June 29, 2013

Finest Hour 135, Summer 2007

Page 54

Books, Arts & Curiosities – Sinking Stone

Blood, Sweat and Arrogance and the Myths of Churchill’s War, by Gordon Corrigan. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 496 pages, hardbound £20, member price $45.

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By Robert A. Courts


This book might be subtitled, “What does an iconoclast do when the icons are broken?” Corrigan built his reputation with his previous Mud, Blood and Poppycock, a strident but generally well-received attack on the World War I generals. Now the ex-Gurkha major turns his gaze upon Churchill, with a professional soldier’s contempt for politicians, but certainly not a historian’s professionalism.

Corrigan, who lists “pricking the pompous” among his hobbies in the credits, is unable to understand that in total war, politics cannot be totally ignored. For example, he blithely asserts that Churchill’s “demands to sink the French fleet [at Oran in 1940 were] unnecessary, for… the French would have come to an agreement without the threat of force.” He has the luxury of such assumptions today; Churchill in 1940 could not take the risk. And he ignores the dynamic political effect of Britain’s action in the USA, where it was seen as proof that Britain would never surrender.

Anyone is free to hold Churchill in contempt, but to do so requires learning something about him. Significantly, Corrigan’s bibliography lists four books by David Irving but only one by Martin Gilbert—and that one not about Churchill. Yet, despite his title, Corrigan actually spends little time on Churchill, and almost none in analysis. His critical comments are rarely sourced, never explained, and overtly glib (“in view of his later treatment of Bomber Command”)—which avoids the tiresome evidential business of proving what one means.

Corrigan calls Churchill “a man who found it difficult to look beyond what he knew and was familiar with,” a statement that would not be made by anyone who has seriously studied the astonishingly prescient and innovative Prime Minister (tanks, Mulberry harbours, naval aviation, SOE, commandos, ad infinitum).

Another criticism cites Churchill as overruling the Chiefs of Staff, despite the well-known fact that he did nothing of the kind on a military issue, no matter how much he might have pressed them, much to his credit. And Churchill did meet serious resistance, not least from the iron-willed Brooke, whom Corrigan astonishingly refers to as “Churchill’s creature.”

The tone throughout is irritatingly smug, at times unworthy of a serious writer: “There is no question that Churchill was personally brave and completely unafraid of death. The trouble was that he was not afraid of anyone else’s death either.” (This is a bizarre comment to anyone who has read of Churchill’s anguish over Gallipoli, or his concern, expressed to Marshall, that a premature invasion of Europe would result in “a sea full of corpses.”)

And the book is often factually wrong. For example: “…originally destined for the infantry, [Churchill] chose instead to join an expensive and gorgeously caparisoned cavalry regiment.” Actually Churchill was never “destined” for the infantry.

Where he is not wrong, Corrigan is selective: he praises Britain for inventing the tank, but does not mention Churchill’s role in that enterprise. Nor does he give WSC credit for making the most of the few resources he had in 1940. Whatever “damage” Churchill may or may not have inflicted on the war effort, without him there would have been no war effort at all.

When Corrigan does stumble upon a valid historical controversy, he deals with it little better than he does Churchill. To one of the most hotly debated topics of the postwar years, the strategic bombing of Germany, he devotes three paragraphs, reaching the heights of analysis: “Dresden was just one more raid in a long war and was totally justified.” Worse, he does not seem to know whether he supports the policy or not, for when Churchill is involved, he is castigated for being “quick to evade the blame for his own policy.”

On the attempt to forestall Hitler in Norway, Churchill is seriously vulnerable to critical analysis; but Corrigan fails to provide it. He offers only his trademark snide remarks (“the great strategist himself… the great man”) and inappropriate language (WSC replaces a naval commander with a “chum.”)

Corrigan fails the basic requirement of a historian: to judge decisions made at the time by the facts known at the time. He criticises Churchill’s belief in the French Army as being “idiocy” that was to prove “utterly and completely erroneous in such a short space of time.” But he ignores the fact that everyone in Europe thought “la Grand Armée” unbeatable, and its swift defeat in 1940 was a shock for all Europe. Proper historians, moreover, do not describe actions or events with such simplistic phrases as “crassly idiotic,” nor describe those who disagree with them as “the Churchill faction.”

Corrigan holds that Churchill “was…the man who by his political actions between 1919 and 1929 contributed in very large measure to Britain being unready,” for the Second World War—as if there was no difference between Weimar Germany and the Third Reich. Churchill’s change of view on rearmament in the 1930s was owed, he says, to being “out of office, and increasingly unlikely to regain it… Churchill underwent a conversion that makes the Black Death look like a minor outbreak of the sniffles.” Such language is worse than mere silliness; it is, er, “crassly idiotic.”

The coverage of military aspects of the war is acceptable, but sadly, to use a Corriganism, the sound of grinding axes drowns out sensible narrative. Corrigan prefers the quick judgement and the glib throwaway, not a sustained and detailed analysis of difficult and controversial times. If you want reasoned criticism, you must turn to far better books, by such authors as Lamb, Charmley, Roskill, R.W. Thompson, and the Alan-brooke Diaries.

In proving his case that Churchill “was very nearly responsible for losing [the war],” Corrigan can only be judged to have failed. When ripples of such weird accusations subside (as they already have) the biggest stones sink fastest. In the great pool of Churchill literature, this book is destined to sink without trace.

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