Winston Churchill, the son of Randolph Churchill, a
Conservative politician, was born in Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, on 30th
November, 1874. His mother, Jennie Jerome, was the daughter of Leonard
Jerome, a New York
businessman.
After being
educated at Harrow he
went to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. Churchill joined the
Fourth Hussars in 1895 and saw action on the Indian north-west frontier
and in the Sudan where he took part in the Battle of Omdurman (1898).
While in the
army Churchill supplied military reports for the Daily
Telegraph and wrote books such as The
Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898) and The River War (1899).
After leaving
the British
Army in 1899, Churchill worked as a war correspondent for the Morning
Post. While reporting the Boer War in
South Africa he was taken prisoner by the Boers but made headline news
when he escaped. On returning to England he wrote about his experiences
in the book, London to Ladysmith
(1900).
In the 1900 General
Election Churchill was elected as the Conservative
MP for Oldham. As
a result of reading, Poverty, A Study of Town
Life by Seebohm
Rowntree he became a supporter of social reform. In 1904,
unconvinced by his party leaders desire for change, Churchill decided to
join the Liberal
Party.
In the 1906 General
Election Churchill won North West Manchester and immediately became
a member of the new Liberal government as Under-Secretary of State for
the Colonies. When Herbert
Asquith replaced Henry
Campbell-Bannerman as Prime Minister in 1908 he promoted Churchill
to his cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. While in this post he
carried through important social legislation including the establishment
of employment exchanges.
On 12th
September 1908 Churchill married Clementine Ogilvy Spencer and the
following year published a book on his political philosophy, Liberalism and the Social Problem
(1909).
Following the
1910 General
Election Churchill became Home Secretary. Churchill introduced
several reforms to the prison system, including the provision of
lecturers and concerts for prisoners and the setting up of special
after-care associations to help convicts after they had served their
sentence. However, Churchill was severely criticized for using troops to
maintain order during a Welsh miners's strike.
Churchill
became First Lord of the Admiralty in October 1911 where he helped
modernize the navy. Churchill was one of the first people to grasp the
military potential of aircraft and in 1912 he set up the Royal Naval Air
Service. He also established an Air Department at the Admiralty so
as to make full use of this new technology. Churchill was so
enthusiastic about these new developments that he took flying lessons.
On the
outbreak of war in 1914, Churchill joined the War Council. However, he
was blamed for the failure at the Dardanelles
Campaign in 1915 and was moved to the post of Chancellor of the
Duchy of Lancaster. Unhappy about not having any power to influence the
Government's war policy, he rejoined the British
Army and commanded a battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the
Western
Front.
When David Lloyd
George replaced Herbert
Asquith as Prime Minister, he brought Churchill back into the
government as Minister of Munitions and for the final year of the war,
Churchill was in charge of the production of tanks, aeroplanes, guns and
shells.
Churchill
also served under David Lloyd
George as Minister of War and Air (1919-20) and Colonial Secretary
(1921-22). Churchill created great controversy over his
policies in Iraq. It was
estimated that around 25,000 British and 80,000 Indian troops would be
needed to control the country. However, he argued that if Britain relied
on air power, you could cut these numbers to 4,000 (British) and 10,000
(Indian). The government was convinced by this argument and it was
decided to send the recently formed Royal Air
Force to Iraq.
An
uprising of more than 100,000 armed tribesmen took place in 1920. Over
the next few months the RAF dropped 97 tons of bombs killing 9,000
Iraqis. This failed to end the resistance and Arab and Kurdish uprisings
continued to pose a threat to British rule. Churchill suggested that
chemical weapons should be used "against recalcitrant Arabs as an
experiment." He added "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas
against uncivilised tribes to spread a lively terror" in
Iraq.
The divisions
in the Liberal
Party led to Churchill being defeated by E. D. Morel
at Dundee in the 1922 General
Election. Churchill now rejoined the Conservative
Party and was successfully elected to represent Epping in the 1924 General
Election.
Stanley
Baldwin, the leader of the new Conservative
administration, appointed Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer. In
1925 Churchill controversially returned Britain the the Gold Standard
and the following year took a strong line against the General
Strike. Churchill edited the Government's newspaper, the British Gazette, during the dispute where he
argued that "either the country will break the General Strike, or the
General Strike will break the country."
With the
defeat of the Conservative
government in 1929, Churchill lost office. When Ramsay
MacDonald formed the National Government in 1931 Churchill, who was
now seen as a right-wing extremist, was not invited to join the Cabinet.
He spent the next few years concentrating on his writing, including the
publication of the History of the English
Speaking Peoples.
After
Adolf
Hitler and the Nazi Party
gained power in Germany in
1933, Churchill became a leading advocate of rearmament. He was also a
staunch critic of Neville
Chamberlain and the Conservative government's appeasement
policy. In 1939 Churchill controversially argued that Britain and
France
should form of a military alliance with the Soviet
Union.
On the
outbreak of the Second World War
Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty and on 4th April
1940 became chairman of the Military Coordinating Committee. Later that
month the
German
Army invaded and occupied Norway. The loss of Norway was a
considerable setback for Neville
Chamberlain and his policies for dealing with Nazi
Germany.
On 8th May
the Labour
Party demanded a debate on the Norwegian campaign and this turned
into a vote of censure. At the end of the debate 30 Conservatives voted
against Chamberlain and a further 60 abstained. Chamberlain now decided
to resign and on 10th May, 1940, George
VI appointed Churchill as prime minister. Later that day the
German
Army began its Western
Offensive and invaded the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Two
days later German forces entered France.
Churchill
formed a coalition government and placed leaders of the Labour Party
such as Clement
Attlee, Ernest
Bevin,
Herbert
Morrison,
Stafford
Cripps and Hugh
Dalton in key positions. He also brought in another long-time
opponent of Chamberlain, Anthony
Eden, as his secretary of state for war. Later that
year Eden replaced Lord
Halifax as foreign
secretary.
Churchill also developed a strong personal relationship with Franklin
D. Roosevelt and this led to the sharing and trading of war
supplies. The Lend
Lease agreement of March 1941 allowed Britain to
order war goods from the United States on
credit.
Although he provided strong leadership the war continued
to go badly for Britain and after a series of military defeats Churchill
had to face a motion of no confidence in Parliament. However, he
maintained the support of most members of the House of
Commons and won by 475 votes to 25.
Churchill continued to be criticized for meddling in military
matters and tended to take too much notice of the views of his friends
such as Frederick
Lindemann rather than his military commanders. In April 1941 he made
the serious mistake of trying to save Greece by
weakening his forces fighting the Desert
War.
One of
the major contributions made by Churchill to eventual victory was his
ability to inspire the British people to greater effort by making public
broadcasts on significant occasions. A brilliant orator he was a
tireless source of strength to people experiencing the sufferings of the
Blitz.
After
Pearl
Harbor Churchill worked closely with Franklin
D. Roosevelt to ensure victory over Germany and
Japan. He
was also a loyal ally of the Soviet
Union after Adolf
Hitler launched Operation
Barbarossa in June, 1941.
Churchill held important meetings with Franklin
D. Roosevelt and Joseph
Stalin at Teheran
(November, 1943) and Yalta
(February, 1945). Although Churchill's relationship with Stalin was
always difficult he managed to successfully develop a united strategy
against the Axis powers.
Despite intense pressure from Stalin to open a second-front by
landing Allied troops in France in
1943, Churchill continued to argue that this should not happen until the
defeat of Nazi
Germany was guaranteed. The D-Day
landings did not take place until June, 1944 and this delay enabled the
Red Army
to capture territory from Germany in
Eastern Europe.
In
public Churchill accepted plans for social reform drawn up by William
Beveridge in 1944. However, he was unable to convince the electorate
that he was as committed to these measures as much as Clement
Attlee and the Labour
Party. In the 1945 General
Election Churchill's attempts to compare a future Labour government
with Nazi
Germany backfired and Attlee won a landslide victory.
Churchill became leader of the opposition and when visiting the
United States
in March 1946, he made his famous Iron Curtain speech at Fulton,
Missouri. He suffered the first of several strokes in August 1946 but
this information was kept from the general public and he continued to
lead the Conservative
Party.
Churchill returned to power after the 1951 General
Election. After the publication of his six volume, The Second World War, Churchill was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Literature. Churchill's health continued to deteriorate
and in 1955 he reluctantly retired from politics. Winston Churchill died
on 24th January, 1965.
(1) David Low first
met Winston Churchill in 1922.
As might be expected
from his origins and temperament, Churchill was inwardly contemptuous of
the 'common man' when the 'common man' sought to interfere in his (the
'common man's) own government; but bearing with the need to appear
sympathetic and compliant to the popular will. In those days, whenever I
heard Churchill's dramatic periods about democracy, I felt inclined to
say: "Please define." His definition, I felt, would be something like
"government of the people, for the people, by benevolent and paternal
ruling-class chaps like me."
Churchill was
witty and easy to talk to until I said that the Australians were an
independent people who could not be expected to follow Britain without
question. They were, in the case of new wars, for instance, not to be
taken for granted, but would follow their own judgment.
Churchill was
one of the few men I have met who even in the flesh give me the
impression of genius. George Bernard Shaw is another. It is amusing to
know that each thinks the other is overrated.
(2) Winston Churchill, Illustrated Sunday Herald
(8th February, 1920)
The part played in the creation
of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian
Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistic Jews
... is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others.
With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures
are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes
from Jewish leaders ... The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in
(Hungary and Germany, especially Bavaria).
Although in all these
countries there are many non-Jews every whit as bad as the worst of the
Jewish revolutionaries, the part played by the latter in proportion to
their numbers in the population is astonishing. The fact that in many
cases Jewish interests and Jewish places of worship are excepted by the
Bolsheviks from their universal hostility has tended more and more to
associate the Jewish race in Russia with the villainies which are now
being perpetrated.
(3) Philip
Snowden, An Autobiography (1934)
The most
surprising of the Ministerial appointments made by Mr. Baldwin was the
constituted his government in November 1924 was the selection of Mr.
Winston Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer. What induced Mr.
Baldwin to offer Mr. Churchill this important post still remains an
inscrutable mystery.
As an ex-Chancellor it fell to me to lead
the Opposition in the Budget debates, and I found Mr. Churchill a foe
worthy of my steel. Mr. Churchill, during these years, gradually
developed as a Parliamentary debater. He learnt to rely less on careful
preparation of his speeches and more upon spontaneous effort. However
much one may differ from Mr. Churchill, one is compelled to like him for
his finer qualities. There is an attractiveness in everything he does.
His high spirits are irrepressible. Mr. Churchill was as happy facing a
Budget deficit as in distributing a surplus. He is an adventurer, a
soldier of fortune.
(4) Jennie Lee
made her first speech in the House of
Commons soon after she was elected in a by-election in
1929.
Winston Churchill was at that
time Chancellor of the Exchequer and I directed my attack mainly against
his budget proposals. Later in the day, in the Smoking Room, he came
over to me and congratulated me on my speech. He assured me that we both
wanted the same thing, only we had different notions of how to get it.
The richer the rich became, the more able they would be to help the
poor. That was his theme and he said he would send me a book that would
explain everything to me. The book duly arrived. It was The American
Omen by Garet Garrett, a right-wing economist who was despised by
most of us for his extreme views.
(5)
J. R.
Clynes, Memoirs
(1937)
I
met Churchill in 1901 during his Election campaign in Oldham, having
been chosen to lead a group of local Labour supporters to interview him,
and obtain from him an exposition of his views on certain Labour topics.
I found him a man of extraordinarily independent mind, and great
courage. He absolutely refused to yield to our persuasions, and said
bluntly that he would rather lose votes than abandon his convictions.
Churchill was, and has always remained, a soldier in mufti. He
possesses inborn militaristic qualities, and is intensely proud of his
descent from Marlborough. He cannot visualize Britain without an Empire,
or the Empire without wars of acquisition and defence. A hundred years
ago he might profoundly have affected the shaping of our country's
history. Now, the impulses of peace and internationalism, and the
education and equality of the working classes, leave him unmoved.
(6) Kingsley
Martin first met Winston Churchill while teaching at the London School of
Economics. Martin wrote about Churchill and the General
Strike in his book, Father Figures
(1966)
The General Strike of 1926 was an
unmitigated disaster. Not merely for Labour but for England. Churchill
and other militants in the cabinet were eager for a strike, knowing that
they had built a national organization in the six months' grace won by
the subsidy to the mining industry. Churchill himself told me this on
the first occasion I met him in person. I asked Winston what he thought
of the Samuel Coal Commission. When Winston said that the subsidy had
been granted to enable the Government to smash the unions, unless the
miners had given way in the meantime, my picture of Winston was
confirmed.
He was a delicious and witty guest, quite willing to
talk freely to young academics. I then regarded him as the most
dangerous of all politicians. He combined brilliance with the most
foolish and antiquated views, which would have condemned us without hope
of reprieve to war between classes and nations; he had tried to make war
with Russia in 1919, and he waged successful war against the workers in
1926. The economic disasters of the thirties were inaugurated by his
return to the Gold Standard in 1925; he was to be a supporter of
Mussolini and Franco, and would have carried out a disgracing war in
India. All the more remarkable that I was to become his admirer in the
later thirties and to write a eulogy of him as our indispensable leader
in 1940.
(7) Winston Churchill, speech in the House of Commons on
the resignation of Anthony Eden
as Foreign Secretary (22nd February, 1938)
The
resignation of the late Foreign Secretary may well be a milestone in
history. Great quarrels, it has been well said, arise from small
occasions but seldom from small causes. The late Foreign Secretary
adhered to the old policy which we have all forgotten for so long. The
Prime Minister and his colleagues have entered upon another and a new
policy. The old policy was an effort to establish the rule of law in
Europe, and build up through the League of Nations effective deterrents
against the aggressor. Is it the new policy to come to terms with the
totalitarian Powers in the hope that by great and far-reaching acts of
submission, not merely in sentiment and pride, but in material factors,
peace may be preserved.
A firm stand by France and Britain,
under the authority of the League of Nations, would have been followed
by the immediate evacuation of the Rhineland without the shedding of a
drop of blood; and the effects of that might have enabled the more
prudent elements of the German Army to gain their proper position, and
would not have given to the political head of Germany the enormous
ascendancy which has enabled him to move forward. Austria has now been
laid in thrall, and we do not know whether Czechoslovakia will not
suffer a similar attack.
(8) On 16th April, 1939, the Soviet
Union suggested a three-power military alliance with Great
Britain and France. In a
speech on 4th May, Winston Churchill urged the government to accept the
offer.
Ten or twelve days
have already passed since the Russian offer was made. The British
people, who have now, at the sacrifice of honoured, ingrained custom,
accepted the principle of compulsory military service, have a right, in
conjunction with the French Republic, to call upon Poland not to place
obstacles in the way of a common cause. Not only must the full
co-operation of Russia be accepted, but the three Baltic States,
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, must also be brought into association. To
these three countries of warlike peoples, possessing together armies
totalling perhaps twenty divisions of virile troops, a friendly Russia
supplying munitions and other aid is essential.
There is no means
of maintaining an eastern front against Nazi aggression without the
active aid of Russia. Russian interests are deeply concerned in
preventing Herr Hitler's designs on eastern Europe. It should still be
possible to range all the States and peoples from the Baltic to the
Black sea in one solid front against a new outrage of invasion. Such a
front, if established in good heart, and with resolute and efficient
military arrangements, combined with the strength of the Western Powers,
may yet confront Hitler, Goering, Himmler, Ribbentrop, Goebbels and co.
with forces the German people would be reluctant to challenge.
(9) Winston Churchill wrote about Operation
Dynamo in his book The Second World War (1949)
Ever since May 20, the gathering of shipping and
small craft had been proceeding under the control of Admiral Ramsay, who
commanded at Dover. After the loss of Boulogne and Calais only the
remains of the port of Dunkirk and the open beaches next to the Belgian
Frontier were in our hands. On the evening of the 26th an Admiralty
signal put Operation Dynamo into play, and the first troops were brought
home that night.
Early the next morning, May 27, emergency
measures were taken to find additional small craft. The various
boatyards, from Teddington to Brightlingsea, were searched by Admiralty
officers, and yielded upwards of forty serviceable motor-boats or
launches, which were assembled at Sheerness on the following day. At the
same time lifeboats from liners in the London docks, tugs from the
Thames, yachts, fishing-craft, lighters, barges and pleasure-boats -
anything that could be the use along the beaches - were called into
service.
(10) Winston Churchill, speech in the House of
Commons (4th June, 1940)
Our losses in men (at
Dunkirk) have been 30,000 killed, wounded and missing. Against this we
might set the far heavier loss certainly inflicted upon the enemy. We
have lost nearly 1,000 guns and all our transport and all the armed
vehicles that were with the army in the north.
The best of all
we had to give, has gone with the B.E.F. and although they had not the
number of tanks they were a very well and finely equipped army. They had
all the first fruits of all our industry had to give, and that is gone.
An effort the like of which has never been seen in our records
is now being made. Work is proceeding everywhere night and day, Sundays
and weekdays. Capital and labour have cast aside their interests, rights
and customs, and put them into the common stock.
Already the flow
of munitions has leapt forward. There is no reason why we should not, in
a few months overtake the sudden and serious loss that has come upon us
without retarding development of our general programme.
(11)
William
Joyce, Germany Calling (21st August, 1940)
Winston Churchill was one
of those who did most to procure England's declaration of war last
September. And we now have his admission that nearly a year later his
country is neither properly equipped nor has it properly started. Surely
the time to think of proper equipment was before the war was launched!
One day the British people will have cause to remember this confession
of the chief warmonger - that he drove them into this disastrous
conflict well knowing, as he did, that they were not prepared to wage
it. Out of his mouth, Churchill stands convicted as a traitor to
England. But this much the people of England have failed to realise. It
was, until very recently, that their war was fought by proxy.
They had not heard the roar of those engines of destruction, which,
thanks to Churchill, descended on their cities, towns, factories, docks
and railways.
It will not be long before
Britain has to yield to the invincible might of German arms, for Germany
started when the war began, and was equipped before that. But this also
I feel, that short as the time may be, every day will have the length of
a year for the people whom Churchill has condemned to ruin in his crazy
and fantastic plan to blockade Europe, the dictator of this little
island showed the depths of his immoral malice.
(12) As commander of the 9th Armed Division Brian
Horrocks had responsibility for protecting the Brighton
coastal area.
It wasin Brighton that I first met the
Prime Minister, Mr. Winston Churchill. He came down to have a look at
our defences and watch the Royal Ulster Rifles carry out a small
exercise. Though no one knew of his visit, he was quickly spotted and a
large and enthusiastic crowd soon gathered. The complete confidence
shown in him was most touching, and rather frightening to us who knew
that, to all intents and purposes, the military cupboard was bare.
During one of these spontaneous demonstrations of affection I found
myself standing at the back beside Mrs. Churchill. There were tears in
her eyes, and I heard her murmur, " Pray God we don't let them
down."
(13) The
Manchester Guardian (10th April, 1941)
It
was a solemn House of Commons that heard Mr. Churchill today, which was
natural. Mr. Churchill's was a solemn speech. It said in effect that the
Allies are facing another crisis. Though it is not comparable with the
gravity of the crisis that followed the collapse of France, no reader of
Mr. Churchill's speech will doubt that it is grave enough. The House had
sensed the occasion. It was full in all its parts.
He was as
masterful as ever. Indeed, he was masterful enough at times as to be
quite casual. Think of Hitler addressing his Reichstag with both hands
thrust deep in his trouser pockets! Yet that was Mr. Churchill. It was
in this way that he announced that the Germans had entered Salonika at
four o'clock this morning. He almost did it in an aside. Intended or
not, the manner took a lot of the force out of the blow.
But what was
the tale as a whole? We had lost Benghazi, and the Germans and Italians
were pressing us so hard that we must expect severe fighting not only to
defend the rest of Cyrenaica but Egypt. Against that had to be set the
victories in Eritrea, Italian Somaliland, and Abyssinia and the freeing
of the Red Sea. Then there was the shattering naval victory of Matapan.
Nothing, Mr. Churchill said amid cheers could detract from these
brilliant achievements or diminish our gratitude to our forces.
Mr. Churchill
is clearly not comfortable about France, in spite of his welcome of
Marshall Petain's declaration that she will never fight her old ally. He
sees how dependent Vichy is on Hitler. But his warning that we shall
maintain our blockade aroused the greatest cheer of the speech. The next
biggest cheer greeted his declaration that we should not tolerate any
movements of French warships from African ports to the ports of
Metropolitan France, for that would alter the balance of naval power in
the Atlantic affecting the United states as much as
ourselves.
(14) Winston Churchill, letter to Charles
Portal in a reply to a report on the need to use more terror bombing
attacks on Nazi
Germany (27th September, 1941)
It is very
disputable whether bombing by itself will be a decisive factor in the
present war. On the contrary, all that we have learnt since the war
began shows that its effects, both physical and moral, are greatly
exaggerated. There is no doubt that British people have been stimulated
and strengthened by the attack made upon them so far. Secondly, it seems
very likely that the ground defences and night-fighters will overtake
the air attack. Thirdly, in calculating the number of bombers necessary
to achieve hypothetical and indefinite tasks, it should be noted that
only a quarter of our bombs hit the targets. Consequently an increase of
bombing to 100 per cent would in fact raise our bombing force to four
times its strength. The most we can say is that it will be a heavy and I
trust a seriously increasing annoyance.
(15) While he was at a Mansion House luncheon Winston
Churchill heard a rumour that Japan had attacked Pearl
Harbor. He immediately telephoned President Franklin
D. Roosevelt.
In two or three minutes Mr.
Roosevelt came through. "Mr. President, what's this about Japan? "It's
quite true," he replied. "They have attacked us at Pearl Harbor. We are
all in the same boat now."
No American
will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that no have the United States
at our side was to me the greatest joy. I could not foretell the course
of events. I do not pretend to have measured accurately the martial
might of Japan, but now at this very moment I knew the United States was
in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after
all!
Yes, after
Dunkirk; after the fall of France; after the horrible episode of Oran;
after the threat of invasion, when, apart from the Air and the Navy, we
were an almost unarmed people; after the deadly struggle of the U-boat
war - the first Battle of the Atlantic, gained by a hand's-breath; after
seventeen months of lonely fighting and nineteen months of my
responsibility in dire stress. We had won the war. England would live;
Britain would live; the Commonwealth of Nations and the Empire would
live.
How long the
war would last or in what fashion it would end no man could tell, nor
did I at this moment care. Once again in our long Island history we
should emerge, however mauled or mutilated, safe and victorious. We
should not be wiped out. We should not be wiped out. Our history would
not come to an end. We might not even have to die as individuals.
Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the
Japanese, they would be ground to powder.
(16)
Henry
Wallace had lunch with Winston Churchill at
the White House on 22nd May, 1943. That night he wrote about the meeting
in his diary.
He made it more clear than he had at
the luncheon on Saturday that he expected England and the United States
to run
the world and he expected the staff organizations which had
been set up for winning the war to continue when the peace came, that
these staff organizations would by mutual understanding really run the
world even though there was a supreme council and three regional
councils.
I said bluntly that I
thought the notion of Anglo-Saxon superiority, inherent in Churchill's
approach, would be offensive to many of the nations of the world as well
as to a number of people in the United States. Churchill had had quite a
bit of whiskey, which, however, did not affect the clarity of his
thinking process but did perhaps increase his frankness. He said why be
apologetic about Anglo-Saxon superiority, that we were superior, that we
had the common heritage which had been worked out over the centuries in
England and had been perfected by our constitution. He himself was half
American, he felt that he was called on as a result to serve the
function of uniting the two great Anglo-Saxon civilizations in order to
confer the benefit of freedom on the rest of the
world.
(17) General Dwight D.
Eisenhower wrote about Winston Churchill in his book
Crusade in Europe (1948)
An inspirational
leader, he seemed to typify Britain's courage and perseverance in
adversity and its conservatism in success. He was a man of
extraordinarily strong convictions and a master in argument and debate.
Completely devoted to winning the war and discharging his responsibility
as Prime Minister of Great Britain, he was difficult indeed to combat
when conviction compelled disagreement with his views. In most cases
problems were solved on a basis of almost instant agreement, but
intermittently important issues arose where this was far from true. He
could become intensely oratorical, even in discussion with a single
person, but at the same time his intensity of purpose, made his delivery
seem natural and appropriate. He used humor and pathos with equal
facility, and drew on everything from the Greek classics to Donald Duck
for quotation, cliché, and forceful slang to support his
position.
I admired and
liked him. He knew this perfectly well and never hesitated to use that
knowledge in his effort to swing me to his own line of thought in any
argument. Yet in spite of his strength of purpose, in those instances
where we found our convictions in direct opposition, he never once lost
his friendly attitude toward me when I persisted in my own course, nor
did he fail to respect with meticulous care the position I occupied as
the senior American officer and, later, the Allied commander in Europe.
He was a keen student of the war's developments and of military history,
and discussion with him, even on purely professional grounds, was never
profitless. If he accepted a decision unwillingly he would return again
and again to the attack in an effort to have his own way, up to the very
moment of execution. But once action was started he had a faculty for
forgetting everything in his desire to get ahead, and invariably tried
to provide British support in a greater degree than promised. Some of
the questions in which I found myself, at various periods of the war,
opposed to the Prime Minister were among the most critical I faced, but
so long as I was acting within the limits of my combined directive he
had no authority to intervene except by persuasion or by complete
destruction of the Allied concept. Nevertheless, in countless ways he
could have made my task a harder one had he been anything less than big,
and I shall always owe him an immeasurable debt of gratitude for his
unfailing courtesy and zealous support, regardless of his dislike of
some important decisions. He was a great war leader and he is a great
man.
(18) General Alan
Brooke, Chief of Imperial General Staff (diary entry, 12th April
1945)
We had to consider this morning one of
Winston's worst minutes I have ever seen. I can only believe that he
must have been quite tight when he dictated it. My God! How little the
world at large knows what his failings and defects are!
(19) Tom
Hopkinson, Of This Our
Time (1982)
A consequence
of this seemingly unending series of disasters was that now for the
first time there began to be criticism of Churchill as Prime Minister.
This took two different slants. Popular criticism, such as was to be
heard in pubs, air-raid shelters and in general talk, took the line that
the 'old man' himself was still the only possible war leader, but that
he was failing to share the burden sufficiently with others, and also
being 'let down' by commanders in the field. Simultaneously a body of
'insider' criticism began to be heard which followed an opposite line,
that it was Churchill who was the cause of our continuing setbacks
through his taking far too much upon himself. Confidential meetings took
place, at one or two of which I was asked to be present, attended by MPs
of all parties, two or three editors and influential journalists, and
some renowned admirals and generals no longer in active posts but
carefully briefed, it seemed to me, by top brass who were unable - or
thought it unwise - to attend in person.
(20) Arthur
Harris, Bomber Command (1947)
I was frequently bidden to
Chequers, especially during the weekends when Winston was normally
there. I never failed to return from these visits invigorated and full
of renewed hope and enthusiasm, in spite of the appalling hours that
Winston habitually kept. If it was a mixed party - which was not very
often - and I could take my wife, I knew that we might get home
somewhere between midnight and one in the morning, but when I was asked
alone, it would be anywhere between three and four before I got back.
Not that I minded.
After
dinner Winston would talk; he was really thinking aloud about how things
were going. He would get repeated reminders that a film show was waiting
for him, and eventually we would all go up to the gallery - the
household staff, and the rest of the family, and even the military guard
from outside - to see the picture. There the Prime Minister would sit,
occasionally making amusing comments about the drama. One realised, of
course, that he was really resting himself in this atmosphere and that
his thoughts were often far away. Sometimes one could hear him rehearse
a phrase for a telegram he would send later. Well after midnight we
would go back down to the hall and he would get down to another batch of
work, sending signals, dictating to his secretaries, and so on, while at
intervals one of his family, and sometimes his naval A.D.C. would
attempt to steer him off to bed, as his doctors had advised, but
invariably without the least success. He went to bed when he wanted to.
I
think the first thing that impresses one about Winston is the
extraordinary mixture in him of real human kindness and of sometimes
impish mischief, all overlaid with an immense, thrusting, purposeful
determination to reach the goal which he so clearly sees. The affection
which the whole Churchill family feel for one another is very obvious
and most refreshing.
Th'e
worse the state of the war was, the greater was the support, enthusiasm,
encouragement and constructive criticism that one got from this
extraordinary man; it was all done with the utmost kindness, though not
without a mischievous dig now and again just for the fun of it. He did
not mind your expressing views contrary to his own, but he was difficult
to argue with for the simple reason that he seldom seemed to listen long
to sides of a question other than his own. He has, in fact, developed to
a perhaps extreme degree this rather unfortunate trait of the man who
has almost absolute power, knows his own mind, and really does not want
to be bothered with everybody else's ideas. He is a bad listener, and
frequently interrupts anyone who is expressing views, whether they are
opposed to his own or not, halfway through a sentence; then he is off at
a tangent, holding forth, always with interest and generally on sound
lines, on some other aspect of the subject under discussion, or even on
some entirely different subject.
The
last occasion when I went to Chequers to see Winston was on the day
after it had been decided to break up the National Government; I
remember feeling horrified by the certainty with which Winston asserted
that the coming election would go in his favour. I was equally certain
that this showed a complete blindness to political realities, and when I
left that night, or rather in the small hours of the next morning, I
knew that I should never again go to Chequers as the guest of Winston
Churchill.
(21) Joseph
Goebbels, diary (27th March, 1945)
The Führer is
right when he says that Stalin is in the best position to do an
about-turn in war policy, since he need take no account of his public
opinion. It is rather different with England. It is quite immaterial
whether Churchill wants to pursue a different war policy; even if he
did, he couldn't; he is too dependent on internal political forces which
are already semi-bolshevistic in character, to say nothing of Roosevelt,
who shows not the smallest sign of any intention to change
course.
The objective
which the Führer has in mind is to discover some possibility of an
accommodation with the Soviet Union and then to pursue the struggle
against England with brutal violence. England has always been the
mischief-maker in Europe; if she was finally swept out of Europe, then
we should have peace and quiet, at least for a time.
(22) Winston Churchill, election broadcast (May,
1945)
I must tell you that a socialist policy is
abhorrent to British ideas on freedom. There is to be one State, to
which all are to be obedient in every act of their lives. This State,
once in power, will prescribe for everyone: where they are to work, what
they are to work at, where they may go and what they may say, what views
they are to hold, where their wives are to queue up for the State
ration, and what education their children are to receive. A socialist
state could not afford to suffer opposition - no socialist system can be
established without a political police. They (the Labour government)
would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo.
(23) Clement
Attlee, election broadcast (May, 1945)
The
Prime Minister made much play last night with the rights of the
individual and the dangers of people being ordered about by officials. I
entirely agree that people should have the greatest freedom compatible
with the freedom of others. There was a time when employers were free to
work little children for sixteen hours a day. I remember when employers
were free to employ sweated women workers on finishing trousers at a
penny halfpenny a pair. There was a time when people were free to
neglect sanitation so that thousands died of preventable diseases. For
years every attempt to remedy these crying evils was blocked by the same
plea of freedom for the individual. It was in fact freedom for the rich
and slavery for the poor. Make no mistake, it has only been through the
power of the State, given to it by Parliament, that the general public
has been protected against the greed of ruthless profit-makers and
property owners.
The
Conservative Party remains as always a class Party. In twenty-three
years in the House of Commons, I cannot recall more than half a dozen
from the ranks of the wage earners. It represents today, as in the past,
the forces of property and privilege. The Labour Party is, in fact, the
one Party which most nearly reflects in its representation and
composition all the main streams which flow into the great river of our
national life.
(24) Winston Churchill, speech in Fulton, Missouri (5th
March, 1946)
A shadow has fallen upon the scenes
so lately lighted by the Allied victory. Nobody knows what Soviet Russia
and its Communist international organization intends to do in the
immediate future, or what are the limits, if any, to their expansive and
proselytizing tendencies. I have a strong admiration and regard for the
valiant Russian people and for my wartime comrade Marshal Stalin. There
is sympathy and goodwill in Britain - and I doubt not here also - toward
the peoples of all the Russias and a resolve to persevere through many
differences and rebuffs in establishing lasting friendships.
We understand
the Russians need to be secure on her western frontiers from all renewal
of German aggression. We welcome her to her rightful place among the
leading nations of the world. Above all we welcome constant, frequent,
and growing contacts between the Russian people and our own people on
both sides of the Atlantic. It is my duty, however, to place before you
certain facts about the present position in Europe - I am sure I do not
wish to, but it is my duty, I feel, to present them to you.
From Stettin
in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended
across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the
ancient states of central and eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague,
Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, and Sofia, all these famous
cities and the populations around them lie in the Soviet sphere and all
are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to
a very high and increasing measure of control from Moscow. Athens alone,
with its immortal glories, is free to decide its future at an election
under British, American, and French observation. The Russian-dominated
Polish government has been encouraged to make enormous and wrongful
in-roads upon Germany, and mass expulsions of millions of Germans on a
scale grievous and undreamed of are now taking place.
The Communist
parties, which were very small in all these Eastern states of Europe,
have been raised to preeminence and power far beyond their numbers and
are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control. Police
governments are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except in
Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy. Turkey and Persia are both
profoundly alarmed and disturbed at the claims which are made upon them
and at the pressure being exerted by the Moscow government. An attempt
is being made by the Russians in Berlin to build up a quasi-Communist
Party in their zone of occupied Germany by showing special favors to
groups of left-wing German leaders.
(25) Milovan Djilas, Rise and Fall (1985)
Filled with curiosity and
joyous anticipation, we went to see Churchill at his London house, an
establishment' no larger or more luxurious than the average middle-class
villa at Dedinje - the type that our top Yugoslav officials acquired
after the war. We found him in his bedroom, in bed. He begged our pardon
for receiving us thus and at once invited us to dinner. We had a prior
engagement for dinner with the British government, and so had to
decline, with genuine regret. Churchill then said, "I have a feeling
that you and we are on the same side of the barricade." We confirmed his
feeling, whereupon he inquired with delight, "And how is my old friend
Tito?"
On the way to his house I
had entertained the thought of reproaching him for having once offended
Tito, so when Brilej or Dedijer replied that Tito felt fine, I added,
"But you said he had deceived you." "When? Where?" Churchill asked in
surprise. "In-your speech at Fulton, Missouri, in 1946." With an
expression of discomfort Churchill replied, "Oh, I've said a lot of
silly things in my life." I then added, with a smile, "But we took no
offense at your words. We understood them as a sort of acknowledgment."
He gave a sardonic laugh.
Churchill then said to me:
"You're a member of the Politburo, you've got a feeling for the Soviet
mentality. If you belonged to the Soviet Politburo, would you invade
Europe?" I replied that I would not. "But I would, you see!" he said.
"What's Europe - disarmed, disunited? In two weeks the Russians would
push right through to the English Channel. This island would defend
itself one way or another, but Europe? If it weren't for atomic weapons,
the Russians might have made their move already." One of us pointed out
that the Russians were exhausted and had not yet recovered from the war.
"The fact the Russians haven't invaded by now shows they don't intend to
invade Europe," I observed. "Yes," said Churchill, "they're held in
check because Stalin is smart enough to shun adventures. And old - he's
got no stomach for running around Siberia dodging atom
bombs!"
At one point Churchill
became quite carried away by strategic considerations. "Yes, the
Russians are held back by their fear of atom bombs. They're a
centralized empire. If atom bombs were dropped on their communications
centers - which wouldn't cause heavy civilian casualties - the periphery
would loosen up and start to fall away. Stalin knows
that well." Here Churchill reared up in bed, toothless, in his nightcap,
and with fingers spread and pointed down, began to imitate the falling
of bombs - a specter in whom the spirit of battle blazed on
undiminished.
(26) Henry (Chips)
Channon, diary
entry (15th January, 1944)
I
went early to the House hearing that the PM was due back. The secret had
been well kept, but I soon twigged that they wanted to stage a
demonstration of enthusiasm and the surprise would add to it. It did. He
came in just before 11.30 and smiled. The House cheered and rose, a
courteous, spontaneous welcome which under the dramatic circumstances
was legitimate, but curiously cold. Churchill is not loved in the House.
He has never had any ovation to equal several of Mr Chamberlain's, and
this morning's performance proved it. I thought he looked disappointed,
but his health and colour have returned.
(27) Herbert
Morrison, An
Autobiography (1960)
His sense of humour was uncertain.
He excelled at making pithy comments about events and about
Hitler and Mussolini - and about some of his colleagues, whether they
were present or not. There was rarely anything vicious about these
jokes: they were leg pulling jokes which only the sensitive and pompous
found annoying.
But he had to be the joker,
and not the victim. Once or twice I essayed a joke at his expense.
Immediately his smile vanished. He gave a perfect masculine version of
Queen Victoria's "We are not amused". The aristocratic Churchill came to
the fore; there was a frown on his face, and then he would move to the
business of the meeting.
The few who tried this sort
of thing, even Bevin who could get away with very earthy comments in
basic Anglo-Saxon terms to describe anyone else, received similar black
looks if the Prime Minister was the butt. None of us minded, for we all
had a real affection for the man, and liked him the more for a foible or
two.
Churchill's dissertations
about military strategy rankled and irritated the service chiefs more
than anything, so far as I could see. They did not hide their view that
if his ideas were adopted it might have been unfortunate for the outcome
of the war. They may have been right. I think that Churchill often put
forward his views on strategy just to stimulate their brains and his
own. He did not necessarily believe what he was
advocating.
(28) Harold
Wilson, Memoirs: The
Making of a Prime Minister, 1916-64 (1986)
These were three very
unhappy years, the worst I have ever had to live through in nearly four
decades in the House of Commons. Our own dissensions soured the
atmosphere and, for those of us who knew and held him in high regard,
there was the sad spectacle of the decline of Winston Churchill. His
lapses were becoming more frequent.
The world itself was
changing. The nuclear developments which had ended the Japanese war did
not stop there. The atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima were dwarfed
by the thermo-nuclear weapon the United States had created. This had
been detonated over Bikini in the Pacific. There were reports of clouds
of noxious fumes capable of being blown 5,000 miles and threatening life
over all that area. The House of Commons debated the issue. An ageing
Churchill replied in terms uncharacteristic of a lifetime in the House
of Commons, no doubt reflecting an unimaginative Foreign Office brief,
but taken by the House as showing insensitivity. The reception to which
he was then subjected totally unnerved him, and those of us sitting on
the Opposition side close to the Speaker's chair saw him go out deeply
upset on the arm of the Chief Government Whip.
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