IN these summer days of 1940 after the fall of France we were all alone. None of the British Dominions or India or the Colonies could send decisive aid, or send what they had in time. The victorious, enormous German armies, thoroughly equipped and with large reserves of captured weapons and arsenals behind them, were gathering for the final stroke. Italy, with numerous and imposing forces, had declared war upon us, and eagerly sought our destruction in the Mediterranean and in Egypt. In the Far East Japan glared inscrutably, and pointedly requested the closing of the Burma Road against supplies for China. Soviet Russia was bound to Nazi Germany by her pact, and lent important aid to Hitler in raw materials. Spain, which had already occupied the International Zone of Tangier, might turn against us at any moment and demand Gibraltar, or invite the Germans to help her attack it, or mount batteries to hamper passage through the Straits. The France of Pétain and Bordeaux, soon moved to Vichy, might any day be forced to declare war upon us. What was left at Toulon of the French Fleet seemed to be in German power. Certainly we had no lack of foes.
After Oran it became clear to all countries that the British Government and nation were resolved to fight on to the last. But even if there were no moral weakness in Britain, how could the appalling physical facts be overcome? Our armies at home were known to be almost unarmed except for rifles. Months must pass before our factories could make good even the munitions lost at Dunkirk. Can one wonder that the world at large was convinced that our hour of doom had struck?
Deep alarm spread through the United States, and indeed through all the surviving free countries. Americans gravely asked themselves whether it was right to cast away any of their own severely-limited resources to indulge a generous though hopeless sentiment. Ought they not to strain every nerve and nurse every weapon to remedy their own unpreparedness? It needed a very sure judgment to rise above these cogent, matter-of-fact arguments. The gratitude of the British nation is due to the noble President and his great officers and high advisers for never, even in the advent of the Third Term Presidential Election, losing their confidence in our fortunes or our will.
The buoyant and imperturbable temper of Britain, which I had the honour to express, may well have turned the scale. Here was this people, who in the years before the war had gone to the extreme bounds of pacifism and improvidence, who had indulged in the sport of party politics, and who, though so weakly armed, had advanced light-heartedly into the centre of European affairs, now confronted with the reckoning alike of their virtuous impulses and neglectful arrangements. They were not even dismayed. They defied the conquerors of Europe. They seemed willing to have their Island reduced to a shambles rather than give in. This would make a fine page in history. But there were other tales of this kind. Athens had been conquered by Sparta. The Carthaginians made a forlorn resistance to Rome. Not seldom in the annals of the past—and how much more often in tragedies never recorded or long-forgotten—had brave, proud, easy-going states, and even entire races, been wiped out, so that only their name or even no mention of them remains.
Few British and very few foreigners understood the peculiar technical advantages of our insular position; nor was it generally known how even in the irresolute years before the war the essentials of sea and latterly air defence had been maintained. It was nearly a thousand years since Britain had seen the fires of a foreign camp on English soil. At the summit of British resistance everyone remained calm, content to set their lives upon the cast. That this was our mood was gradually recognised by friends and foes throughout the whole world. What was there behind the mood? That could be settled only by brute force.
There was also another aspect. One of our greatest dangers during June lay in having our last reserves drawn away from us into a wasting, futile French resistance in France, and the strength of our air forces gradually worn down by their flights or transference to the Continent. If Hitler had been gifted with supernatural wisdom he would have slowed down the attack on the French front, making perhaps a pause of three or four weeks after Dunkirk on the line of the Seine, and meanwhile developing his preparations to invade England. Thus he would have had a deadly option, and could have tortured us with the hooks of either deserting France in her agony or squandering the last resources for our future existence. The more we urged the French to fight on, the greater was our obligation to aid them, and the more difficult it would have become to make any preparations for defence in England, and above all to keep in reserve the twenty-five squadrons of fighter aircraft on which all depended. On this point we should never have given way, but the refusal would have been bitterly resented by our struggling Ally, and would have poisoned all our relations. It was even with an actual sense of relief that some of our high commanders addressed themselves to our new and grimly simplified problem. As the commissionaire at one of the Service clubs in London said to a rather downcast member: “Anyhow, sir, we’re in the Final, and it’s to be played on the Home Ground.”
The strength of our position was not, even at this date, underrated by the German High Command. Ciano tells how, when he visited Hitler in Berlin on July 7, 1940, he had a long conversation with General von Keitel. Keitel, like Hitler, spoke to him about the attack on England. He repeated that up to the present nothing definite had been decided. He regarded the landing as possible, but considered it an “extremely difficult operation, which must be approached with the utmost caution, in view of the fact that the intelligence available on the military preparedness of the island and on the coastal defences is meagre and not very reliable”.* What would appear to be easy and also essential was a major air attack upon the airfields, factories, and the principal communication centres in Great Britain. It was necessary however to bear in mind that the British Air Force was extremely efficient. Keitel calculated that the British had about fifteen hundred machines ready for defence and counter-attack. He admitted that recently the offensive action of the British Air Force had been greatly intensified. Bombing missions were carried out with noteworthy accuracy, and the groups of aircraft which appeared numbered up to eighty machines at a time. There was however in England a great shortage of pilots, and those who were now attacking the German cities could not be replaced by the new pilots, who were completely untrained. Keitel also insisted upon the necessity of striking at Gibraltar in order to disrupt the British imperial system. Neither Keitel nor Hitler made any reference to the duration of the war. Only Himmler said incidentally that the war ought to be finished by the beginning of October.
Such was Ciano’s report. He also offered Hitler, at “the earnest wish of the Duce”, an army often divisions and an air component of thirty squadrons to take part in the invasion. The army was politely declined. Some of the air squadrons came, but, as will be presently related, fared ill.
On July 19 Hitler delivered a triumphant speech in the Reichstag, in which, after predicting that I would shortly take refuge in Canada, he made what has been called his Peace Offer. This gesture was accompanied during the following days by diplomatic representations through Sweden, the United States, and at the Vatican. Naturally Hitler would have been very glad, after having subjugated Europe to his will, to bring the war to an end by procuring British acceptance of what he had done. It was in fact an offer not of peace but of readiness to accept the surrender by Britain of all she had entered the war to maintain.
My first thought was a solemn, formal debate in both Houses of Parliament, but my colleagues thought that this would be making too much of the matter, upon which we were all of one mind. It was decided instead that the Foreign Secretary should dismiss Hitler’s gesture in a broadcast. On the night of the 22nd he “brushed aside” Hitler’s “summons to capitulate to his will”. He contrasted Hitler’s picture of Europe with the picture of the Europe for which we were fighting, and declared that “we shall not stop fighting until Freedom is secure”. In fact however the rejection of any idea of a parley had already been given in the British Press and by the B.B.C., without any prompting from His Majesty’s Government, as soon as Hitler’s speech was heard over the radio.
Ciano records in his diaries that “Late in the evening of the 19th, when the first cold British reaction to the speech arrived, a sense of ill-concealed disappointment spread among the Germans.” Hitler “would like an understanding with Great Britain. He knows that war with the British will be hard and bloody, and knows also that people everywhere are averse from bloodshed”. Mussolini, on the other hand, “fears that the English may find in Hitler’s much too cunning speech a pretext to begin negotiations”. “That”, remarks Ciano, “would be sad for Mussolini, because now more than ever he wants war.”* He need not have fretted himself. He was not to be denied all the war he wanted.
At the end of June the Chiefs of Staff through General Ismay had suggested to me at the Cabinet that I should visit the threatened sectors of the east and south coasts. Accordingly I devoted a day or two every week to this agreeable task, sleeping when necessary in my train, where I had every facility for carrying on my regular work and was in constant contact with Whitehall. I inspected the Tyne and the Humber and many possible landing-places. The Canadian Division did an exercise for me in Kent. I examined the landward defences of Harwich and Dover. One of my earliest visits was to the 3rd Division, commanded by General Montgomery, an officer whom I had not met before. My wife came with me. The 3rd Division was stationed near Brighton. It had been given the highest priority in re-equipment, and had been about to sail for France when the French resistance ended. General Montgomery’s headquarters were near Steyning, and he showed me a small exercise of which the central feature was a flanking movement of Bren-gun carriers, of which he could at that moment muster only seven or eight. After this we drove together along the coast through Shore-ham and Hove till we came to the familiar Brighton front, of which I had so many schoolboy memories. We dined in the Royal Albion Hotel, which stands opposite the end of the pier. The hotel was entirely empty, a great deal of evacuation having taken place; but there were still a number of people airing themselves on the beaches or the parade. I was amused to see a platoon of the Grenadier Guards making a sandbag machine-gun post in one of the kiosks of the pier, like those where in my childhood I had often admired the antics of the performing fleas. It was lovely weather. I had very good talks with the General, and enjoyed my outing thoroughly.
In mid-July the Secretary of State for War recommended that General Brooke should replace General Ironside in command of our Home Forces. On July 19, in the course of my continuous inspection of the invasion sectors, I visited the Southern Command. Some sort of tactical exercise was presented to me in which no fewer than twelve tanks were able to participate. All the afternoon I drove with General Brooke, who commanded this front. His record stood high. Not only had he fought the decisive flank-battle near Ypres during the retirement to Dunkirk, but he had acquitted himself with singular firmness and dexterity, in circumstances of unimaginable difficulty and confusion, when in command of the new forces we had sent to France during the first three weeks of June. I also had a personal link with Alan Brooke through his two gallant brothers—the friends of my early military life.
These connections and memories did not decide my opinion on the grave matters of selection; but they formed a personal foundation upon which my unbroken war-time association with Alan Brooke was maintained and ripened. We were four hours together in the motor-car on this July afternoon of 1940, and we seemed to be in agreement on the methods of Home Defence. After the necessary consultations with others, I approved the Secretary of State for War’s proposal to place Brooke in command of the Home Forces in succession to General Ironside. Ironside accepted his retirement with the soldierly dignity which on all occasions characterised his actions.
During the invasion menace for a year and a half Brooke organised and commanded the Home Forces, and thereafter when he had become C.I.G.S. we continued together for three and a half years until victory was won. I shall presently narrate the benefits which I derived from his advice in the decisive changes of command in Egypt and the Middle East in August 1942, and also the heavy disappointment which I had to inflict upon him about the command of the cross-Channel invasion Operation “Overlord” in 1944. His long tenure as chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee during the greater part of the war and his work as C.I.G.S. enabled him to render services of the highest order, not only to the British Empire, but also to the Allied Cause. This tale will record occasional differences between us, but also an overwhelming measure of agreement, and will witness to a friendship which I cherish.
During this same month of July American weapons in considerable quantities were safely brought across the Atlantic. When the ships approached our shores with their priceless arms special trains were waiting in all the ports to receive their cargoes. The Home Guard in every county, in every town, in every village, sat up all through the night to receive them. Men and women worked night and day making them fit for use. By the end of July we were an armed nation, so far as parachute or air-borne landings were concerned. We had become a “hornets’ nest”. Anyhow, if we had to go down fighting (which I did not anticipate) a lot of our men and some women had weapons in their hands. The arrival of the first instalment of the half-million .300 rifles for the Home Guard (albeit with only about fifty cartridges apiece, of which we dared only issue ten, and no factories yet set in motion) enabled us to transfer three hundred thousand .303 British-type rifles to the rapidly-expanding formations of the Regular Army.
At the “seventy-fives”, with their thousand rounds apiece, some fastidious experts presently turned their noses up. There were no limbers and no immediate means of procuring more ammunition. Mixed calibres complicate operations. But I would have none of this, and during all 1940 and 1941 these nine hundred “seventy-fives” were a great addition to our military strength for Home Defence. Arrangements were devised and men were drilled to run them up on planks into lorries for movement. When you are fighting for existence any cannon is better than no cannon at all, and the French “seventy-five”, although out-dated by the British 25-pounder and the German field-gun howitzer, was still a splendid weapon.
As July and August passed without any disaster we settled ourselves down with increasing assurance that we could make a long and hard fight. Our gains of strength were borne in upon us from day to day. The entire population laboured to the last limit of its strength, and felt rewarded when they fell asleep after their toil or vigil by a growing sense that we should have time and that we should win. All the beaches now bristled with defences of various kinds. The whole country was organised in defensive localities. The factories poured out their weapons. By the end of August we had over two hundred and fifty new tanks! The fruits of the American “Act of Faith” had been gathered. The whole trained professional British Army and its Territorial comrades drilled and exercised from morn till night, and longed to meet the foe. The Home Guard overtopped the million mark, and when rifles were lacking grasped lustily the shotgun, the sporting rifle, the private pistol, or, when there was no firearm, the pike and the club. No Fifth Column existed in Britain, though a few spies were carefully rounded up and examined. What few Communists there were lay low. Everyone else gave all they had to give.
When Ribbentrop visited Rome in September he said to Ciano: “The English territorial defence is non-existent. A single German division will suffice to bring about a complete collapse.” This merely shows his ignorance. I have often wondered however what would have happened if two hundred thousand German storm troops had actually established themselves ashore. The massacre would have been on both sides grim and great. There would have been neither mercy nor quarter. They would have used Terror, and we were prepared to go all lengths. I intended to use the slogan “You can always take one with you”. I even calculated that the horrors of such a scene would in the last resort turn the scale in the United States. But none of these emotions was put to the proof. Far out on the grey waters of the North Sea and the Channel coursed and patrolled the faithful, eager flotillas peering through the night. High in the air soared the fighter pilots, or waited serene at a moment’s notice around their excellent machines. This was a time when it was equally good to live or die.
Sea-power, when properly understood, is a wonderful thing. The passage of an army across salt water in the face of superior fleets and flotillas is an almost impossible feat. Steam had added enormously to the power of the Navy to defend Great Britain. In Napoleon’s day the same wind which would carry his flat-bottomed boats across the Channel from Boulogne would drive away our blockading squadrons. But everything that had happened since then had magnified the power of the superior navy to destroy the invaders in transit. Every complication which modern apparatus had added to armies made their voyage more cumbrous and perilous, and the difficulties of their maintenance when landed probably insuperable. At that former crisis in our Island fortunes we possessed superior and, as it proved, ample sea-power. The enemy was unable to gain a major sea battle against us. He could not face our cruiser forces. In flotillas and light craft we outnumbered him tenfold. Against this must be set the incalculable chances of weather, particularly fog. But even if this were adverse and a descent were effected at one or more points the problem of maintaining a hostile line of communications and of nourishing any lodgments remained unsolved. Such was the position in the First Great War.
But now there was the air. What effect had this sovereign development produced upon the invasion problem? Evidently if the enemy could dominate the narrow seas, on both sides of the Straits of Dover, by superior air-power, the losses of our flotillas would be very heavy and might eventually be fatal. No one would wish, except on a supreme occasion, to bring heavy battleships or large cruisers into waters commanded by the German bombers. We did not in fact station any capital ships south of the Forth or east of Plymouth. But from Harwich, the Nore, Dover, Portsmouth, and Portland we maintained a tireless, vigilant patrol of light fighting vessels which steadily increased in number. By September they exceeded eight hundred, which only a hostile air-power could destroy, and then only by degrees.
But who had the power in the air? In the Battle of France we had fought the Germans against odds of two and three to one and inflicted losses in similar proportions. Over Dunkirk, where we had to maintain continuous patrol to cover the escape of the Army, we had fought at four or five to one with success and profit. Over our own waters and exposed coasts and counties Air Chief Marshal Dowding contemplated profitable fighting at seven or eight to one. The strength of the German Air Force at this time, taken as a whole, so far as we knew—and we were well informed—apart from particular concentrations, was about three to one. Although these were heavy odds at which to fight the brave and efficient German foe, I rested upon the conclusion that in our own air, over our own country and its waters, we could beat the German Air Force. And if this were true our naval power would continue to rule the seas and oceans, and would destroy all enemies who set their course towards us.
There was of course a third potential factor. Had the Germans with their renowned thoroughness and foresight secretly prepared a vast armada of special landing-craft, which needed no harbours or quays, but could land tanks, cannon, and motor vehicles anywhere on the beaches, and which thereafter could supply the landed troops? As has been shown, such ideas had risen in my mind long ago in 1917, and were now being actually developed as the result of my directions. We had however no reason to believe that anything of this kind existed in Germany, though it is always best when counting the cost not to exclude the worst. It took us four years of intense effort and experiment and immense material aid from the United States to provide such equipment on a scale equal to the Normandy landing. Much less would have sufficed the Germans at this moment. But they had only a few ferries.
Thus the invasion of England in the summer and autumn of 1940 required from Germany local naval superiority and air superiority and immense special fleets and landing-craft. But it was we who had the naval superiority; it was we who conquered the mastery in the air; and finally we believed, as we now know rightly, that they had not built or conceived any special craft. These were the foundations of my thought about invasion in 1940. In July there was growing talk and anxiety on the subject both inside the British Government and at large. In spite of ceaseless reconnaissance and all the advantages of air photography, no evidence had yet reached us of large assemblies of transport in the Baltic or in the Rhine or Scheldt harbours, and we were sure that no movement either of shipping or self-propelled barges through the Straits into the Channel had taken place. Nevertheless preparation to resist invasion was the supreme task before us all, and intense thought was devoted to it throughout our war circle and Home Command.
As will presently be described, the German plan was to invade across the Channel with medium ships (4,000 to 5,000 tons) and small craft, and we now know that they never had any hope or intention of moving an army from the Baltic and North Sea ports in large transports; still less did they make any plans for an invasion from the Biscay ports. This does not mean that in choosing the south coast as their target they were thinking rightly and we wrongly. The east coast invasion was by far the more formidable if the enemy had had the means to attempt it. There could of course be no south coast invasion unless or until the necessary shipping had passed southwards through the Straits of Dover and had been assembled in the French Channel ports. Of this, during July, there was no sign.
We had none the less to prepare against all variants, and yet at the same time avoid the dispersion of our mobile forces, and to gather reserves. This nice and difficult problem could only be solved in relation to the news and events from week to week. The British coastline, indented with innumerable inlets, is over two thousand miles in circumference, without including Ireland. The only way of defending so vast a perimeter, any part or parts of which may be simultaneously or successively attacked, is by lines of observation and resistance around the coast or frontiers with the object of delaying an enemy, and meanwhile creating the largest possible reserves of highly-trained mobile troops so disposed as to be able to reach any point assailed in the shortest time for strong counter-attack. When in the last phases of the war Hitler found himself encircled and confronted with a similar problem he made, as we shall see, the gravest possible mistakes in handling it. He had created a spider’s web of communications, but he forgot the spider. With the example of the unsound French dispositions for which such a fatal penalty had just been exacted fresh in our memories, we did not forget the “mass of manœuvre”; and I ceaselessly inculcated this policy to the utmost extent that our growing resources would allow.
My views were in general harmony with Admiralty thought, and on July 12 Admiral Pound sent me a full and careful statement which he and the Naval Staff had drawn up in pursuance of it. Naturally and properly, the dangers we had to meet were forcefully stated. But in summing up Admiral Pound said: “It appears probable that a total of some hundred thousand men might reach these shores without being intercepted by naval forces … but the maintenance of their line of supply, unless the German Air Force had overcome both our Air Force and our Navy, seems practically impossible.… If the enemy undertook this operation he would do so in the hope that he could make a quick rush on London, living on the country as he went, and force the Government to capitulate.” I was content with this estimate.
Then in August the situation began to change in a decisive manner. Our excellent Intelligence confirmed that the operation “Sea Lion” had been definitely ordered by Hitler and was in active preparation. It seemed certain that the man was going to try. Moreover, the front to be attacked was altogether different from or additional to the east coast, on which the Chiefs of Staff, the Admiralty and I, in full agreement, still laid the major emphasis. A large number of self-propelled barges and motor-boats began to pass by night through the Straits of Dover, creeping along the French coast and gradually assembling in all the French Channel ports from Calais to Brest. Our daily photographs showed this movement with precision. It had not been found possible to re-lay our minefields close to the French shore. We immediately began to attack the vessels in transit with our small craft, and Bomber Command was concentrated upon the new set of invasion ports now opening upon us. At the same time a great deal of information came to hand about the assembly of a German Army or Armies of Invasion along this stretch of the hostile coast, of movement on the railways, and of large concentrations in the Pas de Calais and Normandy. Large numbers of powerful long-range batteries all along the French Channel coast came into existence.
In response to the new menace we began to shift our weight from one leg to the other and to improve all our facilities for moving our increasingly large mobile reserves towards the southern front. All the time our forces were increasing in numbers, efficiency, mobility, and equipment, and in the last half of September we were able to bring into action on the south coast front sixteen divisions of high quality, of which three were armoured divisions or their equivalent in brigades, all of which were additional to the local coastal defence and could come into action with great speed against any invasion landing. This provided us with a punch or series of punches which General Brooke was well poised to deliver as might be required; and no one more capable.
All this while we could not feel any assurance that the inlets and river-mouths from Calais to Terschelling and Heligoland, with all that swarm of islands off the Dutch and German coasts (the “Riddle of the Sands” of the previous war), might not conceal other large hostile forces with small or moderate-sized ships. An attack from Harwich right round to Portsmouth, Portland, or even Plymouth, centring upon the Kent promontory, seemed to impend. We had nothing but negative evidence that a third wave of invasion harmonised with the others might not be launched from the Baltic through the Skaggerak in large ships. This was indeed essential to a German success, because in no other way could heavy weapons reach the landed armies or large depots of supply be established.
We now entered upon a period of extreme tension and vigilance. We had of course all this time to maintain heavy forces north of the Wash, right up to Cromarty; and arrangements were perfected to draw from these should the assault declare itself decidedly in the south. The abundant intricate railway system of the Island and our continued mastery of our home air would have enabled us to move with certainty another four or five divisions to reinforce the southern defence if it were necessary on the fourth, fifth, and sixth days after the enemy’s full effort had been exposed.
A very careful study was made of the moon and the tides. We thought that the enemy would like to cross by night and land at dawn; and we now know the German Army Command felt like this too. They would also be glad of a half-moonlight on the way over, so as to keep their order and make their true landfall. Measuring it all with precision, the Admiralty thought the most favourable conditions for the enemy would arise between the 15th and 30th of September. Here also we now find that we were in agreement with our foes. We had little doubt of our ability to destroy anything that got ashore on the Dover promontory or on the sector of coast from Dover to Portsmouth, or even Portland. As all our thoughts at the summit moved together in harmonious and detailed agreement, one could not help liking the picture which presented itself with growing definition. Here perhaps was the chance of striking a blow at the mighty enemy which would resound throughout the world. One could not help being inwardly excited alike by the atmosphere and the evidence of Hitler’s intention which streamed in upon us. There were indeed some who on purely technical grounds, and for the sake of the effect the total defeat and destruction of his expedition would have on the general war, were quite content to see him try.
In July and August we had asserted air mastery over Great Britain, and were especially powerful and dominant over the Home Counties of the south-east. Vast intricate systems of fortifications, defended localities, anti-tank obstacles, block-houses, pill-boxes, and the like laced the whole area. The coastline bristled with defences and batteries, and at the cost of heavier losses through reduced escorts in the Atlantic, and also by new construction coming into commission, the flotillas grew substantially in numbers and quality. We had brought the battleship Revenge, and the old target-ship and dummy-battleship Centurion, and a cruiser to Plymouth. The Home Fleet was at its maximum strength and could operate without much risk to the Humber and even to the Wash. In all respects therefore we were fully prepared.
Finally, we were already not far from the equinoctial gales customary in October. Evidently September was the month for Hitler to strike if he dared, and the tides and the moon-phase were favourable in the middle of that month.
It is time to go over to the other camp and set forth the enemy’s preparations and plans as we now know them.