London is Bombed. Chapter Four: Revenge!
Winston was at his best at striking back. The Nazis were massed at Channel ports, preparing for an invasion, and close enough to be reached from England with a ferocious retaliation.
This Episode: As the summer of 1940 went on and Adolf Hitler worried over what was to be done with England and its truculent Prime Minister, his attention was constantly drawn away from that issue to the way his three great “allies” — Franco, Mussolini, and Stalin — were engaging in truculence of their own. If he were not so distracted, he might have understood that Göting’s destruction of Hugh Dowding’s landing fields, and of Lord Beaverbrook’s airplane factories, had England’s Fighter Command on the verge of collapse. But as it happened, he sent Göring’s Luftwaffe to London with all his bombers and opened an attack of “target terror” that would change everything. Everything.
This Chapter: Winston was on the streets of London early Sunday morning, standing with the people whose homes had disappeared on Saturday. The city had nearly sucked the Thames dry of water for the fires that still burned. As he mourned with the Cockneys of the East End, more sirens sounded. More bombers were coming. He assembled his military staff and told them to prepare to deliver a response “this week” on the Nazi installations on the coasts of France, Belgium, and Holland. He would put cannons with great reach in positions on the shores of England, send bombers of his own, and many battleships of the Admiralty into the Channel to an assault that would bring Hitler to second thoughts about an invasion. Before he struck he would go to the BBC and tell the world of the resolve of his people in response to the attack. The speech echoes yet today.
Contents: Here are the five chapters of “London is Bombed” from “Seeking the Hinge” with their dates of publication.
Chapter One: Hitler’s “Allies,” Churchill’s Defenses Defy Führer. Monday, April 28
Chapter Two: 1,300 Planes Launched on London. Tuesday, April 29
Chapter Three: In the Words of the Pilots. Wednesday, April 30.
Chapter Four: Revenge! Thursday, May 1.
Chapter Five: Consequences. Friday, May 2.
Chapter Four: Revenge!
Reading time: thirteen minutes
The fires burned all night and not for a want of trying to extinguish them. The Thames ran shallow with the tide and the hoses brought it to even emptier with their sucking. No announcement preceded the arrival of the Prime Minister to his city’s East End that morning. His wife and his daughter were with him over his objections. Clemmie and Mary came to the city at first light, retrieved from Chequers by Brendan Bracken and Winston’s bodyguard Walter Thompson. Pamela remained there; a doctor of obstetrics was on hand.
There were Union Jack flags everywhere; little ones, some of paper and a stick, and huge ones that must have seen the first war, were stuck in piles of rubble and holes in the streets. Winston went to a shelter where forty had died from a direct hit and stood in silence before the remains of what it was. He dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief, doing his best to hide it. A handful of people staggered up. One said, “It’s him! It’s Winnie! He’s come!” He had always hated “Winnie” until that moment and he never hated it again. Another said, “I knew he’d come. Didn’t I tell you he would?”
A woman, ragged and dirty, came to him and extended her hand. She said, “We knew you’d come. We was just talking about it and up you come. Thank you so much.”
He felt his throat close and held her hand long after he could have released it, using it to steady himself. He just gazed at her with a small smile, said nothing.
A man said, “There’s nothing phony to your baloney, sir. I may not often agree with you, but I’ll stand here and fight if you ask me.”
Winston said, “And I’ll stand beside you and fight to the death. You may count on me.”
The crowd was now a dozen or more. These were the people he always feared would succumb to the allure of Communism, the people philosophers and appeasers said would revolt if they were attacked. Ribbentrop had been Hitler’s ambassador to England before becoming Foreign Minister, and in his pomposity presented himself as an authority on the British people. He often told the Führer the Cockneys would light the fire that would take Churchill down if they were bombed. Now they had been and they reached for his hand.
A voice said, “Are we going to bomb Berlin?”
“Yes. And we are going to conquer Adolf Hitler and string him up with a rope.”
Someone said, “We can take it. We’re tough buggers here.”
He just smiled at that and teared a little.
A woman said, “See? He really cares. He’s crying.”
Clementine said, “Your shelters are deplorable. They must be improved. And quickly. We will do that.”
And the sirens sounded. The bombers were coming again.
As bombs fell, they made their way back to Ten Downing Street by side streets in a huge armored vehicle that Winston hated. His Daimler disappeared whenever he handed it off to an attendant, but he kept a set of its keys. He summoned his military staff — Eden, Alexander, Dudley Pound, Archie Sinclair, Brooke, and Ismay. Beaverbrook and Home Secretary John Anderson were there. He said he wanted immediately — “this week!” — to destroy the German forces in the Channel ports with naval attacks, with “cannons” on the English shores that could carry the distance, and with bomber attacks.
“The intention is to eliminate Herr Hitler’s invasion capability and his air bases, driving them back to positions of cringing defense, presenting him with the clear understanding that he is powerless to invade us!”
Eden said, “Can we be certain they won’t invade?”
“We can no more be certain of that than in heaven hereafter, but we must continue to live and prepare for the eventuality of both.”
Sinclair said, “They may still come from the air.”
“They shall come from the air. For a great many days and nights and we shall suffer immensely as they do, but their flights will be longer and the range of their fighter escorts more limited. And as they attack our cities, they shall find that we have rebuilt our landing fields and the factories have produced ever more planes and bombers of our own. We shall disturb the equilibrium of this day to our advantage.”
He tasked Pound with designing a side port for ships that would facilitate the unloading of tanks and other heavy vehicles on the beaches.
“Which beaches?” Pound asked.
“French beaches, of course. Belgian, Italian, Moroccan. Any beaches.”
“That will take some time. Not for the design, but for the construction.”
“I know. I want to tell Roosevelt to utilize the design for the ships we have on order with him.”
“Those aren’t expected until 1942 earliest.”
“I know. That’s when we will invade.”
He told Anderson he wanted a full overhaul of his shelter policy. “I want more shelters, larger and deeper, more protection for those who occupy them, and supplies of all types in place for their arrival.”
Anderson said, “And policies in place for their use. Authorities on hand to make certain there are no abuses.”
“Abuses? These are for people who are being abused. They will police themselves if we give them the elements of minimal comfort. They are the reason we are fighting this war.”
A bomb struck nearby and the house shook. From somewhere above came the sound of shattering glass.
Eden said, “Prime Minister, you are living in, and we are meeting in, a death trap.”
“Yes. It’s called London.”
*
The Sunday bombs in London did as much damage as Saturday’s. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were the same. The number of AA cannons was tripled by taking them from other locations. Churchill had them placed where they could be seen and heard by the most people and while they did take heart at the demonstration of fighting back, the result remained negligible. But Beaverbrook’s factories were churning out aircraft around the clock and Sinclair’s Air Ministry was making the airfields operational, as they were spared from attack for the first time in a month. Bomber Command backed off its nightly raids on Berlin to focus on Churchill’s retaliation.
Bill Shirer saw the week unfold from Berlin. He noted in his diary the variation in the British bombing of Berlin without an explanation of it, or any understanding of its context.
The bombing of Friday night, the 6th, was intense, he noted, followed by quiet on the 7th and the 8th, when no British bombers came to Berlin. On the night of the 9th he noted that there came just a few. In London, beyond Shirer’s awareness, the RAF command was preparing for the Channel assault and suddenly realized that too much quiet in their bombing of Berlin would tip their hand, so on Tuesday, the 10th, they delivered what Shirer called, without understanding it in perspective, “the severest bombing yet.”
Hitler had Wednesday, the 11th, set for the invasion based on a Directive he issued on the 3rd. That was the second date he had scheduled. On Tuesday, the 10th, he wavered again. He heard from his embassy in Washington that the American General Staff believed the air attacks had been fatal to England both as to property and public morale. He thought, he hoped, the British would simply capitulate and he could avoid the invasion entirely. He rescheduled it for Saturday, the 14th.
Hitler and Churchill were in an odd dance that neither of them understood. Hitler didn’t want to invade, but thought he owed it to his people, and to his reputation as a conqueror, so he acted like he was eager. He wasn’t. Churchill didn’t believe Hitler would invade, but he used the prospect of it to gain his people’s resolve. He acted as though he believed they were coming and gave the impression he was good and ready for it. He was.
Churchill’s attack on the ports and airfields of France, Belgium, and Holland was set to begin at 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, the 11th. Artillery was in place on the Ramsgate promontory, battleships were entering the field of battle, and the full fleet of bombers was rumbling on the repaired airfields. The artillery would target from Gravelines to Boulonge-sur-Mer. The navy would attack in the north from Amsterdam to Dunkirk, and in the south from Boulonge to Brest on the Normandy peninsula. The bombers would blanket all that, flying above the shelling.
Bracken asked the Prime Minister, knowing the answer as he did, “Are you concerned that we are attacking three nations that have been our allies over long centuries?”
“Those nations are no longer France, Belgium, and Holland. They shall be again one day, but this day they are Germany!”
He said to Jock Colville as he was issuing instructions, “When the time comes to strike the enemy, never do it by halves. Let him have it! Hit him with all you have!”
Fighter Command, growing stronger by the hour, would defend the homeland from the unceasing attacks from above, while Hitler’s invasion fleet, the ports that nursed them, and his nearest airfields would feel Winston’s best punch.
On the BBC, with all the attacking preparations in place, he spoke to the world.
“Hitler’s preparations for invasion on a great scale are steadily going forward. Several hundreds of self-propelled barges are moving down the coasts of Europe, from the German and Dutch harbours to the ports of Northern France, from Dunkirk to Brest, and beyond Brest to the French harbours in the Bay of Biscay.
“Besides this, convoys of merchant ships in tens of dozens are being moved through the Straits of Dover into the Channel, dodging along from port to port under the protection of the new batteries which the Germans have built on the French shore. There are now considerable gatherings of shipping in the German, Dutch, Belgian, and French harbours all the way from Hamburg to Brest. Finally, there are some preparations made of ships to carry an invading force from the Norwegian harbours.
“Behind these clusters of ships or barges, there stand very large numbers of German troops, awaiting the order to go on board and set out on their very dangerous and uncertain voyage across the seas. We cannot tell when they will try to come. We cannot be sure that in fact they will try at all, but no one should blind himself to the fact that a heavy, full-scale invasion of this island is being prepared with all the usual German thoroughness and method, and that it may be launched now — upon England, upon Scotland, or upon Ireland, or upon all three.
“If this invasion is going to be tried at all, it does not seem that it can be long delayed. The weather may break at any time. Besides this, it is difficult for the enemy to keep these gatherings of ships waiting about indefinitely. They are vulnerable to being bombed by our bombers, and shelled by our warships, which are approaching them from Channel positions.
“Therefore, we must regard the next week or so as a very important period in our history. It ranks with the days when the Spanish Armada was approaching the Channel and Drake was finishing his game of bowls, or when Nelson stood between us and Napoleon's Grand Army at Boulogne. We have read all about this in the history books, but what is happening now is on a far greater scale and of far more consequence to the life and future of the world and its civilisation than these brave old days of the past.
“Every man and woman will therefore prepare to do their duty, whatever it may be, with special pride and care. Our fleets and flotillas are very powerful and numerous. Our Air Force is at the highest strength it has ever reached, and it is conscious of its proved superiority, not indeed in numbers, but in men and machines. Our shores are well fortified and strongly manned, and behind them, ready to attack the invaders, we have a far larger and better equipped mobile Army than we have ever had before.
“Besides this, we have more than a million and a half men of the Home Guard, who are just as much soldiers of the Regular Army as the Grenadier Guards, and who are determined to fight for every inch of the ground in every village and in every street.
“These cruel, wanton, indiscriminate bombings of London are, of course, a part of Hitler's invasion plans. He hopes, by the killing of large numbers of civilians, including women and children, that he will terrorise and cow the people of this mighty imperial city, and make them a burden and an anxiety to the Government and thus distract our attention unduly from the ferocious onslaught he is preparing.
“Little does he know the spirit of the British nation, or the tough fibre of the Londoners, whose forbears played a leading part in the establishment of Parliamentary institutions and who have been bred to value freedom far above their lives. This wicked man, the repository and embodiment of many forms of soul destroying hatred, this monstrous product of former wrongs and shame, has now resolved to try to break our famous island race by a process of indiscriminate slaughter and destruction.
“What he has done is to kindle a fire in British hearts, here and all over the world, which will glow long after all traces of the conflagration he has caused in London have been removed. He has lighted a fire which will burn with a steady and consuming flame until the last vestiges of Nazi tyranny have been burnt out of Europe, and until the Old World, and the New, can join hands to rebuild the temples of man's freedom and man's honour, upon foundations which will not soon or easily be overthrown.
“This is a time for everyone to stand together, and hold firm, as they are doing. All the world that is still free marvels at the composure and fortitude with which the citizens of London are facing and surmounting the great ordeal to which they are subjected, the end of which or the severity of which cannot yet be foreseen.
“It is a message of good cheer to our fighting Forces on the seas, in the air, and in our waiting Armies in all their posts and stations, that we send them from this capital city. They know that they have behind them a people who will not flinch or weary of the struggle — hard and protracted though it will be — but that we shall rather draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival, and of a victory won not only for ourselves but for all, a victory won not only for our own time, but for the long and better days that are to come.
“It is with devout but sure confidence that I say: Let God defend the Right.”
As he concluded, the British attack on Hitler’s forces opened. The German bombers that flew over London as he spoke would struggle for a place to land on their return, and the soldiers and ships in the ports would receive a shelling from the Royal Navy, from Bomber Command, and from shore batteries across the Channel that would tell them that the war they were waging in the belief that it was about to end, was just beginning.