June 10, 2013

WIT AND WISDOM: FINEST HOUR 134, SPRING 2007

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BOPPING THE BOCHEE

AFTER “FIGHT IN THE HILLS,” did Churchill suggest socking the Germans with beer bottles?

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I have read somewhere that the speech in the House of Commons on 4 June 1940, was edited; and that Churchill allegedly said, after his “we shall fight in the hills” peroration, something to the effect of throwing beer bottles at the Germans, since there was no shortage of bottles. Is this true, or not? Sir Winston is my political role model; his conservative skepticism is the only sane perspective on the world, albeit depressive. LARS BERGLUND, LJUNBY, SWEDEN

This remark has been rumored (less in regard to the House speech than Churchill’s subsequent broadcast of it), but never completely proven. In fact, we can find only one reference, in a popular biography, Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness, by Robert Lewis Taylor (New York: Doubleday, 1952). Taylor, an itinerant biographer, wrote a good book because he managed to find and interview many people who knew Churchill as far back as the Boer War. But he provided no footnotes, so his attributions are hard to pin down. (You can easily find the book, which is very common—try the Bookfinder website). Taylor writes (223-24):

“There has always been some dispute about the aside that Churchill tacked onto his famous speech in which he promised that ‘We shall fight on the beaches,’ and in other local spots. After crying out the now familiar repetitions, accenting the ‘We shall fights’ like hammer blows, he finished, then added a half-whispered comment as he sat down. The best authorities say that his words were: ‘But God knows what we’ll fight with.’

“The version of the speech that he broadcast carried a positive amplification of this aside. One of England’s highest clergymen, who was present in the studio, reports that Churchill ended his speech, placed his hand over the microphone, and added, ‘And we will hit them over the heads with beer bottles, which is about all we have got to work with.'”

We are not sure who the “clergyman” could be, but the late Sir John Colville, who was present at all of the 1940 broadcasts, does not mention Churchill’s passing remark in his memoirs. Incidentally, it was this speech which gave rise to the claim that actor Norman Shelley substituted for Churchill and read his speeches over the BBC—a myth long since demolished. See here.

I am working on a lesson plan for a university seminar at Munich University and heard in a film that WSC spoke in the Commons in 1946 of the deaths of Hans and Sophie Scholl of the Munich resistance group “Weifie Rose.” Does this remark exist and how can I find it? ANDREW BOOT, COPENHAGEN, DENMARK

We found one source: Richard Lamb, Churchill as War Leader (London: Bloomsbury, 1991, 292): “After the war Churchill stated he had been misled by his assistants about the considerable strength and size of the anti-Hitler Resistance… ‘in Germany there lived an opposition which was weakened by their losses and an enervating international policy, but which belongs to the noblest and greatest that the political history of any nation has ever produced. These men fought without help from within or from abroad driven forward only by the restlessness of their conscience. As long as they lived they were invisible and unrecognisable to us, because they had to camouflage themselves. But their death made the resistance visible.'”

Lamb’s footnote to this passage reads: “Churchill’s remarks about the Resistance have been quoted by several German historians including Pechel in Deutscher Wilderstand. Doubts on whether Churchill really said these words have been cast, but Churchill wrote on 19 November 1946 to Walter Hammer of Hamburg:

” ‘Since the receipt of your letter I have had a search made through my speeches for the passage to which you and Count Hardenburg refer; but so far no record can be found of any such pronouncement by me. But I might quite well have used the words you quote as they represent my feelings on this aspect of German affairs.'”

Churchill makes no mention of the Scholls or WeifSe Rose, nor are these words in any transcripts. We would be very doubtful about quoting such offhand references in a film without attribution. Digital searches now enable us to search more thoroughly than ever, yet the only reference to these words, or even to partial phrases, is Richard Lamb’s book—with his cautionary footnote. We suggest you quote Lamb, not the film, and include Lamb’s footnote, which shows that although Churchill may not have said these exact words, he did share the sentiments. Thanks for a most interesting chase through the literature! RML