All Hell Let Loose_ The World at War 1939-1945 - Max Hastings [50]
On the eve of commencing hostilities with France, Mussolini asserted privately his intention to declare war, but not to wage it. Unsurprisingly, this minimalist approach precipitated a fiasco: on 17 June, when the French had already asked for an armistice, he abruptly ordered an attack on the Franco–Italian border in the Alps. The Italian army, wrong-footed by the sudden transition from manning fixed positions to launching an offensive, was briskly repulsed. The Duce’s delusions and confusion of purpose persisted thereafter: he expressed hopes that the British would not make peace until Italy had been able to make some show of contributing to their defeat, and that the Germans would suffer a million casualties before Britain was overrun. He wished to see Hitler victorious, but not all-powerful. All his dreams would perish in a fashion that would have rendered Mussolini an object of pity and ridicule, had not his delusions cost so many lives.
On 20 June, Franz Halder wrote complacently: ‘I just cannot comprehend what more the political leadership could want of us, and which of its wishes have remained unfulfilled.’ Hitler’s army adjutant Col. Georg Engel recorded: ‘The C-in-C [Gen. Walther von Brauchitsch] had his hour of triumph with the Führer when he announced the end of operations and preparations for an armistice. He briefed the F[ührer] on the urgent need either to make peace with Britain or to prepare and carry out an invasion as soon as possible. The Führer is sceptical and considers Britain so weak that, after bombing, major land operations will be unnecessary. The army will move in and take up occupation duties. The F[ührer] comments that “One way or another … [the British] will have to accept the situation.”’
Among the more unlikely spectators of the German victory parade in Paris on 22 June was a bewildered nineteen-year-old English girl, Rosemary Say, who found herself trapped in the French capital:
The war machine rolled down the Champs Elysées: gleaming horses, tanks, machinery, guns and thousands upon thousands of soldiers. The procession was immaculate, shining and seemingly endless … like a gigantic green snake that wound itself around the heart of the broken city, which waited pathetically to be swallowed up. There was a huge crowd of onlookers, most of them silent but some cheering. My [neutral American] companions were like small boys: calling out the names of different regiments, exclaiming at the modern tanks and whistling at the wonderful horses. I was quiet, fully conscious that I was caught up in a moment of history. Even so, I felt no grand emotions … But as the hours passed and the seemingly endless spectacle continued, I began to feel a little ashamed at having accepted the invitation. I thought of my family and friends back in London, and of the fears for the future they must have.
Before the Germans attacked in the west, the Allies had wanted a long war, believing this would serve their best interests by enabling them to mobilise both American support and their own industrial resources against Hitler. The fall of Norway, Denmark, France, Belgium and Holland seemed to show that instead, the Nazis had achieved a swift and conclusive triumph. Few people anywhere in the world saw that Germany’s armistice with France, signed in the historic railway carriage at Compiègne on 22 June, marked not an end, but a beginning. The scale of Hitler’s ambitions, and the stubbornness of Churchill’s defiance, had yet to reveal themselves.
Britain Alone
RAF fighter pilot Paul Richey, wounded in France, was flown home by mail plane in the first days of June: ‘I looked down on the calm and peaceful English countryside, the smoke rising not from bombed villages, but lazily from cottage chimneys, and saw a game of cricket in progress on a village pitch. With my mind still filled with the blast