For over a year I’ve been working on the fifth, last and best edition of my Churchill book of quotations. The current edition (e-book and paperback) is Churchill by Himself / In His Own Words. It contains 4000 entries in 350,000 words, all with verified citations. (An appendix contains over 250 popular quotations Churchill supposedly said but never did. You can find these in an up to date list on this site. Click here.)

The new edition may be entitled Churchill: An Encyclopedia of His Greatest Words. At over 5000 entries and a half-million words, it is encyclopedic—but not comprehensive. This is only 2.5% of Churchill’s 20 million published words—books, articles, speeches, letters and papers. But the kernel of his wit, wisdom and timeless relevance is here.

I constantly encounter remarkable things he said that I utterly missed in earlier editions: the “best of the best.” I scoop these up seriatim. All are added to the new edition. Many are there purely because they dawned accidentally on what’s left of my consciousness. Today’s topic is just one of them.

“The most important telegram I ever sent”

On 5 July 1953, Churchill showed Field Marshal Montgomery and his doctor Lord Moran what he thought was his best telegram. It was sent to U.S. President Harry Truman on 12 May 1945. It may be read in full in The Churchill Documents, vol. 21 (Hillsdale College Press, 2021), 1389-90. This was also the first time Churchill used the phrase “Iron Curtain”—an expression that dates at least as far back as Martin Luther in 1521.

Churchill’s message was ominous with foreboding. “I am profoundly concerned about the European situation,” he wrote the President:

The newspapers are full of the great movements of the American Armies out of Europe. Our Armies also are under previous arrangements likely to undergo a marked reduction. The Canadian Army will certainly leave. The French are weak and difficult to deal with. Anyone can see that in a very short space of time our armed power on the Continent will have vanished except for moderate forces to hold down Germany.

Meanwhile what is to happen about Russia? I have always worked for friendship with Russia but, like you, I feel deep anxiety because of their misinterpretation of the Yalta decisions, their attitude towards Poland, their overwhelming influence in the Balkans excepting Greece, the difficulties they make about Vienna, the combination of Russian power and the territories under their control or occupied, coupled with the Communist technique in so many other countries, and above all their power to maintain very large Armies in the field for a long time. What will be the position in a year or two…when we may have a handful of divisions mostly French, and when Russia may choose to keep two or three hundred on active service?

“Surely it is vital now…”

An iron curtain is drawn down upon their front. We do not know what is going on behind…. All kinds of arrangements will have to be made by General Eisenhower to prevent another immense flight of the German population westward as this enormous Muscovite advance into the centre of Europe takes place. And then the curtain will descend again to a very large extent if not entirely….

Meanwhile the attention of our peoples will be occupied in inflicting severities upon Germany, which is ruined and prostrate, and it would be open to the Russians in a very short time to advance if they chose to the waters of the North Sea and the Atlantic.

Surely it is vital now to come to an understanding with Russia, or see where we are with her, before we weaken our Armies mortally or retire to the zones of occupation. This can only be done by a personal meeting. I should be most grateful for your opinion and advice. Of course we may take the view that Russia will behave impeccably and no doubt that offers the most convenient solution. To sum up, this issue of a settlement with Russia before our strength has gone seems to me to dwarf all others.

Just as an aside, it would seem that we have never really been able to take the view that Russia will behave impeccably….

Reactions in 1953

According to Moran, Churchill quoted this telegram from his final volume of war memoirs (not yet then published). One always has to take the Moran diaries with circumspection. Published in 1966, they differ in many details from what Moran recorded at the time. Lots of things were added after the fact. Nevertheless, according to Moran, Churchill insisted he was “pleading that we should not give up the part of Germany we occupied to the Russians until we had made a firm agreement with them. Truman replied that we had given our word. I argued that this did not hold under the new circumstances, because the Russians had broken their word over Vienna.” (The last Soviet troops left Austria in 1955.)

Montgomery read the telegram. “That was the first mention of the Iron Curtain?” he asked. Yes, Churchill said. “All these telegrams ought to be published,” replied Monty:

People think we are winning the cold war. It is not true. We are losing it—thirty love. The Big Three ought to have met earlier; Potsdam was too late. This all began at Casablanca. Unconditional surrender meant that Russian troops would invade Germany, and once that was decided we ought to have made certain we’d be first in Berlin, Vienna and Prague. It could have been done. If Alex’s command had not been weakened he would have got to Vienna.” [He was referring to General Alexander’s Italian campaign.]

Churchill replied (again according to Moran):

I warned the Americans before Potsdam not to withdraw from any of the part of Germany we occupied until we had a satisfactory understanding. They would not listen. And they will not listen now when I warn them about Germany. At Potsdam I wanted Prussia isolated and Germany divided horizontally and not vertically.

In retrospect

Churchill deemed this his best telegram. He reprised it in his war memoirs (Triumph and Tragedy, London: Cassell, 1954, 444). He reiterated it in a 1954 debate about West German rearmament (The Unwritten Alliance, London: Cassell, 1961, 206). Martin Gilbert included it in the official biography. Larry Arnn republished it in The Churchill Documents. And I missed it—until I fell over the reference to WSC’s best telegram in Lord Moran’s Churchill: The Struggle for Survival (London: Constable, 1966, 450). Well, it won’t miss my new edition.

Further reading

“Origins of Churchill Phrases: ‘Special Relationship’ and ‘Iron Curtain,'” 2019

“Iron Curtain 75 Years On: Churchill and the Fulton Flak,” 2021

Attlee was the first prime minister of a socialist government with an outright majority (1945-51). In 1940-45, he had served Churchill’s wartime coalition government, chiefly as deputy prime minister. Attlee presided over the cabinet whenever Churchill was abroad (which was a lot). In early 1945, it was he who gave the fateful order, later much regretted, for firebombing Dresden. In May 1945, on behalf of his party, Attlee told Churchill that Labour was withdrawing from the coalition. Churchill, who wanted it to last until the Japanese surrender and end of World War II, was deeply distressed. In the ensuing election of July 1945, Churchill’s Conservatives were routed, and Attlee took over as the head of British government.

Churchill regarded his wartime Labour associates with gratitude and admiration. In the dark days of 1940, when he thought it might come to some grim last stand against the onrushing Germans, he said he had thought to fight it out with a triumvirate of Lord Beaverbrook and another Labour colleague, Ernest Bevin.

Domestically, Attlee and Churchill agreed on nothing significant. But both had fought as soldiers in the deadliest war in history. And both had governed together in the worst war in history. The respect and collegiality they shared is a model for our time. Or any time.

The supposed Attlee gags—”an empty cab drew up and Mr. Attlee got out”; “He is a sheep in sheep’s clothing”—do not track to Churchill. He did say, when President Truman said that Attlee seemed a modest man, “he has much to be modest about.” But that was a private remark, which someone on Truman’s staff overheard and repeated. When confronted with the other Attlee barbs, Churchill would vehemently deny them. Sometimes he would say, “Mr. Attlee is a gallant and faithful servant of the Crown and I would never say such a thing about him”—or words to that effect.

No wonder, then, that Mr. Cohen and I appreciate what Attlee said. He was truly, in the words of the old song, one of the Giants of Old. It why so many, Churchill friends and opponents alike, found Attlee’s speech deeply moving.

The Rt. Hon. The Lord Attlee

My Lords, as an old opponent and a colleague, but always a friend, of Sir Winston Churchill, I should like to say a few words in addition to what has already been so eloquently said.

My mind goes back to many years ago. I recall Sir Winston as a rising hope of the Conservative Party at the end of the 19th century. I looked upon him and Lord Hugh Cecil as the two rising hopes of the Conservative Party. Then, with courage, he crossed the House—not easy for any man. You might say of Sir Winston that to whatever Party he belonged, he did not really change his ideas. He was always Winston.

The first time I saw him was at the siege of Sidney Street, when he took over command there, and I happened to be a local resident. I did not meet him again until he came into the House of Commons in 1924. The extraordinary thing, when one thinks of it, is that by that time he had done more than the average Member of Parliament, and more than the average minister, in the way of a Parliamentary career. We thought at that time that he was finished.

Not a bit of it. He started again another career, and then, after some years, it seemed again that he had faded. He became a lone wolf, outside any party; and yet, somehow or other, the time was coming which would be for him his supreme moment, and for the country its supreme moment. It seems as if everything led up to that time in 1940, when he became prime minister of this country at the time of its greatest peril.

* * *

Throughout all that period he might make opponents, he might make friends; but no one could ever disregard him. Here was a man of genius, a man of action, a man who could also speak and write superbly. I recall through all those years many occasions when his characteristics stood out most forcibly.

Not everybody always recognised how tender-hearted he was. I can recall him with the tears rolling down his cheeks, talking of the horrible things perpetrated by the Nazis in Germany. I can recall, too, during the war his emotion on seeing a simple little English home wrecked by a bomb. Yes, my Lords, sympathy—and more than that: he went back, and immediately devised the War Damage Act. How characteristic: Sympathy did not stop with emotion; it turned into action.

Then I recall the long days through the war—the long days and long nights—in which his spirit never failed; and how often he lightened our labours by that vivid humour, those wonderful remarks he would make which absolutely dissolved us all in laughter, however tired we were. I recall his eternal friendship for France and for America; and I recall, too, as the most reverend Primate has said already, that when once the enemy were beaten he had full sympathy for them. He showed that after the Boer War, and he showed it again after the First World War. He had sympathy, an incredibly wide sympathy, for ordinary people all over the world.

* * *

I think of him also as supremely conscious of history. His mind went back not only to his great ancestor Marlborough but through the years of English history. He saw himself and he saw our nation at that time playing a part not unworthy of our ancestors, not unworthy of the men who defeated the Armada, and not unworthy of the men who defeated Napoleon.

He saw himself there as an instrument. As an instrument for what? For freedom, for human life against tyranny. None of us can ever forget how, through all those long years, he now and again spoke exactly the phrase that crystallised the feelings of the nation.

My Lords, we have lost the greatest Englishman of our time—I think the greatest citizen of the world of our time. In the course of a long, long life, he has played many parts. We may all be proud to have lived with him and, above all, to have worked with him; and we shall all send to his widow and family our sympathy in their great loss.

Peck: “I beg your pardon?”

Gault: “Seriously, we’ve got a press message here which says quite clearly that it’s all over. If so, nobody has told the General and he thought you would be the most likely to know at your end.”

Peck: “Well, if it has ended, nobody has told the Prime Minister either.”

Gault: “Do you think we had better carry on?”

Peck: “Yes, I think so.” [John then went back to sleep, and the war went on.]

Joys of The Churchill Documents

It is a privilege to help edit and proof Hillsdale College‘s final document volumes in the Churchill official biography. We fall over so many gems. Here is one.

This document may be a “reject”—we can’t publish everything. It was culled by Sir Martin Gilbert for Document Volume 21. That volume will release in 2018, covering the period from January to July 1945 and the end of Churchill’s premiership. (After that, we have only two more volumes to go.)

The exchange quoted above is by former Churchill Private Secretary John Peck to Dr. Robert Price of Lexington, Massachusetts, 18 July 1981. They had met at a commemorative ceremony at Churchill’s Cabinet War Rooms in London. Price had sent Peck an article on the exchanges between Churchill and Truman, via Admiral Leahy, at the end of war in Europe (VE Day). Peck’s reply is an amusing insight, a thing we would never know otherwise. It shows us the richness of the Churchill Documents (Admiral William Leahy was Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman from 1942 to 1949.)

John Peck writes:

I happen to have been the Private Secretary concerned in the Leahy/Churchill exchanges on the secret telephone on May 7th, 1945…. My recollection of events, admittedly written many years later without the benefit of official records, runs as follows:

The instrument of total unconditional surrender was signed in the small hours of 7 May 1945 and all hostilities were to cease the following midnight. Evidently, as Leahy records, Churchill had sent a telegram to President Truman, the substance of which was that he wanted to declare VE Day on 8 May. There was evidence that the President felt the same way. However, from Leahy’s telephone conversation with Churchill, it was evident that the President felt obliged to go along with Stalin‘s wishes [to delay] perhaps until 9 May….

Churchill very reluctantly acquiesced, but much later he suddenly said to me, “Go and ring the President and tell him that I have got to announce the end of the war tomorrow (the 8th) as we originally intended, as the crowds know of the German surrender.” (Or words to that effect.)

I duly put through the call, thinking it highly improbable that I should speak to President Truman himself. Indeed, the call was naturally taken by Admiral Leahy. Although it is not verbatim, the following is a pretty accurate account of our brief dialogue:

Peck: “The Prime Minister wants to announce the end of the war tomorrow. The Russians want to go on until the 9th. On balance he is inclined to go ahead and end it on the 8th.”

Leahy: “We want to end it too.”

Peck: “Right, so we will both end it tomorrow.”

Leahy: “Yes, fine, okay.”

To the best of my knowledge no record of any of these conversations was kept at the London end.

Is the War Over?

John Peck’s letter continues:

I seem to have specialised in odd telephone calls around that time. You may be amused by the following extract from an autobiographical work I once wrote recording another telephone conversation, on an open telephone line , on the night of Sunday, 29 April 1945…. [After this] I ceased to be surprised at anything.

During the weekend of 27-30 April 1945 I was on duty at Chequers [the PM’s official country residence]. On the Sunday night we had finally got the PM off to bed at 3.00 am. I had just fallen into a deep sleep when my bedside telephone rang. An apologetic telephonist put through an even more apologetic Colonel Gault, the Military Assistant to General Eisenhower, speaking from his headquarters in Reims.

Gault: “John, is that you? Sorry to bother you at this hour, but the General told me to ask you if the war is over.”

Peck: “I beg your pardon?”

Gault: “Seriously, we’ve got a press message here which says quite clearly that it’s all over. If so, nobody has told the General and he thought you would be the most likely to know at your end.”

Peck: “Well if it has ended, nobody has told the Prime Minister either.”

Gault: “Do you think we had better carry on?”

Peck: “Yes, I think so. I’ll let you know if there are any developments here.”

Gault: “Many thanks. So I can tell the General to go on with the war?”

Peck: “Yes.”

Gault: “Goodnight. Sorry to bother you.”

Peck: “Not a bit. Goodnight.”

So it was that Private Secretary John Peck, on his own recognizance, bid World War II continue. Neither Churchill, nor Truman, nor Stalin were consulted, Peck writes: “I went back to sleep, and the war went on.”