The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (264 page)

Another precaution, anticipated long before the English public would even acknowledge a renewal of the conflict with Germany, was more conspicuous—was, indeed, spectacular. Every major governmental building was surrounded by huge concertinas of barbed wire—coils twelve feet high, with barbs as thick as a man’s thumb. They had lain in warehouses for years and were produced when Britain’s ultimatum was delivered in Berlin. The instant war was declared, up went the wire. The facade of Admiralty House was hidden by intervening buildings until Winston and his companion were almost upon it. Churchill and his companion turned a corner, and there it was, with its vast new concertinas and thousands of barbs gleaming in the late afternoon sun. “Great God!” said Winston’s young friend. “What’s
that
for?”

Churchill replied, “That’s to keep me out.”
²²⁵

A
T
the Admiralty he was expected, recognized, and saluted as he passed through a gap between concertinas. No guide was necessary, of course; the once and present first lord went straight to a concealed entrance where Kathleen Hill, summoned earlier by telephone, and Captain Guy Grantham, who would be his aide, awaited him. Inside, Churchill raced up the stairway, with Mrs. Hill and the captain panting at his heels, and burst into his old lair, the first lord’s office, known to those who had served under Winston between 1911 and 1915 as “the private office.” Swiftly crossing the room, he “flung open a hidden panel,” as Mrs. Hill put it, revealing “a secret situation map” on which he had last plotted the locations of Allied and enemy ships on that long-ago day when he had last worked here. “The ships,” Mrs. Hill remembers, “were still there”—exactly as he had left them on May 22, 1915, when his daring Dardanelles strategy was, as he later wrote, “ruined irretrievably” by incompetent subordinates, and he himself was generally regarded as a ruined politician. Now, he reflected, “a quarter of a century had passed, and still mortal peril threatened us at the hands of the same nation. Once again defence of the rights of a weak state, outraged and invaded by unprovoked aggression, forced us to draw the sword. Once again we must fight for life and honour against the might and fury of the valiant, disciplined, and ruthless German race. Once again! So be it.”
¹

Churchill’s early start at the Admiralty accomplished little; he was adrift in memories of the past—“filled with emotion,” in the words of Rear Admiral Bruce Fraser, the third sea lord. That evening the first sea lord, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, introduced him to the senior men with whom he would be working, and in the boardroom Winston took the first lord’s chair, as of old. Pound formally welcomed him; Churchill, according to one of the admirals, “replied by saying what a privilege and honour it was to be again in that chair…. He surveyed critically each of us in turn and then, adding that he would see us all personally later on, he adjourned the meeting. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘to your tasks and duties.’ ” They left quietly. “Everybody,” one of them later recalled, “realized what a wider responsibility he had”—his duties as a member of the War Cabinet and its Land Forces Committee, and his concern over the fighting in Poland and the strange lack of it in France.
²

His original instinct had been correct; in the war at sea the early hours were crucial. Yet it is hard to see how anyone in the Admiralty could have prevented the war’s first sea tragedy. When hostilities were declared late that morning, Admiral Karl Dönitz had thirty-nine U-boats cruising outside British seaports. One, the
U-30
, was lurking 250 miles off the Irish coast. At 7:45
P.M.
, as Pound was introducing Churchill to his fellow sea lords, the submarine’s commander sighted the S.S.
Athenia
, no warship but an unarmed ocean liner carrying 1,103 passengers, most of them European refugees heading for asylum in the United States. Hitler had vetoed unrestricted submarine warfare in the early stages of the conflict, but the commander of the
U-30
, mistaking the liner for a British auxiliary cruiser, had torpedoed her. The 112 dead included 28 U.S. citizens. Two British destroyers and a Swedish yacht picked up the survivors, who signed affidavits testifying that the U-boat had circled the sinking steamship without offering assistance, though by then the sub’s commander knew he had blundered. The Americans among them demanded transportation home shielded by a convoy of U.S. warships, which was not possible. Ambassador Kennedy sent his twenty-two-year-old son John F. Kennedy, a Harvard senior, to defuse their anger, reassure them, and find them safe passage to New York.

Hitler was indifferent to American public opinion, but Goebbels, as the Reich’s minister of propaganda, could not be, particularly after Churchill publicly declared: “The
Athenia
was torpedoed without the slightest warning. She was not armed.” Goebbels interrupted a Radio Berlin broadcast to call Churchill “
ein Lügenlord
” (“lying lord”) and denied Nazi responsibility for the sinking, saying the only source for such reports was “your impudent lies, Herr Churchill, your infernal lies!” Learning that in English Winston’s initials stood for what Germans called
Wasserklosett
, zealous Nazis painted them on latrines. Berlin announced that Churchill had personally ordered a bomb placed aboard the
Athenia
. “This falsehood,” Winston noted, “received some credence in unfriendly quarters.” In the House of Commons he said the passenger ship “was not defensively armed—she carried no guns and her decks had not even been strengthened for this purpose.” He added that he had expressed his “profound sympathy with the relatives of those who may be bereaved by this outrage.” Privately, he told the War Cabinet, “The occurrence should have a helpful effect as regards public opinion in the United States.”
³

He did not, however, expect a call from the White House. Nevertheless, in early October, while he was dining in Morpeth Mansions with two Admiralty guests, the phone rang, and a few moments later his valet-cum-butler entered to summon him. Churchill asked who was calling. “I don’t know, sir,” his man replied. “Well,” said Winston, “say I can’t attend to it now.” To his surprise, the butler said: “I think you ought to come, sir.” Annoyed, Churchill went, and it was his guests’ turn to be perplexed, at his answers to his caller: “Yes, sir…. No, sir,” One of them later recalled that there were “few people whom he would address as ‘sir’ and we wondered who on earth it could be. Presently he came back, much moved and said: ‘Do you know who that was? The President of the United States. It is remarkable to think of being rung up in this little flat in Victoria Street by the President himself in the midst of a great war.’ He excused himself, saying, ‘This is very important. I must go and see the Prime Minister at once.’ ”
⁴

Roosevelt had told him of a strange warning from Admiral Raeder, commander in chief of the Kriegsmarine. The
Grossadmiral
had informed the Americans that his agents had discovered a British plot: the U.S.S.
Iroquois
, which had sailed from Cork the day war was declared, would be sunk “in similar circumstances to the
Athenia
,” which, according to the current Nazi line, meant by the Royal Navy, on Churchill’s orders. The implication was that England would try to blame the Reich for the ship’s loss and thus get the U.S. into the war. After consulting No. 10 and his sea lords, Churchill cabled the White House: “
Iroquois
is probably a thousand miles West of Ireland…. U-boat danger inconceivable in these broad waters. Only method can be time-bomb planted at Queenstown. We think this not impossible.” Roosevelt agreed and warned the ship’s commander, who quickly sought, and found, safe harbor. But a stem-to-stern search produced nothing. The British accused Germany of trying to spread propaganda against England, and Raeder was embarrassed. The truth is that despite all these hypotheses of Byzantine intrigue, no one in high position was to blame.
⁵

The real significance of this minor contretemps was that Roosevelt had taken the initiative in establishing a bond with a belligerent power—despite official U.S. neutrality, a policy which enjoyed the overwhelming support of the American people—and had cooperated with the British to a remarkable degree, even following up the first lord’s suggestion that the Germans might have smuggled a bomb aboard the ship. With few exceptions the British people, unfamiliar with U.S. politics and the mood of the American public, were unaware of how grave a political risk the president was taking. One British historian observes that from the outset

In bypassing No. 10 Downing Street, the Foreign Office, and his own embassy in London, the president had established a direct tie with the only man, in his view, who could save Europe from Hitler. And since Roosevelt had made this extraordinary move entirely on his own, Churchill was the passive partner in the establishment of the most momentous relationship in his life. Of course, on their level each man was known to the other. Six years earlier, as a rapt admirer of FDR’s New Deal, Winston had sent a copy of his first
Marlborough
volume to the White House, inscribed, on October 8, 1933: “With earnest best wishes for the success of the greatest crusade of modern times.”
⁷

Actually they had met once, at Gray’s Inn, London, on July 29, 1918, when both were guests at a dinner for the War Cabinet, though Churchill—to FDR’s annoyance—did not remember it. Roosevelt professed to have enjoyed Churchill’s subsequent books, and, as noted earlier, he had read
While England Slept
, though the president rarely read anything except newspapers; he liked to learn the views of contemporary writers by inviting them to his home and listening to them. Considering Churchill’s present responsibilities that was impractical now, but already Roosevelt was pondering ways to manage a rendezvous, the more dramatic the better. He never doubted he could do it. After overcoming his appalling paralysis to become the greatest figure in American political history, he felt he could do anything. If he wanted something, he reached for it. No president has ever had a broader reach, and now his hand was extended across the Atlantic.
⁸

He knew he could buy peace for a generation of Americans, but the more he pondered the character of the regime in Berlin, the more convinced he became that the next U.S. generation would lie at Hitler’s mercy. On September 1, as the Wehrmacht’s panzer tracks chewed their way toward Warsaw, Phelps Adams of the
New York Sun
had asked FDR: “Can we stay out of it?” Privately, Roosevelt was doubtful, but after a long pause he had replied: “I not only sincerely hope so, but I believe we can, and every effort will be made by this Administration to do so.” This amounted to duplicity, but the president could not become a great wartime leader unless he won a third term the following year. If he were blunt now he would lose then. However, on Sunday, the day Britain entered the war, he had sounded an unmistakable knell. It was “easy for you and me to shrug our shoulders,” he told his countrymen in a fireside chat, and to dismiss “conflicts thousands of miles from the continental United States” as irrelevant to Americans. But “passionately though we may desire detachment, we are forced to realize that every word that comes through the air, every ship that sails the seas, every battle that is fought does affect the American future.” In 1914 Woodrow Wilson had told the Senate that the “United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name…. We must be impartial in thought as well as in action.” FDR now declared that impossible: “The nation will remain a neutral nation, but I cannot ask that every American remain neutral in thought as well. Even a neutral cannot be asked to close his mind and conscience.”
⁹

His own mind was open and his conscience at peace. In time his commitment would be clear to the entire world. He had already planned one of his bold, ingenious strokes, renouncing freedom of the seas for Americans. “Danger zones” would be proclaimed, and U.S. citizens and ships would be barred from them; there would be no
Lusitania
this time. The isolationism bloc could find no flaw in that. But if they mulled it over, they would see that the policy in effect gave a free hand to Britain and France, who were controlling the seas despite German submarines. A further step came in November 1939, when the U.S. Neutrality Act was amended to permit the sale of arms to belligerents on a cash-and-carry basis. Although theoretically applying equally to all, cash and carry in fact favored whoever dominated the seas; now the Allies could place large orders with American munitions manufacturers and then sail over to take delivery. The impact of cash and carry on the Reich would be anything but neutral, and the orders would mean thousands of jobs for Americans. In all events, FDR intended to intervene personally whenever he could help the democracies and hurt Hitler.
¹⁰

If Roosevelt had judged him right, Churchill was the man with whom he could join hands. Even before his phone call to Morpeth Mansions, he had sent the Admiralty’s first lord an overture via the American diplomatic pouch. Dated September 11 it began: “My dear Churchill:—It is because you and I occupied similar positions in the World War [FDR had been assistant secretary of the U.S. Navy] that I want you to know how glad I am that you are back again in the Admiralty.” Winston—and of course Chamberlain, he added as an afterthought—should know that “I shall at all times welcome it, if you will keep me in touch personally with anything you want me to know about,” sending “sealed letters through your pouch or my pouch.” The president ended gracefully, “I am glad you did the Marlborough volumes before this thing started—and I much enjoyed reading them.”
¹¹

To Winston, who had looked westward when the appeasers were looking to Berlin, this letter bore enormous implications. Laying it before the War Cabinet, he pointed out that the president, as commander in chief, controlled the movements of all American naval vessels and could “relieve the Royal Navy of a great load of responsibility.” By executive order he could declare a safety belt around the Americas, which would make it impossible for the Germans to attack His Majesty’s merchantmen “approaching, say, Jamaica or Trinidad, without risking hostilities with the United States.” The War Cabinet approved his reply, the first of 1,688 exchanges between the two men. It opened, “The following from Naval Person,” and that would continue to be his salutation until he took over the government of Great Britain, when he altered it to “former Naval Person.”
¹²