Austria and other territories to its human and material resources.

The United Kingdom was, of course, not alone. Between
the British and their enemy lay the whole width of France. Their ally had a huge, largely conscript army, and the seemingly impregnable Maginot Line – a chain of underground fortresses that faced the German frontier (in the event, the attacking Germans simply went round it.) The empire also rallied. Australia and New Zealand both declared war at the same time as Britain. South Africa took a few days longer, for there was an ingrained sympathy for Germany among many Boer citizens and it was their remarkable prime minister, Jan Smuts, who influenced his people to enlist in the Allied camp. Canada, intent on showing that it made its own decisions rather than merely following London’s lead, entered the conflict last, its declaration of war signed by the Governor-General, Lord Tweedsmuir. Only one part of the Commonwealth refused to be drawn in. This was the Irish Free State, which had held Dominion status since 1922. For the Irish, the United Kingdom was traditionally the enemy. They had been fighting the British Army less than two decades earlier and, though thousands would enlist as individuals in British units, there was no general desire for involvement in a conflict that put their poverty-stricken country, with its vulnerable coastline, at risk of attack by Germany.

The Phoney War ended with awful suddenness on 9 and 10 May 1940. German armies, in a well-planned and coordinated attack, invaded the Low Countries, Denmark and Norway. The same day Neville Chamberlain, whose leadership since the war began had been heavily criticized, resigned. As the chief appeaser, he had naturally lost all credibility when his agreement with the German dictator proved to have been worthless. The king was obliged to summon Winston Churchill, a renegade member of Chamberlain’s party who was
de facto
war leader but was at the time First Lord of the Admiralty. The king and queen did not care for Churchill. It is said that his championing of King Edward during the abdication crisis had irritated them, though it is difficult to see why this should be so – after all, if he had persuaded the king
to stay on, the Yorks could have kept their cherished private life. Nevertheless, the king acknowledged that Churchill was the sole viable leader. ‘There was only one man whom I could send for who had the confidence of the country, and that was Winston,’ he wrote.

This was significant for the king would very much have preferred Lord Halifax, an urbane and patrician man who was serving as Foreign Secretary. Halifax, whose health was not sound, knew he did not have the makings of a wartime premier and declined, however. One thing that the king admired about Halifax was his belief in the possibility of a compromise peace with Hitler. George was not the only one in his family who thought this notion sound, if not vital. His mother felt even more strongly on the matter. If war must come, it was surely essential to buy time for further rearmament. Negotiations were preferable to outright hostility, and the German leader had made it clear he had no grudge against Britain. Provided he was left a ‘free hand’ in Europe, he was willing to leave the country and its empire alone. Was that not evidence of a reasonable attitude?

The appointment of Churchill represented the rejection of any compromise with Hitler. He now had the confidence of both Parliament and people. George had no choice but to set aside his own inclinations and accept his new prime minister’s view that it was too late for anything but a military response.

As a prime minister and a personality, Churchill was everything his predecessor was not: excitable, unpredictable, rash, over-emotional. The combative Churchill, a warrior since his youth, veteran of three conflicts and various other campaigns, had been a voice crying in the wilderness throughout the thirties as he warned of the danger from Germany. He had been proved right, he had the force of character and the temperament to match the direness of the situation, and he knew what must be done.

None of this made him easy to like, or to work with. He was frequently late for audiences with the king, and might simply
not show up to dinner when invited to the Palace, though this was hardly surprising considering the other claims on his attention. The queen, accustomed all her life to princely manners, found his rudeness insufferable. The king was unhappy too but, like the rest of the population and the empire, eventually found that Churchill’s management of the war effort – granted with some major errors – commanded respect. He and the prime minister knew that they could not allow personal animosity to interfere with the necessity of winning the war and they worked together with increasing confidence, gradually developing a better relationship. Within twelve months, the king was entirely won over, writing in his diary that: ‘I could not have a better P.M.’

Unable to speak well in public even after his stammer had been treated, George nevertheless made memorable speeches to his people in these years. During the war – the event that naturally dominated his reign, and which sealed his reputation as one of the most likeable sovereigns ever – his broadcasts could inspire. He did not seek to rouse the public to bellicose determination in the way that his prime minister did. Rather, he had an air of calm reassurance, a measured reasonableness, that was the very antithesis of the posturing and ranting of other speechmakers – such as Hitler and Mussolini – of that time. In September 1940, a week after German bombers had begun their systematic destruction of London, he said: ‘It is not the walls that make the city, but the people who live within them. The walls of London may be battered, but the spirit of the Londoner stands resolute and undismayed.’

He was upstaged by his wife, who in the same month uttered one of the great quotations to come out of the conflict. Referring to the fact that bombs had been dropped with near-fatal consequences on Buckingham Palace, she mused that: ‘I’m glad we’ve been bombed. It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face.’ The fact that the royal family had refused to leave their people at this fateful time was an immense source
of strength to the British public. It also impressed people all over the world.

At Christmas 1939, in the midst of the Phoney War, the king had made the traditional broadcast to the peoples of the empire. It is difficult today to appreciate the power of the spoken word when broadcast across the world. In a pre-television era, when international telephone communications were primitive, the miracle of wireless enabled the king to be present in sitting-rooms throughout the globe. For those subjects who were separated from the Court of St James by thousands of miles of ocean, and who worried about the safety of the mother country, his encouragement would have been a godsend. He did not disappoint them, for he uttered the most famous words he was ever to speak:

I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year,

‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’

And he replied: ‘Go out into the darkness,

And put your hand into the Hand of God,

That shall be better than light, and safer than a known way,

May that Almighty Hand guide and uphold us all.’

They were not his own. They had been written decades earlier, in 1908, by Minnie Louise Haskins, who was a lecturer at the London School of Economics, and had initially been published under the title ‘God Knows’. It was his daughter, Princess Elizabeth, who had given the poem to George. By his use of it, the poem gained popularity throughout the world, and became so associated with the king that after his death the words would be inscribed in his memorial chapel.

In spite of their inspirational statements, the king and queen were not to become the symbol of national will and leadership that might have been expected. The prime minister, it was quite obvious, had been chosen by fate for that role. It was he,
as Premier and simultaneously Minister of Defence (he had appointed himself to the role), who wielded power, directed the armies and fleets, and hobnobbed with world leaders. He entirely eclipsed the king as a friend of Roosevelt. The two corresponded continuously, spoke frequently on the telephone, and, once the big conferences of wartime leaders began to be held, met several times in person. Theirs was to be the great partnership that dominated wartime events. The king and queen, nevertheless, occupied a key role as builders of public morale, constantly visiting troops, garrisons, cities and, especially, bombed districts. It was a reprise of the role carried out so effectively by King George and Queen Mary in the previous conflict, and it is something that royalty does well.

When the German armies had invaded western Europe, they saw its royal families as potential hostages to ensure the good behaviour of the populace. These were, almost all of them, highly popular figures in the countries concerned: Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. If the monarch were under house arrest, anyone planning acts of sabotage would have to weigh up the possible consequences. The Nazis would not hesitate to execute hostages in retaliation for resistance. If their captive were the head of state, the risk was too awful to contemplate. Some sovereigns managed to escape – King Haakon of Norway arrived in Britain by sea. The queen of the Netherlands came by air, having fled The Hague as German paratroops were dropping there, without a change of clothing but with her country’s gold reserves. Reaching Buckingham Palace, she apologized to King George for her unexpected arrival, and was put in one of the guest suites.

The British royal family, in other words, knew what their own eventual fate might be if they remained in their country. They had the option of going overseas. Many wealthy Britons had either gone themselves or sent their children to North America, to get them out of harm’s way. The grandchildren of the Dutch royal family were in Canada. Should the Windsors,
too, not think of going to safety? After all, they could still be an important rallying point for resistance – a government-in-exile – in exactly the way that the other heads of state were becoming in London, speaking to their peoples by radio and gathering around them an expatriate ‘Court’. In Canada, they would not even be outside their own realm. If the king decided he wished to stay, could his wife, his teenage daughters, or at the very least his mother, not go somewhere out of danger?