Read The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz Online
Authors: Erik Larson
“When your boy”
:
Sherwood,
Roosevelt and Hopkins,
198.
“I have said this before”
:
Ibid., 191.
“a very difficult situation for Germany”
:
Kershaw,
Nemesis,
336.
“The decisive thing”
:
Overy,
Battle of Britain,
98.
“For the first time”
:
“Air Defense of Great Britain,” vol. 3, “Night Air Defense, June 1940–December 1941,” 82, AIR 41/17, UKARCH. The report uses the phrase “small propositions,” surely an unintended substitute for “proportions.”
The ministry sent
:
Gilbert,
War Papers,
2:979.
“frog speech”
:
Toye,
Roar of the Lion,
80.
“He relished the flavor”
:
Ibid., 81.
“On my knees”
:
Ibid.
“Frenchmen!”
:
Gilbert,
War Papers,
2:980–82.
“Tonight Papa spoke”
:
Diary, Oct. 21, 1940, Mary Churchill Papers.
“heavy sentences for radio offenders”
:
Boelcke,
Secret Conferences of Dr. Goebbels,
108.
“in the long run”
:
“Intelligence from Interrogation: Intelligence from Prisoners of War,” 42, AIR 40/1177, UKARCH.
“It looks all right”
:
Goodwin,
No Ordinary Time,
189.
“It is the best thing”
:
Nicolson,
War Years,
126.
“
Glory hallelujah!!
”
:
Diary, Nov. 6, 1940, Mary Churchill Papers.
“This does not mean”
:
Gilbert,
War Papers,
2:1053–54.
“Would you kindly find out”
:
Ibid., 1147.
“I trust this unlikely accident”
:
Lindemann to Churchill, Nov. 1, 1940, F121/1, Lindemann Papers.
“Professor Lindemann implies”
:
Portal to Churchill, Nov. 5, 1940, PREM 3/22/4b, UKARCH.
A navy salvage squad
:
Wakefield,
Pfadfinder,
67.
“It is a very great pity”
:
Lindemann to Churchill, Nov. 13, 1940, PREM 3/22/4b, UKARCH.
“Pray make proposals”
:
Churchill to Ismay, Nov. 18, 1940, PREM 3/22/4b, UKARCH.
The airplane had been lost
:
Ismay to Churchill, Nov. 21, 1940, PREM 3/22/4b, UKARCH.
Lost in this acerbic interchange
:
See Wakefield,
Pfadfinder,
64–67, for a detailed account of the pilot Hans Lehmann’s very bad night.
All the official intelligence reports and memoranda that I used to tell the story of the Coventry attack in this chapter and the one following may be found in the file “German Operations ‘Moonlight Sonata’ (Bombing of Coventry) and Counter-plan ‘Cold Water,’ ” AIR 2/5238, in the National Archives of the United Kingdom. Ever since the attack, conspiracy-minded souls have sought to prove that Churchill knew all about it but did nothing, in order to avoid revealing the secret of Bletchley Park. However, the documentary record, declassified in 1971, makes it clear that Churchill on that night had no idea Coventry was the target.
“apolaustically”
:
Colville,
Winston Churchill,
85.
Growing impatient
:
As Inspector Thompson put it, “He could no more stay out of a raid than he could sit still in a debate in Parliament.” Thompson,
Assignment,
126.
“We could almost have read”
:
Longmate,
Air Raid,
73.
“The air was filled”
:
Ibid., 79.
“After a time”
:
Ibid., 102.
Her seven-year-old said
:
Ibid., 109.
“The complication with bomb lacerations”
:
Ibid., 105.
“During the course of my training”
:
Ibid., 106.
“The whole interior”
:
Ibid., 95.
“When we went out”
:
Donnelly,
Mrs. Milburn’s Diaries,
66.
Now came scenes of horror
:
Süss,
Death from the Skies,
412; Longmate,
Air Raid,
156.
“It is greatly regretted”
:
Longmate,
Air Raid,
223.
“The roots of the Air Force”
:
A.J.P. Taylor,
Beaverbrook,
454.
“He’d asked Coventry’s workers”
:
Longmate,
Air Raid,
196.
“since the night was so clear”
:
“Note on German Operation ‘Moonlight Sonata,” and Counter-plan ‘Cold Water,’ ” 2, AIR 2/5238, UKARCH.
“Oh dear!” she cried
:
Longmate,
Air Raid,
202.
A team of Mass-Observation researchers
:
Harrisson,
Living Through the Blitz,
135.
“The strangest sight of all”
:
Ibid., 134.
“No means of defense”
:
Longmate,
Air Raid,
212.
“exceptional success”
:
Boelcke,
Secret Conferences of Dr. Goebbels,
109.
“The reports from Coventry”
:
Fred Taylor,
Goebbels Diaries,
177.
“The unpredictable consequences”
:
Kesselring,
Memoirs,
81.
“The usual cheers”
:
Bekker,
Luftwaffe Diaries,
180.
“Mounted on two”
:
Diary, Nov. 17, 1940, Colville Papers.
“I enclose a sketch”
:
Pamela Churchill to Randolph Churchill, Nov. 19, 1940, RDCH 1/3/5 File no. 2, Randolph Churchill Papers.
“Having no false dignity”
:
Colville,
Fringes of Power,
1:379.
The child was round
:
Gilbert,
War Papers,
2:1002.
“As it was
my
birthday”
:
Elletson,
Chequers and the Prime Ministers,
107.
“I have never forgotten”
:
Cowles,
Winston Churchill,
327.
“I am not now the man”
:
Beaverbrook to Winston Churchill, Dec. 2, 1940, BBK/D, Beaverbrook Papers.
“As I told you”
:
Churchill to Beaverbrook, Dec. 3, 1940, BBK/D, Beaverbrook Papers.
“The Prime Minister said”
:
Gilbert,
War Papers,
2:1169.
“I have not been able”
:
Churchill to Sinclair et al., Dec. 9, 1940, G 26/1, Lindemann Papers.
“Surely there is”
:
Churchill to Sinclair et al., Jan. 12, 1941, G 35/30, Lindemann Papers.
“It’s horrible”
:
Gilbert,
War Papers,
2:1204.
“As we reach the end”
:
Churchill to Roosevelt, Dec. 7, 1940, FDR/Diplo. Also in FDR/Map.
“Another victim for Christian Science”
:
Andrew Roberts,
“Holy Fox,”
272.
“Orangeade and Christian Science”
:
Cooper,
Trumpets from the Steep,
69.
“Papa in very bad mood”
:
Diary, Dec. 12, 1940, Mary Churchill Papers.
“Since we aimed”
:
Gilbert,
War Papers,
2:1217.
“I didn’t know for quite awhile”
:
Sherwood,
Roosevelt and Hopkins,
224.
“How do I feel”
:
Cockett,
Love and War in London,
181–82.
“I don’t think there is”
:
Sherwood,
Roosevelt and Hopkins,
225.
“ploughing under every fourth”
:
Ibid., 229.
“There was nothing”
:
A.J.P. Taylor,
Beaverbrook,
58.
“He returned to Churchill”
:
Andrew Roberts,
“Holy Fox,”
275.
“the shock effect”
:
Hylton,
Their Darkest Hour,
107.
“to say that their mental health”
:
James R. Wilkinson to Walter H. McKinney, Dec. 27, 1940, FDR/Diplo.
The blackout invariably
:
Harrisson,
Living Through the Blitz,
313.
“Blinds must be kept”
:
Cockett,
Love and War in London,
149.
“Used to smoke occasionally”
:
Ibid., 140.
What Clementine found
:
Clementine Churchill to Winston Churchill, Jan. 3, 1941; “The 3-Tier Bunk,” “Sanitation in Shelter,” “Shelters Visited in Bermondsey on Thursday December 19th 1940,” all in PREM 3/27, UKARCH.
Along these lines, here is a nice breakfast story: Earlier in the fall, the journalist Kingsley Martin visited the massive Tilbury shelter in the East End, a margarine warehouse that nightly drew up to fourteen thousand people. He then wrote a graphic essay about the experience, titled “The War in East London.” The shelter’s inhabitants—“Whites, Jews and Gentiles, Chinese, Indians and Negroes”—paid little attention to sanitation, he wrote. “They urinate and defecate in every part of the building. The process is helped by the convenience of the margarine in cardboard cases which can be piled up into useful mounds behind which people can dig themselves in and sleep and defecate and urinate in comfort.” He did not know whether this margarine had then been distributed to food markets in the city, but wrote that “the dangers of thousands of people sleeping on London’s margarine is obvious enough.”
More toast anyone? PREM 3/27, UKARCH.
“Now is the time”
:
Churchill to Home Secretary et al., March 29, 1941, PREM 3/27, UKARCH.
“Furious,” he wrote
:
Cadogan,
Diaries,
342.
“I looked up and saw”
:
Ibid., 343.
“He was very unhappy”
:
Wheeler-Bennett,
King George VI,
520.
“When will that creature”
:
Fred Taylor,
Goebbels Diaries,
179–80.
“It seems that the English”
:
Ibid., 208.
“The German Armed Forces”
:
Trevor-Roper,
Blitzkrieg to Defeat,
49.
“No strip dancers”
:
Boelcke,
Secret Conferences of Dr. Goebbels,
112.
He warned his lieutenants
:
Ibid., 110.
“A lot of work”
:
For this succession of diary entries, see Fred Taylor,
Goebbels Diaries,
201, 204, 215, 217, 209.
An idea came to Hess
:
Stafford,
Flight from Reality,
126, 127.
As Christmas neared
:
For these rumors, and many others, see Home Intelligence Weekly Reports for Sept. 30–Oct. 9, 1940; Oct. 7–Oct. 14, 1940; Jan. 15–Jan. 22, 1941; Feb. 12–Feb. 19, 1941, all in INF 1/292, UKARCH. Regarding the Wimbledon rumor, see “Extract from Minute by Mr. Chappell to Mr. Parker, Sept. 23, 1940,” HO 199/462, UKARCH.