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justly despised. Yet by November 1940, he could afford to display generosity. His mastery of the nation was secure. His successful defiance of Hitler commanded the admiration of much of the world. He had displayed gifts of self-discipline and political management such as had hitherto been absent from his career. His speeches were recognised as among the greatest ever delivered by a statesman, in war or peace. All that now remained was to devise some means of waging war against an enemy whose control of the Continent was unchallengeable, and whose superiority over Britain remained overwhelming. For Winston Churchill, the hardest part began when the achievement of “the few” was already the stuff of legend.

FIVE

Greek Fire

1. Seeking Action

IN THE AUTUMN of 1940, even Churchill’s foes at Westminster and in Whitehall conceded that, since taking office, he had revealed a remarkable accession of wisdom. He had not become a different person from his old self, but shed the maverick’s mantle. He looked and sounded a king, “ay, every inch a king,” albeit one movingly conscious that he was the servant of a democracy. In a few months, he had achieved a personal dominance of the country which rendered his colleagues acolytes, almost invisible in the shadow of his pedestal. Only Eden and Bevin made much impact on the popular imagination.

Among politicians and service chiefs, however, widespread uncertainty persisted, even if it was discreetly expressed. Though the Germans had not invaded Britain, what happened next? What chance of victory did Britain have? The well-known military writer Captain Basil Liddell Hart saw no prospect beyond stalemate203, and thus urged a negotiated peace. In September Dalton reported Beaverbrook as “very defeatist,” believing that Britain should merely “sit tight and defend ourselves204 until the USA comes into the war.” But would this ever happen? Raymond Lee, U.S. military attaché in London, was among many Americans bemused about what President Roosevelt meant when he promised that their country would aid the British “by all means short of war.” Lee sought an answer from senior diplomats at his own embassy: “They say no one knows205, that it depends on what R thinks from one day to another. I wonder if it ever occurs to the people in Washington that they have no God-given right to declare war. They may wake up one day to find that war has suddenly been declared upon the United States. That is the way Germany and Japan do business. Or, can it be that this is what Roosevelt is manoeuvring for?”

Once the Battle of Britain was won, the foremost challenge facing Churchill was to find another field upon which to fight. In July 1940, Lee was filled with admiration for Britain’s staunchness amid the invasion threat. But he suggested sardonically that if Hitler instead launched his armies eastward, “in a month’s time206 England would go off sound asleep again.” Likewise MP Harold Nicolson: “If Hitler were to postpone invasion207 and fiddle about in Africa and the Mediterranean, our morale might weaken.” As long as Britain appeared to face imminent catastrophe, its people displayed notable fortitude. Yet it was a striking feature of British wartime behaviour that the moment peril fractionally receded, many ordinary people allowed themselves to nurse fantasies that their ordeal might soon be over, the spectre of war somehow banished. Soldier Edward Stebbing wrote on November 14: “I have heard a good many members208 of this unit say that they wished the war would end whether we win or lose … almost every day I hear some variations of the same idea, the common reason being that most of us are fed up with the whole business … The government is criticised for its lack of aggressiveness.”

A correspondent wrote to Ernest Bevin from Portsmouth:

At our weekly meeting last night209 of delegates representing thousands of workers … the members were very disappointed at your not telling the public that the government intended to prosecute the war more vigorously, and take the offensive, instead of always being