June 24, 2015

Finest Hour 122, Spring 2004

Page 40

By CHRISTOPHER H. STERLING

Churchill and Strategic Dilemmas Before the World Wars: Essays in Honor of Michael I. Handel, edited by John H. Maurer. Frank Cass, 164 pp., $79.95 hardbound; $26.95 softbound. Member prices to be determined but less than these; contact the editor or executive director.

Readers may ask (as I did): who was Michael Handel? During the 1990s, we learn here, he was a highly respected teacher and scholar in strategy and policy—and Churchill admirer—at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Before he died in 2001, Handel had hoped to write a book on Churchill as a strategist. This is one of three volumes of essays (the other two focus on different aspects of strategy) published in his memory, assembled by his War College colleagues and based on a conference held there.

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The anthology offers four scholarly papers: the book’s editor on ‘”The Ever Present Danger’: Churchill’s Assessment of the German Naval Challenge before the First World War”; Christopher Bell on “Pacific Security and the Limits of British Power, 19211941”; Brian McKercher on “The Limitations of the Politician-Strategist: Churchill and the German Threat, 1933-1939”; and David Jablonsky on “Churchill and Technology.” Each takes a different tack on Churchill and his changing role.

John Maurer is a professor of policy and strategy at the Naval War College (like the book’s honoree), and is writing a book on Churchill and Britain’s decline as a world power. He focuses here on the early 1900s battleship naval race with Germany (so well told in Robert Massie’s Dreadnought, 1991). Brought to the leadership of the Admiralty in the aftermath of the Agadir crisis of 1911, Churchill is seen here as fully aware of the danger to Britain if her fleet were seriously disabled. The prewar focus is shown here to be on the number of battleships built by each nation, with the Admiralty pegging its plans on those of Germany, trying to maintain at least a 60 percent advantage.

Churchill sought to impress on Germany the futility of trying to catch up to, let alone outbuild Britain. Cognizant of the costs of this race, in 1913 he formally proposed a “naval holiday” which would stretch out projected new ships over a greater number of years—in effect reducing the heat of the race. Maurer concentrates his essay on this complex process, including the all-important domestic political battles that underlay such pronouncements. Eventual German rejection of the move meant, as the author notes, that the two countries “would settle their naval rivalry by fighting and not by negotiation” (36).

Christopher Bell, formerly at the War College, teaches history at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He assesses Churchill’s concern over the growing threat posed by Japan in the years leading up to World War II. Even in the 1920s, Churchill saw the need to work closely with the United States to present a common front against an increasingly expansionist Japan. Still, Bell notes a 1928 Churchill comment that “of all the wars in the world [war with Japan] is the least likely to happen” (51). After all, the two countries shared an alliance that dated to the beginning of the century. And the Washington Naval Conference early in the decade seemed successfully to limit the size of Japan’s navy. Thus the extension of the “ten year rule,” first promulgated in 1919, to suggest war in the Far East was highly unlikely for another decade, which permitted budget cuts. As Bell makes clear, this rule played into a compromise between Churchill’s Treasury, concerned about expenses, and the Admiralty, which sought completion of its Singapore base, and more ships. By the mid-1950s, an out-ofoffice Churchill began to change his position, expressing growing concern about Japan’s intentions (as did some Whitehall ministries). But his worry about the parlous state of the RAF (facing a rearming Germany) meant that he paid little attention to naval needs in the Far East. Even in 1939 he argued the unlikelihood of a Japanese attack on far-off Singapore just as he (and others) felt naval power alone could hold off aggression. Events, of course, proved this to be wishful thinking. Still, Bell concludes that while “his policies towards the Far East may reveal his weaknesses as a strategist…they also highlight many of his strengths” (81).

McKercher, a revisionist, teaches history at the Royal Military College of Canada. He sees Churchill’s famous speeches against Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s as primarily the vehicle of a politician on the make: “Quite simply, he sought the premiership above all else; thus, his criticisms of British foreign and defense policy were less selfless than either he or his disciples later claimed” (88). Mr. McKercher evidently has not read much of WSC’s private correspondence at this time.

While this essay may raise eyebrows among FH readers, the author’s arguments can be perceived as something of a balance to possibly excessive praise of Churchill’s every move in this period. McKercher strongly defends both Baldwin and Chamberlain as working to rebuild British defenses just as Churchill was attacking their seeming inaction. Munich is seen here— and by other revisionists—as a vital play for time for rearmament to reach full effect. Churchill’s years in the political wilderness “resulted from his own follies, primarily his antipathy to Baldwin and Chamberlain,” during which, McKercher argues, “Churchill consistently exaggerated threats” (11011). Clearly with this chapter, the reader can choose sides: which, relatively, was stronger in 1939 than in 1938: Britain or Germany?

David Jablonsky, who teaches national security affairs at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, makes clear Churchill’s fascination with the options, weapons and transport technology in overcoming potential enemies, providing many Churchill quotes on the impact (sometimes literal) of newly-developed dumdum bullets, improved pistols, and later the tank and airplane. At the same time, Jablonsky notes, Churchill was often concerned about possible unintended effects of technological choice, as well as the ethics of certain approaches: “The basic problem, Churchill came to realize, was that technology had changed the scale of warfare” (126). Thus, before and during the Second World War, Churchill became fascinated with a variety of technical options, not all of them workable. Those that did work—such as signals intelligence—often made a huge difference in the outcome.

Taken as a whole, this is a very useful collection, carefully researched and written, and adding insight to what we know of Churchill’s varied diplomatic and military roles in a world that moved from cavalry charges to hydrogen bombs. Michael Handel would be pleased.