When Crisis Called

Was Winston Churchill an enigmatic figure? He was not: He was certainly less secretive than his great adversary, Hitler. Churchill kept sputtering all kinds of ideas and plans, exasperating some of his naturally cautious military advisors such as Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke. Hitler had his famous, sometimes hourlong, monologues, but they were meant to influence his listeners, not to evoke their reflections; and, as he himself said more than once: “No one will know what I really think.” This is one reason--the other is Churchill’s addiction to the written word--why it is easier to understand and to write a good biography of Churchill than of Hitler, even though twice as many books have been written about the latter than about the former.

Had it not been for Hitler, Churchill would have been but a minor figure in the 20th century history of Britain. In 1940 Churchill became the savior of Britain, of Europe and of Western civilization. His reputation was, by and large, untarnished for a long time. Then, about 15 years ago, there was a--in some ways, expected--reaction. English historian John Charmley, spurred and assisted by Alan Clark, wrote that Churchill may or may not have been the savior of Britain in 1940 but that he was surely the destroyer of the British Empire, that he should not have gone on fighting Hitler in 1941, that he had sold out Poland to Stalin, et cetera. There have been mutterings of this sort by others, including William F. Buckley Jr., but they do not amount to much. Admiration for Churchill in 2001 remains as high as ever. This may have something to do with a hardly conscious but nonetheless existing realization that, in our days, the rise of a leader such as Churchill is not only improbable but perhaps even unimaginable.

Three substantial new books have been published dealing with Churchill, and they merit serious consideration. They add to a considerable body of works as well as to the multivolume official biography of Churchill--begun by his son Randolph and completed by Martin Gilbert--that has been published, except for the companion volumes which, too, are nearing their completion. (Gilbert, however, was a cautious chronicler rather than an imaginative historian. Of course that was his task; at any rate, those immense volumes are a main quarry from which all present and future biographers must scratch, pick and choose.)

Roy Jenkins’ “Churchill” is the most massive of the three. The author, an octogenarian, has had a distinguished public career in government and Parliament and has written valuable biographies of William Gladstone and Herbert Asquith. His conclusion is telling: “When I started writing this book I thought that Gladstone was, by a narrow margin, the greater man, certainly the more remarkable specimen of humanity. In the course of writing it I changed my mind. I now put Churchill, with all his idiosyncrasies, his indulgences, his occasional childishness, but also his genius, his tenacity and his persistent ability, right or wrong, successful or unsuccessful, to be larger than life, as the greatest human being ever to occupy 10, Downing Street.” Jenkins understands the duality of Churchill’s character. He also has a fine eye (and ear), finding all kinds of significant phrases, episodes and anecdotes which illuminate that character. There is much valuable material about Churchill’s youth and middle life. However, the book is perhaps too long. Jenkins writes well, but he gave way to the temptation to include too much of his own knowledge of parliamentary history, with too many quotes from Gladstone and Asquith, lengthy quotes from Lloyd George that have nothing to do with Churchill, too many comparisons of electoral arithmetic, many pages that deal less with Churchill than with the history of the Conservative Party. Still it is one of the most serious Churchill biographies extant.

Geoffrey Best’s “Churchill: A Study in Greatness” is a very different book. Best is a professor of history, living in Oxford, whose earlier books deal neither with 20th century history nor with Churchill; but, as he says, he was stirred and inspired by Churchill when a young boy and, in more than one way, this work has been the result of that inspiration. It is half the length of Jenkins’ biography but in some ways richer. As the title tells us, it is a study of character, rather than an encyclopedic biography, but there is little that is missing; and it is superbly written. Like Jenkins, Best read everything about and from Churchill. One of the stunning phrases in Churchill’s history of World War I is his description of the First Fleet leaving Portsmouth for Scapa Flow on July 28, 1914, through the English Channel: “Scores of gigantic castles of steel wending their way across the misty, shining sea, like giants bowed in anxious thought.” Best ends his book with Churchill’s funeral, on Jan. 30, 1965, “the great cranes along the south side of the stretch of the river between Tower Bridge and London Bridge, dipping their masts in tribute as [Churchill’s funeral launch] went by, ‘like giants bowed in anxious thought.”’ This is the mark of a great historian.

Unlike Best’s lyrical and profound tribute, the third book, a complete edition of Alanbrooke’s “War Diaries,” has caused some stir in Britain recently for offering a somewhat contrary portrait of Churchill. The diaries have a curious history. Alanbrooke was the chief of the Imperial General Staff and one of Churchill’s chief military advisors. He wrote his diaries for his wife, almost every day, during the entire war. “On no account must the contents of this book be published,” he directed. Later, he changed his mind. In 1956 and 1959 portions of the diaries were put together, with some additions of Alanbrooke’s autobiographical notes by Arthur Bryant who, once an admirer of Hitler’s Germany, has since been revealed by British historian Andrew Roberts to have been the worst kind of opportunist. Now we have the complete text of the diaries, including all of Alanbrooke’s postwar additions. This edition is complete and unexpurgated, with an excellent introduction by Alex Danchev.

“War Diaries” is of interest for one reason only: Alanbrooke’s numerous critical statements about Churchill. He was (as were many others) critical of Churchill from the beginning. A clue of this is extant from the first time when he (still in France) talked with Churchill by phone in June 1940: “I had never met him. I had never talked to him, but I had heard a good deal about him!” The exclamation point is telling. Other military leaders at the time, such as Henry Pownall, were suspicious and doubtful about Churchill, as were many members of the Conservative Party. In the end, they served Churchill loyally and admired him--at times. Jenkins has it right: “[Alanbrooke’s] exasperation with Churchill, although combined with underlying respect, sometimes conjoined with his natural asperity to make his comments on the Prime Minister unduly harsh.” Churchill himself, as his former secretary John Colville once wrote, “rated high [Alanbrooke’s] military flair, and found him a stimulating companion; but in after years he was hurt and distressed by the publication of the General’s diaries.” Except for his occasional remarks about Churchill, the Alanbrooke diaries are not very interesting. He was a dour Ulsterman, whose very temperament (and also his view of the world beyond the war) was utterly different from Churchill’s. His revelations of Churchill’s limitations reveal much about his own.

The study of history is the study of men and of periods and problems. Despite the mountains of materials and the shelves of books about Churchill, I can think of at least four problems that await more study and exposition by serious historians. One--in many ways already analyzed and described by Jenkins and Best and, at least indirectly, by Alanbrooke--is Churchill’s duality: the hedonist and the warrior. At least Jenkins and Best fully agree and give evidence that at critical times, Churchill’s sense of duty inalterably triumphed over his indulgences, physical and spiritual. The second problem, or necessary correction, involves Churchill’s aristocratic character. As Jenkins suggests, Churchill’s aristocratic provenance was important but never decisive. He, Jenkins writes, “was far too many faceted, idiosyncratic and unpredictable a character to allow himself to be imprisoned by the circumstances of his birth. His devotion to his career and his conviction that he was a man of destiny were far stronger than any class or tribal loyalty.” There is a wonderful quote in Best from a speech of Churchill’s in 1909 when he was a member of Parliament. “Now I come to the great argument of Lord Curzon ... ‘All civilization has been the work of aristocracies.’ Why, it would be much more true to say that the upkeep of the aristocracy has been the hard work of all civilizations.”

The third problem is that of Churchill and Europe. During his second premiership, he did nothing to promote a united Europe with British participation, despite his earlier exhortations for an eventually united Europe. But this is not the point. The point is that Churchill, in 1940 and 1941, would not even consider any possible alternative to fighting against Germany’s domination of Europe. This is found in many of his speeches but also in his confidential injunctions to his administration; for example, during the black day of May 28, 1940: “[I]n these dark days the Prime Minister would be grateful if all his colleagues ... would maintain a high morale in their circles; not minimizing the gravity of events, but showing confidence in our ability and inflexible resolve to continue the war until we have broken the will of the enemy to bring all Europe under his domination.” And a few months later, cited by Best: “Our qualities must burn and glow through the gloom of Europe until they become the veritable beacon of its salvation.” The savior of Europe indeed.

The last problem, which few historians have, as yet, adequately analyzed and described, is the disdain and contumely with which President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles treated Churchill in 1952-54, dismissing Churchill’s intention to seek some kind of contact and, perhaps, agreement with the new rulers of Russia after Stalin’s death. As Jenkins put it, their treatment of Churchill amounted to “insensitivity verging on brutality”; or, as Best put it, “the bellicosity and intransigence epitomized by John Foster Dulles.” So it was.