The Grand Alliance (75 page)

6

And according to Keitel:

Hitler’s main theme was that this was the decisive battle between the two ideologies and that this fact made it impossible to use in this war [with Russia]

methods, as we soldiers knew them, which were considered to be the only correct ones under international law.
7

On the evening of Friday, June 20, I drove down to Chequers alone. I knew that the German onslaught upon Russia was a matter of days, or it might be hours. I had arranged to deliver a broadcast on Saturday night dealing The Grand Alliance

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with this event. It would, of course, have to be in guarded terms. Moreover, at this time the Soviet Government, at once haughty and purblind, regarded every warning we gave as a mere attempt of beaten men to drag others into ruin. As the result of my reflections in the car, I put off the broadcast till Sunday night, when I thought all would be clear. Thus Saturday passed with its usual toil.

Five days earlier, on the fifteenth, I had cabled to President Roosevelt as follows:

Former

Naval

15 June 41

Person to President

Roosevelt

From every source at my disposal, including some
most trustworthy, it looks as if a vast German onslaught
on Russia was imminent. Not only are the main
German armies deployed from Finland to Rumania, but
the final arrivals of air and armoured forces are being
completed. The pocket-battleship Lutzow, which put her
nose out of the Skaggerak yesterday and was promptly
torpedoed by our coastal aircraft, was very likely going
north to give naval strength on the Arctic flank. Should
this new war break out, we shall, of course, give all
encouragement and any help we can spare to the
Russians, following the principle that Hitler is the foe we
have to beat. I do not expect any class political reactions here, and trust a German-Russian conflict will not
cause you any embarrassment.

The American Ambassador, who was my guest at the weekend, brought me the President’s answer to my message. He promised that if the Germans struck at Russia he would immediately support publicly “any announcement that the Prime Minister might make welcoming Russia as an ally.” Mr. Winant delivered this important reassurance verbally.

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When I awoke on the morning of Sunday, June 22, the news was brought to me of Hitler’s invasion of Russia. This changed conviction into certainty. I had not the slightest doubt where our duty and our policy lay. Nor indeed what to say. There only remained the task of composing it. I asked that notice should immediately be given that I would broadcast at nine o’clock that night. Presently General Dill, who had hastened down from London, came into my bedroom with detailed news. The Germans had invaded Russia on an enormous front, had surprised a large portion of the Soviet Air Force grounded on the airfields, and seemed to be driving forward with great rapidity and violence. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff added, “I suppose they will be rounded up in hordes.”

I spent the day composing my statement. There was not time to consult the War Cabinet; nor was it necessary. I knew that we all felt the same on this issue. Mr. Eden, Lord Beaverbrook, and Sir Stafford Cripps – he had left Moscow on the tenth – were also with me during the day.

The following account of this Sunday at Chequers by my private secretary, Mr. Colville, who was on duty this weekend, may be of interest:

On Saturday, June 21,I went down to Chequers just before dinner. Mr. and Mrs. Winant, Mr. and Mrs. Eden, and Edward Bridges were staying. During dinner Mr.

Churchill said that a German attack on Russia was now certain, and he thought that Hitler was counting on enlisting capitalist and Right Wing sympathies in this country and the U.S.A. Hitler was, however, wrong and The Grand Alliance

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we should go all out to help Russia. Winant said the same would be true of the U.S.A.

After dinner, when I was walking on the croquet lawn with Mr. Churchill, he reverted to this theme, and I asked whether for him, the arch anti-Communist, this was [not] bowing down in the House of Rimmon. Mr.

Churchill replied, “Not at all. I have only one purpose, the destruction of Hitler, and my life is much simplified thereby. If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.”

2. I was awoken at 4 A.M. the following morning by a telephone message from the F.O. to the effect that Germany had attacked Russia. The P.M. had always said that he was never to be woken up for anything but invasion [of England]. I therefore postponed telling him till 8 A.M. His only comment was, “Tell the B.B.C. I will broadcast at nine tonight.” He began to prepare the speech at 11 A.M., and except for luncheon, at which Sir Stafford Cripps, Lord Cranborne, and Lord Beaverbrook were present, he devoted the whole day to it. …

The speech was only ready at twenty minutes to nine.

In this broadcast I said:

The Nazi régime is indistinguishable from the worst features of Communism. It is devoid of all theme and principle except appetite and racial domination. It excels all forms of human wickedness in the efficiency of its cruelty and ferocious aggression. No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last twenty-five years. I will unsay no word that I have spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding. The past, with its crimes, its follies, and its tragedies, flashes away. I see the Russian soldiers standing on the threshold of their native land, guarding the fields which their fathers have tilled from time immemorial. I see them guarding their homes where mothers and wives pray – ah, yes, for there are times when all pray

– for the safety of their loved ones, the return of the bread-winner, of their champion, of their protector. I see The Grand Alliance

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the ten thousand villages of Russia where the means of existence is wrung so hardly from the soil, but where there are still primordial human joys, where maidens laugh and children play. I see advancing upon all this in hideous onslaught the Nazi war machine, with its clanking, heel-clicking, dandified Prussian officers, its crafty expert agents fresh from the cowing and tying-down of a dozen countries. I see also the dull, drilled, docile, brutish masses of the Hun soldiery plodding on like a swarm of crawling locusts. I see the German bombers and fighters in the sky, still smarting from many a British whipping, delighted to find what they believe is an easier and a safer prey.

Behind all this glare, behind all this storm, I see that small group of villainous men who plan, organise, and launch this cataract of horrors upon mankind….

I have to declare the decision of His Majesty’s Government – and I feel sure it is a decision in which the great Dominions will in due course concur – for we must speak out now at once, without a day’s delay. I have to make the declaration, but can you doubt what our policy will be? We have but one aim and one single, irrevocable purpose. We are resolved to destroy Hitler and every vestige of the Nazi régime. From this nothing will turn us – nothing. We will never parley, we will never negotiate with Hitler or any of his gang. We shall fight him by land, we shall fight him by sea, we shall fight him in the air, until, with God’s help, we have rid the earth of his shadow and liberated its peoples from his yoke. Any man or state who fights on against Nazidom will have our aid. Any man or state who marches with Hitler is our foe…. That is our policy and that is our declaration. It follows, therefore, that we shall give whatever help we can to Russia and the Russian people. We shall appeal to all our friends and allies in every part of the world to take the same course and pursue it, as we shall faithfully and steadfastly to the end….

This is no class war, but a war in which the whole British Empire and Commonwealth of Nations is engaged, without distinction of race, creed, or party. It is not for me to speak of the action of the United States, The Grand Alliance

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but this I will say, if Hitler imagines that his attack on Soviet Russia will cause the slightest divergence of aims or slackening of effort in the great democracies who are resolved upon his doom, he is woefully mistaken. On the contrary, we shall be fortified and encouraged in our efforts to rescue mankind from his tyranny.

We shall be strengthened and not weakened in determination and in resources.

This is no time to moralise on the follies of countries and Governments which have allowed themselves to be struck down one by one, when by united action they could have saved themselves and saved the world from this catastrophe. But when I spoke a few minutes ago of Hitler’s blood-lust and the hateful appetites which have impelled or lured him on his Russian adventure, I said there was one deeper motive behind his outrage. He wishes to destroy the Russian power because he hopes that if he succeeds in this he will be able to bring back the main strength of his army and air force from the East and hurl it upon this island, which he knows he must conquer or suffer the penalty of his crimes. His invasion of Russia is no more than a prelude to an attempted invasion of the British Isles. He hopes, no doubt, that all this may be accomplished before the winter comes, and that he can overwhelm Great Britain before the Fleet and air power of the United States may intervene. He hopes that he may once again repeat, upon a greater scale than ever before, that process of destroying his enemies one by one by which he has so long thrived and prospered, and that then the scene will be clear for the final act, without which all his conquests would be in vain
–

namely, the subjugation of the Western Hemisphere to his will and to his system.

The Russian danger is, therefore, our danger, and the danger of the United States, just as the cause of any Russian fighting for his hearth and home is the cause of free men and free peoples in every quarter of the globe. Let us learn the lessons already taught by such cruel experience. Let us redouble our exertions, The Grand Alliance

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and strike with united strength while life and power remain.

END OF BOOK ONE

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Book Two

War Comes to America