The House was blinded, and beguiled, by the skyrockets and pinwheels, but in solemn moments Churchill, though entertaining, was never a mere entertainer. He knew serious men would pore over Hansard, looking for a chain of logic, and he provided them with it. He did not lie, he did not distort. But it was sophistry all the same. He omitted certain facts; since they reflected well upon him, it would have been difficult for anyone to argue that he had deliberately remained mute. Among his omissions was the fact that he had spent seven months trying to persuade the War Cabinet that they must move on Narvik (though he did say, “My eye has always been fixed on Narvik”), nor did he reveal his original doubts about Trondheim. Once the Nazi invasion had begun, he said, no one could “dispute that we were bound to go to the aid of the Norwegians and that Trondheim was the place.” Not a voice in the chamber cried: “Why?” Yet that was his one weak point; had he been challenged here, the whole structure of his presentation could have collapsed.
But he got by it and was home free. He conceded that Trondheim had been “a hazardous operation,” but could have succeeded had the Norwegians not neglected to blow key bridges, destroy railroad junctions, hold the mountain passes, or block the Nazi advance north of Oslo. All these delaying tactics having failed, the British commanders were left with a Hobson’s choice: either evacuate their troops “or leave them to be destroyed by overwhelming force.” Could they have been strengthened? They could—by ignoring the military maxim “Never reinforce failure” and by withdrawing divisions from the BEF in France. Escalation in Norway would have led to “a forlorn operation on an ever-increasing scale.” Perhaps he was thinking of Gallipoli. Here he added a warning; he had not abandoned his illusion that sea power was omnipotent, but he foresaw the danger of recklessly committing the RAF unless the need for it became absolute: “We must be careful not to exhaust our air force, in view of the much graver dangers which might come upon us at any time.”229
The prime minister was pleased and grateful. Then the House voted, and he was shocked to discover that over a hundred of those he had counted among his friends weren’t friendly anymore. Despite the Conservative whips, 41 Chamberlain supporters had defected to the Opposition and another 60 had abstained—26 of them Tories whose constituencies included the territorials martyred at Andalsnes. A united party vote would have given the P.M. a majority of 213. Instead, the final tabulation was 281 for the government, 200 against it—a majority of 81. It was a stinging rebuke, wholly unforeseen. And for many the decision had been excruciating. Duff Cooper saw “a young officer in uniform, who had been for long a fervent admirer of Chamberlain, walking through the Opposition lobby”—voting against the government—“with tears streaming down his face.” Churchill had always voted as he pleased, but he was an exception; others faced punishment from Margesson and the party machine. They knew that if they appeared at No. 11 Downing Street’s patronage office now they would be turned away. To abandon their leader had required considerable courage, but they had done it, and now he was in the deepest trouble of his political career.230
His spirits cannot have been raised by Parliament’s response to the announcement of the vote. “Up to the last moment,” Nicolson wrote, “the House had behaved with moderation,” but “during the last twenty minutes… passions rose.” The figures “are greeted with a terrific demonstration,” he continued, “during which Joss Wedgwood starts singing Rule Britannia, which is drowned in shouts of ‘Go, go, go, go!’ ” Some were waving handkerchiefs at the fleeing P.M. To counteract their jeers, Nicolson noted, “Margesson signals to his henchmen to rise and cheer the departing Prime Minister, and he walks out pale and angry.” Hugh Dalton was asked: “What next?” He replied: “The Old Man must go to Buckingham Palace and hand them [the seals of office] in.”231
At 11:13 P.M., May 8, 1940, when the House of Commons adjourned, thousands of Dutch, Belgians, and Luxembourgers had less than forty-eight hours to live, though they were unaware of it; in those days civilized nations mobilized, exchanged hostile notes, and then formally declared war. Nevertheless, guards on the borders of each of these small countries were puzzled and troubled by the total silence on the German side of their frontiers. Hitler had signed nonaggression pacts with each and repeatedly and solemnly reaffirmed them, vowing that not a single hobnailed Wehrmacht boot would ever touch their soil. They had taken little comfort from that; he had told too many grosse Lügen; his credibility had vanished and been replaced by fear. The Third Reich, possessing the most powerful military juggernaut Europe had ever known, was recognized as a terrorist nation, the very essence of Schrecklichkeit, the stuff of nightmares.
Luxembourg was not going to win this war. Her army comprised four hundred infantrymen and twelve cavalrymen. But she had already taken the first step in a campaign which would cripple the Wehrmacht in every conquered country. Luxembourgers had erected barbed wire barricades on frontier roads, evacuated border towns, and closed bridges across the duchy’s river border with the Reich. They called it “passive defense,” but the world would adopt the French name: La Résistance.
As he rose to leave the chamber, the prime minister had motioned to Churchill, an invitation to join him in his private room. There Winston “saw at once,” as he later recalled, “that he took the most serious view of the sentiment of the House toward himself. He felt he could not go on. There ought to be a National Government. One party alone could not carry the burden. Someone must form a Government in which all parties would serve, or we could not get through.”232
Churchill’s reply was the last response one would have expected. He could have relished the moment. He had every right. “If [a prime minister] trips,” he later observed, “he must be sustained. If he makes mistakes, they must be covered. If he sleeps he must not be wantonly disturbed. If he is no good he must be pole-axed.” If ever a man deserved retribution, it was Neville Chamberlain. More than any man except Hitler—and Hitler could not have done it without him—he was responsible for the transformation of Germany into the most powerful military state in Europe, which had begun, with Teutonic efficiency, the destruction of all European Jews and had turned the Slavs in the vast lands it conquered into Sklavenarbeiter—slave laborers. Young Colville, who scorned those who condemned all Germans per se, had nevertheless reflected in March: “I suppose there is a natural strain of brutality in the German character and as great an insensitivity to human suffering as there is a sensitivity to beauty.” The Nazis had unleashed the brutality, but had Chamberlain not embraced their führer at Munich, their government would have fallen as his was now falling.233
It would have been almost instinctive in any other member of Parliament to ponder the implications of the House vote for his own career. Every speech denouncing the government over the past two days had been an echo of the speeches Churchill had been delivering for years—often to empty seats. The awakening of Parliament’s conscience had vindicated the torch he had held aloft, alone, at great personal cost. It was savage irony that he now found himself among the crew of a ship being sunk by torpedoes he had designed. Since he first won election to Parliament forty years earlier, his objective had been to become prime minister. Here, writhing on the rack of humiliation, was the man who had been his chief adversary during the three crucial years before the outbreak of the war. Knowing Neville, he was sure he would not throw in his hand voluntarily, but now the choice might no longer be his. Had Winston connived for office, as was his right—some would have said, his duty—he would have suggested various lines of action, or at the very least have remained silent.
But Churchill was never a rational man. His conduct often seemed to run at cross-purposes with what was best for him and best for England. His magnanimity, so often extended to those who least deserved it, might have led him to console Chamberlain by making some wildly generous, completely ruinous gesture, volunteering to accept, for example, blame that was not his. Instead, he yielded to another Churchillian impulse—to stand with Chamberlain, as though
he were Horatius, to defend the indefensible bridge. “Aroused by the antagonisms of the debate,” as he later wrote, he urged the prime minister to “fight on. ‘This has been a damaging debate, but you have a good majority. Do not take the matter grievously to heart…. Strengthen your Government from every quarter, and let us go on until our majority deserts us.’ ” At midnight he left the P.M. unconvinced, uncomforted. Winston wondered why the man would “persist in his resolve to sacrifice himself.” The answer was that although Chamberlain had never backed away from a fight, logic told him that if he were to survive this moral defeat, he would have to search for compromises. Churchill had never compromised. And in moments of crisis he sought guidance not by reasoning but by intuition.234
After baring his soul to Churchill, the prime minister reverted to type, trying to find a way out of the trap. Although it was midnight, the King readily agreed to see him. The audience was brief. Smiling, the prime minister said he had not come to resign; he hoped to restructure his government as a coalition, with Labour participation. Later a reliable source reported that George VI offered to intervene with Attlee. It seems implausible, a dubious move for Britain’s constitutional monarch. In all events, the prime minister said that Attlee would have a better understanding of his party’s attitude after its annual meeting, about to begin in Bournemouth. He had not yet grasped the nature of the crisis; he thought it would develop slowly, giving him time to negotiate.235
Chamberlain’s critics have held that his sole object after the disastrous debate was to cling to office—“The Old Man is incorrigibly limpet,” wrote Dalton, “always trying new tricks to keep himself firm upon the rock.” It is unlikely that his motives were overtly selfish; able politicians always regard themselves as indispensable, and once Chamberlain realized that the country’s fortunes were likely to improve under another leader, he devoted himself to an orderly transition. That light did not dawn on him until late Thursday morning, but he never sacrificed or bargained or wheedled to stay at No. 10, as Ramsay MacDonald had done ten years earlier.236
Churchill was shaving the following morning when Eden called at the Admiralty. Flourishing his safety razor, Winston predicted, as Eden wrote in his diary, that the P.M. would “not be able to bring in Labour and that a National Government must be formed.” Eden returned early in the afternoon for lunch, and was startled to find that Kingsley Wood was also a guest. Just as Bracken was Churchill’s satellite, so Wood was Chamberlain’s. The prime minister trusted him and respected his advice; in turn, he had raised him from parliamentary secretary to cabinet rank, first as minister of health and now air minister. The RAF had doubled its strength during the past year, but that was not his doing; he was defeatist and had enthusiastically supported appeasement. Why was he at the Admiralty? He wanted to tell Churchill what Chamberlain had been doing. Eden was appalled. Churchill wasn’t. With England in danger, personal loyalties went over the side. Winston may have assumed that his visitor was concerned about the nation’s survival, not his cabinet seat, though later events demonstrated that his visitor’s tale-bearing would not go unrewarded.237
The previous evening, it seemed, no member of the House had gone straight home. Factions and cabals had met in Westminster chambers, Whitehall offices, and private apartments. The largest group, sixty rebel Conservatives, had elected Amery as their chairman and voted, unanimously, that none of them would join or support any government which did not include Labour and Liberals. Downing Street had been informed of this, of course, and at 8:00 A.M., Amery had been summoned to No. 10. Chamberlain had offered him the choice of any cabinet ministry—the Foreign Office and the Exchequer were expressly offered—if he would bring his rebels back into the fold. Amery had asked whether the rebuilt government would include members of the other two parliamentary parties. The prime minister had said bleakly: “I hope that will not be necessary.” In that event, Amery had said, he could not accept the P.M.’s generous offer, and expressing his regrets he had departed.238
At 10:00 A.M., Kingsley Wood went on, Lord Halifax had appeared. There is something intriguing about the Halifax candidacy. The prime minister urged him to be his successor, implying that he would serve under him. Chamberlain’s biographer leaves no doubt that the foreign secretary was his first choice. Back in his office Halifax dictated a note to Cadogan, commenting on the P.M.’s offer: “The evident drift of his mind left me with a bad stomach ache.” Yet from the moment knowledgeable Englishmen had begun talking about a new prime minister, Halifax’s name had led all the rest. On May 6, the day before the crucial two-day debate, he had quietly conferred with Morrison about the possibility of a Conservative-Labour coalition. His diary merely notes the appointment; neither his papers nor Morrison’s mention what was said or decided. And the following day, before the debate began, the Daily Mail had published a letter from Sir Stafford Cripps, KC, which The Times had rejected. Signed “A British Politician,” it had called for an all-party government, with a small cabinet—Churchill, Eden, Lloyd George, Morrison, and Attlee were mentioned—led by Halifax as prime minister.239
Dalton, like Morrison a member of the Labour hierarchy, was open in his support of Halifax. After Chamberlain’s humiliation in the House, Dalton had told Rab Butler that “provided Chamberlain, Simon and Hoare disappeared” Labour might join a coalition, that if asked who should be the new P.M., “I thought, and a number of others shared this view, that there was much to be said for Halifax.” Given the lopsided Tory majority in the House, the hard fact was that no one could form a government without the support of Tory backbenchers. Dalton told Attlee: “Given the strength of parties in the House, the P.M. must be a Conservative. He quite agreed. We thought it lay between Halifax and Churchill, and that either, if other conditions were right, would be a possible leader of a Coalition which we might join.”240
Halifax had left the door ajar, or Chamberlain thought he had, and the P.M., a man of heroic doggedness, refused to accept the noble lord’s rejection. In any event, he himself would resign. In his diary Eden noted that at luncheon with Wood and Churchill, “They told me that Neville had decided to go. The future was discussed. Kingsley thought that W. should succeed, and urged that if asked he should make plain his willingness.” But Wood warned Winston that the P.M. wanted Halifax and would ask Churchill to agree. “Don’t agree,” Wood said, “and don’t say anything.” In his memoirs Eden commented: “I was shocked that Wood should talk in this way, for he had been so much Chamberlain’s man. But it was good counsel and I seconded it.”241
For a party holding only 27 percent of the seats in the House, Labour was courted with extraordinary ardor. During the debates, Harold Macmillan later remembered, there was apprehension on the part of Churchill’s supporters over Winston’s role as the last speaker—concern that by giving a fighting speech, he might alienate Opposition leaders who would then veto his bid to succeed Chamberlain. “We were determined to bring down the Government,” Macmillan recalled, but “if the chief issue of the first day had been the overthrow of the Government, the chief anxiety of the second was the rescue of Churchill.” In fact, he wrote, Chamberlain was convinced that Winston’s spirited defense of his government meant “Labour hostility to Churchill in forming a National Government.” But Bracken, anticipating this, had entertained Attlee at dinner Tuesday evening. Attlee thought Halifax would move into No. 10 with Winston as his minister of defense. His people, he said, “have never forgiven Churchill for Tonypandy.”*242
Bracken, on his own initiative, insisted that Churchill would never serve under Halifax, “incurring all the blame if things went wrong and with no real control of the situation.” He then exacted a pledge from Attlee: if Churchill came to power, Attlee would not refuse to join the government. The irony here is that while Morrison and Dalton found Halifax acceptable—they barred only Chamberlain, Simon, and Hoare—the rest of the party leadership and virtually all the rank and file were less tolerant. On Thursday the ninth Clement Davies reported to Bob Boo
thby that “Attlee & Greenwood are unable to distinguish between the PM & Halifax & are not prepared to serve under the latter.” That same evening Boothby—who had been in the House all day, drumming up support for Churchill—passed this information along to Churchill with the comment: “Opinion is hardening against Halifax as Prime Minister. I am doing my best to foster this, because I cannot feel he is, in any circumstances, the right man.” The Halifax boomlet was doomed; he could never have formed a coalition government—the only government that Parliament would accept.243
Kingsley Wood’s visit was enormously useful to Winston. As Churchill put it, over lunch he “learned that Mr. Chamberlain was resolved upon the formation of a National Government and, if he could not be the head, he would give way to anyone commanding his confidence who could. Thus, by the afternoon, I became aware that I might well be called upon to take the lead. The prospect neither excited nor alarmed me…. I was content to let events unfold.” He was back in his office, scanning staff reports, when the call came from No. 10. Arriving, he found Halifax with Chamberlain; very soon, the prime minister told him, Attlee and Greenwood, Labour’s deputy leader, would arrive. The socialists arrived late, though they could scarcely reveal why. Stopping at the Reform Club, they had met with Clement Davies to review their position. A German attack on the Low Countries was believed imminent. Because of it, Attlee favored keeping Chamberlain in office until the crisis passed. The other two disagreed. Eventually they had brought him round, but it had taken them two hours. In the Cabinet Room he and Greenwood sat on one side, the three Tories on the other, Chamberlain in the middle.244