The World at War Episode 02 - Distant War (September 1939 - May 1940)
Transcript
00:00September the 1st, 1939. Germany attacks Poland. Adolf Hitler ignores Britain and France, which
00:27had promised to fight for Poland.
00:57Sunday, September the 3rd. The British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain broadcasts.
01:16This morning, the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note
01:25stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once
01:32to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell
01:41you now that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently this country
01:48is at war with Germany.
02:48Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!
02:57Danzig, taken from Germany after the First World War, welcomed its liberators. To many
03:03good Germans, the city's capture symbolised the end of the humiliating Treaty of Versailles.
03:12Hitler swept forward to congratulate his victorious troops. He said they had rescued his people
03:34from Polish barbarism.
03:49The Germans thrust into Poland from the west and north. In two weeks, the Polish army had
03:54virtually ceased to exist. Warsaw was one of the few places to hold out. The Russians,
04:01seized parts of Poland they claimed as theirs by right. The two conquerors met at Brest-Litovsk.
04:07It was the scene of the Russian surrender to Germany in 1918.
04:16The official German greeting in Russian said German soldiers had always respected Russian
04:23soldiers. The clash of Nazi and Communist was, for the moment, conveniently forgotten.
04:30The final bombardment of Warsaw began on September the 23rd.
04:57For nearly three weeks, Warsaw radio had defiantly played the Polish National Anthem.
05:18On September the 27th, the anthem stopped.
05:34Warsaw was reduced to rubble.
05:49The capital's commander surrendered.
06:19Poland, followed by Germany and Russia, disappeared into a new dark age. Arrests, deportations,
06:42executions began.
06:50Britain's war started with a false alarm, September the 3rd.
06:55I remember when the outbreak of war came. We were in the cabinet room at the moment
07:02that the ultimatum expired.
07:07Lord Butler was then a junior minister.
07:09And we were just beginning to congratulate the Prime Minister on his broadcast when we
07:16heard a terrible wailing, which of course was the first air raid siren.
07:21Chamberlain took it very seriously. And his wife then appeared with an enormous basket
07:30full of things for the night and thermos flasks and things to read and so on.
07:38And so we all went and sheltered. I went and sheltered after some delay in the Foreign Office.
07:46The whole of the Horse Guards Parade was completely empty of people and there was nobody inside anywhere.
07:52When I got there, there was no furniture, so I had to sit on the floor.
07:56And an air raid warden said that there would be no gas.
08:00But of course there wasn't really any war for some time, apart from being no gas.
08:19So, no war that day. All for many months.
08:24People settled down to enjoy the unexpected reprieve.
08:27It was perfect weather for a late holiday or invading Poland.
08:54One, two, three.
09:24People had braced themselves for a grimmer war. Hospitals were cleared to take air raid casualties.
09:46The experts predicted over a million injured in two months.
09:55Children and their mothers evacuated from the cities, a million and a half of them.
09:59For some, a nightmare. For others, an adventure.
10:03We assembled in a playground rather like this.
10:06The kids were there and the parents.
10:09Children had the gas mask over their shoulder and labels tied to them.
10:16The women had to decide whether to keep their school children with them or whether to allow them to go out.
10:22Now, one would think that this was an easy decision.
10:25Why not keep your children with you, which is the natural thing to do?
10:28But against this was the terrible thought that there was going to be gas,
10:33that there was going to be terrible bombing and death,
10:37and the children would be murdered.
10:40Everyone was crying, the parents and children.
10:43And as we moved off, especially, people burst into tears.
10:47My mother, I think, was more unhappy about the wrench of us going rather than the war itself.
10:53My sister was crying.
10:55I personally wasn't.
10:57I was rather excited at the prospect of leaving this part of London.
11:01We thought we'd travelled to the other side of the world,
11:03but in fact we came to Denham, here, only 20 miles from London.
11:08I promised my mother that I wouldn't be separated from my sister,
11:12so we went to the village hall with all the other kids.
11:16And because we wouldn't be separated, we were the last ones to leave.
11:20We were the last ones to leave.
11:22We were the last ones to leave.
11:24We were the last ones to leave.
11:26We were the last ones to leave.
11:29And because we wouldn't be separated, we were the last ones to find a billet.
11:33It was like being auctioned off at the time.
11:37But when we finally got a house to take us in, it was fantastic.
11:41It was a new world that opened out to us.
11:44I mean, we had toothbrushes and sheets on the bed and hot water.
11:50Imagine hot water.
11:52We just couldn't get over it, and we didn't know what I-da-downs were for.
11:56In the morning, we went blackberry picking.
12:00Then we heard the sirens, so we rushed back to our billet.
12:04The woman there reassured us and said not to worry,
12:08and we sat down to lunch,
12:10and it was the first fully laid-out table I'd ever seen in my life.
12:15And war was declared, I think, that same lunchtime.
12:20She said not to worry and passed us the horseradish sauce.
12:23But I think a number of children suffered really deeply being away from their families.
12:29They suffered a sense of rejection.
12:32They exhibited their senses of rejection and sorrow and suffering
12:37very often by strange behavioral problems,
12:41by bedwetting, perhaps not eating.
12:45Thirty-one arrived with two junior nurses, I think.
12:49They were pretty dirty,
12:53and two of them got impetigo.
12:55I had young children at the time.
12:57And I put them into a large room,
13:00and you have no idea, I had no idea that such a thing could exist in England.
13:04They relieved themselves all over the carpet,
13:07and the place was a shamble.
13:10Stop!
13:20There was no heroic rush to volunteer for the forces.
13:23You waited your turn to be called up for processing in the military sausage machine,
13:28or rather leisurely.
13:36The rush to get married.
13:38In August and September, the highest number of weddings ever recorded.
13:42White's the only way.
13:46White for the blackout, too, to make sure car drivers can see you in the dark.
13:53At first, the blackout was a bit of a joke.
14:00Then road casualties shot up, and the blackout wasn't funny any more.
14:05There weren't any air raids, but thousands of people were killed or injured in accidents in the blackout.
14:15It was depressing, too. Without it, you could almost forget there was a war on.
14:19Every night, every home had to be blacked out.
14:22The air raid warden looking for chinks of light became more hated than Hitler.
14:29The government closed cinemas and other entertainments at the beginning of the war,
14:33but a fortnight later they were allowed to open again.
14:45In spite of total war, there were nearly a million and a half unemployed.
15:16Sir John Simon, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, introduced an emergency budget.
15:21In three hours' time, all budget secrets will be revealed.
15:28I am confident that whatever may be the burdens which have to be carried by the British taxpayer,
15:39my fellow countrymen will bear them with the same resolution and courage
15:47as our fighting men will show when they discharge their grimmer task on the field of battle.
16:08The blackout budget. Income tax up to seven and six.
16:11A 60% tax on excess profits.
16:14In retrospect, mild enough.
16:16But a Conservative MP, Chips Channon, thought it demolished the edifice of capitalism.
16:24Another Tory, Leo Aimery, wanted a tougher war.
16:27Why not bomb Germany?
16:29The Air Minister, Kingsley Wood, said no.
16:31German munition works were private property.
16:34And the Germans would retaliate.
16:36Well, the opening phase of the war was one of the most extraordinary periods through which I've ever lived.
16:41Because it was a sort of period of euphoria on the part of the people of this country.
16:46For a long time, there were quite a lot of unemployed.
16:49While the Germans were manufacturing arms at full stretch,
16:54particularly in the Škoda works in Czechoslovakia, which they had by that time occupied.
17:01Now, all this time the Germans were a beehive of activity.
17:05We were doing absolutely nothing.
17:07We'd gone to war for the defence of Poland.
17:11In the event, we did nothing to help Poland at all.
17:15We never lifted a finger.
17:17For the first three months of the war, the greatest number of casualties were in the blackout.
17:23And we confined our war effort to dropping leaflets on the German people,
17:30telling them that it was a bad idea to go to war,
17:33and that it was a pity that they'd done it, and perhaps we might make peace.
17:39The Phony War.
17:41When a German plane crashed in Scotland in November, people came from miles around to see it.
17:50And the Luftwaffe's dead were buried with full military honours.
18:01The War.
18:06Three British divisions went off to France at the beginning of the war.
18:10More followed.
18:11Nearly 200,000 men, said the war minister proudly.
18:15The French had mobilised six million men.
18:18They grumbled that the British weren't taking the war seriously.
18:21Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye.
18:27Cheerio, here I go on my way.
18:32Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye.
18:37Don't forget, don't forget me today.
18:43Give me a smile, I can't keep all the while.
18:48In my heart is a hope that I'm on the way.
18:52Till we meet once again, you and I.
18:58Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye.
19:10In France, training for a war that ended in 1918,
19:14the newsreel reporter tried hard to make it sound impressive.
19:17The expeditionary force, instead of being thrown into the line for immediate operations,
19:21has been able to perfect its training in conditions similar to those at home.
19:25This being a drill in gas masks is our reply to transparent Nazi propaganda,
19:29which seems to indicate that Germany is preparing to employ poison gas.
19:34Infantry battalions exercise with their auxiliary weapons,
19:37awaiting the moment for their use in actual warfare.
19:41The mortar platoon goes into action with a rapidity only acquired by constant practice.
19:45Steel helmets assume a fashionable appearance with the addition of camouflage.
19:53French and British generals too prepared for their part in the battle to come.
20:07The British dug in on the Belgian frontier.
20:10In December it was decided that when fighting began,
20:13they would leave their defences and advance into Belgium.
20:16Anything helped to keep their minds off the war.
20:24Now imagine me in the Maginot Line,
20:26sitting on a mine in the Maginot Line.
20:29Now it's turned out nice again, the army life is fine.
20:33French girls make a fuss of me.
20:36I'm not French as you can see,
20:38but I know what they mean when they say oui, oui.
20:42Now imagine me in the Maginot Line,
20:46sitting on a mine in the Maginot Line.
20:49Now it's turned out nice again, the army life is fine.
20:53At night myself to sleep I sing,
20:56to my old tin hat I cling,
20:58I have to use it now for everything.
21:12Winston's back, the Navy was told on September the 3rd.
21:15Chamberlain was reluctant to recall his most bitter political opponent
21:19with a reputation for military adventure.
21:25But Churchill was popular with the public.
21:27He had warned them war was coming.
21:30Now, with surprising energy for a 64-year-old,
21:33he proved a willing leader.
21:42The RAF dropped leaflets, the army dug trenches,
21:45but Churchill's Navy was Britain's strongest arm.
21:51And the First Lord of the Admiralty was often in the news.
21:55We are in a very different position from that we were in ten weeks ago.
22:02We are far stronger than we were ten weeks ago.
22:06Ten weeks ago.
22:08We are far stronger than we were ten weeks ago.
22:12We are far better prepared to endure the worst malice of Hitler and his Huns
22:19than we were at the beginning of September.
22:22The news that a German battleship was sinking British merchantmen
22:26gave the chance to take the offensive.
22:28ROARING
22:33Churchill concentrated much of the Navy's strength on finding her.
22:37One of the hunting groups patrolled off the River Plate in South America.
22:41Three cruisers, Exeter, Ajax and Achilles.
22:45At dawn on December the 13th, they sighted a heavier German ship.
22:49It was the pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee.
22:52Although outgunned, the cruisers engaged her.
22:55The Battle of the River Plate began.
22:57SCREAMING
23:01Within about five minutes of the alarm being sounded,
23:04Graf Spee and Exeter were shooting at each other,
23:08and the Ajax and Achilles were both shooting at the Graf Spee,
23:14concentrating their gunfire.
23:17The Exeter was quite soon hit and received early damage.
23:23Her foremost guns only fired a few rounds each before they were out of action.
23:28She continued as long as she possibly could with her after turret,
23:33but the ship herself was badly damaged.
23:36Her speed was reduced.
23:38ROARING
23:41The six-inch gun cruisers before long turned directly towards the Graf Spee
23:47as it closed the range still faster,
23:49and the captain of the Graf Spee did not follow up the Exeter entirely,
23:57but indeed before very long started heading towards Montevideo.
24:02But we could not see any spectacular damage inflicted on him,
24:08and indeed his speed seemed to be unempowered,
24:12and his heavy guns were still firing regularly and with pretty good accuracy.
24:18ROARING
24:22In Montevideo, the Graf Spee took on fuel
24:25and put ashore the crews of the merchant ship she'd sunk.
24:35Her captain, Langsdorff, asked the Uruguayans for permission to stay,
24:39but was told he must clear the port in 72 hours.
24:43ROARING
24:47So he buried his dead,
24:49and believing that much heavier British ships were waiting for him outside,
24:53he prepared to carry out his final orders from Berlin.
25:00As soon as he started pulling his anchor up,
25:04we got news of it from our people ashore,
25:08and we sent off our aircraft,
25:12and in due course we got the signal from the aircraft,
25:16which was a very welcome one.
25:18Graf Spee has blown herself up.
25:26Two days later, Langsdorff shot himself.
25:34Churchill made the most of a victory won by bluff rather than gunpower.
25:39Two of the cruisers were brought home.
25:43CHEERING
25:46Their crews marched through the city of London to Guildhall,
25:49and the First Lord of the Admiralty basked in their glory.
25:53The brilliant sea fight,
25:56which you executed,
26:00those who are here, executed,
26:05takes its place in our naval annals,
26:09and I may add that in a dark, cold winter,
26:15it warmed the cockles of the British heart.
26:19CHEERING
26:36Helsinki, November 30, 1939.
26:40Finland has refused to hand over bases and territory
26:43demanded by her neighbour Russia.
26:45The Russians attack.
26:48SIREN BLARES
26:51EXPLOSION
26:53EXPLOSION
27:14The massive Russian army crossed the frontier,
27:16apparently set for the kind of easy victory the Germans had had in Poland.
27:24But the Finns, few in number, fought back.
27:28EXPLOSIONS
27:36Camouflaged Finnish ski troops knew how to use their own conditions,
27:40moving round the Russian flanks, cutting their supply lines.
27:48The Russian advance ground to a halt,
27:51confirming the German belief that the Russian army,
27:54purged by Stalin of many of its regular officers, couldn't fight.
28:10Whole Russian divisions were destroyed.
28:12Those who weren't taken prisoner died in the snow.
28:16For the Russians, a humiliating, if temporary, failure.
28:47WHISTLE BLOWS
28:57In Britain, it was snowing too.
28:59The censorship tried to hush it up, but people couldn't help noticing.
29:03To the trials of the blackout were added the worst winter for 45 years.
29:07A cold shortage, burst pipes and food rationing.
29:13The RAF was grounded.
29:17CLATTERING
29:19Troops were called in to keep the trains running.
29:30For the Navy, another victory.
29:32Taking refuge in a Norwegian fjord,
29:34the Graf Spee's supply ship Altmark was cornered by British destroyers.
29:39Ignoring Norwegian neutrality, they boarded her,
29:42and, after a fight, released 300 British prisoners.
29:48For Hitler, the seizure of the Altmark was a setback.
29:51He hastened his plans to invade Norway.
29:57WHISTLE BLOWS
30:05For Churchill, another popular triumph.
30:08He too had his eyes on Norway.
30:12CLATTERING
30:20Churchill's colleagues had been discussing for months
30:23his plan for British action in Norway,
30:25but some, like the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, were difficult to persuade.
30:34Churchill now added a plan to help Finland
30:37as part of the Norwegian operation.
30:40He proposed to stop Germany's important supply of iron ore,
30:44which came from Sweden to the Norwegian port of Narvik.
30:47Then it was shipped to Germany through neutral Norwegian waters.
30:55Churchill wanted to mine the waters,
30:57and he added enticingly that if Narvik were captured,
31:00it could be used as a base for helping Finland against Communist Russia.
31:06Churchill knew that his plan might mean retaliation by Hitler in Norway,
31:11and helping Finland could mean war with Russia.
31:17Chamberlain was concerned about innocent Norwegian lives
31:21and the effect on American opinion.
31:23Eventually, he was persuaded.
31:25I think that deep down, he still hoped
31:28that perhaps the major clash of armies could be avoided.
31:32He thought that Germany was on the verge of starvation,
31:37or if not on the verge of starvation,
31:39it anyhow would be brought to the verge of starvation by economic warfare.
31:43He thought also that deep down the German people didn't support Hitler,
31:47that this was a clique, and that if we did our propaganda properly,
31:51there would perhaps be a revolt of the generals or somebody else against Hitler,
31:57and that therefore dropping propaganda leaflets
32:00by bomber command of the RAF rather than bombs
32:04was a good way of conducting the war,
32:07anything to stop the real major outbreak.
32:10And that is why I think to some extent the campaigns in Norway
32:15were something acceptable to Chamberlain,
32:20because it kept the war distant.
32:22It kept the idea of a real big clash
32:26a repetition of Passchendaele or the Somme far away.
32:31It meant that war would be localised
32:34and perhaps some miracle would happen.
32:36Perhaps Hitler would die or be assassinated,
32:38and the whole thing would end with a minimum of bloodshed.
32:42Finland today, amidst higher snows than higher frozen lakes,
32:52is fighting against the forces of unscrupulous violence
32:58just as we are ourselves.
33:02As a need calls for our sympathy and our aid.
33:11Some British aid did go to Finland, but little and late.
33:15The Russians at last brought all their weight to bear
33:18and overwhelmed the Finnish defences.
33:25The day the British steeled themselves to force a landing in Norway,
33:29Finland surrendered.
33:31So Britain was safe.
33:35The armistice terms gave Russia most of what she wanted.
33:43Hundreds of thousands of Finns had to evacuate their homes.
33:48The French Prime Minister Daladier
33:50had staked everything on helping Finland.
33:53He was replaced by Paul Reynaud.
33:56Reynaud went on pressing for Churchill's arrest,
33:59but he was not allowed to do so.
34:02The French Prime Minister,
34:04who had been in charge of Finland for a long time,
34:07was forced to resign.
34:09The French Prime Minister,
34:11who had been in charge of Finland for a long time,
34:14was forced to resign.
34:16There was some pressing for Churchill's operation
34:18to cut off the German iron ore.
34:20An Allied meeting in London decided to mine Norwegian waters.
34:25Churchill had got his way.
34:31British and French troops stood ready to invade Norway.
34:37The mines were laid on April 8th.
34:47A few days earlier, no thought of Norway in his mind,
34:51Chamberlain had proclaimed that Hitler had missed the bus,
34:56and General Ironside dared the Germans to do their worst.
35:05Hitler's invasion force sailed on April 6th.
35:16THE END
35:47The Luftwaffe took over most of the Norwegian airfields.
36:00The German march into Oslo was led by a band.
36:05MUSIC
36:12Norway had no standing army, only half-trained militia.
36:16The Norwegians were anti-militarist by tradition,
36:19and they had seen German newsreels of the Blitzkrieg on Poland.
36:24No one wanted Oslo to go the way of Warsaw.
36:27There was little resistance.
36:35MUSIC
36:43The Allied operation in Norway was a muddle from the start.
36:47Troops were embarked, disembarked, embarked again,
36:51without vital equipment.
36:56A contingent of French troops sailed with the British,
36:59plentifully equipped.
37:05WHISTLE BLOWS
37:11Unlike the British, they were trained for winter conditions,
37:15but they hadn't got straps for their skis.
37:26Even the expedition's objectives were confused.
37:29Trondheim in central Norway was to be captured by a pincer attack
37:33from Andalsnes and Namsos.
37:35So some troops were diverted south,
37:38but Churchill's mind was still fixed on Narvik,
37:41and it was there the first battle took place.
37:44EXPLOSIONS
38:04EXPLOSIONS
38:12The Navy bombarded Narvik,
38:14and German destroyers already there took a battering.
38:17But the advantage was lost.
38:19The British army commander didn't make a direct assault on the town.
38:28British territorials did land at Namsos and Andalsnes.
38:32They had no skis, no proper maps of Norway,
38:36and no heavy guns.
38:41There was little they could do when they ran into the well-equipped Germans.
38:45EXPLOSIONS
38:51Captain Martin Lindsay was with the British force at Namsos.
38:54There really was no hope at all for this operation,
38:57because it was entirely improvised at short notice,
39:01and in a great hurry,
39:03and the force had no aircraft supporting it and no artillery.
39:07But even more important, all the ground was covered with snow,
39:11and the only way to operate was with ski troops,
39:14and we hadn't got ski troops.
39:17And therefore the troops were confined to the road,
39:20and whenever the Germans got onto the hills on a flank,
39:23they had no alternative but to retire.
39:25EXPLOSIONS
39:28The British had come to protect the Norwegians,
39:31but they couldn't stop the Luftwaffe from blitzing the little Norwegian towns.
39:36German control of the Norwegian airfields was the key to the battle.
39:40EXPLOSIONS
39:57The Germans advanced, capturing hundreds of British prisoners.
40:05Some of these were flown to Berlin and paraded before Hitler.
40:12Others were put in front of German newsreel cameras.
40:15You seem to be in a pretty good mood here.
40:17Obviously you don't find Germans as bad as you expected them, do you?
40:21Oh, no, certainly not.
40:23I was captured at Farberg by the Germans.
40:26From there I came to Littlehammer,
40:29and we had a supper,
40:32consisted of brown bread, Gorgonzola,
40:36wine, which the Germans gave to us, cigarettes,
40:40and a hot meal each day,
40:44and getting on fairly decent,
40:47and I hope the war will soon be over and we'll all be going back home.
40:52Most of them did go home, ingloriously,
40:55burning andelsness and numbsauce still burning.
41:09Chased by the Luftwaffe,
41:11the Norwegian campaign rammed home the lesson
41:14that sea power without air power could no longer win battles.
41:26The End
41:45Their only battle honour, the part they played in bringing down a government.
41:49For now the machinery of democracy began to work.
41:55As the troops disembarked,
41:57an angry parliament was assembling to debate the disaster,
42:01feeling cut across party lines.
42:04Captain Lindsay, a Tory, went to the leader of the Labour opposition.
42:08Well, I was the first person from this force to reach London,
42:13and I went straight to see Mr Ayrtley on the morning of the first day of the debate,
42:17and I gave him a memorandum
42:19about the appalling improvisation and deficiencies in Norway,
42:23because I was quite convinced that we should lose the war if we went on like that,
42:27which he gave to Herbert Morrison
42:30to help him open for the opposition that afternoon.
42:33The Norway debate was the only decisive debate
42:36I ever attended during my 34 years as a member of the House of Commons,
42:41because it was the only division
42:44which definitely brought about the fall of a government.
42:47For nearly a year before that debate,
42:49there had been a piling up of bitterness and anguish
42:52in the breasts of people who wanted Britain to go all out
42:56and win the war against Hitler.
42:58And so you can imagine that the debate was a very fierce one,
43:03not only the Labour opposition, but also conservatives.
43:09They felt that the whole conduct of the war
43:12could not be carried on under a man
43:15whom they had already assailed at the time of Munich,
43:19and whom they realised was not really by nature a war leader.
43:23Gradually the temperature began to rise,
43:26and when Herbert Morrison for the Labour Party
43:29announced that they were going to divide
43:31at the end of the debate against the government,
43:34there was an action group
43:37of which Clement Davies was chairman, the Liberal leader,
43:41and I was secretary.
43:43It was an all-party committee committed to pressing
43:47for more decisive action during the war
43:50and a more vigorous posture
43:52and a more vigorous prosecution of the war.
43:55And we decided to hold a meeting after Morrison's announcement,
43:59and we asked Leo Emery to preside over it.
44:02And it was an enormously attended meeting.
44:04There were a great many conservative members of Parliament there,
44:07and I felt something was happening.
44:10And there were a great many members of Parliament
44:13who had never been hitherto members of our action group
44:16who fetched up at the meeting,
44:18and the feeling at the meeting was passionate.
44:20And I felt at that time
44:23that a great many conservative members
44:25were not only prepared to abstain in the division,
44:28but even to vote against the government.
44:30And I came down from that meeting with feelings of great tension.
44:35Meanwhile, Churchill had been putting up
44:38a great defence of the government.
44:41And it was ironical again there
44:44because the debate was about Norway,
44:46and Norway had been a series of disasters
44:49for which, although he might not be blamed
44:52because they may have been unavoidable,
44:53and I think were unavoidable,
44:55he was directly responsible as First Lord of the Admiralty.
44:58And Emery made a most formidable speech
45:02in which he quoted Cromwell's words,
45:05You have been here long enough for any good you have done.
45:08In the name of God, go.
45:10And then Lloyd George came down
45:12and made the most devastating speech I've ever heard even him make,
45:16in which he concluded by saying to Chamberlain,
45:19You have asked the nation for sacrifices,
45:21but there is one sacrifice that is more necessary than any other,
45:25and that is the sacrifice of your own office.
45:27And when the result of the division was announced,
45:29and the Conservative majority fell to about 80,
45:33and that meant the fall of the government in the circumstances,
45:36I could see Chamberlain, I can see him now, blanched.
45:40He had asked, he had asked for friendship
45:45from those who were his friends, and he hadn't got it.
45:49And he walked out of the chamber a solitary figure,
45:52and I felt very sorry for him at that moment
45:55because I knew that he knew that he was done.
45:57And I remember Chamberlain going to his room afterwards
46:00and saying he wondered whether this could go on,
46:03but it wasn't till the next day that he really realised
46:06that his pay number was up.
46:08On that particular day, the whips, I think,
46:11tried to explain to him that it might have been worse,
46:14and that sort of thing.
46:16But those of us who were with him
46:18could see the writing on the wall by that time.
46:20During those two days, the 9th and 10th of May,
46:23there was great doubt as to who would succeed Chamberlain.
46:27And the Labour Party made it clear
46:29that if there was to be a coalition government,
46:32which by now everybody thought necessary,
46:34they would not serve under Chamberlain.
46:36The choice, therefore, was between Churchill and Halifax.
46:40Lord Halifax was the obvious successor,
46:44Chamberlain's trusted colleague.
46:46But no peer had been Prime Minister for nearly 40 years.
46:51As for his rival...
46:53Churchill was viewed with grave misgiving
46:56by the establishment, as it would now be called.
46:59Everybody at 10 Dining Street and Whitehall generally,
47:03the Cabinet offices,
47:05and in very large sectors of the Conservative Party,
47:09were frightened of Churchill.
47:11They thought he was an adventurer.
47:13They remembered Gallipoli.
47:15They thought that they did not want to see
47:17the fortunes of this country
47:19at a most critical moment in its whole history
47:22handed over to somebody who might do the most extraordinary things
47:27and undertake the most astonishing adventures.
47:30And they all after all realised that Norway,
47:33this fiasco from which we were just hoping to recover,
47:36or had just been saved in the nick of time,
47:39was largely the inspiration of Churchill.
47:41It was a very fine idea, but it didn't work,
47:44just like Gallipoli.
47:46And therefore it was with a certain amount of fear of Churchill
47:53that I think the minds of most people in the centre of government
47:58and in the centre of Whitehall turned towards Halifax.
48:02Halifax was safe.
48:04He was clever. He was a fellow of all souls.
48:07He was a man of indisputable charm and absolute integrity.
48:13And it was hoped that he would perhaps be sent for by the king.
48:17The Labour Party approached me, Hugh Dalton and Herbert Morrison,
48:23and they both talked in favour of Halifax.
48:27And they thought that Halifax ought to take over.
48:31And I think their idea always was
48:33that Churchill would run the war under Halifax,
48:37an idea which didn't appeal to Halifax.
48:40I remember Churchill telling me that the critical moment came
48:46when Chamberlain asked Halifax and him to join him in the Cabinet Room.
48:52And the three of them were there.
48:57Halifax was sitting beside Chamberlain,
49:02who suddenly turned to Churchill and said,
49:05Mr Winston, do you see any reason why in the 20th century
49:09a prime minister should not be in the House of Lords?
49:13And Churchill thought that this was a trap.
49:18Because if he said, no, I see no reason at all,
49:22he thought Chamberlain would turn to Halifax and say,
49:25in that case, if the king were to ask my advice,
49:28I could perhaps suggest you.
49:31On the other hand, it would be very difficult for him to say, yes, I do,
49:34because then there could be no alternative but himself.
49:37And so he turned round and stood staring over the horse guards' parade
49:41and did not reply to the question.
49:43The decision, I think, was largely taken by Halifax,
49:46who told me he had a pain in his stomach an hour or two before the meeting
49:52and did not really want to be prime minister.
49:55Whereas the man who really did want to be prime minister,
49:58I bet he was quite determined on it, was Churchill.
50:01At dawn that morning, the Germans swept into Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg.
50:06The war was at last coming very close home to Britain.
50:14As the Allied armies braced themselves for battle,
50:16Chamberlain went to the palace to resign
50:18and advised the king to send for Churchill.
50:22Churchill would be a gamble,
50:24and perhaps when you're at a very serious moment of your lives,
50:29a gamble is not the thing to undertake.
50:31And so it was with great despair that we all heard
50:36on the evening of the 10th of May that the king had sent for Churchill.
50:59MUSIC PLAYS
51:29MUSIC FADES
51:59MUSIC FADES