Churchill Takes Charge
By Williamson Murray

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But Churchill’s political difficulties would pale in comparison to what he was to confront in the strategic and military realms.

On May 10, 1940, the day Churchill took office, the Germans came west with a vengeance. Over the previous six years the West had lost every advantage it once held over Nazi Germany. Moreover, the refusal of Allied governments to undertake any significant military actions against the Reich since its declaration of war on Sept. 3, 1939, had allowed Germany to husband its strength for one great blow. That blow fell during Fall Gelb (Case Yellow), code name for the spring 1940 offensive. Though the Germans left less than half a dozen divisions along the border with Soviet-occupied Poland, the Soviets would stand by and watch the Western Front vanish.

Germany held only marginal advantages in ground strength, but the Luftwaffe boasted air superiority on the Continent, as many of the Allies’ most advanced aircraft were committed to the defense of the United Kingdom. One lasting myth is that France collapsed before the German onslaught with little opposition. In fact, most French soldiers fought tenaciously: More than 100,000 of them would die pour la patrie during the Battle of France. Due to appallingly bad leadership at every level of the French military, however, their efforts were for naught.

In March 1940, French commander in chief Maurice Gamelin, among the most arrogantly incompetent generals in French history, transferred the army’s main reserve from the Reims area, where it was ideally positioned to smash into the main German line of advance through the Ardennes, to the far west of the Allied line, where it was to play no significant role. On May 12, three German panzer corps arrived on the banks of the Meuse. Over the next three days, they achieved one of history’s most decisive tactical victories, which ultimately led to the Fall of France.

Churchill’s first inkling of the unfolding disaster came on May 15, when, as he later recalled in his memoirs, he received a despairing call from French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud: “We have been defeated. We are beaten. We have lost the battle. The road to Paris is open. We are defeated.” The British immediately dispatched to France four more Hurricane fighter squadrons. The next day, as bad news continued to pour in, Churchill flew to Paris to meet with Reynaud and Gamelin. Churchill first asked in English, “Where is the strategic reserve?” and then in his appallingly bad French, “Où est la masse de manoeuvre?” Gamelin’s one-word reply, “Aucune!” (none), was an admission of strategic and operational bankruptcy.

Churchill then faced the difficult task of bucking up a deeply discouraged French leadership that was certain of its pending defeat—a correct assumption at least as far as metropolitan France was concerned. That growing defeatism at the highest levels only deepened when Reynaud fired Gamelin, replaced him with General Maxime Weygand and recalled aged French Marshal Philippe Pétain from his position as French ambassador to Spain. Both soon participated in efforts to undermine the Reynaud government and seek an armistice with the Germans. Thus, Churchill also confronted the hard reality that Britain’s main ally was faltering in its willingness to pursue the war, while on the home front Halifax was insisting both within and outside the cabinet that the military situation was hopeless and Britain must cut a deal with the Nazis before it was too late.

The most obvious aid the British could provide was to send further fighter squadrons to reinforce a French air force that had begun its rearmament far too late, was being badly battered by the Luftwaffe and was losing bases in northern France to onrushing German panzer divisions. But every squadron Britain sent to France diminished its own defenses. Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, the head of Royal Air Force (RAF) Fighter Command, vehemently resisted sending his squadrons to France. On May 20, Churchill, who unlike U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt was never to overrule his military advisers during the course of the war, bowed to Dowding’s strong protests.

Tags: Historical Figures, Military Technology, World War II

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