The Second
World War
TITLES IN THE BLOOMSBURY REVELATIONS SERIES
Aesthetic Theory, Theodor W. Adorno
Being and Event, Alain Badiou
On Religion, Karl Barth
The Language of Fashion, Roland Barthes
The Intelligence of Evil, Jean Baudrillard
I and Thou, Martin Buber
Never Give In!, Winston Churchill
The Boer War, Winston Churchill
The Second World War, Winston Churchill
In Defence of Politics, Bernard Crick
Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, Manuel DeLanda
A Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
Anti-Oedipus, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
Cinema I, Gilles Deleuze
Cinema II, Gilles Deleuze
Taking Rights Seriously, Ronald Dworkin
Discourse on Free Will, Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther
Education for Critical Consciousness, Paulo Freire
Marx’s Concept of Man, Erich Fromm and Karl Marx
To Have or To Be?, Erich Fromm
Truth and Method, Hans Georg Gadamer
All Men Are Brothers, Mohandas K. Gandhi
Violence and the Sacred, Rene Girard
The Essence of Truth, Martin Heidegger
The Eclipse of Reason, Max Horkheimer
The Language of the Third Reich, Victor Klemperer
Rhythmanalysis, Henri Lefebvre
After Virtue, Alasdair Maclntyreq
Time for Revolution, Antonio Negri
Politics of Aesthetics, Jacques Ranciere
Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure
An Actor Prepares, Constantin Stanislavski
Building A Character, Constantin Stanislavski
Creating A Role, Constantin Stanislavski
Interrogating the Real, Slavoj Žižek
Some titles are not available in North America.
The Second
World War
Abridged Edition
With an Epilogue on the Years
1945 to 1957
Winston S. Churchill
Moral of the Work
IN WAR: RESOLUTION
IN DEFEAT: DEFIANCE
IN VICTORY: MAGNANIMITY
IN PEACE: GOODWILL
NOTE
The Second World War is an abridgement by Denis Kelly of the following volumes composed by Sir Winston Churchill:
The Gathering Storm (1919–May 10, 1940)
Their Finest Hour (1940)
The Grand Alliance (1941)
The Hinge of Fate (1942–July 1943)
Closing the Ring (July 1943–June 6, 1944)
Triumph and Tragedy (June 6, 1944–July 25, 1945)
Space compelled the omission of many passages from these volumes, and sequence and proportion demanded a considerable re-arrangement of the remainder of the text. Apart, however, from some linking sentences which are insignificant in number, this abridgement is entirely in Sir Winston’s own words.
The Epilogue, now published in book form for the first time, was written by Sir Winston at the beginning of 1957. It is unabridged and reviews the period since his relinquishment of the office of Prime Minister of Great Britain on July 26, 1945.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I must record my thanks to Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Pownall, Commodore G. R. G. Allen, and Mr. F. W. Deakin, Warden of St. Anthony’s College, Oxford, for reading and criticising the early drafts of this abridgement. I, however, bear the sole responsibility for all defects and deficiencies in the present version.
I am also much obliged to Mr. C. A. Butler for correcting the proofs, to my publishers on both sides of the Atlantic for their customary generosity and patience, and to many others who have given me their help, encouragement, and advice.
D. K.
15 December, 1958.
EXTRACT FROM THE PREFACE TO THE GATHERING STORM
I MUST regard these volumes as a continuation of the story of the First World War which I set out in The World Crisis, The Eastern Front, and The Aftermath. Together they cover an account of another Thirty Years War.
I have followed, as in previous volumes, the method of Defoe’s Memoirs of a Cavalier, as far as I am able, in which the author hangs the chronicle and discussion of great military and political events upon the thread of the personal experiences of an individual. I am perhaps the only man who has passed through both the two supreme cataclysms of recorded history in high executive office. Whereas however in the First World War I filled responsible but subordinate posts, I was in this second struggle with Germany for more than five years the head of His Majesty’s Government. I write therefore from a different standpoint and with more authority than was possible in my earlier books. I do not describe it as history, for that belongs to another generation. But I claim with confidence that it is a contribution to history which will be of service to the future.
These thirty years of action and advocacy comprise and express my life-effort, and I am content to be judged upon them. I have adhered to my rule of never criticising any measure of war or policy after the event unless I had before expressed publicly or formally my opinion or warning about it. Indeed in the afterlight I have softened many of the severities of contemporary controversy. It has given me pain to record these disagreements with so many men whom I liked or respected; but it would be wrong not to lay the lessons of the past before the future. Let no one look down on those honourable, well-meaning men whose actions are chronicled in these pages without searching his own heart, reviewing his own discharge of public duty, and applying the lessons of the past to his future conduct.
It must not be supposed that I expect everybody to agree with what I say, still less that I only write what will be popular. I give my testimony according to the lights I follow. Every possible care has been taken to verify the facts; but much is constantly coming to light from the disclosure of captured documents or other revelations which may present a new aspect to the conclusions which I have drawn.
One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once “the Unnecessary War.” There never was a war more easy to stop than that which has just wrecked what was left of the world from the previous struggle. The human tragedy reaches its climax in the fact that after all the exertions and sacrifices of hundreds of millions of people and the victories of the Righteous Cause we have still not found Peace or Security, and that we lie in the grip of even worse perils than those we have surmounted. It is my earnest hope that pondering upon the past may give guidance in days to come, enable a new generation to repair some of the errors of former years, and thus govern, in accordance with the needs and glory of man, the awful unfolding scene of the future.
WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL
Chartwell,
Westerham,
Kent
March 1948
BOOK I
MILESTONES TO DISASTER
1919–May 10, 1940
I THE FOLLIES OF THE VICTORS, 1919–1929
II PEACE AT ITS ZENITH, 1922–1931
III ADOLF HITLER
IV THE LOCUST YEARS, 1931–1933
V THE DARKENING SCENE, 1934
VI AIR PARITY LOST, 1934–1935
VII CHALLENGE AND RESPONSE, 1935
VIII SANCTIONS AGAINST ITALY, 1935
IX HITLER STRIKES, 1936
X THE LOADED PAUSE, 1936–1938
XI MR. EDEN AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE. HIS RESIGNATION
XII THE RAPE OF AUSTRIA, FEBRUARY 1938
XIII CZECHOSLOVAKIA
XIV THE TRAGEDY OF M
UNICH
XV PRAGUE, ALBANIA, AND THE POLISH GUARANTEE
XVI ON THE VERGE
XVII TWILIGHT WAR
XVIII THE ADMIRALTY TASK
XIX THE FRONT IN FRANCE
XX SCANDINAVIA. FINLAND
XXI NORWAY
XXII THE FALL OF THE GOVERNMENT
BOOK II
ALONE
May 10, 1940–June 22, 1941
I THE NATIONAL COALITION
II THE BATTLE OF FRANCE
III THE MARCH TO THE SEA
IV THE DELIVERANCE OF DUNKIRK
V THE RUSH FOR THE SPOILS
VI BACK TO FRANCE
VII HOME DEFENCE AND THE APPARATUS OF COUNTER-ATTACK
VIII THE FRENCH AGONY
IX ADMIRAL DARLAN AND THE FRENCH FLEET. ORAN
X AT BAY
XI OPERATION “SEA LION”
XII THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN
XIII “LONDON CAN TAKE IT”
XIV LEND-LEASE
XV DESERT VICTORY
XVI THE WIDENING WAR
XVII THE BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC
XVIII YUGOSLAVIA AND GREECE
XIX THE DESERT FLANK. ROMMEL. TOBRUK
XX CRETE
XXI GENERAL WAVELL’S FINAL EFFORT
XXII THE SOVIET NEMESIS
BOOK III
THE GRAND ALLIANCE
Sunday, December 7, 1941, and onwards
I OUR SOVIET ALLY
II MY MEETING WITH ROOSEVELT
III PERSIA AND THE DESERT
IV PEARL HARBOUR!
V A VOYAGE AMID WORLD WAR
VI ANGLO-AMERICAN ACCORDS
VII THE FALL OF SINGAPORE
VIII THE U-BOAT PARADISE
IX AMERICAN NAVAL VICTORIES. THE CORAL SEA AND MIDWAY ISLAND
X “SECOND FRONT NOW!”
XI MY SECOND VISIT TO WASHINGTON. TOBRUK
XII THE VOTE OF CENSURE
XIII THE EIGHTH ARMY AT BAY
XIV MY JOURNEY TO CAIRO. CHANGES IN COMMAND
XV MOSCOW: THE FIRST MEETING
XVI MOSCOW: A RELATIONSHIP ESTABLISHED
XVII STRAIN AND SUSPENSE
XVIII THE BATTLE OF ALAMEIN
XIX THE TORCH IS LIT
XX THE CASABLANCA CONFERENCE
XXI TURKEY, STALINGRAD AND TUNIS
XXII ITALY THE GOAL
BOOK IV
TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY: 1943–1945
I THE CAPTURE OF SICILY AND THE FALL OF MUSSOLINI
II SYNTHETIC HARBOURS
III THE INVASION OF ITALY
IV DEADLOCK IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
V ARCTIC CONVOYS
VI TEHERAN: THE OPENING
VII TEHERAN: CRUX AND CONCLUSIONS
VIII CARTHAGE AND MARRAKESH
IX MARSHAL TITO: THE GREEK TORMENT
X THE ANZIO STROKE
XI “OVERLORD”
XII ROME AND D DAY
XIII NORMANDY TO PARIS
XIV ITALY AND THE RIVIERA LANDING
XV THE RUSSIAN VICTORIES
XVI BURMA
XVII THE BATTLE OF LEYTE GULF
XVIII THE LIBERATION OF WESTERN EUROPE
XIX OCTOBER IN MOSCOW
XX PARIS AND THE ARDENNES
XXI CHRISTMAS AT ATHENS
XXII MALTA AND YALTA: PLANS FOR WORLD PEACE
XXIII RUSSIA AND POLAND: THE SOVIET PROMISE
XXIV CROSSING THE RHINE
XXV THE IRON CURTAIN
XXVI THE GERMAN SURRENDER
XXVII THE CHASM OPENS
XXVIII THE ATOMIC BOMB
EPILOGUE
1945–1957
MAPS AND DIAGRAMS
Europe, 1921–After the Peace Treaties
The Hitlerite Aggressions
Diagrams illustrating the Action against the Graf Spee off the River Plate
Diagram of the Scheldt Line and the Meuse–Antwerp Line
Russian attack on Finland, December 1939
The Allied Campaign in Norway, 1940
Area of Operations, May 1940
German Advances on Successive Days, May 13–17, 1940
Situation, Evening May 18
Situation, Evening May 22
Situation, May 28
General Map of Western France
Sketch Map of German Invasion Plan
Desert Victory, December 1940–January 1941
The Advance from Tobruk
The Balkans
Greece
Crete and the Ægean
Syria and Iraq
The German Attack on Russia
Cyrenaica
The Battle of the Atlantic: The U-Boat Paradise
The Crisis of the U-Boat War
The Pacific Theatre
The Coral Sea
The Western Desert
The Alamein Front, October 23, 1942
The North Coast of Africa
The Front in Russia, April 1942–March 1943
The Battle of the Atlantic: The Crisis of the Battle
The Great Air-Sea Offensive
The Third Attack on the Convoy Routes
Southern Italy: Operations, September–December 1943
Operations in Russia, July–December 1943
Central Italy
Normandy
Operations on the Russian Front, June 1944–January 1945
Burma, July 1944–January 1945
Battle for Leyte Gulf, Philippines: Approach and Contact, October 22–24, 1944
The Decisive Phase, October 25, 1944
The Pursuit, October 26–27, 1944
Rundstedt’s Counter-Offensive
The Invasion of Germany
Occupation Zones in Germany, as agreed at Quebec, September 1944
Merchant Vessel losses by U-Boat, January 1940–April 1945
The Withdrawal of the Western Allies, July 1945
Occupation Zones in Germany and Austria, as finally adopted, July 1945
The Frontiers of Central Europe
BOOK I
MILESTONES TO DISASTER
1919–May 10, 1940
“One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once ‘the Unnecessary War’ There never was a war more easy to stop than that which has just wrecked what was left of the world from the previous struggle.”
EUROPE 1921 – AFTER THE PEACE TREATIES
CHAPTER I
THE FOLLIES OF THE VICTORS, 1919–1929
AFTER the end of the World War of 1914 there was a deep conviction and almost universal hope that peace would reign in the world. This heart’s desire of all the peoples could easily have been gained by steadfastness in righteous convictions, and by reasonable common sense and prudence. The phrase “the war to end war” was on every lip, and measures had been taken to turn it into reality. President Wilson, wielding, as was thought, the authority of the United States, had made the conception of a League of Nations dominant in all minds. The Allied Armies stood along the Rhine, and their bridgeheads bulged deeply into defeated, disarmed, and hungry Germany. The chiefs of the victor Powers debated and disputed the future in Paris. Before them lay the map of Europe to be redrawn almost as they might resolve. After fifty-two months of agony and hazards the Teutonic coalition lay at their mercy, and not one of its four members could offer the slightest resistance to their will. Germany, the head and front of the offence, regarded by all as the prime cause of the catastrophe which had fallen upon the world, was at the mercy or discretion of conquerors, themselves reeling from the torment they had endured. Moreover, this had been a war not of Governments but of peoples. The whole life-energy of the greatest nations had been poured out in wrath and slaughter. The war leaders assembled in Paris in the summer of 1919 had been borne thither upon the strongest and most furious tides that have ever flowed in human history. Gone were the days of the treaties of Utrecht and Vienna, when aristocratic statesmen and diplomats, victor and vanquished alike, met in polite and courtl
y disputation, and, free from the clatter and babel of democracy, could reshape systems upon the fundamentals of which they were all agreed. The peoples, transported by their sufferings and by the mass teachings with which they had been inspired, stood around in scores of millions to demand that retribution should be exacted to the full. Woe betide the leaders now perched on their dizzy pinnacles of triumph if they cast away at the conference table what the soldiers had won on a hundred blood-soaked battlefields.
France, by right alike of her efforts and her losses, held the leading place. Nearly a million and a half Frenchmen had perished defending the soil of France on which they stood against the invader. Five times in a hundred years, in 1814, 1815, 1870, 1914, and 1918, had the towers of Notre Dame seen the flash of Prussian guns and heard the thunder of their cannonade. Now for four horrible years thirteen provinces of France had lain in the rigorous grip of Prussian military rule. Wide regions had been systematically devastated by the enemy or pulverised in the encounter of the armies. There was hardly a cottage or a family from Verdun to Toulon that did not mourn its dead or shelter its cripples. To those Frenchmen—and there were many in high authority—who had fought and suffered in 1870 it seemed almost a miracle that France should have emerged victorious from the incomparably more terrible struggle which had just ended. All their lives they had dwelt in fear of the German Empire. They remembered the preventive war which Bismarck had sought to wage in 1875; they remembered the brutal threat which had driven Delcassé from office in 1905; they had quaked at the Moroccan menace in 1906, at the Bosnian dispute of 1908, and at the Agadir crisis of 1911. The Kaiser’s “mailed fist” and “shining armour” speeches might be received with ridicule in England and America: they sounded a knell of horrible reality in the hearts of the French. For fifty years almost they had lived under the terror of the German arms. Now, at the price of their life-blood, the long oppression had been rolled away. Surely here at last was peace and safety. With one passionate spasm the French people cried “Never again!”
But the future was heavy with foreboding. The population of France was less than two-thirds that of Germany. The French population was stationary, while the German grew. In a decade or less the annual flood of German youth reaching the military age must be double that of France. Germany had fought nearly the whole world, almost single-handed, and she had almost conquered. Those who knew the most knew best the several occasions when the result of the Great War had trembled in the balance, and the accidents and chances which had turned the fateful scale. What prospect was there in the future that the Great Allies would once again appear in their millions upon the battlefields of France or in the East? Russia was in ruin and convulsion, transformed beyond all semblance of the past. Italy might be upon the opposite side. Great Britain and the United States were separated by the seas or oceans from Europe. The British Empire itself seemed knit together by ties which none but its citizens could understand. What combination of events could ever bring back again to France and Flanders the formidable Canadians of the Vimy Ridge; the glorious Australians of Villers-Bretonneux; the dauntless New Zealanders of the crater-fields of Passchendaele; the steadfast Indian Corps which in the cruel winter of 1914 had held the line by Armentières? When again would peaceful, careless, anti-militarist Britain tramp the plains of Artois and Picardy with armies of two or three million men? When again would the ocean bear two millions of the splendid manhood of America to Champagne and the Argonne? Worn down, doubly decimated, but undisputed masters of the hour, the French nation peered into the future in thankful wonder and haunting dread. Where then was that SECURITY without which all that had been gained seemed valueless, and life itself, even amid the rejoicings of victory, was almost unendurable? The mortal need was Security at all costs and by all methods, however stem or even harsh.
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