March 12, 2015

While rejecting the charge that he was an enemy Of Germany, except in wartime, Churchill expressed the view that he liked neither the new institutions nor the racial and religious intolerance of the Nazis, but he was willing to co-exist. What he most feared was a rearmed Germany “which almost single-handed fought nearly all the world and nearly beat them.”

He looked to the United States for economic as well as political and military leadership of the Free World. He worried about the zealous New Dealers who, by waging a ruthless war on private enterprise, were actually leading the world back into a depression.

Sir Maurice Hankey, a sometime confidante, expressed grave concern that Churchill had so many informants within the military, government and civil service. “It shocks me not a little that high Officers in disciplined Forces should be in direct communication with a leading Statesman who notoriously patriotic beyond criticism, is nevertheless in popular estimation regarded as a critic of the Departments under whom these officers serve.”

An international conference, naturally boycotted b y Germany and Italy, was held in Switzerland to discuss Italian interference in Mediterranean shipping lanes. While Churchill cautioned against assuming the role of policeman for all ships, he also believed that a show of strength would influence Italy. “The danger from which we suffer is that Mussolini thinks all can be carried off by bluff and bullying, and that in the end we shall only

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Great Contemporaries was published and work progressed rapidly on volume four of Marlborough.