Mr. Randall Brown writes: “I’ve just read Ralph Raico‘s article ‘Rethinking Churchill,’ dating back over 20  years. He was I believe a voice for the Mises Institute. He makes Churchill sound like a war-mongering, fuming socialist liberal, a cheap power-mad opportunist! It really upset me. How do you answer writers like this?

A: Not quite the right fit

He was profoundly for a liberal society, in which the economy is driven by private enterprise, and in which money is allowed to “fructify,” as he quoted John Morley, “in the pockets of the people.” The modern world, the world that requires freedom of religion and limited government, can abide no other kind of politics. But this kind of politics is demonstrably vulnerable to war. It is also vulnerable domestically. If a disaffected majority, necessarily made up of the many who are poor, or relatively poor, expropriate the wealth of the few, it is a tragedy that will destroy justice in the state—even if the poor have a grievance against the rich.

Churchill was trying to prevent that. How? There one must understand what he meant by “Constitutionalism.” For Churchill, this is a very rich subject, rather like the writings of James Madison.He saw the problem of bureaucracy, and of excesses by the majority, very clearly from an early day. The problem is more mature now than it was in his time. That is why it is easy for some of Churchill’s solutions to look leftish from our modern vantage point.

Liberty

The answer to your question, then, is that not a “closet socialist.” He thought socialism, a far milder form than what we know today, incompatible with human liberty and an obstruction to human progress. Careful study of Churchill’s complex views will show that above all he regarded liberty as the most important characteristic of a just society.

Further reading

Soren Geiger, “Churchill: What We Mean by ‘Civilization,'” 2019

Richard Langworth, “Democracy is the worst form of government….,” 2009

_____ _____, “A Life Devoted to Constitutional Liberty,” 2021

Rightly or wrongly, every day on the Internet, Churchill is praised, lampooned, quoted and misquoted. But comparisons to modern politicians have worn thin. They may emulate him, but should not be compared to him.

Johnson’s Day in the barrel

On 15 June the Wall Street Journal focused on British prime minister in waiting Boris Johnson. Columnist Peggy Noonan wrote a perceptive piece about his prospects and challenges: “England Needs a Slap, and so does China.”

Aside from badly misrepresenting Churchill’s sobriety, she made good points. Boris Johnson’s friends, she wrote, are “have the grating habit of comparing him to Winston Churchill.” Grating is a good word. Mr. Johnson needs to talk to his friends.

Boris’s enemies adopted the same tactic after he was appointed Prime Minister on 24 July. Joyce McMillan in The Scotsman used Johnson’s own description of WSC in his Churchill biography to suggest they were peas in a pod:

“He wasn’t what people thought of as a man of principle. He was a glory-chasing goal-mouth-hanging opportunist…. As for his political career—my word, what a feast of bungling!…he was thought to be congenitally untrustworthy.”

The New York Times likened Johnson’s frequent allusions to the “Dunkirk spirit” in Britain’s exit from the European Union as a fetish: “The idea that Britain, acting alone, can exact favorable terms from much larger powers such as China, Europe or, indeed, the United States, is a delusion… Britain will become a middling provincial country, whose fortunes will be subject to the whims of others… Churchill would have been horrified.”

Since Britain is the world’s fifth largest economy, that is anything but a foregone conclusion. Nor does it suggest what Churchill really thought about a Britain within a federal Europe.

Next Mr. Trump

Then there’s Mr. Trump. His supporters extoll his Churchill characteristics: pugnacity, conviction, diehard devotion to causes and policies. Fans visualize him on Dover’s white cliffs, defying oncoming Democrat Messerschmitts and Dorniers. “We shall go on to the end…We shall never surrender.” (As far as I know, Trump has not yet proclaimed himself a Churchill, though he sometimes suggests he’s Lincoln or Washington.)

“Do you see any comparisons to the President?” I was asked recently. I waffled and gave a dusky answer. The question seemed so preposterous that it took me by surprise. Having now thought about it, yes, there are similarities—but also many differences.

Like Trump, Churchill said what he thought people should hear, straining nothing through advisors or focus groups. “Tell the truth to the British people!” he thundered in the 1930s as Germany armed. In war, he explained, they are “the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst.” (For some three years, the worst was all he could tell them.)

Parallels and Divergencies

Like Trump and Johnson, Churchill often tackled the media: “A few critical or scathing speeches, a stream of articles in the newspapers, showing…how incompetent are those who bear the responsibility,” he said in 1933, “these obtain the fullest publicity.”

When the BBC threatened to censor his broadcasts he quipped: “We can picture [BBC director] Sir John Reith, with the perspiration mantling on his lofty brow, with his hand on the control switch, wondering, as I utter every word, whether it will not be his duty to protect his innocent subscribers from some irreverent thing I might say about Mr. Gandhi, or about the Bolsheviks…”

Abroad, however, Churchill was far more careful than Trump—and his predecessor. In London before the Brexit vote, President Obama said that if Britain left the EU it would have to go “to the back of the queue.”

Trump cheered the Brexit vote.  In London in 2019 he endorsed Johnson for prime minister. (Another of his friends Boris needs to speak to?)

Churchill was very different. “When I am abroad I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country,” he said in 1947, when he was Leader of the Opposition. “I make up for lost time when I come home.”

Unlike Trump, Churchill abroad never took sides between foreign politicians. In Washington in 1954 he said, “I am not going to choose between Republicans and Democrats. I want the lot.” No foreign leader has said that for awhile.

Forget the Comparisons

Let’s be serious. We can’t compare Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, or anybody else to Winston Churchill. Superficial resemblances exist, but everything else overwhelms them.

My friend the college president has the best answer whenever anybody indulges in silly comparisons. I warmly recommend it to you, conscious that I intrude upon his copyright. When asked if  “X” is like Churchill, Dr. Larry Arnn usually responds:

Winston Churchill served in four wars and wrote five books by age 25. He held every major office except foreign minister.  Twice prime minister, he was politically prominent for fifty years. Writing fifty books he won the Nobel Prize for literature. He composed 4000 articles and speeches; in all he produced 15 million words. His official biography is thirty-one volumes, and there are a thousand books about him. Sure, X is just like Churchill.

In 1927, Winston Churchill wrote to his wife Clementine, “I am becoming a film fan.” He had projection equipment installed at Chequers, the country home of British prime ministers, in 1943, and at his family home Chartwell in 1946. “Churchill and the Movies” is the fourth and final event of the Center for Constructive Alternatives in the 2018-19 academic year. We will view and discuss two films widely regarded as Churchill’s favorites, and two Churchill biographic movies in their historical context.

Hillsdale’s Center for Constructive Alternatives (CCA) is the sponsor of one of the largest college lecture series in America. CCA seminars are held four times each year. Students are required to complete one CCA seminar during their undergraduate years. They may elect to enroll in more. Lectures are open to the public, and out-of-town guests are welcomed. There is no registration fee and the program includes dinners and lunches. “Churchill and the Movies” is now sold out, and up to 400 guests are expected plus students. Watch this space for the web stream video locations.

Partial Schedule:

Sunday 24 March

4:00pm Showing of That Hamilton Woman (1941, 125 minutes). Produced and directed by Alexander Korda, this was Winston Churchill’s clear favorite among movies. It stars two actors he vastly admired, Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier.

8:00 p.m. Filmmaker John Fleet: “Churchill and Alexander Korda.”  Mr. Fleet has made a study of their long and fruitful relationship might have produced several more epic movies, had not World War II intervened.

Monday 25 March

10:00 a.m. “Assault on Churchill”: John Miller interviews Richard Langworth on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 fm. The station will offer an audio stream.

4:00 p.m. Showing of Henry V (1944, 137 mins.) Arguably runner-up in Churchill’s affections was the 1944 British Technicolor adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “Henry V.” The on-screen title is “The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agin Court in France” (derived from the title of the 1600 quarto edition). It stars WSC’s longtime friend Laurence Olivier, who also directed.

“The Play’s the Thing…”

8:00 p.m. Richard Langworth: “Churchill, Shakespeare, and Henry V.”  Excerpt:

How well did Churchill know Shakespeare? Well enough, I think, to ace a Hillsdale Shakespeare course. Both by formal quotations, and by well-known phrases almost hidden in his text, Churchill draws allusions and understanding from sixteen Shakespeare plays, from Macbeth to A Midsummer Night’s Dream—though not, surprisingly, the sonnets.

The producer Marlo Lewis says Henry V introduces us “to urgent problems of statesmanship and, through them, to questions of political philosophy….the delicate matters of legitimacy and the founding of regimes.” I think that is an aspect, but not the most important aspect. Above that and first, the importance of Henry V is what it teaches about leadership.

Churchill wrote in his History of the English-Speaking Peoples that when one of Henry’s officers “deplored the fact that they had ‘but one ten thousand of those men in England that do no work to-day,’ the King rebuked him and revived his spirits in a speech to which Shakespeare has given an immortal form: ‘If we are marked to die, we are enough To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honour.’” Compare that to Churchill’s greatest speech, 18 June 1940: “If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”

Tuesday 26 March

4:00 p.m. Showing of Young Winston (1972, 143 mins.)

8:00 p.m. “Young Winston and My Early Life,” with James W. Muller, University of Alaska Anchorage. An expert on Churchill’s autobiography, Professor Muller is well qualified to survey of this remarkable 1972 biopic, starring Simon Ward as Young Winston. The cast was sensational. Anne Bancroft as Lady Randolph, is leered at by Lloyd George (Anthony Hopkins). Robert Shaw is Lord Randolph (remember “Quint” in Jaws?). Young Winston’s evil headmaster at St. George’s School is the great Robert Hardy, who would memorably play Churchill many times in later years.

Wednesday 27 March

2:00 p.m. Richard Langworth: “Current Contentions- Winston Churchill and the Invasion of the Idiots.” A review of the virulent attacks on Churchill in the wake of Gary Oldman’s Oscar for his role as WSC in Darkest Hour. We will discuss four slanders in detail: Fake history in the television series The Crown. Churchill’s alleged 1930s “secret affair” with Lady Castlerosse. The continuing fable that Churchill exacerbated the 1943-44 Bengal Famine. And a renewed “golden oldie” beloved of socialists for a century: the Tonypandy riots of 1910. Excerpt:

Netflix’s The Crown is a not-so-crowning-achievement about the present Queen’s ascent to the throne and her first years as monarch. It starts off well enough. Claire Foy is an honest Elizabeth II.  Matt Smith is a gaudy Prince Philip, acting the foolish playboy. Dame Harriet Walter plays a graceful Clementine Churchill.

John Lithgow as Churchill is good on the voice and mannerisms, minimizing his 6-foot-4 stature with a stoop, and by sitting down a lot. But the script gives him a cartoonish image, far from reality. All too quickly, Lithgow becomes a wheezing old gaffer, clinging stubbornly to power. Productions like The Crown suggest that truth and accuracy matter less than style and perception; that reality must bend to fit the creator’s mindset.

* * *

4:00 p.m. Showing of The Gathering Storm (2002, 96 mins.) Stars the late Albert Finney as Churchill and Vanessa Redgrave as Clementine. This is one of the better World War II biographical movies. Even in a cynical and anti-hero age, filmmakers still can avoid reducing Churchill to a flawed burlesque or a godlike caricature. Except for huge gap in the story line, The Gathering Storm is outstanding. (The gap is Munich, because the film skips it in the rush to war.)

8:00 p.m. Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn: “Churchill as War Leader.” Dr. Arnn is co-editor with Martin Gilbert of The Churchill Documents. Few scholars have devoted more time over the years to studying Churchill’s statesmanship; his remarks stand to be the outstanding feature of this event.

Thursday 28 March

4:00 p.m. Faculty Round Table: Daniel Coupland, James Brandon, Darryl Hart, David Stewart

Perspective of History: Address to the Churchill Society of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on Sir Winston’s 144th birthday, 30 November 2018 (Part 3). We were kindly hosted at Earnscliffe by the British High Commissioner, Susan le Jeune d’Allegeershecque.

Perspective, 144 Years On

Concluded from Part 2…. “The great movements that underlie history—the development of science, industry, culture, social and political structures—are powerful, almost determinant,” wrote Charles Krauthammer.

Yet every once in a while, a single person arises without whom everything would be different. In recent times, only Churchill carries that absolutely required criterion: indispensability… Take away Churchill in 1940 [and] Hitler would have achieved what no other tyrant, not even Napoleon, had ever achieved: mastery of Europe. Civilization would have descended into a darkness the likes of which it had never known.

Churchill was, of course, not sufficient in bringing victory over Nazi barbarism, but he was uniquely necessary He then immediately rose to warn prophetically against its sister barbarism, Soviet communism. Churchill is now disparaged for not sharing our multicultural modern sensibilities. His disrespect for the suffrage movement, his disdain for Gandhi, his resistance to decolonization are undeniable.

But that kind of perspective is akin to dethroning Lincoln as the greatest of 19th century Americans because he shared many of his era’s appalling prejudices. In essence, the rap on Churchill is that he was a 19th century man parachuted into the 20th. But is that not precisely to the point? It took a 19th century man—traditional in habit, rational in thought, conservative in temper—to save the 20th century from itself.

* * *

The originality of the past century lay in its politics. It invented the police state and the command economy, mass mobilization and mass propaganda, mechanized murder and routinized terror—a breathtaking catalog of political creativity. And who is the hero of that story? Who slew the dragon? Yes, it was the ordinary person, the taxpayer, the grunt who fought and won the wars. Yes, it was the great leaders: Roosevelt, Mackenzie King, de Gaulle, Truman, John Paul II, Reagan, Thatcher. But above all, victory required one man without whom the fight would have been lost at the beginning.

And we have his words, digital and in print: 20 million of them, once The Churchill Documents are complete, spanning an age from the cavalry charge at Omdurman to astronauts on the moon. Remember, when Neil Armstrong stepped off his lunar lander, Churchill’s books were still being published posthumously. As they are still.

“The roar when we pronounce his name…”

William F. Buckley Jr. spoke about those words to us in Boston—is it possible?—almost a quarter century ago. “It was not,” he said,

the significance of victory, mighty and glorious though it was, that causes the name of Churchill to make the blood run a little faster. It is the roar that we hear when we pronounce his name. It is simply mistaken that battles are necessarily more important than the words that summon us to arms…. The Battle of Agincourt was long forgotten as a geopolitical event, but the words of Henry V, with Shakespeare to recall them, are imperishable in the mind, even as which side won the Battle of Gettysburg will dim from the memory of men and women who will never forget the words spoken about that battle by Abraham Lincoln. The genius of Churchill was his union of affinities of the heart and mind; the total fusion of animal and spiritual energy.

Churchill’s words were indispensable to that hour, Britain’s finest, whatever the glories or disappointments that came after. And so today the perspective of history on Winston Churchill is unchanged from half a century ago.

“He sweetened English life”

Why is that? Several explanations. One answer is by the chemist and novelist C.P. Snow:

A bad thing is the ability to sense what everyone else is thinking and think like them,” Snow said. “This Churchill never had, and would have despised himself for having. A good thing is the ability to think of many matters at once, their interdependence, their relative importance and their consequences…. Not many have such insight. He did. That was why he could keep us going when we were alone. Where it mattered most, there he was right.

And Snow reminds of today when he says: “People wanted something to admire that seemed to be slipping out of the grit of everyday. Whatever could be said against him, he had virtues, graces, style. Courage, magnanimity, loyalty, wit, gallantry—these are not often held up for admiration. He really had them. I believe that it was deep intuition which made people feel that his existence had sweetened English life.”

“Nothing Surpasses 1940”

Churchill did build his own myth. And he said himself: “Nothing surpasses 1940.” Nineteen forty dominates his reputation: ask any politician who admires him, and they all speak of his finest hour. Regardless of a career that lasted half a century. Despite holding almost every high office, writing fifty books and two-thousand speeches; despite the most imperishable words in English since Shakespeare—there stands 1940.

It is a tremendously powerful image. We see him in the shattered streets of blacked out London—or sitting on a rooftops, defying the Luftwaffe—sometimes seated on a chimney, smoking out those in offices below. He included Canada when he said those were the greatest days our peoples have lived. And there he remains, in a romantic chamber of the heart, where it is always 1940.

“Civilization”

But there is more perspective to Churchill than that, as we constantly preach to those who know only 1940. It is his statesmanship, his devotion to liberty. That’s the perspective of Hillsdale College, Andrew Roberts, and so many others, and should drive societies like this one. 1940 is part of it—but really just a derivation. Here’s Dr. Larry Arnn on Churchill’s thought and statesmanship. See what you think of it.

What he wanted to preserve was, actually, civilization. If you think about that word it means Rembrandt and Plato and Shakespeare. But before that and first, it is cognate with the word for citizen. It means the rule of civilians. In 1938 when Hitler ruled, that’s what Churchill said it meant, in a beautiful commencement address. You should all go read it. It’s on our website. It’s about this long, and it’s one of the prettiest things he ever said.

And he said, what does it mean, civilization? It means that consent of the governed, the rule of law, is central every thing that we mean by civilization. And force—the strongest in the land—does not rule. It means we rule. Ordinary folk.

And there is good reason to think their common sense is still intact. And you can study the career of Winston Churchill—a monarchist, and an imperialist—and find many places where he said, over and over, that in the end, only the people are going to get it right. Because they have a right to. Because they are equal souls, and may not be governed except with their consent. That’s what I think is at stake. In 2018, as in 1940. That’s what the rule of law means. I think that’s what we could be losing.

Be For That…

I think Churchill’s admirers today should be for that. And they should adopt whatever are the best means in front of them to get that. I think that should be the main focus of Churchill studies, as he passes from the hero of 1940 to the ranks of the great thinkers on statesmanship.

I’ll end with the aforementioned Bill Rusher, speaking to us in Banff. He quoted Coventry Patmore, a 19th century poet who, like Churchill, and General Wolfe of Quebec fame, lived in Westerham. Sir Winston said: “The Romans have often forestalled many of my best ideas by thinking of them first.” Similarly, I concede my best ideas to others smarter than me, to Larry Arnn, Bill Rusher, and Coventry Patmore.

“As long as humanity admires courage, eloquence and tenacity,” Bill Rusher said, “Churchill will be remembered and honored—and these are virtues which will come into fashion again, ladies and gentlemen. That is why he would enjoy a little quatrain by Patmore. I always like to end my talks with it, because it is upbeat, optimistic and true.

For want of me the world’s course will not fail.

When all its work is done, the lie shall rot.

The Truth is great and shall prevail,

When none cares whether it prevail, or not.

Churchill and the Perspective of History 144 Years On

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

Surviving the Internet

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

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

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

National societies…

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

In print media…

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

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

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

Ten Great Books in the Space of a Year

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

Scholarly Institutions…

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

Concluded in Part 3…

“Give us the Tools….

Every student of Winston Churchill knows of Hillsdale College’s Churchill Project and the “official biography.” (The term is misleading, because nothing was ever censored.) Read more on this effort on the Project website

Sir Martin Gilbert completed the eighth and final biographic volume in 1988. But the accompanying volumes of documents (aka “Companion Volumes”) ceased in the 1990s. My colleagues and I played a small role in securing financing for three more Document Volumes covering events through 1941. With that the great work stalled.

…And we fill finish the job.”

Then in 2006, President Larry Arnn of Hillsdale College, once Gilbert’s research assistant, arranged to take on the job. He has pursued it with determination. Without him, it is unlikely that the work would have finished.

Before his death in 2015, Sir Martin had assembled thousands of documents. There were papers literally for every day of Churchill’s life. Hillsdale republished the eight biographic and the first sixteen document volumes at modest prices. Since 2013, we have added five new ones:

Testing Times, 1942.

One Continent Redeemed, January-August 1943. 

Fateful Questions, September 1943-April 1944.

Normandy and Beyond, May-December 1944. 

The Shadows of Victory, January-July 1945.

Biographic e-books are already available, and the document e-books will follow.

The Biography He Deserved

As we edit the documents we are struck by the volume and variety of issues Churchill confronted. Those who criticize his sometimes bizarre notions or impatience have never considered the enormity of his task. Toward the end of the war, his workload increased. There was the Italian surrender, U.S. and Russian demands, critical planning for D-Day. Churchill worried over squandering the Italian campaign to feed the invasion of France. He received belligerent notes from Stalin. The War Cabinet harangued him. He tried juggle satisfactory locations for summit meetings. Parliamentary business was constant. Japan and the Pacific war were growing paramount. There were speeches to the country, appointments to fill, family crises, postwar planning.

The volumes go on, fascinating in their detail, millions of words. We take no opinion (except in the editor’s forewords). Randolph Churchill declared when he first took on the biography in 1962: “He shall be his own biographer.” Churchill’s output was extraordinary, his prescriptions usually understandable and wise. His foresight, given the strain of those years, was remarkable. The wisdom of his colleagues is also well documented here.

“The End of the Beginning”

We have just completed proofs for Document Volume 22, importantly documenting Churchill’s recovery from defeat in the 1945 to triumph in 1951. This will be published by early 2019, leading to Volume 23, November 1951 to the end of Churchill’s life,  June 2019. We then celebrate with a cruise around Britain on the 75th Anniversary of D-Day. Any reader with questions is most welcome to comment below. I will try to answer.

“Now this is not the end…but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” The Churchill Project has imortant new goals, in order to build this institution. Our aim is to foster knowledge and understanding of Winston Churchill through publishing, scholarly events, free online courses, and the internet. We are building a massive archive including the Gilbert papers. My own books, collections and papers will someday be there, together with those of many others. To learn how you may join or support our efforts, click here.

Charmley reviewed

What publicized this work was a section arguing that Churchill should have backed away from fighting Germany in 1940 in order to preserve Britain’s wealth, power and empire. (Charmley did not say “make peace with Hitler,” as some reviewers stated.) Per the author, Churchill chose instead to make Britain a client state of America, allowing Soviet power to wax and the British Empire to wane. Whatever we may think of that argument, this is a well written, critical biography from a self-described “Thatcherite historian.” The bibliography lists every significant book in English relating to the political Churchill, but is light on foreign works.

Prof. Charmley provided an entertaining interlude with his thesis and the arguments over it 25 (can it be possible?) years ago. You can download these issues by Googling “Finest Hour 78” and so on:

On Singapore

_________

Learn …

Who was Winston Churchill? Why, half a century since his death, is he the most quoted historical figure? Scholars know the answers. Do you? Why does it matter?

It matters because Churchill continues to offer guidance and example today. His indomitable courage, his ability to communicate, his knowledge of history, his political precepts, are as valuable now as they were in his time.

Courage and resolution

Churchill himself said “nothing surpasses 1940.” We must look there for to learn of his greatest accomplishment. Without him the world today would be unrecognizable: dark, impoverished, tortured. Churchill didn’t win the Second World War. That took more than he alone could offer. His triumphant achievement was not losing it.

Churchill did that in two ways: pursuing the paramount goal to the exclusion of all others; and communicating that goal to a baffled and frightened world.

The great movements that underlie history are the development of science, industry, culture, social and political structures, wrote Charles Krauthammer:

These are undeniably powerful, almost determinant.  Yet every once in a while, a single person arises without whom everything would be different…. The originality of the 20th century surely lay in its politics. It invented the police state and the command economy, mass mobilization and mass propaganda, mechanized murder and routinized terror—a breathtaking catalog of political creativity. And the 20th is a single story because history saw fit to lodge the entire episode in a single century. Totalitarianism turned out to be a cul-de-sac. It came and went. It has a beginning and an end, 1917 and 1991, a run of seventy-five years neatly nestled into the last century. That is our story.

And who is the hero of that story? Who slew the dragon? Yes, it was the ordinary man and woman, the taxpayer, the grunt who fought and won the wars. True, it was America and its allies. Indeed, it was the great leaders: Roosevelt, de Gaulle, Adenauer, Truman, John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan. But above all, victory required one man without whom the fight would have been lost at the beginning. It required Winston Churchill.

Learn more: Winston Churchill’s War Leadership, by Martin Gilbert; Churchill and War, by Geoffrey Best.

Right and freedom

Almost all his life, Churchill’s quarrel was with tyranny. But singularly among politicians of his time, he saw the future—and its implications for good or ill. Churchill predicted today’s age of instant communications. He foresaw the nuclear age, the mobile phone, social media, genetic engineering. He feared the challenge to free government through what he called “Mass Effects on Modern Life.” It is useful to learn how he expressed these warnings, which still apply.

As early as 1908, Churchill’s ideas, speeches and legislative accomplishments produced pioneering reforms in the social structure. His aim was to reform what was bad and to preserve what was good, without disrupting the enterprise that produces the wherewithal to make life worth living. That is still a worthy goal.

* * *

At the same time, Churchill foresaw the all-powerful administrative state. Many an advance in science, technology and communication, Churchill argued, “suppresses the individual achievement.” He deplored the rise of the collective at the expense of the individual: “Is not mankind already escaping from the control of individuals? Are not our affairs increasingly being settled by mass processes? Are not modern conditions—at any rate throughout the English-speaking communities—hostile to the development of outstanding personalities and to their influence upon events; and lastly if this be true, will it be for our greater good and glory?” Today such questions merit examination by thoughtful people.

The newspapers do a lot of thinking for us, Churchill wrote. Substitute “media” for “newspapers” and he could be speaking today. He particularly worried about the superficiality of media. True, it provides “a tremendous educating process. But it is an education which passes in at one ear and out at the other. It is an education at once universal and superficial.” Such a process, taken to its ultimate ends, would produce “standardized citizens, all equipped with regulation opinions, prejudices and sentiments, according to their class or party.”

These considerations alone, writes Larry Arnn,

offer ample practical reasons to know Churchill’s story; but there are other reasons beyond the manifestly practical. Justice and the duty to pursue it are central to true statesmanship. It is certainly worth our time to consider how Churchill, who held to that idea as strongly as any, understood his and his country’s purposes and navigated toward them.

Learn more: Churchill’s Political Philosophy, by Martin Gilbert; Churchill’s Trial: Winston Churchill and the Challenge to Free Government, by Larry P. Arnn.

Magnanimity and generosity

Another quality worthy to learn was Churchill’s magnanimity. He was not a hater. “I have always urged fighting wars and other contentions with might and main till overwhelming victory,” he said, “and then offering the hand of friendship to the vanquished.” He proved this repeatedly.

As a young statesman Churchill fostered a generous peace with the Boers after their defeat in the Boer War. In 1918, he urged (vainly) that shiploads of food be sent to blockaded Germany. He fought the 1926 General Strike, then argued for redress of strikers’ grievances. His hate for the Germans in World War II “died with their surrender.”

* * *

He held the same attitude toward individuals—something we can only wish for among today’s politicians. Admiral Fisher nearly destroyed his career in 1915; a year later Churchill advocated Fisher’s return to the Admiralty. In 1945 the socialist Clement Attlee inflicted his greatest political defeat. Yet when confronted with jokes at Attlee’s expense, Churchill refused to be drawn into lampooning a man he described as a “gallant servant of his country.” In the 1930s he fought a bill granting India greater independence, and then urged the Indian leader Gandhi to “make the most of it,” and promised to see that India would get “much more.”

His eulogies to Neville Chamberlain and Lloyd George were masterful in their generosity, Andrew Roberts wrote: “He did not believe in vengeance against domestic political opponents, but rather in what he called, ‘A judicious and thrifty disposal of bile.’”

This was a rare quality, even then. It remains an example worth imitating. To those who had wronged him in the past Churchill would say, “time ends all things,” or “the past is dead.” In 1940, having finally risen to the pinnacle, he warned critics of his predecessors: “If we open a quarrel between the past and the present we shall find that we have lost the future.”

Learn more: Churchill as Peacemaker, James W. Muller, ed.; Great Contemporaries: Churchill Reflects on FDR, Hitler, Kipling, Chaplin, Balfour, and Other Giants of His Age, by Winston S. Churchill.

“A man of quality”

We do tend to be discouraged about how things are going—although in our time, they haven’t gone all that badly. The fall of the Soviet Union, the prevalence of free market economics, were not things people would bet on forty years ago. Churchill saw them coming twenty years earlier than that. He was always the optimist. Humanity, he believed, was not going to destroy itself.

“In every sphere of human endeavour, Churchill foresaw the dangers and potential for evil,” wrote Martin Gilbert:

Many of those dangers are our dangers today. He also pointed the way forward to our solutions—for tomorrow. That is why it is useful to learn about his life. Some writers portray him as a figure of the past, an anachronism, a grotesque. In doing so, it is they who are the losers, for he was a man of quality: a good guide for our troubled decade and for the generations now reaching adulthood.

These free online courses cover topics such as Winston Churchill, the Constitution, American history, free market economics, and more. Well over a million people have already taken at least one course.

Why do we make our online courses available at no charge? Because education on behalf of liberty is our mission. We don’t want to turn away any citizen who is willing to learn because of financial need.

Hillsdale’s motto is “Pursuing Truth and Defending Liberty Since 1844.” We believe that learning and liberty are closely connected.

Pursuing Truth

Will you consider supporting Hillsdale’s courses and our other educational outreach by giving a gift of any amount to the College today? This is especially important as we close out our fiscal year in a strong financial position.

Our goal is to raise $300,000 by June 30, and we can only reach it with your help.

Please give by clicking on this secure page.

Thank you for helping Hillsdale teach any citizen willing to learn.

Warm regards,

Hillsdale Churchill Project

The Churchill Project serves to propagate a right understanding of Churchill’s record. Its goal is to teach statesmanship, through its academic resources at all levels from undergraduate to online courses.

Since 2006 Hillsdale College Press has been publisher of Winston S. Churchill, the official biography, including its eight biographic and nineteen (to date) document volumes through 2017. The Churchill Project will complete the remaining volumes of The Churchill Documents, bringing to over thirty volumes what is already the longest biography in history.

The Churchill Project is also the archive for the papers of Sir Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s official biographer from 1968 to 2012. And it will promote Churchill scholarship through national conferences, scholarships, online courses, and an endowed faculty chair. Through these endeavours, Hillsdale College will establish itself at the forefront of Churchill research, scholarship, and analysis.

For more information please visit The Churchill Project website. There you may subscribe for frequent updates of articles and videos, and news of seminars and educational programs.

Q: TheQuestion tries to provide our readers with the most reliable knowledge from experts in various fields. As we celebrate National Churchill Day, April 9th, we would appreciate your thoughts on three questions. These are currently posted without responses on our website: Was Winston Churchill really that good an artist? What made him a great leader? What was his greatest achievement?

 

TheQuestion: Churchill as Artist

​Please take a virtual tour of Hillsdale College’s recent exhibition of Churchill paintings and artifacts. Here your readers can decide for themselves. The consensus among experts, however, is that Churchill was a gifted amateur. He had genuine talent, but he also had good tutors: Sir John and Lady Lavery, Paul Maze, Walter Sickert. Several professionals—Picasso was one—said that if painting had been his profession, he would have done very well. (Picasso rarely shared his politics, and is reputed to have wished that happened…)

Churchill himself never pretended to be more than an amateur, referring to his 600 oils as “my daubs.” Until very late he resisted exhibiting, and was sensitive to his works being patronized because of his fame. In 1944, General Eisenhower’s chauffeur, an amateur painter, asked if he might show one of his oils to the Prime Minister. “Very good,” Churchill said, “but you, unlike myself, will be judged on talent alone”

TheQuestion: Leadership

To answer TheQuestion’s second query would require many words. ​Whole books have been written on the subject, notably Churchill on Leadership by Steven Hayward. Churchill’s Trial, by Dr. Larry Arnn, College, considers how Churchill resolved the nature and needs of the citizenry with constitutional democracy and ordered liberty​.

In my opinion two qualities of his leadership stand out: his ability to pursue the paramount goal to the exclusion of all rivals, however worthy; and his ability to communicate that goal to a baffled or frightened world. In May and June 1940, he was the only possible choice for premier, because for almost a decade he had warned of Nazi Germany as the primary threat. “I thought I knew a good deal about it all,” he wrote in his memoirs, “and was sure I should not fail.” A year later, when Hitler invaded Russia, he pledged immediate aid to the Soviet Union, which he had long excoriated: “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.”

As a communicator he was unique in his time, and perhaps any time. I remember a Belgian lady at a Churchill conference, gripping Lady Soames’s arm to tell her what her father’s wartime speeches had meant to Belgians gathered around surreptitious radios, listening to crackling broadcasts over the forbidden BBC. Ronald Golding, a former RAF pilot who was briefly Churchill’s detective after the war, said: “After one of those speeches, we wanted the Germans to come.”

TheQuestion: Achievement

Churchill himself said “nothing surpasses 1940,” and we must look there for his greatest accomplishment—there, and not the glorious victory years later. Churchill didn’t win the Second World War. Winning took the combined resources of the Empire/Commonwealth, Russia and America. His biggest achievement was not losing it.

And it was, as the old Duke of Wellington said of Waterloo, “a damn close-run thing.” By June 1940, many thought the wisest course was coming to terms with Germany. Churchill resisted, and won them over. “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.” His colleagues rose and cheered, thumping him on the back. All possibility of making peace with Germany vanished. Promotion for the upcoming film “Darkest Hour” says the movie will for the first time disclose why Churchill fought on. The reasons have been plain since 1940.

A 19th Century Man…

The journalist Charles Krauthammer contemplated events had Churchill not been there,. Hitler, he said, “would have achieved what no other tyrant, not even Napoleon, had ever achieved: mastery of Europe. Civilization would have descended into a darkness the likes of which it had never known.” And Krauthammer eloquently describes the singularity of Churchill’s achievement:

The great movements that underlie history—the development of science, industry, culture, social and political structures—are undeniably powerful, almost determinant. Yet every once in a while, a single person arises without whom everything would be different….Churchill was, of course, not sufficient in bringing victory, but he was uniquely necessary—he then immediately rose to warn prophetically against Nazism’s sister barbarism, Soviet communism.

Churchill is now disparaged for not sharing our multicultural sensibilities. His disrespect for the suffrage movement, his disdain for Gandhi, his resistance to decolonization are undeniable. But that kind of criticism is akin to dethroning Lincoln as the greatest of 19th century Americans because he shared many of his era’s appalling prejudices. In essence, the rap on Churchill is that he was a 19th century man parachuted into the 20th. But is that not precisely to the point? It took a 19th century man—traditional in habit, rational in thought, conservative in temper—to save the 20th century from itself.

…in a Thoroughly Modern Century

The story of the 20th century is a story of revolution wrought by thoroughly modern men: Hitler, Stalin, Mao and above all Lenin, who invented totalitarianism out of Marx’s cryptic and inchoate communism. And it is the story of the modern intellectual, from Ezra Pound to Jean-Paul Sartre, seduced by these modern men of politics and, grotesquely, serving them.

The uniqueness of the 20th century lies not in its science but in its politics. The 20th century was no more scientifically gifted than the 19th, with its Gauss, Darwin, Pasteur, Maxwell and Mendel—all plowing, by the way, less-broken scientific ground than the 20th. No. The originality of the 20th surely lay in its politics. It invented the police state and the command economy, mass mobilization and mass propaganda, mechanized murder and routinized terror—a breathtaking catalog of political creativity. And the 20th is a single story because history saw fit to lodge the entire episode in a single century.

Totalitarianism turned out to be a cul-de-sac. It came and went. It has a beginning and an end, 1917 and 1991, a run of 75 years. That is our story. And who is the hero of that story? Who slew the dragon? Yes, it was the ordinary man, the taxpayer, the grunt who fought and won the wars. It was America and its allies. And it was the great leaders: Roosevelt, de Gaulle, Adenauer, Truman, John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan. But above all, victory required one man without whom the fight would have been lost at the beginning. It required Winston Churchill.

See also 

National Winston Churchill Day 2016

The volumes comprise “every important document of any kind that concerns Churchill, and the present volume is 2,752 pages long, representing an average of more than eleven pages per day.” Order your copy from the Hillsdale College Bookstore.

Here is an excerpt from my account, “Fresh History,” which can be read in its entirety at the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.

Fateful Questions: Excerpts

Fastidiously compiled by the late Sir Martin Gilbert and edited by Dr. Larry Arnn, this volume offers a fresh contribution of documents crucial to our understanding of Churchill in World War II. It is a vast new contribution to Churchill scholarship.

Fateful Questions takes us from the Allied invasion of Italy to the first Big Three conference at Teheran; Russian successes on the Eastern Front; fraught arguments over tactics and strategy as the Allies begin closing in on Nazi Germany, and on to the eve of D-Day: the invasion of France in June 1944.

The majority of these documents have never before been seen in print. They illustrate the sheer volume and variety of subjects Churchill dealt with, leading Britain in the war while presiding of myriad mechanics of government.

In Fateful Questions, Churchill is called upon to alleviate, in the midst of war, a severe famine in Bengal, India. Almost simultaneously, he is confronted with Italy’s surrender, and the question of who will lead that nation after Mussolini. From America come constant requests, prods and proposals—and the growing realization that by comparison to the USA, Britain will soon play a greatly diminished role.

Militarily, Churchill has to consider siphoning resources from the Italian campaign to support the coming invasion of France. He must cope with belligerent notes from Stalin, often demanding the impossible; strained dialogue within the War Cabinet; difficulties in setting Big Three meetings; Parliamentary business; Japan and the Pacific; communications with the citizenry; appointments to fill; vacancies and losses; postwar planning—page after page, copiously footnoted by Hillsdale’s team of student associates and practiced historians.

Even now, in the digital age, Churchill’s workload in 1943-44 would be enormous for several persons, let alone one man pushing seventy. His output was extraordinary, his prescriptions understandable and wise. If he lost his temper on occasion, it is fully understandable. This is not to suggest—as the documents testify—that Churchill was right on every subject. But the average of his decisions was certainly not bad.

A sampling from Fateful Questions illustrates both the complexity of Churchill’s problems and their wide variety and the depths of detail into which he entered—and, in some cases, some rather astonishing facts which, until this book were confined to archives, or not known at all.

Palestine

Churchill’s steady support of a national home for the Jews continued during World War II, and Fateful Questions contains many evidences. In 1942-44 Walter Guinness, Lord Moyne, was Resident Minister of State in Cairo, responsible for the Middle East, including Mandatory Palestine, and Africa. He was a lifetime friend of the Churchills. His assassination by Zionist extremists in November 1944 stunned Churchill. “If our dreams for Zionism are to end in the smoke of assassins’ pistols, and our labours for its future to produce only a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany,” he declared sadly, “many like myself will have to reconsider the position we have maintained so consistently and so long in the past.”

27 October 1943. Winston S. Churchill to Sir Edward Bridges. Prime Minister’s Personal Minute C.41/3 (Churchill papers, 20/106)

It must be more than three months since the War Cabinet decided that a special committee should be set up to watch over the Jewish question and Palestine generally. How many times has this Committee met? At the present moment Lord Moyne is over here. I said at least a month ago that he should be invited to lay his views before this Committee. He has been made a member, but there has been no meeting. A meeting should be held this week, and Lord Moyne should have every opportunity of stating his full case, in which I am greatly interested. The matter might be discussed further at the Cabinet next week or the week after. Pray report to me the action that will be taken.

Destroyers for Bases 

In the Destroyers for Bases Agreement on 2 September 1940, fifty mothballed U.S. Navy destroyers were transferred to the Royal Navy in exchange for land rights to build American bases on British possessions. No one maintained that this was a fair exchange, but Fateful Questions reveals that Churchill downplayed this issue: “When you have got a thing where you want it, it is a good thing to leave it where it is.” To President Roosevelt’s advisor, Harry Hopkins, he admitted that the value of the trade was unequal—but that, to Britain, American security overrode considerations of an equable “business deal.” This was astonishing admission, characteristic of Churchill, and his loyalty to an ally. 

14 October 1943. Winston S. Churchill to Harry Hopkins. Prime Minister’s Personal Telegram T.1614/3  (Churchill papers, 20/121)

Personal and Most Secret. I am most grateful for the comments which the President made at his Press conference but there are several other important allegations which we think should be answered. I therefore propose to publish from 10 Downing Street on my authority something like the [following]…Statement begins…..

“Complaints are made about the bases lent by Britain to the United States in the West Indies in 1940 in return for the fifty destroyers. These fifty destroyers, although very old, were most helpful at that critical time to us who were fighting alone against Germany and Italy, but no human being could pretend that the destroyers were in any way an equivalent for the immense strategic advantages conceded in seven islands vital to the United States. I never defended the transaction as a business deal. I proclaimed to Parliament, and still proclaim, that the safety of the United States is involved in these bases, and that the military security of the United States must be considered a prime British interest….”

 

Famine in Bengal

Since publication of a book on the 1943-44 Bengal famine a few years ago—and a chorus of condemnations from those who read little else—Churchill and his War Cabinet have been accused near-genocidal behavior over aid to the victims. The Viceroy, Lord Wavell, and Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery, are frequently represented as Churchill’s critics. Before he died, Sir Martin Gilbert told me that the relevant documents, which he had exhaustively compiled, would be revealed in the appropriate document volume. They would, he said, completely exonerate Churchill.

That time has now come with publication of Fateful Questions. Reading it, no one could consider that Churchill and his Cabinet, in the midst of a war for survival, did not do everything they could for the plight of the starving, and for the Indian people in general. Only a few excerpts are possible here. They barely scratch the surface.

8 October 1943. Winston S. Churchill to the War Cabinet. (Churchill papers, 23/11), 10 Downing Street

DIRECTIVE TO THE VICEROY DESIGNATE (WAVELL)

1. Your first duty is the defence of India from Japanese menace and invasion. Owing to the favourable turn which the affairs of The King-Emperor have taken this duty can best be discharged by ensuring that India is a safe and fertile base from which the British and American offensive can be launched in 1944. Peace, order and a high condition of war-time well-being among the masses of the people constitute the essential foundation of the forward thrust against the enemy.
2. The material and cultural conditions of the many peoples of India will naturally engage your earnest attention. The hard pressures of world-war have for the first time for many years brought conditions of scarcity, verging in some localities into actual famine, upon India. Every effort must be made, even by the diversion of shipping urgently needed for war purposes, to deal with local shortages. But besides this the prevention of the hoarding of grain for a better market and the fair distribution of foodstuffs between town and country are of the utmost consequence. The contrast between wealth and poverty in India, the incidence of corrective taxation and the relations prevailing between land-owner and tenant or labourer, or between factory-owner and employee, require searching re-examination.
3. Every effort should be made by you to assuage the strife between the Hindus and Moslems and to induce them to work together for the common good. No form of democratic Government can flourish in India while so many millions are by their birth excluded from those fundamental rights of equality between man and man, upon which all healthy human societies must stand…. [emphasis mine]

12 October 1943. House of Commons: Oral Answers

INDIA (FOOD SITUATION)

Secretary of State for India (Mr. Amery): At the beginning of the year His Majesty’s Government provided the necessary shipping for substantial imports of grain to India in order to meet prospects of serious shortage which were subsequently relieved by an excellent spring harvest in Northern India. Since the recrudescence of the shortage in an acute form we have made every effort to provide shipping, and considerable quantities of food grains are now arriving or are due to arrive before the end of the year. We have also been able to help in the supply of milk food for children. The problem so far as help from here is concerned is entirely one of shipping, and has to be judged in the light of all the other urgent needs of the United Nations.

Canadian & Australian Aid

4 November 1943. Winston S. Churchill to William Mackenzie King (Prime Minister, Canada). PM’s Personal Telegram T.1842/3 (Churchill papers, 20/123)

1. I have seen the telegrams exchanged by you and the Viceroy offering 100,000 tons of wheat to India and I gratefully acknowledge the spirit which prompts Canada to make this generous gesture.
2. Your offer is contingent however on shipment from the Pacific Coast which I regret is impossible. The only ships available to us on the Pacific Coast are the Canadian new buildings which you place at our disposal. These are already proving inadequate to fulfil our existing high priority commitments from that area which include important timber requirements for aeroplane manufacture in the United Kingdom and quantities of nitrate from Chile to the Middle East which we return for foodstuffs for our Forces and for export to neighbouring territories, including Ceylon.
3. Even if you could make the wheat available in Eastern Canada, I should still be faced with a serious shipping question. If our strategic plans are not to suffer undue interference we must continue to scrutinise all demands for shipping with the utmost rigour. India’s need for imported wheat must be met from the nearest source, i.e. from Australia. Wheat from Canada would take at least two months to reach India whereas it could be carried from Australia in 3 to 4 weeks. Thus apart from the delay in arrival, the cost of shipping is more than doubled by shipment from Canada instead of from Australia. In existing circumstance this uneconomical use of shipping would be indefensible….

11 November 1943. Winston S. Churchill to Mackenzie King. PM’s Personal Telegram T.1942/3 (Churchill papers, 20/124)

…The War Cabinet has again considered the question of further shipments of Australian wheat and has decided to ship up to another 100,000 tons, part of which will arrive earlier than the proposed cargo from Canada….

“We should do everything possible…”

14 February 1944. War Cabinet: Conclusions. (War Cabinet papers, 65/41) 10 Downing Street

INDIAN FOOD GRAIN REQUIREMENTS

The Prime Minister informed the War Cabinet that…there had been a further communication from the Viceroy urging in the strongest terms the seriousness of the situation as he foresaw it….he was most anxious that we should do everything possible to ease the Viceroy’s position. No doubt the Viceroy felt that if this corner could be turned, the position next year would be better….

The Minister of War Transport said that it would be out of the question for him to find shipping to maintain the import of wheat to India at a monthly rate of 50,000 tons for an additional two months. The best that he could do was represented by the proposed import of Iraqi barley. If, when the final figures of the rice crop were available, the Government of India’s anticipation of an acute shortage proved to be justified he would then have tonnage in a position to carry to India about 25,000 tons a month. But even this help would be at the expense of cutting the United Kingdom import programme in 1944 below 24 million tons, this being the latest estimate in the light of increasing operational requirements. In the circumstances it was clearly quite impossible to provide shipping to meet the full demand of 1½ million tons made by the Government of India.

24 April 1944. War Cabinet: Conclusions. (Cabinet papers, 65/42) 10 Downing Street

Secret. The War Cabinet had before them a Memorandum by the Secretary of State for India (WP (44) 216) reviewing the latest position as regards the Indian food grain situation. The result was a net worsening of 550,000 tons and the Viceroy, in addition to the 200,000 tons already promised, now required 724,000 tons of wheat if the minimum needs of the civil population were to be met and the Army were also to receive their requirements.

The Secretary of State for India said that the position had been worsened by unseasonable weather, and by the disaster at Bombay, in which 45,000 tons of badly-needed foodstuffs and 11 ships had been lost. He was satisfied that everything possible had been done by the Authorities in India to meet the situation. Given the threat to operations which any breakdown in India’s economic life involved, he felt that we should now apprise the United States of the seriousness of the position. It must be for the War Cabinet to decide how far we should ask for their actual assistance….

The Prime Minister said that it was clear that His Majesty’s Government could only provide further relief for the Indian situation at the cost of incurring grave difficulties in other directions. At the same time, there was a strong obligation on us to replace the grain which had perished in the Bombay explosion. He was sceptical as to any help being forthcoming from America, save at the cost of operations of the United Kingdom import programme. At the same time his sympathy was great for the sufferings of the people of India.

Appeal to Roosevelt

29 April 1944. Winston S. Churchill to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. PM’s Personal Telegram T.996/4. (Churchill papers, 20/163)

No.665. I am seriously concerned about the food situation in India and its possible reactions on our joint operations. Last year we had a grievous famine in Bengal through which at least 700,000 people died. This year there is a good crop of rice, but we are faced with an acute shortage of wheat, aggravated by unprecedented storms which have inflicted serious damage on the Indian spring crops. India’s shortage cannot be overcome by any possible surplus of rice even if such a surplus could be extracted from the peasants. Our recent losses in the Bombay explosion have accentuated the problem.

Wavell is exceedingly anxious about our position and has given me the gravest warnings. His present estimate is that he will require imports of about one million tons this year if he is to hold the situation, and to meet the needs of the United States and British and Indian troops and of the civil population especially in the great cities. I have just heard from Mountbatten that he considers the situation so serious that, unless arrangements are made promptly to import wheat requirements, he will be compelled to release military cargo space of SEAC in favour of wheat and formally to advise Stillwell that it will also be necessary for him to arrange to curtail American military demands for this purpose.

By cutting down military shipments and other means, I have been able to arrange for 350,000 tons of wheat to be shipped to India from Australia during the first nine months of 1944. This is the shortest haul. I cannot see how to do more.

I have had much hesitation in asking you to add to the great assistance you are giving us with shipping but a satisfactory situation in India is of such vital importance to the success of our joint plans against the Japanese that I am impelled to ask you to consider a special allocation of ships to carry wheat to India from Australia without reducing the assistance you are now providing for us, who are at a positive minimum if war efficiency is to be maintained. We have the wheat (in Australia) but we lack the ships. I have resisted for some time the Viceroy’s request that I should ask you for your help, but I believe that, with this recent misfortune to the wheat harvest and in the light of Mountbatten’s representations, I am no longer justified in not asking for your help. Wavell is doing all he can by special measures in India. If, however, he should find it possible to revise his estimate of his needs, I would let you know immediately.

Without Churchill…

Fateful Questions, in these documents and others included, has put paid to the outrageous allegations that Churchill, full of racist hatred for the people of India, was responsible for exacerbating the Bengal famine in 1943-44.

The historian Arthur Herman noted two facts which Churchill’s critics have thus far studiously ignored.  (1) Had the famine occurred in peacetime, without a war for survival, it would have been dealt with competently, as famines had been dealt with before by the British Raj. (2) Without Churchill, the Bengal famine would have been worse.

The 2016 Hillsdale College cruise of southwest Alaska aboard Crystal Serenity (27 July-3 August) provided an impressive visit to a spectacular state. Accompanying the fine dining and entertainment was a crew which could not have done more. Crystal Cruises seems to own all the highest ratings in the business, and it’s easy to see why. There’s no separate bar bill, and they’ll deliver up to two bottles a day to your stateroom. No one could drink this much! Tips are included, nobody duns you for handouts, and you’re not presented with a list of “estimated gratuities” on your last day aboard.

Crystal ships offer more than average public space. We had only 1000 passengers (much less than capacity), aboard an 820 foot, 69,000-ton ship), so it never felt congested. As they used to say at Brooklands racing circuit: “the right crowd and no crowding.” More passengers are usual, however. On 16 August Serenity set sail to Alaska again with 1700 customers on a 28-day cruise from Vancouver to New York via the Northwest Passage. She is the largest ship ever to navigate that course.

Fun Afloat

Aside from the attentive staff and perfect organization, there was nightly entertainment at four or five different venues. Bar room piano player Perry Grant kept us at the Avenue Saloon 9:30-12:30 every night, as he played, sang and interviewed guests. Perry has a touch: never too bawdy, always fun. He seems to know hundreds of tunes, hardly ever repeats one. For those of “a certain age,” it’s a memorable combination. We understand he has a small army of followers, who sign on wherever he goes. Here’s Perry’s version of “My Way.”

(We couldn’t get enough. This one’s for you, and you know who you are….)

The route began from Vancouver to Juneau, Alaska’s capital. There was a sea voyage the Hubbard Glacier, then to the Alaska towns of Hoonah, Skagway and Ketchikan. We reentered British Columbia via Nanaimo, and ended in Vancouver. Well organized excursions (extra cost) were available, but you could easily pass a day walking around a town, or just relaxing on the ship.

We aren’t cruise folk. Viking’s Danube River cruise, with 180 aboard, is more our style. We confess to hankering for a canal barge for twelve, a big ketch for six, or the Claymore II, supply ship for Pitcairn Island, which takes three days to float six passengers to the storied hideaway of Fletcher Christian and a handful of rebels after the Mutiny on the Bounty. That we enjoyed a “big” cruise speaks volumes of Crystal quality and Hillsdale’s organizing.

Hillsdale Seminars

The College’s educational program is a great way to while away days at sea. Our speakers were an eclectic mix. Hillsdale President Larry Arnn always has worthwhile things to say to thoughtful people. Worrisome things these days, with so many uncertainties facing America and the world. Victor Davis Hanson spoke about Athens and Sparta, eloquently and well, not without parallels to modern problems. John Steele Gordon, the historian and columnist, spoke about his illuminating book on the Washington Monument and other obelisks.

Screenwriter Michael Walsh said movies don’t really start off to be liberal or conservative. If you want to write one of those, you’re on the wrong track. What matters—despite Hollywood’s reputation as a hotbed of wealthy lefties who can bear any tax burden levied on the rest of us—is the story line: “The Godfather could have been set a million years BC and would still have been a success because of the story line.”

Walsh incidentally wrote a great prequel/sequel to Casablanca called As Time Goes By, which all Casablanca fans should read. The prequel explains why Rick Blaine(who grew up in New York as Itzhak Baline) could not return to his home town. The sequel describes how Elsa, Victor, Louie, Sam and Rick  helped to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, “the Butcher of Prague.”  So now you know how that happened.

David Goldman was so riveting on the demographics of Islam and the Middle East that I bought his book. Prompted by a Turkish waiter, I also asked him about Turkey, which is worthy of a separate post.

For information on future Hillsdale cruises, click here.

Never Surrender: Winston Churchill and Britain’s Decision to Fight Nazi Germany in the Fateful Summer of 1940

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May 1940: Lord Halifax “sounded like a nervous solicitor reading from a half-thought-out brief….When Churchill spoke of fighting on alone, the mantle of history—Agincourt, Waterloo, Trafalgar, the Armada—sang through his sentences.”

Here is a well-written and organized review of mainly well-known events, retold with dramatic prose and crisp analysis. It’s an ideal book for young people unfamiliar with the scope of Churchill’s achievement in 1940, and, indeed, for anyone who wants a good account of the events that saved Western civilization.

Halfway through the book the perils mount and Churchill becomes prime minister: Dunkirk is evacuated, France falls, and the tempo intensifies in the rapid march of events. By the end of May 1940, the war cabinet faces a bitter choice: fight on, with no obvious route to victory, or accept an armistice or cease-fire, on whatever terms Hitler (who is anxious to make them) might offer. Kelly describes the stark options, and their leading advocates: Halifax the pragmatist, Churchill the “maximalist and romantic.”

Churchill, Kelly writes, “opened up his imagination and invited the House and the country in,” telling Britons they were defending not just their country, but the world cause: “Churchill’s particular genius as a leader lay in his ability to make people feel they had to rise to his level, which had the effect of making them a little bigger and braver than they were….”

Kelly’s fine writing and feel for those perilous times, puts us in mind of Larry Arnn’s lectures in the Hillsdale College online Churchill course. Some things, Dr. Arnn said, are indeed worth the ultimate effort. “Some things you may have to die for.”

We need to keep that thought in mind today.

Read complete review on the Hillsdale Churchill Project site.

I find the glorification of Churchill quite disgusting. It is typical British-American arrogance to ignore the outcome of WW2 for the peoples of Eastern Europe, not to speak of the Germans. Churchill knew from the beginning about the terrible fate of the Russians and many other East European peoples under Bolshevist dictatorship. He obviously didn’t care. He was obsessed with anti-German hatred. Knowing that he bombed German cities, killing thousands of civilians long before the Germans were retaliating, makes him in my opinion even worse than Hitler. Why  did he go into alliance with Stalin against the Germans? That is his crime and the recognition of it will come. —H.W. via email.

The choice before Churchill and Britain in 1939-40 was anything but clear-cut. There were good reasons, however, supporting the choice they made.

While considering the fate of Eastern Europe it is reasonable also to consider that of Western Europe, and what Europe would have looked like had Hitler triumphed, and moved on into the nuclear age.

Before assuming that Churchill didn’t care about Bolshevism, it is necessary to read a little. Read about 1919-20, when he supported the Whites against the Bolsheviks, earning no love from his practical, wise and eminent colleagues, who didn’t see what he did.

Read on into the 1930s. Who occupied the Rhineland in violation of treaties? What was the March 1938 Anschluss about? What happened at Munich? What about March 1939, and the absorption of all those Bohemians, Moravians and Slovakians into the Reich? Which country first allied herself with Russia—Britain or Germany? Cities like Guernica, Warsaw and Rotterdam were all hit before the RAF had dropped a single bomb on the Reich. Indeed, for many months after the war started in 1939, the most the British would drop were pamphlets. Bombing, some in the government believed, would amount to destruction of private property.

Why side with Stalin in 1941? If your back is to the wall you tend to welcome allies without being too choosy about them. It is a legitimate criticism that Churchill was too trusting of Stalin; those arguments are not coming out, they’ve been out for thirty years. But if he hated Germans, his postwar declaration that the only way to salvage Europe was through rapprochement between France and Germany was an odd way to express it. “My hate,” he wrote later, “died with their surrender.”

In 1931 Churchill wrote “Mass Effects in Modern Life”: words that still ring today:

No material progress, even though it takes shapes we cannot now conceive, or however it may expand the faculties of man, can bring comfort to his soul. It is this fact, more wonderful than any that Science can reveal, which gives the best hope that all will be well. Projects undreamed-of by past generations will absorb our immediate descendants; forces terrific and devastating will be in their hands; comforts, activities, amenities, pleasures will crowd upon them, but their hearts will ache, their lives will be barren, if they have not a vision above material things.

“Implicit in those words,” says Dr. Larry Arnn, “are the speeches of 1940. Churchill told the British people we must fight to the death—better to die than to give this thing up. The sin of Hitler, almost superhuman in its scale but not, is that he tried too form a polity that would eliminate the very heart of humanity. No one saw that more clearly than Winston Churchill.”

Churchill was certainly a “Constructive Alternative” to established policies throughout his career, and 2015 contains many significant Churchill anniversaries: his first election to Parliament (115 years), the Dardanelles and Gallipoli disasters (100 years), his first premiership (75 years), his retirement as Prime Minister (60 years), his death and state funeral (50 years). To that end, Churchill was the subject of Hillsdale College’s first Center for Constructive Alternatives (CCA) event of the 2015-16 academic year.

I was pleased to be part of a program featuring two old friends: Timothy Robert Hardy, the most inimitable and genuine actor to ever play the role of Winston Churchill; and Minnie Churchill, Sir Winston’s granddaughter-in-law, an expert on Churchill’s oil paintings. We were joined in presentations by two outstanding scholars, Andrew Roberts and John Maurer. CCA events are open to Hillsdale students, faculty and members of the College’s President’s Club.

Program

Sunday, October 4th

4:00 pm: “Churchill’s Early Life,” with Andrew Roberts, author, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900.

8:00 pm: “Churchill and His Pastime of Painting,” with Minnie Churchill, Chairman, Churchill Heritage Ltd., and co-author of Sir Winston Churchill: His Life and His Paintings.

Monday, October 5th

12:00 pm: “Churchill and the Written Word,” with Richard Langworth CBE, Senior Fellow, Hillsdale College Churchill Project.

4:00 pm: Showing of selections from “Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years,” starring Robert Hardy and Sian Phillips (1981).

8:00 pm: “Churchill in My Life,” with Robert Hardy CBE.

Tuesday, October 6th

4:00 pm: “Churchill as War Leader,” with John Maurer, Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island.

8:00 pm: “Churchill in Peacetime,” with Larry P. Arnn, President, Hillsdale College.

Wednesday, October 7th

4:00 pm: Faculty Roundtable