Churchill and the King

by Kenneth Weisbrode

  “I quite agree,” replied his friend, “and we must thank heaven that we have Neville at the helm.”

  Others, not least the royal family, would agree. Chamberlain was in good standing with them. He slipped occasionally, as when the king was “royally displeased” by not having been warned of Anthony Eden’s decision to resign in 1938 as foreign secretary over a disagreement on the timing of negotiations with Italy, one result being that the king became sympathetic toward Eden. That much was implied at least by Eden’s memoirs. (This also was the only moment over which Churchill recalled losing sleep, including the entire period of the war.) Nevertheless, the king had cultivated so good a routine with his prime minister that the latter could regard himself as the royal couple’s “Godfather.” It is difficult to imagine a warm feeling between these two men and yet the king’s letters to Chamberlain following his resignation seem heartfelt. He was sad to see him go. But we get ahead of the story.

  The king could talk freely to Chamberlain, but the same was not true in reverse. It is also difficult to know the king’s mind at this stage. Like many people, he probably did not know himself. “Everything is a maze,” he had written back in September. The country seemed desperate to believe that Hitler could have his pound of flesh in the Sudetenland and be done. Perhaps the main cynic was Hitler himself, who was said to believe that Britain was prepared to fight, just not anytime soon. Those who said otherwise, Churchill among them, were perceived to be a small, bellicose minority, also desperate to slay the guilty demons of the last war. Few wanted to hear what they had to say. This included both the king and the queen, and much of the royal family, who were about as pro-appeasement as one could be. Here, for example, is Queen Mary: “I am sure you feel as angry as I do at people croaking as they do at the P.M.’s action. . . . It is always so easy for people to criticise when they do not know the ins and outs of the question.” And the king to the queen: “I wish [Chamberlain] could have got more out of him. . . . I don’t much care for our new guarantees of the new Czechoslovakian frontier against unprovoked aggression. . . . What we want is a guarantee from Hitler that he won’t walk into it in 3 or 4 months’ time.” Even so, the queen had written, “for even if nothing comes of it, [Chamberlain] will have made, in England’s name, the beau geste for peace.” She sent Halifax a copy of Mein Kampf and urged him to educate himself about Hitler—by skimming it. Many decades later, when asked if her views on Chamberlain had changed, she replied that they had not: “[W]hatever people say, [Munich] gave us that year . . . to rearm, and build a few aeroplanes.”

  Others no doubt saw matters differently. Churchill played the role of insurrectionist, warning “as familiar as the voice of a muezzin announcing the hour of prayer” about the peril his country faced from the Nazis. They posed much more than a political or military threat; the threat was a mortal one, to all civilization.

  —

  In the summer of 1938, Their Majesties traveled to France. They reviewed fifty thousand troops at Versailles and were impressed with the tanks, aircraft, and Moroccan cavalry they saw. As it happened, Churchill also spent a good part of the fateful year in France, including five weeks on the Riviera and again later in the year to coincide with the royal visit. For some time he had bemoaned the mood of his compatriots back home: “Chattering, busy, sporting, toiling, amused from day to day by headlines, and from night to night by cinemas, they can yet feel themselves slipping, sinking, rolling backward. . . . Stop it! Stop it!! Stop it now!! NOW is the appointed time.” They persisted in pacifist delusion, promoting the “cause of disarmament” by “Mush, Slush and Gush.” He called for more ships, more aircraft, more expenditure, more preparation.

  His warnings were not well taken. He was accused of warmongering. Others greeted him with renewed taunts of “Mussolini!” recalling his earlier praise for Il Duce and his reluctance to condemn the attack on Abyssinia. Some may have wondered, in Channon’s words, if “Winston, that fat, brilliant, unbalanced, illogical orator,” was “more than just that. . . . Or is he perhaps right, banging his head against an uncomprehending country and unsympathetic government?”

  On September 6, Chamberlain wrote to the king: “All the same I have a ‘hunch,’ as J. P. Morgan says, that we shall get through this time without the use of force.” Only a week later he warned the king to “be prepared for the possibility of a sudden change for the worse.”

  The king in turn offered to send a peace feeler to Hitler, from “one ex-Serviceman to another.” That idea was received skeptically by Halifax. Again, he suggested sending a peace feeler and was rebuffed, this time by Chamberlain. He offered to do this repeatedly not only with Hitler but also with others, like the Japanese. Each time, Chamberlain resisted.

  Then, on September 16, Chamberlain went to the palace to brief the king on his latest talks with Hitler, ominously. He assured him that Hitler “was not bluffing” and that “only the intervention of his visit had held up the invasion of Czechoslovakia. He had won a breathing-space.”

  Finally, two weeks later—Munich. Chamberlain had received Hitler’s assurance that there would be no war. The king greeted the returning Chamberlain eagerly, even happily. Chamberlain joined him and the queen on the balcony of Buckingham Palace and waved to the cheering crowds. Chamberlain’s appearance on the balcony was a violation of protocol. But few people at the time seemed to care about that. Nor did they understand the consequences of what Chamberlain had done. “You might think that we had won a major victory instead of betraying a minor country,” said a diplomat. “But I can bear anything as long as [Chamberlain] doesn’t talk about peace with honour.” Alas, he did, just a few minutes later.

  In his October 2 broadcast, the king thanked the British people “for their calm resolve during these critical days, and for the readiness with which they responded to the different calls made upon them.” Then he concluded, “After the magnificent efforts of the Prime Minister in the cause of peace, it is my fervent hope that a new era of friendship and prosperity may be dawning among the peoples of the world.” He also proposed that Chamberlain give another broadcast calling for national service, presumably in preparation for war should all else fail. Chamberlain rejected it then, but he did it the following January.

  What Churchill would have done in Chamberlain’s stead is open to conjecture. The historian Gerhard Weinberg has claimed that back in June, Churchill “was privately telling the Prague government that if in office he would most likely follow the same policy.” This neither was nor is the consensus view. In public now he spoke of “sustain[ing] a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road . . . the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless, by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.”

  Later, in a confrontation with U.S. ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy and the journalist Walter Lippmann, “waving his whisky-and-soda to mark his periods, stubbing his cigar with the other hand,” Churchill underscored the point:

  It may be true, it may well be true, that this country will at the outset of this coming and to my mind almost inevitable war be exposed to dire peril and fierce ordeals. It may be true that steel and fire will rain down upon us day and night scattering death and destruction far and wide. It may be true that our sea-communications will be imperilled and our food-supplies placed in jeopardy. Yet these trials and disasters, I ask you to believe me Mr. Lippmann, will but serve to steel the resolution of the British people and to enhance our will for victory. . . . I for one would willingly lay down my life in combat, rather than, in fear of defeat, surrender to the menaces of these most sinister men. It will then be for you, for the Americans, to preserve and to maintain the great heritage of the English-speaking peoples. It will be for you to think imperially, which means to think always of something higher and more vast than one’s national interests. Nor
should I die happy in the great struggle which I see before me, were I not convinced that if we in this dear dear island succumb to the ferocity and might of our enemies, over there in your distant and immune continent the torch of freedom will burn untarnished and (I trust and hope) undismayed.

  He proved correct. Little less than a year later, Hitler invaded Poland and another war began. On the first of September the king resumed keeping a daily diary. On September 3 at 6:00 p.m., he delivered his war message by radio:

  In this grave hour, perhaps the most fateful in our history, I send to every household of my peoples, both at home and overseas, this message, spoken with the same depth of feeling for each one of you as if I were able to cross your threshold and speak to you myself.

  For the second time in the lives of most of us we are at war. Over and over again we have tried to find a peaceful way out of the differences between ourselves and those who are now our enemies. But it has been in vain. We have been forced into a conflict. For we are called, with our allies, to meet the challenge of a principle which, if it were to prevail, would be fatal to any civilised order in the world.

  It is the principle which permits a State, in the selfish pursuit of power, to disregard its treaties and its solemn pledges; which sanctions the use of force, or threat of force, against the Sovereignty and independence of other States. Such a principle, stripped of all disguise, is surely the mere primitive doctrine that Might is Right. And if this principle were established throughout the world, the freedom of our own country and of the whole British Commonwealth of Nations would be in danger. But far more than this—the peoples of the world would be kept in the bondage of fear, and all hopes of settled peace and of the security of justice and liberty among nations would be ended.

  This is the ultimate issue which confronts us. For the sake of all that we ourselves hold dear, and of the world’s order and peace, it is unthinkable that we should refuse to meet the challenge.

  It is to this high purpose that I now call my people at home and my peoples across the Seas, who will make our cause their own. I ask them to stand calm and firm and united in this time of trial. The task will be hard. There may be dark days ahead, and war can no longer be confined to the battlefield. But we can only do the right as we see the right, and reverently commit our cause to God. If one and all we keep resolutely faithful to it, ready for whatever service or sacrifice it may demand, then, with God’s help, we shall prevail.

  May He bless and keep us all.

  In his diary he added, “Today we are at War again, & I am no longer a midshipman in the Royal Navy.”

  —

  The calculated game of appeasement had ended. Now came the Phony War, the period of several months in which a state of war existed but without military engagement. It was not clear what the government’s strategy was. Chamberlain described it as a wait-and-see policy of deterrence. “My own belief is that we shall win,” he wrote to Franklin Roosevelt, “not by a complete and spectacular military victory, which is unlikely under modern conditions, but by convincing the Germans that they cannot win.” Did this make sense? Someone in the Foreign Office put it this way:

  An elderly gentleman with gout,

  When asked what the war was about,

  In a Written Reply,

  Said, “My colleagues and I

  Are doing our best to find out.”

  The government, meanwhile, made plans to distribute gas masks and began digging trenches in parks and gardens, including Buckingham Palace Gardens. “Keep calm and dig” was the slogan.

  Churchill made his way back to the center of power. He reentered government in September, serving again as First Lord of the Admiralty, though now rather awkwardly under Chamberlain. “There are I believe a fair number of people who think and say that in these times Winston ought to be in the Government, but why?” asked the old diplomat Lord Hardinge. “Could anybody have a worse record? But we are a forgetful and forgiving people.” In August, Churchill had gone to France to visit friends and the ex-wife of his cousin, the Duke of Marlborough. Before his return he remarked to an artist friend, “This is the last picture we shall paint in peace for a very long time.”

  Now a half-American buccaneer and a monarch with a list of German titles were again enlisted in saving the British Empire in a world war. The combination did not yet speak its name; neither man knew how much he would come to depend upon the other, if dependence is the right concept. This may be the biggest irony of all: in principle, neither a nation’s savior nor its monarch needs a special ally. Each is supreme in his own role. Yet, as the next chapter will reveal, each is compromised. On the one hand, by the traditional British preference for mediocrity in its political class. It is a mediocrity that infects even the most exceptional of individuals, who must find a way to translate great virtue and power into a cause that is plausible and acceptable to the voting majority. And, on the other hand, by the tremendous demands placed upon him by a conflict so vast and so severe that no individual, however brilliant, can withstand them without the assistance and confidence of others. So a “mediocre” monarch joined an “exceptional” commoner in leading the nation during its finest hour. Before continuing the tale, there is more to say about the hearts and minds of both men.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Character

  These were two very different and not naturally complementary personalities. Their relationship was asymmetrical. But then, how many great alliances are there between perfect equals? Among allies expediency usually out-weighs parity. Political alliances especially are known to conflate apparent friendship—which always involves a certain degree of complementarity—with the ordering and intermingling of multiple interests, or, as Stalin once put it to Churchill, “The best friendships are those founded on misunderstandings.” He might have said “mismatchings.” Such asymmetries will be familiar to American readers because they occur regularly in our history, probably because of the combination of the roles of head of state and head of government in a single office. The partnership of Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins, Harry Truman and Dean Acheson, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, and George W. Bush and Dick Cheney was that of a nominal superior and a subordinate—the latter an alter ego or, as was once said of Kissinger, an ego that was too big to alter.

  Churchill’s own associations with his secretary Edward Marsh and friends Brendan Bracken and Lords Birkenhead, Cherwell, and Beaverbrook have been much analyzed. Each could be said to have served a purpose beyond providing friendship: as political ambassadors, emissaries, confidants, and sounding boards. Other figures—the Americans Harry Hopkins, John Winant, and Averell Harriman, for example—would augment and insulate Churchill’s position with Roosevelt. They are reminders that leaders—especially war leaders—perform collectively. In the case of Churchill, Roosevelt, and their respective chiefs of staff—Generals Alan Brooke and George Marshall—there was a “quartet of power,” as Andrew Roberts has described it, that “danced [a] complicated minuet, each fearing the potentially disastrous consequences of getting out of step with the others.” It did not perform in isolation; there were many others besides. Who were the real masters? The real commanders? Was the quartet really a prism, as Roberts has defined it? Or did it appear instead to thrive from a tension between opposites? Were they all opposites? And do opposites make for inherently stronger alliances—and leaders—than do more similar personalities? It may be better to think about them in a less mechanistic and more organic way: less as opposing or combining forces than as substances, having been treated for compatibility, mixing together in a solution.

  Churchill, and to a lesser extent the king, surrounded himself with men who extended the zone of familiarity that was so important to him and who, to one degree or another, protected, charmed, and amused him. He shared intimacies frequently, but there was a certain imbalance to these friendships, since nearly all were devotees o
f Churchill as the central figure. There was Marsh, Churchill’s loyal and long-suffering secretary during the early part of his career; Bracken, the brash Irish-Australian publicist, known as Churchill’s “faithful chela”; Frederick Lindemann, “the Prof,” later Lord Cherwell, a half-German, half–Anglo-American scientist known for his vegetarianism and related eccentricities. Earlier there had been the American financier Bernard Baruch; the Liberal politician F. E. Smith, later Lord Birkenhead; and the infamous, asthmatic Canadian press baron Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook—also known as the Beaver. Churchill’s loyalty to these people was strong. One of his first acts after becoming prime minister was to propose Beaverbrook as minister of aircraft production and Bracken for the Privy Council. “What! Give him a peerage?” Churchill might have said mockingly about either man. “Well, perhaps, provided it’s a disappearage.” The king resisted both appointments, but Churchill would not give way.

  Who were the king’s close friends? There were his siblings—especially, until the abdication, David—and his cousin Louis “Dickie” Mountbatten. There was Louis Greig, the naval doctor and equerry who accompanied him to sea and sought to toughen him, and his private secretary Alan Lascelles. But there were few real friends, and it is tempting to ask whether an abundance of true friendships is rare or even possible for any monarch. This one in any event tended to prefer the company of acquaintances and servants, reserving nearly all his intimacies for his wife and daughters. To others he could seem dull, humorless, and awkward. “But,” as Channon has written, “no one hated him—he was too neutral; hence he was a successful and even popular sovereign.”