Five Days in London, May 1940

John Lukacs

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Year: 1999
• ISBN:
  9780300180916
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Segunda Guerra Mundial

A "gripping [and] splendidly readable" portrait of the battle within the British War Cabinet—and Churchill's eventual victory—as Hitler's shadow loomed ( The Boston Globe ). From May 24 to May 28, 1940, members of Britain's War Cabinet debated whether to negotiate with Hitler or to continue what became known as the Second World War. In this magisterial work, John Lukacs takes us hour by hour into the critical events at 10 Downing Street, where Winston Churchill and his cabinet painfully considered their responsibilities. With the unfolding of the disaster at Dunkirk, and Churchill being in office for just two weeks and treated with derision by many, he did not have an easy time making his case—but the people of Britain were increasingly on his side, and he would prevail. This compelling narrative, a Washington Post bestseller, is the first to convey the drama and world-changing importance of those days. "[A] fascinating work of historical reconstruction."— The Wall Street Journal "Eminent historian Lukacs delivers the crown jewel to his long and distinguished career."— Publishers Weekly (starred review) "A must for every World War II buff."— Cleveland Plain Dealer "Superb…can be compared to such classics as Hugh Trevor-Roper's The Last Days of Hitler and Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August."— Harper's Magazine

1. Churchill, Their Finest Hour, 99-100.

2. “There is no doubt that had I at this juncture faltered at all in leading the nation, I should have been hurled out of office.” By whom? By them? And who would succeed him? Was there someone who was more determined to fight Hitler than was Churchill?

3. This first sentence is from Dalton, The Fateful Years, 335. The rest coincides with the same diary entry in The Second World War Diaries of Hugh Dalton, 27-29.

4. Dalton’s marginal insertion: “If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.” (It is possible that, years later, Dalton showed this diary entry to Churchill, who then added or corrected the phrase.)

5. Meaning Chamberlain. Dalton was wrong: the main spokesman for negotiating was Halifax, not Chamberlain. See below, Chapters 2 to 5. Also, the “jumping up, shouting and patting me on the back” episode came at the end of the meeting, not during it. Dalton: “When we separate, several go up and speak to him, and I, patting him on the shoulder, from my physically greater height … “

6. Thompson, Sixty Minutes with Winston Churchill, 444.7. Churchill recognized Hitler’s significance as early as October 1930, two and a half years before Hitler was to become chancellor. Dining at the German embassy in London, the counselor of the embassy, a descendant of Bismarck, considered Churchill’s words significant enough to report them to Berlin: “Hitler of course declares he does not intend starting a world war but Churchill believes that Hitler and his followers will grasp the first chance to resort to arms again.”8. About another momentous and sleepless night in the life of Lord Halifax in 1938, see pp. 64-65.9. He was wrong, too, in his conviction that in 1938 Stalin’s Russia would have gone to war on the side of the Czechs. He wrote this as late as 1948, in volume 1 of his Second World War. Yet Stalin was even less inclined to honor his military pact with the Czechs than were the French.10. Churchill, Their Finest Hour, 667.11. Cited in Gilbert, Finest Hour, 327. Colville Diary (Churchill Archives, referred to as CA, below), 11 May: “There seems to be some inclination in Whitehall to believe that Winston will be a complete failure and that Neville will return”12. On 15 May, to the Chiefs of Staff Committee, Churchill spoke of “this battle of the Bulge.”

13. CA, 20-21. On 19 June Boothby returned to the same argument in a letter to Churchill.

14. Chamberlain Diary, 10 May, NC 2/24 A.

15. Pownall, Chief of Staff, with an excellent introduction by Bond. General Pownall was very intelligent but not always a good judge of men. In 1939 he praised the French general Huntziger: “a very good head on his shoulders” (214). Huntziger was responsible, among other things, for the neglect of the French defense preparation at the Ardennes and the Meuse. About Leslie Hore-Belisha, the minister of war 1938-39, he wrote, “an obscure shallow-brained, charlatan, political jewboy” (203). About Churchill, in 1936: “Churchill of course is hopeless.”

16. War Cabinet 65/7,17 May.

17. Cited in Calder, The People’s War, 106.

18. Ironside Diaries, 316 -17. The same Ironside earlier, in March: the Germans were poor, “their attack in the West would be a terrible gamble for them” (241).

19. Hoare Diary, 18 May, XII/2, cited in a superb doctoral dissertation: Esnouf, “British Government War Aims and Attitudes,” 189.

20. CA, 20/13.

21. Eden, The Reckoning, 107. (But also: “One day at the War Cabinet when the news had been more than usually discouraging, the P.M. looked at me across the table and remarked: ‘About time that No. 17 turned up, isn’t it?’” No. 17 was Churchill’s favorite marker, his winning chip at the roulette tables in Monte Carlo and Cannes.)

22. Esnouf, “British Government War Aims and Attitudes,” 90.

23. Chamberlain Diary, NC 1/20, cited also in Lawlor, Churchill and the Politics of War, 54-55.

24. Colville Diary, 21 May: “But I think Betts was typical of the whole country when she said ‘we shall not be beaten, even if Paris and London fall we shall win.’” As late as 23 May Colville still misspelled “Dunkirque.”

25. In Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, 159.

26. Neave, The Flames of Calais, 50.

27. Ibid., 56, 85.

28. Cannadine, Aspeas of Aristocracy, 132, 147, 159, 161. Nancy Astor to Stewart Perowne, 8 January 1940: “I still don’t want him as Prime Minister” (Astor Papers, 2/206, 1416).

29. Roberts, The Holy Fox, 187–88.

30. Ibid., 203.

31. His letters in CA; in his diary the years 1938-44 are largely weeded out.32. Pownall, Chief of Staff, 304, 323, 333.

33. Much later, in his diaries, Colville pasted a newspaper clipping of a speech by Butler in London in May 1943: “An immortal Prime Minister. Never since the time of Chatham had Britain occupied so prominent a position in the countries of the world nor had any Prime Minister led the armies and navies and air forces of the world towards saving civilization as Mr. Churchill was now doing.”

34. Colville Diary, CA. Butler’s willingness to keep intriguing against Churchill is also evident from the letters he wrote to Colville at the time. On 17 May: “I am really very sorry that you are no longer one of the team [that is, the Chamberlain team] and that you have been sacrificed for the Coalition. Do let me know what you are doing, so that we can meet. I hope we shall keep in touch for the sake of the future, the need for more intimate contact is what we have all learned from recent experiences” (Butler Papers, G 11 74, G 11 75).

35. On 22 May Weygand telephoned Ironside, saying that the French had recaptured Amiens, Albert, and Péronne. This was untrue.

36. CAB 65/7,23 May.

37. From the diary of King George VI, John Wheeler-Bennett, King George VI.38. It is interesting that Churchill, at least in one instance, impatiently confused the two. On 5 February 1940, he told the newspaper proprietor Cecil King, “This time of war the machinery of government was so strong that it could largely afford to ignore popular feeling.” More bluntly, he thought that Prime Minister Chamberlain “could afford to say: ‘to hell with public opinion’” (Bell, “British Public Opinion on the War,” 38, citing Cecil H. King, With Malice Toward None, 22). Bell adds, “[And yet] it was eventually public opinion expressed through the press and the House of Commons, which brought down Chamberlain’s government” — and brought Churchill to power (ibid.).39. Waugh had joined the army and kept a diary. On 19 May there is an admiring and funny note about Churchill. On 20 May: “Returned to camp to find bad news of the war.” On 22 May: “I lectured the company about the international situation and depressed myself so much that I could barely continue speaking” (Diaries, 469).

40. Clark, Another Part of the Wood, 268. Though about Churchill, “When he writes in a Gibbonian manner, I do not admire his prose” (273).

41. “It was very difficult to sound as if we were unbearably chilly and matter-of-fact, like English people in foreign plays, but the danger was so close, the appalling size of the smash-up so apparent, that the only thing to do was what everyone else was doing, keeping a steady eyes-front. Once you looked sideways, once you looked round, once you let your imagination out, you knew you might lose your head. Clearly the thing to do was to get yourself into a certain definite frame of mind and keep it at all costs, even if it made you slightly stupid. Everyone I met in the village seemed to be doing this instinctively” (Allingham, The Oaken Heart, 170).

42. “The actual day-to-day history of these two months, April and May 1940, is now known to everybody who can read. … It makes a savage but coherent tale, one thing following ruthlessly and logically upon the next, but at the time in Auburn (who like the child in the crowd at the barrier, not seeing any better for being in the front row) nothing seemed at all logical. We got to hear of things in a slightly different order from the true one. Some of them, the evacuation of Dunkirk, for instance, we got wind of before many other people, but others, like the shakiness of France, we realized long after most” (ibid., 154).

43. Ibid., 167,154,176,187.

44. Ibid., 168, 175. The novelist Vera Brittain, around 15 May: “During the next few days, the beauty of England increases as the news gets steadily worse.” On 19 May: “Again, as in the autumn, Martin and I, like other

45. Directed by the excellent Dorothy Sheridan, still keeper of the archives.

46. The files in the University of Sussex Archives are well organized. ForMay 1940 “Morale Today” is a summary, Box DR 28, FR 124. It contains files from 18 May to 1 June, for every day: forty-three carefully drafted, typed reports from London, Bolton, Worcester, and Ipswich.

47. “A similar lag of about twenty-four hours in Lancashire reaction had been found in several previous crisis investigations.”1. Bond, Britain, France, and Belgium(an excellent description of the confused planning and commitment of the Allies) : “Hitler’s mo...