Transcription
[Music] On June the 22nd, 1940, Britain stood alone against the Nazis. France had surrendered, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill could only growl defiance. "We will fight on the beaches, we will fight on the landing grounds, we will fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never [Music] surrender."
Britain still had all the resources of its vast Empire. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, and a host of other territories had all been quick to declare war on Germany. But they were thousands of miles away, across the oceans, and their military power could not be brought to bear where it mattered. Britain's situation seemed hopeless, and Hitler had no doubt that Britain would soon try to negotiate a [Music] peace.
But, but Churchill quickly showed how determined he was prepared to be in the war against the Nazis. A powerful squadron of two French battleships and two battle cruisers was lying in the port of Mers-el-Kébir in French North Africa. If the French ships fell into German hands, the British Navy's position in the Mediterranean would become impossible. So, on July the 3rd, a Royal Navy task force demanded that the French ships either join it or sail to a neutral port to be interned. The French refused, so the British opened fire on their former [Music] allies. They destroyed or severely damaged three of the battleships. Almost 1,300 French sailors were killed.
Churchill's ruthlessness didn't seem to impress Hitler. On July the 19th, he returned in triumph to Berlin and was greeted by more than a million people. That day, he made a speech in the Reichstag, the German Parliament, offering peace terms to Britain. His offer seemed generous: Britain could keep its Empire. In return, Hitler wanted a free hand in Europe. His plan was to conquer the countries of the East in order to win "living room" to live for the German people. But Churchill would have none of it. The British would fight on. This would, as he put it, "be their finest hour."
Churchill's defiance was immensely popular. King George VI wrote in his diary: "Personally, I feel happier now that we have no more allies to be polite to and to pamper." But it was difficult to see how Britain could ever turn the tables and actually win the war. The British Army might have survived Dunkirk, but it had lost almost all its tanks, artillery, and transport in the evacuation. It had just 25 divisions, armed mainly with rifles, to resist the vast armored columns of the world's most fearsome war machine.
So there was little to be done except dig in and wait. Coastal defenses were prepared, and concrete pillboxes built all across Southern England. Signposts on roads were removed to make it harder for any invaders to find their way around. Large open areas were littered with obstacles to deter airborne troops. A volunteer defense force, the Home Guard, was recruited. It was made up of men who were otherwise ineligible to fight, often because of their age. By the end of June 1940, almost 1 and a half million volunteers had signed up, but there were few weapons with which to arm them.
Hitler, meanwhile, was getting on with his invasion plans, code-named Operation Sea [Music] Lion. Some 20 divisions would be landed on a broad front along England's South Coast. Barges were gathered from all over Northwest Europe. These were hurriedly converted into makeshift landing craft. Troops were trained for beach landings. But for all Hitler's bravado, those planning Sea Lion were worried. Hitler might dismiss the English Channel as just another river to be crossed. But Britain's Navy was still the largest in the world. It might be stretched thin by its worldwide commitments, but the Royal Navy's Home Fleet far outnumbered the German. The German Naval Chief, Admiral Erich Raeder, had no confidence that he could seize control of the English Channel for long enough to get the Army [Music] across.
But the Germans did have one area of apparent massive superiority: the Luftwaffe. It far outnumbered Britain's Royal Air Force. The Luftwaffe's Commander, Hermann Göring, had little doubt that he could establish air control over the Channel long enough for Sea Lion to take place. On July the 10th, the Luftwaffe began attacking shipping in the Channel. [Music]
In response, the British had two of the most outstanding of the new breed of single-engine, multi-gun monoplanes: the Supermarine Spitfire and the Hawker Hurricane. The Spitfire was slightly faster and more agile than its German rival, the Messerschmitt Bf 109, which escorted the German bombers. It would be used to intercept these. The Hurricane would prove a lethal bomber killer. But in July 1940, Air Vice-Marshal Hugh Dowding, the head of Fighter Command, had less than 700 [Music] fighters. Against them were 2,600 German fighters and bombers. The odds against the RAF were daunting. Dowding knew that he could not take on the Luftwaffe every time it came over the Channel. So when the Germans began hitting British shipping, he did [Music] nothing. Instead, he would only use the RAF to stop the Luftwaffe from establishing the air supremacy needed for invasion. So he would only take on its big attacks.
To help him, the British had one crucial innovation: radar. By the 1930s, scientists in both Britain and Germany knew that objects well beyond human sight could be detected by bouncing radio pulses off them and measuring the time it took for the signals to return. In Britain, a team of scientists led by Robert Watson-Watt began developing radar as a means of detecting approaching aircraft at long range. Their work was seized upon by Dowding. He made radar the core of the world's first integrated air defense [Music] system, known as Chain Home. This was a string of 21 300-foot-tall radar masts sited along the south and east coasts of Britain. These could pick up aircraft at a range of 120 miles and give their distance, direction, height, and numbers. The information would be passed back to RAF Fighter Command's headquarters at Bentley Priory, just outside London. There, it would be assessed, and warning of an impending raid passed to Fighter Command's operations room. "Mine 14, sky blue, take target one, Channel. George controllers would then alert the nearest RAF airfields and scramble the necessary number of fighters."
The question was: would radar make up for Germany's massive superiority in numbers? The stage was now set for what would become known as the Battle of [Music] Britain. Since June the 10th, 1940, the German Luftwaffe had been battering British shipping in the English Channel. The Luftwaffe's Commander, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, was determined to lure the British Air Force into combat. But Britain's Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding refused to take the bait. He used his fighters sparingly, knowing that the real battle was still to come.
As this first phase of the Battle of Britain began, the Luftwaffe had a massive superiority in numbers. It had 1,100 single-engine fighters available to the Royal Air Force's 700. Almost all the German fighters were the excellent Messerschmitt Bf 109E, with a top speed of around 350 mph. About two-thirds of the British fighters were Hawker Hurricanes, slower than the 109s but more agile. The remainder were Supermarine Spitfires, with a top speed similar to the 109s. For their assault, the Germans had over 1,300 medium bombers: Dornier Do 17s, Heinkel He 111s, and Junkers Ju 88s, each carrying about 4,000 lb of bombs. Göring selected August the 13th as Adler Tag (Eagle Day) for the start of his main [Music] assault. His aim was to destroy RAF fighters in the air, and the RAF's airfields and Britain's aircraft [Music] factories.
Softening-up attacks were made the day before. These concentrated on the airfields and the radar towers along the South Coast. One station on the Isle of Wight was put out of action, and several were damaged. But these were working again within hours. Göring did not believe that radar had a significant role to play in the battle, and so these attacks were not repeated. It was a big mistake. [Music] Adler Tag dawned cloudy, so the main assault was postponed until the afternoon. When it came, radar gave ample warning. "St. M. calling planes, heard 3 miles [Music] Southwest." Nonetheless, most of the RAF airfields in the South were hammered. [Music] But by the end of the day, none had been put out of [Music] action. The Luftwaffe lost 46 aircraft. Discover the past with exclusive military history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians, all on History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Download the app now to watch everything from the gripping story of the Band of Brothers to Operation Barbarossa and D-Day. Immerse yourself in the dramatic stories of this remarkable era by signing up via the link in the description.
Britain just [Music] 30. The Luftwaffe mounted its largest attack of the whole battle on August the 15th. [Music] Waves of heavily escorted German bombers forced their way through to the RAF [Music] airfields. The RAF was so overstretched that some pilots flew seven sorties that day. By the time the raids died away, some 90 German aircraft had been shot down for the loss of 42 British fighters. The battle continued with equal ferocity over the next few days. Both sides became increasingly exhausted. Dowding tried to rotate his pilots to rest them, but he simply did not have enough of them. Many were being sent into battle with just 10 hours' flying experience. The Luftwaffe was suffering too. Its pilots were shocked and increasingly demoralized by the resilience of the British. The RAF fighters always seemed to be waiting for [Music] them.
As the fighting wore on for 12 solid days, the British losses began to creep up to match those of the Germans. The Royal Air Force was close to breaking. To turn the screw, Göring began using his bombers to attack at night as well. But this decision had an unexpected outcome. On the night of August the 24th, a flight of Heinkel bombers lost its way and bombed the city of [Music] London. [Music] It was the first attack on a non-military target. The next night, 811 British bombers responded by raiding [Music] Berlin. Hitler was infuriated and demanded massive retaliation. This came on the evening of September the 7th. German bombers attacked the London docks and surrounding areas. More than 450 people died, and thousands of homes were destroyed. But in fact, this was Göring's second crucial mistake. By switching from the RAF's airfields just at the moment when it seemed about to break, he gave it the rest it needed. Had Göring continued to attack the airfields, the RAF could not have continued to defend the skies.
Instead, on September the 15th, British radars picked up another massive assault on London. The first wave of 100 bombers and 400 fighters was intercepted. Fighting raged all the way from the coast. In the afternoon, another fleet of 150 bombers renewed the attack. Winston Churchill was at Fighter Command headquarters that day. After he heard controllers calling in reinforcements from neighboring groups, he asked, "What other reserves have we got?" The reply was, "There are [Music] none." But it was obvious that the Luftwaffe had failed to gain control of the air. And on September the 17th, Hitler postponed Operation Sea Lion. The Battle of Britain did not really end; it died away. Hitler now tried a new tactic. By October the 5th, the daylight raids stopped, and the Germans concentrated on bombing Britain's cities by [Music] night. This was the so-called Blitz. London was attacked every night but one up to November the 12th. On November the 10th, the center of the city of Coventry was obliterated. The Blitz continued into 1941, with the last major raid being made on London on the night of May the [Music] 10th. More than 50,000 civilians were killed in the Blitz. But there was never any question of Britain cracking. Victory in the Battle of Britain was a moment of huge national relief. Pilots had come from all over the Empire to join the RAF, and from countries occupied by the Nazis, like Poland and Czechoslovakia. Churchill summed up the nation's gratitude: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." But for Hitler, this was no more than an irritating setback. Britain, he was convinced, could never be a serious threat, so he now turned to Eastern Europe. For Britain, there was now a chance to rebuild, with a view one day to taking the fight to the enemy. But to do that, Churchill would need [Applause] [Music] help.
Britain may have won the Battle of Britain, but it was still immensely vulnerable. [Music] Night after night, its cities were hammered by the Nazi [Music] Blitz. Its supply lifelines at sea were under constant assault. Churchill needed more help, and there was only one country that could provide it: the United States. By 1940, the US had recovered from the Great Depression, and the economy was booming again. It had immense reserves of manpower and unrivaled industrial strength. But the people of the United States were utterly opposed to becoming involved yet again in Europe's wars. In July 1940, a poll showed that only 8% of them were willing to enter the [Music] war.
Undeterred, Churchill lobbied the US President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt had long admired Churchill for his outspokenly anti-Nazi views, and the two men shared an interest in naval affairs. Roosevelt had been Under Secretary for the US Navy in 1917. After he became president, Roosevelt kept in touch with Churchill. The two began a correspondence, Churchill signing himself "Former Naval Person." For all his avuncular image, Roosevelt had no illusions that German aggression would one day suck America into the war. So he began the long job of preparing American public opinion. "I am a pacifist, but I believe you and I will act together to protect and to defend our science, our culture, our American freedom, and our civilization." In July 1940, he got approval for a massive expansion of the US Navy, including the building of six large battleships and a new class of aircraft carriers. The following month, Congress agreed that the National Guard and other reserves should be called up for one year's active duty. And in September, the large expansion of the 150,000-strong US Army was agreed, with a limited number of conscripts being chosen by lottery. The first number drawn by the Secretary of War is serial number 158. That same month, Roosevelt announced a deal under which the US would supply Britain with 50 World War I destroyers in return for 99-year leases on bases in Newfoundland and the Caribbean. The British Navy, desperate for more escorts to fight the U-boats, began taking them over within days of the deal being signed. The clear sign that Roosevelt was slowly winning the argument came in the November 1940 presidential election, when he convincingly defeated the isolationist Wendell Willkie with 27 million votes to 22 [Applause] [Music] million.
At the end of the year, Roosevelt spoke to the American people, setting out the four essential freedoms which he believed were at stake and which Britain was fighting to uphold: freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from want and from fear. "To save these, the United States must become the Arsenal of Democracies. In other words, it must arm Britain. We shall send you in ever-increasing numbers ships, planes, tanks, guns. That is our purpose and our [Music] pledge." But some Americans remained implacably opposed to helping [Music] Britain. One of the most outspoken was the American ambassador in London, Joseph Kennedy, father of the future President John F. Kennedy. A Boston Irish businessman who had made his fortune bootlegging during Prohibition, Kennedy hated the British and seized every opportunity to claim that they would shortly be forced to surrender. However, Kennedy's virulence was counterbalanced by the growing admiration many Americans felt for the bravery shown by the British people during the [Music] Blitz. In particular, the broadcasts by the CBS London correspondent Ed Murrow helped to change public [Music] opinion. "This is London. I remember, remember the evening of Sunday, December 29th. It was just like any other winter evening. The first bombers were over London at about half [Music] past six. Soon, the fires hissed from the top-story [Music] windows." Hitler once boasted, "I will rub out their cities." This is what he meant.
Encouraged by his electoral success, in January 1941, Roosevelt introduced his so-called Lend-Lease Bill. The United States would supply weapons and war material to Britain and China, which was still struggling desperately against the invading Japanese. Payment would be [Music] delayed. Roosevelt likened Lend-Lease to lending a neighbor a hose to put out a fire; he would worry about the payback later. Roosevelt was also being canny; it also meant that unlike in 1917, if America had to enter the war, it already would have a substantial weapons industry. American war preparations didn't end there. Roosevelt secretly authorized US military staffs to discuss a common strategy with the British should America enter the [Music] war. By April 1941, he felt confident enough to take another step to help Britain at sea. He greatly extended the Pan-American security zone, the area within which US warships would protect US merchant vessels. In May, US troops set up bases in Greenland, and in July, US Marines were sent to replace the British garrison in Iceland, which was there to deprive the Germans of its harbors. The US Navy also began providing limited convoy escorts, particularly for US ships carrying Lend-Lease [Music] materials.
Hitler now gave his submariners strict instructions not to sink American ships, as he didn't want to provoke the United States into war. But inevitably, there were clashes. On September the 4th, 1941, a British aircraft attacked a German submarine, thinking that a strike had come from the nearby US destroyer Greer. The U-boat fired a torpedo at [Music] it. The Greer responded with depth charges, and there was a running battle which lasted 3 hours. Neither vessel was sunk, but the tension was mounting. On November the 17th, the destroyer USS Reuben James was hit by a torpedo while on convoy duty off [Music] Iceland. The U-boat commander claimed it was an accident; he'd been firing at a British ship, and an American had got in the way. But 11 US sailors were dead, and the destroyer only just made it back to port in Reykjavik. Roosevelt protested, and the US press was outraged. However, the American public remained resolutely opposed to going to war. Within weeks, at the end of 1941, the situation was reversed in a single day. But in the meantime, Britain would have to fight on alone, and luckily, it had an astonishing weapon to [Music] hand.
It looks like just another mansion in the English countryside, a bit run-down. But Bletchley Park once contained a secret that fundamentally affected the course of World War II. Because it was at Bletchley that Britain worked out how to read Germany's most secret codes. Since the mid-1930s, all the German armed forces and intelligence departments had adopted a standard machine for encoding their messages: the cipher machine Enigma, better known as Enigma. It was developed in the early 1920s as a handy tool for businessmen to keep commercial messages secret. It was powered by a battery, and its encoded messages were transmitted in Morse code to be decoded on a second Enigma machine at the rece [Music] iver. The critical element of the machine was three rotors, which could be set to scramble the message in a way which could only be unscrambled by another machine with the same settings. The rotors could be replaced and set differently. As a result, each letter typed could come up in any one of 150 million ways. Given the almost infinite number of settings, it was not surprising that the Germans remained convinced throughout the war that Enigma was uncrackable.
It was the Poles who took the first steps in solving this baffling puzzle. They knew of the existence of the Enigma machine and assembled a team of top mathematicians to crack it: Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki, and Henryk Zygalski. But the team could not decipher messages without knowing the internal wiring of the [Music] rotors. The solution was supplied by French intelligence, which sent its Polish allies material gathered by a spy in the German Army Cipher Department. Amongst this was an Enigma manual. The Poles were able to reconstruct an Enigma machine and began laboriously decoding messages. By July 1939, Hitler was sounding increasingly threatening towards Poland. Britain and France had promised to come to its aid. It was clear that war was coming, so intelligence officers from the three allies met in Warsaw. There, the British and French were astonished at how much the Poles had done in decoding Enigma, and the Poles agreed to send two of their reconstructed machines to London. Just 2 weeks after they were handed over, Poland was [Music] invaded.
By the time Poland fell to the Germans, the Polish cryptographers had destroyed all evidence of their work on Enigma. Some were captured and tortured, but none revealed what they'd been up to. The task was now taken up by the British at their Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park, near London. Its head was Commander Alistair Denniston. Denniston recruited a strange collection of mathematicians, chess masters, and crossword puzzle experts to continue the [Music] decoding. Among these experts was Alan Turing. At Cambridge, back in 1936, Turing had described the idea of a universal computing machine, a machine that he believed would one day be able to solve all mathematical problems. He used his ideas to design decryption machines known as "bombes." The raw material for Bletchley came from the British Y-service, a chain of radio listening stations which monitored and recorded German [Music] transmissions. The messages were fed into Bletchley's bombes, and permutations run until, at last, the key was found. Once a message had been decrypted, it was translated, analyzed, and passed on to the appropriate authority.
From the moment he became Prime Minister and learned of Bletchley's work, Winston Churchill understood its extraordinary importance. He referred to Bletchley's output as his "Ultra secret information," and Ultra became its code name. The distribution of Ultra was tightly controlled. Senior commanders were shown only that information which directly concerned their operations. The need to keep the source of the intelligence secret was so great that Churchill insisted that no action could be taken on the basis of Ultra material unless a cover plan had been developed to convince the Germans that the intelligence must have come from another source. The third critical element of the Bletchley operation, after decoding and assessing the material, was keeping control of it. Often, Ultra revealed vital information about German plans and actions. News of forthcoming attacks and other intelligence was filed away in a massive card index system. This was constantly mined for answers to questions, great and small. By the end of the war, Bletchley was decoding much of the German traffic almost as fast as it was being sent. It was jokingly said that it would have been quicker for a German commander to ring Bletchley to get his orders.
It was at sea that the Allies first became aware of how vital information from Ultra could be. An early example of its potential came on June the 8th, 1940. The British aircraft carrier Glorious was covering the convoys withdrawing Allied troops from Norway when Bletchley decoded signals showing the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were approaching its position. A warning was passed to Royal Navy headquarters, but unaware of how accurate the information was likely to be, they chose not to pass it on. The Glorious was intercepted and sunk. The British Navy had learned the hard way just how important the new source of intelligence could be. It was not a mistake it would make again. [Music]
Bletchley also performed a critical role in the buildup to the Battle of [Music] Britain. It had provided a clear picture of the Luftwaffe's order of battle and the overall strategy being adopted by its leader, Hermann Göring. This information convinced the head of British Fighter Command, Air Vice-Marshal Hugh Dowding, that his tactic of committing his fighters bit by bit, rather than in large numbers, was the correct one – a tactic that played a crucial part in preserving the RAF's narrow winning margin. As Britain continued its lonely fight into 1941, it had at last found a way of fighting [Music] back. Bletchley Park was ready for action. The major breakthroughs had been made, the systems for exploiting them put in place and well-tested. In the coming years, Ultra and the work of Bletchley Park would prove vital to the Allied successes. But as the Battle of Britain and the Blitz ground on, these were still a long way [Music] off. Churchill still needed more immediate results, and by early 1941, he thought that he had at last found a way to [Music] get them.
Nazi Germany might now control most of Western Europe, but Britain's Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, now decided to take the war to the Germans. "We shall not flinch from the supreme trial. All will come right out of the..." Even before France had surrendered, he was looking for ways of striking back and of keeping resistance alive in the countries which had been overrun. Just as the last troops were being taken off the beaches of Dunkirk, Churchill was already planning ahead. He wrote to his Chiefs of Staff demanding the formation of raiding forces which could attack the coasts of occupied Europe within a few days. A call for volunteers had been circulated to create a force of 5,000 men. They were to be called Commandos, after the highly mobile B-units which had fought the British for 3 years in South Africa at the turn of the century. 10 Commando units, each of 500 men, were set up. They began practicing attacks from the [Music] sea. One unit was ordered to specialize in parachuting and using assault gliders. This soon became the basis of the separate Parachute Regiment. Admiral Sir Roger Keyes was appointed Director of Combined Operations. Churchill instructed him to prepare to mount three major raids as soon as the threat of an invasion of Britain had passed.
One of Keyes's first tasks was to develop ships which could land his new troops. Three cross-channel ferries were converted so as to carry landing craft. On March the 4th, 1941, two Commando units and a demolition squad were landed on the Lofoten Islands off Northern [Music] Norway. Their main objective was to destroy factories which converted fish oil into glycerine for [Music] explosives. The Commandos achieved total surprise and landed without a shot being fired. The German armed trawler in the harbor was seized. They quickly destroyed the factories and the fish oil [Music] tanks. One officer could not resist using the local post office to send a telegram to Hitler in Berlin. It read: "Reference your last speech, I thought you said that wherever British troops land on the continent of Europe, German soldiers will face them. Well, where, where are they?" The Commandos then rounded up 60 Norwegian collaborators and 225 German prisoners before returning without any losses. With them, they also took 115 Norwegian volunteers. These would then join the Free Norwegian forces in [Applause] Britain. The Lofoten Raid was an enormous public relations success and a huge boost for British morale. But its most important result was one which could not be publicized: the capture of a set of rotors for an Enigma machine. Although the machine had been thrown overboard from the armed trawler, its crew forgot the spares. They were to give invaluable help to the cryptographers of Bletchley Park in breaking the German naval codes. [Music]
Then, in December 1941, four Commando units landed at the Norwegian port of Vaagso and were immediately involved in heavy fighting. The approach to Vaagso was covered by the small island of Marlo, from which the Germans had placed artillery. This was quickly overrun, but across the water in Vaagso, the fighting was [Music] intense. It took several hours for the main German garrison to be subdued. The Commandos then blew up several factories and sank eight ships before withdrawing. These raids convinced Hitler that sooner or later the British would attempt to retake Norway. So for the remaining four years of the war, he kept some 250,000 troops there – troops which might have proved vital on other fronts.
But effective as they were, Commando raids were not enough to stop the Nazis. Churchill needed other ways to hurt them, so he focused on the resistance movements in the occupied countries. In July 1940, a Special Operations Executive (SOE) was formed, as Churchill put it, "to set Europe [Music] ablaze." Its objectives were to encourage sabotage of the enemy war effort, gather intelligence, and prepare clandestine forces to disrupt German [Music] defenses. The bulk of SOE's activities centered on France. Soon, agents were recruited in Britain to build up and coordinate the French Resistance networks. Radio operators and couriers were also trained to support them. One problem was how to get these teams into the country. Submarines, high-speed launches, and fishing vessels were all tried out, but the German coastal defenses proved difficult to penetrate. The answer was aircraft, and in August 1940, a special RAF unit was set up with Whitley bombers and Short Take-Off and Landing Westland Lysanders. Agents and equipment were either parachuted in from the bombers or flown in and brought out by the Lysanders on moonlit nights. A growing number of reception committees would be waiting as an increasingly widespread network of resistance groups was built [Music] up.
But all the while, they were hunted by an increasingly sophisticated German counter-espionage system. This used direction-finding equipment to locate hidden radios and double agents to infiltrate networks. The work of SOE agents was desperately perilous, and their life expectancy short. The slightest lapse in concentration might betray them to the Gestapo. Many suffered torture and death. But Churchill was sure it was worth it. Keeping resistance alive in the occupied countries gave hope to millions that liberation would eventually come. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was also enlisted to raise the hopes of those living under German rule. They broadcast the news in all the languages of the occupied countries. The German penalty for listening to these bulletins was death, but people tuned in regardless. The BBC also played a crucial role in transmitting coded messages to resistance groups. These always came after the 9:00 news.
For the peoples of occupied Europe, the prospect of liberation might only be a distant dream, but in the middle of 1941, it suddenly became more likely. For by then, Britain was no longer alone in fighting Nazism. It had gained a massive ally. But it wasn't America, which Churchill had assiduously been courting; it was the Soviet [Music] Union. She