Churchill Takes Charge

Churchill was now in firm control of the political landscape. His rhetoric had reached deep into the soul of the British people. Even many Tory members of parliament, who might have supported Halifax in May when Churchill first took over, had by mid-June rallied around their prime minister. But Churchill still faced the most daunting question: How was Britain—standing alone, even if united—to win the war?

Here Churchill’s deep sense of history and human nature came into play. The prime minister recognized the Third Reich for what it was: not only a terrible strategic danger to Britain but also a moral one. There could be no compromise. From Churchill’s perspective, the strategic interests of the United States and the Soviet Union also could not allow Germany free rein over much of Europe. The prime minister had his work cut out for him with regard to the Soviet Union, given his longstanding, open animosity toward the Bolshevik regime. But the Soviets represented no immediate threat, while the Nazis were a clear and present danger. Churchill was willing to suspend his views on Bolshevism.

The prime minister sent Sir Stafford Cripps, the British ambassador to the Soviet Union and an ideological Marxist, to Moscow in an effort to persuade the Communists that their interests lay in opposing the Nazis. The Soviets, however, refused to see the obvious. On June 18, 1940, the day after France fell, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov extended to the German government “the warmest congratulations of the Soviet government on the splendid successes of the German Wehrmacht.” One year and four days later, on the morning of June 22, 1941, he would bemoan the onset of the German invasion of the Soviet Union to the German ambassador: “What have we done to deserve this?” In truth he was right; the Soviet Union had done everything it could over the course of the past year to appease Nazi Germany, including massive infusions of raw materials into the German war economy. In fact, the last Soviet goods train would cross into German territory barely two hours before the start of Operation Barbarossa. While Churchill had not managed to thwart the misalliance between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, he had correctly forecast that their marriage of convenience would not last long.

Accord with the Americans represented a more pressing need. Britain would soon exhaust its foreign currency reserves, thus losing its ability to foot the enormous production costs the war was already imposing, much less the projected vast expansion of the RAF and Royal Navy. The United States alone possessed the financial and productive capacity to keep Britain in the war.

From the moment Churchill became prime minister, he engaged the Roosevelt administration in a delicate diplomatic dance. The U.S. president was himself in a precarious political position, as he was about to announce his candidacy for an unprecedented third term. Moreover, many Americans believed the United States should not entangle itself in Europe’s difficulties. Isolationist leaders like Charles Lindbergh vociferously denounced virtually every move the administration made to support the Allies. While more Americans believed the United States should support the British and French economically, many of them were also opposed to any direct American intervention in the war.

As the French free fall accelerated in late May 1940, Roosevelt and his chief advisers seemed to have concluded Britain would soon follow. Spurring this belief was Joseph Kennedy, the pro-appeasement American ambassador to the Court of St. James, who insisted the British had little chance against the Nazi war machine and would quit the minute the Churchill government folded. Roosevelt and his military advisers especially feared that the Axis might gain control of the Royal Navy and French fleet and add them to the Kriegsmarine and Italian navy. Such a force would threaten the U.S. Atlantic Fleet at the same time the Imperial Japanese Navy posed a significant threat in the Pacific. The United States had ramped up naval warship production in 1938, but the fruits of that effort wouldn’t be available until 1942 at the earliest. Thus, Roosevelt’s initial communications with Churchill urged the prime minister to send the Royal Navy to Canada to work in coordination with the U.S. Navy, if and when—emphasis on when —the British position collapsed.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to