Mr. McKinstry is right to regret that Chamberlain has been roughly handled by history. “The reality is that in the late 1930s Chamberlain’s approach was a rational one,” he writes. It was “dictated by military strength and the mood of the nation. It is impossible to imagine him making such an expensive hash of the [Covid] testing regime as the present government has done.”

Covid testing is a bit outside my area of expertise. But Mr. McKinstry is right to insist on fair play for Chamberlain. It seems, however, that Churchill’s Munich prescriptions have been somewhat overlooked in the process. Accordingly I republish a 2014 piece that may shed light on that subject.

Berlin, September 1938

A motorized division rolled through the city’s street just at dusk… The hour was undoubtedly chosen to catch the hundreds of thousands of Berliners pouring out of their offices at the end of the day’s work. But they ducked into the subways, refused to look on, and the handful that did stood at the curb in utter silence…. The Führer was on his balcony reviewing the troops…and there weren’t 200 people. Hitler looked grim, then angry, and soon went inside…. What I’ve seen tonight almost rekindles a little faith in the German people. They are dead set against war.” —William L. Shirer

Chamberlain met Hitler two days later in Munich. Churchill was certain that now was the time to resist. Yet we are regularly told that the Munich agreement was necessary and wise. Obviously, it gave Britain more time to arm. But it also gave Germany more time to arm—and to neutralize a potential enemy in the Soviet Union. Hitler also reaped a military bonanza in Czechoslovakia. In the 1940 invasion of France, three of the ten Panzer divisions were of Czech manufacture.

Obviously, goes the refrain, Britain and France could not have defended landlocked Czechoslovakia. There was more to its defense than that, Churchill wrote: “It surely did not take much thought…that the British Navy and the French Army could not be deployed on the Bohemian mountain front.” [1]

If resisting Hitler in 1938 was a faulty concept, why was it preferable to fight him in 1939-40? That sawa the eradication of Poland in three weeks, the Low Countries in sixteen days, France in six weeks.

If not then, when?

Churchill, in his memoirs had only the scholarship of 1948: Nuremberg testimony, recovered Nazi documents, private contacts, some from inside Germany. From Munich onward, he argued that the time to take on Hitler had been 1938. Was he wrong? How has his theory stood the test of time and modern scholarship? The answer is: no so badly. Reading the literature, it is arguable, that Chamberlain indeed “missed the bus” at Munich.

This is no attempt to pillory Neville Chamberlain, an easy target for generations of second-guessers. Without his rearmament programs and support of his successor, Churchill could not have successfully fought the Battle of Britain. Chamberlain was wrong about Hitler, but he had as Churchill said the “benevolent instincts of the human heart…even at great peril, and certainly to the utter disdain of popularity or clamour,” striving “to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle.” [2]

Williamson Murray analyzed the strategic issues affecting the Czech crisis in The Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938-1939. (See especially chapters 6, 7, and 8.) He closely compares the balance of military forces and political circumstances between 1938 and 1939. Some of his revelations were new and startling; some were common sense. Michael McMenamin (“Regime Change 1938“) has written cogently on the plot against Hitler. This was real and credible, he says, but it stopped cold after Hitler’s Munich triumph. Murray’s and McMenamin’s arguments are summarized in Finest Hour 162, Spring 2014.

Point and counterpoint

Remember, though, that history is a constant process of revision. Contrary arguments exist, and qualified counter-arguments must be considered. Take for example, the case for inertia, which drove Chamberlain. This was nicely defined by the late Churchill scholar Paul Courtenay:

Whatever the relative strengths between UK/France and Nazi Germany in 1938, World War I was so recent in the national memories that public opinion (and Parliament) would never have been in favour of any pre-emptive ultimatum or strike at Hitler. It took two more Nazi outrages—the absorption of Czechoslovakia and the attack on Poland—to persuade everyone that enough was enough.

​This insightful observation has been made before. But again, we rarely hear the parallel: that the Germans too had had a bellyful of war and its disastrous aftermath. Rapturous crowds, believing he brought peace, greeted Chamberlain in Germany. Berliners, watching as Hitler reviewed a motorized column in September, were sparse and sullen. William Shirer said it was “the most striking demonstration against war I’ve ever seen.” Hitler turned away in disgust, remarking to Goebbels, “I can’t lead a war with such people.” [3]

British wishes as he saw them registered with Chamberlain at Munich, as they had with his predecessor. In 1936, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin restrained the French after Hitler occupied the Rhineland. When French Foreign Minister Pierre Flandin appealed for Britain to mobilize, Baldwin replied that he knew the British people, and they wanted peace. Flandin knew that France would not act without Britain. Now he was told that Britain would do nothing. [4]

The path of duty

Churchill snorted at Baldwin’s interpretation of his duty. The responsibility of a leader is to lead, he insisted. The leader’s primary concern is the safety of the nation—whatever the consequences:

I would endure with patience the roar of exultation that would go up when I was proved wrong, because it would lift a load off my heart and off the hearts of many Members. What does it matter who gets exposed or discomfited? If the country is safe, who cares for individual politicians, in or out of office? [5]

Churchill made that ringing declaration in 1936. Two years later Hitler absorbed Austria, an almost catastrophic display of German  military bungling. Heedless of that, he was now after Czechoslovakia. Self-evidently, the British were by then less pacifist. Many were outraged. Lord Halifax, so often portrayed as an abject appeaser, led a “cabinet revolt,” saying Hitler could never be trusted. He telegraphed Chamberlain: “Great mass of public opinion seems to be hardening in sense of feeling that we have gone to the limit of concession.” [6]

Churchill’s reply to the notion that Britons would not fight was given in an interview three months after Munich:

In this country at any rate the people can readily be convinced that it is necessary to make sacrifices, and they will willingly undertake them if the situation is put clearly and fairly before them. No one can doubt that it was within the power of the National Government at any time within the last seven years to rearm the country at any pace required without resistance from the mass of the people. The difficulty was that the leaders failed to appreciate the need and to warn the people, or were afraid to do their duty, not that the democratic system formed an impediment. [7]

“Thus far and no farther”

There are of course incalculables. We cannot know the military outcome or the result of the coup attempt. How would the British public have reacted if the Anglo-French had resisted? In 1939, Britons largely supported declaring war over Poland, which was much less defensible than Czechoslovakia. Properly alerted to the realities, would the people have backed resistance in 1938? Churchill believed so:

The pace is set by the potential aggressor, and, failing collective action by the rest of the world to resist him, the alternatives are an arms race or surrender. War is very terrible, but stirs a proud people. There have been periods in our history when we have given way for a long time, but a new and formidable mood arises. [8]

Churchill’s interviewer interrupted: “A bellicose mood?” No, said Churchill:

A mood of “Thus far, and no farther.” It is only by the spirit of resistance that man has learnt to stand upright, and instead of walking on all fours to assume an erect posture. War is horrible, but slavery is worse, and you may be sure that the British people would rather go down fighting than live in servitude. [9]

By derivation Churchill would also say, as indeed his whole life proved, that if a leader can’t carry the people, then he goes: “…who cares for individual politicians, in or out of office?”

Munich in retrospect

Thanks to Messrs. Murray and McMenamin, we know much about Munich that was previously obscure. There were choices. Of course we were not there in 1938. We don’t know the mood of the people, or the politicians. Churchill never met the formidable Führer face to face. We will never know the outcome as Chamberlain described it, of “a quarrel in a far-away country between a people of whom we know nothing.” [10]

But we do know what happened in September 1939, and in May-June 1940. And we are obliged to consider Churchill’s position—which was, characteristically, far from baseless:

Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling one’s pulse and taking one’s temperature. I see that a speaker at the week-end said that this was a time when leaders should keep their ears to the ground. All I can say is that the British nation will find it very hard to look up to leaders who are detected in that somewhat ungainly posture. [11]

Endnotes

[1] Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm (London: Cassell, 1948), 214.

[2] Churchill, House of Commons, 12 November 1940, quoted in Richard M. Langworth, Churchill in His Own Words, hereinafter CIHOW (London: Ebury Press, 2012), 331.

[3] William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941 (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2002, reprint), 142-43. Hjalmar Schacht, Account Settled (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1949), 124.

[4]  Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 154

[5] Churchill, House of Commons, 20 July 1936, CIHOW, 493.

[6] Andrew Roberts, The Holy Fox (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991) 112-22; John Charmley, Churchill: The End of Glory (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993), 347. Roberts did add that by “great mass of public opinion,” Halifax “really meant his own opinion, together with that of whichever friends he had spoken to and newspapers he had read.”

[7] Winston S. Churchill, interview by Kingsley Martin, editor, The New Statesman, 7 January 1939, republished 7 January 2014.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Neville Chamberlain, broadcast of 27 September 1938, in Anthony Eden, Facing the Dictators (London: Cassell, 1962), 8.

[11] Churchill, House of Commons, 30 September 1941, CIHOW, 492.

Further reading

Richard M. Langworth, “Last Chance at Munich,” Chapter 5 in Winston Churchill and the Avoidable War: Could World War II have been Prevented?, 2015.

Justin D. Lyons, Review of Winston Churchill and the Avoidable War, Hillsdale College Churchill Project, December 2015.

Richard M. Langworth, “Robert Harris on Air Power, Munich, and Chamberlain’s ‘Finest Hour,'” Hillsdale College Churchill Project, October 2017.

As editor over those years, I was constantly grateful that he was there. I had only to press his Heraldry button, his Smuts button, his Military button, his Foreign Affairs button, his Book Review button, for exactly what I needed. I never discovered how many such buttons he had. But it was always certain that what we’d get back would be interesting, meticulously accurate, and exactly the right length.

In 2014 we were preparing an issue on the 1938 Munich Crisis. We were intent on defending Churchill’s view that militarily, 1938—not 1939—had been the time to resist Hitler. “That’s quite true,” Paul observed…

…but you need to understand why Britons were reluctant. Whatever the relative strengths between the Anglo-French and Nazi Germany in 1938, the First World War was so recent in national memories that public opinion (and Parliament) would never have been in favour of any pre-emptive ultimatum or strike at Hitler. It took two more Nazi outrages—the absorption of Czechoslovakia and the attack on Poland—to persuade everyone that enough was enough.

Click on any of the links above and you will more examples of his deft understanding. I don’t know a better definition of a pro.

“Up, up the long delirious burning blue”

Paul Courtenay was born 6 March 1934 to William and Greta Courtenay. His early life was spent amid the burning blue—aviation’s most exciting era of progress and discovery. Father William was a founding member of the Royal Air Force, an aviation writer and correspondent. His godmother was the great aviatrix Amy Johnson, the first woman to fly solo from Britain to Australia.

Paul went to prep school at Cottesmore, West Sussex, and grew up in North Wales as the Second World War raged. Then he enrolled at Malvern College, Worcestershire, where he earned high academic marks and excelled at cross country. Paul was only eighteen when he joined the British Army. “One of his earliest assignments,” his son James says, “was to guard the route along the Mall at the Queen’s Coronation in 1953.”

Further assignments saw Paul in Korea at the wind-up of that war, and on peacekeeping duties in Aden and Gibraltar. James writes: “He had deep and abiding friendships in the Royal Sussex Regiment, which later merged with three others to form The Queen’s Regiment.” He met Sara, his wife of sixty years, raised four children and celebrated twelve grandchildren. Weeks after marriage he was flying Army Air Corps planes in Kenya. Other postings brought Paul and Sara to Cyprus, Malta, Gibraltar, Germany and America. In England they lived in Kent, Sussex, Surrey and Northern Ireland before finally settling in Andover, Hampshire. There they lived for forty years.

Courtenay, Courtenay and Churchill

Paul’s Churchill connection developed early. His father, lecturing on the war against Japan, sometimes shared a platform with Winston Churchill. William Courtenay was often “present at the creation,” as Paul eloquently wrote for Hillsdale:

He was at many of those key campaigns, and he was on board the Missouri, as General MacArthur’s guest, at the hour of victory in September 1945. As supreme commander of occupied Japan, MacArthur rendered further service, building trust with the former enemy as it evolved into a free state. Churchill applauded those events. “We must strive,” he said in 1946, “to redeem and to reincorporate the German and the Japanese peoples in a world system of free and civilized democracy. The idea of keeping scores of millions of people hanging about in a sub-human state between earth and hell, until they are worn down to a slave condition or embrace Communism, or die off from hunger, will only, if it is pursued, breed at least a moral pestilence and probably an actual war.”

“Labouring in the vineyard”

When we met, Paul was about to retire from the Army, which he did in 1987. He then worked in London for the Independent Broadcasting Authority and the Institute of Chartered Accountants. Viewing “retirement” with the same disdain as Sir Winston, he devoted himself to Churchilliana. Sir Martin Gilbert, who respected Paul’s work, used to refer to this as “labouring in the vineyard.”

Courtenay certainly picked a lot of grapes. Crucially for Churchill researchers, he knew Chivalry cold. Is a Knight a Peer? Does an Earl trump a Viscount? Why is Lady Soames not “Lady Mary,” but Lady Margaret Colville is not “Lady Colville”? Paul knew. Yet he would often remark: “Like most Englishmen, I am not sure what to make of it.”

A fastidious proofreader, he was involved in republication of Churchill classics. Together with James Muller, Paul provided new footnotes to new editions of Thoughts and Adventures and Great Contemporaries. Our last work together was on that gem of a biography, Churchill: Walking with Destiny, by Andrew Roberts. We three shared a thousand emails, scrutinizing every paragraph, arguing arcane details. It was a tremendous educational experience. There was no vast Courtenay digital reference at his fingertips. He stored it all in his head. He knew where to look for the tiniest fragment of Churchill lore. I know Andrew agrees that absent Paul Courtenay, history cannot be served so well.

I will say one personal thing about my friend. To any writer, proofreaders and pedants are indispensable. But often when working with them, one is conscious of being patronized. A few are pernicious snobs whose main purpose is to demonstrate how much they know—and how much you don’t. Of course, no book ever existed without errors. With Paul Courtenay, one never encountered that attitude. He would greet the discovery of an error we’d missed with the same regret as our own. But he would never say, “I told you so.” (Even if he had told us so.)

“Shivered into fragments”

Thanks to Hillsdale College I do have access to a fair digital reference. Paul’s loss sent me there to find Churchill’s tribute to Arthur Balfour in Great Contemporaries. Here again Paul taught me something new. I searched for “shivered into fragments,” thinking the words had only appeared in the Balfour piece. In fact, it was a favorite Churchill phrase. Anyway, anent Balfour and Courtenay, the great man’s words apply equally:

Amid universal goodwill and widespread affection he celebrated triumphantly his eightieth birthday. But thereafter hungry Time began to revenge itself upon one who had so long disdained its menace…. I saw with grief the approaching departure, and—for all human purposes—extinction, of a being high uplifted above the common run. As I observed him regarding with calm, firm and cheerful gaze the approach of Death, I felt how foolish the Stoics were to make such a fuss about an event so natural and so indispensable to mankind. But I felt also the tragedy which robs the world of all the wisdom and treasure gathered in a great man’s life and experience, and hands the lamp to some impetuous and untutored stripling, or lets it fall shivered into fragments upon the ground.

Malakand Field Force?

Without consulting references, I thought the “advice” line involved The Story of the Malakand Field Force (Churchill’s first book, 1898). I was influenced by its last chapter, “The Riddle of the Frontier.” Plenty of advice there, though it is as much political as it is military.

I also remember the fine biopic Young Winston (1972). Here General Kitchener picks up a copy of what looks like a first edition Malakand, scans its cover, and hurls it into a wastebasket!

Churchill was at the time lobbying for appointment as a war correspondent on Kitchener’s expedition to recapture Sudan. Dalton Newfield, the second editor of Finest Hour, wrote in his column, “75 Years Ago” FH #28 (1973):

[Churchill] gathered his forces for a tremendous effort to join Kitchener’s forces In Egypt, after which he would return to England and politics. He unashamedly pulled every string known to him or [his mother] Lady Randolph, but Kitchener remained obdurate. He had read the Malakand, often referred to in military circles as “A Subaltern’s Advice to Generals.” He wanted no part of the brash young lieutenant.

Surprisingly, there are few appearances of “A Subaltern’s Advice to Generals” in the Churchill canon. Ted Morgan, in Churchill: The Rise to Failure, alludes to it in passing:

Kitchener listened in absolute silence as Winston told him that the enemy was advancing in large numbers between the British position and the city of Omdurman. “You say the Dervish [Sufi Muslim] army is advancing,” Kitchener said. “How long do you think I have got?” The commander-in-chief was asking a subaltern’s advice, which Winston did not hesitate to give. “You have got at least an hour—probably an hour and a half, sir, even if they come on at their present rate.”

The River War?

But that reference proves nothing, really. Churchill historian Paul Courtenay thought “A Subaltern’s Advice to Generals” refers to Churchill’s second book, The River War.

Mr. Courtenay based his answer on Richard Harding Davis’s Real Soldiers of Fortune (London: P.F. Collier & Sons, 1906), 108. Admittedly his Churchill chapter contains several inaccuracies, but this reference to River War looked right:

Equally disgusted [with The River War] were the younger officers of the service. They nicknamed his book, “A Subaltern’s Advice to Generals,” and called Churchill himself a “Medal Snatcher”…. But Churchill never was a medal hunter. The routine of barrack life irked him…. Indeed the War Office could cover with medals the man who wrote the Malakand and River War and still be in his debt.

I appealed for adjudication to a judge, the Hon. Douglas Russell, who is not only a judge but the author of a distinguished book, Winston Churchill Soldier: The Military Life of a Gentleman at War. Judge Russell replied in detail (reprinted by kind permission)…

Douglas Russell:

If we conclude that the “subaltern’s advice” quip was the reason Kitchener did not want Churchill in the Sudan, the book has to be the Malakand. It could not be The River War, which was published after Churchill left the Sudan campaign. By that time, young Winston was trying to get into the Second Boer War, and the general making the decision was Roberts, not Kitchener.

It is not clear that Churchill’s critiques in the Malakand caused Kitchener’s resistance to him joining the Sudan campaign. I have never verified that. I do not know if Kitchener even read the book. It is clear that Kitchener did not like journalists generally. He certainly knew of Churchill. In August 1898 Winston wrote to his mother:

F[rancis Rhodes, correspondent for The Times] v[er]y kind and amiable. He talked to Sirdar [leader] about me. Kitchener said he had known I was not going to stay in the army—was only making a convenience of it; that he had disapproved of my coming in place of others whose professions were at stake….

This may be the real reason Kitchener did not want Churchill. I do not give great weight to Richard Harding Davis and his Real Soldiers of Fortune. His Churchill chapter has several basic errors on other topics. I have looked at the 1914, 1941 and 1981 editions and there are no footnotes. Davis was a popular rather than a scholarly writer. The subaltern’s advice quip is the sort of thing that would appear in a soldier’s memoir, as something that he had heard someone else say without disclosing the individual who actually said it.

Subaltern’s Advice

So which book contained Lieutenant Churchill’s Advice to his Generals? We concluded that the best reference available is Davis (his errors elsewhere notwithstanding). A war correspondent himself, Davis associated with military types. The wisecrack could have been going around, and if he heard it about The River War, so be it. Churchill in that book deplored certain of Kitchener’s actions after the victory at Omdurman, such as destroying the Mahdi’s tomb.

Still, one could use this humorous subtitle for any of his four war books, all published before he had turned twenty-six. Forever fascinated by war strategy, Churchill never hesitated to speak his mind, whether he was twenty-five or seventy.

But fame and likability don’t a Churchill scholar make. And in that department, Boris Johnson needs some help.

His remarks are quoted from a November 14th speech at the Yale Club in New York City.

Boris Fact-checks

1) Lend-Lease, Roosevelt’s World War II “loan” of $50 billion worth of war materiel to the Allies, “screwed” the British.

I queried Professor Warren Kimball of Rutgers University, editor of the Churchill-Roosevelt Correspondence and several books on World War II, who wrote:

The U.S. did not construct Lend-Lease to take advantage of Britain. FDR and Treasury Secretary Morgenthau rejected suggestions that America take ownership of British possessions. The initial agreement committed Britain to so-called “free” trade, aimed primarily at the Empire. This angered the British (including Keynes), but turned out to be meaningless.

Britain received 60% of Lend-Lease—$31.4 billion (nearly half a trillion today). Churchill regarded Lend-Lease “without question as the most unsordid act in the whole of recorded history.” (Churchill By Himself, 131)

Destroyers or Bathtubs?

2) Roosevelt’s “Destroyers for Bases” deal (September 1940, six months before Lend-Lease) was “heavily biased against Britain.” The fifty aged destroyers Britain received (in exchange for American bases on British possessions) were “useless bathtubs.”

This is both wrong and beside the point. Churchill said the Americans had “turned a large part of their gigantic industry to making munitions which we need. They have even given us or lent us valuable weapons of their own.” (Churchill By Himself, 129) Naval historian Christopher Bell, Dalhousie University, Halifax, author of Churchill and Sea Power, writes:

Churchill was eager for the old destroyers, knowing full well that they were WW1 vintage. They nevertheless helped fill a gap at a critical time. A measure of Churchill’s determination to obtain them was his willingness (mentioned in my book) to trade one of Britain’s new battleships for them—an idea the Admiralty quickly shot down.

Professor Kimball adds the major point Mayor Johnson misses:

What mattered, as any thoughtful person knew and should know, is that Destroyers-for-Bases was a remarkable commitment by FDR and America to Britain’s aid—if it could hold on. It was seen, and was intended to be seen, as a morale builder in the UK, at a time when morale was crucial.

FDR’s Funeral

3) Churchill did not go to Roosevelt’s funeral in 1945 because he was “miffed” at the President.

Facts: Germany was nearing surrender, in a war that had taxed Churchill and Britain for six years. Would you go? Yet Churchill’s first impulse was to go. I owe these references to my colleague Paul Courtenay:

“At the last moment I decided not to fly to Roosevelt’s funeral on account of much that was going on here.” (Churchill to his wife in Mary Soames, Personal Letters, 526). “Everyone here thought my duty next week lay at home.” (Churchill to FDR confidant Harry Hopkins in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill VII: 1294.) “P.M. of course wanted to go. A[nthony Eden] thought they oughtn’t both to be away together….P.M. says he’ll go and A. can stay. I told A. that, if P.M. goes, he must. Churchill regretted in after years that he allowed himself to be persuaded not to go.” (Diaries of Alexander Cadogan, 727.)

4) Remembering Churchill’s “snub” of the Roosevelt funeral, President Johnson took revenge by not attending Churchill’s funeral in 1965.

No: The President was suffering from a bad case of the flu. He sent Chief Justice Earl Warren and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. President Eisenhower joined them and gave a moving eulogy on the BBC. President Johnson said: “When there was darkness in the world…a generous Providence gave us Winston Churchill…. He is history’s child, and what he said and what he did will never die.”

Misquotes

Boris repeated several alleged Churchill quotations on which “I ‘eard different” from eye-witnesses.

“I’ll kiss him on both cheeks—or all four if you prefer.” The object of that crack was De Gaulle, not the Americans. “Proud to be British” involved an old man making improper advances to a young lady, not the way Johnson spins it. Of course Churchill, who often stored and retreaded favorite wisecracks, might have said the same thing at different times.

On the big issues, though, it would be a nice thing if Boris would run his statements past a scholar, lest they add to the cacophony of Churchill tall stories that pollute the Internet.