In his first speech to the House of Commons as Prime Minister, Churchill said, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” He could well have added leadership to the list. Had it not been for his leadership, Britain might not have survived, Western Europe might not be free, the United States might now be an embattled island in a hostile world. To paraphrase one of his most memorable wartime statements, “Never has one man done so much for so many.”
Churchill treated Neville Chamberlain with great generosity when their positions were suddenly reversed. Churchill insisted that Chamberlain stay in the government and continued to include him in all meetings. Churchill did not publicly criticize Chamberlain; rather, he spoke kindly about the nobility of his predecessor’s intentions. This kind of magnanimity is typical of the best of politics in any country. Franklin Roosevelt showed no such generosity as President. Never once during the thirteen years of his presidency did he invite the Hoovers to the White House for any occasion. It brought tears to Hoover’s eyes when one of the first things Harry Truman did as President was invite him to a meeting in the Oval Office.
The Second World War gave Churchill a backdrop commensurate with his larger-than-life abilities and personality. It seems a sad fact of life that great leadership seems most evident only under the terrible conditions of war.
One of the greatest British Prime Ministers was Sir Robert Peel, who made the tough decision to repeal the Corn Laws. But he is not as widely remembered as Disraeli or the other Prime Ministers who lived in 10 Downing Street during wartime. In the United States the same could be said of James Polk, who probably ranks among our top four or five Presidents in ability and accomplishments. Eisenhower is another example. He ended a war and kept the peace for eight years. But many consider him not to have been as strong or decisive as President Truman, who by an accident of history gave the order to drop the atomic bomb in August 1945. It seems that waging wars, rather than ending or avoiding them, is still the measure of greatness in the minds of most historians.
Despite the total defeat of Germany, Italy, and Japan, the outcome of World War II was hardly victorious as far as Churchill was concerned.
It was C. P. Snow who observed that Churchill’s famous statement “I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the dissolution of the British Empire” was wonderfully dramatic but at least a little disingenuous, for that is clearly what anyone who became Prime Minister in 1940 was going to have to oversee. Even without FDR’s determination to free all colonial peoples after the war, the momentum toward independence was already growing irresistibly from within the British Empire itself. For Churchill to try to resist it would have been like King Canute ordering the tide not to come in as it lapped higher around his legs.
Even the defeat of Germany involved ironic consequences for the British. Churchill knew that Germany would have to be rebuilt if there was to be any counterbalance to the Soviet monolith and any stability on the Continent. He also knew that rebuilding from the total devastation from which Germany had to recover was ironically preferable to Britain’s partial crippling. When Germany was rebuilt, a modern industrial plant replaced the one that had been bombed to smithereens. Britain, though victorious, had to make do with what had been a largely obsolete industrial infrastructure even before the war. As a result, the defeated nation became richer and stronger than the victor.
The British people also had to live with the continued privations of rationing and with the nagging realization that, despite all their efforts, pain, and sacrifice, Britain would never again play the leading part in world affairs to which it had been accustomed.
Anglo-American unity had been one of Churchill’s principal interests long before the war began. In the postwar years it became a demanding obsession. In the 1930s he sought it as a means of increasing the prosperity of both nations; in the 1940s it was the prerequisite for Britain’s survival; by the late 1950s he saw it as the only way to hold the ring against the expansion of Soviet communism in Europe and around the world; and by the 1960s I suspect he perceived it as the only way for Britain to retain influence in world affairs.
Churchill had to swallow many bitter pills to preserve Anglo-American unity in the postwar years. The British had held the line against Hitler at a very dear price for two hard years before we entered the war after Pearl Harbor. Great as our casualties were, theirs were far greater in both World War I and World War II. They were deeply grateful for our efforts because without us they would not have survived. But they had to feel that without them we might not have survived against a Europe totally controlled by Hitler. Now they found it necessary to defer to American attitudes and opinions.
The torch of leadership had passed to us, not because we had a greater ability to lead, but because we had greater power. I do not mean to imply that Churchill was openly envious or resentful. But deep down, the British must have had the nagging thought: “With all of our centuries of experience in foreign policy and the great affairs of the world, don’t we really know better how to lead than these Americans?” In my meetings and conversations in 1954 I could sense that the British officials, including Churchill, seemed to have a rather resigned, almost hopeless attitude.
Although the United States has many able foreign service people, I have found in my travels to countries in which the British were influential that their diplomats have often been far more knowledgeable and better qualified than ours. I believe that American policymakers today can profit from actively seeking the advice of their European counterparts before making major decisions, rather than just “consulting” and informing them afterward. We must keep in mind that those who have the most power do not necessarily have the most experience, the best brains, the keenest insights, or the surest instincts.
Even though Churchill felt that U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union immediately after the war was dangerously naive, he did not push things to a breaking point. Instead he continued to flatter us while he tried to educate us. Many people forget that the central point of his famous Iron Curtain speech was to urge Anglo-American unity as the best means to resist Soviet expansionism. This prophetic speech was highly controversial at the time. Eleanor Roosevelt said she thought it was dangerous. One hundred members of Parliament denounced it as trash.
When Churchill warned the world about the threat from Nazi Germany in the 1930s, many refused to face up to it. With the launching of the United Nations at the end of the war, many hoped and prayed that a new era of peace and goodwill among nations and peoples had arrived. When they heard Churchill’s warning about the dangers of Soviet expansionism in the late 1940s, again many refused to believe him. But once more he was right. Once again he was ahead of his time, leading public opinion rather than following it.
During the war Churchill had been prepared to accept any help necessary for defeating Hitler. When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, Churchill welcomed Stalin into the anti-Hitler camp. Many critics chided him about the 180-degree turnaround in his attitude toward Stalin. He replied, “If Hitler invaded Hell, I think I would find a kind word to say about the Devil in the House of Commons.”
Churchill got along well with Roosevelt, his other principal ally. The American President once wrote to Churchill, “It is fun to be in the same decade with you.” And Churchill once said of Roosevelt, “Meeting him was like opening your first bottle of champagne.”
But the two often strongly disagreed on policy. Churchill considered FDR’s insistence on unconditional surrender by Germany to be disastrous and thought the Morgenthau Plan for turning postwar Germany into an agricultural nation was ludicrous. Most importantly, they disagreed on what their policy toward the Soviet Union should be. At least from the time of the Katyn massacre in 1940—when it was learned that ten thousand anti-Communist Polish officers had been murdered by the Soviets—Churchill realized that Stalin might be as rapaciously unappeasable after the war as Hitler had been before it. Meanwhile Roosevelt seemed to be more
suspicious of the imperialism of Britain than of Russia. “Winston,” he once said, “this is something you just are not able to see, that a country might not want to acquire land somewhere even if they can get it.”
As Henry Grunwald wrote in 1965:
Churchill found himself increasingly isolated from Roosevelt, who did not want America and Britain to gang up on “Uncle Joe” and instead tried to play the moderator between Churchill and Stalin. Thus began a series of disastrous agreements which, among other things, resulted in the loss of Poland to the Communists and brought Russian participation in the war against Japan . . . by giving the Russians territorial and economic concessions in Asia, concessions which played their part in China’s fall to the Reds.
Events would have turned out much differently if Churchill had been able to prevail over Roosevelt.
He was worried by FDR’s increasing willingness to trust Stalin, and attributed it to the President’s failing health. After Roosevelt’s death, he feared that Truman, who had been kept poorly informed by FDR, was being influenced by a naively pro-Russian State Department.
Churchill was convinced that it was important to prevent the Soviets from occupying all of Eastern Europe because he was afraid they would never give it up. He wrote to Eisenhower at the beginning of April 1945 to urge him to send American troops into Berlin, Vienna, and Prague. “I deem it highly important,” he stated, “that we should shake hands with the Russians as far to the east as possible.” But Eisenhower held his troops in their positions as the Russians rolled westward.
Two months later Churchill sounded another warning in a message to Truman, pressing him to hold the Potsdam Conference as early as possible. It was in this message that he first used the phrase that would become emblematic of the coming Cold War: “I view with profound misgivings the retreat of the American Army to our line of occupation in the central sector, thus bringing Soviet power into the heart of Western Europe and the descent of an iron curtain between us and everything to the eastward.”
Churchill considered Eisenhower largely responsible for letting the Soviets overrun Eastern Europe. Eisenhower was not Churchill’s kind of general. The Allied commander’s firm but, in Churchill’s view, unimaginative style of command and his easygoing personality may have accounted for the remarkable amity that characterized the collaboration within the Allied command. That alone was an indispensable contribution to winning the war. But Churchill later speculated that if MacArthur had been the Supreme Commander in Europe, America would not have sat back and watched Eastern Europe succumb to Soviet domination.
Eisenhower considered Churchill to be a great leader. Shortly after Churchill’s death he wrote, “Through my wartime association with him, the whole globe seemed to be an exercise ground for a mind that could, almost in the same instant, wrestle with an immediate problem in the deployment of air and land and sea forces and probe into the far-off future, examining the coming peacetime role of the embattled nations, shaping for his listener the destiny of the world.”
While this statement is evidence of his great respect for Churchill, Eisenhower had his differences with Churchill and seldom spoke about him in our meetings at the White House. On one of the rare occasions when he did, he told me that Churchill was one of the most difficult people he had to deal with because he became so emotionally involved in whatever he was doing. “You know, Dick, he would even cry while arguing his case,” he said. I can just picture Eisenhower sitting there uncomfortably while Churchill’s eyes overflowed with tears!
This is not an unusual trait among leaders. Khrushchev and Brezhnev, for example, sometimes were on the verge of tears as they tried to make a point to me. With them, however, I wondered how much of it was really felt and how much was an act for my benefit.
I do not doubt that Churchill was capable of manufacturing a few tears at the right moment or of getting carried away by his own oratory. But he was a genuinely emotional man. Lord Moran’s diary records that Churchill was moved to the verge of tears when he learned that after his stroke he might not be able to continue in leadership. And his secretary reported that he was sobbing like a child when he dictated the peroration of one of his most famous speeches in the dark days of World War II: “We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. 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.”
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The growing realization that the end of the war would bring major new problems for Britain must have been tremendously painful for Churchill. But the biggest blow was yet to come.
On July 25, 1945, Churchill left Stalin and Truman at the Potsdam Conference and flew back to London for the counting of the votes in the first postwar general election. He woke up that night with a stabbing pain in the stomach, a portent of the impending news. The results struck Churchill—and the rest of the world—like a bolt from the blue. Labor won in an overwhelming landslide. The Conservatives were thrown out of office. Clement Attlee was Britain’s new Prime Minister.
It is not unusual for successful wartime leaders to be rejected once the peace has been secured. This happened to de Gaulle as well. One reason is that the qualities that make a man a great leader in war are not necessarily those that the people want in peace. The successful soldier-statesman—Wellington, Washington, and Eisenhower—is the exception, not the rule.
How could this be? Churchill must have asked himself as, numbed, he sat taking in the results. Was this the thanks he should receive for the victory he had not only promised but delivered? As usual he had a quip to hide the pain. When his wife told him, “It may well be a blessing in disguise,” he replied, “At the moment it seems quite effectively disguised.” Ironically it was Churchill himself who had noted just ten years earlier in his Great Contemporaries, “It is the brightest hours that fade away the fastest.”
The humiliation of the general election, the realization that the British Empire was not going to survive intact, the knowledge that the United States had supplanted the United Kingdom as the world’s greatest power, and the difficulties in maintaining Anglo-American unity in the onset of the Cold War must have made Churchill very unhappy during this period. Some thought that he might take this opportunity to retire and rest on the laurels of his wartime accomplishments. When I went to England in 1947 as a freshman congressman, no one I spoke with expected Churchill to return to power. After all, he was seventy-two years old and had recently suffered a stroke.
But no one who really understood Churchill thought that he would bow out under ignominious circumstances. Instead he persevered in the House of Commons as the leader of the opposition for six years until, in October 1951, the Conservatives were returned to power and he was once again Prime Minister. Even in a Hollywood movie such a return to power would have seemed like make-believe. But what would have been make-believe for others was real life for Winston Churchill.
As the seventy-six-year-old Churchill again took on the responsibilities of Prime Minister, it was widely assumed that he would delegate power more broadly than he had before. It was also assumed that after consummating his triumphal return he would turn over the reins to his chosen successor, Anthony Eden. But for most it is very hard to give up power. For an old man, it can be the same as giving up life itself.
I talked to President Tito’s wife about this when I was in Belgrade in 1970. She told me about her husband’s last meeting with Churchill. As Tito entered the room, Churchill comically growled at him, “You know, I didn’t like you during the war, but now that you have taken the position you have vis-à-vis the Russians, I find that I like you better.” In fact the two old World War II veterans apparently hit it off quite well.
Churchill, who was in his eighties and had finall
y retired from politics, was being strictly rationed on his cigars and his alcohol. The still-vigorous Tito puffed away on a big Churchillian cigar and drank his quota of scotch and Churchill’s quota as well. Churchill looked at Tito rather wistfully and said, “How do you keep so young?” As anyone who met him could see, Tito looked so young partly because he dyed his hair. Without waiting for Tito to answer, Churchill said, “I know what it is. It’s power. It’s power that keeps a man young.”
If an older political leader does not suffer from any serious ailments, he will usually make up in wisdom and judgment for what he may lack in stamina, vigor, and mental quickness. When I saw Zhou Enlai in 1972 he was seventy-three; de Gaulle in 1969 was seventy-eight; Adenauer in 1959 was eighty-three. They were still in power because they were stronger and abler than the younger men in their governments.
Churchill simply could not bring himself to give up power voluntarily. He kept putting back the date of his retirement. First he said he would stay until Queen Elizabeth’s coronation; then it was to be until she returned from a trip in Australia; then it was to be until Eden fully recovered from a major intestinal operation; then until after the upcoming Geneva conference. Years passed and Churchill was still firmly planted at 10 Downing Street. Finally he could not ignore his own infirmities or his colleagues’ importunings. He quipped, “I must retire soon. Anthony won’t live forever.” He resigned on April 5, 1955.
• • •
Even at the age of eighty, retirement was not a happy time for this man of action. When Eisenhower returned from the Geneva summit in 1955, he told me of a letter he had received from Churchill. The retired British leader wrote that while he was in some ways relieved not to have responsibility, he felt a sense of “nakedness” when an important diplomatic conference went ahead without him.
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