The Second World War Read online

  When Churchill returned to the War Cabinet and reported this conversation, Halifax revived his suggestion of approaching the Italian government. Churchill had to play his cards carefully. He could not risk an open breach with Halifax, who commanded the loyalty of too many Conservatives, while his own position was unsecured. Fortunately, Chamberlain started to come round to support Churchill, who had treated him with great respect and magnanimity despite their previous antagonism.

  Churchill argued that Britain should not be linked to France if it sought terms. ‘We must not get entangled in a position of that kind before we had been involved in any serious fighting.’ No decision should be taken until it was clear how much of the BEF could be saved. In any case, Hitler’s terms would certainly prevent Britain from ‘completing our re-armament’. Churchill rightly assumed that Hitler would offer far more lenient terms to France than he would to Britain. But the foreign secretary was determined not to give up the idea of negotiations. ‘If we got to the point of discussing the terms which did not postulate the destruction of our independence, we should be foolish if we did not accept them.’ Again Churchill had to imply that he acceded to the idea of an approach to Italy, but in fact he was playing for time. If the bulk of the BEF were saved, his own position as well as the country’s would be immeasurably strengthened.

  That evening, Anthony Eden sent a signal to Gort confirming that he should ‘fall back upon the coast… in conjunction with French and Belgian armies’. That same evening, Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsay in Dover was ordered to launch Operation Dynamo, the evacuation by sea of the BEF. Unfortunately, Churchill’s message to Weygand confirming the retreat to the Channel ports did not spell out the evacuation plan. It was unwisely assumed that this was self-evident in the circumstances. The consequences for Britain’s deteriorating relationship with the French would be grave.

  The halting of the panzer divisions had given Gort’s staff the chance to prepare a new defensive perimeter based on a line of fortified villages while the bulk of the BEF retired. But the French commanders in Flanders were incensed when they discovered that the British were planning to evacuate. Gort had assumed that London had informed General Weygand at the same time as he had received his instructions to pull back to the coast. He also believed that the French had received instructions to embark too and was horrified to find that this was not the case.

  From 27 May, the 2nd Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment and a battalion of the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry defended Cassel to the south of Dunkirk. Platoons occupied outlying farms, in some cases for three days against vastly superior forces. To their south, the British 2nd Division, which had been moved to defend the Canal Line from La Bassée up to Aire, suffered very heavy attacks. Having run out of anti-tank ammunition, soldiers of the exhausted and badly depleted 2nd Royal Norfolk Regiment were reduced to dashing out with hand-grenades to drop them into the tracks of the panzers. The remnants of the battalion were surrounded by the SS Totenkopf and taken prisoner. That night, the SS massacred ninety-seven of them. On the Belgian sector that day, the German 255th Division avenged their losses near the village of Vinkt by executing seventy-eight civilians, falsely claiming that some of them had been armed. The next day, a group of the SS Leibstandarte commanded by Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Mohnke at Wormhout killed nearly ninety British prisoners, mainly from the Royal Warwicks who were also acting as rearguard. Thus the murderous war against Poland produced a few echoes on the supposedly civilized western front.

  South of the Somme, the British 1st Armoured Division mounted a counter-attack against a German bridgehead. Once again French artillery and air support did not materialize, and the 10th Hussars and the Queen’s Bays lost sixty-five tanks, mainly to German anti-tank guns. A more effective counter-attack was launched by de Gaulle’s 4th Armoured Division against the German bridgehead near Abbeville, but this too was repulsed.

  In London, on 27 May, the War Cabinet met again three times. The second meeting, in the afternoon, perhaps encapsulated the most critical moment of the war, when Nazi Germany might have won. This was when the developing clash between Halifax and Churchill came out into the open. Halifax was even more determined to use Mussolini as a mediator to discover what terms Hitler might offer to France and Britain. He believed that, if they delayed, the terms offered would be even worse.

  Churchill argued strongly against such weakening, and insisted that they should fight on. ‘Even if we were beaten,’ he said, ‘we should be no worse off than we should be if we were now to abandon the struggle. Let us therefore avoid being dragged down the slippery slope with France.’ He understood that once they started to negotiate, they would be ‘unable to turn back’ and revive a spirit of defiance in the population. Churchill at least had the implicit support of Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood, the two Labour leaders, and also of Sir Archibald Sinclair, the Liberal leader. Chamberlain too was convinced by Churchill’s key argument. During this stormy meeting, Halifax made it clear to Churchill that he would resign if his views were ignored, but Churchill afterwards managed to calm him.

  Another blow fell that evening. After the Belgian line on the River Lys had been breached, King Leopold decided to capitulate. The following day, he surrendered unconditionally to the Sixth Army. Generaloberst von Reichenau and his chief of staff Generalleutnant Friedrich Paulus dictated the terms at their headquarters. The next surrender which Paulus would conduct would be his own at Stalingrad two years and eight months later.

  The French government was outwardly scathing about the ‘betrayal’ of King Leopold, yet in private rejoiced. One of the capitulards expressed the mood when he said: ‘Finally, we have a scapegoat!’ The British, however, were hardly surprised by the Belgian collapse. Gort, on General Brooke’s advice, had wisely taken precautions by moving his own troops in behind the Belgian lines to prevent a German breakthrough between Ypres and Comines on the eastern flank.

  General Weygand, now officially informed that the British had decided to pull out, was furious at the lack of frankness. Unfortunately, he did not give the order to his own units to evacuate until the following day, and as a result French troops reached the beaches well after the British. Marshal Pétain argued that the lack of British support should lead to the revision of Reynaud’s agreement signed in March not to seek a separate peace.

  On the afternoon of 28 May, the War Cabinet met again, but this time at the House of Commons at the prime minister’s request. The battle between Halifax and Churchill broke out anew, with Churchill taking an even more resolute line against any form of negotiation. Even if the British were to get up and leave the conference table, he argued, ‘we should find that all the forces of resolution which were now at our disposal would have vanished’.

  As soon as the War Cabinet meeting ended, Churchill called a meeting of the whole Cabinet. He told them that he had considered negotiations with Hitler, but he was convinced that Hitler’s terms would reduce Britain to a ‘slave-state’ ruled by a puppet government. Their support could hardly have been more emphatic. Halifax had been decisively outmanoeuvred. Britain would fight on to the end.

  Hitler, not wanting to use up his depleted panzer forces, limited them in their new advance towards Dunkirk. They were to halt as soon as their artillery regiments were within range of the port. The shelling and bombing of the town began in earnest, but it was insufficient to prevent Operation Dynamo, the evacuation. Luftwaffe bombers, often still flying from bases back in Germany, lacked effective fighter support and were frequently intercepted by Spitfire squadrons taking off from much closer airfields in Kent.

  The hapless British troops crowding the sand dunes and town as they waited their turn for embarkation cursed the RAF, not realizing that its fighters were engaging the German bombers inland. The Luftwaffe, despite Göring’s boast that he would eliminate the British, inflicted comparatively few casualties. The lethal effect of the bombs and shells was reduced greatly by the soft sand dunes. More Allied sold
iers were killed on the beaches by strafing attacks than by bombs.

  By the time the German advance had resumed with infantry, the strong defence by both British and French troops had prevented a German breakthrough. The few who escaped from the defended villages were exhausted, hungry, thirsty and in many cases injured. The more severely wounded had had to be left behind. With Germans all around them, it was a nerve-racking retreat, never knowing when they were going to bump into an enemy force.

  The evacuation had started on 19 May, when wounded and rear troops were taken off, but the main effort began only on the night of 26 May. Following an appeal over the BBC, the Admiralty contacted the volunteer owners of small vessels, such as yachts, river launches and cabin cruisers. They were told to rendezvous, first off Sheerness, then off Ramsgate. Some 600 were used in the course of Operation Dynamo, almost all crewed by ‘weekend sailors’, to augment the force of over 200 Royal Navy vessels.

  Dunkirk was easy to identify at a great distance, both from the sea and from the landward side. Columns of smoke rose into the sky from the burning town attacked by German bombers. Oil tanks blazed fiercely with thick, black billowing clouds. Every road leading into the town was jammed with abandoned and destroyed army vehicles.

  Relations between senior British and French officers, especially the staff of Admiral Jean Abrial, commander of northern naval forces, became increasingly acrimonious. The situation was not helped by both British and French troops looting in Dunkirk, with each side blaming the other. Many were drunk, having tried to quench their thirst with wine, beer and spirits as the mains water was no longer working.

  The beaches and the port were packed with troops queueing for embarkation. Each time a Luftwaffe attack came in, with Stuka sirens screaming as they dived ‘like a flock of huge infernal seagulls’, men scattered for their lives. The noise was deafening, with all the anti-aircraft pom-poms of the destroyers off the mole firing flat out. Then, once it was over, the soldiers dashed back, afraid to lose their place in the queue. Some cracked up under the strain. There was little that could be done for casualties of combat fatigue.

  At night, soldiers waited in the sea with water up to their shoulders, as lifeboats and small boats edged in to pick them up. Most were so tired and helpless in their sodden battledress and boots that the cursing sailors had to haul them up over the gunwhales, grasping them by their webbing equipment.

  The Royal Navy suffered just as much as the troops they were rescuing. On 29 May, when Göring, under pressure from Hitler, launched a major effort against the evacuation, ten destroyers were sunk or seriously damaged, as well as many other vessels. This prompted the Admiralty to withdraw the larger fleet destroyers which would be vital for the defence of southern England. But they were brought back a day later as the evacuation flagged, for each destroyer could take off up to a thousand soldiers at a time.

  That day also saw a furious defence of the inner perimeter by the Grenadier Guards, the Coldstream Guards and the Royal Berkshires from the 3rd Infantry Division. They just managed to hold off the German attacks which, if successful, would have put paid to any further evacuation. French troops from the 68th Division continued to hold the western and south-western part of the Dunkirk perimeter, but the strains in the Franco-British alliance became acute.

  The French were certain that the British would give priority to their own men, and in fact contradictory instructions were sent from London on this point. French troops often turned up at British embarkation points and were refused permission to pass, which naturally led to furious scenes. British soldiers, irritated that the French were bringing packs, when they had been told to abandon their own possessions, pushed them off the harbour wall into the sea. In another case, British troops rushed a ship which had been allocated for the French, while a number of French soldiers trying to climb aboard a British ship were thrown back into the sea.

  Even the famous charm of Major General Harold Alexander, commander of the 1st Division, was unable to deflect the anger of General Robert Fagalde, commanding XVI Corps, and Admiral Abrial, when he told them that his orders were to embark as many British troops as possible. They produced a letter from Lord Gort assuring them that three British divisions would be left behind to hold the perimeter. Admiral Abrial even threatened to close the port of Dunkirk to British troops.

  The dispute was referred to London and to Paris, where Churchill was meeting Reynaud, Weygand and Admiral François Darlan, the head of the French navy. Weygand accepted that Dunkirk could not expect to hold out indefinitely. Churchill insisted that the evacuation should continue on equal terms, but his hope of maintaining the spirit of the alliance was not shared in London. There, the unspoken assumption was that, since France was likely to give up the battle, the British had better look out for themselves. Alliances are complicated enough in victory, but in defeat they are bound to produce the worst recriminations imaginable.

  On 30 May, it looked as if half of the BEF would be left behind. But the following day the Royal Navy and the ‘little ships’ arrived in strength: destroyers, minelayers, yachts, paddle-steamers, tugs, lifeboats, fishing boats and pleasure craft. Many of the smaller vessels ferried soldiers out from the beaches to the larger ships. One of the yachts, the Sundowner, was owned by Commander C. H. Lightoller, who had been the senior surviving officer of the Titanic. The miracle of Dunkirk lay in the generally calm sea during the vital days and nights.

  On board the destroyers, Royal Navy ratings handed out mugs of cocoa, tins of bully beef and bread to the exhausted and famished soldiers. But, with the Luftwaffe stepping up their attacks whenever there were breaks in the RAF’s fighter cover, reaching a ship did not guarantee a safe haven. The description of the terrible injuries inflicted by air attack, of those drowning as ships sank and of the unanswered cries for help are hard to forget. Conditions for the wounded left behind within the Dunkirk perimeter were far worse, with medical orderlies and doctors able to do little to comfort the dying.

  Even those evacuated found little relief to their suffering on reaching Dover. The mass evacuation had overwhelmed the system. Hospital trains distributed them far and wide. One wounded soldier, back from the horror of Dunkirk, could hardly believe his eyes when he saw out of the train window white-flannelled teams playing cricket as if Britain were still at peace. Many men, when eventually treated, were found to have maggots in their wounds under field dressings or were suffering from gangrene and had to have a limb amputated.

  On the morning of 1 June, the rearguard at Dunkirk, which included the 1st Guards Brigade, was overwhelmed by a determined German offensive across the Bergues–Furnes Canal. Some men and even platoons collapsed, but the bravery shown that day led to the award of a Victoria Cross and several other medals. Evacuation in daylight now had to be cancelled because of the Royal Navy’s heavy losses and that of two hospital ships, one sunk and the other damaged. The last ships arrived off Dunkirk during the night of 3 June. Major General Alexander in a motorboat made a final tour up and down the beaches and harbour calling for any soldiers left to show themselves. Shortly before midnight, Captain Bill Tennant, the naval officer with him, felt able to signal to Admiral Ramsay in Dover that their mission had been completed.

  Instead of the 45,000 troops, which the Admiralty had hoped to save, the warships of the Royal Navy and the assorted civilian craft had taken off some 338,000 Allied troops, of whom 193,000 were British and the rest French. Some 80,000 soldiers, mostly French, were left behind due to confusion and the slowness of their commanders to withdraw them. During the campaign in Belgium and north-eastern France, the British had lost 68,000 men. Almost all their remaining tanks and motor transport, most of their artillery and the vast majority of their stores had to be destroyed. The Polish forces in France also made their way to Britain, prompting Goebbels to refer to them contemptuously as ‘the Sikorski tourists’.

  The reaction in Britain was strangely mixed, with some exaggerated fears but also emotional relief that the B
EF had been saved. The ministry of information was concerned that popular morale was ‘almost too good’. And yet the possibility of invasion had really begun to sink in. Rumours of German parachutists dressed as nuns circulated. Some people apparently even believed that in Germany ‘mentally defective patients [were] being recruited for a suicide corps’, and that ‘the Germans dug through under Switzerland and came up in Toulouse’. The threat of invasion inevitably produced an incoherent fear of aliens in their midst. Mass Observation also noted in the wake of the evacuation from Dunkirk that French troops were warmly welcomed, while Dutch and Belgian refugees were shunned.

  The Germans wasted little time in launching the next phase of their campaign. On 6 June, they attacked the line of the River Somme and the Aisne, enjoying a considerable superiority in numbers and air supremacy. French divisions, having got over the initial shock of the disaster, now fought with great bravery, but it was too late. Churchill, warned by Dowding that he did not have sufficient fighters to defend Britain, refused French requests to send more squadrons across the Channel. There were still over 100,000 British troops south of the Somme, including the 51st Highland Division which was soon cut off at Saint-Valéry with the French 41st Division.

  In an attempt to keep France in the war, Churchill sent another expeditionary force under General Sir Alan Brooke across the Channel. Before leaving, Brooke warned Eden that, while he understood the diplomatic requirement of his mission, the government must recognize that it offered no chance of military success. Although some French troops were fighting well, many others had started to slink away and join the columns of refugees fleeing towards the south-west of France. Panic spread with rumours of poison gas and German atrocities.