The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz (58 page)

A small but pressing crisis
:
Ogden,
Life of the Party,
100; Smith,
Reflected Glory,
71.

“like a happy child”
:
Shirer,
Berlin Diary,
363. Shirer calls Göring’s retreat “Karin Hall”; for the sake of consistency, I’ve changed it to Carinhall.

“The Minister emphasizes”
:
Boelcke,
Secret Conferences of Dr. Goebbels,
67.

“So wonderful an actor”
:
Shirer,
Berlin Diary,
362.

First Hitler ran through
:
See transcript of the speech in
Vital Speeches of the Day,
6:617–25, on
www.ibiblio.org/​pha/​policy/​1940/​1940-07-19b.html
.

“Throughout Hitler’s speech”
:
Shirer,
Berlin Diary,
363–64.

“One bomb on the Kroll Opera House”
:
Galland,
The First and the Last,
8.

Galland’s journey to this moment
:
Details of Galland’s upbringing and career can be found in his autobiography,
The First and the Last,
and in materials relating to his postwar interrogations by U.S. Air Force officials. See especially the May 18, 1945, transcript of one interrogation and the more comprehensive report, “The Birth, Life, and Death of the German Day Fighter Arm (Related by Adolf Galland),” Spaatz Papers.

the Messerschmitt Me 109
:
The fighter is often referred to as the Bf 109, after its original manufacturer, Bayerische Flugzeugwerke. Overy,
Battle of Britain,
56.

“Let me tell you what”
:
Manchester and Reid,
Defender of the Realm,
129–30.

The various officials present
:
Shirer,
Berlin Diary,
362.

“I do not propose to say”
:
Colville,
Fringes of Power,
1:234.

“We shall not stop fighting”
:
Andrew Roberts,
“Holy Fox,”
250.

“Mistrust must be sown”
:
Boelcke,
Secret Conferences of Dr. Goebbels,
70.

“At the right moment”
:
Ibid., 74.

Churchill was in high spirits
:
Gilbert,
War Papers,
2:580.

“the effect of which”
:
Winston Churchill,
Their Finest Hour,
406.

“Nothing must now be said”
:
Gilbert,
War Papers,
2:667.

“The next six months”
:
Winston Churchill,
Their Finest Hour,
398.

In May, a military maneuver
:
Goodwin,
No Ordinary Time,
49.

“Against Europe’s total war”
:
Ibid., 52.

“this minor and easily remediable factor”
:
Churchill to Roosevelt, cable, July 31, 1940, FDR/Map.

“no chance of passing”
:
Goodwin,
No Ordinary Time,
142.

“I was driven all through the day”
:
A.J.P. Taylor,
Beaverbrook,
446.

The first night began
:
For a full account of the episode, see Interview Transcripts, July 1991, Biographies File, Pamela Harriman Papers. Also, Ogden,
Life of the Party,
95–97.

“The German Air Force”
:
Boelcke,
Secret Conferences of Dr. Goebbels,
37–38.

“For the first time”
:
Otto Bechtle, “German Air Force Operations Against Great Britain, Tactics and Lessons Learnt, 1940–1941” (lecture, Feb. 2, 1944), AIR 40/2444, UKARCH.

He expected little resistance
:
Indeed, at the end of 1942 a captured Luftwaffe officer would tell his interrogators that if German intelligence reports were correct, the RAF and Allied air forces possessed “minus 500 aircraft.” See “Intelligence from Interrogation: Intelligence from Prisoners of War,” 42, AIR 40/1177, UKARCH.

“Göring refused to listen”
:
“The Birth, Life, and Death of the German Day Fighter Arm (Related by Adolf Galland),” Interrogation Report, 15, Spaatz Papers.

“To do our work”
:
Gilbert,
War Papers,
2:636.

Anti-tank mines
:
Colville,
Fringes of Power,
1:251.

“The First Sea Lord fell”
:
Ibid., 252.

Saturday morning brought
:
Ibid., 253–54.

“Oh, Moon, lovely Moon”
:
Ibid., 254.

“Today they painted them”
:
Shirer,
Berlin Diary,
373.

At dawn on Tuesday
:
Baker,
Adolf Galland,
109–11; Basil Collier,
Battle of Britain,
70–71; Basil Collier,
Defense of the United Kingdom,
184–88; Bekker,
Luftwaffe Diaries,
151; Overy,
Battle of Britain,
62–63.

“Everything beyond was practically”
:
Galland,
The First and the Last,
18.

“At Luftwaffe HQ, however”
:
Ibid., 24.

“The question everyone is asking”
:
Colville,
Fringes of Power,
1:261.

“Our view is that we are two friends”
:
Winston Churchill,
Their Finest Hour,
409–10.

“The transfer to Great Britain”
:
Ibid., 404.

Galland dove headlong
:
Baker,
Adolf Galland,
110.

“There’s more than a hundred”
:
Baker,
Adolf Galland,
157.

“I have known him”
:
“War Diary of
Kampfgruppe
210,” Appendix to Interrogation Report 273/1940, AIR 40/2398, UKARCH.

“Don’t speak to me”
:
Ismay,
Memoirs,
180.

“RAF exploits continue to arouse”
:
Addison and Crang,
Listening to Britain,
331.

“This was to be the day”
:
Cadogan,
Diaries,
321.

“While our eyes are”
:
Gilbert,
War Papers,
2:679.

A British intelligence report
:
Air Ministry Weekly Intelligence Summary, No. 51, Aug. 23, 1940, AIR 22/72, UKARCH.

“The setting was majestic”
:
Cowles,
Looking for Trouble,
423–24.

One Luftwaffe bomber pilot
:
Basil Collier,
Battle of Britain,
88–89.

“So, you see,” she scolded
:
Nicolson,
War Years,
111. William Shirer, in his diary, described the sound of shrapnel from exploded anti-aircraft shells: “It was like hail falling on a tin roof. You could hear it dropping through the trees and on the roofs of the sheds” (389).

“one thinks every noise”
:
Cockett,
Love and War in London,
148.

“With this gorgeous moon”
:
Ibid., 143.

When Colville arrived
:
Colville,
Fringes of Power,
1:264–65.

As it happened, the plane
:
Air Interrogation Reports, 237/1940 and 243/1940, AIR 40/2398, UKARCH. Report 237 notes the bomber’s markings: “Blue Shield with a White Starfish in the Centre, Yellow patch in centre of Starfish. Upper wing dark green, under wing grey.”

In the course of the war
:
Bessborough,
Enchanted Forest,
118. Lord Bessborough’s son and his co-author, Clive Aslet, published an engaging portrait of Stansted House and of English country life, titled
Enchanted Forest: The Story of Stansted in Sussex
. Here one can learn a multitude of things, among them the fact that one of the stained-glass lights in the east windows of the house is a depiction of the Ark of the Covenant, a nifty detail if ever there was one (80). Also, one learns about the early tactic of making a “Resurrection Pie” to create the illusion that a host had prepared more foods for a meal than was actually the case—“a homely dish composed of promiscuous fragments, which was intended merely to swell the number of dishes on the board, but otherwise to be ignored” (73).

“The important thing now”
:
Boelcke,
Secret Conferences of Dr. Goebbels,
78–79. Goebbels came up with a particularly cunning way to further generate unease within England, by amplifying already widespread fears that fifth columnists were hard at work paving the way for invasion. He commanded his director of external broadcasting to achieve this by inserting “mysterious-sounding but well thought-out messages” into regular programming, these crafted to sound like what one might imagine the secret communications of spies would sound like, “thereby keeping alive the suspicion that we are getting in touch with members of the Fifth Column in Britain.” One can only imagine a British family listening to such a broadcast on a Sunday evening. “How so very odd—why did that news reader just say porridge for the sixth time?” Ibid., 79.

“It is curious”
:
Colville,
Fringes of Power,
1:266.

“We feel that the material loss”
:
Upward to Churchill, Aug. 20, 1940; Beaverbrook to John Martin, Aug. 26, 1940, Correspondence, BBK/D, Beaverbrook Papers.

“We have already many interruptions”
:
Beaverbrook to Churchill, Aug. 27, 1940, BBK/D, Beaverbrook Papers.

“Undoubtedly,” he said
:
Gilbert,
War Papers,
2:697.

“On the whole”
:
Colville,
Fringes of Power,
1:267.

Their mother, Edith Starr Miller
:
Miller,
Occult Theocracy,
8. Miller also wrote a kind of cookbook, published in 1918, called
Common Sense in the Kitchen,
to show how best to reduce food waste at home, tailoring her advice for a “household of 12 servants and 3 masters.” See Edith Starr Miller,
Common Sense in the Kitchen: Normal Rations in Normal Times
(New York: Brentano’s, 1918), 3.

“very attractive and refreshing”
:
Colville,
Fringes of Power,
1:99n.

“The collapse of England”
:
Overy,
Battle of Britain,
87.

“a piece of carelessness”
:
Basil Collier,
Battle of Britain,
95.

His enemies made him out
:
Fort,
Prof,
233; Birkenhead,
Prof in Two Worlds,
167, 272–73; Note, “
Mrs. Beard:
An old woman…,” June 4, 1959, A113/F1, Lindemann Papers. See the rest of the long saga of the former nurse—and her increasing fiscal demands—at F2–F15. For other examples of the Prof’s charitable deeds, see files A114–18.

The one universal balm
:
For various references to tea, see Overy,
Battle of Britain,
45–46; Stansky,
First Day of the Blitz,
138; Harrisson,
Living Through the Blitz,
78; Wheeler-Bennett,
Action This Day,
182–83.

“The wisdom of a 2 ounce tea ration”
:
Fort,
Prof,
217.