Churchill as Hero of World War II

Allies at War: How the Struggles Between the Allied Powers Shaped the War and the World
By Tim Bouverie
Crown,  1,007 pp., $38

Tim Bouverie, the author of the best study of the Origins of World War II, Appeasement: Chamberlain, Churchill, Hitler and the Road to War (2019), has continued his analysis of the conflicts and collaborations of the Allied statesman that shaped the course of the war. Allies at War is old fashioned diplomatic history at its best, disentangling the vicissitudes of the relations not only of the Big Three, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, who determined the direction of the war, but also the roles played, often with surprising affect, by lesser statesman such as de Gaulle, de Valera, and Tito among others.

Bouverie is a great admirer of Churchill, whom he argues played a weak hand brilliantly at times as Britain’s weakness viz a viz the United States and the Soviet Union became apparent as the war unfolded. Churchill, he notes, entered the war with an optimism regarding France’s military performance not warranted by facts. The collapse of France in six weeks (really five days if one accepts Premier Paul Reynaud’s verdict that France had lost the war on May 15 when the Germans broke through at Sedan) shattered British confidence in her future.

Churchill stood by France until the French decided to seek an armistice. In late May, Churchill convinced the Cabinet to reject French suggestions to open negotiations with Germany through an approach to Mussolini. Churchill recognized that this would mean that Britain would have to fight alone as well as risk possible invasion. That decision, Bouverie notes, led to the second important Churchill decision: to cultivate the United States and win her away from a policy, if not quite isolation, at least indifference, to what was happening in Europe and its significance for the world.

Churchill’s cultivation of President Roosevelt — “no lover ever studied every whim of his mistress as I did those of President Roosevelt” — paid handsome dividends for Britain. Lend Lease and the steady flow of arms and increasingly aggressive American naval action in the Atlantic helped Britain through what could be described as a deadly time for her.

Britain’s performance militarily in the year after the fall of France was not impressive. The defeat of France was followed by a series of military and diplomatic setbacks in Yugoslavia, Greece, and North Africa. What saved Churchill was the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941 and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, followed by an unexpected Hitler decision to declare war on the United States. Churchill knew that whatever happened Britain was saved. As he wrote, the night after the news of Pearl Harbor, he went to bed “sleeping the sleep of the saved.”

From 1942, especially after the German debacle at Stalingrad, the Soviet Union not only dominated but played the key role in winning the war, as any glance at the statistics in numbers involved and casualties incurred would prove. Churchill recognized this and what its consequences would be while Bouverie argues that Roosevelt deluded himself into believing that he had a special connection with Stalin. He once told Churchill that Stalin hates your guts but likes me and, even more foolishly, believed, as he told Ambassador Robert Murphy: “I can handle him.” Many of America’s diplomatic mistakes on the war arose from that delusion.

Bouverie has a high opinion of Stalin’s diplomatic gifts. He ruthlessly exploited Russia’s position as the nation playing the major role in defeating Germany, which eventually gave him control over most of Central and Eastern Europe. He outmaneuvered both Churchill, and especially Roosevelt, throughout the war.

The various diplomatic conferences from Casablanca (1943) on saw the Big Three working and overcoming difficulties to bring about the defeat of Germany. Churchill had a number of objectives which given his weak hand as the lesser of the three, he played well. Bouverie notes that he wanted to keep the United States involved in European affairs after the war, to parry the spread of Soviet control into the heart of Europe, and in a point often overlooked, he worked to see that France was recognized as a major power. Neither Stalin nor Roosevelt had much time for de Gaulle. Roosevelt worked through Vichy French contacts until the American and British invasion of North Africa in November 1942 and continually tried to undermine de Gaulle’s credibility.

Bouverie is both fascinated and repelled by de Gaulle, arguing that he performed miracles at times. Starting as a virtual unknown with no basis of power he managed to recruit an army of 35,000 and force his way into the top Allied circles often at the cost of angering his friends, especially Churchill.

One of the best parts of Bouverie’s study is his capsule portraits of key figures. Anthony Eden, for example, fascinated him: “half mad baronet, half beautiful woman” as his rival Rab Butler once described him, Eden possessed good looks, charm and intelligence, vitiated by vanity and a high-strung temperament, qualities that would destroy his premiership in 1956 during the Suez crisis.

If there is a hero in the book it would have to be Churchill. With all his flaws and idiosyncrasies, he saw clearer than Roosevelt, was more realistic than de Gaulle, and eventually read Stalin and the Russians better than the other Allied leaders. He called the last volume of his History of the Second World War, Triumph and Tragedy, a perfect description for how the conflict ended. Earlier than any other Allied leader he recognized what Soviet control meant for the West, particularly Europe. In the spring and fall of 1945 he began using the term “Iron Curtain” in his letters to describe what was happening in Central and Eastern Europe. As his Iron Curtain speech in March 1946 would prove, this time the Free World was listening.

Bouverie has written what is in my view the best single volume overview of the diplomatic wrangling among the Great Powers during World War II. It is not only a good read but it also contains one of the best bibliographies for anyone interested in the further study of the topic.

READ MORE from John P. Rossi:

Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair: A Reflection

Is Orwell Heading to the Memory Hole?

Tim Robey’s Box Office Poison: Hollywood’s Story in a Century of Flops

John P. Rossi is a professor emeritus of history at La Salle University in Philadelphia

By mfnnews