Dunkirk Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Churchill at 150: A Certain Splendid Memory

Richard M. Langworth — Sat, 30 Nov 2024 19:34:13 +0000

A memory of maiden speeches

On 18 February 1900, young Winston Churchill rose for his maiden speech in the House of Commons. At its end, acknowledging his thanks to the House for having listened to him, he invoked the memory of his father:

I cannot sit down without saying how very grateful I am for the kindness and patience with which the House has heard me, and which have been extended to me, I well know, not on my own account, but because of a certain splendid memory which many Hon. Members still preserve.

In 1990 I made my own maiden speech at Westminster—not in the Chamber, if course, but nearby. Unlike Churchill’s, it was not followed by two or three thousand more. It was the only one. I was aware that such honors are fleeting. Once Churchill was shooting pheasants on the estate of his friend Bendor, the Duke of Westminster. “How many did you shoot?” the Duke asked him. “Two brace,” he replied. “Indeed,” said the Duke, “then you’ve shot enough, and I will have your carriage ordered for tomorrow morning.”

So before my carriage was summoned I managed to invoke a memory, or three So many superlatives have already been issued about Winston Churchill, it is scarcely necessary to create more. This occasion long ago sticks in my memory—not because of what I said, but what three people I quoted said. All of them knew him well. Here is the transcript….

Earl Alexander of Tunis

2 June 1990— Tonight marks the fiftieth anniversary of the final evacuations at Dunkirk. Fifty years ago at 3am tomorrow morning, General Sir Harold Alexander was the last soldier to leave, having patrolled the beaches to be sure there were none left behind.

Field Marshal Earl Alexander in 1946. (Archives Canada, public domain)

“Alex” as Churchill called him was one of the great generals of the war. Who can forget the famous exchange between the Prime Minister and Alexander as the latter prepared to take command in North Africa?

“Your prime & main duty,” Churchill wrote, “will be to take or destroy at the earliest opportunity the German-Italian Army commanded by Field Marshal Rommel, together with all its supplies and establishments in Egypt & Libya.

“2. You will discharge, or cause to be discharged, such other duties as pertain to your command without prejudice to the task described in paragraph 1.”

That order in Churchill’s own hand was given Alexander on 10 August 1942. And lodged in his memory was Alexander’s reply in 1943:

“Sir: The orders you gave me on August 10th, 1942 have been fulfilled. His Majesty’s enemies, together with their impedimenta, have been completely eliminated from Egypt, Cyrenaica, Libya and Tripolitania. I now await your further instructions.”

It was typical of Alex, a man of few words, who in a calm, orderly and unflashy way simply got the job done. Churchill of course replied in kind: “Well, obviously we shall have to think of something else.”

Churchill’s singleminded obsession with victory typified his order to Alexander. And that reminds me of a similar memory recounted by a former naval person.

Earl Mountbattten of Burma

In October 1941, after being nearly drowned in the sinking of his ship, HMS Kelly, Mountbatten was invited to Pearl Harbor. His task, he said, “was to address the American Pacific Fleet on what the war was like.” (This prompted laughter among his audience, at Edmonton, Canada. “Come on, come on!” he grinned. “That was before they came in.”)

Admiral of the Fleet The Earl Mountbatten. (Photo by Allan Warren, Creative Commons)

“While there,” he continued, “the Prime Minister recalled me. He said he wanted me for another job. I was horrified, took my time getting back, and was immediately summoned.

“‘Why have you taken so long to answer my summons?’ he demanded. ‘You realise what I want you for? You are to relieve Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, who is in charge of Combined Operations.’

“I said: ‘Sir, if this means a desk in Whitehall, I would sooner be back at sea.’

“He retorted: ‘Have you no sense of glory? What could you do at sea, except to be sunk in a larger and more expensive vessel?’

*

“Now just think of this for a moment. It was October 1941. Our backs were to the wall, all our allies knocked out, Russia apparently on the point of defeat, no sign of the United States coming in. He went on:

“‘You will devise the appliances, the appurtenances, and the techniques necessary to get back onto the continent. You will get the greatest brains among the three services as your planners. In Combined Operations you will plan as one service. The whole of the south coast of England is a bastion against invasion from the Germans. You will turn this bastion into a springboard for our invasion!

“‘Unless we can land on the continent and beat the Germans in battle, we shall never win the war. All our headquarters are thinking defensively, except yours. Yours will think only offensively. You will go ahead and plan the invasion of Germany and you will let me know as soon as may be convenient when you will be ready to invade.’”

Grace Hamblin

My final memory is by Grace Hamblin. From 1932, she was his secretary, and then Lady Churchill’s. Later she became the first administrator of Chartwell under the National Trust. Grace’s memory was of January 1965, and the graveside ceremony at Bladon for his family and closest friends:

Grace Hamblin, 1987. (Photo by Barbara Langworth)

“At the end I went down with the family, and to me that quiet, humble service in the country churchyard was much more moving than had been the tremendous pomp and glory of the state ceremony in London.

“And I pondered what had made this dynamic but gentle character so beloved and respected, and such a wonderful person to work for. I think one found first of all that there was courage. He had no fear of anything, moral or physical. There was sincerity, truth and integrity, for he couldn’t knowingly deceive a cabinet minister or a bricklayer or a secretary. There was forgiveness, warmth, affection, loyalty and, perhaps most important of all in the demanding life we all lived, there was humour, which he had in abundance.

“One of those many, many letters Lady Churchill received in 1965 came from America, and it has always been in my mind: ‘That he died is unimportant, for we must all pass away. That he lived is momentous to the destiny of all. He is not gone. He lives wherever men are free.’”

To the greatest man in the world

The story goes (confirmed by Lady Soames) that a small boy eluded all security and arrived in Churchill’s bedroom at Chartwell. There he found The Presence, in bed riffling the newspapers and smoking an outsize cigar.

“My dad says you’re the greatest man in the world,” the precocious nipper said. “Is it true?”

“Certainly,” returned Sir Winston. “Now buzz off.”

That too sticks in the memory. (Actually, Lady Soames said, he used an earthier phrase, but in deference to my surroundings I edited it.)

And so we toast the heroic memory of the Rt. Hon. Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, Knight of the Garter, Companion of Honour, Order of Merit, Fellow of the Royal Society. Never in the history of the Twentieth Century was so much owed, by so many, to one man.

Living in memory

“Grace Hamblin, Total Churchillian,” 2015.

“At Bladon: Echoes and Memories,” 2024.

Bradley Tolppanen, “Harold Alexander: Churchill’s Favorite General,” 2020.

“Darkest Hour,” the movie: an interview with The Australian

Richard M. Langworth — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 20:43:46 +0000

For The Australian …

Troy Bramston of The Australian newspaper had pertinent questions about the new movie Darkest Hour, starring Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill. With the thought that Troy’s queries might be of interest, I append the text of the interview.

The Australian : Of all the things Winston Churchill is purported to have said and done, the myths and misconceptions, which are the most prevalent and frustrating for scholars?

None of these appear in the film, but there are three things that rankle: 1) The lies—that he was anxious to use poison gas; that he firebombed Dresden in revenge for Coventry; that he exacerbated the Bengal famine, etc. 2) The personal nonsense—that he was an alcoholic, that he had an unhappy marriage, and so on. 3) The many one liners he never said: “poison in your coffee,” the phony “success” quotes. I’ve spent forty years researching and exploding those canards.

Politics of 1940

Australian : Darkest Hour shows Churchill under enormous political pressure and somewhat hesitant in the war cabinet about confronting Adolf Hitler. In truth, did he have any moments of self-doubt?

Doubt about the outcome, yes. Doubt in himself, never. It was not in his make-up. In the past his self-confidence had done him harm—as over his support for the Dardanelles naval action (1915) without plenary authority to direct it. In the main, he’d learned to avoid this by 1940. The two chief misconceptions in an otherwise very good film involve its suggestions of self-doubt: The scene where the King tells him to take his cue from the people, and the Underground scene where he does just that. Actually, he knew what the people wanted. He said of them later:

Their will was resolute and remorseless, and as it proved unconquerable. It fell to me to express it, and if I found the right words you must remember that I have always earned my living by my pen and by my tongue. It was the nation and the race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.

It is true about the tremendous political pressure. He got the job on 10 May 1940 only because nobody else wanted it. His predecessor, Neville Chamberlain, and the only other likely candidate, Lord Halifax, had powerful support. He needed to acknowledge their views, to go through the motion of considering their proposals. But in his soul, Churchill knew there was no compromising with Hitler. “We should become a slave state,” he said about any peace deal. Thus his game-changing speech to the wider cabinet on 28 May 1940, so ably dramatized by the film, and by John Lukacs’ Five Days in London: May 1940: “If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.”

What if?

Australian : Is it accurate to conclude that without Churchill rising to power at that moment, May 1940, with Nazi Germany on the warpath in Europe, that Britain could well have ended up suing for peace? Without Churchill—one man—would history have been very different?

Probably. No one can know the outcome if things had been otherwise. The odds against victory were high. The case for a peace deal was credible. But Churchill had two unique qualities: supreme confidence and the skill to communicate. With these he inspired the nation—and the Commonwealth. That included the efforts of Australia, which made powerful contributions under its wartime prime ministers, Menzies and Curtin.

Australian : How tenuous was Churchill’s position as PM in his early months? Were Lord Halifax and Neville Chamberlain really contemplating Churchill losing Tory support or facing a vote of no confidence in the Commons?

Remember it was a coalition government—he needed Labour and Liberal as well as Tory support. There was never a threat of a no confidence vote at that time. But on 10 May 1940, Churchill was politically vulnerable. There was huge residual good will for Chamberlain, who had tried to save the peace. By May 28th, encouraged by the ongoing evacuation at Dunkirk, Churchill knew the bulk of the army was safe. Britain had a chance. His speeches did the rest. An old RAF flyer, briefly his Scotland Yard bodyguard after the war, told me: “After one of those speeches, we wanted the Germans to come.”

Oldman’s portrayal

Australian : We are presented in the movie with a Churchill who puts a lot of effort into his speeches, writing and rewriting, to make them compelling. Do the documents and the testimony of those who worked with him show this?

Yes. He used to say, “One hour of prep for each minute of delivery.” That was an exaggeration—or was it? It didn’t take that long to compose his “Finest Hour” speech of 18 June 1940. But we should consider that he’d been mulling over those ideas—a valiant Britain resisting a continental tyrant—since writing the life of Marlborough—which took him ten years. Read Marlborough and you can see those speeches forming. It was his greatest work—far more than a biography. The scholar Leo Strauss called it “an inexhaustible mine of political wisdom and understanding.”

Australian : Some things are, obviously, invented, such as the scene in the London Underground. Churchill did not use the subterranean War Rooms often. And I don’t think he had a direct line to Franklin Roosevelt until later. But does any of this really matter in dramatizing this story?

Not a lot. True, he disliked the War Rooms, slept there only a handful of nights. (Among other things, the place stank—sanitation was rudimentary.) The Underground scene is unfortunate because it misrepresents his resolution. Hollywood likes to reduce great figures to the ordinary. They aren’t. That is not to say Churchill didn’t harbor serious doubts. His bodyguard, Inspector Thompson, recalled May 10th with moving emotion. When Thompson offered his congratulations, observing that the task was enormous…

Tears came into his eyes as he answered gravely: “God alone knows how great it is. I hope that it is not too late. I am very much afraid that it is. We can only do our best.” As he turned away he muttered something—to himself. Then he set his jaw and with a look of determination, mastering all emotion, he began to climb the stairs of the Admiralty. It was the greatest privilege of my life to have shared those few moments with him.

* * *

One can only imagine what he muttered to himself, but I’ll hazard a guess. It is from Marvell’s Horatian Ode to King Charles I—a phrase Churchill frequently repeated. He said it about the British people in 1940, about Roosevelt in 1941 and, improbably, about the abdicated King Edward VIII. Why wouldn’t he have said it about himself, in that hour? “He nothing common did or mean, Upon that memorable scene…”

Australian : Churchill is seen drinking and smoking to excess, being cranky and barking orders, working in bed etc. Did you find this portrayal close to the real Churchill?

Yes, and in some versions the producers thought it necessary to say smoking, which is naughty, is only there for artistic purposes. Oh dear!

My new book, Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality, addresses these canards. Inspector Thompson wrote: “He likes to smoke a cigar, but he realises that the public like to see him doing so even more. He, therefore, takes good care to ensure that a cigar is in his mouth on all special occasions!” His sipped or drank alcohol most all of the day, every day, but it was spaced out. Contrary to the film, he never drank whisky neat. He warned those who did that they would not enjoy a long life. His heaviest consumption was at mealtimes, when it was easier to absorb without effect. In his single-minded intensity, he did bark and become obstreperous—his wife successfully got him to back off. But his staff was devoted to him, for the most part. They understood the pressure he was under.

Setting a mark

Australian : Overall, how does Gary Oldman’s portrayal of Churchill compare to the many other small and large screen treatments of his life? Do you have a favourite?

For me, nobody will ever replace Robert Hardy in The Wilderness Years. But that was a sustained performance, an eight-part mini-series, pinpoint accurate and perfectly cast. Robert followed with many separate performances. However, most everyone agrees that Gary Oldman is masterful. It is a real treat after all the many recent movie misrepresentations. I’d rank Oldman very high. He is marvelous. And his make-up artist is a magician.

Is the Movie “Dunkirk” Dumbed Down?

Richard M. Langworth — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 15:56:25 +0000

Reviews of Christopher Nolan’s new film on Dunkirk, which take quite opposite points of view.

Dunkirk without Context

Dorothy Rabinowitz, in The Wall Street Journal, proclaims “the dumbing down of Dunkirk.” Mr. Nolan, she writes:

…considers Dunkirk “a universal story…about communal heroism.” Which explains why this is—despite its impressive cinematography, its moving portrait of suffering troops and their rescuers—a Dunkirk flattened out, disconnected from the spirit of its time, from any sense even of the particular mighty enemy with which England was at war.

When an event in history has become, in the mind of a writer, “universal” it’s a tip-off. the warning bell that we’re about to lose most of the important facts of that history, and that the story-telling will be a special kind—a sort that obscures all specifics that run counter to the noble vision of the universalist.

No wonder those German Stukas and Heinkels bombarding the British can barely be identified as such. Then there is Mr. Nolan’s avoidance of Churchill* lest audiences get bogged down in “politics”—a strange term for Churchill’s concerns during those dark days of May 1940. One so much less attractive, in its hint of the ignoble and the corrupt, than “communal” and “universal”—words throbbing with goodness. Nothing old-fashioned about them either, especially “universal”—a model of socio-babble for all occasions.

*Churchill’s post-Dunkirk speech is read by a soldier at the end. See my review.

Another view

Meanwhile, Manohla Dargis in The New York Times calls it a “brilliant” film. “Dunkirk,” she writes, “revisits a harrowing, true World War II mission in a story of struggle, survival and resistance.”

Dargis’ review, one friend says, should reduce my concern about Churchill being heard but not seen in the movies: “It seems clear about who made the big decisions. ‘Saving Private Ryan’ sidelined the politicians, and properly so.” Joshua Distel, a learned friend who saw “Dunkirk” agrees:

Churchill’s words were used to great effect. The WSJ review does not understand the film as it understands itself, so to speak. The film is about survival, in the air, in the water, and on land. The film does not cover conduct or strategy or the war. It is about the heroism of the individuals at Dunkirk. The script relates the moments where they did or did not do what they ought to have done. It is about fear and danger.

Surely this one can’t be more historically inaccurate than the three recent bio-pix which did feature Churchill. “The Crown,” “Viceroy’s House,” and “Churchill” speak for themselves.

Port without Stilton?

If Mr. Nolan wished simply to display the courage of troops and their rescuers, fine. But forgive us Churchillians for being a wee bit sensitive after the aforementioned bio-pix.

For us, Dunkirk without Churchill, or other valiant heroes who directed the operation, is like Port without Stilton, as Sir Winston once remarked. “Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” Consequently, the story is half-told, one-dimensional.

“Saving Private Ryan” did feature George Marshall (Harve Presnell) making a difficult choice. Should he save the last of four brothers in the midst of a desperate battle across France? This emphasizes the trauma of a command decision involving lives, which could not have been easy. “Private Ryan” is a moving piece of drama, one of the best films I’ve ever seen.

But “Saving Private Ryan” was the story of raw courage by a small unit of soldiers. It was not the epic rescue of entire armies. Many wise colleagues around Churchill thought the attempt foolhardy. Churchill ignored them. His words and speeches sparked a “spontaneous movement which swept the seafaring population of Britain.” As he wrote in his memoirs:

* * *

Everyone who had a boat of any kind, steam or sail, put out for Dunkirk. [They were aided] by the brilliant improvisation of volunteers on an amazing scale. The numbers arriving on the 29th were small, but they were the forerunners of nearly four hundred small craft which from the 31st were destined to play a vital part by ferrying from the beaches to the off-lying ships almost a hundred thousand men. In these days I missed the head of my Admiralty Map Room, Captain Pim, and one or two other familiar faces. They had got hold of a Dutch schuit which in four days brought off eight hundred soldiers. Altogether there came to the rescue of the Army under the ceaseless air bombardment of the enemy about eight hundred and sixty vessels, of which nearly seven hundred were British and the rest Allied.

And make no mistake. Had it gone wrong, Churchill would have been excoriated. By all the lesser pygmies who never had to face such decisions.

No Role for Churchill?

It’s not necessarily bad that the Prime Minister doesn’t appear in person, given the way he’s been portrayed elsewhere recently. The producers no doubt observed the eruptions caused by the aforementioned “bio-pix” that so bedizened the media. Whatever the reason, they missed a chance to add full depth to the story.

Carmine Gallo in Forbes writes in his own review that “words can inspire a nation.” Nor were Churchill’s words purely inspirational. He also told the truth. He dished out hard facts, requiring Britons to face reality. In fairness, the movie quotes some of his words:

Wars are not won by evacuations.… Our thankfulness at the escape of our army and so many men, whose loved ones have passed through an agonising week, must not blind us to the fact that what has happened in France and Belgium is a colossal military disaster…

He also had words of hope and encouragement:

I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. (4 June 1940, Churchill by Himself, 273).