Winston Churchill: Defender of Democracy

A statesman transformed

At the beginning of the Second World War the reputation of Winston Churchill was that of a gifted politician who had twice changed parties, an impulsive man prone to impractical enthusiasms, and a Conservative backbencher who opposed the foreign policy of his leader - the prime minister, Neville Chamberlain.

Six years later, Churchill towered above all contemporaries as a statesman of international renown. He was known as the champion of freedom and civilisation, and the victorious leader of the British nation and empire at war. How did this transformation happen?

The change did not begin to happen until 1940, when the war was nine months old. Even his enemies had recognised that Churchill would have to be brought into the government in the event of war - his military expertise was universally acknowledged, and his criticisms of Chamberlain's policy of appeasement had after all proved justified - and he had been made First Lord of the Admiralty. In this capacity he was given charge only of the Royal Navy, a position that, after ten years in the political wilderness, he was content to accept.

Had the war ended before May 1940 (as some people wanted it to do, although it would have meant sacrificing Poland in the wake of Czechoslovakia), history would now know Churchill as an average First Lord, with an embarrassing share of responsibility for the failures of the Norwegian campaign. But by a strange turn of history, this failure led to the increased unpopularity of Chamberlain, and gave Churchill his big chance. On 8th May 1940, the Commons began to debate the government's poor performance in the campaign. Then on the 10th, Germany began its invasions of the Low Countries and France - the 'phony war' was over.

Threat of invasion

Neville Chamberlain, supporter of appeasement  © Chamberlain resigned, the man whom most Conservatives wanted in his place (Lord Halifax) declined to serve, and Churchill took on the job. It was astonishing, and a measure of his uniqueness, that he did so with calm assurance and a conviction that this, at last, was the realisation of his destiny: to lead his beloved nation in an all-out war for survival and for the universal values it represented.

If the challenge looked formidable on 10th May, it looked infinitely worse six weeks later. The British army's escape from capture at Dunkirk was hailed as a salvation but of course it was, in military terms, a shocking setback. The continental ally whom Britain had relied on to face the German army had surrendered, Italy had come in on the German side, and Hitler was master of Europe from the Arctic Circle to the Bay of Biscay.

In addition, the French navy was likely to fall into German hands, German U-boats would soon have bases on the Atlantic, German bombers would be able to take off from bases close to Britain's coasts, and, worst of all, now that the Germans were able to mass on the Belgian coast, Britain was facing the first serious threat of invasion since 1805. It was easy in such circumstances to despair and to look for a way out of a war that seemed impossible to win.

Any leader but Churchill would probably have done so - with no other imaginable consequence than that Britain would have become (like Vichy France) a subordinate cog in Hitler's imperial machinery, with a subservient right-wing authoritarian government dedicated to racial discrimination. Churchill, however, saved his country from that humiliation.

Unfailingly brave

Surveying the bomb damage in London  © Churchill persuaded cabinet and parliament that Britain and its empire could survive. His inspiring speeches encouraged the British people to be courageous and hopeful, and he invited the rest of the world - especially the United States, whose support he hoped to secure - to back them up. He forbade defeatist talk and refused to be put on the defensive. Even in those fraught days, he ordered planning to begin for attacking German power by means of heavy bombing, commando raids, and the Special Operations Executive (SOE)-aided resistance by Germany's victims.

His public demeanour was unfailingly brave and heartening. The Conservative Party came round to him, the British people (except for the communists) were solidly behind him; and by the end of October the worst of the dangers of that year were past. The 'Battle of Britain' had been won (though only just), invasion was no longer imminent, and Londoners were beginning (painfully) to learn how to survive 'the Blitz'.

Having successfully brought his people through that baptism of fire, Churchill now had to manage a war that was going to be long and hard. Despite his years (he was approaching 70 by now), he proved to be very good at it, earning universal respect as one of the most remarkable war leaders of modern history.

Man of the people

Churchill broadcasts to the nation in his famous 'siren suit'  © The first of the four fields in which he had to lead was, literally, the popular one. The British people had to be kept united. The impression they got of their leader would be crucial. Churchill remained as heartening, even endearing, a figure through the years 1941-45 as he had been in 1940. He was a popular character, an eccentric of traditional type. His sonorous and rousing speeches were unlike anyone else's, and his manner of delivery lent itself to admiring imitation. Except when dressing up as a warrior, he wore distinctive clothes: old-fashioned pinstripes with a bow tie, or funny clothes like the 'siren suits' his wife got made for him. He was often seen, never without his cigar, around the cities of Britain and wherever the armed forces were encamped. Good stories were told (or made up) about him and people familiarly referred to him as Winston or 'Winnie'. He appeared to be a man of the people.

Besides being a popular leader, Churchill was also an emphatically democratic one. Parliament continued to sit throughout the war, and the war's progress was publicly debated. Churchill assumed full responsibility and, during the dark months of 1941-42, when he often had to report disasters, he had to bow a bit to his critics. The normal peacetime freedoms of the citizen were of course restricted but rarely beyond the limits of reason. The world could see no hypocrisy in Churchill's claim to be fighting for democracy and human rights against tyranny and barbarism.

Grand alliance

Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin attend the Yalta Conference  © In foreign affairs, his greatest achievement was to engage the sympathy of the United States, without whose material help - and, better, military alliance - Britain, he well understood, had no chance of winning. America came safely on board in December 1941. A more unexpected ally had already been found in the form of the Soviet Union: an uncomfortable ally, indeed - but given Britain's grim situation in mid-1941, Churchill prudently bowed to necessity. Once this 'grand alliance' was formed, Churchill became both the pivot and mainspring of it. Stalin and Roosevelt, left to themselves, would never have come together to decide grand strategy and to try to sort out problems. It was Churchill who did the journeying (40,000 miles during the war) to keep the 'big three' together; it was he who invented the 'summit' meetings of national leaders (those at Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam are the most famous) - and these have remained a feature of international affairs ever since.

The fourth dimension of Churchill's war leadership, the one that continues to excite more debate than the others, concerned the military. Constitutional principle, joined with his experience of the First World War, convinced him that military men could not be allowed to use their armed forces free from ultimate civilian political control. Britain's military chiefs for their part sought no such freedom; but they did expect freedom to decide by themselves, with the advice of their own staffs and experts, what was militarily possible and what was not. Churchill, a soldier himself in earlier life and with naval experience, liked to press his own ideas upon the army and navy staffs and insisted on them being exhaustively considered. This wasted much time and temper. The memoirs of the army Chief of Staff, Lord Alanbrooke, are only the most choleric of many accounts of the rows that punctuated the army's relations with its ultimate master.

Achievements of war

Churchill addresses a London crowd on VE Day  © There is no doubt some of Churchill's ideas were impractical, even silly. On the other hand, some were good, and others were politically necessary. He was surely right, moreover, to believe that the generals tended to plan too stolidly and move too slowly, and that without his zeal for aggressive activity early on, the British armed forces would have lapsed into mere defensiveness. When large-scale offensives did become practical, in 1943, his big idea was, oddly enough, one that appealed to Alanbrooke: the idea of attacking Germany through Italy and, if possible, the Balkans.

Undertaken with maximum force, this would have been at the expense of the 1944 Normandy landings upon which the Americans had fixed their aim. Whether Churchill's 'Mediterranean strategy' was a good or a bad idea remains controversial; as do the questions of whether more or less resources should have been put into the costly bombing offensive gallantly conducted by the RAF, encouraged by Churchill, and of the rights and wrongs of its methods. In this fourth dimension of his leadership, one has to conclude that Churchill's achievement was not as indisputably great as in the other three. But overall, as is almost universally agreed, his achievement in the war to save democracy and the liberties of Western Europe was enormous.

Find out more

Books

The Second World War by Winston Churchill (6 vols, 1948-54, and subsequently)

The Speeches of Winston Churchill edited by David Cannadine (Penguin, 1990)

Churchill edited by Robert Blake and William Roger Louis (1990)

1940 - Myth and Reality by Clive Ponting (1990)

Churchill on the Home Front by Paul Addison (1992)

Churchill. A Study in Greatness by Geoffrey Best (2001)

Churchill as Warlord by Ronald Lewin (1973)

Churchill's Generals edited by John Keegan (1991)

Churchill's Grand Alliance: the Anglo-American Special Relationship 1940-1957 by John Charmley (1995)

Five Days in London, May 1940 by John Lukacs (1999)

The People's War: Britain 1939-1945 by Angus Calder (1965)

Roosevelt and Churchill: Men of Secrets by David Stafford (1999)

Places to visit

Chartwell The home of Winston Churchill from 1924 until the end of his life. Many of the rooms remain exactly as he left them. Chartwell, Westerham, Kent TN16 1PS Tel: 01732 868381

Cabinet War Rooms The underground complex occupied by Churchill and his War Cabinet through much of World War Two. The museum is currently under expansion and more rooms will be open soon. Clive Steps, King Charles Street, London SW1A 2AQ Tel: 020 7930 6961

Blenheim Palace The home of the 11th Duke of Marlborough and the birthplace of Winston Churchill. Host to a Winston Churchill exhibition, the Marlborough Maze and extensive gardens. Blenheim, Woodstock, Oxfordshire Tel: 01993 811091

About the author

Dr Geoffrey Best is an academic, writer and historian. His books include Mid-Victorian Britain (1970), Humanity in Warfare (1980), The Permanent Revolution 1789-1989 (1988), War and Law since 1945 (1994) and Churchill: A Study in Greatness (2001).