The Second World War

by Winston S. Churchill

I do not wish to claim a monopoly of credit for these conceptions. One of the advantages of being in Opposition is that one can outdistance in imagination those whose fortune it is to put plans into practical effect. The British Government, much inspired by the stouthearted and wise Mr. Ernest Bevin, took the lead in rebuilding something of the Concert of Europe, at least in what was left of Europe. Initial thoughts were mainly of the dangers of a resurrected Germany. In 1947 Britain and France signed the Treaty of Dunkirk binding each to come to the other’s assistance if there was another German attack. But already the grim realities of the present were overshadowing the fears of the past. After many months of diplomatic activity the Brussels Treaty was signed in 1948. France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, the Belgians and Luxembourg undertook to assist one another against aggression, from whatever quarter it might come. Germany was not mentioned. Moreover, the beginnings of a military organisation were set up under the chairmanship of Field-Marshal Montgomery to assess the resources available for defence and to draw up a plan with what little was available. This became known as the Western Union. I endorsed these measures, but vehemently hoped that the United States, without whose aid they would be woefully incomplete, would soon be brought into the association. We were fortunate at the time to have in the American Secretary of State the far-sighted and devoted General Marshall, with whom we had worked in closest comradeship and confidence in the war years. Within the limits imposed by American Congressional and public opinion, President Truman and he sought to add weight to what was being done in Europe. The efforts on both sides of the Atlantic bore fruit, and in April 1949 the North Atlantic Treaty was signed, in which for the first time in history the United States bound herself, subject always to the constitutional prerogative of Congress, to aid her allies if they were attacked. The European signatories, besides the Brussels Treaty Powers, included Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Italy and Portugal. Canada also acceded to the Treaty, thereby giving additional proof to the faith we in Britain have always entertained of her friendship and loyalty.

  The work that followed was complex. It resulted in the setting up of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, headed by a military planning staff under General Eisenhower at Versailles. From the efforts of the Supreme Headquarters Atlantic Powers Europe, or SHAPE as it was called, there gradually grew a sober confidence that invasion from the East could be met by an effective resistance. Certainly in its early stages the Atlantic Treaty achieved more by being than by doing. It gave renewed confidence to Europe, particularly to the territories near Soviet Russia and the satellites. This was marked by a recession in the Communist parties in the threatened countries, and by a resurgence of healthy national vigour in Western Germany.

  The association of Germany with the Atlantic Treaty remained in the forefront of Western plans. But it was very difficult to overcome French fears of a revived German army, and the topic was a fruitful one for the misguided as well as the mischievous. Within the space of seventy years the French had been invaded three times from across the Rhine. It was hard to forget Sedan, the blood-bath at Verdun, the collapse in 1940, the long, grinding occupation of the Second World War, which had sundered so many loyalties, and in which Frenchman had fought Frenchman. In Britain I was conscious of a wide hostility to giving weapons, even under the strictest safeguards, to the new German Republic. But it was unlikely that a Soviet invasion of Western Europe could ever be repulsed without the help of the Germans. Many schemes were tried and failed. The French had taken the lead in the closer integration of Western Europe in civil matters, and they sponsored a scheme for a European army with a common uniform, into which German units would be merged without risk to their neighbours. I did not care for this idea. A sludgy amalgam of half a dozen nationalities would find it difficult to share common loyalties and the trust which is essential among comrades in battle. It was not for some years that the final simplicity of a direct German contribution through a national army to the strength of the West was achieved. Even today little has been done to put it into effect. I myself have never seen the disadvantage of making friends with your enemy when the war is over, with all that that implies in co-operation against an outside menace.

  Side by side with these developments, many of them lying only in the paper sphere, the United States continued to manifest her determination to assist Europe, and thus herself. Long before the Atlantic Treaty was signed American aircraft were stationed in East Anglia in substantial numbers. Here was a most practical deterrent. Alas, the splendid structure of the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff, who had been the architects of so much of our victorious war planning, had been dismantled at American instigation. Nothing has subsequently equalled it, and the best of the NATO arrangements are but a poor shadow of the fraternal and closely knit organisation that formerly existed.

  The crucial test came in June 1948 when the Russians cut off Berlin from the outside world. Their object was to incorporate the whole of Berlin in the Communist state which they had promoted in Eastern Germany. It seemed that Britain, France and America must either abandon the city or try to force supply convoys in from Western Germany, as was their legitimate right. Fortunately a solution was found which avoided many perils. The Airlift began, and by February 1949 over a million tons of supplies had been flown in by American and British aircraft during the preceding eight months of the blockade. This original conception was highly successful. In due course the Russians had to yield, and they were forced to abandon the blockade entirely.

  Economic assistance to the allies was also vital. We in Britain had spent so much money in the war that, even if the greatest skill and economy had been exercised, we would have been very hard pressed. In spite of a huge American loan the position was getting ever more serious. The rest of Europe was also suffering in varying degrees. General Marshall gave his name to a remarkable plan for economic aid and mutual co-operation among sixteen free European countries. The benefits were offered to the Soviet bloc, but were refused. The Organisation for European and Economic Co-operation has rendered the greatest service to us all. But without the massive dollar aid provided by the American administration, in spite of some hostility on the part of Congress, Europe might well have foundered into ruin and misery in which the seeds of Communism would have grown at a deadly pace. General Marshall’s decision was on the highest level of statesmanship, and it was a source of great pleasure, but not surprise, to me that my old friend should have presided in America over the two great enterprises of the Marshall Plan and the Atlantic Treaty.

  There was another aspect to our conceptions and hopes for the unifying and strengthening of Europe against external aggression and internal subversion. The ideas that I had opened at Fulton were translated to a great extent into reality through governmental action and the chain of treaties and official organisations which I have briefly described. It was also important for more far-reaching conceptions of the final ideal of a United Europe to find a forum in which they could be discussed and examined. Many distinguished European statesmen and leaders of thought held the same views, and in 1947 the European Movement was launched to devote itself to the propagation of the theme of European unity and the examination of ways in which it could gradually be put into effect. I say gradually. There were many different opinions among those concerned, and some wanted to go faster than others. In large enterprises it is a mistake to try to settle everything at once. In matters of this kind it was not possible to plan movements as in a military operation. We were not acting in the field of force, but in the domain of opinion. I several times stressed my views on this point. It was of importance that when the inevitable lulls, delays and obstacles occurred we should not be considered to have abandoned our ultimate goal. Moreover, I did not wish to compete with governments in the executive sphere. The task was to build up moral, cultural, sentimental and social unities and affinities throughout Europe.

  The European Movement gained greatly in vigour and strength and played a substantial part in
governmental thinking. General Marshall referred to the concept as one of the reasons which had led him to his plan for economic aid to Europe. The culmination of the many discussions that took place came in the creation of the Council of Europe in 1949, with its seat at Strasbourg. With varying fortunes and shades of publicity much useful work was done at Strasbourg. There are those who are disappointed that the rapid creation of a federation of European States did not ensue, but there is every justification for a slow and empirical approach. Such weighty matters cannot be imposed on the people from above, however brilliant the planning. They must grow gradually from genuine and widely held convictions. Thus the Council of Europe is serving its purpose and playing an honourable part in a great enterprise.

  As the stark and glaring background to all our cogitations on defence lay man’s final possession of the perfected means of human destruction: the atomic weapon and its monstrous child, the hydrogen bomb. In the early days of the war Britain and the United States had agreed to pool their knowledge, and experiments in nuclear research, and the fruits of years of discovery by the English pioneer physicists were offered as a priceless contribution to the vast and most secret joint enterprise set on foot in the United States and Canada. Those who created the weapons possessed for a few years the monopoly of a power which might in less scrupulous hands have been used to dominate and enslave the entire world. They proved themselves worthy of their responsibilities, but secrets were soon disclosed to the Soviet Union which greatly helped Russian scientists in their researches. Henceforward most of the accepted theories of strategy were seen to be out of date, and a new undreamed-of balance of power was created, a balance based on the ownership of the means of mutual extermination.

  At the end of the war I felt reasonably content that the best possible arrangement had been made in the agreement which I concluded with President Roosevelt in Quebec in 1943. Therein Britain and America affirmed that they would never use the weapon against each other, that they would not use it against third parties without each other’s approval, that they would not communicate information on the subject to third parties except by mutual consent, and that they would exchange information on technical developments. I do not think that one could have asked for more.

  However, in 1946 a measure was passed by the American Congress which most severely curtailed any chance of the United States providing us with information. Senator McMahon, who sponsored the Bill, was at the time unaware of the Quebec Agreement, and he informed me in 1952 that if he had seen it there would have been no McMahon Act. The British Socialist Government certainly made some sort of a protest, but they felt unable to press it home and they did not insist on the revelation of the Quebec Agreement, at least to the McMahon Committee, which would have vindicated our position and perhaps saved us many years of wearisome and expensive research and development. Thus, deprived of our share of the knowledge to which we had a most certain right, Britain had to fall back on her own resources. The Socialist Government thereupon devoted vast sums to research, but it was not until 1952 that we were able to explode our first atomic bomb. The relative stages of research and development remain unknown, but experimental explosions are not the sole criterion, and we may perhaps in some ways claim to have outdistanced even the United States. But research is one thing, production and possession another.

  It was in this, then, the American possession or preponderance of nuclear weapons, that the surest foundation of our hopes for peace lay. The armies of the Western Powers were of comparative insignificance when faced with the innumerable Russian divisions that could be deployed from the Baltic to the Yugoslav frontier. But the certain knowledge that an advance on land would unleash the devouring destruction of strategic air attack was and is the most certain of deterrents.

  For a time, when the United States was the sole effective possessor of nuclear weapons, there had been a chance of a general and permanent settlement with the Soviet Union. But it is not the nature of democracies to use their advantages in threatening or dictatorial ways. Certainly the state of opinion that prevailed in those years would not have tolerated anything in the way of rough words to our late ally, though this might well have forestalled many unpleasant developments. Instead the United States, with our support, chose a most reasonable and liberal attitude to the problems of controlling the use of nuclear weapons. Soviet opposition to efficient methods of supervision brought this to nothing. In former days no country could hope to build up in secret military forces vast enough to overwhelm a neighbour. Now the means of destruction of many millions can be concealed in the space of a few cubic yards.

  Every aspect of military and political planning was altered by these developments. The vast bases needed to sustain the armies of the two world wars have become the most vulnerable of targets. All the workshops and stores on the Suez Canal, which had fed the Eighth Army in the desert, could vanish in a flash at the stroke of a single aircraft. Harbours, even when guarded by anti-aircraft guns and fighter planes, could become the graveyard of the fleets they had once protected. The evacuation of non-combatants from the cities was a practical proposition even in the days of highly developed bombing methods in the last war. Now, desirable though they may be, such measures are a mere palliative to the flaring ruin of nuclear attack. The whole structure of defence had to be altered to meet the new situation. Conventional forces were still needed to keep order in our possessions, and to fight what people call the small wars, but we could not afford enough of them because nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them were so expensive.

  The nuclear age transformed the relations between the Great Powers. For a time I doubted whether the Kremlin accurately realised what would happen to their country in the event of war. It seemed possible that they neither knew the full effect of the atomic missiles nor how efficient were the means of delivering them. It even occurred to me that an announced but peaceful aerial demonstration over the main Soviet cities, coupled with the outlining to the Soviet leaders of some of our newest inventions, would produce in them a more friendly and sober attitude. Of course such a gesture could not have been accompanied by any formal demands, or it would have taken on the appearance of a threat and ultimatum. But Russian production of these weapons and the remarkable strides of their air force have long since removed the point of this idea. Their military and political leaders must now be well aware of what each of us could do to the other.

  Hopes of more friendly contacts with Russia remained much in my mind, and the death of Stalin in March 1953 seemed to bring a chance. I was again Prime Minister. I regarded Stalin’s death as a milestone in Russian history. His tyranny had brought fearful suffering to his own country and to much else of the world. In their fight against Hitler, the Russian peoples had built up an immense good will in the West, not least of all in the United States. All this had been impaired. In the dark politics of the Kremlin, none could tell who would take Stalin’s place. Fourteen men and 180,000,000 people lost their master. The Soviet leaders must not be judged too harshly. Three times in the space of just over a century Russia has been invaded by Europe. Borodino, Tannenberg and Stalingrad are not to be forgotten easily. Napoleon’s onslaught is still remembered. Imperial and Nazi Germany were not forgiven. But security can never be achieved in isolation. Stalin tried not only to shield the Soviet Republics behind an iron curtain, military, political and cultural. He also attempted to construct an outpost line of satellite states, deep in Central Europe, harshly controlled from Moscow, subservient to the economic needs of the Soviet Union and forbidden all contact or communion with the free world, or even with each other. No one can believe that this will last for ever. Hungary has paid a terrible forfeit. But to all thinking men, certain hopeful features of the present situation must surely be clear. The doctrine of Communism is slowly being separated from the Russian military machine. Nations will continue to rebel against the Soviet Colonial Empire, not because it is Communist, but because it is alien and oppressive. An arms race, ev
en conducted with nuclear weapons and guided missiles, will bring no security or even peace of mind to the great powers which dominate the land masses of Asia and North America, or to the countries which lie between them. I make no plea for disarmament. Disarmament is a consequence and a manifestation of free intercourse between free peoples. It is the mind which controls the weapon, and it is to the minds of the peoples of Russia and her associates that the free nations should address themselves.

  But after Stalin’s death it seemed that a milder climate might prevail. At all events it merited investigating, and I so expressed myself in the House of Commons on May 11, 1953. An entirely informal conference between the heads of the leading powers might succeed where repeated acrimonious exchanges at lower levels had failed. I made it plain that this could not be accompanied by any relaxation of the comradeship and preparations of the free nations, for any slackening of our defence efforts would paralyse every beneficial tendency towards peace. This is true today. What I sought was never fully accomplished. Nevertheless for a time a gentler breeze seemed to blow upon our affairs. Further opportunities will doubtless present themselves, and they must not be neglected.

  It is not my purpose to attempt to assign blame in any quarter for the many disagreeable things that have occurred since 1945. Certainly those who were responsible in Great Britain for the direction of our affairs in the years that followed the war were beset by the most complex and malignant problems both at home and abroad. The methods by which they chose to solve them were often forced upon them by circumstances or by pre-determined doctrinaire policies, and their results were not always felicitous either for Britain or the free world.

  The granting of independence to the Indian subcontinent had long been in the forefront of British political thought. I had contributed a good deal to the subject in the years between the wars. Supported by seventy Conservative members, I had fought it in its early stages with all my strength. When I was at the head of the Coalition Government I was induced to modify my former views. Undoubtedly we came out of the desperate world struggle committed to Dominion status for India, including the right to secede from the Commonwealth. I thought however that the method of setting up the new Government should have given the great majority of the Indian people the power and the right to choose freely for themselves. I believed that a constitutional conference in which all the real elements of strength in India could participate would have shown us the way to produce a truly representative self-governing India which would adhere to the British Empire. The “untouchables”, the Rajahs, the loyalists, of whom hundreds of millions existed, and many other different, vital, living interests, would all have had their share in the new scheme. It must be remembered that in the last year of the war we had had a revolt of the extremists in the Indian Congress party which was put down without difficulty, and with very little loss of life. The British Socialist Party took a violently factional view. They believed that the advantage lay in the granting of self-government within the shortest space of time. And they gave it without hesitation—almost identifiably—to the forces which we had vanquished so easily. Within two years of the end of the war they had achieved their purpose. On the 18th of August, 1947, Indian independence was declared. All efforts to preserve the unity of India had broken down, and Pakistan became a separate state. Four hundred million inhabitants of the subcontinent, mainly divided between Moslem and Hindu, flung themselves at one another. Two centuries of British rule in India were followed by greater bloodshed and loss of life than had ever occurred during our ameliorating tenure. In spite of the efforts of the Boundary Commission, the lines drawn between India and Pakistan were inevitably and devastatingly cruel to the areas through which the new frontiers passed. The result was a series of massacres arising out of the interchange of Moslem and Hindu population which may have run into four or five hundred thousand men, women and children. The vast majority of these were harmless people whose only fault lay in their religion.