Chamberlain—apparently grasping, for the first time, the implications of Britain’s commitment to Warsaw—expressed anxiety that a German invasion of Poland might involve Great Britain. Beck said nothing; there was nothing to say. Chamberlain naively asked where Hitler would strike next. The Pole sardonically replied that if Nazi statements were to be believed, “the gravest question is the colonial question.” Chamberlain asked about Russia, pointing out that the Reich and the U.S.S.R. shared no common border; to fight Nazis the Red Army would have to cross Polish or Rumanian soil. Beck replied that “any association between Poland and Russia” would mean war between Poland and the Reich; whatever Britain and the Soviet Union decided to do, Poland would “keep clear.” The issue of Rumania was raised for the third time, and Beck declared that Rumania should be left to her own devices “until the Danubian problem has cleared itself up.” He then reeled off a series of outright fabrications. Germany had “never contested” Polish rights in Danzig; indeed, Ribbentrop had “recently reaffirmed them.” He doubted that the Führer would “risk a conflict” over “local matters,” or that “any serious danger” of Nazi aggression existed. The prime minister suggested that Poland had been weakened by Germany’s seizure of Czechoslovakia’s Skoda Works. Beck replied that Poland was “not at all” dependent on Skoda’s factories. In munitions she was “largely self-supporting”; indeed, the Poles exported weapons and “even supplied guns to Great Britain.”96
That was too much for Chamberlain. As a man of commerce, he kept a sharper eye on England’s trade balance than any prime minister in memory. He knew what Britain imported, where it came from, the quantities and the prices, particularly goods bought by His Majesty’s Government. Polish arms weren’t on the list. The illustrious Colonel Beck was a liar. Chamberlain and Halifax were beginning to understand why this man was a legend. They had been had. HMG’s negotiations with him, and the culminating guarantee, had been a blind. Europe’s security had not been strengthened. Instead Britain’s vulnerability had grown.97
In politics the squeaky wheel gets little grease. This is particularly true when a public figure challenging the leader carries a controversial reputation in train. The mass distrusts controversy. Reluctant to reconsider its convictions, superstitions, and prejudices, it rarely withdraws support from those who are guiding its destinies. Thus inertia becomes an incumbent’s accomplice. So does human reluctance to admit error. Those who backed the top man insist, against all evidence, that they made the right choice.
Chamberlain was still basking in the glow of the reception that had greeted his return from Munich. Having saved the peace then, he believed he could do it again. And in their hearts Englishmen still yearned for abiding peace. Chamberlain thought he had time. He could avoid a general election until 1942. By then, his loyal admirers believed, the old man could pull one more rabbit out of his hat, and the old man thought so, too. Something had gone wrong. If he could identify it and find it, he could set the world right again. But he was puzzled. What was it? Where had it gone?
The source of his greatest anxiety could be found in the Reich Chancellery, but now Hitler’s fellow dictator in Rome had decided that he had better start grabbing while the grabbing was good. Brooding on his balcony above the huge sign “Il Duce ha sempre ragione!” (“The Duce is always right!”) Mussolini had decided the Führer had been upstaging him. The surest way to reach the world’s front pages was to break the peace. Therefore, the Duce would dazzle the international press by avenging a personal insult: the Albanians, under King Zog, had objected to the bullying tactics of the local Fascist party. The tattered banners that Italian legions had dragged through Ethiopia were unfurled and mended; Italian warships bombed Zog’s coast, causing him and his queen to flee to Greece first, and then to Turkey. On April 7, Good Friday, the first wave of legionnaires waded ashore, some of them drowning in a treacherous undercurrent, and the natives fled inland. Enough of them were assembled to vote for union with Italy. King Victor Emmanuel reluctantly accepted the crown. It was an infamous victory.
Churchill dryly observed: “The British habit of the week-end, the great regard which the British pay to holidays which coincide with festivals of the Church, is studied abroad.” He then pointed out that this was not all opéra bouffe. Despite its Ruritanian appearance, the mountainous little country was a strategic springboard for an invasion of Greece. Mussolini’s operation had been anticipated for weeks—every Italian embassy was like a sieve—but Churchill was the only English statesman who had worked out what he regarded as England’s most appropriate response. The evening before the Duce launched his Albanian adventure, Winston had dined at Cherkeley, Beaverbrook’s country home near Leatherhead. While the others were playing backgammon, he had approached a fellow guest—Arthur Christiansen, editor of the Daily Express and until now a stranger to him—to talk. He was feeling histrionic, and, as Christiansen put it in his memoirs, he seemed to be “rolling the words around his palate and licking them before they [were] uttered.” He asked: “Where is the—ah—the British Fleet tonight? It is lolling in the Bay of Naples. No doubt the—ah—the Commander of the British ships at Naples is—ah—being entertained ashore, entertained no doubt on the orders of—ah—Mussolini himself at the Naples Yacht Club.” Winston’s demeanor changed; he glowered, chewed his cigar, then growled: “And where should the British Fleet be tonight? On the other side of that longheel of a country called Italy, in the Adriatic Sea, not the Mediterranean Sea, to make the rape of Albania impossible.”98
At dawn the Duce’s men were on the beaches. Churchill was at home in Kent when news of the Italian assault reached Chartwell. He sent word to No. 10: “Hours now count.” Parliament, he wrote, ought to be “recalled at the latest on Tuesday,” and he hoped Chamberlain would form a united parliamentary front, “as in the case of the Polish Agreement.” As Churchill saw it, “It is imperative for us to recover the initiative in diplomacy…. What is now at stake is nothing less than the whole of the Balkan Peninsula. If these states remain exposed to German and Italian pressure while we appear, as they may deem it, incapable of action, they will be forced to make the best terms possible with Berlin. How forlorn then will our position become!”99
He proposed, as a first step, a British occupation of the Greek island of Corfu, “of course with Greek consent.” If the Royal Navy were there first, an Italian attack “even upon a few British ships would confront Mussolini with beginning a war of aggression upon England. This direct issue gives the best chance to all the forces in England which are opposed to a major war with England. So far from intensifying the grave risks which are now open, it diminishes them. But action ought to be taken tonight.” Chamberlain replied that this maneuver had found no support in the cabinet. Winston was not easily put off; the following week the P.M. wrote his sister that Churchill had been “at the telephone all day urging that Pmt should be summoned for Sunday & that the Fleet should go & seize Corfu that night!” If Winston were given an office, “would he wear me out resisting rash suggestions of this kind?”100
It was in fact rash. Churchill had proposed a classic exercise of sea power, ignoring the havoc Italian warplanes could wreak upon the British Fleet. Later he would learn not to underrate air power at sea. But the cardinal point is that he was urging action—while the prime minister was above all a man of inaction who would move only when, as at Munich, he was menaced by the threat of greater involvement. Harold Macmillan, a luncheon guest at Chartwell that Good Friday, later recalled, “It was a scene that gave me my first picture of Churchill at work. Maps were brought out; secretaries were marshalled; telephones began to ring.” The estate had been transformed into a state within a state, with advisers, researchers, filing cabinets, and mounted charts. Approaching the end of his life, Macmillan would remember: “I shall always have a picture of that spring day and the sense of power and energy, the great flow of action, which came from Churchill, although he then held no public office.” In London’s ministries eve
ryone seemed indecisive, vacillating. But not here with the master of Chartwell. To Macmillan, “He alone seemed to be in command, when everyone else was dazed and hesitating.”101
Winston’s proposals to Chamberlain seemed presumptuous, but no other living Englishman, in uniform or mufti, possessed so profound a knowledge of the Royal Navy. The effort which dazzled Macmillan continued to annoy Chamberlain, however. To his sister the P.M. complained that “It doesn’t make things easier to be badgered… by the two Oppositions & Winston who is the worst of the lot, telephoning almost every hour of the day.”102
Actually the prime minister ought to have been seeking advice; he had a great deal at stake in the Adriatic. Ever since moving into No. 10 he had been courting Mussolini, trying to drive a wedge between the Duce and the Führer. In January he and an FO entourage had journeyed to Rome and appealed for the good offices of “Musso,” as Chamberlain called him in his diary. Specifically, he hoped that the Duce could be persuaded “to prevent Herr Hitler from carrying out some ‘mad dog’ act.” Mussolini asked the P.M. whether he wanted to raise any specific point. Chamberlain replied that German rearmament and Wehrmacht troop moves were “giving rise to a great deal of anxiety and doubt… all over Europe.” According to Ciano, his father-in-law thought this sounded like a whine; he had been listening for a trumpet call, but that was an instrument Neville Chamberlain did not know how to play. “The talks with the English are finished,” wrote Ciano, dismissing them as “nothing of consequence.” Churchill had anticipated Chamberlain’s failure. Earlier, dining with Vansittart and Duff Cooper, he had remarked: “Mussolini, like Hitler, regards Britannia as a frightened, flabby old woman, who at worst would only bluster, and was anyhow incapable of making war. She certainly looks the part.”103
Bismarck, when told that Romans dreamed of a second empire, remarked: “The Italians have a big appetite and poor teeth.” That was rather brutal, but it described Musso to a T. Tiny Albania, like tiny Ethiopia, was about all that the new Italian army, straining every muscle and summoning that last desperate erg of effort, could manage to conquer. Still, his attack on King Zog’s realm was aggression and therefore had to be condemned by Parliament, ending the possibility, once real, that Italy might again march with the democracies. This was a good time for wise British statesmen to say nothing. But Chamberlain, who brandished an olive branch when the flashing blade of a saber was needed, had a genius for flexing Britannia’s muscles at the wrong time. On the following Thursday, April 13, he informed a startled House of Commons that His Majesty’s Government had decided to guarantee the frontiers of Greece, Turkey, and, once more, Rumania.
Winston was already having second, third, and fourth thoughts about the Polish guarantee, in part because he learned that the prime minister was also having them. On Monday, April 3, three days after Chamberlain had announced Britain’s new relationship with the Poles, Churchill had told the House that “this is no time for negotiation. After the crime and treachery committed against Czechoslovakia, our first duty is to reestablish the authority of law and public faith in Europe.” Members were beginning to wonder about the relevance of this when he drew their attention to “a sinister passage in The Times’ leading article on Saturday, similar to that which foreshadowed the ruin of Czechoslovakia.” Dawson had written: “The new obligation which this country yesterday assumed does not bind Great Britain to defend every inch of the present frontiers of Poland. The key word in the statement is not ‘integrity’ but ‘independence.’ ” The prime minister’s statement, the editorial continued, “involves no blind acceptance of the status quo…. This country”—the confidence of The Times’s editor in assuming that he always spoke for Britain is a source of endless amazement—“has never been an advocate of the encirclement of Germany, and is not now opposed to the extension of Germany’s economic pressure and influence, nor to the constructive work she may yet do for Europe.”104
Churchill was unaware that this passage actually reflected Chamberlain’s views. Earlier that same Monday, before Winston spoke, the prime minister had written his sister that his statement linking England’s fortunes with Poland was “unprovocative in tone, but firm, clear but stressing the important point (perceived alone by The Times) that what we are concerned with is not the boundaries of States, but attacks on their independence. And it is we who will judge whether this independence is threatened or not.” Reports that appeasement was dead, it seemed, had been greatly exaggerated. But it was dying. Only a few weeks earlier Margot Asquith had declared that anyone “who is against the Gvts. Peace policy” was guilty of treason. But she had been among those who were completely turned round by the Nazi rape of Prague. After the prime minister’s Birmingham speech protesting Hitler’s betrayal of the Munich accord, she had written to Winston: “We are old friends (I, very old!). I think you sd go to 10 Downing Street & offer yr services, in whatever the PM wishes to place you. We must show Germany that we are united against her wish to dominate Europe.”105
If so proud a woman could be humbled by Prague, as she was, if she could reject her convictions of yesterday and campaign for stronger British defenses, a hard line with Hitler, and, above all, Churchill’s return to power—if that single event could reconcile Margot and her stepdaughter Violet, who had long believed Churchill alone could save England, to the point that they wept and embraced—then it is hardly surprising that their reconciliation was repeated in millions of homes, as those who had believed Munich meant “peace for our time” turned volte-face, boxing the compass as their long winter of feuding ended. Churchill, then Chamberlain, and then Margot prayed for “unity,” for “union”—an end to the dissension which enervated England and succored only Hitler.
Their yearning for a single national purpose was not self-fulfilling. England was not marching in lockstep toward a single goal. Democracies do not work that way. Churchill’s proposed policies, in the prime minister’s view, would split the country into flinders. Nevertheless, one or the other must prevail. The question was which, and as England struggled toward a consensus, Englishmen had a lot of catching up to do. For six lost years the British public had been misled and misinformed. To be sure, it had been a public willing, even eager, to be deceived, but leaders bred in British public schools were expected to achieve more than popularity. Now, and throughout 1939 and into 1940, as the transfiguration of an England disenchanted with appeasement picked up momentum, the long pendulum swung back toward honor.
The swing was neither smooth, swift, nor uninterrupted. A vague uneasiness had been perceptible even before Munich; after the prime minister departed London for his confrontation with the Führer at Godesberg, the German chargé d’affaires had wired the Wilhelmstrasse: “Chamberlain and his party have left under a heavy load of anxiety…. Unquestionably opposition is growing to Chamberlain’s policy.” But then the P.M. had brought back what the British public thought was peace with honor, and the pendulum had been arrested. After Prague, its motion resumed, only to slow when the Polish guarantee was announced.106
It went like that, in fits and starts. The British people remained deeply respectful of authority, and Neville Chamberlain continued to control the institutions of government. Fleet Street, in the beginning, was deeply divided. And those who wanted to see His Majesty’s Government replaced could not agree on who should lead them. In retrospect Churchill seems to have been inevitable, but that was not so at the time. As the prime minister’s popularity ebbed, senior Conservatives, led by David Margesson, the chief Tory whip, began casting about for a successor. Almost to a man, they preferred Halifax. Chamberlain himself favored his foreign secretary; so did the King; so did The Times. Outside the establishment, however, Halifax was discredited. If a new tenant were to move into Downing Street, most of the great London dailies—and, if the polls were accurate, most Englishmen—wanted a man untainted by a record of truckling to Hitler and unstained by responsibility for the shabby state of Britain’s defenses.
The shoe fitted
Winston, and he was an obvious candidate. Yet claims were advanced for others. Eden and Duff Cooper, disillusioned, had resigned from the cabinet. Amery was also fearless. Nevertheless, each of Churchill’s rivals was vulnerable. Eden and Cooper had waited too long to quit. And Amery, who had misjudged the Führer in the beginning, had gone along with Baldwin’s draconian cuts in Britain’s defense estimates during the years when rearmament was vital.
Those who wanted a new broom in Downing Street sought a man of political stature who had opposed HMG’s policies and attempted to reverse their course. Eden in particular had problems here. Even before his appointment as foreign secretary, he had been an ardent appeaser. To his mortification, his role in forfeiting the Rhineland, which he had thought forgotten, was exhumed. Duff Cooper, on the other hand, was unpredictable and guilty of lapses in judgment. As relations deteriorated between White-hall and the Wilhelmstrasse he wrote seventy-two-year-old Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, the one man no other Conservative wanted to remember, with a singular proposal. “If the international situation deteriorates, which I believe it will,” he wrote, “we shall be forced to have a Coalition Government.” Duff Cooper doubted “that Neville could ever lead such a Government,” and then dealt with the two likeliest successors—“Halifax or Winston.” He didn’t believe the first was “up to it,” and Churchill “has too many and such violent enemies.” Many Englishmen, he added, “don’t trust him.” Having set up the retired P.M., who was even more responsible than Chamberlain for the neglect of the country’s defenses, Duff Cooper propositioned him: “I am wondering whether after two years’ rest you feel you could come back.” Since Earl Baldwin of Bewdley’s image had been tarnished beyond restoring, he replied that no, he did not think he could.107