FUTURE generations may deem it noteworthy that the supreme question of whether we should fight on alone never found a place upon the War Cabinet agenda. It was taken for granted and as a matter of course by these men of all parties in the State, and we were much too busy to waste time upon such unreal, academic issues. We were united also in viewing the new phase with good confidence.
On June 13 I made my last visit to France for four years almost to a day. The French Government had now withdrawn to Tours, and tension had mounted steadily. I took Edward Halifax and General Ismay with me, and Max Beaverbrook volunteered to come too. In trouble he is always buoyant. This time the weather was cloudless, and we sailed over in the midst of our Spitfire squadron, making however a rather wider sweep to the southward than before. Arrived over Tours, we found the airport had been heavily bombed the night before, but we and all our escort landed smoothly in spite of the craters. Immediately one sensed the increasing degeneration of affairs. No one came to meet us or seemed to expect us. We borrowed a service car from the station commander and motored into the city, making for the Prefecture, where it was said the French Government had their headquarters. No one of consequence was there, but Reynaud was reported to be motoring in from the country.
It being already nearly two o’clock, I insisted upon luncheon, and after some parleyings we drove through streets crowded with refugees’ cars, most of them with a mattress on top and crammed with luggage. We found a café, which was closed, but after explanations we obtained a meal. During luncheon I was visited by M. Baudouin, whose influence had risen in these latter days. He began at once in his soft, silky manner about the hopelessness of the French resistance. If the United States would declare war on Germany it might be possible for France to continue. What did I think about this? I did not discuss the question further than to say that I hoped America would come in, and that we should certainly fight on. He afterwards, I was told, spread it about that I had agreed that France should surrender unless the United States came in.
We then returned to the Prefecture, where Mandel, Minister of the Interior, awaited us. This faithful former secretary of Clemenceau, and a bearer forward of his life’s message, seemed in the best of spirits. He was energy and defiance personified. His luncheon, an attractive chicken, was uneaten on the tray before him. He was a ray of sunshine. He had a telephone in each hand, through which he was constantly giving orders and decisions. His ideas were simple: fight on to the end in France, in order to cover the largest possible movement into Africa. This was the last time I saw this valiant Frenchman. The restored French Republic rightly shot to death the hirelings who murdered him. His memory is honoured by his countrymen and their allies.
Presently Reynaud arrived. At first he seemed depressed. General Weygand had reported to him that the French armies were exhausted. The line was pierced in many places; refugees were pouring along all the roads through the country, and many of the troops were in disorder. The Generalissimo felt it was necessary to ask for an armistice while there were still enough French troops to keep order until peace could be made. Such was the military advice. He would send that day a further message to Mr. Roosevelt saying that the last hour had come and that the fate of the Allied cause lay in America’s hand. Hence arose the alternative of armistice and peace.
M. Reynaud proceeded to say that the Council of Ministers had on the previous day instructed him to inquire what would be Britain’s attitude should the worst come. He himself was well aware of the solemn pledge that no separate peace would be entered into by either ally. General Weygand and others pointed out that France had already sacrificed everything in the common cause. She had nothing left, but she had succeeded in greatly weakening the common foe. It would in those circumstances be a shock if Britain failed to concede that France was physically unable to carry on, if France was still expected to fight on and thus deliver up her people to the certainty of corruption and evil transformation at the hands of ruthless specialists in the art of bringing conquered peoples to heel. That then was the question which he had to put. Would Great Britain realise the hard facts with which France was faced?
I thought the issue was so serious that I asked to withdraw with my colleagues before answering it. So Lords Halifax and Beaverbrook and the rest of our party went out into a dripping but sunlit garden and talked things over for half an hour. On our return I re-stated our position. We could not agree to a separate peace however it might come. Our war aim remained the total defeat of Hitler, and we felt that we could still bring this about. We were therefore not in a position to release France from her obligation. Whatever happened, we would level no reproaches against France; but that was a different matter from consenting to release her from her pledge. I urged that the French should now send a new, final appeal to President Roosevelt, which we would support from London. M. Reynaud agreed to do this, and promised that the French would hold on until the result was known.
At the end of our talk he took us into the adjoining room, where MM. Herriot and Jeanneney, the Presidents of the Chamber and Senate respectively, were seated. Both these French patriots spoke with passionate emotion about fighting on to the death. As we went down the crowded passage into the courtyard I saw General de Gaulle standing stolid and expressionless at the doorway. Greeting him, I said in a low tone, in French: “L’homme du destin.” He remained impassive. In the courtyard there must have been more than a hundred leading Frenchmen in frightful misery. Clemenceau’s son was brought up to me. I wrung his hand. The Spitfires were already in the air, and I slept sound on our swift and uneventful journey home. This was wise, for there was a long way to go before bed-time.
At 10.15 p.m. I made my new report to the Cabinet. My account was endorsed by my two companions. While we were still sitting Ambassador Kennedy arrived with President Roosevelt’s reply to an earlier appeal which Reynaud had made to him on June 10. “Your message,” he cabled, “has moved me very deeply. As I have already stated to you and to Mr. Churchill, this Government is doing everything in its power to make available to the Allied Governments the material they so urgently require, and our efforts to do still more are being redoubled. This is so because of our faith in and our support of the ideals for which the Allies are fighting.
“The magnificent resistance of the French and British Armies has profoundly impressed the American people.
“I am, personally, particularly impressed by your declaration that France will continue to fight on behalf of Democracy, even if it means slow withdrawal, even to North Africa and the Atlantic. It is most important to remember that the French and British Fleets continue [in] mastery of the Atlantic and other oceans; also to remember that vital materials from the outside world are necessary to maintain all armies.
“I am also greatly heartened by what Prime Minister Churchill said a few days ago about the continued resistance of the British Empire, and that determination would seem to apply equally to the great French Empire all over the world. Naval power in world affairs still carries the lessons of history, as Admiral Darlan well knows.”
We all thought the President had gone a very long way. He had authorised Reynaud to publish his message of June 10, with all that that implied, and now he had sent this formidable answer. If, upon this, France decided to endure the further torture of the war, the United States would be deeply committed to enter it. At any rate, it contained two points which were tantamount to belligerence: first, a promise of all material aid, which implied active assistance; secondly, a call to go on fighting even if the Government were driven right out of France. I sent our thanks to the President immediately, and I also sought to commend the President’s message to Reynaud in the most favourable terms. Perhaps these points were stressed unduly; but it was necessary to make the most of everything we had or could get:
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The next day arrived a telegram from the President explaining that he could not agree to the publication of his message to Reynaud. He himself, according to Mr. Kennedy, had wished to do so, but the State Department, while in full sympathy with him, saw the gravest dangers. The President complimented the British and French Governments on the courage of their troops. He renewed the assurances about furnishing all possible material and supplies; but he then said that his message was in no sense intended to commit and did not commit the Government of the United States to military participation. There was no authority under the American Constitution except Congress which could make any commitment of that nature. He bore particularly in mind the question of the French Fleet. Congress, at his desire, had appropriated fifty million dollars for the purpose of supplying food and clothing to civilian refugees in France.
This was a disappointing telegram.
Around our table we all fully understood the risks the President ran of being charged with exceeding his constitutional authority, and consequently of being defeated on this issue at the approaching election, on which our fate, and much more, depended. I was convinced that he would give up life itself, to say nothing of public office, for the cause of world freedom now in such awful peril. But what would have been the good of that? Across the Atlantic I could feel his suffering. In the White House the torment was of a different character from that of Bordeaux or London. But the degree of personal stress was not unequal.
In my reply I tried to arm Mr. Roosevelt with some arguments which he could use to others about the danger to the United States if Europe fell and Britain failed. This was no matter of sentiment, but of life and death. “The fate of the British Fleet,” I cabled, “as I have already mentioned to you, would be decisive on the future of the United States, because if it were joined to the Fleets of Japan, France, and Italy and the great resources of German industry, overwhelming sea-power would be in Hitler’s hands. He might of course use it with a merciful moderation. On the other hand, he might not. This revolution in sea-power might happen very quickly, and certainly long before the United States would be able to prepare against it. If we go down you may have a United States of Europe under the Nazi command far more numerous, far stronger, far better armed than the New World.…”
Meanwhile the situation on the French front went from bad to worse. The German operations north-west of Paris, in which our 51st Division had been lost, had brought the enemy to the lower reaches of the Seine and the Oise. On the southern banks the dispersed remnants of the Tenth and Seventh French Armies were hastily organising a defence; they had been riven asunder, and to close the gap the garrison of the capital, the so-called Armée de Paris, had been marched out and interposed.
Farther to the east, along the Aisne, the Sixth, Fourth, and Second Armies were in far better shape. They had had three weeks in which to establish themselves and to absorb such reinforcements as had been sent. During all the period of Dunkirk and of the drive to Rouen they had been left comparatively undisturbed, but their strength was small for the hundred miles they had to hold, and the enemy had used the time to concentrate against them a great mass of divisions to deliver the final blow. On June 9 it fell. Despite a dogged resistance, for the French were now fighting with great resolution, bridgeheads were established south of the river from Soissons to Rethel, and in the next two days these were expanded until the Marne was reached. German Panzer divisions, which had played so decisive a part in the drive down the coast, were brought across to join the new battle. Eight of these, in two great thrusts, turned the French defeat into a rout. The French armies, decimated and in confusion, were quite unable to withstand this powerful assembly of superior numbers, equipment, and technique. In four days, by June 16, the enemy had reached Orleans and the Loire; while to the east the other thrust had passed through Dijon and Besançon, almost to the Swiss frontier.
West of Paris the remains of the Tenth Army, the equivalent of no more than two divisions, had been pressed back south-westwards from the Seine towards Alençon. The capital fell on the 14th; its defending armies, the Seventh and the Armée de Paris, were scattered; a great gap now separated the exiguous French and British forces in the west from the rest and the remains of the once proud Army of France.
And what of the Maginot Line, the shield of France, and its defenders? Until June 14 no direct attack was made, and already some of the active formations, leaving behind the garrison troops, had started to join, if they could, the fast-withdrawing armies of the centre. But it was too late. On that day the Maginot Line was penetrated before Saarbrucken and across the Rhine by Colmar; the retreating French were caught up in the battle and unable to extricate themselves. Two days later the German penetration to Besançon had cut off their retreat. More than four hundred thousand men were surrounded without hope of escape. Many encircled garrisons held out desperately; they refused to surrender until after the armistice, when French officers were dispatched to give them the order. The last forts obeyed on June 30, the commander protesting that his defences were still intact at every point.
Thus the vast disorganised battle drew to its conclusion all along the French front. It remains only to recount the slender part which the British were able to play.
General Brooke had won distinction in the retreat to Dunkirk, and especially by his battle in the gap opened by the Belgian surrender. We had therefore chosen him to command the British troops which remained in France and all reinforcements until they should reach sufficient numbers to require the presence of Lord Gort as an Army Commander. Brooke had now arrived in France, and on the 14th he met Generals Weygand and Georges. Weygand stated that the French forces were no longer capable of organised resistance or concerted action. The French Army was broken into four groups, of which its Tenth Army was the westernmost. Weygand also told him that the Allied Governments had agreed that a bridgehead should be created in the Brittany peninsula, to be held jointly by the French and British troops on a line running roughly north and south through Rennes. He ordered him to deploy his forces on a defensive line running through this town. Brooke pointed out that this line of defence was 150 kilometres long and required at least fifteen divisions. He was told that the instructions he was receiving must be regarded as an order.
It is true that on June 11 at Briare Reynaud and I had agreed to try to draw a kind of “Torres Vedras line” across the foot of the Brittany peninsula. Everything however was dissolving at the same time, and the plan, for what it was worth, never reached the domain of action. In itself the idea was sound, but there were no facts to clothe it with reality. Once the main French armies were broken or destroyed, this bridgehead, precious though it was, could not have been held for long against concentrated German attack. But even a few weeks’ resistance here would have maintained contact with Britain and enabled large French withdrawals to Africa from other parts of the immense front, now torn to shreds. If the battle in France was to continue, it could be only in the Brest peninsula and in wooded or mountainous regions like the Vosges. The alternative for the French was surrender. Let none, therefore, mock at the conception of a bridgehead in Brittany. The Allied armies under Eisenhower, then an unknown American colonel, bought it back for us later at a high price.
General Brooke, after his talk with the French commanders, and having measured from his own headquarters a scene which was getting worse every hour, reported to the War Office and by telephone to Mr. Eden that the position was hopeless. All further reinforcements should be stopped, and the remainder of the British Expeditionary Force, now amounting to a hundred and fifty thousand men, should be re-embarked at once. On the night of June 14, as I was thought to be obdurate, he rang me up on a telephone line which by luck and effort was open, and pressed this view upon me. I could hear quite well, and after ten minutes I was convinced that he was right and we must go. Orders were given accordingly. He was released from French command. The back-loading of great quantities of stores, equipment, and men began. The leading elements of the Canadian Division which had landed got back into their ships, and the 52nd Lowland Division, of which the larger part had not yet been committed to action, retreated on Brest. On June 15 the rest of our troops were released from the orders of the Tenth French Army, and next day moved towards Cherbourg. On June 17 it was announced that the Pétain Government had asked for an armistice, ordering all French forces to cease fighting, without even communicating this information to our troops. General Brooke was consequently told to come away with all men he could embark and any equipment he could save.
We repeated now on a considerable scale, though with larger vessels, the Dunkirk evacuation. Over twenty thousand Polish troops who refused to capitulate cut their way to the sea and were carried by our ships to Britain. The Germans pursued our forces at all points. In the Cherbourg peninsula they were in contact with our rearguard ten miles south of the harbour on the morning of the 18th. The last ship left at 4 p.m., when the enemy, led by Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division, were within three miles of the port. Very few of our men were taken prisoners. In all there were evacuated from all French harbours 136,000 British troops and 310 guns; a total, with the Poles, of 156,000 men.
The German air attack on the transports was heavy. One frightful incident occurred on the 17th at St. Nazaire. The 20,000-ton liner Lancastria, with five thousand men on board, was bombed just as she was about to leave. Upwards of three thousand men perished. The rest were rescued under continued air attack by the devotion of the small craft. When this news came to me in the quiet Cabinet Room during the afternoon I forbade its publication, saying: “The newspapers have got quite enough disaster for to-day at least.” I had intended to release the news a few days later, but events crowded upon us so black and so quickly that I forgot to lift the ban, and it was some time before the knowledge of this horror became public.
We must now quit the field of military disaster for the convulsions in the French Cabinet and the personages who surrounded it at Bordeaux.
On the afternoon of June 16 M. Monnet and General de Gaulle visited me in the Cabinet Room. The General in his capacity of Under-Secretary of State for National Defence had just ordered the French ship Pasteur, which was carrying weapons to Bordeaux from America, to proceed instead to a British port. Monnet was very active upon a plan to transfer all French contracts for munitions in America to Britain if France made a separate peace. He evidently expected this, and wished to save as much as possible from what seemed to him to be the wreck of the world. His whole attitude in this respect was most helpful. Then he turned to our sending all our remaining fighter air squadrons to share in the final battle in France, which was of course already over. I told him that there was no possibility of this being done. Even at this stage he used the usual arguments—“the decisive battle”, “now or never”, “if France falls all falls”, and so forth. But I could not do anything to oblige him in this field. My two French visitors then got up and moved towards the door, Monnet leading. As they reached it, de Gaulle, who had hitherto scarcely uttered a single word, turned back, and, taking two or three paces towards me, said in English: “I think you are quite right.” Under an impassive, imperturbable demeanour he seemed to me to have a remarkable capacity for feeling pain. I preserved the impression, in contact with this very tall, phlegmatic man: “Here is the Constable of France.” He returned that afternoon in a British aeroplane, which I had placed at his disposal, to Bordeaux. But not for long.
The War Cabinet sat until six o’clock that evening. They were in a state of unusual emotion. The fall and the fate of France dominated their minds. Our own plight, and what we should have to face and face alone, seemed to take a second place. Grief for our ally in her agony, and desire to do anything in human power to aid her, was the prevailing mood. There was also the overpowering importance of making sure of the French Fleet. Some days beforehand we had evolved a Declaration for a Franco-British Union, common citizenship, joint organs for defence, foreign, financial and economic policy, and so forth, with the object, apart from its general merits, of giving M. Reynaud some new fact of a vivid and stimulating nature with which to carry a majority of his Cabinet into a move to Africa and the continuance of the war. Armed with this document, and accompanied by the leaders of the Labour and Liberal Parties, the three Chiefs of Staff, and various important officers and officials, I now set out on yet another mission to France. A special train was waiting at Waterloo. We could reach Southampton in two hours, and a night of steaming at thirty knots in a cruiser would bring us to our rendezvous by noon on the 17th. We had taken our seats in the train. My wife had come to see me off. There was an odd delay in starting. Evidently some hitch had occurred. Presently my private secretary arrived from Downing Street breathless with the following message from Sir Ronald Campbell, our Ambassador at Bordeaux:
Ministerial crisis has opened.… Hope to have news by midnight. Meanwhile meeting arranged for to-morrow impossible.
On this I returned to Downing Street with a heavy heart.
The final scene in the Reynaud Cabinet was as follows.
The hopes which M. Reynaud had founded upon the Declaration of Union were soon dispelled. Rarely has so generous a proposal encountered such a hostile reception. The Premier read the document twice to the Council. He declared himself strongly for it, and added that he was arranging a meeting with me for the next day to discuss the details. But the agitated Ministers, some famous, some nobodies, torn by division and under the terrible hammer of defeat, were staggered. Most were wholly unprepared to receive such far-reaching themes. The overwhelming feeling of the Council was to reject the whole plan. Surprise and mistrust dominated the majority and even the most friendly and resolute were baffled. The Council had met expecting to receive the answer to the French request, on which they had all agreed, that Britain should release France from her obligations in order that the French might ask the Germans what their terms of armistice would be. It is possible, even probable, that if our formal answer had been laid before them the majority would have accepted our primary condition about sending their Fleet to Britain, or at least would have made some other suitable proposal and thus have freed them to open negotiations with the enemy, while reserving to themselves a final option of retirement to Africa if the German conditions were too severe. But now there was a classic example of “Order, counter-order, dis-order”.
Paul Reynaud was quite unable to overcome the unfavourable impression which the proposal of Anglo-French Union created. The defeatist section, led by Marshal Pétain, refused even to examine it. Violent charges were made. It was “a last-minute plan”, “a surprise”, “a scheme to put France in tutelage, or to carry off her colonial empire”. It relegated France, so they said, to the position of a Dominion. Others complained that not even equality of status was offered to the French, because Frenchmen were to receive only the citizenship of the British Empire instead of that of Great Britain, while the British were to be citizens of France. This suggestion is contradicted by the text.
Beyond these came other arguments. Weygand had convinced Pétain without much difficulty that England was lost. High French military authorities had advised: “In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.” To make a union with Great Britain was, according to Pétain, “fusion with a corpse”. Ybarnegaray, who had been so stout in the previous war, exclaimed: “Better be a Nazi province. At least we know what that means.” Senator Reibel, a personal friend of General Weygand’s, declared that this scheme meant complete destruction for France, and anyhow definite subordination to England. In vain did Reynaud reply: “I prefer to collaborate with my allies rather than with my enemies.” And Mandel: “Would you rather be a German district than a British Dominion?” All was in vain.
We are assured that Reynaud’s statement of our proposal was never put to a vote in the Council. It collapsed of itself. This was a personal and fatal reverse for the struggling Premier which marked the end of his influence and authority upon the Council. All further discussion turned upon the armistice and asking the Germans what terms they would give, and in this M. Chautemps was cool and steadfast. Two telegrams we had sent about the Fleet were never presented to the Council. The demand that it should be sailed to British ports as a prelude to the negotiations with the Germans was never considered by the Reynaud Cabinet, which was now in complete decomposition. At about eight o’clock Reynaud, utterly exhausted by the physical and mental strain to which he had for so many days been subjected, sent his resignation to the President, and advised him to send for Marshal Pétain. This action must be judged precipitate. He still seems to have cherished the hope that he could keep his rendezvous with me the next day, and spoke of this to General Spears. “To-morrow there will be another Government, and you will no longer speak for anyone,” said Spears.
Forthwith Marshal Pétain formed a French Government with the main purpose of seeking an immediate armistice from Germany. Late on the night of June 16 the defeatist group of which he was the head was already so shaped and knit together that the process did not take long. M. Chautemps (“to ask for terms is not necessarily to accept them”) was Vice-President of the Council. General Weygand, whose view was that all was over, held the Ministry of National Defence. Admiral Darlan was Minister of Marine, and M. Baudouin Minister for Foreign Affairs.
The only hitch apparently arose over M. Laval. The Marshal’s first thought had been to offer him the post of Minister of Justice. Laval brushed this aside with disdain. He demanded the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from which position alone he conceived it possible to carry out his plan of reversing the alliances of France, finishing up England, and joining as a minor partner the New Nazi Europe. Marshal Pétain surrendered at once to the vehemence of this formidable personality. M. Baudouin, who had already undertaken the Foreign Office, for which he knew himself to be utterly inadequate, was quite ready to give it up. But when he mentioned the fact to M. Charles-Roux, Permanent Under-Secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the latter was indignant. He enlisted the support of Weygand. When Weygand entered the room and addressed the illustrious Marshal, Laval became so furious that both military chiefs were overwhelmed. The permanent official however refused point-blank to serve under Laval. Confronted with this, the Marshal again subsided, and after a violent scene Laval departed in wrath and dudgeon.
This was a critical moment. When, four months later, on October 28, Laval eventually became Foreign Minister there was a new consciousness of military values. British resistance to Germany was by then a factor. Apparently the Island could not be entirely discounted. Anyhow, its neck had not been “wrung like a chicken’s in three weeks”. This was a new fact; and a fact at which the whole French nation rejoiced.
At the desire of the Cabinet I had broadcast the following statement on the evening of June 17:
The news from France is very bad, and I grieve for the gallant French people who have fallen into this terrible misfortune. Nothing will alter our feelings towards them or our faith that the genius of France will rise again. What has happened in France makes no difference to our actions and purpose. We have become the sole champions now in arms to defend the world cause. We shall do our best to be worthy of this high honour. We shall defend our Island home, and with the British Empire we shall fight on unconquerable until the curse of Hitler is lifted from the brows of mankind. We are sure that in the end all will come right.
That morning I had mentioned to my colleagues in the Cabinet a telephone conversation which I had had during the night with General Spears, who said he did not think he could perform any useful service in the new structure at Bordeaux. He spoke with some anxiety about the safety of General de Gaulle. Spears had apparently been warned that as things were shaping it might be well for de Gaulle to leave France. I readily assented to a good plan being made for this. So that very morning—the 17th—de Gaulle went to his office in Bordeaux, made a number of engagements for the afternoon, as a blind, and then drove to the airfield with his friend Spears to see him off. They shook hands and said good-bye, and as the plane began to move de Gaulle stepped in and slammed the door. The machine soared off into the air, while the French police and officials gaped. De Gaulle carried with him, in this small aeroplane, the honour of France.
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