His speeches often attracted hostile coverage in the press. Even supposed friends such as Lloyd George assented to the substance of the criticisms, if not the withering tone. But Churchill was undeterred, and he had supporters as well as critics. Members of the public had been impressed by his parliamentary protest about the shocking wastage of manpower. He remained a respected and sought-after commentator on the war, developing his reputation as someone who understood its higher direction. While soldiering and remaining in touch with politics and parliamentary business, he also found time to keep his hand in as a journalist, writing, among other things, a column in the Sunday Pictorial. Writing newspaper articles earned money and kept his name before the public and allowed him to develop the theme that the higher direction of the war was being sorely mismanaged by a military clique insufficiently subjected to civilian control.
In this period, Churchill made considerable progress in clearing his name and restoring his tattered reputation. In June 1916, the prime minister announced that the papers relating to the Dardanelles would be put before Parliament. He then decided against this “for security reasons.” MPs pressed for a full debate, and the government proposed a new select committee. A Commission of Inquiry began work in August 1916 to examine the Dardanelles campaign and published its interim report in March 1917. This made it abundantly clear that Churchill did not deserve his scapegoat tag (and enabled him, as he put it, to become “the escaped scapegoat”) and that he had not been the principal author of the fiasco. The main criticism fell upon Asquith for his lack of clear direction and his failure to call a War Council meeting for a two-month period between March and May 1915. It highlighted the confusion surrounding the respective roles of service chiefs and Cabinet ministers. In scrutinizing the role of experts advising the War Council, the inquiry found that the “functions of the experts were differently understood by the experts themselves and the ministerial members of the War Council.”60 What this meant was that those naval experts who had reservations about the operation should have spoken up forcefully, though they had not thought it their place to do so. The inquiry asked Sir Arthur Wilson if, “in representing the opinion of the Admiralty to the War Council on 13 January and 28 January,” Churchill reflected “these unfavourable opinions.” Wilson answered: “No, I think he rather passed them over. He was very keen on his own view.” Churchill protested: “No one ever said ‘This is a thing you cannot do.’”
The inquiry concluded on this issue that:
We have not the least doubt that, in speaking at the Council, Mr. Churchill thought that he was correctly representing the collective views of the Admiralty experts. But, without in any way wishing to impugn his good faith, it seems clear that he was carried away by his sanguine temperament and his firm belief in the success of the undertaking which he advocated. Although none of his expert advisers absolutely expressed dissent . . . Mr. Churchill had obtained their support to a less extent than he himself imagined. . . . Other members of the Council, especially the Chair [prime minister Asquith], should have encouraged experts to give their opinions, should have insisted upon it.61
As 1916 unfolded, Asquith’s government foundered, culminating in the disastrous Somme offensive. Churchill urged the government to revamp the nation’s war effort, adding to its troubles. With Asquith’s administration divided over conscription and on its last legs, Churchill was anxious to be in London with his finger on the political pulse. He spoke in the secret session of Parliament on April 25 but was recalled to his battalion two days later. Fortunately for Churchill, in May 1916, his battalion was amalgamated with another, and his role as a battalion commander therefore became redundant, the senior battalion commander by rights taking over the merged formation. His post having ceased to exist, he could now leave the army honorably. In the meantime, he hoped that Asquith’s government would fall and was buoyed by the prospect of a proposed alliance with Lloyd George and Bonar Law that would see his return to high office.
But what Churchill did not appreciate was the strength of opposition toward his return to government. As Lloyd George observed, some Conservatives felt more strongly about Churchill than they did about the kaiser. Churchill was yet to grasp the visceral hatred toward him in certain quarters of the Tory party and how impossible it was—even for a powerful man such as Lloyd George—to overcome their objections. When Asquith was replaced as prime minister by Lloyd George in December 1916, at the head of a coalition containing both Conservatives and Liberals, Churchill was excluded. This was a shock to him, and he felt betrayed by his old friend. Time weighed heavily: “One is quite powerless as far as war is concerned. . . . I am simply existing.”62
Despite his peripheral position, Churchill was still a very highly regarded figure and was even called upon by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Arthur Balfour, to prepare a statement for public release following the Battle of Jutland, partly in the hope of keeping him friendly toward the government, partly to employ his unrivaled skill with words. Lloyd George was not deliberately trying to exclude Churchill, but he was not prepared to ruin his first term as prime minister (which rested upon a delicate alliance with the Conservatives) for the sake of including him. Though Churchill was crestfallen over his omission from office, Lloyd George fully recognized his abilities and was also concerned lest a resurgent Churchill, already scoring points as a parliamentary and press critic of government war strategy, become the focus of a new opposition to the government. This had its own logical momentum. Better to invite him in, thereby boosting the coalition’s Liberal credentials and harnessing a talent that, if mishandled, might be used in opposition.
Churchill was instrumental in calling a secret session of Parliament in May 1917, in which the state of the war was fully debated. He spoke authoritatively about the need to avoid a repeat of the disastrous Somme offensive of the previous year and said that there should be no premature offensive, arguing that the war situation was bleaker than generally acknowledged. “We ought not to squander the remaining armies in France and Britain in precipitate offensives before the American power begins to be felt on the battlefields.”63 The debate showed Churchill to be the outstanding man among the government’s critics and an expert on the higher direction of war, and Lloyd George sought him out in the Commons bar afterward, asking him to lunch a few days later. Soon he was relying on frequent advice from Churchill and moving delicately among the Tories to try to engineer Churchill’s return to government. But resistance remained potent. As Lord Esher wrote, “The power of Winston for good and evil is, I should say, very considerable. His temperament is of wax and quicksilver, and this strange toy amuses and fascinates L. George, who likes and fears him.”64
Return to Government
Churchill’s path was smoothed by publication of the investigation into the Dardanelles. In the face of fierce Tory opposition, Lloyd George restored Churchill to the Cabinet, appointing him minister of munitions in July 1917. The Tory Morning Post commented archly that “although we have not yet invented the unsinkable ship we have discovered the unsinkable politician.”65 But the fact was that Churchill’s unique attributes made him a desirable political commodity. Sir Maurice Hankey’s assessment was that though he might be rash, his courage and inspiration made him a tower of strength.
While of vital importance to the war effort, Churchill’s ministerial position entitled him to a seat in the Cabinet, but not access to the inner sanctum of the War Cabinet. It was this fact, indeed, that had overcome the opposition of the most important Conservatives to Churchill’s return. Even so, a hundred Conservative backbenchers signed a motion objecting to his appointment. His new ministerial position meant resigning his parliamentary seat and fighting a special election in Dundee, a campaign combined with the urgent work of his ministry that saw Clementine address many meetings in her husband’s stead, helping him toward a handsome victory at the polls. He was back in government and back in the business of war direction in which he reveled.
The h
eadquarters of Churchill’s new ministerial empire was the Metropole Hotel on Northumberland Avenue off Trafalgar Square. It presided over twelve thousand officials (rising to twenty-five thousand by the end of the war) and approximately two and a half million factory workers. It was, in his words, “the biggest purchasing business and industrial employer in the world.” Its job was to make the bombs and guns that serviced the fighting men of the British Empire all over the world. The ministry had been created to rectify the faults in British industry and war coordination that had led to the “shells scandal” of 1915 and to ensure plentiful supplies of munitions and prioritization in the production of weapons. Managing such a gigantic organization, and driven by the overriding need to defeat the enemy, Churchill realized that radical new methods of organization and industrial relations were called for, an experiment in “war socialism” that was to stand him in good stead during the next war.
Churchill’s appointment was greeted by some hostility within the ministry, though his opening address to his new staff saw “the atmosphere changed perceptibly . . . those who came to curse, remained to cheer.”66 As he had done at the Admiralty, Churchill began his tenure by reorganizing the ministry’s higher management, reducing fifty subdivisions to a more streamlined ten and instituting a daily council that decided upon policy and took decisions based on a cross-departmental awareness of priorities and demands. There were areas of overlap and tension that Churchill could not easily smooth out, most noticeably involving the Admiralty, which was responsible for its own weapons procurement and therefore a competitor for industrial resources. To ease tensions within the various organizations and industries working toward the common goal of victory, and to promote efficiency, a War Priorities Committee of the War Cabinet was set up under the South African prime minister, Jan Smuts. Trademark work habits soon emerged—on August 3, 1917, for instance, Churchill asked for detailed information about the tank program “on a single sheet of paper,”67 and it wasn’t long before Cabinet colleagues were bristling at his intervention in their departments’ affairs.
The job of minister of munitions thrust Churchill back into the turbulent waters of labor relations. The demand for war material meant that the bargaining power of the workers increased dramatically, their ability to impact war policy through strikes growing stronger in a time of industrial warfare. Churchill spent a great deal of his time visiting industrial sites across Britain, as well as making frequent visits to France. He was able to indulge his love of France and his desire to be close to the action, and to meet firsthand with those responsible for using the equipment his ministry was producing. The commander in chief, General Haig, placed the Château Verchocq at his disposal during these visits. On one such occasion, he witnessed the ceremonial entry of British troops into Flanders. As minister of munitions, he provided for a great expansion of the Tank Corps and the Machine Gun Corps, increased the number of aircraft in France, and encouraged the development of mustard gas. Haig thought that through these visits, “Winston means to do his utmost to provide the army with all it requires, but at the same time he can hardly stop meddling in the larger questions of strategy and tactics.”68 But Churchill’s belief in the futility of a further major offensive in 1917 proved to be correct—while Haig had every confidence in Passchendaele.
Churchill’s department was also responsible for delivering vast quantities of material to American forces fighting in France. During his tenure, 164 heavy guns, 1,500 trench mortars, 300,000 grenades, 11 million rounds of ammunition, 4,553 lorries and ambulances, 2,219 motorcycles and bicycles, 811 cars, and 452 airplanes were supplied. His fertile mind conceived and supported technological advances and constantly searched for solutions to problems such as the threat of land mines to tanks. Sometimes criticized or pooh-poohed, such thinking and ceaseless interest was vital, and his “crude ideas,” as he wrote, were “only intended to excite the scientific mind and lead to the production of definite solutions!”69 He welcomed the arrival of soldiers from America, a country he considered a “mighty champion at the other end of the world” that had “restored to us the fortunes of the war,”70 building in his mind ideas of Anglo-American union that were to grow to full maturity in the 1940s and 1950s.
In terms of war strategy, Churchill was a convinced 1919 man. He believed that during the course of that year, the vastly superior Allied resources then coming onstream would bring victory, and that until then the Allies should adopt a more defensive posture—and avoid any more offensives involving mass bloodletting for the sake of limited territorial gains. Though Lloyd George dissented from this view, he acknowledged the regard in which Churchill was held in military circles and sent him to France to coordinate action with Clemenceau when the German offensive of spring 1918 nearly undid the Allies. During these critical weeks, Churchill performed an important steadying role and exhorted his ministry to labor intensely to replace heavy weapons losses. In France, he conducted business using his creative knowledge of the French language.† As late as the summer of 1918, Churchill, like many others, believed that the war had at least a year to run. The trick was to allow superior Allied resources to come into play and to avoid catastrophic defeat in the meantime. As he wrote from France on August 10, 1918, “Today I have been working at GHQ on shells. [We] hope to ‘catch up’ with the Germans next year.”
When the Allied counteroffensive proved successful, Churchill wrote to Haig: “I am so glad about this great and fine victory of the British Army. It is our victory, won chiefly by our troops under a British Commander, and largely through the invincible tank which British brains have invented and developed.”71 On August 8, he had written to Clementine from France that “the events which have taken place in the last 3 days are among the most important that have happened in the war. . . . The tide has turned!”72
Given the disaster of the Dardanelles and its impact upon Churchill’s career, by the end of the war a remarkable turnaround in his fortunes had been achieved. He had developed an even thicker political skin and perhaps shed some of his restlessness, without losing any of his fight. On September 15, 1918, he wrote that he was thoroughly “contented with my office. I do not chafe at adverse political combinations, or at not being able to direct general policy. I am content to be associated with the splendid machines of the British Army, & to feel how many ways there are open to me to serve them.”73 Siegfried Sassoon met Churchill in September, at Churchill’s request. Churchill talked and talked, pacing his office with his cigar, soon addressing, Sassoon realized, not him but “no one in particular.” “It had been unmistakeable that for him war was the finest activity on earth.”74
His new ministerial absorption, together with the opportunities to travel overseas, was not particularly good for Churchill’s home life. The Churchill family had moved out of their London home at 33 Eccleston Square in 1918 and spent some time squatting in various homes, which bothered Churchill (who often elected to stay in his ministerial hotel) less than his wife. In the spring of 1917, they had also taken Lullenden, a ramshackle Tudor manor in Sussex, in order to get away from potential German air raids and as a country seat. This was something that both Winston and Clementine desired, though the house was sold in 1919 as the Churchills’ finances again proved troublesome. Clementine chided her husband for spending too much time in France when his job also required constant attention at home. As she told him in October 1918: “Darling do come home and look after what is to be done with the Munition Workers when the fighting really does stop. Even if the fighting is not over yet, your share of it must be, & I would like you to be praised as a reconstructive genius as well as for a Mustard Gas Field, a Tank juggernaut & a flying Terror.” In reprimanding him for his desire to spend time overseas when his presence was needed at home, Clementine was also censuring him for making too little time for his family. As she wrote after an unusually long silence: “No letter—I just think you are a little pig. ‘What can you expect from a pig but a grunt?’, says the adage—But I haven�
�t even had a grunt from mine.”75
Churchill learned a great deal about war leadership in the last years of the war, which was to stand him in good stead when he became prime minister in 1940. In Churchill’s mind, Lloyd George’s tenure demonstrated the need to provide dynamic leadership, to inspire the public and one’s colleagues, and to streamline the machinery of government in a situation of total war that encouraged the growth of bloated and unwieldy ministries and industrial and administrative structures. The First World War experience also demonstrated to him the value of a small and supreme War Cabinet drawing its strength and legitimacy from cross-party composition. The quest for government effectiveness in this period also confirmed Churchill’s belief in the need to remain in constant contact with Parliament in order to receive sanction for strategic direction and to explain policy decisions and military operations. Finally, the conduct of the Lloyd George administration taught Churchill the merit of appointing people from outside of politics to key political jobs.
“Our country had emerged from the ordeal alive and safe,” Churchill wrote of the armistice, “its vast possessions intact, its war effort still waxing, its institutions unshaken, its people and Empire united as never before. Victory had come after all the hazards and heartbreaks in an absolute and unlimited form.”76 Two weeks after the armistice that ended the First World War, Parliament was dissolved, and in an atmosphere of patriotic fervor, the “coupon election” took place. Swimming somewhat against the tide, Churchill spoke out against harsh measures being forced upon the vanquished enemy, a manifestation of his liberal and forward-looking political beliefs. This was typical of the man, more compassionate than his peers, though his resolution in conflict has led consistently to him being misrepresented as a warmonger. He was adamant that Germany had to be utterly defeated—“Germany must know she is beaten; Germany must feel she is beaten”77—but once the victory had been won, compassion and healing were the things most needed.
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