August 29, 2013

Finest Hour 106, Spring 2000

Page 14


Q: I am an undergraduate at Bristol University about to embark on a project of 10,000 words with the provisional title “Inconsistency or Uniformity? Churchill’s Actions and Attitudes Toward France from the Beginning of his Career until the Fall of France in June 1940”. Obviously I already have quite a substantial bibliography but any books, documentation or websites which you could suggest would be much appreciated.
-Rebecca Hardee ([email protected])

A: There is a passage in Churchill’s “The Dream” where he comments (to the ghost of his father) of a boyhood visit to the Strasbourg monument, draped in black, on the Place de la Concorde. “The Dream” is published in full toward the end of vol 8 of the official biography. Kersaudy’s book Churchill and de Gaulle, though an excellent source, is mainly about events after June 1940. Reynaud’s book In the Thick of the Fight (NY: Simon & Schuster 1955) is good on Churchill through May 1940. Of course the official biography should be combed for France references through volume 6. Then there are Churchill’s essays on Foch and Clemenceau (published in Great Contemporaries). And you should also check French references in Churchill’s two war memoirs, The World Crisis and The Second World War.

Q: What books did WSC read during his “university” period whilst in India?
-Robert Courts, UK

A: See My Early Life, chapter IX, in which he lists: Gibbon’s Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire (8 volumes) and Autobiography; Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome, History of England and Essays on Chatham and Frederick the Great; Lord Nugent’s Memorials of Hampden; Clive; Warren Hastings; Barere; Southey’s Colloquies on Society; Robert Montgomery’s poems; Plato’s Republic; The Politics of Aristotle; Schopenhauer’s On Pessimism; Malthus’s On Population; Darwin’s Origin of Species; Winwood Reade’s The Martyrdom of Man; Lecky’s Rise and Influence of Rationalism and History of European Morals; and Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations “…all interspersed with other books of lesser standing.”
-Paul Courtenay

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Q: Could you recommend some good books on Churchill and the Yalta Conference?
-Jason W. Jones

A: Begin with Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 7 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, London: Heinemann 1986). See the Yalta chapter in chief of staff Hastings Ismay’s Memoirs of General Ismay (London: Heinemann and NY: Viking 1960). You’ll find something also in John Colville’s The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries 1939-1955 (London: Hodder & Stoughton; New York: Norton 1985). Although Colville was not present at Yalta, he vividly describes how Churchill felt afterwards.

For the critical side see Clemens, Yalta (Oxford University Press 1970), and Kimball, Forged in War: Roosevelt, Churchill and the Second World War (NY: Morrow 1997). Clemens is pretty shrill, Kimball more measured. See also Jean Laloy, Yalta: Today, Yesterday, Tomorrow (English translation, NY: Harper & Row 1988). Laloy, a French historian of the Soviet Union, argues that the failures of Yalta were western misunderstanding of Stalin’s European policy. Laloy’s book is worth pondering. It’s rather naive to state, “It is difficult to understand what Roosevelt and Churchill feared,” but he accurately cites Churchill’s remark in his memoirs that in wartime, one is not always free to choose the ideal tactic.

My own view strictly as a layman is that too much Yalta analysis is based on long-distance hindsight. Things looked different when there were 300-400 German divisions still in the field. -Ed. 

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