Reacquainting Myself with Winston

Yesterday afternoon, out of sheer boredom, I started to read The Grand Alliance, which is the third book in Winston Churchill's magisterial six-volume survey of World War Two. I had begun to read the series during senior year (probably in relationship to the class I was taking on the Third Reich, though I can't recall precisely), first The Gathering Storm, and then I think part of Their Finest Hour. I picked up a copy of The Gathering Storm and The Grand Alliance at a tag sale last summer, and they've been adorning my bookshelf ever since.

This is the description of the series from Amazon:

Churchill's six-volume history of World War II -- the definitive work, remarkable both for its sweep and for its sense of personal involvement, universally acknowledged as a magnificent historical reconstruction and an enduring work of literature. From Britain's darkest and finest hour to the great alliance and ultimate victory, the Second World War remains the pivotal event in our century. Churchill was not only its greatest leader, but the free world's most eloquent voice of defiance in the face of Nazi tyranny. His epic account of those times, published in six volumes, won the Nobel Prize in 1953.

They're not kidding about the "sweep" element to these books. Thanks to the USA's late entrance into the war, Americans aren't typically familiar with a lot of the great battles that were fought between 1939-1941, and Churchill takes you through each active theatre in painful, awe-inspiring detail. North Africa, Egypt, the Middle East, Malta, Greece, Crete, Turkey, the Balkans: vicious fighting was taking place in all of those places, chiefly between the British and German armies (as well as the Italians in their African Kingdom). There were incredible sea battles going on, as the British fleet fought to maintain control of the seas against the German U-boats, and keep the vital supply lines to North America open; at the same time, England itself was being pummeled from the air during the Blitz.

The personal element comes, of course, from Churchill's front-row seat to this unfolding drama-- first as the outsider who protested in vain against Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement, and then as the grimly victorious leader who promised: "We shall fight him by land, we shall fight him by sea, we shall fight him in the air..." His text is frequently supplemented by the actual letters, memos, and other communications that were going back and forth between him and the War Office, the Foreign Office, the generals in the field, etc., as well as his correspondence with Roosevelt, whom Churchill desperately needed on his side. Churchill was also able to include high-level Nazi communications, such as the missive Ribbentrop sent to the German ambassador in Moscow in June 1941, instructing him to obtain a personal meeting with Molotov in order to formally declare war on Soviet Russia.

Several things about this series, and about The Grand Alliance in particular, really strike me. For one thing, there have been so many incredible (and often terrible) advancements in the technology of warfare since WWII that it's surprising to read Churchill boasting of improvements to this new-fangled thing called "radar." Without the benefit of satellites, reconnaissance was still being done by planes and by agents on the ground, as in the case of British spies in the Balkans who warned of the massive build-up of armaments that signaled an imminent attack on Russia.

The whole idea of war has changed, as well. Writing about the British armies that had been engaged in a stand-off with the enemy in Northern Africa, Churchill wrote "In war, armies must fight." That's not true anymore; conflicts today are highly fragmented, mostly because the enemy has changed. Terrorists have guerilla tactics and IEDs instead of divisions and troop movements. Similarly, the high moral tone that Churchill and the Allied powers could take during WWII has soured for our day. Although terrorists are certainly extremist fanatics, there's just not the level of moral consensus, the sense of self-righteousness, that existed in WWII rhetoric. I think that a lot of people today realize that much of the hatred towards the West stems from our own policies toward the rest of the world.

In terms of style, Churchill's grand manner of eloquence is certainly suited to the scale of events. I think he expressed this in the transcription of his radio address on June 22, 1941, the day Germany invaded Russia. Churchill had long been forcefully anti-Communist, but in light of a new common foe, he announces that that must be forgotten:

"The past, with its crimes, its follies and its tragedies, flashes away...I see the 10,000 villages of Russia, where the means of existence was wrung so hardly from the soil, but where there are still primordial human joys, where maidens laugh and children play. I see advancing upon all this, in hideous onslaught, the Nazi war machine, with its clanking, heel-clicking, dandified Prussian officers, its crafty expert agents, fresh from the cowing and tying down of a dozen countries. I see also the dull, drilled, docile brutish masses of the Hun soldiery, plodding on like a swarm of crawling locusts. I see the German bombers and fighters in the sky, still smarting from many a British whipping, so delighted to find what they believe is an easier and a safer prey. And behind all this glare, behind all this storm, I see that small group of villainous men who planned, organized and launched this cataract of horrors upon mankind."

Despite the fact that we all know how this play ends, Churchill manages to maintains a sense of narrative tension, which is one of the things that makes it enjoyable to read. Another is Churchill's famously sardonic sense of humor, which only makes itself felt occasionally within such a formal context. One example is the memo drafted by his personal secretary regarding the day of the German invasion of Russia:

"After dinner, when I was walking on the croquet lawn with Mr. Churchill, he reverted to this theme, and I asked whether for him, the arch anti-Communist, this was not bowing down in the House of Rimmon. Mr. Churchill replied, "Not at all. I have only one purpose, the destruction of Hitler, and my life is much simplified thereby. If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons."

Oh, Winston.

There's been considerable criticism of Churchill's books since they were published; people have pointed out that the undertaking was similar in nature, if not in scale, to that of a prima donna reviewing her own ballet, and that his main purpose was to explain and excuse his choices. That is probably quite true--after all, this was the man who said "History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it." It's nearly impossible for anyone to be completely objective about themselves, especially politicians, and especially one who was unseated in the 1945 election after leading his people successfully through the war. People like that always have something to prove. What Churchill offers us is not necessarily the purest and most objective account of the war--that would have to wait for professional historians with greater distance from the subject--but an unparalleled vantage point of the events of 1939-45 via the mind of one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century. That, I think, will always be of value.