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Churchill is said to have said
"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.''
It has been and he did.
Though actually he did not say those words. He said
"For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself."
John Charmley, perhaps the greatest historian of our time, utterly exploded the Churchillian version of history but the explosion has been ignored.
This is my review of his two great books about Chamberlain and Churchill.
To my surprise the papers did not give him an obituary but I found this article from which I quote.
<Chamberlain was portrayed here not as a weak man but a strong one in control of his situation and working to bring foreign and defence policy into alignment. If British and French military commanders had held up their end and proven remotely competent in 1940, perhaps history would remember Chamberlain’s strategy quite differently. Much battlefield blame belonged with the brass hats.
But Charmley also argued that Chamberlain’s real error was to insist on intervening, diplomatically, in the Czech crisis in 1938. This put Britain and Germany on course for conflict and effectively moralised international politics by creating “duties” for Britain to uphold. Isolation was a wiser policy, Charmley felt, not least because it could have propelled Germany and the Soviet Union into collision earlier.
Then the Prime Minister unwisely issued a guarantee to Poland in early 1939 to “save face” at home ahead of a general election. Contrary to the standard view that Chamberlain had been insufficiently vigorous in his diplomacy, Charmley maintained that he had been insufficiently restrained. Britain imprudently went to war in order to save Stalin the job of confronting Hitler himself.
This interpretation was controversial, to say the least (Alan Clark wrote a positive review for the Spectator, but the Cabinet Office felt that “it was inconsistent with his position as a Minister of the Crown”, and so it was never published). Charmley took the view, correctly, that the Second World War had been a disaster for Britain.
His approach was similar to that of Peterhouse’s Maurice Cowling, whose earlier The Impact of Hitler (1975) had explored the political intrigues behind how Britain found itself waging this “liberal war”. Unlike Cowling’s prose, Charmley’s book remains a delight to read. Years later, he quipped that Chamberlain and the Lost Peace was “the English-language version” of The Impact of Hitler.
Yet Charmley’s next target was even more ambitious. In the biography Churchill: The End of Glory (1993), Charmley went elephant-hunting. Across almost 800 pages of tiny but magnificently written text, he charted the life and career of the most famous democratic politician of them all. Rather than salvaging a reputation, this time Charmley sought to blow one up. There was no reverence here. He argued that Churchill’s war leadership played a central role in the decline of British power and that to ignore brutal facts and to concentrate instead on the mythology of the Finest Hour is just romantic nonsense.
Churchill’s policies fatally weakened Britain and its empire; he was repeatedly outmanoeuvred by the Americans, who established a position of international pre-eminence at British expense; and he refused to even think much of the future, with disastrous results at home and abroad.
Charmley felt that, for Britain, the results of victory in 1945 were not worth the sacrifices that had been made. Britain went to war to stop the appalling regime in Berlin from dominating half of Europe, yet in 1945 an equally appalling regime in Moscow dominated half of Europe, with almost half a century more to come. Charmley judged the end of the British Empire to be damaging for British power and imperial subjects alike. As he put it, “the British Empire vanishing has had a very deleterious effect on the Third World.”>
<Chamberlain was portrayed here not as a weak man but a strong one in control of his situation and working to bring foreign and defence policy into alignment. If British and French military commanders had held up their end and proven remotely competent in 1940, perhaps history would remember Chamberlain’s strategy quite differently. Much battlefield blame belonged with the brass hats.
But Charmley also argued that Chamberlain’s real error was to insist on intervening, diplomatically, in the Czech crisis in 1938. This put Britain and Germany on course for conflict and effectively moralised international politics by creating “duties” for Britain to uphold. Isolation was a wiser policy, Charmley felt, not least because it could have propelled Germany and the Soviet Union into collision earlier.
Then the Prime Minister unwisely issued a guarantee to Poland in early 1939 to “save face” at home ahead of a general election. Contrary to the standard view that Chamberlain had been insufficiently vigorous in his diplomacy, Charmley maintained that he had been insufficiently restrained. Britain imprudently went to war in order to save Stalin the job of confronting Hitler himself.
This interpretation was controversial, to say the least (Alan Clark wrote a positive review for the Spectator, but the Cabinet Office felt that “it was inconsistent with his position as a Minister of the Crown”, and so it was never published). Charmley took the view, correctly, that the Second World War had been a disaster for Britain.
His approach was similar to that of Peterhouse’s Maurice Cowling, whose earlier The Impact of Hitler (1975) had explored the political intrigues behind how Britain found itself waging this “liberal war”. Unlike Cowling’s prose, Charmley’s book remains a delight to read. Years later, he quipped that Chamberlain and the Lost Peace was “the English-language version” of The Impact of Hitler.
Yet Charmley’s next target was even more ambitious. In the biography Churchill: The End of Glory (1993), Charmley went elephant-hunting. Across almost 800 pages of tiny but magnificently written text, he charted the life and career of the most famous democratic politician of them all. Rather than salvaging a reputation, this time Charmley sought to blow one up. There was no reverence here. He argued that Churchill’s war leadership played a central role in the decline of British power and that to ignore brutal facts and to concentrate instead on the mythology of the Finest Hour is just romantic nonsense.
Churchill’s policies fatally weakened Britain and its empire; he was repeatedly outmanoeuvred by the Americans, who established a position of international pre-eminence at British expense; and he refused to even think much of the future, with disastrous results at home and abroad.
Charmley felt that, for Britain, the results of victory in 1945 were not worth the sacrifices that had been made. Britain went to war to stop the appalling regime in Berlin from dominating half of Europe, yet in 1945 an equally appalling regime in Moscow dominated half of Europe, with almost half a century more to come. Charmley judged the end of the British Empire to be damaging for British power and imperial subjects alike. As he put it, “the British Empire vanishing has had a very deleterious effect on the Third World.”>
Fair enough.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Charmley's interpretation of history far more than with Churchill's, and it is interesting to read about it here. I am not sure what Britain could have done to help Poland in the short term. An earlier Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union perhaps egged on in private by Britain and France would have created an opportunity for the British and French to rethink, rearm and retrench. The high command of both their armies let them down very badly.
ReplyDeletehad it worked, else, having the Eastern front near the coast of Portugal would have commanded a briefer cold war of unpleasant color; as it were, the too old continent was caught at its height of instability - equipotent opposing forces, coin toss thereof /whatnotcomestomind
DeleteOf course GB had no defence agreement with Czecho, the way the French did. Further, Chamberlain could and should have ignored the whole thing, whereupon the German-Czecho thing would have resulted in a stalemate at worst. Perhaps the General Staff would have forced Hitler out. These were all common expectations in 1938.
ReplyDeleteI have read one version that Germany saw others with empire and insisted it was Germany's turn. The great battle was Germany v. USSR. The big mistake was the German solution to the 'Jewish Question.'
ReplyDeleteAs evil and barbaric as the Nazis were, the evil and barbarism of the commies is usually ignored.
John Korst
We did not go to war because the Nazis were evil because we thought Germany a threat to Britain and France meaning the Brit and French empires. Thinking in terms of evil is completely the wrong way to think about Hitler's Germany or for that matter Communist Russia, Iran, Putin, etc
DeleteHitler thought England was powerful because she had Canada. No doubt Australia and NZ too. In fact the colonies cost us money but this was why he wanted lebensraum. AJP Taylor said: “If the Germans had succeeded in exterminating their Slav neighbors as the Anglo-Saxons in North America succeeded in exterminating the Indians, the effect would have been what it has been on the Americans: the Germans would have become advocates of brotherly love and international reconciliation."
ReplyDeleteWas World War Two just as pointless and self-defeating as Iraq, asks Peter Hitchens https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-560700/Was-World-War-Two-just-pointless-self-defeating-Iraq-asks-Peter-Hitchens.html
ReplyDelete