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The Question

“What do you think are Churchill’s best books on war? Though he was a great peacemaker, his work there is eclipsed by the climacterics of war. What are his best?”

The River War

In 1885 the Sudan had been overrun by Dervish tribesman under their religious leader, the Mahdi (Muhammad Ahmad). Fourteen years later, London sent Lord Kitchener and an Anglo-Egyptian force (including Churchill) to reestablish sovereignty. Notwithstanding the superiority of British weapons and tactics, the obstacles presented by the Nile, the desert, the climate, cholera and a brave, fanatical Dervish army were formidable.

Churchill excitingly describes the British victory, culminating in the Battle of Omdurman in 1898. Yet he doesn’t hesitate to criticize the actions of his own side. He is particularly critical of Kitchener, whose treatment of the dead Mahdi was shameful, even barbaric. Far from accepting uncritically the superiority of British civilization, Churchill appreciates the longing for liberty among the indigenous Sudanese. But he finds their native regime defective in its disdain for the human rights of its inhabitants.

***

In 1902 for an abridged edition, Churchill excised one-fourth of the narrative, including his criticisms of Kitchener. By then he had entered Parliament, and was wary of burning bridges. He also added some material, so there are two texts: 1899 and 1902. A new and complete edition, prepared by Professor James Muller, containing both the original and 1902 texts has long been developing. It will be linked here when available. (For Dr. Muller’s video presentation at Hillsdale College, “Lessons from The River War, “ click here.)

Uncommonly for a Victorian, Churchill had words of praise for the Muslim warriors, while deploring their savagery toward other Muslims. There are in The River War many examples of Churchill praising Muslims. He considered his Dervish enemies “as brave men as ever walked the earth.” Years later he wrote with deep feeling of Muslim and Hindu soldiers of the Indian Army in the Second World War. Context matters.

For further reflections see Dr. Paul Rahe’s essay, “The Timeless Value of Winston Churchill’s The River War.”

The World Crisis

In 1905 Churchill hired a polymath who was to remain his literary assistant for thirty years. Edward Marsh was a classical scholar, a civil servant and a brilliant litterateur. From that time, Churchill stopped writing his books in longhand and began dictating to teams of secretaries. Marsh vetted the drafts for Churchill’s final approval. They made a marvelous team.

Marsh appears frequently in Churchill’s life. When he died in 1953 Churchill, who seemed to outlive everybody, waxed eloquent: “He was a master of literature and scholarship and a deeply instructed champion of the arts. All his long life was serene, and he left this world, I trust, without a pang, and I am sure without a fear.”

Marsh helped Churchill write The World Crisis, his memoir of World War I. Here Churchill began as First Lord of the Admiralty, fell disastrously from power and volunteered for the front. Then he returned to office as Minister of Munitions. He became Secretary of State for War ironically, just as the war ended. Perhaps not ironically, for the appointment was made by Prime Minister Lloyd George, who nursed a wry sense of humor.

“All about himself”

Whenever I’m asked to recommend a big book by Churchill, I always name The World Crisis. Like all of his war books it is highly personal. One of his friends called it, “Winston’s brilliant autobiography, disguised as a history of the Universe.” One of his enemies said, “Winston has written an enormous book all about himself and calls it The World Crisis.”

A thoughtful critic, Sir Robert Rhodes James, regarded The World Crisis as Churchill’s masterpiece. But he correctly noted that “one can never quite separate Churchill the orator from Churchill the writer.”

Even if you do not read war books you will be entranced by Churchill’s account of the awful, unfolding scene of the First World War. Readers learn of the great power rivalries that caused the war. We observe Churchill’s failed effort to break the deadlock on the Western Front by forcing the Dardanelles, knocking Turkey out of the war. We revisit the carnage of the Somme and Passchendaele. Finally we see Germany almost win and then lost the war in 1918. A fifth and final volume, The Eastern Front, relates the lesser-known horrors of the war in Russia and Austria-Hungary. In his fourth volume, The Aftermath, Churchill covers the decade after victory.

“Are you quite sure? It would be a pity to be wrong”

Two brief excerpts from The World Crisis. The first is a favorite of Colin Powell, who asked me to look it up when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs. It tells us a lot about Powell, said to be the voice of caution before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In 1911, the Germans sent a gunboat to Agadir, Morocco, and almost went to war with France over it. Churchill here describes the exchange of diplomatic telegrams between Berlin, Paris and London as the Agadir Crisis deepened.

They sound so very cautious and correct, these deadly words. Soft, quiet voices purring, courteous, grave, exactly measured phrases in large peaceful rooms. But with less warning cannons had opened fire and nations had been struck down by this same Germany. So now the Admiralty wireless whispers through the ether to the tall masts of ships, and captains pace their decks absorbed in thought. It is nothing…less than nothing. It is too foolish, too fantastic to be thought of in the twentieth century….

No one would do such things. Civilization has climbed above such perils. The interdependence of nations in trade and traffic, the sense of public law, the Hague Convention, Liberal principles, the Labour Party, high finance, Christian charity, common sense have rendered such nightmares impossible. Are you quite sure? It would be a pity to be wrong. Such a mistake could only be made once—once for all.

“The King’s ships were at sea…”

Of course, the mistakes were made, and the world plunged into war, with Churchill running the Royal Navy. In 1914 he did a prescient thing. In July Britain’s Grand Fleet had assembled for a Naval Review. On his own authority, Churchill ordered the Fleet not to disperse. Instead, it sailed in darkness through the English Channel to its war station at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys. Here is Churchill’s description of the passage of the armada:

We may now picture this great Fleet, with its flotillas and cruisers, steaming slowly out of Portland Harbour, squadron by squadron, scores of gigantic castles of steel wending their way across the misty, shining sea, like giants bowed in anxious thought. We may picture them again as darkness fell, eighteen miles of warships running at high speed and in absolute blackness through the narrow Straits, bearing with them into the broad waters of the North the safeguard of considerable affairs….

If war should come no one would know where to look for the British Fleet. Somewhere in that enormous waste of waters to the north of our islands, cruising now this way, now that, shrouded in storms and mists, dwelt this mighty organization. Yet from the Admiralty building we could speak to them at any moment if need arose. The King’s ships were at sea.

One has to look far and wide for writing like that. When he wrote it, our author was 49. 

 The Second World War

The first book New York Mayor Giuliani read after 9/11 was Churchill’s The Second World War. Anyone who wonders whether Winston Churchill remains relevant today need only consider it.

Consider the major criticisms of Churchill’s most famous work: It is not history. It is filled with grandiose prose, inflicted on an apathetic postwar public who only wanted peace and a quiet life. It is highly biased—the author never puts a foot wrong. He publishes hundreds of his own memoranda and directives, but few replies to them. It moralizes incessantly about dictators and their empires, but not the British Empire. It is vague on the impact of the war on Britain, or the details of Cabinet meetings. Churchill alone seems to confront the French, Hitler, the Soviets, the Americans.

In the words of Arthur Balfour, these complaints contain much that is trite and much that is true. But what’s true is trite, and what’s not trite is not true.

Perhaps one of the best descriptions is by Professor Manfred Weidhorn: “a record of history made rather than written….No other wartime leader in history has given us a work of two million words written only a few years after the events and filled with messages among world potentates which had so recently been heated and secret.”

Humor: his secret of survival

The Second World War  is conducted like a symphony, Weidhorn continues—or a first class novel:

Such is the eerie sense of déjà vu and ubi sunt upon his return in 1939, as First Lord [of the Admiralty], to Scapa Flow, exactly a quarter of a century after having, at the start of the other world war, paid the same visit during the same season in the same capacity…. The collapse of the venerable and once mighty France and Churchill’s agony are beautifully rendered by the sensuous detail of the old gentlemen industriously carrying French archives on wheelbarrows to bonfires.

The end finds our hero in Berlin amid its “chaos of ruins.” Churchill walks Hitler’s shattered chancellery for “quite a long time.” The great duel is over; the victor stands where so much evil originated. “We were given the best first-hand accounts available at that time of what had happened in these final scenes.”

“Amid the pathos, humour bubbles,” writes Robert Pilpel. It is “as if Puck had escaped from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and infiltrated Paradise Lost.” There is Churchill’s desert conference with his Generals, “in a tent full of flies and important personages.” There is lunch with King Saud, whose religion forbids tobacco and alcohol—which Churchill says are mandated by his religion. In 1941 he sends a courtly letter to the Japanese Ambassador, signed “Your Obedient Servant.” He announces “with high consideration” that a state of war exists between their countries. (“When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.”)

Prudence in statesmanship

What was it, I’ve wondered, that Mayor Giuliani paused over? I’m told he read Volume 2, Their Finest Hour, about Britain in the Blitz. I can only wish today’s leaders, who squabble over inconsequentia as danger mounts, read from Volume 1, The Gathering Storm:

When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story…. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong. These are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.

How often must we slide slowly down from invincibility, only to be reminded by sudden calamity that we have neglected the primary mission of the state: to provide for the common defense? Churchill wondered. In an unpublished passage for The Gathering Storm he wrote:

Some historians will urge that admiration should be given to a Government of honourable high minded men who bore provocation with exemplary forbearance…. I hope it will also be written how hard all this was upon the ordinary common folk who fill the casualty lists. Under-represented in Government and Parliamentary institutions, they confide their safety to the Ministers of the day.

The Second World War, a prose epic like The River War and The World Crisis, is in the first rank of Churchill’s books. Flaws and all, it is indispensable reading for anyone who seeks a true understanding.

Last thoughts

In the last few years of his life Churchill gave in to the pessimism he had always dodged before. In the late Fifties he told his private secretary, Anthony Montague Browne: “Yes, I have worked very hard and accomplished a great many things—only to accomplish nothing in the end.”

I ventured that Churchill was thinking of the “special relationship” with America, which never reached the closeness he sought. Then too, there was his failure to reach a “settlement” with Russia, although in 1949 he predicted communism would expire. “Yes,” said Sir Anthony, “It was very sad.”

Here anyway are three Churchill books that are must reading: The River War, The World Crisis and The Second World War. They represent an understanding of statesmanship in times of duress. And also, Manfred Weidhorn wrote, “fascinating products of the human spirit.”

They are “epic tales of the depravities, miseries, and glories of man.”

“Her gleaming, mystic figure…”

Churchill waxed eloquent on Joan of Arc in 1938. His words would likely not pass with today’s minders of Political Correctness:

We see her gleaming, mystic figure in the midst of the pikes and arrows, and it needed not her martyrdom to win her canonization as a saint not only from the Pope but from the modern world. Less enthusiasm would have been excited if, for instance, Joan of Arc had displayed extraordinary proficiency with the crossbow, and if history recounted the numerous victims who had fallen to her unerring aim. We are thrilled by the spectacle of a weak woman leading and encouraging strong men. We do not relish the idea of her killing strong men by some ingenious apparatus; for that strips womanhood of the sex-immunity from violence which is so precious to the dignity of man.

I suppose that will be taken as solid proof that Churchill was an incurable misogynist. In fact, no one had a greater respect for women than he—except perhaps Hilaire Belloc. Men, Belloc said, “come to look on the intelligence of women first with reverence, then with stupor, and finally with terror.” Joan of Arc proved this to the English.

“The winner in the whole of French history”

Churchill in 1938 was writing of Joan in his History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Laid aside during the Second World War, it  began appearing in 1956. Describing Joan, Churchill was at his eloquent best:

…an Angel of Deliverance, the noblest patriot of France, the most splendid of her heroes, the most beloved of her saints, the most inspiring of all her memories, the peasant Maid, the ever-shining, ever-glorious Joan of Arc. In the poor, remote hamlet of Domrémy, on the fringe of the Vosges Forest, she served at the inn. She rode the horses of travellers, bareback, to water. She wandered on Sundays into the woods, where there were shrines, and a legend that some day from these oaks would arise one to save France.

It is possible that Churchill’s original opinion was less effusive. In January 1946 he told a literary advisor, Professor Denis Brogan, that he had corrected his Joan of Arc section “after reading Anatole France’s highly documented study.” He hoped that Brogan would not think his praise of Joan “excessive.” Nevertheless, he had admired the Maid a long time.

An Early Appreciation

Churchill was soon aware of Joan’s qualities. In April 1908, he was simultaneously fighting an election in Manchester and courting Clementine Hozier. One of his campaigners was Lady Dorothy Howard, “last of the great Liberal ladies,” a champion of women’s suffrage. “Lady Dorothy arrived of her own accord, alone and independent,” he wrote Clementine (who was also pro-suffrage). “I teased her by refusing to give a decided answer about women’s votes, and she left at once for the North in a most obstinate temper.” Later, after reading his campaign statements, “back she came and is fighting away.” Churchill handily won the seat. “Lady Dorothy fought like Joan of Arc before Orleans,” he wrote Clementine. “…tireless, fearless, convinced, inflexible—yet preserving all her womanliness.”

In the First World War Churchill saw Joan-like qualities in two great Frenchmen, Ferdinand Foch and Georges Clemenceau. The latter represented “the French people risen against tyrants.” Foch expressed the “more ancient, aristocratic heritage of Joan of Arc.” Together he saw them as a “cameo…. But when they gazed upon the inscription on the golden statue of Joan of Arc: ‘La pité qu’elle avait pour le royaume de France’ and saw gleaming the Maid’s uplifted sword, their two hearts beat as one.”

Joan de Gaulle: “But my bishops won’t burn him”

In May 1943, prior to the invasion of Sicily. Churchill cabled Eisenhower: “Many congratulations. …Give my love to Joan of Arc.” I believe but cannot prove this referred to Charles de Gaulle, prickly leader of the Free French. Churchill admired de Gaulle’s fighting qualities, but not his constant interference and demands.

Flight Lieutenant James Coward was an aide at Chequers one night in 1942 when de Gaulle rang. “Oh no,” groaned the Prime Minister, “can’t you put him off? We’ve only started the soup.” De Gaulle insisted, so Churchill went to the phone. He returned livid. “That bloody de Gaulle had the effrontery to tell me that the French looked on him as the second Joan of Arc. I had to remind him that we had to burn the first.” This is likely the origin of Churchill’s famous crack about de Gaulle to Brendan Bracken: “But my bishops won’t burn him.”

Later Churchill was more charitable: “It was said in mockery that he thought himself the living representative of Joan of Arc, whom one of his ancestors is supposed to have served as a faithful adherent. This did not seem to me as absurd as it looked. Clemenceau, with whom it was said he also compared himself, was a far wiser and more experienced statesman. But they both gave the same impression of being unconquerable Frenchmen.”

“His Joan of Arc stance, his pugnacity, his passion…”

On 15 March 1946, after his controversial “Iron Curtain” speech at Fulton, Churchill spoke in New York. Reporters asked, did he regret what he said? Slowly, enunciating each syllable, Churchill replied: “I do not wish to withdraw or modify a single word.” This was said as much to Stalin as his audience, wrote Robert Pilpel. “It brought to mind Joan of Arc’s famous retort to the bullying Duke de la Tremouille: ‘Thou’rt answered, old Gruff-and-Grum.'”

“Winston was not a modern Joan,” his doctor Lord Moran wrote, “exalted and inspired by voices from God.” Like Lincoln, he dominated his colleagues by “sheer moral force.” But another Joan of Arc, Moran considered, was what the British people received. Professor Manfred Weidhorn expands on this thought:

Some of his greatest weaknesses were transmuted by the elixir of global crisis into his greatest strengths. His fervid patriotism, his melodramatic approach to events, his archaic thinking, his theatrical, romantic mode of expression, his Joan of Arc stance, his pugnacity, his passion for obtaining power and leadership, his downright obstinacy, above all his conservative faith in tradition, empire, the British mission and his zeal for war making—these traits were often irrelevant, boring, or obnoxious. But in 1940 nothing else seemed to the point, and he was the only man for the challenge.

Churchill’s book Joan of Arc

Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples began serial and book publication in Spring 1956. In May, Paris Match reprinted his passage on Joan as an article, “Jeanne d’Arc” (Cohen C692/1). Then, four years after Churchill’s death, his U.S. publishers Dodd, Mead & Co. issued the same text as a hardback, Joan of Arc (Cohen A279). This lovely little book, beamed at ages 8 and above, cost only $3.50.

The publishers explained in a note that the text opens shortly before the end of the Hundred Years’ War. “The events which are recounted were to lead at last to the breaking forever of England’s hold over France.”

Bibliographer Ronald Cohen says the decision to publish might have had something to do with the illustrator, Lauren Ford. “She herself wrote four books, which she also illustrated: The Little Book about God, Our Lady’s Book, The Ageless Story, and Lauren Ford’s Christmas Book. All had also been published by Dodd, Mead, where she was a fixture.”

Joan of Arc had only one printing and is the scarcest among extracts from Churchill’s History. As a Churchill bookseller I encountered fewer than a half-dozen copies over twenty years. Marc Kuritz of the Churchill Book Collector has recorded sale prices of $129 to $600, varying with condition. Occasionally one finds a copy inscribed by Lauren Ford herself, often with a charming sketch. These sell for up to $1250.

Joan as agent of Brexit? 

Churchill was always ambivalent about France, wrote his last private secretary, Anthony Montague Browne. His love was “sentimental and long-standing, based on personal experience in peace and war. But this did not deter him from taking a firm line with the French if he felt it was required.” And yet in the end, thirty years after he spoke of Joan as “the winner,” Sir Anthony still believed she was:

WSC had quite a pantheon of highly regarded individuals, historical and present. It was unwise to reflect unfavourably on the former, however well-founded subsequent negative evidence might be. I was blasted into orbit with exuberant intellectual energy for making some disparaging remarks about Napoleon and, what was worse, casting doubts on the accuracy of some of the Joan of Arc legend…. His greatest heroine, or indeed hero for that matter, was Joan of Arc.

“Toynbee, rather more tactlessly, argued that Britain’s skepticism about Europe was all the fault of Joan of Arc,” wrote John Ramsden. Joan “taught us to turn our backs on Europe” by inflicting heavy defeats on the invading English in the 15th century. Joan as an agent of Brexit? It seems a stretch.

The French historian François Kersaudy was not quite ready to grant Joan top rank in Churchill’s pantheon: WSC “knew the history of France as well as any Frenchman, and even better than most. With his intensely sentimental and romantic mind, he greatly admired ‘France’s contribution to human freedom and wisdom’; the heroes of French history he admired even more, first and foremost Joan of Arc and Napoleon.”

“Dans le grand drame, il était le plus grand”

But did Churchill rank Joan above Napoleon? Emotionally perhaps, for valiant stands against heavy odds always excited him. In his broad view of French history, however, this writer agrees with Andrew Roberts. Napoleon, whose bust Churchill kept on his desk, stood at his pinnacle. Joan of Arc was close behind. Third in line, I believe, was Clemenceau.

Many historians might place Charles de Gaulle fourth. Churchill had more respect for him than he usually let on, and de Gaulle repaid this on Churchill’s death. “Dans le grand drame,” he wrote Lady Churchill, “il était le plus grand.” In the great drama, he was the greatest.

The scholar Manfred Weidhorn has an explanation for what we call Churchillian (or Yogi Berra) Drift: “You do not find yourself the target of Churchillian Drift unless, like Churchill, you are already a fine aphorist. Part of the reason it’s so easy to misattribute brilliant sayings to great aphorists is that they have already coined so many brilliant sayings themselves.”

The Amazon link for the above title is not provided. That’s because I don’t recommend you buy this book, which I strongly suspect is full of fiction. Ah, you say, so instead you’re plugging your own quote books? Au contraire…

Non – fiction Recommendations

Forget me and look around for two fine quotation books—oldies but goodies. Each was compiled by someone who knew Churchill intimately. Sir Colin Coote’s Maxims and Reflections of the Rt Hon Winston S. Churchill was first published in 1947 and saw many printings. Kay Halle’s Irrepressible Churchill (1966) has had several editions as late as 2011.

Neither book is 100% perfect (nor are mine). But they are highly reliable.  (Be sure to search Bookfinder for first editons and used copies other than Amazon’s.)

The book displayed above bedizens its cover with five alleged quotations. Not one is a true Winston Churchill quote. This must be a world record or sorts. Of course, it’s in the Bush League compared to A-Z Quotes, an Internet-based cornucopia of fiction.

“Interrupting”

Just for the sake of pedantry, the “Interrupting” quote on the book cover comes close, and a lenient teacher might allow it a “D.” What Churchill actually said was to his son: “Randolph, do not interrupt me while I’m interrupting!”  (Circa 1930s, at the Chartwell dinner or luncheon. See Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years, 13.)

On interrupting, he also offered self-criticism: “All the years that I have been in the House I have always said to myself one thing: ‘Do not interrupt,’ and I have never been able to keep to that resolution.” (Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 10 July 1935,)

As you can see, attribution is the key to getting quotes right. Never trust any Churchill quip that is not accompanied by a note to a reliable source.

“Courage”

The other WSC quotes on the cover above are pure fiction. Churchill did voice the “Courage” quote, but the cover leaves out his acknowledgement of a prior author. What he actually said was: “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because, as has been said, it is the quality which guarantees all others.” (“Alfonso the Unlucky,” Strand Magazine, July 1931, reprinted in Great Contemporaries. Emphasis mine.)

In referring to an earlier author Churchill was perhaps thinking of Dr. Samuel Johnson.  “Sir, you know courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other.” If so, Churchill’s editing improved on Johnson.

Fiction Compiled

As a public service, I provide on this website a multi-part compilation of every fake Churchill quote I have read or been notified about. To the original “Red Herrings” appendix in Churchill by Himself, this list includes every new fiction encountered since. I have now compiled close to 150. There is no shortage of material. It keeps me off the streets.

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