The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

been in a mess together before and got out of it all right. ‘Evidently this
battle will be known as the Battle of the Bulge,’ he said. ‘Now, my General,
when and where are you going to counter-attack?’ Gamelin replied
morosely that he had nothing with which to counter-attack. ‘We suffer from
inferiority of numbers, equipment, method and morale,’ he said. In fact, he
was only right on the last two points.
Churchill tried to maintain an outward cheerfulness, but he had been
deeply shocked. Again and again, the three Frenchmen asked for more
fighter squadrons. Fighter planes, above all, were what they needed;
perhaps then the battle could yet be turned. Churchill told them he would
seek the consent of his Cabinet; in his mind he was convinced Britain
should do as requested, but he wanted the approval of his ministerial
colleagues.
‘Today the news is worse,’ noted a morose Neville Chamberlain in
London that same day, ‘the French are giving way without fighting.’
Churchill was in France trying to stiffen Reynaud’s resolve, but in London
the mood was almost as bleak as it was in Paris. In the afternoon,
Chamberlain saw Joe Kennedy, who told him frankly that he believed
French morale was broken and that they had no fight left. He didn’t see how
Britain could fight on without them. ‘I told him I did not see how we could
either,’ added Chamberlain, who thought the only chance left if France
collapsed would be for President Roosevelt to make an appeal for an
armistice, though he knew it was unlikely the Germans would respond.
For his part, Joe Kennedy had been shocked by the appearance of his
old friend. ‘He is definitely a heartbroken and physically broken man,’
Kennedy noted. ‘He looks ghastly; and I should judge is in a frightfully
nervous condition.’
It was when Kennedy saw the ashen expressions of men like the former
Prime Minister and listened to the increasingly dire news from France that
he felt doubly sure his predictions of a short war that would end favourably
for Germany were correct. The previous day, he had been summoned to see
Churchill.
Although the PM had yet to set off to France, he had by this time
spoken with Reynaud and had realized that Britain might well soon have to
face Germany alone. To this end, it was, Churchill believed, essential to
bring the United States in on her side, not in terms of troops on the ground,
but materially. Only the US had the industrial might to provide the kinds of