David Irving replies:

WELL, it seems a fair guess that the sources on which Sir Ian Kershaw (above) relied for the previously unknown War
Cabinet peace deliberations in the spring of 1940
(in fact May and June 1940) were in fact my
Churchill and Hitler biographies, “Churchill’s
War”, vol. i: “Struggle for
Power” and
“Hitler’s
War” (Millennium Edition,
2002).

Both books were the product of the kind of original research — and thinking — for which Kershaw is not renowned. He was rewarded for his conformity with a knighthood a few years back, and so far as I know has spent little of his time in solitary confinement in prison.

In the spring of 1940 the bombing of London had not begun, and Hitler had used several channels to inform leading Britons that he had no interest in destroying their Empire
— which was true.

At that time there was a powerful peace movement in the Cabinet. Several ministers predicted that the British Empire would be ruined by fighting a needless war against the
Nazis to benefit, not the British, but their recent immigrants from Germany who were the ones pushing hardest for war in 1938 and 1939. As Machiavelli wrote, Never heed the advice of immigrants. (Ironically, in May 1940 the British interned most of them as dangerous aliens. But the damage had been done).

Most outspoken for peace (behind the closed doors of No., 10 Downing Street) were the former Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain, whom Churchill had replaced by underhand tactics

on May 10; Lord Halifax, the foreign minister (whom Churchill sent into exile in July, as ambassador in Washington); and
Lord Beaverbrook, the press magnate. The
Cabinet was thus evenly divided. Halifax argued the most powerfully for accepting Hitler’s peace offer, calling it most reasonable.

Churchill had only just come into office however, and had a lifetime of political failure behind him. To accept peace now would have marked the end of his personal ambitions. While stating in one Cabinet session that he too felt it would be wrong to jeopardize the Empire needlessly, the next day he came back and stated that there could be no question of
“surrender” — the loaded word he chose.

Halifax walked him out into the garden at No. 10, and continued the argument, but Churchill would not be talked out of it.

In mid June 1940, R A
Butler of the Foreign Office — later a deputy prime minister, who nearly found himself giving me
Hitler’s Mein Kampf at our school prize day in 1956
— confided to a Swiss diplomat that the British wanted to accept, and they would not allow their mad prime minister to do otherwise. But Churchill was in the position that George W Bush and Tony
Blair are in now: the whole world wanted disengagement and peace, but he saw it as his own personal ruin.

To kill off the peace movement Churchill did two things: he ordered the bombardment of the French fleet at Mers el-Kébir early in July, and he provoked the bombing of London by deliberately attacking Berlin in the last week of August, on a pretext. (He himself hid out in Oxfordshire every time
Intelligence sources told him London was going to be bombed). The archives leave no doubt.

After the first raid on
Berlin, Hitler hurried back to his capital and secretly instructed Hess to make one final attempt to establish contact with his high-placed friends in Britain, to halt the madness. Hess fumbled; the war continued, and the Empire was lost. As I stated in “Churchill’s War”, vol. i: “Struggle for Power”,
Winston was the destroyer of two empires – one of them his own.

THE new edition of
“Churchill’s War”, vol. i: “Struggle for Power”, which will be much updated, contains an extraordinary revelation (the work of researcher
David Pounder, not myself) — that the admirals were plotting, with Queen
Elizabeth, to overthrow Winston later that
June.

I myself revealed that King George VI
told several American visitors including Sumner
Welles and Harry Hopkins and the
Canadian prime minister Mackenzie King that he disliked Churchill as prime minister and preferred Lord Halifax. Captain Ralph
Edwards wrote in his diary on June 19,
1940:

“Sir
W. Monkton’s Secretary telephoned and asked me
to see Sir W [Walter]. I went at 18:00
and told him the whole truth or rather
corroborated Bill T.’s story. He promised action
and told me [Leo] Amery + Beaverbrook +
his own minister were ready to act. It seems
likely that they’ll do it thro’ the Queen, who
seems to be the power behind the throne.”

Bill T was Captain
William Tennant. One 1940 file of Sir
Walter Monkton, the queen’s lawyer and adviser, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford is still sealed because it is known to contain references to her belief that Hitler’s peace offer should be accepted. Pounder concludes that this was clear evidence that the plot (to replace Churchill and to conclude a negotiated peace with Berlin) was being managed by Monckton and powered by Queen Elizabeth.

Free download: David
Irving, “Churchill’s War”, vol. i: “Struggle for
Power”
Jewish
experts heartily endorse US plans to film Sir
Ian’s Hitler biography as “absolutely
marvellous”
Extracts
from David Irving’s diary referring to
Kershaw
Sir
Ian Kershaw reviews Prof Richard Evans’ book
Telling Lies about Hitler
A reader
asks Mr Irving’s opinion of Kershaw
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