Winston Churchill's War Leadership - Martin Gilbert [7]
Nineteen days after Churchill became Prime Minister, as British troops were falling back towards Dunkirk, the Italian government indicated its willingness to mediate between Britain and Germany, with a view to some form of negotiated peace. Churchill was certain that the only terms Britain could acquire from a triumphant Germany would be those of subordination and servitude. At the least, Germany had intimated that it must be allowed to retain its conquests in the east: Prague and Warsaw were both under German rule. At that very moment, British troops were fighting in France to try to prevent a German victory there, and British airmen were combatting the German air force above French soil. Churchill could not conceive of negotiations doing anything except seal the fate of France, and undermine the British resolve to fight on once France had surrendered. Yet, at four in the afternoon of May 29, in a meeting held in Churchill’s room in the House of Commons, the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, told the War Cabinet: “We must not ignore the fact that we might get better terms before France went out of the war and our aircraft factories were bombed, than we might get in three months time.”
Churchill, in the strongest assertion of his war leadership yet seen, or required, opposed this line of reasoning. The notes of the War Cabinet recorded his response: “It was impossible to imagine that Herr Hitler would be so foolish as to let us continue our rearmament. In effect, his terms would put us completely at his mercy. We should get no worse terms if we went on fighting, even if we were beaten, than were open to us now. If, however, we continued the war and Germany attacked us, no doubt we should suffer some damage, but they also would suffer severe losses. Their oil supplies might be reduced. A time might come when we felt that we had to put an end to the struggle, but the terms would not then be more mortal than those offered to us now.” Both Halifax and Neville Chamberlain—whom Churchill had brought into his War Cabinet—saw some merit in saying (as Chamberlain expressed it) “that, while we would fight to the end to preserve our independence, we were ready to consider decent terms if such were offered to us.”
Churchill believed that this willingness to consider “decent terms” was a misreading of the public mood, but he could not know for certain, and he had no veto on any majority decision that might be made against him. At this point in the discussion, however, he had to ask for a break in the War Cabinet meeting—which had already lasted for two hours—to meet, for the first time since he had formed his Government, the twenty-five members of his administration who were not in the inner circle: the Junior Ministers and those Cabinet Ministers who were not in the War Cabinet. That meeting, fixed for six o’clock, had been set up several days earlier. No sooner had these Ministers come into his room in the House of Commons—the War Cabinet having left—than Churchill told them that although Hitler would probably “take Paris and offer terms,” as might the Italians too, he, Churchill, had no doubt whatever “that we must decline anything like this and fight on.”
To Churchill’s surprise, as he spoke the words “fight on,” there was a sudden outpouring of support from the twenty-five Ministers assembled there, in the very room where the discussion about a negotiated peace had just taken place. Churchill was overwhelmed by their spontaneous determination for continuing the fight. It gave him the added strength he needed half an hour later, at the reconvened War Cabinet meeting. Referring to the extraordinary enthusiasm he had witnessed for continuing the fight, Churchill went on to win the argument for continuing to resist the Nazi onslaught, telling the War Cabinet, “He did not remember having ever before heard a gathering of persons occupying high places in political life express themselves