WINSTON CHURCHILL Also by Henry Pelling *THE ORIGINS OF THE LABOUR PARTY THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM AMERICA AND THE BRITISH LEFT *LABOUR AND POLITICS, rgoo-rgo6 (with Frank Bealey) THE BRITISH COMMUNIST PARTY MODERN BRITAIN, 1885-1955 AMERICAN LABOUR *A HISTORY OF BRITISH TRADE UNIONISM *SOCIAL GEOGRAPHY OF BRITISH ELECTIONS, 1885-1910 *POPULAR POLITICS AND SOCIETY IN LATE VICTORIAN BRITAIN BRITAIN AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR *THE LABOUR GOVERNMENTS, 1945-51 *A SHORT HISTORY OF THE LABOUR PARTY *BRITAIN AND THE MARSHALL PLAN • Also published by Palgrave Macmillan WINSTON CHURCHILL HENRY PELLING Fellow of Stjohn's College, Cambridge Second Edition M MACMILLAN ©Henry Mathison Pelling I974, I989 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 2nd edition 1989 978-0-333-48696-2 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act I956 (as amended), or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place, London WCIE 7DP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First edition I974 Second edition I989 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG2 I 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Pelling, Henry Winston ChurchilL-2nd ed. I. Great Britain. Churchill, Winston S. (Winston Spencer), I874-I965 I. Title 941.082'092'4 ISBN 978-1-349-10693-6 ISBN 978-1-349-10691-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-10691-2 Contents List of Illustrations 5 Introduction to the Second Edition 7 Preface to the First Edition 15 Birth and Parentage 17 2 Schoolboy and Cadet 30 3 Subaltern and War Correspondent 42 4 Member of Parliament 68 5 Colonial Under-Secretary 94 6 President of the Board of Trade 110 7 Home Secretary 8 First Lord of the Admiralty 9 Early Married Life 10 Antwerp and the Dardanelles 11 Battalion Commander and Opposition Spokesman 210 12 Munitions 229 13 Secretary of State in the Post-war Coalition 249 14 Out of Parliament, 1922-4 279 15 Chancellor of the Exchequer 298 16 Private Life and Public Critics, 1918-29 326 17 Out ofOffice: Indian Affairs 345 18 The Road to War 366 3 19 Private Life: Historian and journalist, 1929-39 399 20 First Lord Again 419 21 The Finest Hour 440 22 The Expanding War 461 23 1942, The Critical Year 481 24 From Alamein to Overlord 498 25 From D-day to VE-day 522 26 The Caretaker Government and the Election, May tojuly 1945 548 27 Leader of the Opposition 1945-9 563 28 On the Edge of Power 195o--1 581 29 Prime Minister Again, 1951-5 596 30 In Retirement, 1955-65 616 31 Conclusion 632 Appendix A: Offices of State Held by Churchill 645 Appendix B: Winston Churchill's Books 646 Appendix C: Select List of Unpublished Sources 647 Appendix D: Select Bibliography of Books on Churchill 649 Appendix E: General Bibliography 651 Notes 661 Index 71 I 4 Rlustrations Between pages 350 and 351 1a Lord Randolph Churchill: a cartoon 1b Winston at two years old, with his mother. u With his mother and younger brother John, c.188g. 2b In full-dress uniform as a subaltern in the 4th Queen's Hussars. 3a In tropical kit at Bangalore, India, in 18g6. 3b A Boer proclamation offering a reward for Churchill's recapture, 18gg. 4a Churchill revisits the wreck of the armoured train, 1900. 4b As a young MP: a cartoon. sa In east Mrica in 1908. 5b With Clementine not long after their marriage. 6a With his mother in 1911. 6b With Lloyd George on Budget Day 1910. 7a With Asquith on a Mediterranean cruise: cartoon of May 1913. 7b With the Kaiser at the German army manreuvres, 1913. Sa Churchill arrives at Portsmouth by air, 1913. 8b Wearing a French army helmet, in the company of French officers, 1916. 5 ga The Cairo conference in 19U. 9b 'The Recruiting Parade': a cartoon of October 19.a4. wa Churchill and Lloyd George: a cartoon of March 19.a6. wb Bricklaying at Chartwell, c.1930. ua Painting in France, 1933· ub With his son Randolph at the Wavertree by-election of 1935· ua Churchill and Sir Thomas Inskip: a cartoon of July 1936. ub In Trinity House uniform, 1937. 13a As First Lord of the Admiralty, March 1940. 13b Churchill and the War Cabinet: a cartoon of October 1940. 14a With General Eisenhower and Dominion prime ministers, May 1944. 14b With General de Gaulle at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Paris, Armistice Day 1944· 15a Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta, February 1945· 15b Brendan Bracken, Beaverbrook and Churchill: a cartoon of July 1945. 16a At a Conservative rally in Bedfordshire, May 1955· 16b On his last annual visit to Harrow, November 1961. 6 Introduction to the Second Edition THIS single-volume biography of Winston Churchill went to press over fifteen years ago, and it is surprising that no other biography of comparable length has since been published. It is true that the would-be biographer is discouraged by the precautions that Churchill himself took to ensure that his personal papers would remain securely in family hands and would continue to produce an income thereby. The Churchill and Telegraph Trust that he established originally chose his son Randolph as biographer, with sole access to his father's papers; and Randolph planned a series of five volumes, the first of which was published in the year after his father's death. 1 Only two volumes had been published when Randolph himself died in 1968; and the Trustees appointed Martin Gilbert, a young Oxford graduate who had worked as his research assistant, to carry on the task. Mr Gilbert originally planned a series of six volumes, together with fourteen companion volumes of documents; and he extended the completion date as far forward as 1977. Gilbert's series was not in fact completed until 1988. The total number of volumes had been increased to eight, the seventh of which, covering the years 1941-5, was published late in 1986, and the eighth, covering 1945-65, in the spring of 1988. The series incorporates a vast amount of detailed and scrupulous research, and this makes it an invaluable mine for future historians. For the ordinary reader, however, it is somewhat overwhelming. When it is not told in Churchill's own words - which had been the original 7 intent of Randolph's work - it draws heavily on the diaries and records of his 'Secret Circle', that is, his personal staff. And it follows Churchill's own record in largely ignoring issues of domestic politics and issues of subsequent controversy, such as whether Churchill's figures for the strength of the German Air Force in the 1930s were correct or not. One important item of Churchill's career, which Gilbert has been able to clear up for the benefit of the present work, was his decision, quickly withdrawn, to place Chartwell on the market in 1938. 2 It is now apparent that he had run up a debt of over £18,ooo to his stockbrokers by imprudent investment in American stocks; but that, through the intermediary assistance of Brendan Bracken, he was relieved of the burden by Sir Henry Strakosch, the South African gold magnate. 3 His financial reckless­ ness was fortunately equalled by the munificence of his friends. But the last fifteen years have seen numerous criticisms of aspects of Churchill's career. One of the most authoritative was that by the official naval historian, Captain Stephen Roskill, who in his Churchill and the Admirals (1977) took Churchill to task for the failure of the Dardanelles operation in three respects: for exaggerating 'the effects of naval gunfire against fixed or mobile shore batteries'; for not waiting until adequate military forces were available and hence 'sacrificing the inestimable advantage of initial surprise'; and for not consulting his professional advisers - the War Staff group - sufficiently.4 But Roskill's book is primarily concerned with Churchill's relations with the admirals in the Second World War, whether as First Lord or as Minister of Defence. He concludes that his erroneous strategic concepts, such as his blindness to the threat from Japan and his share in the responsibility for the disasters in Greece and Crete in 1941, brought very serious consequences in their train .... His dedication to the bombing of Germany instead of first securing the safety of our sea communications ... must also be classed as a major strategic error; and his addiction to the capture of widely scattered islands led to the dissipation of valuable resources .... Last among his major mistakes and misjudgments may be placed his acceptance early in 1943 of the 'Unconditional Surrender' dogma ... and the less far-reaching but deeply distressing fiasco in the Aegean in the autumn of the same year. Nevertheless Roskill recognises at the end: Perhaps this was the price which had to be paid for his dynamic leadership and his political achievements; but if that is so the price was not negligible. 5 8 A further study of Churchill as a strategist and also as a historian is to be found in Dr Robin Prior's Churchill's World Crisis as History ( 1983). Dr Prior, an Australian, appropriately pays close attention to the Dardanelles campaign, in which so many Australians were involved, but he argues that the operation, even if successful, would have led nowhere.