Readers interested in further details may wish to watch or read three pertinent presentations, the first being the speech itself, the other two provided by the Hillsdale College Churchill Project:

• Sir Winston Churchill’s Fulton Speech, “The Sinews of Peace,” Westminster College, 5 March 1946 (audio; speech begins at minute 8:40)
• Sir Martin Gilbert, “The Enduring Importance of the ‘Iron Curtain’ Speech,” Hillsdale College, 22 October 2004.
• Jacob R. Weaver, “The Rhetoric of Cold War: Churchill’s 1946 Fulton Speech,” Hillsdale Churchill Project, July 2018.

Fulton aftermath

Andrew Roberts in the Express summarizes the fiery reactions to the speech Churchill entitled, “The Sinews of Peace”:

The American and British press lambasted [him], the Chicago Sun saying it contained a “poisonous doctrine” and, in Britain, The Times stated that the West “had much to learn” from Soviet communism, especially “in the development of economic and social planning.” Some 93 Labour MPs tabled a censure motion against Churchill in the House of Commons, saying the speech had been “calculated to do injury to good relations between Great Britain, the USA and the USSR.”

Initially condemned as a warmonger for telling the truth, Churchill was soon acknowledged as a prophet—sometimes by the same individuals and media who had excoriated him in 1946.

Churchill shrugged off his critics and never backed off. He knew he was right, and by 1948 it was generally proven. Over the next few years he often alluded to his Fulton forecast.

Shortly on the Hillsdale Churchill site, I reprise Churchill’s references to the speech against a timeline of events and endnotes proving every word of his warning. Herewith a brief summary.

Short memories

As Andrew Roberts notes, many people were offended that Churchill should question the motives of dear old “Uncle Joe,” the Soviet dictator. Hadn’t Stalin helped win the war? Some even insisted Russia had won it alone. Anthony Montague Browne, Sir Winston’s last private secretary, had a different memory:

It was only a few years previous that the Russians had concluded that hangman’s pact with Nazi Germany, closely followed by their cynical attack on Poland, and then on Finland, and the gobbling up of the Baltic States. Then there was the German U-boat base on Russian soil near Murmansk, that didn’t get much publicity…. The Soviet press gloated over every British defeat—and there were plenty to gloat over. Then at last the cannibals fell out—after Stalin had angrily rejected British warnings of the forthcoming German onslaught. It now seems astonishing that the Left can represent wartime Russia as nobly sustaining the fight to save us.

President Truman, who had accompanied Churchill to Fulton and smiled and nodded as he spoke, next suggested that Stalin might come and present his side of the story. (In the event, Uncle Joe did not take up this invitation.)

Standing firm

Churchill’s first reply to “Fulton flak” was jocular. Three days later he addressed the General Assembly of Virginia. “Do you not think you are running some risk in inviting me?…. I might easily, for instance, blurt out a lot of things, which people know in their hearts are true, but are a bit shy of saying in public, and this might cause a regular commotion and get you all into trouble.”

A week later in New York the cacophony had grown, and Churchill stuck to his guns:

I do not wish to withdraw or modify a single word. I was invited to give my counsel freely in this free country and I am sure that the hope which I expressed for the increasing association of our two countries will come to pass, not because of any speech which may be made, but because of the tides that flow in human affairs and in the course of the unfolding destiny of the world.

In October, speaking in Parliament, he was unrepentant. The Fulton speech, he said

had a mixed reception…and quite a number of Hon. Members of this House put their names to a Motion condemning me for having made it. [Today] it would attract no particular attention…. It was easier in Hitler’s day to feel and forecast the general movement of events. But now we have not to deal with Hitler and his crude Nazi gang. We are in the presence of something very much more difficult to measure.

The light dawns

In March 1947, the President proclaimed the Truman Doctrine. Reports of desperate conditions in Europe would lead to the Marshall Plan. Churchill viewed Truman’s actions with satisfaction. What he said at Fulton would today

be regarded as a stream of tepid platitudes…. I am very glad we are able to give our full support to the United States in the efforts she is making to preserve Freedom and Democracy in Europe, and to send food to its distressed and distracted countries…. Such a process should be treated on all occasions with the respect which is its due. No country in the world has ever done anything like it on such a scale before.

Fulton after all had been a plea for peace through accommodation, not a call to war. Churchill returned to that theme in January 1948:

It is idle to reason or argue with the communists. It is, however, possible to deal with them on a fair, realistic basis, and, in my experience, they will keep their bargains as long as it is in their interest to do so, which might, in this grave matter, be a long time, once things were settled.

Unfortunately, a month later Czech communists deposed President Edvard Beneš, with the same celerity as Hitler had in 1938. In June, Stalin solidified his grip on Hungary and began the blockade of Berlin. Truman, with Britain’s support, replied with the Berlin Airlift. Nine months later the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was founded.

Vindication

Speaking at M.I.T.’s Mid-Century Convocation in March 1949, Churchill once more alluded to his Fulton speech. The criticism he’d had after Fulton was no more. Now he was vindicated, and felt gratified:

Today there is a very different climate of opinion. I am in cordial accord with much that is being done. We have, as dominating facts, the famous Marshall Aid, the new unity in Western Europe and now the Atlantic Pact. No one could, however, have brought about these immense changes in the feeling of the United States, Great Britain and Europe but for the astounding policy of the Russian Soviet Government….Why have they done it? It is because they fear the friendship of the West more than its hostility. They cannot afford to allow free and friendly intercourse to grow up between the vast areas they control and the civilized nations of the West.

“An approaching scientific ability to control thoughts…”

M.I.T. was the end of a chapter, but the tale goes on, Roberts concluded: “Totalitarianism is on the rise in our battered world today, and democracy needs another champion with the prescience and eloquence of Churchill to warn us of the consequences. Churchill’s statement that ‘freedom of speech and thought should reign’ is anathema to the totalitarians who now rule over half of the global population, and needs to be restated.” Indeed his message is stunningly relevant:

One of the questions which you are debating here is defined as “the failure of social and political institutions to keep pace with material and technical change.” Scientists should never underrate the deep-seated qualities of human nature and how, repressed in one direction, they will certainly break out in another. The genus homo—if I may display my Latin—still remains as Pope described him in An Essay on Man 200 years ago:

Placed on this Isthmus of a middle State,
A being darkly wise and rudely great…
Created half to rise and half to fall;
Great Lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled;
The glory, jest and riddle of the world.

Laws just or unjust may govern men’s actions. Tyrannies may restrain or regulate their words. The machinery of propaganda may pack their minds with falsehood and deny them truth for many generations of time. But the soul of man thus held in trance or frozen in a long night can be awakened by a spark coming from God knows where and in a moment the whole structure of lies and oppression is on trial for its life.

Again today “we are in the presence of something very much more difficult to measure.”  Are today’s generations up to the challenge?

Four such episodes came to mind last week which exemplify this vanished era. Questions arrived from colleagues about Churchill: his encounters with Canadian soldiers and his North Carolina connections. Then The New York Times published a retrospective on Woodrow Wilson, during the 1918 Paris Peace Conference. This was remindful of a fourth episode, involving Harry Truman. The sadness is that none of these could have happened in, the last fifty years. Maybe longer.

Walk in Paris: Woodrow Wilson, 1918

The Municipal Council of Paris gave President Wilson the keys to the City, but they neglected to present him with what is far more essential, a good map book, with which to find his way about the city’s intricate streets. And so he enjoyed the privileges of his new citizenship by getting lost.

Anxious friends of the President need not be worried, however, for he was found by two small boys who pointed out the way for him. The President and Mrs. Wilson started out unaccompanied one morning for a walk. From the time they left the Hôtel Murat until they returned, they were recognized by no one but the two young Paris urchins.

They were enjoying their incognito walk so much that they neglected to take note of the wanderings of Paris streets. Not sure where they were, they stopped to ask the French boys the right direction. The response was very prompt and courteous. Then, to the surprise of the President and Mrs. Wilson, who did not think they were recognized, two small hands came out under the capes the boys were wearing: “And now, Mr. President, won’t you shake hands with us?”

The hand-shaking was cordial on both sides, and Pierre and Jean went away with something to tell their grandchildren.

—Reported by the International Herald Tribune, reprinted 2018 

Walk in Kent: Winston Churchill, 1941

Kenneth B. Smith, past president of Canada’s Hastings and Prince Edward Regimental Officers Association, told a humorous anecdote: Robert Morrison of B Company was on roving duty one evening at Chartwell in the summer of 1941 when he saw Churchill, who had gotten away from London for one of those rare weekends at his country home. Morrison saluted.

“Why didn’t you challenge me, Canada?” Churchill growled.

“I know who you are, sir,” replied Morrison.

“Oh, how do you know me?,” asked the Prime Minister.

“By your cigar, bald head, double chin, short neck and fat belly, sir,” answered Morrison.

“But don’t forget, the Germans have bald men with short necks and fat bellies who smoke cigars,” said Churchill.

“You’re right sir,” answered Morrison, “but they would do up the bottom button on the vest.”

Morrison’s logic “delighted the Prime Minister, who went chuckling into the twilight.”

Morrison’s last line was explained by Col. Strome Galloway of Ottawa: “The young Canadian soldier was very perceptive to realize that Englishmen, but not Germans, leave undone the bottom button of their waistcoats (not ‘vests,’ which in England means undershirts.) When King Edward VII became so paunchy he could not do up the bottom button of his waistcoat, and had to appear in public before his tailor could make the necessary adjustments, his entourage immediately undid theirs so as to follow the new Royal fashion.”

—Reported by the Globe and Mail (1984)

Walk in Casablanca: Winston Churchill, 1943

At Casablanca, where they shared several dinners, the Prime Minister kept General George Patton up very late telling stories before Churchill returned alone to his quarters near the Anfa Hotel. He had insisted nobody accompany him as it was only 3am and he wished to walk.

Near the hotel he was halted by an American sentry, a farm boy from North Carolina, who challenged the Prime Minister and then called: “Corporal of the Guard! I have a fellow down here who claims he’s the Prime Minister of Great Britain. I think he is a goddam liar.”

The Corporal of the Guard arrived and recognized Mr. Churchill. The incident pleased the Prime Minister greatly, for he told it afterwards on many occasions.

—Harry H. Semmes, Portrait of Patton (1955).

Walk in Washington: Harry Truman, ca. 1950

As President, Truman felt more than ever a need to see and make contact with what he called the everyday American. And always he felt better for it.

On an evening in Washington, on one of his walks, he had decided to take a look at the mechanism that raised and lowered the middle span of the Memorial Bridge over the Potomac. Descending some iron steps, he came upon the bridge tender, eating his evening supper out of a tin bucket.

Showing no surprise that the President of the United States had climbed down the catwalk and suddenly appeared before him, the man said, “You know, Mr. President, I was just thinking about you.” It was a greeting Truman adored and never forgot.

—David McCullouch, Truman (2003).

One wonders….

….most of all about what must have been the incandescent conversation between Churchill and Patton. Did Patton explain that he had been present, in another life, at the Battle of Carthage in 149 B.C.? What did Patton think of Churchill’s part in the Battle of Omdurman, 1,749 years later? We are only reminded once again, of how much of the Churchill canon was never recorded.

See also

“Churchill’s Common Touch,” in five parts, beginning here.

A great joy of reading The Churchill Documents is their trove of historical sidelights. Volume 22 (August 1945—September 1951, due late 2018) covers the early Cold War: the “Iron Curtain,” the Marshall Plan, Berlin Airlift and Korean War. It reminds us of the political battles swirling around the Anglo-American “special relationship.” The issues seem very clear in hindsight. Seven decades ago, the future was unknowable. Take Governor Dewey and the question of America’s commitment to world security.

The Dewey Lament

In late 1950, Churchill received a letter from twice-unsuccessful presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey. The New York governor took issue with his fellow Republican, former President Herbert Hoover:

I have hesitated for a long time about burdening you with this [but] I am taking the liberty of imposing upon you…. Mr. Hoover made a speech night before last, the implications of which are appalling to me. The press reports today it has had wide and unhappy repercussions in Great Britain and on the Continent.

I am still not quite sure why I ran again [for president in 1948] but in any event, having no ambitions or expectations of having any other office I am free to proselyte to the limit of my capacity for the point of view expressed in my speech and intend to do so. [Churchill, a lover of concise English, must have blanched at that.]

If you find any spot on the horizon more cheerful than I do, I should appreciate hearing of it. The world is filled with gloom and almost in extremis.¹

Not “another man or dollar…”

Probably a lot of people beside Dewey wondered why he had run again (he had lost to FDR in 1944).  But to me, the surprise was to find Dewey, a former Republican nominee, taking issue with Hoover the last Republican president. They certainly didn’t like each other. Hoover reportedly said Dewey had “no inner reservoir of knowledge on which to draw for his thinking…. A man couldn’t wear a mustache like that without having it affect his mind.”

I asked Professor George Nash, Hoover’s biographer, what Dewey was referring to. Dr. Nash referred us to Hoover’s broadcast of 20 December 1950, the text of which he sent. He also helped us compose a footnote to Dewey’s note to Churchill:

On December 20, Hoover gave a speech to advocate a Western-hemisphere-oriented “Gibraltar” geopolitical strategy, a buildup of American air and naval forces, but not of its army, focused on defending the Western Hemisphere and the free island nations on the Pacific and Atlantic rims, like Taiwan and the UK “if she wishes to cooperate.” Hoover would also refuse to send “another man or dollar” to continental Europe for its defense until​ the non-​communist nations there strengthened their own military forces. His advice (denounced by his critics as isolationist) differed from President Truman’s plan, announced just the day before, to send more U.S. troops to western Europe to assist in NATO’s defense preparations.²

“Some great common bond…”

As World War II had wound down, America’s attitude toward the postwar defense of Europe was a major concern of Churchill’s. The Churchill Documents contain many examples of this. ³ Churchill’s worries continued after Roosevelt’s death. What would be the attitude of the new president? In May 1945 Churchill wrote Truman, asking for a “standstill order” on the movements of U.S. forces. Truman replied, “I must not have any avoidable interference with the redeployment of American forces to the Pacific.”⁴

To Churchill’s relief, Truman adopted a robust attitude toward Soviet aggression. The President tacitly (though not publicly) approved of Churchill’s forceful 1946 message about the Iron Curtin. He responded vigorously to communist challenges in Greece and Turkey. When the Russians seemed to hesitate in withdrawing troops from Iran, Truman sent a naval task force led by the battleship Missouri into Sea of Marmara.⁶

In 1948, Stalin threatened to cut off Allied access to Berlin. Truman and Prime Minister Attlee defied him with the Berlin Airlift. In the House of Commons, a jubilant Churchill congratulated Labour with gusto.⁷ He even hoped for “some great common bond of union, like we had in 1940.”⁸ It was typical of Churchill’s lifelong preference for coalitions at times of crisis.

“We cannot buy [Europe] with money…”

Hoover was not proposing American isolation. He wanted America armed to the teeth, able to repulse any challenge. Like Churchill, he voiced “the need to preserve Western Civilization on the Continent of Europe [and] our cultural and religious ties to it.”⁹

They diverged in two critical areas. The first was the atomic bomb, which the Soviets had by then acquired. Hoover said the bomb was “a far less dominant weapon than it was once thought to be.”¹⁰ Churchill differed profoundly. “It may well be,” he had declared in 1946, “that in a few years this awful agency of destruction will be widespread, and the catastrophe following from its use by several warring nations will not only bring to an end all that we call civilization but may possibly disintegrate the globe itself.”¹¹

Hoover also balked at helping a Europe that refused to help itself. “The test is whether they have the spiritual force, the will, and acceptance of unity among them by their own volition. America cannot create their spiritual forces; we cannot buy them with money.” Churchill was doing his best to create unity of purpose and collaboration, but this view was anathema to him. With the best spiritual will and unity, he declared again and again in those years, Europe could not defend itself. It was America’s obligation to do everything to help.

Otherwise, however, the Hoover and Churchill theses run parallel. Hoover like Churchill favored peace through strength. He advocated a joint naval and air strategy, a unity of minds between the United States and the British Empire and Commonwealth. That is what Churchill had worked for most of his life.

“I would denounce such a plan scathingly”

Churchill’s 1950 reply to Dewey was brief: “It is a comfort to me that you felt Hoover’s speech was ‘appalling.’ I think that your own declarations are of far more consequence.”¹² But two years later Eisenhower was elected. And Eisenhower, like Hoover, seemed betimes to regard the atomic bomb as just another weapon.

Oddly or ironically, Dewey now proposed a defense posture much like Hoover’s. He and Churchill met in New York in January 1953, before Eisenhower took office. They were joined by John Foster Dulles, about to become Eisenhower’s Secretary of State.

The details of that meeting will appear in the final volume 23 of The Churchill Documents. We already know much of it from Never Despair 1945-1965, Martin Gilbert’s final Churchill biographic volume. On 7 January Churchill cabled his Foreign Minister Anthony Eden and Chancellor of the Exchequer R.A. Butler:

Dewey proposed a scheme for a Pacific Treaty between all Pacific powers including the Philippines, Formosa [Taiwan], and the like, excluding (repeat excluding) Great Britain. I said I would denounce such a plan scathingly. Dulles then gave a long account of the negotiations leading up to the Anzus Treaty, and how the Labour Government had made no objection to it at all.

I explained our point of view. Dewey, who is thoroughly friendly, then said that if I objected so strongly, he would let his baby, i.e. the Pacific Treaty, die. In fact I could consider it dead. On the spur of the moment he said that an alternative plan might be for the United Kingdom and the United States to make a joint declaration (comparable to our guarantee to Poland in 1939) that if Communist China attempted to occupy Indo-China, Burma or any other countries in the Pacific Area, we and the Americans would declare war.¹³

“Great Slab of a Face”

Jock Colville and Christopher Soames, respectively Churchill’s private and parliamentary private secretaries, were present during this chilly interview. Dewey suggested that Churchill “could cast a spell on all American statesmen and that if he were directly associated with the economic talks, the fears of the people and of Congress would be aroused to such an extent that the success of the talks would be endangered.” Colville continued:

Winston took this very reasonable statement ill, but Christopher and I both took pains to assure Dulles afterwards that we thought he was absolutely right. Irritated by this, Winston let fly at Dewey after dinner and worked himself into a fury over certain Pacific Ocean questions. Christopher and I again applied soft soap subsequently. We told Dewey that a sharp debate was the PM’s idea of a pleasant evening…. But…Winston was really worked up and, as he went to bed, said some very harsh things about the Republican Party in general and Dulles in particular…. He said he would have no more to do with Dulles whose “great slab of a face” he disliked and distrusted.¹⁴

So it was that Thomas Dewey reversed himself, but Churchill’s views remained consistent. He went away with grave doubts about Foster Dulles, who would confirm his misgivings by his attitude toward a Soviet summit at the Bermuda Conference with Eisenhower the following December.

“I tell you all this,” Churchill concluded in his cable to Eden and Butler, “to show you the rough weather that may well lie ahead in dealing with the Republican Party who have been twenty years out of office; and I feel very sure we should not expect early favourable results. Much patience will be needed.”¹⁵

And that indeed is another story—one that The Churchill Documents 1951-1965 shall relate.

Endnotes

¹ Larry P. Arnn & Martin Gilbert, eds., The Churchill Documents, vol. 22, August 1945-October 1951 (Hillsdale College Press, forthcoming).

² See Herbert Hoover, “Our National Policies in This Crisis,” Broadcast on 20 December 1950, in Addresses Upon the American Road 1950-1955 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1955), 3-10. Online at http://bit.ly/2NQXOs2.

³ Larry P. Arnn & Martin Gilbert, eds., The Churchill Documents, vol. 21, The Shadows of Victory, January-July 1945 (Hillsdale College Press, forthcoming, October 2018.)

⁴ WSC to Truman, 12 May 1945; Truman to WSC, 21 May 1945, ibid.

N.B. Material referred to in footnote 5 is omitted in this excerpt.

⁶ Churchill to Attlee and Bevin, 7 March 1946, in The Churchill Documents, vol. 22.

⁷ Winston S. Churchill, “Foreign Affairs,” House of Commons, 10 December 1948, in The Churchill Documents, vol. 22.

⁸ Churchill, speech at Leeds, 4 February 1950, in The Churchill Documents, vol. 22.

⁹ Hoover, “Our National Policies,” 4.

¹⁰ Hoover, ibid., 5.

¹¹ Winston S. Churchill, Zurich, 19 September 1946, in Richard M. Langworth, ed., Churchill By Himself (London: Ebury Press, 2012), 315.

¹² Churchill to Thomas Dewey, 30 January 1951, in The Churchill Documents, vol. 22.

¹³ Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 8, Never Despair 1945-1965 (Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College Press, 2013), 791.

¹⁴ John Colville, The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries 1940-1955, 2 vols. Sevenoaks, Kent: Sceptre Publishing, 1986-87, II 320. Note: It is widely reported, but without attribution, that Churchill also said Dulles was “the only bull who carries his china shop with him.”

¹⁵ Gilbert, Never Despair, 791.

How Harry fleeced Winston at poker, and the PM wished to be born again…

The Hillsdale College Churchill Project is closing in on finishing Winston S. Churchill, the official biography. At thirty-one volumes, it is the longest on record and will have taken fifty-six years to complete. It is an honor to be part of the team now reviewing proofs for the penultimate document (companion) volume. This runs from August 1945, after Churchill was turned out of office, through September 1951, when he was about to regain it. The last volume (1951-65) will be published next year, with suitable celebrations.

One of the joys of this work is the vast trove of hitherto undiscovered (or at least obscure) facts it provides. Take the 1945-51 volume, for example. One has no concept of the extent and collegial communication, after the July 1945 election, between Churchill and Clement Attlee. Labour had routed the Conservatives. Churchill was embittered over his dismissal, and conventional wisdom is that they were at daggers-drawn. Not so. Churchill and Attlee went out of their way to communicate. Even when they disagreed on issues, they respectfully wrote and met with each other. That was indeed a different age.

Above all, they tried to maintain a united front in British foreign policy as the Cold War accelerated. Churchill’s alleged cracks about Attlee— “an empty taxi arrived and Clem got out”; a “sheep in sheep’s clothing”—are apocryphal. Churchill made only one remark at Attlee’s expense. It was in private, and it is in this volume. It occurred as he and President Truman rode to Fulton for the “Iron Curtain” speech  aboard the Ferdinand Magellan, “U.S. Railcar No. 1.”

All Aboard!

This volume exhaustively covers Churchill’s invitation to speak at Fulton, Truman’s support for it, Churchill’s visit to America, and every aspect of the event down to who was assigned to which car on the Presidential train. One was Clark Clifford who worked for Democrat presidents from Truman to Carter and served briefly as Lyndon Johnson‘s Secretary of Defense. Aged only forty in 1946, he was White House counsel to the President. His recollections were published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Before he died he sent them to me with permission to use for any educational purpose. They are among the few additions I could offer to this volume, so masterfully assembled by Martin Gilbert and Hillsdale’s Churchill fellows. It is in Clifford’s recollection that Churchill committed a momentary lapse in his usual respectful references to Attlee.

The Magellan, Clifford wrote:

had an observation platform on the back and it was equipped so that in the rear portion you walked into a very attractive living room, furnished as you might furnish a men’s club. There was a series of closed-in staterooms with separate baths, and at the other end of the car, there was a dining room and what the Navy would call a galley. So those two lived on that car and the rest of us lived on the car in front, which was a standard Pullman. The reason they went by train was to give Churchill and Truman an ample opportunity to talk. Mr. Truman wanted the opportunity to visit with Churchill, and Churchill, who had been very close to Franklin Roosevelt, felt he had no relationship with Truman and wanted to develop one.

* * *

We left Washington around noon, and we all sat down in the living room. Mr. Churchill said, “Mr. President, we’re going to be together now for a week or so. I would like to dispense with formality, and to have the privilege of calling you Harry.” And Truman said, “Mr. Churchill, I would be honored if you would call me Harry.”

Then Mr. Churchill said, “Well, if I am going to call you Harry, then you must call me Winston.” Mr. Truman, as you know, was a very modest fellow, so he said, “That would be very difficult for me to do, Mr. Churchill. I have such a high regard and enormous respect for you.” But Churchill said, “You must do it, or I can’t call you Harry.” And Mr. Truman said, “All right, then. It’s Harry and Winston.”

The next thing Truman said was, “About six weeks ago, Clement Attlee came over to see me.” There was a very chill silence. Then Churchill said, “There is less there than meets the eye.” Mr. Truman, knowing that he’d kind of put his foot in it, just bravely felt he had to go on. So he said. “Well, he seems to be a very modest fellow.” “Yes,” Churchill said, “He has much to be modest about.”

“If I were to be born again…”

It was “a great deal of fun,” Clifford continued, because “Churchill punctuated the conversation with philosophical musings.” He remembered only one, but in Harry Truman’s vernacular, it was a humdinger. Until Mr. Clifford’s testimony, it was hard to believe Churchill said it:

One evening, we stayed up late. Everybody else went to bed, and [Truman Press Secretary] Charlie Ross and I stayed up and talked to him afterwards. He was kind of mellow by that time. He had the reputation of being a fairly formidable drinker, and I think I know the reason why. It was because he always had a scotch highball in front of him, but he would nurse the highball, and it would take him about an hour and a half to drink it. I did not find him to be a heavy drinker at all.

This evening, he said, “If I were to be born again, I would wish to be born in the United States. At one time it was said that the sun never sets on the British Empire. Those days are gone. The United States has the natural resources; they have an energetic, resilient people. The United States is the hope of the future. Even though I deplore some of your customs. You stop drinking with your meals.”

* * *

For the archetypal Englishman, with such reverence for his country, this seems astonishing. And yet as you think about it, it becomes easier to believe. Britain after two world wars was exhausted and broke. Churchill knew it—knew it first hand. His documents are full of his depression over Britain’s plight. Yet he had this overwhelming respect and faith in what he always called “my mother’s land.” He saw in “the Great Republic” the hope of the world.

Poker

Without leaking the full contents of the Clifford document, I can’t resist some of the poker bits. The story is redolent of Churchill and Truman humor, their ripening friendship as the train rumbled on. Clark Clifford continues:

Churchill said, “Harry, I’ve read in the press over a period of years that you play poker.” And Truman said, “Yes, I guess I’ve played poker for a good many years, Winston.” Then Churchill proudly said, “Well, I first learned to play poker in the Boer War. I love the game.” Well, my God, that was very impressive; none of us could remember when the hell the Boer War was.

* * *

We played dealer’s choice: stud, draw, seven-card stud and high-low, which is a great gambling game because it keeps everybody in the pot. Well, we played about an hour and a half, and Mr. Churchill excused himself to go to the men’s room. And the President looked over to his staff and counsellors and said, “Men, Mr. Churchill has lost $850. Now, remember, he is our guest. We certainly are not treating him very well.”

Charlie Ross spoke up, and said, “Boss, you can’t have it both ways. Which do you want us to do, play poker or carry this fellow along?”

The President said, “Boys, I want Mr. Churchill to have a good time. I recognize the standards of poker as played in Great Britain aren’t nearly up to the standards in the United States. But I want him to have a lovely time.”

So he was nursed along, and he won some wonderful big pots. I saw some people drop out with three aces, and he’d win with a pair of kings. He had a marvelous time, and yet he couldn’t go back and say he’d beaten this group playing poker. When the last game was over he’d lost about $80.

The occasion was the opportunity of a lifetime. Here we were, encapsulated in this railroad car, having meals during the day and the poker at night. I don’t know anybody else who had the opportunity of spending that kind of time with Mr. Churchill.

The article appeared in southwest Australia’s Sun Coast Daily on April 26th. Not exactly The Times, and if you don’t subscribe to Google Alerts you missed it. For the fun of shooting fish in a barrel, however, it’s worth a few minutes of your time.

Critique 1: Self-Interest

“Churchill had a long and varied career in politics, managing to swap parties as his career needs required.”

Churchill swapped parties in 1904 over principle (Free Trade), risking rather than enhancing his career. (He lucked out when his new party won the next election.) He switched again in the 1920s after that party fell out from under him, which didn’t help his career much either (he was out of Parliament for over two years). Fortunately for him, a Conservative prime minister offered him a job. It seemed like the right thing to do. Wouldn’t you?

Critique 2: Military Catastrophes

“He managed while in government to produce two military catastrophes: first the awful Dardanelles campaign of the First World War cost him his job, then in the Second World War he master-minded the awful Norwegian campaign which cost Chamberlain his job and catapulted Churchill into the PM’s office.”

Churchill did not conceive of either operation and to say he “produced” them is a “terminological inexactitude.” While it is true that he loyally tried to advance them, the failures were the work of many. On the Dardanelles, he later admitted “trying to carry out a major and cardinal operation of war from a subordinate position. Men are ill-advised to try such ventures. This lesson had sunk into my nature.” For an eminently balanced account of the follies of the Dardanelles, I recommend Christopher M. Bell’s Churchill and the Dardanelles.

Critique 3: Cheesy on Defense

“While it’s true he did speak out for rearmament late in the 1930s, readers may not realise that while treasurer in conservative governments between the wars he presided over an austerity program including a huge decline in military spending, leaving the navy, for example, running a string of mostly clapped-out First World War era battleships.”

The state of the Royal Navy in 1939 can hardly be blamed on someone who’d been out of office for the previous ten years. But in the 1920s, you couldn’t find a member of any Tory or Labour government in favor of spending money on armaments. Yet Churchill, when times had changed, was among the leading supporters of the government’s decision to renew capital warship production in 1936.

Critique 4: Singapore

“Churchill, the military genius and austerity merchant, left Singapore incompletely and poorly defended. He sent two battleships, completely lacking air cover, to deal with the Japanese threat. Both were sunk by Japanese planes while steaming away from the Japanese landings in Malaya.” 

In 1924-25, Churchill questioned the decision to defend Singapore by shore based guns, and recommended submarines and air power. Granted, he was mainly trying to avoid heavy defense expenditures at a time when no one foresaw the need for them. (The guns fired, ineffectually, at land-based attackers in 1941.)

In October 1941, before Japan attacked, Churchill sent the two warships to Singapore, hoping they would serve as a deterrent. When the deterrent failed, his first impulse was to send them to join the remnants of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. He should have. But it was Vice Admiral Tom Phillips, not Churchill, who opted to sortie from Singapore without air cover, hoping to disrupt Japanese landings, and he was sailing toward them, not away from them. Yet throughout the war, very few capital ships were sunk by air power alone, except when caught in harbor.

The historians Robin Brodhurst and Christopher Bell explain these little-known corrections to popular belief shortly on the Hillsdale College Churchill Project website, which I will link when published.

Critique 5: Unions

“Churchill notoriously urged the government to machine-gun striking unionists in the 1926 General Strike.”

While hostile to socialism, Churchill warmly accepted trade unions. For him, wrote the historian Chris Wrigley, “they were elements of Victorian individualism.” In dealing with unions, including over the General Strike, his impulse was first to win the argument, then to address their grievances. There is no evidence whatsoever that he urged the gunning-down of strikers.

Critique 6: India

“Churchill was also deeply racist, regarding the idea of Indian independence and Gandhi with deep horror.”

What Churchill regarded with “deep horror” in India was more Brahmin domination than Indians governing themselves, which they were largely doing long before the Raj ended. When the India Bill passed in 1935 he encougraged Gandhi, who replied: “’I have got a good recollection of Mr. Churchill when he was in the Colonial Office and somehow or other since then I have held the opinion that I can always rely on his sympathy and goodwill.”

Some racist. See “Churchill and Racism: Think a Little Deeper” and “Welcome Mr. Gandhi—Winston Churchill.”

Critique 7: He “ran the show”

“During the war he presided over a national all-party government which meant in effect that he ran the show. Once an election was held in 1945 the British people dumped him and the Conservative Party unceremoniously.”

It is the tendency in both national and party governments for the prime minister to “run the show.” Given what he learned from the Dardanelles (see #2 above), what else would we expect of him in 1940?

I must admit this is the first time I’ve heard Churchill criticized for presiding over a coalition government. It was a coalition because all three parties and Mr. Chamberlain agreed in May 1940 that a coalition was the only way to fight Hitler. Churchill was the only candidate both available and willing, whom all three parties would agree to support.

Winston Churchill was on the political scene over half a century, and his mistakes like his virtues were on a grand scale. But the latter considerably outweighed the former. Would-be critics need to do better research before proclaiming his feet of clay.

After resigning as Secretary of State (1947-49) owing to ill health, Marshall recovered long enough to be President Truman‘s Secretary of Defense (1950-51)—the only uniformed military officer ever to hold that position. In 1953 he headed the U.S. delegation to the coronation of HM Queen Elizabeth II, and became the only career U.S. army officer to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, largely for the Marshall Plan (European Recovery Act) that helped Europe revive after the war.

Alistair Cooke always sniffed and told me that the Marshall Plan should really have been called the Acheson Plan, for all the work Dean Acheson put into it. But Harry Truman insisted it be named for his Secretary of State. In part through Marshall’s efforts and prestige, it passed Congress with bipartisan support—not something transformative Acts of Congress seem to do nowadays.

Thomas E. Ricks has a good brief review of “Marshall VII” in Foreign Policy. “He had his faults, but he was a thoughtful, well-balanced man, and that comes out even in his minor exchanges. Again and again, I am struck at how well he handled Congress. He was clear and honest. Yet he also took very political steps.” Ricks calls Marshall “a decent man, not always treated decently.”

Marshall and Churchill

As soon as we were in the air I addressed myself to the Russian communiqué. As I found it very hard to make head or tail of the bundle of drafts, with all our emendations in the President’s scrawls and mine, I sent it along to General Marshall, who two hours later presented me with a typed fair copy. I was immensely impressed with this document, which exactly expressed what the President and I wanted, and did so with a clarity and comprehension not only of the military but of the political issues involved. It excited my admiration. Hitherto I had thought of Marshall as a rugged soldier and a magnificent organiser and builder of armies—the American Carnot. But now I saw that he was a statesman with a penetrating and commanding view of the whole scene. I was delighted with his draft, and also that the task was done. I wrote to the President that it could not be better, and asked him to send it off with any alterations he might wish, without further reference to me.

Scott Johnson of Powerline (“Why We Dropped the Bomb,” 13 April) kindly links an old column of his quoting an old one of mine with reference to President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima and the atom bombing of Japan.

Johnson links a lecture by Professor Williamson Murray, which is worth considering, along with Paul Fussell’s classic essay in The New Republic, “Thank God for the Atom Bomb,” which makes you think, though some consider it a rant. Fussell wrote:

John Kenneth Galbraith is persuaded that the Japanese would have surrendered surely by November without an invasion. He thinks the A-bombs were unnecessary and unjustified because the war was ending anyway. The A-bombs meant, he says, “a difference, at most, of two or three weeks.” But at the time, with no indication that surrender was on the way, the kamikazes were sinking American vessels, the Indianapolis was sunk (880 men killed), and Allied casualties were running to over 7000 per week. “Two or three weeks,” says Galbraith.

Two weeks more means 14,000 more killed and wounded, three weeks more, 21,000. Those weeks mean the world if you’re one of those thousands or related to one of them. During the time between the dropping of the Nagasaki bomb on August 9 and the actual surrender on the fifteenth, the war pursued its accustomed course: on the twelfth of August eight captured American fliers were executed (heads chopped off); the fifty-first United States submarine, Bonefish, was sunk (all aboard drowned); the destroyer Callaghan went down, the seventieth to be sunk, and the destroyer escort Underhill was lost.

That’s a bit of what happened in six days of the two or three weeks posited by Galbraith. What did he do in the war? He worked in the Office of Price Administration in Washington. I don’t demand that he experience having his ass shot off. I merely note that he didn’t.

Bombing and Churchill

But back to Churchill. What did he think about the bombing? Need you ask. Churchill wrote in his war memoirs, Vol. 6, Triumph and Tragedy (1953, chapter 19):

British consent in principle to the use of the weapon had been given on July 4, before the test had taken place. The final decision now lay in the main with President Truman, who had the weapon; but I never doubted what it would be, nor have I ever doubted since that he was right. The historic fact remains, and must be judged in the after-time, that the decision whether or not to use the atomic bomb to compel the surrender of Japan was never even an issue. There was unanimous, automatic, unquestioned agreement around our table; nor did I ever hear the slightest suggestion that we should do otherwise.

Some historians have cited a minor official in the Foreign Office who argued that Japan would surrender without the bombing, if the Allies promised she could keep her emperor; it was never proven that this ever reached the plenary level. Others quibble that the first bomb (Hiroshima) was perhaps necessary, but surely not the second (Nagasaki) only three days later, after the effects of the first were not even assessed. But the Japanese cabinet was divided still on the question of surrender after Nagasaki. Churchill continued:

I had in my mind the spectacle of Okinawa island, where many thousands of Japanese, rather than surrender, had drawn up in line and destroyed themselves by hand-grenades after their leaders had solemnly performed the rite of harakiri. To quell the Japanese resistance man by man and conquer the country yard by yard might well require the loss of a million American lives and half that of British—or more if we could get them there: for we were resolved to share the agony.

Now all this nightmare picture had vanished. In its place was the vision—fair and bright indeed it seemed—of the end of the whole war in one or two violent shocks. I thought immediately myself of how the Japanese people, whose courage I had always admired, might find in the apparition of this almost supernatural weapon an excuse which would save their honour and release them from being killed to the last fighting man.

Truman never shrank from decisions, and in this one he was right. Six years of war (ignorant Americans always forget and say four) was enough. In 1953, Acheson placed Churchill “on trial” for dropping those bombs, in a perhaps inappropriate banter, but with more serious implications.

*****

Wars are declared on nations, not those who lead them, which is one reason why declarations of war have gone out of fashion. In our more “enlightened” age we are repelled by the suffering war inflicts on ordinary people. Unfortunately, you can’t declare war on an individual.

In introducing Alistair Cooke at the 1988 Churchill Conference, I quoted the words of that caring and generous man on the 25th anniversary of the bombing, which I had long since committed to memory:

Without raising more dust over the bleached bones of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I should like to contribute a couple of reminders: The first is that the men who had to make the decision were just as humane and tortured at the time as you and I were later. And, secondly, that they had to make the choice of alternatives that I for one would not have wanted to make for all the offers of redemption from all the religions of the world.

In early 1953, Winston Churchill was placed on trial by his peers, with President Truman the presiding judge, for complicity in the use of atomic bombs. To anyone who may write to say that he and Truman were making light of events causing thousands of deaths, the answer is twofold: 1) How do you know they were making light?; and 2) This is in answer to a historical query. Sources: Clark Clifford, recollection, to Richard Langworth, 1988. Margaret Truman, “After the Presidency,” in Life, 1 December 1972, 69-70. Also recorded in her book, Harry S. Truman.

__________________

Margaret Truman wrote: “During our last weeks in the White House, Prime Minister Churchill arrived for a visit. My father gave him a small stag dinner to which he invited Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett, Averell Harriman, General Omar Bradley, and Secretary of State Dean Acheson. Everyone was in an ebullient mood, especially Dad. Without warning, Mr. Churchill turned to him and said…”

Mr. President, I hope you have your answer ready for that hour when you and I stand before St. Peter and he says, “I understand you two are responsible for putting off those atomic bombs. What have you got to say for yourselves?”

Robert Lovett asked: “Are you sure, Prime Minister, that you are going to be in the same place as the President for that interrogation?

Lovett, my vast respect for the Creator of this universe and countless others gives me assurance that He would not condemn a man without a hearing.

Lovett: “True, but your hearing would not be likely to start in the Supreme Court, or, necessarily, in the same court as the President’s. It could be in another court far away.”

I don’t doubt that, but, wherever it is, it will be in accordance with the principles of English Common Law.

Dean Acheson, who liked to tweak Churchill about Britain’s diminished stature, then spoke up: “Is it altogether consistent with your respect for the Creator of this and other universes to limit His imagination and judicial procedure to the accomplishment of a minute island, in a tiny world, in one of the smaller of the universes?”

Well, there will be a trial by a jury of my peers, that’s certain.

Acheson: “Oyez! Oyez! In the matter of the immigration of Winston Spencer Churchill, Mr. Bailiff, will you empanel a jury?”

Each guest accepted an historic role, wrote Margaret Truman. “General Bradley decided he was Alexander the Great. Others played Julius Caesar, Socrates and Aristotle. The Prime Minister declined to permit Voltaire on his jury—he was an atheist—or Cromwell, because he did not believe in the rule of law. Then Mr. Acheson summoned George Washington. That was too much for Mr. Churchill. He saw that things were being stacked against him:”

I waive a jury, but not habeas corpus. You’ll not put me in any black hole.*

“They ignored him and completed the selection of the jury. Dad was appointed judge. The case was tried and the Prime Minister was acquitted.

“During this visit Mr. Churchill confessed to Dad that he had taken a dim view of him as President when he had succeeded Franklin Roosevelt. ‘I misjudged you badly,’ the Prime Minister said. ‘Since that time, you, more than any other man, have saved Western civilization.'”

_______

*Churchill’s words (bold face) are from Margaret Truman’s account except the last sentence asterisked, which was quoted to me by Clark Clifford, whose account was otherwise the same as Ms. Truman’s.

After his self-education as a young officer in India, when he read all the popular challenges to orthodox religion, like Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species and William Winwood Reade’s The Martyrdom of Man, Churchill evolved into what we might term an “optimistic agnostic.” He spoke jocularly of the Almighty, suggesting that as a boy,

I accumulated…so fine a surplus in the Bank of Observance that I have been drawing confidently upon it ever since. Weddings, christenings, and funerals have brought in a steady annual income, and I have never made too close enquiries about the state of my account. It might well even be that I should find an overdraft.

Visiting President Truman just before Truman left office in 1953, Churchill quipped,

Mr. President, I hope you have your answer ready for that hour when you and I stand before St. Peter and he says, “I understand you two are responsible for putting off those atomic bombs.”

Truman’s Secretary of Defense, Robert Lovett responded: “Are you sure, Prime Minister, that you are going to be in the same place as the President for that interrogation?” Churchill’s reply was quick:

Lovett, my vast respect for the Creator of this universe and countless others gives me assurance that He would not condemn a man without a hearing….wherever it is, it will be in accordance with the principles of English Common Law.…

Why did Churchill refer so frequently to “Christian civilisation”? First because alongside Darwin, he had absorbed the King James Bible, impressed by its beautiful phraseology and the ethics it expounded; and second because he believed its principles applied broadly to all of mankind regardless of religion. Unlike Christian fundamentalists, he did not accept the Bible as rote. He saw no need to resolve its stories with modern science. Why bother? he asked:

If you are the recipient of a message which cheers your heart and fortifies your soul, what need is there to ask whether the imagery of the ancients is exactly, scientifically, feasible?

When Churchill in speeches referred to “Christian civilisation” (a phrase I have actually seen edited out of certain modern renditions) he did not mean to exclude Jews or Buddhists or Muslims. He meant those words in a much broader sense. Just as, to Churchill, the word “man” meant humanity, his allusions to Christianity embodied principles he considered universal: the Ten Commandments (a “judgmental” set of moral imperatives now expunged from certain public places); the Sermon on the Mount; the Golden Rule; charity; forgiveness; courage.

Times change. If a President or Prime Minister went round discussing “Christian civilisation” today, ten thousand Thought Police would descend screeching out of the sky to proclaim excommunication from the Church of the Politically Correct.

It is not my brief to suggest how Churchill would react to modern situations, but surely he would be mystified by this—as indeed would the Jews, Buddhists and Muslims of his time who wholeheartedly endorsed what he said about the war they were in together. Yet we consider these to be more enlightened times.