The Rest Is History - 43. 1940

Episode Date: April 15, 2021

It is arguably the most important year in modern history. With the British Expeditionary Force trapped at Dunkirk, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain replaced by the maverick Winston Churchill and France collapsing under the force of invasion, the world watched and waited to see which way the axis of power would tilt. James Holland, leading historian of the period, joins his brother Tom and Dominic Sandbrook to discuss the events of 1940. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestish, toil, tears and sweat. And of course, 45 minutes of podcasting gold. The words of Winston Churchill, spoken on the floor of the House of Commons on the 13th of May 1940. The Nazi war machine was on the march. France faced collapse under the impact of the German blitzkrieg. The British

expeditionary force retreated to the beach at Dunkirk, surrounded and desperate. The little ships were on their way. Hitler was beginning the preparations for Operation Sealer. Dominic, calm down! The invasion of Britain. Britain stood alone and saved the world.

You know this story better than you know your own names. 1940, perhaps the most consequential, most romanticised, perhaps most mythologised year in recent history. So welcome to The Rest is History. Sometimes we take a wide and rigorous perspective when we look at the history of China or Persia. Sometimes we narrow our focus to a single year, 1940s we're doing now, and indulge in some of these myths or perhaps debunk them. So today we're going to be joined by Tom's brother, James Holland, as if one Holland is not enough. James has written extensively about 1940s, written countless books about the Second World War. And he also presents our brilliant sister podcast, our little sister podcast, as Tom and I like to call it. We Have Ways of Making You Talk with the comedian Al Murray.

James, Tom, Hollands, welcome. Well, thank you, Dominic. And it's very exciting to be on and a big fan. So I'm an avid listener. I really enjoyed your 17th century one. Particularly enjoyed the Prime Minister's. That was absolutely fascinating. Prompted me to go and try and find out a little bit more.

And I also enjoyed the one about entertainment and board games and everything. Great. Well, thank you for listening to The Rest is History. And we'll be back next week with... Can I ask you, what did you make of Dominic's, frankly, histrionic and melodramatic introduction there? Because he was indulging every myth, wasn't he? And knowing you as I do, I know that there's going to be a fair bit of myth busting coming up about the summer of 1940.

Yeah, but 1940 is still, I mean, the one thing that isn't a myth is just how important it was and how pivotal it was. And, you know, for me, 1940 is just, important it was and how pivotal it was um and you know for me 1940 is just you know it's the daddy year really so can you just give us um just give us a very kind of brief 30 second run through of the greatest hits what are the the absolutely big moments in this this year so so it starts off with the phony war nothing really happening um uh war at sea and that's about it, economic blockade by the Royal Navy of Germany, Battle of Atlanta just starting. And then the British and the French decide to go and stop production of Swedish iron ore reaching Germany.

And at exactly the same time, Germany decides to go and invade Denmark and Holland, which is the first part of April 1940. It goes very badly wrong for the Germans at sea. It goes very, very well for them on land. And then Hitler launches his assault on the West on the 10th of May, 1940, which is the day after Chamberlain has been forced to resign as Prime Minister of Great Britain.

And this is the big strategic earthquake of the Second World War, really, because what happens is German forces sweep into the Low Countries, into Belgium and Holland, and into France, and the French army, which is bigger than the Germans and certainly has more tanks, more artillery pieces, and parity with air power, actually loses and just gets crushed in six weeks.

The British, who have a very, very small army, the British Expeditionary Force, which is part of the Western Allied Forces opposing the Germans, has to kind of fall back in line with the Belgium and French allies either side of them, gets trapped at Dunkirk, has to retreat. And it all looks like the Germans are all conquering master race and unstoppable. And the only thing that sort of the Germans don't complete the capture of France. And then they start thinking about how they're going to get to bring Britain to heel. And so it begins a battle in Britain, which the Luftwaffe loses very badly.

And so that's the end of it. And what that means is that Britain's continuing in the fight. It means for Germany, it's got a massive problem on its hand because Britain is still fighting, which means it can't turn east really without fighting on two fronts, which in the last war in 1914, 1918 was one of its biggest problems. And, you know, Germany is caught up in the middle of Europe and is resource poor and all the rest of it. And so it has a massive problem on its hands. So that is why the middle of Europe and is resource poor and all the rest of it and so has a massive problem on its hands so that is why the Battle of Britain in 1940 is so kind of so pivotal really. Wow that's a masterful survey can we take you back right to the beginning so none of nobody can see this happening right no one can see this coming you're talking about the phony war the

British and French are basically kind of sitting tight at the beginning of 1940 they don't really have a plan to knock out the Germans. I mean, they've gone into the war to save Poland, which they've manifestly failed to do. Stalin has kind of entered the war at the other extreme. He's taken his bit of Poland. He's eyeing up the Baltic states. Well, they've not promised to save Poland. What they've done is they've promised to defend its sovereignty,

but that doesn't really mean the same. That doesn't mean we're going to storm in and um through germany and attack you know they've left that quite opaque exactly but that's the point they don't really seem to have a plan about how they're going to win this war that they've that they've now entered right yeah it's really interesting because at the highest level france and britain kind of underestimate the strength of Germany. You know, they look at them and they go, well, they can't possibly do this.

You know, they just simply don't have the strength. And yet at the same time, you have the commander-in-chief of the French Air Force, the Armie de l'Air, is also completely terrified before the war even begins about the strength of the Luftwaffe and has a completely false idea of how strong it is. There's actually nothing like the strength. And the British as well. The bomber always gets through. There's actually nothing like the strength of the Luftwaffe. And the British as well.

The bomber always gets through. There's terror about what the impact might be on civilian populations. Yes, and of course, this is because air power is still so new and it's developing so fast and no one quite knows what it's going to look like when you apply air power in any kind of strength in a new conflict.

So there's lots of things which are kind of sort of slightly paradoxical because on the one hand, they're quite complacent and on the other hand, they're kind of sort of shitting themselves at the same time. So it's kind of, and this actually goes with what you're saying, Dominic, that there is no kind of quite clear strategy or quite clear plan. And one of the big problems is that Britain and France are confirmed allies. You know, they've signed up to a deal.

The problem is, particularly with French as as um anyone who's read the dark valley will know um french politics is is just completely um split you know that it's it's one coalition government after the other the problem with military power is if you don't have political power at the top strong political leadership you don't tend not to have strong military leadership and what tends to happen is you have one of a it goes one of what one of two ways either the military revolts and forms a kind of coup which ultimately is what happens with patan um and the fall of france in june 1940 um or it just becomes not very effective which is what happens in may in april and may 1940 and if you don't have that strong political leadership, it's really, really hard for the military to work.

And that is really the failing in 1939, where the French army, which is huge, and has a standing army of kind of 1.2 million, and within about 48 hours can be about 3.5 million, something like that. I'm talking slightly off the top of my head. You're talking millions. But the problem is, bro, is that they can't,

you know, they're perfectly capable of going into western germany into the rhineland going up the backside of germany while germany's forces are uh diverted in poland and and and it's all over but there is not the political will to let that happen and there is actually what's really interesting when you look at french french soldiers and you look at french accounts of uh memoirs and letters and stuff from 1939, they're really up for it. They're really, really gung-ho, which is in sharp contrast to what happens in Manchurian 1940. So in the British context, is it that sense that really we should be more proactive that leads to the coup against Chamberlain that then brings Churchill to power?

What's going on there? Yeah, so there is... Okay, so at the start of the war, the whole point is that France is going to do the army bit because it's got a massive land power. That's not what we do. We do naval power and we do burgeoning air power. And we have a very, very small standing army

and that's really traditional and goes back all the way back to way back when. And, you know, the reason why the Royal Navy is a senior service is because it is the senior service of the three. army and that's that's really traditional goes back all the way back to way back when and you know the reason why the royal navy is a senior service is because it is the senior service of the three and it is absolutely huge it is the world's largest in 1939 and indeed in 1940 what what happens in the reason why chamberlain goes is go is forced out of office is not because of the phony war it's because there's been so much faffing around, neither France or Britain can decide what their strategy should be.

And the reason the French can't decide is because largely because, you know, it's very simplistic, but in simplistic terms, because of their coalition warfare, where they're going to, you know, their coalition politics, which they can just can't decide anything.

So that then has a knock-on effect if you're an ally, because then you can't agree anything. So, you know, it is Churchill, for example, who says, I suggest that we go and you know um mine the leads into um into norway right in the north of norway which is through which um swedish iron ore gets transported down to germany and he suggests that in 19 in september 1939 it's quite a good idea in september 1939 but it's a really bad idea by april 1940 because you know everything's changed it's just they've just been faffing around too long no one no one can make a mind their mind up and so everyone gets frustrated about that and

then what happens is that Germany then goes into invades um Denmark and Norway at precisely the same time that the the mining operation is just about to about to begin and on on the ground which is what catches the news headlines and where you get the footage you know the film footage and all the rest of it rather than out at sea which is out at sea where no one can see. You know, the Germans are all conquering. And so we've been faffing around, nothing's happened. There's a sense that we've kind of missed an opportunity to give the Germans a bloody nose when we had the opportunity

in the autumn of 1939. We've left it too late. We've missed the bus. And consequently, through the ineptitude of our political leadership, we've now been defeated on the ground in Norway. And the Germans have got a big foothold. And they kind of sort of ignore the fact that the Luftwaffe, sorry, the Kriegsmarine, the German Navy,

has had a massive bloody nose at the hands of the Royal Navy, particularly in the Norway battle. But that is what forces Chamberlain to go out. It's also that classic example of political leadership being as much about image as it is about substance isn't it though james i mean chamberlain doesn't you see this in people's diaries in the spring of 1940 chamberlain doesn't exude the air of a war leader so he's sort of reading us and his kind of beacon us and his i mean he's he he says his umbrella i've always been a man of peace. He says that in the Declaration of War.

I'm a man of peace. You know, this is, when we declare war in 1939, straight after saying, you know, this country is now at war with Germany. I have to say, this country is now at war. And it just sounds awful, doesn't it? But he then says, you can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me. And this sort of slight element of self-pity.

I mean, he doesn't have the sort of boisterous, swashbuckling sort of braggadocio that Churchill brings. And that's one reason why Churchill also is a man of war. Churchill has been an omdurman. He's been in the First World War. He's a man who famously glories in war. And so I think the fall of Chamberlain is, to me, it's a classic example of how in politics, appearance matters, and style matters as much

as substance. Yeah, absolutely. And by 1939, and by 1940, you know, you are in a media age, you know, you absolutely are, you know, your voice is heard over the radio and all the rest of it, you know, there is news footage on, you know, the precede all the major feature films, which is your main source of entertainment at that time, going to the cinema. So, you know, politicians are much more visual than they'd ever been before. I mean... But it's about more than image, isn't it?

Yeah, he just wasn't very good. It's about the fact that Churchill actually would be very, very proactive. And so there's a famous book by John Lukacs, the historian, Five Days in London, where he basically says that, you says that this is the throttle point of 20th century history. This is the moment where the Germans could have won the war. The Allies could have lost it. Do you go along with that? Yes, I absolutely do.

What's going on in Whitehall and Westminster at this point? Because the question over who will succeed Chamberlain, will it be Halifax? Will it be Churchill? Will it be someone else? Is this of that seismic significance, as Lukács says? Yes, well, Lukács is talking about the five days in May, at the end of May.

What we're talking about is the ousting of Chamberlain and inserting of Churchill as prime minister, which happens on the 9th, 10th of May, which coincidentally is the same day that the Germans launched Case Yellow, which is the invasion of the West. And don't forget that the favourite to take over from Chamberlain is another kind of peacetime politician, is Lord Halifax, who has been the foreign secretary and continues as foreign secretary. He doesn't want the job,

but that is what everyone, you know, had he said, yeah, all right, I'll do it, he would have been prime minister and not Churchill. Fast forward to, you know, so when Halifax doesn't do it, there is no one else who could do that job other than Churchill. That's why he gets it.

You know, so he becomes prime minister, you know, because an existing voted-in-for Prime Minister has been ousted. You know, he's not the elected Prime Minister. But also because Labour will back him, James. He has support from Labour. Yes, but I think Labour would have supported Halifax

as well. You know, Halifax has his reputation as being the most honest, straightest, level-headed politician in the land you know he's seen as safe as you know he's got this uh you know he's been a former viceroy of india he's got a long career in politics but you know he's he would have been catastrophically bad as prime minister so it's it's great relief that that he wouldn't even have been in the commons would he he wouldn't even be in the commons no it'd be disaster. And he felt ill about the whole thing.

And, you know, anyone who's sort of making themselves feel ill just at the thought of it, you know, clearly isn't the right person for the job. So, you know, thank goodness that he kind of, you know, he realised his own shortcomings and didn't take it on. You know, Churchill was absolutely the man. But Churchill was coming as very much sort of damaged goods at that point. I mean, he's not, you know, he's not the Churchill in...

The Churchill of 10th of May 1940 is not the Churchill of even late June 1940. You know, he's quite a different... You know, politically, he's not that empowered at that point. You know, and there's still some massive guns within the War Cabinet. So you have the wider Cabinet, which is about 30 people. Then you have the War Cabinet, which is five.

So it's him, Chamberlain, the former Prime Minister, is still in the War Cabinet, Halifax. And then it's it's it's him chamberlain the former prime minister is still in the war cabinet halifax um and then it's arthur greenwood and clement atley the two labor boys but they're so new to it that their their influence at this stage is very very small so then you move on to the five days in may which is the 27th of may up to the kind of you know second of first of june and that that is the kind of pivotal moment and actually when that's the 26th of may isn't it sunday the 26th which is national day of prayer which the king calls for um and that that is the kind of pivotal moment and actually when that's the 26th of May isn't it Sunday the 26th which is a national day of prayer which the king calls for um and that is where it all looks incredibly bleak because what has happened is is the Germans have okay okay

hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on okay so we've got we've got Churchill in place and we've done the politics in in in Westminster let's go back to then the onset of the war we've got a question from Tim B was there anything the British could have done to stop the onset of the war. We've got a question from Tim B. Was there anything the British could have done to stop the invasion of France? Or given the lack of French coordination and German aggression, was it inevitable? So is there anything that could have been done to spike the Blitzkrieg?

I don't think there's anything that the British could have done other than what they were doing because their army is so small. It's just, you know, it doesn't, you know, if you've got a small army, you don't have any clout in the decision-making process on land operations.

And it was agreed as part of the alliance that the French would take the lead. So the British would have a power of veto, but they would be subordinate to the French commanders. So from a land point of view, no. You're also operating aircraft out of France. And so you're also playing a subordinate role to the Army of the Air. So you can't do anything about that. The only place where you can actually have... Britain has a decisive and leading role is at sea, and it's doing all that it can do.

It's imposed a blockade on Germany right from the word go, and that's incredibly effective, really. There's not much else you can do, really, so no. I don't think there's anything else that Britain could have done. But I think the French could have stopped it in 1939. Let's's rephrase that is there any when the blitzkrieg begins is there anything the french could have done to stop it or was it always going to work they could have done something in september 1939 if they'd gone into west germany western germany in 1939 in strength coordinated with a coordinated attack it would have brought germany to its knees

i'm that i have absolutely no doubt but once the blish king is launched it's it's it's it's over for france yeah it's too late well not not on paper certainly um the the problem with the french is uh you know that and when when uh paul reyna rings up churchill and says you know we have lost we've lost the battle um days in, four days in. That is because the River Meuse has been crossed. Now, the way the French have organised themselves is they've assumed that the Second World War is going to be fought very much like the First World. It's going to be long and attritional and largely static. In actual fact, they've got kind of two parts of that right, as it turns out. It's just the static bit that they've got wrong. And unfortunately, that's rather bad news. So the French more you know they have a parity really in terms of troops

um they have double the number of artillery pieces they have a parity pretty much in terms of um of aircraft alone but that's before you add the ref and the and the dutch air force and belgian air force and all the rest of it um they've also got considerably more tanks and better tanks with higher guns thicker armor and all that kind of stuff so on paper there should be no no problem whatsoever and they're being defensive you know they're on the defense and defending is considerably easier than it is attacking you know you need something like you know the rule of thumb military rule of thumb throughout history is a three to one advantage for your attacking force and this is why germany over the years you know we were talking about it with catcher hire the other day you know when you're doing when they're attacking I don't know Denmark in 1864 or Austria in 1866 or whatever it is or

France in 1870 you know what they do is they have the schwerpunkt which is they concentrate on this mass of forces at the main point and quickly do an encirclement a kettle schlacht and annihilate your enemy really quickly but it all has to be done incredibly quickly with a huge amount of speed. That's what they're trying to do in 1914. It just doesn't work. And it's exactly what they're trying to do in 1940. And they do it substantially more successfully. But the French don't have an answer for this because the new development, the tactics the Germans are using are the same that they've always been. It's exactly the same model. This goes all the way back beyond Frederick the Great to the greater frederick the elector you know etc etc i mean this is how the germans and before them the prussians have always fought their battles um but the difference is really twofold

first of all they've now got the luftwaffe operating um operating with close air support what we would call a tactical air force, there to support ground operations primarily. And it's evolved organically because Germany is a continental land power. The second thing is radio technology, which the Germans are masters of. And it's very, very interesting that while they are kind of languishing a long, long way down in kind of mechanisation, they are one of the least automotive modern societies in the world in 1939. They have more radios per person than any other country in the entire world including the united states one of the reasons for this is because of the nazis and they're developing a propaganda and all the rest of it

and this realization that if you can get get your voice and your message over to a lot of people that's incredibly powerful so what they then do is they develop very very cheap radios and if you kind of think back of radio sets in 1939 and the 1930s, they're kind of lovely, great, ornate kind of, you know, chestnut wooden things that you sort of put on your sideboard. Well, what the Germans develop is the Deutsche Keinenfanger, which is the German little radio, which is nine inches by four inches by four inches.

And this is, you know, this is as revolutionary as the introduction of the iPod, because it's tiny and it's cheap, and it means that everyone can have one. And what the army realizes, hang on a minute, if you can make radios really small, then we can put them in our Panzers. We can put them in our groovy little kind of BMWs with sidecars. We can put them with our artillery and with our motorized infantry. And suddenly, we can create a thing called a Panzer division. And a panzer division is not stuff full of of tanks it's got tanks yes but it's also got

motorized infantry motorized artillery motorized reconnaissance um it's got all the components you need for a little battle group and they can all communicate with each other which is one of the great problems of the first world war in the Western Front. So they can all communicate to each other, which the French haven't developed. So, you know, the commander-in-chief, Moïse Gamelin, the commander-in-chief of French forces at the Château de Marseille, just on the edge of Paris, you know, that doesn't have a radio system in it at all, which means the French are then completely dependent

on field, you know normal telephone lines or dispatch riders and of course what happens is the stook has come over and you know bombers and stuff and shoot up the telephone lines and cut the lines um so they're then dependent on dispatch riders and but by and because they're so top heavy they've got army groups overall army command then army groups then armies then corps then divisions and brigades and you know battalions and so on and so it goes down every single time you're trying to get an order and you've got to send a little gun and motorbike and you're then fighting refugees and he then gets shot or whatever or doesn't make it back and then you've got to send another one out the whole thing they're just

like rabbits in headlights they just get completely ground to a halt so you can't bring that massive force together and what the germ Germans are then able to do is beat them in penny packets. And that is what happens. Tom, when we invited your brother on, I knew we would have long discussions about tanks. And that is precisely what just happened. I'm sorry about that.

I'm glad not to disappoint. Just before we go to a break, I want to ask you a to stress's question so the germans are basically they've wiped the floor with a french they're charging forward you know all looks good for the germans and then they stop they pause and this is a sort of crucial moment in this whole story and some people would argue it's sort of turning point in the war they stop before dunkirk they don't base they don't carry on and wipe out the British. They give the British time to escape. Now, addicted to stress, his question is, is that because Hitler wants to deal with the British and

the British Empire, or is it because the German lines are too stretched or whatever, and they have to stop for kind of logistical reasons? It's ostensibly for the latter reason, but it's really because Hitler is trying to impose his authority over the army command um and and he's trying to show who's boss um and as a result of that he arguably loses the war it's really really fascinating i mean the point is is that what one has to understand is these mobile armored divisions out of the 135 divisions that are used and the division is about 15 000 men that is the kind of unit by which we judge sizes of armies in the second world war um of the 135 divisions that the germans use in in the in the attack in the west um only 16 are motorized so the rest are using their own two

feet or they're using horse and cart horses on the thousands of loads of horses yep yep 1.5 million horses in in the first world war two and a half million in the second. And so it is these 16 divisions which are motorised, which are mechanised, which are doing all the hard yards. They are very much the kind of the point of the spear. The horses and the guys on their feet are the kind of shaft of the spear. And they are doing all the hard yards. But this is completely new. You know, they haven't done this before.

So those old, crustier kind of, you know, the von Kleist,ist the von rundstedt these older prussian aristocratic kind of generals this is all new and they get nervous that the the spearhead is overreaching itself so von kleist who is commander of one of the great panzer groups um which is doing this the southern sweep through army group um a um sweeping around from the south southern heart of it through the Ardennes and all the rest of it, getting across the River Meuse. He starts to get nervous that the panzer divisions are overextending

and getting too far ahead of the infantry divisions, which are sort of plodding on behind. So he imposes a halt order. General Halder, who is the chief of staff of the army, realises that this is catastrophic just at the moment they've got of closing in a complete encirclement around the French and British army in northern France.

This is not the time to be cautious. This is the time to absolutely go for it. And so he rescinds the order. The following day, the 24th of May, Hitler turns up to see von Rundstedt, who is the overall commander of Army Group A, and says, what are all your Panzer divisions doing? And he goes, well, I don't know,

because Halder's transferred them all over to Army Group B, which is the ones coming through the top, through Belgium and Holland. So they're no longer part of my command. And Hitler absolutely goes ballistic at this. You know, how dare Halder kind of, you know, make this decision, von Brauchert, who's the commander-in-chief of the army,

how dare they make this decision without consulting me first? There's something as major as transferring the panzer elites over to a different army group you know I'm just completely I I I countermand that order completely you're now back in charge and it's up to you when you when you release the panzers and let them go on the march again um and and so this is humiliates von Browkitch humiliates Halder they have absolutely not a leg to stand on. And consequently, von Rundstedt doesn't then release them again until 1.30pm on the afternoon of the 26th of May,

by which time those orders have been fed, it's about eight o'clock at night. And so actually the panzers don't get moving until the 27th of May, by which time it's too late. And so then the British are able to get away. But Dominic, just before we go to the break, one last question from Gregory gregory doll on dunk on dunkirk um he asked what would have happened if they'd only got a hundred thousand or fewer of dunkirk so i guess really

the question is how important is it the british army gets away from dunkirk well i think the the events of monday the 27th of may which for me is is the is the closest that britain ever comes to losing the war, those events might not have played out in the same way had the BEF looked like it was going to be completely destroyed. I think that's the interesting thing. Okay, well, I can hear the air raid sirens, so I think we should take a break while we wait for the all clear, and we'll be back after the break. See you in a minute. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman, and together we host The Rest Is Entertainment.

It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History with Tom Holland, me Dominic Sandbrook and our special guest James Holland. Now next week we'll be talking about 1066 and we'll also be talking about our very favourite eunuchs. Everybody's got a favourite eunuch haven't they? So get your questions in on Twitter and we'll try to go through as many of them as possible.

And we are also going to do an episode live on the internet next Wednesday, April the 21st. And the subject is assassinations. So Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Julius Caesar. We've got them all. Failed assassinations as well. Failed assassinations as well. Failed assassinations, exactly. Well, Hilary Mantel wrote a book about her short story

about the assassination of Margaret Thatcher, didn't she? So maybe assassinations that never happened at all. Anyway, it's free for anybody to join, and we'll send out a link on Twitter next week. Tom, here we are with your brother, and you have a question for him from Rolf Merchant, I believe. Well, so before the break, we were in the process of getting the British from the beaches of Dunkirk. France is in the process of being defeated.

It's looking bad. All kinds of political shenanigans going on in Whitehall and Westminster. And I think that this is the perfect time to ask Rolf Merchant's question. He says, what might a negotiated settlement with Germany have looked like had Britain decided against fighting on? Presumably so unpalatable for the British that it was never a realistic option. So I guess two questions there. Were there serious attempts to put out peace feelers? And had those peace feelers been, you know, gone a bit further? What might a negotiated settlement have looked like for britain in in the end of may 1940 well i do think it would i mean i'm i'm not i

know you've done a whole episode on what ifs but i'm not a massive fan of what ifs at all but um um i think you can say fairly safely that it would have been very very bad news um i think it would have been so the the key moment as far as i can make out is between sunday the 26th of may 1940 and tuesday the 28th with the really crux of it probably being somewhere in the afternoon of the monday the 27th of may so operation dynamo which is the operation to evacuate the BEF, is launched on the afternoon, about 5.30 in the afternoon on that Sunday, which the King has already called as a national day of prayer. So bad is the situation. And so shocked and stunned are the British ruling class, but also the wider public as well by what has happened on the and over that weekend um lord halifax who um as we were talking about was the most likely candidate to replace chamberlain before refusing to take on the job and so it falls to churchill instead has been talking to um giuseppe bastanini who is the italian ambassador

about the possibility of opening peace feelers. Now, as it happens, there is a spat within the war cabinet. So there is the wider cabinet, which is made up of about 30 or so people, cabinet ministers. And then there is the war cabinet, which is just five strong. And there is Churchill, who's prime minister,

Lord Halifax, who's foreign secretary. Then there is Neville Chamberlain, the ousted prime minister, but a giant of the political stage in Britain at the time. And then there is Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood, who are two Labour guys, who have just come in and are very much the new boys. So yes, their views count, but they don't count half as much as Halifax and Chamberlain's and, of course, Churchill's. And a dispute breaks out on that Monday, the 27th, about what they should do, you know, should the BEF not be evacuated.

And the estimates, when Operation Dynamo is launched on that Sunday evening, the estimates are 40,000, if we're lucky. So what did they get out? 338,000. They got out all of them right so they got out every single man who was was able to get on board a ship was was a boarder ship i mean loads of wounded were left behind there was another whole kind of you know best part of 200 000 that were later picked up in in um uh further south um and in in normandy later on but but but for dunkirk it's 338 000

so if so if they failed, what then? Well, the point is, is it goes to, comes down to this argument on the afternoon of, which comes to, rears its head really on the afternoon of Monday the 27th, when Halifax is saying, look, I've just, I've got these peace feeders going, you know, I've got these, had these talks with Bassanini, you know, he's saying he will intervene and Mussolini can be the kind of go-between between Hitler and us about a settled peace. And Churchill says, you just do not understand. You cannot do that. First of all, that goes against our alliance

treaty with France. You know, you are not allowed to kind of, you know, you can't just sort of start negotiating behind someone's back when you haven't settled that with your ally first. So that's sort of perfidious to start off with. Then you've got the other problem. Once the door is ajar, it's slammed wide open. There's no way back. You're morally bankrupt. You've crossed a Rubicon of which there can be no return.

And Halifax says, well, I just don't get it. I don't see why. I don't see why. Obviously, if the terms aren't good, then we won't pursue them. And judges are going, no, the moment you start talking terms, it's all over. You've got to understand this. I'm right on this. And Halifax gets really cross and just thinks he's being bloody minded and silly. And so this is before they know, this is before they know that Dunkirk evacuation has been a success. Yes, this is right at the

very beginning. So although it is launched on the afternoon of the Sunday the 26th, the first troops are not picked off until that day. So as the very, very first troops, and only 7,669 men are lifted off Dunkirk, off the Dunkirk beaches on that first day. You know, so the Germans are closing in and they're expecting it not to be more than, you know, 48 hours. OK, but just to be clear, Churchill's position is that

even if they don't get anyone off the beaches, Britain should fight on. Absolutely. And so what happens is that afternoon, Halifax loses his temper, which is very rare, and threatens to resign. Then there's a pause in the cabinet, and Churchill takes Halifax out into the garden of Number 10. No one knows what he's saying, what he says to him, but he puts a proverbial arm on his shoulder.

They have a chat. And when they come back in, there's no more talk of resignation. But, you know, that first day is not particularly auspicious. I mean, 7,669 is, you know, when you're only going to be, probably the whole of Dunkirk

is going to fall in, you know, estimated 48 hours. You know, that is about 40,000 men, if you're lucky, probably less. You know, 40,000 was the kind of upper level of what was expected. They were kind of trumping that on one day. I mean, they got 65,000 off on one day. So later on in the week. So but what Churchill understands, and this is what what Halifax doesn't, because he doesn't have the same, quite the same geopolitical understanding that Churchill has, is that actually, Britain's strength does not lie in its army at all.

The army has traditionally always been very, very small and is very, very small. You know, it's 10 divisions on the continent, you know, compared to 105 that the French have. And the division is the kind of unit by which we judge the sizes of armies in the 1940s, about 15,000, 16,000 men in a division. And he understands that the senior service is the Royal Navy, that they have the world's largest navy, that Britain has the world's largest merchant fleet, that we have access to around 85% of the world's merchant shipping, that we have a vast empire, that we're absolutely not alone,

that we can absolutely hold on, and that crossing the Channel and defeating an island nation is incredibly difficult. James, can I just jump in here? There are some historians, though, aren't there, who think that given all that you've said, that Britain has this great empire, that it has the fleet, that it has all these resources, all the rest of it,

wouldn't it have been better in the long run to have done a deal? No, I don't think this, but they think it. It would have been better to do a deal with Hitler or indeed not to have entered the war at all, to let Hitler and Stalin fight each other and knock each other out, as it were, and that the world would be, or that Britain would have been better placed at the end of the war if it had done Halifax's deal, if it had sort of husbanded its energies.

Now, you presumably think that is... But Dominic, can I also just just just to go back to the question i was right at the beginning which which is what would the deal have been because the question of whether the deal would would have been you know in in any way kind of bearable surely is dependent on what that deal would have been yeah well let me let me i mean they're both connected i mean the deal would have been a bad one for britain they would have lost a number of properties almost certainly gibraltar, Malta, lots of overseas territories, access to the Suez Canal, which would have been catastrophic for India,

obviously, which still remains a jewel in the crown at that point. Access to the Far East, of course, the collapse of the Far East hasn't happened at that point, and that is a massive source of resources out there. Global humiliation. And the problem is that Hitler can't be trusted at all. That's been proved. So you don't know. You might have a deal

in June 1940, but whether that stands is extremely unlikely. Large part of massive disarmament would have been a key point which would have left them vulnerable to invasion later on. It would have been catastrophic. Churchill himself says, doesn't he, that we would have had to hand over the fleet and we'd have mostly put in charge.

Yeah, I think that bad. I he might not have had they might not have had to hand over the fleet. But but it's a possibility. You know, you're not going to bet on that, are you? I mean, the point of the point is once you're once you're negotiating about whether you keep the fleet or not, it's all over. You know, you've lost so terribly. It's about a reduction of everything that Britain stands for. All right, well, let's go back to the meetings. So in the sort of popular imagination,

Churchill prevails against the sort of Tory old guard, so Halifax and Chamberlain. But my impression is that that's completely wrong, that Chamberlain's is the key voice and that Chamberlain has kind of been maligned by popular history, which paints him as this sort of archipelago. Whereas in the crucial meeting,

it's Chamberlain, isn't it, who says, no, no, Churchill is right. We must back Churchill. We must fight on Hitler. Can't be trusted. Yeah. I mean, we're very fortunate that we have verbatim accounts of every single word that's said in these cabinet meetings and they're absolutely fascinating and um you know John Lukacs's book um Five Days in May is is or Five Days in London whatever it's called I mean he's just completely brilliant on this it's really vivid it's incredibly compelling and what you see is that Churchill does it starts to

kind of stick up for Churchill on um Chamberlain rather starts to stick up for Churchill on that Monday um and I think is one of the one of the reasons you know I think the main reason why Halifax doesn't resign is because of the conversation that happens in the garden that we don't know about but it's also because it's clear that Chamberlain is also starting to inch with towards towards Churchill on this one he kind of keeps out of it to a large extent it's also because it's clear that Chamberlain is also starting to inch with towards Churchill on this one he kind of keeps out of it to a large extent it's really a back and forth between Halifax and Churchill but on the following day Tuesday he absolutely does and he says no no no you you know Winston I'm paraphrasing but Winston's correct you know you can't deal with

these guys you know I'm with Churchill on this and since that since Attlee and Greenwood don't really they do have a vote, but they don't effectively have a vote in this. It is a three-way power tussle between Halifax, Chamberlain and Churchill. And Chamberlain and Halifax are really, really tight. I mean, they're very, very good friends. They've been colleagues for many years.

They're absolutely cut from the same sort of political cloth in terms of their outlook and all the rest of it. And you would, you know, just from personality point of view, you would expect probably Chamberlain to side with Halifax. Again, because he doesn't have that kind of global geopolitical understanding that Churchill does. And yet he doesn't. And, you know, that is a moment of greatness that's perhaps overstating it.

But, you know, Chamberlain is a total lad in 1940. I mean, you know, once he resigns, he's brilliant. You heard it here first. Do you think that Chamberlain does this because he's had dealings of how Hitler just doesn't keep his word? I mean, he's kind of bringing his personal experience here. Yeah, unquestionably. But I do think, generally speaking, I think Chamberlain is much maligned.

I mean, you wouldn't have all those Spitfires and Hurricanes in 1940 to win the Battle of Britain if it hadn't been for Chamberlain when he was Chancellor back in 1935. As Churchill says when Chamberlain dies, doesn't he, later in the year? He gives a very moving thrannity on him. Okay, so moving on to what really is the kind of

the key question that everybody has asked. So just I just quote a question from splendidly named I.R. Baboon. So so we've got the army out. We're fighting on. And I.R. Baboon asks, would Operation Sea Lion, the Nazi plan for the invasion of Britain, have been successful, even if the Luftwaffe had control over the skies because there's still the royal navy which still hasn't been beaten so the question is and i i kind of know what the answer is if i'm going to answer anyway basically how decisive is the battle of britain the battle of britain is incredibly decisive um it it well first of all to first first answer the question question is no they couldn't have got across.

I mean, not a hope in hell. I mean, just not a hope. You think how much jeopardy there is in 1944 when the Allies are going across to Normandy. You know, the intelligence picture has to be absolutely spot on. We've got to keep them guessing right up to the last minute. You know, we have to have overwhelming air superiority over the entire swathe of Northwest Europe.

You know, we have to have overwhelming naval superiority as well well as well as firepower and all the rest of it you know all those things have to be met before you can even consider attempting a cross-channel invasion i mean germany doesn't have remotely any one of those those so why is the battle of britain decisive then because it it consigns germany to a long attritional war that it can't afford to fight. And it makes the one thing that is absolutely guaranteed the moment Hitler comes into power in 1933, that there is going to be the God almighty ding dongs of ding dongs against the Soviet Union at some point. Now, when this happens and what the conditions are and who actually wins is up for grabs in certainly in 1933. But the point is, is that, you know, Hitler was originally planning for an invasion of Soviet

Union in roughly 1943, possibly 1944. The idea is not to fight a global conflict. It's to fight a series of small conflicts, small, short, sharp conflicts, which Germany can win comprehensively. I mean, the whole German way of war is about annihilating your enemy completely. And he's hustled into an invasion of the soviet union before germany is ready i mean the the luftwaffe is weaker in june in the third week of june 1941 which is where operation barbarossa is launched and it was on the 10th of may 1940 and a large part of that is because there's catastrophic losses they suffer in the battle of breton but but it's also you know they're just they're just not ready for a conflict on that scale.

And they have to do that because Britain is still in the war and hovering in the shadows is the United States with its huge manpower and industrialisation and all the rest of it. And he knows he has to beat the West

to win the war. And he doesn't want to be fighting on two fronts for any longer than he absolutely has to. But to stick to the Battle of Britain, because most people's sense of the Battle britain is that this is the the key you know if if britain loses the battle of britain then we get invaded but you're saying that even if the battle even if we lose the battle of britain there's no prospect of a successful german invasion of britain in summer of 1940? No, the danger...

I mean, say the RAF is... Say they do successfully invade, then obviously that's catastrophe. Had we kind of sued for peace on the 27th, started opening peace feelers on the 27th of May or 28th of May or something, and Dunkirk's a failure, then they wouldn't have needed to invade Great Britain. No, you know, when Dunkirk's a failure, then they wouldn't

have needed to invade Great Britain. No, but I'm saying with the Battle of Britain, because it's specifically, we have this idea that the Battle of Britain is where, you know, never so much, by so many to so few. This isn't quite the pivot that most people traditionally think then, is what you're saying. Well, on paper, there is no reason to throw in the towel. And I don't think churchill would have certainly let it let it happen even if the ref had been defeated but my point is is that the rf is such a long way from being defeated that hitler's failure to defeat britain in 1940

is that is the decisive the decisive battle as it turns out in the second world war above all because it ensures that britain carries on fighting And it consigns Germany to a long attritional battle, which ultimately they can't win. I mean, you know, if you just think about this, you know, if you think about the middle of June 1941, Nazi Germany has one enemy, Great Britain, albeit Great Britain plus dominions and empire. Fast forward to six months to, you know, middle of December 1941, it's got three enemies. It's got Great Britain plus Empire and Dominions. It's got United States of America and the Soviet Union. I mean, it just it is simply not going to win. The strategic earthquake of the Second World War that are twofold. First is, you know, the Japanese attacks in December and early

part of December 1941 and early part of 1942. That's the second one. The first major strategic earthquake is the fall of France in May and June 1940. Everything else, I think, is pretty much predetermined. James, let me take you back to the invasion. So, I mean, Tom and I have talked about these books, you know, Nazi Britain, Operation Sea Lion happened, Robert Harris. And I can't bear them. All these sort of stuff.

Now, are you genuinely saying there was no realistic prospects of a German invasion? I mean, all that strikes me is that's a very big claim to make, given that we don't know the effect on morale and so on, of even a small German landing. You know, we don't know whether morale would have crumbled. We don't know how far the Germans would have got inland and so on and so forth. But are you really saying you're certain that this was just never going to happen, never realistic? And an additional sort of question, side question is, did Hitler even actually want to do it? Was he really ever signed up to Operation Sea Lion, do you think?

Well, Hitler made some pretty crazy decisions in the war and was not the soundest of military military minds it has to be said but even he recognized that without air without control of the skies there wasn't even a chance even if they had got control of the skies and let's face it you have to accept that in the battle of breton out of 138 airfields only one was knocked out for more than 48 hours so it was just a completely you know it's an abject failure every which way you look at it but on top of that there's something like 14 bomber command squadrons ready with chemical weapons to drop on any invasion fleet. The idea that we wouldn't know

that the invasion is launching, you know, within 24 hours of it being started is, 24 hours before it being started is just ridiculous. And that they don't have any landing craft. They've got a few of these sort of ferries that they've developed, which are kind of pretty, you know, they're absolutely woeful

and completely not suitable for going across the Channel at all. The rest of them are Rhine River barges, and then most of them are motorised. So what they're having to do is they're having one motorised one towing two unmotorised barges. I mean, can you imagine anything more crap than that for a major invasion in 1940?

I mean, it's simply not going to work. And you've got the world's largest navy, and they completely understand that they completely get that that that militarily they have britain is far stronger than defeat on the continent and the evacuation of dunkirk would would suggest so hold on james doesn't that then raise the question why does churchill then his, we will fight them on the beaches, we'll fight them on the landing ramp, if he knows there's no realistic prospect

that they're going to be on the beaches? Because that's all about, well, because he knows that, but it also doesn't seem quite, you know, when you've got hordes of Nazi planes coming over, it still seems pretty intimidating. And he also understands that what everyone needs to do is come together, kind of realise that there is a big threat take it really really seriously not be kind of lackadaisical about it in any way whatsoever except there is a real threat and all pulled together and that's

exactly what happened now i know there are cynics out there so go yeah well there were people still being murdered there was black marketeers and people breaking into houses in the blitz and stealing stuff but but the the country did come together the free world came together in that instance. You know, lots and lots of Americans coming over as well. And that's the other big reasons why Churchill was ramping up the rhetoric because, you know, he knew perfectly well

that Roosevelt's worst nightmare was a Britain conquered or dominated by Nazi Germany. You know, suddenly the Atlantic is not the great barrier that it once was to their insular kind of non-militaristic approach to the world. And, you know know that's all about encouraging the Americans to kind of beef up war manufacturing and all the rest of it and come in on their side and you know that's why we need our 40 destroyers and all this kind of stuff because

you know most of which ended up as kind of breakers offshore in 1944 I mean you know so it's it's you know they were never much use uh um but that's not the point i mean you know there are lots of american observers coming over and so what they wanted to do is say you know this is really serious this is the threat that this is what we're looking at if if we don't pull our finger out there's no room for complacency whatsoever and yet these american observers would come over people like um to his spots and stuff who ended up becoming a you know air commander later on in the war. People like Toohey Spots?

You know, they're coming over and reporting, Toohey Spots, yeah. Is that a genuine American name? Well, Toohey was his nickname. He was really called Carl. But Spots was his surname. But S-P-A-A-T-Z. And, you know, he was reporting back going,

I can't see how the Luftwaffe could possibly win. You know, Britain's absolutely fine. And that's exactly what we want him to say. So we did, I think, the entire history of Persia in 40 minutes. We've taken longer than that to do about three weeks. So we should probably start moving to the end. But we've had Dunkirk. We've had the Battle of Britain.

Of course, the other famous event in British history that happens in 1940 is the Blitz. Do you think that people in both government and the general population have an appreciation of the fact that victory in the Battle of Britain means that large-scale bombing is kind of inevitable? Is it something that they're waiting to happen or does it come as a surprise? Well, no, because the large-scale bombing happens in the middle of the Battle of Britain. So that launched on Saturday the 7th of September 1940. And tactically, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. If their stated aim is to try and destroy the RAF, they're much better off targeting airfields. But the problem is, is they just don't have enough bombers to do the job.

I mean, so the Battle of Britain is still going on. I mean, you know, we're still a week and a day away from what becomes Battle of Britain Day, the 15th of September, which is Sadie's birthday, right? 1940. My beloved wife. Yeah. So it's just, it's starting to happen.

And that is in retaliation to the bombing of Berlin. So the RAF bombs Berlin before, four times before Luftwaffe deliberately bombs London. And it's always said that that is a deliberate attempt. Is that true? That this is a deliberate strategy to try and annoy the Germans into stopping bombing the airfields? Is that true or not?

No, it's really to show that they can do it and to show that they are not just sitting back and taking it, that they're still in the game, that they're showing Germans that they haven't won, that they're still in the game, that they're showing Germans that, you know, they haven't won, that British bombers are going to come over

and this is what you can expect. I mean, you know, you have to also, one has to remember that despite the sort of terrible scenes in the East End, terrible scenes in Southampton, Liverpool, of course, Coventry in November 1940 and all the rest of it. I mean, you know, it is very, very, very small beer indeed compared to what the Germans are going to receive later on in the war. I mean, you know, the total tonnage of bombs that are dropped on London in the Blitz between September the 7th, 1940 and the middle of

May 1941 is 18,000 tonnes. I mean, you know, that is, I mean, the Allies drop 197,000 tonnes in nine weeks on France alone in the run up to D-Day. So, you know, that is the kind of comparison we're talking about. But the interesting thing is, you know, the Germans just don't have enough of anything to do what they're trying to do in the summer of 1940 to defeat Britain. The conclusion that I would come to from listening to you is that basically Germany have lost the war even then. That Germany have almost, in a sense, Germany have lost the war from the very beginning. I mean, you're painting a picture in which it's actually very hard listening to what you say about Britain's great strengths, its supply network, its allies, its dominions

and so on, Germany's weakness, Germany, they don't have enough to do this, they don't have enough to do that. In a way, haven't they lost already? Is that not the conclusion that you would come to? Which in that case, if that's obvious to you, how come it's not obvious to everybody else at the time? Well, I mean, it is to a certain extent. I mean, Churchill says, you know, Hitler knows he must defeat Britain or lose the war. And, you know, that's exactly what happens. I mean, I think you can say and argue and argue convincingly that it is definitely all over for Germany by November 1941.

When Barbarossa, the invasion of Soviet Union, has failed. I don't think there's any way back. But I also don't think there was a huge amount of chance of that working either. The odds were stacked against Barbarossa being successful, despite the kind of overwhelming victories in the initial weeks and the kind of sort of envelopments of vast Soviet armies and all the rest of it, although it looked very bleak if you were stalin you know and there was the day of panic i think it was the 16th of october 1941 where you know they're all fleeing moscow and burning papers and all the rest of it even so that was still a huge stretch because of the huge logistical chains that were being put on the germans and all the rest of it but it was made more you know the the reason it's

unlikely to succeed is because they've been hustled into it. And the reason they've been hustled into it and launching it in the middle of June 1941 is because they've lost the Battle of Britain. And the whole point is, OK, well, what are we going to do now? Britain is still in the game. America waiting in the wings of all this industrial might clearly siding. You know, even if it's not actually in the war, it's certainly siding materialistically with Britain and the Allies. You know, so we need to knock Britain out, but we're not strong enough to do that. So we're going to have to go and get the wealth of the Soviet Union, and then we can turn back and face Britain.

So 1940 is actually the beginning of the end. Yeah, I think you could, yeah. Well, I think we've seen off the Germans, Tom. I think we have. Let's put them in their place. I think that's about it for today's The Rest Is History. James, thank you so much. I've been waiting ages for somebody to come on

and show Tom precisely how you do this podcast. And I thought it would bite all the more if it came from his younger brother. So it's great that you've come on and put him in his place. Well, we could do an episode on Elder and younger brothers. Do you know what I was actually thinking, Tom? That would be a great subject. Harry and Wills.

So much to play with. Well, I'm absolutely thrilled to be on and it's been great fun and I never need any second invitation to talk about 1940. That's to be said. Jolly good. Well, and also, if people haven't had enough of you, there are also 300 episodes of We Have Ways of Making You Talk. That's a hell of a lot of tanks, Tom.

There's a lot of Second World War. A lot of Second World War. Thanks so much, bro. It's been sensational. It's been great fun. Thank you. And we will be back next week with a bonus live episode on wednesday so do please put that in your diaries and we will see you then goodbye for now

thanks for listening to the rest is history. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.