Churchill
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Churchill and the Admiralty had long made plans to act on that side of the North Sea, but it was some time before the War Cabinet granted permission to enact one of them. Thus was born the Norwegian campaign, designed to stop Germany importing iron ore from Sweden, though it was badly planned and executed, betraying inept British strategy not helped by Churchill’s influence and constantly changing plans. The plan was to mine Narvik, the most important port, though at that very moment Hitler dispatched troops to seize it and the other main ports. While British ships bested German ships in the fjords (leading to crippling losses that diminished the Kriegsmarine’s chances of success in Hitler’s planned invasion of Britain), British, French, Norwegian, and Polish troops failed to dislodge their German opponents in the vicinity of Trondheim, and German fighters dominated the freezing skies above. So the campaign failed, and a gallant attempt to take Narvik—briefly successful—led to a coastal evacuation that presaged the much larger operation that took place at Dunkirk only weeks later, the first in a series of British evacuations expertly managed by the navy but of little help in winning the war.
The Norwegian campaign showed Churchill in full spate, closely engaged in strategic and tactical decisions and with his fingerprints all over the operation, taking a larger share of the blame than was properly his own (or that he should have allowed himself to carry). The campaign also revealed the muddled machinery for interservice cooperation and determined Churchill to create dedicated combined-operations capabilities. This became a significant innovation; with Britain and its allies having been shut out of Europe (and later out of much of Asia, too), conducting coastal raids and amphibious attacks became a prominent activity.
When the Norway campaign got under way in spring 1940, it had looked as if the situation was up for grabs both at sea and on land. This was why the War Cabinet’s Military Co-ordination Committee, which Churchill chaired following the resignation of Lord Chatfield in April 1940, decided to land troops in the vicinity of Trondheim. The committee was part of the clumsy war machinery in place under Chamberlain, intended to advise the prime minister and Cabinet. This particular decision of the committee was made in the absence of Oliver Stanley, the minister for war, who complained to Chamberlain. The prime minister was persuaded that he himself should chair the committee as the ultimate Cabinet authority, though the campaign as a whole was to demonstrate that Chamberlain was not able to provide the degree of war direction necessary. Churchill’s powers were soon enhanced, and the war-fighting machinery of government improved, when he returned to chair a newly empowered Military Co-ordination Committee. It now had direct access to the Chiefs of Staff Committee (the three most senior British officers) and its own staff, headed by Major-General Hastings “Pug” Ismay. This was an important step toward the concentration of war-directing power in the hands of one individual, which would mature when Churchill became prime minister.
Despite mistakes on Churchill’s part, the Norway campaign did little to diminish the sense that he was head and shoulders above his Cabinet colleagues. Operations in Norway led to mounting public dissatisfaction with Chamberlain’s government. The campaign had been plodding rather than innovative and fluid, showing the paucity of British (and French) strategic thinking and operational art, as well as poor cooperation between the army and the navy. It offered invaluable lessons about the necessity of adequate air cover if land operations were to succeed. Much of the blame rested with Churchill, though at a superficial rather than a fundamental level: Britain’s strategic posture and conduct was the responsibility of the government that had taken Britain to war and that had prepared (or not prepared) Britain to face a war with Germany. Chamberlain and his colleagues had been in power since 1931, and blame for the situation in which Britain found itself naturally attached to them, not to the erstwhile exile Winston Churchill. Nevertheless, even Churchill was to consider himself fortunate for escaping blame for the Norwegian fiasco, which rather than damaging him was to elevate him to the premiership.
Framed against a growing atmosphere of national failure and retreat, the Commons debate, or rather inquest, on the Norway campaign began on May 7, 1940. Churchill spoke eloquently and pugnaciously in defense of the government’s actions, (“Let pre-war feuds die; let personal quarrels be forgotten, and let us keep our hatreds for the common enemy”) but Lloyd George admonished him not to convert himself into an “air-raid shelter to keep the splinters from hitting his colleagues” (meaning the “failures” Chamberlain, Hoare, and Simon).14 It was, according to Roy Jenkins, “the most dramatic and the most far-reaching in its consequences of any parliamentary debate of the twentieth century.”15 “Everywhere the story is ‘too late,’” lamented Clement Attlee, leader of the Labour Party. It was during this debate that Leopold Amery made his most famous contribution to British political life, telling Chamberlain that “in the name of God,” he should go. In the subsequent vote, the government’s majority of 213 was cut to 81, a wounding margin conveying the sense that Britain was losing the war and that better leadership was urgently needed. Just over a day after this vote, Hitler invaded Western Europe, ending anything that had been “phony” about the war and precipitating a period of dramatic crisis. Thus began the “five days in London,” in which the fate of Europe hung in the balance, and it was decided that Winston Churchill would lead the nation and the anti-Fascist world, and that there would be no surrender.
Chamberlain, who during his speech had said that Churchill was to be authorized on behalf of the Military Co-ordination Committee to give direction to the chiefs of staff, realized that a coalition government was now unavoidable, seeking to broaden the base of his government and move toward the kind of cross-party coalition that had served Britain well in past crises. But key opposition figures refused to serve under Chamberlain, most notably Clement Attlee. The writing was on the wall for the weary, sick politician whose name remained associated with “appeasement” and whose demeanor as a war leader lacked conviction. He decided to resign.
Prime Minister
On May 9, Chamberlain summoned Churchill for a consultation about the choice of a successor. Churchill demurred when asked to comment on the suitability of Lord Halifax, biting his tongue on the premeditated advice of Kingsley Wood. Halifax, also present, eventually said that as a peer, and therefore not a member of the House of Commons, it would be almost impossible for him to take the job. In any case, it was quite clear that it was a job he did not want in a moment of supreme national crisis. His decision was tempered by a belief that he would remain close to the center of affairs and could act as a restraining and guiding influence on Churchill. There was also the distinct possibility that a Churchill government would not last long and that Halifax could then emerge to pick up the pieces. In contrast to Halifax, Churchill relished the prospect of becoming prime minister. He believed in his destiny and that Britain could not lose.
Thus it was that almost by default Winston Churchill reached the summit of British political life. No other combination of circumstances could have removed the seemingly insuperable obstacles that barred the way to this aging leviathan, this political Methuselah, becoming the king’s first minister. But in the exceptional circumstances of 1940, the obstacles had evaporated like the morning mist. His rivals and detractors stood aside or ceased to matter. Even the pro-Labour Daily Mirror called him “the most trusted statesman in Britain.” This was a remarkable turnaround, caused by the simple fact that now his country—it is not an exaggeration to say the world—needed the unique range of talents that his constitution, personality, and experience had caused him to possess. His message in these crucial days was simple and communicated to the whole nation and beyond:
We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny. . . . You
ask, what is our aim? I can answer that in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.16
Having reviewed the gravity of the situation in this prime ministerial broadcast of May 13, 1940, he concluded: “But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, ‘Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.’”17 Churchill’s speeches at this time had a major impact. As Enoch Powell put it, “My impression is that Churchill was aiming exactly right, that he was talking to those who were predisposed to see the situation as he was presenting it to them, a situation where one at least had the advantage of having clarified the nature of the danger, having almost maximized the nature of the danger, and yet of a degree of confidence that one would survive it.”18 In 1940, Churchill didn’t flinch. He told it as it was, “convinced that people would respect the truth and respond with fortitude.”19
It is worth reflecting on Churchill’s speeches. He savored the English language, the opulence of words, and loved “to ambush the unexpected word or phrase.”20 His orations recorded simple narrative accounts of the progress of the war, tours d’horizon of the military situation, and dwelled on themes such as resistance, defiance, the importance of the Atlantic lifeline, the need to protect small states, the significance of sea power, and the importance of unity. He was a master of effective communication. One of his practices, as he told the future King Edward VIII, was to drive home his main points. “If you have an important point to make, don’t try and be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time.”21 Harold Nicolson ascribed “his mastery of the House” to “the combination of great flights of oratory with sudden swoops into the intimate and conversational.”22 He rhetorically involved America in the war on Britain’s side long before it became a belligerent. Churchill’s speeches in the late 1930s and the early months of the war became so famous not just because of what he said, but because no other public figure offered the people an explanation of what was happening and why. He understood what a huge mind shift the public had to go through in order to brace themselves for the horrors and the tedium of a lengthy war.
Though he was a master of repartee and conversation, Churchill was never a natural when it came to extempore public speaking. He had an unusual, to some unattractive, voice. He struggled to overcome a lisp and a stammer, consulting voice specialists, practicing in private and choosing appropriate words. Churchill’s speeches were meticulously prepared; his first major Commons speech had taken six weeks to perfect. A problem with this kind of public speaking was that if circumstances did not favor the big, prepacked set piece, a speech could fall wide of the mark, as was also the case if the mood of a meeting or a Commons session was against him. Churchill recognized that dramatic set pieces were not always suited to the intimate and conversational atmosphere of parliamentary debate. As he wrote to Clementine, “It is astonishing what goes down in these days of mass politics. One thing is as good as another. All the old Parliamentary drama & personal clashes are gone—perhaps forever.” Sometimes the argument was lost in the show, and while people might admire his words and phrases, they might not be at all swayed by his message. As Rab Butler put it, whereas Churchill was profoundly moved by his own words, others were not.
Churchill’s speeches and their effectiveness changed over time. As a young minister, he was renowned for the command of detail shown in his parliamentary speeches. Later on, his budget speeches were widely praised; yet by the 1940s and 1950s. his speeches lacked detail, and in the age of the mass electorate, his grandiloquent style lost some of its appeal. Whereas his famous speeches of the war years had usually been exquisitely appropriate and aimed at a receptive audience, his election speeches of 1945 appeared out of tune.
Nevertheless, he was one of the greatest British orators of all time, and his wartime speeches deserve their renown. As Lord Tweedsmuir noted, “Some speeches rank as deeds,” and Winston Churchill was the master of this form of communication.23 His faith in his ability as a war leader, and the relish with which he approached the task, made him utterly unique. The contrast between him and all other senior British politicians was marked. Chamberlain despised the role—“How I loathe and hate this war. I was never meant to be a War Minister,” he wrote.24 Churchill, on the other hand, relished it. Harold Nicolson caught the contrast between the two men, observing them on the Commons front bench on September 26, 1939, the one “dressed in deep mourning,” the other “looking like the Chinese god of plenty suffering from acute indigestion.”25 After turning down Churchill’s offer of a Cabinet position because he could not face sitting around the Cabinet table with Chamberlain, Lloyd George wrote that “Winston likes war; I don’t.”
Winston Churchill became the nation’s leader and champion because of extraordinary times in international affairs and because Britain faced defeat and occupation by the forces of an evil foreign power. His elevation was aided by his character and reputation—for so long, brakes upon his political ascent—and even by the way he looked and the way he dressed, as distinctly Victorian and aristocratic habits blended with the eccentric, the theatrical, and the unconventional. The cigar (a spare case, along with his National Registration Card and gas mask, was carried around by his bodyguard) was his most famous prop, but there were others, including hats and uniforms, the “V for Victory” sign, and Pol Roger champagne.
Churchill, like Hitler, became a historical colossus because of the Second World War. But Churchill did not win the war single-handedly, and though he may have personified traits the British liked to think they possessed in abundance—resolve, defiance, and pluck—he was the democratic leader of forty-five million Britons, not their god. Winston Churchill was no superman, though because of the Second World War, many readings of the historical runes have sought to portray him as such. This has unnecessarily exacerbated the division between Churchill supporters and Churchill detractors: too much hagiography surrounding Churchill the war leader has surrendered ground cheaply to his enemies as they seek to show in detail how the man often failed to measure up to his inflated billing.
The apparent energy and ubiquity of Winston Churchill during the Second World War, and in its historical memory, is staggering. He appears everywhere, interested in every minute facet of the conflict, his image and his voice dominating popular memory. His name is everywhere, too: “Winston Special” convoys, Churchill tanks, “Churchill aerodromes” (the Japanese name for captured airfields in Malaya), Churchill films (such as the 1941 Churchill’s Island), a Winston Churchill Bridge on the island of Rodrigues, iconic photographs in newspapers and international magazines, souvenir prints, mugs, and buttonholes. Churchill became, among many other things, an unlikely pinup. His boundless energy and appetite for work, his bloody-minded stamina and incessant desire to involve himself in other people’s business—here a divisional commander positioning his tanks, there a scientist searching for a technological breakthrough, or a Cabinet colleague minding his departmental business—amplified his role in the Second World War, as it had in the First. His faults now became his chief assets. “Entirely self-centred,” at this moment of supreme crisis he listened “to nobody’s views: I just went straight ahead.”26 His mighty strategic decisions at this juncture included sending the only armored division in Britain to Egypt and refusing to commit more RAF squadrons to France.
The hide and the constitution of a rhinoceros were vital characteristics for the man at the epicenter of an imperial war effort and a global political and military alliance. So, too, was the ability to conceptualize events taking place all over the world and the implications they had upon one another. “Those working closely with him,” wrote Sir Ian Jacob, “were impressed by the fury of his concentration . . . [as he] relentlessly focused o
n the problem in hand.”27 The unsurpassed burden of eighteen hundred days of war leadership would have destroyed anyone with less than monumental strength and ability. Surviving the bleak, desolate moments when personal strategies failed, disasters unfolded, and losses mounted—the fall of Tobruk and Singapore, the sinking of the Hood and the Prince of Wales, knowledge of the imminent V-2 campaign—presented a test unparalleled in British history. The decisions Churchill was obliged to take were often unspeakably unpleasant—whether to press on and authorize the bombardment of the French fleet at Oran, to reinforce or not to reinforce doomed garrisons, or to watch (and indeed condone) the tightening of Russia’s bloody grip on Poland, the ally for which Britain had gone to war. One wonders if anyone else in the world could have performed so well under such pressures. From June 1940 until December 1941, “Churchill carried the world on his shoulders. The burdens he bore, and the anxieties he endured, would have crushed many lesser mortals.”28
Everything that had gone into the making of Winston Churchill—his parents’ genes and his childhood, his experiences on the frontiers of empire and his father’s fall from grace, as well as his own tempestuous experience of the vicissitudes of democratic politics—had steeled him for the unparalleled demands of a global war of national survival. Churchill’s achievements during the Second World War, and the epic nature of Britain’s struggle, have been allowed to overshadow the significance of his achievements before the war and after. Aneurin Bevan wrote on Churchill’s death that he would have admired him more if he had not appeared to enjoy the war so much and suggested that it was easy to understand why this was so: “the war rescued him from political oblivion and gave him wings.”29 It can only be said that most modern politicians, including Bevan, would have envied the career leading up to that “oblivion,” and that such claims are quite ridiculous if one moves away from the central narrative of Churchill as war leader, in training before 1939, and from 1945 in an elegant decline that personified the decline of his nation. As we have seen, though out of office during the 1930s, Churchill’s life blossomed, and his political contribution to Britain was greater than that of anyone beyond the charmed circle of the Cabinet. Even during the so-called wilderness years, Churchill was still a member of Parliament, a political commentator of international significance, and the most powerful backbench opponent of government policy in the land. He was now, with the world at war, about to become as close to a savior as a nation is ever likely to get.