Winston Churchill and the Slovenes
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božo repe Filozofska fakulteta, Univerza v Ljubljani Winston ChurChiLL anD the sLovenes Winston Churchill was a great statesman. But he was a statesman of the imperialistic world, secret agreements and divisions into spheres of interest. e historical balance of the relationship between Churchill and Slovenes is, roughly, as follows: during WW1, as a member of Asquith’s cabinet, he was an ardent supporter of the secret Treaty of London, which granted Italy in advance a third of the Slovene territory and a quarter of the Slovene population; during WW2, he pragmatically decided to support militarily and later also politically Tito’s Partisan movement (which included the Slovene Partisan army), which between 1941 and 1943, in the completely occupied Europe, was more or less the only resistance movement worthy of mention; at the same time, he concluded a secret pact with Stalin about the division of spheres of interest in the Balkans, according to which inuence in Yugoslavia was to be divided between them according to the fty-fty principle (if the outcome of the military operations had developed dierently, there would probably also have been a physical division of Slovenia and Yugoslavia); at the end of WW2, he tried to realize the division of interest spheres according to the Greek scenario, but did not succeed because of the strength of Tito’s army; in 1953, he agreed to a relatively just solute; on of the border issue with Italy, with which Slovenia lost Trieste, but gained access to the sea south of it. Key words: secret Treaty of London 1915, Tito’s Partisan movement, Slovene Partisan army, spheres of interest in the Balkans, Trieste, London agreement (Memorandum about consensus; Second London agreement) 1954 ritish historian Ashley Jackson in the book Churchill from 2011 (one of many about BChurchill)1 tries to respond to Churchill’s critics from the professional and human aspect. Among other things he wrote: “Churchill’s personality and physical appearance, it also strikes a chord because it implies he was unfit for post-war government because he was old and unmodern. This is a shallow portrayal; older people are often more intellectually supple and balanced than their younger peers, and being over sixty-five is not a bar to service or utility. Churchill, in fact, was no different from the vast majority of ageing people. What is more, the image of Churchill the dinosaur (this refers to the comment by Aneurin Bevan – the health minister in Atlee’s government after the war – about the ageing Churchill, saying that when he was the Prime Minister in the early Fifties, he “looked like a dinosaur at a light engineering exhibition”, author’s note) sits ill alongside clear evidence throughout his life of adaptability to changing circumstances and resilience in the face of both per- sonal and public change and tragedy! (…) Harsh assessments of Churchill’s capacities (or incapacities) are also sometimes founded on the tendency to view him in isolation, and to judge him by more exacting standards than those normally applied to politicians and noted public figures. Too often Churchill is portrayed as a giant in a historical landscape that he could (or should) have dominated, one largely devoid of other people and the swirling movement of real life and the manifold forces that shape it. Of course, life isn’t like this, 1 Ashley Jackson, Churchill, Ljubljana 2018. 1010 Zbornik Drage Roksandiæa and even the most powerful men cannot command the tides of history, even if, on rare occasions, they have the opportunity to influence them. Should Churchill have known and understood everything?”2 It is certainly possible to agree with the opinion that when Churchill was in the key position from 1939 to 1945 “belonged not only to Britain, but to the world” and that be- cause of this history is kind to him, which also applies generally to Slovenia. Biographers, other writers and film producers shows Churchill from very different standpoints, but for history mainly are important three: first, there is the passionate commitment to Britain’s imperialist policy, which is then supplemented by the domination of white “English-speaking people” (during his time, the leading role was taken from Britain by the United States of America, while Churchill established the “special relationship” between the two states, which still holds). Second, he was convinced about the necessity for closer European ties although, to tell the truth, he saw Europe as the weakest link where above all else peace should be secured, and not as a supra-state formation, which could threaten the interna- tional position of Britain and the USA. Britain should be “only” an equal member of any European formation. Subsequent and present-day British politicians have not differed much in this respect as Brexit shows. Third: Churchill’s we should add his belief that peace could be ensured only through war or a balance in armaments (including nuclear). Churchill adapted all his other standpoints (including passionate anti-Communism and the switching of parties) to geostrategic trends and the current situation. In 1964, the Borec publishing house published the first book about Churchill in Slovene: Druga svetovna vojna. Z epilogom o povojnih letih (World War Two. With an Epilogue About the Post-War Years).3 This was an abridged, but still over 1000 pages long publication of memoirs from a German series of 12 volumes published in Bern and Stutt- gart. This was the first Churchill book in Yugoslavia. Slightly later the same year, Prosveta in Belgrade published a considerably more extensive Serbo-Croatian translation in three volumes, each of which had over 700 pages of small print. Later, many other books about Churchill were published, particularly about his attitude to Yugoslavia and Tito, and mem- ories of the British emissaries to Tito during the war, while Slovene and Yugoslav libraries also contained English and other publications of this type of literature. The publication of Churchill’s memoirs posed no particular ideological or political problem. During the war, he was accepted in Slovenia and Yugoslavia as a positive figure, depicted on posters and in newspapers together with Roosevelt and Stalin, and in caricatures as a bulldog fighting the Nazis and Hitler. This, of course, applied only to the victorious Partisan side. The collaborationist (anti-Partisan, anti-Communist) side was critical of him, both in the occupying forces’ censored printed media, as well as in internal discussions. Firstly, because of the fear that, due to the collaboration during the initial attack on Yugoslavia, British forces would intern the fleeing Slovene politicians, then because of Churchill’s support for Tito’s Partisans, and at the end of the war and after it because the British did not start World War Three against the Soviet Union or at least a war against Tito’s new Yugoslavia (which, as in Greece, would enable the collaborationists to fight in a civil war and return to power, backed by the West). Of course, there was also the reproach that Churchill and 2 Božo Repe, “Winston Churchill in Slovenci”, in: Jackson, Churchill, 9-10. 3 Winston Spencer Churchill, Druga svetovna vojna. Z epilogom o povojnih letih, Ljubljana 1964. Božo Repe: Winston Churchill and the Slovenes 1011 the British – in spite of being aware of what awaited them – returned the collaborationist Slovene Home Guard army from Carinthia, which was followed by the post-war massacres and other settling of scores. There was quite a number of reports about Churchill in the Slovene media after the war, particularly when he took part at the Potsdam Conference of the “big three”. These reports were not only about politics, but also about social things, such as what Churchill had to drink during his private dinner with Stalin. The Slovene and Yugoslav media also followed the British election campaign in 1945 fairly objectively. It reported both Churchill’s and Attlee’s standpoints equally, but after Churchill’s defeat the conclusion prevailed that the Conservatives had lost because of supporting reactionary (including Fascist) forces in Europe and that the result was good both for the British and the wider European public. There again followed a fairly objective overview of reaction to the elections in individ- ual European countries. The reasons for his defeat were mostly attributed to Churchill’s poor advisers rather than the programme, although from an extensive description of the Labour programme, it was clear that it was thought that Churchill – focused on the war and post-war geostrategic relations – had simply “forgotten about” the expectations of the British people after years of blood, sweat and tears, which he had promised them at the beginning of his mandate. He appeared once again on the horizon of the Slovene and Yugoslav media a few years later, in 1953. There were two reasons for this and again, they were contradictory. The first was still the border issue (Primorska with Trieste, and Carinthia). Both were resolved in 1954 and 1955: Carinthia entirely to the detriment of Yugoslavia and Primorska partly so. The second reason was the visit of the Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito to Britain. The visit signified Tito’s glorious return to the international scene, which after the war was interrupted by the conflict with the Informbiro. The visit took place between 16 and 21 March 1953 – coincidentally but at the same time symbolically, only ten days after Stalin’s death. This was the first visit of any Communist leader to Britain. During his stay, Tito met Churchill for the second time (the first meeting occurred on 12 August 1944 in Naples). At decisive moments, Churchill thus twice opened up a path to the West for Tito, even though the second time in the shadow of the American policy toward Yugoslavia which, however, does not reduce the symbolic meaning of the visit.