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

worked. ‘They can do nothing,’ grumbled Kennedy, ‘but complicate the
situation here.’
Raymond Lee spent a great deal of time with Donovan and Mowrer,
taking them around the south coast defences, introducing them to Churchill,
General Brooke and others. Lee had also organized a morale poll of his own
and discovered that, with the exception of the City of London, morale was
pretty high in Britain, and, to his surprise, highest among the workers in the
industrial areas. On 2 August, he had a farewell breakfast with Donovan in
which they had a ‘free and frank’ discussion. Lee was pleased that they
seemed to be of much the same opinion as him: that Britain had better than
even odds of surviving. Donovan also gave Kennedy a stinging rebuke.
‘Well,’ Donovan told Lee as he boarded his plane, ‘I told him before I left
that the American policy was to help in every way we can and it doesn’t
help these people any to keep telling them that they haven’t got a chance.’
Churchill, of course, was delighted by Donovan’s visit. By the time
Wild Bill headed back to Washington, there were other small signs of
encouragement too. On 19 July, Roosevelt had been nominated to stand for
an unprecedented third term. Should he win, the chances of American entry
into the war would receive a huge boost. Arms and munitions were also
continuing to make their way across the Atlantic. Churchill had deliberately
left Roosevelt alone since his last appeal for help before the fall of France,
but with six weeks gone, with the arrival of Donovan and with the news of
Roosevelt’s nomination, the Prime Minister decided to once again ask for
fifty or sixty old destroyers. Large construction work was underway
building new ships but the fruits of these labours would not be ready until
1941. He needed the President’s help to stop the gap now.
Kennedy remained deeply sceptical. ‘Don’t let anybody make any
mistake,’ he wired Roosevelt along with the Prime Minister’s cable, ‘this
war, from Great Britain’s point of view, is being conducted from now on
with their eyes only on one place, and that is the United States. Unless there
is a miracle, they realize that they haven’t a chance in the long run.’
Kennedy was right to add a sober word of caution. Britain was in a
better position than she had been at the end of June, but this was no time for
becoming over-confident. The Luftwaffe, for all its shortcomings, was still
a mighty foe, whilst, with the material benefits gained as a result of Hitler’s
lightning victories, Germany had far stronger economic legs than Churchill