***
British statesman, writer, historian, and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1940-1945), Winston Churchill, once famously said, “history will be kind to me for I intend to write it."
Well, history hasn’t been very kind to Winston Churchill lately, because a trend is in progress with revisionists and other commentators looking back on history with a 21st century progressive and moral lens—on a mission to shame history’s most decorated historical figures. Knowing a rebuttal for those accused won’t be coming because they’re no longer around to defend themselves, makes their case appear even stronger.
Most recently, journalist and historian Geoffrey Wheatcroft has taken to a public flogging of Churchill in broad daylight in his new book, “Churchill’s Shadow,” hoping to shatter all the hero worshiping and adulations given to the “British Bulldog” for most of the 20th century and spilling over into the 21st century.
Wheatcroft challenges readers to widen their net when looking at Churchill’s life by taking a sharper, more critical look at some of his unseemly characteristics which have largely been swept under the rug.
Readers are going to have to decide for themselves whether his account is a character assassination or an objective, non-partisan look at arguably one of the most worshiped figures of the 20th century.
Peter Baker, Chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, recently reviewed Wheatcroft’s book, writing that “on both sides of the Atlantic, we are living in an era when history is being re-examined, a time when monuments are coming down and illusions about onetime heroes are being shattered.”
Between the covers, Wheatcroft, according to Baker’s account, underscores Churchill’s perceived racism, narcissism, heavy drinking, his unabashed imperialist tendencies, neglecting his own children, along with being a horrible judge of character, and, naturally, a shameless mythmaker.
In Wheatcroft’s book, he becomes the prosecutor, judge and jury of Churchill’s life and career without the former prime minister ever appearing on the witness stand.
While Baker might not be in perfect agreement with Wheatcroft demolishing the iconic status of Churchill, he does concede that Wheatcroft makes a compelling argument in unpacking the complicated features of Churchill, just not the ones we selectively choose to remember.
“History is not one-dimensional,” Baker wrote. “Churchill was indeed a complicated figure, one whose stirring defense of Britain at its moment of maximum peril — and by extension that of Western civilization — overshadows fewer worthy parts of his record.”
Roger Louis, an American historian and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and editor-in-chief of “The Oxford History of the British Empire” thinks “Churchill’s Shadow” was a book that needed to be written and according to him, an accurate reassessment. “It makes clear,” Louis told me, “what most authorities on Churchill would recognize as a long overdue account and concludes with a fair judgment: “he saved his country and saved freedom.”
Will Wheatcroft’s book significantly reshape Churchill’s legacy?
Not according to Richard M. Langworth, Senior Fellow at Hillsdale College’s Churchill Project.
“I think there is scarcely a dent in Churchill's legacy: first because most of the charges are false, and second because they ignore what really matters. Only a small fraction of people believes such things,” Langworth observed.
The Hillsdale College Churchill Project has been making “the case for the defense” against blatant inaccuracies written about Churchill for years-- such as its “Truths and Heresies," department.
The Churchill Project additionally documents a selection of popular quotes wrongly attributed to Churchill. Followers of Winnie, for example, might be surprised to learn he never said: "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: what counts is the courage to continue.” Nor did he say, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
In addition to Peter Baker, “Churchill’s Shadow’’ was reviewed by British historian and biographer Richard Aldous in the Wall Street Journal in which he praises Wheatcroft for the first part of his book, but takes him to task for the second part in which he belittles historian Andrew Roberts (author of “Churchill: Walking With Destiny,” 2018), along with other historians for their "Churchillolatry.”
“That’s a shame,” Aldous wrote, “not least because Mr. Roberts’s is a much better book—deeply researched in the archives and the product of decades of Churchill study.”
Aldous is additionally puzzled that Wheatcroft questions the wisdom of the British state paying £12.5 million for the Churchill papers. “Those papers are now available digitally, though Mr. Wheatcroft seems not to have made much use of them,” Aldous wrote.
Aldous contends Wheatcroft was correct in suggesting that so much of what Churchill believed in and championed has “withered away” as Britain lost its leadership prominence as the 20th century came to a close. But Aldous is just as quick to point out that while Britain is no longer a superpower, it still maintains the fifth largest economy in the world, has a permanent seat on the United Nations Council, is a leading member of NATO, and is now part of the Aukus security alliance (with Australia and the United States).
“All these elements of status and power,” Aldous argues, “have their origins in the late 1940s and 1950s, a period Mr. Wheatcroft views so balefully. “
Chris Waters, professor of Modern European History at Williams College (Williamstown, Massachusetts) agrees with Wheatcroft that the cult surrounding Churchill since World War II emphasizing his “finest hour” speech too often dominates the “more problematic side Churchill’s character and politics,’’ which should be more thoroughly scrutinized.
Waters argues as Britain has lost its prominent status on the world stage, there’s a tendency to fall prey to nostalgia, especially about Churchill going to eyeball-to-eyeball with Adolf Hitler and standing tall after the Luftwaffe sprayed bombs on London for 57 consecutive nights between September and November 1940.
Waters believes, strongly, that we should “demolish the myth that has grown up around Churchill since the War, but we should not demolish the statues or fail to respect his many triumphs and contributions to the nation either!”
Since the main thrust of “Churchill’s Shadow” was to smash what Wheatcroft considered the blatant idolatry of Churchill in historian Andrew Robert’s 2018 masterpiece, “Churchill Walking with Destiny,” (published in 2018), it didn’t take long for Roberts to answer back.
In an article published by The Churchill Project , the biographer and historian highlighted some weaknesses or inaccuracies in Wheatcroft’s work.
Wheatcroft stated Churchill was not a well-travelled man. Quite the contrary, Roberts fired back. “Churchill visited America 16 times and Canada nine times, crossing both from coast to coast. He served for years in India and Afghanistan, fought in Cuba, South Africa, the Sudan and on the Franco-Belgian border, honeymooned in Italy, holidayed in France, Italy, Florida, Monaco, Madeira, Morocco, Bahamas and Spain, mountaineered in Switzerland, twice visited Stalin in Moscow, held conferences in Cairo and Tehran, watched army maneuvers with the Kaiser in Germany, cruised the Mediterranean and Caribbean, and also visited Palestine, Iceland, Turkey, Cyprus, Uganda, Belgium, Tanganyika (modern-day Tanzania), Mozambique, Kenya, Bermuda, Monaco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Malta, Holland, Trinidad, Jamaica and Greece.”
In another part of the book, Wheatcroft argues that Churchill’s judgement was strategically flawed. “Yet,” Roberts answers, it was Churchill and “Alan Brooke (senior officer of the British army) who not only came up with the Mediterranean strategy that liberated North Africa and Italy but also sold it to the Americans, and ensured no over-hasty return in force to the European continent before D-Day.”
In addition, charges that Churchill cultivated fascist leanings in the 1920’s isn’t supported by any reputable sources, Roberts claims, except political enemies of the “British Bulldog.”
Roberts argues, among other weaknesses of the book, that many of Wheatcroft’s sources are dubious, including the use of internet articles by the former journalist Johann Hari, who later had to return a journalism prize for inventing quotes.
In summing up Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s book, Roberts wrote that “never in the field of Churchill revisionism have so many punches been thrown in so many pages with so few hitting home.”
Winston Churchill addresses the House of Commons of Canada in 1941.
Photo Credit: CP Archive
***
Admittedly, one of the biggest problems in assessing the life and times of Winston Churchill, much like Abraham Lincoln, is that he endured many failures and hardships before rising to the top when his country needed him most, during its darkest hour.
Churchill spent sixty years of his political life in the House of Commons. Taking a broad brush to Churchill’s accomplishments and failures over so many decades of service, isn’t fair. He entered the House of Commons in 1900, and over 19 contested elections, he was successful in 14 of them.
He failed miserably in 1915 as First Lord of the Admiralty in orchestrating the disastrous Dardanelles naval campaign, which resulted in the loss of thousands of British lives. As Chancellor of the Exchequer (treasurer) he blundered badly by restoring Britain to the gold standard, which resulted in unemployment, deflation, and a general strike. He also voted against self-rule for India, unable to let go of the romanticism associated with Britain’s imperial history. And much like Lincoln, he succumbed to severe bouts of depression, “The Black Dog’’ as he called it.
Imagine, Churchill was 65 years old when he became PM in 1940, about the time most are retiring.
Prior to leading Britain out of the dark storm, Churchill served in every important cabinet post except for Foreign Minister.
So, all those setbacks and failures he experienced may very well have prepared him for a time when the country needed a strong, resolute leader to face the menace of Nazi Germany. Churchill undoubtedly met the challenge as PM and as head of the Ministry of Defense.
“I felt as if I was walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour," he would later write.
While all of us may fall prey to Churchill idolatry now and again, it’s hard to imagine how Britain and Western Europe could have survived World War II had not Churchill been in the right place at the right time, with decades and decades of experience under his belt.
I’m not reading many books that focus on Abraham Lincoln being defeated for the state legislature in 1832, his abysmal failings in business, being defeated for the U.S. Senate, not once (1854) but twice (1858), and being defeated in the nomination for the Vice Presidency in 1856.
But we do remember Lincoln’s Gettysburg address (November 19, 1863) in which he famously said: “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”
Churchill, to be sure, possessed heaps of flaws, prejudices, and undoubtedly exercised poor judgement at times in his career, but do we honor Churchill today for his personality qualities and boorish behavior, or do we honor him for his indomitable courage and leadership in rallying the nation during arguably one of the most destructive conflicts in human history, when FDR and the United States was nowhere to be found.
--Bill Lucey
November 3, 2021
Comments