The Splendid and the Vile Read online

  Copyright © 2020 by Erik Larson

  Reader’s guide copyright © 2020 by Penguin Random House LLC.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crown, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  For quotes reproduced from the speeches, works and writings of Winston S. Churchill:

  Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown, London on behalf of The Estate of Winston S. Churchill.

  © The Estate of Winston S. Churchill

  Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London on behalf of The Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive.

  © The Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Larson, Erik, 1954– author.

  Title: The splendid and the vile / Erik Larson.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Crown, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019045028 (print) | LCCN 2019045029 (ebook) | ISBN 9780385348713 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780385348720 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Churchill, Winston, 1874–1965. | Prime ministers—Great Britain—Biography. | World War, 1939–1945—Great Britain. | World War, 1939–1945—Campaigns—Great Britain. | World War, 1939–1945—Social aspects—Great Britain.

  Classification: LCC DA566.9.C5 L326 2020 (print) | LCC DA566.9.C5 (ebook)

  | DDC 940.54/2121—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2019045028

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2019045029

  Ebook ISBN 9780385348720

  randomhousebooks.com

  FRONTISPIECE PHOTOGRAPH: Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

  Map by Jeffrey L. Ward

  Book design by Barbara M. Bachman, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Christopher Brand

  Cover photograph: Hulton Deutsch/Corbis Historical/Getty Images

  ep_prh_5.4_c0_r1

  It is not given to human beings—happily for them, for otherwise life would be intolerable—to foresee or to predict to any large extent the unfolding course of events.

  —WINSTON CHURCHILL, EULOGY FOR NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN, NOVEMBER 12, 1940

  A Note to Readers

  IT WAS ONLY WHEN I moved to Manhattan a few years ago that I came to understand, with sudden clarity, how different the experience of September 11, 2001, had been for New Yorkers than for those of us who watched the nightmare unfold at a distance. This was their home city under attack. Almost immediately I started thinking about London and the German aerial assault of 1940–41, and wondered how on earth anyone could have endured it: fifty-seven consecutive nights of bombing, followed by an intensifying series of nighttime raids over the next six months.

  In particular I thought about Winston Churchill: How did he withstand it? And his family and friends? What was it like for him to have his city bombed for nights on end and to know full well that these air raids, however horrific, were likely only a preamble to far worse, a German invasion from the sea and sky, with parachutists dropping into his garden, panzer tanks clanking through Trafalgar Square, and poison gas wafting over the beach where once he painted the sea?

  I decided to find out, and quickly came to realize that it is one thing to say “Carry on,” quite another to do it. I focused on Churchill’s first year as prime minister, May 10, 1940, to May 10, 1941, which coincided with the German air campaign as it evolved from sporadic, seemingly aimless raids to a full-on assault against the city of London. The year ended on a weekend of Vonnegutian violence, when the quotidian and the fantastic converged to mark what proved to be the first great victory of the war.

  What follows is by no means a definitive account of Churchill’s life. Other authors have achieved that end, notably his indefatigable but alas not immortal biographer Martin Gilbert, whose eight-volume study should satisfy any craving for the last detail. Mine is a more intimate account that delves into how Churchill and his circle went about surviving on a daily basis: the dark moments and the light, the romantic entanglements and debacles, the sorrows and laughter, and the odd little episodes that reveal how life was really lived under Hitler’s tempest of steel. This was the year in which Churchill became Churchill, the cigar-smoking bulldog we all think we know, when he made his greatest speeches and showed the world what courage and leadership looked like.

  Although at times it may appear to be otherwise, this is a work of nonfiction. Anything between quotation marks comes from some form of historical document, be it a diary, letter, memoir, or other artifact; any reference to a gesture, gaze, or smile, or any other facial reaction, comes from an account by one who witnessed it. If some of what follows challenges what you have come to believe about Churchill and this era, may I just say that history is a lively abode, full of surprises.

  —ERIK LARSON

  MANHATTAN, 2020

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  A Note to Readers

  Map

  Bleak Expectations

  Part One: The Rising Threat

  Chapter 1: The Coroner Departs

  Chapter 2: A Night at the Savoy

  Chapter 3: London and Washington

  Chapter 4: Galvanized

  Chapter 5: Moondread

  Chapter 6: Göring

  Chapter 7: Sufficient Bliss

  Chapter 8: The First Bombs

  Chapter 9: Mirror Image

  Chapter 10: Apparition

  Part Two: A Certain Eventuality

  Chapter 11: The Mystery of Swan Castle

  Chapter 12: The Ghosts of Dull People

  Chapter 13: Scarification

  Chapter 14: “This Queer and Deadly Game”

  Chapter 15: London and Berlin

  Chapter 16: The Red Warning

  Chapter 17: “Tofrek!”

  Chapter 18: Resignation No. 1

  Chapter 19: Force H

  Chapter 20: Berlin

  Chapter 21: Champagne and Garbo

  Chapter 22: Have We Sunk So Low?

  Chapter 23: What’s in a Name?

  Chapter 24: The Tyrant’s Appeal

  Chapter 25: The Prof’s Surprise

  Chapter 26: White Gloves at Dawn

  Chapter 27: Directive No. 17

  Chapter 28: “Oh, Moon, Lovely Moon”

  Part Three: Dread

  Chapter 29: Eagle Day

  Chapter 30: Perplexity

  Chapter 31: Göring

  Chapter 32: The Bomber in the Pasture

  Chapter 33: Berlin

  Chapter 34: Ol’ Man River

  Chapter 35: Berlin

  Chapter 36: Teatime

  Chapter 37: The Lost Bombers

  Chapter 38: Berlin

  Chapter 39: Ah, Youth!

  Chapter 40: Berlin and Washington

  Chapter 41: He Is Coming

  Chapter 42: Ominous Doings

  Chapter 43: Cap Blanc-Nez

 
Part Four: Blood and Dust

  Chapter 44: On a Quiet Blue Day

  Chapter 45: Unpredictable Magic

  Chapter 46: Sleep

  Chapter 47: Terms of Imprisonment

  Chapter 48: Berlin

  Chapter 49: Fear

  Chapter 50: Hess

  Chapter 51: Sanctuary

  Chapter 52: Berlin

  Chapter 53: Target Churchill

  Chapter 54: Spendthrift

  Chapter 55: Washington and Berlin

  Chapter 56: The Frog Speech

  Chapter 57: The Ovipositor

  Chapter 58: Our Special Source

  Chapter 59: A Coventry Farewell

  Chapter 60: Distraction

  Chapter 61: Special Delivery

  Chapter 62: Directive

  Chapter 63: That Silly Old Dollar Sign

  Chapter 64: A Toad at the Gate

  Chapter 65: Weihnachten

  Chapter 66: Rumors

  Chapter 67: Christmas

  Chapter 68: Egglayer

  Chapter 69: Auld Lang Syne

  Part Five: The Americans

  Chapter 70: Secrets

  Chapter 71: The Eleven-thirty Special

  Chapter 72: To Scapa Flow

  Chapter 73: “Whither Thou Goest”

  Chapter 74: Directive No. 23

  Chapter 75: The Coming Violence

  Chapter 76: London, Washington, and Berlin

  Chapter 77: Saturday Night

  Chapter 78: The Tall Man with the Smile

  Chapter 79: Snakehips

  Chapter 80: Bayonet Quadrille

  Chapter 81: The Gambler

  Chapter 82: A Treat for Clementine

  Chapter 83: Men

  Part Six: Love amid the Flames

  Chapter 84: Grave News

  Chapter 85: Scorn

  Chapter 86: That Night at the Dorchester

  Chapter 87: The White Cliffs

  Chapter 88: Berlin

  Chapter 89: This Scowling Valley

  Chapter 90: Gloom

  Chapter 91: Eric

  Chapter 92: Le Coeur Dit

  Chapter 93: Of Panzers and Pansies

  Chapter 94: Le Coeur Encore

  Chapter 95: Moonrise

  Part Seven: One Year to the Day

  Chapter 96: A Beam Named Anton

  Chapter 97: Interloper

  Chapter 98: The Cruelest Raid

  Chapter 99: A Surprise for Hitler

  Chapter 100: Blood, Sweat, and Tears

  Chapter 101: A Weekend at Chequers

  Epilogue: As Time Went By

  Dedication

  Sources and Acknowledgments

  Bibliography

  A Reader’s Guide

  Also by Erik Larson

  About the Author

  Bleak Expectations

  NO ONE HAD ANY DOUBT that the bombers would come. Defense planning began well before the war, though the planners had no specific threat in mind. Europe was Europe. If past experience was any sort of guide, a war could break out anywhere, anytime. Britain’s military leaders saw the world through the lens of the empire’s experience in the previous war, the Great War, with its mass slaughter of soldiers and civilians alike and the first systematic air raids of history, conducted over England and Scotland using bombs dropped from German zeppelins. The first of these occurred on the night of January 19, 1915, and was followed by more than fifty others, during which giant dirigibles drifting quietly over the English landscape dropped 162 tons of bombs that killed 557 people.

  Since then, the bombs had grown bigger and deadlier, and more cunning, with time delays and modifications that made them shriek as they descended. One immense German bomb, a thirteen-foot, four-thousand-pounder named Satan, could destroy an entire city block. The aircraft that carried these bombs had grown larger as well, and faster, and flew higher, and were thus better able to evade home-front defenses. On November 10, 1932, Stanley Baldwin, then deputy prime minister, gave the House of Commons a forecast of what was to come: “I think it is well for the man in the street to realize that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed. Whatever people may tell him, the bomber will always get through.” The only effective defense lay in offense, he said, “which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves.”

  Britain’s civil defense experts, fearing a “knock-out blow,” predicted that the first aerial attack on London would destroy much if not all of the city and kill two hundred thousand civilians. “It was widely believed that London would be reduced to rubble within minutes of war being declared,” wrote one junior official. Raids would cause such terror among the survivors that millions would go insane. “London for several days will be one vast raving bedlam,” wrote J.F.C. Fuller, a military theorist, in 1923. “The hospitals will be stormed, traffic will cease, the homeless will shriek for help, the city will be a pandemonium.”

  The Home Office estimated that if standard burial protocols were followed, casket makers would need twenty million square feet of “coffin wood,” an amount impossible to supply. They would have to build their coffins from heavy cardboard or papier-mâché, or simply bury people in shrouds. “For mass burial,” the Scottish Department of Health advised, “the most appropriate type of grave is the trench grave, dug deep enough to accommodate five layers of bodies.” Planners called for large pits to be excavated on the outskirts of London and other cities, the digging to be done with as much discretion as possible. Special training was to be provided to morticians to decontaminate the bodies and clothing of people killed by poison gas.

  When Britain declared war against Germany, on September 3, 1939, in response to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, the government prepared in earnest for the bombing and invasion that was sure to follow. The code name for signaling that invasion was imminent or underway was “Cromwell.” The Ministry of Information issued a special flyer, Beating the Invader, which went out to millions of homes. It was not calculated to reassure. “Where the enemy lands,” it warned, “…there will be most violent fighting.” It instructed readers to heed any government advisory to evacuate. “When the attack begins, it will be too late to go….STAND FIRM.” Church belfries went silent throughout Britain. Their bells were now the designated alarm, to be rung only when “Cromwell” was invoked and the invaders were on their way. If you heard bells, it meant that parachute troops had been sighted nearby. At this, the pamphlet instructed, “disable and hide your bicycle and destroy your maps.” If you owned a car: “Remove distributor head and leads and either empty the tank or remove the carburetor. If you don’t know how to do this, find out now from your nearest garage.”

  Towns and villages took down street signs and limited the sale of maps to people holding police-issued permits. Farmers left old cars and trucks in their fields as obstacles against gliders laden with soldiers. The government issued thirty-five million gas masks to civilians, who carried them to work and church, and kept them at their bedsides. London’s mailboxes received a special coating of yellow paint that changed color in the presence of poison gas. Strict blackout rules so darkened the streets of the city that it became nearly impossible to recognize a visitor at a train station after dark. On moonless nights, pedestrians stepped in front of cars and buses and walked into light stanchions and fell off curbs and tripped over sandbags.

&n
bsp; Suddenly everyone began paying attention to the phases of the moon. Bombers could attack by day, of course, but it was thought that after dark they would be able to find their targets only by moonlight. The full moon and its waxing and waning gibbous phases became known as the “bomber’s moon.” There was comfort in the fact that bombers and, more importantly, their fighter escorts would have to fly all the way from their bases in Germany, a distance so great as to sharply limit their reach and lethality. But this presumed that France, with its mighty army and Maginot Line and powerful navy, would stand firm and thereby hem in the Luftwaffe and block all German paths to invasion. French endurance was the cornerstone of British defensive strategy. That France might fall was beyond imagining.