Winston Churchill's War Leadership - Martin Gilbert [30]
How far did such “deadliness” show itself in the Second World War? In June 1940 the War Cabinet authorized the detention without trial of tens of thousands of German-born “enemy aliens,” fearing they might serve as a pro-German fifth column in the event of an invasion. Many of those arrested were German opponents of Nazism who had found refuge in Britain. Others were German Jews, recent refugees from Nazi racial prosecution, but the prospect of invasion seemed so imminent that there was no time to examine individual cases. One of those arrested and interned was a German-Jewish refugee, Eugen Spier, who from 1936 to 1939 had helped finance the Focus, an all-Party group that Churchill set up to discuss the Nazi danger and to make it more widely known. These swift and widespread internments have been commented on as an example of Churchill’s ruthlessness. Less publicized is Churchill’s wish to avoid these draconian measures. “Many enemy aliens,” he told the War Cabinet as the plan was going ahead, “had a great hatred of the Nazi regime, and it was unjust to treat our friends as our foes.” Churchill put forward another idea, to form all able-bodied anti-Nazi aliens into a Foreign Legion for training and eventual use as garrison troops overseas, possibly in Iceland, which Britain had just occupied. But the War Cabinet insisted on internment, and Churchill had no veto on its decisions and deferred to the arguments of the Minister responsible, Sir John Anderson—formerly a member of Neville Chamberlain’s Cabinet—who insisted that the internment was essential and urgent.
One of the most ruthless British wartime acts, certainly in terms of loss of life, was the decision in July 1940 to open fire on the warships of the French fleet then at anchor in the French North African port of Oran, after the Germans had insisted, as part of the Franco-German Armistice agreement, that all French warships be transferred to German control. Desperate to prevent these ships from becoming part of a German invasion fleet, Churchill offered the French admiral the choice of scuttling them or sailing them to a British or a neutral port for the duration of the war. If the admiral refused, Churchill decided that the ships would have to be sunk or disabled. For much of July 3, negotiations with the French admiral continued, but when it became clear, from an intercepted French naval signal, that the admiral would continue to refuse the British terms, the British warships outside Oran opened fire and more than 1,250 French sailors, Britain’s allies of only a few weeks earlier, were killed.
For Churchill, a lifelong friend of the French people, this course was horrendously difficult to take, although dictated by the urgent needs of war and survival. It had one unexpected and beneficial result: it convinced President Roosevelt—despite the belief of his ambassador, Joseph Kennedy (the father of John F. Kennedy), to the contrary—that the British really were determined to fight on, and that any war material sent to Britain would not be allowed to fall into German hands as a result of an armistice. It had been his hope, Churchill told the House of Commons during the Oran debate, “that our terms would be accepted without bloodshed.” When Churchill finished his statement, in which he told the House, “We shall not fail in our duty, however painful,” the whole House rose to its feet to cheer. It was the first such demonstration of his premiership. Churchill wept, and as he left the chamber he was heard to say to a fellow Member: “This is heartbreaking to me.”
Churchill’s ruthlessness was tempered with compassion. Throughout the war, Churchill was disturbed and distressed when it came to high