The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (190 page)

T
he revelations emanating from Germany—the announcement of the Luftwaffe, the overt rejection of Versailles and the resumption of conscription, the claim of air parity with Britain—had shaken all Europe, and reverberations continued through the spring. Mussolini at that time was committed to neither Germany nor the democracies. The Duce admired Hitler’s style but worried about Austria. He liked it as it was, a buffer between Italy and the Reich, but he knew the Führer had designs upon it. Therefore he had agreed to meet Ramsay MacDonald and Premier Pierre-Étienne Flandin for a three-power conference in Stresa, Italy. There, in April, the three leaders had declared that they would “oppose by all appropriate means any unilateral repudiation of treaties which may endanger the peace of Europe.” This formation of the “Stresa Front” was followed by negotiations between Paris and Moscow for a Franco-Soviet military alliance. Stalin’s foreign commissar then signed a similar pact with Czechoslovakia, though this was odd: the two countries lacked a common border; if Soviet troops were to rescue the Czechs, they would have to cross Poland or Rumania, both of whom historically regarded Russia as their bête noir.
¹³⁹

Hitler, deciding that Europe needed more reassurance, summoned the Reichstag on May 21 and delivered another
Friedensrede
, declaring that Germany would never dream of threatening other countries, that the Reich “has solemnly recognized and guaranteed France her frontiers,” including the renunciation of “all claims to Alsace-Lorraine,” and—at a time when Nazi
Strassenkämpfer
were storming through the streets of Vienna, clubbing Austrian pedestrians who had failed to greet them with the stiff-armed
Hitlergruss
—that “Germany neither intends nor wishes to interfere in the internal affairs of Austria, to annex Austria, or to conclude an Anschluss.”
¹⁴⁰

In London
The Times
rejoiced. The Führer’s speech was “reasonable, straightforward, and comprehensive. No one who reads it with an impartial mind can doubt that the points of policy laid down by Herr Hitler may fairly constitute the basis of a complete settlement with Germany—a free, equal and strong Germany instead of the prostrate Germany upon whom peace was imposed sixteen years ago.” But the only settlement the Führer wanted was one achieved by conquest. On the evening of May 21, a few hours after his
Friedensrede
, he issued a secret decree reorganizing the Reich’s military establishment. The name Reichswehr, a reminder of the hated Weimar regime, was replaced by the prouder, more aggressive Wehrmacht; the Ministry of Defense was rechristened the Ministry of War. General Blomberg, the war minister, was designated commander in chief of the armed forces. Under Blomberg, Göring headed the Luftwaffe, Raeder the navy, and Werner von Fritsch the army. Beck became chief of the Generalstab. In a few months, the War Academy would ceremoniously reopen, and the men Hitler had chosen to lead Germany in the coming war would speak eloquently of “the spirit of the Old Army.” The tempo of the Reich’s martial music was
accelerando
.

Had
The Times
known of this, Dawson’s enthusiasm might have been tempered, but there can be little doubt that the paper’s course would have remained unaltered. Very likely, excuses would have been found for Hitler. How Dawson and Barrington-Ward remained so blind to developments in central Europe is unfathomable. It is not as though information was withheld from them. Norman Ebbutt, the paper’s Berlin correspondent, filed accurate, perceptive dispatches on Nazi Germany for over three years, until the summer of 1937, when the Nazis, realizing that there seemed to be virtually no limit to the humiliation and intimidation London would accept rather than risk war, expelled him. Ebbutt’s editors read his stories; they knew what was happening in the Third Reich, though their readers often did not; his dispatches were frequently rewritten or suppressed by Dawson, who, after five years of jumping through Hitler’s hoops, merely wondered at the man’s ingratitude. He wrote H. G. Daniels, his Geneva correspondent: “I do my utmost, night after night, to keep out of the paper anything that might hurt their [Nazi] susceptibilities. I can really think of nothing that has been printed now for many months past to which they could possibly take exception as unfair comment.”
¹⁴¹

The Führer, meantime, had made England an offer which any proud government would have rejected. In November 1934 he had told the British ambassador that Germany, in building up her navy, would agree to limit it to 35 percent of the size of the Royal Navy, with parity, or something close to it, in submarines. He had repeated his proposal to Lord Lothian in January, to Simon again in March, and on May 21 before the Reichstag, vowing that there would be no escalation of demands. He recognized “the overpowering importance, and hence the justification of the British Empire to dominate the seas,” and he was determined to “maintain a relationship with the British people and state which will prevent for all time a repetition of the only struggle there has been between the two nations.” He added: “
Für Deutschland ist sie endgültig
” (“For Germany this is final”).
¹⁴²

The Times
found Hitler’s proposal “sincere” and “well considered,” and the prime minister and his cabinet agreed. Baldwin, at that point still lord president, received Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Reich’s ambassador-at-large, to review the details. In less than two weeks S.B. intended to cast MacDonald aside and move into No. 10 himself. It was time he dealt directly with the Germans. He had negotiations in mind, but it turned out that there was no room for them; Hitler, Ribbentrop explained, had committed himself to the Reichstag and could not retreat. However, he quickly added, the Führer would never dream of naval rivalry with Britain, though submarines were an exception to the 35 percent ratio; there the Germans meant to limit themselves to four vessels for every five British subs, except in cases of “
Notwendigkeit
” (“necessity”). Baldwin accepted on the spot, then called in a small group of ministers and laid it all before them.
¹⁴³

Even the most devout parishioner has moments of doubt, and now and then one finds a true believer in appeasement straying, if only a few steps, from the garden path. It happened at this point to Sir John Simon. Usually Simon was among the most devout. But for a moment in 1935 he was shaken; during the opening talks with German naval officers and Wilhelmstrasse diplomats he lost his temper, delivered a heated lecture on the unwisdom of ratios, and stalked from the room. He was the only member of the cabinet who refused to endorse the treaty. His successor as foreign secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, spoke sharply in the House on July 11 about “those people”—he meant Churchill and the Churchillians—“who seem to take a morbid delight in alarms and excursions, in a psychology, shall I say, of fear, perhaps even of brutality.” He called them “alarm-mongers and scaremongers.” The pact with Germany, he noted, had been greeted by the people with glee. It was “an agreement profitable alike to peace and to the taxpayer.”
¹⁴⁴

Hoare and the rest of His Majesty’s Government overlooked a great deal. Hitler had driven a wedge between the allied nations on the Reich’s western front, the two powers his generals feared most. At the same time he had ended Germany’s diplomatic isolation, imposed by the rest of Europe after he had quit the League of Nations and abrogated Versailles. And with a stroke of the pen England—which had nothing to gain from the naval pact—was shattering what remained of Versailles’ claims to legitimacy. Germany, as she continued to rearm, could no longer be accused of breaking her word. It was perhaps true, as Eden told the French diplomat Alexis Léger, that the limitations imposed at Versailles no longer meant much. But “it should have been apparent,” Telford Taylor writes, “that for the British to countenance a reborn German Navy, including U-boats, would deeply wound French and Italian feelings.”
¹⁴⁵
Moreover, with an Anglo-Italian crisis over Ethiopia imminent, the timing of the pact was atrocious.

Two backbenchers in the House saw this: Lloyd George and Churchill. The Welsh firebrand was very old now, and his flame was flickering low, but Winston was fine, fit, and fierce. Speaking immediately after Hoare, he damned the agreement. Britain, he said, had struck a very poor bargain. The assumption that the Nazis would observe the still untested rules of submarine warfare was, he said, “the acme of gullibility.” He pointed out that Britain had “condoned this unilateral violation of the Treaty [of Versailles]” without conferring with any of “the other countries concerned.” At the very moment when European salvation depended on a “gathering together of Powers” fearing the “rearmed strength of Germany,” England had chosen “to depart from the principle of collective security in a very notable fashion.” The French would moan but cling desperately to Britain, their only sure ally. The Italians could go elsewhere. And, he predicted, they would.

But the most perilous feature of the pact, said Churchill, was that it took no account of Britain’s worldwide responsibilities. Germany, he reminded Parliament, had no overseas possessions. Britain had an empire. He knew there were men in the chamber who disapproved of the Empire, but it still existed, and until Parliament decided otherwise, the government was obliged to shield the Dominions, Crown Colonies, and protectorates. The 100-to-35 ratio was comforting only if the Royal Navy were confined to the North Sea.

He paused, scowled, and then lashed out: “What a windfall this has been for Japan! Observe what the consequences are…. The British Fleet, when this [German] programme is completed, will be largely anchored in the North Sea.” Now “the whole advantage of having a great naval base at Singapore upon which a battle fleet can be based”—to protect, he pointed out, imperial domains including Australia and New Zealand—“is greatly affected by the fact that when this German fleet is built we shall not be able to keep any appreciable portion of the British Fleet so far from home.” The path to peace did not lie in bilateral agreements. War could be prevented only by collective security. And now His Majesty’s Government had abandoned that. Admirers of the German regime might rejoice, but he was troubled. Before he rose, he reminded the House, the right honorable gentleman preceding him had talked of alarm-mongers and scaremongers. He accepted those epithets. One could do worse. “It is better to be alarmed and scared now than to be killed hereafter.”
¹⁴⁶

The issue rankled. Later he noted that the
Daily Herald
had quoted Baldwin as saying, “We shall have to give up certain of our toys—one is ‘Britannia rules the waves.’ ” Here Baldwin was attacking, not only Churchill’s position, but also one of the three patriotic anthems Winston treasured most, the other two being “Land of Hope and Glory” and “The British Grenadiers.” Churchill drew attention to the prime minister’s misquotation. “It is, ‘Britannia, rule the waves’—an invocation, not a declaration of fact. But if the idea ‘Rule Britannia’ is a toy, it is certainly one for which many good men from time to time have been ready to die.” Yet at the time he said privately that very few Britons seemed ready to die for anything anymore; the entire country seemed crippled by a national
défaillance
. He had spoken to them in the tongue of Victoria’s England, itself a dead language, and there were no interpreters.
¹⁴⁷

The Anglo-German Naval Agreement was signed on June 18, 1935—Hitler sent Ribbentrop to London as his personal emissary—eleven days after Baldwin succeeded MacDonald at No. 10, thereby becoming prime minister
de jure
as well as
de facto
. Less than three months had passed since the Führer made public the fact that Germany had renounced Versailles and was rearming. Europe, the United States, and Japan took note of Britain’s cynical disregard of her Versailles obligations, and Mussolini, deciding he could now safely flout the League of Nations Covenant, ordered his generals to plan an invasion of Ethiopia, to take place after the rainy season ended.
¹⁴⁸

The most baffling aspect of this diplomatic debacle was Britain’s treatment of her great ally across the Channel. In a spectacular understatement, Eden had pointed out to his ministerial colleagues that the French, when they learned of the agreement, might have “reservations.” Certainly they were entitled to them. Hoare told the cabinet that it was “essential” to humor the Germans in certain small requests, among them a pledge that the French be told none of the treaty’s provisions. France also had a first-class navy, and the new agreement would put her ships within range of German naval gunners. Yet His Majesty’s Foreign Office could not even tell the Quai d’Orsay how many ships Hitler could build, their size, and their categories—battleships, heavy cruisers, light cruisers, destroyers, U-boats. Actually, the pact permitted the Nazis to construct five battleships whose armament and tonnage outclassed any vessels in the Royal Navy—this had been accomplished by a mistranslation of one clause—together with twenty-one cruisers, sixty-four destroyers, and, in practice, an unlimited number of submarines.
¹⁴⁹

French loyalty to the triumphant entente of 1914–1918 was vital to England’s safety. If war were declared, it would be France’s job to contain the German army; at most the British could send but five divisions to the Continent at the outset and six later. But beginning with Hitler’s defiant rejection of Versailles and continuing through the imminent crises in the Rhineland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, France was to be the passive member of the 1918 entente, deferring to the British, accepting decisions made in Whitehall. The patriciate ruling England enjoyed their dominant role, accepting Gallic docility without question. They had never understood why anyone should question their judgment and thought the French were merely being sensible.

Churchill shared the illusion of France’s defensive strength. Speaking in the House three days after Hitler’s defiant acknowledgment of German rearmament, Winston said: “The frontiers of Germany are very much nearer to London than the sea-coasts of this island are to Berlin, and whereas practically the whole of the German bombing air force can reach London with an effective load, very few, if any, of our aeroplanes can reach Berlin with any appreciable load of bombs.”
¹⁵⁰
He considered this warning dire. He did not anticipate England’s plight if Nazi bombers were based on
French
airfields—directly across the Channel. Carrying blockbuster bombs, they could then devastate London and Britain’s great industrial cities, including their armaments factories, in the Midlands. Even Churchill’s imagination could not encompass such a calamity. The possibility that the Germans could actually conquer France and overrun Paris, using over a million superb infantrymen behind a great panzer force, was never raised. He still believed that the French army was “the finest in the world.”