Churchill Takes Charge
By Williamson Murray

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Churchill played hardball with his American cousins. He made it clear that as long as he was prime minister, Britain would remain committed to the war against the Third Reich. But his missives also suggested that without substantial American aid, Britain might not be able to continue the struggle. Kennedy was undoubtedly reporting that other British cabinet members desired to reach an accommodation with Nazi Germany. If they could drive Churchill from office, Britain would no longer be bound by any promises he might make to the U.S. Churchill admitted as much in a message to the Canadian prime minister that was deliberately forwarded to Roosevelt: Obviously, I cannot bind a future government which, if we were deserted by the United States and beaten down here, might very easily be a kind of [Norwegian collaborator Vidkun] Quisling affair, ready to accept German overlordship and protection. The warning was clear: Support us or face the possibility of a worldwide coalition of enemies with only Canada as an ally.

Churchill still had to persuade the Americans that Britain was in it for the long haul. His solution was as ruthless as it was strategically brilliant. In early July 1940, the Royal Navy determined to disarm the French fleet. The move was executed with minimum bloodshed in Alexandria and in British ports, but the main French fleet units in North Africa resisted the effort. On July 3, following fruitless negotiations at the Mers-el-Kébir naval base in Algeria, the Royal Navy’s Force H from Gibraltar unleashed a murderous salvo of 15-inch shells, destroying the French battleship Bretagne and heavily damaging the battleships Dunkerque and Provence , as well as the destroyer Mogador. Nearly 1,300 French sailors died in the attack. In retrospect, the British had probably overreacted, but given the exigencies of the moment, they had no choice.

Admiral Dudley Pound summed up the raison d’état of the British action to the French naval attaché shortly before the action: “The one action we had in view was winning the war.… All trivialities, such as questions of friendship…must be swept away.”

In a rousing speech before the House of Commons on July 4, the day after the attack, Churchill similarly defended the action—one that showed Britain could act as ruthlessly in defense of her interests as the Fascists and Nazis. The prime minister sat down to thunderous applause. The Conservative Party was now his. Moreover, Mers-el-Kébir proved Churchill’s mettle to the Americans. As Roosevelt adviser Harry Hopkins later confided to Churchill’s private secretary, John Colville, Mers-el-Kébir had persuaded the president that Britain would “stay in the fight, alone, and if necessary for years.” Teams of American officers would soon hold talks with British counterparts, while the administration took its first steps toward providing Britain with substantial aid.

Many challenges, including the Battle of Britain, lay before Churchill and his people. Nevertheless, in his first six weeks, the new prime minister had made a series of decisions that not only mobilized his own country to the terrible tasks that lay before it but also bolstered other democratic nations against the threat of Nazi tyranny. For that he certainly merits consideration as the 20th century’s greatest leader.

For further reading, Williamson Murray recommends: Winston S. Churchill: Finest Hour, 1939–1941 , by Martin Gilbert, and Ten Days to Destiny , by John Costello.

Sidebar: The Tragedy of the French Fleet

An excerpt from Churchill’s address to the House of Commons on July 4, 1940, the day after the attack on Mers-el-Kébir:

We are moving through a period of extreme danger and of splendid hope, when every virtue of our race will be tested, and all that we have and are will be freely staked. This is no time for doubt or weakness. It is the supreme hour to which we have been called.… [We shall] prosecute the war with the utmost vigor by all the means that are open to us until the righteous purposes for which we entered upon have been fulfilled.

Tags: Historical Figures, Military Technology, World War II

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