Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [14]
He flung his Valet razor into the basin, swung around and said:—“Of course I mean we can beat them.”
Me: “Well, I’m all for it, but I don’t see how you can do it.”
By this time he had dried and sponged his face and turning round to me, said with great intensity: “I shall drag the United States in.”
Here was a characteristic Churchillian flash of revelation. The prospect of American belligerence was remote. For years, Neville Chamberlain had repeatedly and indeed rudely rebuffed advances from Franklin Roosevelt. Yet already the new prime minister recognised that U.S. aid alone might make Allied victory possible. He was obliged to acknowledge the probability—though, unlike France’s generals, he refused to bow to its inevitability—of German victory on the Continent. Reports from the battlefield grew steadily graver. Churchill urged the Chiefs of Staff to consider bringing large reinforcements from India and Palestine, and holding back some tank units then in transit from Britain to the BEF. The threat of a sudden German descent on England, spearheaded by paratroops, seized his imagination, unrealistic though it was.
A Home Intelligence report suggested to the government that national morale was badly shaken: “It must be remembered that the defence52 of the Low Countries had been continually built up in the press … Not one person in a thousand could visualise the Germans breaking through into France … A relieved acceptance of Mr. Churchill as prime minister allowed people to believe that a change of leadership would, in itself, solve the consequences of Mr. Chamberlain. Reports sent in yesterday and this morning show that disquiet and personal fear have returned.”
On the evening of May 18, the War Cabinet agreed that Churchill should broadcast to the nation, making plain the gravity of the emergency. Ministers were told that Mussolini had rejected Britain’s proposal for an Italian declaration of neutrality. This prompted Navy Minister A. V. Alexander to urge the immediate occupation of Crete, as a base for operations against Italy in the Mediterranean. Churchill dismissed the idea out of hand, saying that Britain was much too committed elsewhere to embark upon gratuitous adventures.
On the morning of Sunday, May 19, it was learned that the BEF had evacuated Arras, increasing the peril of its isolation from the main French forces. Emerging together from a meeting, Ironside said to Eden: “This is the end of the British Empire.” The secretary for war noted: “Militarily, I did not see how53 he could be gainsaid.” Yet it was hard for colleagues to succumb to despair, when their leader marvellously sustained his wit. That same bleak Sunday, the prime minister said to Eden: “About time number 1754 turned up, isn’t it?” The two of them, at a Cannes casino’s roulette wheel in 1938, had backed the number and won twice.
At noon, Churchill was driven across Kent to Chartwell, his beloved old home, shuttered for the duration. He sought an interlude of tranquillity in which to prepare his broadcast to the nation. But he had been feeding his goldfish for only a few minutes when he was interrupted by a telephone call. Gort, in France, was seeking sanction to fall back on the sea at Dunkirk if his predicament worsened. The C-in-C was told instead to seek to reestablish contact with the French army, on his right; German spearheads were in between. The French, in their turn, would be urged to counterattack towards him. The Belgians were pleading for the BEF to hold a more northerly line beside their own troops. The War Cabinet determined, however, that the vital priority was to reestablish a common front with the main French armies. The Belgians must be left to their fate, while British forces redeployed southwestwards towards Arras and Amiens.
Broadcasting to the British people that night, Churchill asserted a confidence which he did