Churchill and the King

by Kenneth Weisbrode

  Ismay, known as Pug, was an exception: if he got exasperated, he rarely showed it. He was a tall, solid cavalryman who had once been a polo champion:

  Characteristic of straightforward and practical commonsense were his round head and square capable hands, the other side of his nature being compound in his large brilliant eyes [that] mirrored a clairvoyant foresight, a psychic perception of men’s foibles and, more often than not, a sure discernment of their true motives. They also made him a formidable cardplayer who knew the whereabouts of any card in the pack.

  Ismay’s role was to be the greaser of wheels and the impartial arbiter. It required diplomatic skill. But Ismay could take a stand when one was necessary. Once when Churchill asked him what he really thought about a certain question, the answer was definite: “Do you wish me to be of value to you or not?” “Naturally . . .” “Then . . . you will never ask me that question again.”

  Churchill’s relations were more strained with the man who became the most important military commander to serve him: Brooke, who replaced Dill as CIGS. Brooke was a strict, stern, dark, and dour Anglo-Irish soldier whose family had served in the army for generations. He was Britain’s top general in more than one respect: Ismay regarded him as simply the “best” of the eight chiefs of the Imperial General Staff he had known.

  Having grown up in France, Brooke knew Europe as well as any of his counterparts. Like Churchill, he could be impatient—he “thought fast, talked fast, moved fast”—but unlike him, he bore grudges. “Brookie,” however, could stomach Churchill far better than Dill. His biographer and onetime editor of his diaries, Arthur Bryant, has described him as Churchill’s unrecognized “complement” who matched the man’s inspiration with the ability to perceive practicalities—and impracticalities—at all levels. The two argued over them endlessly. To his credit, Churchill took part in these arguments and allowed himself to be challenged; the only alternative would have been to dismiss Brooke, which he could have done but never did. Seeing him as an equal, or even in possession of a superior military mind, cut deeply against Churchill’s grain, not only because he had been a professional soldier himself and a self-assured one at that, but also because of the experience of the last war, when the commanders had failed their country so badly. It had a lasting effect on him and on practically every other politician of his generation. Where the king’s instinct toward the military professionals was for deference, with Churchill it was the opposite, which they in turn must have wanted to reciprocate. Thus what Churchill must have sought from his commanders was not inspiration or passion but order, or to counter the tendency, as he liked to say, to “devot[e] more time to self-expression than to self-discipline.” He had the sense to know it, in Brooke’s case, eventually.

  It has been said that Churchill and Brooke represented the opposing minds of the artist and the scientist. There is some truth to this. For if Brooke understood anything, it was the calibration and the concentration of power. He was first and foremost an artilleryman. Brooke loved the artillery. He thought and wrote about it his entire life. This not only inspired an obsession with firepower that would come in useful during the war, but also an important preoccupation with careful planning as well as a faith in the ultimate value of attrition, despite the suffering it had brought during the previous war. That this time attrition came from the air rather than from the trenches seemed not to alter the basic concept. This was in marked contrast to Churchill’s antiquated fixation upon maneuver and mobility. “Why should the New Armies be sent to ‘chew barbed wire’?” His brief time in the trenches during the last war only confirmed the view. He simply hated immobility, which he equated with inaction and potential slaughter, not prudence and preparation. Churchill railed against “mountains of impedimenta.” “[S]haking his fist in the CIGS’ face, he said, ‘I do not want any of your own long term projects. . . . All they do is cripple initiative.’” Brooke later exclaimed, “I feel like a man chained to the chariot of a lunatic!!”

  This is another way of saying that Brooke was incorrect in claiming that he and the generals had strategy while Churchill merely had guesswork. There was more to the contrast, which in the event had mostly to do with a struggle for complementarity. And the extent to which Brooke imparted these views to the king—the above quotations appear on the same page of Brooke’s diary as a visit to Buckingham Palace, for example—cannot be known, though they probably counted. Nevertheless, to Brooke, Churchill was the essential, if impossible, man: “God knows where we would be without him, but God knows where we shall go with him!”

  Tenacity was one reason why Churchill was so successful a war leader. “Whatever the P.M.’s shortcomings may be, there is no doubt that he does provide guidance and purpose for the Chiefs of Staff and the [Foreign Office] on matters which, without him, would often be lost in the maze of inter-departmentalism or frittered away by caution and compromise.” He fought constantly against what he had earlier praised as the “common Staff brain.”

  For Churchill really did understand mobile warfare; he had, after all, been one of the first to invest in experimental “landships” (tanks) and was regarded as a leading “apostle of the offensive.” Yet he also understood, or thought he understood, what Brooke knew in spades: the vital role of firepower. He may not have really understood the progress in mechanization that armies had made since the last war, and almost certainly never understood the effective management of supply lines. “When I was a soldier,” he said, “infantry used to walk and cavalry used to ride. But now the infantry require motor-cars.” There was obviously much more to modern warfare. This is the reason why he needed the constructive opposition of Brooke, and vice versa.

  No military commander welcomes the meddling and second-guessing of politicians, least of all one as intellectually powerful and bloody-minded as Churchill. Brooke has drawn a contrast with the dealings of Marshall and Roosevelt in which the latter “listened” and more or less took whatever “advice” the former gave him. This was not likely to have been the case for Stalin, however, who, according to Brooke, “had a military brain of the very highest calibre.” With Churchill it was not always clear where one stood. “When I thump the table and push my face towards him what does he do? Thumps the table harder and glares back at me. . . . I know these Brookes—stiff-necked Ulstermen and there’s no one worse to deal with than that!” Perhaps neither man could make up his mind about the military brain. “How often have I seen Winston eyeing me carefully trying to read my innermost thoughts,” Brooke noted, “searching for any doubts that might rest under the surface.”

  There were indeed times when the relationship seemed near collapse, but there is also evidence that Churchill fought the impulse to quit. When asked if he could ever reach the point of dismissing Brooke, Churchill said, “Never,” then again, after “a long pause, ‘Never.’” But just a few weeks after being appointed CIGS, Brooke wondered if he should resign in favor of another person who could better handle Churchill. Ismay reported this to Churchill, who said, “General Brooke—resign? Why no—I’m very fond of him, and I need him!” Even so, “Brooke was the only man on whom” Churchill was later seen to “deliberately and ostentatiously turn his back.” On yet another occasion Churchill blurted out, “Brooke must go! I cannot work with him. He hates me. I can see hatred looking from his eyes!” When Ismay told this to Brooke, the general replied, “Hate him? I don’t hate him. I love him. But the first time I tell him I agree with him when I don’t will be the time to get rid of me, for then I will be of no more use to him.” Ismay reported back, “The CIGS says he doesn’t hate you. He loves you! But if he ever tells you he agrees when he doesn’t you must get rid of him as no more use.” Churchill, whose eyes were said to fill with tears, said only, “Dear Brooke!” The general later concluded, “You left him with the feeling that you would do anything within your power to help him carry the stupendous burden he had shouldered.”

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Churchill’s relations with Brooke contrasted with others, notably admirals and air marshals, with whom he spent less time. One reason was that none had the same stature or ability. Much of what has been written about Admiral Dudley Pound, for example, was of how often he slept. Churchill was said to be fonder of Admiral Andrew Cunningham, who did not reciprocate, reportedly viewing Churchill as a cavalryman out of his depth on naval matters. He was even fonder of Air Marshal Charles Portal, but he has written less about him than he has about army generals. This was strange given Churchill’s deep interest in both the Admiralty and the Royal Air Force. His more strenuous military associations tended to be the more important ones, which provide a comparison to his alliance with the king: stature alone did not suffice, nor did a degree of mutual affection. There was also the mental contest.

  A similar pattern was evident with regard to political allies. Churchill had some positive feeling for Anthony Eden, the man he meant to succeed him, but within limits, as Eden’s own frequent bouts of exasperation during the war—Churchill called them attacks of “Foreign-officissimus”—attest. The king was reported to think less of Eden but deferred to Churchill. Had both he and Eden somehow been killed, Churchill’s nominee for successor was John Anderson, the economic war coordinator and chancellor of the exchequer (and overseer of Britain’s atomic warfare research), but a man toward whom Churchill felt no intimacy whatever, apart from the indirect association there was with his late friend Ralph Wigram, whose widow Anderson had married.

  Toward his private secretaries and other civilian aides he was mainly paternalistic, sometimes intolerable, and often generous. He could be devastating toward them; other times he could be kind and jocular. Typists were especially hard put. Churchill could be difficult to follow when they took dictation, and he was merciless with errors. But every now and then he let a mistake go without a tantrum, as when a secretary typed “lemons” instead of “Lemnos.” His aides deserve brief mention if only because a few, like Joan Astley and John “Jock” Colville, have left behind such vivid portraits.

  Finally something more must be said about the men’s families. The importance of the king’s devotion to the queen and the princesses, and Churchill’s to his wife, Clemmie, has already been noted. Churchill adored his daughters, especially Mary and Sarah. However, relations with his son, Randolph, a drunkard and boaster, became bitter. Churchill was said to be afraid of him because he was so unmanageable. Toward his sons-in-law, he could be occasionally doting but never entrusted any of them, with the partial exception of Christopher Soames, with the clear expectation of succession, much unlike the role he assumed for himself vis-à-vis his own father. The king was more fortunate in his progeny. He adored his daughters and was especially close to the eldest, Lilibet, who was most like him, though her shyness, like his, mellowed with age. While she may have been “good at trying to find words for strangers . . . it is a great strain for her. Not so for Princess Margaret Rose who burbles away naturally and easily.”

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  How much did various personal and private relations affect the war? It is impossible to qualify them without returning to the concept of adversity. Lord Moran has said that the “English rather like a man who hasn’t come off, anyway if he is staunch and uncomplaining in adversity.” He applied the trait to Churchill:

  [I]t’s a man’s character that counts with us, not his achievements. . . . Winston seems to me to be a hundred per cent American in his feelings about failure. Unless a man has done something in life, something really worth doing, he does not interest Winston. The fact that he has not come off and is a bit of a failure merely depresses him. It is what a man does, not what he is, that counts.

  At root Churchill was probably deeply afraid of failure. Moran continued, “[W]hen the sun shines his arrogance, intolerance and cocksureness assume alarming proportions.” But “[i]n adversity Winston becomes gentle, patient and brave.” He “grows in” it. Failure and adversity made each man stronger by distilling his character. To Moran adversity was “first cousin” to Churchill’s “pugnacity.” In the king it was a constant companion that sifted and sorted and reduced him to his fundamental nature. When faced with the prospect, or the consequences, of adversity or failure, most people do not triumph over them right away; first they must toss overboard all the excess baggage of character, the traits that have been acquired and honed self-consciously over the years in the luxury of happier circumstances and as representations of the people they would otherwise like to be. Real adversity forces them to face who they really are. It forces them to confront the extent of their strength and weakness. In so doing, it extends and sharpens the capacity for empathy. Knowing themselves that much more allows them to know others better, and vice versa.

  Adversity has an either/or quality: it kills or it builds strength; it defeats or is overcome; it blesses by its absence or curses by its presence in people’s lives. It is, however, more reciprocal and cumulative with its function than absolute or final. It is at once a burden and a test, therefore, less than it is so much one or the other. It has every ability to destroy but not necessarily to defeat—to borrow a distinction from Hemingway—and there are many shades in between. The effects of adversity rest in the strength and nature of the character that meets it, however much that character is shaped by it in response.

  That is how it works in practice. The effort and the quality of a role were at one with its effects. Of Churchill’s three classes of people—“those who are toiled to death, those who are worried to death, and those who are bored to death”—he and the king were determined to spare each other the fate of the first two, while the final seemed irrelevant. Both men tried hard, though not everyone else grasped the roles they played. It was said, for example, that the reason Rudolf Hess made his famous landing on the estate of the Duke of Hamilton was because Hess understood that the duke was the Lord Steward, and so may have thought the duke would be the perfect person to persuade the king to make a separate peace. “This greatly amused Churchill. . . . ‘I suppose he thinks the Duke carves the chicken and consults the King as to whether he likes breast or leg!’” In reality there was very little the Duke of Hamilton could do for Hess. The king found his persuasion elsewhere.

  Of the many clichés that fill the biographical literature about the king, probably the two most tiresome refer to his need to gain self-confidence and to the favorable impression he made on first-time acquaintances. Churchill also defied certain stereotypes. There can be no doubt that he was a great man, but not “in the way Lloyd George was; but undeniably a great personality, which is another matter.” Put differently, as he liked to say, “I am arrogant, but not conceited.” Others would say that “[h]e has genius without judgment.” And there is Baldwin’s familiar quip:

  [W]hen Winston was born lots of fairies swooped down on his cradle bearing gifts—imagination, eloquence, industry, ability, and then came a fairy who said “No one person has a right to so many gifts,” picked him up and gave him such a shake and a twist that with all these gifts he was denied judgement and wisdom.

  So he was talented, indeed, but not, in the end, superhuman. He understood the value of subtlety, and was not so patently the bellicose, juvenile, exhibitionistic, uncooperative figure of popular insult. Yet just as the various presumptions about the king’s character had some basis in fact, so did those about Churchill.

  Where did they come from? Churchill’s mind was “a powerful machine,” in the words of Lloyd George, “but there lay hidden in its material or make-up some obscure defect which prevented it from always running true.” The real defect was authority. There was something just slightly too unusual with Churchill; the superiority of his talent was, in the British setting, almost exotic. His tie to the king served to ground him, to temper his nature, or at least to diminish his tendency to incapacitate those around him. Their alliance, then, was about refining and selling each other’s character as much as it was about duty and prerogat
ive, or about clarifying each other’s thinking. Churchill’s propensity to immerse himself in the tiniest details has been noted often, yet less understood perhaps is the critical role his regular meetings with the king played in helping him to settle, clarify, and order the many details in the form of a familiar tutorial or briefing. Churchill liked variety but not unfamiliarity. He had trouble with strangers or opponents and resisted them. With such people he “sidles away from one . . . looks down as he talks,” and “seems to contract, suddenly to look smaller and his famous charm is overclouded by an angry taurine look.” If demanding endless details from his subordinates was a means for expending great energy, then releasing it through recitation in the presence of the king must have performed a similar function within the familiar bounds of official duty. Doing so helped each man conquer long-standing and debilitating defects in his character, not least of which was a depressive tendency that was kept well hidden. Each man when with the other was seen to some degree as working against his own faults on behalf of the other. If true, it would go a long way toward explaining how they could strip their personal relationship down to the bare essentials in order to rebuild it with an armature of knowledge and trust. That was their mutual invention. It and the partnerships discussed above served a critical purpose for each man that spread in turn by way of their cumulative enhancement of a combined character. They, as was said about Churchill, did not “tilt at windmills . . . [or] embrace lost causes, but sought rather the very roots and sources of power, gauging with sure insight the hidden springs.” This showed that adversity’s silver lining must be polished constantly and reciprocally “till it shone after its fashion.” Nobody can be whole on his own.