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Alistair Parker, ed., Winston Churchill: Studies in Statesmanship. London: Brasseys, 2003, 282 pages, paperback, Amazon $32; hardbound copies also available.

“There are times,” wrote a great Cambridge scholar, Sir Geoffrey Elton, “when I incline to judge all historians by their opinion of Winston Churchill: whether they can see that no matter how much better the details, often damaging, of man and career become known, he still remains, quite simply, a great man.” Cambridge University’s recent, one-sided panels on Churchill and race prompts this look at an earlier, more balanced Cambridge symposium.

Sir Geoffrey would likely have judged this collection favorably. It was organized by Correlli Barnett, then Keeper of the Churchill Archives Centre. Its papers were compiled by the late R.A.C. Parker, a historian who specialized in the appeasement period. Its contents are varied, thoughtful and balanced. They demonstrate the right way to organize a serious symposium.

“My views are a harmonious process…”

Like other collections of broad essays, Parker is by nature somewhat disjointed. Fifteen papers range from the daughterly observations of Lady Soames to Churchill’s relations with German Chancellor Adenauer (Hans-Peter Schwarz). They extend to postwar subjects like “Churchill and the European Idea” (Martin Gilbert). At that time, Britain had only just ratified the Treaty of Rome, creating the modern European Union.

The Parker book is consistent: It attempts neither to rewrite nor to demythologize Churchill, as did the concurrent Churchill: A Major New Assessment. Nor does it try to whitewash him. It is overtly “international,” with contributors from Poland, Denmark, Germany and Italy as well as the USA, Britain and Canada. There are no new conclusions about Churchill’s character. It shows how Churchill is observed in various countries—and how his own views changed with circumstance. (Once challenged for inconsistency he responded: “My views are a harmonious process which keeps them in relation to the current movements of events.”)

Parker and Co.

Many papers carry contemporary relevance. Tage Kaarsted studies Britain and the smaller European states, specifically Denmark. He explains why, though Churchill did little for them in the Second World War, they considered him their hero.

Paolo Pombeni’s “Churchill and Italy” destroys the late-blooming myth that Churchill supported Fascism. He initially admired Mussolini and his benign accomplishments. But he was never blind about whom he was dealing with. “Mussolini and Churchill spoke different languages, [but] mutual understanding was complete,” Pombeni concludes.

Parker offers valuable studies of Churchill’s relations with the navy—the American (Phillips O’Brien) as well as the British (Jon Sumida); and his attitude toward Europe, from balance of power politics (Brian McKercher) to the postwar situation (Warren Kimball) to the European Community (Gilbert). There are thoughtful pieces on his relations with France (Maurice Vaisse, François Kersaudy), Germany (Schwarz) and Poland (Anita Prazmowska).

There is plenty of contention in the Parker collection. One example is Bernd Martin, a German history professor who takes up the question of Britain backing away from the war after France fell.

Peace in 1940

Roosevelt’s offer to mediate peace talks in early 1939, Martin says, was “deliberately reserved.” The crafty Roosevelt wanted it to fail. American policy aimed to nullify German-Japanese industrial achievement, which threatened to surpass that of the USA. Roosevelt egged on Churchill to stand fast against Hitler, though he “provided no real help” to Britain. When he became convinced that war with Germany was inevitable, he goaded the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor. Apparently FDR was a mind-reader who knew that Hitler would then declare war on the United States.

This analysis does not consider the nature of the American people. U.S. foreign policy in the 1930s, Martin writes, was in pursuit of trade dominance. One might ask: what U.S. foreign policy? The impulse of Americans is isolationist, except in extreme circumstances, witness their abhorrence of today’s endless foreign wars.

Martin asserts that Churchill’s seriously considered an armistice with Hitler during the war cabinet of 26 May 1940. Halifax supported exploring a meeting through the “good offices” of Mussolini. Martin offers the traditional revisionist explanation. To mollify Halifax, Churchill said he might accept a cease-fire based on “restoration of German colonies and the overlordship of Central Europe.” This offer is frequently cited as proof that peace was possible, but there is little else to cite. There is no evidence that Churchill seriously considered it.

What price Hitler?

Martin does not mention contemporary works by historians like Martin Gilbert or Sheila Lawlor (Churchill and the Politics of War (1994). Both showed that there was little space between Churchill, Halifax and Chamberlain after France fell in mid-June 1940. Martin does later admit that no British peace overtures followed France’s fall. Indeed he wonders if  even Halifax “would really have concluded a peace agreement with a vainglorious dictator like Hitler.” So why the speculation to the contrary?

Bernd Martin believes “Churchill did not understand Germany and German culture in general, let alone National Socialism in particular.” Churchill seemed to grasp the later, at least, when he defined it in October 1938. Nazism, he said, “spurns Christian ethics [and] cheers its onward course by barbarous paganism.” It “vaunts the spirit of aggression and conquest, which derives strength and perverted pleasure from persecution, and uses with pitiless brutality the threat of murderous force.” Evidently Churchill understood Germany and Nazism well enough.

Parker as model

When Studies in Statesmanship was published, we were in the midst of the revisionist argument that Britain should have edged away from the Hitler war in 1940. “Part of the trendy process of cultural self-flagellation and navel contemplating in which [its proponents] indulge rests on a foundation of moral chauvinism,” wrote a correspondent at the time. “This distorts what otherwise is the advantage of hindsight. with judgments and conclusions not just wrong, but infuriatingly wrong. One wonders who can possibly measure up to the high standards of these professional iconoclasts.” What would that correspondent say today?

As editor, Alistair Parker took the responsible approach. He selected authors with a range of opinions who often disagreed with each other. Isn’t that the purpose of scholarly symposia? Perhaps Cambridge will do this again one day.

Parker himself provided only a brief introduction: “…this book suggests Churchillian prose concealed a sharp, flexible and quick intellect unencumbered by prejudices, in practice if not in words….” In his own book, Churchill and Appeasement (2000), he declared Churchill completely right about Nazi Germany. An Anglo-Soviet alliance, he ventured, may well have deterred Hitler.

In this compilation, however, not a hint of Parker’s opinions interferes with or overrides those of his contributors. Which is something from which the moderator of the recent, egregiously one-sided Cambridge “race panel” might learn.

Prominently quoted in this context is a remark Churchill made to de Gaulle—at least according to de Gaulle—in Unity, his 1942-44 war memoirs: “…each time we must choose between Europe and the open sea, we shall always choose the open sea.”

Nothing to do with the EU

Warren Kimball’s Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence (III, 169), nicely clears up this quotation. Churchill was referring to de Gaulle, not to anything resembling today’s EU. He wrote to Roosevelt on 7 June 1944: “I think it would be a great pity if you and he [de Gaulle] did not meet. I do not see why I have all the luck.” In his remark about the “open sea,” he was criticizing the intransigent attitude of de Gaulle’s Free French, and stating his intention to side with Roosevelt. Kimball writes:

In a letter…to General Marshall, [Eisenhower] commented that only two groups remained in France: “one is the Vichy gang, and the other [is] characterized by unreasoning admiration for de Gaulle.” In the original draft Eisenhower had put it even more strongly, asserting that the second group “seems almost idolatrous in its worship of de Gaulle” (Eisenhower Papers, III 1867-68).

Even de Gaulle recalled the phrases, though he surmised that Churchill’s passion was aimed primarily at the ears of his British associates: “Each time we must choose between Europe and the open sea, we shall always choose the open sea. Each time I must choose between you and Roosevelt, I shall always choose Roosevelt.” (de Gaulle, Unity, 153).

More definitive…

Reader Kevin Ruane (@KevinRuane2) directed me to something Churchill said which would seem more to the point. In a memo to his cabinet on 29 November 1951, Churchill addressed the question of Britain  joining the Schuman Plan, a single authority to control the production of steel and coal in France and West Germany, open to other European countries to join:

Our attitude towards further economic developments on the Schuman lines resembles that which we adopt about the European Army. We help, we dedicate, we play a part, but we are not merged with and do not forfeit our insular or commonwealth character. Our first object is the unity and consolidation of the British Commonwealth….Our second, “the fraternal association” of the English-speaking world; and third, United Europe, to which we are a separate closely- and specially-related ally and friend. (National Archives, CAB129/48C(51)32.)

“European pensioners”

In John Charmley’s Churchill’s Grand Alliance, the above is followed by a statement from Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden: “It is only when plans for uniting Europe take a federal form that we ourselves cannot take part, because we cannot subordinate ourselves or the control of British policy to federal authorities” (Charmley, 250).

On 13 December 1951, Churchill agreed with Eden’s formulation. He wrote to Conservative delegation to the European Consultative Assembly. His note suggests that the Labour Party, then as now, was generally hostile to Britain within Europe. From The Churchill Documents, Vol. 31, 1951-1965, forthcoming from Hillsdale College Press, 2019…

We seem in fact to have succumbed to the Socialist Party hostility to United Europe. I take the full blame because I did not feel able either to go there myself or send a message. You know my views about the particular kind of European Army into which the French are trying to force us. We must consider very carefully together how to deal with the certainly unfavourable reaction in American opinion. They would like us to fall into the general line of European pensioners which we have no intention of doing.

Churchill’s 1951 statements clearly arrays him against Britain joining a “federal system.” But what kind of system? The concepts and forms of 1951 are not those of today.  It may tempting and even supporting to suggest this proves Churchill would be pro-Brexit. But it is not dispositive. Neither Europe nor the British Commonwealth are what they were then.

Again on 11 May 1953 Churchill told the House of Commons: “We are not members of the European Defence Community, nor do we intend to be merged in a federal European system. We feel we have a special relationship to both.”

Then is not now

Let’s also clear up the story bandied about by the other side of the EU debate, from Field Marshal Montgomery, who wrote that Churchill in 1962 was “protesting against Britain’s proposed entry into the Common Market” (then the EEC, predecessor to the EU). Montgomery’s statement not only took advantage of a private conversation with an old and ailing friend; it also misrepresented Churchill’s views. Sir Winston’s daughter Lady Soames wrote: “What I remember clearly is that not only my father, but all of us—particularly my mother—were outraged by Monty’s behaviour, and he was roundly rebuked.” (For more detail see Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 8, Never Despair, Hillsdale College Press, 2013, 1337.)

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In his memoir, Long Sunset, Sir Winston’s longtime private secretary Sir Anthony Montague Browne wrote that Montgomery, while not entirely inventing Churchill’s remark, was seriously misinterpreting the old man’s opinion. Consulting no one, Montague Browne immediately released to the press a statement of Churchill’s views on the subject in a private, unpublished letter to his Woodford constituency chairman, Mrs. Moss, in August 1961.” Extracting from Churchill’s statement, on pages 273-74 of Long Sunset:

For many years, I have believed that measures to promote European unity were ultimately essential to the well-being of the West. In a speech at Zurich in 1946, I urged the creation of the European Family, and I am sometimes given credit for stimulating the ideals of European unity which led to the formation of the economic and the other two communities. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the key to these endeavours lay in partnership between France and Germany.

…They, together with Italy, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg, are welding themselves into an organic whole, stronger and more dynamic than the sum of its parts. We might well play a great part in these developments to the profit not only of ourselves, but of our European friends also…. I think that the Government are right to apply to join the European Economic Community, not because I am yet convinced that we shall be able to join, but because there appears to be no other way by which we can find out exactly whether the conditions of membership are acceptable.

Fence-sitting

Montague Browne admitted that this was “a fence-sitting letter,” with fairly mild opinions. But it “took the heat off and pacified” both the Euro-skeptics and the Euro-enthusiasts. “Now the whole scenario is so out of date as to render the letter irrelevant….”

Churchill held more stock in the “Special Relationship” with the United States than what was then the European Community, Sir Anthony said, but he did not think they were mutually exclusive: “Moreover, the British Commonwealth, or at least the old Commonwealth, was not then the charade it has now become….If Britain had taken the initiative before the Treaty of Rome in 1957 things might have been different.”

Futile speculation

In fairness, it has been pointed out to me by a respected historian that Montgomery was telling the truth. But Churchill’s remarks were about the EEC, not the EU, or anything like it. Thus, on the matter of Britain remaining in or leaving the EU, they are non-sequitur.

These passages represent Churchill’s ultimate views on European Unity, or Union. The EEC began as a free trade agreement, providing practical and benificent commercial arrangements for member nations. It has morphed into something entirely different. The British electorate voted accorcdingly.

So let’s stop all this futile speculation over how Winston Churchill would view the Brexit debate. That was then, this is now. It is impossible to know how today’s choices before Great Britain vis-à-vis the European Union would be viewed by Churchill. And to quote Sir Anthony: “improper use should not be made of him.”