Churchill: Walking with Destiny

by Andrew Roberts

a kind of understanding grew up between me and the British Chiefs of Staff that we should convince and persuade rather than try to overrule each other.

I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.’ We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realized; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that Mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, ‘Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.’59

‘It is refreshing to work with somebody who refuses to be depressed even by the most formidable danger that has ever threatened this country.’112

Also that same day – 22 May 1940 – the Allied cryptographers at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire broke the Luftwaffe code for the Enigma cipher machine. They would break the German naval code in June 1941 and the Wehrmacht code three months later.129 For much of the war this stream of decrypts, known by its special security classification Ultra, allowed the Allies to read many of the communications sent and received between the German High Command, Army High Command, Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, SS, Abwehr (intelligence) and the Reichsbahn (railways). All told, several million communications were intercepted and decoded from the correspondence of the Führer himself right down to that of the harbour-master of Olbia in Sardinia (when Italian ciphers were broken in July 1941). The Bletchley code-breakers – as many as 10,000 men and women by the end of the war – were, as Churchill put it, ‘the geese who laid the golden eggs’ and who, just as importantly, ‘never cackled’. Such was the seriousness with which those at Bletchley took their obligation to silence that many of them refused to speak about what they had done there, even after the existence of Ultra became public knowledge in the early 1970s.

‘If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.’

he reminded his listeners that in the Great War ‘We repeatedly asked ourselves the question: How are we going to win? and no one was able ever to answer it with much precision, until at the end, quite suddenly, quite unexpectedly, our terrible foe collapsed before us.

Winston had a very acute sense of the meaning of words.’

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’139*

He used to quote Raymond Poincaré, the French President during the Great War: ‘I take refuge beneath the impenetrable arch of probability.’

‘A lot of people talked a lot of nonsense when they said wars never settled anything,’

The news Churchill desperately wanted to hear came later that day: Roosevelt beat Willkie by 449 electoral votes to 82. He had carried thirty-eight states to ten, and became the first president ever to be elected to a third term.

Churchill refused to take responsibility for anything unless it was written down, something that became a key aspect of Whitehall lore.*

according to Napoleon’s maxim ‘Frappez la masse et le reste vient par surcrôit’ (Strike the main body and the rest will follow).

“Only one thing in history is certain: that Mankind is unteachable.”’

but it is just in that kind of cause, where one is swimming against the stream, that one learns the worth and quality of a comrade and friend

he ‘considered it a bad system to allow a debate every time things went wrong for us’.

‘They are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst, and like to be told that they are very likely to get much worse in the future and must prepare themselves for further reverses.’

‘There was a custom in Imperial China that anyone who wished to criticize the Government had the right to . . . and, provided he followed that up by committing suicide, very great respect was paid to his words, and no ulterior motive was assigned.

On Sunday, 7 December 1941, the Japanese attacked the US Navy base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, sinking or seriously damaging seven of the eight battleships stationed in the port.

Later that day, the long-anticipated news arrived that Germany and Italy had declared war on the United States (the only country Hitler ever formally declared war against).

In my country, as in yours, public men are proud to be the servants of the State and would be ashamed to be its masters.209

‘After a long experience of public life I have come to the conclusion that very few understand the politics of their own country – and none the politics of other countries.’

‘Nothing counts unless it is in writing.’177

‘Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’

It was an integral part of Churchill’s leadership code never to scapegoat subordinates.

‘The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings,’ he said in a debate in October. ‘The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.’

‘I am surprised that in my later life I should have become so experienced in taking degrees, when, as a school-boy, I was so bad at passing examinations,’

Many have defended Britain against her foes. None can defend her against herself.’62

‘No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise,’ Churchill said at the second reading of the Parliament Bill on 11 November, which amended and strengthened the Commons’ powers over the Lords. ‘Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously rule, and that public opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.’82

‘He seems to have felt sure that the facts would tell their tale.’

‘the only sure foundation of peace and the prevention of actual war rests upon strength.’

liked the former appeaser, so instead the

‘Free speech carries with it the evil of all foolish, unpleasant and venomous things that are said, but on the whole we would rather lump them than do away with it.’

‘I should have made nothing if I had not made mistakes.’

‘There was a strong element of altruism in the kind of imperialism for which Churchill stood,’ stated Jock Colville, correctly.

The reason the public trusted and soon came to love him in 1940 was not because they believed he had been right in the past, but because they believed he had been consistently true to his beliefs, in a way many other, self-serving politicians who had held office throughout the 1930s had not been.

Halifax was certainly not the semi-traitor he has sometimes been depicted as being: he simply could not see how Britain could possibly win once driven off the continent, when France was about to fall, the Soviet Union was a German ally, Italy was about to become another and the United States was in no mood to declare war on Germany. Halifax was merely a logical rationalist when the need was for a stubborn, emotional romantic.