Inferno - Max Hastings [53]
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 Britain was well-placed to repel. The British Army and people were not obliged to confront the Wehrmacht on their beaches and in their fields—a clash that would probably have ended ignominiously for the defenders. The prime minister merely required their acquiescence, while the country was defended by a few hundred RAF pilots and—more importantly though less conspicuously—by the formidable might of the Royal Navy’s ships at sea. The prime minister’s exalting leadership secured public support for his defiance of the logic of Hitlerian triumph, even when cities began to burn and civilians to die.
The prospect of an imminent invasion was less plausible than Britain’s chiefs of staff supposed and Churchill publicly asserted, because the Germans lacked amphibious shipping and escorts to convoy an army across the Channel in the face of an immensely powerful British fleet and an undefeated RAF. Hitler’s heart was never in it. But intelligence about his means and intentions was fragmentary: decryption of enemy cipher traffic at Bletchley Park1 lacked anything like the comprehensive coverage achieved later in the war. Much German activity, or absence of it, on the Continent was shrouded from London’s knowledge. British service chiefs, traumatised by the disaster in France, attributed almost mystical powers to the Wehrmacht.
Privately, Churchill was always sceptical about the invasion threat, but he emphasised it in his rhetoric and strategy making throughout 1940–41, as a means of promoting purposeful activity among both his people and the armed forces. He judged, surely rightly, that inertia and an understanding of their