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Winston Churchill remains one of the most fascinating figures of the twentieth century. Aware of how history judges individuals, he was determined to be one of the first to write his own account of the war years. He said he would be happy for the judgement of events to be left to history – but that he would be one of the historians.1 The massive six-volume memoir–history of the Second World War that he published from 1948 to 1954 presented his own interpretation of events very clearly and lucidly. Backing up his narrative, he provided a mass of documents he had special clearance from the Cabinet to publish.2 Up to his death, most of the memoirs and accounts that were published painted a positive picture of his leadership, with the exception of Arthur Bryant’s working of General Brooke’s diaries. These first appeared in Bryant’s two books The Turn of the Tide 1939–43 and Triumph in the West 1943–46 in the late 1950s. Churchill was extremely hurt and offended by the publication of these diary entries frequently written in anger and despair while events were still unfolding, often late at night, and without the mediation and reflection of time. According to John Colville, Churchill deliberately and ostentatiously turned his back on Brooke, by then Viscount Alanbrooke, after the publication of Bryant’s books. Colville said he knew of no other person who received similar treatment from Churchill.3 But after Churchill’s death, the pendulum began to swing and several historians took a more robust and often hostile view of the great man.4 More recently, the pendulum has swung back again. In 2002, Churchill was voted ‘Greatest Briton’ in a BBC television series.
One of the key questions when it comes to evaluating his leadership of Britain during the Second World War is: what difference did he make? Churchill later said that all he did was ‘to let the Lion roar’, that the British people were the lion-hearted nation and it was his good luck to lead them.5 But in this, rarely for once, he underplays his own role. In May and June 1940, when France was disastrously overrun in a matter of weeks, when Britain faced the possibility of invasion and attack from the air, and when the sea-lanes that kept the nation functioning might have been cut, the situation seemed truly hopeless. At that time, what was the real view of the British people? We will never know for sure, but Churchill had only a fragile hold on Downing Street. Most members of the Conservative Party, by far the largest number of MPs in the Commons, were far from convinced that he was the right man to lead the nation in its hour of peril. Moreover, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that if another leader, perhaps Lord Halifax, had told the British people at that moment that the only sensible option was to make peace with Germany, then Britons might well have eagerly gone along with him. And as several commentators have said, the ensuing history of Europe would have taken a very different course. As it was, Churchill, with his strong sense of history and an equally strong sense of destiny, would have ‘no parley’ with the Nazis. His speeches and his courage at this moment without question had an immense impact on the course of events. First to the War Cabinet, then to the full Cabinet, then to Parliament, and then to the people at large, Churchill provided a direction and a leadership that filled them with pride and the resolution to fight on against an evil regime. This was not just a question of clever oratory, of fine eloquence, it was a question of saying what needed to be said. Hitler had to be stopped, and the only way this was possible was by defeating him in war. Had Churchill dropped dead of a heart attack a few months later, as he could well have done, his contribution to world history would still have been immense. But as it was he went on saying what needed to be said to keep the British people determined to fight on against what looked like impossible odds, until first the Soviet Union and then the United States joined the struggle. From May 1940 until November 1942, he kept the war effort going before the contribution of those new allies really made a difference to the balance of the war. He stayed put in London when it was wise to do so. He visited bomb-damaged cities when he needed to. And he visited the Allies and the military front in a seemingly endless round of travels in order to understand better what was going on and to inspire and motivate those he met.
In the latter part of the war, as Britain’s contribution to the defeat of fascism in Europe and militarism in Japan was far exceeded by those of the United States and the Soviet Union, inevitably Churchill’s ability to make a difference lessened. But through his Chiefs of Staff he convinced the Americans to postpone D-Day until 1944, a postponement which few historians today regard as anything other than essential for final victory. And Churchill was the first leader to identify the Soviet Union as the next antagonist of the West although he failed to convince Roosevelt of this. But in the years to come Americans would see him almost as a prophet for this vision.
As a military man, he certainly had courage, and luck. He understood how armies and navies worked and he was able to get things done. He had closely observed and reflected on the process of government during war, and when he came to lead he knew exactly how he wanted to structure things. He knew the strengths and weaknesses of experts and advisers. He did not want to be given an over-rosy interpretation of events; nor did he want to hide disasters from the public when they happened, as they did in plenty. But even when conveying bad news he had the ability to exude confidence.6 The biggest criticism against him on this point is that he listened too unquestioningly to Lord Cherwell, his principal scientific aide. Cherwell was to be proved wrong on many key matters – from the effectiveness of bombing as a way to destroy the German war economy to the ability of the Germans to produce rocket missiles. Even though he was over-reliant on this single individual at the expense of other great wartime scientists, Churchill valued science and technology highly, at least as far as they could improve military actions, at a time when there was much suspicion of scientists. And he liked fresh, unconventional, even unorthodox thinking. He could inspire people. His words inspired a generation living through the war. No matter how old-fashioned or out of place he seemed in 1940, he said what people wanted to hear in those extreme circumstances. He made people feel important and that their lives were linked to a long and great history. He had the ability to push individuals, sometimes beyond what they thought they were capable of.
This account has been full of quotes from men and women who felt lit up in his presence. R.V. Jones, the young scientist who first met the Prime Minister when he arrived late for the crucial Downing Street meeting that ushered in the Battle of the Beams in June 1940, had several meetings with Churchill through the war. Thirty years later, reflecting on being with Churchill, he wrote: ‘I had the feeling of being recharged by contact with a source of living power. Here was strength, resolution, humour, readiness to listen, to ask the searching question and when convinced, to act.’7 Even accounting for the impression an elder statesman would naturally make on a younger man, this describes a rare quality in leadership. Churchill had led a team of scientists and military chiefs, he had cut through red tape, encouraged innovation and fresh thinking. The War Lab he developed around him helped Britain survive and did much to contribute to victory.
The other side of this is that he cajoled and sometimes bullied his military chiefs beyond what was fair and reasonable, although not usually beyond endurance. He usually knew when to stop, and when a kind word was needed. When pushing one of his secretaries, Elizabeth Layton, at a critical moment late at night he paused, realising her exhaustion, and said: ‘We must go on like the gun horses until we drop.’8 Of course she was then willing to go that extra mile for him and with him. He probably came nearest to a full-scale falling out with General Brooke, particularly when exhaustion had reduced both men to a fragile state in the spring of 1944, and they argued intensely about future strategy. But even here, Churchill did not push Brooke into resignation, although he and the Chiefs of Staff came near to it. And, as Brooke’s diary recorded, Churchill was keen to make up and express his appreciation for his CIGS when he felt he had gone too far.
As we have seen throughout this book, Churchill’s intervention was critical at many key moments. From getting extra resources for the much-needed expansion of the code-breaking centre at Bletchley Park to focusing both government and military thinking on solving the U-boat threat; from giving the go-ahead to constructing the floating Mulberry harbours to pausing the bombing offensive until navigation techniques could be improved. These are just a few of his many key interventions. And of course, more than anything else, Churchill realised the importance of the ‘special relationship’ with the United States. This awareness began well before he came to office but it became a life-saver during the Spitfire Summer of 1940. Despite his differences with President Roosevelt, differences that have often been overlooked in the rosy glow of victory, Churchill worked immensely hard in building not just a strong personal relationship but a system of collaboration between two military operations that not only survived the war but became a key alliance of the post-war world.
When it came to shaping military strategy, Churchill’s record is more chequered. He has been criticised a lot for his ‘dispersionist’ strategy, always looking for a flank to attack, for his obsession with dispersing his forces to surprise the enemy by attacking where they least expect it. This, in essence, was what the Dardanelles campaign was all about. And, in part, it was what was behind his Mediterranean strategy. But sometimes it worked brilliantly. In 1941, there was nowhere else realistically to attack Axis forces than in North Africa. By dragging Hitler into this theatre of war, and later into Italy to defend his Italian ally, and by diverting his forces from elsewhere, Churchill’s strategy worked. He had a canny ability to sense where the enemy was weak and to attack there. But Nigel Knight, among others, believes that, as an overall strategy, this is fundamentally flawed and wars are won by concentrating forces against the enemy, not by dispersing them. Knight claims that Churchill might have extended the war by as much as a year by pursuing this strategy.9 Of course, this can never be proven. Churchill’s unrealised pet project, to attack Norway, probably helped to keep a dozen German divisions in that country when they could have turned the tide of battle elsewhere. On the other hand, his plan to invade Sumatra in 1944 seems ridiculous today.
There is also the controversy of the bombing offensive and accusations have even been made that by ordering the area bombing of German towns and cities Churchill was effectively a war criminal. But it is profoundly un-historical to apply the moral criteria of one age to individuals living in a different era. Today, when war deaths are reported in the mass media and in Parliament name by name, it is difficult to imagine a context in which thousands or even tens of thousands of people lost their lives in a single day. So it would be historically wrong to condemn Churchill for being the political leader of a nation that left a trail of such devastating loss of life across German cities. At the time, in the aftermath of Hitler’s Blitz on British cities, there was no moral condemnation of the bombing of Germany, just a debate as to whether the ends (the partial destruction of the German war economy) justified the means (the vast allocation of resources within the US and British war economies and the huge loss of life among the bomber crews). Later, this became a political and a moral issue. Political in that no campaign medal was ever given to the men of Bomber Command. Moral in that it has been said that the killing of civilians in war is always wrong. But it still goes on today despite our moral revulsion. And the moral debate about Churchill continues.
Did Churchill have doubts? Certainly he did. He would not have been human otherwise. On the day he became Prime Minister, driving back to the Admiralty, his personal detective offered his congratulations and Churchill responded grimly that he hoped it was not too late. Returning from his penultimate meeting with the French leaders in June 1940, he turned to General Ismay and said: ‘We fight alone.’ When Ismay tried to cheer him up by saying he was glad of it, and that ‘We’ll win the Battle of Britain,’ Churchill turned to him, gave him a look and said: ‘You and I will be dead in three months’ time.’10 On many occasions over the following years he was brought low by depression, his ‘black dog’. In the First World War, he had admitted to ‘terrible and reasonless depressions’.11 In the Second, he was worried by recurring fears that, for instance, the British soldier no longer had the warrior spirit to fight with the determination that would bring victory. He was also terribly upset on hearing news of losses, particularly at sea. Despite the strength of his oratory and the courage he displayed, he wore his emotions on his sleeve for most of the war. There are dozens of accounts of tears falling down his cheeks at emotional moments, not something it is easy to imagine with more recent leaders.
The telephone calls Churchill frequently had with Roosevelt over the first ever ‘hot-line’, which was set up between the Cabinet War Rooms and the Oval Office, had to be listened to by a censor because they were sent by radio and although scrambled they could be intercepted by the Germans (as indeed they were). Ruth Ive, then in her early twenties, was one of those who listened in to these phone calls and she was instructed to interrupt the two leaders if certain security protocols were breached. She could always tell when Churchill was in a depressed frame of mind. She was always alarmed by hearing him in this depressed state, wondering at times if he were capable of carrying on.12 Many others who worked with him closely had the same worries.
So Churchill was only human after all, which should be no surprise. He needed the right people around him to bring out the best in him, and for him to bring out the best in them. And they in turn passed on his passion and his inspiration to others. That was what his War Lab was all about. So, yes, he really did make a difference. At a time of a national, European and world crisis, when leadership mattered, Britain for once had the right man in the right place doing the right job.