Perfect Preparation: What Churchill Learned from the First World War

Winston Churchill famously wrote about his feelings on becoming prime minister in May 1940, “ I felt as if I were walking with Destiny and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.” It was true, and no part of his life had been a better preparation than 1914–18. The way that Churchill learned from his and others’ mistakes of the Great War, putting the lessons to good use in the Second World War, is an object lesson in statesmanship.

On the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, Churchill set up the Admiralty War Group, which consisted of himself and the four most senior admirals there. It met daily—sometimes several times a day—to take all the most important strategic decisions. This concentration of power worked well, and agreed upon the overriding objectives for the Royal Navy in the conflict. Elsewhere in Whitehall, however, the organization of the war under Herbert Asquith, the prime minster, was ludicrously haphazard. Decisions were taken by a few ministers called together ad hoc in emergencies without minutes being taken. Only at the end of November 1914 was a War Council of eight members formed, which soon grew to thirteen. From his own experience, therefore, Churchill learned how important it was to take a grip on the organization of the central decision-making bodies and to keep the numbers involved as small as possible.

In the first days of the war, Churchill also set up a new Royal Naval Division, an infantry force under the control of the Admiralty rather than the Army, which was repeatedly to distinguish itself in action in many of the bloodiest engagements of the war. It proved the template for later units that he brought into being in the Second World War, such as the Special Air Service, Special Boat Service, Commandos, and Parachute Regiment.

Locus in quo

On 19 August 1914, only a fortnight after the outbreak of war, Churchill visited the mayors of Calais and Dunkirk to discuss the redoubts they were building there. His personal knowledge of these Channel ports was further enhanced in May 1918 when Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig gave him the Chateau de Verchocq in the Pas-de-Calais. Knowing the area intimately was to prove invaluable in the Second World War when decisions had to be taken about the defence of Calais