Five Days In May: Black Monday

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In the last days of May 1940, the fate of Britain, indeed the outcome of the Second World War, depended on two things.

One was the division between Churchill and Halifax.

The other was the destiny of the British Army crowding back into Dunkirk.

And that's also a quote from John Lucas's book, Five Days in May, which we've been referencing a few times, haven't we, Al?

Welcome to We Are Ways and Make You Talk with me.

I'm Marian James Holland.

And this episode,

our last episode was a day of prayer.

And by the way, some of you may have noticed that a slight difference in audio quality between the start of the episode and the end of it.

That's because of tangled schedules, me popping up in Birmingham and having to record on a laptop that seems to be involved in some sort of death pact with itself.

Yeah, yeah, it is on the way out, isn't it, that laptop?

Just get yourself a MacBook Air and you'll be sick.

This truck, it's trying to let me know that laptop, that it's had it.

It's like when a dog goes out and lies under a tree in a garden.

I'm prepared to keep going for you, mate.

But Exactly.

I've got to say, there's not much legs there left of me.

He's a bit wheezy, isn't he?

Exactly.

Exactly.

That's exactly it.

The back's bending.

The spine's not as tall as it once was.

Precisely.

So if you enjoyed our day of prayer in our previous episode, today is our cheerily entitled Black Monday.

Now, as someone who dubbed a day Black Tuesday, we don't just dole out these black

descriptions.

They've got to be earned.

And

what what's interesting is particularly in the last episode the thing we i think we were really trying to get up close to is how on earth did this feel at the time how on earth are the decisions being made what's the thinking and what must it have been like you're you're well you see it's empatio to halifax but you know what up to the point up to a point no up to the point where he says we can do a deal with hitler everything he says makes complete sense within his frame of reference with the situation the british are actually in i think up to that one point where he goes, and

we'll be able to strike a deal with the dictators.

And that's where, no, he's plain wrong.

He's plain wrong.

And if you're going to pin all the rest of it on being able to do a deal, forget it, right?

This is where Chamberlain comes in, I think.

Well, this is where Chamberlain

comes in because he knows perfectly well this is impossible.

And I think this is, you know, if you just parse Chamberlain through the failure of appeasement and after all, and again, we're using that word with strong advisement, right?

Maybe appeasement did fail.

But what's the lesson Chamberlain has learned from Apacement that he brings to bear at this absolutely critical juncture?

And it's that you can't do a deal with these people.

It's impossible.

Maybe he's learned this lesson too late, but the point is he has certainly learned it.

And he's happy to lean in and help Churchill out because that's the thing Churchill always said was the case.

And so I'm not sympathetic with Halifax, but I completely see where he's coming from, particularly having been Viceroy of India, and there's this idea that the Empire will pull to us.

That's very much Churchill's sentimental notion.

Halifax knows exactly how difficult that would be in India.

Yes, and the other thing is also he's not a flamboyant character under any stretch of the imagination and he doesn't like the kind of Churchillian romantic rhetoric and the kind of putting on the heartstrings.

For him, it's just pragmatism.

So you know, they're coming at it from completely different psychological perspectives as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Be that as it may.

What's going on in Berlin?

Well, there's an American journalist there called William Shire,

and he reports that on that morning that Calais has fallen, he notes on the 26th of May.

Britain is now or Britain is now cut off from the Coninant and there's even reports in the Wölkische Bierbachter which is the Nazi daily news sheet that the Luftwaffe had been bombing southeast England which hasn't really but the halt order is finally lifted yes at 1 30 p.m.

on the 26th but that doesn't mean that they're all suddenly you know you know 132 they're all off yes not a bit of it because it's not until 8 p.m.

that night that panzer group kleist is finally given operational orders and they're not going to begin till the morning of the 27th so in other words you know they've been idle for three whole days doing diddly squat and three whole days is a flipping long time in this campaign yeah well given given what's happened in a fortnight three days is a sizable portion of time isn't it that's the thing yeah it really really is and and by that time in those three days gort's men as well as the french have been organized and dung it along the the canal line this is the burgu uh canal which goes um furners canal which goes all the way you know round the perimeter of of dunkirk about kind of five miles inland it's changed very unfavourably for the Germans.

You know, four British and several French divisions have reached Dunkirk in that time.

And that morning on the 27th of May, the renewed attack kicks off, but it soon bogs down.

And the reason it bogs down is because suddenly they're in this flat area, very, very, it's completely flat as a board there.

And the sluice gates have been opened by the British and the fields around on the German side of the Burgoose-Ferns Canal and on the other side are now waterlogged.

Yeah.

You know, which means you can still go around the causeways, but you can't kind of do mass panzer attacks.

Yeah.

And they've had time to prepare their positions and everything.

So, you know,

it's not the sort of improvised scratch defenses that have been in place up to this point in the campaign with them basically cascading back.

General Holder, who is the chief of staff of the army, who keeps his brilliant diary,

that on the left wing, von Kleis seems to encounter stronger resistance than expected.

You know, he's absolutely steaming about this.

Yeah.

And when he might be.

Yeah.

You know, have the Germans just blown it?

Well, it doesn't seem that way to the British on the Monday the 27th, I can assure you.

No, of course not.

It seems like the Germans old all the aces.

Yeah.

What has happened in the meantime, there's dynamos underway.

You know, at this point, isn't the miracle of Dunkirk?

Not yet.

It hasn't happened yet.

That's named after the office that it's commanded from, isn't it?

There is a room where there used to be a dynamo.

Literally, so it's literally named after the room it's being planned from, where there was literally a dynamo.

I mean, the thing is, is the Royal Navy have been extricating themselves from Norway after all, because the previous campaign to this.

Well, they're still there.

They're still fighting.

No, Norway comes out.

They're still there there fighting.

Yeah, yeah.

Up in Arvik.

Actually, you know, if you get the balance sheet out, it's a fantastic victory for the Royal Navy.

And yes, it's a disaster for the army, and it's the thing that results in Chamberlain's enforced retirement as Prime Minister.

It's been a great hunting time for the Royal Navy.

They've done all sorts of damage to the Kriegsmarine.

Great success and catastrophic for the Kriegsmarine.

Yeah, completely catastrophic for the Kriegsmarine.

Yeah.

And terrible for the German pre-war policy of building up a surface fleet, which is now lying wrecked.

You know, when clearly they should have been building ever larger numbers numbers of u-boats but they haven't done that you know which again is very much in britain's favor and you know they they should bear that in mind when they're uh yes you know thinking about the perils of the future in the in the days and weeks to come well in essence the creeks offered the royal navy a chance to render them useless in the event of an attempt to invade should there be one not that the germans had that in mind but they may have it in mind soon and if you look at what happens in norway it's never going it's never going to be possible i mean it's interesting this they've been blowing up port installations and fuel depots in holland yep they've brought queen wilhelmina back who was at the prayer service wasn't she so yes and they've been taking troops and supplies to france because there's a there's another deployment going into france and then bringing them back to britain too so cherbourg diet boulogne dunkirk they've been lifting thousands of people out 5 000 refugees and 3 000 troops on the 23rd of may for example and they're mine laying and mine sweeping and they have coastal patrol work to carry out they've not been idle not been idle and one of the sort of security things the royal navy has to deal with is the coal going from literally from the north to london east coast convoys east coast convoy and so that there's all these things that the navy have got to do and now they've got to turn their focus onto extricating the bf it's extraordinary how the royalty time to be on a destroyer though don't you think oh yeah absolutely yeah if you're a young man and you you know this is this is this is your this is catnip isn't it yeah well and you're the thing that service personnel often say you finally get to put the training to the test finally get do the thing i've been training for all this time and all that sort of stuff anyway background to dynamo Dynamo.

Well, this is interesting is that on the 19th, Gort had warned, hadn't he, that the BEF might consider evacuation.

It's quite early, isn't it?

And the Admiralty immediately held a meeting to discuss that.

And then enter the man of the hour.

All-time greats.

Yeah.

They decide that, you know, after that meeting on the 19th, they decide that should it come to it, the naval sub-command of Dover.

So there's all these commands, a bit like sort of 11 group, 10 group, 12 group in the REF.

Fighter Command, there's also commands all around.

There's Noor Command, there's there's Dover Command.

So Dover Command, obviously, as its name suggests, covers the area of the southeast of England, that stretch of the coast.

And that's Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsey.

You know, he's not Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey at this point.

He's comparatively junior in the big scheme of things.

Representatives of the War Office, Movement Control, and Ministry of Shipping have met Ramsey at Dover on the 20th to discuss the huge numbers of thorny issues involved in such an operation.

This is not a straightforward undertaking by any stretch of the imagination, particularly not when you're having to do it very, very quickly.

So the first is that sleep destroys and minesweepers that make up most of the Navy's ships are filled with guns and depth charges and

that's certainly not designed to carry large numbers of men.

No, that's the truth of it.

That also means, you know, therefore you can use those and you are going to cram the decks with men and down below and all the rest of it.

But it also means drafting in merchant ships, fishing vessels, cross-channel ferries, pleasure boats, ferries and pleasure boats from elsewhere.

You know, the ferries that are doing the run from Liverpool to the Isle of Man, get them down to South Coast quickly.

And they do.

You know, they're ordered off straight away.

Yes, it's extraordinary, isn't it?

You know, Isle of White ferries.

They're all coalescing in Dover.

Those of our listeners who remember the Falklands War will remember that sort of sudden thing where ships were commissioned to be requisitioned, rather, to be taken south, cruise liners and all that sort of thing.

The QE2, painted grey.

Exactly.

But it's that on absolute steroids, isn't it?

Yeah, it is.

Yeah.

It's extraordinary.

And they're also thinking, well, are we going to lift these people off the beaches?

You know, that's the problem.

They're imagining that the port's going to be under attack.

It's going to be probably hammered, very difficult to get onto the quay sides.

We're probably going to have to lift from the beaches.

You can't do that of a destroyer because you can only get in so close.

So, what that means is we're going to need little boats and you know, whalers and launches and stuff to go right onto the beach, ferry them back and forth.

And that's why they're thinking, you know, if we get 40,000 off, we'll be doing well.

Yeah.

It's because they don't think they're going to have a quay side or a series of quaysides from which to lift these people.

That's the issue.

Entirely reasonable of them to think that as well.

Because if if the Germans have figured out how they're going to stop getting men off, they're going to destroy the port properly, aren't they?

Well, yeah, and there's also the problem that Dunkirk coastline is riven with shoals.

It's rarely more than a couple of fathoms deep and is a notorious graveyard.

So, I mean, you can't think of a kind of worse place in which to have to lift 300,000 men.

Exactly.

It ain't going to happen.

Yeah.

By the morning of the 27th of May, your notes here say the problems facing them on the 20th of May multiply.

I mean, that's one way of putting it.

It's like...

Yeah, society society is like understatement, isn't it?

Ever so slight.

I mean, not just in terms of the sheer number of people they're going to have to try to lift.

I mean, I just sort of think in this, you can slice this as what are the practical problems, but the political thing hanging over, the pressure hanging over these officers, if you screw this up, even despite your best efforts, the enemy thwart you anyway.

The ramifications of this are boggling, aren't they?

They really, really are.

Anyway, at about half past seven on the morning at a.m., 07.30, on the morning of the Monday, the 27th of May, Captain Bill Tennant reports to Admiral Ramsey.

So this is about 13 hours after the 6.27 p.m.

when Operation Dynamo goes into action.

And up until 6 o'clock that night, that Sunday, the 26th of May, the day of prayer, Tennant has been chief staff officer to the first sea lord at the Admiralty.

That's interesting.

So he's a desqualer.

He's a staff officer at the Admiralty in London.

But he's a navigation expert.

So he was the navigator on HMS Renown of the World Tour of 1921 and a naval instructor at the Imperial Defense College before the war.

So he's now in his 40s.

And they go, oh, okay, you're a staff officer,

but you know loads about navigation.

That's what we're going to need here at Dunkirk.

You better go and report to Admiral Ramsey.

And from there, he's going to be seized.

Ramsey says, right, you know, you're going to go to Dunkirk and you'll organise the shore end of the evacuation as the SNO, the senior naval officer on the beaches, where we reckon your navigation knowledge is going to be invaluable.

So he goes, Roger that, and packs a few And 8:25 p.m.

on the uh 26th, he sets out first for Chatham and then goes on to Dover.

And he reports stuff to Ramsey at 7:30 in the morning.

Oh no, nine o'clock in the morning.

So I beg your pardon.

Yeah, so it's 9 a.m.

that he finally gets to Ramsey's headquarters.

And these are, I don't know if you've ever been there, but these are a sort of series of tunnels from dug into the chalk hills.

They're rather amazing.

Originally, that's extraordinary.

Ramsey has his office, has a window and a small iron balcony overlooking the channel.

And once a cannon has been pointed from that room towards France.

But from where they are, they can hear the guns.

Yeah.

They can hear the sounds of battle from across the channel.

I mean, how sinister is that going to be?

That's not going to make you sanguine, is it?

No, if you need reminders of the pressure, you can't look out to sea and take in the waves and have a moment of reflection, can you?

If you can hear it going on the other side of the channel.

Yeah.

They basically work on the assumption that the port at Dunkirk has been smashed up so much they aren't going to be able to use it.

So they're thinking it's a 10-mile stretch of beach to this the port and that's what we're going to to have to do.

And because they've had to keep it secret, they can't put out a call for boats and volunteer crews until it starts.

So you've got this necessary lag at the start of the evacuation that will happen.

But I mean, it's absolutely incredible.

On the morning of the 27th of May, only 129 of the merchant navy's 10,000 vessels are available.

My God, I mean...

You can see why they're not feeling particularly optimistic, aren't you?

Yeah, exactly.

And then they get bad news.

Ramsey says to Telent, the Bosch has got as far as Gravelin.

That's the worst blow yet.

Now, this is the French gun position at Gravelin with the coast west of the gun.

They've got massive coastal guns out.

Huge guns.

But with the coast west of Dunkirk now in German hands, it means that the short route from Dover to Dunkirk is within reach of these guns.

Which is only 39 miles.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, how big are these guns?

But basically, the point is, is you can't go the quick way.

So, Route Z, which is that shorter route.

40 coastal guns already operating.

But what if the French got coastal guns pointing in our direction, Jim?

What's going on?

I thought we were their allies.

Hey?

There's a couple of important questions that need answering here.

Yeah, but they might get attacked by the Christmarina.

Yeah, next time Mr.

Reynold shows up, I think we need to just ask him quite what he was doing.

Anyway, so there's three routes.

There's Route Z.

This is the 39 mile closest one.

Then there's Route X, which is 55 miles, but that hits the coast between Dunkirk and Gravelleem.

And then there's Route Y, which is 87 miles long and involves a dog leg off Ostend and approaching from the east.

So Route Y passes through the minefield.

So this is the 87 mile one and Route X is as yet untested.

Both are going to have to be used and that means that the crossings are going to take longer, a lot longer than they would if they were taking Route Z, which is a 39 mile one.

Yeah, come here, what do you do?

It's hard steaming 39 miles.

You can do that really in a couple of hours, three hours or so, if you really put your pedal to the metal.

Ramsey tells Tennant, you know, if we do 45,000 men at BEF, we'll be doing well.

Crikey.

Yep.

So accompanying Tennant are a team of 12 officers and 160 ratings.

They are going to be, you know, in charge of the shore parties, organising the men on the ground, getting them into boats, getting them, you know, lifted off the beaches onto larger vessels waiting offshore.

They leave Dover at 1.45 p.m., briefings complete, you know, on the destroyer HMS Wolfhound, and they follow Route Y.

First Dukas attack them at 2.45pm.

They're harried and bombed the rest of the way, although they do manage to dodge and weave their way out of trouble.

And this comes to a bigger point, actually, which we can maybe discuss a little bit later.

But above the din, Tennant begins organizing his men.

You know, each officer is going to have 12 ratings, given a stretch of the beaches, part of the port to reconnoitre and manage.

He's trying to be kind of methodical about it.

As they draw near Dunkirk, it's just this vision of hell.

The entire coastline seems to be ablaze because the oil refineries at San Paul, just southeast of Dunkirk, they're burning.

So huge pool of thick black smoke is kind of billowing up into the sky.

And this is one of the things about Dunkirk in this period that it may be the last week of May, but it feels wintry because the whole sky is covered.

First of all, by a windless spank of low pressure, creating 10 tense cloud, but exacerbated by this incredibly thick pool of black smoke, which just burns the whole week pretty much until, well, until the Saturday, the 2nd of June.

Flames spewing from the warehouses and buildings around the port, you know, above aircraft are thundering over, bombs whistling down, explosions, you know, as they're hitting the ground, guns booming.

They finally pull into Dunkirk Harbour at 5.35 p.m.

Miraculously intact.

They do actually get to a quayside as another stick of bombs falls on the quayside nearby.

I mean,

crikey.

And it's only once the raiders have passed this tenant, you know, they disembark and start dispersing his men.

And then he heads off towards Bastion 32, which is still there.

It's a sort of, you know, huge great bunker.

And this is the headquarters of Admiral Jean-Marie Charles Abrial, who is the French Admiral Nord, the Admiral of the North, the naval commander at Dunkirk.

So they kind of pick their way through the rubble and shards of broken glass and burnt out vehicles and snapped tram wires and eventually reach Bastion 32 where they're led through heavy steel doors into a kind of long damp corridor lit by candles.

Just amazing.

It takes them to the operations room.

And here he finally meets with Brigadier Reginald Palmeter.

I mean, God, that's an old school British army name, if ever there was one, isn't it?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Here's Palmeter, Reginald Palmeter.

Jolly good.

Who's from Gort staff?

Colonel G.P.H.

Whitfield, who's the area commandant, and Commander H.P.

Henderson, the British Naval Liaison Officer to Admiral Abriel.

And they all say the same thing.

There's absolutely no chance at all of using the harbour for evacuation.

And Tennant goes, well, you know, how long do you reckon we've got?

And they go, you know, 24, 36 hours at the most.

And after that, the Germans will be here.

One question I have is, who has ultimate authority in this situation?

Is it Tennant?

Well, this becomes a debating point because Gort has, part of the alliance is that Gort has a right of veto.

So he's under the orders of the French, but can kind of, you know, refer back if he needs to.

And Tennant's in the same situation that his commander, his command is.

They want cooperation with the French, but they're separate from the French.

Right.

Okay.

Yes, you can see that possibly.

He is a guest at Abriel's Bastion.

Oh, good lord.

But when it comes to dealing with the army, is it a situation that goes, well, this is how we're going to do it, and then the army have to go along with it this is a naval operation so he has full authority yep because you know a captain's what a colonel isn't it if you're yeah exactly and there he is dealing with brigadiers and so on and yet he's it's actually him that's going to call the shots isn't it yeah in effect dynamo is a naval is a british royal navy operation it's not an army operation yeah in the meantime the luftwaffe are trying to do what goering has promised the führer they've hit the port with 30 000 incendiary bombs 15 more than 15 000 high explosives they've destroyed the railhead pretty much and the docks and quays are in ruins.

Water supply has been cut off, which is disastrous for the men.

That's very bad.

Because everyone's short of water.

But this is interesting, isn't it?

Because this is what Goering's plan.

It's the thing that's bolstered Hitler's political situation with the army.

But it's interesting that they have started their operations immediately, but the Luftwaffe is pretty thinly spread, actually.

Yeah, it is, because it's got a long way to come.

It's got a long way to come.

It's also still engaged in tactical operations supporting the German army.

Well, I think it's really important to stress that the airfields in which they're operating, you know, they're still back in Germany.

They're miles away.

So it's harder work.

So you end up with, it's Kessering's fluftflotter.

But what you end up with is on the 25th, von Kluge meets with Wolfram von Richthofen.

I wonder how he got the job.

Who's the commander of 8th Fliger Corps?

I mean, a family name gets you a long way, doesn't it?

And he asks sarcastically whether he'd yet taken Dunkirk.

And von Richthofen replies, no, Herr General Oberst.

I have not even attacked it yet.

My Stuckers are too far back.

The approach flight's too long.

Consequently, I use them twice a day at most and unable to focus them at one point of effort.

I mean, this is the thing, isn't it?

Goering, consistently throughout the Second World War, and thank goodness for this, writes checks he simply can't cash with a Luftwaffe, doesn't he?

This is a prime example.

Son, your buddy's writing checks your buddy can't cash, to quote Top Gun.

Exactly.

And the weather, as you said, said, is really, really bad.

We know that accurate bombing is hard.

I think if you've listened to this podcast a lot, you know that basically no one can bomb accurately much with any degree of reliability.

And this is early on in the war.

Yes, and the thing about stukas is stukas are starting their dive at you know 5 000 feet 6 000 feet you know they're still quite high up yeah yeah and from 6 000 feet a destroyer which is not terribly long you know what's a destroyer in like 120 meters something like that yeah they look like a pencil and they're now they're moving around all over the place and you know it's you will only hit a destroyer by chance i mean you know you can increase those chances but it's a fluke shot if you hit it so it's incredibly difficult and so you know and they're also pumping out vast amounts of anti-aircraft fire and by this stage the leftoffer since the campaign campaign and we talked about it's only been a fortnight really they've lost a thousand aircraft since the campaign began that is i mean this is one of the things we said earlier on about how blitzkrieg works is it's really costly and you have to push on through the cost but the idea is you get it over with worst single day for the luftwaffe in the entire war is the 10th of may 1940 they lose 352 aircraft

352 in one day that is absolutely diabolical yep most of them transports yeah and yet the great takeaway of course on the Allied side is that the Luftwaffe are absolutely brilliant.

Have a great campaign.

But the Germans are still optimistic.

And Goering again, he goes to visit the Führer later that day.

He's in a jovial mood and confident his Luftwaffe was doing everything he had promised it could.

And what does he say, Jim?

Only fishing boats are coming home.

I hope Zitomis are good slimmers.

Yes, yes, Feldman.

That's a good one, Hermann.

And so on.

But I think what's interesting, though, is...

I'm quite pleased with my jovial jovial Goering, actually.

I like it.

I like it.

It's quite strong.

I'm going to add that to my repertoire along with.

It's like he's in the room.

It's like he's in the room.

You do Churchill, I'll do Goering.

Okay, brilliant.

I'm satisfied with that division of labour, I've got to say.

But the thing is, is Goering's still living it up, isn't he?

He's getting plenty of sleep.

He's taking it easy, really, as is Hitler.

They're not focused on it, perhaps, in the way that British leaders are.

On the night of the 26th, Neville Chamberlain has written in his diary, the blackest day of all.

But we promised you Black Monday, which is the 27th.

So.

Yes.

So I think what we should do is take a break, shouldn't we?

And then we should get into war cabinet meetings on Black Monday.

Brilliant.

See you in a second.

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Welcome back to We Have Ways of Make You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland.

Well, it's Black Monday, people.

It's Black black monday exactly if chamberlain had a bad day yesterday buckle up neville there's worse to come uh things are obviously for the beaf looking absolutely diabolical and they're pretty pessimistic as we've seen that the assessment is you're not really going to get anyone you're not going to be able to use the harbour you're not going to get anyone off the beach much no it's all going to go pretty badly 45 000 tops yeah and churchill likes to recall quotations that match his mood in times of strain i mean that the extent to which he lives through words and uses words it's just amazing.

It's fascinating, isn't it?

It's so brilliant.

Particularly as he's an autodidact.

And I think that's one of the really interesting things about Churchill, isn't it?

Is that this whole body of literature that he's and words that he falls back on and then uses and re-engineers, because an awful lot of his rhetoric is sort of extraordinary stirred pot of recycled stuff.

It's very interesting.

The familiarity he has with classical texts is something he's done for himself.

And I think that makes him and his understanding and use of words and rhetoric even more interesting.

So he asks one of his secretaries secretaries to find a line from George Borrow's Prayer for England at Gibraltar.

And there's more praying.

You know, there are no atheists in foxholes.

I think that's what this is, isn't it?

This is the political foxhole that Churchill finds himself in.

Fear not the result, for either shall thy end be majestic and an enviable one, or God shall perpetuate thy reign upon the waters.

So that's basically shit or bust.

Yes, basically.

I think it's fair to say he's going to need that kind of level of stoic resolve, isn't he, in the days to come.

Yeah.

Really, really important to remind us about that opening quote that we have from John Lukax.

You know, the fate of Britain, the fate of the Second World War, the fate of the free world depends not only on the successful evacuation of the BEF from the beaches of Dunkirk, it also rests on the outcome of the split between Churchill as Prime Minister and Lord Halifax, most respected man in Britain, the Foreign Secretary.

Also much depends on Chamberlain, who influence is still absolutely enormous.

And should Chamberlain emphatically side with Halifax in this debate, I think Churchill's going to find it very difficult to oppose both.

That's the truth of it.

And Labour, at this point, are keeping Stumm, aren't they?

They're letting the Tories.

Yeah, they're the new boys, and they kind of don't really feel it's their place to kind of butt in.

But Chamberlain is already a sick man.

The cancer is already taking hold of him, but he hasn't yet been diagnosed.

So he doesn't know.

You know, Churchill has bent over backwards to be gracious, nice, kind, respectful.

He's leave, you know, he's still bedding down in the Admiralty so that Chamberlain can stay in number 10 for the time being.

All this is going to, he hopes this will bear fruit when they have these difficult kind of conversations that they're going to have today.

Well, and also, I mean, it's worth remembering that when Churchill becomes Prime Minister, when he enters the House of Commons, he enters to silence.

And when Chamberlain then turns up in the chamber, there are cheers.

So he needs him for all these reasons.

He needs him to stay in contact with the party and keep the party on side.

If things don't pan out, that's going to be incredibly important.

Whatever's going to happen happen next, that's incredibly important.

And so, right, so the first war cabinet that day is at 11.30 at Downing Street.

Do you imagine this scene?

They begin with reports read out from France.

So a sit rep as what's going on in France.

And then a discussion about what to tell the Dominions.

This is all really bad, isn't it?

And they know that the Australian High Commissioner is a defeatist, right?

They know he's set to throw in the towel.

They also know that things are terrible in Norway still.

They're going to have to evacuate Narvik, which has been captured by an Anglo-French Polish force two days before.

but you know, you know, that's gonna have to go, isn't it?

That's gonna have to wither on the other side.

They've got bigger fish to worry about right now.

March, much, bigger fish to fry.

Chamberlain then gives his appraisal of the Chief of Staff's certain eventuality, which is the sort of kind of risk assessment that the Chiefs of Staff have drawn up as to what will probably happen if things do go completely wrong.

Yeah, and he points out that much depends on the United States.

And he says, this was perhaps not an unjustifiable assumption, but we might not obtain this support in the immediate future.

You know, we might expect some help from America at some point, but it ain't happening this week.

Yeah, and that notably is part of Halifax's argument, as we saw in the last episode.

A major factor in Halifax's argument.

And Churchill, with his strategic sense and his grip on...

Because Churchill's visited America a lot, of course.

This is the other thing to remember, is he knows what America is, doesn't he?

He's been there.

He's seen it face to face, the American economy and what it's capable of.

Yeah, yeah.

There's some debate over the over the figures that have come from the air ministry.

So this is Group Captain Elmhurst's figures of Luftwaffe for strength of being kind of four to one.

And it's actually now, Air Marshals Richard Pierce has now produced new, more accurate figures, which suggest the advantage is more like 2.5 to 1 in favour of the Germans rather than 4 to 1.

Oh, that's all right.

You know, it still means that the British airmen have got to shoot down three German aircraft for every one.

Yeah.

I've suddenly feeling sort of Lawrence Olivier in the Battle of Britain here.

The simple arithmetic is that our young airmen will have to shoot down three of their young airmen for every one of ours.

Anyway, at this point, Halifax is saying very little, but I think it's fair to say that the mood in the cabinet room that morning at number 10 is gloomy.

I mean, I expect you would say little.

Those sound like his arguments being laid out.

So he's thinking, I don't need to weigh in here.

I'll store this up for the moment.

It's all going in my direction.

They first will one o'clock, go off and have lunch, and then they come back.

They reconvene at 3.30 p.m.

on that fateful Monday, 27th of May.

At 3.30, he has called for the third war cabinet of the day, which is going to be an hour's time.

But at that moment, Churchill is alone in the cabinet room at the rear of number 10, reading through answers from the chiefs of staff and vice-chiefs to questions that he'd asked them earlier that morning.

Could the Royal Navy and the RAF hold out reasonable hopes of preventing a serious invasion attempt by the Germans?

And could the various forces gathered in this island, in the UK, cope with raids from the air?

The cabinet room has changed a little bit, but in 1940, in front of him at this central position, right in front of the marble fireplace with a picture of walpole above it there are letter racks seven wooden trays um a telephone there's bookcases lining this paneled room they're each bound with with copies of handsard which you know is the official records of of of the proceedings in parliament and out beyond is the garden isn't it that um we were looking at just the other day calais has fallen you know three and a half thousand men in the bag now comes the news that morning for the belgian embassy that the king of the belgians is almost certainly going to make a separate peace with Germany that day, that they're going to surrender.

And these two hammer blows mean the likelihood of even 40,000 men of the BEF getting away is now further reduced.

You know, it is expected that the Germans will be overrunning Dunkirk at any minute.

And so the Chiefs and the Vice-Chiefs have set out their responses in 11 very terse, typically British of that particular period paragraphs.

And basically they say this.

So long as the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force remain in being in inverted commas, they say they should be able to prevent Germany from carrying out a seaborne invasion.

On the other hand, if the RAF is defeated, then the Navy could hold up an invasion for a time, but not for an indefinite period.

If an invasion is then begun, however, coastal defenses would be unable to prevent the enemy making a firm foothold.

The crux of the matter is air power.

Whether the RAF can successfully defend the skies.

The Luftwaffe, however, outnumbers the RAF and so far has destroyed all other air forces in its wake.

On the other hand, Britain does have the first and only coordinated air defense system in the world.

However, it hasn't been tested.

So no one knows whether this is going to work.

They hope it's going to work, but they don't know.

And at present, RAF fighter planes are still operating over and being sent to France, where there is no air defense system of any note and where they're fighting heroically and successfully, but also losing a large number as well.

So this then is the really, really obvious dilemma.

Do you send them to France now and risk them being shot down ahead of any inevitable air assault on Britain or hold them back as Cyril Newell, who's the head of the RAF and Dowding, who is the commander-in-chief of RAF Fighter Command, the defenders of Britain, have been urging?

On the other hand, by operating over Dunkirk, they might improve the chances of the BEF.

The way this is all laid out, I'm just imagining the PowerPoint presentation where you click from the

slide card.

And you're reading out the text you've written on the PowerPoint.

Exactly.

If the

Navy remains in being, we find.

fine however if it's not however dot dot dot next slide however next slide and then you and then you press the wrong button with a with a silhouetted image of a of a of a sinking ship and then you go press the wrong button and go back hang on i'm sorry i'm sorry the ref has survived now again oh no i'm gonna go forward oh my goodness me

but you know when you put it like that it's quite a dilemma isn't it yeah yeah it is it's interesting because as we know you know from what happened with the balance of probabilities is that's kind of how things worked out That the RAF does remain in being and is able to defend the airspace, which means the Royal Navy are able to, will be able to do so successfully as well, and on and on and on.

But

no one knows this at this moment.

No.

And also, no one knows, you know, because another part of the question that Churchill has asked the Chiefs of Staff is, you know, can the British public put up with sustained bombing?

And again, they don't really know.

If bombers destroy much of the aircraft industry, then this would obviously have a grave effect on Britain's chances.

The moral effect of bombs raining down is also large unknown because this has never happened before.

You know, there's been bombers coming over London in 1917 and 1918 and stuff, but, you know, not seriously.

Warsaw's been hammered.

Rotterdam's been hammered.

There has never been a sustained bombing campaign on cities ever.

But there's been a lot of writing about what it might amount to.

An awful lot of chances.

Yes, and it's all pretty apocalyptic.

Catastrophised.

Yeah, exactly.

Oh, God.

Yeah, conclusions are stark and brutal.

The primia face, Germany has most of the the cards.

Crikey.

The bottom line is, we're up the creek.

We don't know what's going to happen, but it's not looking good.

That's basically

yeah, we're up the creek.

Maybe we have a paddle or two.

It's a shocker, isn't it?

So Churchill knows that Monday, this day, Monday the 27th of May, is the potential to be the most calamitous time in the country's history.

Full stop.

He did want to be prime minister, though.

So, you know, suck it up, mate.

So there's a war cabinet at 4.30.

Yes.

And as they gather down and they sit in their places at the cabinet cabinet table, everyone knows exactly the situation they're in.

And, you know, this is the thing is, militarily, you can draw up that balance sheet.

But the thing that that balance sheet also says is we don't know.

We don't know how morale, what the psychological and political effect of any of this is going to be.

They just don't know.

That in a way is the sort of thing that they're going to have to argue over after all.

Aren't they?

They know what losing the BF will mean.

They know it'll bring about a collapse.

It could bring about a collapse of the government.

I mean, America could go in either direction of that, couldn't it?

Because the Americans don't don't want the Royal Navy in the hands of the Third Reich.

A Britain that's a satrap, a British Empire that's a satrap of the Third Reich.

They don't want that.

The Empire would implode anyway, wouldn't it?

The Dominions would be, well, we're nothing to do with this anymore.

All of those consequences.

And, you know, Hitler will have won and a new dark age will descend upon Europe.

And then all the free world, and then actually all of the non-free world.

That's the other thing.

When you look at why Jamaicans come to fight, they say, well, we've got to get rid of Hitler and then we'll get rid of the empire.

So the, you know, it's consequences for everybody, isn't it?

You know, everyone knows what the stakes are.

Everyone knows that this is this is possibly one of the most consequential meetings of British political leaders in the history of British, of Britain, the history of Britain, full stop.

I mean, this is it.

This is the moment.

It's 4.30 p.m.

afternoon of Monday of the 27th.

There's six men around the table.

There's the Liberal leader.

and the new Secretary of State for Air, Archibald Sinclair.

He's been invited to join them, partly for his knowledge of the air situation, but also because Churchill knows he's absolutely with him in believing that any talks through the Italians are going to be disastrous.

So the Prime Minister begins the session by raising Halifax's draft memorandum, suggested approach to Signor Mussolini, which they've now all read.

He's got to confront this.

He's got to kind of puncture this, face to, you know, there has to be the confrontation.

And Churchill says, and what we've got, what we're going to do in the next 15, 20 minutes is read out verbatim what these players were saying.

at that cabinet meeting, that third cabinet meeting of the day.

We've got the transcripts, the actual words they spoke.

And they very much speak for themselves.

But you're going to be Churchill, I'm going to be Halifax.

I'll be Chamberlain.

You can be Sinclair.

And if Goeing should pop up, you can do him too.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I thank you for your memorandum, Edward.

But let me begin by suggesting it would be far more advantageous for us that if any approach to Signor Mussolini be made, then it be made by President Roosevelt rather than us making the first move via our French ally.

If France collapses, Germany will probably give her good terms, but we'll expect the French to have the kind of ministers who are acceptable to the Germans.

Yeah, they all get what this means.

This means that France would shift dramatically from being an ally and friend to becoming Britain's enemy.

Halifax replies.

I do not entirely disagree with regard to the French.

My last message from Sir Percy Lorraine in Rome, that's the British ambassador in Rome, is to the effect that nothing we can do will be of any value this stage, so far as Signor Mussolini is concerned.

And it's now that Chamberlain speaks up.

This seems clear.

I suspect Mussolini might be willing to play a part in the game, but not until Paris has been taken.

Yet, for the sake of the French, or rather, to avoid letting them down completely at this critical hour, it would be unfortunate if they were to add to this that we had been unwilling even to allow them the chance of negotiations with Italy.

Yeah, so Chamberlain is digging into this situation, yeah.

The issue is this, that as formal allies, France cannot begin any negotiations of their own without the agreement of the British and vice versa.

Yeah, and Churchill feels an awesome sympathy for the French, but the danger is that by agreeing to Raynaud's request to begin talks with the Italians, Britain will then find themselves drawn into an armistice table through stealth, through the back door, effectively.

And Churchill knows this can't happen.

So, if France begins talks, it must do so against British wishes, not with their blessing.

So, the time has now come to emphatically state his position.

So the words he uses, the intonation, the framing of the sentences, these are all going to be critical.

This is vital.

And we've said what an amazing wordsmith he is and how words are so important to him.

There is no single point in his life where his words that he now speaks are going to be more important than now.

Neville?

I believe your argument amounts to this, that nothing would come of the approach, but that it is worth doing to sweeten relations with a falling ally.

Allow me to read a telegram I received earlier this morning from Monsieur Renaud.

The argument, which to his mind clearly carries the most weight, far more than the Italian business, is the assistance given by Britain to France at this tragic hour.

This, he says, and I quote, will help to strengthen the alliance of hearts, which I believe to be essential.

And then Archibald Sinclair chips in.

I am convinced that an approach to Italy at this time would be futile.

Being in a tight corner, any weakness on our part will encourage the Germans and the Italians, and will tend to undermine the morale both in this country and in the Dominions.

The suggestion that we are prepared to barter away pieces of British territory will have a deplorable effect and will make it difficult for us to continue the desperate struggle that faces us.

I am, however, impressed by the importance of doing all we can to strengthen the hands of the French.

So, Sinclair sided with Churchill here that and with and you know and Churchill's using the telegram from from Raino which is saying what we need is you to back us to back us unequivocally and that anything beyond that is surplus to requirements and also bad form is the thing.

You know, it's absolutely fascinating isn't it that even as the alliance has gone militarily gone completely down the plughole, they're honouring all this stuff.

I mean it's others more cynical go, well, France has had it.

They're toast.

Who cares?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So anyway, so it's now the Labour men speak up.

Greenwood's 60, he's a veteran Labour politician, former health minister in the last Labour government, and he's the son of a painter and decorator from Yorkshire.

So, unlike the aristocratic at Halifax, his roots are firmly working class, and during the 30s, he's repeatedly been a harsh and outspoken critic of Chamberlain, and not least on the 2nd of December when he accused the then Prime Minister of vacillation over Germany's invasion of Poland.

Um, you know, it's only the next day after that that Chamberlain declares war, but now they're colleagues.

So, Greenwood says, Well, I must say, I can see no way of France getting out of her difficulty, yet we must bear in mind that if it got out that we had sued for terms at the cost of ceding British territory, the consequences will be terrible.

With that in mind, it would be heading for disaster to go any further with these approaches.

You know, at this point, Churchill was sort of going, whew.

Yeah, Labour have been stumb up to this point, haven't they?

They've not said a thing.

And Halifax hasn't said a thing.

Well, yes, and Alifax hasn't said a thing until now.

So

all he's done up to this point is say what's happened to this conversation with Bastianini, the Italian ambassador to Britain.

Bastianini's spin-hedging.

He's not going to commit to anything.

He probably isn't allowed to.

He's expressed his hope to find solutions satisfactory to both sides, which is nonsense, isn't it?

And that the French are proposing nothing more than the most tentative of opening discussions.

So then Halifax starts to lay his cards down, doesn't he?

I doubt there is very much force in the argument that we must do nothing which gives an appearance of weakness, since Signor Mussolini will know that President Roosevelt's approach has been prompted by us.

You know, he's got a point.

He's got a point.

But it's interesting, though, that the weight of numbers is against him, isn't it?

Sinclair and that Greenwood suddenly are going, well, we can't be doing any shabby deals.

But he also knows that by Churchill talking about doing any presentation via Roosevelt rather than them is just, you know, it's kicking the can.

You know, it's a delaying tactic.

You know, he knows that.

It's not a serious proposition for the precise of the reasons he's just given.

But also, Churchill knows that he's got to now emphatically reject Halifax's suggested approach.

So he says, even if we are beaten, we should be no worse off than we should be if we are now to abandon the struggle.

Let us therefore avoid being dragged down the slippery slope with France.

The whole of this manoeuvre was intended to get us so deeply involved in negotiations that we should be unable to turn back.

We have gone a long way already in our approach to Italy, but let us not allow Monsieur Renault to get us involved in a confused situation.

The approach proposed is not only futile, but involves us in a deadly danger.

That's on the nose, isn't it?

You can see Halifax starting to sort of look a bit pinched and starting to fume.

And Chamberlain speaks up again.

He's clearly trying to be the arbitrator.

And he suggests at this point that perhaps they ought to go a little further with the proposal just to keep up the appearance of alignment with the French.

And then Churchill interjects, and this time it's about the fighting spirit of the French, and they might yet hold out.

And even if the worst comes to the worst, Churchill says it, you know, it might not be the most terrible thing to go down fighting for the other countries already overcome by Nazi tyranny.

And Churchill knows that Halifax is not one to be swayed by such talk.

You know, he's, as we were discussing earlier on, you know, Halifax is a pragmatist.

He's clinical.

You know, he doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve.

You know, so the rhetoric is for the others.

It's for Attlee.

It's for Greenwood.

It's for Sinclair and even it's for Chamberlain.

But Halifax now sits up.

You know, he's really getting cross.

He points out with kind of the kind of understatement he's known for that clearly profound differences and points of view are emerging.

I cannot recognize any resemblance between the action which I am proposing and the suggestion which we are that we are suing for terms and following a line which will lead us to disaster.

You know, and he points out that the previous day, Churchill had agreed to discuss terms so long as Britain is able to emerge favourably.

Now, however, he says, you know, the Prime Minister seems to be suggesting that no conditions could be contemplated and that the only course left open is to fight to the finish.

You know, his exasperation is really, really clear now.

And so he continues: if, however, it is possible to obtain a settlement that does not impair those conditions, I, for my part, doubt I am able to accept the view now being put forward by the Prime Minister.

Winston, you have said that two or three months will show us whether we are able to stand up against the air risk.

This means that the future of the country turns upon whether the enemy's bombs happen to hit our aircraft factories.

I am prepared to take that risk if our independence is at risk, but if it is not at stake, then I think it is right to accept an offer which will save the country from avoidable disaster.

Gosh.

When you hear it like that, I mean, goodness me.

And then Churchill comes back to the point that we were talking about earlier that he says that there are no favourable terms to come from Hitler.

Come on, we all know this.

And I think Chamberlain is still trying to sort of mitigate, compromise, triangulate, isn't he?

But they're getting further apart.

The points of view are widening, so that's more difficult.

He suggests that if any concrete proposals are put forward, there'd be no difficulty in settling what were acceptable and what were not.

But obviously, Churchill's just not going to buy that there are any acceptable conditions, is he?

So that the arguments are beginning to sort themselves out, as Churchill would put it.

So Halifax then says, Suppose the French government says, we are unable to deal with an offer made to France alone, and you must deal with the Allies together.

Suppose Herr Hitler, being anxious to end the war through knowledge of his own internal weakness, offers terms to France and England.

Would you be prepared, Winston, to discuss them?

So Churchill pauses, lightly wraps his finger, you know, between his cigar is still wedged, and then he speaks.

I would not join France in asking for terms, but if I were to be told what the terms offered are, then I would be prepared to consider them.

And it's noticeable how quiet Attlee, Greenwood, and Sinclair have been.

You know, this clearly is a debate between two political titans, Halifax and Churchill, with Chamberlain as moderator.

And now it's the former Prime Minister whose turn it is to speak again.

And he says that he suspects that Hitler would most likely only make an offer specifically to France.

Perhaps, says Halifax, but he still insists they must not send a flat refusal to the French.

The argument has not been resolved at all.

in this cabinet.

And as the meeting wraps up with a brief discussion on the position of the United States, and then chairs are pushed back, papers collected, war cabinet moves to leave and as Halifax steps out into the corridor he sees Alexander Caduggan, his permanent undersecretary at the

Foreign Office hovering waiting for him and as he nears him he mutters, I can't work with Winston any longer.

But before Caduggan can reply there is a call from Churchill.

Edward!

And Halifax stops and turns as the Prime Minister hurries to him.

And Churchill places a hand briefly on Halifax's elbow, part steering him away, part a kind of signal of intimacy.

And this is a peace feeler of his own.

And he leads him through number 10 to the enclosed garden at the rear.

And only once they are there, alone, out of earshot, does Churchill then speak again.

And no one knows what was said, except that Halifax did give a bit of a report.

He said that Winston was full of affection and basically says, don't resign.

But as you and I both know, Jim, at We have Ways Festival last year, we did manage to get some glimpse into what may have been said in the Rose Garden.

Yes, that's those presents.

Remember, it is fascinatingly dramatic.

This one thought that was crossing my mind while we were reading all that is a modern cabinet now, we'd have read about that in the paper the next day.

It would have been leaked by everybody.

In the modern style, that whole thing would have been leaked everywhere.

It is fascinating that this remains.

And the contents of the conversation of the Rose Garden would have been leaked by Halifax or by Churchill in the modern style.

But by Halifax saying, I can't work with Winston anymore.

The threat is clear.

He's losing his temper.

He's fed up with this, and he's considering his position.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And if Halifax resigns, yeah, a proper blow to the government.

Well, it's probably the end of the government.

It collapses, and that would then almost certainly usher in defeat.

I mean, you know,

it's a domino effect.

So him saying that is catastrophic.

What Churchill is doing in the garden is being affectionate, saying, Come on, you know, we've been colleagues for a long time.

You know, you're a good chap.

You know, I need you on side.

You know, we have no idea what he's saying, but we're suspecting that it's words along to that effect.

Meanwhile, back at Dunkirk, you know, dusk is settling now on the kind of the first full day.

They've managed to get, I think, 7,899 men lifted on that day, but it's just, you know, it's not enough.

The Germans are knocking at the door.

The guns are getting ever closer.

The pool of smoke is ominously thickening above Dunkirk.

The sound of guns and stookers diving and bombs exploding.

Thousands upon thousands of hundreds of thousands of men, little black silhouettes huddling on the beaches, you know, for 10 miles all the way down to Le Pan and beyond.

And the situation looks absolutely terrible.

And that night, the Belgians are going to surrender.

Could it be any worse?

Well, find out in our next episode.

I don't know about you, but my heart's beating faster.

Well, yeah, I mean, I have to say, actually having their words and seeing their arguments laid out in front of you is just amazing, isn't it?

It's quite amazing.

It's quite incredible.

And in the notes, everybody, Jim used a typeface that when you get those enormous blue books of the cabinet reports, they're in that typeface.

It's a very, very peculiar flashback there to times looking at those.

Anyway, if you've enjoyed this episode and really need to move on very, very quickly without adverts to the next one, you could always subscribe on our Apple channel, Officer Class, or you could become a Patreon member.

And if you want to meet other people who know exactly what happened at their Rose Garden, because they saw a sketch about it last year at We Have Waste Fest, come to We Have Waste Fest 5.

V for victory.

Putting the fun into fun, September the 12th to the 14th.

Apologies for the hard sell, regular listeners, but we just want people to experience the best history weekend in the country.

Nay, in the free world, a history festival secured by Winston Churchill, taking Halifax into that garden in many ways.

We will see you for our next episode.

Thanks for listening, everyone.

Bye-bye.

Cheerio.

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