The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson Read Free Book Online

“I was most ashamed and horrified,” she wrote in her diary. “Mummie & I had to go & have lunch at the Carlton. Good food wrecked by gloom.”
    A visit to church presented Clementine with another opportunity to express her indignation. On Sunday, May 19, she attended a service at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the famed Anglican church in Trafalgar Square, and there heard a minister deliver a sermon that struck her as being inappropriately defeatist. She stood up and stormed from the church. Upon arriving at 10 Downing, she told her husband the story.
    Churchill said, “You ought to have cried ‘Shame,’ desecrating the House of God with lies!”
    Churchill then traveled to Chartwell, the family home outside London, to work on his first radio broadcast as prime minister, and to spend a few peaceful moments beside his pond, feeding his goldfish and a black swan.
    There had been other swans, but foxes had killed them.
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    A NEW TELEPHONE CALL from France drew Churchill back to London. The situation was growing dramatically worse, the French army wilting. Despite the grave news, Churchill seemed unfazed, and this caused a further warming in Jock Colville’s attitude toward his new employer. In his diary that Sunday, Colville wrote, “Whatever Winston’s shortcomings, he seems to be the man for the occasion. His spirit is indomitable and even if France and England should be lost, I feel he would carry on the crusade himself with a band of privateers.”
    He added: “Perhaps my judgments of him have been harsh, but the situation was very different a few weeks ago.”
    At a four-thirty meeting of his War Cabinet, Churchill learned that the commander in chief of Britain’s forces in France was contemplating a withdrawal toward the channel coast, identifying in particular the port city of Dunkirk. Churchill opposed the idea. He feared that the force would be trapped and destroyed.
    Churchill made the decision that, in fact, no fighter aircraft would be sent to France. With that country’s fate now seeming so tenuous, there was little point, and every fighter was needed in England to defend against the coming invasion.
    He worked on his radio speech until the last minute, from six to nine that night, before settling himself in front of a BBC microphone.
    “I speak to you for the first time as Prime Minister in a solemn hour for the life of our country,” he began.
    He explained how the Germans had broken through the French line, using a “remarkable” combination of aircraft and tanks. However, he said, the French had proven themselves in the past to be adept at raising counteroffensives, and this talent, in tandem with the power and skill of the British Army, could turn the situation around.
    The speech set a pattern that he would follow throughout the war, offering a sober appraisal of facts, tempered with reason for optimism.
    “It would be foolish to disguise the gravity of the hour,” he said. “It would be still more foolish to lose heart and courage.”
    He left out completely any reference to the possibility, discussed just a few hours earlier with his War Cabinet, that Britain might withdraw the BEF from France.
    Next he addressed his main reason for giving the speech: to warn his countrymen of what lay ahead. “After this battle in France abates its force there will come the battle for our Islands, for all that Britain is and all that Britain means,” he said. “In that supreme emergency we shall not hesitate to take every step—even the most drastic—to call forth from our people the last ounce and inch of effort of which they are capable.”
    The speech terrified some listeners, but Churchill’s apparent candor—at least on the threat of invasion, if not the true state of the French army—encouraged others, according to the Home Intelligence division of the Ministry of Information. The division went to great lengths to monitor public opinion and morale, publishing weekly reports that drew from