Churchill (John Keegan)

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Churchill (John Keegan)

Phoenix paperback, 2003

That very good military historian, John Keegan, has written a short book on the life and career of Winston
Churchill which is to be thoroughly recommended to all. There has been a continuous stream of books on Churchill, Hitler and Stalin, and about World War II: a stream that shows no sign of slackening. And now that our pacifist media has discovered an hypnotic interest in war and group violence, every war and every incident of martial mayhem since the Fall is being exhumed, videoed and almost drooled upon. Strange that the new classes, while adamantly refusing to teach the young any valid or authentic history over a wide range of human ideas and endeavour, should have no taboos about military history — its
great butcheries and its cast of heroes and anti-heroes. Obviously it all sells . . . so everything is forgiven.

Keegan begins by recalling how, as a young man educated after the War, he shared the patronizing — even deprecating — view of Churchill, held by the cognoscenti of his generation. Why had there been all the fuss about this man who now appeared — more and more — old, sick and querulous, lacking all the charisma of which Keegan’s parents’ generation had spoken? Then, in 1957, in a New York apartment
lent him by a friend, he discovered among the record collection an anachronistic item: the wartime speeches of Winston Churchill. Keegan was riveted by the superb oratory, the seemingly total mastery
of the English language, the absolute candour and realism about the course of events, and how the struggle was going to be long and bitter, with defeats and setbacks on the way. But . . . Britain would survive and triumph.

The Nazis and Hitler, for all their great power, would be defeated and made to disappear from the face of the earth. And liberty would be restored to all suffering under the Nazi heel: a pugnacious, grim, hubristic appeal to the patriotism, courage and sheer faith of his countrymen. This appeal fell on willing ears; and the rest is history. If it was Britain’s finest hour (and doubtless it was), so was it Churchill’s. Keegan became an admirer of Churchill for life. As did so many of us, particularly those older than Keegan, who
listened to his speeches, as the terrible conflict took its course. And the course lasted five years.

Things were not as simple as we supposed, and Keegan points this out. There were still currents of compromise, if not surrender, in many high places. Thus, a little earlier Chamberlain had still hoped to cut a deal after the Germans invaded Poland: if Herr Hitler would withdraw his troops and territorial adjustments were made to Poland’s border, there would be no need for Britain to declare war. But Hitler’s armies pressed on. Again, after France’s defeat and surrender and the entrapment of the British Army which followed, pressures within Cabinet for a negotiated peace resurfaced. Churchill had to stall until he was sure that the B.E.F. was escaping.

He then took to the microphone and turned Dunkirk into a great propaganda victory. And so on. notes the argument that all terrorist movements will now know that the United States will go after any movements that it perceives as threats. But he also notes the opposite argument that “there is a risk that, especially if further mistakes are made, more states and people around the world may come to view the United States as a global bully, and that many more Muslims and Arabs will consider the occupation of Iraq a humiliation, and that this feeling may breed hatred – and further terrorism”. Dr. Blix clearly favoured observance of the Security Council’s requests in 2003 for more time for inspection. By disregarding these
requests: “Instead, a greater price was paid for this action: in the compromised legitimacy of the action, in the damaged credibility of the governments pursuing it, and in the diminished authority of the United Nations.” There is clear purpose of selfjustification in Dr. Blix’s account of events. He had been criticised, and he has an understandable wish to justify himself. In this he succeeds: he was evidently conscientious in the course lasted five years.

It is difficult to describe the elation, the thrill, as in 1940 we witnessed Churchill’s magnificent defiance and steely confidence — at last we had a leader, and one who was going to save Britain, and us, and defeat the all-conquering Nazi barbarians on the coast opposite. Of course, after each speech, doubts and fears would re-emerge — but at least we felt we had a man who would do no sleazy deals and who
would, if fate decided upon our defeat, go down with the ship. We had no such confidence concerning
any of the other pre-war British leaders (or our own Australian equivalents).

He then took to the microphone and turned Dunkirk into a great propaganda victory. And so on. Had Churchill not become Prime Minister at that fateful juncture, Britain and America would probably not have gone to war at all unless the Japanese had attacked her (as they were to do) at Pearl Harbour. Hitler
would still have had his Operation Barbarossa — but possibly with a different outcome.

Winston Churchill was born in 1874 and had already fought in the Boer War, been captured and escaped, gained an international reputation for his exploits via his journalism, and won a seat in Parliament — all by the time he was twenty-six years old. There is no doubt that he had had a lonely and unhappy childhood — his parents having more interesting things to do than talk to him: yet he idolized those distant, and quite flawed, parents. A dunce at boarding school, he was lucky to scramble into Sandhurst. But there, in the Army, he started to feel the confidence and show the energy which few people had realised he possessed. And, from indifferent performances in school English, Churchill was to develop into one of the masters of English prose and a writer of great, sweeping histories, which were not only immensely popular, but remarkable creations in their own right.

Churchill appears to have suffered from cyclical, deep depression — which he called “My Black Dog” — and discharge of his duties, and there are serious questions whether the attack on Iraq in 2003 was justified. Nonetheless, now that an attack has taken place, it is in the interest of all states to support the Coalition in its attempt to instal a democratic government in Iraq and to suppress terrorist and Ba’athist activities there. In these respects the United States has once again become a victim of its uncritical support for Israel. Israeli actions have de-stabilised the Middle East. The Israeli settlements in Palestinian lands and the killing by Israeli forces of Palestinians– including women and children – have been a continuous source of resentment and hatred, both against Israel, and also, not surprisingly, against the United States. The United States has provided Israel with arms and money and has made no real attempt to moderate Israelis: the United States government has submitted uncritically to the powerful New York Jewish lobby.

It is very damaging to the United States to allow itself to be manipulated in this way. R.M. Pearce credited with having helped create a navy completely ready for action and powerful enough to shut out the German blue water fleet for the duration. On the other hand, there was Gallipoli which effectively destroyed Churchill’s military reputation until the 1940s. Keegan gives due weight to critics of Churchill’s military blunders, and of the considerable difficulties collaborators experienced in working with him in both wars.

THE WARTIME BOMBING CAMPAIGN

One important issue — and it is becoming more and more important with each year — concerns the mass bombing of Germany from 1940 onwards. Rather than go for strategic targets — railheads, oil stores, air defence systems, aerodromes, key bridges which would slowly bring the German war machine to a halt and shorten the war by making an invasion feasible earlier — Churchill chose to proceed by bombing and burning the cities, towns and even the villages of Germany, with the aim, apparently, of destroying German morale, breaking their will to fight and driving down war production, so as to fatally weaken the German war machine and economy. None of this occurred. For example, German war production reached its peak in 1944 and while 600,000 German civilians died, so did 50,000 members of Bomber Command.

The Germans had to be flushed out by land. There are speculations to the effect he has been called a manic-depressive. But the great stabilising element in his life was his wife Clementine whom he adored. Churchill said he thought he lacked a strong sexual drive so was not tempted to get into the deep waters in which other politicians sometimes drowned. And, Keegan writes, Churchill really had no close friends,
only allies and acolytes (of some of whom Clementine greatly disapproved). Probably the intense loneliness of childhood must take some responsibility for his lifelong disinclination to bond (except to his wife). Churchill’s children were not to be so fortunate.

Despite his long career in public life— from 1900 onwards — we think mainly of his roles in the First World War and the Second; of his life-long aversion to Communism and his determination to stop it spreading and hopefully for it to die or be destroyed. When Nazism came along, he soon realised its evil character and made himself unpopular with his party concerning Germany and the great dangers it posed. In a sense, his adamantine refusal to make any concessions to Hitler when Prime Minister was
simply a continuation of his pre-war attitudes (although he had been an intemperate supporter of Edward VIII during the abdication crisis). Churchill’s handling of the communists from 1919 until he left the stage,
started from first principles. In World War One, Churchill can be credited with having helped create a
navy completely ready for action and powerful enough to shut out the German blue water fleet for the duration.

On the other hand, there was Gallipoli which effectively destroyed Churchill’s military reputation until the 1940s. Keegan gives due weight to critics of Churchill’s military blunders, and of the considerable difficulties collaborators experienced in working with him in both wars.

There are speculations to the effect that Churchill was “captured” by Bomber Harris and Lindemann and
that therefore he ignored the criticisms of this city bombing strategy made by his generals and the Americans. I think that Churchill personally liked the city bombing strategy, for psychological, historical and contemporary political reasons. Thus, going back to Edwardian times, he along with many other Englishmen, saw Prussianism and the hubristic attitudes of Germany as a potential threat to Europe and to world peace. He doubted whether German rulers, be they Junkers or Nazis, were very different from their fellow countrymen. The attitudes of Hitler’s people and their conduct could not be written off as aberrant deviations from mainstream German culture and national psychology. Hitler spoke for a great many Germans, as had the Kaiser.

So, Germans required re-education as did their leaders . . . destruction. In addition, post-1918, too many
Germans had grasped at the story that they had not really lost World War One, but that they had been betrayed by Jews, pacifists, profiteers, Socialists— the stab in the back. Germany’s borders had not been breached. The German Army had marched home in full formation with banners flying. The Armistice was a mistake, and the Versailles treaty a crime against Germany. Some of the traitors who signed were
punished later for their treason. The English and the Russians thought that this time Germany should not be able to deny defeat if every square metre was occupied by coalition invaders and there was no place to hide for Germans — so long as they continued to wage war. Bombing and burning Germany was one way of making this point inescapable.

Then there was the vexatious problem of a second front for which Russia was calling, saying that they were doing all the fighting — and dying — while their allies looked on. Committees demanding a second front — schnell, schnell — sprang up in Britain, the United States and colonies such as Australia. Manned by the usual suspects, as well as by many genuine people; and an early warning to us all of what to expect in the future. Showbiz oracles such as Charles Chaplin led the charge, drawing on their cutting edge political argument and putative military experience to abuse their governments. Some speakers would delicately suggest that the Anglo-Americans were dragging their feet so that the Soviet Union would be worn out. The truth was, had the allies crossed the Channel at the moment demanded by these committees, they may well have been defeated — again. And that would have been that.

Russia might have finished up with the whole of Europe instead of half. The Italian Campaign was a large
sideshow, so there remained the mass bombing campaign. Those on the receiving end of earlier Nazi city destructions from the air, such as Rotterdam, Coventry, Guernica — backed Churchill to the hilt. For them there was doubtless an element of revenge. On the other hand, when the allies began diverting aircraft from the city bombing offensive so as to attack military targets in Northern France and prepare for invasion, Harris and others like him protested. Germany was about to break, they said, and this diversion
would get them off the hook.

Interestingly — after the war — Albert Speer said that had the bombing campaign continued at it original intensity, Germany may well have collapsed. In which case, the bloody war in the West need not have been a long one, and the Russians would have been obliged to stop much earlier. Probably we will never know whether he was correct. Doubtless anyone wishing to hold to the theory of the Just War has had
great difficulties with this bombing campaign, as they did with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but then, none of the protagonists in this vast struggle appear to be advocates of this theory — although the Anglo-Saxons liked to think they had a Just Cause. Nazis and communists thought also that anything they did was just. The Fuhrer or the Central Committee decided that. So, the Anglo-Saxons had more moral qualms and, from time to time, regrets. But the consequences of that strategy are ever evident.

OSTWAR CONSEQUENCES OF THE BOMBING OF GERMANY

Just as the true nature, extent and implications of the Holocaust only started to take centre stage in the German mind in the late 1960s, so have Germans only recently turned to examining that dreadful bombing campaign: what life was like, and how they had felt, and was that mass destruction by the allies really necessary and what, at rock bottom, do they think about Englishmen and Americans as
a consequence? Right-wing or just conservative parties in Germany are working through all this, so it is not surprising that dire warnings are hastily being issued about the rise of Neo-Nazism, Racism, Anti-Semitism, by the status quo “don’t talk about it” Germany establishment. And massive attempts to make the Holocaust a pressing, contemporary issue are in train. But I do not think the unfinished business of Churchill and Harris’ destruction of Germany is going to go away easily.

SUMMATION

Born, and growing up in the most triumphant period of British imperialism; descendant of Marlborough and steeped in the literature and the histories of the British Empire (these the Whig versions), Churchill said he had not come to power to preside over the demise of the British Empire. But it happened — and it does not seem to have hurt as much as many people had feared. Churchill was a Whig not a Tory — therefore as happy to serve and work with Liberals as with Tories. And, as Keegan said, he had far more
liberal and humane social policies than many gave him credit for. Talking of the Tonypandy Riots and the
General Strike does not get the measure of the man. England’s Tories cordially detested Churchill so when the skies darkened and he first roared his defiance as P.M., the Labour and Liberal members cheered … but masses of Tory members remained silent, sulking. It was said that they never forgave him for moving between the Liberals and Conservatives.

I doubt this. I think they were frustrated appeasers. In any case, they got their comeuppance in the ’45
election, which Labour won by a totally unforeseen 200 seats. Even so, Conservative and Liberal votes just exceeded the Labour ones. Less than half of the four million servicemen voted, and while 60 per cent of these voted Labour, the long-running left myth of war service radicalising the British tommy, does not really add up. Masses of Tory voters stayed home. The turnout was only 73 per cent. Tory voters returned in force in 1950 when the participation rate was 80 per cent. Then, in 1951, when Churchill returned to power, 85 per cent of eligible Englishmen voted. The fact is, the English people admired, and many loved the old man. The could not stand his pre-war colleagues. I think they were right.

Max Teichmann

National Observer No. 65 - Winter 2005