June 22, 2015

Finest Hour 106, Spring 2000

Page 34

Churchill and Hitler: in Victory and Defeat, by John Strawson. New York: Fromm International 1997, 540 pages, illus., published at $30, member price $22.

Comparative studies of Churchill and Hitler are surprisingly scarce. In 1942, journalists Stephen Laird and Walter Graebner (the latter was Churchill’s Life editor for his serialized war memoirs) published their conversation, Hitler’s Reich, Churchill’s Britain (Batsford, 1942); and John Lukacs has written in The Duel and in Five Days in London about the Hitler-Churchill stand-off which he believes settled the war. Now military historian Gen. John Strawson expands the Hitler-Churchill juxtaposition by comparing their lives from childhood through World War II, with big chapters on each year of the war, ending with a “Verdict” that summarizes the views of their admirers, critics and colleagues. No revisionist, Strawson records Churchill’s faults, but emphasizes his indispensability, even in the eyes of his chief military critics. He concludes that Churchill “did not want war but the war he got changed history.”

The book is thick and comprehensive in its coverage, better than half of it devoted to the campaigns of 1939-45 and Hitler’s and Churchill’s reactions to them. But there is not much that is original or new, and the absence of source references constantly frustrates. “Where have I read that before?” one asks; “where did he get that?” The bibliography, while commendably full of German sources—which recent English revisionists rarely consult—is neither lengthy nor revealing, except of Strawson’s intent to portray the German view of things. Not surprisingly (since most of it was written after 1945) this tends to corroborate the popular view that Hitler was an evil genius whose total control over the German military machine eventually lost the war—yet equally led to stunning victories that would probably not have occurred without him.

Part of Strawson s book is a reply to John Charmley, who wrote in his Churchill: The End of Glory (reviewed, FH 81) that the proper course for Britain was to have backed away from the war in 1941. Strawson refutes Charmley’s assertions that by fighting on, Britain lost her empire, independence and “anti-Socialist vision”:

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It is not only the premise itself that may be challenged, for although the Empire diminished after 1945, as was inevitable on India’s independence two years later, it lingered on for a good many years and the Commonwealth survives still; British independence—in the sense of the country earning most of its living, indulging in military action in the interests of moderation and justice, taking its own line in European matters—is still discernible; and who is to say today that Britain is socialist? Not even the Labour Party leadership, it seems. But leaving these points aside, Churchill’s vision and ideals were far broader than Dr Charmley’s concept of them. Sir Isaiah Berlin is the man to put him right on this score, when he writes that ‘Mr Churchill…knows with unshakable certainty what he considers to be big, handsome, noble, and worthy of pursuit by someone in high station, and what, on the contrary, he abhors as being dim, grey, thin, likely to lower or destroy the display of colour and movement in the universe.’ (501)

Fair enough, but surely we didn’t need the snippy little footnotes directed at Charmley, which are not big, handsome or noble. For example, Strawson dramatically relates the War Cabinet meeting of 28 May 1940, when Churchill ended: “If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us likes choking in his own blood upon the ground.” (263) That produced such acclaim among his colleagues, Strawson goes on, that “no one can seriously doubt that Churchill was right to dismiss utterly the idea of negotiation….” Then he adds a footnote: “Except, it seems, revisionists like John Charmley.” Charmley’s argument was broader than that and, dare we say it, rather more sophisticated.

Contrariwise Strawson seems to view Hitler apologist David Irving as a credible source. For example, on 15 May 1943 Hitler told his generals that an Italian collapse would require withdrawing twelve divisions from the Eastern Front. Irving claims this “destroys the myth that Hitler always refused to abandon territory in Russia, when it was strategically necessary.” (383) Twelve divisions? Elsewhere Strawson quotes uncritically Irving’s challenge to find any document proving that Hitler knew about the Holocaust. It is like expecting Attila to know precisely how his Huns went about murdering each conquered people. Believe such sources as Mr. Irving and, as the Old Duke said, “Sir, you will believe anything.”

Strawson’s defense of Churchill as war strategist is more convincing. He notes for example how, in 1945, Churchill’s realization of the political and strategic importance of Berlin was lost on Eisenhower as the Anglo-Americans drove east. After Normandy, Eisenhower told his two principal subordinates, Bradley and Montgomery, “Clearly, Berlin is the main prize… There is no doubt whatsoever, in my mind, that we should concentrate all our energies and resources on a rapid thrust to Berlin.” But in March 1945 Eisenhower changed his mind and, with Stalin’s approval, signaled Montgomery to halt east of the Ruhr and thereafter concentrate on Leipzig and Dresden. (481) Churchill’s note to his Chiefs of Staff, stressing the continued paramountcy of Berlin in military and strategic importance, is quoted in full— but as usual without source notes. (482)

There are a few stray typos and a couple of howlers—Strawson says the code breaking center at Bletchley Park was in Oxfordshire not Buckinghamshire (278). But there is also a very useful, 16-page “Dramatis Personae,” with brief biographies of virtually everyone who mattered in the military-political history of World War II—not a new idea, but something you may constantly refer to in future. The photographs are old chestnuts, the binding modern-cheap, the dust jacket well designed and attractive, and the price reasonable. This is not as good a study of Churchill, Hitler and the war as we’ll ever get; but it will do until a better one comes along.