Review of the Strategical Situation on the Assumption That Germany Has Decided to Seek a Decision in 1940 examined the three options open to Hitler if he made an attempt to win the war that year. Of the three, the chiefs rated as most likely the one the Turkish report mentioned: “a major offensive against Great Britain,” starting with an air campaign and culminating in an invasion aimed at knocking Britain out of the war. Less likely—though not to be discounted, said the chiefs—was the second option: Germany seeks military and economic hegemony in Scandinavia and in parts of the Balkans, severs Britain’s sea routes, then calls for a peace conference in which the German conquests allow Hitler to dictate the terms. The chiefs rated a German offense in France, the third option, as least likely. Attacking the Allies at their strongest point would produce unacceptable losses. Chamberlain scanned the report, but not very attentively. By early May he was engaged in two wars: one against Germany, the other against his critics in Parliament.

It is impossible to say when Chamberlain’s fall became inevitable. Opposition to appeasement had been growing in fits and starts since Churchill’s 1932 warning about a rearming Germany—and opposition to Chamberlain personally, at least since the Munich conference in 1938. Yet if one had to choose a moment when the prime minister’s fall became inevitable, it would probably be his talk with Lord Salisbury the day after the Norway invasion. Salisbury was a member of one of the most influential and storied families in England. For four hundred years the Cecils had tumbled down through English history like the notes of a particularly sparkling tune. There had been Cecil prime ministers, Cecil secretaries of state, Cecil lord privy seals, and Cecil ambassadors and proconsuls. Salisbury, the current leader of the family, was seventy-eight and had a commanding presence that owed something to breeding, something to the old-fashioned Victorian frocks he favored, something to personal rectitude, and something to a stare of displeasure that carried such moral weight that even brave hearts withered under it.

Salisbury was also the leader of the Watching Committee, which he founded, not to unseat Chamberlain but to help him and his ministers execute the war more effectively. A few bomb throwers had managed to slip by Salisbury’s watchful gaze and become members of the committee, but in the main its members were like him: thoughtful public men of steady temperament who believed that differences between the government and its critics could be resolved if the prime minister adopted three measures, which Salisbury laid out for Chamberlain during his visit to Downing Street the day after the Norway invasion. None of the measures was particularly novel. For months, critics had been urging Chamberlain to bomb Germany, to create a smaller, more nimble war cabinet, and to bring more new faces into the government. And for months Chamberlain had resisted the advice. Perhaps because he was tired of hearing it, after Salisbury finished, the prime minister forgot who he was talking to and snapped: “If people did not like the present administration of the government, they could change it.”

On April 29, during a talk with Lord Halifax at the Foreign Office, Salisbury again pressed for a more vigorous pursuit of the war. From Argentina to Sweden, Germany was viewed as always swift and daring, Britain as always too late with too little. “A formidable air offensive against German military targets . . . would have a profound and . . . favorable effect on neutrals, including the United States,” Salisbury said. Lord Halifax, who also had grown weary of unsolicited advice from uninformed notables, thanked Salisbury and his companions, Leo Amery, Edward Spears, and Harold Nicolson, for their concern, and assured his guests that the government was aware of the dangers facing the country. “Lord Halifax, we are not satisfied,” Salisbury said with the sharpness of a man unaccustomed to being patronized. Then he rose from his chair and walked out of the foreign secretary’s office, taking with him his colleagues and whatever remaining hopes he had of working with the Chamberlain government.

“Oh! The excitement, the thrills, the ill concealed . . . nervousness, the self interest . . . when there is a crisis on.” So wrote Henry Channon of the intoxicating blend of political intrigue, deception, backbiting, phone taps, and war that was London in the first week of May 1940. Sensing that Norway had made Chamberlain politically vulnerable, on May 2, the day the government announced the Trondheim failure, Clement Davies and Leo Amery, two of the most influential opposition leaders, decided to mount a challenge to the government. Every May before adjournment for the Whitsunday holiday (the Feast of Pentecost), Parliament held an adjournment debate, an unstructured session during which MPs could introduce almost any subject for discussion and debate. Amery and Davies arranged to have the Norwegian campaign put on this year’s debate schedule.