A Summer Bright and Terrible (16 page)

In the meantime, nothing much was happening.
England had gone to war on behalf of Poland, but there was no way it could help
that eastern country. Poland fell in a few weeks, and then everyone looked
around and wondered what to do next. The BEF was basically an adjunct to the
French army, waiting on French initiative. But the French had no initiative.
They had learned their lesson in the First World War. Then, their motto had
been
“Elan, elan, toujours elan!”
and the result had been the slaughter
of an entire generation of young men. Now their strategy was defensive. They
were dug in behind their impregnable Maginot Line, waiting for the Royal Navy
to blockade Germany and starve it into submission.

And Christmas came and went, and the horrors of
war did not appear. No bombers appeared in the sky, no artillery fire boomed across
the trenches. The satirists came out and named this affair the Bore War, a
screamingly funny pun on the Boer War, and everyone had a chuckle and went back
to sleep.

In April 1940, there was a slight awakening
when the Germans invaded Denmark and Norway. This gave Churchill his chance,
and he unleashed the navy to cut the Germans’ overwater supply lines and drive
them out. The result was an unmitigated British defeat.

It was a bad plan, properly executed. In the
First World War, Churchill had sent the navy through the Bosporus into Turkey,
a good plan that was badly executed. Though the fault then had been with the
commander in the field, Churchill had been blamed and was drummed out of the
government. Now, because of Churchill’s poor plan in Norway, Chamberlain was
blamed and drummed out of the government. The next day, May 10, 1940, Churchill
was installed as Prime Minister. He was greeted, not with brass bands, but with
the news that on this same day, the German army was smashing through and around
the Maginot Line into France.

The Germans, you see, had also learned a
lesson from the First World War, when the British tanks broke over their
trenches, overwhelmed their machine-gun nests, and broke their back. This time,
the Germans built their army around the tank corps, the Panzers, but with a new
wrinkle.

Britain had accepted the Douhet principle that
the next war would be fought by fleets of bombers attacking cities in what has
been called strategic bombing. Germany instead saw the bombers as long-range
artillery, attacking tactical targets with pinpoint accuracy. They ignored
development of long-range heavy bombers and built instead a fleet of
dive-bombers,
Sturzkampfflugzeugen,
which means “vertical battle
airplanes,” called Stukas for short, to accompany the Panzer Korps, and with
these they swept through Poland in a Blitzkrieg, or lightning war.

The French thought they were safe from the
Panzers behind their Maginot Line, but that line had two problems, one economic
and one political, and both stupid. The line stretched across the border
between France and Germany. To save a few francs when building it, France
ignored the stretch of border that was lined with the Ardennes forest because
that ground was obviously impenetrable to heavy artillery. Moreover, the
Maginot Line ended at the western end of France’s border with Germany, where
Belgium sat stuck between the two. Belgium had refused to allow the line to
continue along its border with Germany because it didn’t want to provoke the
Nazis; instead the small country relied on a diplomatic agreement of
nonaggression.

So everyone was surprised on May 10, 1940, when
the Panzers broke out of the Ardennes onto French soil, leaving their heavy
artillery behind but supported instead by waves of Stukas blasting everything
in sight. To the west, more Panzers swept into Belgium and kept right on going
into France.

The French army collapsed. The French air force
was destroyed in the air and on the ground as waves of Stukas and Messerschmitt
fighters swept over their aerodromes and caught them unawares, for they had no
radar. Elan gave way to despair.

Churchill, too, was caught unawares. He had
monitored the growth of Nazi military might, but he hadn’t realized how
completely the French were depending on their Maginot Line and how weak they
were behind it. British strategy relied on a great French army, merely
reinforced by the BEF. Now, day by day, the French retreated, surrendered,
threw down their arms, and ran from the German tanks. Inexorably the Panzers
raced over the countryside, wildly the Stukas screamed out of the clouds, and
daily the telegrams poured into 10 Downing Street pleading for help.

What help could the British give? The BEF
comprised all the British army that was prepared for war; there wasn’t any
more. Except for the Royal Air Force.

But without radar, the RAF planes that were
sent to France were overwhelmed. Within the first three days, half the bomber
force was lost. Lord Gort, commanding the BEF, and Air Marshal Barratt, in
charge of air support, demanded reinforcements. Dowding was ordered to send two
more squadrons of Hurricanes.

The next day, a group of tactical bombers,
Fairey Battles, was put under French orders. On May 13, thirty-one of them were
dispatched to attack pontoon bridges the Germans were building across the Meuse
River. The orders sending the Battles into action were incredibly stupid, for
there was nothing to be gained by destroying such easily reparable structures.
The Battles were slow and poorly armed, they were meat on the table for the
Messerschmitts, but they pushed their attack to the limit and destroyed the
bridges. And the Messerschmitts destroyed the Battles. Twenty-four bombers—77
percent!—were lost, and within a few hours, the Germans had rebuilt the
bridges, monuments to brass hat stupidity.

The Messerschmitts were dominating the air.
Prime Minister Reynaud, acting on demands from the French general staff, made a
personal appeal to Churchill for ten more fighter squadrons. Ford Gort seconded
this request: “Our main defence in the air is fighters. . . . I earnestly hope
the War Cabinet will decide to give additional air assistance for Allied
success in the coming battle.” Churchill brought these appeals to his War
Cabinet, which agreed that ten more squadrons should be prepared to fly to
France.

Dowding was appalled. “I was responsible for
the Air Defence of Great Britain, and I saw my resources slipping away like
sand in an hourglass. The pressure for more and more assistance to France was
relentless and inexorable.” He gave up on the Air Ministry, on playing the game
and either following orders or going through the proper channels. Instead he
appealed directly to Churchill, telling him that the requested squadrons would
have little effect on the war since they would be operating without radar and
so would be helpless against the overwhelming numbers of German fighters. They
would be a sacrificial lamb, accomplishing no military purpose.

Churchill responded that there was more than
mere military purposes on the line here. There were political promises to be
kept and emotions to be dealt with. Above all else, French morale had to be
rebuilt; they must be assured that Britain would stand by them or they might
give up and leave England to face Hitler alone.

Dowding said, point blank, that taking more
squadrons from him would do nothing for France and would leave him unable to
defend England. Churchill was adamant. Dowding then asked him for permission to
take his case to the War Cabinet personally. “I had to do it because I believed
that the Air Ministry would not support me firmly enough against the Prime
Minister in his strong wish to send more fighter squadrons to France in
response to the frantic appeals coming from across the Channel. . . . It was
confounded impertinence on my part, but I could not be sure that the Air
Ministry were fighting tooth and nail [against sending the fighters].”

Thirty years later, Dowding was asked, “In your
whole life, what was the most important decision you ever had to take?” His
answer: “The decision to ask for an interview with the War Cabinet to prevent
our fighters being handed over to the French.”

Churchill was shaken by his sincerity, and
agreed. The next day, May 15, Dowding was driven to the underground bunker
known as the War Rooms on Prince George Street, one block from No. 10 Downing
Street, to argue his case before the War Cabinet.

He argued briskly, efficiently, and, as always,
alone. Although the Air Ministry was well represented at the meeting, they
remained silent. “I should have been able to count on them for support in what
I was saying, but I got none. Newall [Chief of Air Staff] had been rebuffed a
little earlier by Churchill over something inconsequential, and he was silent.
Sinclair [Secretary of State for Air] was sitting forward with his arms on the
table eagerly trying to guess what Churchill was going to say next.”

Churchill, though affected by Dowding’s words,
repeated his own argument: The French were collapsing, and without French
resistance, Hitler would become master of Europe, and England would have to
face the Nazi hordes alone. The French needed bolstering, and they needed it
today The BEF was doing all it could, but if the French army collapsed, the
British army would be lost along with it. The only help England could provide
was airplanes, fighter airplanes. Churchill asked that the cabinet authorize
the immediate departure of ten more fighter squadrons to France.

The room was quiet. Dowding waited for Newall
or Sinclair to speak up, but they remained silent. “The Air Ministry
representatives took no part in this discussion, despite [their later
protestations]. I felt that everybody was too frightened of Winston Churchill,”
Dowding remembered. Finally, Dowding rose to his feet. He took up a graph he
had prepared showing the daily losses of his Hurricane fighters in France. “I
walked around to the seat occupied by the Prime Minister. I leant forward and
laid the graph on the table in front of him, and I said: ‘If the present rate
of wastage continues for another fortnight we shall not have a single Hurricane
left in France or in this country.’ I laid a particular emphasis on
or in this
country.
”

Then he sat down again. No one said a word. The
air circulation system went on whirring. Wing Commander William Elliott (later
Air Chief Marshal Sir William) was in the room that day: “The atmosphere was
the most highly charged emotionally that [I] had ever known. . . . Dowding was
white in the face with strain . . . but when [he] came to make his statement it
was put so ably and sincerely, and with such feeling, that there was no room
left for any further discussion.”

Everyone waited for Churchill to speak. He did
not. What could he say? Quietly, the cabinet agreed unanimously that no more
fighters should be sent to France, but added the cautionary phrase “for the
present.” That last phrase was bothersome, but Dowding decided not to argue it
but rather to take his victory and remain vigilant. He left the meeting and
wrote that afternoon to Keith Park, his chief assistant: “We had a notable
victory on the Home Front this morning and the orders to send more Hurricanes
were cancelled. Appeals for help will doubtless be renewed, however, with
increasing insistency and I do not know how this morning’s work will stand the
test of time, but I will never relax my efforts to prevent the dissipation of
the Home fighter forces.”

He didn’t know that “this morning’s work” had
already failed the test of time, for after he left, Churchill began to have
second thoughts, and he unilaterally decided to send four more squadrons to
France. When he was in that mood, the cabinet never stood up to him. And so,
without further debate, the morning’s “decision was reversed,” according to
General Sir Ian Jacob, one of those present. “I believe it was the only
occasion in the whole war on which, a firm decision having been reached, the
Prime Minister changed his mind.” Churchill then flew off to France to deliver
the glad tidings to Reynaud, but instead, Reynaud’s despair infected him.
Churchill began to think the unthinkable: that France might totally collapse
and surrender. That must not be allowed to happen. He telegraphed his cabinet,
telling them to send six more squadrons immediately, adding that he expected a
reply by midnight.

In his diary, Churchill’s private secretary,
John Colville, described the dilemma the cabinet now faced: “The Cabinet met at
11.00 pm to discuss a terrifying telegram Winston has sent from Paris. Winston
wants us to mass all our air strength to stop the [German] advance in order to
save the collapsing French morale. . . . The Cabinet’s decision was to send the
ten fighter squadrons for which the French asked. That means denuding this
country of a quarter of its first line fighter defence.”

In
Their Finest Flour,
Churchill
describes it all: “In the morning, before I started [for France], the Cabinet
had given me authority to move four more squadrons to France. On our return to
the Embassy and after talking it over . . . I decided to ask sanction for the
despatch of six more. This would leave us with only the twenty-five fighter
squadrons at home, and that was the final limit.”

And that is it, the whole story according to
Churchill. It is historical emendations such as these that prompted Sir John
Slessor, a later Air Chief Marshal of the RAF, to remark, “The enormous
interest and value of Sir Winston’s memoirs sometimes suffers from his
occasional genius for self-deception.”

Not only does Churchill ignore the entire
cabinet meeting at which Dowding fought against the departure of any more
fighters from England—and at which the cabinet agreed with him—but he says that
twenty-five fighter squadrons at home was what was required to defend England.
In truth, Dowding and the Air Staff had always agreed that a bare minimum of
fifty squadrons would be necessary—they argued over whether it should be fifty,
fifty-one, or fifty-two—and the RAF was already down to thirty-seven. Nor was
even this “the final limit,” for the French collapse continued, and the BEF was
now in danger of being surrounded and cut off from the Channel ports. Churchill
now had to face not only the loss of his only ally, France, but the loss of his
own army as well.