← Dan Snow's History Hit
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- [00:01]
Mark Bittman
Hi folks, it's Mark from the podcast Food with Mark Bittman.
- [00:04]
Dan Snow
As the weather gets warmer, it's time for lighter meals. And Whole Foods Market has just what.
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Mark Bittman
You'Re looking for with great everyday prices. Look for the yellow low price signs that help you save money without compromising the quality you expect.
- [00:19]
Dan Snow
Nothing, absolutely nothing in the store has any high fructose corn syrup, for example.
- [00:24]
Mark Bittman
Just shop with confidence. Save on the best of spring with great everyday prices at Whole Foods Market.
- [00:32]
Phillips O'Brien
When you think of skyrocketing brands like Aloe Allbirds or Skims, it's easy to credit their success to great products, sleek branding and brilliant marketing. But here's the overlooked secret. The real magic lies in the engine behind the scenes, the business powering their business. For millions of brands, that engine is Shopify, making selling seamless for them and shopping effortless for us. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout Alo Yoga uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.comretail all lowercase go to shopify.comretail to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.comretail I know I'm not alone when.
- [01:16]
Dan Snow
I say adulting can be overwhelming.
- [01:19]
Phillips O'Brien
And what we all could use is a drink. That's where Apple and Eve juice comes in.
- [01:23]
Dan Snow
As the rulers of the juice box.
- [01:25]
Phillips O'Brien
They'Ve been juice joyful for 50 years.
- [01:28]
Dan Snow
With refreshing juice blends bursting with bold flavor. One sip sends you right back to childhood. So when the grind dulls your shine.
- [01:35]
Phillips O'Brien
Remember to kid yourself. Apple and Eve has delicious juices for at home and on the go shop.
- [01:41]
Dan Snow
Today.
- [01:48]
Mark Bittman
We shall fight on the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and.
- [01:54]
Dan Snow
Growing strength in the air, we shall.
- [01:57]
Mark Bittman
Defend our island, whatever the cost may be.
- [02:01]
Dan Snow
We shall fight on the beaches, we.
- [02:03]
Mark Bittman
Shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.
- [02:18]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Whenever anyone talks about leadership, you can bet this speech pops up. It's Churchill at his most steadfast, his most superb, imperious. It was a speech he gave to the House of Commons in the summer of 1940. A rallying cry after setback after a disaster actually. The British army had been humiliated. The British army has evacuated from via Dunkirk. And Churchill is here to report that wars are not won by evacuations, but by fighting, by resisting. At this point, the outcome of the war seemed to be balanced on a knife edge. There was a very real threat of a German invasion of Britain. An eventual Allied victory, well far from certain. Winston Churchill's wartime Leadership has been mythologised, starting with Winston Churchill himself. It is, though true that he took the reins from Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister who was foundering, and he proved himself to be the man the country needed at that moment. He was a wartime leader unlike any other. But of course, he's also a man, he's also human. He's full of contradiction, he's full of controversy. And it's always interesting to remember that were it not for 1940, he might be remembered for, well, the first great chunk of his career, when he was an ambitious, yes, talented politician, but who had a knack of driving people completely bonkers. He was certainly not the great leader floating above the partisan fray that he would later come to embody, from alienating pretty much everyone in the Conservative Party before the First World War, to a catastrophic campaign in Gallipoli during the war, and then his disastrous mishandling of the gold stand in 1925. If we were talking to people and say, 1930, well, I think militarily and politically they would have regarded Winston Churchill as a bit of a failure, not quite having lived up to his potential.
- [04:25]
Dan Snow
I mean, he carries the can for the Dardanelles. He's forced out of force. Lord of the Admiralty, they gotta get rid of him because he's considered too politically toxic and he is sort of left demoted.
- [04:38]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
You're listening to Dan Snow's History in our second episode of our Leaders series. I'm gonna be joined by Phillips O'Brien. He's a professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews. He's the author of the brilliant new book the Strategists. And we're gonna look at Churchill, his strategy, the moves he made in the war, and how he went from being a ridiculed outsider to. To a man who kept the world tethered to their radio sets through his astonishing oratory. We're also going to look at just how instrumental Churchill was in the Allied victory and how his leadership style compares to that of his opponent in Germany. Churchill had always opposed Hitler, even in the early 1930s, before it was really mainstream, before it was fashionable, he warned his fellow politicians about the rise, the threat of fascism in Germany. He recognized, I think, that Hitler was a threat unlike anything they'd seen before. But Churchill's concerns were rooted in a British and British Empire perspective. He was mostly concerned about Germany's territorial expansion, what that would mean, particularly for Britain. I think he was less energized by Hitler's domestic policies, his terrible treatment of Jews and other minorities in Germany, his euthanasia campaign. And that's because Churchill was an arch imperialist, he was steeped in it. He grew up thinking the British Empire was one of those wonderful things that ever happened in the history of the world. He'd campaigned for that empire in colonial battles as a young man. He was certain that the empire kept Britain strong and British imperial strength kept the world safe. And so when it came to his strategy as Britain's wartime leader, preserving Britain's empire was a bedrock of his decision making. This is the Churchill biographer and historian, Geoffrey Wheatcroft. Jeffrey Churchill was born. I mean, he was born into one of the very grandest families in the country, wasn't he?
- [06:45]
Mark Bittman
Although the Duke of Marlborough was a duke, and though he lived in an immensely grand palace, Blenheim, built by a grateful nation after the 1st Duke of Marlborough's victories, they were not by any means as rich as some other dukes, and they rather felt it, his father was a younger son, that he was perennially short of money and looking for ways to make it. But he was conscious of his heritage, of course, from the 1st Duke of Marlborough, and he was attached to what he called the. The 200 families, who for 200 years had guided the destinies of England and the British Empire, meaning the old patrician class, which was indeed still the ruling class in Queen Victoria's day. And, of course, he was born as well, in the absolute heyday of the British Empire, which reached its apogee not quite its largest extent, which came after the Great War, but in the 1890s, it was not just the heyday of empire, but of imperialism. And Churchill was, of course, affected by this. Kipling wrote a famous poem called Recessional, which was a warning against imperial hubris. But it's not a warning that Churchill ever really took to heart.
- [07:58]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
What about his views on war itself? Initially, he wanted to be a soldier.
- [08:03]
Mark Bittman
It wasn't preordained that he would be a soldier. I mean, his academic career at Harrow, his public school, was notoriously unsuccessful, by his own account as anyone else's. And he might have gone to Oxford, which his father did, but he wasn't considered quite up to it. Or at any rate, it was decided that he would go into the army. So he went to Sandhurst, and even then he didn't do well enough with his exams to get into the regiment. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, wanted him to join the 60th Rifles, who required higher grades than the cavalry. So he joined the fourth Azars instead, and then spent several years both witnessing and participating in a quite remarkable number of wars or conflicts of one kind or another.
- [08:50]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Tell me about all the wars that he was able to go and take part in the 1890s and early 20th century. I mean, this was a period of unending imperial policing by Britain's vast empire.
- [09:03]
Mark Bittman
The first time Churchill witnessed a conflict, it was in late 1895. They were very lenient in his regiment or in the British army at that time, by giving young officers leave. And he took leave to go to Cuba, which was then a part of the Spanish empire, and he witnessed the patriotic rising there and wrote about it. He'd already started, I should say, as his other career as a journalist from a very early age. He was still only 20. And he continued wherever he went to watch wars, he continued to write about them lucratively for newspapers. He then returned to India with his regiment, but was given leave to go to cover what was effectively a punitive expedition by the British across the northwest frontier to deal with the Pashtuns. And he wrote in very blunt terms about the brutality with which the British did deal with them, burning their crops and filling their wells. After that, he found himself in 1898 with Lord Kitchener's army fighting against the Mahdis in Sudan. Zealous Islamist rebels against British authority. And he not only witnessed the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, but took part in it. And he had said to his mother, I have a keen aboriginal desire to kill these barbarous nadists. And he did kill several of them in battle. It was not really a battle in the conventional sense because the British army sustained a few dozen casualties while killing 10,000 people on the other side. And then in late 1899, the Boer War began. And yet again, Churchill, who by this time left the army and had already stood for Parliament unsuccessfully as a Tory. And he got himself commissioned by a newspaper to go to South Africa and reported from there.
- [11:01]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Churchill in South Africa was experiencing the second Boer War. It began thanks to tensions between the British Empire, which controlled bits of southern Africa, and the Boer republics, the descendants of Dutch settlers who had self governing states, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Massive diamond, gold, mineral well found in those Boer republics attracted the British gaze. Britain's empire was dragged into war with the Boers, with local indigenous peoples getting caught up in the fighting on both sides. The war saw early Boer victories. Britain was humiliated. But then the British Empire countered with overwhelming force, scorched earth tactics and rounding civilian populations up in concentration camps. By 1902, the Boers had surrendered Accepting British rule in name, but in practice, retaining a lot of autonomy. Though Britain had won, the war fueled Afrikaner nationalism, and it laid the ground both for future conflicts in South Africa, but also for white supremacy. Churchill was there as a soldier, but also, somewhat ambiguously, as a war correspondent, and he was captured by Boer forces in November 1899 after they ambushed a British armored train.
- [12:19]
Mark Bittman
His position at the time was, I may say, was pretty dicey because when he was taken prisoner, he was wearing plain clothes, civilian clothes, but also armed with a revolver. And there has always been a rule of war observed by every country that anyone wearing civilian clothes and bearing arms could be treated as a franc tirer and shot out of hand. But he wasn't. He was taken prisoner and then made this highly dramatic escape, which, of course, he turned into a tremendous yarn.
- [12:50]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
In his escape, Churchill had climbed the prison fence. When the guards weren't watching. He'd left behind a note for the Boer minister of war, Cheeky. He then trekked through swamps. At one point, he hid in a coal mine. He then boarded a freight train to Portuguese East Africa, where he linked up with the British consul, who helped get him onto a steamer bound for the British held town of Durban. Upon his arrival there, he was hailed as a hero.
- [13:15]
Mark Bittman
He didn't stay very long in South Africa, and he was now, by 1900, at the age of 25, he was very famous. I mean, he was one of the great celebrities of the age. He came back giving a lantern slide lecture, which was the equivalent of a television documentary in those days, called the War as I saw It. Then he immediately left to go on a speaking tour of North America and making a great deal of money.
- [13:42]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Did he enjoy war? Was he invigorated by it? Or did he think that was his only path really, to fame, fortune, success in that or other fields?
- [13:53]
Mark Bittman
I think he did enjoy it to a degree which not only might seem repellent to us today, his descriptions of not just warfare in the abstract, but in killing large numbers of people. But I think it had an effect on him that by the time he had led his country through the greatest war in our history, after 1945, Churchill became very conscious of having seen far too much war. And I wouldn't say he became a pacifist, but he was even haunted by his early years and the memory of having seen so much fighting and so many men killed.
- [14:30]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
In 1900, a returned hero from the Boer War, a known orator, a celebrity in his own right, Churchill turned his eye to politics. He won the Oldham constituency, becoming Conservative mp. But four years later he. He switched party to the Liberal Party, a move that seriously tainted him in the eyes of many Conservative politicians and voters.
- [14:55]
Mark Bittman
He was already regarded with a certain degree of reserve by some Tories. Not just by Tories, I mean, because he was so bumptious and so quickly successful and possibly on the make. Not everyone adored or admired him, but he became a notable parliamentary speaker and then he did have an honest difference with the Conservative Party, or Unionist Party it was called at the time, and that was over free trade. And Churchill was a lifelong supporter of free trade. And the Tories, and particularly under the impulse of Joseph Chamberlain, were moving towards protection, or what was then called tariffs, which was a food tax and it was very unpopular. In the spring of 1904, Churchill dramatically crossed the floor of the House of Commons to join the Liberal opposition. He was immediately accused by Tories, including one high Tory paper, the National Review, of deserting the Tories simply because he hadn't been given a government job. And he was ever after accused of acting out of cynical self interest, although at the same time he was often accused of being a reckless adventurer, which is all the more striking because the two accusations are in a sense mutually exclusive. A Liberal government was formed by Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman and Churchill was given a job as Under Secretary for the Colonies. And the Liberals then won a landslide election and Churchill held office for nearly 10 years. In fact, he held office for nearly 25 years by way of first of all leaving the Tories for the Liberals just before the Liberals won landslide election, then after the Great War, quietly deserting the Liberals and stealthily rejoining the Conservative Party so that he was able to serve in Baldwin's government in 1924-29 as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He himself said, anyone can rat, but it takes someone special to re rat to desert one party and then desert that party for the original one.
- [17:08]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Some deft footwork there. Tell me about his experiences in the First World War. Because he begins the war as First Lord of the Admiralty for the Liberals, he's seen as rather aggressive as Britain's deciding whether or not to go to war. In that terrible summer of 1914, Churchill was certainly in the war camp. How did he run the navy for the first year and a half, two years of the war?
- [17:28]
Mark Bittman
Well, he had been first ordered Admiralty for several years before the war and liked to take pride in having prepared the navy for war if a war came. He was indeed the party of war. Churchill's response to any challenge was to fight. The war came to his delight, but he saw sooner than most people that the Western Front was going to be a complete deadlock, that the conditions of war had completely changed. There was no longer a war of movement. The two sides, the Germans on their side and the French and British on theirs, were really incapable of breaking through each other's lines. And he said there must be something better for the British soldiers to do than to chew barbed wire in Flanders where the line was. And he didn't single handed dream up the Gallipoli expedition, but he dreamed very much, favoured it and favored it ever after.
- [18:26]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
The Gallipoli expedition of 1915 was a catastrophe. None of its strategic goals were secured and there was a catastrophic loss of life and equipment. The Allies landed on the peninsula with troops from Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand and India, but the Turks resisted fiercely. Soon this attempt to bypass the trenches of the Western Front was bogged down in terrible trench warfare on the Gallipoli peninsula. They were as unable to break that stalemate in Turkey as they were in France and Belgium. And the Allies submitted to the inevitable and withdrew. The campaign had cost nearly quarter of a million Allied casualties and nearly as many on the other side. The Gallipoli landings were Churchill's idea. He'd helped to plan them, he'd pushed for them, he'd lobbied for them. It, it was his strategic baby. And after its failure he was demoted to Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, which for my North American listeners is a cabinet position, but in the words of Hamilton, it's not a real job. He resigned in November 1915 and he decided to join the Royal Scots Fusiliers, an army regiment fighting on the Western.
- [19:37]
Mark Bittman
Front, it never really made any sense at all. The idea that even if the British and the French as well, and of course the Anzacs, the Australians and New Zealanders who landed on 25th April 1915, even if they had defeated Turkey and reached Constantinople and what were they meant to do? It's from Constantinople to Berlin is the same as from Kansas City to New York. I mean, Churchill, he had the insight that the war was not going to be won easily on the Western Front. Nobody realized it was another four years of frightful battles, mostly pointless battles. He was right about that. But he was wrong in thinking that there was a way round that problem, to use a later phrase. He thought that there was a soft underbelly from which what were then called the Central Powers, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Turkey, could be attacked. But one of the lessons of both wars, as it happened, was to Remind us that Europe doesn't have any soft underbellies, and not in Gallipoli and not in Italy in 1943.
- [20:41]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
So defeat in the Dardanelles campaign looked like it had torpedoed Churchill's very promising political career. Now, not just the Conservatives, but many on the Liberal benches thought he was something of a failure. But like all failure, it can be an essential ingredient of later success. Joining me now to talk about that is Professor Phillips O'Brien. Phil, let's think about the First World War. He was in charge of the Navy. Initially, he's taking strategic decisions at the highest level, but then he goes and becomes commander of a reasonably small unit, a battalion, on the Western Front. He gets to chew barbed wire, he gets to see the World War up close.
- [21:20]
Dan Snow
Churchill is the most studied, probably person in history, or certainly British history. But what's interesting is that when it comes to the First World War, a lot of the focus is on the early part of the war. It's when he is First Lord of the Admiralty in 1914, 15, when he is the driving force in Gallipoli, which ends up being a disaster, the Dardanelles campaign. But I think what's fascinating is what happens after that, because he's considered a failure. I mean, he carries the can for the Dardanelles, he's forced out of force. Lord of the Admiralty, they gotta get rid of him because he's considered too politically toxic and he is sort of left demoted and he's really wondering what his political future is, if anything. And he makes this decision to try and restore himself, rebuild himself, going to leave Parliament, doesn't give up his seat, but he's actually going to go fight on the Western Front. And he spends six months at the front from the end of 1915 to May, June 1916. And by the way, he's also incredibly lucky and he hadn't planned this. He comes right after the first Battle of Loos and right before the Somme. Now, that wasn't conscious. Had he gone any other time, he would have had a much higher chance of dying. But he is at the Western Front at a relatively quiet period. But what he sees is not quiet, it is just death. And it's not huge numbers of death every moment, it's just death every day.
- [22:44]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
GRINDING yeah.
- [22:45]
Dan Snow
One day a shell will hit a dugout and take out a small command post. The next day a sniper will hit a soldier who stuck his head above the trench. And even though he doesn't see a battle, what he sees on the Western Front is stunning to him. Because there's no bravery in this war. It is just mud and blood and death. And I think that matures him. He had been very boyish, and even though he's described as in the Cabinet as being very boyish and impetuous and full of daring ideas like the Dardanelles, which go wrong. But after six months in the Western Front, he comes back a man, I would say, and someone who realizes, oh, modern war is not anything like I thought it was. And the key thing is to keep British casualties down. Now, he's doing it because he believes Britain has a population problem. It's smaller than Germany, smaller than the United States, smaller than Russia. So Britain, in his mind, if it gets involved into kind of attritional war on the Western Front against the German army. And by the way, his experiences on the Western Front give him a huge respect for the German army, and this influences his view in the Second World War. And when he comes back from the trenches in 1916, the summer of 1916, he has decided we have to basically hold back for a while. We need to use our industrial resources. We don't want to do any mass attacks. He's very depressed about things like the Salman Passchendaele. He's opposed to these kind of offensives from that point on. And he believes that Britain's role is to, in a sense, fight with machines, not men. And that's a really crucial moment in that change.
- [24:23]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
And he gets a chance to put that thinking into practice, because he becomes the minister in charge of producing those machines, those shells, those vehicles.
- [24:30]
Dan Snow
He gets a chance to produce the machines and to argue for it, but he can't put it into action. And that's why it's an interesting period, because he's not allowed back in the War Cabinet. British politics at the time. Lloyd George becomes Prime Minister in coalition with the Conservatives, so that you have a sort of a wartime coalition. And actually Asquith and the Liberal Party become the opposition at that time. But the Conservatives are not going to have Churchill in the War Cabinet. Then one, they view him as a traitor for switching parties back before the First World War, but also they believe he's responsible for the Dardanelles. So even though he's Minister for Production, you would think, who should be in the War Cabinet. He's not. But that means he has to write a lot of memorandum, and he actually lays out a lot of interesting ideas about movement power over firepower. This isn't about just blowing up what's in front of you, it's about Protecting your own troops so that they can move. And he outlines a series of ideas on war. He, by the way, doesn't want the British army to attack until 1990. His view is that wait till 1919.
- [25:28]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Lots of tanks once the Americans are in the war.
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Dan Snow
I mean, he doesn't want to die in many ways. From that point on, he's very careful with British lives. He doesn't want the British soldiers to suffer huge casualties. Let's wait till we have the tanks, the aircraft, the Americans are there and then the Germans will have no chance. He doesn't want to take risks. So he's changed. The risk taking is out.
- [25:51]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Let's talk about 1939, Winston Churchill. What's his worldview? What's driving him? And tell me about his approach to wielding executive power, that kind of energy.
- [26:01]
Dan Snow
Well, I mean, in 39, of course, the first part of the year, he's still on the outs. That he had been considered a political failure, that Chamberlain really didn't have much time for him. He had been considered a cranky old, far too much of a hardliner for British politics at the time. But he believes he has vindication in August, September 1939, when Hitler does attack Poland. And therefore he transforms from being a voice in the wilderness and really considered a bit of a fossil to maybe an oracle who someone understood what Hitler was going to be. So Chamberlain, even though he never really reconciles himself to Churchill in a way, brings Churchill back into the Cabinet and he brings him back in as First Lord of the Admiralty, the same job that Churchill had in 1914, 1915, he now has in 1939. It's just absolutely wonderful. He goes back to the Admiralty and he finds certain things that never change, like his old maps were left in the same area. The same furniture was still in the place. So he settles back into his rhythm of being First Lord of the Admiralty. Now, what he does in 1939, this part in the war, the German submarines aren't as active as they were going to be. So what he's mostly concerned with in his mind, is trying to use naval power to hem Germany in. Probably his greatest campaign, which ends up being a bit of a mixed bag, of course, is Norway. So he plays a role in sending British naval power and forces into Norway. But ultimately, of course, he still remains at his heart a believer in control of the North Atlantic. As long as Britain controls the North Atlantic, it's going to be okay.
- [27:37]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
And people comment on his arrival. I mean, he's like a dynamo. There's an energy There, which you'll see again when he goes to number 10.
- [27:43]
Dan Snow
Which is very different from Chamberlain. I mean, the British government of this is probably going to. People are going to say it's unfair. The British government of 1938 and the first half of 1939 is about as languid a group of men as you're going to have. Chamberlain's schoolmaster is still wearing those ridiculous old collars, speaking with a high pitched voice. I mean you couldn't be more sedate than Halifax. It was basically a London club land, very quiet, you know, not assertive personalities, in control of the British government. And Churchill comes in utterly different. He gathers energy to him because not a lot of people in the British government have energy in the way that he does. And plus he has the ultimate vindication to many people of being right about Hitler. So I think he plays a very important role in providing the kind of energy the British government needed in 1939-40.
- [28:38]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
It's interesting how quickly, even before he becomes Prime Minister, he's a spokesman in the Commons in particular, people are sort of looking to him to provide that narrative of why we're fighting almost straight away.
- [28:47]
Dan Snow
Well, because Chamberlain and Halifax can't do it.
- [28:49]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
And so what's he say? Why is Britain fighting? What's Churchill's view about why Britain's fighting in the Second World War and what he wants the outcome to be?
- [28:56]
Dan Snow
Because Hitler's evil. Hitler is, in his mind, a unique threat and a very scary threat. Again, coming from his First World War experience, he has a very healthy respect for German military power. But what he sees is Hitler is even more ruthless than Germany's First World War leaders. More willing to take risks, more willing to sort of go to war. So Churchill is very worried about what Hitler represents. It's not the gentlemanly Kaiser or the earlier kind of pre1914 German leadership. So he believes Hitler is a unique threat.
- [29:29]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
This is before the Brits had seen into Belsen and this is before the unimaginable casualties of the Second World War. Churchill even in the 1930s identified. He says, no, he's not Louis XIV, he's not Philip of Spain, he's not Napoleon, he's not the kind. This is unique in a thousand years of history. How does he get that so right?
- [29:46]
Dan Snow
Well, I mean, it sort of sense. I mean, maybe it's a bit of a class assumption. Hitler is a working class and that's more dangerous. He's a thug and he's an ideologue. He is an outright anti Semite, which I don't think Churchill's as bothered with. Many people had little elements of anti Semitism, but Hitler takes it to an extraordinary degree. So I think what it is is just Hitler is different. He's radical. He's not an old gentlemanly German leader. And to Churchill, that is very threatening. If Hitler can actually take the German military, latent German military might, and use it effectively, that is a nightmare for Churchill.
- [30:25]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
His whole world will be overturned.
- [30:28]
Dan Snow
Well, he understands that Germany is the largest land power in Europe. He had seen from 1914 to 1918 that Germany had almost won a German land war. They'd certainly knocked Russia out of the land war. They had tied down the British and the French on the Western Front, that Germany, fighting on its own with the Austro Hungarians, bless them, were not a very useful ally. Germany, fighting on their own, had basically fought Britain, France and Russia.
- [30:54]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Come pretty close to Paris. Yeah.
- [30:56]
Dan Snow
So he is never going to be underestimating what Germany can accomplish militarily.
- [31:02]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
And Churchill's somebody for whom this sort of whiggish view of history, the progression, Enlightenment onward, he saw this as a force that could overturn centuries of what he'd have seen as sort of advances.
- [31:14]
Dan Snow
Well, the big thing is he thinks it is a force to condemn the British Empire. I think that's very important, that Churchill has one general thing that he wants to do. He wants to maintain the British Empire. Yes, he does love empire, but he actually sees this as Britain, that Britain's future has to be as an imperial power, because Otherwise Britain is 40 million people on a damp island off the coast of Europe. Without the empire he understands, or in his mind, without the empire, Britain is not the great power that he wishes it to be. So he is very worried if things happen to conspire to take that empire away. So I think Hitler in his mind, does represent a big threat to that.
- [31:56]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Does Churchill think he's a creature of destiny?
- [31:59]
Dan Snow
Well, my favorite quote about that, this is actually before, I think, just before the First World War, Churchill had a very skeptical view of human nature. And he said, you know, we're all worms, but I am a glow worm. And I think, you know, I. E. He partly understands human beings are nasty in his mind, pretty grubby things. But he believed he was especially a special human being. He's a glow worm. He's not a superhuman, he's not God blessed. But he understands he has certain characteristics and certain drives that he believes can play a huge important and historic role.
- [32:38]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
One of those characteristics, his unwavering determination his energy. But what about the glow? His ability to convince people he's used words? Is that important?
- [32:48]
Dan Snow
He was a brilliant writer. I mean, if you remember that Churchill wrote all the time. The first time people would become aware from Churchill is they would have read a book by him or a newspaper article. And he writes with huge verve, huge passion, which we later see brought over to recordings. So the Second World War speeches, which are in many ways how we remember him now, are very much a continuation of the kind of way he had been writing for decades before that. So he had a passion in the way he expressed himself, which stands in extraordinary contrast to, say, Chamberlain and Halifax, who simply couldn't do it. They didn't have that ability to rouse people. And Churchill absolutely did.
- [33:33]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
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- [36:01]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Hola.
- [36:02]
Phillips O'Brien
Hey, you speak Spanish, but do you speak liver?
- [36:06]
Dan Snow
People with conditions like obesity, type 2.
- [36:08]
Phillips O'Brien
Diabetes or high blood pressure could be.
- [36:10]
Dan Snow
At risk for a potentially life threatening.
- [36:12]
Phillips O'Brien
Liver disease called mash, or metabolic dysfunction associated steatohepatitis.
- [36:17]
Dan Snow
Whoa. I could be at risk. I'll ask my doctor. You're bilingual? No, I speak liver now. I'm trilingual. Ask your doctor about your risk and if you should be screened for MASH.
- [36:28]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Learn more@speakliver.com early summer of 1940, by an astonishing coincidence, Churchill becomes Prime Minister the day that Hitler launches his mighty offensive in the west against France, the Low Countries. At that moment, Churchill's Prime Minister, he is the great warlord of the British Empire. What are his desired strategic outcomes in the Second World War.
- [37:01]
Dan Snow
You couldn't have become Prime Minister at a more extraordinary moment, that as he becomes Prime Minister, the German army begins streaking through France. And within days. I mean, it's the speed with which France collapses in May of 1940 that is absolutely stunning. In April 1940, no one thought France would be done by June. Every strategic calculation that Churchill had up until he becomes Prime Minister is based on the assumption that France survives.
- [37:34]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
He's a huge fan of the French.
- [37:35]
Dan Snow
Army since the First World War. He loved the French Adrian Helmut. He had been a Francophile in many ways in the First World War. And then as soon as he becomes prime minister, he's confronted with a collapsing France within days. And he. In fact, his first trip to Paris right after becoming prime minister is a shock because he's basically confronted with a French leadership, political and military, which is sort of saying that we're in real trouble and we don't know if we're going to make it, we don't know if we're going to survive. So he has to make impactful decisions right away. And I think the single most important decision Churchill makes in the Second World War is, in a sense, not to gamble at all to save France. I don't think we can underestimate that importance that the French are saying, give us everything, send us every plane you have, send us every soldier you have if you want us to survive, we need it all. And by the way, there might have been a British leadership that could have said, okay, France is so important and our ability to withstand Germany without France will be so minimal, it's worth taking that risk. Churchill actually goes the other way, pulls them out of Dunkirk, doesn't send many back, just leaves a few British troops.
- [38:49]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
People forget about that. The French, Dunkirk, they went, many of them, back into France to fight again.
- [38:54]
Dan Snow
He could have sent them back. And the key thing is he keeps the RAF in Britain. And the French want the raf, lots of the RAF units sent to France to help them fight the German army off. So Churchill's. I don't want to say he sacrifices France, because what has happened is the French are losing the battle. That's not a British decision. But the decision he makes is to preserve British power and understand that Britain can still win a long war, that it's not just May, June 1940, that will decide things. And that comes, I think, from his more mature view of how wars are fought by the Second World War.
- [39:29]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
So within weeks, he has to make big decisions. How's he going to conduct that war? How's he going to win that war?
- [39:35]
Dan Snow
Well, he has one wobble on, I think it's May 26th. He first makes the decision. The French press him to send things. He doesn't do it. I'm not going to commit all of British force to France. But by the end of May, it just looks doomed. France looks doomed. And there is a discussion in the war cabinet one afternoon. Should we have negotiations? Pushed, not surprisingly, by Halifax. And Churchill says, well, we need to consider it. That lasts for about three hours. And a few hours later, he simply says, we're going to fight. Because I think what he decides and understands is that actually Britain can't be defeated right now. The Western alliance, this alliance has lost a battle and the Anglo French alliance is over. But the world balance of production, if you're, again, say you're a Ministry of production figure in 1918 in Britain. Well, actually, losing France isn't that big of a deal. France has got a big army, but its industrial production is far less than Britain's and of course, far less than the United States. So if you are Churchill, as long as we can tap into American production and keep the US on side with Canada, which, by the way, Canada is producing increasingly a great deal. Actually, the balance of global force is not against us in a way that we are going to lose this war automatically. So the key thing is to double down on preserving Britain, preserving British production, controlling trade across the North Atlantic, and building up the RAF and the Royal Navy. And that becomes his great focus.
- [41:10]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
So fight on.
- [41:11]
Mark Bittman
Yep.
- [41:12]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Engage the Americans. Definitely buy stuff from the Americans, ideally, bring them in.
- [41:16]
Dan Snow
Well, he would love to have them come in. I mean, what is also a really interesting thing is that Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, who's President of the United States, reaches out to Winston Churchill when the war breaks out, and Roosevelt reaches out to Churchill, because Roosevelt is, like Churchill, obsessed with naval power and Churchill is the First Lord of the Admiralty. So Roosevelt and Churchill had struck up a correspondence, which is quite unorthodox for the President of the United States to be writing to a British Cabinet member, not the Prime Minister, but the British Cabinet member. So they had spent much of 1939 and early 1940 talking about naval power. And basically what Roosevelt was trying to get from Churchill is what's going on in the naval war. So what Churchill knew is that Roosevelt was following this very, very closely and that Roosevelt did want the British to win. I mean, you don't correspond with British Cabinet members if you are neutral in a war emotionally. So Churchill understands Roosevelt has certain impulses with which he agrees on naval power. And also that Roosevelt and the Americans are by nature going to be more supportive to Britain. And he believes there's a very good chance they will get in the war. He can't say, of course, when that will be.
- [42:24]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
He decides Britain is going to stay in the war in the summer of 1940, an extraordinarily important decision. Is he going to blockade Germany? Is he going to infiltrate force into Europe and set it ablaze? Is he going to invade? What's his strategy for winning the war? Or is he still focusing on not losing?
- [42:40]
Dan Snow
Well, the winning the war is to keep. Get the U.S. in eventually. I mean, that is how you're going to win it. By the way, you're going to win the war by making it a global war. And the Soviet Union is still, at this point, a bit of an enigma as to what it will eventually do. Yes, he wants to light Europe ablaze. I think that is more just to preoccupy the Germans. He understands that's not going to really change the course of the war. What does he want is he basically starts building A huge amount of aircraft. So what is his decision in 1940, in the summer of 1940? Well, what do we need to do? We need to double down on aircraft production and some naval construction. And you can see that's how he's going to fight the war. If I can protect Britain and I can protect the sea lanes, then really there's not much Hitler can do. What is amazing, I think, is how easily they win that competition. The Battle of Britain is the most misunderstood battle because the British look at small Britain fighting big Germany. Britain is probably a superior industrial producer.
- [43:41]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Not even close.
- [43:42]
Dan Snow
Britain is actually stronger than Germany in aircraft production in 1940. They have slightly fewer on hand when the battle starts. But what you have on hand when the battle starts never decides it. It's what you make during it and what you can produce. And what actually British production does in 1940 is really remarkable. That they triple, quadruple aircraft production during the course of the year. And that's Churchill basically saying, we are going to build aircraft. So the Germans lose the Battle of Britain very quickly because there's no way they can win it. They simply don't have the aircraft and they're not producing enough to keep up in that battle. Battle of Britain is over in a matter of weeks, really. It's not a long battle.
- [44:23]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
So before we come into the rest of the war, the big key moments, Churchill, as you say, Phil, so studied as a leader, tell me a little bit about how he made decisions through the war, how he interfered, was he a genius? Was he. Where do you come down all this kind of stuff?
- [44:39]
Dan Snow
He's sort of a halfway between a micromanaging Hitler and a more detached Roosevelt is how I would describe where Churchill sits. So if you're going to talk about the gradations of war leadership, Hitler and early Stalin are the micromanagers. They really interfere on quite low levels and even tactical levels at time. Roosevelt is much more the grand person, setting quite deliberate, you know, and distinct ideas, but saying to his people, you make those happen. This is what I want to have happen. You make it happen, and I'm not going to interfere too much in what you're doing. Churchill is sort of in the middle of that one because he had been in the military. Churchill is an extraordinarily experienced person. He'd been in the army and he'd been First Lord of the Admiralty. There aren't many people who had been an army officer and been the civilian head of the Navy and Department of Munitions and Department of Munitions. He really believed he Understood these things. He was by his nature, also quite emotional at times. And what he would often do is he'd have these late night sessions. It's interesting. War leaders often stay up later and later. The only exception to that was Roosevelt, who actually started going to bed earlier and earlier because he needed more sleep. But actually, war leaders often stay up late because they're living in such high tension. So Churchill begins this process of staying late and talking. Now, Churchill would often have some pretty crazy ideas on the war, but what he had an understanding is eventually to realize they were crazy and not to follow through with them. Whereas Hitler would have probably tried to follow through on them.
- [46:10]
Mark Bittman
Yeah.
- [46:10]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
So if Churchill's military advisors, all of them say, sorry, sir, no, he doesn't overrule them.
- [46:16]
Dan Snow
Hitler would have. Churchill is not going to order an operation if his military advisors say, no, this really isn't going to work. So he does understand certain things that Hitler just doesn't.
- [46:26]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
I'm so struck by people who have left accounts of Churchill. They found him brilliant, impossible, naive genius. Like, I mean, it's very difficult, isn't it, to sort of synthesize his leadership?
- [46:38]
Dan Snow
Well, I mean, so much of, by the way, comes from the Alanbrook diaries, too. I mean, in many ways, that's a bit of an overuse because the chief of the imperial general staff, Sir Alanbrooke, who later becomes Lord Alanbrooke, writes a brilliant diary and actually quite an extraordinary diary where he records every meeting, every day. He'll say, well, we stayed up and Churchill drank and I tried to not drink. And we had all these ideas. And quite clearly, Allan book gets frustrated with Churchill. But what is interesting is for all the complaining, in the end, Churchill always gives way on certain things. But the picture we get comes very much from the Alan Brooke diary of what it is. I always think the more interesting ones are when Churchill meets with Roosevelt. It's interesting how the Americans write about Churchill. They view him as incredibly eloquent, dangerously so. So that Churchill will always come in with his eloquence and make a brilliant argument. And then it's whether he can get that put into place which becomes the great challenge.
- [47:36]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
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- [48:22]
Phillips O'Brien
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- [49:12]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Winston Churchill knew he had to drag America into the war. He had no way of forcing the United States to join. So he'd have to woo America with words. He wrote letters, he made speeches, he sent envoys. Little by little, he thought he was cracking it. In March 1941, President Roosevelt signed the Lend Lease act which opened up a flood of industrial support and weapons to the British, still short of joining the war. But really a very, very one sided form of neutrality. In August of that year, aboard a warship in the North Atlantic, Churchill and Roosevelt crafted the Atlantic charter. A vision for the post war world. A hint of what was to come. But Churchill's persuasion alone didn't bring America into the fight. The key moment there was one of fire and fury. December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor. The very next day, Roosevelt stood before Congress and declared war on Japan. Days later, Hitler and Mussolini declared war on the USA, sealing America's fate and their own. The USA was now fully in the war. During 1942, Britain remained the dominant Allied partner. But that wouldn't last. Phil, let's go to January 1943. Churchill's finally the fall of 1942. He's finally had that elusive big success on the land. He's defeated German Italian armies in North Africa at the Battle of Alamena. It's a nice set piece. Victory. There's a clear advance. There's direction of travel. He meets with Roosevelt at Casablanca in North Africa. Is this Churchill the warlord? The wind's at his tail. Britain's still in the fight. Britain's still an equal partner. Is this his sort of zenith in terms of his agency?
- [51:05]
Dan Snow
I think so. I think Casablanca represents the high point of Churchill as a war leader and as a leader of the Allies. Britain has survived The US Is in. The Soviet Union survives. They're going to win the war. But 1942 is a pretty uncomfortable year for the first seven, eight months. You have the horrible losses of shipping off the US east coast. You have the German summer offensive into Russia in the summer of 42. You also have Rommel doing well in the desert, at least for the first few months of 1942. So the first part of 1942 is uncomfortable. And then in quick succession, boom, boom. From El Alamein onwards, the German army and the Germans seem on the back foot. So in January 1943, when Churchill goes to Casablanca and Roosevelt comes to meet him, they are now thinking about, okay, how do we win the war? This is a plan. Now they're going to win it. How do we actually come up with the best possible plan? And what happens at Casablanca is that the British war leadership is just so much more focused and directed. In many ways. Churchill has imprinted on it his view of war about what they want. And what they want is to delay for as long as possible and maybe even permanently delay any invasion of France. They don't want to do it. This is Churchill from the First World War. The last thing he wants to do is have a mass British army fighting on the Western front. Again, no interest. What he wants to do is to fight in the Mediterranean, bomb Germany and let the Soviets do the land war. That's his strategy, you might say, ideally for the rest of the war. That's what he would have liked to have done. Bomb the Germans from the air, make the Mediterranean the primary theater for the British and the Americans. Take Italy eventually or the Balkan soft underbelly, but avoid a large land commitment. Mass army fighting on the European continent against the Germans. And in Casablanca, he sort of gets Roosevelt to agree to that in 1943. So what he does is he runs into an American leadership that is quite disorganized. The head of the navy wants one thing. Ernest King. The head of the army, George Marshall, wants another thing. Roosevelt sort of wants everything or nothing. He's not quite sure what he wants at that point, but the British know exactly what they want, and they basically take advantage of disorganization in the American camp and the fact that Britain is still an equal producer. American production is ramping up clearly, and America will soon be drastically out producing everybody. But at this point, the British are still building aircraft like the Lancaster in very high numbers. They're still doing most of the fighting. I think that's the important thing. Early 43, the British are doing Most of the fighting. And this allows Churchill to play, I would say, a superior role in determining what will happen in 1943 with this.
- [54:03]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Soft underbelly, Eastern Europe stuff. Is this Churchill thinking about post war? Is he thinking about Stalin? Eastern Europe? Is he really playing 3D chess here?
- [54:12]
Dan Snow
This is one of the things where often people forget. Now, if you were saying from the point of view of Britain in 1900, what's the key waterway of the world? It's the Mediterranean. So Churchill grows up as a Mediterranean obsessive. So if you can control the Mediterranean and through that, the Suez Canal, that is the key waterway. So if you are looking at maintaining the British Empire, it's far more important to control the Mediterranean than, say, the Baltic or anything like that. And so what he wants to do, and a lot of his worst strategy had been in 41, 42, to make sure North Africa remains British, that the Mediterranean. That's why he holds Malta. The certain things that he's doing to make sure that Britain maintains itself in the Mediterranean. It also, by the way, means he doesn't have to have a large land army. This is important. He doesn't want to have people sent in these sort of large infantry formations to fight the Germans. I actually don't think he wants to go in the Balkans, personally. I think he's trying to use that to simply say, let's not do France, let's focus on Italy, let's do that. Or the Balkans if needs be. But it's not so much that he's desperate to do the Balkans. It's just he does not want to invade France. And what he gets from Roosevelt in Casablanca is a decision not to invade France in 43, a clear one. Moreover, he gets a commitment from Roosevelt to make the Mediterranean the main theater of effort in 43 and to invade one island, which turns out to be Sicily. So it's a real, you might say, strategic triumph for Churchill for his view of the war.
- [55:44]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Phil, let's come to the end of 1943 now. Let's talk about the Tehran conference. Is this when he starts to get a little bit nervous?
- [55:50]
Dan Snow
A bit nervous is a bit kind way of putting it. Casablanca is the high point. And from there we sort of have to say it's downhill. Because what happens from that point on is that Roosevelt sort of comes back from Casablanca and says, you know, I think we were hoodwinked. That in many ways they come back and go, well, what did we get from Casablanca? Well, really, we got nothing and we didn't get in. Roosevelt's mind any clear decision on how the war will be ended. So what Roosevelt and really his chief of staff William Leahy, from after Casablanca onwards are entirely committed to is an invasion of France in 44. They want that. They didn't want to invade France in 43, but they really want to invade France in 44.
- [56:33]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Just out of interest, why? Because that's the quickest way to Berlin or because are they worried about Western Europe? Post both. Okay.
- [56:40]
Dan Snow
They do believe you are going to have to have a large land army in northwest Europe to seize Western Germany. Remember, even up until the summer of 43, the Germans are very far into the Soviet Union. The idea that somehow you would quickly be in Berlin on the border of Germany a year and a half later would have seemed very far fetched. So their view in early 43 is that at some point you are going to have to invade France and then sandwich Germany between these two large forces. What they don't believe is that they will have the force to do it without taking too much risk until 44. They believe by 44 they'll have enough. They will absolutely be able to swamp the Germans, but they don't believe that will be ready till 44. And basically for the rest of 1943 after Casablanca, they are trying to bludgeon Churchill to agree to D Day. And this begins in what's called the Trident Conference in Washington in May 1943. It continues through the first Quebec conference in the fall of 1943. And then it reaches its high point in Tehran. So you might say that everything after Casablanca are the Americans trying to bludgeon Churchill into agreeing to D Day? What Churchill does is usually agree, but then try to back out on the deal. So, well, okay, we'll agree. And in May 1943, yes, he agrees to invade France in May 1944. But then when Italy looks like it's collapsing in the summer of 43, he's like, okay, let's go into Italy and so we don't have to invade France in 44. So he's always trying to find ways out of it, but Tehran becomes the moment when he can't. And that's the problem for Churchill at Tehran is that he has not just Roosevelt, he's got Stalin. It's the first time Roosevelt and Stalin have been together. He has always met them separately.
- [58:32]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
He's always been the go between, hasn't he? In a way.
- [58:34]
Dan Snow
And Roosevelt and Stalin get together and they basically just bash him into submission.
- [58:39]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Is that a matter of personalities? It's a Matter of strategy or is there also a sense here that the Soviets and the Americans start to realise, hang on a second, the British Empire is weaker than it looks and maybe does not have the place in the post war world that Churchill think it does. What's going on here?
- [58:57]
Dan Snow
It wasn't that they thought Britain would instantly collapse as a great power. The United States was at this point showing it was industrially in a league of its own and the Red army was showing it was going to be the largest army in Europe. Remember, if you're looking at it from a point of view of Stalin, you actually think the Americans are going to go home after the war. In that case, you're going to be sitting there in very good position with this mass army in Europe because the British are not going to have the mass army of the kind that you're creating. So I think both Roosevelt and Stalin believe Britain is going to matter. And so they always talk about the big three, these are going to be the post war alliance. But they also know that Britain's gonna be struggling a bit after the war, particularly if the Americans go home. And also Roosevelt and Stalin have that same basic idea that you want to invade France in 44 to end the war. So it's both a long term and a short term perception.
- [59:47]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
And Churchill feels it, doesn't he? He starts to say, I am being frozen out here.
- [59:52]
Dan Snow
If you read what happens at Tehran, which very interesting. Again, personal difference, Stalin. Well, Stalin tells Roosevelt that there's all these assassination plots, why don't you come stay in my compound? And Roosevelt goes, which is itself an extraordinary decision. But basically Roosevelt and Stalin are living in the same place in Tehran and Churchill has to commute in and out from British residents. And that means that Stalin and Roosevelt meet alone, without Churchill. And in fact their first meeting sets the tone the first time they ever meet. Basically, Roosevelt is trying to ingratiate himself with Stalin and one of the ways he tries to ingratiate himself with Stalin is say, I'm not one of these old European imperialists. I'm not like the British and the French. I believe in a newer world and we're going to get along. So they can use Britain both as something to attack, to bring them together. So I think that's what happens at Tehran. Phil.
- [60:50]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
We Brits are very bad at chalking up every success to Winston Churchill in the Second World War. But talk me through what you think his strengths were as a war leader.
- [61:00]
Dan Snow
Well, I actually think his strengths are as a military industrial leader. 1941 to 1943. And I don't think we can underrate the importance one, Britain wins the war in the North Atlantic. That actually is the fundamental campaign of Anglo American victory. If you cannot win the war in the North Atlantic, it's going to be very hard to knock Germany out of the war because you're going to have to ship everything across the Atlantic. The British do the vast majority of the fighting in the North Atlantic. The Americans take a pretty small role. So the triumph in the North Atlantic is a military, industrial, technological triumph of British armed forces. Radar, British shipping, British air power, all of that comes together. And Churchill is the driving factor in that. This is something that he focuses on a great deal of his time and he helps win. That is a great decisive victory is what happens in the North Atlantic, winning the war at sea. Churchill plays a huge role in that and that we have to give him enormous amount of credit. What we had talked about earlier, he makes the decision to fight on in 1940 and to keep the RAF growing in strength, which wins the battle of Britain. And another war leader, Halifax, might not have done that. You could see a war leadership that would have cut a deal with Hitler in 1940. Not only does he not cut a deal, but he starts energizing British production in a way that I think was really quite remarkable. And Britain really peaks in production at 43. They really skyrocket, and they are maximizing industrial potential in a way that no other power does to that point. Then they have to level out because they are literally making all they can make. They're doing that. So I would think that period from 40 to 43 is Winston Churchill's great period in the war.
- [62:50]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Does he energize the war effort in terms of the population, the global population, but also the energy within. Whitehall sacking generals in North Africa. Does he do more good than harm in that respect?
- [63:02]
Dan Snow
It's really hard to say, because testing public opinion in a war is not easy to do. The key thing is what he does for the British people. No people really listens to war leaders of another country that much. We often like to think they do. But I don't think it's the case that Churchill inspires Americans or Roosevelt inspires Brits. It's what you do with your own population. The British population during the Second World War doesn't lose their faith that it can win. At no point does the British population think we are going to lose the war. And that has to have a lot to do with Churchill, because at least he provides the population With a basic confidence that their warder leadership will give them a real chance of winning.
- [63:50]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
And what about the inside game, his effect on the British military and political elite? Does he instill that same sense of confidence into that matter?
- [63:56]
Dan Snow
I think in many ways the British military is quite professional and they always believe they're going to win. I don't think they actually do believe they're going to lose. So they don't need Churchill to tell them that. So I'm not so sure it's that. I think what he does actually, interestingly, politically, maybe to the detriment of his own political future. What he's quite, I think, smart on, though conservatives might hate it, is he turns over a lot of domestic policy to Labor. So why does Britain end up with the welfare state it has is because labor actually runs domestic policy during the war. He's turning to Attlee, and Attlee becomes deputy prime minister during the war. And what Churchill actually does is run a coalition really well. He runs a coalition government during the war and he gives Labor a great deal of authority because he actually doesn't like domestic policy. Churchill, he likes world policy and all of that. And that actually makes for a very effective team so that Britain has very strong bipartisan leadership during the war. And a lot of that is because Churchill is willing to cede power in the domestic area.
- [65:01]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
How about all his action this day memos? He's going to Bletchley park and saying, give Turing everything he wants. I mean, there's so much myth making around that. Was that creative? Was it constructive?
- [65:11]
Dan Snow
I hate this idea. Decisive moments, you know, that someone does one order at a changes the thing. Wars are run through the creation and application of strength. And it's not something where you wake up one morning and write an order and that changes everything. Personally, I don't get that excited by those kinds of moments. I'm more looking at the steadily accumulation and application of strength. And that's what Churchill does very effectively from 1940 onwards, is he continues building up British strength and actually using it quite effectively where he can.
- [65:44]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Phil, just one last thing about Churchill. He dies considering himself a failure. Well, he does contribute to the total destruction of Adolf Hitler and Nazism. But by his other own criteria, he does fail. The British Empire is utterly eclipsed.
- [65:58]
Dan Snow
Yeah, I mean, he is always fighting for the greatness of Britain. He is, in his mind, a British patriot. And he isn't fighting the war to have the United States and Soviet Union supplant Britain. That's not his primary Strategic goal. So you might say, yes, he defeats Hitler, but in many ways, tragically for him, he lives a very long life. He's very depressed after the war. William Leahy, who was Roosevelt's chief of staff and becomes friendly with Churchill and he visits Churchill in the late 40s in London, and Churchill invites him over to his house for dinner. And this is after Indian independence and Churchill is trying to scheme how to get India back and even how to get Ireland back. Churchill is living in a fantasy world, or a desperate fantasy world of trying to recreate the British Empire of 1900. And so that is for him ultimately a failure, that Britain does not remain what he wants it to remain.
- [66:57]
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
The leader that Britain needed in 1940 had a moment of astonishing peril. The war leader was not the peacetime leader that Britain needed or wanted. The British voters had become distrustful of the Conservative Party, of their foreign and domestic policies in the 1930s. They were distrustful of imperial rivalries, of foreign adventures. And so the very qualities, in some ways, that had made Churchill a great leader in war now doomed him in domestic politics. He was voted out decisively by the British electorate in July 1945. For six years he watched from the opposition benches, warning now of the dangers of rising Soviet power. In 1951, at the age of 77, he returned as Prime Minister. He didn't win more votes in that 1951 election, which means that Winston Churchill never got more votes than the opposition in any election in which he was leader. But the curiosities of the British electoral system saw his Conservative Party win slightly more seats than Labour. The Winston Churchill of his second premiership was not the Churchill of the war years. Age had caught up with him. His health faltered. He was no longer a great orator, nor was he an imperial strategist. He struggled to keep up with the shifting world order. Britain's empire shrank. The Cold war deepened. In 1955, Churchill stepped down. He handed power over to his long time understudy, Anthony Eden. A series of strokes left him weak. Churchill retreated to Chartwell, his beloved home. On January 24, 1965, 70 years to the day after his father's death, Winston Churchill passed away. His funeral was the greatest gathering of world leaders and monarchs for decades. The great cranes of the River Thames bowed as his coffin passed a silent salute to Britain's great wartime leader. In our next episode, we'll be looking at our next wartime leader, Benito Mussolini, the man who dreamed of a new Roman Empire, who seized power with grand promises of strength and order, only to leave Italy in ruins. His legacy a cautionary tale of ambition, dictatorship, hubris, terrible decision making and ultimate total failure. Join us on Wednesday 12th March for that one. Make sure you don't miss it. Just hit follow on Dan Snows history on your podcast player to get it automatically downloaded to your advice.
- [69:58]
Dan Snow
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