Churchill's Hour by Michael Dobbs Read Free Book Online Page A

useless, little more than rusting barges with clappedout engines and rotting hulls—although someone had taken the trouble to ensure that the washrooms were equipped with towels and fresh soap. When would the Americans learn? You couldn’t fight a war with clean hands.
In the last war the United States sent two million men across the Atlantic. But this is not a war of vast armies firing immense masses of shells at one another. We do not need the gallant armies which are forming throughout the American union. We do not need them this year, nor next year, nor any year that I can foresee.
    He swallowed his shame, telescope to unseeing eye, even as he uttered these profound deceits. He had no choice. Step by step, as he had explained to Randolph. He had to pretend to be at one with Roosevelt, to be alongside him, joined to him at the hip—otherwise he would never be able to lead him astray.
In order to win the war, Hitler must destroy Great Britain. He may carry havoc into the Balkan States. He may tear great provinces out of Russia…
    Yes, an attack on Russia, that would happen some time, of that Churchill was certain. It was the nature of the Nazi beast, couldn’t restrain itself. But when? Would it be in time to save Britain?
He may march to the Caspian; he may march to the gates of India. All this will avail him nothing. It may spread his curse more widely throughout Europe and Asia, but it will not avert his doom. With every month that passes the many proud and once happy countries he is now holding down by brute force and vile intrigue are learning to hate the Prussian yoke and the Nazi name as nothing has ever been hated so fiercely and so widely among men before. And all the time, masters of the sea and air, the British Empire—nay, in a certain sense the whole English-speaking world—will be on his track, bearing with them the swords of justice.
    â€˜In a certain sense the whole English-speaking world’? In what sense, pray? Roosevelt and his Americans might pretend they were up to wielding the sword of justice, but the last place they intended to bury it was deep inside the guts of the German war machine.
The other day President Roosevelt gave his opponent in the late presidential election a letter of introduction to me, and in it he wrote out a verse in his own handwriting from Longfellow, which he said applies to you people as it does to us. Here is the verse:
Sail on, O Ship of State!
    Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
    Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
    Roosevelt was sending poetry and bars of soap when what Churchill wanted was guns, more guns and bloody shells! But he must turn it, use the cascade of words to excite the passions and dull their wits, to avert their gaze so that he could launch his monstrous deception…
What is the answer that I shall give, in your name, to this great man, the thrice-chosen head of a nation of a hundred and thirty millions? Here is the answer I shall give to President Roosevelt.
    Put your confidence in us. Give us your faith and your blessing and, under Providence, all will be well. We shall not fail or falter. We shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle nor the longdrawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down.
    He paused for the briefest moment. His voice lifted.
Give us the tools—and we will finish the job!
    Oh, it was true Churchillian splendour, rhetoric that rang around the world. Yet he meant not a word. It was a promise he never had the smallest intention of keeping. Like blossom before the frost, it would vanish before the day was done. The bombardment of words was intended for one purpose only, to encourage the Americans to move forward an inch upon a slippery slope. After that, he would drag them the other three thousand miles.

THREE
    The blue waters of the Mediterranean had been turned into a shooting range, one in which the enemy