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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.

The most touching and durable vision left by Mr. Maier comes toward the end of this long book: the famous White House ceremony in April 1963, as President Kennedy presents Sir Winston Churchill (in absentia) with Honorary American Citizenship—while from an upstairs window his stroke-silenced father, Joseph P. Kennedy, watches closely, with heaven knows what reflections:

Whatever thoughts raced through the mind of Joe Kennedy—the rancor of the past, the lost opportunities of his own political goals, and the tragic forgotten dreams he had once had for his oldest son, could not be expressed. His weak, withered body, with its disfigured mouth, no longer served him…could say nothing in his own defense.

This is a readable book, elegantly written, which commits some errors. It contains much known information, except perhaps for encyclopedic revelations of which Churchills and Kennedys were sleeping with whom. In some ways one is reminded of a description applied by Warren Kimball to Volume 3 in the Manchester Churchill trilogy The Last Lion: “A nice cruise down a lengthy river you’ve sailed before.”

Meetings and consequences

The biographies surround occasions when the two families meet (or collide): 1933, 1935, 1938, and so on. Much of what we read about John F. Kennedy’s remarkable affinity for Churchill has been recorded earlier, by Barbara Leaming, in Jack Kennedy: The Education of a Statesman (2006).

Along the way are interesting takes. Churchill’s interest in secret intelligence, for example, is traced to the Boer War, when young Winston “performed a bit of reconnaissance work, posing as a civilian riding a bicycle” in the Boer capital of Pretoria. Mr. Maier tracks the Joe Kennedy-Churchill relationship thoroughly, establishing that it began in 1933 (five years before JPK became Roosevelt’s Ambassador to Britain), when he and Churchill did some joint business involving the liquor trade. This, he suggests, might today be termed influence peddling—but Churchill held no office from 1929 to 1939.

Mr. Maier gets quite a few Churchill points wrong. There’s an incomplete account of the scandal involving Lord Alfred Douglas, who in 1916 libeled Churchill (“short of money and eager for power”), accusing him of manipulating war news to benefit his mentor Sir Ernest Cassel. Maier might have added that Churchill sued and won…or that in 1941, when Douglas published a sonnet praising the now-prime minister, Churchill forgave him on the spot, saying, “Time ends all things.”

Balanced criticism

Perhaps it is hard nowadays to credit many people with kindness and altruism, like Sir Henry Strakosch, who took over Churchill’s portfolio and preserved WSC’s dwindled finances. Maier calls this a “bailout plan…considered more a gift than graft by Churchill and his benefactors….” But graft is “the unscrupulous use of a politician’s authority for personal gain.” Strakosch never made one demand of Churchill. He acted only in appreciation for the man and the leader.

Churchill the imperialist is not ignored. “Winston showed little enthusiasm for the revolutionary spirit of independence among those living in former colonies of the British Empire such as India, South Africa, Kenya, or even neighboring Ireland,” Maier writes. Not so fast! What about his post-1935 encouragement to Gandhi and Nehru; his loyalty to Smuts, who opposed Apartheid; praise of locally-ruled Kenya in 1908; his instrumental role in the 1921 Treaty that brought independence to Ireland? Against such omissions, the canard that Churchill wanted to use “poison gas” against Iraqi tribesman stands in some contrast.

In World War II, Maier writes, “when the Communist guerrillas threatened to take control of Yugoslavia, Churchill underlined his concern by sending his only son.” No: Churchill had determined that Tito’s Communists were “killing more Huns” than the royalists, and sent his son to aid Tito. And Tito was not a “Soviet puppet.”

Kennedys and Winston

Maier says Joe Kennedy “blamed Roosevelt and Churchill for the death of his son Joe Jr.” No specific evidence exists for this.

A media kerfuffle was raised by the book’s report that after the war, WSC told Senator Styles Bridges (R., N.H.) that America should nuke Moscow before the Russians got their hands on the bomb. This was perfectly legitimate to record, but raised shock headlines among the ignorant media. As noted elsewhere, the story is not new. Churchill often voiced apocalyptic notions to visitors to observe their reaction. He never made that proposal to any plenary U.S. authority. As Graham Farmelo wrote in Churchill’s Bomb: “This was the zenith of Churchill’s nuclear bellicosity.” He soon softened his line, telling Parliament in January 1948 that the best chance of avoiding war was “to arrive at a lasting settlement” with the Soviets. Maier doesn’t acknowledge Churchill’s change of view until 1952. He adds that Churchill “would drop the bomb if he could.” That is simply unproven. And unlikely.

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Other basic errors include the assertion that Winston’s father never visited him at school, that Churchill’s war memoirs comprised four volumes, that the Munich Agreement was in 1939, that Egypt was a former British colony (508). Among the trivial are mis-titling a Churchill article and identifying “Toby” the green parakeet as Churchill’s “white canary.”

Churchill’s description of Munich as a “choice between War and Shame” was not said in Parliament; “MBE” does not stand for Member of the British Empire. Lord and Lady Churchill, Lady Nancy Astor or “Sonny” Marlborough never existed. Tw0 nannies are misnamed: Elizabeth Everest (not “Everett”) and Marriott Whyte (not “Madeleine White).”

Fathers and sons

The book finishes with thoughtful reflections. Jack and Bobby got on much better with their father than Randolph with his, Maier suggests. Yet the Kennedy sons were far from their father in outlook and policy. After Joe’s stroke, “Jack and Bobby interacted with their father as they always did, as if he might suddenly talk back to them.” But poor Randolph Churchill just talked back. “I do so very much love that man,” Randolph says in tears, after being pointedly ejected from the Onassis yacht following a flaming attack on his aged father, “but something always goes wrong between us.”

Did Winston spoil Randolph to the point of disaster? Or did he subconsciously communicate a wish that Randolph could never be his equal? Did Joe Kennedy accept early on that great political prizes would not be his, but  for his sons? Mr. Maier leaves his readers to draw their own conclusions. His summary well crafted summary:

This legacy between fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the eternal questions about families and fate, and our lasting impression of greatness, were all part of the shared experience between the Churchills and the Kennedys. In the twentieth century, no two families existed on a bigger world stage…. With courage, wit, and unforgettable determination, both Winston S. Churchill and John F. Kennedy helped define and save the world as we know it today.

That is a bit of overreach: comparing the lengths of their careers and the scales of the two salvations. But save it they did.

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.