Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [71]
Following the suicide of the Greek prime minister, Alexander Korizis, on April 18, the will of his nation’s leadership collapsed. In London, Robert Menzies wrote after a War Cabinet on April 24, 1941: “I am afraid of a disaster242, and understand less than ever why Dill and Wavell advised that the Greek adventure had military merits. Of the moral merits I have no doubt. Better Dunkirk than Poland or Czechoslovakia.” Menzies added two days later: “War cabinet. Winston says ‘We will lose only 5000 men in Greece.’ We will in fact lose at least 15000. W is a great man, but he is more addicted to wishful thinking every day.”
Towards the end of April, a young soldier on leave in Lancashire who was visiting housewife Nella Last got up and left the living room as the family tuned to a broadcast by the prime minister. Mrs. Last said: “Aren’t you going to listen to Winston Churchill?”243 Her guest demurred, as she recorded in her diary: “An ugly twist came to his mouth and he said ‘No, I’ll leave that for all those who like dope.’ I said, ‘Jack, you’re liverish, pull yourself together. We believe in Churchill—one must believe in someone.’ He said darkly, ‘Well, everyone is not so struck.’” Mrs. Last, like the overwhelming majority of British people, yearned to sustain her faith in the prime minister. Yet it seemed hard to do so, on such an evening as this: “Did I sense a weariness and … foggy bewilderment as to the future in Winston’s speech—or was it all in my tired head, I wonder? Anyway, I got no inspiration—no little banner to carry. Instead I felt I got a glimpse of a horror and carnage that we have not yet thought of … More and more do I think it is the ‘end of the world’—of the old world, anyway.” The poor woman acknowledged that she was unhappy and frightened. “Its funny how sick one can get, and not able to eat—just through … fear.” Harold Nicolson, parliamentary under-secretary at the Ministry of Information, wrote: “All that the country really wants244 is some assurance of how victory is to be achieved. They are bored by talks about the righteousness of our cause and our eventual triumph. What they want are facts indicating how we are to beat the Germans. I have no idea at all how we are to give them those facts.”
In Greece, the retreating army was much moved by the manner of its parting from the stricken people: “We were nearly the last British troops they would see and the Germans might be at our heels,” wrote Lt. Col. R. P. Waller of his artillery unit’s withdrawal through Athens, “yet cheering, clapping crowds lined the streets and pressed about our cars … Girls and men leapt on the running boards to kiss or shake hands with the grimy, weary gunners. They threw flowers to us and ran beside us crying ‘Come back—You must come back again—Goodbye—Good luck.’” The Germans took the Greek capital on April 27. They had secured the country with a mere 5,000 casualties. The British lost 12,000 men, 9,000 of these becoming prisoners. The rest of Wavell’s expeditionary force was fortunate to escape to Crete from the ports of the Peloponnese.
Dill broadcast his gloom beyond the War Office. “He himself took a depressed view245 of our prospect in Libya, Syria and even Ira[q],” Lord Hankey recorded after a conversation with the CIGS, “and said that the German armoured forces are superior to ours both in numbers and efficiency—even in the actual Tanks. He was evidently very anxious about invasion, and seemed to fear that Winston would insist on denuding this country of essential defensive forces. He asked what a CIGS could do if he thought the PM was endangering the safety of the country.” In such a case he should resign, said Hankey, an increasingly malevolent critic of the prime minister. Dill mused aloud: “But can one resign in war?” It is extraordinary that the