The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (357 page)

Churchill knew that such a weapon made hatred all the more dangerous and made all the more necessary a vision and plan for the postwar world. However, he also believed that any weapon that could end the war sooner—mustard gas, bacterial warfare, assassinations and sabotage by the SOE, even something as futuristic and dastardly as an atomic fission device—possessed great utility. For the time being, however, conventional bombs would have to suffice. Lindemann, at Churchill’s request, commenced work on a scientific and policy paper that addressed how best to deal from the air with German cities. The Prof’s conclusions and their implementation by Halifax, Lancaster, and B-17 bombers would within three years go a long way toward fulfilling his dream of destroying Germany.
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C
hurchill tried in his speeches to offer hope to his listeners, whether they were enslaved on the Continent or cowering in British air-raid shelters. As he regularly did for Englishmen, in a spring broadcast he offered the Poles his message:

His words on this occasion fell short of the mark, for the Poles were suffering depredations not visited upon any of the Western European peoples conquered by Hitler. Poles were starving faster than Himmler could shoot them. Himmler and Hitler as yet ruled no lands farther east on which they could resettle the Polish people, although they had concluded that Siberia would do nicely. Absent a place to send the Poles (and soon enough, to send all Slavs who lived west of the Urals), Reich policy was to put them to work readying the countryside for the millions of German warrior-farmers who would emigrate there to start new lives and make fine German babies. The Poles, at least the Catholics among them, would labor as slaves for the Nazis. But more than three million of Poland’s prewar population of thirty-four million were Jews. For them, the most sinister of Himmler’s programs had yet to begin, but already Poles, both Christians and Jews, beheld in their future nothing resembling Churchill’s “morning of hope and freedom.” Rather, they beheld darkness and slavery and unspeakable evil.

No speaker could turn a phrase with Churchill’s skill, yet he sometimes turned one too many. Churchill’s “real tyrant is the glittering phrase,” Australian prime minister Robert Menzies jotted in his diary, “so attractive to his mind that awkward facts have to give way.” “Pumpernickel principalities” is just the sort of glittering phrase Churchill could not resist, but perhaps should have on that occasion.
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Curiously absent from his broadcast to the Poles was any mention of Stalin, who in partnership with Hitler had chewed off eastern Poland in 1939. Churchill was by now convinced Russia would be Hitler’s next victim, and soon. It was inopportune to criticize the Russian Bear for its predations on Poland when at any moment the Bear might himself be mauled, securing for Churchill a new ally and a modicum of respite for Britons. The Poles, for their part, understood with terrible certainty that whether or not Hitler attacked Stalin, their prospects in no way changed for the better. Churchill’s words on this occasion were eloquent, the sort that inspired his countrymen, who were further inspired by the sight of captured German airmen, the wreckage of Luftwaffe bombers, searchlight beams stabbing into the night, and the
crack
of AA guns, all of which meant Churchill was giving it back. But Poles could give back nothing. Churchill’s words offered them only the modest succor afforded by the knowledge that Winston Churchill was out there, across the miles, and that he had not forgotten them.

Menzies remained in London for much of the year. Though he supported Churchill, he knew that voters back home sought more say in the deployment
of Australian troops. His political opposition in Canberra thought him too cozy with London, more British than the British. He pestered Churchill constantly for a greater role within the London government, including a permanent seat in the War Cabinet. Although Menzies, along with Jan Smuts, was frequently invited to sit in on War Cabinet meetings, Churchill was constrained by law—a happy coincidence, given his opposition to the idea—from giving a representative of an autonomous commonwealth nation a permanent seat in the War Cabinet. Still, Churchill found Menzies estimable and entertaining enough to sponsor him for membership in the Other Club, Churchill’s private dining society, where a man’s company was valued more than his politics. But as the year wore on, Churchill’s frustration with Menzies grew. The Australian, recalled Viscount Antony Head (at the time a colonel working in war plans), had taken to “laying down the law to Winston” and telling him where he was wrong on strategy and policy. After a sullen meeting between Churchill and Menzies, held at Chartwell, the Australian made ready to depart. Clementine called out to him, “Oh, Mr. Menzies, you must sign the guest book.” Churchill murmured, “Yes, and you know what to write—J. Christ.”
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T
he second phase of 1941’s Blitz—the “Luftwaffe’s tour of the ports”—began in mid-February with four straight nights of raids on Portsmouth, where the quays were smashed and the city center reduced to rubble. The town anointed itself “the smitten city.” Then Plymouth came in for it, and the Mayflower stone, which marked the spot from which the Pilgrims had ventured forth to the New World, was blown to smithereens. Göring put Hull, Bristol, Merseyside, Swansea, and Glasgow in his sights, and hit them hard, especially—and worrisomely—just as convoys made port. Göring’s uncanny ability to find convoys on the open seas and hit the ports at such opportune times (for Germany) inclined Churchill to believe that a spy had to be forwarding information to the Germans. In fact, the Germans had cracked the British merchantman code years earlier. U-boats and Luftwaffe planners simply followed ships’ radio signals. Almost 150,000 tons went to the bottom within sight of land in the last days of February and first days of March, the third worst week of shipping losses since the war began. “The sinkings are bad and the strain is increasing at sea,” Churchill cabled Roosevelt.
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The president did not reply.

The previous summer, Spitfires and Hurricanes helped keep the Germans out of Britain, but bombers, not fighters, were now Churchill’s
weapons of choice. Despite Fighter Command’s protests, Churchill, in his capacity as minister of defence, demanded more bombers. He understood that British night fighters accounted for few German kills, and would not do so until British airborne radar—the “smeller,” he called it—was made far more efficient and lighter. The Germans meanwhile, stung by Fighter Command, had ceased daylight raids the previous October. More RAF fighters, therefore, would not result in more downed German pilots, but more RAF bombers would result in more dead Germans. To accomplish that, Churchill turned to the Aircraft Ministry and Beaverbrook.
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Beaverbrook, though not as steadfast a believer as Churchill in bomber warfare, complied. It was the correct decision, made at the correct moment, for by the end of 1940, with growing numbers of RAF bombers lost and in need of repairs (for which there were scarcely any spare parts), Bomber Command was flying only about one-half the sorties flown in the summer. The tonnage of bombs dropped on Germany had fallen to barely a third of the tonnage dropped in September. The RAF was inflicting no pain on the Reich. By January, Beaverbrook’s factories began to meet Churchill’s demand. The first Lancaster bombers—powered by four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, and toting up to six tons of bombs—had taken their shakedown flights in mid-January. The Germans had nothing to match the armament, range, and bomb capacity of the Lancasters. These were the instruments of destruction that Churchill needed in order to fulfill his strategic priority, which was, as he stated frequently and with no equivocation, to deliver “an absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland.”
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Beaverbrook took it as his mission to make good on Churchill’s oath, and he did so in a manner that pleased no one but the prime minister. The Beaver’s staff resented his holding his cards close, and neither the fighter nor bomber wings of the RAF were satisfied with their allotments. But he was not to be denied. He changed production schedules seemingly at random, broke aircraft factories into smaller components, and scattered them in the countryside, where the Luftwaffe could not find them. He unilaterally granted permission to American factories to build Merlin engines under license, and Hurricanes and Spitfires, too, if they desired (the British had to pay cash for the end products). Harold Macmillan thought him “half mad, half genius… who thinks only of his present work, and that all his old fortune, newspapers and women are completely forgotten.” Beaverbrook managed by cajoling and by instinct; he operated at full steam ahead, until a crisis arrived, which he would fix before steaming off again at flank speed. Randolph cautioned his wife, Pamela, to avoid at all costs “Beaverbrook’s spell, because nothing amuses Beaverbrook more than to have complete control
of people’s lives, to smash them or put them together as he sees fit.” In his dealings with everyone (including Churchill), Beaverbrook was clever to the point of deviousness, yet Churchill, recalled Pamela, “had great respect for Beaverbrook’s shrewdness and cunning and ability—tremendous respect.” He kept his production schedules and inventory needs on scraps of paper in his pocket and available in case Churchill asked about such matters, which he did often. For this trait alone Churchill respected Beaverbrook, a happy confluence of utility in a friendship of three decades’ standing. In Churchill, Beaverbrook found the hero he had sought out since childhood—a great man who appreciated his talents and who welcomed him into his inner circle. In return, Beaverbrook reciprocated with absolute loyalty, although when he and Churchill agreed to disagree—which they did on a regular basis—he was not the sort to back down.
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B
y late February, O’Connor’s VIII Corps, now commanded by General Philip Neame, held the Libyan flank, five hundred miles west of Cairo. On the Horn, the Italians still fled before Wingate and Cunningham. All looked well. Harold Nicolson saw the African campaigns as “mere chicken-feed.” He told his diary there was no doubt where the real threat lay, “We know that the Great Attack is impending…. When the climate improves they may descend upon us with such force as they have never deployed before. Most of our towns will be destroyed.” Expecting the worst, Nicolson closed his diary entry with: “Well, if they try, let them try. We shall win in the end.”
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