Alone, 1932-1940

  In the Cabinet Room, Chamberlain told Churchill that he saw “no hope of averting war.” He proposed to form “a small War Cabinet of Ministers without departments” to conduct it. This would exclude the war, Admiralty and RAF ministers, which he thought wise. He had hoped to form a national coalition, but Labour had declined to join it. Churchill later recalled that the prime minister “invited me to become a member of the War Cabinet. I agreed to his proposal without comment, and on this basis we had a long talk on men and measures.” The P.M. repeated that he had abandoned his long quest for peace. “The die,” he said, “is cast.” The Foreign Office had informed Berlin that unless the Germans suspended “all aggressive action against Poland” and were prepared “to withdraw their forces” already there, His Majesty’s Government would fulfill its obligations to the Poles “without hesitation.”171

  This was considerably less than candid. Chamberlain had not abandoned hope of preserving the peace, did not believe the die was cast, and was prepared to hesitate indefinitely before fulfilling HMG’s obligations to the Poles. To Parliament early that evening the prime minister announced that the government was preparing a White Paper which would “make it perfectly clear that our object has been to bring about discussions about the Polish-German dispute between the two countries themselves on terms of equality, the settlement to be one which safeguarded the independence of Poland,” an agreement buttressed “by international guarantees.” The P.M. had his eye on history now; he was trying to launder it. His attempt was doomed. By drafting an apologia instead of fighting, he himself was flouting such guarantees. British and German foreign policy documents would provide a day-by-day account of his stewardship, and Churchill, not Chamberlain, was to be the first writer of that history. Furthermore, the last thing the Poles needed in this hour of desperation was a White Paper exonerating the Chamberlain government. Lacking tanks and divisions which could be moved on trucks, very short of antiaircraft and antitank guns, they had rashly decided to make their stand on Poland’s frontiers, meeting the enemy columns with massed cavalry charges. The strongest enemy force, the army group under Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, attacking from Moravia and Slovakia as well as Silesia, had overwhelmed the gallant but ill-starred defenders and was now roving through open country. Defiant but tragic Poles were being mashed beneath panzer treads of Generals Heinz Guderian and Paul von Kleist as the Wehrmacht drove across the corridor. The Poles’ Field Marshal Edward Rydz-Smigly had no reserves because the corridor forced him to fight a two-front war, sending the reserves to check another German army group striking southward from East Prussia.172

  At 10:00 A.M., as Churchill had been breaking the news to an incredulous Ironside, Raczyński had met his official obligation by calling on Halifax and delivering a formal notice of the Nazi invasion. It was, he said, “a plain case as provided for by the treaty.” The foreign secretary replied that he had no doubt of the facts—he was reluctant to discuss the treaty—and at 10:50, after Raczyński had departed, Halifax summoned the German chargé d’affaires, Theodor Kordt, and asked if he had any news which might interest HMG. Kordt replied that he knew nothing of a German attack and had received no instructions from the Wilhelmstrasse. The foreign secretary murmured that reports reaching his desk “create a very serious situation.” He said no more. Kordt reported their brief meeting to Berlin by phone at 11:45 A.M.173

  In this new situation, one of the few civilians who seemed to be himself—if indeed he was a civilian—was Adolf Hitler. After describing the bogus Polish attack on the German radio station to the Reichstag, he received Göring, accompanied by the ubiquitous Dahlerus. The Führer had been at ease with the Reichstag, but now, Dahlerus thought, his manner was “exceedingly nervous and very agitated.” He had always suspected that England wanted war, he said—believing his own lies—and now he knew it. He would crush Poland; he would crush England; he would destroy anyone who tried to stop him. The Führer “grew more and more excited and began to wave his arms,” Dahlerus noted; he shouted, and the shout rose to a scream; the “movements of his body began to follow those of his arms,” and “he brandished his fist and bent down so that it nearly touched the floor as he shrieked: ‘Und wenn es erforderlich ist, will ich zehn Jahre kämpfen!’ [‘And if necessary I will fight for ten years!’].”174

  Henderson was another exception to the rule. Everyone else in his embassy was anxious, but he followed the course that had contributed so much in leading Europe to the cataclysm now upon them. At 10:45 A.M., while the War Office in London was sending mobilization telegrams and Kordt was on his way to the FO, His Majesty’s envoy in Berlin had phoned Halifax: “I understand that the Poles blew up the Dirschau bridge during the night.” It was their bridge; they had the right to blow it, and, with German troops in their coal-scuttle steel helmets swarming on the far bank, would have been fools not to, but Henderson appears to have thought it aggressive. “On receipt of this news,” he said, “Hitler gave orders for the Poles to be driven back from the border line and to Göring for destruction of the Polish Air Force along the frontier.”175

  The ambassador ended his report: “Hitler may ask to see me… as a last effort to save the peace.” The fact that peace could no longer be salvaged—that World War II had begun, that borders guaranteed by his own government had been violated on a clumsy, vaudevillian excuse, that Poles of both sexes and all ages had been dying for nearly seven hours—was ignored. Josiah Wedgwood, an MP who despised appeasement and had visited Germany, recalled now in bitter contempt how Henderson had “smiled [and] fraternized with evil.” Like Chamberlain, Halifax, and Horace Wilson, Henderson was among that group of Englishmen who had, in Wedgwood’s words, mistaken Hitler “for a new crowned head at whose fancy cruelties they might giggle and from whom they might not differ with propriety.”176

  Hitler did not ask to see the British ambassador. After Britain’s declaration of war Henderson would return to London and volunteer to serve His Majesty in another diplomatic post for which his experience made him suitable. The Foreign Office would reply that there was none.

  In London parents of small children were studying a notice from the town clerk of Westminster instructing them to bring “infants up to two years of age” to designated centers “between the hours of 10.p [sic] and 6.0 p.m., to be fitted with helmets for protection against… gas.” This time the gas threat was real. John Gunther, until recently the London correspondent of the Chicago Daily News, told Americans in an NBC broadcast that Friday evening, September 1: “It’s a strange face that London wears tonight. It’s a dark face. We’re having a blackout here. The streets are black, the houses are black.” In the entire length of Piccadilly he had seen fewer than a half-dozen cars; the only Londoners in sight were workmen carrying sandbags into position; indeed, already “the whole town looks sandbagged.” Although “what may be the second world war began today,” London was “quiet and confident. The British take even such a supreme moment of crisis as tonight with good humor, quietly. A few moments ago I saw something highly typical on the news ticker: ‘The Football Association announces that a message received stated that the situation at present does not warrant the cancellation of tomorrow’s matches.’ ”177

  That sort of thing was taken as an illustration of British phlegm, and therefore encouraging. In fact, it was a sign that in their hearts and minds Britons were still at peace and expected to remain so. They were following their prime minister, matching their government’s mood. Under the agreement Poland and Britain had signed the previous Friday, England was pledged to act “at once” with “all the support and assistance in its power,” to make war on Germany. The status of Danzig alone was no longer an issue. Polish sovereignty had been violated. Without either an ultimatum or a declaration of war—shocking in those days—the Wehrmacht had invaded Poland on all fronts, and the Luftwaffe was bombing every Polish city, including Warsaw. No one could doubt now that the Führer’s objective was the military conquest of the entire country. Leg
ally, under her covenant, Great Britain had no choice; she was bound to declare war on Germany immediately. But she hadn’t; the bold note to Berlin which Chamberlain had quoted to Churchill, and then in the House of Commons, was inadequate.178

  Even so, there was less there than met the eye. Halifax sent Henderson, who would deliver the Foreign Office’s message to Ribbentrop, a note explaining that it was “in the nature of a warning and is not to be considered as an ultimatum.” At the same time, the Foreign Office asked Dahlerus: “Could you limit the hostilities until you had been to London?” Obviously, the invasion of Poland was not considered casus belli. Assured of some “limit,” His Majesty’s Government stood ready to negotiate. But any negotiations now would be cramped; the only alternative to declaring war was to insist that the Wehrmacht withdraw from Poland. Roger Cambon, of the French embassy, told Halifax that such a demand for a withdrawal “ought to be accompanied by a time limit.” Halifax replied that it was an interesting question, but at this point the matter was “moot.” How it could be moot confounded Cambon, but his position was weak. He couldn’t be sure his own government would back him. France’s response to the invasion of her ally had been waffly; the Quai d’Orsay had expressed its “willingness to negotiate” if the Wehrmacht pulled back but, like Whitehall, had specified no time limit.179

  Churchill’s situation was now uncomfortable. He had accepted a position in a War Cabinet, and this shackled him from public criticism of HMG’s foreign policy. Shortly after midnight, in the early hours of Saturday, September 2, he wrote the prime minister from his Morpeth Mansions flat. It was a careful, crafted letter, opening with a minor issue and building toward his chief point. “Aren’t we a very old team?” he asked at the outset. “I make out that the six you mentioned to me yesterday aggregate 386 years or an average of over 64!” Labour’s refusal to join a coalition—which, though he did not mention it, was understandable; Chamberlain had not offered them a single cabinet post—meant “we shall certainly have to face a constant stream of criticism, as well as the many disappointments and surprises of which war largely consists.” It was, therefore, “all the more important to have the Liberal Opposition firmly incorporated in our ranks,” and because of Eden’s popularity there, he suggested that a place on the front bench be found for him. Then Winston rolled up his heavy guns. “The Poles,” he reminded the prime minister, “have now been under heavy attack for thirty hours, and I am much concerned to hear that there is talk in Paris of a further note. I trust you will be able to announce our Joint Declaration of War at latest when Parliament meets this afternoon.” He closed: “I remain at your disposal.”180

  All day Saturday he awaited a summons from No. 10. Mrs. Hill recalls him “pacing up and down like a lion in a cage. He was expecting a call, but the call never came.” At a suggestion from No. 10 Lord Hankey, who would also be included in the new cabinet, called at Morpeth Mansions for a visit. Hankey wrote his wife the following day: “As far as I can make out, my main job is to keep an eye on Winston!… He was brimful of ideas, some good, others not so good, but rather heartening and big. I only wish he didn’t give one the impression that he does himself too well!”181

  It was a time when men in public life—and their wives—kept diaries, wrote letters, and filed memoranda to themselves against the day they wrote their memoirs. Because of this, we know far more about their observations and opinions than future writers will know of ours. But it is important to remember that Churchill’s popularity in the country was never matched in Parliament. In justifying him, events had discredited most of his colleagues. Being decent men, they tried to suppress their resentment. But they were not always successful. Hankey had been an appeaser. When Winston was down he had said hard things about him. Now Winston was up, and when Hankey told his wife about encountering him later that same day, his letter bore a faint taint of malice. In the House of Commons smoking room, Hankey wrote, “the amount of alcohol being consumed was incredible! Winston too was in a corner holding forth to a ring of admiring satellite MPs! He has let it get into the Press that he will be in the War Cabinet—to the great annoyance of many.”

  Certainly, Churchill had not kept the news of his impending appointment to himself. Lord Camrose’s diary entry for that day opens, “Winston called me up at 11:30 and told me he had accepted a place in the Cabinet and was to be a Minister without portfolio.” Telling a press lord was like making an announcement over the BBC. But to keep mum would have been wholly out of character for Churchill. Thirty years earlier, when he proposed to Clementine, he had promised to keep her acceptance secret until she could tell her mother; ten minutes later he had shouted it out to everyone within earshot. After ten years in the wilderness, he could hardly be expected to keep his new appointment to himself. The indiscretion, if any, was slight. It seems fairer to infer that the motives of those who were “greatly annoyed” are suspect.182

  The real indiscretion that evening was historic, and it was committed by Neville Chamberlain. When the cabinet met at 4:30 P.M., the Poles’ situation was desperate. The superior training, equipment, and strategy of the Germans had already brought Rydz-Smigly’s troops to the brink of collapse. They had lost all the frontier battles. The Luftwaffe’s Stuka dive-bombers were spreading chaos in the Polish rear, destroying communications and preventing the movement of replacements. German troops were already over the River Warta and approaching Cracow. In the north the Fourth Army, driving eastward, had linked up with another force, striking southward from East Prussia. If ever an embattled nation needed allies, it was Poland, and now. The French, fully mobilized, could have lunged into the Ruhr and the Saar upon the issuance of a single command. Hitler had rejected Anglo-French notes urging him to abort his attack; he blamed the British for encouraging the Poles in a policy of “persecution and provocation.” Some French leaders, ever distrustful of perfidious Albion, believed him. Others, grasping at straws, found merit in Mussolini’s proposal, earlier in the day, for a five-power conference. The French government, appalled at the prospect of facing the Wehrmacht alone, awaited a British initiative.

  It was well that the MPs in the smoking room were fortifying themselves with drink. The session that lay ahead of them was going to be grim. In his note to Berlin, Halifax had been unwilling to set a time limit; now, in the Cabinet Room, he claimed this was the French position, though he supported it. The Germans, he thought, ought to be given till Sunday noon to accept or reject a conference with France and Britain. Raczyński, who had been waiting in an anteroom, was invited to address the ministers. The Polish ambassador told them that the Nazi offensives, slashing deep into his country from all sides, had been “violently resumed” at dawn, and since noon all large Polish cities had been subjected to “heavy bombing from the air.”183

  Hore-Belisha, deeply moved, spoke immediately after Raczyński’s departure. As he recorded in his diary, he told his colleagues that “I was strongly opposed to further delay, which I thought might result in breaking the unity of the country. Public opinion was against yielding an inch.” He proposed that His Majesty’s Government immediately send Hitler an ultimatum which would expire at midnight. The discussion was lively, with several vehement conversations going on at once, but in the end all were won over, and Hore-Belisha recorded the final decision, binding on all ministers, including the prime minister: “Unanimous decision was taken that ultimatum should end at midnight.” Halifax agreed to tell the Germans that what had been a warning was now in fact an ultimatum, and that it would end at the stroke of twelve. They rose. Parliament awaited them. The prime minister would make the announcement in the House. When the clock struck, Great Britain and Germany would be at war.184

  The sequel to this meeting is baffling, even incomprehensible. With the exception of one telephone call, no one outside the Cabinet Room was ever told of the decision. Halifax, his faith in negotiations undiminished, broke his word to his colleagues and did nothing—did, in one instance, worse than nothing: he told Cian
o that Britain saw her role as that of a “mediator” and, flatly contradicting the cabinet, repeated the line that HMG’s warning “was not an ultimatum.” The phone call was made by Cadogan. After the cabinet had adjourned he spoke to Bonnet in Paris and informed him of its resolution. Why he bypassed Ambassador Phipps is inexplicable. So is his choice of Bonnet, the arch appeaser (“Votre Chamberlain, il est faible [weak],” Georges Mandel told Duncan Sandys. “Mais notre Bonnet, il est lâche [a coward].”) Bonnet did not repeat the conversation. He himself had not decided whether a conference of the great powers should be made conditional on the withdrawal of Nazi troops from Poland. The French cabinet, he had told Cadogan, was “going to deliberate” that point, but in any event they were “firmly decided” that any ultimatum “must be of forty-eight hours.”185

  At 7:30 P.M. a crowded House awaited the prime minister’s announcement. Parliament, like the British press and public, was ready for war. The secret conduct of foreign policy was past. The country knew of HMG’s commitment to Poland, knew how deeply the German army had penetrated the Polish defenses, knew England’s delay in declaring war was responsible for Luftwaffe supremacy in the skies over Poland, and was ready to come to her aid. Spears had never seen Parliament “so stirred, so profoundly moved…. The benches were packed. The unbearable suspense was about to be relieved. One and all were keyed up for the announcement that war had been declared.”186