[Bell tolling]
SIR BEN KINGSLEY: When Winston Spencer Churchill died
at the age of 90 on January 24, 1965,
life stopped for a few days in Great Britain.
While he had been in ill health
and out of the public life for many years,
his death still came as a shock,
not only to the British people but to the rest of the world.
From the average person in the street
to world leaders and the British royal family,
it seemed as if there was no one who was not affected
by the passing of the man who many considered to be
the greatest figure of the 20th century.
WOMAN: I think his legacy is his inspiration
and the example that he set in the most difficult time
that his country had ever had.
MAN: The vital importance of Winston Churchill was
that he kept the flag of freedom flying.
I'm convinced that but for Winston Churchill,
it is entirely possible that the Nazi swastika
would to this day be flying
over the palace of Westminster, over Buckingham Palace,
and over every capital city of Europe as far east as Moscow.
KINGSLEY: 25 years earlier, few would have predicted
this kind of adulation.
May 10, 1940.
Nazi Germany had just invaded France, Belgium,
Holland, Norway, and Denmark.
Increasing numbers of Britons, dissatisfied
with the way in which Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
was handling the war,
were now demanding a change in the government,
so Chamberlain handed in his resignation.
The public were calling for Churchill, the newest
member of the cabinet
and the First Lord of the Admiralty,
to replace Chamberlain.
But he was not the preferred choice
of King George VI and many
in the majority Conservative Party, the Tories.
After a spirited debate in the House of Commons,
a reluctant decision was made by the Tories to go
with public sentiment.
That evening, Churchill was driven to Buckingham Palace
to meet with the King.
On the drive back to his residence
at the Admiralty, Churchill was
uncharacteristically quiet.
His personal bodyguard, Inspector Walter H. Thompson,
wanting to break the silence,
decided to congratulate his boss
on his appointment.
"I only wish the position had come your way
in better times, for you have an enormous task,"
said his long-time aide.
Churchill became quite emotional.
"God alone knows how great it is," he replied.
"I hope it is not too late.
"I'm very much afraid it is.
We can only do our best."
The situation he was inheriting was
extremely bleak.
Over 130 Nazi divisions, backed by
the powerful Luftwaffe in the air, were on the assault
throughout Western Europe.
More than 300,000 British and French troops
in Northern France and Belgium were caught
completely off guard.
The French army was cut off and unable to launch
an effective counterattack.
Late on May 10, in his residence
at the Admiralty, Churchill reflected
on the situation and the events which had led
to his becoming Prime Minister.
By the time he was ready to retire for the night,
his glum mood after meeting with the King
had changed.
He wrote in his diary "I was conscious
"of a profound sense of relief.
"I felt as if I were walking with destiny
"and that all my past life had been
"but a preparation for this hour and this trial.
I was sure I should not fail."
In early 1930, Winston Churchill was
living in the wilderness, both physically
and politically.
Thrown out of office the year earlier with
the rest of the Conservative government, he was still
a member of Parliament but without a cabinet
position for the first time
in almost 3 decades.
He had retreated to the beauty of Chartwell,
his country estate in Kent, a few hours outside London.
WOMAN: Chartwell was his home.
Um, he had a house in London, but Chartwell was
where he felt most, I should think, at peace.
He did an enormous amount of work in the grounds.
He developed waterfalls which went down into
ponds, where he kept wonderful fish,
and there was a swimming pool,
and then at the very bottom,
there was a big lake where he had black swans,
and--he loved any living creature, so anything
that he could put there, whether it was fish or
birds, he always had.
My grandfather described Chartwell as somewhere
where "a day away from Chartwell is
a day wasted."
KINGSLEY: One of his favorite tasks
at Chartwell was bricklaying.
In fact, he took such pride in his work that he
joined the bricklayers union.
One day, he decided to take on a particularly
ambitious project, a brick wall outside
a cottage a local contractor was building
for him on the estate.
Watching him work was his bodyguard Walter H. Thompson.
At noon, Churchill left to have his lunch.
As he was dining, the builder took
Inspector Thompson over to Churchill's half-built wall,
each layer of bricks progressively out of line
with the next.
"Look at his wall," the builder exclaimed.
"If he puts one more layer of bricks on it,
it will topple over."
Knowing how proud Churchill was of his
bricklaying skills, Thompson did not want to
deliver the bad news.
So the bodyguard and the builder tore down
the wall and rebuilt it while Churchill
enjoyed his lunch.
Upon his return, Churchill stood
before the wall admiring his work.
"Look at that," he proclaimed to Thompson.
As straight as a die."
Despite his isolation at Chartwell, Churchill had
not stopped paying attention to world affairs,
especially a developing situation
in Germany.
MAN: In October 1930-- this is almost
3 years before Hitler becomes chancellor--
Churchill went to a dinner party
at the German embassy in London,
and the counselor of the embassy was startled
because Churchill kept asking him about Hitler.
He found it so unusual that he reported this to
the German foreign minister as an oddity.
KINGSLEY: One of the reasons why Churchill was
paying attention to Hitler's rising
popularity was his concern about the Nazi
leader's views and rhetoric about Jews.
Randolph Churchill, his father, had many close
Jewish friends.
After his death just before Winston's 20th birthday,
these same friends looked after him,
becoming father figures, and when he began his
political career in the early 1900s,
his first Parliamentary seat was in Manchester,
with a large Jewish constituency.
Churchill's concern about Nazism was also shared
by son Randolph, who in the early 1930s was
working as a journalist.
MAN: My father, when he was only 21 years old,
his first commission as a journalist was to go to
Nazi Germany and report on the German election campaign,
and he made friends with Hitler's
press secretary Putzi Hanfstaengl.
KINGSLEY: Less than a year later, Randolph Churchill
accompanied his father, his mother Clementine,
and his sister Sarah on another
trip to Germany, this time to Munich.
Churchill had signed a contract to write a book
about his ancestor the Duke of Marlborough.
Marlborough had defeated the French in the 17th century
in a series of battles at Blenheim near Munich,
and Churchill spent several weeks doing
research there.
MAN: It was very fortunate for history that Churchill,
when he was in his early 50s, found himself
in November 1932 in Munich and saw the Nazi
thugs marching in the streets and heard their
cries and knew that Hitler was anti-Semitic.
KINGSLEY: Hitler's press secretary Hanfstaengl
heard that Randolph was in Munich and contacted
him with an idea.
Would his father be interested in meeting
the leader of the Nazi Party?
GILBERT: Churchill said, "Well, I'm happy to meet
"him, but I'd like to know why he's so
against the Jews."
KINGSLEY: The plan was for Hitler to meet
Churchill in the lobby of his hotel one evening
after dinner.
WINSTON S. CHURCHILL: Apparently, according to
Hanfstaengl, Hitler came to the glass door
of the hotel restaurant and looked through
at my grandfather,
but in the end,
he didn't dare go through with the meeting.
I think Hitler maybe just didn't have
the self-confidence at that particular moment to
confront my grandfather.
KINGSLEY: Churchill returned to England
and became the country's main voice against
Nazism, founding the British Anti-Nazi League,
and demanding that the British government do
more to help Jewish refugees from Germany.
He warned in the House of Commons,
in newspaper articles, and in radio speeches
about the danger of Adolf Hitler,
his true aims for Europe,
and the rearming of Germany.
CHURCHILL: Only a few hours away by air,
there dwells to a nation of nearly 70 million
of the most educated, industrious, scientific,
disciplined people in the world, who are being
taught from childhood to think of war as
a glorious exercise and death in battle as
the noblest fate for man.
It is but 20 years since these neighbors
of ours fought almost the whole world
and almost defeated them.
Now they are rearming with the utmost speed,
and ready to their hands is this new lamentable
weapon of the air against which our navy has
no defense.
Now, these are facts, are grim, indisputable facts,
and in face of these facts, I ask again,
what are we to do?
KINGSLEY: Churchill's warnings about Nazi Germany
fell on deaf ears throughout most
of the 1930s.
He was accused of being a warmonger after sharply
criticizing Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
and Foreign Minister Lord Halifax
for their policies which would have given Hitler
control of much of Europe in exchange for friendly
relations with Great Britain.
However, in May 1940, with Europe
at war and Great Britain under threat by Hitler,
Winston Churchill was no longer a prophet
in the wilderness.
The British people were demanding that
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain step down.
Leo Amery, a senior member
of the Conservative Party, spoke for many
when he addressed Parliament in the House of Commons.
He quoted former Prime Minister Oliver Cromwell's
famous speech some 3 centuries earlier
about another unpopular and ineffectual government.
"You have sat here too long for any good you may be doing.
"Depart, I say, and let us have done with you.
In the name of God, go."
While the public loudly cheered Churchill's
appointment as Prime Minister, many
in the Conservative Party were less enthusiastic
about his elevation to the position.
In order to promote peace within the party,
Churchill decided to keep Lord Halifax as foreign
secretary and asked Chamberlain to stay
on in the cabinet as Lord President of the Council.
LUKACS: Churchill and his group were still
a minority in the Conservative Party.
When Churchill first appears in Parliament
at his inaugural speech as Prime Minister, he's
not very much cheered.
Chamberlain walks in, and he's cheered to
high heaven.
KINGSLEY: Churchill did not let the tepid
reception get in the way of delivering a speech
on May 13, intended to prepare the Parliament
and the nation for the task ahead.
CHURCHILL: Mr. Speaker, on Friday evening last,
I received His Majesty's commission to form a new
administration, but it must be remembered that
we are in the preliminary stage of one
of the greatest battles in history.
I would say to the House, as I said to those who
have joined the government, I have
nothing to offer but blood, toil,
tears, and sweat.
You ask, "What is our aim?"
I can answer in one word-- victory, victory at all
costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory
however long and hard the road may be, for without
victory, there is no survival.
KINGSLEY: The day after Churchill's address,
Holland fell to the Nazis, and the French
and Belgian armies were in full retreat.
The British Expeditionary Force, some 230,000
English soldiers, and another 70,000
French troops were beginning a massive
withdrawal to Dunkirk.
On the evening of May 14, French Premier Paul Reynaud
frantically called Churchill to
report that more than half the British
air force in France had been destroyed and that they
were desperate for more planes.
Churchill decided to fly to France to meet
with Reynaud and view the situation in Paris
firsthand, but before leaving London, he wrote
his first letter to President Franklin Roosevelt
as Prime Minister.
"I trust you realize, Mr. President, that the voice
"and force of the United States may count
"for nothing if they are withheld for too long.
"You may have a completely subjugated
"Nazified Europe established
"with astonishing swiftness, and the weight
may be more than we can bear," he warned.
Churchill went on to ask Roosevelt to allow
Great Britain to borrow as many as 50 old American
destroyers and purchase new planes,
antiaircraft weaponry, and much need ammunition.
FDR replied the very next day.
The news was not what Churchill wanted to hear.
FDR maintained that now was not the time for him
to make such a request of the Congress or
the American people.
A majority of both were opposed to involvement
in the war in Europe.
WOMAN: My own sense is that FDR understood even
from the late thirties that something was going
to have to be done to contain Hitler,
but he knew that in a democracy he could not carry his
country into that war until he had shaped
public opinion to allow him to bring them along.
Churchill's meeting in Paris with Premier Reynaud
and his war cabinet distressed him as
he learned about the dire state of affairs
for the French military
and the British Expeditionary Force.
Back in London, Churchill set out to prepare
the nation on the situation in France as he delivered
his first radio address as Prime Minister.
CHURCHILL: A tremendous battle is raging
in France and Flanders.
Our task is not only to win the battle but to
win the war.
After this battle in France abates its force,
there will come the battle for our Island,
for all that Britain is and all that
Britain means.
Centuries ago, words were written to be a call
and a spur to the faithful servants
of Truth and Justice:
"Arm yourselves,
"and be ye men of valor, and be in readiness
"for the conflict; for it is better for us to
"perish in battle than to look upon the outrage
of our nation and our altar."
KINGSLEY: Churchill's message managed to
inspire the British people, as well as bring
down the national stress level.
The polling organization Mass-Observation reported
on May 20, "Tension is slightly relieved today,
"slightly less gloom.
"A feeling of grave seriousness remains,
"if anything, emphasized by Churchill's broadcast.
"General feeling is that we shall pull
through, just."
Less inspired by Churchill's message was
United States ambassador to England Joseph P. Kennedy.
The ambassador had long opposed any American
involvement in the war in Europe.
He believed the greatest danger to the world was
the Soviet Union and communism.
Before the war, he'd written privately
about "Jewish propaganda" threatening peaceful
relations between Germany and Great Britain.
He now wrote to FDR, maintaining that
Great Britain's chances of winning the war against
Germany were "impossible."
GILBERT: Joseph Kennedy was urging Roosevelt not
to help Britain because Britain was finished,
Britain was doomed, Britain would be defeated,
and therefore, why waste good armaments,
good destroyers.
KINGSLEY: The news from France continued to get
worse as reports came in about British and French
troops retreating in ever increasing numbers
towards Dunkirk.
The Germans were now in the position
of annihilating the retreating
British Expeditionary Forces.
For all intents and purposes, that would have
meant the end of the British army.
The 230,000 troops stationed there
represented almost 70% of the country's entire
armed forces.
On May 24, Adolf Hitler boarded a plane and flew
from his German headquarters to
Charleville, France, to meet with his commanders.
He reviewed the situation with his top general
Karl von Rundstedt and decided to call a halt to
the German advance.
The chief of the German army general staff
Franz Halder was both mystified and angered by Hitler's
decision, writing in his diary, "These orders from
"the top just make no sense.
The tanks are stopped as if they were paralyzed."
LUKACS: The interesting thing is why Hitler was
somewhat reluctant to go into Dunkirk immediately.
Hitler was too cautious.
He said, "Listen. We have advanced too far.
"The tanks and the Panzers are worn out.
Let's just stop for a while."
But there was another thing.
He let himself to be convinced by Goering that
the Luftwaffe can do the job in Dunkirk.
KINGSLEY: The day after the halt order was
issued, the head of the SS Heinrich Himmler
arrived in France for confidential meetings
with Hitler.
The high-ranking Nazi official brought
a memorandum with him entitled,
"Reflections on the Treatment of Alien Races in the East."
Among other things, the document outlined
Himmler's hope that the non-Aryan population
"will furnish Germany annually with migrant
workers for special tasks" and that
"the concepts of Jews will be completely extinguished."
Hitler reviewed the memo and told Himmler that he
found it "very good and correct."
At the same time, the Fuehrer also demanded that
it be kept top-secret.
Just a few miles outside of Dunkirk on the verge
of one of the greatest military victories
in recorded history, foremost in Hitler's mind
was that which would become known as
the Final Solution.
The very next day, Adolf Hitler lifted the halt
order he had issued some 48 hours previously.
The advance of the German army was in motion once again.
As this was occurring, an argument began taking
place in the conference room at number 10
Downing Street.
WINSTON S. CHURCHILL: Even though to the world
Churchill was now in the driving seat, in reality
behind closed doors within the British
cabinet, there was a battle royal going on.
It was on a knife edge whether the cabinet would
back Winston Churchill in refusing to engage
in negotiations, because Halifax was saying,
"Let's engage Herr Hitler to see what terms he
might offer."
KINGSLEY: Halifax was not the only one who held
such views.
There were people involved at a very high
level within the British government saying,
"Do not imagine that all of us want war with Germany.
"There are many of us who would accept an honorable
negotiated settlement." And my grandfather saw
that as the slippery slope, and he realized
that if one once embarked on that course of action,
there would be no holding point,
and the game would be lost.
KINGSLEY: Churchill realized that if he was
going to win this argument in the cabinet,
he was going to need the support
of Neville Chamberlain.
Almost immediately upon becoming Prime Minister,
he began to cultivate favor with Chamberlain,
formerly his most bitter rival.
Knowing how much Mrs. Chamberlain enjoyed
living at number 10, he told the former
Prime Minister that they need not move out
of the residence there. And just before his trip
to Paris, Churchill took him aside and asked him
to "mind the store."
None of this was lost on Chamberlain, who after
having been betrayed by Hitler was no longer
a believer in the appeasement philosophy
he once backed.
During one particularly heated argument between
Churchill and Halifax, the Prime Minister
suddenly cut the debate short, explaining that he
had a prior engagement at Parliament.
GILBERT: Although he'd been Prime Minister
for 3 weeks, he'd not yet met the majority
of the junior members of his administration
because the pressure of war being so,
and he said, "I have to go.
"It's just next.
I have to speak to them."
So he left the room, and in the course of speaking
to them, he said, "I'm one of those who thinks
we should fight on to the end."
KINGSLEY: The Prime Minister told the outer
cabinet that making peace at this moment would not
get Britain better terms as some were claiming.
"The Germans would demand our fleet," he
maintained, "our naval bases, and much else."
"We shall become a slave state," he added.
"Where would we be at the end of all that?" he asked.
The Prime Minister argued that Britain still had
tremendous reserves and advantages.
Because of that, he insisted, "We shall go
"on and fight it out here or elsewhere,
"and if at long last the story is to end,
"it were better it should end not through surrender
but only when we are rolling senseless on the ground."
GILBERT: When he said that, to his
astonishment, these 40 or 50 junior members
of his administration, they stood up
and they crowded round him, and they cheered him to
the rafters, and he was completely overwhelmed.
He returned to the meeting of ministers,
told them of this demonstration, and said,
"So I think, gentlemen, we do have to fight on,"
and Neville Chamberlain quick as a flash said,
"Yes, I agree," which isolated Halifax.
KINGSLEY: The debate about whether to seek
terms with Hitler was now a thing of the past.
Churchill had convinced the government to fight on,
but it needed an army to do that.
The only way to ensure the battle could continue
would be to evacuate the British Expeditionary Force
to Great Britain.
Bracing for the worst, the Prime Minister told
Parliament "We must prepare ourselves
"for hard and heavy tidings.
"Nothing in this battle can happen that can
"relieve us of our duty to defend the world cause,
"nor can it destroy our confidence in our power
"to make our way through disaster and grief to
the ultimate defeat of our enemy."
Churchill now focused his attention on what would
become a rescue unprecedented
in military history.
The plight of the British Expeditionary Force was
no longer a subject about which Americans were
remaining neutral.
A year earlier, most Americans had been
opposed to any involvement in the war in Europe.
Now public opinion was shifting away
from isolationism.
Republican Party leaders meeting in the Midwest
privately expressed their concerns that sympathy
for the Allied cause was growing and that this
could benefit the Democrats
in the 1940 elections.
At the 1940 World's Fair in New York City,
a sign was put up at the popular
McGinnis Restaurant.
It requested that patrons refrain from discussing
the war at the bar.
Bartenders were expected to enforce the rule by
management because loud disagreements among
patrons were disturbing the atmosphere.
The change in sympathies were also being reported
by the nation's press.
In the pages of the nation's most respected
daily came the following observation: "What some
"men had feared for many months now was occurring
"to the whole population.
"Germany might win, the British fleet might be
"swept from the seas, an enemy might appear
on this side of the Atlantic."
And the country's most influential
syndicated columnist Walter Lippmann noted,
"The rest of the world would do well to recognize what is
"happening in the United States.
"The American public is changing its
mind profoundly."
KINGSLEY: Sunday, May 26, was
the National Day of Prayer in England.
That morning, an order was issued
from the Admiralty to initiate the evacuation
of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk.
As early as the 14th of May, the BBC
had broadcast an announcement to the owners
of self-propelled pleasure craft
between 30 and 100 feet long
to contact to Admiralty to add to its roster of ships.
A flotilla of boats now began to converge upon Dover.
This rag-tag collection of vessels would soon be
making a 22-mile voyage across the English Channel
to Dunkirk for a maritime rescue mission
that had never before been attempted.
MAN: It was an extraordinary sight.
All manner of small and medium craft appeared.
Some had never been in the open sea before.
They were manned by volunteers.
Most were experienced sailors, but many were
fledglings who knew nothing
about maritime hazards.
KINGSLEY: Because of the shortage of personnel,
many of the men were asked to volunteer
for a month's duty in the Royal Navy.
Many had little or no idea what they were
getting themselves into.
MAN AS OSBORNE: It was then we were told
in lurid detail of the stunt at hand.
A cold, hard lump formed in my stomach.
My tummy felt as if it had dropped to my knees.
I had not even told my wife and kiddies that
I had left London, let alone joined up
with the navy.
KINGSLEY: There was the 59-foot motor launch
piloted by a former officer on the Titanic,
his teenage son, and a Sea Scout.
The smallest craft in the rescue fleet was
the Tamzine, a 17-foot fishing boat.
The scene at Dunkirk that awaited the flotilla was
a desperate one.
[Explosions, gunfire]
MAN: The overhead bombardment
was terrifying.
I can't describe the fear I felt as the planes
and gunfire got closer to me.
Men were lined up on the beach, waiting
for the boats to come to ferry them to the ships
waiting in deeper water.
They were sitting targets.
KINGSLEY: As the situation worsened, many
soldiers tried swimming out to the boats
in the Channel.
MAN AS LOWE: It must have been a mile offshore,
and I swam hard through discarded equipment
and bodies.
I was exhausted when I was hauled up
onto the deck.
KINGSLEY: However, being rescued from Dunkirk did
not ensure returning home safe.
Many of the ships were bombed from the air
or sunk by torpedoes.
One soldier whose ship had taken a torpedo hit
said, "The disaster was still trying to penetrate
"the outer layer of my brain.
"I remember similar situations
"in American films.
Gary Cooper always finds a way out."
There were stories of quiet heroism.
MAN: A boatload of wounded came
into our ship.
One asked our lieutenant if he could be brought
back ashore so he could look after his wounded
comrades there.
Our lieutenant said it wasn't possible.
Our boat needed to sail to Dover immediately.
The soldier pleaded but to no avail.
Then we heard an approaching motorboat.
The man hailed it and jumped into it
from our ship.
As he went, I could see the intense fighting
on the beach in the distance,
and I knew I wouldn't have had the courage
to do what he did that night.
KINGSLEY: A few kilometers outside
of Dunkirk, directing the attacking against
the evacuating British forces,
was General Franz Halder, the chief of the German army
general staff.
Halder, who had strongly opposed Hitler's halt
order a few days before, could not contain his
anger about the fact that the British
were escaping.
He wrote in his diary, "The pocket would have
"been closed at the coast if only our armor had not
"been held back.
"Now we must stand by and watch countless thousands
of the enemy get away to England under our noses."
As the boats pulled away from the coastline
of France, among those rescued were tens
of thousands of French soldiers, fighting
with the British Expeditionary Force.
Many had tears streaming down their faces,
wondering if they would ever see home again.
For the almost 250,000 English soldiers,
the escape was much less melancholy.
Recalled one, the sweetest words he ever
heard were "Wakey wakey, lads.
You're at Dover."
Until the masses of troops started arriving home,
the British people had been kept in the dark
about the evacuation for security purposes.
Newspapers were now filled with emotional
stories of the returning troops.
The "Manchester Guardian" noted "One watched them
"with a pride that became almost pain as one
cheerful, patient figure succeeded another."
A reporter from the "Daily Express"
exclaimed, "It is the greatest sight
"I've ever seen!
"The men came ashore in heaps, barely able to
"stand, yet they pulled themselves in straight
lines and walked to the harbor gates."
The public welcomed the soldiers
home enthusiastically.
Crowds awaited them with signs proclaiming,
"Well done, BEF," and "Thumbs-up!"
The Women's Voluntary Services, which had been
formed in 1938 to assist in civil defense,
worked around the clock to provide sandwiches
and tea for the returnees as they arrived
at the railway stations.
But not everyone was as welcoming.
One civil servant who'd taken the day off
at the weekend was questioned by his boss, a government
official, about the suntan he'd
returned with.
Had he been sunbathing in Hyde Park, the suspicious
official wanted to know.
"No, sir," the man answered.
"I've been with my small sailing boat to rescue
survivors from the beaches near Dunkirk."
And then there was the Marquess of Reading,
the commanding officer of one particular unit that
fought heroically on the beaches.
He ordered his troops to line up for inspection as
they arrived at the train station.
As he looked them over, he sneered, "Never in all
"my army career have I seen such a display
"of filth and dirt, an absolute disgrace to
the men wearing His Majesty's uniform."
One of the soldiers his lordship was dressing
down was Fred Pelican, a Jewish immigrant from
Breslau, Germany, who had joined
the British Expeditionary Force almost immediately upon
his arrival in England.
Just two years previously, he'd been
an inmate at the Dachau concentration camp, where
he was tortured.
Miraculously, he'd been released when his mother
managed to secure an immigration visa for him,
which brought him to Great Britain.
Stanley Mewis was another of the returnees.
He was one of less than 70 survivors
of the torpedo attack on the HMS Wakeful in which
almost 700 soldiers were killed.
Unbeknownst to Mewis, his mother had received
a telegram saying he was missing
and presumed killed.
MAN AS MEWIS: My mother was overwhelmed.
I didn't tell her I was coming.
I just turned up, and she was very shocked.
It was a few weeks after this that I got married.
The vicar wanted me to get married in my uniform,
but it was covered in black oil
and was filthy.
I certainly couldn't get married like that.
KINGSLEY: The rescue of the British Expeditionary Force
seemed to unify the nation and give it
a much needed psychological boost.
Harold Nicolson, who as a junior member
of the Churchill government, had urged his
wife, the famed writer Vita Sackville-West, to
prepare a suicide pill only days before,
convinced that the Germans would defeat them.
Now he wrote to her, "My darling,
"how infectious courage is.
"I am rendered far stronger in heart
and confidence by such bravery."
Nellie Last, a Lancashire housewife, jotted in her
diary, "I forgot I was a middle-aged woman who
"woke up tired and often had a backache.
"The story made me feel a part of something that
was undying and never old."
And in a small apartment in Hampstead
in North London, David Ben-Gurion,
who would become Israel's first Prime Minister,
was listening closely to
radio reports about the Dunkirk rescue.
Ben-Gurion had come to England to consult
with Zionist Organization President Chaim Weizmann,
who was based in London.
In a letter to his wife Paula in Tel Aviv,
he marveled at Britain's perseverance in fighting
until victory even when it remained alone
in the struggle.
"As it happens," he wrote, "I was called here
"during days that will not quickly be forgotten
by history."
In the end, over 860 ships belonging to
the Royal Navy or civilians participated
in the rescue.
More than 240 were sunk.
Over 300,000 allied troops were brought out
of Dunkirk, 228,000 British,
and the remainder French.
Over 2,000 were killed in the treacherous
crossing of the English Channel.
As the evacuation was completed on June 4,
Churchill addressed Parliament, acknowledging
that a miracle had taken place at Dunkirk.
At the same time, he wanted the nation to be
realistic about what had actually occurred.
CHURCHILL: We must be very careful not to
assign to this deliverance
the attributes of a victory.
Wars are not won by evacuation.
Our thankfulness at the escape of our army
and so many men does not blind us to the fact that
what happened in France and Belgium is a colossal
military disaster.
So I have, myself, full confidence that if all do
their duty, we shall prove ourselves once more
able to defend our Island home.
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.
KINGSLEY: In the United States, Churchill's words
resonated deeply to both the average American,
as well as to President Roosevelt.
GOODWIN: When Churchill was able to give words
that gave meaning to the Dunkirk evacuation,
that is something that both Roosevelt
and the American people had enormous respect for,
and Roosevelt especially was a man of words.
He knew how important it could be to instill
confidence in a people to get them through, as he
had gotten them through those early days
of the Depression, and now he hears
and the American people hear those extraordinary
words that Churchill gave after Dunkirk, plus
the miraculous evacuation, which made people feel,
Yes, There's something in that British spirit.
KINGSLEY: Less than a week after the evacuation
at Dunkirk and the Prime Minister's speech,
a nationwide Gallup poll found that 62%
of Americans were convinced that if
the Nazis defeated France and Britain, the United States
would be attacked next. And in a "Life" magazine
survey, over 70% said that they were in favor
of the adoption of immediate compulsory
military training for young men, while 88%
answered that the U.S. should "Arm to the teeth
at any expense."
On June 10, President Roosevelt addressed
the graduating class at the University of Virginia,
which included his son Franklin Roosevelt Jr.
He had decided to use the occasion to make a strong
statement in support of the British and to condemn
Italy, which had just joined Nazi Germany
and declared war on the Allies.
ROOSEVELT: In our unity, in our American unity,
we will extend to the opponents of force
the material resources of this nation.
[Applause]
We will harness and speed up the use
of those resources.
We will not slow down or detour.
Signs and signals call for speed,
full speed ahead.
[Applause]
KINGSLEY: Prime Minister Churchill was extremely
heartened by FDR's speech, cabling
the President that his words were "an encouragement to
the Allies in a dark hour."
The hour was getting even darker as the German army
was now advancing on Paris with the Luftwaffe
already bombing parts of the city.
At this point, Premier Reynaud and the cabinet
moved the government a hundred miles southwest
of Paris, the first of two moves that would
occur over the next two weeks.
The developments in Paris alarmed Churchill, who
was determined to keep the French in the fight.
Churchill conferred with his war cabinet and then
sent another urgent cable to President Roosevelt.
"This is the moment for you," Churchill told
the President, "to strengthen Reynaud
the utmost you can."
The Prime Minister then flew to France to meet
with Reynaud and the French war cabinet.
The premier was not encouraged by Churchill's
correspondence with FDR.
However, Churchill managed to convince
Reynaud to hang on until he heard back
from the President.
This was not what the French war cabinet
wanted to hear.
The French chief of staff, General Maxime Weygand,
gave Churchill an extremely bleak
assessment of the situation
of the French military.
As Weygand saw things, France had no other
choice but to negotiate an armistice
with Hitler.
The general and Reynaud had been arguing
about this for days.
Disagreements between the premier
and the chief of staff often turned into
personal shouting matches.
Weygand accused Reynaud of being callous towards
the French people, who were suffering because he
insisted on continuing the fight.
Reynaud argued that in negotiating peace terms,
Weygand was "taking Hitler for Kaiser Wilhelm,
"the old gentleman who only took
from us Alsace-Lorraine."
"Hitler," shouted the primer,
"is Genghis Khan!"
Adding to the strain the French leader was under
was the pressure being brought onto him by his
mistress, the Countess Hélène de Portes,
a well-known fascist sympathizer.
She read his private correspondence,
interfered in government affairs, and tried
cajoling him into making an armistice.
In fact, the countess was so infuriated that
Churchill was prodding her lover to keep
fighting the Nazis that as the two men were
saying an emotional good-bye to one another before
the Prime Minister's return to England,
she lunged at Churchill, trying to attack him.
Inspector Walter H. Thompson,
the Prime Minister's personal bodyguard,
managed to stop the assault.
"She had no gun," he explained, "but we found
a knife on her person."
The threat to Churchill's physical safety on their
trip did not stop with the Countess de Portes.
Flying across the English Channel on the way
back to London without a fighter escort,
the Prime Minister's plane suddenly dove towards the sea.
A Nazi fighter plane was attacking French fishing
boats in the channel.
The quick action of Churchill's pilot,
diving into the sea mist, kept he Luftwaffe airman
from seeing the Prime Minister's plane.
Commented Inspector Thompson, "Some German
"pilot will never know how close he was to winning
an Iron Cross first class."
Premier Reynaud sent one last desperate
correspondence to Roosevelt early
on June 14.
"If you cannot give to France the certainty that
"the United States will come into the war within
a very short time," wrote Reynaud, "the fate
of the world will change."
But was too late.
That same day, the German army marched into Paris
and occupied the city.
Infantrymen paraded down the Champs-Elysees
and through the Arc de Triomphe.
Nazi soldiers acted like tourists, enjoying
themselves in the cafes and photographing each
other in front of the Eiffel Tower.
The news that Paris had fallen stunned the rest
of the world.
In New York's Tin Pan Alley, Jerome Kern
and Oscar Hammerstein quickly wrote a song that
became a bestseller, as well as a lament for what
had been lost.
WOMAN: ♪ The last time I saw Paris ♪
♪ Her heart was warm and gay ♪
♪ I heard the laughter of her heart ♪
♪ In every street cafe ♪
♪ The last time I saw Paris ♪
♪ Her heart was young and gay ♪
♪ No matter how they change her ♪
♪ I'll remember her that way ♪
KINGSLEY: Within two days, Reynaud resigned,
and a new French government headed by
the venerated World War I hero
Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain was now in place,
with its capital in Vichy.
Churchill sent word to Reynaud, asking that he
come to England and head up the French resistance
movement there, but the now former premier
declined the offer.
Fearing arrest, he quickly left
with Countess de Portes, driving south,
where the Nazis had not yet occupied the country.
A few miles away, their car crashed into a tree,
killing the countess instantly.
A few weeks later, the former premier would be
arrested by the Vichy government and imprisoned
for the rest of the war.
Almost immediately after being named
the new French leader, Marshal Pétain sent word
to Hitler requesting an armistice.
24 hours later, the Vichy government signed
terms capitulating to Nazi Germany.
Within a few months, German military
authorities in France issued the first laws
severely limiting Jewish rights.
Jewish businesses were required to post signs
identifying them as such.
Jews were required to submit to a census and to
carry I.D. cards with the marking "Juif."
The bad news about France was leading to
speculation that a similar onslaught was
ahead for Great Britain.
The Prime Minister decided to send a message
to Hitler and the rest of the world in what would
become one of his most dramatic addresses to
the House of Commons.
CHURCHILL: I expect that the Battle of Britain is
about to begin.
The whole fury and might of the enemy must very
soon be turned on us.
If we can stand up to him, all Europe
may be free.
But if we fail, then the whole world will sink
into the abyss of a new Dark Age.
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties,
and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire
and its Commonwealth last
for a thousand years, men will still say,
"This was their finest hour."
KINGSLEY: Despite the fact that French
armistice terms with Germany did not require
surrendering their navy, Prime Minister Churchill
was convinced that the Nazis would get
control of it.
Through the prime minister's office,
the French admiral in Algiers was ordered to either
join the British or neutralize his ships.
When he refused, the British navy attacked
the French fleet there.
More than a thousand French sailors were killed,
and the ships were sunk.
The decision was a heart-wrenching one
for Churchill, who was in tears when he announced
it to Parliament.
In France, the reaction to the news was so bitter
that all relations between the Pétain
government and Great Britain were broken off.
On July 10, what Churchill had described
as the Battle of Britain a month earlier
officially began. But it was not the German
land invasion that so many had predicted.
The Luftwaffe started bombing British shipping
convoys in the English Channel.
The Royal Air Force quickly responded,
and battles were soon taking place in the skies
above England.
With France defeated and tens of thousands
of German troops in northern France,
some 20 miles across the English Channel,
why didn't Hitler invade the British Isles?
British intelligence agents at Bletchley Park
outside London got advanced word of such
an attack.
They had captured the German military encoding
machine called Enigma and had broken its code
on the same day Churchill became Prime Minister.
For weeks, they had been intercepting orders from
the Nazi high command and sending them to Churchill
and the war cabinet.
On July 16, they decrypted an order
from Hitler called Operation Sea Lion, in which he
said, "I have decided to begin to prepare
"for and if necessary carry out an invasion
of England."
There was little question at that time
about the ability of the German infantry to carry
off an exercise of this nature.
Even in the Churchill home, there was concern
about the likelihood of a Nazi invasion.
WINSTON S. CHURCHILL: I remember my mother
Pamela Harriman, who later became American
ambassador to France, telling me how age 20,
6 months pregnant with me, dining alone with her
in-laws, with my grandfather
and grandmother, my grandfather comes
to table, and silence reigns.
Nobody says anything, and he's far away, brooding
in his thoughts, and he suddenly brings his eyes
into focus on my mother's and said, "If the Hun
"comes, I'm counting on each one of you to take
one with you before you go."
And my mother said, "But, Papa, I don't have a gun,
and if I did, I wouldn't know how to use it."
"But, my dear, you can go to the kitchen and get
a carving knife."
KINGSLEY: However, Hitler delayed launching
a land invasion for the time being.
As was the case in Dunkirk, he may have been
listening to Goering, who maintained that in order
to successfully invade Britain, Germany needed to
first obliterate the RAF and gain control
of the skies. And Goering was betting on a quick
victory, as the Luftwaffe outnumbered the RAF more
than two to one at that moment.
The Germans initially concentrated their
attacks on Dover and the southeastern corner
of England.
Defeating the British thee would make it easier
for the Nazis to launch a cross-Channel
land invasion.
In spite of being outnumbered by the Germans,
the RAF's two main fighter aircraft,
the Spitfire and the Hurricane,
were superior to the Luftwaffe's principal fighter,
the Messerschmitt, in both range and firepower.
Throughout July and early August, the Germans lost
more than twice as many planes as the British.
ANNOUNCER: Somebody's hit a German, and he's coming
down in a long streak.
He's coming down completely out of control,
a long streak of smoke.
The man's bailed out by parachute.
The pilot's bailed out by parachute.
It's a Junker 87, and it's going slap into
the sea, and there he goes.
Smash!
KINGSLEY: A frustrated Goering called a meeting
of his top fighter aces to ask if there was
something else they needed to turn the tide
against the RAF.
When he asked Adolf Galland, the Luftwaffe's
most famous and feared fighter pilot, the German
ace answered, "I should like an outfit
of Spitfires."
Goering stormed out of the meeting in a rage.
But this was not a one-sided battle, especially
when Goering ordered massive strikes on RAF
airfields to knock out the Spitfires
and the Hurricanes before they could take to
the air, in an operation called The Attack
of the Eagles.
[Air raid siren]
An additional component of this strategy was
German raids on key British factories
and industries during the evening hours, taking
advantage of the Luftwaffe's
superior nighttime bombing techniques.
Bletchley Park decoders had picked up
the Luftwaffe chief's orders for the operation,
learning that it would start anytime after August 5.
While Goering's Attack of the Eagles strategy
inflicted serious damage on RAF airfields
and British industry, poor German
intelligence seriously hampered the effort.
The Luftwaffe's intelligence chief,
Colonel Joseph "Beppo" Schmidt, often told Goering what
he wanted to hear rather than the reality
of the situation.
At one point, Schmidt reported that
the Luftwaffe had destroyed so much of the RAF that
it had no more than 300-400
fighters left.
The truth was it was almost 650
at that moment.
Britain's aircraft industry was quickly
closing the gap, producing planes
at the rate of 4-1 over the Germans.
[Ringing]
During this period, RAF pilots scrambled to their
planes as many as 6 or 7 times a day.
While the RAF may have been lacking in numbers,
they weren't to short on spirit or courage.
The majority of the flyers were
in their late teens and early 20s.
The squadrons were on permanent alert,
with the young pilots practically living
in their flight suits on the Tarmac,
sleeping in tents or makeshift huts,
scrambling at the sound of the alarm.
In minutes, they were in the air, taking off from
landing strips that were often hastily converted
farm fields.
The key was to keep alert in the air and watch
from all sides, remembering the refrain
"Watch for the Hun in the sun."
There was squadron leader Douglas Bader, who flew
despite the fact that he had lost both of his legs.
And Sailor Malan, a South African who reportedly
got his nickname from serving in the merchant marines.
The truth was that he preferred Sailor to his real
first name--Adolph.
His 10 rules for air fighting began with,
"Wait until you see the whites of his eyes."
Not all of them were youngsters.
42-year-old Ernie Mayne was a World War I fighter pilot
who volunteered and flew alongside
the 19- and 20-year-olds.
Billy Fiske was one of the 10 Americans flying
with the RAF then.
An Olympic gold medalist, he'd come to England to
study at Cambridge and married
the Countess of Warwick.
Masquerading as a Canadian, he joined
the RAF, flying a Hurricane.
Other Americans included Eugene "Red" Tobin from
California, who'd worked as a studio messenger
at MGM to finance his flying lessons
before he came to England to volunteer.
And Andy Mamedoff from Miami was a well-known stunt flyer,
who had barnstormed across the U.S. before
joining the RAF.
Vernon "Shorty" Keough from Brooklyn, New York,
was 4'10", the shortest officer in the RAF.
He needed two inflatable pillows to see out
through the windows of his Hurricane.
None would survive the war.
GILBERT: There was even a German fighter pilot
in the Battle of Britain-- Ken Adam--later
a distinguished filmmaker involved
in the James Bond films, and Ken Adam was a young
flight lieutenant, was one of the bravest
of the British fighter pilots,
and he was a German Jewish refugee.
KINGSLEY: There were also the women who joined
the Women's Auxiliary Air Force.
While some in the RAF referred to them as
the Beauty Chorus, their bravery and ability to
keep calm under fire was unquestioned.
Some of the first casualties
of the Battle of Britain were volunteers belonging to
the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, who refused to
leave their posts and radar stations
that came under attack.
These young women were also the witnesses to
the last screams of RAF pilots trapped in their
cockpits as their flaming planes plunged
to the ground.
Those who were able to eject themselves from their
disabled aircraft were not assured rescue
or survival.
Many who bailed out into the freezing waters
of the English Channel died of hypothermia
waiting for help in view of the white cliffs of Dover.
The heroism of these young airmen was not lost
on Winston Churchill.
In mid August, at the height
of The Attack of the Eagles, the Prime Minister
and Military Chief of Staff Lord Ismay
drove down to Oxbridge,
the RAF's southern headquarters.
During the course of their visit, waves
of German bombers began attacking, and the RAF
immediately responded with its Spitfires
and Hurricanes.
Churchill was quite taken with the courage
of the RAF pilots, the ground crews,
and the radio operators of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force.
After the battle was over, Churchill and Lord Ismay
left Oxbridge.
As the car pulled away, Churchill admonished
the general, "Don't speak to me.
I have never been so moved."
A few minutes later, he turned to Ismay
and uttered the words that became part of one
of his most celebrated speeches of the war.
CHURCHILL: The gratitude of every home in our
Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world
goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by
odds, unwearied in their constant challenge
and mortal danger, are turning the tide
of the world war by their prowess
and by their devotion.
Never in the field of human conflict was
so much owed by so many to so few.
KINGSLEY: In the closing days of August,
the Luftwaffe's bombers caused their most serious
damage to the RAF during the Battle of Britain.
Had the Nazis continued to focus
on the airfields, the RAF might not have been able
to recover, and Operation Sea Lion, Hitler's
proposed land invasion of the British Isles,
might have succeeded.
On the evening of August 24, a simple
navigational error led German bombers to drop
their payload on civilian areas of London.
Prime Minister Churchill was furious and ordered
retaliatory raids on Berlin to take place
within 24 hours.
They continued for the next 4 days, terrifying
the German public and humiliating
Hermann Goering.
He had promised Berliners that the Luftwaffe would
ensure their city would always be safe.
He had once said that, "If one British bomb ever
fell on Berlin, my name is Meyer."
Hitler could not contain his anger
about the British attack, and in a speech
at the beginning of September, he promised
a frenzied crowd, "If they attack our cities, we
will wipe out theirs."
Heil!
Sieg...
Heil!
Sieg...
Heil!
KINGSLEY: By attacking Berlin, Churchill
provoked Hitler into changing the Luftwaffe's
strategy from bombing Britain's airfields
and industry to attacking its cities and civilians.
It also forced the Fuehrer to put Operation Sea Lion
on hold indefinitely.
This enabled the RAF to replenish itself
for the fight ahead.
England had held out and decisively won
the Battle of Britain, a turning point in the war.
At the same time, the British people were
about to experience a period of almost
unrelenting terror.
MAN: I'm standing on the roof
of Broadcasting House on this evening
of Sunday, in September,
and we had a warning earlier on in the day,
but this is the first time the raiders
actually appeared over London. And they were met
by a tremendous barrage of antiaircraft fire.
[Air raid sirens]
You could see their flashes quite plainly,
and we had shrapnel falling around,
and away on the far side of the river, there's another
severe fire over in the direction of Woolwich,
where they've started another large fire.
I can actually see Saint Paul's and the city
churches silhouetted against the blaze.
KINGSLEY: September the 7th, 1940, became known as
Black Saturday, the official beginning
of what the world would soon call the Blitz.
Throughout the fall and winter of 1940
and well into 1941, German bombers conducted
nightly raids over London.
The air raid sirens would sound, and wherever
one was in the city, he or she would run to
the closest shelter.
Some people would go down into deep shelters
in the Underground.
The trains kept running until about midnight,
and people getting on and off the trains, so you
could only actually sleep at the back
of the platform and in passageways.
If you had a back garden, you could have your own
Anderson shelter.
You got two pieces of corrugated iron that were
bolted together.
There were quite a few cases where people slept
under railway arches, and a direct hit,
and everybody died.
KINGSLEY: For parents, many of whom were working
in the city, the anxiety about their children,
who were either at school or at home,
was overwhelming.
Many opted to send them to relatives, friends,
even strangers in the countryside, where
the Luftwaffe was not dropping bombs.
[Air raid sirens]
[Explosions]
The Luftwaffe's bombs fell indiscriminately.
From the wealth of Mayfair to the poor
Italian and Jewish neighborhoods in the East End,
no one was shown any mercy.
Yet, the next day,
people picked up the pieces of their lives.
They found new places to live if they had to
and went off to their jobs.
GASKIN: And if the office wasn't there,
there would probably be a rope across
with a piece of paper saying, "The office has moved to
so and so," and then they'd have to sort of
climb over whatever they had to climb over to
get to the new office.
My mum, for example, she would be working up
in the city, and she said you would turn up,
and sometimes, the buildings just weren't
there anymore, and I'd say, "Well, how did you
carry on?"
And she said, "Well, you just got on with it."
KINGSLEY: American journalists covering
the Blitz spent a great deal of time
trying to figure out what kept the British going.
The American newspaper reporter Ernie Pyle
published a dispatch when the country's most
important church after Westminster Abbey,
Saint Paul's, was bombed during one raid
in November 1940.
He noted that Londoners looked at the damage
without sadness and said, "We would rather have it
"that way in a free London than have it whole like
Notre Dame in an imprisoned Paris."
One of the key reasons why the British managed
to keep going despite the nightly barrage
of Luftwaffe bombs was seeing their Prime Minister
Winston Churchill out among them on a regular basis.
From the moment the Blitz started, Churchill
ventured out into the streets to inspect damage
and offer comfort to Londoners.
CHURCHILL: These cruel, wanton, indiscriminate
bombings of London are, of course, a part of Hitler's
invasion plan.
Little does he know the spirit of the British
nation or the tough fiber of the Londoners.
KINGSLEY: To protect the Prime Minister,
the cabinet, the highest echelons of the military,
and the government, a heavily fortified
underground complex was built, called
the Cabinet War Rooms, just steps away
from number 10 Downing Street.
The Prime Minister's wife Clementine, his personal
bodyguard Inspector Walter H. Thompson,
as well as many in the government would have
preferred that he remained in the safety
of the Cabinet War Rooms.
But to the chagrin of those surrounding him,
Churchill insisted on being where the action was.
He would often go up on the roof
of the government offices in Whitehall to view
an air raid as it was occurring.
On one occasion, while dining with the King
at number 10, the Luftwaffe began bombing
and both His Majesty and the Prime Minister
were asked to go into the shelter, but Churchill refused,
telling the King, "I must go out
and see how things are going."
The Prime Minister did not like to sleep
in the bedroom provided for him in the Cabinet War Rooms.
He preferred the residence at number 10
so he could get outside quickly during a raid
and see what was happening.
One day, Mrs. Churchill got word from the Air Ministry
that a big attack was expected.
She made her husband promise that they would
sleep in the private quarters at the Cabinet War Rooms.
She asked Inspector Thompson to make sure
that the Prime Minister did just that.
When the air raid began, the bodyguard was amazed
to see Churchill getting into his bedclothes
and doing exactly what his wife had requested of him.
But when Thompson returned to his own room,
his bell rang, and he returned to find
the Prime Minister in his dressing gown
and slippers.
"Thompson, get my clothes," he said.
"I've kept my promise to Mrs. Churchill.
Now I'm going upstairs to sleep."
Churchill insisted on taking his nightly
constitutional in Saint James' Park
despite the danger.
After one such walk as he and Inspector Thompson
stepped into the annex at number 10, a tremendous
explosion occurred.
The bodyguard was hoping that his might dissuade
the Prime Minister from taking further strolls,
but he was undaunted, telling Thompson,
"There is someone looking after me besides you."
"Do you mean Sergeant Davis?" the inspector asked,
referring to his assistant.
"No," answered the Prime Minister, as he pointed his finger
towards the skies.
"I have a mission to perform," said Churchill,
and that person intends to see that it is performed."
It was Churchill's practice to go out among
the people, especially after a particularly
severe bombing raid.
Inspector Thompson recalled that, surrounded
by the intense devastation of a whole
block or cluster of homes, he would stand and talk,
chatting with survivors, listening to their
accountings of what had happened to them.
After one raid, the Prime Minister arrived
at the scene of a bombed house, only to pitch in
and help the rescue workers.
MAN AS THOMPSON: Winston went down on his knees to
clutch a woman who, still conscious, was being dug out.
For a moment, they looked at one another,
Winston with his coat and trousers spattered
with mud, the woman covered from head to
foot in dust.
Then with a tremor in her voice, she thanked him
and was taken away by friends.
"There goes greatness," Winston said.
Tears were streaming down his face.
There were many occasions when he would silently
and without shame or embarrassment
weep without speaking for many minutes.
KINGSLEY: Winston Churchill's visibility
among the people, as well as his addresses
on the radio, helped to send a message to Britons
that became a watchword during the Blitz--
Keep calm and carry on.
GASKIN: Winston Churchill really sort of put all
the right words in the right order so that
people could say, "Yes, yes.
"I can move, fight on.
"I can get myself up and do the next day.
We will keep going."
KINGSLEY: On several occasions, the Prime Minister
was accompanied by the King and Queen.
While many in the government had insisted
that the royal family move to Canada for their
safety, the King and Queen refused,
insisting it was their duty to stay in England.
They remained in Buckingham Palace
with the two princesses even after it was bombed
during one raid, killing a member
of the Royal Guard.
WOMAN: When we heard that our King and Queen
weren't deserting us and going to a safer country,
of course we were all thrilled, and it gave
everybody a lot of hope and courage,
and that meant a lot.
KINGSLEY: Another important component
in helping to keep up the sprits of the British
people during the worst of the Blitz
was popular culture.
LYNN: When war was declared, everybody
assumed that everything was going to close up,
particularly places of entertainment.
But of course, that didn't prove so.
People were very glad of the entertainment,
and they all still hoped that everything would be
OK while they were there, but the manager used to
come on stage and say that there'd been the siren
and if anybody wished to leave, they could and go
to the nearest shelter. And those who wanted to
stay could just say, and of course, they stayed.
Only recently I had a letter from someone
saying that they were on their way home one night
from work and they passed a theater in London
and saw my name up, and they thought, "Ooh,
right. I'll just pop in and see her," because he
was a fan, and he did, and he enjoyed the show.
but when he got home, his house had gone.
It had just been bombed and blown away.
So he said he was very grateful to me for probably
saving his life.
You know, I remember singing
"A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square"
one night, and the sirens went off,
and of course, it was no nightingale
we could hear but the start of some bombing,
but nobody moved.
They still sat there, and I still stood on stage
and carried on with my nightingale that was
singing in Berkeley Square.
LYNN: ♪ The streets of town ♪
♪ Were paved with stars ♪
♪ It was such a romantic affair ♪
♪ And as we kissed and said good night ♪
♪ A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square ♪
♪ I know 'cause I was there ♪
♪ That night ♪
♪ In Berkeley Square ♪
KINGSLEY: Ironically, some of the best
entertainment took place
in some of the underground shelters.
They had the ballroom at the Dorchester Hotel,
where there was an orchestra and people
danced as the bombs fell.
GASKIN: Somebody sort of looked around this very
high-class room and said, "If a bomb hit now, it
"would be like the Titanic going down all over again,"
and then someone else pointed out that
a lot of these really well-dressed girls were
actually during the day or on other nights
driving ambulances or fire trucks, or they
might be nurses.
KINGSLEY: November 1940, was a difficult
month for Great Britain.
The Luftwaffe carried out one of its most powerful
bombing raids on the town of Coventry.
Over 500 German bombers destroyed
4,000 homes, killing 600 and wounding more
than a thousand.
There was not a building in the city center that
did not suffer some damage.
Giving the British public some hope was the fact
that Franklin Roosevelt had won an unprecedented
third term as President of the United States.
FDR had campaigned on a platform that said,
"All aid to Britain short of war."
The President was quite concerned that
with Britain under attack, the United States would
not be far behind.
One afternoon, FDR, who was paralyzed from
the waist down with polio, demonstrated to an aide
how he would make for the nearest exit in the event
of a German air raid.
He got out of his wheelchair, got down
on the floor, and began to move on his elbows.
The First Lady happened to walk into the Oval Office
at this moment and fled in tears when she
realized what her husband was doing.
With the election behind him, President Roosevelt
began to focus on getting Churchill the destroyers
and other military aid he'd been asking
for since he became Prime Minister in May.
His job was made somewhat easier when the Luftwaffe
pounded London on December 29, igniting
even greater support in America
for the British people.
That evening, the President addressed
the nation about the situation
in Great Britain in one of his famous fireside chats.
We must be the great arsenal of democracy.
For us, this is an emergency as serious as
war itself.
There will be no bottleneck in our
determination to aid Great Britain.
CHOIR: ♪ Ding dong merrily on high ♪
♪ In Heaven, the bells are ringing ♪
♪ Ding dong verily... ♪
KINGSLEY: The weekend between Christmas and New Year's,
"Christmas Under Fire," a short film
written and narrated by the American journalist
Quentin Reynolds, was rushed into 16,000
movie theaters in the United States.
It had a big impact on public opinion just prior
to President Roosevelt's State of the Union Address.
FDR laid out a plan that would lend American
destroyers and other military equipment to
Great Britain in exchange for leases on British
naval bases.
FDR dispatched a close aide and confidant,
the former commerce secretary Harry Hopkins, to England
to meet with Churchill to help coordinate
the working relationship between
the two countries.
Hopkins was tremendously moved by what he saw
in England and created a close bond with Churchill
that would last the rest of the war.
In early March 1941, after two months
of politicking, the U.S. Lend-Lease Act passed
in the Congress.
The long-awaited American destroyers and other
material were on their way to Great Britain.
Within a few weeks, Germany began to scale
back on their nightly bombing raids.
The British people had refused to give up during
the Blitz.
The Luftwaffe's arsenals were becoming depleted.
RAF retaliatory raids on Berlin and other German
cities were also shaking up the Nazis.
One British attack came as Russian Foreign Minister Molotov
was completing meetings with Hermann Goering
and German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop.
Throughout the meetings, Goering and von Ribbentrop kept bragging
that Great Britain was finished.
As RAF bombs started raining down on Berlin,
Molotov looked at his hosts and asked,
"If Britain is finished, then why are we in this
shelter, and whose bombs are falling on us?"
In the North London neighborhood where
David Ben-Gurion was living, he often found himself
in the shelter in the Underground station
around the corner from his flat during air raids.
Back in his apartment after the all clear,
the future Prime Minister of Israel reflected
on Winston Churchill's leadership, writing,
"He lifted an entire nation out of the depths
"of humiliation and defeat, instilled in them
"the spiritual strength to hold fast against heavy odds.
If not for Churchill, England would have gone down."
8 years later, as Israel was about to declare its
independence, Ben-Gurion thought back on his time in London.
"I recall the men and women of London during
the Blitz," he wrote.
"I have seen what a people are capable
of achieving in the hour of supreme trial.
"I have seen their spirit touched by nobility.
This is what the Jewish people can do."
There was another reason why the Nazis began to
decrease their raids on England in the spring of 1941.
Hitler had made the decision to launch
Operation Barbarossa, the invasion
of the Soviet Union.
3 days before the invasion began on June 21, 1941,
Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels
expressed his frustration about Winston Churchill.
"Were it not for him," wrote Goebbels in his diary,
"this war would have ended long ago."
Despite the fact that Russia and Germany had
signed a non-aggression pact, relations between
the two had deteriorated and become hostile.
Hitler was convinced that invading in June would
ensure a quick victory before the bitter Russian winter set in.
Within a month of the Nazi invasion,
special units of the SS called the Einsatzgruppen
were sent into the Ukraine and eastern Poland.
Their mission was to eliminate the Jewish population from those areas.
Over the next 18 months, more than 1.5 million Jews
were murdered at killing centers called Belzec,
Majdanek, Treblinka, and Sobibor.
Back in the summer of 1941 at Bletchley Park,
Enigma intercepts were providing
Prime Minister Churchill with information
about the Einsatzgruppen murder squads.
Churchill decided to raise the issue
with President Roosevelt at their first face-to-face
meeting off the coast of Canada in late August 1941.
GILBERT: Churchill had spoken on what was
happening to the Jews of Russia, and he was very
concerned with it, but at this meeting, he was
concerned, could Britain survive?
KINGSLEY: While Churchill was intent on getting
a deeper commitment by the President to joining
the war effort, FDR seemed to be focused
on the world after the war.
Toward the end of their meeting, President Roosevelt
presented Churchill with a document
called the Atlantic Charter.
It was FDR's vision of a post-war world in which
Great Britain and the United States would
pledge themselves to respect the right of all
peoples to choose a form of government
under which they live.
Churchill supported the idea of the charter,
but he raised an issue with FDR that would prove
to be a sticking point in their relationship
throughout the rest of the war years.
The Prime Minister explained his fears that
under the charter, the Arabs of Palestine might
claim the right to expel the Jews or to forbid
future Jewish immigration there.
"I am strongly wedded to the Zionist policy,"
Churchill told the President.
Meeting later with his war cabinet,
the Prime Minister declared that if Britain and the U.S.
emerged from the war victorious, the creation
of a "great Jewish state" in Palestine would be one
of the matters discussed at the peace conference.
Returning to London on August 24, the Prime Minister
discussed his meetings
with the President in a BBC broadcast.
He also raised the issue of German atrocities
in the Soviet Union.
CHURCHILL: There has never been methodical,
merciless butchery on such a scale
or approaching such a scale,
and this is but the beginning.
We are in the presence of a crime without a name.
KINGSLEY: On the evening of December 7, 1941,
Winston Churchill was at Chequers, the official
country estate of the British Prime Minister,
dining with the newly appointed U.S. ambassador
Gilbert Winant and FDR's special envoy
Averell Harriman.
Churchill turned on the radio so the group could
listen to the 9 P.M. BCC news.
NEWS READER: Here is the news.
Japan's long-threatened aggression in the Far East began
tonight with air attacks on United States naval bases
in the Pacific.
KINGSLEY: As Churchill switched on the radio,
there was a bulletin about the Japanese attack
on Pearl Harbor, which had just occurred.
The Prime Minister jumped to his feet and said,
"Great Britain shall declare war on Japan."
A moment later, Ambassador Winant got
President Roosevelt on the telephone
and confirmed the attack.
He then put the Prime Minister on the phone.
Roosevelt's first words were, "We are all
in the same boat now."
It was something that Churchill had been
waiting to hear since May of 1940.
That night, Churchill would later report
he slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.
Two weeks later, Prime Minister Churchill
arrived in Washington, D.C., to meet
with President Roosevelt and strategize the now
joint war effort between Great Britain
and the U.S.
Churchill stayed on as FDR's guest
in the White House.
GOODWIN: Churchill arrives, and they put him up
in the room which is now known of course as
the Churchill room, and he said,
"Now I have a few rules.
"There's not to be any talking
"in the hallways around me.
"I don't like to hear that.
"I hate to hear whistling, and I need to have
"have a bottle of sherry every morning
"before breakfast.
"I need to have Scotch and soda before lunch,
"and I need to have wine and liquor and brandy
after dinner."
He would then stay up with Roosevelt
until 2 A.M.
The two of them would smoke and drink until
finally Eleanor would come in and say,
"Isn't it time for you two little boys to go to bed?"
KINGSLEY: One morning during Churchill's visit,
FDR had an idea and asked his aide to wheel him
into the Prime Minister's room immediately.
GOODWIN: It so happened Churchill was just coming
out of the bathtub and had absolutely nothing
on, so Roosevelt said, "I'm so sorry.
I'll come back in a few moments," but Churchill,
ever able to speak spontaneously, in a very
formal voice said, "Oh, no. Please stay.
"The Prime Minister of Great Britain has nothing
"to hide from the President
of the United States."
KINGSLEY: The day after Christmas,
Winston Churchill was given an honor accorded to
a very few.
He addressed the joint houses of the United States Congress.
The Prime Minister, whose mother was an American,
immediately won over the Congressional
representatives and senators assembled.
I cannot help but reflecting that if my
father had been American and my mother British
instead of the other way around, I might have got
here on my own.
[Laughter and applause]
Here we are, together, facing a group of mighty
foes, who seek our ruin.
Here we are, together, defending all that
to free men is dear.
Twice in a single generation,
the catastrophe of world war has fallen upon us.
Twice in our lifetime has the long arm of fate
reached out across the ocean to bring
the United States into the forefront of the battle.
Here I avow my hope and faith sure and inviolate
that in the days to come the British and American
people will for their own safety and for the good
of all walk together in majesty, in justice,
and in peace.
KINGSLEY: The U.S. Congress, which a year
earlier has balked at helping Great Britain,
was now giving its Prime Minister
a standing ovation.
Around the United States, there was no more
popular a figure.
The strain of the last few weeks and months,
as well as the 10-day journey from England to
the U.S., had taken its toll on Churchill.
The morning after his triumphant speech, as he
was opening the window to his room at the White House,
he felt a sharp pain in his chest.
His personal physician Lord Maron was
immediately summoned, and after examining
the Prime Minister, he found that Churchill had suffered
a mild heart attack.
Rather than alarming Churchill or his American
hosts, the doctor kept the news to himself,
telling his patient that he had strained a muscle
and needed some rest.
He insisted that Churchill relax for a few
days in Florida before his upcoming trip to
Canada, where he was scheduled to speak to
the Canadian parliament.
Lord Maron's secret would be kept for almost
a quarter of a century.
There was little evidence of the heart attack as
Churchill resumed a full schedule of meetings
in the U.S. after his trip to Canada.
At the end of January, it was time for him to
return to Great Britain.
President Roosevelt saw him off at the airfield.
When Churchill and FDR had last said good-bye
during their Atlantic Charter conference,
the President had taken his bodyguard
Inspector Thompson aside and said to him,
"Take care of him.
"He is about the greatest man in the world.
In fact, he may very likely be the greatest."
Now Roosevelt's final words to Churchill
as he boarded his plane were,
"Trust me to the bitter end."
At the start of his journey across
the Atlantic, the plane's captain invited
the Prime Minister to the control deck.
Churchill then asked if he could pilot the plane.
The Prime Minister's questions
about the plane's operations assured
the captain that he could handle it himself.
The captain turned off the automatic pilot
and turned over the control of the plane
to Churchill.
The Prime Minister then asked if he could make
a couple of banked turns, which he did,
with considerable success.
The captain then asked the Prime Minister
when he'd last piloted a plane.
Churchill replied, "1913."
As the Prime Minister's plane crossed
the Atlantic, a navigational error sent it within
5-6 minutes of Nazi-occupied France.
When the mistake was discovered, the captain
turned north at once.
Now entering British airspace
from the direction of France, it was detected by British
radar as a hostile bomber.
6 Hurricane fighters were dispatched to shoot
it down before the captain was able to
identify who they were.
"Fortunately," Churchill would later comment,
"they failed in their mission."
Winston Churchill, who'd been in the political
wilderness just a few years before, who some
had believed would never last as Prime Minister,
now returned to England in triumph.
He had forged an alliance with the United States,
one that few would have predicted when he became
Prime Minister in 1940.
But it was a goal he insisted was obtainable
and which he made a reality.
Against all odds, he'd led his nation as it
won the Battle of Britain and survived the Blitz.
As he arrived back in London and reflected
on what he'd accomplished, the words
of his good friend, the Presidential envoy
Harry Hopkins, were ringing true.
At a dinner the year before, Hopkins toasted
the British Prime Minister and discussed
the future of British-American relations.
He paraphrased the Book of Ruth,
bringing Winston Churchill to tears:
"Whither thou goest, I will go,
"and where thou lodgest, I will lodge.
"Thy people shall be my people
and thy God my God even to the end."
A few weeks later, Winston Churchill
addressed the British people.
He told the nation, "We must remember that we are
"no longer alone.
"We are in the midst of a great company.
"The whole future of mankind may depend upon
"our action and upon our conduct.
"So far, we have not failed.
"We shall not fail now.
"Let us move forward steadfastly together
into the storm."