Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [25]
Ian Jacob was among those impressed by the calm with which Churchill received Pownall’s Dunkirk situation report of May 30. Thereafter, the War Cabinet addressed another budget of French requests: for troops to support them on the Somme front; more aircraft; concessions to Italy; and a joint appeal to Washington. Churchill interpreted these demands as establishing a context for French surrender, once Britain had refused them. The decision was taken to withdraw residual British forces from northern Norway. The prime minister determined to fly again to Paris to press France to stay in the war, and to make plain that Britain would dissociate itself from any parley with Germany mediated by the Italians. The next morning, as Churchill’s Flamingo took off from Northolt, he knew that 133,878 British and 11,666 Allied troops had been evacuated from Dunkirk.
The prime minister’s old friend Sir Edward Spears was serving as a British liaison officer with the French, a role he had also filled in World War I. Spears, waiting at Villacoublay airfield to meet the party, was impressed by the prime minister’s imposture of gaiety. Churchill poked the British officer playfully in the stomach with his stick, and as ever appeared stimulated by finding himself upon the scene of great events. He beamed upon the pilots of the escorting Hurricanes which had landed behind him, was driven into Paris for lunch at the British embassy, then went to see Reynaud at the Ministry of War.
Amid the gloom that beset all of France’s leaders, gathered with her prime minister, Pétain and Admiral Jean-François Darlan showed themselves foremost in despair. As Ismay described it: “A dejected-looking old man81 in plain clothes shuffled towards me, stretched out his hand and said: ‘Pétain.’ It was hard to believe that this was the great Marshal of France.” The rationalists, as they saw themselves, listened unmoved to Churchill’s outpouring of rhetoric. He spoke of the two British divisions already in northwestern France, which he hoped could be further reinforced to assist in the defence of Paris. He described in dramatic terms the events at Dunkirk. He declared in his extraordinary franglais, reinforced by gestures, that French and British soldiers would leave arm in arm—“partage—bras dessus, bras dessous.” On Cabinet orders, Gort was to quit Dunkirk that night. If, as expected, Italy entered the war, British bomber squadrons would at once strike at her industries. Churchill beamed once more. If only France could hold out through the summer, he said, all manner of possibilities would open. In a final surge of emotion, he declared his conviction that American help would come. Thus this thirteenth meeting of the Allied Supreme War Council concluded its agenda.
Reynaud and two other ministers were guests for dinner that night at the palatial British embassy, in the Rue St.-Honoré. Churchill waxed lyrical about the possibility of launching striking forces against German tank columns. He left Paris the next morning knowing he had done all that force of personality could achieve to breathe inspiration into the hearts of the men charged with saving France. Yet few believed a word of it. The Allies’ military predicament was irretrievably dire. It was impossible to conceive any plausible scenario in which Hitler’s armies might be thrown back, given the collapse of French national will.
Paul Reynaud was among a handful of Frenchmen who, momentarily at least, remained susceptible to Churchill’s verbiage. To logical minds, there was an absurdity about almost everything the Englishman said to ministers and commanders in Paris. Britain’s prime minister paraded before his ally his own extravagant sense of honour. He promised military gestures which might further weaken his own country, but could not conceivably save France. He made wildly