Assassination: The Royal Family's 1000-Year Curse (61 page)

The Hurricane crashed so heavily that the crater was simply filled in and covered up. In 2004, the remains were excavated in Holmes’s presence; the machine-gun button was still set to ‘FIRE’.

The attacks on Buckingham Palace by Goring’s Luftwaffe were somewhat ironic. In the mid-seventeenth century, the owner of the building on the site of Buckingham Palace was, in fact, Lord Goring, and the building was known as Goring House until it burned down in 1674. Probably Hermann never knew.

By coincidence, 15th September became Battle of Britain Day, as the weather over the Channel deteriorated and a turning point was reached. Hitler postponed the invasion indefinitely. Instead, progress was made elsewhere, as Italy invaded Greece, and then Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria joined the fascist powers. The Italian attack on Greece was repulsed, but then the Germans took over and conquered both Greece and Yugoslavia.

The relentless bombing of British cities and factories continued well into 1941. However, it became increasingly costly for the Luftwaffe, and there was little strategic benefit. So Hitler turned his attention to the East. On 22nd June 1941, the German Army began its march into Russia, eventually penetrating 1,000 miles, murdering millions of civilians as they advanced. Churchill said: “We are in the presence of a crime without a name.”

Britain had won the battle for survival, yet Churchill knew that the army had to be held back from continental Europe until America joined the war. The problem was that although there were many American supporters of Britain’s cause, including President Roosevelt, the vast majority of the people and of Congress opposed any involvement. It was as much as Roosevelt could do to provide ships, weapons and supplies, even in return for payment and territory.

The Germans actually hoped that their invasion of Russia might gain them support in the United States. However, the torpedoing by German submarines of British ships carrying American passengers, and even of some American ships, put paid to that hope. September saw a change in the American attitude as Roosevelt threatened German and Italian vessels entering American waters: “When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.”

Despite the fine words, America did indeed wait until the rattlesnake struck. When Japan occupied French Indo-China in mid-1941, America, Britain and colonial Holland (controlling East Indies oil) imposed economic sanctions. In response, on 7th December 1941 Japanese aircraft attacked the US fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, the Japanese hoping to cripple the American Navy so that they could seize territories and oil wherever they wished in the Far East. On the same day, Japan invaded British-ruled Malaya; Britain re-acted immediately, declaring war on Japan before the US did. In the US, a declaration of war could only be made by Congress, so it had to wait until after the Senate and House of Representatives had been addressed by the President.
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The British fear was that America might go to war with Japan, and remain neutral as regards Germany. Three days later, supporting their ally, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. Now there was hope. Mercifully, at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor the American aircraft carriers had been at sea, and devastating as the attack was, the US Navy with its carriers and submarines was still a force in the Pacific. However, the Japanese were now able to extend their conquests in the Far East, capturing Hong Kong, Singapore, Burma, Thailand, Malaya and the Philippines.

At last, in 1942 the momentum changed. The Americans went on to the attack in the Pacific, winning the critical Battle of Midway, and the Russians halted and then reversed the German advance. In North Africa, the British Eighth Army defeated the Germans and Italians at El Alamein; now the Germans would not gain access to Middle East oil fields.

In February 1943, despite suffering two million casualties, the Russians defeated the German Army at Stalingrad, taking over 100,000 prisoners including 22 Generals and a Field Marshall. May 1943 saw the Germans surrender in North Africa. Next, Sicily fell to the Allies who soon started to make their way through Italy, and before long Mussolini was deposed. The Italian fascists surrendered, and Italy changed sides; although German troops in Italy continued to resist.

The big question for the Allies was where the second front was to be established. Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill met in Teheran. Stalin had refused to attend the earlier conference in Cairo saying it was because Chinese anti-Communist leader Chiang Kai-shek was attending. Really it was because Stalin

54 Fearing a Japanese assassination attempt during the President’s journey from the White House to the Capitol, efforts were made to acquire a bullet-proof car. It was impossible, because federal law limited the price of the President’s car to $750. The Treasury came to the rescue, providing a car that had been confiscated after the arrest of a gangster; so President Roosevelt rode to the Capitol in Al Capone’s 1928 Cadillac with its 3,000 lbs of armour, bullet-proof glass, police radio receiver, and false police siren.

was afraid of flying. Now, swaggering with Russian victories, he was eager to come to Teheran – the only time he ever flew. The Americans wanted to attack the Germans from the west, through northern France, with the Russians continuing to attack from the east. Stalin quickly agreed this with the Americans; he was content to leave France and the Low Countries to the Americans and British while the Russian Army conquered eastern Europe. Churchill was not happy. He wanted the American and British forces to attack through the Balkans, link up with the Russians and attack the Germans from the south and the east. Churchill did not want to allow Russia to seize the whole of eastern Europe.

However, Roosevelt was suspicious of Churchill’s motives, believing him to be eager to protect British territories in the Middle East and India, when one of America’s war ambitions was to see to the break-up of all colonial empires. So the American plan was accepted, and it was also agreed that east Poland would be transferred to Russia and that the Russians would set up governments in eastern European countries and in the Baltic states.

All available resources were now put into Operation Overlord – the Normandy landings. At great cost in lives, on 6th June 1944 the joint force of Americans, British, Canadians and allies landed in northern France, securing beachheads and then moving inland. A British memorial was erected in Bayeux reading: “We, once conquered by William, have now set free the Conqueror’s native land”. In August, Paris was liberated, and in the east, Romania surrendered to the Russians. The war was going to be won, but not for another year.

In early 1945, the three allied leaders met again, this time in Yalta on the north coast of the Black Sea, to debate the future of Europe. Stalin demanded that Russia must have its own ‘sphere of influence’. Churchill told Roosevelt that Communist Russia was the next threat to the free world. But Roosevelt trusted Stalin. When warned by one of his advisers, Roosevelt said, “I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of man … if I give him everything … he won’t try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace.” Not a very good hunch.

The leaders agreed that they would accept nothing but the unconditional surrender of Germany plus reparations, and that Poland would be re-created but would have a communist government. Also, ethnic Germans living in Poland and Czechoslovakia were to be transferred to Germany so as to remove the excuse for the future.

As the Russians moved west, the British and American forces in France had their advance slowed by stiff German resistance and counter-attacks, finally meeting the Russians on the River Elbe to the south of Berlin on 25th April 1945. It was much further west than anticipated, and it left the Russians with the countries they wanted plus half of Germany.

Mussolini tried to escape to Switzerland, but he was caught by Italian partisans and executed. Hitler committed suicide, and on 8th May 1945 Germany surrendered unconditionally. The war in Europe was over.

Churchill told cheering crowds in Whitehall: “This is
your
victory!” They shouted back: “No, it is
yours
.” He had borne the weight of the war for years, had carried the country and driven the free world to victory. It was an incredible physical and mental effort. No other person could have done what he did.

In the East, the war against Japan continued. The Americans gave the Japanese an ultimatum to surrender or meet with utter destruction. The ultimatum was ignored. War with Japan ended after the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August.

TheSecondWorldWarhadcosttheUnitedKingdom,France andtheUSAhalfamillionliveseach,sixmillionweremurdered in the Holocaust (so over 97% of the victims were from outside Germany), up to twenty million Russians were killed, and so were many millions more in other countries, particularly in the Far East – in total, over 2.5% of the world’s population.

In settling affairs at the end of the war, the American leadership was concerned to ensure the end of the old colonial empires; in their place came a new colonial empire. At a speech in Fulton, Missouri, Churchill declared that an Iron Curtain had descended across Europe. The Cold War had begun: a situation of tension without direct military action; the Soviet Union and its satellites and allies on one side, and the US and its western allies on the other side.

With peace came a general election. Churchill and the Conservatives were defeated, and Labour took power under Prime Minister Clement Attlee. The new government proceeded with its manifesto promises of nationalising the coal mines, road and rail transport, gas, electricity and the Bank of England, and creating the National Health Service. The Lords opposed iron and steel nationalisation, so the Lords’ delaying power was reduced from two years to one.

The post-war years were a time of economic collapse. Britain found itself with crippling debts, an overvalued pound and a decline in exports. Taxes were raised, bread was rationed and there was a coal shortage. Ireland finally cut all ties, and India gained independence; the Empire became the Commonwealth
– the King was no longer Emperor.

In all the gloom, there was cause for celebration in November 1947 when Princess Elizabeth married the exiled Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, her third cousin (they were both greatgreat-grandchildren of Queen Victoria), who was at the time a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy.

The 1950 election saw Labour’s overall majority reduced to eight. Attlee was forced to call another election in 1951, and the Conservatives under Churchill took over. Both governments had to deal with the Korean War of 1950-53, which saw the communist north invade the south, western forces and the United Nations push them back into the north, Chinese troops advance into the south, only to be driven back, and after a stalemate a truce confirming the division of the country very much as it was when the war began.

By now, King George was ill; he had already had an operation for arterio-sclerosis in 1949. In mid-1951, he became increasingly weak. He had lived all his life under strain with his education, the crown, the war and then the economic downturn. In addition to all that, George was a heavy smoker. At the back of Buckingham Palace, outside the King’s bedroom, there were flagstones upon flagstones, so to reduce the noise of their marching, the guards wore bedroom slippers at night rather than boots. At Windsor Castle (now the largest and oldest occupied castle in the world) in the years after the war, they provided an additional service. The Queen had tried to limit her husband’s smoking. So, the sentries at the back of the gardens were each required to have a pack of cigarettes available for the King, who (when his wife was not around) would approach one of them asking, “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a gasper?”

In September cancer was diagnosed and a lung was removed, but the tumour was malignant. Weak and grey, George insisted on going to London Airport on 31st January 1952 to see off Princess Elizabeth and her husband, now the Duke of Edinburgh, who were going on a short tour of East Africa before flying on to Australia.

On 5th February, King George went shooting at Sandringham. During the night he died, aged only 56 – the youngest British monarch to die since Queen Anne in 1714. He had been a hard-working sovereign, admired by his people, and he repaired much of the damage to the monarchy caused by his predecessors, struggling throughout against personal and national problems. Churchill’s wreath bore a card reading simply: ‘For valour’ – the inscription on the Victoria Cross.