March 28, 2015

Finest Hour 127, Summer 2005

Page 37

By Richard M. Langworth

Churchill: The Unexpected Hero, by Paul Addison. Oxford U. Press, 308 pages, £30, member price $20.

The author of the seminal volume on Churchill’s domestic politics (Churchill on the Home Front, 1992) wrote this compact, thorough biography more or less by accident. After writing the Churchill entry for the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, it occurred to Professor Addison that his 30,000 words “could easily be expanded to a short work concentrating on an analysis of Churchill’s character and career.” The result is a treat. Professor John Ramsden accurately describes it: “…now by a long way the most recommendable short life of WSC. It seems quite amazingly fresh to me.”

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Unexpected Hero is full of arresting insights. Writing of official biographer Sir Martin Gilbert, for example, Addison is the first author to my knowledge to demonstrate that Gilbert is not bereft of opinion—a common critique by the ill-informed. He quotes Gilbert on Churchill’s failings over the Gallipoli episode, and several times to show how Gilbert illumines the often superior judgment of Clementine to Winston. And we naturally are proud of his numerous references to Finest Hour articles; he cites The Churchill Centre as “having done much to encourage debate,” despite its founding by Churchill admirers.

While balanced between praise and criticism, Addison is scrupulously accurate in areas where other biographers frequently trip. Lord Randolph likely died of a brain tumor, not syphilis; Winston’s “rash” act of leading the defense of Antwerp in World War I denied Germany early access to the channel ports; WSC wished to use tear gas, not poison gas, on Arab tribesmen; the phrase, “he mobilised the English language and sent it into battle,” is traced not to John Kennedy or Edward R. Murrow but to the English journalist Beverley Nichols. And so on.

A few minor nits: The mistaken notion about Indian forebears (7) is actually the first of two genealogical myths. It may be uncertain that “captivated” (77) is the right word to describe Churchill’s view of a fleet sailing up the Dardanelles to cow Constantinople; a lot of hard-headed analysis went into that strategy (see Finest Hour 126). The World Crisis is really a far better book than left-wing critics admit (110). Time in 1950 named WSC “Man of the Half Century,” not “Man of the Year” (224), which made their 2001 attempt to wriggle off the hook on “Person of the Century” all the more hilarious.

These are insignificant points, but we are not left without one major bone to chew: Churchill’s role in the bombing of Dresden. The account here is based on an unpublished paper by Sebastian Cox, a Ministry of Defence Air Historian. Cox is incorrect in detail, so far as I can can tell, and this seems the only instance where the author relies solely on the conclusions of someone other than himself.

Cox stated that Dresden was bombed as part of “Operation Thunderclap,” designed at Soviet request to demolish German morale in the closing stages of the war; that the Secretary for Air (Sinclair) and Chief of Air Staff (Portal) “would have preferred to concentrate on oil targets, but when they showed signs of hesitation Churchill settled the matter with a forceful demand for the implementation of the revised ‘Thunderclap.’ Cox believes Churchill acted so as to strengthen his hand at Yalta, where he was bound to argue with Stalin over Poland and other contentious matters.

But Martin Gilbert writes that the bombing of Dresden, though it did arise from a Soviet request, was not part of Thunderclap. It was the result of a specific Russian request sent to London while both Churchill and Portal were already en route to Yalta, and was acted upon by Attlee and the deputy chief of air staff. Gilbert doesn’t suggest that Churchill would have acted differently, since Dresden was cited as a military target. Churchill would have done almost anything to win the war. But Cox’s conclusions suggest a degree of frightfulness which cannot be ascribed.

Addison’s summary, “Churchill Past and Present,” is worth the price of the book. While acknowledging the legitimate doubts about Churchill’s judgement among colleagues and the public, he provides this unanswerable defense: “Churchill’s judgement was uneven but compared favourably with that of any of the three main political parties. He was generally consistent in his political beliefs and his apparent shifts were mainly a consequence of a fixed world-view applied to changing circumstances. In normal times, however, British politics had no need of a Man of Destiny.” (249)

Addison reminds us: “there was much truth in the Churchillian myth. Churchill was prophetic in his warnings of the dangers posed by the rise of Hitler. He was the founder and leader of a Coalition government that mobilized Britain for war. At the critical moment his leadership was decisive in ensuring that a compromise peace with Hitler was avoided. As a popular leader his inspirational powers were beyond dispute….he successfully resolved the problem of civil-military relations which had bedevilled the politics of the First World War. It is hard to imagine that any British Prime Minister could have done more to bind together the alliance of Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union.”

Where then is the myth? Addison continues: “It lies in the notion that he was always (or almost always) right, and more deeply in a denial of his true personality and the true character of his genius….Much of the so-called revisionism that began after his death, and offended the loyalists who guarded the statue, was not in the least anti-Churchillian. On the contrary it was an attempt to recover the full humanity, and the uneven, intuitive genius, of a character foreshadowed in Dryden’s lines on Achitophel: ‘a man so various that he seemed to be, not one, but all mankind’s epitome.’”

Paul Addison’s book completes a triumvirate of essential books for three different age brackets: Fiona Reynoldson’s Leading Lives for young people; Celia Sandys’ well illustrated and accurate Churchill for the more mature; and Unexpected Hero for a contemplative, judicious view of Churchill’s inimitable fifty-year career. From here, the reader logically moves to the longer, broader tomes like Gilbert’s single-volume life, Jenkins, Ramsden, Pelling, Charmley and Manchester, graduating finally to the magisterial official biography, which Addison acknowledges as the trunk from which all branches of modern Churchill studies start.