May 10, 2013

LEADING CHURCHILL MYTHS: FINEST HOUR 144, AUTUMN 2009

BY RICHARD M. LANGWORTH AND WARREN F. KIMBALL

For texts of supporting documents (Paul-Henri Spaak memoirs; Professor Kimball’s Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Complete Correspondence (Princeton, 1984), please email the editor, or visit our website. Finest Hour regularly skewers fictions, fairy tales and tall stories. For the list see FH 140: 20, or visit the web address above.

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It is occasionally suggested, particularly on the World Wide Web, that Churchill favored withholding food and medical aid to occupied Belgium, and other countries under the Nazi boot, in an effort to cause revolts against the Germans, while President Roosevelt insisted on shipping aid to the needy. This is an inaccurate interpretation of the views of both leaders, not borne out in the documents, including memoirs of the principals.

The Allies blockaded Nazi-occupied Europe as part of the war effort. But it is unlikely that Churchill would entertain such Machiavellian thoughts, and no such evidence has turned up. Churchill did, however, object in principle to sending food to countries occupied by the enemy. And so, apparently, did FDR.

Roosevelt advocated humanitarian aid to unoccupied countries like Vichy France, and Churchill went along with this. But in 1943, when Roosevelt suggested aid to occupied Norway, Churchill said “conditions in Belgium are worse than in Norway and in our judgement it would not be right to make a concession to Norway and not to Belgium.”

Churchill’s policy (as advised by his military chiefs) was clearly aimed at the common enemy, as he wrote in 1943:

“To abandon the principle that the enemy is responsible for the territories he has conquered will lead very quickly to our having the whole lot on our backs, a burden far beyond our strength.”

Mischief-makers have implied that Churchill wished to starve the Belgians into revolt. But until evidence is shown, we cannot accept this.

Churchill’s daughter once said, “My father would have done anything to win the war, and I’m sure he had to do some very rough things—but they didn’t unman him.” An overt starvation campaign does not, however, appear to be one of those things. —RML

A message (drafted by Sumner Welles) from Roosevelt to Churchill dated 31 December 1940 makes no mention of Belgium, but proposes, “for humanitarian and also political reasons,” sending “limited quantities of milk and vitamin concentrates for children” through the Red Cross to unoccupied [my emphasis] France and to Spain. FDR drew a distinction between occupied and unoccupied territory. He seemed primarily concerned with Spain.

The carrot, not the stick, was advocated by the State Department for Franco’s Spain. This was a positive response to Churchill’s message of 23 November 1940, suggesting that the USA “dole out” food to Spain “month by month” so long as Spain stayed out of the war.

What FDR did, in his message of 31 December, was to add unoccupied France—something he indicated had met with opposition from British blockade authorities on the grounds that the distinction between occupied and unoccupied France would be difficult to establish or enforce.

Churchill replied on 3 January 1941, cautiously agreeing to such humanitarian relief shipments, but asking for strict adherence to the conditions and assurances from Vichy that it would acknowledge “the cooperation of His Majesty’s Government….” WSC ended asking for FDR to provide the same assurances: It was all right, Churchill wrote, to say it was a USA initiative, but “we would like it stated that the relief goods are available only by the good will of His Majesty’s Government.” (Perhaps the first and only time Churchill equated the United States and Vichy!)

Thereafter it seems that relief to Vichy France gets caught in the politics of Vichy’s neutrality. But even there I find nothing wherein WSC argues that humanitarian relief should be withheld so as to foment uprising in occupied territory. In 1940-41, my cursory look shows that such aid was discussed only for unoccupied lands.

Three years later, on 15 March 1944, Roosevelt wrote Churchill saying he’d been thinking further about “limited feeding programs for children and nursing and expectant mothers in the German occupied countries of Europe.” Belgium is specifically mentioned. Roosevelt (in a message drafted by the State Department) made a plea on humanitarian grounds that withholding food “hurt our friends more than our enemies.” On 8 April Churchill rejected this proposal, arguing that it would hurt “impending military operations,” as it required opening channels of transportation into Europe.

Intelligence reports, available to both Churchill and Roosevelt, indicate that short rations did not damage enemy morale. The total embargo/blockade on relief to occupied countries was, by 1944, of no strategic value, and added to the existing humanitarian tragedy. That said, I can find no words or actions by Churchill holding back relief to Belgium to create conditions so horrible that the Belgians would revolt. Not only was Churchill not so jaded, but he also knew that such a revolt (unlikely as it was) would be crushed like an eggshell by Nazi/Gestapo enforcers.

This claim is remindful of the “Auschwitz argument,” that liberation would be quicker and more effective than dealing with the immediate situation— not much help to Jews in the camp, or starving mothers in Belgium; it is the old debate: a short-term prophylactic versus a permanent solution.

There is no mention that I can find by Churchill inciting the Belgians to revolt. As I recall, he really didn’t think the Belgians had the stomach for revolt, but that’s a question for others.

To the extent that Franklin Roosevelt comes out looking more humane, it is because he did, in one instance in 1944, support food shipments to Belgium, while Churchill, perhaps following the advice of his mili 
 

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