1940- Myth and Reality CLIVE PONTING I I

Transcription

1 1940- Myth and Reality CLIVE PONTING I I Ivan R. Dee CHICACO 1991

2 l : Myth and Reality minimum of fifty-two squadrons to defend Britain (not the sixtyplus or thirty-nine stated earlier), but had only thirty-seven available (although on the calculations made on 16 May it should by now have been thirty-five). The paper concluded that 'we have already reached the absolute limit of the air assistance we can afford to France'." The war cabinet discussed the paper two days later and agreed that no more aircraft should be sent. Ministers took a very different view when the evacuation of the BEF from Dunkirk was at stake, authorizing full RAF fighter support, a fact that did not pass unnoticed by the French. Immediately after Dunkirk the French made two further appeals for support, both of which were rejected. Once the BEF was safely back from the continent the British no longer had much direct involvement in the battle, as Churchill told the cabinet defence committee on 8 June: 'We should recognize that whereas the present land battle was of great importance, it would not be decisive one way or the other for Great Britain... If this country were defeated, the war would be lost for France no less than for ourselves.' 9 The meagre nature of the air assistance given to France and the lack of any political will to do more can be judged not just by the failure to send fighters during the crucial days in May but by the situation at the beginning of June. Then Britain had three fighter squadrons operating in France (six and a half per cent of the total British strength). less than had been available on 10 May at the start of the battle. This was despite the fact that production was greater than the number lost in combat and, as a consequence. the number of squadrons available for home defence had risen to forty-five. The other issue that embittered relations between Britain and France during these weeks was the role of the BEF and its evacuation from Dunkirk. The BEF was only a small part of the Allied forces and, like the Belgian forces. was placed under overall French command. On 10 May it began the planned advance to the River Dyle although its first action was, unfortunately. to attack the retreating 10th Belgian division. The retreat from the Dyle to Dunkirk began on 16 May. when the British moved without informing the Belgians on their flank. The next day Lord Cort, the British commander. refused to accept French orders to fight on the River Senne and conrinuod to withdraw. This left tho Belgians with the choico of kooplng tho Allied line intuct or giving 89 up more of their country to the Germans. They supported. their Allies and retreated alongside the British. On 19 May Gort rejected a French request to fight alongside the 1st French army and the BEF retreat continued. The British did not have to fight their way back to the coast (they sustained only 500 casualties in the first eleven days of the campaign), leaving the bulk of the fighting to the Belgians and French. On 20 May the war cabinet ordered Gort to attack southwards to disrupt the Germans moving towards the coast and link up with the French armies on the other side of the German salient. This led to the limited British attack around Arras on 21 May (the only BEF offensive action of the campaign), but when this failed Gort placed all the emphasis on evacuation through the Channel ports. The withdrawal from around Arras was made without consulting the French and it convinced them that the British were interested only in saving themselves. This view was reinforced by events at Boulogne. The British occupied the port on 22 May but were evacuated by sea within twenty-f~ur hours (when armed sailors had to stop drunken troops rushing the ships) and left the French to defend the port against the Germans for another thirty hours. The British. on leaving. sank a ship in the harbour. which stopped the French evacuating any of their troops before the port finally fell. On 24 May there were similar scenes at Calais. British stevedores refused to work under sporadic German shelling and had to be dragged out of hiding by armed troops. But with the British about to abandon the port after holding it for forty-eight hours, the French formally protested. The British commander was ordered not to surrender 'for the sake of Allied solidarity' and received a message full of Churchillian rhetoric and designed primarily for publication. In private Churchill was scathing about the performance of the British army and telegraphed to Gort: 'Of course if one side fights and the other does not, the war is apt to become somewhat unequal.' Churchill omitted this sentence when he published the text of the message in his war memoirs. British interest in withdrawing the BEF from the continent began very early in the campaign. On return from his 16 May visit to Paris Churchill asked Chamberlain to start planning for evacuation and the military were also instructed to begin preparations. Gorl hod his fil'ht plans ready by 19 May and a week later. before Ih sturt of tho Dunkirk vncuutinn, the British had already

3 : Myth and Reality brought 28,000 troops back to the UK. As the surrounded Allied armies retreated into a pocket around the port of Dunkirk, the British relied on their Allies to hold the Germans without offering to evacuate their partners. The Belgians were encouraged to keep fighting and on three occasions held positions to enable the British to retreat, though from May the British rejected five appeals from the Belgians to counter-attack. The British showed little respect for Belgian military prowess and still less interest in their fate. General Pownall, Gort's chief of staff, described them in his diary as 'rotten to the core and in the end we shall have to look after ourselves'. When asked about the possible evacuation of the Belgians, Pownall replied, 'We don't care a bugger what happens to the Belgians.' 10 Early on the evening of 25 May Gort told Eden, Secretary of State for War, that he was moving the BEF back to the coast for evacuation. Eden replied, 'It is obvious that you should not discuss the possibility of the move with the French or the Belgians.' The next day Gort ignored a French order to attack southwards and break out of the pocket, relying instead on the strong resistance put up by the 1st French army around Lille, which lasted until 1 June, to hold off the encircling Germans. On the evening of 26 May Gort asked for the Canadian division in Britain to be sent to France to hold the bridgehead while the British were evacuated. This move was rejected after strong Canadian pressure against the sacrifice of their only trained troops. The large-scale evacuation of troops from Dunkirk began on 27 May. The British were given only a small part of the bridgehead to hold because the French did not expect them to fight. When the Belgians surrendered late that evening the French took over their part of the front. The senior Royal Navy officer at Dunkirk, Captain Tennant, commented on 29 May: 'The French staff at Dunkirk feel strongly that they are defending Dunkirk for us to evacuate, which is largely true.' On that day French troops were manhandled off British ships and soldiers from the two armies came close to shooting each other. By 29 May 73,000 troops had been evacuated but only 655 were French. One of the reasons for this was that the French had not been informed about the evacuation. Churchill had not told Reynaud of the decision when he visited London on 26 May and did not do 80 until 29 May. On tho next two days another British troops loft Dunkirk but only 23,000 French. At the uprornu Wur Council mooting in Paris on May, Churchill, after French protests about the situation, offered them half the future evacuation places. Since at that stage there were only 50,000 British troops left compared with 200,000 French, this was a less generous offer than it appeared. Only in the last few days, when virtually all the British troops had been evacuated, did the French numbers exceed the British. At the 31 May meeting in Paris Churchill had insisted that the British should act as the rearguard for as long as possible. However, at Dunkirk the British commander, General Alexander (who had taken over after Gort left), though nominally under French command, agreed with Eden that evening that the British should not be left behind and would pull out within twenty-four hours. The French held the bridgehead for another two days after the final British withdrawal. until they surrendered on 4 June. One of the myths 'of Dunkirk is that the troops were evacuated from the beaches by an armada of small boats manned by volunteers from all over England. In fact two-thirds of those evacuated were lifted directly on to Royal Navy ships from the east mole of Dunkirk harbour. No public information about the evacuation was given until the evening of 30 May when nearly three-quarters of the BEF had already been rescued. Only then could volunteers come forward and playa part in the operation. Over the last four days of the operation the small boats helped lift 26,000 troops from the beaches, about eight per cent of the total evacuated from Dunkirk. As part of the myth surrounding the operation it also came to be represented as an heroic episode in British military history. Like that of other armies in retreat, the morale and cohesion of the BEF was poor as it moved through France and Belgium towards the coast. The problems began on 10 May when the German attack caught the BEF by surprise and with many key personnel on leave. This confusion was compounded by Gort's decision to move his headquarters near to Lille while leaving his operational and intelligence staffs at Arras. This confusion was made worse by the almost total collapse of communications during the retreat: the wireless system broke down and the telephones did not work. Within ten days there were only three days' rations left (although plenty of ammunition because of the lack of fighting) and the troops looted what they required from the locals. In the panic about 'fifth columnlnts' thoro were a large number of shoot-

4 ; Myth and Reality ings of 'suspicious' characters, many of whom had done nothing worse than possess fair hair. British troops were also using dumdum bullets, banned under the Geneva convention, and had orders not to take prisoners except for interrogation. The Germans replied with two massacres by the SS of a total of 170 British prisoners. When the first troops arrived at Dunkirk discipline nearly broke down altogether and for the first two days of the evacuation order had to be kept by armed naval personnel until more disciplined regiments arrived on 29 May. Even then men were rushing the boats in their anxiety to get away and General Alexander was shocked by the behaviour of the soldiers. Later in the year, during a secret session of the House of Commons, several MPs told how a large number of officers had run away and deserted their troops so as to get on to the earliest boat. Privately, the War Office was alarmed at the state of the army. As the Director of Statistics later told one newspaper editor: 'The Dunkirk episode was far worse than was ever realized in Fleet Street. The men on getting back to England were so demoralized they threw their rifles and equipment out of railway-carriage windows. Some sent for their wives with their civilian clothes, changed into these, and walked home.' 11 In private, Churchill told his junior ministers that Dunkirk was 'the greatest British military defeat for many centuries'." None of this, the government and military decided, could be told to the public. They were able to enforce this decision because no journalists were present at Dunkirk. Once it was clear that the BEF was being evacuated, General Mason-Macfarlane, the head of military intelligence, summoned journalists on 28 May and told them: 'I'm afraid there is going to be a considerable shock for the British public. It is your duty to act as shock-absorbers, so I have prepared... a statement that can be published, subject to censorship.' 13 The journalists were also told to blame the French for not fighting and to say that the BEF was undefeated; both statements were travesties of the truth. No news of the events at Dunkirk was released to the public until the 6 p.m. BBC news on 30 May, five days after the evacuation had started and when nearly three-quarters of the BEF were already back in Britain. The public were then told, in a statement approved by the Ministry of Information, that 'men of the undefeated British Expeditionary Force hove hocn coming home from France. They have not come back in triumph, tht y huvu corm bock in Hlory.' 93 When the Dunkirk evacuation was completed on 3 June the Allies had lost a total of sixty-one divisions and three-quarters of their modern equipment. There were only fifty-one divisions, 200 tanks and 175 fighters left to face 104 enemy divisions. The German army quickly regrouped and began to attack southwards across the Somme on 5 June. The French put up strong resistance for a while but, heavily outnumbered, they were overrun. On 10 June the government evacuated Paris, which was declared an open city. Mussolini decided that the time had come to enter the war and, he hoped, pick up for himself some of the spoils of victory won by others. On 11 June Churchill flew to Briare for a conference with the French at which the different national perceptions of the situation were starkly apparent. Once again he rejected French pleas that this was the decisive battle and argued that the German assault on Britain would be crucial: if Britain survived for three or four months they would be able to continue the war and then 'we will win it back for you'. These rhetorical gestures failed to impress a French government facing total defeat. When Churchill spoke of sending one more division to add to the two divisions still on the continent, but offered no more before 1941 and recalled the grim days of March and April 1918, Marshal Petain, who had been recalled to the French cabinet, retorted, 'In 1918, I gave you forty divisions to save the British army. Where are the forty British divisions that would be needed to save ourselves today?' 14 In fact, the British were about to stop any more troops going to France and start evacuating those that remained. The French pressed for more fighter squadrons, but on his return Churchill told Reynaud that the fighters would stay in Britain and operate at the limits of their range. This meant nothing, because the fighting in France was now beyond the range of fighters operating from southern England. Back in London on 12 June, Churchill told the war cabinet that 'it was clear that France was near the end of organized resistance'.'" The last week before the French request for an armistice was one of confusion and poor communication between the two governments as the German army swept on to occupy threequarters of France. At first it was hoped that President Roosevelt might step in to save the Allies. On 10 June Reynaud asked for American assistance. Roosevelt's reply on 13 June - saying that everything poastblo WlHI botng d ne to supply the Allies and

5 : Myth and Reality urging the French to carryon fighting - was taken as very encouraging. That evening in London ministers were euphoric. Beaverbrook argued that 'it was inevitable that the United States would declare war' and Churchill agreed that the message 'came as near as possible to a declaration of war' and that he expected the Americans to be in the war within a fortnight.w This optimism collapsed when the Allies asked Roosevelt's permission to publish his message. He refused, adding that his earlier response 'was in no sense intended to commit and did not commit the government to military participation in support of Allied governments',11 On 13 June Churchill made a last flight to France to see Reynaud at Tours. Reynaud asked to be released from the AngloFrench agreement not to seek a separate peace, noting acidly that 'it is quite natural for Britain to continue, given that until today she has not suffered much'. The British delegation refused to discuss the French request and left for England. Reynaud had omitted to tell Churchill that the French cabinet were waiting to see him and the latter's failure to appear only reinforced their view that Britain was no longer interested in the fate of France and strengthened the hand of those arguing for a separate armistice. On the morning of 16 June the British offered to release the French from the agreement provided the French fleet sailed to British harbours immediately. Early in the afternoon details of a projected Anglo-French union were sent to France. When the French cabinet met at 5 p.m., the British idea of union was read out but not the demands about the fleet. The overwhelming opinion in the French government was that they were on their own and had to seek the best deal they could for France, regardless of British views. The possibility of fighting on from north Africa was rejected in favour of asking the Germans for armistice terms. Reynaud resigned and was replaced by Marshal Petain. The next day, 17 June, the French asked for an armistice. The German terms, which left the French in control of an unoccupied zone, the fleet and the overseas empire, were generous enough to ensure their acceptance. Some in Britain were glad that the French had collapsed. 'Chips' Channon wrote in his diary, when Petain set up the Vichy government in July: 'The third French Republic has ceased to exist and I don't care; it was graft-ridden, incompetent, Communistic and corrupt and had out-lived its day.' 16 After six weeks of fighting the ullianco had collapsed amid 95 recrimination and bitterness. The British convinced themselves that they had been let down by the Belgians and the French and from as early as the first week of the campaign were planning on a French collapse. The French felt betrayed by the limited British help and Britain's consistent placing of national self-interest before the needs of the alliance. The French complaints had much substance. British casualties in three weeks of fighting were 3,500 killed, almost the same as the Dutch lost in a few days. This compared with French losses of 120,000 killed, 250,000 wounded and 1.5 million prisoners; a scale equivalent to some of the worst phases of the Verdun slaughter in the First World War. The British sent pitifully small forces to the continent and paid the price for their decisions in the 1930s not to provide an army to support France by seeing their ally overwhelmed. At the crucial moment they refused to send their fighter squadrons across the Channel to try to win air supremacy over the battlefield. In the long run that decision preserved the RAF for the air battle over England; but that was little consolation at the time for the French, who were facing a catastrophic defeat. The British actions at Dunkirk reinforced the French view that their ally was mainly interested in self-preservation. The British, thrown back on their own painfully limited resources, now faced some agonizing decisions. Could they continue the war with a reasonable prospect of surviving, let alone continuing until victory? Should they make their own peace with Germany before their prospects deteriorated any further? The British government had already begun to discuss these questions in the last week of Mayas they faced the humiliation of Dunkirk. The French request for an armistice brought them to the top of the agenda. On several occasions, both at the end of May and in the middle of June, the war cabinet discussed the possibility of peace with Germany.