CHURCHILL's WAR Is a Series of Volumes on the Life of the British Statesman
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David Irving CHURCHILL’S WAR i – The Struggle for Power Part of Introduction, Chapters – ‘Two books in English stand out from the vast literature of the Second World War: Chester Wilmot’s The Struggle for Europe, published in , and David Irving’s Hitler’s War’ , Times Literary Supplement, F FOCAL POINT DAVID IRVING Copyright © Parforce (UK) Ltd All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be commercially repro- duced, copied, or transmitted save with written permission of the author in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act of (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and to civil claims for damages. CHURCHILL'S WAR is a series of volumes on the life of the British statesman. Vol. i – The Struggle for Power (ISBN ) – was originally published by Veritas (Western Australia) in , by Hutchinson (London) in , by Avon Books (New York) in , and by Herbig Verlag (Munich) in . Vol. ii – Triumph in Adversity (ISBN ) – was published by Focal Point Publications (London) in . A third volume is in preparation. CHURCHILL’S WAR David Irving is the son of a Royal Navy commander. Incompletely edu- cated at Imperial College of Science and Technology and at University College London, he subsequently spent a year in Germany working in a steel mill and perfecting his fluency in the German language. In he published The Destruction of Dresden; it became a best-seller in many coun- tries. Among his thirty books, the best-known include Hitler’s War; The Trail of the Fox: The Life of Field-Marshal Rommel; Accident, the Death of Gen- eral Sikorski; The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe; Göring: a Biography, and Nur- emberg, the Last Battle. He has translated several works by other authors including Field-Marshal Keitel, Reinhard Gehlen and Nikki Lauda. He lives in London and has raised five daughters. DAVID IRVING Contents Introduction : Faithless but Fortunate : Keeping It under His Hat : Wuthering Depths : Wild Man in the Wilderness :Sixty : The Hired Help :Over-Reaching Himself : People Are Buying ‘Churchills’ : The Grand Alliance : ‘Let’s Wait and See’ Said Maisky : Choosing between War and Shame : Here Today, Gone Tomorrow :Outcast : Still Hibernating :Two-Fisted : A Foot in the Door : Naval Person : The Joybells Will Ring : Nobody Questions the Victor :Tit for Tat : Completely Outwitted : Hence Prime Minister : Rogue Elephant : An Avoidable Disaster : We Shall Fight in the Hills :Breakneck :The Diehard : A Misunderstanding between Friends : Gangster Methods CHURCHILL’S WAR : The Eagle Never Landed : In a Single Gulp : The One Sinless Man : Good Ol’ Winnie : The Fixer : Britain Can Take It : All Very Innocent :The Unsordid Act : There Goes the Empire : Against His Better Judgement : The Midas Touch : Mr Optimist Frog : The Telephone Job : Turning Point : Beaverbrook, and Notes and Sources Index DAVID IRVING Introduction trod carefully into the middle of the sec- ond floor clubroom and paused, deliberately surveying the W dozen faces that had turned toward him. As he stood there, short and squat, in a tuxedo that had seen long and honourable service, it occurred to him that he was probably a quarter cen- tury older than any of them. Hosting this dinner at the Union Club in New York City was Henry R. Luce, publisher of the magazines Time, Life and Fortune. It was March , : the uneasy interlude after the end of World War Two had ended, and everybody could sense it. Luce’s fellow editors and executives scrutinised the famous Englishman as if taken aback to find him so small, in the way that movie fans are startled to find that their idols are less than the twenty-foot giants of the silver screen. In the words of a lucid and penetrating memorandum* that Charles Murphy wrote for Luce’s private files, there was just a dress-shirted cave where the chest should have been, and a swelling paunch that bore testimony to years of rich fare. Henry Luce, who had brought him in, turned to greet his other guests. As Churchill swayed alone and splendidly in mid-room, the image struck Murphy of the Cunard Line’s Queen Mary at the moment when she cast off her tugs in Southampton Water – heavy and loggy, drifting as the Solent’s current pressed her hull until her screws bit water and she forged ahead again. rolls of flesh linking his head and body he looked to Murphy like a congenial, well-adjusted bullfrog. The frog’s arms and legs were short and stubby, the hands small-boned and white. The complexion was pasty. Then Churchill’s expressionless and bloodshot eyes fastened on a * The memorandum, sixty-three pages long, is now archived in Life executive C. D. Jack- son's files in the Eisenhower Library at Abilene, Kansas. Among those present were John Billings, John Davenport, Allen Grover, Jackson, Henry R. Luce, Charles Murphy and Charles Wertenbaker. CHURCHILL’S WAR portrait on the far wall. The liner’s screws began to thump and churn, he swayed across the clubroom and challenged: ‘Who’s that blighter?’ Luce guessed from the portrait’s dress that it was an eighteenth- century Englishman; with the smug certainty of Charles Lamb’s ‘wary connoisseur,’ he confirmed it by a glance at the brass nameplate and pro- nounced: ‘William the Fourth.’ That it was that blundering and inept monarch took Churchill by sur- prise. He harrumphed, and said: ‘Looks more like Lord Rosebery to me. Same heavy jowls.’ Behind them was a brooding sculpture of a bald eagle, carved in clear ice some hours earlier by the Union Club’s chefs. The wings of this sym- bol of American might were outstretched; its eyes glittered, and every crevice was heaped with black caviar. The club’s heating had been turned up, and rivers of iced water dribbled down its chest. Churchill leered. ‘The eagle,’ he announced, ‘seems to have caught a cold.’ He was hypnotised less by the sculptor’s art than by the caviar. He waved aside the genteel slices of dry toast an editor handed him, ex- claimed: ‘This stuff needs no reinforcement,’ and put words into action by shovelling a whopping helping onto a plate, and from there, with scarcely a perceptible interruption, straight and undiluted to his mouth – seem- ingly unabashed at the appreciative belches that shortly emerged from that orifice. ‘I hope, gentlemen,’ he apologised with little evidence of true contrition, ‘I hope you don’t find me too explosive an animal.’ Luce misinterpreted the remark. ‘On the contrary, Sir,’ he said, ‘you were only putting into words what was gravely in the minds of many Americans.’ Just over a week earlier, on March , , Churchill had delivered an astonishing speech at Fulton in Missouri, accusing the Soviet Union of having imposed an ‘Iron Curtain’ across Europe. On March the entire Soviet press had fired a mighty broadside back, and even Joseph Stalin had joined in the assault, stating in the official Soviet newspaper Pravda that Churchill ‘has now adopted the position of warmonger.’ Another mighty belch was Churchill’s response to Luce’s compliment. Dismissing it with a slice of one hand, he said: ‘The explosions I had in mind were those given off by my internal pleasure.’ He gazed mistily at the spoonful of caviar poised in his hand. Times were when Stalin used to send him a lot of this delicacy. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll ever be getting any more,’ he said. DAVID IRVING not yet served. For a few minutes he quietly contemplated the others. Then he began to speak, with a purposeful tone that in Mur- phy’s description cut like a buzzsaw across the grain of idle conversation. Luce signalled with his arm that the others should stop. They led the Elder Statesman into dinner after that, and Luce seated him at the place of honour on his right. Clear turtle soup was served, and he gobbled it down. It was followed by terrapin: lowering his head so as to be nearer to his prey, he skillfully forked the delicacy from plate to mouth with swift grabbing movements which reminded one onlooker of a steamshovel’s grab-bucket at work. Words and oratory cascaded from him, his tongue now loosened by rare champagne; true, he appeared to be taking only delicate sips, but from the number of refills it was clear that he had imbibed a considerable volume – editor Allen Grover assayed his intake on this evening as one martini, two sherries, four or five glasses of champagne and a formidable balloon of brandy. Once, he recalled, Stalin had debated with him the real meaning of democracy. Britain, said Stalin, was really a dictatorship because one party – the party that happened to be in power – controlled everything. Chur- chill remained a skeptic, committed to parliamentarianism. He told Luce’s dinner guests how, at Potsdam in , he had warned Stalin that he might well find himself replaced as prime minister at the General Election whose results were even then being awaited; Stalin had solemnly com- mented, ‘My kind of election is better.’ Several remarks showed Churchill’s warm regard for Stalin. ‘Stalin is the one human being in Russia,’ he said, ‘I’m sure he doesn’t believe any of those awful things he said about me.’ Later he said, ‘Stalin always kept his word’ – and gave as an example how the Kremlin had adhered to the Soviet–German agreement of August right up to Hitler’s attack two years later. Who actually controlled Russia? Churchill pondered the ques- tion, then said: ‘While Stalin appears to make policy in a sort of vacuum, I doubt very much that he is really free to do what he wants to do.’ There was no gainsaying his admiration of the Soviet Communist Party’s role in the war.