The Newspaper Axis by Kathryn S. Olmsted

Author:Kathryn S. Olmsted
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780300256420
Publisher: Yale University Press

The “bore war” on the western front ended abruptly in April 1940, when the Germans attacked Denmark and several ports in Norway. Hitler hoped to forestall an Allied occupation of Scandinavia and secure German access to iron ore in neutral Sweden. Denmark fell within hours, but Norway resisted the Nazi assault. The British sent an expeditionary force to help the Norwegians hold out. But they were forced to withdraw as the Germans’ air superiority enabled them to take Norway and its valuable North Sea ports.

The German success in Norway triggered a political crisis in London and one of the most extraordinary debates in the history of Parliament. The Labour Party combined with Liberal MPs and some rebel Conservatives to force a division of the House—effectively, a vote of confidence in Chamberlain’s government. Conservative MP Leo Amery quoted Oliver Cromwell’s words to the Long Parliament centuries earlier: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”52 The government won the vote, but Chamberlain’s majority was severely reduced and his credibility shattered.53 Yet he remained in office and attempted to consolidate power again.

Beaverbrook maintained his faith in Chamberlain and appeasement to the end. He refused pleas from friends to help topple the prime minister.54 On May 6, two days before the confidence vote, he wrote a signed article in the Express casting doubt on the importance of the defeat in Norway. “What is the damage?” he asked, and then gave an answer: very little. “There can be no possible ground for the depression and gloom that exist over the course of events in Norway,” he reassured his millions of readers.55 Chamberlain was so pleased with the article that he wrote Beaverbrook to express his gratitude. “When so many are sounding the defeatist note over a minor setback, it is a relief to read such a courageous and inspiriting summons to a saner view.”56 Rothermere also praised the prime minister’s leadership and encouraged him to remain in office. “Hold on and you will win,” he wrote Chamberlain on May 7, the day before his disastrous vote in Parliament.57 As historian Richard Cockett has argued, the undeserved support the prime minister received from Beaverbrook, Rothermere, and a few other press lords gave Chamberlain a distorted view of his policies’ popularity and success, and helped persuade him to try to “cling to office” after he should have quit.58

But the new German offensive had sealed Chamberlain’s fate. Having lost the confidence of his party, appeasement’s great champion was forced to resign. Winston Churchill, who had spent much of the 1930s warning of the Nazi menace, became the new leader of the war effort. “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat,” he told Parliament in his first speech as prime minister, on May 13. “You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be.

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