Winston Churchill's the Second World War: Metanarrative, Markets, and the Politics of Memory
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WINSTON CHURCHILL'S THE SECOND WORLD WAR: METANARRATIVE, MARKETS, AND THE POLITICS OF MEMORY By DAVID J. GOSSEN B.A., The University of Lethbridge, 1979 L.L.B., The University of Victoria, 1982 M.A., The University of British Columbia, 1994 A THESIS SUBMITTED LN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of History) We accept this thesis as conforming 4p the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA April 2001 © David James Gossen, 2001 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada DE-6 (2/88) 11 ABSTRACT The potency of memoirs to shape collective memory makes it important to seek a critical understanding of their political and historical functions. Memoirs offer insights into the character, motives, and influence of political leaders, yet many scholars question this genre's ability to produce accurate history, insightful political analysis, or literature of merit. However, to the extent that memoirs contribute to our knowledge and understanding of the past they deserve closer study. Memoirs mediate remembrance of the recent past by functioning primarily in the interval between contemporary political discourse and professional historiography, where their reception molds historical memory. This study assesses how the past is remembered, and the political influences embedded in memory that shape collective identities, through a study of Winston Churchill's metanarrative of the second world war, produced at a critical period in war memory formation. Exposing the politicized aspects of social memory requires examining the means by which private memories are transmitted into the public realm of collective consciousness. In the early postwar era, the dominant transmitter of war memory was the political press, which responded to war narratives by amplifying, dramatizing, or challenging their underlying political messages. Thus, we examine how Churchill's metanarrative of war was produced and promoted by his publishing syndicate, and how his messages were received by the political press and general reading public in Britain and America. After 1945, the main stimuli for contested political memory arose from widespread fears over security, freedom, rapid social change, and historical discontinuity caused by the war. Churchill's metanarrative of legitimation offered an explanation of the traumatic past that contained conservative lessons for political culture. His messages fused an abiding faith in the righteousness of imperial memory with a sense of historical destiny that linked the English-speaking peoples in a common cause to resist totalitarian challenges in the 20th century. Their reception reveals that imperial memory and the archaic language of redemption through war did not end with the first or second world wars, but gained a renewed sense of relevancy and power during the early cold war era. i i i TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Preface ii v Acknowledgments v 1 CHAPTER I Introduction. 1 CHAPTER II Churchill's Metanarrative: Messages and Leadership 19 2.1 Imperialism and Democracy ...........19 2.2 Unifying the English-speaking Peoples 27 2.3 Appeasement and Political Praxis 32 2.4 Churchill's Finest Hour 46 CHAPTER III Memoirs and Markets: The Origins of a Publishing Syndicate 55 3.1 Building a Publishing Syndicate 57 3.2 The Chartwell and Literary Trusts 65 3.3 The Artistry and Techniques of Production 71 3.5 Abridgements 83 CHAPTER IV The Messages: Lessons from the Past for the Present 93 4.1 Imperialism and the Civilizing Mission 93 4.2 The "Special Relationship" of the English-speaking Peoples 103 4.3 Leadership, Character and Vision in War 115 4.4 Lessons of History and Origins of the Cold War 130 CHAPTER V Reading Churchill: Press Reception and the Public .....155 5.1 A Literary Phenomenon 160 5.2 Empire, Commonwealth, and World Order 163 5.3 Appeasement, Leadership and the Preventable War 173 5.4 Forging the Anglo-American Fraternity 185 5.5 Fighting the Cold War 196 5.6 A Monument on Celluloid 210 CHAPTER VI Conclusion 230 Bibliography 251 iv PREFACE This dissertation project had a long gestation period. It began more than 33 years ago, when a fourth grade classmate of mine handed me Time/Life''?, one-volume edition of Churchill's memoirs with the suggestion that I might be interested in looking at it; indeed I was. Lost in my memory is why a nine-year-old child of pacifist parents and conscientious objectors would be interested in such a book about war. What I do remember most vividly is being completely entranced by the picture- book's stunning depictions of a world at war. Churchill's stirring prose surely enhanced the experience, though I confess that it was the visual imagery of war that was most memorable at the time. Years later, while in undergraduate school, I became interested in reading The Gathering Storm during a summer recess, and found myself so taken by Churchill's story of political failure and redemption in war that I read the entire memoirs with alacrity. I enthusiastically followed Churchill's every step and decision on that long, tortuous road from the political wilderness to El Alamein and victory because for the first time in my life I felt that someone was providing a powerful explanation for the complicated postwar world into which I had been born. Unwittingly, and to large extent uncritically, I absorbed into my consciousness Churchill's conception of the principal causes for the cataclysmic events of the interwar and war years. Exactly to what extent my world view on war, peace, and international relations was molded by Churchill, and the glowing public memory of Churchill as the savior of the free world, only became apparent to me after entering graduate school in the 1990s, where I commenced a study of appeasement and the press for my Master's thesis. Though a detailed recollection of Churchill's metanarrative had receded into the background of my memory over the decade and a half since I had last read his memoirs, I retained a lingering bias against British leaders from the 1930s who had pursued appeasement for so long without realizing its inefficacy, and who had ignored viable political alternatives that might have prevented war. In my Master's thesis, I focused on Neville Chamberlain's political alliance with Times editor Geoffrey Dawson, as the chief architects of appeasement, who allegedly chloroformed public opinion in order to promote their foreign policy agenda. Only near the latter stages of my thesis research did I re-read The Gathering Storm to flesh out the perspective of anti-appeasers who had resisted Chamberlain and Dawson. It was then that I realized just how closely my general outlook on war causation, along with that of a great many secondary sources I consulted, was premised on a thoroughly Churchillian critique of appeasement V contained in his memoirs. About a year after completing the Master's thesis, my academic advisor Dr. George Egerton recommended a dissertation project centered on the production arid reception of Churchill's war memoirs. Despite my abiding interest in Churchill and an obvious affinity for his ideas at the time, I hesitated at first to embrace the project. For one thing, so much had been written about Churchill that I naively presumed there was little unique or original left to say about the man or his political influence. In addition, being iconoclastic by nature, it was apparent that such a research project would involve critical analysis of a man whom I still considered in a heroic light. My study of appeasement had taken an unsympathetic view of revisionist historiography that undermined Churchill's political legacy, since he was to me an icon of historical greatness in a time of immense turmoil and crisis who towered above the petty maneuvering of present-day politicians. Nonetheless, having taken the plunge, my research into Churchill, his politics, and war writing prompted a major reappraisal of my previous views on appeasement as a policy of weakness and ignorance, and of the British leader's prophetic wisdom. Studying Churchill's speeches, correspondence, and literature spanning six decades enabled his world view to come into much sharper focus, and enabled me to get out from under the awesome weight of traditional historiography which had invested such tremendous authority in the man and his messages. Re-reading The Second World War, I conceived a thematic approach to the study of Churchill's memoirs. Four thematic threads were found to comprise the author's metanarrative, all originating in his world view from before the war, and becoming entwined in the course of World War II and its aftermath. This analysis was then connected to a media study of Churchill's reception after the war. In this sense, my dissertation constitutes a continuation of research begun in the Master's thesis, in which I attempted to weave together an analysis of appeasement, political leadership, and press influence upon the shaping of foreign policy during the 1930s. But whereas the Master's thesis was concerned with the power of politicians and the press to shape public opinion before the war, this dissertation examines the issue from the perspective of postwar memory formation, and the power of politicians and press to shape conceptions of the recent past for advancing their specific ideological agendas.