The Vanquished and the Defiant
QUEEN WILHELMINA of the Netherlands had escaped to England during the collapse of her country, along with her daughter, Princess Juliana, and her German son-in-law, Prince Bernhard, and members of her Government, and had formed a government-in-exile in London. During her long reign, which had begun when she was a ten-year-old girl in 1890, she and the Royal Family had been widely accepted and broadly popular without ever being especially cherished, and her leaving had been a cause of controversy; King Leopold of the Belgians, in contrast, had chosen to stay with his sinking ship.
Leopold had been widely criticized for surrendering, while Wilhelmina had faced the same charge for making good her escape; only King Haakon of Norway, who had eventually escaped to Britain, appeared to have avoided such censure. Being monarch of a country overrun by the Nazis was, it seemed, a thankless job.
Be that as it may, Queen Wilhelmina had wasted no time in establishing both a government-in-exile and making herself the focus of future Dutch resistance to Nazi rule, despite having a German mother and son-in-law and despite the many close ties between Germany and the Netherlands. Although a constitutional monarch, she also put herself very much in charge; when she clashed with her defeatist Prime Minister, Dirk Jan de Greer, who was urging collaboration with Germany, she forced him to resign and appointed Pieter Gerbrandy, an outspoken anti-collaborator, instead.
The Queen was also the wealthiest woman in the world, and when, that summer, Lord Beaverbrook introduced the Spitfire Fund, a scheme for individuals and organizations to ‘purchase’ a Spitfire for £5,000, she bought an entire squadron. She also used the BBC to broadcast in Dutch on Radio Oranje to her subjects across the sea in the Netherlands.
Listening to her first address, on 28 July, had been Gerrit den Hartog, who although not found by his wife back in May had returned home a few weeks later after being released as a prisoner of war. Physically, he was none the worse for his ordeal, although he had become even quieter and suffered recurring nightmares as a result of what he’d witnessed. ‘My compatriots,’ she told den Hartog and the many others clandestinely listening, ‘because the voice of the Netherlands could and should not remain silent, I, at the last moment, made the decision to take myself and my government, as symbols of our nation, to a place where we can continue to work as a living power and make our voice heard.’ For den Hartog, who had remained as wedded to the news on his radio as ever, it was a significant moment. Disliking the Nazi propaganda and endless martial marches blaring out from the Dutch radio, he tried to listen to the BBC and the new Radio Oranje as often as he could.
Yet although he resented the Germans and was a loyalist to the Queen, den Hartog was hardly stirred to join the early resistance movement. Rather, with a family to feed and a further son born on 5 December, he had continued with his market-garden business and found he had never been in greater demand. It made him and his wife uncomfortable to think they were growing food to feed the bellies of the Germans, and yet what other choice did he have? If he refused, he’d have ruined himself.
Initially, the Netherlands had been given a military administration, appointed by the C-in-C of the Army, with General Alexander von Falkenhausen as Governor. Von Falkenhausen, who had advised the Chinese leader, General Chiang Kai-shek, in the mid-1930s, was known for being critical of the Nazi regime, so initially there were hopes in Holland that German occupation would be conducted in tune with international law. Hitler was having none of it, however, and instead appointed Reichskommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart as head of all civil administration and charged him with creating a closer economic collaboration with Germany. Seyss-Inquart was Austrian but a die-hard Nazi and protégé of Himmler, and a further indication of the rule of steel that would be imposed was the appointment of Brigadeführer Hanns Albin Rauter as Senior SS and Police Leader. Their brief was to win over the ‘kindred-blood’ population and to govern the Netherlands through ‘considerate’ treatment. This meant the Dutch would not be treated like Untermenschen – that is, racially inferior – as the Poles had been, for example, but Germany still meant to take its fair share of plunder and booty from the Netherlands and to treat the Dutch with an iron fist in terms of security.
And the troops and SS police remained an intimidating presence, as the den Hartogs soon discovered. One Sunday, they had been out walking with friends when their visitors’ teenage son was called over by some German troops, blindfolded and a pistol pressed into his cheek – all in full view of both families. He was soon released, but it was hardly the kind of action to win over the Dutch to Nazi rule. And no matter how lenient by Nazi standards, the occupiers still had every intention of bleeding the Netherlands dry.
It had taken quite a while for the French officer Capitaine Daniel Barlone to reach England, by way of Spanish Morocco and Lisbon, but he had eventually got there at the beginning of October, just as the last French servicemen were voluntarily heading in the opposite direction back to France. Barlone had marvelled at the naivety of so many of his fellow Frenchmen, not least the Maréchal himself. ‘Do Pétain and Weygand think that Great Britain is incapable of both defending herself and of winning the war with her 500,000,000 subjects, her unlimited powers of purchasing arms from America, and her Dominions who have thrown themselves body and soul into the struggle?’ he asked in his diary back in July. Barlone, however, was in the minority in thinking rationally about Britain’s strengths at that critical moment in the summer.
The new regime appalled him and he was utterly horrified that the press had been subdued into being little more than a Nazi mouthpiece. ‘It must not speak of our defeat and abasement,’ he wrote, ‘nor of the hard times ahead. It must keep us beaten and dejected, persuade us there is no hope . . . But above all they must keep us in the stupor and torpor of the hopelessly vanquished. That probably is the “New Order” so noisily promised by Hitler and Mussolini. But not for me, thank you.’
None the less, it was clear that there was little appetite for continuing the struggle, and Capitaine Barlone, Jean-Mathieu Boris and others who had made their way to England and vowed to follow de Gaulle’s flag were in a minority. Edward Spears, now Churchill’s liaison officer for de Gaulle, had accompanied the general to Liverpool soon after the armistice, where they had done their best to persuade some 15,000 French sailors not to leave. Spears offered them wages in return for basic labour, but to a man they refused. ‘As for what might happen to England,’ said Spears, ‘they couldn’t have cared less.’
The Nazi- and Vichy-controlled press made much of any returning French servicemen who were prepared to speak out against Britain and in support of Pétain. One such was Gonthier de Basse, a former pilot in the Armée de l’Air who had been disgusted after the attack at Mers-el-Kébir to have been offered money to serve Britain. It would, he claimed, have been treason. ‘Frenchmen, comrades,’ he announced, ‘it is our duty to follow our leader, Maréchal Pétain, to restore our defeated France to her place in a New Europe, so that our French prisoners may return home soon.’
Despite the overwhelming desire of most Frenchmen to get home, get their heads down and get on with life in the new France, some colonies had opted to show allegiance to de Gaulle’s Free French. France had considerable possessions in Africa. There were Algeria and French Morocco, as well as West Africa and French Equatorial Africa. And while the North African territories and West Africa had chosen to fly the Vichy flag, much of French Equatorial Africa, which incorporated Congo and Cameroun, had chosen to side with the Free French.
With this strong African support, the British and Free French under Général de Gaulle decided to try and spread their influence into West Africa. To fly the Cross of Lorraine, the new Free French flag, over French West Africa would, it was felt, send out a powerful message and from a practical point of view would also offer the Allies a far better staging port at Dakar than at Freetown in Sierra Leone. Furthermore, the gold reserves of both the Bank of France and those of the Polish government-in-exile were stored in Dakar. All in all, winning Dakar over to the Free French cause would bring many benefits.
Launched on 23 September, the assault was, however, a failure. Free French planes flew from the British aircraft carrier Ark Royal and after landing at the airfield at Dakar were promptly captured. An attempt to land troops was met with stiff gunfire, so de Gaulle recalled them. Two Vichy submarines and one destroyer were sunk, while the British battleships Barham and Resolution were damaged by shore defences. When Admiral Cunningham, who was aboard Barham, suggested to de Gaulle that they should cut their losses, the Free French leader could only agree. The operation’s failure meant a loss of face for the British but was a grievous setback for de Gaulle. ‘I went through what a man must feel,’ he noted, ‘when an earthquake shakes his house brutally and he receives on his head the rain of tiles falling from his roof.’
On the back of this setback for de Gaulle, there was a danger other Free French possessions might change sides to Vichy. None did, however. In fact, in November, Gabon, the lone Vichy outpost in French Equatorial Africa, was successfully taken by Général Philippe Leclerc and his Free French forces. That was something at least, but the failure of Dakar had shown that there would be no massed uprising in the Vichy colonies let alone Metropolitan France any time soon. It was a blow for de Gaulle and it was a blow for Churchill, who had set such store by Britain fanning the flames of resistance. It was another reminder, if any were needed, that there could be no quick or easy victory over the Axis.
Yet the failure at Dakar did not mean the colony was pro-Nazi or that, in time, the majority would not change their mind. The truth was, Vichy was, as a rule of thumb, more popular the further people were from occupied France. There were no swastikas in French West Africa and no German soldiers. Furthermore, many in France had been happy to leave the country’s future in the hands of one of the most revered of Frenchmen. ‘Maréchal Pétain stood in my country’s history,’ wrote René de Chambrun, ‘as a symbol of integrity, patriotism, and military glory.’ There were plenty who thought France was better off without corrupt, fractious politicians who could agree on and do nothing. In Algeria, where Général Weygand had been appointed delegate, there was a widespread belief that it was perfectly possible to be broadly right wing, pro-Pétain and still anti-German. Weygand, who had urged an armistice in June, had done so in the belief that it was possible to salvage some honour and then fight back; he remained quite openly anti-German. In fact, Vichy North Africa was allowed to keep 30,000 troops in service, a figure that was then permitted to rise to 120,000 following the British attack on Mers-el-Kébir; the Germans thought it a small price to pay to ensure those possessions remained pro-Vichy. Germany hardly wanted the hassle of manning France’s overseas territories. For those in North Africa, however, it seemed as though life had not really changed very much at all.
The same, of course, could not be said for Metropolitan France, although many returning from Britain had assumed otherwise. Only around two-fifths of France remained in the hands of the Vichy Government. The town itself was chosen as something of a stopgap; most had thought in the summer of 1940 that Britain would soon be out of the war, the Germans would go back to Germany, and France would be returned to the French, with the Government moving back to Paris. Having overseen this smooth transition, Pétain, who was, after all, in his mid-eighties, would resign, his task complete.
Britain fighting on rather changed all that, and there was no doubt enthusiasm was waning for the Pétain regime by the New Year, particularly since there was no sign whatsoever of the French POWs being returned home any time soon. Even so, disgruntlement was not the same as abhorrence. Moreover, Vichy was perceived around the world to be a legal government, and crammed into the tiny spa town in the Auvergne were more than forty embassies, including those of Russia and the United States. Admittedly, Britain had broken off diplomatic relations but still allowed a Canadian life assurance firm to continue to pay the Maréchal a pension.
But while Vichy France meant living under the legitimate dictatorship of Pétain, more than half the country was occupied and that included the Atlantic coast, the north and many of France’s major cities, including Paris. The north, including the Pas-de-Calais and the Channel ports, was incorporated into a ‘Forbidden Zone’ that was governed not from Paris but from Brussels. In Paris itself, there were curfews, severe rationing, almost no vehicles and different rules for both civilians and different German ranks. There was a military commander in Paris, from October General Otto Stülpnagel, who was effectively a military governor and was allocated troops for policing and to keep order.
Among those now in Paris was the young Austrian Jew Freddie Knoller. Since being arrested in May and sent to the internment camp at Saint-Cyprien, he had had mixed fortunes – but at least he was still alive and now at liberty, even if not exactly free. In the camp, he had been nearly raped by a Senegalese guard, but having kneed the soldier in the crotch and run had been determined to swiftly escape the camp before suffering any retribution. This he had done on 11 August by simply crawling under some loose wire at night and making his way to the town of Gaillac, where he was taken in by some cousins there and given some forged papers and a new name: Robert Metzner.
In sleepy Gaillac, however, he had quickly become restless and with the callowness of youth had determined to make his way back to now occupied Belgium and find and rescue his cello. Equipped with a pass from the town Mairie to cross the demarcation zone, and with more false papers declaring him to be on his way to his home in Metz in Alsace, he made it to Belgium and then to Antwerp to see the Aptes, the family who had looked after him when he had first arrived back in 1938. They were no longer there, however, and he later learned they had made it to England. Making his way to Eksaarde, he found the Jewish Centre ransacked and, of course, there was no sign at all of his cello. From there, he went to Brussels and bought a train ticket to Paris. It had been a mad idea: he was a young, largely penniless Austrian Jew, heading straight to the heart of the German-occupied city, and yet for Knoller Paris held an extraordinary allure. He was young, virile and sex-starved, and the thought of Montmartre and the illicit clubs there had drawn him to the place like a moth to a light.
And he had been lucky – taken in by a Jewish restaurateur, who fed him and gave him a job out of sight in the kitchen cleaning dishes. There was another young Viennese Jew working there clandestinely too, called Otto. They quickly struck up a rapport and Knoller agreed to share Otto’s simple flat with him. It was on the top floor of an old building – just one room with twin beds, a cupboard, a couple of chairs and a wash basin. ‘If the Germans come,’ Otto told him, ‘we can easily climb from the balcony on to the roof.’
Whenever they had the chance, Knoller and his new friend would head over to Pigalle and the red-light district. One evening, Knoller had watched a smartly dressed young man with Mediterranean good looks accompanying German soldiers to the doors of cabarets. Once they were in, he would then return to the street. Clearly, the man was making money, and it occurred to Knoller that if he managed to create a similar role for himself, he would not only get money but, more importantly, provide himself with a cover. Another night he spotted the man again and, steeling himself, brazenly walked up to him. ‘Look, I’m a refugee from Metz,’ Knoller said to him. ‘I’m penniless here in Paris. My German is very good, so I think I can be of some use to you. I’ve been watching you and understand how you make a living. To be frank, I need some money.’
The man looked him up and down, then said, ‘Come with me.’ Knoller was led to a nearby bistro. There the man sat him down and told him his name was Christos and that he was Greek. He made his living by introducing Germans to the clubs, who then gave him a percentage of their take. Knoller proposed working for Christos and giving him a percentage of his own take. A deal was struck and the details soon worked out. ‘Just a little warning,’ Christos told him. ‘If you try to cheat me, I have certain friends who will take care of things.’ On the other hand, he said, if they were to become friends then there were certainly more than enough Germans for both of them. ‘I can’t handle them all,’ he admitted. He even invited Knoller to share his flat. Knoller agreed and in so doing simply walked out on Otto and the Jewish restaurant. He sensed that to survive, he had to think about himself and separate himself from his Jewish identity. With fair, wavy hair and a round, youthful-looking face, he certainly did not look obviously Jewish. He had recognized that he needed to make the most of what few advantages he had.
Christos bought him a suit, a shirt and a tie, took him to several brothels and introduced him to the madams, and with that he had begun his new life as a pimp. The lie he had created came surprisingly effortlessly, he discovered; he was a natural at his new job, steering a succession of Germans straight into the brothels. ‘I was rudderless, virtually friendless, and in constant danger of discovery,’ he wrote, ‘but I felt like a bird released from its cage. I had found my ingenuity and independent spirit.’
Also still in Paris was Andrée Griotteray, who had kept her job at the Police HQ, where French policemen and Germans were now operating side by side. She was also once more living with her entire family, who had been unable to get on board a boat to England and so had returned home. Andrée and her younger brother, Alain, were also involved in very embryonic resistance work. Now at the Sorbonne, Alain and a few friends had begun writing and circulating a resistance bulletin called La France. Andrée had agreed not only to type it up but also to use the printing facilities at the office to run off copies for them to circulate. Doing this at police headquarters was not only brave but, frankly, rather reckless.
As the 11 November Armistice Day commemorations approached, Alain and his friend Noël Le Clerq decided to organize an anti-German demonstration on the Champs-Élysées. ‘Résistez l’envahisseur,’ they printed in La France. ‘L’Étoile vers 16 heures.’ It was an unqualified success, with some 3,000 students gathering on the day, shouting defiance and singing the ‘Marseillaise’. Both police and German troops moved swiftly to break up the demonstration. Alain Griotteray managed to escape the arrests and cross over the Seine, and spend the night in a friend’s flat. As German troops moved in to break up the crowds, Andrée linked arms with a girlfriend and quietly headed away. Neither was stopped.
Although Paris was run entirely by Germans, Vichy did have representatives in the city. One of the key intermediaries was Otto Abetz, curiously the German Ambassador in a part of France that was occupied and governed by Germany. Abetz was still good friends with Jean Luchaire, who had been made editor of the pro-German daily newspaper Le Matin. Also now back in Paris was his daughter, the film star Corinne Luchaire, who had returned to France after completing her film in Italy, only to flee to Saint-Brieuc in Brittany with a Jewish girlfriend in an effort to escape the fighting. Corinne had still been there some time after the armistice when the German commander in the area had called her in and told her she was suspected of being a spy. He pointed out that she had travelled a great deal, spoke several languages and was now living near the Atlantic coast. It was, she was told, deeply suspicious. Thus warned, she had left for Paris immediately, where she had been reunited with her father.
She worried, however, about the ongoing friendship between her father and Abetz. ‘I don’t know why,’ she wrote, ‘but I felt uneasy about that.’ Jean Luchaire was not only a friend of Otto Abetz, but also of Pierre Laval, twice Prime Minister in the thirties, a former minister and now Pétain’s deputy. As such, Luchaire was uniquely placed to be not only a pro-regime newspaper editor, but also an intermediary between Paris and Vichy. It was an unofficial post but often took him to Vichy. Crossing the occupied zone required special passes, but he was able to secure the relevant paperwork to take his daughter with him on one occasion.
Vichy was buzzing, with many familiar faces from Paris hovering around the main hotels where the Government now resided. Pétain had rooms in the Hôtel du Parc, and proximity to his rooms was considered a sign of power. Corinne dined and lunched with many of the new members of the Government, all of whom, it seemed, wanted to both talk to her father and be seen with her. ‘Everybody,’ she wrote, ‘was carefully listening to his advice and opinions. When he was in Vichy, he was eagerly expected in Paris. And when he was in Paris, he was eagerly expected in Vichy.’ He was clearly revelling in being at the heart of the new politics; Corinne, though, wondered whether her father was being a little naive. ‘He didn’t know,’ she added, ‘that success brings jealousy.’
It was largely jealousy that caused the downfall of Pierre Laval in December. Pétain had never really liked him and was concerned that his deputy was making too many pro-German decisions off his own bat. Laval also had a habit of blowing smoke in his face, which the Maréchal disliked intensely; it lacked deference as much as anything. In December, Pétain asked all his ministers to write their letters of resignation. Laval did so, thinking it was a trick to axe René Belin, the Minister of Labour. It wasn’t; it was a trick to sack him. A stunned Laval was promptly arrested and then not long after, in what was a truly bizarre episode, was dramatically rescued by German troops who stormed into the ‘free’ zone and whisked him to Paris.
Laval’s sacking came shortly after a series of talks between General Warlimont and Abetz on the German side and several leading Vichy ministers, Amiral Darlan included, about closer co-operation, or, to put it another way, the possibility of Vichy joining the Axis. That Mussolini was against such a move was no longer of any concern to his German allies. Warlimont was fully aware that Laval had been the driving force on the French side, but his arrest, seen by Hitler as a slight on Pétain’s part, effectively killed the talks. Hitler’s contempt for France had not changed since the armistice, as had been made clear by the brutal reparations demanded. ‘According to Hitler’s plans,’ said Warlimont, ‘France was to have a minor role in the New Europe led by Germany . . . He picked up his ideas on France from books that were probably biased and which he never bothered to question. Thus he pictured a decadent France that would go on declining forever.’ Pétain and his Government could puff around the unoccupied zone believing they had done what was best for France and thinking they had real power, but it was largely illusory. They were Hitler’s puppets, and as the war continued, life in France was only going to get tougher.
As yet, though, Vichy France was free of bombing raids, which was more than could be said for Britain, Germany, Italy or any other countries where the war was continuing. Bad weather in December had dogged the Luftwaffe’s bombing efforts over England, but it was clear enough on 29 December and the bombers had returned to London with a vengeance. On Goebbels’s suggestion, the Luftwaffe liked to try and put in a good, heavy raid whenever Roosevelt was about to make a big statement, in the hope that news of the destruction they had caused would dilute the effect of the President’s words.
Roosevelt had made a point of discussing the war while delivering his ‘Fireside Chats’ to the nation, and in this last one of 1940 he pulled no punches. ‘We cannot escape danger,’ he told Americans, ‘or the fear of danger, by crawling into bed and pulling the covers over our heads.’ The only peace that could be achieved with the Nazis could come at the price of total surrender, he said. There could be no dealing with these people, and no compromise. Rather, it was up to the United States to help Britain and its allies win the war. The United States, he told his listeners, had to become ‘the arsenal of democracy’.
Around the time Roosevelt was recording his ‘chat’, another American was watching the bombing of London. Ernie Pyle was a newspaperman, rather than a broadcaster, who had already revolutionized the way in which a journalist might write. His style was simple: to talk to people, observe life around him, and write as though he were talking to someone standing next to him. His columns were informal, ponderous, sensitive, often funny and often rather moving too. He’d made a name for himself travelling around America recording everyday life, and his pieces, syndicated through the Scripps Howard chain of newspapers, made him seem like a friend to his millions of readers. Funny, intelligent, but prone to depression, he was a complicated man with a profound fear of failure, despite his originality and apparently effortless skill. As his readers were discovering, this intimate, informal approach was bringing alive the experiences of the British as the Blitz continued.
His arrival had coincided with the lull in the heavy bombing, and he was impressed by how little effect the Blitz had had up to now. ‘So far,’ he wrote in one of his first despatches, ‘the blitz on London is a failure. London is no more knocked out than the man who smashes a finger is dead.’ On the night of 29 December, however, he was awestruck by what he saw. With some friends, he climbed up on to a high darkened balcony that gave him a view directly towards the City and the East End. ‘There was something inspiring just in the awful savagery of it,’ he wrote. Fires were springing up, leaping into the air, as bombers droned over, ‘like a bee buzzing in blind fury’. The biggest fires seemed to be directly in front of them, around St Paul’s Cathedral, the flames licking hundreds of feet into the air and smoke ballooning up around the gigantic dome.
Also watching these raids was Gwladys Cox, who had just about re-covered from the trauma of losing her flat. They had rented a shabby and depressing place for a month, then retreated to the Lake District and had only just returned to the capital, renting a ground-floor flat in Honeybourne Road, close to their old home. It had taken all that time to have their furniture restored or replaced and carpets dried and cleaned.
Invited by a Dutch neighbour to view the unfolding attacks, they had watched with mesmerized horror. ‘Volumes of rose-pink smoke and many coloured flashes from explosions pierced again and again the blood-red clouds,’ she recounted in her diary. ‘We could only guess at the destruction wrought by each flash or explosion.’ She feared for the Wren churches, the libraries, the Guildhall and other historic buildings. ‘We sensed numbly that London would have known no such dire experience as this since the Great Fire of 1666.’
For Ernie Pyle, closer to the scene, the site of London burning was, he was ashamed to confess, a beautiful sight. ‘St Paul’s was surrounded by fire,’ he wrote, ‘but it came through. It stood there in its enormous proportions – growing slowly clearer and clearer the way objects take shape at dawn. It was like a picture of some miraculous figure that appears before peace-hungry soldiers on a battlefield.’
Columns like these, broadcasts, film reels and even photographs by the likes of the fashion photographer Cecil Beaton showing injured girls in their hospital beds on the front of Life magazine – it was all grist to the mill in helping Roosevelt to sell the idea of aid to Britain.
The President had announced his intention to ‘lend’ Britain the aid it needed on 17 December at a White House press conference following his trip on the Tuscaloosa. This would be put to Congress as a bill that he hoped would soon become law. The best defence for the US, he said, was the success of Britain in defending itself. What he was proposing was to get Britain the help it needed without a big dollar sign before it. ‘Let me give you an illustration,’ he told the assembled reporters. ‘Suppose my neighbour’s home catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him put out his fire. Now what do I do? I don’t say to him, “Neighbour, my garden hose cost me fifteen dollars; you have to pay me fifteen dollars for it.” No! I don’t want fifteen dollars. I want my garden hose after the fire is over.’ The neighbourly analogy was a masterstroke as it was the kind of language – as Ernie Pyle had discovered – that Americans responded to. Heated debates in Congress would ensue, but the combination of shifting public opinion, a president newly re-elected with a whopping majority and an administration that was united behind Roosevelt was going to be hard for the isolationists to deny.
At the beginning of January, the President sent Harry Hopkins to Britain. He arrived by flying boat, landing at Poole Harbour on the south coast from Lisbon on 9 January, and was met by Brendan Bracken, one of Churchill’s inner circle and his Parliamentary Private Secretary. Hopkins was suffering after the long trip, but as they took the train to London he peered out of the window and said, ‘Are you going to let Hitler take these fields from you?’
‘No,’ came Bracken’s succinct reply.
Hopkins finally met Churchill the following day after a tour of 10 Downing Street. ‘A rotund – smiling – red faced gentleman appeared,’ he wrote to Roosevelt that night, ‘extended a fat but none the less convincing hand and wished me welcome to England.’ They then lunched together in a small dining room in the basement, talking for three hours.
The two men quickly developed a rapport, with Churchill going out of his way to make as much of a fuss of him as possible, and with Hopkins winning friends with his wit, charm and ability to cut to the chase; he got on especially well with Churchill’s wife, Clementine, who often took a while to take to someone new, but was both drawn to Hopkins’s mordant humour and touched by his frailty.
His visit included weekends at Chequers, lunch with the King and Queen, and trips to see the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow, the guns and defences at Dover, and the bomb damage at Portsmouth. There were other lunches and dinners too. On Saturday, 11 January, Churchill had taken him to Ditchley, near Oxford, for a typical aristocratic weekend in the country. Also on hand were not only Oliver Lyttelton, but also Jock Colville, and after dinner Churchill launched into one of what Lyttelton called his ‘majestic monologues’. ‘We seek no treasure, we seek no territorial gains,’ said Churchill, ‘we seek only the right of man to be free; we seek his right to worship his God, to lead his life in his own way, secure from persecution.’ He continued in similar vein, then paused and asked, ‘What will the President say to all this?’
Hopkins paused before answering, then in his Midwest drawl said, ‘Well, Mr Prime Minister, I don’t think the President will give a damn for all that.’ He paused again, and Lyttelton was beginning to cringe. Then Hopkins added, ‘You see, we’re only interested in seeing that that Goddam sonofabitch Hitler gets licked.’ Lyttelton, along with everyone else, could not help laughing loudly.
On Sunday, 8 February, Hopkins spent his last full day in England at Chequers, where news arrived that the Lend-Lease Bill had been passed in the House of Representatives by 260 votes to 165. All that remained was getting it through the Senate.
The following day, Hopkins left for America, having written a last, hand-scrawled note to Churchill. ‘I shall never forget these days with you,’ he wrote, ‘your supreme confidence and will to victory. Britain I have ever liked – I like it the more.’