June 1, 2015

Finest Hour 107, Summer 2000

Page 24

By Warren F Kimball

Churchill and the Soviet Union, by David Carlton. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 234 pages. Hardback published at $69.95, member price $58; trade paperback published at $19.95, member price $16.

On 15 September 1919, Winston Churchill penned a caustic warning about the Bolsheviks: “It is a delusion to suppose that all this year we have been fighting the battles of the anti-Bolshevik Russians. On the contrary, they have been fighting ours; and this truth will become painfully apparent from the moment that they are exterminated and the Bolshevik armies are supreme over the whole vast territories of the Russian Empire.”

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Twenty-five years later, in the aftermath of the Yalta Conference, Churchill commented: “poor Neville Chamberlain believed he could trust Hitler. He was wrong. But I don’t think I’m wrong about [trusting] Stalin.”

About a year later, on 5 March 1946, Churchill condemned the Soviet Union for dropping “an iron curtain… across the continent,” and for allowing Eastern Europe to be ruled by “police government.” “God has willed,” he declaimed, that the United States, not “some Communist or neo-Fascist state,” should have atomic bombs.

During Churchill’s last ministry in the early Fifties, he steadily plumped for a summit meeting with Stalin and then with Stalin’s successors. Just as he was leaving office for the last time, Churchill—Britain’s greatest war leader —seemed to have opted for geopolitical peace over ideological war.

Will the real Winston Spencer Churchill please stand up!

David Carlton, a lecturer at the University of Warwick and author of a critical but solid biography of Anthony Eden, has examined these and a raft of similar “somersaults” (to quote the back-cover blurb) and given us much to ponder. This book is a great deal more than a chronological survey of Churchill and the Soviet Union, although that provides the narrative thread. In each chapter, beginning with the Bolshevik Revolution and ending with Churchill’s last ministry, Carlton outlines Churchill’s position toward the Soviet Union, then summarizes the various theories and interpretations as to why he advocated that policy.

Some themes and questions repeatedly appear: fear and loathing for Bolshevism is one, the influence of domestic politics—both personal and party—is another. Is Churchill simply a flexible geostrategist? Is he an ideologue? Is he an opportunistic politician? Or is he a little of all three? Carlton uses his considerable historical imagination, discusses past and current scholarship, and presents or cites the documentary evidence. Most important of all, he raises difficult, awkward questions about Churchill’s motives and actions.

Those who want to understand Churchill and not merely to praise him should make a note here and now to read this book, regardless of what comes in the rest of this review.

This study does not masquerade as an “objective” academic survey of various interpretive schools of history, even if it summarizes them. Carlton does not sit on the fence. He is sympathetic to the “Tory revisionism” offered long ago by Maurice Cowling (The Impact of Hitler), but much too sensible and restrained to accept the superficial and foolish Churchill depicted by John Charmley. Carlton’s Churchill is subtle and clever, whatever the bombast of his rhetoric. And so is this author.

Carlton’s Churchill consistently operates from domestic political imperatives. He had to curry support within the Conservative Party, since he was an ex-Liberal with no base in his new political home. At the same time, he needed to soften the anti-worker image he gained during the 1926 General Strike. Churchill “courted” Soviet Ambassador Ivan Maisky and the USSR in the summer of 1939, to no effect internationally. But, speculates Carlton, that gave him “unexpected respectability on the British Left which served to strengthen his chance of obtaining the Premiership…Had he perhaps foreseen this all along?”

Churchill used language that was, for Carlton, comparatively more gentle on Hitler and Mussolini than were WSC’s harsh, emotional words about the Bolsheviks. But most of all, Carlton’s Churchill is an “appeaser,” perhaps the most value-laden word in British political history. Following a discussion of the points of agreement between Churchill and Chamberlain during the 1930s (rearmament, working with fascist Italy, a preference for victory by the anti-communist Franco in the Spanish Civil War, no thought of an alliance with the Soviet Union), Carlton wonders: is it “too far-fetched to speculate that had Chamberlain, on becoming Prime Minister in May 1937, made Churchill his Foreign Secretary, the two men might have easily worked in as close a partnership during the late Thirties as they were actually to do in the summer of 1940?” (Carlton later claims that Franco became an asset to American and British leaders during the Vietnam War!)

But “appeasement” seems more a method than a policy, since Carlton uses the same word to describe Churchill’s policies toward the Soviet Union during his premiership. This prompts some curious and dubious comments. Carlton claims that Churchill’s inclination to “appease” Stalin was “decisively reinforced” by Franklin Roosevelt at the Teheran Conference in November 1943, a time when FDR was “in weakening health and increasingly under the influence of his pro-Soviet adviser [Harry] Hopkins…”

Granted, Hopkins was the President’s “alter ego” until early 1944 when both illness and personal considerations forced Hopkins to move out of the White House, where he had lived since May 1940. But during the Teheran meeting, FDR’s health was reasonably good. He had high blood pressure, but the first report of a “heart attack” (congestive heart failure) came after the conference. And Roosevelt’s policy of using the wartime alliance to promote long-term cooperation with the USSR was most evidently his own, and had been adopted since at least summer 1941.

For those who find consistency the “hobgoblin of little minds,” Churchillon-Russia would qualify for the largemind award. Certainly that is where Carlton comes out. In a somersault worthy of Churchill himself, Carlton manages to rescue his protagonist by condemning him for hypocrisy and political sail-trimming. Carlton’s Churchill may waffle a bit for practical and political reasons, but he never loses his bedrock distrust and contempt, even hatred, for the Bolsheviks and the Soviet Union—despite what he said about Stalin after Yalta.

Carlton may be right, but he is answering the wrong question. Whatever Churchill’s personal attitude toward the Soviet Union, it is his behavior as a leader that is historically important. There it comes out a bit different. The two periods when he promoted cooperation with the USSR—”Allied with Hell” is Carlton’s chapter title for the Second World War era—were precisely the two periods when he was Great Britain’s Prime Minister. That high office breeds a sense of responsibility is a near-cliche. In charge, Churchill acted more responsibly and repeatedly searched for ways to promote trust, confidence, and cooperation between the West and the Soviet leadership. Out of office, he could rant and rave (play to the crowd?) without affecting the interests of Great Britain.

One last observation. Perhaps Winston Churchill did not become dizzy with all his somersaults. This is impressionistic—but my sense is that when Churchill as Prime Minister referred to the “Bolsheviks,” he was thinking of ideology. When he referred to the “Russians,” he was thinking of geopolitics. His ideology certainly affected his policies as Prime Minister, but his geopolitical assessments of British interests routinely prevailed. Whether or not those assessments were wise is a different question that requires a different book.

Dr. Kimball ([email protected]) is Treat Professor of History at Rutgers University, an academic adviser to The Churchill Center, author of Forged in War, and editor of the diree-volume FDR-Churchill Correspondence.