Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [27]
The German drive on Paris began on June 5. Anglo-French exchanges in the days that followed were dominated by increasingly passionate appeals from Reynaud for fighters. Five RAF squadrons were still based in France, while four more were operating over France from British bases. The War Cabinet and Chiefs of Staff were united in their determination to weaken Britain’s home defence no further. On June 9, Churchill cabled to South African premier Jan Smuts, who had urged the dispatch of more aircraft, saying: “I see only one sure way through now, to wit, that Hitler should attack this country, and in so doing break his air weapon. If this happens he will be left to face the winter with Europe writhing under his heel, and probably with the United States against him after the Presidential election is over.” The Royal Navy was preoccupied with fears about the future of the French fleet. Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, the first sea lord, declared that only its sinking could ensure that it would not be used by the Germans.
Yet perversely and indeed indefensibly, Churchill continued to dispatch more troops to France. The draft operation order for the 1st Canadian Division, drawn up as it embarked on June 11, said: “The political object of the re-constituted BEF83 is to give moral support to the French Government by showing the determination of the British Empire to assist her ally with all available forces … It is the intention … to concentrate … in the area North and South of Rennes … A division may have to hold 50 miles of front.” At a meeting of ministers in London that day, Dill was informed that a study was being undertaken for the maintenance of a bridgehead in Brittany, “the Breton redoubt.”84 As late as June 13, Royal Engineers were preparing reception points and transit camps on the Brittany coast, to receive further reinforcements from Britain.
Churchill recognised the overwhelming likelihood of French surrender, yet still cherished hopes of maintaining a foothold across the Channel. It seemed to him preferable to face the difficulties of clinging on in France, rather than those of mounting from Britain a return to a German-defended coast. He sought to sustain French faith in the alliance by the deployment of a mere three British divisions. He seemed unmoved by Mussolini’s long-expected declaration of war on June 10, merely remarking to Jock Colville: “People who go to Italy85 to look at ruins won’t have to go as far as Naples and Pompeii again.” The private secretary noted his master’s bitter mood that day. On the afternoon of June 11, Churchill flew with Eden, Dill, Ismay and Spears to the new French army headquarters at Briare, on the Loire, seventy miles from Paris, to meet the French government once again. The colonel who met their plane, wrote Spears, might have been greeting poor relations at a funeral. At their destination, the Château du Muguet, there was no sense of welcome. At that evening’s meeting of the Supreme War Council, after the French had unfolded a chronicle of doom, Churchill summoned all his powers. He spoke with passion and eloquence about the forces which Britain could deploy in France in 1941—twenty, even twenty-five divisions. Weygand said dismissively that the outcome of the war would be determined in hours, not days or weeks. Dill, pathetically, invited the supreme commander to use the makeshift British forces now in France wherever and however he saw fit.
The French, with the Germans at the gates of Paris, could scarcely be blamed for thinking themselves mocked. Eden wrote: “Reynaud was inscrutable86 and Weygand polite, concealing with difficulty his scepticism. Marshal Pétain was overtly incredulous. Though he said nothing, his attitude was obviously c’est de la blague”—“it’s a joke.” The harshest confrontation came when Weygand asserted that the decisive point had been reached, that the British should commit every fighter they had to the battle. Churchill replied: “This is not the decisive point.