I’m here to talk about Winston Churchill. I know this audience knows who he was! Did you know a survey of British schoolchildren reveals that one in five think he was a fictional character? And better than half think Sherlock Holmes was a real person?

My book is about the non-fictional Churchill. It exposes all the tall tales, exaggerations, lies, myths, rumors and distortions about him over the years. Nowadays, the old adage that you don’t speak ill of the dead is obsolete. Nowadays, it seems important to deconstruct history. Especially old-fashioned concepts like heroes.

The tool is the Internet. Without straying from your keyboard, you can anonymously spout whatever nonsense that occurs to you. The late Umberto Eco, the Italian writer and critic, nicely described this phenomenon: “Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community….It’s the invasion of the idiots.”

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Churchill, who won a Nobel Prize, and did a few other things, cannot reply. He lies at Bladon in English earth, “which in his finest hour he held inviolate.” I think he’d love the controversy he stirs on media he never dreamed of. He once said the vision “of middle-aged gentlemen who are my political opponents being in a state of uproar and fury is really quite exhilarating to me.”

My book has thirty-seven chapters. I won’t cover them all! A favorite Churchill family story involves a Yale commencement speaker who told his audience, Y is for youth, A for achievement, L for loyalty, E for enterprise. He gave 20 minutes on Youth. He was ten minutes into Achievement when a voice came from the audience: “Thank God he didn’t go to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”

Our cruise around Britain relates to interesting Churchill myths. I’ll put this map up again in the Q&A. On it, I’ve labeled every place around the British Isles with a Churchill connection. If any suggest a question, please ask. For example, what does Churchill have to do with the Isle of Jura in the Hebrides?

“Churchill Opposed D-Day”

Thursday 6 June marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day. We were opposite Normandy just after leaving port. Big party going on over there. Churchill, of course, was vital to D-Day. Yet he was charged with opposing it—and the charges began during the war itself. He wrote in his memoirs:

In view of the many accounts which are extant and multiplying of my supposed aversion [to the invasion], it may be convenient if I make it clear that from the very beginning I provided a great deal of the impulse and authority for creating the immense apparatus and armada for the landing of armour on beaches, without which it is now universally recognised that all such major operations would have been impossible.

No “Second Front” in 1942

What Churchill feared was the invasion being thrown back with losses. He’d seen that in the Gallipoli landings in World War I. He wanted to be sure of success. On the eve of D-Day, he remained anxious. “Do you realise,” he asked his wife, “that by the time you wake up in the morning, “20,000 men may have been killed?” Fortunately not.

In reality, Churchill was demanding what he called “a lodgment on the continent” before the Russians or Americans were in the war. As early as June 1940, a few weeks after Dunkirk, he was asking about relanding on French beaches. In 1941, after Hitler invaded Russia and Japan attacked in the Pacific, clamor grew for a so-called Second Front. But in March 1942 the Americans said they couldn’t provide more 130,000 troops in the near future.

Disappointed but still anxious to prepare, Churchill proposed the “Mulberry Harbours,” which he first thought of in 1917: floating piers. “They must float up and down with the tide,” he directed. “Let me have the best solution worked out. Don’t argue the matter. The difficulties will argue for themselves.” The Mulberries proved indispensable. A fine model of Port Arromonches, used by British and Canadian forces, is in the library at Chartwell.

Nor in 1943…

With a French landing impossible in 1942, the Anglo-Americans opted for North Africa. Meanwhile, the Americans promised to get 27 divisions to England for the Second Front by Spring 1943. Actually, counting North Africa and the Atlantic, there were already three fronts. But U.S. troop levels fell short. “We had been preparing for 1.1 million men,” Churchill wrote President Roosevelt. FDR replied that he had no wish to give up on 1943, but the troops and landing craft were still insufficient.

So the Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943 and Italy proper in September. The invasion of France (now named Operation Overlord) was postponed until 1944. But the American chiefs were reluctant to divert materiel to the Italian campaign. Churchill’s Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General (later Field Marshal) Alan Brooke wrote: “It is becoming more and more evident that our operations in Italy are coming to a standstill.” Stalin, Churchill complained, was “obsessed by this bloody Second Front. Damn the fellow.” Italy, he declared, must be fought until victory.

When Rome fell two days before D-Day, seven crack divisions were immediately pulled out of Italy for Operation Dragoon, a supplemental invasion of southern France, in August. Churchill viewed this as a pointless sideshow. In Italy the Allies advanced northward, but it was slow going, and fighting continued until April 1945.

Though disappointed over Italy, Churchill continued to support Overlord. He missed nothing—even the fake Army under General Patton, which convinced the Germans the main invasion would come 200+ miles north of Normandy. Meeting regularly with Eisenhower, he covered every aspect of the landings. He even enlisted the London Fire Brigade, which provided pumps for the Mulberry Harbors.

D-Day myths and misinformation

Given all this, it was astonishing to read in 2016 the same old accusations. On 12-13 August 1943, Churchill was with Roosevelt at Hyde Park. There, according to Commander-in-Chief, by Nigel Hamilton, Roosevelt threatened to withhold U.S. atom bomb secrets from Britain unless Churchill supported invading France in 1944. According to Hamilton, Churchill was so outraged that he woke up in the night ‘unable to sleep and hardly able to breathe.’”

No evidence was offered for this other than Churchill’s quote, which had nothing to do with FDR. “It was so hot,” Churchill wrote, “that I got up one night because I was unable to sleep and hardly to breathe, and went outside to sit on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River.” Thus Hamilton’s thesis collapses on its face—another myth with no basis in reality.

He took what the war gave him

Churchill in war manifested two traits: eagnerness and flexibility. War is mostly chance, he said. “You have to run risks. There are no certainties n war. There is a precipice on either side of you—a precipice of caution and a precipice of over-daring.”

Disappointed by the slow build-up for Overlord, he saw opportunity in Italy—though he certainly did not, as some insist, propose invading Germany over the Alps. Franklin Roosevelt, with good reason, resisted Churchill’s more fanciful proposals farther east. “Winston has 100 new ideas a day,” FDR cracked, and three of them are good.” I think the balance was better than that—but FDR was not entirely wrong. Legitimate criticism has its place. But not fairy tales.

President Roosevelt decided against invading France in 1943 when he realized that the forces to assure success were insufficient. Churchill too realized that circumstances had changed, and when Mediterranean opportunities arose he pursued them. Both leaders wanted to win the war quickly. Churchill challenged the assumption that Normandy was the only way to wear down the enemy. But he worked as hard as anyone to ensure its success.

A: There are several candidates and variations. Taking them as a group, Churchill had from six to 100 ideas daily, of which between one and six were good. In order of the most likely. But it could be one of those all-purpose cracks applied to many people.

Roosevelt: fifty to 100 ideas, three or four good.

President Roosevelt is the most likely to have said this, since he’s quoted more than anyone else. Lord Moran, Churchill’s doctor, heard the line from Frances Perkins, Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor. In his alleged diaries, Moran was with WSC in Marrakesh in December 1947. “When I told him that Frances Perkins had quoted the President as saying that Winston had a hundred ideas a day and that four of them were good, he blew up: ‘It is impertinent of Roosevelt to say this. It comes badly from a man who hadn’t any ideas at all.'” That was an unusually rough dismissal of FDR—but possible. WSC was then writing his early war memoirs.

The journalist Colin Coote, longtime friend of Churchill and secretary of The Other Club, might have had this from Moran, but he published it before Moran did. Coote wrote the chapter, “Churchill the Journalist,” in Charles Eade’s excellent compilation, Churchill by His Contemporaries (1953). Churchill, Coote wrote, had “a prodigious memory and a mental activity like a dynamo. ‘He has,’ said the late President Roosevelt, ‘a hundred ideas a day, of which at least four are good.’ Moreover, he does not forget what he has read; and since he has now read a lot he is a walking reference library.”

In 1988 William Manchester repeated the FDR line but changed a number in The Last Lion, volume 2: “Franklin Roosevelt later said: ‘Winston has fifty ideas a day, and three or four are good.'”  He provides no footnote. Since he wasn’t always pinpoint accurate, he might have got the “fifty” wrong.

Alanbrooke: Ten ideas, one good.

Andrew Roberts in Hitler and Churchill offered a dual credit. Of Churchill he wrote: “He had an astonishingly fertile mind: ‘Winston had ten ideas every day,’ his Chief of the Imperial General Staff Lord Alanbrooke used to say of him, ‘only one of which was good, and he did not know which it was.'” But then Roberts adds that “Roosevelt made a very similar remark, saying that the Prime Minister had a hundred ideas a day of which six were good (a much larger number if an even lower percentage).” Fine historian that he is, Roberts expanded on the theme:

Nothing was too minute a detail to escape Churchill’s notice. He laid down the precise number of apes that should occupy the Rock of Gibraltar (twenty-four), tried to find out whether captured First World War trophy weapons could be reconditioned for use, worried about the animals in London Zoo during the bombing, and made sure that beer rations went to the fighting men at the front before those behind the lines. He even tried to discover whether wax might be used to protect the hearing of soldiers during bombardments.

Duke of Kent: Six ideas, zero to six good.

In Menzies and Churchill at War, the critic David Day writes that Prince George Duke of Kent told Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies that Churchill “has six ideas a day; they can’t all be right!” Day adds: “For such an ardent Royalist as Menzies, this apparent Royal displeasure with Churchill must have weighed heavily.” Menzies later became more critical of Churchill.

Lloyd George: Ten ideas, one good.

Another critic, Keith Sainsbury, wrote in Churchill and Roosevelt at War: “Roosevelt’s intelligence was not, perhaps, primarily a creative one, but to compensate for this he was extremely receptive to new ideas and would take them from as wide a range of sources as possible…. Churchill, however, was inordinately fertile in ideas, which flowed from him in a steady stream, but less sure in judgment. His early mentor, Lloyd George, had remarked of him, ‘There’s Winston, now. He has ten ideas a day, but he does not know which is the right one.'”

Verdict: FDR

It seems most likely that crack about Churchill was uttered by Roosevelt. Whether Lloyd George preceded him is a good question, and possible—LG had a pretty good wit. The others might have heard the FDR remark and kept it in readiness for their own version. Or, some gnomologist (see “Churchillian Drift” for the definition) may reveal that all these are variations on an ancient witticism dating much farther back!

Churchill and the Perspective of History 144 Years On

Continued from Part 1…. Do you want the good news or the bad news on Churchill today? The bad news is the high level of ignorance, as measured by that electronic Hyde Park Speaker’s Corner, the Internet.

Churchill’s name elicits 100 million Google hits, a colleague says, “Some are questions, many of which simply require the answer ‘No’—such as: ‘Was Churchill anti-Semitic?’ ‘Did Churchill hate Indians?’ ‘Was he bipolar?’ ‘Was he born in a ladies’ loo?’ ‘Did he have an affair with Lady Castlerosse?’ ‘Did Alexander Fleming save him from drowning?’” Of course, this was going on long before the worldwide web. Churchill wrote in 1938:

It is astonishing to me, looking back…how many different kinds of people—Suffragettes, Sinn Feiners, Communists, Egyptians, and the usual percentage of ordinary lunatics—have from time to time shown a very great want of appreciation of my public work. To be guarded and shadowed day and night…is only rendered tolerable…by the extraordinary tact, courtesy and skill of those entrusted with the duty of watching over public persons, who, at particular times, are thought to be worthy of powder and shot.

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He’s still worthy today—although the powder and shot of history is digital not literal. Let’s face it: the web is where people GO. So much of it warps reality. A recent survey revealed that most British schoolchildren think Churchill was a mythical figure and that Sherlock Holmes was a real person in history.

Professor John Charmley said: “After holding our heads in our hands and deciding that the world has indeed gone to the dogs, we might care to reflect that there may be an irony in this. Churchill did set out to make himself a mythical figure; so it may be only just….that he seems to have become one.”

Surviving the Internet

But here’s the good news. Churchill has defied this mother load of ignorance. His social media critics don’t go unanswered anymore. Sometimes the answers are from people we’ve never heard of, who take the trouble to learn the truth. Last month a former U.S. astronaut, who said something nice about him, cravenly apologized when dunned by Tweets claiming Churchill was a racist who starved the Bengalis in 1943. He was greeted with a cacophony of digital guffaws, referring to a dozen different websites that disprove such nonsense. As a writer I have to be glad for all this calumny. After all, it furnished me with enough material for a book, Winston Churchill: Myth and Reality, which Ron and I will be happy to sell you tonight. Alas it’s already out of date, because new charges are constantly invented.

My website recently listed all the false claims of 2018 along with links to the best rebuttals. The defenders range from Toronto’s Terry Reardon, a Mackenzie King historian, on who was really to blame for the disastrous 1942 Dieppe raid—to Zareer Masani, an Indian scholar, on what really caused the Bengal Famine. One of us posted a quotation you won’t find among the attacks: “The old idea that the Indian was in any way inferior to the white man must go….We must all be pals together. I want to see a great shining India, of which we can be as proud as we are of a great Canada.” (Churchill said that in the War Council in 1943.)

I think we should be encouraged and heartened by such defenses. We didn’t have nearly as many allies five or ten years ago. We owe thanks to diligent efforts of Churchillians like yourselves. Which brings me to the many societies like this one.

National societies…

…like the one I founded fifty years ago, are increasingly creaky—like me. People just don’t join clubs the way they used to. The exchange of information and opinion they offer is freely accessible with a gadget you hold in your hand. Yet local societies, like this one, are going strong. What past political figure can you think of, besides perhaps Lincoln, who engenders such enthusiasm? The more advanced Churchill societies, like this one and Vancouver’s, welcome speakers on current events—not necessarily about Churchill, but keeping Churchill firmly in mind. It’s a remarkable credit to a man who realized the value of encouraging informal discussion by all shades of political opinion when he founded his own club for that purpose 107 years ago. In Wisconsin they named theirs after it. They call it the Other Other Club.

In print media…

…his reputation stands. Critics arose soon after the war. In 1957 Lord Alanbrooke published his frustrated, late night harangues with Churchill—and then apologized to him for leaking those private diaries. Brooke’s fuming is often used to show Churchill’s feet of clay—and Lord knows he had them.

But lately we’ve seen another side of Brooke—as when the PM arrives in France after D-Day. “I knew that he longed to get into the most exposed position possible,” Brooke wrote. “I honestly believe that he would really have liked to be killed on the front at this moment of success. He [often said that] the way to die is to pass out fighting when your blood is up and you feel nothing.” I think that little aside, by a frequently cited critic, captures a key aspect of Churchill.

Books about him keep piling up. At Hillsdale we’ve reviewed 100 since 2014, twenty per year. Yes, a few dwell in muddy byways, half-baked history. Some are pretty grim. To paraphrase Sir Winston, in war you can only be killed once—but by writers, many times. And yet, 144 years on, his reputation survives.

Ten Great Books in the Space of a Year

Think of all the really good books we’ve had just this year. Lewis Lehrman’s Churchill and Lincoln, a scholarly comparison of two dominant statesmen. Antoine Capet’s exhaustive encyclopedia, Dictionnaire Churchill. David Lough’s My Darling Winston, the insightful letters between WSC and his mother. Brough Scott on his life with horses, Churchill at the Gallop. Jill Rose’s Nursing Churchill on his health in wartime. Larry Kryske’s Churchill without Blood Sweat and Tears applied his leadership principles to modern living. Leslie Hossack’s Charting Churchill is a beautiful photo documentary of Churchill’s London. Piers Brendon’s Churchill’s Bestiary is a scholarly account of his relations with and allusions to animals. Hillsdale College’s The Churchill Documents offer massive new primary source material from D-Day through 1945. All these books are reviewed, with ordering links, on Hillsdale’s Churchill website.

The crowning achievement is Andrew Roberts’ Churchill: Walking with Destiny. Full disclosure: I was one of Andrew’s readers and kibitzers. Together with the tenacious Paul Courtenay, we exchanged a thousand emails. We ran down facts and factoids, from the Royal Library to gossip columns, arguing out every conclusion. With Hillsdale’s help, we checked even the unpublished parts of Sir Martin Gilbert’s “wodges”: documents, clippings and diaries covering almost every day of Churchill’s life. We didn’t agree about everything, but the average isn’t too bad.

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This was the first biography I’d proofread since William Manchester’s The Last Lion, so I am perhaps qualified to compare. No one will ever reach the lyrical heights of “Horatius at the Gate,” as Manchester did. Andrew is however far more insightful, accurate, up to date, and critical where he needs to be. Walking with Destiny is I think the best single volume life of Churchill you can read.

Right now Andrew is on book tours. He’ll be here in Ottawa on May 27th. “Where are you now?” I just asked him. “New York en route to Chicago, Milwaukee and Madison,” he said—“just like Churchill in 1901. And guess what—I don’t even have to pay the crooked major.” He was referring to Major Pond, Churchill’s 1901 lecture agent, whom WSC called “a vulgar yankee impresario.”

Here’s what matters: these books have again brought Churchill to the forefront of history. Andrew writes: “There’s an explosion of love for him among ordinary people that would make you very happy. It’s like 1940 in terms of his popularity, whenever you get away from the smug elites. Big audiences. We sell out constantly. They ask good questions. No questions about firebombing Dresden, Iraqi gassings or the Bengal Famine. Sometimes one can feel down over the Twitter eruptions and statue smearings. But out in the real world, he’s as much loved as ever. Our life’s work has borne fruit.”

Scholarly Institutions…

…are a third part of his stature. The Hillsdale College Churchill Project has become the Center for Churchill Studies Ron and I used to dream about. It began in 2006, when Hillsdale President Larry Arnn declared he would finish the Official Biography. Oddly, this reminded me of what Churchill said when Japan declared war on the United States, the British Empire and the Dutch East Indies. “They have certainly embarked upon a very considerable undertaking.”

Considerable? It seemed impossible. The great history had stalled after the 1941 document volume. Undaunted, Dr. Arnn reprinted all twenty-four previous volumes, most of them out of print. Since then, helped by the Churchill Fellows, our dedicated student researchers, Hillsdale has published five more, taking the documents through 1945—seven volumes in all on World War II. In June, the 31st and final volume completes the job Randolph Churchill began fifty-six years ago. We celebrate with a cruise around Britain and a London banquet. But this is not the end, or even the beginning of the end….

The Churchill Project’s endowment finances an array of activity: seminars, online courses, conferences, tours and publications. We are building the largest Churchill archive in North America, housed in a new purpose-built Archives building. It includes the Martin Gilbert Papers—all of them, on 20th century and Jewish history as well as Churchill. My own library and papers are in trust for it. We are 2/3rds of the way to a $9 million endowment. Hillsdale maintains a Canadian link through its recognition by your CRA. So your support too is tax-deductible.

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My first surprise when I joined Hillsdale in 2014 was to find so many young people with a keen interest in the great man. They have varied opinions and questing minds. My second surprise was the events. There is no registration charge. They’re free, whether online, on campus, at the Kirby Center in Washington, or elsewhere. We even provide lunches and dinners. You just have to get there. The secret is owning most of the necessary real estate and pre-financing expenses.

With the Official Bio behind us, the Churchill Project will turn to events, online education, and new publications. The work is something great and lasting, to “keep the memory green and the record accurate,” as Lady Soames charged us to do. And all of it is financed and set in stone to continue long after we are gone. This is the only way, in the long run, to assure that Churchill’s statesmanship will be recognized and studied forever.

Concluded in Part 3…