Winston Churchill's War Leadership Part 1

Winston Churchill's War Leaders.h.i.+p.

by Martin Gilbert.

Introduction.

In February 2002 I was asked to speak in the White House about Churchill's war leaders.h.i.+p. I was invited into the Oval Office, where I showed the President the bust of Churchill that had recently been presented to him by the British Emba.s.sy in Was.h.i.+ngton, and to which he had given pride of place. As the twenty-first century began, a President of the United States was embarking on two military expeditions, the first against Afghanistan and the second against Iraq-not unlike the British punitive expeditions a century earlier, in which Churchill had taken part.

In the second of those early-twenty-first-century expeditions, the one against Iraq, a British Prime Minister joined the United States with commitment and conviction. The Anglo-American war effort against Iraq involved every aspect of war leaders.h.i.+p in a small conflict, even though it will be at least a decade before the real stories of that leaders.h.i.+p will begin to emerge through the archives of the conflict: the true nature of the Anglo-American link, the Secret Intelligence dimension, the actual relations.h.i.+p between the leaders and their Ministers and advisers, and the precise pattern of decision-making and execution of orders.

These are important matters for recent history, but they are minor compared with the leaders.h.i.+p aspects of the Second World War. Unlike the Iraqi adversary in 2003, the German enemy sixty years earlier was able to sustain a ferocious aerial bombardment for more than two years, to sustain a devastating submarine offensive for three years, and to fight tenaciously in the field for more than five years. In addition, Germany was able to acquire, after two years of victorious fighting, a remorseless ally: j.a.pan.

War leaders.h.i.+p during the Second World War required intensive concentration and decision-making over a lengthy period, filled with dangers and uncertainties on a scale that has not been repeated since then, even in Korea and Vietnam, harsh and prolonged though those conflicts were. In that regard, Churchill's war leaders.h.i.+p can have no parallel, unless the world plunges back into a disaster of epic proportions, in which an added dimension could well be the nuclear one.

Leaders.h.i.+p against global terrorism requires qualities of a different order, which even now are being formulated and put into practice. In the hope that there may still be some aspects of Churchill's war leaders.h.i.+p that can be of service in the present conflict, this book is dedicated to President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair.

WINSTON CHURCHILL'S WAR LEADERs.h.i.+P

When Winston Churchill became Prime Minister on 10 May 1940, he had been a Member of Parliament for almost forty years. For more than twenty-five of those years he had held high ministerial office, with responsibilities that covered many spheres of national policy and international affairs. Central to the strength of his war leaders.h.i.+p was this experience. Churchill could draw upon knowledge acquired in the many fierce political battles and tough international negotiations in which he had been a central and often successful partic.i.p.ant. "My knowledge, which has been bought, not taught," was how he expressed it in the House of Commons during a stormy interwar debate on defence.

Churchill's knowledge had often been bought at the price of unpopularity and failure. But, above all, it was the experience of dealing, both as a Cabinet Minister from 1905 and as a member of the Committee of Imperial Defence from 1909, with a wide range of national and world issues, and also of persuading a frequently hostile House of Commons to accept the logic and argument of government policy. That experience served as an essential underpinning-and strengthening-of his leaders.h.i.+p in the Second World War. For a decade before the First World War, four Prime Ministers-Campbell-Bannerman, Asquith, Lloyd George and Baldwin-each entrusted Churchill with contentious issues, having a high regard for his negotiating and persuasive skills. The experience he gained was considerable. In 1911 he had been a pioneer of industrial conciliation and arbitration at a time of intense labour unrest. In 1913 he had led the search for an amelioration of Anglo-German naval rivalry. In 1914 his duties as First Lord of the Admiralty (the post he was to hold again on the outbreak of war in 1939) included both the air defence of London and the protection of the Royal Navy and merchant s.h.i.+pping from German naval attack. In 1917 he was put in charge of munitions production in Britain at a time of the greatest need and strain. In 1919 he devised, as a matter of urgency, a system of demobilization that calmed the severe tensions of a disaffected soldiery. In the early 1920s he had been at the centre of resolving the demands of Irish Catholics for Home Rule and of the first-and effectively the last-border delineation dispute between Southern Ireland and Ulster. At the same time, he had undertaken the complicated task of carrying out Britain's promise to the Jews of a National Home in Palestine after the First World War.

This experience of dealing at the centre with Britain's major national needs, during more than three decades, gave Churchill a precious boon from the first days of his premiers.h.i.+p. It also provided him with many specific pointers to war direction. A quarter of a century before he became Prime Minister, he had seen the perils that accompanied the evolution of war policy when there was no central direction. He had been a member of the War Council in 1914, when the Prime Minister, Asquith, had been unable to exercise effective control over the two Service departments-the army and the navy. To redress this problem, on becoming Prime Minister in May 1940, Churchill created the post, hitherto unknown in Britain, of Minister of Defence. Although the new Ministry had no departmental structure as such, it did have a secretariat, headed by General Hastings Ismay, who served, with his small staff, as a direct conduit between the Prime Minister and the Chiefs of Staff-the respective heads of the army, navy and air force. This structure enabled Churchill to put forward his suggestions directly, and with the utmost directness, to those who would have to accept or reject, modify and implement them.

The organization of his wartime premiers.h.i.+p was a central feature of Churchill's war leaders.h.i.+p. That organization took several months to perfect, but from his first days as Prime Minister and Minister of Defence he worked to establish it, and to create in the immediate ambit of 10 Downing Street an organization that would give the nation strong and effective leaders.h.i.+p. At its core was the close relations.h.i.+p between Churchill and the three Chiefs of Staff. Their frequent meetings, often daily, enabled him to discuss with them the many crises of the war, to tackle the many emergencies, and to decide on an acceptable common strategy. Working under the Chiefs of Staff, and in close a.s.sociation with Churchill through the Ministry of Defence, were two other essential instruments of military planning: the Joint Planning Staff (known as the "Joint Planners") and the Joint Intelligence Committee.

Other essential elements of the organizational side of Churchill's war leaders.h.i.+p evolved as the need arose, among them the Production Council, the Import Executive, the Tank Parliament, the Combined Raw Materials Board (an Anglo-America venture), the Anglo-American s.h.i.+pping Adjustment Board, and the Battle of the Atlantic Committee of the War Cabinet. And always to hand was the apparatus of Intelligence gathering, a.s.sessment and distribution, controlled by the Secret Intelligence Services headed by Colonel (later General) Stewart Menzies, with whom Churchill was in daily communication. In his Minutes to Menzies, Churchill made whatever comments he felt were needed on the nature, implications and circulation of Intelligence material.

This organizational structure gave Churchill a method of war leaders.h.i.+p whereby the highest possible acc.u.mulation of professional knowledge was at his disposal. He was not a dictatorial leader, although he could be emphatic in his requests and suggestions. If the Chiefs of Staff opposed any initiative he proposed, it was abandoned. He had no power to overrule their collective will. But on most occasions there was no such stark dichotomy. He and they were searching for the same outcome-the means, first, to avert defeat; then to contain and, finally, to defeat Germany-and in this search they were in frequent agreement.

One of the members of Churchill's Private Office, John Peck, later recalled: "I have the clearest possible recollection of General Ismay talking to me about a meeting of the Chiefs of Staff Committee at which they got completely stuck and admitted that they just did not know what was the right course to pursue; so on a purely military matter, they had come to Churchill, civilian, for his advice. He introduced some further facts into the equation that had escaped their notice and the solution became obvious."

A crucial aspect of Churchill's war leaders.h.i.+p was his private secretariat, the Private Office at 10 Downing Street. Members of his Private Office accompanied him wherever he went, whether in Britain or overseas, and were available to help smooth his path during every working hour, often until late into the night. At its centre were his Private Secretaries: civil servants, mostly in their thirties, who remained at his side on a rota system throughout the week and the weekend. They were privy to his innermost thoughts (although not, ironically, to the decrypted Enigma messages on which so many of those thoughts hinged). They knew how to interpret his briefest of instructions, some of which were scarcely more than a grunt or a nod of the head. They knew how to find doc.u.ments and to circulate them. They kept his desk diary with its myriad appointments. They also ensured that whatever the Prime Minister needed-a doc.u.ment to study, a file to scrutinize, a colleague to question, a journey to be organized, a foreign dignitary to be received-all was ready at the right time and in the right place. Given the scale of Churchill's travel in Britain and overseas, and his notorious unpunctuality and indecision in little things, this streamlined operation was impressive. In a private letter to General Sir Bernard Montgomery, Clementine Churchill referred to her husband's "chronic unpunctuality" and "habit of changing his mind (in little things) every minute!" For example, his Private Secretariat was caused endless vexation as to whether he would receive some important visitor at 10 Downing Street, at No. 10 Annexe a hundred yards away, or in the Prime Minister's room in the House of Commons.

Churchill could also show uncertainty regarding the large decisions, rehearsing them in his mind and hesitating for long periods before settling on a course of action. One such instance was the difficult decision, which he supported, to send British troops to Greece to take part in the defence of that country against a possible German attack, thus weakening the British forces that were then defending Egypt. In the end, he asked for every member of his War Cabinet to vote on this matter. The unanimous vote was in favour of showing Greece that she was not to be abandoned by her ally, despite the hopelessness of the situation, given German military superiority.

The names of most of the members of Churchill's Private Office are little known to history. Only one, John Colville-who started as the Junior Private Secretary in 1940-subsequently made his mark, one of great importance to history, because he kept a detailed diary (quite against the rules) of those days when he was on duty. Neither the first Princ.i.p.al Private Secretary, Eric Seal, nor Seal's successor John Martin, nor the other members of the Private Office-John Peck, Christopher Dodds and Leslie Rowan-kept anything more than a few jottings and private letters. The whole team const.i.tuted, collectively, the support system on which Churchill depended and from whom he obtained first-cla.s.s service, ensuring the smooth running of the prime ministerial enterprise at its centre. The members of his Private Office sustained him without publicity or fanfare, but with a professionalism and a devotion that helped to make his leaders.h.i.+p both smooth and effective.

One integral part of the Private Office were the secretary-typists-a lynchpin of the whole vast operation. At their apex was a woman whose photograph at Churchill's side almost never appeared in the press. Her name was Kathleen Hill. She had been his residential secretary since 1936. Once, at the end of the war, when a newspaper published a photograph of Churchill which included her walking next to him, she was described in the caption as "an unknown woman." Her contribution to Churchill's war leaders.h.i.+p was silent, unnoticed and essential.

The method used by Churchill and Mrs. Hill, and by his two other princ.i.p.al typists, Elizabeth Layton and Marian Holmes, was simple and effective. They would sit "still as a mouse" (in Mrs. Hill's words) wherever Churchill was, whether in Downing Street, at his country retreat at Chequers, travelling by car, on trains, on board s.h.i.+p, even on planes, with a notepad at the ready or with a silent typewriter (specially designed by Remington), paper in place, to take down whatever he might say whenever he might say it. He might be reading a newspaper and be prompted by something he read to dictate a Minute to a Cabinet Minister. He might be reading a clutch of diplomatic telegrams from amba.s.sadors overseas, or top-secret signals from commanders-in-chief on land, sea or air, and have a thought, a point of criticism, a note of praise, a request for information, or a suggestion for action. As he began to speak, often in a difficult mumble, the typist on duty would immediately take down his words and transcribe them. So good was this trio of Mrs. Hill, Miss Layton and Miss Holmes that, after one or another of them had taken down his words on the silent typewriter as he spoke them, all that remained was to hand him the sheet of paper for his signature. They were masters of their craft. A fourth member of this team was Churchill's shorthand writer Patrick Kinna. It was he who had been present when Churchill, walking naked in his bedroom at the White House after a bath, giving dictation, was interrupted by President Roosevelt, who entered the room. Churchill, "never being lost for words," as Kinna recalled, said, "You see, Mr. President, I have nothing to conceal from you."

There can hardly have been a single day of the war when Churchill did not dictate to one or other of his devoted secretarial staff. At the outset of his premiers.h.i.+p, he decided that every instruction, suggestion, proposal or criticism emanating from him-and all the answers he received-should be in writing. He remembered too many occasions during the First World War when a policy agreed upon at one meeting was challenged at the next but there was no written record to show what the first decision had been or what arguments had been put forward and by whom, either for it or against. He was determined that no such muddles and uncertainties would exist under his war leaders.h.i.+p. "Let it be clearly understood," he minuted on 19 July 1940, to General Ismay, as well as to the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Edward Bridges, and the Chief of the Imperial Staff, Field Marshal Sir John Dill, "that all directions emanating from me are made in writing, or should be immediately afterwards confirmed in writing, and that I do not accept any responsibility for matters relating to national defence, on which I am alleged to have given directions, unless they are given in writing." This Minute was shown to all members of Churchill's Private Office and implemented.

In March 1918, during the First World War crisis when German forces drove back the Anglo-French defenders and confusion and doubt reigned among the British war leaders.h.i.+p, Churchill wrote to the Prime Minister, Lloyd George: "Ponder-and then act" (Churchill underlined the word act act). The equivalent instruction in the Second World War, often given a dozen times or more each day, was "Action This Day." It would accompany a written Minute-the basic method of communication between the Prime Minister and those he needed to consult-sent from Churchill to Ismay for the Chiefs of Staff or direct from Churchill to the Cabinet Minister responsible. For urgent Minutes, Churchill's Private Office stuck on a brightly coloured label with "Action This Day" printed on it. The combination of intense thought and consultation, followed by a clear instruction for action, enabled the war machinery to advance. Every time Churchill minuted his thoughts, concerns and instructions, that machinery moved one step forward.

The Private Office devised a system whereby Churchill could have everything he needed at his fingertips. That system revolved around the Prime Minister's traditional locked boxes that went with him-or were brought to him by messenger-wherever he might be: at 10 Downing Street; at Chequers; at his most frequented base, the above-ground secret wartime "Number Ten Annexe" (one floor above the underground Cabinet War Rooms); in the Cabinet War Rooms themselves whenever they were used during an air raid; and during travels throughout Britain and overseas. Churchill devised the arrangement of the boxes himself, a system, John Peck commented, "peculiarly Winston's own, and it was in a sense the nerve centre of his war effort." Inside the box, the first set of folders was marked "Top of the Box" and contained those items, covering every aspect of the war effort, considered by the Private Office to be particularly urgent. The next set of folders was labelled "Foreign Office Telegrams": Churchill liked to follow closely what the amba.s.sadors were sending and what they were being sent. Then came "Service Telegrams," the exchanges between the three Service Ministers and the princ.i.p.al commanders in the field. Next were "Periodical Returns." As Peck explained: "He was keenly interested in the development of new equipment. He was also much concerned about the necessity for speed and punctuality in delivery despite bombing, breakdown and other causes of delay." These Periodical Returns included monthly, weekly and even-where Churchill considered them necessary-daily reports on production, technical developments, manpower, training, tank and aircraft strengths, and much else. They enabled Churchill to make sure, as Peck expressed it, "that there were no disasters due to lack of zeal or direction in the back rooms."

Also in the daily budget of locked boxes-in addition to the buff-coloured boxes containing Secret Intelligence material and material from the Joint Intelligence Committee, to which Churchill alone had the key-were files on parliamentary questions that Churchill had to answer, letters for signature, a folder marked "To See" with items that his Private Office thought he would be interested in, a special file from General Ismay with reports from the Chiefs of Staff, and a folder of doc.u.ments that Churchill himself had marked "R Week-end": things he wanted to be returned to him at the weekend when he would have more time to study them.

Churchill worked through his boxes every morning, before he got out of bed; every evening, often until late into the night if the material in the boxes made such working necessary; and throughout the weekends- generating a stream of Minutes of his own, seeking information. Often he would mark on a doc.u.ment the instruction "Ismay to explain" or "Prof Lindemann to advise" on some statistic; or, on one occasion at least, the single word "elucidate."

The pressure of work on any British Prime Minister, let alone a wartime Prime Minister, is formidable. (I once spent an evening watching John Major working his way through his boxes in the flat at Downing Street. As soon as he had finished going through one box, with all its challenges and burdens, another was brought up to him, and so on, from early evening until midnight.) While Churchill's daily life had to centre upon the demands of the war, he was also conscious of the need to lead as normal and as sustaining a life as possible. One rule he insisted upon from the outset of his premiers.h.i.+p: when he had gone to bed at night he was not to be woken up by any news, however bad, except the invasion of Britain.

His pattern of daily life was as fixed as the circ.u.mstances of war allowed. Each morning he stayed in bed as long as possible, working and dictating from a wooden tray that had been specially designed to hold his books and papers. He got up only when he was needed at a meeting-usually the Chiefs of Staff in mid-morning or the War Cabinet at noon. He saw no point in rising if there was no need to do so. His Private Office and his typists were used to him working in bed and adjusted their activities accordingly: there was certainly no falling off of effort and productivity. Each afternoon, usually at about five o'clock, he would return to bed, burrow inside the sheets, and have an hour or so of deep sleep before he got up and embarked on his work again, refreshed. By this means he effectively created for himself a two-day working day.

Each night before going to bed, or each morning before getting up, he would read all the main newspapers-nine or ten in all-absorbing the way the public were being informed about the war, studying the editorials, and looking through news items that alerted him to myriad aspects of the daily life of the nation. Did a reduction in the food ration seem to be creating public hostility? A brief request from Churchill to Professor Lindemann, head of the Downing Street Statistical Branch-a branch of Churchill's inner war-policy grouping containing eight university statisticians- would ascertain the facts of the situation (the ration itself, the reserves of whatever food or other rationed item it was, the supply and import situation). Then Churchill would dictate a Minute to the Minister of Food or some other Ministers concerned, asking for more facts and suggesting an amelioration. Much of the thrust of Churchill's reading of the newspapers was to reduce hards.h.i.+ps and grievances among the public, especially factory workers, servicemen and -women, and their families. Two examples: Reading of a prison sentence imposed on a woman who had compared him to Hitler, Churchill insisted on the sentence being reduced. He did likewise when he read of a group of firemen who had been on duty during a night of severe bombing, and been heavily fined for "looting" some bottles of wine and spirits from a bombed-out pub.

Churchill's leaders.h.i.+p and his moods were closely interwoven. He was not enamoured of harsh words and conflict. On one occasion he told a visitor: "Anger is a waste of energy. Steam, which is used to blow off a safety valve, would be better used to drive an engine." But the strains of leaders.h.i.+p were enormous, and he often turned to anger and petulance. His wife, Clementine, saw this tension in the dire summer of 1940 and was fearless in her criticism; she felt she alone could raise the issue, knowing that her husband had the strength of character to accept blame and to act upon it. On one occasion that summer she warned him that "a devoted friend" in his inner circle had reported to her a decline in his character. After setting out some of the details of what she had heard, including his being "so contemptuous" at conferences "that presently no ideas, good or bad, will be forthcoming," she added: "My darling Winston-I must confess that I have noticed a deterioration in your manner; & you are not so kind as you used to be. It is for you to give the Orders, & if they are bungled . . . you can sack anyone & everyone. Therefore with this terrific power you must combine urbanity, kindness & if possible Olympic calm."

Recalling how she was accustomed to hearing praise from all those who had worked with him, Clementine Churchill told her husband that those to whom she had spoken about his new-found irritability had commented: "No doubt it's the strain." There was truth in that. "You must indeed have had a terrible time during the last fortnight," the British Amba.s.sador in Madrid, Sir Samuel h.o.a.re-a former Conservative Cabinet colleague-wrote to him a week later. The slow pace of vital United States supplies, the imminent collapse of France, and the prospect of a German invasion of Britain were all heavy burdens on Churchill at that time.

Churchill did heed his wife's admonition, although future setbacks and burdens saw that irascibility return: many wartime diarists give evidence of that. They also reveal his ability, even in difficult times, to a.s.sert his charm, his forbearance and his generosity of spirit. General Sir Alan Brooke, who was to record in his diary many moments when Churchill was angry and cantankerous, also saw the thoughtful, calm, courageous side of his character. "Just by ourselves at the end of a long day's work and rather trying," Brooke noted on 23 July 1940. "But he was very nice and I got a good insight into the way his brain is working. He is most interesting to listen to and full of marvellous courage considering the burden his is bearing." The American Amba.s.sador in Britain, Gilbert Winant, later recalled Churchill's mood immediately after Pearl Harbor, when the two men had been together at Chequers and Churchill feared that the United States would focus all its efforts on the war in the Pacific, and leave Britain to fight in Europe alone: "He knew at that moment that his country might be 'hanging on one turn of pitch and toss.' Nevertheless he turned to me with the charm of manner that I saw in difficult moments, and said, 'We're late, you know. You get washed and we will go in to lunch together.'"

Churchill's typists were also to find that, however bad his moods could be in dire moments of the war, he always had words of comfort for them and a ready smile-his "beatific grim," as Marian Holmes called it. "Don't mind me," he would say after an outburst, "it's not you-it's the war." On one occasion, in November 1944, finding Marian Holmes and her colleague Elizabeth Layton working in the Hawtrey Room at Chequers without a fire, he commented, "Oh, you poor things. You must light a fire and get your coats. It's just as well I came in"- and he proceeded to light the fire himself, piling it high with logs.

"There is no defeat in his heart": with these words the Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies summed up in his diary a central feature-if not the dominant and crucial feature-of Churchill's leaders.h.i.+p. Defeatism, fear, uncertainty, and the attractions of a negotiated or a compromise peace all bedeviled the first six months of the war, and even later months as the recurring crises of the war looked grim for Britain. Even when he could see no way forward, however, Churchill combatted all defeatist tendencies with total determination. When one of his closest friends, "Bendor," Duke of Westminster, told a group of friends that the war was part of a Jewish and Masonic plot to destroy Christian civilization, Churchill warned in a private letter marked "secret and personal": "I am sure that pursuit of this line would lead you into measureless odium and vexation. When a country is fighting a war of this kind, very hard experiences lie before those who preach defeatism and set themselves against the will of the nation."

One fear Churchill had in the summer of 1940 was that the public would find evidence that the government was planning for the possibility of defeat. He was determined to give a lead in eliminating any evidence to that effect. Plans had been put forward by the Foreign Office for the evacuation of the Royal Family and the government (including Churchill) to "some part of the Overseas Empire, where the war would continue to be waged." As soon as this suggestion reached Churchill, he wrote to one of his trusted advisers: "I believe we shall make them rue the day they tried to invade our island. No such discussion can be permitted." On the following day Churchill was asked if he would authorize sending the paintings in the National Gallery from London to Canada. His answer was succinct: "No, bury them in caves and cellars. None must go. We are going to beat them."

Nineteen days after Churchill became Prime Minister, as British troops were falling back towards Dunkirk, the Italian government indicated its willingness to mediate between Britain and Germany, with a view to some form of negotiated peace. Churchill was certain that the only terms Britain could acquire from a triumphant Germany would be those of subordination and servitude. At the least, Germany had intimated that it must be allowed to retain its conquests in the east: Prague and Warsaw were both under German rule. At that very moment, British troops were fighting in France to try to prevent a German victory there, and British airmen were combatting the German air force above French soil. Churchill could not conceive of negotiations doing anything except seal the fate of France, and undermine the British resolve to fight on once France had surrendered. Yet, at four in the afternoon of May 29, in a meeting held in Churchill's room in the House of Commons, the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, told the War Cabinet: "We must not ignore the fact that we might get better terms before France went out of the war and our aircraft factories were bombed, than we might get in three months time."

Churchill, in the strongest a.s.sertion of his war leaders.h.i.+p yet seen, or required, opposed this line of reasoning. The notes of the War Cabinet recorded his response: "It was impossible to imagine that Herr Hitler would be so foolish as to let us continue our rearmament. In effect, his terms would put us completely at his mercy. We should get no worse terms if we went on fighting, even if we were beaten, than were open to us now. If, however, we continued the war and Germany attacked us, no doubt we should suffer some damage, but they also would suffer severe losses. Their oil supplies might be reduced. A time might come when we felt that we had to put an end to the struggle, but the terms would not then be more mortal than those offered to us now." Both Halifax and Neville Chamberlain-whom Churchill had brought into his War Cabinet-saw some merit in saying (as Chamberlain expressed it) "that, while we would fight to the end to preserve our independence, we were ready to consider decent terms if such were offered to us."

Churchill believed that this willingness to consider "decent terms" was a misreading of the public mood, but he could not know for certain, and he had no veto on any majority decision that might be made against him. At this point in the discussion, however, he had to ask for a break in the War Cabinet meeting-which had already lasted for two hours-to meet, for the first time since he had formed his Government, the twenty-five members of his administration who were not in the inner circle: the Junior Ministers and those Cabinet Ministers who were not in the War Cabinet. That meeting, fixed for six o'clock, had been set up several days earlier. No sooner had these Ministers come into his room in the House of Commons-the War Cabinet having left-than Churchill told them that although Hitler would probably "take Paris and offer terms," as might the Italians too, he, Churchill, had no doubt whatever "that we must decline anything like this and fight on."

To Churchill's surprise, as he spoke the words "fight on," there was a sudden outpouring of support from the twenty-five Ministers a.s.sembled there, in the very room where the discussion about a negotiated peace had just taken place. Churchill was overwhelmed by their spontaneous determination for continuing the fight. It gave him the added strength he needed half an hour later, at the reconvened War Cabinet meeting. Referring to the extraordinary enthusiasm he had witnessed for continuing the fight, Churchill went on to win the argument for continuing to resist the n.a.z.i onslaught, telling the War Cabinet, "He did not remember having ever before heard a gathering of persons occupying high places in political life express themselves so emphatically."

One of the Ministers present at the six o'clock meeting, Hugh Dalton-who had just been appointed Minister of Economic Warfare-recorded in his diary the words Churchill used in the moments leading up to the sudden demonstration of support for continuing the war. "I am convinced," Churchill told them, "that every man of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground." Then followed the demonstration of support. Dalton noted in his diary: "Not much more was said. "No one expressed even the faintest flicker of dissent."

Thus Churchill learned that his determination not to surrender reflected a wider mood. He was certain it would be supported by the nation at large, and he immediately wrote one of the strongest official notes of his war premiers.h.i.+p, addressed to all Cabinet Ministers and senior civil servants. Marked "Strictly confidential," it was a supreme example of his war leaders.h.i.+p, putting to those at the apex of power his implacable opposition to defeatism. "In these dark days," the note read, "the Prime Minister would be grateful if all his colleagues in the Government, as well as high officials, would maintain a high morale in their circles; not minimizing the gravity of events, but showing confidence in our ability and inflexible resolve to continue the war till we have broken the will of the enemy to bring all Europe under his domination. No tolerance should be given to the idea that France will make a separate peace; but whatever may happen on the Continent, we cannot doubt our duty and we shall certainly use all our power to defend the Island, the Empire and our Cause."

The battle against defeatism was not over. On the last day of May, Churchill was shown a seven-page note by the Australian High Commissioner in London, Stanley Bruce, favouring an international conference "to formulate a peace settlement." Churchill struck out this paragraph, writing in the margin a single word: "No." Against another point made by Bruce, that "the further shedding of blood and the continuance of needless suffering is unnecessary" and that the belligerents should "cease the struggle," Churchill wrote the word "Rot." Where Bruce concluded that negotiations were possible, Churchill commented, "The end is rotten."

Churchill tried to prevent any suggestion of defeatism, wherever it emerged. In the summer of 1940 the Admiralty devised a scheme-of which I, aged three and a half, was a part-to evacuate British children to Canada and the United States. Churchill opposed this plan. It only went ahead because the meeting at which it was put before the War Cabinet was interrupted by news of the Franco-German armistice, before any formal decision about the evacuees was reached. "A large movement of this kind," Churchill told the War Cabinet during the discussion, "encourages a defeatist spirit, which was contrary to the true facts of the position and should be sternly discouraged." The Minister concerned went ahead, regardless.

At that same War Cabinet meeting, convened at a time when rumours of an imminent invasion were gaining momentum, the Cabinet invited Churchill to issue a circular to the heads of all government departments, instructing them to take drastic steps to put a stop to defeatist talk. The War Cabinet had just been told by the Intelligence Services, based partly on intercepted private correspondence, that the publication of the most recent deaths from a German air raid-eleven civilians killed and more than a hundred injured in the Newcastle area- might "have a demoralizing effect in the country." To combat this mood, the War Cabinet agreed that Churchill himself should draft and sign a message to be sent to more than three thousand people: to all Members of Parliament, Peers, Lord Lieutenants of the counties of the United Kingdom, Lord Mayors and Privy Councillors-the very centre of British governance. The message, which was printed over a facsimile of Churchill's signature, began: "On what may be the eve of an attempted invasion or battle for our native land, the Prime Minister desires to impress upon all persons holding responsible positions in the Government, in the fighting services or in the civil departments, their duty to maintain a spirit of alert and confident energy."

After setting out his confidence that a German invasion could be repulsed, Churchill continued: "The Prime Minister expects all His Majesty's Servants in high places to set an example of steadiness and resolution. They should check and rebuke expressions of loose and ill-digested opinion in their circles, or by their subordinates. They should not hesitate to report, or if necessary remove, any officers or officials who are found to be consciously exercising a disturbing or depressing influence, and whose talk is calculated alarm and despondency. Thus alone will they be worthy of the fighting men, who in the air, on the sea, and on land have already met the enemy without any sense of being outmatched in martial qualities."

In what was arguably the "finest hour" of Churchill's leaders.h.i.+p, he had successfully challenged defeatist talk. Churchill understood that the British people were determined, despite the mounting dangers, to fight on. He commented on one occasion, with regard to the British character and its soundness in adversity: "The British people are like the sea. You can put the bucket in anywhere, and pull it up, and always find it salt." In a speech in the House of Commons on 21 November 1940, bluntly describing the difficulties that lay ahead-"the darker side of our dangers and burdens"-Churchill commented: "I know that it is in adversity that British qualities s.h.i.+ne the brightest, and it is under these extraordinary tests that the character of our slowly wrought inst.i.tutions reveals its latent, invisible strength." In a comment to one of his Private Office about Ernest Bevin, a senior Labour Party figure in his coalition and, as Minister of Labour, the man responsible for the vast wartime workforce, Churchill described him as "a good old thing with the right stuff in him and no defeatist tendencies." It was Churchill's own opposition to all forms of defeatism that marked out the first six months of his war premiers.h.i.+p and established the nature and pattern of his war leaders.h.i.+p.

Churchill had found the will and the strength to challenge defeatism. All his life he had been an opponent of supine surrender. But there were times, especially when there was news of heavy loss of life at sea or in the air, or in the German bombardment of British cities, when Churchill could be cast down and depressed, albeit briefly. In a speech in the House of Commons shortly before he became Prime Minister, he described these spells as "the brown hours, when baffling news comes, and disappointing news." Yet even when the news was bleak, Churchill found the means to combat depression. In those very "brown hours," he told the Commons on 8 May 1940-when the battle in Norway was going so badly for Britain, provoking a political crisis with Churchill at its centre-"I always turn for refreshment to the reports of the German wireless. I love to read the lies they tell of all the British s.h.i.+ps they have sunk so many times over, and to survey the fools' paradise in which they find it necessary to keep their deluded serfs and robots." This att.i.tude was Churchill's nature. It was also what he recognized as an essential feature of successful war leaders.h.i.+p: avoiding depression and despair.

During the many periods that still lay ahead, of setbacks on the battlefield or of the relentless German submarine sinkings of British merchant s.h.i.+ps in the Atlantic, Churchill's "brown hours" were many. The sinking of the British wars.h.i.+ps Prince of Wales Prince of Wales and and Repulse Repulse off Malaya three days after Pearl Harbor was one such time. The fall of Singapore in February 1942 was another. But Churchill never allowed such moments to dominate him or to affect him adversely beyond the moment. After the fall of Singapore, which he admitted to the House of Commons cast "the shadow of a heavy and far-reaching military defeat," he went on to tell the parliamentarians: "Here is the moment to display that calm and poise, combined with grim determination, which not so very long ago brought us out of the very jaws of death"-the Dunkirk evacuation. "Here," Churchill added, "is another occasion to show-as so often in our long story-that we can meet reverses with dignity and with renewed accessions of strength." off Malaya three days after Pearl Harbor was one such time. The fall of Singapore in February 1942 was another. But Churchill never allowed such moments to dominate him or to affect him adversely beyond the moment. After the fall of Singapore, which he admitted to the House of Commons cast "the shadow of a heavy and far-reaching military defeat," he went on to tell the parliamentarians: "Here is the moment to display that calm and poise, combined with grim determination, which not so very long ago brought us out of the very jaws of death"-the Dunkirk evacuation. "Here," Churchill added, "is another occasion to show-as so often in our long story-that we can meet reverses with dignity and with renewed accessions of strength."

As parliamentary criticism of his leaders.h.i.+p grew after the fall of Singapore, Churchill confided another of his fears to Roosevelt: "I do not like these days of personal stress and I have found it difficult to keep my eye on the ball." He could not reveal in Parliament the facts as he knew them: that the Commander-in-Chief Far East's report on the fall of Singapore told of "the lack of real fighting spirit" among the troops not only in Malaya but also in Burma, where a j.a.panese attack was expected at any moment. This information had to remain secret from all but the most inner circle, and it had to be kept from the House of Commons, even though it was both an explanation and a "defence" of what had happened. In the course of the war, Parliament had to take many things on trust; some information was conveyed to it in specially convened Secret Sessions, where Churchill spoke with great frankness, but where the usual parliamentary record was not made public. As Churchill told Roosevelt: "Democracy has to prove that it can provide a granite foundation for war against tyranny."

When, not long after the start of the j.a.panese war, one of Churchill's staff brought him some particularly grim news, Churchill commented: "We must just KBO." The initials stood for "Keep b.u.g.g.e.ring On." At other moments of bad news he would burst into a popular music hall song of the First World War, "Keep right on to the end of the road." He even sang this song to Stalin at a time when his Soviet ally suddenly began to accuse him of not really wanting to see the defeat of Hitler. That song, a member of the British delegation explained to a startled generalissimo, "is Britain's secret weapon."

A war leader is only as strong as the information reaching him, and his ability to use that information. A determining factor in Churchill's war leaders.h.i.+p was his use of top-secret Intelligence. Some was provided by agents in the field, some by aerial reconnaissance. Information of crucial importance was also gleaned from careful clandestine reading of telegrams sent to and from neutral emba.s.sies in London, and from Signals Intelligence of the most secret sort. Several times each day Churchill and his Chiefs of Staff received what Churchill called his "golden eggs"-the intercepted top-secret German radio communications, including many from Hitler himself, transmitted through the Enigma machine. These messages were decrypted at Bletchley Park, northwest of London, by a staff that was to exceed five thousand before the end of the war.

These "golden eggs"-laid, Churchill once remarked, "by the geese who never cackled," the staff at Bletchley-gave Churchill and those in the inner circle an insight, unique in the history of modern warfare, into the strategic thinking and tactical intentions of the enemy. Beyond the staff at Bletchley, the number of people privy to the Enigma decrypts was strictly limited: in September 1940 only thirty-one people within the governing instrument in London were aware of their existence or able to take them into account in policy making. When Churchill learned of a dozen others in receipt of this information, he cut most of them out, minuting to the head of the Secret Intelligence Services: "The wild scattering of secret information must be curbed." Beyond the small group in London-who included King George VI-the others who knew of this most secret source were the land, sea and air commanders-in-chief, to whom the relevant aspects were transmitted, and the Special Liaison Unit officers at the commander-inchiefs' headquarters, who decoded them.

During the Cold War decades that followed the Second World War, none of the partic.i.p.ants in these Enigma-based decisions were able to refer to them in their memoirs, a ban that also applied to Churchill. Secrecy had to be maintained, as the Enigma machine continued to be used by several post-war governments. As a result, both at the time and even as late as the beginning of the twenty-first century, many major British wartime decisions have been seen as absurd, unintelligible, or as the result of Churchill's personal interference. For Churchill, his War Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff, the Enigma revelations played a crucial role in the process of deciding how to respond and where to strike. Along with its innumerable tactical and strategic benefits, Enigma also revealed some of the innermost decision-making processes of the enemy.

The search for, and achievement of, national unity was another vital aspect of Churchill's war leaders.h.i.+p. From the outset of his premiers.h.i.+p, Churchill determined to set aside the hostilities and animosities of the pre-war years. For almost a decade he had been the most outspoken critic of the government of the day, castigating it in Parliament, in public and in print for its neglect of national defence. The country had been as divided as its politicians, and vitriol had been the order of the day. From the first days of Churchill's war government, however, those who had been his severest critics, and whom he had most severely criticized, became, at his request, colleagues charged with averting defeat and preserving the realm. A few hours before he became Prime Minister, his son, Randolph, asked whether he would achieve the highest place-arguably his father's ambition for more than thirty years. Churchill replied, "Nothing matters now except beating the enemy."

When he formed his government on 10 May 1940, Churchill was confronted by near outrage among some of his closest friends and allies for giving high positions to former adversaries, including those who had kept him out of office and had belittled his policies on the eve of war. Churchill was emphatic in his reply. "As for me," he wrote to one pre-war adversary who had apologized for his role in trying to remove Churchill from Parliament, "the past is dead." Two days before he became Prime Minister, during the debate in the House of Commons when Chamberlain's leaders.h.i.+p and Churchill's conduct of the Norwegian Campaign were both under attack, Churchill appealed to his fellow parliamentarians in these words: "I say, let pre-war feuds die; let personal quarrels be forgotten, and let us keep our hatreds for the common enemy. Let Party interests be ignored, let all our energies be harnessed, let the whole ability and forces of the nation be hurled into the struggle, and let the strong horses be pulling on the collar."

Three months later, as Prime Minister, he was to reiterate this theme with even greater force. After describing the recriminations between France and Britain on the eve of the fall of France as well as the neglect by the pre-war British government to provide an adequate army for fighting on the continent, he told the House of Commons: I am not reciting these facts for the purpose of recrimination. That, I judge, to be utterly futile and even harmful. We cannot afford it. I recite them in order to explain why it was that we did not have, as we could have had, between twelve and fourteen British divisions fighting in the line in this great battle instead of only three. Now I put all this aside. I put it on the shelf, from which the historians, if they have time, will select their doc.u.ments and tell their stories. We have to think of the future and not of the past. This also applies in a small way to our own affairs at home. There are too many who would hold an inquest in the House of Commons on the conduct of the Governments-and of Parliaments, for they are in it too-during the years which led up to this catastrophe. They seek to indict those who were responsible for the guidance of our affairs. This also would be a foolish and pernicious process. There are too many in it. Let each man search his conscience and search his speeches. I frequently search mine.

Churchill continued: "Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future."

Churchill rejected the demand that those who had been at the centre of the pre-war appeas.e.m.e.nt policy not be rewarded for their pre-war stance. He told the House of Commons: "Every Minister who tries each day to do his duty shall be respected, and their subordinates must know that their chiefs are not threatened men, men who are here today and gone tomorrow, but that their directions must be punctually and faithfully obeyed. Without this concentrated power we cannot face what lies before us."

One of Churchill's ministerial appointments- Captain David Margesson as Chief Whip-was particularly criticized by those who wanted to see the pre-war "Men of Munich" excluded from government. Margesson had been both Stanley Baldwin's and Neville Chamberlain's Chief Whip, active in helping to keep Churchill out of office and in dragooning the serried ranks of Conservative Members of Parliament to vote against many of his proposals on national defence, including his advocacy of a Ministry of Supply to enable industry to prepare for the eventuality of war. To a Conservative anti-appeas.e.m.e.nt Member of Parliament who had voiced his opposition to the retention of Margesson, Churchill wrote: "It has been my deliberate policy to try to rally all the forces for the life and death struggle in which we are plunged, and to let bygones be bygones. I am quite sure that Margesson will treat me with the loyalty that he has given to my predecessors." He added: "The fault alleged against him which tells the most is that he has done his duty only too well. I do not think that there is anyone who could advise me better about all those elements in the Tory Party who were so hostile to us in recent years. I have to think of unity, and I need all the strength I can get." As to the Chief Whip's qualities, Churchill wrote, "I have long had a very high opinion of Margesson's administrative and executive abilities." Not long after writing this letter, Churchill appointed Margesson to be Secretary of State for War.

At the centre of Churchill's mental energies as war leader was his belief in himself-in his abilities and in his destiny. While at school, he had gathered a group of boys around him and explained his confidence that one day, far in the future, when London was under attack from an invader, he would be in command of the capital's defences. As a young soldier he thought that destiny had somehow marked him out, and he expressed that belief on several occasions in letters to his mother. In 1897, on his way to his first action on the northwest frontier of India, he wrote to her: "I have faith in my star-that I am intended to do something in this world." In 1900, when he was only twenty-six years old but already a partic.i.p.ant in three wars and the author of five books, Captain Percy Scott, a naval gunnery expert whom he had met in the Boer War, predicted a remarkable future for him. "I feel certain," wrote Scott, "that I shall some day shake hands with you as Prime Minister of England; you possess the two necessary qualifications, genius and plod. Combined, I believe nothing can keep them back." To Violet Asquith, who had spoken cynically about men in general, Churchill remarked a few years later: "All men are worms, but I do believe that I am a glow worm."

During the first six months of 1916, when Churchill was serving as a battalion commander on the Western Front, a German sh.e.l.l had nearly killed him. Writing to his wife, Clementine, that night, he told her of his innermost feelings on contemplating his extinction. Had the sh.e.l.l fallen a mere twenty yards closer to him, he wrote, it would have been "a good ending to a checkered life, a final gift-unvalued-to an ungrateful country-an impoverishment of the war making power of Britain which no one would ever know or measure or mourn."

In the first few months of Churchill's wartime premiers.h.i.+p, one of his hardest tasks and greatest achievements was projecting confidence, even at the blackest of times. In the summer of 1940, during the dangerous, long-drawn-out days and nights of the German invasion and conquest of Belgium, Holland and France and the subsequent German aerial bombardment of Britain, Churchill did not see how Britain could avoid defeat. On returning from Buckingham Palace after becoming Prime Minister-as German forces were breaking through the frontiers of the three northern European nations-he told the detective who was with him: "I hope that it is not too late. I am very much afraid that it is. We can only do our best." An extraordinary feature of his war leaders.h.i.+p in those first months, and at other times of crisis, was his ability to hide his doubts and fears from the public. He understood from the outset of his premiers.h.i.+p that if he was seen to waiver, public confidence in continuing at war would not be sustained.

The main vehicle by which Churchill sustained that confidence was through his speeches and broadcasts. The twin pillars of his oratory were realism and vision. One complemented the other. When he spoke in Parliament or broadcast to the nation (Parliament having refused to allow his speeches in the House of Commons to be broadcast), he instilled confidence in a way he himself had not antic.i.p.ated. He made his first public broadcast as Prime Minister at the urging of his predecessor and former opponent, Neville Chamberlain. Those who listened to Churchill's early broadcasts expected to be told, as indeed they were, that times were dangerous and the future dire. What they did not expect to hear, after the stark warnings, was that the Prime Minister looked forward to something very different from a state of siege.

In his first speech in the House of Commons as Prime Minister, on 13 May 1940, while he was still in the process of forming his government, Churchill began by setting out the dangers that were confronting Britain: "I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government, 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.' We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say, It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that G.o.d can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpa.s.sed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. This is our policy."

Churchill then went on to present the Members of Parliament with his astonis.h.i.+ng vision. "You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory. Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival."

The words "a monstrous tyranny" highlighted another facet of Churchill's leaders.h.i.+p-his clarity as to the purpose of the war. From the outset of the fighting, when he was First Lord of the Admiralty and a member of Chamberlain's War Cabinet, he was able to convey to the British public something they overwhelmingly felt within themselves: that it was a just war, a war being fought against evil. Even earlier, at the height of the pre-war debate about whether n.a.z.i Germany could, or should, be appeased, Churchill had understood, and conveyed, that what was at stake was the survival of humane values. "War is terrible," he had written on 7 January 1939, "but slavery is worse." From the first months of n.a.z.i rule in Germany, Churchill had spoken out in the House of Commons against the racism of the new regime and the cruel nature of n.a.z.i anti-Semitism. He had argued in 1938 that any appeas.e.m.e.nt of Germany was a sign not only of British military weakness but also of moral weakness, and that, sooner or later-"and most probably sooner"-both would have to be redressed, since the object of appeas.e.m.e.nt-to satisfy Hitler by acceding to his territorial demands-would only encourage more and more demands.

When Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, Churchill spoke in the House of Commons of that moral aspect. He was still a back-bencher, awaiting the call-which came after the debate-to join Chamberlain's government. Three days earlier, Germany had invaded Poland and seized the Free City of Danzig. "This is not a question of fighting for Danzig or fighting for Poland," Churchill told the House of Commons. "We are fighting to save the whole world from the pestilence of n.a.z.i tyranny and in defence of all that is most sacred to man. This is no war of domination or imperial aggrandizement or material gain: no war to shut any country out of its sunlight and means of progress. It is a war, viewed in its inherent quality, to establish, on impregnable rocks, the rights of the individual, and it is a war to establish and revive the stature of man."

This speech, reproduced in all the newspapers on the following morning, was a clarion call to those who would have to give up many home comforts to help the war effort and to risk-and sometimes lose-their lives in the battles and aerial bombardments that lay ahead. The speech marked Churchill out as a person-perhaps the only one in government or on its fringes-who saw and clearly expressed the true meaning of Britain's partic.i.p.ation in the war. After entering the War Cabinet later that day, as First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill returned to this theme on 1 October 1939, in his first wartime broadcast, telling his listeners, "We are the defenders of civilization and freedom." In his second broadcast, on 12 November 1939, he recognized the nature of the adversary and spoke with both defiance and hope. "The whole world is against Hitler and Hitlerism," he declared. "Men of every race and clime feel that this monstrous apparition stands between them and the forward move which is their due, and for which the age is ripe. Even in Germany itself there are millions who stand aloof from the seething ma.s.s of criminality and corruption const.i.tuted by the n.a.z.i Party machine. Let them take courage amid perplexities and perils, for it may well be that the final extinction of a baleful domination will pave the way to a broader solidarity of all the men in all the lands than we could ever have planned if we had not marched together through the fire."

Churchill's clear understanding of the issues at stake enhanced his leaders.h.i.+p of the nation even before he became Prime Minister. That vision was conveyed both in speeches and broadcasts to the British public and in secret to his closest colleagues in government. On 18 December 1939, he told the War Cabinet: "We are fighting to establish the reign of law and to protect the liberties of small countries. Our defeat would mean an age of barbaric violence, and would be fatal not only to ourselves, but to the independent life of every small country in Europe." He added that making war might well involve breaches of the rule of law: the issue under discussion was Churchill's request for the violation by British wars.h.i.+ps of Norwegian territorial waters, to prevent the pa.s.sage of Swedish iron ore to Germany along the Norwegian coast. But even if such action were to be authorized, Churchill explained that nothing would be done by Britain that would be accompanied by "inhumanity of any kind."

As Prime Minister, Churchill reiterated in his public p.r.o.nouncements his understanding of the moral nature of the conflict. In his "We shall fight on the beaches" speech of 4 June 1940, he spoke of how "large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of n.a.z.i rule." It was that "odious apparatus" against which he fought, and which the British people understood to be the enemy. It was not "Germany" or the German people, but a perversion of all that was decent, humane, modern and constructive in human society. In May 1941, in a message to the American Booksellers a.s.sociation, he warned that when the minds of nations could be "cowed by the will of one man," then civilization was "broken irreparably." He went on to declare: "A one-man State is no State. It is an enslavement of the soul, the mind, the body of mankind." Hitler's "brute will" had imprisoned or exiled the best of Germany's writers. "Their fault is that they stand for a free way of life. It is a life that is death to meteoric tyrants. So be it. And so it will be."

Even as Britain faced new attacks and new enemies, Churchill was confident that the justness of the cause would prevail. On 12 December 1941, less than a week after j.a.pan had entered the war by attacking American, British and Dutch possession in the Far East and the Pacific, he told the House of Commons that "when we look around us over the sombre panorama of the world we have no reason to doubt the justice of our cause or that our strength and will-power will be sufficient to sustain it." Throughout his five years as war leader, Churchill was able to convey the "justice of our cause"- the Allied cause-and, in conveying it, he reflected the belief of the British public. When, on his eightieth birthday, he was praised as having been the "British lion," he replied with a truer understanding of what his war leaders.h.i.+p had been. "It was," he said, "a nation and a race dwelling all around the globe that had the lion's heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar." And, he added: "I also hope that I sometimes suggested to the lion the right places to use his claws."

Knowing the nature of the enemy and making sure the nation had no doubt of the moral aspect of the conflict were important elements in Churchill's war leaders.h.i.+p. Another aspect was his understanding of the reality of war. He had no illusions about the dangers war posed both to the fighting men and to the civilians on all sides. That knowledge made his war leaders.h.i.+p more humane and more sensitive. In one of his early letters to his wife, written within a year of their marriage in 1908, he wrote: "Much as war attracts me & fascinates my mind with its tremendous situations, I feel more deeply every year-& can measure the feeling here in the midst of arms-what vile & wicked folly & barbarism it all is." During the First World War he had sought to devise policies that would minimize suffering on the battlefield. He had planned the Dardanelles campaign as a means to end the terrible stalemate of trench warfare on the Western Front and to bring the war to a speedier conclusion. He had opposed what he described as Britain's "futile offensives" on the Western Front in 1917, which had culminated in the b.l.o.o.d.y slaughter at Pa.s.schendaele.

During the Second World War Churchill was equally concerned about the human cost of the conflict, and not only to the Allies. At Chequers, after watching a short Royal Air Force film of the bombing of a German city, he commented to those present, "Are we beasts? Are we taking this too far?" But he had no doubt that the war had to be fought; that the struggle was between the forces of democracy and human decency on the one hand and tyranny and dictators.h.i.+p on the other.

No single aspect of Churchill's war lea