Close-up accounts of Churchill’s private habits and character abound as he became one of the most observed men on earth. His foibles included a loathing of whistling and of paper clips, which he insisted be removed from incoming mail and documents before they came to him. He wore silk vests and slept with a black satin band over his eyes. After his second bath of the day, he might emerge in his famous siren suit, then after dinner change again, sometimes into a dressing gown, before settling down to bagatelle. His bodyguard Thompson described him as looking like a teddy bear. He would occasionally listen to music, his taste embracing popular tunes such as Noël Coward’s “Mad Dogs and Englishmen,” “Run Rabbit Run,” and “Home Sweet Home.” As the gramophone played, he might hum the tune and mark time with his hand, and he had been known, if sufficient floor space presented itself, as in the Great Hall at Chequers, to march in time to military music or waltz with his daughter Sarah to the “Blue Danube.” He sang “There Is a Happy Land Far Far Away,” “The Glory Song,” “A Wandering Minstrel I,” and “Keep Right On to the End of the Road.”
An Indecisive Year
After the Battle of France and the Battle of Britain, with their contrasting outcomes, the British war effort fell into a series of distinct patterns. Churchill presided over and inspired an unprecedented mobilization of the British home front; the RAF and Luftwaffe traded blows across Europe; the navy and the merchant marine fought a deadly battle with German submarines; and the army, licking its wounds and manning the defenses of Britain, began extensive operations in Africa following Italy’s entry into the conflict. In the air, Britain continued to endure German bomber raids against cities and towns. The RAF, meanwhile, built up its strategic bomber offensive against German cities and industrial sites. The prevailing wisdom still decreed that heavy bombing could shorten the war by knocking out important elements of the enemy’s war machine, from U-boat pens to munitions factories, and that its impact upon civilian morale would weaken the enemy’s resolve. Both contentions have been hotly debated ever since, as symbolized by the intense controversy surrounding Air Chief Marshal Arthur “Bomber” Harris. From the British point of view, the air campaign against Germany had another, more political value once Hitler had invaded Russia. From June 1941, unable to launch the “second front” offensive (the reinvasion of Nazi-occupied Western Europe) that Stalin so vociferously demanded, Bomber Command’s activities were presented by Churchill to the Russians as a significant military threat to the enemy’s homeland and contribution to winning the war. A strategy involving the destruction of German industrial cities and the “de-housing” of the population was hardly a grotesque response to the way the war was turning out; it had been at the heart of British air power doctrine and national strategy since the interwar years (while the valiant Coastal Command remained a Cinderella service compared with the richly endowed Bomber Command). The advice Churchill received from experts of various shades, including Professor Lindemann, was that bombers were better employed raining destruction upon Germany, not operating against shipping and coastal targets.
On land, with the Allies booted out of Europe, the Middle East became the focus of Britain’s war effort. The fall of France meant that the war in the west was now over, Britain momentarily safe following the Battle of Britain, though a renewal of the German offensive was entirely possible and there was no time for complacency. The question was, how could Britain act against Germany now? Where, on land, could it meet the enemy given Germany’s complete success in conquering Europe? Where could Britain strike a blow? The old British strategy died with the fall of France. Churchill now cast about for new means to take the fight to the enemy, seizing upon initiatives such as the Special Operations Executive and the creation of commando, paratroop, and combined-operations capabilities. While not decided upon by choice, it transpired that Africa became the one place where Britain was facing the German enemy on land, after Hitler’s frustrated decision to reinforce the Italians in the Western Desert with the dispatch of General Erwin Rommel and the Afrika Korps. This was after a period of dramatic British and imperial victories over Italian forces in East and North Africa in 1940–41 under General Sir Archibald Wavell, commander in chief Middle East. By February 1941, General Wavell’s troops, never exceeding 30,000 in the front line, had advanced five hundred miles in ten weeks, completely destroyed an Italian army, and captured 130,000 prisoners, for a cost of fewer than 2,000 killed and wounded. It said much about the contrasting fortunes of war that while for the British, the war in the Western Desert became the main thing, for Germany it was always a sideshow, an entanglement born of Italy’s ineptitude.
While unable to make any dramatic inroads into Nazi-dominated Europe, Churchill continued to exude confidence. Dealing robustly with those who criticized his government’s record, he painted an optimistic picture, telling the Commons in May 1941: “When I look back on the perils which have been overcome, upon the great mountain waves through which the gallant ship has driven, when I remember all that has gone wrong, and remember also all that has gone right, I feel sure we have no need to fear the tempest. Let it roar, and let it rage. We shall come through.”66 In the following month, he told a conference of Dominion high commissioners and Allied ministers that “our solid, stubborn strength has stood the awful test. We are masters of our own air, and now reach out in ever-growing retribution upon the enemy. The Royal Navy holds the sea.”67
Throughout 1941 and the first half of 1942, campaigns in the Mediterranean and North Africa went badly. Elsewhere in these theatres, Churchill took the guarantee of Greek independence seriously and hailed a coup in Yugoslavia that installed a government favorable to resisting the Nazis. It led him to conceive the idea of a large-scale Balkan front, though the Yugoslavian government hesitated about joining a military alliance. Events in both these countries moved quickly. General Wavell was obliged to weaken his North African front by moving troops for the defense of Greece (the alternative was to shamefacedly abandon an ally). Though often portrayed as an example of poor Churchillian decision making, Britain’s ill-fated Greek campaign was in fact an initiative proposed by commanders on the spot and sanctioned collectively by the War Cabinet. German invasion of both countries soon followed, Yugoslavia being defeated within two weeks. The invasion of Greece came in March 1941, and Churchill accepted the advice of Eden and Wavell and sent imperial troops, overrun in the following month and hastily evacuated, 43,000 of 55,000 deployed getting away. In May and June 1941, Crete, to which 26,000 of these men had been transferred, fell to German paratroops, and the army was again taken off by the hard-pressed vessels of the Royal Navy, 16,000 escaping to Alexandria. Churchill thought that Wavell could have done more to save the island.
In June 1941, Operation Battleaxe, a counteroffensive in the Western Desert promising a long-overdue British victory, got under way. Churchill had pressured Wavell into this offensive earlier than the general would have liked. As reports of the battle filtered back to Britain, Churchill was at a deserted Chartwell, shut up for the war, roaming the valley deep in thought. But the operation fared badly, and Wavell’s time was up. He had had the misfortune to command the world’s most active theatre of war with woefully inadequate resources once the Italian pretenders had been resoundingly defeated under his command. These several setbacks greatly deflated Churchill, but he continued to believe, and to convince those around him, that Britain could not be beaten. In Cairo, Auchinleck replaced Wavell, and Wavell replaced Auchinleck in Delhi as commander in chief India. Churchill hated inactivity. The Eastern Fleet, performing a valuable role in the face of Japanese naval superiority, was often labeled “idle.” And he never allowed Middle East Command to rest. “The Army is like a peacock—nearly all tail,” he said. “I intended North Africa to be a springboard, not a sofa.”68
The spring and summer of 1941 were trying times as the British war effort continued to founder. But British action in “peripheral” theatres (which are never “peripheral” to those who figh
t and die in them and usually have a strategic purpose) was impressive, largely stimulated by Churchill’s intuition, enthusiasm for action, and understanding of the global nature of Britain’s war effort. Likely as it was that Iraq might be next on Germany’s list following their series of victories in the Mediterranean, the British acted against the pro-German Iraqi regime in order to ensure that this region, containing vital oil resources, did not fall to the enemy. Vichy Syria was also conquered, and in August 1941, Anglo-Russian forces invaded Iran so as to forestall Nazi penetration, guard oil supplies, and open a new Anglo-American supply route to Russia via the Gulf and the Caspian Sea.
Meanwhile, in May 1941, a major naval triumph occurred when the world’s most powerful warship, the Bismarck, was destroyed after she had accounted for the Royal Navy’s iconic HMS Hood. Churchill had issued the order “Sink the Bismarck,” which spurred a period of frenetic naval action. Elsewhere at sea, the campaign to keep open the world’s sea lanes and protect British, Allied and neutral vessels from the predations of Axis raiders and U-boats continued. In particular, the Battle of the Atlantic raged around Britain’s key lifeline with North America, but the entire empire needed to be defended and held together, and this meant a constant, often bloody, vigil for the Royal Navy all over the world. From its overseas bases in places such as Sierra Leone, Cape Town, Durban, Mombasa, Aden, Colombo, and Bombay, British and imperial warships engaged the enemy and sought to protect the thousands of merchantmen flying the Red Duster, as well as the ensigns of other friendly powers, while seeking to interdict enemy shipping and blockade enemy coasts.
The Royal Navy enjoyed success against the impressive Italian fleet and U-boats sent by Hitler into the Mediterranean, but not without severe losses, epitomized by Italian frogman raids on Alexandria and the epic Malta convoy battles. Meanwhile, the Japanese menace to British possessions in Asia and the Far East loomed, though it was to an extent underplayed—because there was little chance to reinforce, given the state of affairs closer to home, and because of the hope that, in alliance with America, Japan could be deterred. This was a reasonable, if unpalatable, assessment; it was believed that Japan would not be rash enough to go to war against the combined might of the world’s two largest navies. Unfortunately, when it did, defending British possessions in Southeast Asia and the Far East had slipped further down the list of strategic priorities, and Churchill made the unpleasant, though strategically correct, decision to send military aid (including the most modern fighter aircraft) to Russia rather than to Malaya. Keeping Russia in the war as a fighting ally was more important than saving Singapore.
In the autumn of 1941, Churchill hatched numerous schemes for coastal landings in Northern Europe and the Mediterranean theatre. Churchill’s bamboozling tried the chiefs of staff severely. As General Sir Alan Brooke put it, “He cannot grasp the relationship of various theatres of war to each other.” Deciding on grand strategy and its military execution from a position of extraordinary power at the center of an emergency wartime British government, Churchill was comfortable playing the strategist. Some argued, however, that he was too hotheaded to be a great strategist because of his demand for action all the time. As Sir Ian Jacob put it, his “predilection for continuous feats of arms had to be curbed. It was a weakness in his strategic thinking. He always wanted to be doing something himself, and the forces to be doing something; hammering away, engaging the enemy at all points on all fronts.”69 Churchill’s attitude to global strategy was that resources should be centrally directed toward clearly understood priorities. Thus supplying Russia with arms was deemed more important than sending aid to Singapore, and Churchill vehemently opposed the Australian government’s desire to have its divisions returned from the Middle East as Japan threatened, arguing that American divisions would make up the shortfall—strategically logical, though trampling on Australian sensibilities. Churchill’s belief that Japan would not invade Australia was correct, and the fact that Churchill was insensitive to Australian feelings is not much of a criticism; “feelings” count for little in war, and Churchill was famously uninterested when it came to the feelings of others.
Throughout his life, Churchill “lived the imperial theatre” and was one of the few politicians who understood the implications of Britain’s unique imperial status and the Anglo-Saxon heritage. He was acutely aware of the imperial nature of Britain’s fight, and the empire was rarely far from his mind, as shown repeatedly in his speeches and broadcasts. He understood that British world power depended upon the empire, and that Britain—unique among the Great Powers of the world—was an imperial state. He was not, however, keen on consulting the Dominions, firmly believing that the center of the empire’s war effort was London and that London should therefore have the power to decide upon the movement of all imperial resources. This was evidenced by his relations with the Australian government and with the Canadian prime minister, who said that when hosting Churchill and Roosevelt for conferences in Quebec, he was treated rather like the general manager of the Hotel Frontenac. Churchill’s thinking, on Dominions or smaller allies alike, was revealed in a speech to the Commons in January 1942, in which he said: “To hear some people talk, however, one would think that the way to win the war is to make sure that every Power contributing armed forces and branches of these armed forces is represented on all the councils and organizations which have to be set up, and that everybody is fully consulted before anything is done. That is, in fact, the most sure way to lose a war.”70 While always mindful of Britain’s imperial status and responsibilities, Churchill’s concentration on Europe and the Middle East was a sound, war-winning strategy. As Richard Toye puts it: “[We] need not conclude from his repeated invocations of Empire that his vision for the war was an imperial one. Of course, imperial resources were highly welcome to him. . . . [But] Churchill’s method—and it was undoubtedly sound strategy—was not to rush all possible help to under-defended outposts, but rather to exploit the imperial periphery in order to defend the metropole.”71
New Allies: Russia and America
Evidence mounted in 1941 of an imminent German attack on Russia, though Stalin did little to heed Churchill’s intelligence-led warnings. When Operation Barbarossa was launched, Churchill was keen for Britain to do all it could to help its newfound ally, showing political acumen in jettisoning long-held prejudices against Russia and embracing a new ally as the tectonic plates of global power shifted imperceptibly. He broadcast his encouragement over the airwaves, setting the tone for British support of what would become a mighty but awkward ally—but most important, one capable of smashing the German army. In July 1941, an Anglo-Soviet agreement committed both powers to not making separate peace deals with Germany. In the following month, the first Arctic convoy departed from Scapa Flow, bearing two squadrons of Hurricanes to bolster Russia’s attempt to repel the German onslaught. Churchill shared intelligence from his treasured ULTRA source. An Anglo-American supply conference in London in September decided to allocate munitions to Russia that had been destined for Britain under the Lend-Lease agreement.
This policy of supporting Russia in any way possible demonstrated Churchill’s ability to make immensely difficult decisions at the highest strategic level and to change his tune when circumstances demanded. As General Sir Alan Brooke lamented, the policy of supporting Russia removed precious military resources from British battlefronts. (As Churchill signaled to Attlee from Ottawa in December 1941, “If Malay Peninsula has been starved for sake of Libya and Russia, no one is more responsible than I and I would do exactly the same again.”)72 What was more, the Russian ally was invariably ungrateful and ungracious. The policy also meant that from this moment, Britain was allied to a power whose political system was anathema and whose vision of the postwar world differed fundamentally from those of the Western allies. But the war against Germany had to be won, so any German enemy was automatically Britain’s friend. Churchill overcame his potent hostility to the Soviet regime, proclaiming that “
if Hitler invaded hell I would at least make a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.” “No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last twenty-five years. I will unsay no word that I have spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle of what is now unfolding. The past with its crimes, its follies, its tragedies flashes away.”73
While Churchill had deeply held concerns about Russian intentions and saw the descent of the Iron Curtain and the battle lines of the Cold War long before anyone else who mattered, he realized the need to build a relationship with Stalin in order to attempt to influence him. Becoming an ally of Russia brought foul dilemmas later in the war—standing as an onlooker, for example, while Russia clamped its authority upon Poland, the very country for whose freedom Britain had gone to war. But in terms of realpolitik, it is difficult to see what else Churchill could have done. Russia was an emerging superpower and a key ally; Poland a weak and relatively unimportant one that bordered Russia, not Britain. Russia, furthermore, had gained notable (if undeserved) prestige in the eyes of many British people, and Churchill’s support of Russia played well with the public. So at this moment of Soviet need, as German troops and tanks poured eastward, Churchill bravely committed resources for which British commanders around the world were crying out. This was in support of a country that, according to the best available intelligence, would collapse under the weight of German invasion within a couple of months (though, shrewdly, Churchill himself did not share this gloomy assessment).
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