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British Dunkirk Evacuation Footage- Operation Dynamo 1940

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Winston Churchill - First Lord Of The Admiralty I WHO DID WHAT IN WW1?

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How 20 Turkish Mines Changed the Course of History with Dan Snow

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On 7 September 1940, German bombers raided the east London docks area in two waves of devastating attacks. The date has always been taken as the start of the so-called 'Blitz' (from the German 'Blitzkrieg' or lightning war), when for nine months German bombers raided Britain's major cities. But the 7 September attack also came at the height of the Battle of Britain, the defence by RAF Fighter Command against the efforts of the German Air Force to win air superiority over southern England as a preparation for Operation Sea Lion, the German invasion of Britain.

In reality the Battle of Britain and the Blitz were closely related. The raid on London was supposed to signal the last stage of the 'softening up' of southern England prior to a landing planned for 15 September. By disrupting trade, transport, and services the German side hoped to create panic in the capital and hamper the government's efforts to counter the invasion. The failure to win air superiority, made clear on the very day that Hitler had hoped to invade, 15 September (now celebrated as Battle of Britain Day), meant that the bombing of London, if it continued, would have to serve a different strategy. The Blitz, despite its reputation as an example of pure terror bombing, became part of a combined air-sea effort to blockade Britain by sinking ships, destroying port facilities, warehouse storage, milling plants, and oil and food stocks. To prevent the RAF from contesting the blockade, vital aero-engine and component firms were targeted, most famously in the raid against Coventry on 14 November. No effort was made to avoid human casualties, though Hitler rejected simple terror bombing, and the German Air Force regarded attacks on residential areas as a waste of strategic resources.

The raid on 7 September also had another purpose. It was defined as a 'vengeance attack' in German propaganda against RAF bombing of Germany. One of the persistent myths of 1940 is the belief that Germany started the bombing war, but from the night of 11/12 May, when bombers raided the west German city of Mönchengladbach, the RAF struck at targets in or near German towns for every night when the conditions permitted. By early September, after weeks of sheltering every night, the population of western Germany demanded reprisals. Since they had already ordered the final pre-invasion raids on the capital, it was a simple thing to define the first major raid (bombs had been dropping in and around London since mid-August) as a vengeance operation in order to still domestic complaint.

The start of the Blitz and the end of the Battle of Britain overlapped. By the time the Battle petered out, with high losses to the German side for little strategic gain, Operation Sea Lion had been postponed to the spring or, if necessary, even later. The blockade campaign followed over the winter months, imposing high losses on the German bomber fleets, chiefly from accidents caused by poor flying conditions and growing combat fatigue. Hitler had little faith in independent air power, and did not think in the end that the blockade would work, or that the British people would be sufficiently demoralized by its effects to abandon the war. But by the time it was evident that the Blitz was not going to be effective, it was too late to suspend it, partly from the political backlash at home if it was halted, partly because of the boost it would give to Britain's wartime image, but also because the bombing would persuade Stalin that Britain was Hitler's priority, when in fact German leaders were now planning a massive assault on the Soviet Union in the early summer of 1941.

In its own term, the German Blitz was very ineffective. Only 0.5% of oil stocks were destroyed, around 5% of potential war production was lost, and food stocks remained more or less intact. Aircraft production was not hit seriously, and though German intelligence speculated that Britain could only produce 7,000 aircraft in 1941, some 20,000 were produced, almost double German output. What the Blitz did achieve was a very high level of civilian casualty. By the time it ended 43,000 people had been killed, 28,000 of them in London. It is this large total that has always supported the idea that the Blitz was simply a terror attack to undermine civilian morale. The truth is more complicated. High casualties reflected the nature of the targets chosen, mostly port cities, or inland ports like Manchester, where there was much low-quality working-class housing crowded around the dock areas. The concentrated working-class areas were also the ones least likely to have been provided with secure shelter. A survey in London showed that 50% of people had no access to shelter at all and made do with local railway bridges, or the cupboard under the stairs. Research also found that shelter discipline was poor, and became more so as populations became habituated to bombing, as in London. Thousands of those killed abandoned the idea of finding a shelter; contemporary evidence shows that thousands chose in the end to sleep in their own beds and run their luck. There was no legal obligation to shelter, as there was in Germany, and shelter discipline was lax. In the early months of the Blitz, when casualty rates were at their highest, the government had also failed to anticipate what would be needed. A massive volunteer effort of men and women in civil defence and first aid prevented the disaster from being much worse than it was.

British bombing of Germany continued across the period of the Blitz, but the small size of the force, combined with poor navigation and inaccurate bombing, produced little effect. Although presented in popular memory as revenge for the Blitz, it was not intended as such, nor did much of the population favour meting out to the Germans what was happening in Britain. An early opinion poll in London showed 46% in favour of bombing German civilians, but 46% against. But once the cycle had started, it was as difficult for the RAF to abandon as it was for the Germans. In British popular memory of the war the Blitz has a central part to play as the moment when British society was tested to the brink and survived. It is perhaps for this reason that so many myths still surround the experience. The Blitz is no longer merely historical fact, but a metaphor of endurance against the odds.
Featured image: Children of an eastern suburb in Britain made homeless by the Blitz by Sue Wallace. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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The Battle of Britain and the Blitz | OUPblog

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On 7 September 1940, German bombers raided the east London docks area in two waves of devastating attacks. The date has always been taken as the start of the so-called 'Blitz' (from the German 'Blitzkrieg' or lightning war) when for nine months German bombers raided Britain's major cities.

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Battle of Britain Statistics | Allied and Axis Losses

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Proposed in late 1940 and passed in March 1941, the Lend-Lease Act was the principal means for providing U.S. military aid to foreign nations during World War II. It authorized the president to transfer arms or any other defense materials for which Congress appropriated money to "the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States." By allowing the transfer of supplies without compensation to Britain, China, the Soviet Union and other countries, the act permitted the United States to support its war interests without being overextended in battle.

The Lend-Lease Act of March 11, 1941, was the principal means for providing U.S. military aid to foreign nations during World War II. The act authorized the president to transfer arms or any other defense materials for which Congress appropriated money to "the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States." Britain, the Soviet Union, China, Brazil, and many other countries received weapons under this law.

By allowing the president to transfer war matériel to a beleaguered Britain-and without payment as required by the Neutrality Act of 1939-the act enabled the British to keep fighting until events led America into the conflict. It also skirted the thorny problems of war debts that had followed World War I.

Lend-Lease brought the United States one step closer to entry into the war. Isolationists, such as Republican senator Robert Taft, opposed it. Taft correctly noted that the bill would "give the President power to carry on a kind of undeclared war all over the world, in which America would do everything except actually put soldiers in the front-line trenches where the fighting is."

The Reader's Companion to American History. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors. Copyright © 1991 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Proposed in late 1940 and passed in March 1941, the Lend-Lease Act was the principal means for providing U.S. military aid to foreign nations during World War II. It authorized the president to transfer arms or any other defense materials for which Congress appropriated money to "the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States."

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In July 1940, after Britain had sustained the loss of 11 destroyers to the German Navy over a 10-day period, newly elected British Prime Minister Winston Churchill requested help from President Roosevelt. Roosevelt responded by exchanging 50 destroyers for 99-year leases on British bases in the Caribbean and Newfoundland. As a result, a major foreign policy debate erupted over whether the United States should aid Great Britain or maintain strict neutrality.

In the 1940 Presidential election campaign, Roosevelt promised to keep America out of the war. He stated, "I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again; your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars." Nevertheless, FDR wanted to support Britain and believed the United States should serve as a "great arsenal of democracy." Churchill pleaded, "Give us the tools and we'll finish the job." In January 1941, following up on his campaign pledge and the prime minister's appeal for arms, Roosevelt proposed to Congress a new military aid bill.

The plan proposed by FDR was to "lend-lease or otherwise dispose of arms" and other supplies needed by any country whose security was vital to the defense of the United States. In support of the bill, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the debate over lend-lease, "We are buying . . . not lending. We are buying our own security while we prepare. By our delay during the past six years, while Germany was preparing, we find ourselves unprepared and unarmed, facing a thoroughly prepared and armed potential enemy." Following two months of debate, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act, meeting Great Britain's deep need for supplies and allowing the United States to prepare for war while remaining officially neutral.

For more information and other related documents, see the Teaching With Documents Lesson Plan Documents Related to Churchill and FDR.

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In July 1940, after Britain had sustained the loss of 11 destroyers to the German Navy over a 10-day period, newly elected British Prime Minister Winston Churchill requested help from President Roosevelt. Roosevelt responded by exchanging 50 destroyers for 99-year leases on British bases in the Caribbean and Newfoundland.

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Gallipoli: Campaign, Battle & Movie - HISTORY | HISTORY

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In the Gallipoli Campaign of World War I, British, French, Australian and New Zealand troops failed to take the Galli…

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Darkest Hour - Official International Trailer (Universal Pictures) HD

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Chamberlain was British prime minister between 1937 and 1940, and is closely associated with the policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany.

Arthur Neville Chamberlain was born on 18 March 1869 in Birmingham into a political family. His father, Joseph, was an influential politician of the late 19th century and Neville's older half-brother Austen held many Conservative cabinet positions in the early 20th century and won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Chamberlain was educated in Birmingham. After a successful career in business, in 1915 he was appointed lord mayor of Birmingham. In 1916, Lloyd George appointed him director-general of the department of national service, but disagreements between them led Chamberlain to resign. In 1918, Chamberlain was elected Conservative member of parliament for Ladywood in Birmingham and was rapidly promoted. He served as both chancellor of the exchequer (1923 - 1924) and minister of health (1923, 1924 -1929, 1931). In 1937, he succeeded Stanley Baldwin as prime minister.

Like many in Britain who had lived through World War One, Chamberlain was determined to avert another war. His policy of appeasement towards Adolf Hitler culminated in the Munich Agreement in which Britain and France accepted that the Czech region of the Sudetenland should be ceded to Germany. Chamberlain left Munich believing that by appeasing Hitler he had assured 'peace for our time'. However, in March 1939 Hitler annexed the rest of the Czech lands of Bohemia and Moravia, with Slovakia becoming a puppet state of Germany. Five months later in September 1939 Hitler's forces invaded Poland. Chamberlain responded with a British declaration of war on Germany.

In May 1940, after the disastrous Norwegian campaign, Chamberlain resigned and Winston Churchill became prime minister. Chamberlain served in Churchill's cabinet as lord president of the council. He died a few weeks after he left office, on 9 November 1940.

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Read a biography about Neville Chamberlain, and discover why he's closely associated with the policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany.

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Neville Chamberlain, in full Arthur Neville Chamberlain, (born March 18, 1869, Birmingham, Warwickshire, England-died November 9, 1940, Heckfield, near Reading, Hampshire), prime minister of the United Kingdom from May 28, 1937, to May 10, 1940, whose name is identified with the policy of " appeasement" toward Adolf Hitler's Germany in the period immediately preceding World War II.

Who were Neville Chamberlain's parents?

What was Neville Chamberlain's family like?

What is Neville Chamberlain best known for?

What were Neville Chamberlain's achievements?

The son of the statesman Joseph Chamberlain and younger half brother of Sir Austen Chamberlain, he managed his father's sisal plantation on Andros Island, Bahamas, and then prospered in the metalworking industry in Birmingham. Chosen lord mayor of that city in 1915, he organized in 1916 a municipal savings bank, the only one in Great Britain. In December 1916 he joined David Lloyd George's World War I coalition government as director general of national service, but, having insufficient powers, he resigned in August 1917. A Conservative member of the House of Commons from December 1918, Chamberlain served as postmaster general (1922-23), paymaster general of the armed forces (1923), minister of health (1923, 1924-29, and 1931), and chancellor of the Exchequer (1923-24 and 1931-37). He became prime minister on May 28, 1937.

In a futile attempt to sway Fascist Italy away from German influence, he agreed (April 16, 1938) to recognize Italian supremacy in Ethiopia and kept Great Britain out of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), in which Italy was deeply involved. A few days later (April 25) he also undertook to abandon British naval bases in Ireland, a move opposed by some as weakening Britain's defense capability.

On three occasions in September 1938, Chamberlain went to Germany in efforts to prevent the outbreak of a general European war over Hitler's demand that Czechoslovakia cede the Sudetenland to Germany. By the Munich Agreement of September 30, he and Premier Édouard Daladier of France granted almost all of Hitler's demands and left Czechoslovakia defenseless. He returned to England a popular hero, speaking of "peace with honour" (echoing an earlier prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli) and "peace for our time." Nonetheless, he immediately ordered the acceleration of the British rearmament program. When Hitler seized the rest of Czechoslovakia (March 10-16, 1939), Chamberlain definitely repudiated appeasement, and he soon published Anglo-French guarantees of armed support for Poland, Romania, and Greece in the event of similar attacks. The next month, peacetime military conscription was instituted for the first time in British history.

The Soviet-German nonaggression treaty (August 23, 1939), frustrating Chamberlain's plan for a mutual assistance agreement among Great Britain, France, and the U.S.S.R., was followed by an Anglo-Polish pact (August 24). When the Germans attacked Poland (September 1, 1939), Chamberlain countered with a British declaration of war (September 3). He remained prime minister during the " phony war" period of sporadic military action, taking into his war cabinet his foremost critic, Winston Churchill, as first lord of the Admiralty.

After the failure of a British expedition to Norway in April 1940, Chamberlain lost the support of many Conservatives in the House of Commons. He resigned on May 10, the day of the German invasion of the Low Countries. In Churchill's coalition government he served loyally as lord president of the council until September 30, 1940, when ill health forced him to resign that office and the Conservative Party leadership. He died a few weeks later.

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Neville Chamberlain | Biography, World War II, Appeasement, History, & Facts

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Neville Chamberlain, prime minister of the United Kingdom from May 28, 1937, to May 10, 1940, whose name is identified with the policy of 'appeasement' toward Adolf Hitler's Germany in the period immediately preceding World War II. Learn more about Chamberlain's life and career in this article.

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Exam board content from BBC Bitesize for students in England, Northern Ireland or Wales. Choose the exam specification that matches the one you study.

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Because the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War is coming up (it falls on September 3) and Chamberlain, Britain's bloodhound-faced, moustachioed, wing-collared, brolly-carrying Prime Minister at its outset, has become entrenched in popular legend as the man who fatally failed to stand up to Hitler in the approach to hostilities.
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A year before war was finally declared over Germany's invasion of Poland, general European hostilities nearly broke out over Hitler's wish to seize part of Czechoslovakia (the Sudetenland, a region which contained many German-speaking Czechs). In a vast blaze of publicity, the like of which had never been seen before, Chamberlain flew to Germany three times in September 1938 to stave off the conflict, and eventually, in a final meeting in Munich at the end of the month, succeeded. He got Hitler to sign a friendship agreement with Britain and flew back to wave it before cheering crowds on the Tarmac of Heston Airport (the Heathrow of those days) while declaring he had secured "peace in our time".
But wasn't that a good thing?
Not if you were a Czech. Chamberlain's plan was simple - to keep Hitler from causing trouble for Britain by giving him what he wanted - in this case, the Sudetenland (which six months later became all of Czechoslovakia). He and the French Prime Minister, Edouard Daladier, persuaded the Czechs not to make a fuss while a big chunk of their country was given away to one of history's vilest figures. Chamberlain had a name for his policy: appeasement. In his mind it seemed like a rational way of avoiding conflict. But the word has come to stand for cowardice of the basest kind, for a craven inability to stand up to bullies. Appeasement now seems dreadful, and it wasn't even any use - a year later, war came anyway. The term and Chamberlain's name have become virtually synonymous.
Is that a fair historical verdict?
Maybe. Maybe not. Historical verdicts are rarely the whole truth, are they? To see Neville Chamberlain as exemplifying appeasement and nothing else, to see him merely as the historical epitome of spinelessness, ignores two other factors. One is his earlier political career, and what he had done with it. The other is the question of whether or not, in September 1938, he had any choice but to act as he did.
What was interesting about Chamberlain's earlier career?
In many ways, it had been a monument to social reform - Conservative though he was. Chamberlain came from a famous political dynasty in Birmingham: his father, Joseph ("Joe") Chamberlain was Lord Mayor of the city and one of Britain's leading Liberal politicians in the late 19th century (though he later allied himself with the Conservatives over the issue of Home Rule for Ireland); his half-brother, Austen Chamberlain, rose to become Conservative party leader and Chancellor of the Exchequer (though never Premier). Although Neville Chamberlain himself was also Birmingham's Lord Mayor, he entered national politics late, in 1918, at the age of 49; but, by 1922 he was Minister of Health, a position he held twice over the succeeding years and used especially to bring in a raft of measures to promote social housing (which have now of course been entirely forgotten). He was far from being a typical Tory.
But what about appeasement? What do you mean, he might have had no choice?
We easily forget what a completely intractable problem the rise of Hitler presented other European states with in the 1930s. Just how were they to deal with a man controlling Europe's most militarised and warlike nation, who had an implacable will to dominate the whole continent? In the event, Hitler was only to be stopped by history's most titanic war, which may have cost 25 million lives in Russia alone. But who would choose such a solution? Memories were only too fresh of the Great War, the First World War of 1914-18 in which a whole generation was slaughtered. Furthermore, there was a terror of a new weapon: the bomber aircraft. In 1938, the Committee of Imperial Defence told Chamberlain that a German bomber offensive launched against Britain would result in half a million civilian deaths within the first three weeks. The armed forces felt Britain was not ready for conflict militarily. The general public - you and me, 70 years ago - were terrified of war, and as desperate to avoid it as Chamberlain himself was. You can argue that doing anything to put it off was, as he believed, a rational choice. Certainly, when he stood on the Tarmac at Heston waving the piece of paper bearing Hitler's signature, he was regarded as a national hero. Only a few voices, such as that of Winston Churchill, denounced appeasement as the sell-out it was. You and me were silent.
So why is Chamberlain now so reviled?
The answer, really, is because of his naivety. He was naïve in thinking that Hitler would keep his promise to make no more territorial grabs - der Führer gobbled up the rest of Czechoslovakia a mere six months later, and then turned to Poland, and even appeasement could not stop him then. But Chamberlain made a great parade of his naïve belief in Hitler's goodwill. The three eve-of-destruction flights he made to Germany were a wholly new event in international politics - the first shuttle diplomacy, if you like. He had never been on a plane before in his life, but he saw, quite rightly, that this remarkable démarche would capture the public imagination, and he basked in the brief hero status it gave him. Yet the momentum of hope and expectation it engendered was so enormous that the disenchantment was all the greater when within 12 months the hope was shown to be hollow. And there was one other area where he failed disastrously - at least in the verdict of history.
What was that?
He lost the rhetoric battle. He might have had to do what he did, but his words carry a shameful echo. He spoke of poor Czechoslovakia as "a far away country of which we know nothing". He said he had achieved "peace in our time". He hadn't. Contrast that with Churchill, whose great achievement in the Second World War was his rhetoric. Whenever Churchill intervened directly in the conduct of military affairs, as he frequently did, the results were disastrous. But we have forgotten that. What we remember is We Shall Fight Them On The Beaches. We remember Never Has So Much Been Owed By So Many To So Few. We remember Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat. And with Neville Chamberlain, we remember Peace In Our Time (not).
Did Chamberlain have any choice but to appease Hitler in September 1938? Yes...
* He should have seen then that appeasement would not stop such a power-mad dictator

* A resolute show of force (with the French) might have persuaded Hitler to pull back

* His actions convinced Hitler of Britain's weakness and encouraged him in further demands
No...
* There seemed to be no other option if full-scale war with a resurgent Germany was to be avoided

* Britain's military forces were not ready for war anyway and the government feared a bombing campaign

* Chamberlain was reflecting widespread public opinion at the time which wanted peace

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The Big Question: Was Neville Chamberlain really the failure portrayed

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Why are we asking this now? Because the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War is coming up (it falls on September 3) and Chamberlain, Britain's bloodhound-faced, moustachioed, wing-collared, brolly-carrying Prime Minister at its outset, has become entrenched in popular legend as the man who fatally failed to stand up to Hitler in the approach to hostilities.

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▼ Primary Sources ▼

Edward Wood, the fourth son of the 2nd Viscount Halifax, was born in Powderham Castle, the home of his maternal grandfather, William Courtenay, 11th Earl of Devon, on 16th April, 1881. He was the sixth child and fourth son of Charles Lindley Wood (1839-1934), who later became the second Viscount Halifax, and his wife, Lady Agnes Elizabeth Courtenay (1838-1919). His great-grandfather was Earl Grey, the motivating force behind the 1832 Reform Act. Wood was born with an atrophied left arm that had no hand.

David Dutton has pointed out: "The Woods had emerged from among the gentry of Yorkshire to become one of the great landowning houses of northern England, but with three elder brothers Edward seemed to have little prospect of inheriting his father's title. Between 1886 and 1890, however, each of his brothers fell victim to one of the Victorian child-killing diseases, leaving him heir to the family viscountcy."

Wood went to St David's Preparatory School in September 1892 at the age of eleven. Two years later he transferred to Eton College. He did not enjoy his early schooling and was pleased to arrive at Christ Church, in October 1899. An outstanding student, he obtained a first-class degree in modern history from University of Oxford. He was also elected to a fellowship at All Souls in November 1903 and devoted himself over the next three years to further academic study, which led to the publication of a short biography of John Keble, one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement.

On 21st September 1909 he married Lady Dorheld government office oothy Evelyn Augusta Onslow (1885-1976), daughter of the William Onslow, 4th Earl of Onslow, who had served in the cabinet under Robert Cecil, Lord Salisbury (1886-1889) and was a former governor-general of New Zealand. (1889-1892). The couple's first child, Anne, was born in July 1910. They also had three sons: Charles (1912), Peter (1916) and Richard (1920).

A member of the Conservative Party, Wood won the seat of Ripon from the Liberal candidate, Henry Finnis Blosse Lynch, in the 1910 General Election. As captain in the Queen's Own Yorkshire dragoons, a yeomanry regiment, he did not spend much time in the House of Commons during the First World War. However, when he did take part in debates, he joined Conservative hardliners who demanded all-out victory and a punitive peace with Germany. Wood spent time on the Western Front in 1916 and was relieved to be offered the post of deputy director of the labour supply department in the Ministry of National Service. He held this position to the end of the war. Robert Bernays later wrote: "He (Wood) has a magnificent head, and his tall figure and Cecilian stoop and sympathetic kindly eyes give more the impression of a Prince of the Church than a politician".

Ripon was a safe Conservative seat and at the elections of 1918, 1923, and 1924 Edward Wood was returned unopposed. In parliament Wood became a member of a small group of MPs which included Samuel Hoare, Philip Lloyd-Graeme, and Walter Elliot, whose aim was to espouse progressive policies. Wood was the co-author of The Great Opportunity (1918). As David Dutton has argued that Wood suggested that the "Conservative Party should focus on the welfare of the community rather than the advantage of the individual. It also advocated a federal solution to the Irish question." In April 1921 Wood was appointed under-secretary for the colonies in April 1921. In the winter 1921-2 Wood toured the British West Indies in order to report to Winston Churchill on the political and social situation there.

Wood became disillusioned with the leadership of David Lloyd George and was among the majority who voted at the Carlton Club on 23rd October, 1922 that the Conservative Party should contest the next general election as an independent force. With many leading Conservatives remaining loyal to Lloyd George, Wood was elevated from the obscurity of junior office to the ranks of the cabinet as president of the Board of Education on 24th October 1922. According to his biographer he regarded "it as little more than a stepping stone to higher office" and "made sure that his ministerial schedule left time for two days' hunting each week". He lost office when Ramsay MacDonald became the new prime minister following the 1924 General Election.

The Conservative Party returned to power in November 1924. In the government led by Stanley Baldwin Wood served as minister of agriculture on 6 November 1924. He held the post for less than a year for in October 1925 Wood was approached by the secretary of state for India, Lord Birkenhead, with the offer of the viceroyalty and governor-generalship in succession to Rufus Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading. He gave up his seat in the House of Commons and after accepting the title of Lord Irwin, left for India on 17th March 1926.

David Dutton has argued: " In many ways Irwin was well fitted for his new post. He relished the pomp which was inseparable from it. Physically, he cut an impressive figure, and was an accomplished horseman. Six feet five inches tall, he easily gave an impression of aristocratic self-confidence which set him apart from lesser men.... Yet at the same time he showed a sympathy for the Indian point of view unmatched by many of his predecessors. He also displayed considerable physical bravery in the face of more than one attempt to assassinate him during his time in the subcontinent. His viceroyalty was characterized by a patient commitment to ensuring that a contented India should remain inside the British Commonwealth for the foreseeable future. He set out to win Indian goodwill and co-operation, but could be firm when necessary, and stressed that it would be difficult to meet Indian wishes while Indians remained divided among themselves... In his first major speech as viceroy he appealed for an end to the endemic communal violence between Muslims and Hindus, and returned to this theme at intervals throughout his time in India. Towards terrorism he was uncompromising and, despite his Christian beliefs, felt no hesitation or remorse when signing death warrants which he considered justified."

Lord Irwin clashed with Winston Churchill over his dealings with Mohandas Gandhi, who he considered a "malignant subversive fanatic". On 17th February 1931, Irwin met Gandhi for the first of a series of discussions. When he heard the news Churchill commented: "It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well-known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace, while he is still organising and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor."

On 5th March, 1931, Lord Irwin agreed a deal with Gandhi. In exchange for prisoner-release and other concessions, civil disobedience would be halted and Congress would attend the next session of the Round Table Conference. A few hours after the agreement was reached, Gandhi came back to see Irwin. Jawaharlal Nehru had told Gandhi that he "had unwittingly sold India". Irwin later recalled: "I exhorted him not to let this worry him unduly, as I had no doubt that very soon I should be getting cables from England, telling me that in Mr Churchill's opinion I had sold Great Britain."

Edward Wood, Lord Halifax

Ramsay MacDonald, the former leader of the Labour Party, and head of the National Government appointed Lord Irwin as his president of the Board of Education in June 1932. He did not have progressive views on education and is quoted as saying the country needed state schools to "train them up for servants and butlers". In 1933 he was appointed as chancellor of the University of Oxford.

Upon the death of his 94-year-old father in January 1934, became Viscount Halifax. When Stanley Baldwin replaced MacDonald as prime minister in June 1935, Halifax was moved from education to the War Office. He did not seem particularly worried by the emergence of Adolf Hitler and the growth of Nazi Germany and according to his biographer, David Dutton, "at the committee of imperial defence he challenged the assertion of the chiefs of staff that the country's paramount need was to step up the pace of rearmament. It was a weakness in his understanding of the international situation that he never fully grasped, until it was too late, the enormity of Hitler's capacity for evil."

Nancy Astor and her husband, Waldorf Astor held regular weekend parties at their home Cliveden, a large estate in Buckinghamshire on the River Thames. This group eventually became known as the Cliveden Set. Those who attended included Lord Halifax, Philip Henry Kerr (11th Marquess of Lothian), Geoffrey Dawson, Samuel Hoare, Lionel Curtis, Nevile Henderson, Robert Brand and Edward Algernon Fitzroy. Most members of the group were supporters of a close relationship with Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. The group included several influential people. Astor owned The Observer, Dawson was editor of , Hoare was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Fitzroy was Speaker of the Commons.

Norman Rose, the author of The Cliveden Set (2000): "Lothian, Dawson, Brand, Curtis and the Astors - formed a close-knit band, on intimate terms with each other for most of their adult life. Here indeed was a consortium of like-minded people, actively engaged in public life, close to the inner circles of power, intimate with Cabinet ministers, and who met periodically at Cliveden or at 4 St James Square (or occasionally at other venues). Nor can there be any doubt that, broadly speaking, they supported - with one notable exception - the government's attempts to reach an agreement with Hitler's Germany, or that their opinions, propagated with vigour, were condemned by many as embarrassingly pro-German."

In 1936 Halifax visited Nazi Germany for the first time. Halifax's friend, Henry (Chips) Channon, reported: "He told me he liked all the Nazi leaders, even Goebbels, and he was much impressed, interested and amused by the visit. He thinks the regime absolutely fantastic." Halifax later explained in his autobiography, Fulness of Days (1957): "The advent of Hitler to power in 1933 had coincided with a high tide of wholly irrational pacifist sentiment in Britain, which caused profound damage both at home and abroad. At home it immensely aggravated the difficulty, great in any case as it was bound to be, of bringing the British people to appreciate and face up to the new situation which Hitler was creating; abroad it doubtless served to tempt him and others to suppose that in shaping their policies this country need not be too seriously regarded."

On 17th June, 1936, Claude Cockburn, produced an article called "The Best People's Front" in his anti-fascist newsletter, . He argued that a group that he called the Astor network, were having a strong influence over the foreign policies of the British government. He pointed out that members of this group controlled and The Observer and had attained an "extraordinary position of concentrated power" and had become "one of the most important supports of German influence".

During the weekend of 23rd October 1937, the Astors had thirty people to lunch. This included Geoffrey Dawson (editor of ), Nevile Henderson (the recently appointed Ambassador to Berlin), Edward Algernon Fitzroy (Speaker of the Commons), Sir Alexander Cadogan (soon to replace the anti-appeasement Robert Vansittart as Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office), Lord Lothian and Lionel Curtis. They were happy that Neville Chamberlain, a strong supporter of appeasement was now Prime Minister and that this would soon mean promotion for people such as Lothian and Lord Halifax.

According to Norman Rose, Lord Lothian gave a talk on future relations with Adolf Hitler. "He wished to define what Britain would not fight for. Certainly not for the League of Nations, a broken vessel; nor to honour the obligations of others. As he had explained to the Nazi leaders, 'Britain had no primary interests in eastern Europe,' areas that fell within 'Germany's sphere'. To be dragged into a conflict not of Britain's making and not in defence of its vital interests would bedevil relations with the Dominions, fatal for the unity of the Empire. For the Clivedenites, this was always the bottom line... In effect, Lothian was prepared to turn central and eastern Europe over to Germany." Nancy Astor supported Lothian: "In twenty years I've never known Philip to be wrong on foreign politics." Geoffrey Dawson also agreed with Lothian and this was reflected in an editorial in that he wrote a few days later. Lionel Curtis was the only member of this group that had doubts about Lothian's plans.

In November, 1937, Neville Chamberlain, who had replaced Stanley Baldwin as prime minister, sent Lord Halifax to meet Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Goering in Germany. In his diary, Lord Halifax records how he told Hitler: "Although there was much in the Nazi system that profoundly offended British opinion, I was not blind to what he (Hitler) had done for Germany, and to the achievement from his point of view of keeping Communism out of his country." This was a reference to the fact that Hitler had banned the Communist Party (KPD) in Germany and placed its leaders in Concentration Camps. Halifax had told Hitler: "On all these matters (Danzig, Austria, Czechoslovakia)..." the British government "were not necessarily concerned to stand for the status quo as today... If reasonable settlements could be reached with... those primarily concerned we certainly had no desire to block."

The story was leaked to the journalist Vladimir Poliakoff. On 13th November 1937 the Evening Standard reported the likely deal between the two countries: "Hitler is ready, if he receives the slightest encouragement, to offer to Great Britain a ten-year truce in the colonial issue... In return... Hitler would expect the British Government to leave him a free hand in Central Europe". On 17th November, Claude Cockburn reported in , that the deal had been first moulded "into usable diplomatic shape" at Cliveden that for years has "exercised so powerful an influence on the course of British policy." He later added that Lord Halifax was "the representative of Cliveden and Printing House Square rather than of more official quarters." The Reynolds News claimed that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was "in protective custody at Cliveden". The Manchester Guardian, The Daily Chronicle and The Tribune reported the story in a similar fashion.

Whereas Lord Halifax supported Chamberlain's appeasement policy, the foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, was highly critical of this way of dealing with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. On 25th February, 1938 Eden resigned over this issue and Lord Halifax became the new foreign secretary. It was claimed that this was a victory for the Cliveden Set. In a speech given in the House of Commons Eden argued: "I do not believe that we can make progress in European appeasement if we allow the impression to gain currency abroad that we yield to constant pressure. I am certain in my own mind that progress depends above all on the temper of the nation, and that tmper must find expression in a firm spirit. This spirit I am confident is there. Not to give voice it is I believe fair neither to this country nor to the world."

Soon after Lord Halifax's appointment, Adolf Hitler invited Kurt von Schuschnigg, the Austrian Chancellor, to meet him at Berchtesgarden. Hitler demanded concessions for the Austrian Nazi Party. Schuschnigg refused and after resigning was replaced by Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the leader of the Austrian Nazi Party. On 13th March, Seyss-Inquart invited the German Army to occupy Austria and proclaimed union with Germany.

The union of Germany and Austria ( Anschluss) had been specifically forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. Some members of the House of Commons, including Anthony Eden and Winston Churchill, now called on Lord Halifax and Neville Chamberlain to take action against Adolf Hitler and his Nazi government. However, they still retained the support of most of the Conservative Party and Henry (Chips) Channon suggested that the problem was with the rest of the government: "Halifax and Chamberlain are doubtless very great men, who dwarf their colleagues; they are the greatest Englishmen alive, certainly; but aside from them we have a mediocre crew; I fear that England is on the decline, and that we shall dwindle for a generation or so. We are a tired race and our genius seems dead."

Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe, a close friend of Adolf Hitler, asked her friend, Lady Ethel Snowden to arrange a meeting with Lord Halifax, about arranging unofficial talks with the Nazi government. Halifax wrote in his diary on 6th July 1938: "Lady Snowden came to see me early in the morning. She informed me that, through someone on the closest terms with Hitler - I took this to mean Princess Hohenlohe - she had received a message with the following burden: Hitler wanted to find out whether H.M. Government would welcome it if he were to send one of the closest confidants, as I understand it, to England for the purpose of conducting unofficial talks. Lady Snowden gave me to understand that this referred to Field-Marshal Goering, and they wished to find out whether he come come to England without being too severely and publicly insulted, and what attitude H.M. Government would take generally to such a visit."

Lord Halifax was initially suspicious of Princess Stephanie. He had been warned the previous year by Walford Selby, the British ambassador in Vienna, that Stephanie was an "international adventuress" who was "known to be Hitler's agent". He had also heard from another source that she was a "well known adventuress, not to say blackmailer". Despite this, after obtaining permission from Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, he agreed to meet with Hitler's representative, Fritz Wiedemann. The meeting took place on 18th July at Halifax's private residence in Belgravia. Halifax noted in a memorandum: "The Prime Minister and I have thought about the meeting I had with Captain Wiedemann. Of especial importance to us are the steps which the Germans and the British might possibly take, not only to create the best possible relationship between the two countries, but also to calm down the international situation in order to achieve an improvement of general economic and political problems."

Someone leaked the meeting to The Daily Herald. When it appeared in the newspaper on 19th July, it created a storm of controversy. The French government complained that the meeting had been arranged by Princess Holenlohe, who according to their intelligence services was a "Nazi agent". Jan Masryk, the Czech ambassador in London, wrote to his government in Prague on 22nd July: "If there is any decency left in this world, then there will be a big scandal when it is revealed what part was played in Wiedemann's visit by Steffi Hohenlohe, née Richter. This world-renowned secret agent, spy and confidence trickster, who is wholly Jewish, today provides the focus of Hitler's propaganda in London." On 23rd July 1938, Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary: "Wiedemann's visit to Halifax on the Führer's instructions continues to dominate the foreign press more than ever."

Walford Selby was also shocked by this meeting that had been arranged by Princess Stephanie. He warned the government that he had information that her suite at the Dorchester Hotel in London had become a base for Nazi sympathisers and an "outpost of German espionage", and that she had been behind much of the German propaganda circulating in London since she first moved to England. On 31st July, The Daily Express published an article about the man who had met Lord Halifax in secret. They described Fritz Wiedemann as Hitler's "listening-post, his contact man, negotiator, a checker-up, a man with a job without a name and without a parallel".

International tension increased when Adolf Hitler began demanding that the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia should be under the control of the German government. In an attempt to to solve the crisis, Lord Halifax and Neville Chamberlain and the heads of the governments of Germany, France and Italy met in Munich. On 29th September, 1938, Chamberlain, Hitler, Edouard Daladier and Benito Mussolini signed the Munich Agreement which transferred to Germany the Sudetenland, a fortified frontier region that contained a large German-speaking population. When Eduard Benes, Czechoslovakia's head of state, who had not been invited to Munich, protested at this decision, Chamberlain told him that Britain would be unwilling to go to war over the issue of the Sudetenland.

The Munich Agreement was popular with most people in Britain because it appeared to have prevented a war with Germany. However, some politicians, including Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden, attacked the agreement. These critics pointed out that no only had the British government behaved dishonorably, but it had lost the support of Czech Army, one of the best in Europe.

Halifax also did what he could to persuade the British press not to criticise Adolf Hitler. According to Herbert von Dirksen, the German ambassador to London, he even went to see the cartoonist, David Low: "On his return to England he (Lord Halifax) had done his best to prevent excesses in the Press; he had had discussions with two well-known cartoonists, one of them the notorious Low, and with a number of eminent representatives of the Press, and had tried to bring influence to bear on them. He (Lord Halifax) had been successful up to a point. It was extremely regrettable that numerous lapses were again to be noted in recent months. Lord Halifax promised to do everything possible to prevent such insults to the Führer in the future."

In March, 1939, the German Army seized the rest of Czechoslovakia. In taking this action, Adolf Hitler had broken the Munich Agreement. Lord Halifax and Neville Chamberlain, now realized that Hitler could not be trusted and their appeasement policy now came to an end. However, the British government was slow to react. As Clive Ponting, the author of 1940: Myth and Reality (1990) points out: "Hitler remained obdurate and the British government, under immense pressure from the House of Commons, finally declared war seventy-two hours after the German attack on their ally. Until the summer of 1940 they continued to explore numerous different approaches to see whether peace with Germany was possible. The main advocates of this policy after the outbreak of war were the Foreign Office, in particular its two ministers - Lord Halifax and Rab Butler - together with Neville Chamberlain."

Halifax defended his role in appeasement in in his autobiography, Fulness of Days (1957): "One fact remains dominant and unchallengeable. When war did come a year later it found a country and Commonwealth wholly united within itself, convinced to the foundations of soul and conscience that every conceivable effort had been made to find the way of sparing Europe the ordeal of war, and that no alternative remained. And that was the best thing that Chamberlain did."

After the outbreak of the Second World War Lord Halifax remained as the country's foreign secretary. On 14th December, 1939, Lord Lothian wrote to Halifax: "American opinion is still... almost unanimously anti-Nazi. In addition it is now almost more strongly anti-Soviet. It is to a much less degree pro-French or pro-British. There are formidable elements which are definitely anti-British which take every opportunity to misrepresent our motives and attack our methods.... I have no doubt that the best corrective is the fullest possible publicity from England and France through the important and high class American correspondents of what the Allies are thinking and doing."

Winston Churchill and Lord Halifax

When Neville Chamberlain resigned in May, 1940, the new premier, Winston Churchill kept Lord Halifax as foreign secretary in order to give the impression that the British government was united against Adolf Hitler. The following month, Joseph Goebbels recorded in his diary that Hitler had told him that peace negotiations had begun with Britain through Sweden. Three days later, a Swedish banker, Marcus Wallenberg, told British Embassy officials in Stockholm that the Germans were prepared to negotiate - but only with Lord Halifax.

In December, 1940, Lord Halifax was replaced as foreign secretary by his long-term opponent, Anthony Eden. Halifax now became British ambassador to the United States. As Nicholas J. Cull, the author of Selling War: The British Propaganda Campaign Against American Neutrality (1996), has pointed out: "Lord Halifax was the six-foot-six-inch, living, breathing personification of every negative stereotype that Americans nurtured with regard to Britain - the very antithesis of the dynamic new nation of Spitfires and the Dunkirk spirit."

In November 1942 Lord Halifax heard that his second son, Peter, had been killed in action in North Africa. Only two months later he learned that his youngest son, Richard, had been severely wounded. Halifax remained a somewhat reluctant ambassador over the following months. At the end of the Second World War he agreed to the request of the new Labour foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that he should carry on until May 1946. This extension enabled him to play an important part in the negotiations led by John Maynard Keynes to secure an American loan after the abrupt termination of lend-lease.

On his arrival home he was invited to join Churchill's shadow cabinet, but he declined the offer. However, he continued to play an active role in the House of Lords. He took part in the debate over Indian Independence. Lord Templewood, the former Samuel Hoare, criticizing the decision of the Labour cabinet to hand over India to an Indian government by June 1948 at the latest "without any provision for the protection of minorities or the discharge of their obligations". According to David Dutton, Halifax argued that "he was not prepared to condemn what the government was doing unless he could honestly and confidently recommend a better solution, which he could not".

In his retirement Lord Halifax wrote his memoirs, Fulness of Days (1957) where he attempted to defend the policy of appeasement. Edward Wood, 3rd Viscount Halifax, died at Garroby Hall, near York, on 23rd December, 1959.

The advent of Hitler to power in 1933 had coincided with a high tide of wholly irrational pacifist sentiment in Britain, which caused profound damage both at home and abroad. At home it immensely aggravated the difficulty, great in any case as it was bound to be, of bringing the British people to appreciate and face up to the new situation which Hitler was creating; abroad it doubtless served to tempt him and others to suppose that in shaping their policies this country need not be too seriously regarded.

I had a long conversation with Lord Halifax about Germany and his recent visit. He described Hitler's appearance, his khaki shirt, black breeches and patent leather evening shoes. He told me he liked all the Nazi leaders, even Goebbels, and he was much impressed, interested and amused by the visit. He thinks the regime absolutely fantastic, perhaps even too fantastic to be taken seriously. But he is very glad that he went, and thinks good may come of it. I was rivetted by all he said, and reluctant to let him go.

(3) Lord Halifax met Adolf Hitler in Brechtesgaden on 19th November, 1937. He recorded the meeting in his diary.

Hitler invited me to begin our discussion, which I did by thanking him for giving me this opportunity. I hoped it might be the means of creating better understanding between the two countries. The feeling of His Majesty's Government was that it ought to be within our power, if we could once come to a fairly complete appreciation of each other's position, and if we were both prepared to work together for the cause of peace, to make a large contribution to it. Although there was much in the Nazi system that profoundly offended British opinion, I was not blind to what he (Hitler) had done for Germany, and to the achievement from his point of view of keeping Communism out of his country.

This Government has never commanded my respect: I support it because the alternative would be infinitely worse. But our record, especially of late, is none too good. Halifax and Chamberlain are doubtless very great men, who dwarf their colleagues; they are the greatest Englishmen alive, certainly; but aside from them we have a mediocre crew; I fear that England is on the decline, and that we shall dwindle for a generation or so. We are a tired race and our genius seems dead.

(5) In March, 1939 Herbert von Dirksen, the German Ambassador in London, sent a telegram to Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister. The telegram commented on the talks between Lord Halifax, the British Foreign Minister, and Joseph Goebbels, the German Minister of Propaganda, that had taken place in Berlin.

On his return to England he (Lord Halifax) had done his best to prevent excesses in the Press; he had had discussions with two well-known cartoonists, one of them the notorious Low, and with a number of eminent representatives of the Press, and had tried to bring influence to bear on them.

He (Lord Halifax) had been successful up to a point. It was extremely regrettable that numerous lapses were again to be noted in recent months. Lord Halifax promised to do everything possible to prevent such insults to the Fuehrer in the future.

(6) In his memoirs Lord Halifax attempted to justify his appeasement policy that culminated in the signing of the Munich Agreement in September, 1938.

The criticism excited by Munich never caused me the least surprise. I should very possibly indeed have been among the critics myself, if I had not happened to be in a position of responsibility. But there were two or three considerations to which those same critics ought to have regard. One was that in criticizing the settlement of Munich, they were criticizing the wrong thing and the the wrong date. They ought to have criticized the failure of successive Governments, and of all parties, to foresee the necessity of rearming in the light of what was going on in Germany; and the right date on which criticism ought to have fastened was 1936, which had seen the German reoccupation of the Rhineland in defiance of treaty provisions.

I have little doubt that if we had then told Hitler bluntly to go back, his power for future and larger mischief would have been broken. But, leaving entirely aside the French, there was no section of British public opinion that would not have been directly opposed to such action in 1936. To go to war with Germany for walking into their own backyard, which was how the British people saw it, at a time moreover when you were actually discussing with them the dates and conditions of their right to resume occupation, was not the sort of thing people could understand. So that moment which, I would guess, offered the last effective chance of securing peace without war, went by.

The other element that gave fuel to the fires of criticism was the unhappy phrases which Neville Chamberlain under the stress of great emotion allowed himself to use. 'Peace with Honour'; 'Peace for our time' - such sentences grated harshly on the ear and thought of even those closest to him. But when all has been said, one fact remains dominant and unchallengeable. When war did come a year later it found a country and Commonwealth wholly united within itself, convinced to the foundations of soul and conscience that every conceivable effort had been made to find the way of sparing Europe the ordeal of war, and that no alternative remained. And that was the best thing that Chamberlain did.

Halifax was a man of deep sincerity and pleasing personality. In the Churchill coalition he gave the impression of being a competent statesman though not, perhaps, one destined for immortal fame. Churchill seemed to get on well enough with him, but there was a certain coolness which suggested that he had not entirely forgotten Halifax's connexion with a cabinet which had pursued, in his judgment, wrong policies before and after war broke out. He was one of the men of Munich. It may well be that Churchill included Halifax, as he did Chamberlain, as a deliberate policy of taking some of the prominent supporters of the Baldwin and Chamberlain regimes into his coalition to preserve the unity of his Party.

As Ambassador to the U.S.A., upon ceasing to be Foreign Secretary, Halifax was a conspicuous success. Next to Royalty the citizens of the American republic love an aristocrat as a visitor, official or otherwise. Halifax combined his aristocratic status with a real man-to-man attitude which endeared him to the Administration, to Congressmen, to businessmen, and to the public.

The British government entered the war in September 1939 with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. For two days after the - German invasion of Poland they tried to avoid declaring war. They hoped that if the Germans would agree to withdraw, then a four-power European conference sponsored by Mussolini would be able to devise a settlement at the expense of the Poles. But Hitler remained obdurate and the British government, under immense pressure from the House of Commons, finally declared war seventy-two hours after the German attack on their ally. Until the summer of 1940 they continued to explore numerous different approaches to see whether peace with Germany was possible. The main advocates of this policy after the outbreak of war were the Foreign Office, in particular its two ministers - Lord Halifax and Rab Butler - together with Neville Chamberlain. But the replacement of Chamberlain by Churchill had little effect on this aspect of British policy and the collapse of France forced the government into its most serious and detailed consideration of a possible peace. Even Churchill was prepared to cede part of the Empire to Germany if a reasonable peace was on offer from Hitler. Not until July 1940 did an alternative policy - carrying on the war in the hope that the Americans would rescue Britain - become firmly established.

British peace efforts in the period 1939-40 remain a highly sensitive subject for British governments, even though all the participants are now dead. Persistent diplomatic efforts to reach peace with Germany are not part of the mythology of 1940 and have been eclipsed by the belligerent rhetoric of the period. Any dent in the belief that Britain displayed an uncompromising 'bulldog spirit' throughout 1940 and never considered any possibility other than fighting on to total victory is still regarded as severely damaging to Britain's self-image and the myth of 'Their Finest Hour'. The political memoirs of the participants either carefully avoid the subject or are deliberately misleading. Normally, government papers are available for research after thirty years but some of the most sensitive British files about these peace feelers, including key war cabinet decisions, remain closed until well into the twenty-first century. It is possible, however, to piece together what really happened from a variety of different sources and reveal the reality behind the myth.

The main contacts in the autumn of 1939 were, as in 1940, made through the various neutral countries, which were still able to act as intermediaries between Britain and Germany. Early in October contacts were established with the German ambassador in Ankara, von Papen, but these came to nothing. A more substantial approach was made via the Irish. On 3 October the Irish Foreign Office told the German embassy in Dublin that Chamberlain and those around him wanted peace, provided that British prestige was preserved. This approach was not an Irish initiative but represented a British attempt to explore a possible basis for peace with Germany. The subject is still regarded as highly sensitive and all British files remain closed until 2016. Some evidence of the sort of terms the British may have had in mind is provided by Rab Butler's conversation with the Italian ambassador in London on 13 November. Butler, obviously intending that the message should be passed on to Germany, said that the Germans would not have to withdraw from Poland before negotiations to end the war began. He also made it clear that Churchill, with his more bellicose public utterances, spoke only for himself and did not represent the views of the British government.

The possibility of peace was also high on the agenda in the spring of 1940 before the German attack on Scandinavia. Influential individuals within the British establishment thought peace should be made. When the foremost independent military expert in the country, Sir Basil Liddell-Hart, was asked in early March what he thought Britain should do, he replied: "Come to the best possible terms as soon as possible ... we have no chance of avoiding defeat." Lord Beaverbrook, proprietor of Express Newspapers, was even prepared to back 'peace' candidates run by the Independent Labour Party at by-elections. He offered £500 per candidate and newspaper backing, but the scheme never got off the ground. Within the government there were similar yearnings for peace. On 24 January Halifax and his permanent secretary, Sir Alexander Cadogan, had a long conversation about possible peace terms. Cadogan reported that Halifax was "in a pacifist mood these days. So am I, in that I should like to make peace before war starts." The two men believed that peace was not possible with Hitler on any terms that he would find acceptable and were worried that either the Pope or President Roosevelt might intervene with their own proposals. If they did, then Allied terms would have to be put forward, but neither Halifax nor Cadogan could think what they should be. Cadogan concluded: "We left each other completely puzzled." The British were also under pressure from the dominions to make peace. This was urged by both New Zealand and Australia. The Australian Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, wrote to his High Commissioner in London, Bruce, that Churchill was a menace and a publicity seeker and that Britain, France, Germany and Italy should make peace before real war made the terms too stiff and then combine together against the real enemy: Bolshevism.

The meeting also considered what Britain might have to give up in order to obtain a settlement. There was general agreement that Mussolini would want Gibraltar, Malta and Suez and Chamberlain thought he might well add Somaliland, Kenya and Uganda to the list. It was more difficult to see what might have to be conceded to Hitler. The war cabinet were united in agreeing that Britain could not accept any form of disarmament in a peace settlement but that the return of the former German colonies taken away in the Versailles settlement was acceptable. At one point Halifax asked Churchill directly "whether, if he was satisfied that matters vital to the independence of this country were unaffected, he would be prepared to discuss terms". Churchill's reply shows none of the signs of the determined attitude he displayed in public and the image cultivated after the war. It reveals little difference between his views and those of Halifax, and shows he was prepared to give up parts of the Empire if a peace settlement were possible. He replied to Halifax's query by saying that "he would be thankful to get out of our present difficulties on such terms, provided we retained the essentials and the elements of our vital strength, even at the cost of some cession of territory". Neville Chamberlain's diary records the response in more specific terms than the civil service minutes. He quotes Churchill as saying that "if we could get out of this jam by giving up Malta and Gibraltar and some African colonies he would jump at it".

(12) Lynn Picknett, Clive Prince and Stephen Prior, Double Standards (2001)

Two other central figures were Lord Halifax, Foreign Secretary from 1938 until November 1940, and his under-secretary, R. A. (Richard Ausren "Rab") Butler. Halifax, although a minister, was a peer and therefore in the House of Lords, whereas Butler was the Foreign Office's representative in the Commons, so it proved particularly useful for them to work as a team. Both men were staunch supporters of Chamberlain's policies, continuing to explore ways of bringing about peace even after the outbreak of war. Halifax described Churchill and his supporters as "gangsters" - an epithet gleefully seized upon by the Nazi propaganda machine. Halifax not only disliked and distrusted Churchill, but was his chief rival for the job of Prime Minister after Chamberlain's resignation...

In early August 1939 a delegation of seven British businessmen met Goring in order to offer concessions that could prevent the outbreak of hostilities. The existence of this mission has been known for a long time, and largely dismissed - in the words of historian Donald Cameron Watt, writing in 1989 - as being made up of "well-meaning amateurs". The group consisted of Lord Aberconway (then chairman of the shipbuilders John Brown & Co. and Westland Aircraft); Sir Edward Mortimer Mountain (chairman of Eagle Star Insurance, among other companies); Charles E Spencer (chairman of Edison Swan Cables); and the prominent stockbroker Sir Robert Renwick. But in 1999 the last surviving member of the delegation, Lord Aberconway, finally revealed that far from being an ad hoc group, it had been sanctioned by Lord Halifax and very probably by Chamberlain himself. The delegation was acting on behalf of the British government, with the aim of persuading Hitler to make the offer of peace talks, which Chamberlain would argue it was his moral obligation to accept.

(13) Lynn Picknett, Clive Prince and Stephen Prior, Double Standards (2001)

Having been dragged into a war it never wanted, Chamberlain's government now sought a way out of it as soon as was possible without losing face. Although Chamberlain appointed Churchill as First Sea Lord and gave him and his ardent supporter Anthony Eden places in the War Cabinet, these were mere sops to the pro-war elements in the House of Commons. Chamberlain's cabinet remained resolutely composed of appeasers such as Halifax, Hoare and Simon. Astoundingly, on 2 September 1939 - the day before Britain declared war - Hoare told a German journalist: "Although we cannot in the circumstances avoid declaring war, we can always fulfil the letter of a declaration without immediately going all out."

It was the Chamberlain government's undeclared policy to fight a short and strictly limited war with a negotiated peace being made as soon as possible - in other words, the whole campaign would be merely a face-saving exercise. This was the strange nervy period known as the "Phoney War", which lasted from September 1939 until April 1940. While Germany and the Soviet Union looted Poland, Britain and France geared up for military action, training troops and manufacturing weapons. Most of the action at this time took the form of grappling for command of the North Sea, with the RAF bombing German warships and U-boats attacking British vessels...

In 1965, Bjorn Prytz, Swedish Ambassador to London during the Second World War, revealed on Swedish radio that he had discussed the possibility of a negotiated peace between Britain and Germany with the Halifax/Butler team in June 1940. The first meeting with Butler was on 17 June, the day that France surrendered to the Nazis. Butler told Prytz that Churchill was indecisive, and assured him that "no occasion would be missed to reach a compromise peace if reasonable conditions could be obtained". According to Prytz, Butler also said that "diehards like Churchill would not be allowed to pre¬vent Britain making a compromise peace with Germany'. During their meeting, Butler was telephoned by Halifax, who asked him to assure Prvtz that Britain's actions would be guided by 'common sense and not bravado'. After this Prytz sent a telegram to his superiors in Stockholm, the details of which were withheld by the Swedish government from the public until the 1990s 'because of British objections.

It is interesting that when Churchill (not yet Prime Minister) made a vehement attack on Hitler on 19 November 1939 - calculated to anger the dictator and effectively scupper any chance of making peace - Butler hurriedly assured the Italian Ambassador that the speech "was in conflict with the government's views". At this stage at least, Churchill's bellicose attitude was widely seen as an embarrassment and a major stumbling block to peace...

The peace camp was very busy in the early months of the war. Goebbels records in his diary that, in June 1940, Hitler told him that peace negotiations were under way, through Sweden. Three days after Goebbels confided this to his diary, a Swedish hanker named Marcus Wallenberg approached British Embassy officials in Stockholm. He told them that the Germans were prepared to negotiate - but only with Lord Halifax.

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▼ Primary Sources ▼ Edward Wood, the fourth son of the 2nd Viscount Halifax, was born in Powderham Castle, the home of his maternal grandfather, William Courtenay, 11th Earl of Devon, on 16th April, 1881. He was the sixth child and fourth son of Charles Lindley Wood (1839-1934), who later became the second Viscount Halifax, and his wife, Lady Agnes Elizabeth Courtenay (1838-1919).

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Lived

1881 to 1959

Dates in office

February 1938 to December 1940

Political party

Conservative

Interesting facts

Nick-named 'the Holy Fox' due to his passion for hunting and his Christian moral outlook

Biography

The Prime Minister wrote privately that Halifax was a more congenial colleague: "I thank God for a steady unruffled Foreign Secretary who never causes me any worry". He hoped that Halifax would not become infected with the pessimism and suspicion of Hitler and Mussolini which, in Chamberlain's opinion, some senior Foreign Office officials displayed.

Halifax was nicknamed 'the Holy Fox', reflecting his passion for hunting and his Christian moral outlook. He was a man of great stature, who possessed a rational outlook, calm resolution and a conciliatory manner. His air of aristocratic reserve was accompanied by a shrewd political judgement.

Negotiations with Hitler and Mussolini

Halifax agreed with Chamberlain that it was not worth starting a war to defend the crumbling post-war Versailles settlement. Both men initially believed that they could find a satisfactory solution to the demands of Hitler and Mussolini through negotiation and concession. But their traditional 'gentlemanly' approach to diplomacy was at odds with the new assertive Fascist leadership and the bullying brinksmanship they practiced.

Halifax realised earlier than Chamberlain, but later than others, that Britain would have to stand firm against Nazi demands for territorial aggrandisement. But it came too late to avoid him being cast in 1940 as one of the 'Guilty Men' (in the publication of the same name), held responsible for the war by appeasing fascism.

Halifax was no stranger to foreign affairs having deputised for Eden and acted as spokesman in the Lords since 1935. During the crisis resulting from the Hoare-Laval Pact (which gave Italy territorial concessions at the expense of Abyssinia) Halifax had declared the government's moral standing was at stake and called for the Foreign Secretary to resign. In November 1937 he had accepted an invitation, as Master of the Middleton Hunt, from Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering to visit a hunting exhibition in Berlin and to shoot foxes with him in Pomerania. Chamberlain pushed for the visit to be used to make contact with the German leadership and sound-out their intentions.

Halifax visited Hitler at his mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden where he nearly mistook the German Chancellor for a footman. He recalled in his memoirs: "As I looked out of the car window, on eye level, I saw in the middle of this swept path a pair of black trousered legs, finishing up in silk socks and pumps. I assumed this was a footman who had come down to help me out of the car and up the steps, and was proceeding in leisurely fashion to get myself out of the car when I heard Von Neurath [the German foreign minister] or somebody throwing a hoarse whisper at my ear of 'Der Führer, der Führer'; and it then dawned upon me that the legs were not the legs of a footman, but of Hitler" (Halifax, Fulness of Days, London, 1957).

In a 3 hour conversation, Halifax did little to curb Hitler's ambitions towards Austria and Czechoslovakia with his vague talk of 'possible alterations in the European order which might be destined to come about with the passage of time'.

The Munich crisis

At first Chamberlain continued to dominate foreign affairs and use personal diplomacy to circumvent the normal diplomatic channels. Even with a Foreign Secretary more to his liking, Chamberlain did not take Halifax with him to the Munich conference in September 1938 at which Czechoslovakia was carved up, and after which Chamberlain infamously declared he had secured 'peace for our time'. And at a subsequent mission to Italy to woo Mussolini in January 1939, Halifax played only a secondary role.

However during the Munich crisis, conscious as he was of the political mood and public opinion, Halifax's attitude towards Germany hardened. He was consequently instrumental in modifying Chamberlain's policies. In September 1938 he led the Cabinet in insisting on making fewer concessions to Germany over the Sudetenland. Following Hitler's complete annexation of Czechoslovakia, in March 1939, he pushed for Britain to offer a guarantee of security to Poland. Later that summer Halifax also made Chamberlain reassure France very publicly (if rather belatedly) of British military support should it too be invaded by Germany.

The final years in office

Chamberlain resigned as Prime Minister in May 1940 following the debacle of the Norwegian campaign. Halifax was seen as a leading candidate to replace him but he realised that Churchill would make a superior war leader and, pleading ill-health, withdrew from the race.

Halifax remained as Foreign Secretary and has been identified with various peacemaking initiatives in the summer of 1940. Churchill then decided he wanted Eden back as Foreign Secretary and in January 1941 Halifax was persuaded to take up the ambassadorship to Washington. There, after an initially hesitant start, he formed a strong working relationship with President Roosevelt and remained until May 1946.

Further reading

Halifax: The Life of Lord Halifax, by The Earl of Birkenhead (London, 1965)

Chamberlain and the Lost Peace by John Charmley (London, 1989)

The Holy Fox: A biography of Lord Halifax by Andrew Roberts (Bath, 1991)

An entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography by DJ Dutton (2008)

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History of Edward Frederick Lindley Wood - GOV.UK

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1881 to 1959 February 1938 to December 1940 Conservative Nick-named 'the Holy Fox' due to his passion for hunting and his Christian moral outlook The Prime Minister wrote privately that Halifax was a more congenial colleague: "I thank God for a steady unruffled Foreign Secretary who never causes me any worry".

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A letter in the files from the passport office to Captain WS Mars, dated January 9, 1940, states: "The permit granted on the 8th was given at the request of Mr CGS Stevenson, the Private Secretary to Lord Halifax, who telephoned to say that the Secretary of State wished that all possible facilities should be granted to Mr Bryans."

More details of Lord Halifax's involvement are contained in a internal note for the Ministry of Information dated October 19, 1945.

Its states: "Lonsdale Bryans met Lord Halifax on 25 August 1939. That he should travel to Europe to make contact with enemy groups opposed to Hitler. Lord Halifax is reputed to have said that Britain would not fight for Danzig and the [Polish] corridor and later to have minuted that he was impressed by the proposal."

Security officials stumbled upon the mission by accident when they arrested an associate of Lonsdale Bryans called Anderson who had letters from the old Etonian on his person.

A note connected with an interrogation of Anderson states: "The main point which seemed to emerge from the interrogation was that according to Anderson, Lonsdale Bryans was a personal friend of Lord Brocket and also claimed to be something in the nature of an unofficial envoy of Lord Halifax. He wished to see Hitler and with this in view had asked Anderson to get in touch with a certain Stahmer that Bryans would be vouched by a number of persons including those on the list."

On December 13, 1940, MI5 contacted Sir Alexander Codogan, the Permanent Under Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, to provide further details of the arrest and to disclose what the service had learned about Lonsdale Bryans from his associate.

The MI5 note states: "With reference to our conversation yesterday afternoon with regard to the case of John Lonsdale Bryans, I attach a copy of a letter which this individual wrote to the Director of the Schwartzhaupter Verlay, Leipzig, evidently offering to make a trip to Germany for the purpose of an audience with the Fuhrer.

"In writing this letter Bryans has of course been guilty of an offence under the Defence Regulations (DR4A) in the he has attempted to communicate with the enemy, but I certainly agree with your view that in the circumstances of the case the suggestion that we should request the Admiralty to intercept the Portuguese vessel on which Bryans is now travelling from Funchal to Lisbon is not practical."

Sir Alexander agrees that given the Foreign Office's involvement the idea of an arrest is out of the question. On 7th April 1941 he wrote: "Although there seems to be a good deal to be said for locking him up to prevent him airing his views to all and sundry, I understand that if this is done it will inevitably involve him bringing up the question of his contacts with the Foreign Office and the facilities offered to him to get into Italy.

"In the circumstances we feel that he might be left at large though of course be strictly watched."

The Foreign Office seems to have spent the rest of the war worried that Lonsdale Bryans will reveal the mission to the outside world.

One Foreign Office note from the period states: "Bryans is becoming desperately short of money and although no mischief has been done so far, I anticipate the possibility that he might try to sell his story the press. It occurs to me that it might be a good idea to warn Lonsdale Bryans as seriously and solemly as possible that he should not go on telling people of how he contacted the Germans."

An MI5 official notes on 1 March 1944: "Bryans story would make sensational reading in the Daily Mirror."

The Foreign Office provided its clearest explanation of events in a letter sent seven years after the end of the war, when the security services found out about plans by Lonsdale Bryans to write about his adventures.

In a letter dated 15 August, 1952, an official wrote: "The truth of the matter seems to be that Bryans managed, by importuning a number of influential people in the country, to get himself an interview with Lord Halifax and, by virtue of his Italian contacts, to arrange a meeting with von Hassell in Switzerland to discuss a possible revolution in Germany and peace terms. He brought back a paper which he gave to Sir Alexander Cadogan purporting to be set out von Hassell's views. His did this off his own bat and was never set on any mission by Lord Halifax or employed by HMG in any capacity whatsoever, though Lord Halifax did see him and though his journeys to Switzerland and Italy were facilitated on two occasions, but solely to the extent then necessary to enable anyone to travel."

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By Chris Hastings, Public Affairs Editor  

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Lord Halifax tried to negotiate peace with the Nazis

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A letter in the files from the passport office to Captain WS Mars, dated January 9, 1940, states: "The permit granted on the 8th was given at the request of Mr CGS Stevenson, the Private Secretary to Lord Halifax, who telephoned to say that the Secretary of State wished that all possible facilities should be granted to Mr Bryans."

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Darkest Hour Trailer #1 (2017) | Movieclips Trailers

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Chamberlain back from Germany after signing a peace agreement, The Munich Agreement with A.Hitler (agreement between France Germany , Italy and the UK) September 1938

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Speech by N.Chamberlain , Prime Minister (1940)

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"Their finest hour" is a famous historic speech delivered by Winston Churchill to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom on June 18, 1940.

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Gary Oldman on playing Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour | Film4 Interview Special

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Gallipoli Campaign: Gallipoli Campaign, (February 1915-January 1916), in World War I, an Anglo-French operation against Turkey, intended to force the 38-mile- (61-km-) long Dardanelles channel and to occupy Constantinople. Plans for such a venture were considered by the British authorities between 1904 and 1911, but

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We shall fight...June 1940 House of Commons 

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We shall fight...June 1940 House of Commons 

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Winston Churchill - We shall never surrender

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Full speech :June 4, 1940House of Commons. 

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Full speech :June 4, 1940House of Commons. 

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June 4, 1940

House of Commons
The position of the B. E.F had now become critical As a result of a most skillfully conducted retreat and German errors, the bulk of the British Forces reached the Dunkirk bridgehead. The peril facing the British nation was now suddenly and universally perceived. On May 26, "Operation Dynamo "-the evacuation from Dunkirk began. The seas remained absolutely calm. The Royal Air Force-bitterly maligned at the time by the Army-fought vehemently to deny the enemy the total air supremacy which would have wrecked the operation. At the outset, it was hoped that 45,000 men might be evacuated; in the event, over 338,000 Allied troops reached England, including 26,000 French soldiers. On June 4, Churchill reported to the House of Commons, seeking to check the mood of national euphoria and relief at the unexpected deliverance, and to make a clear appeal to the United States.
From the moment that the French defenses at Sedan and on the Meuse were broken at the end of the second week of May, only a rapid retreat to Amiens and the south could have saved the British and French Armies who had entered Belgium at the appeal of the Belgian King; but this strategic fact was not immediately realized. The French High Command hoped they would be able to close the gap, and the Armies of the north were under their orders. Moreover, a retirement of this kind would have involved almost certainly the destruction of the fine Belgian Army of over 20 divisions and the abandonment of the whole of Belgium. Therefore, when the force and scope of the German penetration were realized and when a new French Generalissimo, General Weygand, assumed command in place of General Gamelin, an effort was made by the French and British Armies in Belgium to keep on holding the right hand of the Belgians and to give their own right hand to a newly created French Army which was to have advanced across the Somme in great strength to grasp it.

However, the German eruption swept like a sharp scythe around the right and rear of the Armies of the north. Eight or nine armored divisions, each of about four hundred armored vehicles of different kinds, but carefully assorted to be complementary and divisible into small self-contained units, cut off all communications between us and the main French Armies. It severed our own communications for food and ammunition, which ran first to Amiens and afterwards through Abbeville, and it shore its way up the coast to Boulogne and Calais, and almost to Dunkirk. Behind this armored and mechanized onslaught came a number of German divisions in lorries, and behind them again there plodded comparatively slowly the dull brute mass of the ordinary German Army and German people, always so ready to be led to the trampling down in other lands of liberties and comforts which they have never known in their own.

I have said this armored scythe-stroke almost reached Dunkirk-almost but not quite. Boulogne and Calais were the scenes of desperate fighting. The Guards defended Boulogne for a while and were then withdrawn by orders from this country. The Rifle Brigade, the 60th Rifles, and the Queen Victoria's Rifles, with a battalion of British tanks and 1,000 Frenchmen, in all about four thousand strong, defended Calais to the last. The British Brigadier was given an hour to surrender. He spurned the offer, and four days of intense street fighting passed before silence reigned over Calais, which marked the end of a memorable resistance. Only 30 unwounded survivors were brought off by the Navy, and we do not know the fate of their comrades. Their sacrifice, however, was not in vain. At least two armored divisions, which otherwise would have been turned against the British Expeditionary Force, had to be sent to overcome them. They have added another page to the glories of the light divisions, and the time gained enabled the Graveline water lines to be flooded and to be held by the French troops.

Thus it was that the port of Dunkirk was kept open. When it was found impossible for the Armies of the north to reopen their communications to Amiens with the main French Armies, only one choice remained. It seemed, indeed, forlorn. The Belgian, British and French Armies were almost surrounded. Their sole line of retreat was to a single port and to its neighboring beaches. They were pressed on every side by heavy attacks and far outnumbered in the air.

When, a week ago today, I asked the House to fix this afternoon as the occasion for a statement, I feared it would be my hard lot to announce the greatest military disaster in our long history. I thought-and some good judges agreed with me-that perhaps 20,000 or 30,000 men might be re-embarked. But it certainly seemed that the whole of the French First Army and the whole of the British Expeditionary Force north of the Amiens-Abbeville gap would be broken up in the open field or else would have to capitulate for lack of food and ammunition. These were the hard and heavy tidings for which I called upon the House and the nation to prepare themselves a week ago. The whole root and core and brain of the British Army, on which and around which we were to build, and are to build, the great British Armies in the later years of the war, seemed about to perish upon the field or to be led into an ignominious and starving captivity.

That was the prospect a week ago. But another blow which might well have proved final was yet to fall upon us. The King of the Belgians had called upon us to come to his aid. Had not this Ruler and his Government severed themselves from the Allies, who rescued their country from extinction in the late war, and had they not sought refuge in what was proved to be a fatal neutrality, the French and British Armies might well at the outset have saved not only Belgium but perhaps even Poland. Yet at the last moment, when Belgium was already invaded, King Leopold called upon us to come to his aid, and even at the last moment we came. He and his brave, efficient Army, nearly half a million strong, guarded our left flank and thus kept open our only line of retreat to the sea. Suddenly, without prior consultation, with the least possible notice, without the advice of his Ministers and upon his own personal act, he sent a plenipotentiary to the German Command, surrendered his Army, and exposed our whole flank and means of retreat.

I asked the House a week ago to suspend its judgment because the facts were not clear, but I do not feel that any reason now exists why we should not form our own opinions upon this pitiful episode. The surrender of the Belgian Army compelled the British at the shortest notice to cover a flank to the sea more than 30 miles in length. Otherwise all would have been cut off, and all would have shared the fate to which King Leopold had condemned the finest Army his country had ever formed. So in doing this and in exposing this flank, as anyone who followed the operations on the map will see, contact was lost between the British and two out of the three corps forming the First French Army, who were still farther from the coast than we were, and it seemed impossible that any large number of Allied troops could reach the coast.

The enemy attacked on all sides with great strength and fierceness, and their main power, the power of their far more numerous Air Force, was thrown into the battle or else concentrated upon Dunkirk and the beaches. Pressing in upon the narrow exit, both from the east and from the west, the enemy began to fire with cannon upon the beaches by which alone the shipping could approach or depart. They sowed magnetic mines in the channels and seas; they sent repeated waves of hostile aircraft, sometimes more than a hundred strong in one formation, to cast their bombs upon the single pier that remained, and upon the sand dunes upon which the troops had their eyes for shelter. Their U-boats, one of which was sunk, and their motor launches took their toll of the vast traffic which now began. For four or five days an intense struggle reigned. All their armored divisions-or what Was left of them-together with great masses of infantry and artillery, hurled themselves in vain upon the ever-narrowing, ever-contracting appendix within which the British and French Armies fought.

Meanwhile, the Royal Navy, with the willing help of countless merchant seamen, strained every nerve to embark the British and Allied troops; 220 light warships and 650 other vessels were engaged. They had to operate upon the difficult coast, often in adverse weather, under an almost ceaseless hail of bombs and an increasing concentration of artillery fire. Nor were the seas, as I have said, themselves free from mines and torpedoes. It was in conditions such as these that our men carried on, with little or no rest, for days and nights on end, making trip after trip across the dangerous waters, bringing with them always men whom they had rescued. The numbers they have brought back are the measure of their devotion and their courage. The hospital ships, which brought off many thousands of British and French wounded, being so plainly marked were a special target for Nazi bombs; but the men and women on board them never faltered in their duty.

Meanwhile, the Royal Air Force, which had already been intervening in the battle, so far as its range would allow, from home bases, now used part of its main metropolitan fighter strength, and struck at the German bombers and at the fighters which in large numbers protected them. This struggle was protracted and fierce. Suddenly the scene has cleared, the crash and thunder has for the moment-but only for the moment-died away. A miracle of deliverance, achieved by valor, by perseverance, by perfect discipline, by faultless service, by resource, by skill, by unconquerable fidelity, is manifest to us all. The enemy was hurled back by the retreating British and French troops. He was so roughly handled that he did not hurry their departure seriously. The Royal Air Force engaged the main strength of the German Air Force, and inflicted upon them losses of at least four to one; and the Navy, using nearly 1,000 ships of all kinds, carried over 335,000 men, French and British, out of the jaws of death and shame, to their native land and to the tasks which lie immediately ahead. We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations. But there was a victory inside this deliverance, which should be noted. It was gained by the Air Force. Many of our soldiers coming back have not seen the Air Force at work; they saw only the bombers which escaped its protective attack. They underrate its achievements. I have heard much talk of this; that is why I go out of my way to say this. I will tell you about it.

This was a great trial of strength between the British and German Air Forces. Can you conceive a greater objective for the Germans in the air than to make evacuation from these beaches impossible, and to sink all these ships which were displayed, almost to the extent of thousands? Could there have been an objective of greater military importance and significance for the whole purpose of the war than this? They tried hard, and they were beaten back; they were frustrated in their task. We got the Army away; and they have paid fourfold for any losses which they have inflicted. Very large formations of German aeroplanes-and we know that they are a very brave race-have turned on several occasions from the attack of one-quarter of their number of the Royal Air Force, and have dispersed in different directions. Twelve aeroplanes have been hunted by two. One aeroplane was driven into the water and cast away by the mere charge of a British aeroplane, which had no more ammunition. All of our types-the Hurricane, the Spitfire and the new Defiant-and all our pilots have been vindicated as superior to what they have at present to face.

When we consider how much greater would be our advantage in defending the air above this Island against an overseas attack, I must say that I find in these facts a sure basis upon which practical and reassuring thoughts may rest. I will pay my tribute to these young airmen. The great French Army was very largely, for the time being, cast back and disturbed by the onrush of a few thousands of armored vehicles. May it not also be that the cause of civilization itself will be defended by the skill and devotion of a few thousand airmen? There never has been, I suppose, in all the world, in all the history of war, such an opportunity for youth. The Knights of the Round Table, the Crusaders, all fall back into the past-not only distant but prosaic; these young men, going forth every morn to guard their native land and all that we stand for, holding in their hands these instruments of colossal and shattering power, of whom it may be said that:

Every morn brought forth a noble chance
And every chance brought forth a noble knight,
deserve our gratitude, as do all the brave men who, in so many ways and on so many occasions, are ready, and continue ready to give life and all for their native land.

I return to the Army. In the long series of very fierce battles, now on this front, now on that, fighting on three fronts at once, battles fought by two or three divisions against an equal or somewhat larger number of the enemy, and fought fiercely on some of the old grounds that so many of us knew so well-in these battles our losses in men have exceeded 30,000 killed, wounded and missing. I take occasion to express the sympathy of the House to all who have suffered bereavement or who are still anxious. The President of the Board of Trade [Sir Andrew Duncan] is not here today. His son has been killed, and many in the House have felt the pangs of affliction in the sharpest form. But I will say this about the missing: We have had a large number of wounded come home safely to this country, but I would say about the missing that there may be very many reported missing who will come back home, some day, in one way or another. In the confusion of this fight it is inevitable that many have been left in positions where honor required no further resistance from them.

Against this loss of over 30,000 men, we can set a far heavier loss certainly inflicted upon the enemy. But our losses in material are enormous. We have perhaps lost one-third of the men we lost in the opening days of the battle of 21st March, 1918, but we have lost nearly as many guns - nearly one thousand-and all our transport, all the armored vehicles that were with the Army in the north. This loss will impose a further delay on the expansion of our military strength. That expansion had not been proceeding as far as we had hoped. The best of all we had to give had gone to the British Expeditionary Force, and although they had not the numbers of tanks and some articles of equipment which were desirable, they were a very well and finely equipped Army. They had the first-fruits of all that our industry had to give, and that is gone. And now here is this further delay. How long it will be, how long it will last, depends upon the exertions which we make in this Island. An effort the like of which has never been seen in our records is now being made. Work is proceeding everywhere, night and day, Sundays and week days. Capital and Labor have cast aside their interests, rights, and customs and put them into the common stock. Already the flow of munitions has leaped forward. There is no reason why we should not in a few months overtake the sudden and serious loss that has come upon us, without retarding the development of our general program.

Nevertheless, our thankfulness at the escape of our Army and so many men, whose loved ones have passed through an agonizing week, must not blind us to the fact that what has happened in France and Belgium is a colossal military disaster. The French Army has been weakened, the Belgian Army has been lost, a large part of those fortified lines upon which so much faith had been reposed is gone, many valuable mining districts and factories have passed into the enemy's possession, the whole of the Channel ports are in his hands, with all the tragic consequences that follow from that, and we must expect another blow to be struck almost immediately at us or at France. We are told that Herr Hitler has a plan for invading the British Isles. This has often been thought of before. When Napoleon lay at Boulogne for a year with his flat-bottomed boats and his Grand Army, he was told by someone. "There are bitter weeds in England." There are certainly a great many more of them since the British Expeditionary Force returned.

The whole question of home defense against invasion is, of course, powerfully affected by the fact that we have for the time being in this Island incomparably more powerful military forces than we have ever had at any moment in this war or the last. But this will not continue. We shall not be content with a defensive war. We have our duty to our Ally. We have to reconstitute and build up the British Expeditionary Force once again, under its gallant Commander-in-Chief, Lord Gort. All this is in train; but in the interval we must put our defenses in this Island into such a high state of organization that the fewest possible numbers will be required to give effective security and that the largest possible potential of offensive effort may be realized. On this we are now engaged. It will be very convenient, if it be the desire of the House, to enter upon this subject in a secret Session. Not that the government would necessarily be able to reveal in very great detail military secrets, but we like to have our discussions free, without the restraint imposed by the fact that they will be read the next day by the enemy; and the Government would benefit by views freely expressed in all parts of the House by Members with their knowledge of so many different parts of the country. I understand that some request is to be made upon this subject, which will be readily acceded to by His Majesty's Government.

We have found it necessary to take measures of increasing stringency, not only against enemy aliens and suspicious characters of other nationalities, but also against British subjects who may become a danger or a nuisance should the war be transported to the United Kingdom. I know there are a great many people affected by the orders which we have made who are the passionate enemies of Nazi Germany. I am very sorry for them, but we cannot, at the present time and under the present stress, draw all the distinctions which we should like to do. If parachute landings were attempted and fierce fighting attendant upon them followed, these unfortunate people would be far better out of the way, for their own sakes as well as for ours. There is, however, another class, for which I feel not the slightest sympathy. Parliament has given us the powers to put down Fifth Column activities with a strong hand, and we shall use those powers subject to the supervision and correction of the House, without the slightest hesitation until we are satisfied, and more than satisfied, that this malignancy in our midst has been effectively stamped out.

Turning once again, and this time more generally, to the question of invasion, I would observe that there has never been a period in all these long centuries of which we boast when an absolute guarantee against invasion, still less against serious raids, could have been given to our people. In the days of Napoleon the same wind which would have carried his transports across the Channel might have driven away the blockading fleet. There was always the chance, and it is that chance which has excited and befooled the imaginations of many Continental tyrants. Many are the tales that are told. We are assured that novel methods will be adopted, and when we see the originality of malice, the ingenuity of aggression, which our enemy displays, we may certainly prepare ourselves for every kind of novel stratagem and every kind of brutal and treacherous maneuver. I think that no idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered and viewed with a searching, but at the same time, I hope, with a steady eye. We must never forget the solid assurances of sea power and those which belong to air power if it can be locally exercised.

I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty's Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

© Chartwell Trust. Reprinted by permission Curtis Brown, London

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We Shall Fight on the Beaches - The International Churchill Society

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June 4, 1940 House of Commons The position of the B. E.F had now become critical As a result of a most skillfully conducted retreat and German errors, the bulk of the British Forces reached the Dunkirk bridgehead. The peril facing the British nation was now suddenly and universally perceived.