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pains to appear reasonable. Halifax spoke with the voice of logic. Amid shattering military defeat, even Churchill dared not offer his colleagues a vision of British victory. In those Dunkirk days, the director of military intelligence told a BBC correspondent: “We’re finished. We’ve lost the army and we’ll never have time or strength to build another.” Churchill did not challenge the view of those who assumed that the war would end, sooner or later, with a negotiated settlement rather than with a British army marching into Berlin. He pitched his case low, because there was no alternative. A display of exaggerated confidence would have invited ridicule. He relied solely upon the argument that there was no more to lose by fighting on, than by throwing in the hand.

How would his colleagues, or even posterity, have assessed his judgement had he sought, at those meetings, to offer the prospect of military triumph? To understand what happened in Britain in the summer of 1940, it is essential to acknowledge the logic of impending defeat. This was what created tensions between the hearts and minds even of staunch and patriotic British people. The best aspiration they and their prime minister could entertain was a manly determination to survive today, and pray for a better tomorrow. The War Cabinet discussions between May 26 and 28 took place while it was still doubtful that any significant portion of the BEF could be saved from France.

At the meeting of May 26, with the support of Attlee, Greenwood and eventually Chamberlain, Churchill summed up for the view that there was nothing to be lost by fighting on, because no terms which Hitler might offer in the future were likely to be worse than those now available. Having discussed the case for a parley, he dismissed it, even if Halifax refused to do so. At seven o’clock that evening, an hour after the War Cabinet meeting ended, the Admiralty signalled the flag officer Dover, Vice Adm. Bertram Ramsay: “Operation Dynamo is to commence.” Destroyers of the Royal Navy, aided by a fleet of small craft, began to evacuate the BEF from Dunkirk.

That night yet another painful order was forced upon Churchill. The small British force at Calais, drawn from the Rifle Brigade, possessed only nuisance value. But everything possible had to be done to distract German forces from the Dunkirk perimeter. The Rifles must resist to the last. Ismay wrote: “The decision affected us all67 very deeply, especially perhaps Churchill. He was unusually silent during dinner that evening, and ate and drank with evident distaste.” He asked a private secretary, John Martin, to find for him a passage in George Borrow’s 1843 prayer for England. Martin identified the lines next day: “Fear not the result, for either thy end be a majestic and an enviable one, or God shall perpetuate thy reign upon the waters.”

On the morning of May 27, even as British troops were beginning to embark at Dunkirk, Churchill asked the leaders of the armed forces to prepare a memorandum, setting out the nation’s prospects for resisting invasion if France fell. Within a couple of hours, the Chiefs of Staff submitted an eleven-paragraph response, which identified the key issues with notable insight. As long as the RAF was “in being,” they wrote, its aircraft together with the warships of the Royal Navy should be able to prevent an invasion. If air superiority was lost, however, the navy could not indefinitely hold the Channel. Should the Germans secure a beachhead in southeast England, British home forces would be incapable of evicting them. The Chiefs pinpointed the air battle, Britain’s ability to defend its key installations and especially aircraft factories, as the decisive factor in determining the future course of the war. They concluded with heartening words: “the real test is whether the morale of our fighting personnel and civil population will counter-balance the numerical and material advantages which Germany enjoys. We believe it will.”

The War Cabinet debated at length, and finally accepted, the Chiefs’ report. It was agreed