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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780750951630 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 08/05/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 5 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
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History's Narrowest Escapes
By James Moore, Paul Nero
The History Press
Copyright © 2013 James Moore and Paul NeroAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7509-5163-0
CHAPTER 1
THE ASSASSINATION OF WINSTON CHURCHILL
On the morning of 1 June 1943, the actor Leslie Howard, famed for his role in films like Gone With The Wind, boarded BOAC Flight 777 at Lisbon Airport, Portugal, bound for Britain. Beside him was another man, Alfred Chenhalls, Howard's financial agent, who enjoyed smoking cigars and, it is said, bore an uncanny resemblance to the then prime minister, Winston Churchill.
With Portugal and Spain still neutral in the Second World War, Howard, a popular heart-throb who was also a fervent patriot, had just completed a propaganda tour aimed at winning over hearts and minds in the region. Legend has it that his plane home was delayed after he went back to retrieve a package containing a pair of silk stockings for a lady friend. Howard had reportedly been reluctant to take the trip to the Iberian Peninsula at all and, as it turned out, with good reason. About 200 miles into his flight home, the Dutch pilot of the Douglas DC-3 radioed to say, 'I am being followed by strange aircraft. Putting on best speed ... we are being attacked. Cannon shells and tracers are going through the fuselage. Wave-hopping and doing my best.' At 11 a.m. radio contact was lost. The plane had been shot down over the Bay of Biscay by a force of eight German Junkers 88 aircraft. The lives of all seventeen people on board, including Howard and Chenhalls, were lost.
Within days, speculation was rife in the British press that the shooting down of the aircraft might well have been a botched attempt by the Nazis to assassinate Winston Churchill. While Howard's death was a much-mourned loss, Churchill's death would have been a huge coup for the Germans.
What made the theory more credible was that Churchill himself had been at a meeting in North Africa with American general Dwight D. Eisenhower, or 'Ike' as he was popularly known, then Allied commander in the region. Churchill actually flew back to England on 4 June, on a similar route to Flight 777, without incident. His flight had even been delayed due to bad weather. Rumours had been circulating, possibly put about by British intelligence itself, that Churchill might return on a civilian airliner such as the few that still plied the route from Lisbon to Britain. After all, in 1942, he had flown back to Britain from Bermuda on a Boeing flying boat. The theory goes that poor Alfred Chenhalls could have been mistaken for the portly prime minister by German agents monitoring these flights. It's certain that German spies were watching such airfields.
In his memoir The Hinge of Fate, Churchill said he believed that the Bay of Biscay attack was indeed intended for him. But he noted that the Nazis were idiotic to think he would be on a civilian airliner, saying, 'The brutality of the Germans was only matched by the stupidity of their agents.' When the Second World War was brewing Churchill had known he would be a target for assassins. As early as August 1939, before he was even prime minister, he had re-employed Detective Inspector Walter H. Thompson, paying him £5 a week to be his bodyguard. In an earlier period of service, Thompson had thwarted an attempt by IRA shooters to kill Churchill in Hyde Park. And, in June 1940, during a dash over to France before the nation fell to the Nazis, Thompson had managed to stop a crazed lunge on Churchill by the French countess Hélène de Portes, who was armed with a knife.
Other theories sprang up about Flight 777. The most plausible was that the Germans had actually planned to kill the anti-Nazi campaigner Howard, thinking he was a British spy. Even today, the truth behind the episode remains mysterious.
A few months before the demise of Flight 777 there was a very definite and carefully planned bid by the Nazis to end Churchill's life.
While one of the more bizarre German ploys uncovered by British intelligence – to kill Churchill via exploding chocolate bars served to him in London meetings – was highly unlikely to succeed, in February 1943, spies prepared to do away with him via one of the old campaigner's better known vices – alcohol.
Churchill travelled 200,000 miles during the war and it was probably during these foreign trips, which gave his government and military chiefs nightmares, that he was most vulnerable. The poison plot emerged as Churchill toured North Africa following a visit to Turkey in January, in which he met President Ismet Inönü to persuade the nation, which had remained neutral, to come in on the side of the Allies.
After the negotiations, which proved fruitless, Churchill flew on to Cyprus and then Cairo before landing in Tripoli to celebrate with the Eighth Army, who, after their success at the Second Battle of El Alamein, in November 1942, had all but cleared the North African deserts of German resistance.
Then the alarm came. There had been some kind of leak. Immense amounts of planning always went into disguising the prime minister's location when he was on a foreign trip, but now Churchill's route home to Britain had somehow become known to the Germans. Thankfully, code-breakers at Bletchley Park, the secret wartime intelligence headquarters, had discovered the lapse in security. But what they discovered spread fear amongst the British Cabinet as they awaited Churchill's homecoming. The intercepted messages, between Nazi agents in the field and Berlin, showed that the knowledge of Churchill's travel plans would be used to try and kill him.
On 4 February 1943 Britain's deputy prime minister, Clement Attlee, sent a 'clear the line' message marked 'Most Secret' to the Western Desert, for the prime minister's eyes. It read:
Attempts are going to be made to bump you off. We have studied possibilities very carefully and I and my colleagues, supported by the Chiefs of Staff, consider that it would be unwise for you to adhere to your present programme. We regard it as essential in the national interest that you cut out visits to both Algiers and Gibraltar and proceed to England.
Analysis showed that Algiers was the most likely place where the assassination attempt would be made. The intercepted messages had been sent from an agent called Muh, based in Tangier, Morocco. This was actually Hans-Peter Schulze, a man working undercover as a German press attaché. According to his communiques to Berlin, four assassins were on their way to Algeria with an 'assignment against Churchill'. He had asked high command to 'dispatch urgently 20–50 machine pistols with ammunition, magnetic and adhesive mines. Also poisons for drinks.' According to the wires, by 4 February, the killers – recruited from the ranks of local, disaffected nationalists – were already on their way to ambush the PM.
It's unclear what Churchill's reaction to the message was. What is not in question, however, is that by the morning of 5 February Churchill was already on his way to Algiers to meet Eisenhower and the British admiral, Sir Andrew Cunningham. In fact, the prime minister seems to have enjoyed the chance to let his hair down in Algiers, saying to his aides, almost playfully, 'There is no reason why we should hurry on from here. No-one knows we are here.'
Eisenhower had been informed of the assassination threats and had given the prime minister his own car, with bulletproof windows. But as Churchill was finally ready to fly home that evening, something strange happened. His Liberator plane developed a fault. Not a serious one, but enough for Churchill to decide to stay another day. Ike was furious, desperate to get Churchill back to London where he was 'worth two armies' but a 'liability' anywhere else.
After the war there was a theory that Churchill had ordered Thompson to tamper with the aircraft on purpose by removing a rotor arm. Thompson denied the fact publicly but, apparently, once admitted to his son that this was true. Was Churchill playing a dangerous game of bluff with his movements, in order to outwit Nazi agents who might target his plane? Had he wanted it to look like the aeroplane had mechanical trouble, to cover the fact that he had been tipped off about an assassination attempt? After all, making sudden changes to his plans might signify that British intelligence had cracked the Germans' codes, putting the war effort at risk. Much more likely was that Churchill was simply enjoying his trip and saw the chance for a few more drinks. As it turned out, on the evening of 6 February, Churchill finally flew back to Britain in the Liberator via a more direct route than originally planned. Nothing more was heard of the would-be assassins.
Later the same year there was another scheme, code-named Operation Long Jump, to kill not only Churchill but also Stalin and Roosevelt at the Big Three's conference in Tehran in November 1943. Ordered directly by Hitler, after German intelligence had found out about the conference, and masterminded by Nazi superspy Otto Scorzeny, the plot involved six German radio operators being parachuted into Iran to plan the attack. But the Soviets knew the conference was a likely target and a 19-year-old Soviet agent called Gevork Vartanyan led a team working tirelessly to track down the German group. He found them 'travelling by camel and loaded with weapons' and began monitoring their dispatches back to Berlin. Discovering that a second wave of German agents were on the way he had the first group arrested, then forced them to report the failure of their mission by radio back to Berlin leading to the cancellation of the attack.
Thankfully for the British people, and perhaps the rest of the world, Winston Churchill survived all the wartime attempts on his life. We can only speculate as to what would have happened had he been successfully 'bumped off', as Attlee put it. By 1943 the tide of the war had definitely turned in favour of the Allies. But there was a long way to go before peace, including the thorny question of Allied landings on the Continent of Europe. Then there was Churchill's value as a cog in the personal relationships between the leaders of the Big Three and his influence on post-war planning. Most importantly, no doubt, there was his ongoing value to British morale. Roosevelt certainly had no doubt when he told Churchill's bodyguard, Thompson, to 'Look after the Prime Minister. He is one of the greatest men in the world.' Whatever Churchill's personal worth, it was certainly fitting that he was there on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on VE Day in 1945, along with the Royal Family, to celebrate the Allied victory over Hitler.
There was no doubt that the wily old man had always embraced the dangers of his position with a degree of sangfroid. On the way back to England in February 1943, having eluded the assassins of North Africa, he ruminated, 'It would be a pity to have to go out in the middle of such an interesting drama, without seeing the end.'
CHAPTER 2WHEN BRITAIN ALMOST MADE PEACE WITH HITLER
During early May 1940 it was clear that Neville Chamberlain, the prime minister who had once promised 'peace for our time', could no longer continue to lead the country. Some eight months into hostilities with Hitler, the war was going badly for Britain. Poland had already been defeated and then there had been a disastrous campaign to Norway, in which 4,000 troops and a large number of ships had been lost, in a failed bid to stop the Germans overrunning Scandinavia. It was this military debacle that precipitated a fierce debate in the House of Commons on 7–8 May, culminating in a confidence vote in Chamberlain's government.
The prime minister won the ballot, but only by eighty-one votes. A war leader needed better backing. Embattled and worn out, with his past as an appeaser of Hitler a millstone round his neck, Chamberlain was finished as PM. The Labour leader, Clement Attlee, refused to offer his party's participation in a national government led by Chamberlain. In the debate over Norway, Attlee even noted that the prime minister and others were leading 'an almost uninterrupted career of failure.' It was time to find a successor.
Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, was not the favourite of the two main candidates who emerged. Already 65 years old, he had spent much of the 1930s in the political wilderness, noisily criticising the policy of appeasement from the sidelines. His past wartime experiences in government did not instil great confidence. Churchill's reputation had been left in tatters after he had masterminded the calamitous Gallipoli campaign during the First World War. Now his fingerprints were all over the Norwegian campaign too. Even Churchill's own former private secretary, Sir James Grigg, warned that he would 'bugger up the whole war'.
The obvious person to be prime minister, agreed most of the establishment, was Lord Halifax, then foreign secretary. He had experience, gravitas and seemed a safe pair of hands compared to Churchill, a man who had switched political parties twice. Born into a sickly family and fourth in line to inherit the family seat, Halifax attained his title when his three older brothers died in childhood. With extraordinary wealth and the best of educations, Halifax was an unprepossessing man with an attuned political instinct. Nicknamed 'the Holy Fox' he had worked his way up through Tory ranks during thirty years in Parliament before giving up his job in the Commons on becoming Viceroy of India. Then, in the late 1930s, he had returned to government, serving in a number of roles, even meeting Adolf Hitler in 1937 in Germany. The fact that he had almost handed the Führer his coat, mistaking the dictator for a footman, was not auspicious.
With Chamberlain set to resign it appeared that Halifax had the backing of the majority of the Conservative party as well as the Royal Family. The press baron Lord Beaverbrook, one of the few to want the bombastic Winston to take the role, wrote, 'Chamberlain wanted Halifax. Labour wanted Halifax. The Lords wanted Halifax. The King wanted Halifax. And Halifax wanted Halifax.'
On the afternoon of 9 May Chamberlain met with Churchill and Halifax, the main contenders for his job. Churchill initially stayed quiet in the meeting – quite out of character. But by this stage it seems that Halifax was wavering. Beaverbrook was mistaken. Halifax, it appeared, did not want to be prime minister, not at this juncture at any rate. With defeat by Germany a distinct possibility, perhaps he felt the premiership was a poisoned chalice. In fact, on the morning of the crucial meeting, he was already suffering from a 'stomach ache' at the prospect of being PM.
And, as Chamberlain seemed set to recommend him to the king, Halifax himself pointed out that as a peer, unable to sit in the House of Commons, it would be tricky to serve as prime minister. Undoubtedly this obstacle could have been overcome. Yet Halifax clearly felt it would be difficult to have Churchill serve under him in a War Cabinet where Winston would inevitably lead military policy. Halifax intimated to Chamberlain that Churchill was the better choice as leader. And Winston, recalled Halifax, 'did not demur'.
Churchill certainly hadn't pushed to be prime minister. He had originally expected to merely be in a new Cabinet led by Halifax. And for some Tories, who loathed the idea of Churchill in charge, the fight to make Halifax PM wasn't over. One senior minister, 'Rab' Butler, rushed to see him, trying to get Halifax to change his mind. He was told that the foreign secretary had gone to the dentist. On 10 May Chamberlain went to the king and recommended that Churchill be made prime minister. By 6 p.m. Churchill had got the job.
Three days later Halifax was already carping. He confided to a friend, 'I don't think WSC will be a very good PM ... though the country will think he gives them a fillip.' Churchill himself admitted to the people, a few days after taking office, that he had 'nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat', but vowed to achieve 'Victory. Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all terror. Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.'
(Continues...)
Excerpted from History's Narrowest Escapes by James Moore, Paul Nero. Copyright © 2013 James Moore and Paul Nero. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Acknowledgements,
Introduction,
1. The assassination of Winston Churchill,
2. When Britain almost made peace with Hitler,
3. How St Paul's survived the Blitz,
4. The ship that nearly sank New York,
5. The female Schindler,
6. Caught in the blast of two atomic bombs,
7. Operation Unthinkable – a Third World War in 1945?,
8. How a bear nearly started Armageddon,
9. The man who cancelled Doomsday,
10. Beating the Iron Curtain in a hot air balloon,
11. Escape from the Hindenburg,
12. The Wright brothers and the world's first fatal plane crash,
13. The foreign 'Few' who helped turn the tide in the Battle of Britain,
14. The miraculous survival of the Last Supper,
15. The charmed life of the Mona Lisa,
16. How the Bayeux Tapesty survived the French Revolution and the Nazis,
17. The French admiral who thwarted Napoleon's invasion of Britain,
18. The humble sailor who saved Nelson for Trafalgar,
19. The English Armada of 1589: Sir Francis Drake's forgotten failure,
20. Mud and the myths of Agincourt,
21. The oak tree that saved a monarchy,
22. The tortured life of the Crown Jewels and an unlikely survivor,
23. The letter that foiled the Gunpowder Plot,
24. The British Revolution of 1832,
25. How Queen Victoria was almost potty King Ernest,
26. How the first Victoria Cross was won,
27. The last man out of Kabul,
28. How Prince Albert averted war between Britain and the United States,
29. How Abraham Lincoln cheated death and went on to free the slaves,
30. An escapee slave and the underground railroad to freedom,
31. The taxidermist who saved the American buffalo,
32. The German who helped Wellington win at Waterloo,
33. Charles Dickens' close shave,
34. How St Pancras was saved from the bulldozer,
35. When the Eiffel Tower was nearly toppled,
36. How Isambard Kingdom Brunel nearly engineered his own downfall,
37. The unsinkable Arthur John Priest,
38. The man who operated on himself in the Antarctic,
39. How a mouldy melon saved thousands of Allied lives on D-Day,
40. Saving millions from deadly gas in the First World War,
41. The Second World War gas attacks that never were,
42. The man who looked into the abyss,
43. An escape from the volcano that buried Pompeii,
44. The first British 'home run' from Colditz,
45. The night Margaret Thatcher was bombed,
46. Escaping Henry VIII's chopping block by a whisker,
47. The men they couldn't hang,
48. How Bligh survived the mutiny on the Bounty,
49. Russia's Apollo 13,
50. When the Millennium Bug didn't bite,
Selected sources & further reading,
Copyright,