Five Days In May: The Prayer

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What a grim interlude in our lives.

The Government may decide to evacuate Kent and Sussex of all civilians.

If, as I hope, they are orders instead of advice, then those orders will either be go or stay.

If the former, then you know what to do.

If the latter, we are faced with a great predicament.

I don't think that even if the Germans occupied Sissinghurst, they would harm you in spite of the horrid dislike which they feel for me.

But to be quite sure that you are not put in any humiliation, I think you really ought to have a bare bodkin handy, so that you can take your quietus when necessary.

I shall have one also.

I am not in the least afraid of such sudden and honourable death.

What I dread is being tortured and humiliated.

But how can we find a bodkin which will give us our quietus quickly and which is easily portable?

I shall ask my doctor friends.

My dearest, I felt so close to you yesterday.

We never need to put it all in words.

If I believe in anything surviving, I believe in a love like ours surviving.

That

was a letter by Harold Nicholson, MP, part of the Ministry of Information, in a letter to his wife, the writer and gardener, Vita Sackville West on the 26th of May, 1949.

And obviously, a bear bodkin is a euphemism for a file of something deadly.

The Harold Nicholson star is fantastic.

I recommend them to anyone.

They're this amazing snapshot into

the machinations of the time, politically and diplomatically, all that, but also into the mind of really extraordinary people.

The idea of incredibly melodramatic.

Oh, yeah, exactly.

Those orders will either be go or stay.

Yeah?

The idea that you need to use a euphemism when writing to your wife about take your own life.

It's quite funny, isn't it?

Well, it is.

It is, and it's melodramatic.

And again, you know, writing to his wife, but sort of, you know, the whole thing sort of cloaked in euphemism.

i mean you know i'd hate to be humiliated i mean but it also underlines i think the kind of terrible panic they're all feeling giant gigantic sense of flux literally everything's up in the air isn't it no one knows how any of this is going to fall and all of the ramifications are totally they're preparing themselves for the worst Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

And that could be anything, because they're imaginings about what's going to happen if London is bombed, for instance, is that the mob will rise up against them is what the ruling classes are also worried about they're thinking about that too yeah they're thinking about the possibility of a revolution or something as well in which nice people like the nicholsons will get swept away in the first sort of

say forever you know say goodbye forever for their rose garden

exactly

and their castle Exactly.

They have to sell their castle.

You know, as we saw in the last episode, and welcome, by the way, to We have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland, our Five Days in May series.

We've settled on Five Days, haven't we, we, Jim?

It's five days in May.

It's five days.

Where we're trying to go as deep as we can into the sort of high politics and decision-making that surrounds the Dunkirk evacuation.

Those of you who are long-term listeners will remember that for the 80th anniversary in 2020, I think it's from episode 141 to 148, something like that.

We did look at some Dunkirk stuff before, but

we wanted to look at the sort of this kind of high drama,

some of which, as we've just seen, borders on melodrama, and certainly the way people express themselves at the time, but where absolutely everything is up in the air all the certainties that were in place on the 9th of may

even the morning of the 10th of may as winston churchill came into government it's all gone everything's up in the air the empire is up for negotiation as the italians have made clear you know the survival of the british army is completely on very thin ice everything's up for grabs and and it's whether the germans can grasp it or not or whether the british can actually find their way out of this situation is what these five days are about, right?

Yep.

Yep.

I mean, it's the most important five days.

You said last time in British history since 1066, I'd say it's more important than 1066.

Because 1060,

long time ago, who cares, right?

It's my,

as you know, it's my general attitude to things a long time ago.

Who cares?

We all need to care about this one.

Yeah, you can,

there's a fork in the road here, and there are an awful lot of people in Britain who are thinking of taking the other fork in the road.

And you can see why all their certainties have been shattered.

So you can see why in our previous episode, Lord Halifax, you know, who is a highly respected British statesman and is the Foreign Secretary.

And it's interesting, he's not in the Commons.

So he's slightly detached from the regular grind of British politics.

Yes, and he's now...

actively starting to think of alternative ways out of this yeah he's looking at the other fork in the road which could so easily have been taken is the thing they don't know what's going to happen next so

we're having a day of prayer, aren't we, Jim?

That's the point.

Well, the king is, but but the Germans aren't.

No, no, the Germans are not.

So the halt order continues.

I mean, amazingly.

So having enforced the halt order on the Panzers on the afternoon of the 24th of May, Hitler then gives von Rundstedt complete authority to lift the order whenever he sees fit.

So he goes, right, I've sorted this all out now.

Now it's up to you.

The outrage along the German units ranged along the canal line, which those who listened to to the first episode will remember is the sort of defensive position that runs from the River R into Le Basset Canal.

And this is the south of the lozenge.

So the BF and the French First Army in a kind of lozenge shape extending kind of from Dunkirk.

And this is the southern bit.

And von Bock, who's a commander of Army Group B, is absolutely incensed.

You know, he absolutely senses that there is this golden opportunity to completely pinch off this lozenge and encircle the whole lot,

lockstock, and barrel.

And he can't.

All the time of every passing hour that they're not doing anything, the British and French are able to move, British particularly, are able to move into Dunkirk and start preparing this perimeter.

And there's a very useful perimeter there, which is yet another canal, the Burgu Canal, which runs around, sort of goes, goes, is about sort of five miles inland, something like that.

Very sort of neatly encases the whole of the sort of Dunkirk and the beaches beaches extending north eastwards into Belgium.

So, you know, this is a really, really, really bad decision from the point of view of Hitler and the Germans.

Given von Rundstedt's attitude to Blitzkrieg, and we're using that word advisedly, we're using that word with oven gloves on one because we know perfectly well that that's really a Nazi propaganda word and there's kind of no such thing.

And von Rundstedt is an example of how there's really no such thing.

Giving that decision to hold up the panzers to von Rundstedt means they will be held up longer because he doesn't buy it.

He thinks the thing's too old with risk.

He's old school.

He thinks it's too risky.

It's too hot-headed.

It'll result in, you know, being overextended and...

kind of failure.

Yeah, overreach.

Exactly.

Overeach.

And so Hitler's sort of double-bound his army by, first of all, having stopped them and then deferring the decision to restart to someone who's disinclined to do so.

Yeah, and the reason why von Bock is so furious is because his infantry divisions are 50 miles away and they've got to advance on foot, whereas the panzers are on the La Basse Canal and kind of basically there.

So all they've got to do is kind of, you know, put into first gear and press the throttle and off they go.

And so instead of, you know, so suddenly they can become the hammer and, you know, and von Box infantry divisions, the anvil.

But it's turning out to be the other way around.

And that's ridiculous.

It is ridiculous.

And thank God it's one of those,

you know, as we said a moment ago, this is the decision point in the survival of Western civilization.

So we've got to be grateful for this on this day of prayer.

We have to be grateful for this chaos amongst the enemy and thankful to hear in his own weird way.

Thank you, Fiora.

A phrase I never thought I'd say.

We've gone there.

But it's interesting because General von Kluger and

who's fourth Army Commander and von Kleist, who have both originally suggested the order in the first place, the halt to kind of just buy a bit of time, I also now think it should be rescinded immediately.

But it's not happening.

We've all had buyers' remorse in our life, haven't we?

That's what that is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anyway, it doesn't happen.

Of course, what's even more galling is that the number of units that have already made it across a canal line have been told not only to halt, but to come back.

And early on the 25th of May, Guderian visits the Wuffen-SS Liebstandarte division and then finds them crossing the River R in defiance of the order.

And Guderian crosses too and eventually finds the commander, Orbit Gruppenführer Sepp Dietrich.

Remember him?

There's an alarm bell.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In the ruins of a castle on a well-placed hillock called Mount Votten.

And when Gundarian asked him why he was disobeying orders, Dietrich points out that Mount Votten commanded a very strong position, that the task of crossing the art would be very much harder if it was enemy hands.

And of course, you know, Gudarian says, yeah, fair enough.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So they defy it a little bit, but they don't defy it completely.

Yeah, they bend the rules, but that's Gudarian's style, isn't it, isn't it?

Yeah, exactly.

But and von Braukich, who is the Field Marshal von Braukic, who is the commander-in-chief of the army of the OKH, the Oberkommando de Hera, he is commander-in-chief of the army because he always bends to Hitler's will.

And, you know, he's a fairly weak character.

And there's been a couple of times already in this war where, you know, he's gone in with grim determination to kind of be defiant and come out a quivering wreck, you know, showered in spittle and shaking.

And there's another moment now because on the 24th, on the afternoon of the 24th, he gets summoned to see Hitler.

And obviously, it's his opportunity to point out to the Fuhrer the lunacy of this halt order.

and to explain in very, very clear terms a golden opportunity to finish off the battle and destroy the BEF and win

potentially the entire war.

But

when he comes back, Halder yet again finds him shaken and humiliated.

And

he finds himself on the receiving end of another tongue-lashing.

And Commander-in-Chief tries to put across his arguments, but failed.

Holden notes in his diary, apparently, again, a very unpleasant interview with the Fuhrer.

It's spectacular, isn't it?

And it's Hitler exerting his authority, isn't it?

He's the Lance corporal.

He's a working-class man who's now in charge of this Prussian aristocrat, and he's giving him what for.

It's a mixture of, don't screw with me, don't, you know, I'm your dirt to me.

Spite, ego, class war, the whole thing, all wrapped into one.

But, you know, in the process of doing a potentially a war-losing decision.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

Anyway.

Haldo, in the meantime, has been working out how to get around the halt order.

So this is what they all start doing, basically.

And just as Gudarian and Dietrich,

how do we work a way around this?

And he issues a message to Army Groups A and B, expanding on the directives into May 24th Army High Command Order.

So he basically says we can carry on the attack towards Dunkirk, Cassel, Esther,

Armantier, and Ypres.

Osten.

So not canal line, but the northern half, which does shut Army Group B.

Yeah, which basically closes things off for the BEF.

And it's it's a go-ahead so uh carry-on chaps rather than a new order and it's not a few order um it doesn't contradict anything von rundsted said or hitler said and then amazingly von rundsted says no i'm not having it because he obviously thinks it's just that it is not worth hitler finding out about this and me getting and me getting in the doo-doo the bollocking and the sacking that that will be coming my way there's no doubt that everyone everyone certainly knows by now that this is what happens if you defy hitler's will which is after all the point But Halder just absolutely blowing a gasket himself.

You know, he goes, this is a complete reversal of the plan.

I wanted to make Army Group A the hammer and Army Group B the anvil in this operation.

Now B will be the hammer and A the anvil.

As Army Group B is confronted with a consolidated front, progress will be slow and casualties high.

I mean, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, what's interesting is that Paris and London are both at sixes and sevens, but so are the Germans too.

You know, there are moments in the war, we've talked about this, where actually no one knows in in the west in in london and paris that the germans are having this problem no one knows about it it's just this mysterious halt no one knows what's going on under the surface no of course not and of course not but the sort of state of funk that both sides are in kind of match each other in a weird way yeah yeah yeah funk and indecision allies are panicking at the prospect of defeat and the germans in a weird way are panicking at the prospect of victory that there's a peculiar thing that's putting the halt on them grabbing their.

They're panicking that victory is in their grasp, it might be snatched away with them by recklessness.

That's what they're thinking.

But actually, the irony is, and actually, this mirrors what Halifax is doing in a weird sort of way.

The caution is the recklessness.

Exactly.

Well, it's Hitler's personal recklessness that's actually what's the cause of this, of the caution.

That recklessness, one way or another, is the problem, but it's just manifesting itself in a completely different way, which is that he's yelling at people and showing them as pitiless.

Exactly, that the recklessness has popped up somewhere else, but it's just as decisive.

Yeah.

So anyway, Halder urges von Braukisch to try again to persuade Hitler.

Von Braukisch does, but Hitler's having absolutely none of it.

And von Rundstedt, along with his chief of staff, General Georg von Sodenstern, are absolutely determined to keep the halt order in place throughout the whole of Saturday, the 25th of May.

But this isn't just differences in military ideology.

This is just pure bloody-mindedness, isn't it?

Yeah.

Well, and him thinking, you know, I'm not going to to contradict the Fuhrer now.

It's too late.

Yeah.

Here's a marked contrast, isn't there?

That is that the Germans can't decide stuff without on the ground, without political say-so.

The Allies generally, it doesn't really work like that.

Well, up until this point, the Germans have, you know, and, you know, this is the decision of Guderian to kind of push on at Sedan rather than where von Kreis wants him to cross and crossing the Ardennes Canal when...

von Kreis has told him to kind of hold fire and he just does it anyway.

And, you know, that's very much the German tradition that those on the ground are best placed to make decisions.

They've got to be the right decisions, of course, but they are given the kind of latitude to make that those decisions.

You know, this is the first big interference, I think, of the war.

And it's the first big interference of Hitler.

properly micromanaging.

But, you know, what it shows is Hitler's complete lack of military understanding.

And this is proved even further with his complete indulgence of Field Marshal Goering, you know, commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe.

And on the 23rd, Goering's on his train, Asia, when he hears the news that the enemy is now almost surrounded.

And, you know, he wants to have the Luftwaffe in at the kill.

Yeah.

So he thinks, you know, this is a great opportunity.

I must speak to the Fuhrer at once.

And he then rings Hitler and tells him that his Luftwaffe could set the channel ports ablaze and destroy the British troops trapped in the encirclement.

And Hitler goes, great, well, crack on then.

You know, don't need the armies.

You know, the armies can halt and be secure.

And the Luftwaffe can finish off the BEF and the French.

And in that process, he's setting the Luftwaffe, which is run by an actual Nazi party member, by a high-up Nazi.

He's setting the Luftwaffe against the army.

So it's the old Hitler management in large, isn't it, basically?

If the Luftwaffe win this, then the army can sweat about it.

I mean, it's...

So now it's all on.

The Luftwaffe is going to finish it all off.

But General Jodel, who is the chief of staff of the OKW, tells Major Gerhard Engel, who keeps a DARI at this time, and he's a career officer, and he's on Hitler's staff.

He tells him that he says confidentially that Luftwaffe has bitten off more than it can chew.

But Goering doesn't think so.

Our air force, he tells Milk, who is the Milk, who we all know is the second in command, is to mop up the British.

I persuaded the Fuhrer to hold the army back.

And Milk also immediately expresses his concerns.

You know, Ports are at the limit of most of his fighter units' range because they're not all up on the coast.

They're miles away.

They're still in Germany.

Yeah.

They've already been involved in very, very heavy and intense fighting.

And, you know, maybe this is too much.

And Goering just brushes him aside.

He goes, the army always wants to act the gentleman.

They round up the British as prisoners with as little harm to them as possible.

The Fuhrer wants them to be taught a lesson.

General Kasselring, who is a Flieger Corps commander, Flieger Corps II, also is concerned about these orders.

Bombing Rotterdam, he says, is one thing, destroying the channel ports of the British is quite another.

Yeah, and he, well, and he's concerned about Spitfires, isn't it?

I pointed out to Goering since a modern Spitfires had recently appeared, making our air operations difficult and costly.

He's thinking we're biting off more than we can chew here, but it's too late, isn't it?

Because Goering has Hitler's ear in a way that none of the soldiers do, none of the generals do.

Nope.

And it offers Hitler an opportunity to play people off against one another.

We know how clueless the Luftwaffe are about the state of the British air effort.

Later, you know, as we've discussed in our Battle of Britain episodes, we know they don't really know their way around any of it.

But they know fighter range is a bad thing and that the Spitfires are turning up.

They know they might be outmatched.

And it's interesting, people getting their their caveats in early even people like kessering who later in the war yeah yeah brook no argument with the führer well it's absolutely amazing and two days later Goeringer turns up at Felsenet, Hitler's tactical headquarters on the German-Belgian border rather.

And Gerhard Engel, this aide on Hitler's staff, follows them as they walk through the woods.

And there's a photo taken at distance, and you can see Goering wearing one of his great big capes and things, his sort of light, like dove-gray cape.

Engel writes in his diary, Impression, Goeing successfully stirred it up against the army.

Fuhrer emphasized repeatedly the political liability of the Luftwaffe in contrast to the army.

So they're all pitching against one another as well.

You know, it's a sort of, it's just amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

On the Allied side of the hill, what's quite clear is that British and French commanders, certainly the people on the ground, have begun, they know which way it's going.

They're accepting the inevitable and they're starting to think, not in terms of how do do we defeat the Germans, but how do we basically mitigate the situation we're in?

And they start cooperating.

And I think it's quite interesting, isn't it, that while the governments, the cabinets are drawing up their own, are dealing with their own sort of panic and funk about what's happening, the soldiers on the ground are going, okay, what do we do?

So early on the 26th, Gort sees Blanchard.

He's reconciled to the decision that they're going to have to fall back to the coast.

But he's actually helpful in drawing up lines of withdrawal.

So they're starting to cooperate properly.

Blanchard is first army command, French first army commander.

So in this lozenge that we keep talking about, you've got the BEF in the first half of the lozenge, and then to the east of them, you've got French First Army.

Yeah.

Blanchard's not one of the sort of 900-year-old French general types, is he?

No, he's still getting on a bit.

Yeah, because they're all very, very old, aren't they?

I mean, this is part of their problem.

Yeah, no, he's pretty old.

He's born in 1877.

All right, so he is.

Yeah, so he is basic.

He's another 60-year-old getting on for 70.

Yeah.

I mean, he needs to be in bed with a cup of cocoa.

He's 63.

He needs to be in bed with a cup of cocoa and a rusk.

Yeah, a cup of cocoa and a couple of digestives.

That's right.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So on the night of the 26th, 27th, one and two corps, who leave rear guards at the frontier defence, they swing back into the center of the corridor while French First Army prolongs the line.

So they're reorganising themselves.

Yeah, so how the lozenge is going.

So you've got holding a northern line, holding a southern line, and then the eastern end of it is folding in on itself and going back to Dunkirk.

That's how it's working.

Yeah.

That following night, the bulk of of the BF is to fall behind the River Lease, with rear guards covering the new line until the night after that.

So they're going to fight by day, fall back under the cover of darkness.

That's a pretty good plan.

Yeah, Gort's short of people.

So what he wants to do is, what he decides to do is use villages, towns, high points, and use them as strong point redoubts.

So places like Hazelbruck, Cassel, those places in that bit of Flanders that when you, if you go on the Eurostar to Paris, you look at the left-hand side of the train, there's Cassell with its windmill on it.

That's one prominent feature in that stretch of Flanders.

Even though they're cooperating, Gort isn't saying anything about evacuation to Planchard.

No.

Is he?

Although, I mean, what else is he going to do?

It's obvious, isn't it?

You know, they're not going to hold up there forever and break out.

That's never going to happen.

Yeah.

But meanwhile, Gort's chief of staff, Lieutenant General Henry Palno, is, you know, making the preparations for the defense and working out how to do this.

And we mentioned the canal from Burgu all the way going down to Fern and then on the way to Neuport, which is sort of 12 miles, 15 miles from Dunkirk, something like that, along the coast.

So it's a very obvious natural barrier.

And the canal is, what, about 15 yards wide, something like that, but it's got quite steep banks.

It's plenty.

Yeah, you know, a tank's not getting across that.

You know, the only way you're going to get across it is to bridge it.

So the British are making their defences on the other side.

You've got dikes and irrigation canals.

And you've got the infantry on the canal line.

That's basically how it's working.

And so what happens is as infantry moves up, they're told to abandon their, their, you know, take their, those who are going straight onto the beaches get told to take their vehicles straight to the beaches.

Those who are abandoning them, there's a mass of abandoned vehicles of Burgu, for example, where they're all sort of butchered and sandpointed into the petrol tank and all that kind of stuff.

But it's defensible because it's cut up by canals and rivers and stuff.

Yeah, so it's very low-lying.

And you can see the other side coming, is the other thing.

Yeah, and the British have opened the sluice gates.

Yeah.

So it's starting to bog down.

Yeah, it's not the worst place to be having to do this kind of defensive stand.

Well, you know, all these irrigation channels, you know, they're easy to flood, which is what they're doing.

And that makes it, of course, very difficult for panzers to move, which is doubly why this was such a bad decision to have the order.

Yeah.

So Court puts General Ronald...

Adam in charge of preparing the port of the perimeter.

He becomes a major player in the army when he becomes adjutant general later in the war.

And so he's relieving him of his commander 3 Corps, which is understandable because these core numbers are there

not really important anymore are they at this stage of the situation we're looking at battalion actions now really brigade and battalion actions people hanging on where they are in the defensive element and then everyone else bugging out as best they can as coherently as they can so you don't need to be thinking in terms of core anymore and he sends it with the bf's quartermaster general and a bevy of other staff officers to help so they get organized and adam is a great organizer he's the right man he's definitely the right man for the job yeah but by this point you know dunkirk's already been bombed and bombed quite heavily this is the start of the luftwaffe's attack um to try and destroy the bf The Panzers might not be coming, but they don't know much about that.

And if you're Gort and Paunall and Ronald Adam, you're just thinking this is an absolute first-class shower.

And Pownall writes in his diary, it is all a first-class mess-up.

And events go slowly from bad to worse, like a Greek tragedy.

The end seems inevitably to come closer and closer with each exceeding day and event.

I mean, it's hardly someone with sort of, you know, flush with optimism, is it?

Yeah, yeah.

There's no miracle on his horizon, is there?

Yeah, yeah.

Anyway, that was more of a kind of precursor precursor to the

day of prayer.

Well, so maybe we should come back after the rate, don't you think?

Yes, we'll take a break and then we will return with a day of solemn prayer.

Welcome back to We Have Ways of Making You Talk, where finally James Holland and I are about to engage in a day of national prayer, aren't we, Jim?

We certainly are.

I mean, this, frankly, it can only help, can't it?

It can only help.

And what's the harm in it?

That's the other thing, isn't it?

No harm in it at all.

No harm in it at all.

So the king calls for this National Day Prayer, which does happen.

But what's interesting, though, is the cabinet are getting on with politics, even though it's the weekend, right?

Which they don't normally do.

Yeah, so, I mean, you know, this is a 24-7 kind of situation, very much so.

So, you know, weekends are meaningless, frankly.

And there is going to be a big service at Westminster Abbey, which the king's going to attend and which, you know, all the cabinet are expected to attend and the Prime Minister and all the rest of it.

But first, you know, but that's not till 11 o'clock or something so um the first war cabinet of the day is at 9 a.m in the cabinet room at number 10 which is at the back of the building overlooking it with with windows overlooking the garden um it's that classic room with the uh with the picture of robert walpole the first prime minister above the fireplace the prime minister sits in the middle in front of the fireplace did then does now so lovely sense of continuity um but also present there are the chiefs of staff and i should also hasten to add that churchill isn't living at number 10 at this point you know Chamberlain is still living there because Chamberlain's been there for a bit.

And one of the things that Churchill was anxious to do was to make, not ingratiate himself, but kind of make...

very, very friendly overtures to Chamberlain, recognising that Chamberlain is a titanic figure in British politics, that he deserves some respect.

And he says to him, you know, stay as long as you want, basically.

Well, and because Churchill's, he might be a Conservative, but he's not loved by the party at all.

And so Churchill needs to clutch people to his bosom that the party can tolerate.

And although Chamberlain no longer can be Prime Minister, he's still very much the leader of the Conservative Party.

And Churchill's got to be completely sensitive to that, hasn't he?

Yep, yep, he has.

And also attending this war cabinet are the chiefs of staff.

And Churchill begins the war cabinet by telling them that the previous evening, he's received a letter from his personal representative in Paris, who is Lieutenant General Sir Edward Spears, who is a...

is a francophile, who's a great old friend of Churchill's, was a senior liaison officer for the French during the First World War.

I was brought up in France, actually.

He's British completely, but he's

totally bilingual.

He's also the guy who later on becomes the kind of sidekick for de Gaulle.

Anyway, and he reads out Spears' letter and Spears is warning that the French are deeply pessimistic, that the Weygarde plan has been completely cancelled, that Blanchard's First Army has lost all its heavy guns and had no armoured vehicles.

Refugees are hampering movement.

The Belgians, he warns, are about to capitulate.

And actually, this isn't terribly

unexpected because they're being pushed back.

And once they've fallen back into the sea, there's obviously nowhere for them to go.

Yeah.

It's like a run on the pound, isn't it?

Yeah, and there's a psychological effect, but there's also a practical headache, which is, for Gort, means that, you know, he's literally just managed to create a continuous line on the northern part of that lozenge that we were talking about.

And that bit between the coast and the British troops is now in danger of going and needing plugging.

And that's going to need further rejigging of his troops.

So that's another major headache.

You know, and as Churchill points out on this morning, evacuation is now looking like the only option is the truth of it.

Yeah.

And he says, this being the case, there is a good chance of getting off a considerable number of the BEF.

Yeah.

He's whistling there.

He doesn't know that, does he?

No, privately, he's thinking if we get 50,000, we've done well.

Yeah.

And no one is expecting that.

No one is expecting more than 50,000 out of 300,000 plus to come out.

He then tells them, Churchill then tells them that Paul Renault is shortly going to be arriving.

He's the French Prime Minister and that the cabinet should be prepared to hear from him that the French aren't going to carry on.

So they've got to be ready for that.

The Prime Minister then announced that he's previously asked the chiefs of staff to prepare a document about what Britain should do if the French were to drop out of the war.

What are the prospects of our continuing the war alone against Germany and probably Italy?

Can the Navy and the Air Force hold out reasonable hopes of preventing Swiss invasion?

And could the forces forces gathered in this island cope with raids from the air involving detachments not greater than 10,000 men?

Kind of apocalyptic stuff.

That is not a good prognosis, is it?

That's the thing.

I mean,

I think, but I mean, I think what's interesting there, though, is because

we've often talked about this before, and I think when we're looking at this in

this kind of close-off, we've talked about this before, like, yeah, but it's never going to happen.

The Germans can't pull it off.

We all know that.

Sea line, when they actually get to writing it down, is basically nonsense.

They don't have a navy.

They don't have the capability to pull this off.

But at this point, those things which we know are certainties, no one's sure of that, because

no one really knows what the German strength is.

But we're just going through this, going through this process by process, by war cabinet by war cabinet.

Are you not feeling a little bit scared?

I am.

You know, I know what happens.

And I'm already feeling quite tense and just thinking, yikes, Jesus, when you put it like that.

You know, anyway, so the Chiefs of Staffman makes some comments and then Halifax speaks up.

On the broader issue, we have to face the fact that it is not so much now a question of imposing a complete defeat upon Germany, but as safeguarding the independence of our own empire and if possible, that of France.

So in other words, he now believes the Nazis are unbeatable.

That's basically what he's saying.

So in this connection, with this in mind, he then tells them about his meeting with Signor Bastianini the previous day.

And he says that Mussolini's principal wish was to secure peace in Europe.

Yeah.

And this would mean peace under German domination.

Churchill, no.

We could never accept that.

This is such an interesting moment, isn't it?

Because Halifax is right, isn't he?

No, because he's the Nazis are beatable.

No, but from Halifax's point of view,

because after all, history's not been kind to that faction and fair enough.

But from his perspective, from where he's looking, he's right, really, isn't he?

No.

i don't think he is because the nazis are beatable and you know britain has the world's largest empire and the world's largest merchant navy and has still has many assets and has a has the world's only air defense system and yeah has been tested but only one of those factors is going to be any use in the immediate you to draw the power of the empire in that's going to take ages isn't it and so you're looking at you're in a very brittle febrile situation where it feels like the whole house of cards is falling in as we said earlier everything's up in the air and and halifax is thinking, that'll take 10 years.

Are we ready for that?

And, you know, he's been viceroy in India, so he knows how touch and go India actually is as an imperial asset, perhaps.

Maybe he's coming at it that way.

I am, obviously, I'm playing devil's advocate to an extent here, but you can see why he thinks this.

I think you have to try and get into his head and see why he thinks this.

I can see why he thinks it, but I don't think he's necessarily right.

That's the point.

I don't think he is right.

I think he's wrong.

Yeah.

But anyway, so Churchill then says, not only could we never accept it.

we must ensure our complete liberty and independence.

I am opposed to any negotiations which might lead to a derogation of our rights and power.

For Halifax, already this is quite irksome because he's, you know, we might have to negotiate a little bit.

You know, we might have to get, you know, we're in a right tight spot.

And if we want to safeguard our future, they'll say, you know, fighting on is maybe not the way.

What maybe the way is to kind of, you know, maybe we should have a conversation about Malta or whatever, you know.

But that's absolutely not on Churchill's radar.

And this is why this is the start of a split of a, you know, of how they should approach and deal with the situation.

And what's really interesting is none of the other war cabinet members or the chiefs of staff either agree or disagree.

They just, they just go, uh, okay, right, fine.

You two have it out.

Yeah.

Then they, they discuss an 18-page edited memoir, which has been prepared by the chiefs of staff entitled euphemistically, British Strategy in a Certain Eventuality.

And I've got an original copy of this.

It's just, it's just absolutely amazing.

Yeah.

And Chamberlain then asks if it's possible to ask the French whether Italy could be bought off.

And he says, this might at least keep matters going.

To which Churchill says, I agree that this point is worth bearing in mind.

But as Halifax then glances through the document, what he does is he reveals his own lack of military understanding, I think, because Britain's ability to carry on, he says, depends on whether air superiority could be established over the Luftwaffe.

And Cyril Newell, who is the chief of the air staff, so you know, he's a member of the chiefs of staff, goes, no, that's not case.

It depends on Britain preventing the Germans from achieving such air superiority as would enable them to invade this country.

You know, Halifax then blunders again, because he says, if France collapses, I assume that the Germans would no longer need large land forces.

They will then be free to switch the bulk of their effort to air production.

What effect would that have on the crucial question of air?

And I think he's being really naive here about Germany's relationship with the Soviet Union and also the difficulties of switching from one type of war production to the other.

It doesn't just work like that.

That would at least give them a huge amount of time.

Yes, but

he's not the only politician in Western Europe to not understand how any of these things work.

I completely agree, but I'm still saying that's why he's wrong.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I just think it, I think it's

because so often, and I think we talked about this earlier about how, you know,

Britain and France have agreed to this alliance and agreed to sort of

a direction of policy that when it comes undone, they haven't done plan B, they haven't got a plan C, D, they've done absolutely no contingency planning in this situation.

What will actually happen if France goes up?

They've done none of that.

No one's, and this is, this shows very often how politics, even in the clinch like this, can operate on very much on a sort of surface understanding of things, that politicians, they don't know the stuff that's in front of them.

And Churchill's coming at this, he doesn't want, yes, he wants to fight on, but he's also thinking, I don't want to lose the British Empire.

He's an imperialist.

He's thinking in those terms.

Halifax is thinking in terms of, how do we get out of this fix right in front of us, right this minute.

But I think he undermines his argument in this war cabinet meeting by making some false assumptions.

And I think that that's going to hurt him.

Yeah, and no one knows that no one has taken seriously that the Germans are going to go to the Soviet Union next because they've been so staggered by the fact that the Germans have done an allegiance with the Soviet Union.

They don't know which way the wind's blowing at all in that diplomatic.

No, but at the moment, the Soviet Union is propping up the German war effort.

Yeah, which device, that's the point.

You know, it's

Soviet fuel that is powering the love offer etc so so then halifax suggests that in the last resort they could maybe ask the french to put some of their batteries out of gear and and and chamberlain even chamberlain who is halifax's great friend says says since the terms of their peace which the germans were proposed would inevitably prevent their fulfilment this is completely pointless

and churchill says I agree.

It has to be expected, moreover, that the Germans would make the terms of any peace offer as attractive as possible to the French and lay emphasis on the fact that their quarrel was not with France, but with England.

So what you suddenly see is a clear split emerging suddenly this Sunday morning, this day of national prayer, between Churchill on the one hand, who's anxious not to become involved in any kind of dialogue with Italy or Germany under any circumstances, and Halifax, who believes it's at the very least worth considering.

You know, so the progression from this point is either fighting on or suing for peace.

That's the stark choice.

Yeah.

And then they have to go pray.

You wonder what they're thinking when they're on their knees at the service at Westminster Abbey.

Yeah.

Because that's also that, that's not a long cabinet meeting, is it?

It starts at nine.

They have to be at the service for 10, don't they?

Yeah, so it's all over at 9.45.

So it's a pretty punchy bunch of arguments being hurled around and then go do the formalities.

And it's extraordinary, isn't it?

King and queen turned.

No, king and queen with their gas masks.

It's accompanied by Wilhelmina the Queen of the Netherlands, who's just had to evacuate from Holland.

Yeah.

And then Churchill stays for the first 10 minutes.

He's never really a religious man, Churchill.

No.

Slips out and goes to meet Raynau.

And then he goes off there.

Meanwhile, after the service, Halifax then returns straight to the Foreign Office where he's visited by Bastanini.

They get no further than they had the day before.

And then soon after this, Churchill is lunching with Raynaud at Admiralty House.

And the French Prime Minister, unlike Petin or Weygan, was an anglophile.

And he hadn't come to say that they were going to throw in the towel, but he did make it clear that the writing's on the wall.

And he says that personally, he was never going to sue for peace, but the time might come when he's forced to resign.

And he now reveals to Churchill the depth of Petin's and Weygan's defeatism and that's the big problem because the military and the political have now merged you know petin is a senior he's a field marshal is now in the in the french government and he is actively pursuing an armistice at this point yeah his eye exit yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and even renault is admitting that you know it's too late on land but it but it's interesting isn't it because churchill says well you know as soon as the north of france is cleared up the the germans aren't going to turn south but they're going to begin attacking britain renault disagrees and what he says is amazing.

The dream of all Germans is to conquer Paris.

Whatever happens we are not prepared to give in.

We would rather go down fighting than be enslaved to Germany.

Well quite right.

Well quite right, but that's also quite a thing to say to a country that's about to go down and be enslaved by Germany, isn't it?

Well, yes, I think what he's trying to suggest is that we've got your back and we're still with you.

By the way, we might evacuate the BEF.

So Reynaud now remains at Admiralty House while Churchill returns to Downing Street for the second war cabinet of the day.

And at this second cabinet, Halifax is much more bullish.

So since the morning session, he's read all the Chiefs of Staff's aid memoir in which the following scenario is envisaged.

Most of the BEF lost, France making peace with Germany, Italy entering the war, and Europe from Norway to Africa, either in German hands or under German domination.

Britain could still hold out, but only if the United States gave full financial and material support.

And if the Royal Navy and RAF RAF managed to maintain a control over and around the country.

So, you know, from where Halifax is in, he's not a military man, but he's seeing the whole thing kind of sort of crumble to dust on the on the continent.

That seems like a pretty bleak scenario.

And at the back and an appendix are the estimates of Luftwaffe strength and that of the RAF.

And on the 17th of May, the RAF had just 491 fighter planes, so Spitfires and Hurricanes, but also including Obsolescent Defiance.

In contrast, the estimate is that Luftwaffe still has 4,500 aircraft.

Now, as it happens, they've massively overestimated that.

They don't.

Naval comparisons are much more favourable.

319 of all types of warship for the Royal Navy compared with around 100 for the Kriegsmarine in an immediate environment.

But the Italian Navy does have 400 vessels of all kinds, which then rather redresses the balance.

But what they don't know is that the Italian Navy don't have radar.

They do know that they don't have any aircraft carriers, but they don't have any radar or anything like that.

It's pretty sobering stuff.

And it's understandable that Halifax believes they're completely staring down the barrel.

And their survival seems to, to him, to depend on so many ifs, inverted commas, eventualities that the chiefs of staff have pufamisedly caused.

And none of these eventualities can be remotely guaranteed.

He knows that Churchill's always been something of a warmonger and

he just doesn't trust his judgment on this.

It's the truth of it.

Yeah, because people don't trust Churchill's judgment, because Churchill's judgment in the last decade has been all over the shop.

Yeah.

You know.

So he now now says very starkly that he favours and approached Italy.

He's no longer saying, well, you know, we could do this.

He's going, I think we should.

And Churchill says he doubts very much anything that will come to it.

But to sort of mollify Halifax at this moment, he says, well, you know, perhaps we should sort of consider it then.

So then the meeting breaks up.

Halifax goes to see Raynaud at the Admiralty House and discuss a possible buying off of Mussolini, while Churchill and the rest of the war cabinet follow some 10 minutes later.

And about 4 p.m., Rayno finally leaves for Paris.

So he goes down to Croydon, flies from there.

And Churchill reconvenes another war cabinet at Admiralty House.

And by now, the argument between Churchill and Halifax is becoming more heated.

So Churchill points out that Britain is in a very different position to France, which it is.

First, he points out Britain still has her navy and her air force, powers of resistance.

And secondly, France was likely to be offered reasonable terms, but Britain would not be.

And he says, if France could not defend herself, it is better that she should get out of the war rather than drag us into a settlement which involved intolerable terms.

Yep, but he also pointed out that he was very wary about going cap in hand to Mussolini with the French, as Reynaud has suggested, before Britain had been involved in any serious fighting.

You know, and they haven't really, you know, one has to remember it's only kind of nine divisions that are involved in the BF at this point.

Yeah.

No, eight, I think it is, because you know, First Armour hasn't got there yet and the 51st Highland is to the south and, you know, they're not even involved in fighting at all.

But the scale of the undertaking to then get involved,

and you can see where Churchill, you can actually see in this where Churchill's thinking will end up going in terms of fighting the war on the German periphery, that you fight them in North Africa and you fight them in Greece and you fight them everywhere else.

You can see the strands of that thinking in this approach, the strategic approach.

We've got troops in Egypt and Middle East.

We can control the Suez Canal and

that's good for Australia and New Zealand and South Africa.

and our Dominion forces and we'll get them up there quickly.

And we don't need to throw in the tower yet at all.

And Halifax also disagrees that Hitler would necessarily ask for outrageous terms.

He says, we might say to Signor Mussolini that if there was any suggestion of terms which affected our independence, we should not look at them for a moment.

But he didn't see any harm in trying an approach.

Here's where I now can't get my head into how Halifax thinks.

Because up to this point, that whole list of eventualities and everything, those all in this situation make complete sense, I think.

Need American backing.

We'd need, you know, all those things.

They do.

But this is where he is, I think he's plain wrong, which is that up till now, there has been every agreement Hitler has embarked upon has turned out to be a nonsense and a thing that he's prepared to go back on and a thing that he's prepared to tear up.

So, whatever terms you might get, I mean, via Mussolini, but whatever guarantees you might get via Mussolini about what Hitler might do, you just can't, you cannot accept that.

You know, that's like thinking that you can do a deal with Putin right now.

You know,

that's where I have to go.

No, you're absolutely completely wrong.

And even looking at it from your perspective at that time, the thing you know, you know, at that point is that you can't do a deal with Hitler, right?

All the other things, all the other things are in the balance and things that you can weigh and things you can understand about how the politicians think.

But that one he's plain wrong.

Yeah.

So what's interesting is that neither Chamberlain, Attlee, or Green would say anything during this discussion.

They're just taking it all and they're looking at these two sort of, you know, giants kind of sort of sparring with one another.

Churchill clearly recognizes at this point that he needs to start treading a bit carefully.

carefully.

Because if the majority of the war cabinet agree with Halifax, he's going to be obliged to go along with it.

And in fact, if Chamberlain sides strongly with Halifax, Churchill's position is going to be very difficult because the former prime minister, who is the one man who has actually personally dealt with Hitler, but is also a great friend of Halifax.

You know, Attlee and Greenwood, they're new to government.

They don't have the same authority.

And Churchill, at this point, is only 16 days into the job.

You know, his position is far from secure.

Just disabuse yourself of any notions notions of Churchill at the back end of the summer of 1940 with all these great speeches out of the way, or at the end of the war, or even in the middle of the war.

You know, this is him being the new boy.

And Halifax stance seems at face value reasonable.

Yeah.

They're completely in the mire.

Where's the harm of just exploring this?

But Churchill knows that to try and bargain with Mussolini is...

you're kicking the door ajar only for it to be blown wide open.

That it is a very, very much the thin end of the wedge.

And that once you get into these talks, it's very difficult to back down from them.

And what happens if the French find out?

You know, that hastens their end.

That causes even more problems.

You know, so as far as Churchill's concerned, there is absolutely no point in considering it.

You know, for him, it's a kind of you fight on and die in the process and you either succeed or you don't.

But, you know, you cannot surrender.

And so he says at this point.

Hitler thinks he has the whip hand.

The only thing to do is to show him that he cannot conquer this country.

But he does recognise form of concession to Halifax is now needed.

So he tells the foreign secretary that he wouldn't raise any objection at all to some kind of approach being made to Mussolini.

And the phrasing he uses is intentionally vague, because in reality, he has no intention of making any move whatsoever.

And Halifax has already discussed a joint draft with Reynaud, which he now reads out.

Greenwood suggests that Mussolini might demand Malta, Gibraltar, and Suez.

Chamberlain, crucially, said he suspected the Italian leader would demand more than that, that and as part of a general settlement with Germany.

And the meeting ends with the five men agreeing that Halifax should overnight prepare a draft communique to Mussolini, but not send it yet.

And that evening, Churchill dines with his old friend, Anthony Eden and Tiny Ironside, even though he's just sacked him at CIGS and replacing him with Dill, and also with Hastings Isme, who is his military advisor.

And he knows then that Calais is about to fall and that with it, all of the 30th Brigade that he's just sent over there and which he refused to evacuate plus the third royal tank regiment will have to surrender and earlier at 6 57 p.m the signal had been given for the royal navy to begin operation dynamo which is the evacuation of dunkirk so much of the bf is surely from the perspective of the evening of this national day of prayer going to follow the calais garrison into captivity it is inconceivable that at this point that it could be anything else and the worst news from france the harder it would be to prevent halifax from getting his way So that night, Churchill, who loves his food and his drink, barely touches his plate or his drink.

And afterwards, he stands up with a sad expression on his face and he says, I feel physically sick.

As well he might.

As well he might.

God, the tension.

Are you not feeling it?

Are you not kind of enthralled?

I mean, it's absolutely amazing.

I am.

I'm absolutely completely.

But

what I'm also finding really interesting is trying to put yourself in, trying to put oneself in Halifax's shoes.

He's not suddenly behaving like this.

He's not, you know, this is a conclusion of the way he thinks about the world, isn't it?

And the things he wants to save and the things he thinks, the deals that can be done.

And, you know, he's a statesman of great experience and renown.

It's just, it's very, very interesting because it's so easy to say, well, because of the way things turned out, he was wrong.

That's the trap, isn't it?

Yes.

But Churchill's perspective is it is better to die and go down fighting than it is to surrender.

And I completely agree with him.

Well, and the crucial part, the crucial element, I think, in all of that is Chamberlain going, no, there's no deal to be done with these people.

Because after all, his political career has been destroyed by trying to do deals with dictators in Europe.

Yeah, and not least Mussolini.

I mean, you know, he's met Mussolini.

Mussolini's there at Munich.

Yeah, exactly.

Not least Mussolini.

That's the important part.

This is a triangular relationship with between the Western powers.

And what are Italy going to do next?

So often the question, and, you know, because he's a weathercock, isn't he, Mussolini?

He goes where the wind's blowing.

I mean, after all, they do come into the into the war, don't they, once they think it's won.

So a massive opportunist.

His greed won't be able to resist the urge to kind of push Britain further than, you know, is reasonable.

Well, anyway, there concludes our National Day of Prayer.

I'm just going to head down to the village church to just sort of have a moment of quiet contemplation and consider those terrible events.

I've been quite traumatised by it, I've got to say.

Well, fair enough.

We plead to the Almighty that you return for our next episode, which will be the next of our five days in May, Black Monday.

I mean,

well, I would argue, and

I would argue this is the closest Britain comes to losing the war, Monday, the 27th of May.

Well, we hope to see you for the next episode.

If you want to listen to these in a lump, of course, without any adverts and all in one exciting torrent of doom and gloom, you can subscribe to our Apple channel, become Officer Class, join our Patreon, the We Have Ways of Make You Talk Patreon, and of course, our festival, We Have Ways Festival, in September the 12th to the 14th.

We will see you there.

Anyway, we'll see you in a moment for Black Monday.

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