Churchill

by Ashley Jackson

  On May 10, 1940, Churchill went to Buckingham Palace and was formally asked by the king to form a government, then returned to the Admiralty and set about forming a War Cabinet of five, contacting the leaders of the opposition parties as he sought to build what would be a remarkably successful wartime coalition government. “I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.” Yet despite this roseate view of the “man of destiny” assuming his appointed place, a view entrenched in history and national mythology, his appointment was not universally welcomed and, following Attlee’s refusal to join a Chamberlain-led coalition, owed more to the Labour Party than to the Conservative. Halifax had been a more popular choice as prime minister among many senior figures; Eden despaired of Churchill’s political judgment; the Canadian prime minister, William Mackenzie King, recorded a conversation with King George VI in June 1939 in which “the King said he would never wish to appoint Churchill to any office unless it was absolutely necessary in time of war. I confess I was glad to hear him say that because I think Churchill is one of the most dangerous men I have ever known.”30 For the staff at 10 Downing Street, according to Jock Colville, the thought of Churchill as boss “sent a cold chill down the spines” (and he feared the arrival of Churchill and his “mermidons,” Brendan Bracken, Professor Lindemann and Desmond Morton). Colville himself, however, was later to write of the utter transformation in opinion across Whitehall within two weeks of Churchill’s taking up his post.

  But on the other hand, there were plenty who recognized that Churchill was the man for the hour. His old friend David Lloyd George, Father of the House, responded to his “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” speech by saying that “we know the Right Honourable gentleman’s glittering intellectual gifts, his dauntless courage, his profound study of war, and his experience in its operation and direction . . . it is fortunate that he should have been put in a position of supreme authority.”31 Now Churchill had the bridge to himself. A life in preparation had led to this moment.

  The Machinery of Government and War Direction

  Churchill’s tasks as prime minister were legion and fell into a number of broad categories: acting as a signal box and processor for the manifold activities of a global empire during a time of total war; shaping the machinery of government and strategic direction and providing the political stability without which commanders cannot effectively wage war; providing a focal point of leadership and inspiration for the people of Britain, the empire, and the world in opposition to the dictators; and acting as the nation’s public face in all dealings with foreign powers, concentrating in his own hands control of British foreign and defense policy.

  Churchill’s first notable achievement was the formation of a truly representative national government that included the other main parties and did not ostracize leading Chamberlainites, many of whom had until very recently been thoroughly opposed to him serving as a Cabinet member, let alone prime minister. Chamberlain stayed on as leader of the Conservative Party, and his supporters remained powerful in both party and parliamentary affairs. Chamberlain and Halifax were wisely included in Churchill’s government. So, too, was Clement Attlee, leader of the Labour Party, and Churchill’s old friend Sir Archibald Sinclair, leader of the Liberals. The Labour ministers were the staunchest supporters of Churchill as prime minister for quite some time, reflecting the legacy of hostility and suspicion within Conservative ranks and Churchill’s lack of a parliamentary power base. Ernest Bevin, a leading trade unionist but not a member of Parliament, was made minister of labor, and Sir John Anderson was brought in to chair the Cabinet Home Affairs Committee.

  Churchill immediately established an iron grip on British grand strategy and took possession of the bridge connecting strategic direction and military action by making himself minister of defense, effectively relegating the three service ministers, who were not to be members of the War Cabinet. They were no longer responsible for strategic planning and the day-to-day conduct of operations; that responsibility now rested with the Chiefs of Staff Committee, which was harnessed to the prime minister. As his appointment of Bevin and several ministerial uses of Lord Beaverbrook showed, like Lloyd George in the First World War, Churchill was prepared to make unorthodox appointments in order to get the job done. Churchill’s arrival instilled a hitherto unknown sense of urgency throughout Whitehall: a new dynamo had been installed at the core of Britain’s political system and war machine, and it lit up like a Christmas tree. Military assistant secretary to the War Cabinet Sir Ian Jacob gave an excellent description of this phenomenon:

  The total war effort was an interconnected battery of powerful engines—the Departments of State, the Forces, the civilian bodies within the country, the Dominions and Colonies within the Commonwealth, and beyond that our allies. What was needed—and it is easier to see it now than it was then—was some single unifying human force to drive the whole contraption: a power at the center strong enough to move even the wheels at the periphery. And Churchill was by nature such a prime mover. . . . Previously we had seen this human dynamo threshing around unharnessed and uncentred, dislocating and disrupting, even destroying from time to time. Now, with the dynamo in the right place, it was a different story. . . . Once the prime minister had been more or less harnessed to the machinery, the effects were terrific. Things began to hum, and they hummed till the end of the war. It is impossible to put into words the change that we felt. His power seemed to be turned on all the time.32

  Churchill’s presence, spirit, and voice braced the nation at a moment when the threats of invasion and mass bombing raids were very, very real. Untainted by the mark of the “guilty men” that had blighted his predecessor, he was a figure of defiance, resolve, purpose, and hope. The fact that he had so often been branded an enthusiast for war now became a positive asset, not a stick with which to beat him. Here was someone who knew about war, indeed welcomed it. Clement Attlee believed that he was the only man who could have performed the required role—“I saw nobody around who could qualify except Winston. . . . [He] knew what war meant in terms of suffering of the soldier, high strategy, and how generals got on with their political bosses.”33 Churchill offered hope in eventual victory, despite the odds. “The tunnel may be long and dark, but at the end there is light.”34 The confidence and even overconfidence, the energy and exuberance that led some to question his reliability, seemed uniquely appropriate when harnessed to a national struggle for survival.

  By a paradoxical accident of history it was this very unwillingness to compromise with the forces of the modern world that enabled him to avoid the error of being reasonable with Hitler. What had once earned him the ugly reputation of being a reactionary and a warmonger was the same quality that enabled him to save civilization from one of the greatest dangers it has ever faced. . . . His great hold on his countrymen in the years of the Hitler war lay in the extraordinary fact that he seemed to reach back across the security of the Victorian era and to revive in us all the qualities of an older Britain.35

  Nevertheless, there remained people who opposed the lionization of Churchill, choosing instead to focus upon his failings. For months, many Conservative members of Parliament refused to be convinced, harping on about old crimes and Churchill’s “notorious” methods and character.

  Churchill sought to fashion a highly centralized “war machine” in which politicians were not bossed around by military leaders and in which the prime minister exercised effective ultimate control. There was to be no repeat of the situation that pertained under the Asquith administration during the First World War: “It took Armageddon to make me prime minister, but now I am there I am determined that power shall be in no other hands but mine. There will be no more Kitcheners, Fishers or Haigs.”36 As minister of defense, he had the right not only to summon the chiefs of staff, but also to instruct them. This meant that he was literally able to run the war and its military aspects, in conjunction with the
three most senior officers in the army, the navy, and the RAF. All of this enhanced his ability to direct across the field and meant that the British war machine was far less fractious than the American equivalent. Clement Attlee, writing on Churchill’s death, expressed the magnitude of Churchill’s achievement in this field: “I rate him supreme as Britain’s leader in war because he was able to solve the problem that democratic countries in total war find crucial and many find fatal: relations between the civil and military leaders. . . . Winston’s concrete contribution to the war effort, namely the setting up of the intra-governmental machine that dealt with the war, was most important.”37

  Though Churchill exercised overwhelming power at the center of Britain’s war machine, and despite his forcefulness and impetuosity, he was a democratic warlord and the servant of king and the Cabinet. He sought support from the War Cabinet and appeared often before Parliament. What is more, despite his position, he appointed service chiefs—Dill (followed by General Sir Alan Brooke), Portal, and Cunningham—who were able to pay him back in kind and hold their ground. In bossing them around, Churchill never pushed them to the point of resignation. No matter how much he harried the chiefs of staff, he never overruled them. “He knew the limits of his proper constitutional role,” Attlee wrote, “and of theirs.” Alan Brooke ventured the opinion that “if Hitler had acted in the same way the outcome of the war might have been different.”38 Though Churchill hounded the chiefs of staff and senior commanders in the field, he did so with purpose and could eventually be made to listen. He acted constitutionally and maintained his respect for the role of Parliament even in a time of extraordinary national crisis. Clementine also acted as a restraint on her husband, as when on June 27, 1940, she censured him for his “rough, sarcastic, and overbearing manner.”

  While the normal procedures of government, such as Cabinet meetings and committees, continued during the war, they were bound to be modified, and much was achieved by the prime minister outside of office hours and often in less conventional settings—over lunch, in the dead of night, and by summoning generals and proconsuls to his side during his regular overseas peregrinations. Churchill and his government showed initiative in their willingness to create ad hoc ministries and agencies when necessary, institutions such as the Ministries of Economic Warfare, Food, Fuel and Power, Supply, and Reconstruction. Another innovation was the system of Cabinet-ranking resident ministers sent out to coordinate civil-military affairs in the Far East, the Middle East, Northwest Africa, and West Africa. Churchill’s experiences of government in the First World War, especially his stewardship of the Ministry of Munitions, suited him well for the task of streamlining government to manage national war mobilization, and he presided over an enormous expansion of the state apparatus. He was always ready to sponsor and support new or peripheral military initiatives. He nurtured Bletchley Park and prized the unexpurgated daily intelligence reports it provided him, telling the head of the Secret Intelligence Service in September 1940 to send all original transcripts to him every day (“Where are my eggs?” he would ask, referring to the latest box of intercepts); he was enthused by the prospect of Special Operations Executive activity around the world; he supported the establishment of the commandos and heard, without derision, the schemes proposed by the Combined Operations Command he had created; and he fostered the careers of men such as Percy Hobart (the armored warfare specialist), Mountbatten, and Wingate.

  In gearing up the British government to total war, Churchill was aided by his willingness to delegate and allow colleagues to get on with the job, and to be influenced, even if after much debate, by colleagues and advisers. His maverick approach to politics aided both his and the nation’s cause. As the linchpin of the British war effort, it was better to have someone who conceived of himself as a statesman and strategist rather than as a party politician. As the war progressed, he grew increasingly detached from party politics and immune from criticism in the minds of the majority of the public (though ultimately this damaged his party’s electoral prospects). He managed to foster as well as personify national unity and purpose, and to identify himself with the fears and hopes of the nation.

  Churchill’s impact on the conduct of the war was immense, though not uniformly successful. But it should always be remembered that there was no chance whatsoever of conducting war on such a massive scale and over so many years without mistakes being made. Those who search gleefully for Churchill’s errors in order to attack him do little more than confirm the unremarkable fact that in war, mistakes are unavoidable and losses inevitable. Churchill’s command over generals and admirals was incredible, and it is difficult to see any other contemporary politician achieving such a degree of civilian control and strategic direction or having the confidence, knowledge, and ability to even try. He was prepared to chastise, harry, and sack senior commanders, at times revealing his ignorance of logistics in the process as well as his sometimes unhelpful passion for ceaseless action. Churchill was the generals’ bane, and Attlee recorded that “some of the generals out in the field thought that Winston was like Big Brother in Orwell’s book, looking down on them from the wall the whole time,”39 an impression strengthened by his access to secret intelligence. ULTRA intelligence was invaluable in his dealings with the chiefs of staff and field commanders, as it enabled him to keep abreast of the war in different theatres and to think across its many fronts, though it also encouraged his tendency to act as if he were a general himself. Even Hitler is said to have been impressed by the abandon with which Churchill sacked his generals. His judgment on these matters was sometimes excellent, sometimes lucky, and often influenced by the opinion of people he liked. It was sometimes wrong. Thus the taciturn Wavell was less to his taste than the urbane Alexander or the zealous and unorthodox Wingate (though Churchill’s interest in him was transient; Lord Moran, on board the Queen Mary on August 8, 1943. as Churchill sailed for Quebec, wrote that “Wingate is only a gifted eccentric. He is not another Lawrence. When this became plain to the PM he lost interest in him, and presently forgot all about his presence on the ship”).40 That having been said, when he wasn’t frustrating commanders on the ground with unreasonable suggestions or demanding information that was the business of a quartermaster sergeant rather than a prime minister, Churchill created the space in which commanders could operate and backed them up with all the support he could give. As General Ismay wrote to Auchinleck, he “is head and shoulders above anyone the British or any other nation could produce” as a war leader, “indispensable and irreplaceable.”41 Jan Smuts told Lord Moran that Churchill was “indispensable. He has ideas. If he goes, there is no one to take his place.”42 “Churchill’s return to power,” reflected Sir Ian Jacob, “in a war where knowledge and technique were as important as the gift of command was, I think, perhaps the most original aspect of his many-sided career.”43

  The Fall of France

  Notwithstanding Churchill’s ascent, the situation facing Britain in the summer of 1940 was dire. Many of the best-informed people in the land believed it was hopeless. Even if an invasion could be prevented, defeating Germany seemed impossible. Churchill became prime minister just as Germany’s westward onslaught was about to restart: having absorbed Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland between March 1938 and September 1939, through political bullying and invasion, Germany had stood like a greedy pig digesting what had thus far been devoured. Now Germany’s quest for “living space” continued, in a series of brilliant, lightning-quick campaigns, and between April and June 1940, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, France, and Norway were secured for the Reich. From the point of view of British survival, the loss of the French army—a vital pillar in British defense planning in any conflict with Germany or Italy—was an utter disaster. It totally altered the nature of the war that Britain had to fight. Britain’s grand strategy and military planning had been firmly founded upon the belief that any war would be fought with France as a fully functioning military ally, and its massive army was consider
ed vital given the smallness of Britain’s own land forces. All around the world, the alliance with France had been pivotal. Now the fall of France was to fundamentally weaken Britain’s strategic position, not only in Europe, but also in the Mediterranean and the Far East.

  Churchill, who realized that the war had begun for Britain the moment Hitler had set his heart on continental domination, contended with the pressing problems from abroad that Allied impotence and German power were creating. As the Low Countries fell and Paris was threatened, so began a spurt of frenzied shuttle diplomacy aimed at keeping France in the fight once the Maginot Line had been breached. Churchill never wavered in his determination to go on, persuading the Cabinet that this was the only course. A war that had seemed distant had become an eyeball-to-eyeball encounter and a war of national survival.