WINSTON CHURCHILL

Also by Henry Pelling

*THE ORIGINS OF THE LABOUR PARTY

THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM

AMERICA AND THE BRITISH LEFT

*LABOUR AND POLITICS, rgoo-rgo6 (with Frank Bealey) THE BRITISH COMMUNIST PARTY

MODERN BRITAIN, 1885-1955 AMERICAN LABOUR

*A HISTORY OF BRITISH TRADE UNIONISM

*SOCIAL GEOGRAPHY OF BRITISH ELECTIONS, 1885-1910 *POPULAR POLITICS AND SOCIETY IN LATE VICTORIAN BRITAIN

BRITAIN AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR

*THE LABOUR GOVERNMENTS, 1945-51 *A SHORT HISTORY OF THE LABOUR PARTY

*BRITAIN AND THE MARSHALL PLAN

• Also published by Palgrave Macmillan

WINSTON CHURCHILL

HENRY PELLING Fellow of Stjohn's College, Cambridge

Second Edition

M MACMILLAN

©Henry Mathison Pelling I974, I989

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 2nd edition 1989 978-0-333-48696-2

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First edition I974 Second edition I989

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Pelling, Henry Winston ChurchilL-2nd ed. I. Great Britain. Churchill, Winston S. (Winston Spencer), I874-I965 I. Title 941.082'092'4 ISBN 978-1-349-10693-6 ISBN 978-1-349-10691-2 (eBook)DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-10691-2

Contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction to the Second Edition

Preface to the First Edition

Birth and Parentage

2 Schoolboy and Cadet

3 Subaltern and War Correspondent

4 Member of Parliament

5 Colonial Under-Secretary

6 President of the Board of Trade

7 Home Secretary

8 First Lord of the Admiralty

9 Early Married Life

10 Antwerp and the Dardanelles

5

7 15

17

30

42

68

94 110

11 Battalion Commander and Opposition Spokesman 210

12 Munitions 229

13 Secretary of State in the Post-war Coalition

14 Out of Parliament, 1922-4

15 Chancellor of the Exchequer

16 Private Life and Public Critics, 1918-29

17 Out ofOffice: Indian Affairs

18 The Road to War

3

249

279

298

326

345

366

19 Private Life: Historian and journalist, 1929-39 399 20 First Lord Again 419 21 The Finest Hour 440 22 The Expanding War 461

23 1942, The Critical Year 481

24 From Alamein to Overlord 498

25 From D-day to VE-day 522 26 The Caretaker Government and the Election, May

tojuly 1945 548

27 Leader of the Opposition 1945-9 563 28 On the Edge of Power 195o--1 581

29 Prime Minister Again, 1951-5 596

30 In Retirement, 1955-65 616

31 Conclusion 632 Appendix A: Offices of State Held by Churchill 645 Appendix B: Winston Churchill's Books 646 Appendix C: Select List of Unpublished Sources 647 Appendix D: Select Bibliography of Books on Churchill 649 Appendix E: General Bibliography 651

Notes 661

Index 71 I

4

Rlustrations

Between pages 350 and 351

1a Lord Randolph Churchill: a cartoon

1 b Winston at two years old, with his mother.

u With his mother and younger brother John, c.188g.

2b In full-dress uniform as a subaltern in the 4th Queen's Hussars.

3a In tropical kit at Bangalore, India, in 18g6.

3b A Boer proclamation offering a reward for Churchill's recapture, 18gg.

4a Churchill revisits the wreck of the armoured train, 1900.

4b As a young MP: a cartoon.

sa In east Mrica in 1908.

5b With Clementine not long after their marriage.

6a With his mother in 1911.

6b With Lloyd George on Budget Day 1910.

7a With Asquith on a Mediterranean cruise: cartoon of May 1913.

7b With the Kaiser at the German army manreuvres, 1913.

Sa Churchill arrives at Portsmouth by air, 1913.

8b Wearing a French army helmet, in the company of French officers, 1916.

5

ga The Cairo conference in 19U.

9b 'The Recruiting Parade': a cartoon of October 19.a4. wa Churchill and Lloyd George: a cartoon of March 19.a6.

wb Bricklaying at Chartwell, c.1930.

ua Painting in France, 1933·

ub With his son Randolph at the Wavertree by-election of 1935·

ua Churchill and Sir Thomas Inskip: a cartoon of July 1936. ub In Trinity House uniform, 1937. 13a As First Lord of the Admiralty, March 1940. 13b Churchill and the War Cabinet: a cartoon of October 1940. 14a With General Eisenhower and Dominion prime ministers,

May 1944. 14b With General de Gaulle at the tomb of the Unknown

Soldier in Paris, Armistice Day 1944· 15a Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta, February 1945· 15b Brendan Bracken, Beaverbrook and Churchill: a cartoon

of July 1945. 16a At a Conservative rally in Bedfordshire, May 1955· 16b On his last annual visit to Harrow, November 1961.

6

Introduction to the Second Edition

THIS single-volume biography of Winston Churchill went to press over fifteen years ago, and it is surprising that no other biography of comparable length has since been published. It is true that the would-be biographer is discouraged by the precautions that Churchill himself took to ensure that his personal papers would remain securely in family hands and would continue to produce an income thereby. The Churchill and Telegraph Trust that he established originally chose his son Randolph as biographer, with sole access to his father's papers; and Randolph planned a series of five volumes, the first of which was published in the year after his father's death. 1 Only two volumes had been published when Randolph himself died in 1968; and the Trustees appointed Martin Gilbert, a young Oxford graduate who had worked as his research assistant, to carry on the task. Mr Gilbert originally planned a series of six volumes, together with fourteen companion volumes of documents; and he extended the completion date as far forward as 1977.

Gilbert's series was not in fact completed until 1988. The total number of volumes had been increased to eight, the seventh of which, covering the years 1941-5, was published late in 1986, and the eighth, covering 1945-65, in the spring of 1988. The series incorporates a vast amount of detailed and scrupulous research, and this makes it an invaluable mine for future historians. For the ordinary reader, however, it is somewhat overwhelming. When it is not told in Churchill's own words - which had been the original

7

intent of Randolph's work - it draws heavily on the diaries and records of his 'Secret Circle', that is, his personal staff. And it follows Churchill's own record in largely ignoring issues of domestic politics and issues of subsequent controversy, such as whether Churchill's figures for the strength of the German Air Force in the 1930s were correct or not. One important item of Churchill's career, which Gilbert has been able to clear up for the benefit of the present work, was his decision, quickly withdrawn, to place Chartwell on the market in 1938. 2 It is now apparent that he had run up a debt of over £18,ooo to his stockbrokers by imprudent investment in American stocks; but that, through the intermediary assistance of Brendan Bracken, he was relieved of the burden by Sir Henry Strakosch, the South African gold magnate. 3 His financial reckless­ness was fortunately equalled by the munificence of his friends.

But the last fifteen years have seen numerous criticisms of aspects of Churchill's career. One of the most authoritative was that by the official naval historian, Captain Stephen Roskill, who in his Churchill and the Admirals (1977) took Churchill to task for the failure of the Dardanelles operation in three respects: for exaggerating 'the effects of naval gunfire against fixed or mobile shore batteries'; for not waiting until adequate military forces were available and hence 'sacrificing the inestimable advantage of initial surprise'; and for not consulting his professional advisers - the War Staff group - sufficiently.4 But Roskill's book is primarily concerned with Churchill's relations with the admirals in the Second World War, whether as First Lord or as Minister of Defence. He concludes that

his erroneous strategic concepts, such as his blindness to the threat from Japan and his share in the responsibility for the disasters in Greece and Crete in 1941, brought very serious consequences in their train .... His dedication to the bombing of Germany instead of first securing the safety of our sea communications ... must also be classed as a major strategic error; and his addiction to the capture of widely scattered islands led to the dissipation of valuable resources .... Last among his major mistakes and misjudgments may be placed his acceptance early in 1943 of the 'Unconditional Surrender' dogma ... and the less far-reaching but deeply distressing fiasco in the Aegean in the autumn of the same year.

Nevertheless Roskill recognises at the end:

Perhaps this was the price which had to be paid for his dynamic leadership and his political achievements; but if that is so the price was not negligible. 5

8

A further study of Churchill as a strategist and also as a historian is to be found in Dr Robin Prior's Churchill's World Crisis as History ( 1 983). Dr Prior, an Australian, appropriately pays close attention to the Dardanelles campaign, in which so many Australians were involved, but he argues that the operation, even if successful, would have led nowhere. As he says, Churchill's work

contains the assertion that a victory at the Dardanelles could have saved Russia and somehow enabled Britain and France to augment her depleted supplies of munitions from their own non-existent surplus. 6

Dr Prior sustains Churchill's view of the disproportionately heavy casualties suffered in the Somme offensive, and by implication, in other offensives on the Western Front; but he believes that Churchill exaggerated his role in the invention of the tank, pointing out that his original proposal was for armoured infantry carriers mounting machine guns. It was General Ernest Swinton of the Royal Engineers who envisaged a caterpillar-driven enclosed vehicle and secured its development.

Revisionists are also beginning to chip away at the interpretations embodied in Churchill's Second World War. Perhaps the most vulner­able is the first volume, The Gathering Storm, which describes Churchill's fight for rearmament in the 1930s. It is now apparent, however, as Dr R. J. Overy has demonstrated, that the Air Ministry in 1937 had much more accurate figures for German aircraft production than were available to Churchill, and that the latter made a considerable over-estimate. Although, as Dr Overy says, 'the spur to greater rearmament [in Britain] was a very necessary one under the circumstances', the exaggeration of German strength led to 'distortion in public discussion ... and to unnecessary fears'. 7

Perhaps they helped, in fact, to engender the 'Munich mentality' which Churchill himself so much deplored.

The account of the Norwegian campaign in this volume is also seriously flawed in that it does not bring out the extent to which Churchill himself was prepared to violate Scandinavian neutrality before Hitler decided to do so in what we can now see was a defensive move. Nor does it bring out the inadequacy of the control of operations in London by the Military Co-ordination Committee, of which Churchill became chairman, but which according to John Peck, one of Churchill's wartime secretaries, was 'known throughout Whitehall as the Crazy Gang'.8 It was only by the greatest good fortune that Churchill was able to escape the blame for the failure

9

of the Norwegian campaign, and indeed managed to use it as a ladder to the Premiership. The preparations made by the Western Allies for the invasion of both Norway and Sweden, under cover of providing assistance to the Finns in their winter resistance to Russia, became known to the Germans. This fact provided some awkward moments for British lawyers at the trial of war criminals at Nuremberg at the end of the war, as has been shown by Dr Patrick Salmon.9

So far as the second and third volumes, Their Finest Hour and The Grand Alliance, are concerned, Dr David Reynolds has argued cogently that 'the Churchill of myth (and of the war memoirs) is not always the Churchill of history'. He was disappointed by the degree of assistance afforded by the United States in I 940, and used the Embassy in Washington as a 'political dustbin', offering it first to Lloyd George, who was no supporter of a continued resistance, and then to Lord Halifax, his principal rival in the Conservative Party leadership. 10 For his part, Roosevelt was either unable or unwilling to take the United States beyond an attitude of benevolent neutrality. When Churchill proposed at his meeting with Roosevelt at Argentia, Newfoundland, in August 1941, that American battleships should move to Singapore, he met with a dusty answer. 11 After the meeting, Churchill reported to Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's aide, a 'wave of depression' in the British Cabinet, and commented plainti­vely, 'I should be glad if you could give me any sort ofhope'. 12 Even attacks on American warships involving heavy loss of life could not persuade Congress to take a more militant stance in the autumn of 1941. Britain was saved only by the folly of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Hitler's declaration of war on the United States next day.

It was entirely to Churchill's credit in writing the volumes of his Second World War that he omitted all reference to the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley - now transferred to Chelten­ham and known as Government Communications Headquarters or GCHQ. The organisation's wartime successes only began to become generally known as late as 1973. They began after the fall of France and the transfer to Britain of the Polish machine for decoding the German 'Enigma'. The School had recruited dons and in some cases undergraduates in Arts subjects and in Mathematics from Oxbridge and elsewhere, and was able by May 22nd 1940 to decrypt the German air code. Sir Harry Hinsley, the Master ofStjohn's College, Cambridge, who was one of the undergraduates drawn into the work, has lately been writing in several volumes the official history

IO

of British intelligence during the war, 13 but I summarise the story in the words of Dr Christopher Andrew, who is also a student of the subject:

A year later, in the spring of 1941, it [the School] mastered the naval Enigma. In the spring of 1942 it conquered the army enigma. In addition, it solved a whole series of hand ciphers, some of which provided 'cribs' which helped in the rapid solution of the daily change in the setting of the Enigma machines. 14

The organisation was responsible to Brigadier Stewart Menzies, who was head of the Secret Intelligence Service or SIS; but it was carefully monitored by Churchill himself, who on the one hand

ensured that it was supplied with all necessary manpower and material, but on the other hand strictly limited the number of people who were allowed to see the decrypts. The retention of the secret for a whole generation was itself a remarkable achievement. Dr Andrew concluded his account with the observation that

The blemishes in Churchill's sometimes overenthusiastic tactical handling of intelligence were far outweighed by his grasp of its strategic importance. No British statesman in modern times has more passionately believed in the value of secret intelligence. None has been more determined to put it to good use. 15

The knowledge that was available to him accounts in some part for Churchill's well-known tendency to bully his commanders in the field, as he generally knew so much more about the overall strategic picture at any time, and about the enemy's tactical intentions.

It is not surprising, though, that criticism should emerge about the strategic conduct of the war on the Allied side. John Grigg, in

his book 1943: The Victory that Never Was (1g8o), has argued that the British strategy for that year - really that of General Sir Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and not that of Churchill himself- should not have prevailed over the American proposal to strike during the year from Britain into Northern France and thus relieve the pressure on the Russian front. Grigg maintains

that it would have been better merely to contain the German and Italian forces in Tunisia, for whom in any case supply difficulties were becoming so acute that General von Arnim, their commander after Rommel had returned to Germany, said that they would have

had to capitulate by June 1st 1943 in any case without any Allied offensive. 16

I I

But once Churchill had accepted Brooke's strategy, which gave a higher profile to British commanders, he became passionately devoted to it. He out-argued the Americans, referring to Italy as the 'soft under-belly of the Axis'- a remark that Allied troops who became involved in the costly campaign in Italy found ironic - and visited Turkey, against the advice of the British Cabinet, in a fruitless attempt to persuade that country to join in the war. Meanwhile Admiral Ernest King, the American Naval Chief of Staff, who had control of the supply of landing craft, decided to devote the larger proportion of them to operations in the Pacific Ocean, despite the directive agreed by the Combined Chiefs of Staff that the war against Germany and Italy should have priority. Thus, in Grigg's view, the opportunity was lost of concluding the German war a year earlier, at least by some time in 1 944·

This issue, which is not merely a matter of hindsight but was seriously discussed at the Casablanca Conference, is not taken up in Mr Gilbert's seventh volume. The difference between the British and American Staffs that he concentrates upon is the latter's insistence on withdrawing seven divisions (three American and four French) from the Italian front for an assault upon the South of France in August 1944. The French naturally wished to assist in the liberation of their own country; and General Eisenhower wanted to be able to have Marseilles as a base. But Churchill thought that this was a strategic error, as otherwise the armies in Italy under General Alexander could have struck north-eastwards through the so-called 'Ljubljana gap' in the direction of Vienna. Actually, the British Joint Planning Staff did not imagine that Ljubljana could have been captured before January 1945 anyway, so that it is doubtful if it would have hastened the conclusion of the war. 17

Grigg also revived the criticism of the Allied bombing offensive on Germany that has surfaced several times since the war- that it was directed largely, not to specific military targets, but to 'dehousing' the working population in the erroneous belief that this would break German morale and cripple the Nazi war effort. The policy derived some of its justification from the fact that accurate bombing could not be conducted at night, and that bombers could not operate during the day without heavy loss. Later the Americans joined in the campaign, and after suffering heavy losses managed to undertake successful daylight bombing by protecting their aircraft with new long-range fighters. Even so, the post-war Strategic Bombing Survey found that throughout the war, until almost the end, German

12

military output steadily rose. It was only at the end of the war that concentration upon military targets such as oil and ball bearings began to pay dividends. It was as late as March 1945, that Churchill, after watching a film of the destruction of Dresden, suddenly expressed revulsion- although as Dresden was only about fitty miles ahead of the Russian front line, it could be regarded as a legitimate target. In his minute to Air Marshal Sir Charles Portal, the Chief of Air Staff, Churchill questioned 'the bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror'. But in the light of his years of supporting the policy, Portal insisted on his withdrawing the minute in its original form. >IB

The last volume of the Second World War is entitled Triumph and Tragedy. Churchill's theme here was to acclaim the victory of the Allied powers but to deplore the 'iron curtain' imposed upon Eastern Europe by the Russians. John Colville has recorded that Churchill was still writing this volume after Eisenhower had become President of the United States, and that he felt compelled to omit criticisms of the General uttered at the time for failing to push eastwards with his armies as far as Berlin. 19 Eisenhower had corresponded directly with Stalin so as to limit the range of occupation of German territory by each power; and he had decided to direct his armies to halt at the Elbe and to pursue the enemy southward into Bavaria. The boundaries of the occupation zones had already been drawn and agreed; and it is difficult to imagine what the Western Allies would have obtained from occupying Berlin first themselves except a certain hollow prestige.

Churchill's last administration of 1951-5 has been ably studied by Dr Anthony Seldon, whose work is based not on the Cabinet or departmental papers - which were not available when he was writing - but on the reminiscences of Churchill's colleagues and civil servants.20 Controversy has fastened on to whether Churchill was in fact competent to control the government or whether, as has been implied by his doctor, Lord Moran, he was already senile well before his resignation in April 1955.21 Dr Solden accepts that he was quite competent to run the government at least until the autumn of 1954, apart from the interlude in 1953 when he was incapacitated for some months by a stroke - from which, however, he made a remarkable recovery. His policy was a moderate one, by no means reversing the legislation of his predecessors and actively encouraging the idea that his administration was a revival of the wartime Coalition.

There was a degree of luck associated with the increasing prosperity of the period: the death of Stalin in 1953 led to the conclusion of the Korean War and a degree of detente which enabled the government to assume that the rearmament programme could be slowed down. But Churchill's efforts to secure a summit meeting with the Soviet leadership foundered on the opposition of Eisenhower and of Dulles, the US Secretary of State. Eisenhower had become convinced even before he took office as President in 1953 that Churchill 'no longer absorb[ed] new ideas' and was 'quite definitely showing the effects of the passing years'. 22

Churchill's principal weakness as a prime minister was his failure to secure the co-ordination of the work of the various departments.23

Although his government started with the appointment of several co­ordinating ministers, popularly known as 'Overlords', the experiment was soon abandoned, especially as the ministers were not particularly well chosen. Lord Alexander of Tunis, for instance, who was brought back to be Minister of Defence after a term as Governor-General of Canada, was very ill-suited for politics and could do little to improve the co-ordination of the armed services. The impatience ofChurchill's 'crown prince', Anthony Eden, at the Prime Minister's intervention in foreign policy and at the delays in his final decision to retire have been revealed very clearly in the recently published diary of his private secretary, Evelyn Shuckburgh. 24 But when Churchill did retire, the inheritance was a good one, and Eden was able promptly to call a general election and to win it on the Conservative record, thereby increasing the majority of his party in the Commons.

None of the new work on Churchill's career has substantially damaged his reputation, and I do not think that any further revelations will do so in the future. Mr David Irving's Churchill's War, the first volume of which was published in Australia late in 1987, argues that he was both a drunkard and a coward, but it is doubtful if this interpretation will prove convincing.25 The loyalty of his family, his closest friends and his 'Secret Circle' of aides and secretaries affords a tribute to his own loyalty to them, and they have continued in recent years to publish their testimony. 26 His qualities of humanity, wit, energy and courage receive ever-increas­ing recognition as the years go by since the centenary of his birth. That he was also a man of his own time, devoted in his later years to an already outdated concept of Empire and of the 'special relationship' of the English-speaking peoples, can also be acknowledged.

Preface to the First Edition

IN the late 196os, when I was preparing a book on Britain and the Second World War- published by Messrs Collins in 1970-it occurred to me that there was no serious critical study of the life of Winston Churchill which in any way covered the entirety of his career. The official biography, now being most ably written by Mr Martin Gilbert, promises to be of very considerable length: the last volume to be published as I write this preface covers the years 1914-16. But the Public Record Office has now made available the great bulk of the official papers of Churchill's years in office up to the end of his first Premiership in 1945; and there is an abundance of material in the form of the memoirs, diaries and biographies of his colleagues, in addition to the documents published by the official biographer as com­panion volumes. In view of the extent of the evidence, I have not endeavoured to seek direct assistance from members of the Churchill family, or from surviving colleagues, of whom there are of course many. To some extent this has enabled me to write with more freedom than would otherwise be the case; but it would be difficult for a person of ordinary temperament to write the biography of so versatile a statesman without developing sympathy for his attitudes and feelings.

Miss E. D. Box typed almost the entire work for me and gave me valuable suggestions for its stylistic improvement. Both Mr James Wright of Macmillan and his wife Gilli also helped me

to eliminate errors and to make the text crisper and clearer. Mr Peter Collenette helped me with the illustrations and my colleague Mr Mervyn King kindly assisted by reading the proofs. My obligations to archivists, to librarians and their staffs are too numerous to list in detail: they will be obvious to the reader.

St John's College, Cambridge February 1974

HENRY PELLING