The Gathering Storm: The Second World War (81 page)

2. But the war may well be raging in 1941, and no one can tell what opportunities may present themselves then. I wish, therefore, that all the preparations of various ships and auxiliaries outlined in your table and marked as “beneficial” should continue as opportunity offers; that when ships come into the dockyards for repair or refit, everything should be done to them which will not delay their return to service. And it would surely be only common prudence, in view of the attitude of Russia, to go on warning our destroyers for service in winter seas. I am glad to feel that we are agreed in this.

* * * * *

So far no ally had espoused our cause. The United States was cooler than in any other period. I persevered in my correspondence with the President, but with little response. The Chancellor of the Exchequer groaned about our dwindling dollar resources. We had already signed a pact of mutual assistance with Turkey, and were considering what aid we could give her from our narrow margins. The stresses created by the Finnish War had worsened our relations, already bad, with the Soviets. Any action we might undertake to help the Finns might lead to war with Russia. The fundamental antagonisms between the Soviet Government and Nazi Germany did not prevent the Kremlin actively aiding by supplies and facilities the development of Hitler’s power. Communists in France and any that existed in Britain denounced the “imperialist-capitalist” war, and did what they could to hamper work in the munition factories. They certainly exercised a depressing and subversive influence within the French Army, already wearied by inaction. We continued to court Italy by civilities and favourable contracts, but we could feel no security, or progress towards friendship. Count Ciano was polite to our Ambassador. Mussolini stood aloof.

The Italian Dictator was not, however, without his own misgivings. On January 3, he wrote a revealing letter to Hitler expressing his distaste for the German agreement with Russia:

No one knows better than I with forty years’ political experience that policy – particularly a revolutionary policy – has its tactical requirements. I recognised the Soviets in 1924. In 1934, I signed with them a treaty of commerce and friendship. I, therefore, understood that,
especially as Ribbentrop’s forecast about the non-intervention of Britain and France has not come off,
you are obliged to avoid the second front. You have had to pay for this in that Russia has, without striking a blow, been the great profiteer of the war in Poland and the Baltic.

But I, who was born a revolutionary and have not modified my revolutionary mentality, tell you that you cannot permanently sacrifice the principles of
your
revolution to the tactical requirements of a given moment…. I have also the definite duty to add that a further step in the relations with Moscow would have catastrophic repercussions in Italy, where the unanimity of anti-Bolshevik feeling is absolute, granite-hard, and unbreakable. Permit me to think that this will not happen. The solution of your
Lebensraum
is in Russia, and nowhere else…. The day when we shall have demolished Bolshevism we shall have kept faith with both our revolutions. Then it will be the turn of the great democracies, who will not be able to survive the cancer which gnaws them….

* * * * *

On January 6, I again visited France to explain my two mechanical projects, Cultivator Number 6
¹
and the Fluvial Mine (“Operation Royal Marine”), to the French High Command. In the morning, before I left, the Prime Minister sent for me and told me he had decided to make a change at the War Office, and that Mr. Hore-Belisha would give place to Mr. Oliver Stanley. Late that night, Mr. Hore-Belisha called me on the telephone at our Embassy in Paris and told me what I knew already. I pressed him, but without success, to take one of the other offices which were open to him. The Government was itself in low water at this time, and almost the whole press of the country declared that a most energetic and live figure had been dismissed from the Government. He quitted the War Office amid a chorus of newspaper tributes. Parliament does not take its opinion from the newspapers; indeed, it often. reacts in the opposite sense. When the House of Commons met a week later, he had few champions, and refrained from making any statement. I wrote to him, January 10, as follows:

I much regret that our brief association as colleagues has ended. In the last war I went through the same experience as you have suffered, and I know how bitter and painful it is to anyone with his heart in the job. I was not consulted in the changes that were proposed. I was only informed after they had been decided. At the same time, I should fail in candour if I did not let you know that I. thought it would have been better if you went to the Board of Trade or the Ministry of Information, and I am very sorry that you did not see your way to accept the first of these important offices.

The outstanding achievement of your tenure of the War Office was the passage of conscription in time of peace. You may rest with confidence upon this, and I hope that it will not be long before we are colleagues again, and that this temporary set-back will prove no serious obstacle to your opportunities of serving the country.

It was not possible for me to realise my hope until, after the break-up of the National Coalition, I formed the so-called “Caretaker Government” in May, 1945. Belisha then became Minister of National Insurance. In the interval he had been one of our severe critics; but I was very glad to be able to bring so able a man back into the Administration.

* * * * *

All January the Finns stood firm, and at the end of the month the growing Russian armies were still held in their positions. The Red air force continued to bomb Helsingfors and Viipuri, and the cry from the Finnish Government for aircraft and war materials grew louder. As the Arctic nights shortened, the Soviet air offensive would increase, not only upon the towns of Finland, but upon the communications of their armies. Only a trickle of war material and only a few thousand volunteers from the Scandinavian countries had reached Finland so far. A bureau for recruiting was opened in London in January, and several scores of British aircraft were sent to Finland, some direct by air. Nothing in fact of any use was done.

The delays about Narvik continued interminably. Although the Cabinet were prepared to contemplate pressure upon Norway and Sweden to allow aid to pass to Finland, they remained opposed to the much smaller operation of mining the Leads. The first was noble; the second merely tactical. Besides, everyone could see that Norway and Sweden would refuse facilities for aid; so nothing would come of the project anyway.

In my vexation after one of our Cabinets I wrote to a colleague:

January
15, 1940.

My disquiet was due mainly to the awful difficulties which our machinery of war conduct presents to positive action. I see such immense walls of prevention, all built and building, that I wonder whether any plan will have a chance of climbing over them. Just look at the arguments which have had to be surmounted in the seven weeks we have discussed this Narvik operation. First, the objections of the economic departments, Supply, Board of Trade, etc. Secondly, the Joint Planning Committee. Thirdly, the Chiefs of Staff Committee. Fourthly, the insidious argument, “Don’t spoil the big plan for the sake of the small,” when there is really very little chance of the big plan being resolutely attempted. Fifthly, the juridical and moral objections, all gradually worn down. Sixthly, the attitude of neutrals, and above all, the United States. But see how well the United States have responded to our
démarche!
Seventhly, the Cabinet itself, with its many angles of criticism. Eighthly, when all this has been smoothed out, the French have to be consulted. Finally, the Dominions and their consciences have to be squared, they not having gone through the process by which opinion has advanced at home. All this makes me feel that under the present arrangements we shall be reduced to waiting upon the terrible attacks of the enemy, against which it is impossible to prepare in every quarter simultaneously without fatal dissipation of strength.

I have two or three projects moving forward, but all I fear will succumb before the tremendous array of negative arguments and forces. Pardon me, therefore, if I showed distress. One thing is absolutely certain, namely, that victory will never be found by taking the line of least resistance.

However, all this Narvik story is for the moment put on one side by the threat to the Low Countries. If this materialises, the position will have to be studied in the light of entirely new events…. Should a great battle engage in the Low Countries, the effects upon Norway and Sweden may well be decisive. Even if the battle ends only in a stalemate, they may feel far more free, and to us a diversion may become even more needful.

* * * * *

There were other causes for uneasiness. The progress of converting our industries to war production was not up to the pace required. In a speech at Manchester on January 27, I urged the immense importance of expanding our labour supply and of bringing great numbers of women into industry to replace the men taken for the armed forces and to augment our strength:

We have to make a huge expansion, especially of those capable of performing skilled or semi-skilled operations. Here we must specially count for aid and guidance upon our Labour colleagues and trade-union leaders. I can speak with some knowledge about this, having presided over the former Ministry of Munitions in its culminating phase. Millions of new workers will be needed, and more than a million women must come boldly forward into our war industries – into the shell plants, the munition works, and into the aircraft factories. Without this expansion of labour and without allowing the women of Britain to enter the struggle as they desire to do, we should fail utterly to bear our fair share of the burden which France and Britain have jointly assumed.

Little was, however, done, and the sense of extreme emergency seemed lacking. There was a “twilight” mood in the ranks of Labour and of those who directed production as well as in the military operations. It was not till the beginning of May that a survey of employment in the engineering, motor, and aircraft group of industries which was presented to the Cabinet revealed the facts in an indisputable form. This paper was searchingly examined by my statistical department under Professor Lindemann. In spite of the distractions and excitements of the Norwegian hurly-burly then in progress, I found time to address the following note to my colleagues:

This Report suggests that in this fundamental group, at any rate, we have hardly begun to organise man-power for the production of munitions.

In [previous papers] it was estimated that a very large expansion, amounting to 71.5 per cent of the number engaged in the metal industry, would be needed in the first year of war. Actually the engineering, motor, and aircraft group, which covers three-fifths of the metal industry and which is discussed in this survey, has only expanded by 11.1 per cent (122,000) between June, 1939, and April, 1940. This is less than one-sixth of the expansion stated to be required. Without any Government intervention, by the mere improvement of trade, the number increased as quickly as this in the year 1936/37.

Although 350,000 boys leave school each year, there is an increase of only 25,000 in the number of males under twenty-one employed in this group. Moreover, the proportion of women and young persons has only increased from 26.6 per cent to 27.6 per cent. In the engineering, motor, and aircraft group, we now have only one woman for every twelve men. During the last war the ratio of women to men in the metal industries increased from one woman for every ten men to one woman for every three men. In the first year of the last war, July, 1914, to July, 1915, the new workers drafted into the metal industries amounted to 20 per cent of those already there. In the group under survey which may fairly be taken as typical of the whole metal industry, only 11 per cent have been added in the last ten months.

Admiralty establishments, in which employment has been increased by nearly 27 per cent, have not been considered here, as no figures of the different types of labour are given.

* * * * *

On January 19, anxieties about the Western Front received confirmation. A German staff-major of the 7th Air Division had been ordered to take some documents to Headquarters in Cologne. Wishing to save time for private indulgences, he decided to fly across the intervening Belgian territory. His machine made a forced landing; the Belgian police arrested him and impounded his papers, which he tried desperately to destroy. These contained the entire and actual scheme for the invasion of Belgium, Holland, and France on which Hitler had resolved. The French and British Governments were given copies of these documents, and the German major was released to explain matters to his superiors. I was told about all this at the time, and it seemed to me incredible that the Belgians would not make a plan to invite us in. But they did nothing about it. It was argued in all three countries concerned that probably it was a plant. But this could not be true. There could be no sense in the Germans trying to make the Belgians believe that they were going to attack them in the near future. This might make them do the very last thing the Germans wanted, namely, make a plan with the French and British Armies to come forward privily and quickly one fine night. I, therefore, believed in the impending attack. But such questionings found no place in the thought of the Belgian King, and he and his Army Staff merely waited, hoping that all would turn out well. In spite of all the German major’s papers, no fresh action of any kind was taken by the Allies or the threatened states. Hitler, on the other hand, as we now know, summoned Goering to his presence, and on being told that the captured papers were in fact the complete plans for invasion, ordered, after venting his anger, new variants to be prepared.