CHURCHILL's WAR Is a Series of Volumes on the Life of the British Statesman
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David Irving CHURCHILL’S WAR i – The Struggle for Power Part of Chapters – F FOCAL POINT Copyright © Parforce (UK) Ltd All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be commercially reproduced, copied, or transmitted save with written permission of the author in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act of (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and to civil claims for damages. CHURCHILL'S WAR is a series of volumes on the life of the British statesman. Vol. i – The Struggle for Power (ISBN ) – was originally published by Veritas (Western Australia) in , by Hutchinson (London) in , by Avon Books (New York) in , and by Herbig Verlag (Munich) in . Vol. ii – Triumph in Adversity (ISBN ) – was published by Focal Point Publications (London) in . A third volume is in preparation. Contents : Nobody Questions the Victor :Tit for Tat : Completely Outwitted : Hence Prime Minister : Rogue Elephant : An Avoidable Disaster : We Shall Fight in the Hills :Breakneck :The Diehard : A Misunderstanding between Friends : Gangster Methods : The Eagle Never Landed : In a Single Gulp : The One Sinless Man : Good Ol’ Winnie : The Fixer DAVID IRVING : Nobody Questions the Victor locked all Europe in an unwanted embrace. The Rhine traffic was paralysed in its glacial grip, the lakes and A canals congealed, the railroads halted. A similar paralysis gripped Allied planning as the British and French argued out their own strategic beliefs – whether to mine the Rhine, invade Narvik, seize other Norwegian ports, or intervene in Finland’s far north at Petsamö. At staff talks at the end of January the French high com- mand showed that they believed they had time: that Finland would not collapse under Soviet attack, and that Hitler would not attack on the west for many months – perhaps even until . On February the British cabinet agreed to ask the French to abandon their Petsamö plan. That day Churchill invited Scandinavian journalists to lunch; Ribbentrop would later claim that Churchill blurted out a number of ‘incautious remarks’ about Norway, and that these shortly reached Ber- lin. A Supreme War Council was convened in Paris to resolve the strate- gic controversy, and Chamberlain invited Churchill to attend. Wearing what one notable described as ‘a strange, spurious naval costume’ and clasping a red Lord High Admiral’s flag, Churchill took the cabinet party by special train to a destroyer at Dover. Lord Halifax eyed Winston’s nautical garb with amusement: ‘He was in grand form,’ he dictated later, ‘and I have never seen anyone so pleased at being in a party.’ On the train down, Chamberlain showed him telegrams concerning a peace mission being undertaken by the American under-secretary of state Sumner Welles in European capitals; in his telegram of reply Chamberlain had urged caution upon Washington lest Welles be exploited by Nazi propa- ganda. Winston [noted one diarist] after a second sherry, read them through and, with tears in his eyes, said ‘I’m proud to follow you!’ ‘So that was alright,’ concluded the diarist, Sir Alec Cadogan. Chur- chill had evidently chosen the flattery with care, because he referred to the very words ten years later when writing his memoirs, and Lord Halifax CHURCHILL’S WAR also quoted ‘Winston’s immediate comment’ in his diary, adding, ‘An interesting specimen of his quick generosity.’ They stayed at the British embassy in the Rue Saint-Honoré. The French cabinet came to dinner, ‘less [General Maurice] Gamelin,’ as Hali- fax remarked, ‘who has [taken] a vow not to dine anywhere in war.’ The next morning Churchill woke early, breezed into Halifax’s room at : .. in a dressing-gown, and staggered the sleepy foreign secretary with a two-hour harangue about the war in general. The speech seems to have exhausted him, and neither the British nor the French text shows Winston uttering a word during the entire Supreme War Council at the war minis- try. ‘I have just seen a miracle,’ gasped Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, the First Sea Lord, to Oliver Stanley: ‘I have just attended a meeting for three hours without Winston making a speech.’ This silence was not only unChurchillian but regrettable: had he in- sisted on going straight for Narvik and Gällivare much evil might have been averted. But a determined Soviet offensive had now begun in Fin- land, and there were fears of an early collapse. Daladier approved all of Chamberlain’s proposals except for the total abandonment of the Petsamö plan, which was now to be exploited if Norway and Sweden refused to co- operate with the large plan aimed at seizing Gällivare. Daladier and Chamberlain agreed that a total of three or four divisions should be sent across Norway and Sweden to Finland by mid-April, which seems further proof that no German offensive was expected that spring. There were obvious snags. Lord Gort’s expeditionary force had taken a month to move the few miles to France; this new army would have to cover a far greater distance before the Finns collapsed. But the party that trooped back aboard Winston’s destroyer behind their prime minister – Halifax, Oliver Stanley and Kingsley Wood – were satisfied. They looked to one observer like happy-go-lucky schoolchildren following a popular master on a Sunday outing; the First Lord, he noticed, trudged up the gangplank by himself, while General Ironside was clutching a kilogram of French butter. Halifax had slept badly, disturbed by ‘Winston’s snores [from] next door’ aboard the train to Boulogne; he went below. A hot soup was carried up to Chamberlain on the bridge. The First Lord had his unusual red flag run up the halyards, lit a cigar, and descended to the wardroom. Here he warmed body and soul with a decanter of port and pages of scantily-clad ladies in Blighty, respectively. As their destroyer ran into Dover, his flag attracted a signal from an igno- rant – nay, foolhardy – destroyer captain: ‘Why the Red Ensign?’ had not been without hazard. DAVID IRVING When Sunday Pictorial editor Cecil King came to lunch on the follow- ing day with the Churchills at Admiralty House, Winston told him that they had encountered several mines and had hit one with a shell. Instead of exploding, the top flipped into the air and came hurtling down toward them. ‘Ch[urchill] said it was rather frightening, as it weighed fully fifty pounds and they couldn’t tell quite where it would fall.’ The newspaperman found Clementine good-looking but dry and nervy. Winston himself had come in wearing zipper-sided black boots but looking puffy and old. A rather loud American lady who had joined them handed him a bottle of brandy, but he set it aside: ‘I’m giving it up for a while,’ he said, and drank port and beer alternately during the meal. They talked of Hore-Belisha. Recently, Churchill had told this jour- nalist that the man was one of Chamberlain’s best ministers. Now he dis- paraged the ex-minister ruthlessly. The editor correctly divined that the new war minister, Stanley, was a social friend of the Churchills; he sus- pected that Winston had dislodged Hore-Belisha to make place for him. As for the P.M., Churchill went out of his way to praise him – he was tough and belligerent. King replied that Chamberlain was old and dreary; the country re- garded Churchill as their leader, he said. Churchill refused to be drawn. No. , he observed modestly, was not much of a prize these days anyway. ‘I would take it only if offered by common consent.’ He was amused to hear that the public opinion polls showed that a clear majority wanted him to succeed Chamberlain, fol- lowed by Eden. When the talk turned to the shipping war, King was sceptical: Winston’s complacent figure of , tons sunk ignored neutral ship- ping completely. ‘The story Ch[urchill] seemed to believe,’ the editor wrote in his diary, ‘is the one he puts over in his radio speeches.’ The only thing he said he was afraid of was the effect of unre- strained aeroplane warfare on our highly complex industrial or- ganisation. I said I thought Hitler had done more harm to us by not bombing than he could have done by bombing. Without air raids, Cecil King pointed out, the peace movement would thrive. Churchill feigned ignorance of this movement, but the editor warned that it embraced a third of the Labour Party. Churchill replied that when organised labour realised they were earning more than in peacetime it would stabilise public opinion in favour of war. The editor bridled at this ‘harping on money,’ but confined his distaste to his diary. CHURCHILL’S WAR Ch[urchill] took a poor view of the Labour leaders and said they wanted to win the war and then give away our colonies. Before the ladies withdrew, the newspaperman suggested bringing the battle-scarred cruiser Exeter – coming home for repairs after the Graf Spee battle – up the Thames into the very heart of London. ‘What’s the good of that?’ asked Churchill dismissively. ‘It could only come up to the Pool. People couldn’t go on board.’ King replied that the Pool was the centre of London (‘though not,’ he reflected, contemplating the well-lunched Mr Churchill, ‘of his London’). People could go up one gangway, along the deck and down another. Churchill’s youngest daughter Mary, a ‘real winner’ with generous eyes and mouth, excitedly suggested a City dinner for the sailors; Clementine chimed in, ‘– in the Guildhall!’ If Exeter’s sailors paraded to the Guildhall, said King, all London would pour into the streets.