Churchill's War by David Irving

Author:David Irving [Irving, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Volume I: The Struggle for Power, Churchill, World War II, Biography
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

DAVID IRVING

cials in North Africa had their price. ‘He strongly advocates,’ Desmond Morton reported, ‘an intensive campaign of propaganda and bribery.’

Churchill approved in red ink. In December one Daniel Dreyfus would even offer to buy Pierre Laval for Britain, claiming to have bribed him in the past. Sir John Anderson suggested that Dreyfus, while otherwise

‘thoroughly unscrupulous,’ could be relied on because of his religion. But by the time Halifax put the idea up Pétain had dismissed his prime minister and Churchill red-inked that Laval was ‘no longer worth buying.’

Winston trusted Morton – one of his prewar informers inside the S.I.S. and his neighbour at Chartwell – implicitly. In  Winston had appointed him to the secret service; he had created the Industrial Intelligence Centre. Now the bluff and somewhat pompous major alone had a key to Winston’s buff box of   documents; he kept it attached to his person. Some idea of his position is given by Winston’s memorandum constituting his liaison staff in June: his son-in-law Duncan Sandys to liaise with Home Defence and the Air Raid Precautions; Oliver Lyttelton, with the Ministry of Supply; and Morton, to handle enemy war production data, relations with the F.O. and the French Committee, and ‘Secret Service and fifth column activities.’ Now pushing fifty, Morton had a predilection for pink gins that made Winston feel at home with him, and an Irish impertinence as well: he successfully put himself forward for a K.C.M.G. in the  New Year’s Honours List.

In June  Morton had formed a small committee to manipulate de Gaulle. Churchill had formally recognised this extraordinary general as leader of the Free French on the day after the armistice, and had invited him to broadcast a declaration to France. (It had taken quite a tussle at the F.O. to persuade this headstrong Frenchman to amend the declaration and take out names – ‘In particular his,’ as Cadogan observed in his diary.) Admiral Cunningham, close to the disgruntled French in the Middle East, warned the First Sea Lord that ‘no one has any opinion of him.’ But Churchill had, and Eden found him late in July in the garden of No.  ‘anxious to let de Gaulle loose somewhere.’

With Churchill’s approval, Morton gave a City public relations expert a big budget to ‘sell’ de Gaulle in Britain as well as in France’s colonies and the Americas. Morton had argued that they could switch off his publicity at any moment.

On July , Churchill directed the admiralty to allow him access to the French sailors interned after  so that he could raise a small navy of two or three ships, perhaps even a battleship, to fly the Free French flag.

‘These ships,’ he suggested, ‘may be of use in parleying with French colonies and in getting into French harbours on one pretext or another.



CHURCHILL’S WAR

He was already eyeing Dakar in Senegal, a port of strategic importance in West Africa. Officials there had suggested that taking it would be easy; on July  he had asked Spears to discuss it with de Gaulle.

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