Winston's War: Churchill, 1940-1945

by Max Hastings

  After it was over I was on my way1127 to the front door when W. called me back and we had half an hour alone. He was pretty wretched, poor old boy. Said he didn’t feel any more reconciled this morning, on the contrary it hurt more, like a wound which becomes more painful after the first shock. He couldn’t help feeling his treatment had been scurvy. “Thirty years of my life have been passed in this room. I shall never sit in it again. You will, but I shall not,” with more to the same effect.

  As he left Chequers after a final weekend with his family and intimates, he wrote in its visitors’ book: “FINIS.” Three weeks later, on August 15, Japan’s surrender brought an end to the Second World War.

  Churchill had wielded more power than any other British prime minister had known, or would know again. In 1938, he seemed a man out of his time, a patrician imperialist whose vision was rooted in Britain’s Victorian past. By 1945, while this remained true, and goes far to explain his own disappointments, it had not prevented him from becoming the greatest war leader his country had ever known, a statesman whose name rang across the world like that of no other Englishman in history. Himself believing Britain great, for one last brief season he was able to make her so. To an extraordinary degree, what he did between 1940 and 1945 defines the nation’s self-image even into the twenty-first century.

  His achievement was to exercise the privileges of a dictator without casting off the mantle of a democrat. Ismay once found him bemoaning the bother of preparing a speech for the House of Commons, and obviously apprehensive about its reception. The soldier said emolliently: “Why don’t you tell them to go to hell?”1128 Churchill turned in a flash: “You should not say those things: I am the servant of the House.” General Sikorski remarked at Chequers that the prime minister was a dictator chosen by the people. Churchill corrected him: “No, I am a privileged domestic1129, a valet de chambre, the servant of the House of Commons.” It should be a source of wonder and pride that such a man led Britain through the war, more than half believing this. It was entirely appropriate that he led a coalition government, for he was never a party man. He existed, sui generis, outside the framework of conventional politics, and never seemed any more comfortable with the Conservative Party than it was with him. A. G. Gardiner wrote of Churchill back in 1914: “He would no more think of consulting a party1130 than the chauffeur would of consulting the motor car.” The same was true in 1945.

  As for Churchill’s war direction, it is not difficult to identify his strategic errors and misplaced enthusiasms. Anatole France wrote, “Après la bataille, c’est là que triomphent les tacticiens.” Yet the outcome justified all. The defining fact of Churchill’s leadership was Britain’s emergence from the Second World War among the victors. This, most of his own people acknowledged. No warlord, no commander in history has failed to make mistakes. As Tedder observed, “War is organised confusion.” It is as easy to catalogue the mistakes of Alexander the Great, Caesar and Napoleon as it is those of Churchill. Both Britain’s most distinguished earlier war leaders, Pitt the Elder and Younger, were responsible for graver strategic follies than himself.

  Historians and biographers have a duty to present evidence for the prosecution, to identify blunders and shortcomings. But before the jury retires, it is necessary to strip away nugatory matter, and focus upon essentials. Churchill towers over the war, standing higher than any other single human being at the head of the forces of light, as many Americans recognised. Mark Sullivan wrote in the New York Herald Tribune on May 11, 1945: “Churchill’s greatness is unexcelled … Churchill’s part in this world war reduces the classic figures of Rome and Greece to the relatively inconsequent stature of actors in dramas of minor scope … Churchill was the fighting leader, and his own poet.” Anyone who attempts the difficult feat of imagining British wartime history deprived of his presence will find it sadly shrunken in stature. Even Brooke was once moved to complain, “Dull cabinet without PM.”1131 To an extraordinary degree, one man raised his nation far above the place in the Grand Alliance which its contribution in troops, tanks, ships and planes could have justified from 1943 onwards. It is a mistake to assess Churchill’s war leadership in isolation. When it is measured against that of Roosevelt or Stalin, not to mention Hitler, Mussolini or Tojo, his failures and shortcomings shrink dramatically. No honourable course of action existed which could have averted his nation’s bankruptcy and exhaustion in 1945, nor its eclipse from world power amid the new primacy of the United States and Russia.

  Churchill possessed the ability, through his oratory, to invest with majesty the deeds and even failures of mortal men. More than any other national leader in history, and aided by the power of broadcast communications, he caused words to become not mere assertions of fact or expressions of intent, but acts of governance. “His countrymen have come to feel1132 that he is saying what they would like to say for themselves if they knew how,” wrote Moran. “… Perhaps for the first time in his life, he seems to see things through the eyes of the average man. He still says what he is feeling at the moment, but now it turns out that he is speaking for the nation.”

  In reality, as this book has sought to show, Churchill did not command the respect and trust of all the British people all of the time. But he empowered millions to look beyond the havoc of the battlefield, and the squalor of their domestic circumstances amid privation and bombardment, and to perceive a higher purpose in their struggles and sacrifices. This was, of course, of greater importance in averting defeat in 1940–41 than later, when the Allies were able to commit superior masses of men and matériel to securing victory. Churchill’s rhetoric has played a significant part in causing the struggle against Hitler to be perceived by posterity as “the good war.” He explained the struggle as no one else could, in terms mankind could comprehend and relate to, now as then. Even most American historians, when chronicling the wartime era, are more generous in their use of quotations from the words of Winston Churchill than from those of their own president, Franklin Roosevelt.

  He cherished aspirations which often proved greater than his nation was capable of fulfilling. This, too, has been among the principal themes of this narrative. But it seems inconsistent to applaud his defiance of reason in insisting that Britain must fight on in June 1940, and then to denounce the extravagance of his later demands upon its people and armed forces. The service chiefs often deplored his misjudgements and intemperance. Yet his instinct for war was far more highly developed than their own. If they were often right in pleading that the time was not ripe to fight, left to their own devices they would have been intolerably slow to fight at all. While Brooke was an officer of remarkable qualities, like many soldiers he was a limited human being. He deluded himself in claiming, as he did after the conflict, that Western strategy had evolved in accordance with his own conception. While this may have been so in 1942–43, thereafter the European war was brought to a conclusion in consequence of Soviet exertions aided by American supplies, with significant assistance from the strategic air offensive and Eisenhower’s armies. In the west, major military operations—which means the northwest Europe campaign—conformed to an American design, to which the foremost British contribution was to delay the invasion of the Continent until conditions were overwhelmingly favourable.

  Britain produced few outstanding military commanders in the Second World War, a reflection of the institutional debility of the British Army, which also afflicted its tactics, choice of weapons and battlefield performance. The Royal Navy was Britain’s finest fighting service, its performance tarnished only by the limitations of the Fleet Air Arm. The Royal Air Force also made an outstanding contribution, but like the USAAF it suffered from the obsessive reluctance of its higher commanders to subordinate their independent strategic ambitions to the interests of naval and ground operations.

  It is often and justly remarked that Churchill enjoyed war. He revered heroes. Yet away from the battlefield, he seldom found such men congenial companions. Few generals are highly cul
tured men or notable conversationalists, capable of illuminating a conference room or dinner table to Churchill’s standard. In his peacetime life, even after the two world wars, old warhorses played little part. Many people supposed that he himself would have coveted a Victoria Cross. This was surely true in his youth. But when his daughter Mary asked in his old age whether he felt that anything was missing from his wondrous array of laurels, he said nothing of medals, but instead answered slowly: “I should have liked my father1133 to have lived long enough to see that I made something of my life.”

  During the war years, his commanders far more often disappointed his hopes than fulfilled them. He was forever searching for great captains, Marlboroughs and Wellingtons, yet towards the end he grew impatient even with Alexander, his unworthy favourite. He valued both Brooke and Montgomery, but never warmed to them, save as instruments of his will. Neither the British Army nor its chieftains fulfilled his soaring warrior ideal, and it was never plausible that they should. Much of the story of Churchill and the Second World War is of Britain’s leader seeking from his nation’s torpid military culture greater things than it was capable of achieving. He inspired it to accomplish more than it dreamed possible in June 1940, but never as much as he wanted. Such is the nature of the relationship between many great leaders and their peoples, who know themselves mortal clay. Had Britain—or America—produced legions of warriors such as those of wartime Germany and Japan, they would have ceased to be the kind of liberal democracies the war was fought to preserve.

  If Churchill’s rhetoric and personality had been less remarkable, if he himself had not been so lovable, some of his military decisions might have been more harshly judged both by his contemporaries and by posterity. As it was, he was able to weave spells in the House of Commons and in his writings, which deflected even the best-merited criticisms. The only charge against him which stuck with the public, and lost him the general election of 1945, derived from his indifference to forging a new society. Moran wrote in 1943: “With Winston war is an end in itself rather than a means to an end.” The British people understood his indifference to humdrum domestic issues, and thus acted as sensibly in evicting Churchill from Downing Street in 1945 as they had done by supporting his installation there in 1940.

  Macmillan was at least half right in asserting that only Churchill could have secured the commitment of American power to the Mediterranean and Europe in the year following Pearl Harbor. Without his personal influence, the lure of the Pacific might have proved irresistible to Roosevelt and his Chiefs of Staff. If the Americans in 1944–45 came to regret their engagement in the Mediterranean, in 1942–43 it is impossible to perceive how else the Western Allies’ armies could have played some part in fighting Hitler’s armies.

  There is an escapable pathos about Churchill’s predicament in the last year of the war, because almost all his ambitions were frustrated, save for victory over the Axis. His engagement with armies became almost exclusively that of a tourist, because he could no longer much influence their movements. For such a mighty warrior, this was a source of unhappiness. The limits to his powers of negotiation with Roosevelt and Stalin were set by economic and strategic realities. But he accomplished the little that a British leader could.

  Churchill’s view of the British Empire and its peoples was unenlightened by comparison with that of America’s president, or even by the standards of his time. This must be set in the balance against his huge virtues. He excluded brown and black peoples from his personal vision of freedom. Yet almost all of us are discriminatory, not necessarily racially, in the manner and degree in which we focus our finite stores of compassion. In this as in many other things, Churchill displayed mortal fallibility. Most great national leaders are cold men, as Roosevelt ultimately was, for all his capacity to simulate warmth. Churchill, despite monumental egoism, displayed a human sympathy that was none the less impressive because he often neglected intimates and servants, and failed to extend his charity to imperial subject races.

  Any assessment of Churchill’s wartime contribution must include words of homage to his wife. Clementine provided a service to the world by her manifold services to her husband, foremost among which was to tell him truths about himself. He was a domestic and parental failure, as most great men are. It would be disruptive to any family to accommodate a lion in the drawing room. Without ever taming Winston, Clementine managed and tempered him as far as any mortal could, while sustaining her husband’s love in a fashion which moves posterity. Whatever he might have been without his indomitable wife, it would surely have been something less than he was.

  History must take Churchill as a whole, as his wartime countrymen were obliged to do, rather than employ a spokeshave to strip away the blemishes created by his lunges into excess and folly. If the governance of nations in peace is best conducted by reasonable men, in war there is a powerful argument for leadership by those sometimes willing to adopt courses beyond the boundaries of reason, as Churchill did in 1940–41. His foremost quality was strength of will. This was so fundamental to his triumph in the early war years that it seems absurd to suggest that he should have become more biddable, merely because in 1943–45 his stubbornness was sometimes deployed in support of misjudged purposes.

  He was one of the greatest actors upon the stage of affairs whom the world has ever known. Familiarity with his speeches, conversation and the fabulous anecdotage about his wartime doings does nothing to diminish our capacity to be moved to awe, tears and laughter by the sustained magnificence of his performance. He was the largest human being ever to occupy his office. If his leadership through the Second World War was imperfect, it is certain that no other British ruler in history has matched his direction of the nation in peril or, please God, is ever likely to find himself in circumstances to surpass it.

  Acknowledgements and References

  My first debt is to Richard Johnson of HarperCollins in London and Ash Green at Knopf in New York, for showing the confidence to commission this work, when less optimistic souls might have judged that there was no more usefully to be said about Winston Churchill. Robert Lacey of HarperCollins is a superb editor who contributes immeasurably to the coherence of my books; likewise Andrew Miller at Knopf. Michael Sissons and Peter Matson have been my agents for longer than they care to remember, and have always been wonderfully supportive.

  Dr. Lyuba Vinogradov has been responsible for research and translation in Moscow on this book, as for my earlier Armageddon and Nemesis. It has today become much more difficult to access Soviet archives than it was a decade ago, but Lyuba achieved a remarkable amount by scouring published document collections. I am especially grateful to her for translating hundreds of pages of material concerning Churchill and the Allies from the wartime Soviet press.

  Edward Young, whom I met when he was assisting Douglas Hurd with his biography of Peel, has done important and extraordinarily energetic research for me in U.S. archives. He is on the threshold of becoming a distinguished historian in his own right. As usual, I owe thanks to the peerless staff of the London Library, whose patience and goodwill are invaluable. Allen Packwood and his team at the Churchill Archive Centre in Cambridge have been tirelessly helpful, a great tribute when they contend with a column of Churchill scholars threading daily through their doors. Beyond generosity with his time while I was visiting Churchill College, Allen was generous enough to read my draft manuscript and make helpful comments and corrections.

  William Spencer and his colleagues at the British National Archive, together with their American counterparts at the National Archive in Washington—Tim Nenninger most conspicuous among them—show how magnificently great collections function when staffed by men and women who really care. The Imperial War Museum’s library and manuscript archive become ever more important, now that most 1939–45 eyewitnesses are dead. The Liddell Hart Archive at King’s College, London, holds many important papers, and I am especially grateful for access to Sir John Kennedy’s diary. I am indebt
ed to copyright holders who have given permission for extracts from their material to be quoted in my text, including Antonia Yates for the papers of Capt. Andrew Yates.

  Anyone who writes about Winston Churchill must pay tribute to Sir Martin Gilbert, his official biographer, whose work laid the foundations for all who follow. Gilbert’s massive life, accompanied by the equally fascinating companion document collections, represents one of the great scholarly achievements of our time. Future writers and biographers will owe Sir Martin a further debt when he completes his forthcoming volumes of war papers for 1942–45.

  Professor Sir Michael Howard, OM, CH, MC, and two other old friends, Godfrey Hodgson and Don Berry, have read my draft manuscript. Both made immensely helpful suggestions and proposed amendments, most of which I have acted upon. I am indebted to Antony Beevor for focusing my attention on Operation Unthinkable, and for the time and advice of Professor David Reynolds, Professor Robert Gildea, Professor Christopher Andrew and Chris Bellamy. In the United States, Dr. Williamson Murray made many helpful suggestions about the text, based upon his own exhaustive knowledge of the period. Dr. Tami Biddle of the U.S. Army War College is extraordinarily generous with her own material, in this case pointing me to Harris’s and Slessor’s 1941 reports from Washington and to important material on Allied relationships in the collection at Carlisle. The contribution of my secretary, Rachel Lawrence, is always indispensable, not least in collating notes and references. So too is that of my infinitely long-suffering wife, Penny, who feels doomed forever to share my spirit existence, focused upon 1939–45. She deserves to believe that some day we shall progress towards a real life in our own times.