by Paul Johnson
Fourth, Churchill himself began to set a personal example of furious and productive activity at Ten Downing Street. He was sixty-five but he looked, seemed—was, indeed—the embodiment of energy. He worked a sixteen-hour day. He sought to make everyone else do likewise. In contrast to lethargic, self-indulgent old Asquith (“the bridge-player at the Wharf,” as Churchill called him) or even Lloyd George, who had high tea instead of a proper dinner to discus strategy and went to bed at nine o’clock, Churchill began to wear his own form of labor-saving uniform, a siren suit, easy to put on or take off, in which he could nap if he wanted during long nighttime spells at work. This added hugely to the fast-accumulating Churchill legend: the public called it his “rompers.” In fact, thanks to Clemmie, some of these siren suits were of elaborate and costly materials, velvet and silk as well as wool—for “best” parties in the Number Ten bombproof dining room, and so on. Churchill had always used clothes for personal propaganda and had a propensity to collect unusual uniforms. Since 1913 he had been an elder brother of Trinity House, a medieval institution which supervised all light-houses and port lights in the British Isles. Its uniform had a distinctive nautical flavor and for court dress he always wore it in preference to that of his Privy Council. General de Gaulle, who had by now taken charge of France’s resistance forces, asked him what it was and received the mystifying reply, “Je suis un frère aîné de la Sainte Trinité.” But the siren suit was the everyday wartime wear and proved a masterstroke of propaganda. In it the prime minister worked within days of taking over, as the first brief and pointed memos and orders flowed out under the famous headline: “Action This Day.” So did the endless series of brief, urgent queries: “Pray inform me on one half-sheet of paper, why . . .” Answers had to be given, fast. Churchill had teams of what he called “dictation secretaries.” He worked them very long hours. He was sometimes brusque or angry, swore, forgot their names, even lost his temper. But he also smiled, joked, dazzled them with uproarious charm and whimsicalities. They all loved him and were proud to work with him. They helped him to turn Number Ten into a dynamo, and its reverberations gradually resounded through the entire old-fashioned, lazy, obstructive, and cumbersome government machine, until it began to hum, too. Churchill’s sheer energy and, not least, his ability to switch it off abruptly when not needed were central keys to his life, and especially his wartime leadership. But it must be admitted that he killed men who could not keep up—Admiral Pound, for instance, and General Sir John Dill—just as Napoleon Bonaparte killed horses under him.
The fifth factor was Churchill’s oratory. It is a curious fact that he switched it on to its full power just as Hitler switched his off. Hitler had been, in his time, the greatest rabble-rouser of the twentieth century. In his successful attempt to destroy Versailles and make Germany a great power again—incidentally ending unemployment—his oratory had been a vital factor in making him the most popular leader in German history (1933-39). But the Germans, while overwhelmingly behind the campaign against Versailles, had no desire to see Hitler turn Europe into a servile German empire, let alone lead them into a world war. When Hitler marched into Prague in March 1939 it was his first unpopular act. Until now he had ruled mainly by consent. Thereafter it was by force and fear. Sensing his loss of personal popularity, Hitler ceased to address the Reichstag or make public speeches. By the time Churchill took charge, Hitler had retreated into his various military headquarters, mostly underground, rarely appearing and never speaking in public. He became a troglodyte, while Churchill became a world figure ubiquitous in newspapers and newsreels wherever Nazi censorship had no control.
The oratory had two interlocking audiences: the Commons and the radio listener. Here a personal word is in order. I was twelve when Churchill took power and had learned to caricature him since the age of five (I could also do Mussolini, Stalin, and Roosevelt). My father, having served four years in the trenches and lost friends in the Dardanelles, was suspicious of Churchill. In April 1940 I recall his saying, “There’s talk of making that fellow Churchill prime minister.” But by early May events had swung him round: “It looks as if we’ll have to put Winston in charge.” By then the nation was calling him “Winston.” My father and I read in the newspaper together all his speeches in the late spring and summer of 1940, and listened to all his regular broadcasts. The combined effect was electrifying and transforming. I can remember the tone of voice, the words, many whole phrases to this day. There were two passages in particular. After Dunkirk, and before the last phases in the already lost battle on the Continent, he insisted (June 4):We shall not flag or fail. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.
In the Commons, Churchill characteristically supplemented the passage with a joking aside, sotto voce, “We shall fight with pitchforks and broomsticks, it’s about all we’ve bloody got.” Jokes were never far away when Churchill spoke, even in the gloomiest times. He was rather like Dr. Johnson’s old friend from Pembroke College: “I try to be a philosopher, but cheerfulness keeps breaking in.” Of course we did not know that bit about the pitchforks. But the bit about never surrendering rang true. We believed it, we meant it.
After France capitulated, he struck again with memorable words: “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’ ” People believed this, too, and not only in Britain. Somehow his words were broadcast in Europe, where men and women listened to them at the peril of their lives, and they were believed there, too. At this time, a young archaeology don from Oxford, C. E. Stevens, thought of the V for victory sign. He spent his holidays “pigging it,” as he said, with French charcoal burners, and believed they would like it, and so would others. Its Morse code symbols, three dots and a dash, echoed the opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The BBC spread the notion. Churchill adopted it with alacrity and enthusiasm and gave the V sign everywhere with one hand, clutching his huge cigar and holding on to his outsize bowler with the other, as he toured the troops and bombed cities. So the first true victory Britain won in the war was the victory of oratory and symbolism. Churchill was responsible for both.
Sixth, however, came his sense of the importance of airpower and his speed in grasping the opportunities it offered. Under his rule as secretary of state for war and air, just after the First World War, the RAF had been the world’s largest air force. It had been grievously neglected in the twenties and early thirties but the level of research and development had been high—Lindemann had explained to him the importance of Robert Watson-Watt in radar and Frank Whittle in advanced jet engines—and by the beginning of the war Britain was producing better aircraft than Germany. By the time Churchill took power, production was equal to Germany’s in numbers. He made Beaverbrook his minister for aircraft production and told him to go flat out. By the end of the year British production of war aircraft, both fighters and bombers, had overtaken German in both quantity and quality. So had the output of trained aircrews. Meanwhile, radar stations were spreading all over southern England. For the first time in the war, British technological superiority was established, and Churchill and Beaverbrook put all available resources behind maintaining and lengthening their lead. The result was that when Hitler and Göring, head of the Luftwaffe, unleashed large-scale air attacks on Britain at the end of June, using air bases in northwest France and Belgium, the RAF was ready and eager. The Luftwaffe’s first object was to destroy the RAF’s southern airfields. Had this been accomplished there is no doubt that a seaborne invasion would have been launched with a good prospect of establishing a bridgehead in Kent or Sussex. After that the outlook for Britai
n’s survival would have been bleak. But the RAF successfully defended its airfields and inflicted very heavy casualties on the German formations, in a ratio of three to one. Moreover, the German aircrews were mostly killed or captured whereas British crews parachuted to safety. Throughout July and August the advantage moved steadily to Britain, and more aircraft and crews were added each week to lengthen the odds against Germany. By mid-September, the Battle of Britain was won. The sign of defeat was the German decision to switch to night bombing raids on British cities. These caused misery and some loss of civilian life, but the move from hard to soft targets was strategically very welcoming and encouraging for Churchill. As early as August 20 he scented victory and was able to report to the Commons in a speech which contained the memorable tribute to the RAF fighter pilots: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
Moreover, by now he was able to envisage that the air offered Britain her one big opportunity to move over to the offensive. He wrote to Lord Beaverbrook (July 8, 1940):When I look round to see how we can win the war I see that there is only one sure path. We have no Continental army which can defeat the enemy military power—the blockade is broken and Hitler has Asia and probably Africa to draw from. Should he be repulsed here or not try invasion, he will recoil eastward, and we have nothing to stop him. But there is one thing that will bring him back and bring him down, and that is an absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland.
Churchill knew of course of plans to make an atomic bomb. In the meantime, the Lancaster bomber was being created to carry five tons of bombs apiece in thousand-strong raids. The Battle of Britain had in effect made a Nazi invasion impossible. At the same time, Churchill was gearing up to begin the Battle of Germany, which was waged with growing force over the next four and a half years. It was at this point that he adopted the RAF, got himself made an air commodore, and wore this uniform on public and official occasions more often than any other. Like the siren suit, it was rich in symbolism.
Seventh, though Britain was not in a position to attack Hitler on the Continent, Churchill ensured that powerful blows were struck against his ally Mussolini. The moment it became clear that an invasion of Britain was unlikely (Hitler postponed the invasion indefinitely on September 17, 1940), every available aircraft and tank was sent to the Middle East. Before long, the results came flowing in. Italy’s ramshackle empire in East Africa was overrun, and Italian troops surrendered in entire units, often without firing a shot. The British position in Iraq was secured against an Arab uprising, and from that point there was no serious threat to Britain’s oil supplies in the Persian Gulf, whereas Hitler was soon driven to manufacturing an inferior form of gasoline known as ersatz, one of many German words eagerly adopted by the British (blitz was another) as a subtle sign that they were capable of swallowing the enemy: Churchill encouraged the trend—kaput became a favorite term of his, and kamerad, the German cry of surrender. Britain had already seized France’s principal warships or put them out of action. Now the two French protectorates in the Middle East, Syria and the Lebanon, which had opted for Vichy, were occupied. This impressed Turkey, which began to lean toward Britain, a process reinforced by Churchill, who sent Eden (now foreign secretary) out to the area for a visit. “What shall I tell Turkey?” he asked. Churchill replied: “Warn her Christmas is coming.”
Eighth, Wavell was encouraged to “go for Musso,” as Churchill put it, and eventually did. In January 1941 the Italian Libyan force collapsed and countless prisoners were taken, though Wavell did not pursue the fleeing Italians and take the capital Tripoli, being slow and cautious, characteristics Churchill did not like and which eventually led to his replacement. More to his taste was Admiral Cunningham, who had, he said, “the Nelson Touch.” In November 1940 Cunningham’s seaplanes sank a third of the Italian fleet in harbor at Taranto, and in March 1941 he won the largest fleet action in European waters at the battle of Cape Matapan. Churchill’s reaction was characteristic: “How lucky we are the Italians came in!” These victories made welcome headlines at home and were reinforced by the fact that ships that had taken tanks to Cairo were filled going home by over one hundred thousand Italian prisoners of war. They were promptly put to work on farms where they showed themselves industrious and grateful that they were still alive. They proved mighty popular as visible symbols that Britain would win battles as well as suffer defeats. “Friendly Wops,” as Churchill put it, “are good for morale.” He began to think of the Mediterranean coast as “the soft underbelly of Europe” and planned to attack it as the easiest way to the Nazi vitals.
Ninth, Churchill was always on the lookout for allies, large or small. That was why when Mussolini, desperate for a victory, invaded Greece in October 1940 and was soundly thrashed, calling desperately to Hitler for help, Churchill was in favor of sending troops to Greece, which he did in March 1941. The majority opinion was against him, the Germans invaded in April, and in due course both Greece and Crete were lost. In the long run, however, Churchill was proved right. By this time, thanks to possession of the Nazi encryption machine Enigma and the British decoding center at Bletchley, he was getting regular intercepts of top-level Nazi messages. This was the most closely guarded secret of the war, and it says a lot for the precautions Churchill personally took, and his own discretion, that the Nazis never suspected their codes were broken and continued to use them to the end. The excerpts persuaded Churchill that Hitler intended to invade Russia in May. By coming to the aid of Italy in Greece, Hitler was forced to postpone the invasion till the second half of June 1941, which in practice made it impossible for him to take Moscow and Leningrad before the winter set in. So the attack on Russia, instead of being a blitzkrieg, became a hard slog. Moreover, his attack on Crete with his prize paratrooper forces proved so costly that he banned their use in the Russian campaign, a serious handicap as it turned out. Primed by the intercepts, Churchill warned Stalin that he was about to be invaded. Stalin took no notice, suspecting a “capitalist trick” to drag him into the war. When it occurred, Churchill was delighted, and at once reversed his quarter century of hostility to the Soviet Union. “And why not, after all,” he joked. “If Hitler invaded Hell, at least I would ensure that in the House of Commons I made a favourable reference to the Devil.” So Russia was warmly welcomed by Churchill as “our new and great ally.” When Hitler failed to demolish the Red Army, as most experts expected, Churchill’s opinion rose. On October 29 he made a rousing speech to the boys of his old school, Harrow:Do not let us speak of darker days. Let us rather speak of sterner days. These are not dark days: these are great days—the greatest days our country has ever lived. And we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.
A month later Japan attacked Britain and America. Hitler then made his biggest mistake: quite needlessly he declared war on the United States. Churchill had been strikingly successful in getting Roosevelt to send war supplies in growing quantities and on “lend-lease,” for Britain’s dollar resources were now exhausted. In a broadcast to America, on February 9, 1941, he had said, “Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.” But he knew this was over-optimistic: Britain alone was not capable of crushing Germany. Now the odds had been changed completely. As he put it, “An eventual Allied victory is odds-on.” However, he clinched matters by persuading Roosevelt and his advisers that priority should be given to defeating Germany first. This was perhaps the most important act of persuasion in Churchill’s entire career, and it proved to be absolutely correct.
Indeed, and this is the tenth point, Churchill had an uncanny gift for getting priorities right. For a statesman in time of war it is the finest possible virtue. “Jock” Colville, his personal secretary, said, “Churchill’s greatest intellectual gift was for picking on essentials and concentrating on them.” But these essentials were always
directed toward the destruction of the enemy. General “Pug” Ismay, his closest military adviser, noted, “He is not a gambler but never shrinks from taking a calculated risk if the situation so demands. His whole heart and soul are in the battle, and he is an apostle of the offensive.” He made it clear in his memos that no commander would ever be penalized for an excess of zeal toward the enemy. This was a huge comfort and safeguard for aggressive generals and encouraged the spirit of adventure.
