A reader refers us to The Polar Bear Expedition: The Heroes of America’s Forgotten Invasion of Russia 1918-1919 (2019). It repeats a misunderstanding about Churchill’s role in aiding the White Russians against the Bolsheviks. By the spring of 1919 in Russia, we read:

…the cat was out of the bag: whether its allies—English, French, White Russians—liked it nor not, the U.S. was pulling out. On March 4, the British War Cabinet decided to follow suit, ignoring the arguments of the virulently anti-Bolshevik Winston Churchill, who as secretary of war had proposed increasing the Allied commitment in Russia to one million men.

“The passage makes Churchill sound like a madman,” our reader writes. “What is the truth of the matter?”

The Allied Venture

First, it wasn’t simply America’s invasion. After the Armistice of November 1918, various Allies sent troops to assist Anton Denikin and Alexander Kolchak, leading rebels against Lenin’s Soviet government. Allied intervention on behalf of the White Russians involved hundreds of thousands of troops. By far the largest contingents, up to 70,000 each, were from Czechoslovakia and Japan. America’s commitment was 11,000, Britain’s 7,500, France’s 15,000. Czech casualties dwarfed those of the others. Second, Winston Churchill never demanded the Allies send a million troops. He did mention the likely involvement of a million White Russians.

What really happened? Sir Martin Gilbert’s Official Biography, World in Torment 1916-1922, offers the truth. Churchill did powerfully support aiding the White Russians. He was also mindful how far the Allies could go. He also favored a firm decision. When he realized they would not go far enough, he urged disengagement.

Quandaries over White Russians

The British War Cabinet met on 10 January 1919, a week before the Paris Peace Conference began. The day before, Churchill had accepted Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s offer of the War Office. Churchill’s chief task was to demobilize and bring home four million men. He was well aware of their sacrifice. A million British, Indian, Canadian, Australian and other soldiers had given their lives. Martin Gilbert describes the White Russians discussion:

Sir Henry Wilson pointed out that during the past week “there had been signs of unrest in the Army at home, and it was notorious that the prospect of being sent to Russia was immensely unpopular.” [But Marshal Foch had said it was urgent] “to stop the advance of Bolshevism before it penetrated Austria and Germany.” Churchill supported Foch’s appeal…. He then suggested that the defeated German army should be used to check the westward advance of Bolshevism….

Wilson was Churchill’s senior adviser on military affairs, but frequently disagreed with his civilian chief. Wilson was convinced, he wrote in his diary, “that we (British) should keep out of the scrum. If the Americans and French like to go in, let them.” He agreed with Churchill’s idea about using the defeated German army: “We should order the Boches to hold up Bolshevism.” But few in the Cabinet wanted that.

Paris Peace Conference

So informed, the Prime Minister went to Paris. Lloyd George, Gilbert continues, “favoured conciliation rather than intervention.” Backed by U.S. President Wilson, he invited the Bolsheviks to a peace conference at Prinkipo, a Turkish island near Constantinople. Learning of the Prinkipo proposal, Churchill protested that it would amount to recognizing Lenin’s vicious regime.

In London, Cabinet opinion was strongly against British intervention. Lord Curzon, shortly to become foreign minister, wanted other countries to act. Austen Chamberlain wanted no intervention by anyone. President Wilson in Paris opposed intervention. If it occurred, he said, Britain and France would “have to sustain the whole cost.” The White Russians, Wilson believed, could not survive “for a moment” by themselves.

Above all, Gilbert writes, Churchill wanted a firm decision. “He offered his colleagues three clear choices: authorize him to intervene with British troops; aid the Whites with guns and equipment; “or to withdraw.” Lloyd George, continues Martin Gilbert,

… asked Sir Henry Wilson to prepare a statement showing the military effect of each of the three possible policies…. Churchill himself sent a long note to Wilson, in which he asked him to assume, in his calculations: (a) that the Prinkipo Conference will not take place and that the Allied Governments will instead make a united appeal to all loyal Russians to exert themselves to the utmost against the Bolsheviks; (b) that no troops can be sent from this country by compulsion to carry on the war in Russia.

Churchill’s Views

Churchill envisioned helping the Whites but not bearing the full burden. Repeatedly he insisted, “the only chance of making headway against the Bolsheviks was by the use of Russian armies,” Gilbert continues:

There were, he said, nearly half a million anti-Bolshevik Russians under arms, and the Russians themselves planned to double this figure. “If we were unable to support the Russians effectively,” he added, “it would be far better to take a decision now to quit and face the consequences, and tell these people to make the best terms they could with the Bolsheviks.”

“I am all in favour of declaring war on the Bolsheviks,” Sir Henry Wilson declared, “but the others, except Winston, won’t.”

Before leaving  the Peace Conference, President Wilson supported the Prinkipo meeting, but later he waffled.  The Bolsheviks had “raised a number of issues” he said, which were “insulting”: repayment of debts, concessions and territorial compensations. In the event, the Prinkipo conference never occurred.

A Plea for Decision

Winston Churchill didn’t waffle. Again as Martin Gilbert shows, he implored his colleagues to make a decision—but to understand what withdrawal would mean:

The complete withdrawal of all Allied troops was, at least, “a logical and clear policy,” but [Churchill] feared that its consequences “would be the destruction of all non-Bolshevik armies in Russia,” a total of half a million men, whose numbers were increasing. “Such a policy,” he continued, “would be equivalent to pulling out the linch-pin from the whole machine. There would be no further armed resistance to the Bolsheviks in Russia, and an interminable vista of violence and misery was all that remained for the whole of Russia.”

“There is no ‘will to win’…”

The President no sooner arrived in Washington than he announced withdrawal of U.S. troops “at an early date.” On 23 February, a British battalion, the 13 Yorks, refused to march in support of fellow forces on the Archangel front. Their Commander, General Ironside, said they’d been aggravated by the American announcement. Four days later, Churchill  sent Lloyd George an anguished letter, which perfectly understood the attitude of the British battalion: “The lack of any “will to win” communicates itself to our troops and affects their morale: it communicates itself to our Russian allies and retards their organisation, and to our enemies and encourages their efforts…. [The Alliles] are pausing midway between these two courses with an equal dislike of either…. It is necessary [that you] hammer out a policy…. No one below you can do it.”

Withdrawal

Lloyd George acted. When he returned from Paris, the War Cabinet voted to begin evacuating British troops from Russia. On 5 March Churchill asked his chiefs of staff to implement withdrawal. Again we have Martin Gilbert to thank for his exact words. They show Churchill as anything but a mad warmonger. He asked for

a definite timetable for this operation prepared with the necessary latitude… I am extremely anxious about this position, and from day to day my anxieties increase [and] I have announced to Parliament and pledged the War Office to leave no stone unturned [so long as we act in] a manner not incompatible with the honour of our army. I should like also to be able to raise the morale of our men out there by promising them definitely in a message direct from me that they will either be relieved by volunteers from England or withdrawn altogether as soon as Archangel is open….

In Retrospect

Historical assessments of the Allied intervention on behalf of the White Russians are almost all negative. The Bolsheviks concluded that the West wished to destroy them. The operation prolonged a bloody civil war with nothing to gain at the end but Russian enmity. It is debatable whether that enmity still mattered when Russia and the West faced a more implacable foe in 1940. Stalin was many terrible things, but he was also a pragmatist.

Churchill’s view in 1919 was clear:  As he wrote to General Harington, Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff: “We may live to regret bitterly the opportunities and resources we are losing through the present indecision.” Churchill’s view many years later was unaltered. “If I had been properly supported in 1919, I think we might have strangled Bolshevism in its cradle,” he said at a Washington press conference in 1954. “But everybody turned up their hands and said, ‘How shocking!’”

No evidence exists that Churchill wished to commit a million Allied troops. The British contingent he envisioned was small, and made up of volunteers. Above all, Churchill wanted decision, not hesitation, which he abhorred all his life.

Four such episodes came to mind last week which exemplify this vanished era. Questions arrived from colleagues about Churchill: his encounters with Canadian soldiers and his North Carolina connections. Then The New York Times published a retrospective on Woodrow Wilson, during the 1918 Paris Peace Conference. This was remindful of a fourth episode, involving Harry Truman. The sadness is that none of these could have happened in, the last fifty years. Maybe longer.

Walk in Paris: Woodrow Wilson, 1918

The Municipal Council of Paris gave President Wilson the keys to the City, but they neglected to present him with what is far more essential, a good map book, with which to find his way about the city’s intricate streets. And so he enjoyed the privileges of his new citizenship by getting lost.

Anxious friends of the President need not be worried, however, for he was found by two small boys who pointed out the way for him. The President and Mrs. Wilson started out unaccompanied one morning for a walk. From the time they left the Hôtel Murat until they returned, they were recognized by no one but the two young Paris urchins.

They were enjoying their incognito walk so much that they neglected to take note of the wanderings of Paris streets. Not sure where they were, they stopped to ask the French boys the right direction. The response was very prompt and courteous. Then, to the surprise of the President and Mrs. Wilson, who did not think they were recognized, two small hands came out under the capes the boys were wearing: “And now, Mr. President, won’t you shake hands with us?”

The hand-shaking was cordial on both sides, and Pierre and Jean went away with something to tell their grandchildren.

—Reported by the International Herald Tribune, reprinted 2018 

Walk in Kent: Winston Churchill, 1941

Kenneth B. Smith, past president of Canada’s Hastings and Prince Edward Regimental Officers Association, told a humorous anecdote: Robert Morrison of B Company was on roving duty one evening at Chartwell in the summer of 1941 when he saw Churchill, who had gotten away from London for one of those rare weekends at his country home. Morrison saluted.

“Why didn’t you challenge me, Canada?” Churchill growled.

“I know who you are, sir,” replied Morrison.

“Oh, how do you know me?,” asked the Prime Minister.

“By your cigar, bald head, double chin, short neck and fat belly, sir,” answered Morrison.

“But don’t forget, the Germans have bald men with short necks and fat bellies who smoke cigars,” said Churchill.

“You’re right sir,” answered Morrison, “but they would do up the bottom button on the vest.”

Morrison’s logic “delighted the Prime Minister, who went chuckling into the twilight.”

Morrison’s last line was explained by Col. Strome Galloway of Ottawa: “The young Canadian soldier was very perceptive to realize that Englishmen, but not Germans, leave undone the bottom button of their waistcoats (not ‘vests,’ which in England means undershirts.) When King Edward VII became so paunchy he could not do up the bottom button of his waistcoat, and had to appear in public before his tailor could make the necessary adjustments, his entourage immediately undid theirs so as to follow the new Royal fashion.”

—Reported by the Globe and Mail (1984)

Walk in Casablanca: Winston Churchill, 1943

At Casablanca, where they shared several dinners, the Prime Minister kept General George Patton up very late telling stories before Churchill returned alone to his quarters near the Anfa Hotel. He had insisted nobody accompany him as it was only 3am and he wished to walk.

Near the hotel he was halted by an American sentry, a farm boy from North Carolina, who challenged the Prime Minister and then called: “Corporal of the Guard! I have a fellow down here who claims he’s the Prime Minister of Great Britain. I think he is a goddam liar.”

The Corporal of the Guard arrived and recognized Mr. Churchill. The incident pleased the Prime Minister greatly, for he told it afterwards on many occasions.

—Harry H. Semmes, Portrait of Patton (1955).

Walk in Washington: Harry Truman, ca. 1950

As President, Truman felt more than ever a need to see and make contact with what he called the everyday American. And always he felt better for it.

On an evening in Washington, on one of his walks, he had decided to take a look at the mechanism that raised and lowered the middle span of the Memorial Bridge over the Potomac. Descending some iron steps, he came upon the bridge tender, eating his evening supper out of a tin bucket.

Showing no surprise that the President of the United States had climbed down the catwalk and suddenly appeared before him, the man said, “You know, Mr. President, I was just thinking about you.” It was a greeting Truman adored and never forgot.

—David McCullouch, Truman (2003).

One wonders….

….most of all about what must have been the incandescent conversation between Churchill and Patton. Did Patton explain that he had been present, in another life, at the Battle of Carthage in 149 B.C.? What did Patton think of Churchill’s part in the Battle of Omdurman, 1,749 years later? We are only reminded once again, of how much of the Churchill canon was never recorded.

See also

“Churchill’s Common Touch,” in five parts, beginning here.

Ideals that today’s educated people take for granted — equal rights, free speech, and the primacy of human life over tradition, tribal loyalty and intuitions about purity — are radical breaks with the sensibilities of the past. These too are gifts of a widening application of reason.

Fair enough, but to contrast what educated people were like in the bad old days, Prof. Pinker offers this:

Heroes like Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Woodrow Wilson avowed racist beliefs that today would make people’s flesh crawl.

“Generational Chauvinism”

Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson may have defenders to speak for them, but I’ll take this up on behalf of Churchill. Professor Pinker is exhibiting what William Manchester called “Generational Chauvinism”—judging people of the past by the accepted better standards of today.

If he means that Churchill used words like “blackamoors” and said that certain non-white races have “a high rate of reproduction,” nolo contendere. Of course, when Churchill grew up—in the late Victorian and Edwardian era—every Briton from the Sovereign to a Covent Garden grocer said the same things about other races, and nobody’s skin crawled because all of them believed it. That may be shocking to today’s ears—but that’s the way it was.

But simply to declare that Churchill was a man of his time is to miss a feature that distinguishes him. For example, this is the same Winston Churchill who in 1899 argued for equal rights for black South Africans in a debate with his Boer jailer in Pretoria, In 1906, as Undersecretary for the Colonies, he endeared himself to Gandhi by defending the rights of Indians in South Africa. The same Churchill endorsed the concept of a Jewish national home, and praised the contributions of Jews to civilization in 1920. Churchill opposed Indian self-government in the 1930s and, when he lost, sent encouragement to Gandhi; who admired Nehru; who would admire the Indian democracy today.

He Can’t be Pigeonholed

Winston Churchill was by no means a saint, and it does him a disservice to pretend he was without faults. But he is too complex a figure to pigeonhole. We must take into account the full picture. As Manchester wrote in the first volume of his biography, The Last Lion (p. 844):

Churchill, however, always had second and third thoughts, and they usually improved as he went along. It was part of his pattern of response to any political issue that while his early reactions were often emotional, and even unworthy of him, they were usually succeeded by reason and generosity.

Quoting Churchill’s famous remark that when he became Prime Minister he felt as if he “were walking with destiny,” Morrison writes: “I want my president to have concerns, but not fears. I don’t want him to go on television and kvetch. I want my president to walk with destiny.” Among the comments to this article is one asserting that Churchill and President Wilson “orchestrated a plan” to get America into World War I by sinking the liner Lusitania.

Dear oh dear…..

Please, Mr. Morrison…

For writers to offer comparisons of today’s politicians with Winston Churchill is remindful of what Churchill said (drawing laughs) to the U.S. Congress in 1941, just after the Japanese had attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor: “They have certainly embarked upon a very considerable undertaking.”

As reported here, Obama actually has more Churchilliana than Bush had. And Obama alluded favorably to Churchill (albeit inaccurately) during the debate about waterboarding OBL’s followers at Guantanamo. Also, Obama’s grandfather left gaol in Kenya before Churchill returned to power in 1951. And Churchill actually expressed sympathy toward the Kenyan rebels. The details are on this site.

But kvetching and the current incumbent aside, you simply don’t parachute 10,000 commandos on a city, a feat beyond even Hitler’s Luftwaffe. For years  we knew that during World War I the British shipped arms on passenger liners. But Churchill and Wilson did not set up RMS Lusitania to be torpedoed. No, they did not withdrew a naval escort. No they did not order a course that magically put the ship in the crosshairs of the U-20. Apparently we’re supposed to believe they knew where all the U-boats were, too.

The Lusitania nonsense was refuted years ago by Professor Harry Jaffa in the book Statesmanship (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1981), and further demolished in my book, Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality: What He Actually Did and Said.