The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (315 page)

On May 28, the number of evacuees was low: 17,800. “All this day of the 28th,” Churchill wrote afterward, “the escape of the British army hung in the balance.” On May 29, however, the figure was 47,310; on May 30, 53,823; on May 31, 68,014; on June 1, 64,429; and on June 2, 26,256. That
was supposed to be the end of it, but Admiral Ramsay made one last perilous attempt to lift off the gallant French rearguard, and he returned with 26,175 polius. Altogether,
Dynamo
had rescued 338,226 Allied soldiers, 112,000 of them French, although a greater number of French troops turned and went home, to take their chances.

Behind them they had “left their luggage,” as Churchill put it: 2,540 artillery pieces, 90,000 rifles, 11,000 machine guns, nearly 700 tanks, 6,400 anti-tank rifles, 20,000 motorcycles, 45,000 trucks and other vehicles, and vast ammunition dumps.
⁷⁸

But the great thing, for the English public, was that the men were back. They had heard stories of the heroic rearguard action. “Then,” Mollie Panter-Downes told readers of
The New Yorker
on June 2, “it was learned that the first war-stained, exhausted contingent had arrived on British shores, and the relief and enthusiasm were terrific.” Churchill never much liked
The New Yorker,
deriding it as
The New Porker
(he had a moniker for everyone), but here came Panter-Downes with journalistic testimony to the heroics in England. He could not have bought more favorable press.
⁷⁹

Still, the news added up to disaster. On June 4 Churchill told the House the story of Dunkirk. “Wars,” he told them bluntly, “are not won by evacuations” and “what has happened in France and Belgium is a colossal military disaster.” Nevertheless, he said, Dunkirk was “a miracle of deliverance, achieved by valor, by perseverance, by perfect discipline, by faultless service, by recourse, by skill, by unconquerable fidelity.” Britain would “outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.”

In his diary Jock Colville wrote: “Went down to the House to hear the P.M.’s statement on the evacuation of Dunkirk. It was a magnificent oration which obviously moved the House.” Next day the
News Chronicle
called the address “a speech of matchless oratory, uncompromising candour, and indomitable courage.” Harold Nicolson wrote his wife, Vita Sackville-West: “This afternoon Winston made the finest speech that I have ever heard.” She wrote back: “I wish I had heard Winston make that magnificent speech! Even repeated by the announcer it sent shivers (not of fear) down my spine. I think one of the reasons why one is stirred by his Elizabethan phrases is that one feels the whole massive backing of power and resolve behind them, like a great fortress; they are never words for words’ sake.” That evening, in a broadcast to the United States, a constituency that Churchill desperately needed to reach, Edward R. Murrow, the CBS man in London, said: “He spoke the language of Shakespeare with a direct urgency which I have never before heard in that House.” Later, the historian Brian Gardner wrote of the address that it had “electrified not only his own country, but the world. With it, Churchill won the complete confidence of the British people, which he had never before enjoyed. Whatever was to happen, Churchill’s place in the national life was assured; he would never be in the wilderness again.”
⁸¹

Churchill also worked a challenge to Hitler into his address: “When Napoleon lay at Boulogne for a year with his flat-bottomed boats and his Grand Army, he was told by someone, ‘There are bitter weeds in England.’ There are certainly a great many more of them since the British Expeditionary Force returned.”
⁸²

None were more bitter than Churchill.

C
harles Corbin, the French ambassador, was alarmed. He called at the Foreign Office to ask what the prime minister had meant by declaring that Britain would, if it came to that, carry on alone. He was told that he had meant “exactly what he had said.” That, members of Corbin’s staff told diplomatic correspondents, was “not exactly encouraging the French to fight on against fearful odds.”
⁸³

The French were getting nervous. As they saw it, the British army had bolted, leaving them to the enemy’s mercies. Of course, the evacuation would have been unnecessary if the French strategy had not been hopelessly wrong or if Weygand had not been a liar. Moreover, the original intent of the operation, as seen by Gort, Churchill, and Ironside, had been to extricate the BEF and then land it in the south, rejoining their allies. The loss of their equipment meant they had to be refitted, but Churchill intended to then send the troops back, and Reynaud, Weygand, and the French high command knew it. Even as Dunkirk wound down, Churchill
had landed two fresh British divisions below the Somme. Nevertheless, he had been aware of the uneasiness across the Channel. On May 30, he had decided to convene a meeting of the
Conseil Supérieur de la Guerre
in Paris the following day. With him he would take Clement Attlee, Pug Ismay, and Sir John Dill, the new Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Ironside staying behind as the new commander in chief of Home Forces, to organize English defenses against the invasion threat. Spears would meet them at Villacoublay Airport.
⁸⁴

Flying over France had become more hazardous since Churchill’s last flight to the theater. Although the Flamingo was escorted by nine Spitfires, north of Paris the sky was swarming with Nazi fighters. Churchill’s pilot detoured and they arrived late. Spears saw the hunched but resilient figure of the prime minister emerge, “obviously in grand form. He might not have had a care in the world…. Danger, the evocation of battle, invariably acted as a tonic and a stimulant to Winston Churchill.”
⁸⁵

The
Conseil
met at 2:00
P.M.
on May 31, in a large first-floor room, giving out on a garden, in the Ministry of War in the rue Saint-Dominique, with the conferees sitting at an immense green-baize-covered oval table, the visitors on one side and, facing them, their hosts: Reynaud, Admiral Jean Darlan; Paul Baudouin, a protégé of Reynaud’s mistress and an admirer of the defeatist Pétain; Weygand, booted and spurred; and, finally, a newcomer to the war council: eighty-four-year-old Maréchal Henri-Philippe Pétain, in mufti.

Reynaud had appointed Pétain his deputy premier, hoping to increase the public’s confidence in the government. In France the old marshal was regarded as a hero of the last war,
le vainqueur de Verdun
(the conqueror of Verdun). The British saw him differently. In 1917 he had suppressed a mutiny in the French army by promising his soldiers that the British and the Americans would do most of the future fighting. He was, moreover, an impassioned Anglophobe who despised democracy; the responsibility for France’s present plight, he believed, lay with the leftist Popular Front of 1935. “Now,” Ismay thought, Pétain “looked senile, uninspiring, and defeatist.”
⁸⁶

Churchill opened by suggesting that they consider three questions: the Allied force still in Norway, the fighting in Flanders, and the strong likelihood that Mussolini would soon enter the war at Hitler’s side. First, however, he thought the French would be interested in a piece of good news. The Dunkirk evacuation was succeeding beyond all expectations: 165,000 men had been taken off, including 10,000 wounded. It was then that Weygand sounded the first dissonant note. In an aggressive, querulous voice, he interrupted to ask, “But how many French? The French are being left behind?”
⁸⁷

The Englishmen present expected a Churchillian outburst. All the signs were there: the light had died out of his face, he was drumming his fingers on the table, and his lower lip jutted out like the prow of a dreadnought. Clearly he was angry, and with reason. Weygand had known of Operation Dynamo for six days, but had neglected to tell his commander in the north and had issued no orders authorizing French participation in the evacuations. Indeed, that was one of the reasons the prime minister had flown over. However, he controlled himself; his expression became sad; he said quietly, “We are companions in misfortune. There is nothing to be gained from recrimination over our common miseries.”
⁸⁸

Baudouin wrote that there were “tears in his eyes,” that he was obviously moved by “the common sufferings of England and France.” Spears felt that “a stillness fell over the room.” They then proceeded with the agenda, agreeing, first, to reinforce the Allied armies in France by withdrawing their forces from Norway. Briefly they discussed fortifying a redoubt in Brittany, into which they might withdraw if France fell. The RAF would bomb Italian targets if Mussolini entered the war. At that point the French translator, misunderstanding the P.M., said it was understood that British soldiers at Dunkirk would embark before the French. Churchill interrupted him; waving his arms, he roared in his extraordinary accent:
“Non! Partage bras dessous, bras dessous”
—the soldiers from both countries would leave together, arm in arm.
⁸⁹

The French wanted more RAF squadrons. Churchill pointed out that His Majesty’s Government had already given ten additional squadrons, needed for the defense of Great Britain. If they lost the rest, the Luftwaffe could, with impunity, attack “the most dangerous targets of all, the factories producing new aircraft.” It was, he said, “impossible to run further risks” with British aircraft.

What concerned him most was the flagging spirit of all Frenchmen—soldiers, civilians, and, except for Reynaud, members of the government. He could not say that there, of course, but he wanted them to know that England meant to crush Nazi Germany, whatever the cost. “I am absolutely convinced,” he said, his voice rolling with oratorical cadences, “that we have only to fight on to conquer. If Germany defeats either ally or both, she will give no mercy. We should be reduced to the status of slaves forever. Even if one of us is struck down, the other must not abandon the struggle. Should one comrade fall in battle, the other must not put down his arms until his wounded friend is on his feet again.”
⁹⁰

Attlee endorsed every word the prime minister had said, adding: “Every Englishman knows that the very basis of civilization common to both France and Britain is at stake. The Germans kill not only men, but ideas.” Reynaud was pleased; that was the line he had been taking with his ministers. They,
however, were divided. Spears thought that Baudouin had been swept away by Churchill’s fire. Not so; in his diary he wrote that he had been “deeply troubled” by Churchill’s vow and asked, “Does he consider that France must continue the struggle, cost what it may, even if it is useless? We must clear that up.”

Beaming, Churchill said merrily:
“Fini l’agenda!”

But he himself was not finished. As they rose from the table, gathering in groups to discuss this or that, Churchill headed for Pétain, followed by Spears. The old man had not said a word. His voice would carry great weight with the people of France, and the P.M. thought he looked “detached and sombre, giving me the feeling that he would face a separate peace.” One of the Frenchman said that if events continued on their present course, France might have to reappraise its foreign policy, including ties to Britain, and “modify its position.” Pétain nodded. Spears told them in perfect French that such a change would result in a British blockade of French ports. Then, looking directly into Pétain’s eyes, Spears said, “That would not only mean blockade but bombardment of all French ports in German hands.” Afterward Churchill wrote, “I was glad to have this said. I sang my usual song: we would fight on whatever happened or whoever fell out.”
⁹¹

No one had mentioned the Anglo-French
accord
signed by both governments nine weeks earlier—they had solemnly agreed to “neither negotiate nor conclude an armistice or treaty of peace except by mutual agreement.” In March, when the pledge was signed, the strength of the opposing forces on the Western Front had been roughly equal, but by May 31, when the
Conseil
was meeting in Paris, the Nazi edge was enormous. The Germans had taken almost 500,000 prisoners at a cost of 60,000 casualties. Unaccountably, Weygand issued no orders to move the seventeen divisions manning the Maginot Line. As a consequence he had to face the coming onslaught with forty-nine divisions. The Germans attacked with 130 infantry and ten panzer divisions—almost three thousand tanks.