March 8, 2015

Finest Hour 158, Spring 2013

Page 42

By Michael McMenamin

125 YEARS AGO

Spring 1888 • Age 13

“It is awfully jolly.”

Winston entered Harrow School in April 1888, and on 20 April wrote his mother, “I like everything immensely.” But some things never change and in the same letter he added, “I am afraid I shall want more money.” The next day wrote: “Please send the money as soon as possible you promised me I should not be different to others.”

Military training was part of the Harrow curriculum and he particularly enjoyed this, telling his father in a June 3rd letter, “I am getting on very successfully in the corps especially in the Shooting. We use the full sized Martini-Henry rifle and cartridges, the same as the Army. The rifles kick a good deal, it is awfully jolly.”

On June 15th he wrote his mother, “I hope also that you are enjoying yourself at Ascot as much as I am enjoying myself at Harrow.”

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100 YEARS AGO

Spring 1913 • Age 38

“Timetable of a Nightmare”

Almost from the time he became prime minister in 1940, Churchill doubted that the British Isles were in serious danger of an invasion. One reason for this might be that in 1913— when a young Adolf Hitler was leaving Vienna for Munich in a futile quest to restart his somewhat spotty career as an artist—Churchill had studied the problem of invasion in detail. On April 16th he released a confidential memorandum on a successful surprise invasion, entitled “The Timetable of a Nightmare.” In preparing it he had sought the counsel of his staff, such as Admiral Lewis Bayly, to whom he wrote:

Please assume that you are in full control of all the German resources, and that your object is to land as many men as possible in England either at one, two, or three places simultaneously or successively. How would you do it?…[F]or your first movements which open the war you must not make any preparations which would be certain to attract attention over here. It is thought that you might get 20,000 men on to the necessary shipping without exciting suspicion; but that is about the limit for the first plunge. Then, however, the question is whether more can be sent to reinforce those who have landed before the British fleet can get round to dominate the situation. Or, again, assuming the British fleet has been attracted to one point, could a second disembarkation be made somewhere else?… If there are any points which require discussion, will you come and see me this afternoon?

His purpose, Churchill explained in The World Crisis, was “to explore and illuminate the situations that might arise…what we thought the enemy might do against us, and the dangers we hoped to avoid ourselves.” His object was “to stimulate thought in the Admiralty War Staff and to expose weak points in our arrangements….I caused war games to be played at the War College in which, aided by one or the other of my naval advisers, I took one side, usually the German, and forced certain situations” (emphasis added).

In 1940 Churchill knew what he had learned in 1913: England could be successfully invaded only by surprise, and while the Fleet was distracted. Once at its war stations, the Royal Navy would make an invasion impossible. He knew a Nazi invasion could never come by surprise and the only variable not present in 1913 was air power. Once the RAF kept the Luftwaffe from gaining daylight air supremacy, Churchill was assured his assumptions were right.

On April 26th Churchill was summoned before a Parliamentary Select Committee investigating the Marconi Scandal, involving improper holdings of Marconi shares by certain Members of Parliament. The basis for his summons was a rumor, testified to that day by the editor of the Financial News, that Churchill had been successfully dealing in Marconi shares—for which the editor had no evidence and which he personally believed to be false. Churchill, who had never owned Marconi shares, was livid that he had been summoned, and as The Times reported, lit into the Committee:

Am I to understand that every person, Minister or Member of Parliament, whose name is mentioned by current rumour and brought forward by a witness who says he does not believe it, is to be summoned before you to give a categorical denial to charges which, as I have pointed out, have become grossly insulting by reason of the fact that the Minister in question, it is suggested, has concealed up to this moment what his position was? Are you going to summon anybody else?…[W]hat public man is there about whom lies are not in circulation? If I tried to contradict every lie put forward about me, I could not get through my daily work. One is entitled to protest against such statements unless the person making them has good reason or some prima facie evidence to justify them.

75 YEARS AGO

Winter 1937-38 • Age 63

“You have only to look at the map.”

On March 24th Churchill in the Commons urged a formal alliance with France as the best way to preserve peace in Europe: “Treat the defensive problems of the two countries as if they were one. Then you will have a real deterrent against unprovoked aggression.”

The same day, Churchill received two crucial letters affecting his finances. One was from the editor of The Evening Standard, owned by his friend Lord Beaverbrook; the other was from the financier Sir Henry Strakosch.

The value of Churchill’s holdings in American stocks had declined so precipitously that his account with the London firm of Vickers da Costa had a negative balance in excess of £18,000. Churchill decided he had no choice but to sell Chartwell, his beloved country home, to pay off his debt. Then Lord Beaverbrook had piled on, canceling WSC’s twice-monthly articles in the newspaper, which were netting him over £1600 annually.

Fortunately, Strakosch’s letter advised that he had paid off Churchill’s debt to Vickers and taken delivery of the U.S. securities in WSC’s account there, confirming an agreement of a week earlier: Strakosch would have complete control of Churchill’s stock portfolio for three years, during which he could buy and sell as he wished while Churchill would incur no further liability. Saved by his friend, Churchill took Chartwell off the market and, early in April, effected a transfer of his newspaper articles to the Daily Telegraph at no loss of income.

Churchill’s son-in-law, Duncan Sandys MP, was planning a trip on behalf of the Parliamentary Air Raid Precautions Committee to much-bombed Barcelona, where 500 civilians had been killed during a three-day span earlier in March. (See “Honored in Barcelona,” page 6.) Sandys wanted to take his wife Diana, Churchill’s daughter. Her father successfully dissuaded him:

There is no excuse whatever for bringing her into this scene of misery, privation and danger. You may easily have great difficulty in getting out if the front breaks while you are there. I am bound to let you know how very strong my opinion is.

On May 13th, at the request of Robert Vansittart of the Foreign Office, Churchill gave a secret luncheon for the Sudeten Czech Nazi leader Konrad Henlein. Present were Liberal MP Archie Sinclair; Malcolm Christie, a former air attaché in Berlin and friend of Goering; and Professor Lindemann, who took notes. In response to Churchill’s prodding, Henlein proposed autonomy for the Sudeten Germans which “would not destroy the integrity of the Czech state.” Churchill approved, as did Jan Masaryk, Czech ambassador to Britain.

The details of Henlein’s proposal are less important than his stated belief that if Germany ever invaded Czechoslovakia, “France would come in and England would follow.” Churchill said this was correct. Christie wrote that Henlein “took away with him the firm impression” that German aggression against Czechoslovakia would not be tolerated.

What Churchill and Christie did not know was that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had already secretly decided the fate of Czechoslovakia. Writing to his sister in late March, Chamberlain said he had determined that an Anglo-French alliance was impracticable: “You have only to look at the map to see” that neither France nor England “could possibly save” Czechoslovakia from “being overrun by the Germans.” Any effort by France and England to help the Czechs “would simply be a pretext for going to war with Germany”—a war that Chamberlain thought the Anglo-French had no “reasonable prospect” of winning.

Churchill was planning to supplement his income with a speaking tour of the United States in the autumn. His goal was at least twenty-five speeches at $2000 each (over $800,000 in today’s money). On 18 April Churchill’s American agent, Harold Peal, wrote that he had already signed contracts for twelve cities and had no doubt the tour would be “completely sold out.” But the Munich crisis that coming autumn would thwart all plans for the speaking tour. Had he known, Hitler doubtless would have been pleased that the crisis he initiated would deprive his future nemesis of a small fortune.

50 YEARS AGO

Spring 1963 • Age 88

“It was a bitter decision.”

On April 9th, at a White House ceremony attended by his son and grandson, Sir Winston was presented by President Kennedy with an honorary American citizenship, the first foreigner to be so honored since Lafayette after the Revolutionary War. The same day Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, after a London dinner that evening with Supreme Allied Commander in Europe Lyman Lemnitzer, Field Marshal Alexander and Lord Mountbatten, wrote WSC: “We and others present unanimously agreed to send you a message recalling the days we worked together under your leadership. We also wished to express our delight at your versatility which allows you to combine being a loyal British subject with being a good United States’ citizen.”

An election was coming in 1964 and Sir Winston was under pressure from his family and his Constituency chairman, Doris Moss, not to stand again as Member for Woodford. On April 19th Lady Churchill wrote: “I hope Darling you are thinking carefully about the letter Christopher [Soames] wrote to you—He read it to me before he despatched it & I agree with all he says. I don’t see how you can stand next year without campaigning & fighting for your seat—And it would be kind to let your Executive Council know now, before they become too restive.”

Clementine continued a week later: “You know your Chairman, Mrs. Moss, is coming to luncheon to-day hoping for a decision—Don’t forget that you promised your Executive that you would at the next General Election make way for a younger man.”

Her good advice had its intended effect. On May 1st, Churchill wrote to Mrs. Moss to say he would not stand in the next election. “For him,” his daughter Mary wrote, “it was a bitter decision.”