The Splendid and the Vile

CHAPTER 19

Force H

THE NIGHT WAS EXCEPTIONALLY DARK, WITH ALMOST NO MOON; a brisk wind shook the windows at 10 Downing Street. Churchill needed the counsel of a friend—a decisive, clear-eyed friend.

It was just after midnight when he called Beaverbrook to the Cabinet Room. There was no doubt that Beaverbrook would still be awake and alert. As minister of aircraft production, he kept the same hours as Churchill, prodding and cajoling his staff to find ways to get Britain’s aircraft factories to accelerate production. Beaverbrook’s brief insurrection had been a schoolboy’s pout aimed at eliciting Churchill’s support against the Air Ministry, rather than a serious attempt at abandoning his job.

Already present for the meeting were Churchill’s top two Admiralty men, First Lord A. V. Alexander and his operations chief, First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound. There was tension in the room. The matter of what to do about the French fleet had come down to a yes or no question—whether or not to attempt to seize the fleet to keep it out of Hitler’s hands. The Royal Navy was poised to execute a newly devised plan for “the simultaneous seizure, control, or effective disablement of all the accessible French fleet,” meaning any ships in such English ports as Plymouth and Southampton, as well as those moored at French bases in Dakar, Alexandria, and Mers el-Kébir, in Algeria. One element of the plan, code-named Operation Catapult, focused on the most important base, Mers el-Kébir, and a smaller annex three miles away at Oran, where some of the French navy’s most powerful ships lay at anchor, among them two modern battle cruisers, two battleships, and twenty-one other ships and submarines.

Time was short. These ships could sail any day, and once under the control of Germany, would shift the balance of power at sea, especially in the Mediterranean. No one expected for a moment that Hitler would adhere to his promise to leave the French fleet idle for the duration of the war. An ominous development seemed to confirm the Admiralty’s fears: British intelligence learned that the Germans now possessed and were using French naval codes.

Once Operation Catapult got underway, Churchill knew, its commander might have to use force if the French did not willingly relinquish or disable their ships. The man placed in charge was Vice Admiral Sir J. F. Somerville, who earlier had met with his superiors in London to discuss the plan. For Somerville, the idea of firing on the French was deeply unsettling. Britain and France had been allies; together they had declared war against Germany, and their troops had fought side by side, enduring thousands of casualties in the vain attempt to stop Hitler’s onslaught. And then there was the fact that the officers and crew on the French ships were fellow navy men. Sailors of all nations, even when at war, felt a strong kinship to one another, as brothers for whom the sea, with all its rigors and dangers, was a common opponent. They recognized a duty to rescue anyone cast adrift, whether by mishap, storm, or warfare. On Monday afternoon, Somerville had telegraphed the Admiralty, urging “that the use of force should be avoided at all costs.”

He was prepared, however, to carry out his orders to the fullest, and he possessed the wherewithal to do so. The Admiralty had placed under his command a persuasive battle fleet, code-named Force H, consisting of seventeen ships, including a battle cruiser, HMS Hood, and an aircraft carrier, HMS Ark Royal. By Monday night, when Churchill summoned Beaverbrook, the force was already gathered at Gibraltar, ready to sail for Mers el-Kébir.

All Admiral Somerville needed now was a final order.

AT 10 DOWNING STREET that blustery night, First Sea Lord Pound declared himself in favor of attacking the French ships. First Lord Alexander at first expressed uncertainty, but he soon sided with Pound. Churchill was still tormented. He called the matter “a hateful decision, the most unnatural and painful in which I have ever been concerned.” He needed Beaverbrook’s clarity.

And true to form, Beaverbrook showed no hesitation. He urged attack. There could be no doubt, he argued, that Hitler would appropriate the French ships, even if their captains and crews balked. “The Germans will force the French Fleet to join the Italians, thus taking command of the Mediterranean,” he said. “The Germans will force this by threatening to burn Bordeaux the first day the French refuse, the next day Marseilles, and the third day Paris.”

This persuaded Churchill, but just after he gave the order to proceed, the magnitude of what might soon unfold overwhelmed him. He grabbed Beaverbrook by the arm and dragged him into the garden behind 10 Downing Street. It was almost two A.M. The wind blew strong. Churchill sped through the garden, with Beaverbrook behind, struggling to keep up. Beaverbrook’s asthma spiked. As he stood wheezing and gulping air, Churchill affirmed that the only path was indeed attack, and began to weep.

Somerville received his final orders at 4:26 A.M., on Tuesday, July 2. The operation was to begin with the delivery of an ultimatum from Somerville to the French admiral in command at Mers el-Kébir, Marcel Gensoul, that set out three alternatives: to join Britain in fighting Germany and Italy; to sail to a British port; or to sail to a French port in the West Indies where the ships could be stripped of armament or transferred to the United States for safekeeping.

“If you refuse these fair offers,” Somerville’s message stated, “I must with profound regret require you to sink your ships within six hours. Finally, failing the above, I have the orders of His Majesty’s Government to use whatever force may be necessary to prevent your ships from falling into German or Italian hands.”

Force H left Gibraltar at dawn. That night, at ten fifty-five, Admiral Pound, at Churchill’s behest, telegraphed Somerville: “You are charged with one of the most disagreeable and difficult tasks that a British Admiral has ever been faced with, but we have complete confidence in you and rely on you to carry it out relentlessly.”

IN BERLIN THAT DAY, Tuesday, July 2, Hitler asked the commanders of his army, navy, and air force to evaluate the feasibility of a full-on invasion of Britain, the first concrete indication that he had begun seriously to contemplate such an attack.

Until now he had shown little interest in invasion. With the fall of France and the disarray of Britain’s army after Dunkirk, Hitler had assumed that Britain, in one way or another, would withdraw from the war. It was crucial that this happen, and soon. Britain was the last obstacle in the west, one Hitler needed to eliminate so that he could concentrate on his long-dreamed-of invasion of Soviet Russia and avoid a two-front war, a phenomenon for which the word-minting power of the German language did not fail: Zweifrontenkrieg. He believed that even Churchill, at some point, would have to acknowledge the folly of continuing to oppose him. The war in the west was, in Hitler’s view, all but over. “Britain’s position is hopeless,” he told his head of Army High Command, General Franz Halder. “The war is won by us. A reversal in the prospects of success is impossible.” So confident was Hitler that Britain would negotiate, he demobilized forty Wehrmacht divisions—25 percent of his army.

But Churchill was not behaving like a sane man. Hitler sent a series of indirect peace feelers through multiple sources, including the king of Sweden and the Vatican; all were rejected or ignored. To help avoid scuttling any opportunity for a peace deal, he forbade Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring from launching air raids against civilian districts of London. Invasion was a prospect he contemplated with anxiety and reluctance, and with good reason. Early studies conducted independently by the German navy well before Hitler himself began to ponder invasion highlighted grave obstacles, mostly centered on the fact that Germany’s relatively small navy was ill-equipped for any such enterprise. The army, too, saw dangerous hurdles.

Hitler’s uncertainty was evident in how he now couched this new request to his commanders. He emphasized that “the plan to invade England has not taken any definite shape” and that his request merely contemplated the possibility of such an invasion. He was definitive on one point, however: Any such invasion could succeed only if Germany first achieved complete air superiority over the RAF.

AT THREE A.M. ON Wednesday, July 3, as Admiral Somerville’s Force H neared Oran in the Mediterranean Sea, a destroyer in the group was sent out ahead with three officers, to open a communications channel with the French. Nearby stood the ruins of an ancient Roman town with the disconcerting name of Vulturia. Soon afterward, a message was sent to the French admiral in charge, Gensoul, requesting a meeting. The message began with a salvo of flattery: “The British Navy hopes that their proposals will enable you and the valiant and glorious French Navy to be by our side.” It assured the French admiral that if he chose to sail with the Royal Navy, “your ships would remain yours and no one need have anxiety for the future.”

The message closed: “A British Fleet is at sea off Oran waiting to welcome you.”

The admiral refused to meet with the British officers, who now sent him a written copy of the full ultimatum. The time was 9:35 A.M. Britain’s Admiral Somerville signaled the French: “We hope most sincerely that the proposals will be acceptable and that we shall have you by our side.”

Reconnaissance planes from the Ark Royal, the aircraft carrier assigned to Force H, reported signs that the French ships were preparing to sail, “raising steam and furling awnings.”

At ten A.M., the French admiral delivered a message affirming that he would never let the French ships fall under German control but also vowing, in light of the ultimatum, that his ships would fight back if the British used force. He repeated this vow an hour later, pledging to spare nothing to defend his fleet.

Tension mounted. At eleven-forty, the British sent a message stating that no French ship would be allowed to leave the harbor unless the terms of the ultimatum were accepted. British air reconnaissance reported further signs that the French fleet was getting ready to put to sea. The ships’ bridges were fully manned.

Admiral Somerville ordered that aircraft from the Ark Royal begin depositing mines at the mouth of the harbor.

Somerville was just about to send a message telling the French that he would begin bombarding their ships at two-thirty that afternoon when word arrived from the French admiral, agreeing to a face-to-face conference. By this point, Somerville suspected that the French were merely stalling for time, but he dispatched an officer all the same. The meeting, aboard the French flagship, Dunkerque, began at four-fifteen, by which time the French ships were fully primed to sail, with tugboats in position.

Somerville ordered the placement of more mines, these to be dropped in the nearby harbor at Oran.

ABOARD THE DUNKERQUE, the meeting went badly. The French admiral was “extremely indignant and angry,” according to the British emissary. The talk continued for an hour, achieving nothing.

IN LONDON, CHURCHILL AND the Admiralty grew impatient. The French admiral was clearly stalling for time, and so, it seemed, was Somerville. His reluctance to attack was understandable; nevertheless, the time for action had come. Nightfall was approaching. “There was nothing for it but to give [Somerville] a peremptory order to carry out the repugnant task without further question,” wrote Pug Ismay. “But all who were present when that message was drafted could not but feel sad and, in a sense, guilty.” Pug had initially opposed attacking the French fleet, out of both moral scruple and fear that France might declare war on Britain. “To kick a man when he is down is unattractive at any time,” he wrote. “But when the man is a friend who has already suffered grievously, it seems almost to border on infamy.”

The Admiralty wired Somerville, “Settle the matter quickly or you may have French reinforcements to deal with.”

At four-fifteen P.M., while the meeting aboard the Dunkerque was just getting underway, Somerville signaled the French that if they did not accept one of the options set out in the original British ultimatum by five-thirty, he would sink their ships.

Force H prepared for battle. The French did likewise. As the British emissary left the Dunkerque, he heard alarms behind him sounding “Action.” He reached his ship at five twenty-five P.M., five minutes before Somerville’s deadline.

The deadline came—and went.

IN PORTSMOUTH AND PLYMOUTH, where the operation to seize French ships was also underway, British forces faced little resistance. “The action was sudden and necessarily a surprise,” Churchill wrote. “Overwhelming force was employed, and the whole transaction showed how easily the Germans could have taken possession of any French warships lying in ports which they controlled.”

Churchill described the action in British ports as having been mostly “amicable,” with some French crews actually glad to leave their ships behind. One vessel resisted—the Surcouf, an immense submarine named for an eighteenth-century French privateer. As a British squad raced aboard, the French sought to burn manuals and scuttle the submarine. Gunfire left one French sailor dead, three British. The Surcouf surrendered.

IN THE MEDITERRANEAN OFF Mers el-Kébir, Admiral Somerville at last gave the order to open fire. The time was 5:54 P.M., nearly a half hour past his deadline. His ships were positioned at “maximum visibility range” of 17,500 yards, just shy of ten miles.

The first salvo fell short. The second struck a breakwater, blasting loose chunks of concrete, some of which struck the French ships. The third was on target. A large French battleship, the Bretagne, with a crew of twelve hundred men, exploded, sending a great orange plume of fire and smoke hundreds of feet into the sky. A destroyer also blew up. Smoke filled the harbor, blocking the view of British spotters aboard their ships and in the air.

One minute after the British began firing, the French began to fire back, using big shipboard guns and other heavy guns on shore. Their shells fell closer and closer to the British ships, as their gunners adjusted their aim.

Somerville sent a message by wireless to London: “Am being heavily engaged.”

At 10 Downing Street, Churchill told First Lord Alexander that “the French were now fighting with all their vigor for the first time since war broke out.” Churchill fully expected France to declare war.

British shells struck another French battleship, drawing forth a cascade of orange flames. A large destroyer received a direct hit as it tried to flee the harbor.

In all, the ships of Force H fired thirty-six salvos of shells, each fifteen inches in diameter and packed with high explosives, until the French guns went quiet. Somerville gave the order to cease fire at 6:04 P.M., just ten minutes after the action began.

As the smoke cleared, Somerville saw that the battleship Bretagne had disappeared. The attack and the secondary actions killed 1,297 French officers and sailors. To the statistically inclined, that worked out to roughly 130 lives per minute. Nearly a thousand of the dead had been aboard the Bretagne. Somerville’s Force H suffered no casualties.

AT 10 DOWNING, news of the fighting began to arrive. Churchill paced his office, and kept repeating, “Terrible, terrible.”

The battle affected him deeply, as daughter Mary observed in her diary. “It is so terrible that we should be forced to fire on our own erstwhile allies,” she wrote. “Papa is shocked and deeply grieved that such action has been necessary.”

Strategically, the attack yielded obvious benefits, partially crippling the French navy, but to Churchill what mattered just as much or more was what it signaled. Until this point, many onlookers had assumed that Britain would seek an armistice with Hitler, now that France, Poland, Norway, and so many other countries had fallen under his sway, but the attack provided vivid, irrefutable proof that Britain would not surrender—proof to Roosevelt and proof, as well, to Hitler.

THE NEXT DAY, THURSDAY, July 4, Churchill revealed the story of Mers el-Kébir to the House of Commons, telling it as a kind of maritime thriller, recounting the battle as it had unfolded, in direct terms, not shying from details. He called it a “melancholy action” but one whose necessity was beyond challenge. “I leave the judgment of our action, with confidence, to Parliament. I leave it to the nation, and I leave it to the United States. I leave it to the world and to history.”

The House roared its approval, rising in a wild tumult, Labour, Liberals, and Conservatives alike. Churchill’s great trick—one he had demonstrated before, and would demonstrate again—was his ability to deliver dire news and yet leave his audience feeling encouraged and uplifted. “Fortified” is how Harold Nicolson put it in his diary that day. Despite the grim circumstances, and the grimmer potential that France might now declare war on Britain, Nicolson felt something akin to elation. “If we can stick it,” he wrote, “we really shall have won the war. What a fight it is! What a chance for us! Our action against the French Fleet has made a tremendous effect throughout the world. I am as stiff as can be.”

The applause lasted for several minutes. Churchill wept. Amid the tumult, John Colville overheard him say, “This is heartbreaking for me.”

The public applauded as well. The Home Intelligence survey for July 4 reported that news of the attack “has been received in all Regions with satisfaction and relief … It is felt that this strong action gives welcome evidence of Government vigor and decision.” A Gallup Poll for July 1940 found that 88 percent of Britons approved of the prime minister.

Within the Admiralty itself, however, there was condemnation. The senior officers involved in the attack called it “an act of sheer treachery.” French naval officers sent Somerville a scathing letter that, according to Pug Ismay, accused the admiral “of having brought disgrace on the whole naval profession.” Outwardly, Somerville seemed to brush off the rebuke, but, wrote Ismay, “I am sure it cut him to the quick.”

The episode caused a tense moment over lunch at Downing Street soon afterward. Word came to Clementine that one of the expected guests, General Charles de Gaulle, now lodged in England, was in an even more obstreperous mood than usual, and that she should make sure everyone at lunch was on their best behavior. Pamela Churchill was among those invited.

At Clementine’s end of the table, the conversation lurched into dangerous territory. She told de Gaulle that she hoped the French fleet would now join with Britain in the fight against Germany. “To this,” Pamela recalled, “the General curtly replied that, in his view, what would really give the French fleet satisfaction would be to turn their guns ‘On you!’” Meaning against the British fleet.

Clementine liked de Gaulle, but, keenly aware of how deeply her husband grieved having to sink the French ships, she now rounded on the general and, in her perfect French, took him to task “for uttering words and sentiments that ill became either an ally or a guest in this country,” as Pamela put it.

Churchill, at the far side of the table, sought to dispel the tension. He leaned forward and, in an apologetic tone, in French, said, “You must excuse my wife, my General; she speaks French too well.”

Clementine glared at Churchill.

“No, Winston,” she snapped.

She turned back to de Gaulle and, again in French, said, “That is not the reason. There are certain things that a woman can say to a man that a man cannot say. And I am saying them to you, General de Gaulle.”

The next day, by way of apology, de Gaulle sent her a large basket of flowers.

CHAPTER 20

Berlin

HITLER WAS SERIOUS ABOUT SEEKING AN AGREEMENT WITH Britain that would end the war, though he grew convinced that no such thing could be achieved while Churchill was still in power. Britain’s attack on the French fleet at Mers el-Kébir had proved that beyond doubt. In July, Hitler met with his deputy, Rudolf Hess, and told him of his frustration, conveying his “wish” that Hess find a way of engineering the removal of Churchill as prime minister so as to clear a path for negotiations with a presumably more pliable successor. As Hess saw it, Hitler was assigning him the great mandate of securing peace in the west.

To Hess, it was a welcome honor. For a time, he had been closer to Hitler than any other party member. For eight years he served as Hitler’s private secretary, and, following the abortive Nazi putsch of 1923, was incarcerated with Hitler at Landsberg Prison, where Hitler began writing Mein Kampf. Hess typed the manuscript. Hess understood that a central tenet of Hitler’s geopolitical strategy set out in the book was the importance of peace with Britain, and he knew how strongly Hitler believed that in the prior war Germany had made a fatal mistake in provoking Britain to fight. Hess considered himself so much in tune with Hitler that he could execute his will without being commanded to do so. Hess hated Jews, and orchestrated many restrictions on Jewish life. He cast himself as the embodiment of the Nazi spirit and made himself responsible for perpetuating national adoration of Hitler and ensuring party purity.

But with the advent of war, Hess began to lose prominence, and men like Hermann Göring began to ascend. To have Hitler now assign so important an undertaking must certainly have reassured Hess. There was little time, however. With France now fallen, Britain must either agree to stand down or face extinction. One way or another, Churchill had to be removed from office.

In his conversation with Hess, Hitler expressed his frustration at Britain’s intransigence in a way that, given events soon to occur, would seem at least superficially prophetic.

“What more can I do?” Hitler asked. “I can’t fly over there and beg on bended knee.”