One of the few journalists: Manchester Guardian, May 7, 1940.
“We chatted for a moment”: James, Chips, 300.
Chamberlain’s speech at Norway debate: Hansard, Conduct of the War, vol. 360, 1073–85.
He “spoke haltingly”: James, Chips, 300.
“The earlier Chamberlain”: Manchester Guardian, May 8, 1940.
Attlee’s speech Norway debate: Hansard, Conduct of the War, vol. 360, 1086–94.
Roger Keyes speech: Ibid., 1125–30.
Description of Amery’s thoughts and feelings as he prepares to speak: Amel7/34, Churchill Archive Center, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK: Amery, My Political Life, vol. 3, 366.
Amery’s address at Norway debate: Hansard, Conduct of the War, vol. 360, 1140–51.
Reactions to Conduct of War debate: Channon “most uneasy about tomorrow,” James, Chips, 300; “The efficacy of the Government”: Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 78; Chief Whip Margesson warned: “nadir of gloom”: Colville, The Fringes of Power, 118.
“I ask that the vote”: Herbert Morrison, Hansard, Conduct of the War, vol. 360, 1251–54.
“I have friends in the House”: Chamberlain, ibid., 1266.
“Little Neville”: James, Chips, 301.
“The right honorable gentleman”: Lloyd George, Hansard, Conduct of the War, vol. 360, 1283.
Churchill’s speech at Norway debate: Ibid., 1348–61.
Reaction to Churchill speech: Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 79.
Violet Bonhom Carter, Dingle Foot, Lady Alexandra Metcalfe: Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, 139.
Description of atmosphere in House during division (vote): Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe, vol. 1, 127–30.
Kennedy . . . looked “haggard and shaken”: Nasaw, The Patriarch, 439; Amery, My Political Life, 369.
CHAPTER SIX: THE ROGUE ELEPHANT
Public complain about Chamberlain: Mass Observation, Political Crisis Report, May 5, 1940.
Disparaging remarks about George VI and his test scores: Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, 7–8.
King’s relationship with Chamberlain: Ibid., 11.
“A little defeatist” after a talk with Ambassador Kennedy: Dilks, The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 215.
Queen disapproves of Churchill: Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, 24–25.
King offers to speak to Labour Party: Ibid., 36.
Whips mount Iron Man defense: John Barnes and David Nicholson, eds., The Empire at Bay: The Leo Amery Diaries, 1929–1945 (London: Hutchinson, 1987), 612.
Whips attempt to woo rebel Torys: Amery, My Political Life, vol. 3, 370.
The Whips are putting it about: Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 80.
Churchill and the Tonypandy Raids: Anthony Mór-O’Brien, “Churchill and the Tonypandy Riots,” Welsh History Review 17, no. 1 (1994): 67–78.
Labour Party supports Halifax: Roberts, The Holy Fox, 199–200.
“bitterly opposed to Winston”: Ibid., 39.
“Don’t agree and don’t say anything”: Anthony Eden, The Reckoning: The Memoirs of Anthony Eden (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1965), 111.
German merchant fleet had switched to the frequency: David Irving, Churchill’s War (New York: Avon Books, 1991), 261–62.
“When the history [of this period] comes to be written”: Lloyd George, Hansard, May 9, 1940, vol. 360, 1496.
Lloyd George is “stak[ing] out a position”: Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, 530.
“Unable to distinguish between the P.M. and Halifax”: Gilbert, Finest Hour, 302–3.
“Our party won’t have you”: Kenneth Harris, Attlee (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995), 174.
Halifax’s reservations about becoming Prime Minister: Roberts, Holy Fox, 195–205.
Churchill’s version of how he became Prime Minister: Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 592.
Halifax’s version of how Churchill became Prime Minister: Roberts, Holy Fox, 204–5.
Halifax goes to the dentist: Ibid., 207–8.
Profile of General Gamelin: May, Strange Victory, 129–32; Horne, To Lose a Battle, 116–22.
Reynaud disillusioned with Gamelin: Paul Reynaud, In the Thick of the Fight, 1930–1945 (London: Cassell and Company, 1955), 284–85.
“That nerveless man”: May, Strange Victory, 379.
Reynaud’s miraculous recovery on the ninth: Ibid., 378–79.
“If [Gamelin] is guilty, I am,”: Ibid., 379.
London learned of the German offensive: Cab, May 10, 1940, 65/7 117 (40).
“How crazy . . . Children playing by the stream”: Horne, To Lose a Battle, 211.
The general had dismissed a warning: Reynaud, In the Thick of the Fight, 294.
in Downing Street: Cab, morning cabinet, May 10, 1940, 65/7 117 (40).
“Perhaps the darkest day in English history”: James, Chips, 306.
General Gamelin “strode up and down the corridor”: André Beaufre, 1940: The Fall of France (London: Cassell, 1967), 388.
“Oh, I don’t know about that”: Gilbert, Finest Hour, 306.
Chamberlain had announced that he intended to stay in office: Eden, The Reckoning, 111; Hugh Dalton, The Fateful Years: Memoirs 1931–1945 (London: Frederick Muller, Ltd, 1957), 344.
Alec Douglas-Home addresses Watching Committee: Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 80.
Brendan Bracken mobilizes votes for Churchill: Gilbert, Finest Hour, 308.
Labour Party refuses to back Chamberlain: Cab, afternoon cabinet, May 10, 1940, 65/7 119 (40).
“all my past life”: Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 596.
“I have met a genius”: Paul Addison, Churchill: The Unexpected Hero (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005), 3.
“If I had to spend my whole life”: Nella Last, Nella Last’s War: The Second World War Diaries of Housewife, 49 (London Profile Books, 2006), 46–47.
“Old men forget”: Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, 137.
“True blue” Tory: Ibid., 145.
“The crooks are on top”: John Charmley, Churchill: The End of Glory (New York: Harcourt, 1993), 396.
“King over water”: James, Chips, 307.
Cabinet appointments: Charmley, Churchill, 397.
“The only hope lies in”: Roberts, The Holy Fox, 209.
“Victory, victory at all costs”: Churchill inaugural speech as prime minister, May 13, 1940, Hansard, Conduct of the War, vol. 360, 1501–25.
CHAPTER SEVEN: “THERE FADED AWAY THIS NOISE WHICH WAS A GREAT ARMY”
“There faded away this noise which was a great army”: Victor Hugo, “Waterloo! Waterloo! Waterloo! Morne plaine!”
“It went too damn well”: Drew Middleton, Our Share of Night: A Personal Narrative of the War Years (New York: Viking, 1946), 40.
Schlieffen plan: May, Strange Victory, 260, 294–95.
“Everything so far has been running like clockwork”: Alex Danchev and Dan Todman, eds., War Diaries 1939–1945: Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001), 59–60.
“In towns and villages”: Sebag-Montefiore, Dunkirk, 61.
“Retracing steps taken in a dream”: Middleton, Our Share of Night, 40.
“When we took the decision to go into Belgium”: Sebag-Montefiore, Dunkirk, 66.
“I could have wept with joy”: Jackson, The Fall of France, 28.
“It’s a miracle! It’s a miracle!”: Ronald Atkin, Pillar of Fire: Dunkirk 1940 (Edinburgh: Birlinn, Ltd., 2001), 40.
General Irwin Rommel began May 13: Horne, To Lose a Battle, 272–74.
French strategic errors at Meuse: May, Strange Victory, 426–31.
“Beat it!”: Reynaud, In the Thick of the Fight, 302.
French despair at German breakthrough: Beaufre, 1940, 185.
Reynaud requests ten RAF squadrons immediately: Cab, May 14, 1940, 65/7 122 (40).
twenty-nine . . . fig
hter squadrons currently available: Cab, evening cabinet, May 16, 1940, 65/7 25 (40).
Churchill sends Reynaud an ambiguous reply: Premier papers, 3/188.
Conversation with Joe Kennedy: Nasaw, The Patriarch, 441.
Reynaud makes second desperate request for RAF squadrons: Cab, May 15, 1940, 65/7 123 (40).
Description of mood on Paris streets, May 15 to 18: Horne, To Lose a Battle, 385–89.
“The road to Paris is open”: Reynaud, In the Thick of the Fight, 319–20.
Convenes emergency meeting to discuss defense of Paris: Ibid., 322.
London receives grave news on morning of May 16: Cab, May 16, 1940, 65/7 124 (20).
Paris could fall within the next few days: Hastings Ismay, The Memoirs of General Lord Hastings Ismay (New York: Viking, 1960), 127.
“The French High Command is already beaten”: Gilbert, Finest Hour, 349; Supreme War Council minutes May 16, 1940, 99/3.
Conflicting accounts of Anglo-French meeting of May 16: Churchill, Their Finest Hour, 38–44; Reynaud, In the Thick of the Fight, 323–30.
Paul Baudouin’s observations about Daladier: Ibid., 392–93.
Venerable officials burning documents: Churchill, Their Finest Hour, 39.
“I assure you that in this bulge”: Horne, To Lose a Battle, 394.
“Inferiority of numbers, inferiority of equipment”: Churchill, Their Finest Hour, 43.
walked over to the window again: Ibid., 42.
“Churchill is still thinking of his books”: Colville, The Fringes of Power, 132.
May 14 . . . lost seventy-one planes: Terraine, A Time for Courage, 34.
Ismay sends message in Hindustani: Ismay, The Memoirs of General Lord Hastings Ismay, 130.
Description of meeting at Reynaud’s apartment: Gates, End of the Affair, 125–26.
“Don’t fuss and budget, dearie”: Ismay, The Memoirs of General Lord Hastings Ismay, 130.
“We are living in a new phase of history”: MacLeod and Kelly, Time Unguarded, 310.
“I think they are going to beat us”: Sandra Koa Wong, ed., Our Longest Days (London: Profile Books, 2008), 23.
Developments in public opinion in second half of May, including changing perception of Hitler: Mass Observation, The General Morale: Background Situations, May 30, 1940.
Roosevelt’s skepticism about Churchill: David Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance 1937–1941 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 112–14.
Chamberlain was claiming that “everything [was] finished”: Esnouf, British Government War Aims, 189.
“Could we maintain the Air Struggle?”: MacLeod and Kelly, Time Unguarded, 313.
“A miracle may save us”: Dilks, The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 288.
“If the Germans received fair peace terms”: Hastings, Winston’s War, 32.
Basil Liddel Hart, Montagu Norman, John Gielgud, Sybil Throndike, George Bernard Shaw, etc.: Jackson, The Fall of France, 204; Hastings, Winston’s War, 32–33.
CHAPTER EIGHT: A CERTAIN EVENTUALITY
General Pownall’s visit to Dunkirk: Colville, Man of Valour, 203.
“You ought to have cried, ‘Shame’ ”: Gilbert, Finest Hour, 362–63.
Cabinet debates whether Gort should retreat to sea: Cab, Confidential Annex, May 19, 1940, 65/13 W.M. (40) 140.
“be ye men of valour”: Churchill’s first broadcast to British people as prime minister, May 19, 1940.
“A withdrawal south”: Gates, End of the Affair, 86.
“last alternative”: Horne, To Lose a Battle, 492.
Reynaud appoints Pétain and Weygand to his government: Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe, 151–52.
“Instead of ectoplasm, we [have] a man!”: Beaufre, 1940, 190; Gilbert, Finest Hour, 56–57.
Design and object of Weygand offensive: Reynaud, In the Thick of the Fight, 364–67.
Weygand offensive miscarries: Gilbert, Finest Hour, 384–87; Colville, Man of Valour, 212–15.
Churchill tells King a seaborne evacuation still might be necessary: John Wheeler Bennett, King George VI: His Life and Reign (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1958), 458.
German pressure on Channel ports of Calais and Boulogne threatens BEF: Cab, Confidential Annex, May 23, 1940, 65/13 W.M. (40).
“Not many sailing”: Sebag-Montefiore, Dunkirk, 223.
Situation in Calais: Ibid., 230.
Calais to be defended to last round: MacLeod and Kelly, Time Unguarded, 331–32.
“The final debacle cannot be long delayed”: Ibid., 332.
Chamberlain study group organized to examine the effect the fall of France would have on Britain: P. M. H. Bell, A Certain Eventuality: Britain and the Fall of France (London: Saxon House, 1974), 32.
Could Britain continue the war alone? The Chiefs of Staff view: Chiefs of Staff, British Strategy in a Certain Eventuality, May 25, 1940, Cab 66/7, W.P. (40) 168.
Henry Channon buries his diaries: James, Chips, 312.
Vera Brittain imagined herself at a requiem for “European civilization”: Brittain, England’s Hour, 34.
“The appalling size of the smash up”: Allingham, The Oaken Heart, 181.
Spears flight to Paris May 25: Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe, 176–77.
Paris and London blame each other: Gates, End of the Affair, 133.
“Many people now quite openly blame”: Boothe, Europe in the Spring, 265.
Description of Reynaud and Spears’s meeting at Ministry of Defense: Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe, 180–81.
Reynaud’s telephone annoys Spears: Ibid., 187–88.
meeting with Major Fauvelle: Ibid., 189–91.
“Gort’s only hope is to get to the coast”: Oliver Harvey, The Diplomatic Diaries of Oliver Harvey, 1937–1940 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1971), 368.
Italian embassy suggests Anglo-Italian talks: Cab, May 25, 1940, 65/7 W.M. (40) 138; Andrew Roberts’s The Holy Fox provides more detail about the invitation on page 214.
he drafted a cable to Roosevelt in Churchill’s name: Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, 103.
Churchill said he had “no objections” to talking to the Italians: Cab, May 25, 1940, 65/7 W.M. (40) 138.
Halifax describes his talk with Bastianini in a cable to Percy Lorraine, the British ambassador in Rome: Cab, May 26, 1940, 66/7 W.P. (40) 170.
Paresci complains meeting had miscarried: Roberts, The Holy Fox, 214–16.
“Black as black”: Dilks, The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 289–90.
Captured German map: Bryant, The Turn of the Tide, 96.
Weygand describes how France will fall: Reynaud, In the Thick of the Fight, 389.
Albert Lebrun urges that France initiate talks with Germany immediately: Gates, End of the Affair, 140–41.
Pétain and Campinchi offer their views to committee: John Lukacs, Five Days in London: May 1940 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 88.
“If I ever have to go through another war”: Charles Ritchie, The Siren Years: A Canadian Diplomat Abroad, 1937–1945 (Toronto: McCelland & Stewart, 2001), 54.
The “pipe will go on passing water through”: Bryant, The Turn of the Tide, 98.
“lunatics . . . were the last straw”: Ibid., 98.
“lame women suffering”: Ibid., 89.
“March north to the coast in battle order”: Defense Committee, May 25, 1940, Cab papers 69/1.
Young woman crying at bus stop: Edward Bliss, ed., In Search of Light: The Broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow, 1938–1961 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1997), 25.
“Horrifying sense of living the same old nightmare”: Mollie Panter Downes, London War Notes, 1939–1945 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971), 62.
CHAPTER NINE: THE ITALIAN APPROACH
“Morale of German troops fantastically good”: Shirer, Berlin Diary, 380.
“You ought to have a ‘bare bodkin’ ”: Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 90.
N
ational Prayer Day: Manchester Guardian, May 27, 1940.
Description of cabinet room: Ian Colvin, The Chamberlain Cabinet (West Sussex, UK: Littlehampton Book Service, 1971), 18–21.
Halifax proposes Britain examine a compromise peace: Cabinet, Confidential Annex, May 26, 1940, 65/13 W.M. (40) 139.
Description of National Prayer Day: Times of London, Daily Mail, Daily Express, May 27, 1940; David Baldwin, Royal Prayer: A Surprising History (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2010), 88–90.
“In Westminster Abbey”: John Betjeman, Collected Poems (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006), 74.
Three versions of Reynaud’s visit to London: French War Committee’s version, Esnouf, British Government War Aims, 211; Reynaud’s version, In the Thick of the Fight, 404; Colonel de Villelume’s version, Gates, End of the Affair, 145.
Reynaud and Churchill’s lunchtime conversation: At the afternoon cabinet, Churchill described the topics he and Reynaud discussed; Confidential Annex, May 26, 1940, Cab 65/13 W.M. (40) 140.
Reynaud sounded remarkably like Halifax: Esnouf, British Government War Aims, 212–13.
British Strategy in the Near Future: May 26, 1940, Cab 66/7 W.P. (40) 169.
German GDP greater than that of Britain or the United States: Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, 383.
Churchill’s manipulation of Chiefs of Staff to produce a more optimistic assessment of Britain’s ability to fight on alone: Private communication to the author; also see Christopher Hill, Cabinet Decisions on Foreign Policy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 154–55.
“We [are] in a different position from France”: notes on the third and last cabinet of May 26 can be found in the concluding paragraphs of Confidential Annex, Cab 65/13 W.M. (40) 140.
Halifax’s disadvantages in compromise peace debate: Hill, Cabinet Decisions on Foreign Policy, 159–61.
Churchill’s advantages in debate: Ibid., 147–54.
Role of Chamberlain, Attlee, Greenwood in debate: Ibid., 156–57.
“The Duce . . . plans to write a letter to Hitler”: Hugh Gibson, ed., The Ciano Diaries 1939–1943 (New York: Simon Publications, 1945), 255.
Fall of Calais: Sebag-Montefiore, Dunkirk, 228–38; Charles Whiting, The Poor Bloody Infantry (London: Hutchinson, 1987), 44–45.
“Operation Dynamo is to commence”: Gilbert, Finest Hour, 405.
“Fear not the result”: Ibid., 406.