My friend Steve Hayward had the wit to paraphrase, in reaction to the arrival of Boris Johnson at 10 Downing Street, some comments about another incoming PM, eighty years ago next May. “Cambridge Cute,” says another friend of Steve’s good piece.

Speaking of Cambridge Cuties, I immediately thought of what Andrew Roberts described as “The Respectable Tendency,” the British establishment, in his great book, Eminent Churchilllians.  So I dug into the sources to find more of what they said back then about the new Prime Minister. (Lightly paraphrased.)

“Coup of the rabble…”

“Even whilst the new PM was still at Buckingham Palace kissing hands, the junior private secretary and Chamberlain’s PPS, Lord Dunglass [Alec Douglas-Home] joined Rab Butler and ‘Chips’ Channon at the Foreign Office. And there they drank in champagne the health of the ‘King over the Water’ (not King Leopold, but Mr. Chamberlain).”

“Rab said he thought that the good clean tradition of English politics, that of Pitt as opposed to Fox, had been sold to the greatest adventurer of modern political history…. The sudden coup of the rabble was a serious disaster and an unnecessary one. The ‘pass had been sold’ with a weak surrender to a half-breed American whose main support was that of inefficient but talkative people of a similar type.”

“Since the new PM came in, the House of Commons had stunk in the nostrils of the decent people. The kind of people surrounding him are the scum and the peak [bottom? -RML] came when Brendan [Bracken] was made a Privy Counsellor! For what services rendered heaven knows. The PM’s adventurism is suspect, and his promotion of those  in whom he detected the buccaneering spirit, doubly alarming.”

“A bright blue suit, cheap and sensational looking…”

“He has not put his own henchmen in the highest offices. That does not prevent his detractors from convincing themselves otherwise. Butler is one of a number who contend with the fact that they are serving in an administration led by the man they have spent the best part of a decade briefing against and cat-calling.”

“His appointment sent a cold chill down the spines of the staff at 10 Downing Street…. Our feelings were widely shared in the Cabinet Offices, the Treasury and throughout Whitehall. Seldom can a Prime Minister have taken office with the Establishment…so dubious of the choice and so prepared to find its doubts justified.”

“He sees no way of putting his ideas into practice at present and is not ashamed of admitting the fact. Lloyd George was afterwards offered the Ministry of Agriculture (for which the cheap press has always tipped him). He refused it because he thinks the country is in a hopeless position and he is generally despondent.”

Jock Colville: “I spent the day in a bright blue new suit from the Fifty-Shilling Tailors, cheap and sensational looking, which I felt was appropriate to the new Government. But of course Winston’s administration, with all its faults, has drive, and should be able to get things done….”

Retrospective

Thus spake the Respectable Tendency of new Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1940. Flash forward seventy-nine years. Nobody, of course, knows what Mr. Johnson will make of his honorable and ancient office. Friends of Britain must wish him well. What happens now is up to him. But opinion can change rapidly.

Back in 1940 Jock Colville soon shed his cheap blue suit. June 1940 found him in conservative pinstripes, an ardent admirer of his new Prime Minister. Correctly he surmised that the PM’s administration would “get things done.”

On getting things done today, refer to a thoughtful piece by John O’Sullivan on the now-nearly-complete Johnson Cabinet.

We report, you decide. And for historical perspective on the British establishment in days gone by, read Andrew Roberts’ book.

Judging Hitler

It is important to understand just how right Churchill was about Hitler. In May 1935 the Führer wrote a revealing letter to the British newspaper magnate Esmond Harmsworth, Lord Rothermere, one of his promoters. Hitler declared he was for Anglo-German understanding. He’d worked for it for fifteen years. Their mutual enemy was Bolshevism.

An Anglo-German alliance, Hitler wrote, would combine “the unique colonial ability and sea-power of England” with “one of the greatest soldier-races of the world.” Together, Britain and Germany could ensure generations of peace—a brotherhood of man. Except for references to Aryan supremacy, the Pope might have been writing this screed.

Rothermere enthusiastically forwarded the Hitler note to Churchill—whose reply was definitive. If Hitler was suggesting Britain agree to Germany dominating the continent, Churchill replied, it would be counter to history. Britain had always been on the side of Europe’s second strongest power: “Thus Elizabeth resisted Philip II of Spain. Thus William III and Marlborough resisted Louis XIV. Thus Pitt resisted Napoleon, and thus we all resisted William II of Germany.”

* * *

In 1935, Churchill published an article on Hitler, later reprinted in part in his 1937 book Great Contemporaries. Out of courtesy to the government (courtesy existed among politicians in those days), Churchill submitted his draft to the Foreign Office. They thought it too harsh. Churchill toned it down. They still didn’t like it. (“Don’t Let’s be Beastly to the Germans,” as Noël Coward later sang.)

In his 1935 article, WSC wrote: “…history will pronounce Hitler either a monster or a hero…whether he will rank in Valhalla with Pericles, with Augustus and with Washington, or welter in the inferno of human scorn with Attila and Tamerlane.”

These words were removed from his Great Contemporaries essay, though they reappeared shortly after the book was published in “This Age of Government by Great Dictators (News of the World, 10 October 1937. None of his words materially alters Churchill’s view of the Führer.

“A Champion as Indomitable…”

Ah, replied Pat Buchanan, but what about this: “If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.”

Without context, “a champion as indomitable” almost seems like a testimonial. But Churchill had preceded that by saying: “One may dislike Hitler’s system and yet admire his patriotic achievement.” And Buchanan leaves out the rest:

I am sorry, however, that he has not been mellowed by the great success that has attended him. Everyone would rejoice to see in Hitler acts of magnanimity and of mercy and of pity to the forlorn and friendless, to the weak and poor….let this great man search his own heart and conscience before he accuses anyone of being a warmonger.

Churchill insisted he was no enemy of Germany. But he said what he thought the people should hear. So he declared that Britain would reject the “brutal intolerances of Nazidom” and “the paganism on which they are based.”

As a politician, Churchill obviously appreciated Hitler’s skill and nerve. With his innate optimism, he hoped briefly that Hitler might mellow. But in his fundamental understanding, Churchill never wavered. He was right all along. Dead right.

World War II: Firebombing Dresden

Next: World War II is the largest source of myths. An actor delivered his broadcasts. Churchill opposed the Second Front in France. He exacerbated the Bengal famine and destroyed Monte Cassino abbey. He refused to bomb Auschwitz or to feed the oppressed in occupied Europe. Well, no. But no World War II canard is more persistent than the story that Churchill firebombed Dresden in hatred and revenge for the bombing of Coventry. Continued in Part 6…