All Hell Let Loose_ The World at War 1939-1945 - Max Hastings [51]
Churchill’s speech to the House of Commons on 18 June 1940 has been so often quoted that it sometimes receives only the nod due to glorious rhetoric. But its closing words repay attention, because they defined for the rest of the war the democracies’ vision of their purpose:
What General Weygand called the battle of France is over. I expect that the battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our empire. The whole might and fury of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us, therefore, brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’
It is striking to contrast the prime minister’s appeal to ‘brace ourselves to our duties’ with the strident demands of Germany’s warlord, in similar circumstances in 1944–45, for ‘fanatical resistance’. Grace, dignity, wit, humanity and resolution characterised the leadership of Britain’s prime minister; only the last of these could be attributed to Hitler. In the summer of 1940, Churchill faced an enormous challenge, to convince his own people and the world that continued resistance was credible. Sergeant L.D. Pexton, thirty-four years old, was a prisoner in Germany when he wrote on 19 July: ‘Heard today that Hitler had broadcast some peace terms and that Churchill had told him what to do with them … Hope they do patch up some sort of terms as everyone here wants it, and to get home.’ Pexton’s view was obviously influenced by experiencing defeat in France, and thereafter finding himself at the mercy of the victorious Nazis. But in Britain, too, there were those – especially among the commercial classes and the ruling caste, best informed about the nation’s weakness – who continued to fear the worst. It was Churchill’s epic personal achievement to rally them in support of the simple purpose of repelling invasion.
The latter months of 1940 were decisive in determining the course of the war. The Nazis, stunned by the scale of their triumphs, allowed themselves to suffer a loss of momentum. By launching an air assault on Britain, Hitler adopted the worst possible strategic compromise: as master of the Continent, he believed a modest further display of force would suffice to precipitate its surrender. Yet if, instead, he had left Churchill’s people to stew on their island, the prime minister would have faced great difficulties in sustaining national morale and a charade of strategic purpose. A small German contingent dispatched to support the Italian attack on Egypt that autumn would probably have sufficed to expel Britain from the Middle East; Malta could easily have been taken. Such humiliations would have dealt heavy blows to the credibility of Churchill’s policy of fighting on.
As it was, however, the Luftwaffe’s clumsy offensive posed the one challenge which