FRIDAY 10TH MAY 1940
Perhaps the darkest day in English history. I was still asleep, recovering from the emotions of the past few days, when my private telephone tinkled and it was Harold [Balfour] speaking from the Air Ministry. Holland and Belgium invaded; bombs falling on Brussels, parachutists landing at The Hague etc. Another of Hitler's brilliantly conceived coups done with lightning precision. Of course he seized upon the psychological moment when England is politically divided and the ruling caste is seething with dissension and anger. I suppose he heard of Wednesday's debate and fatal division yesterday morning and immediately acted upon it.* It took only a few hours to prepare this further crime and all day Holland and Belgium have been invaded. I rang up Alan [Lennox-Boyd] who curiously enough never knows anything, nor did Rodney Wilkinson - who for all his really invidious charm has a middle-class mind - then I dressed and went to the [Foreign Office]. Princess Olga [of Greece and Denmark] rang up asking for news and suggested going out tonight! I telephoned about frantically to find a free young man and could only get Rodney. At the Office all was in confusion, and the mandarins, some of them, seemed more downhearted that the invasion of the Low Countries had probably saved Chamberlain, than depressed by the invasion itself. It was the popular view this morning that Neville was saved, for after all his policy had been vindicated swiftly, surely, suddenly in the last twenty-four hours. Had he sent immense numbers of troops to Norway, where should we be now? This latest coup is probably the prelude to a concentrated attack on England with all imaginable horrors [...]
Now the drama begins: the Chamberlains returned to No. 10, and sometime during the afternoon a message came from the Labour people that they would join a govt, but refused to serve under Chamberlain. Action had to be taken immediately: Neville hesitated for half an hour, and meanwhile [Alexander Douglas-Home, Lord] Dunglass rang me - couldn't Rab [Butler] do anything with Halifax, plead with him to take it on? Rab was doubtful as he had already this morning and yesterday had such conversations with 'the Pope' who was firm - he would not be Prime Minister. I don't understand why, since a more ambitious man never lived, nor one with, in a way, a higher sense of duty and noblesse oblige. Nevertheless I persuaded Rab to go along to Halifax's room for one last final try: he found H closed with [the Duke of] Alba, and waited. Three minutes later H had slipped out to go to the dentist's without Rab seeing him and Nicholas Valentine Lawford, the rather Third Empire secretary, who neglected to tell Halifax that Rab was waiting, may well have played a decisive negative role in history. Rab came back to our room, angry and discouraged, and we rang No. 10; but Alec Dunglass said that already the die had been cast: it seems that Winston [Churchill] had half thrown away his mask and was pressing the PM to resign and at once. Winston feared that the Dutch invasions would bring about a reaction in Neville's favour. A message was sent to the Palace and an audience arranged for six o'clock - it seemed now that only a miracle could save Chamberlain, and perhaps England.
- Henry 'Chips' Channon MP, in Simon Heffer (ed.) Henry 'Chips' Channon: The Diaries 1938-43, London, 2021, p.310-11.
* Heffer notes: 'He did nothing of the sort. Hitler had ordered plans for the invasion to be drawn up the previous October and had resolved to do it once matters were settled in Denmark and Norway'. At the audience Channon mentions at the close Winston Churchill became Prime Minister. Chamberlain would be dead of cancer within six months.
See also:Blog: NZ declares war on Germany, 3 September 2014
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