DECEMBER 7, 1941
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, ENGLAND
9:00 P.M.
Winston Churchill needs good news.
The prime minister is in a foul mood. Churchill is spending the weekend at Chequers, his official country retreat. The room is cigars and Christmas, dignitaries and personnel: an ambassador, a bureaucrat, an attaché, a personal secretary. Churchill broods, so lost in worry that not even Pol Roger nor the enormous yule fir in the great hall decorated with ornaments, candles, and baked cookies can lift his mood. It is a long year and a half since Paris fell. The strain of standing alone grows heavier by the day, often bringing forth the “black dog,” as Churchill refers to his lowest moments.*
Just this morning, intelligence reports confirmed the presence of Japanese naval vessels in waters near the British protectorate of Singapore. Churchill mulls whether to send a heated warning to Japan’s leadership as a reminder to keep their distance. But that would be a bluff: Britain is going broke. The nation can barely afford to wage war in Africa, let alone open a second front in the Pacific. They are already receiving handouts of food, oil, and raw materials from America through a program known as lend-lease, which carefully skirts American neutrality laws. W. Averell Harriman, the wealthy and polished businessman chosen by President Roosevelt to administer the program, is among Churchill’s guests tonight. Left unsaid is that the fifty-year-old Harriman is having an affair with Pamela, the winsome twenty-year-old wife of Randolph Churchill, the prime minister’s only son.*
Noting the time, Churchill rises and turns on the radio.
“Here is the news, and this is Alvar Liddell reading it,” comes the clipped, articulate voice of the BBC’s famous evening reader. Liddell’s self-introduction is an assurance to listeners that he is not a Nazi propagandist. When the thirty-three-year-old first began reading the news almost a decade ago, it was BBC policy for Liddell to wear a tuxedo while on the air. That dress code has been relaxed, but Liddell still dons a coat and tie as he broadcasts, his angular face freshly shaven so late in the evening, as if respectfully delivering the information in person.
It was Alvar Liddell whose soothing nightly reports kept England abreast of events throughout the “Battle of Britain” one year ago, when Adolf Hitler’s attempted invasion was thwarted by the heroic efforts of the Royal Air Force. The city of London lay in rubble due to nightly German bombings, but Liddell was the upbeat voice of hope, sustaining the nation. On one occasion a bomb landed just outside the BBC’s Portland Place studio, causing an explosion clearly audible to listeners. Yet the unflappable Liddell kept calm and carried on as if nothing had happened.
And it was also Alvar Liddell who informed England about the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June of this year. Germany is now waging war in Russia, North Africa, Britain, and in the Mediterranean. This ends the possibility—for now—that Hitler might make another attempt to invade England.
Through it all, Winston Churchill has listened to Alvar Liddell most evenings, just like any normal Briton. So it is not unusual that he turns on the news despite having guests or the fact that radio reception isn’t always strong forty miles outside London. Through the intermittent static comes snippets of headlines: “Japanese Navy . . . British ships . . . Dutch East Indies. Japan . . .
“. . . United States.”
That is extremely odd.
Churchill sits in complete silence, straining to decipher details. His guests are equally confused. The mention of America among the wartime developments is unheard-of.
The butler steps from the kitchen. “The Japanese have attacked the Americans,” he announces to the room.
Commander Charles Ralfe “Tommy” Thompson, Churchill’s devoted naval envoy, adds a clarification. The Americans, he has deduced from the broadcast, appear to have been attacked at a place called “Pearl River.”
This is confusing. The Pearl River is in China. Churchill knows nothing of an American presence in the Far East.
But Alvar Liddell is not done. He once again repeats the information about the attack on American forces, clarifying that it has taken place in Hawaii.
Churchill’s foul mood is gone. In its place is a call to action. He announces that he is about to officially declare war on Japan. The attack means America must do the same.
Britain no longer stands alone.
“Good God,” says John Gilbert Winant, the new American ambassador to Great Britain. His hair is black and creased on the left. The liberal Republican and former governor of New Hampshire is a private, often shy individual, prone to keeping his own counsel. But he and Churchill have become close friends over the last nine months, sharing the same nonstop work ethic. So Winant has no problem reining him in. “You can’t declare war on a radio announcement.”
Churchill cedes the point. This is a very dark hour for America. His rambunctious euphoria is replaced by the need to be a statesman. The prime minister turns to John Martin, his senior private secretary.
“Get me the president on the phone—at once.”
In the Berkhamsted section of Hertfordshire, at a villa known as Rodinghead, Charles de Gaulle entertains a weekend guest. Yvonne sits with the two men, prim in a long skirt, dark hair parted on the right. The family attended Sunday Mass this morning at the Church of the Sacred Heart on nearby Park View Road. The general then enjoyed a private stroll with their visitor, thirty-year-old André Dewavrin, code-named “Colonel Passy.” Dewavrin is the general’s chief intelligence officer and envoy to the British SOE.
“We came back from a long walk and sat down in armchairs in the drawing room,” Dewavrin will write in his memoirs. The air is filled with cigarette smoke and confidential conversation. In just three weeks, a young Resistance leader named Jean Moulin will parachute into the South of France at de Gaulle’s behest. Moulin bears a deep scar on his neck, the result of trying to slash his own throat while in Nazi custody last year. Acting on no authority but his own, de Gaulle has named Moulin his delegate of the French National Committee of the unoccupied zone. To convince any skeptics of the veracity of claims Moulin might make in his name, the Resistance will carry a small matchbox concealing a microfilmed document signed by the general. “Mr. Moulin’s task is to bring about, within the zone of metropolitan France not directly occupied, unity by all elements resisting the enemy and his collaborators,” according to Dewavrin.
Moulin’s trademark is a scarf worn at all times to hide the failed suicide. De Gaulle, who considers the dashing, dark-haired Moulin “a great man, great in every way,” is in charge of unifying France’s many resistance groups so that they might wage war in a coordinated manner.
The importance of Moulin’s mission cannot be overstated. This is the general’s most significant effort at taking control of the Resistance, just as he controls the Free French Forces in Africa and the Middle East. Even from a remove, commanding a fighting force of Frenchmen within France is a bold step forward.
Meanwhile, as the men talk, the introverted Yvonne remains in the room, no one’s idea of a security threat.
Like Winston Churchill, now just fourteen miles away at Chequers, Charles de Gaulle turns on the radio. The news is shocking: Radio Londres is announcing the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.
It is too soon to know details about the thousands of American men who lost their lives, the sailors hideously disfigured by fire and shrapnel, nor an exact count of the ships sunk. But de Gaulle is a warrior. He knows exactly what happens to men when bombs explode in their midst and when long machine-gun bullets pierce soft flesh. The general knows precisely how the air smells when a man is burning and the specific octave of the piercing screams let loose by dying boys who will never again chug a cold lager, pray an Our Father, or revel in the carnal heat of entering a woman lying naked below him.
And Charles de Gaulle does not care.
America is joining the fight. Pearl Harbor is an answered prayer.
“The war is now definitely won!” de Gaulle exults.
Yvonne walks alone into the kitchen. Getting down on her knees, she prays that this is so.