The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (250 page)

T
he present is never tidy, or certain, or reasonable, and those who try to make it so, once it has become the past, succeed only in making it seem implausible. Among the perceptive observations and shrewd conclusions of the Churchills and Sargents were clutters of other reports and forecasts, completely at odds with them. All of it, the prescient and the cockeyed, always arrives in a promiscuous rush, and most men in power, sorting through it, believe what they want to believe, accepting whatever justifies their policies and convictions while taking out insurance, whenever possible, against the possibility that the truth may lie in their wastebaskets.

Neville Chamberlain required a very large wastebasket, for he was stubborn and strong-willed, and long after his subordinates had abandoned their faith in appeasement he clung to the conviction that if he could just put the proper deal together, Hitler would buy it. “Hitler,” Macmillan recalled, “was always regarded by British politicians as if he were a brilliant but temperamental genius who could be soothed by kindness or upset by hard words. It was this fearful misconception about the nature of dictators that was… the root-cause of much that went amiss in these tragic years.” Somehow an excuse had been found for every wild threat and instance of extravagant behavior in the Reich Chancellery. Karl Burckhardt, the League of Nations high commissioner of Danzig, who later wrote
Meine Danziger Mission 1937–1939
, told Halifax that the Führer had said to him: “If the slightest incident happens now, I shall crush the Poles without warning in such a way that no trace of Poland can be found afterwards. I shall strike with the full force of a mechanized army, of which the Poles have no conception.” Burckhardt thought the Führer’s “boasting” arose from “fear,” and Halifax accepted that explanation as reasonable.
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By the end of May virtually every powerful
Ausländspolitiker
in Europe had endorsed the triple alliance except the British prime minister. He wrote his sisters that Halifax had written that he had been “unable to shake Maisky on his demand for the 3 party alliance & Daladier had insisted that it was necessary, Poland had raised no objection…. It seemed clear that the choice lay between acceptance & the breaking off of negotiations,” which “no doubt” would “rejoice the heart of Berlin & discourage Paris.” There was “no sign of opposition to the Alliance in the Press & it was obvious that refusal would create immense difficulties in the House even if I could persuade my Cabinet.” Nevertheless, he still distrusted the Russians, still lacked faith in the Red Army, and still thought it disastrous to divide Europe into two armed camps. The only supporter he could find, he wrote, was “Rab Butler & he was not a very influential ally.” The P.M. was searching for an escape hatch, instructing Horace Wilson to work out a plan which would give the Russians “what they want” but avoid “the idea of an Alliance” by substituting “a declaration of
intentions
in certain circumstances.”
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That was on May 28, 1939. Churchill’s repeated calls for swift execution of the alliance were a growing irritant to Chamberlain, a variant of the Chinese water torture; another of them appeared in the
Daily Telegraph
of June 8, and this time Winston struck a new, somber note. There was, he wrote, reason to doubt that His Majesty’s Government was negotiating in good faith. This opinion seemed confirmed by HMG’s response to a suggestion from the Kremlin that Britain send a special envoy to Moscow. Eden quickly volunteered. He would have been an excellent choice; he was a former foreign secretary, he had met Stalin several times under agreeable circumstances, and his resignation from the cabinet on a matter of principle had enhanced his prestige on the Continent. Instead, Chamberlain sent William Strang, “an able official,” as Churchill described him, “but without any standing outside the Foreign Office.” It was, as Winston called it, “another mistake. The sending of so subordinate a figure gave actual offence.” The Russians were highly sensitive on matters of protocol, and the junior diplomat from Whitehall, having presented his credentials, was ignored by the new commissar for foreign affairs. On June 19 Nicolson wrote: “Strang has not seen Molotov again since Friday. Yet… Halifax told Winston yesterday that all was well. I confess I am most uneasy.”
⁵⁹

In Parliament the prime minister repeated his pledge to stand by Poland if she were invaded. Nevertheless, Churchill felt a thickening sludge of defeatism. As so often in moments of despair, he looked westward across the Atlantic toward the one power which, if aroused and armed, could crush Nazi Germany without mortgaging Europe’s future to Stalin. In
News of the World
on June 18, after outlining ways in which the “atrocity” of bombing civilian targets could be countered, he wrote: “Of these grievous events the people of the United States may soon become the spectators. But it sometimes happens that the audience becomes infuriated by a revolting exhibition. In that case we might see the spectators leaving their comfortable seats and hastening to the work of rescue and of retribution.”

Britain and France, however, seemed to be losing their audience. The diplomatic conversations in Moscow were not revolting, but they had certainly become tiresome. The negotiations were wallowing. After a brief spurt of activity at the bargaining table, Halifax, on Chamberlain’s instructions, permitted the talks to lapse again. This was dangerous, raising questions in other capitals over England’s resolution and strength. On July 7 Mussolini, the poseur of machismo, summoned His Majesty’s ambassador in Rome, Sir Percy Loraine, and said loftily, “Tell Chamberlain that if England is ready to fight in defense of Poland, Italy will take up arms with her ally, Germany.”
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Actually, this was the hollowest of threats. Despite the Pact of Steel, the Italian end of the Axis was tin. Mussolini’s men weren’t ready. However, Whitehall was unaware of that (so was Hitler), and in any event Chamberlain’s extravagant efforts to keep Italy in the Anglo-French entente had already failed.

The defection of Belgium was more serious. Three years had passed since the Belgians’ announcement that they would no longer participate in staff talks with officers from the War Office and the French Ministère de Guerre. Instead they would, in any future conflict in Europe, remain strictly neutral. But Belgium now, as in 1914, did not enjoy the freedom to make that choice. If Hitler’s powerful new Wehrmacht chose to knife through the Low Countries into France, it would drive a bloody blade into the same scar over the same wound the kaiser had opened a quarter-century earlier, and a nation which has been invaded cannot remain neutral. All the callow sovereign in Brussels had accomplished was to ease the task of Hitler’s Generalstab. King Leopold III had reached his decision, Churchill commented, “in a spirit of detachment from the facts.” He lived to see his people subjugated by the Wehrmacht, the young men forced to work as slave labor in Ruhr munitions factories, the old subject to execution as hostages whenever Belgian freedom fighters struck. They would still be bowed beneath the Third Reich’s yoke when he died in 1944.
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Despite Hitler’s shredding of the Munich Agreement, despite daily reports of Nazi outrages in Austria and shattered Czechoslovakia, and despite brutal incidents on the borders between Germany and Poland (the beatings of civilian Poles by Nazi thugs), Neville Chamberlain remained serene in his stateroom on the
Titanic
. And his troika—Halifax, Simon, and Hoare—was equally tranquil. Churchill, untranquil but helpless as Europe blundered toward the brink of war, toiled away at Chartwell or sat brooding by his fish pond, his hands in his lap, like weapons put to rest. The Chamberlain government ignored him, but he remained a public figure; J. L. Garvin wrote and published in the
Observer
an editorial stating that were Churchill taken into the cabinet the decision “would be accepted” throughout Europe as “conclusive proof of national efficiency and resolution.”
Pravda
, arguing that the Baltic states must not fall into Nazi hands, noted on July 22 that “The security of such states” was of prime importance for Britain and France, “as even such a politician as Mr. Churchill has recognized.”
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Churchill’s rare disclaimers of ambition, his affecting to enjoy the squire’s life in Kent, were merely the palaver expected of any political figure excluded from power. His lust for office remained undiminished. He yearned to be in the cockpit of action, not only for the excitement—though that would always be there, and was part of his charm; his expressions, gestures, and swings in mood evoked images of the mischievous small boy at Harrow. He relished the prospect of glory, and, if he made it to the top, of more decorations and honors, of audiences with his sovereign, and motorcycle escorts as he raced about serving the monarch and his people. But he was driven by deeper motives. He was, and proudly proclaimed himself to be, an egoist. He wanted, he
needed
power. He knew his worth, and suffered when he saw mediocrities, men without imagination, vision, or honor, betraying his England. Egoism and grandeur are so close that they may merge in one man, and he was such a man. Like Lord Chatham, prosecuting the Seven Years’ War in the eighteenth century, Churchill could say: “I believe I can save this country and no one else can.”
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Clearly Neville Chamberlain couldn’t. His indifference to the Russian proposal proved that. The talks in Moscow remained stalled, and on July 13, nearly three months after the Soviet offer to Britain and France, Winston wrote in the
Daily Mirror
that there could be no excuse for the “unaccountable delay” in signing “a solid, binding, all-in alliance” between Moscow, Paris, and London. Such procrastination, he declared, “aggravates the danger of a wrong decision by Herr Hitler. It is lamentable indeed that this broad mainsail of peace and strength, which might carry the ship of human fortunes past the reef, should still be flapping half-hoisted in the wind.”

The prime minister was unmoved. He wrote Ida: “I am so sceptical of the value of Russian help that I should not feel that our position was greatly worsened if we had to do without them.” This was a stunning misjudgment. Hitler had told his interpreter that if Britain and France accepted the Soviet offer and formed the triple alliance which had been Litvinov’s dream, he would be outmanned, outgunned, and outwitted; he would be forced to cancel his war plans and bide his time. Churchill later wrote that the three-power coalition “would have struck deep alarm into the heart of Germany.” With “superior power on the side of the Allies,” countries the Führer had marked as future victims would have regained the diplomatic initiative and “Hitler could afford neither to embark upon the war on two fronts… nor to sustain a check. It was a pity not to have placed him in this awkward position, which might well have cost him his life.” Winston concluded: “Having got ourselves into this awful plight of 1939, it was vital to grasp the larger hope.”
⁶⁴

Throughout July the three-power talks flickered, sputtered, and guttered, like the last candle in a darkening house.
Pravda
reported that “in the circles of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, results of the first talks are regarded as not entirely favorable.” Actually Maisky had told the ministry that he believed the men from London “want the talks to fail,” that Chamberlain was a creature of the “Cliveden set” whose only reason for entering negotiations had been to mollify his critics in Parliament. The distrust was mutual. Cadogan was developing a profound hatred for the Soviet delegation. Their chairman was particularly easy to hate. Churchill, who later encountered him at several official functions, described Molotov in vintage Chartwell prose: He was “a man of outstanding ability and cold-blooded ruthlessness. He had survived the fearful hazards and ordeals to which all the Bolshevik leaders had been subjected in the years of triumphant revolution… His cannonball head, black mustache, and comprehending eyes, his slab face, his verbal adroitness and imperturbable demeanour, were appropriate manifestations of his qualities and skill. He was above all men fitted to be the agent and instrument of the policy of an incalculable machine… I have never seen a human being who more perfectly represented the modern conception of a robot.”
⁶⁵

But during the Moscow talks Molotov also had reason to fume. Cadogan wrote: “We give them all they want, with both hands, and they merely slap them.” That was absurd; how could they be giving the Russian negotiators “all they want” when, despite repeated Soviet entreaties, they refused to exert pressure on Poland—whose best interests would be served, since the Poles would be trapped in any war between Russia and Germany—to become party to the agreement? The Anglo-French delegates rejected the simple, comprehensive Soviet proposal, suggesting instead unilateral guarantees by individual nations. The Englishmen parried and thrusted, immunized to boredom by their profession and doubtful that Britain had anything to gain or lose here. Like Chamberlain and Halifax, most of them doubted that the Red Army would be any match for the Wehrmacht. And, like them, they believed nothing else was at stake.
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