Excerpt­ed from “Did Churchill’s Admi­ral­ty Try to Recruit Rudolf Diesel?” Writ­ten by Michael Richards (RML pen name) for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the orig­i­nal arti­cle with end­notes, click here. To sub­scribe to week­ly arti­cles from Hills­dale-Churchill, click here and scroll to bot­tom. Enter your email in the box “Stay in touch with us.” We nev­er spam you and your iden­ti­ty remains a rid­dle wrapped in a mys­tery inside an enigma.

Q: Was there a Churchill-Diesel relationship?

A Hills­dale col­league refers us to an excel­lent 2023 book, The Mys­te­ri­ous Case of Rudolf Diesel, by Dou­glas Brunt…

Diesel van­ished from the steamship Dres­den while cross­ing from Bel­gium to Eng­land on 29 Sep­tem­ber 1913. The­o­ries on the cause include acci­dent, sui­cide or mur­der. On the eve of the Great War, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment was anx­ious to main­tain its progress on Diesel propulsion.

Dou­glas Brunt spec­u­lates that Diesel was being wooed or recruit­ed as an asset of the British gov­ern­ment, in par­tic­u­lar by First Lord of the Admi­ral­ty Win­ston Churchill. He offers no doc­u­men­tary proof, but points to a great degree of cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence. Churchill’s incen­tive may have arisen from British prob­lems devel­op­ing Diesel engines for sub­marines. Obvi­ous­ly it would be a great advan­tage to have the inventor’s services.

A: Inconclusive

Dou­glas Brunt makes a good case for Diesel being mur­dered or thrown over­board by Ger­man agents, pre­sum­ably to keep his tal­ents from falling into British hands. We con­sult­ed our sources, includ­ing every word of Churchill’s in print or archived. There are forty hits for “Diesel.” A few tes­ti­fy to British anx­i­ety that the Ger­mans would steal a march with Diesel propul­sion of mil­i­tary ves­sels or vehicles.

We found only one ref­er­ence involv­ing Churchill, by the his­to­ri­an R.W. Thomp­son in 1963. It con­cerns Churchill’s ini­tial activ­i­ties as First Lord of Admi­ral­ty after his appoint­ment in Octo­ber 1911. From The Yan­kee Marl­bor­ough (Lon­don: George Allen and Unwin, 1963), 164:

Churchill, now with the aid of Lloyd George, Chan­cel­lor of the Exche­quer, laid down two keels to one in com­pe­ti­tion with the Ger­mans. It was not only a ques­tion of ships, but of types of ships, of propul­sion and fuel, of arma­ment, of the devel­op­ment of sub­marines and a naval air arm.

Rudolf Diesel had prob­a­bly rev­o­lu­tionised propul­sion, and with that coal, and even oil, might become obso­lete. The inter­nal com­bus­tion engine might rule the world, and the old “steam” empires were in a new race which might be dom­i­nat­ed by sci­ence and technology.

It was an unpleas­ant thought. A con­stant stream of new and unknown fac­tors, and prob­lems of obso­les­cence, were con­stant­ly ham­per­ing the plan­ners of weapons and strat­e­gy in a man­ner pre­vi­ous­ly unknown, and undreamt of.

“Why Coal Must Go”

Jacky Fish­er, the retired Admi­ral whom Churchill brought back as his First Sea Lord in 1914, was the dri­ving force behind the Roy­al Navy’s con­ver­sion from coal- to oil-fired war­ships. But Fish­er was also a pro­po­nent of inter­nal com­bus­tion engines (includ­ing Diesels) for small­er craft.

On 4 Octo­ber 1912, when Churchill was active­ly court­ing Fish­er to take charge of oil con­ver­sion project. the Admi­ral wrote a mem­o­ran­dum: “A New Navy: Why Coal Must Go, Why the Inter­nal Com­bus­tion Engine is Vital.” Sent to Churchill, it is a char­ac­ter­is­tic exam­ple of Fisher’s fer­vent prose

The enclosed, writ­ten for some of our fal­ter­ing col­leagues, may amuse you. Don’t send it to the Dai­ly Mail. It’s writ­ten cur­rente calamo as you will observe. On Nov. 26, 1910, every news­pa­per in Amer­i­ca report­ed at length my words that the nation which first adopt­ed Inter­nal Com­bus­tion Propul­sion would sweep the board com­mer­cial­ly as well as pugnaciously!….

The British Admi­ral­ty is going to see a Ger­man bat­tle-cruis­er going round the Earth with­out refu­elling in eigh­teen months from now, and all our won­der­ful marine engi­neers are sim­ply servile copy­ists of a damned skunk called Diesel! And we haven’t got a work­man or a met­al­lur­gist who is capa­ble to pro­duce any­thing approach­ing the for­eign article.

I am going to become a nat­u­ral­ized Jew and go to Pales­tine as I think the end of the world must be near and the last trump begins there and I want to get in first somewhere!”

Archival resources

The Churchill Archives Cen­tre at Cam­bridge holds sev­er­al Fish­er-Churchill let­ters on coal-oil con­ver­sion. None, how­ev­er, men­tion Rudolf Diesel—not sur­pris­ing if his help was being sought surreptitiously.

There is no doubt that British naval thinkers were con­cerned that Ger­many might be first with Diesel-pro­pelled sub­marines. The engine was also ide­al for Churchill’s idea of  “land cater­pil­lars” (tanks). But we found no evi­dence of Churchill’s inter­est in Rudolf Diesel himself.

It is known that Diesel board­ed the Dres­den that fatal Octo­ber in 1913 intend­ing to meet with the British about licens­ing his inven­tion. By then Churchill and Fish­er were well along on the con­ver­sion from coal to oil for cap­i­tal ships, and WSC had secured an oil sup­ply through the Anglo-Per­sian Oil Com­pa­ny. How far Diesel devel­op­ments had affect­ed designs for sub­marines or Churchill’s “land­ship” (the tank) bears fur­ther investigation.

Diesel links

Dou­glas Brunt inter­view about his book by Charles C.W. Cooke, 2023.

“‘OMG’: Churchillian Ori­gins of the Pop­u­lar Texter’s Phrase,” 2023.

“Dar­d­anelles Straits, 1915: Suc­cess Has a Thou­sand Fathers,” 2024.

Mar­cus Frost, “Churchill’s ‘Land­ship’: The Tank,” 2016.

Christo­pher H. Ster­ling and Richard M. Lang­worth, Review of Bar­ry Gough’s Churchill and Fish­er: Titans of the Admi­ral­ty, 2018.