Winston S. Churchill: Never Despair, 1945–1965

By Martin Gilbert

The final volume of the acclaimed official biography: “A meticulously detailed and annotated account of Churchill’s declining years . . . A contemporary classic” (Foreign Affairs).
 
The eighth and final volume of Winston S. Churchill’s official biography begins with the defeat of Germany in 1945 and chronicles the period up to his death nearly twenty years later. It sees him first at the pinnacle of his power, leader of a victorious Britain. In July 1945 at Potsdam, Churchill, Stalin, and Truman aimed to shape postwar Europe. But upon returning home, was thrown out of office in the general election.
 
Though out of office, Churchill worked to restore the fortunes of Britain’s Conservative Party while warning the world of Communist ambitions, urging the reconciliation of France and Germany, pioneering the concept of a united Europe, and seeking to maintain the close link between Britain and the United States.
 
In October 1951, Churchill became prime minister for the second time. The Great Powers were navigating a precarious peace at the dawn of the nuclear age. With the election of Eisenhower and the death of Stalin, he worked for a new summit conference to improve East-West relations; but in April of 1955, ill health and pressure from colleagues forced him to resign.
 
In retirement Churchill completed his acclaimed four-volume History of the English-Speaking Peoples and watched as world conflicts continued, still convinced they could be resolved by statesmanship. “Never despair” remained his watchword, and his faith, until the end.
 
“A milestone, a monument, a magisterial achievement . . . rightly regarded as the most comprehensive life ever written of any age.” —Andrew Roberts, historian and author of The Storm of War
 
“The most scholarly study of Churchill in war and peace ever written.” —Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9780795344695

Martin Gilbert

Sir Martin Gilbert was named Winston Churchill's official biographer in 1968. He was the author of seventy-five books, among them the single-volume Churchill: A Life, his twin histories The First World War and The Second World War, the comprehensive Israel: A History, and his three-volume History of the Twentieth Century. An Honorary Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and a Distinguished Fellow of Hillsdale College, Michigan, he was knighted in 1995 'for services to British history and international relations', and in 1999 he was awarded a Doctorate of Literature by the University of Oxford for the totality of his published work. Martin Gilbert died in 2015. 

Book preview

Churchill in Morocco, January 1948

WINSTON S. CHURCHILL

by MARTIN GILBERT

VOLUME VIII

NEVER DESPAIR

1945–1965

Hillsdale College Press

RosettaBooks

2015

Hillsdale College Press

33 East College Street

Hillsdale, Michigan 49242

www.hillsdale.edu

Winston S. Churchill: Never Despair, 1945–1965 (Volume VIII)

Copyright © 1988 by C & T Publications Limited

Originally published in 1988 by William Heinemann Ltd. in Great Britain and by Houghton Mifflin in the United States.

All rights reserved. eBook edition published 2015 by Hillsdale College Press and RosettaBooks

Cover art by Jirka Väätäinen (based on photograph from P.A.-Reuter Photo, 26 October 1951)

Cover design by Jay McNair

ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795344695

www.RosettaBooks.com

For Susie

Contents

Illustrations

Maps

Preface

Acknowledgements to the New Edition

PART ONE: VICTORY 1945

1   ‘AN IRON CURTAIN IS DRAWN DOWN’

2   ‘SOME FORM OF GESTAPO’

3   PRELUDE TO POTSDAM

4   ELECTIONEERING

5   ‘TERMINAL,’ THE POTSDAM CONFERENCE

6   DEFEAT

PART TWO: IN OPPOSITION 1945–1951

7   ‘NOW THERE IS THE TUMBLE!’

8   ITALIAN INTERLUDE

9   ‘VAIN REPININGS’

10   THE FULTON SPEECH

11   VIRGINIA, WASHINGTON, NEW YORK

12   ‘VICTORY BLEAK AND DISAPPOINTING’

13   CHARTWELL, ‘THE CORPSE’ AND THE WAR MEMOIRS

14   ‘FULTON STILL HOLDS ITS OWN!’

15   ‘SCUTTLE, EVERYWHERE, IS THE ORDER OF THE DAY’

16   FAMILY, FRIENDS AND FEARS

17   ‘OUR BATTERED SHORES’

18   BRITAIN, ‘THE VITAL LINK BETWEEN THEM ALL’

19   ‘GRINDING AND GNAWING PEACE’

20   THE DREAM

21   MARRAKECH, 1947

22   ‘MY EXPERIENCE, WHICH IS UNIQUE…’

23   WRITING THE MEMOIRS, 1948

24   ‘HARD, HARD WORKING WONDERFUL PAPA’

25   ‘POOR OLD BRITAIN…’

26   PEACE, AND THE ATOMIC BOMB

27   THOUGHTS, AND PLANS, AT SEVENTY-FOUR

28   AN ELECTION LOST

29   ‘NO EXTINCT VOLCANO HE’

30   KOREA, AND THE ‘FRONT AGAINST COMMUNISM’

31   ‘NEW, STRANGE, GATHERING DANGERS’

32   RETURN TO MARRAKECH, 1950

33   ‘SUCH AWFUL HAZARDS’

34   ‘IT IS ONLY THE TRUTH THAT WOUNDS’

35   TOWARDS THE GENERAL ELECTION

PART THREE: SECOND PREMIERSHIP 1951–1955

36   PRIME MINISTER FOR THE SECOND TIME

37   TRANSATLANTIC JOURNEY, JANUARY 1952

38   1952: ‘A VOLCANIC FLASH’

39   ‘THE ZEST IS DIMINISHED’

40   RENEWED VIGOUR

41   TOWARDS SEVENTY-EIGHT, AND BEYOND

42   RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES

43   STALIN’S DEATH

44   THE CALL FOR A SUMMIT

45   STROKE

46   RECOVERY

47   STAYING ON: ‘I MAY… HAVE AN INFLUENCE’

48   THE BERMUDA CONFERENCE, DECEMBER 1953

49   ‘UNIMAGINABLE HORRORS’

50   TO RESIGN OR NOT TO RESIGN

51   SUMMER 1954: RETURN TO WASHINGTON

52   DISPUTES ON THE ROAD TO MOSCOW

53   ‘NO INTENTION OF ABANDONING MY POST’

54   PRIME MINISTER AT EIGHTY

55   DECISION TO RESIGN

56   THE CHALLENGE OF THE HYDROGEN BOMB

57   ‘A NEW CHANCE’

58   RESIGNATION

PART FOUR: FINAL DECADE 1955–1965

59   IN RETIREMENT

60   ‘DETERMINED TO PERSEVERE’

61   NEW STRENGTH, AND A NEW BOOK

62   ‘A TEMPLE OF PEACE’

63   TRAVELS AND REFLECTIONS

64   ‘THE CLOSING DAYS OR YEARS OF LIFE’

65   GOOD TIMES AND BAD

66   LAST YEARS

EPILOGUE

Maps

Endnotes

Illustrations

Section 1

1    Churchill and his wife leaving St Paul’s Cathedral, 14 May 1945 (Press Association Ltd)

2    Electioneering, 26 May 1945 (Press Association Ltd)

3    In the ruins of Hitler’s Chancellery, 16 July 1945 (Imperial War Museum)

4    Reviewing British troops, Berlin, 21 July 1945 (Albums of Field Marshal Earl Alexander of Tunis)

5    At Potsdam with Stalin and Truman, 17 July 1945 (Signal Corps Photo)

6    On his way to Buckingham Palace to resign, 26 July 1945 (Associated Press Ltd)

7    On his way to St Margaret’s, Westminster, to give thanks for the victory over Japan, 15 August 1945 (Keystone Press Agency Ltd)

8    At Metz, 14 July 1946 (Interpress, Paris)

9    In the United States, with General Eisenhower, 8 March 1946 (Charles T. Mayer)

10    With his son Randolph and his daughter Mary at an American war cemetery in Belgium, 15 July 1946 (Photo Helminger)

11    With Bill Deakin and Sarah Churchill at Marrakech, January 1948 (Churchill photograph collection)

12    In his study at Chartwell working on his war memoirs, 29 April 1947 (Life Photo by N. R. Farbman)

13    With the Duchess of Kent, May 1948 (Photo by A. Poklewski-Koziell)

14    With Clementine Churchill on holiday at Madeira, January 1950 (Foto-Perestrello’s, Madeira)

15    On his son Randolph’s election platform, Devonport, 9 February 1950 (Life Photo by Mark Kauffman)

Section 2

16    Re-elected, 26 October 1951 (P. A.–Reuter Photo)

17    Leaving Buckingham Palace, Prime Minister once more, 27 October 1951 (Sport and General Press Agency Ltd)

18    In Washington with President Truman, 5 January 1952 (White House photograph)

19    Anthony Eden, Churchill, Dean Acheson and President Truman, Washington, 5 January 1952 (White House photograph)

20    With the Queen, Princess Anne and Prince Charles at Balmoral, 30 September 1952, a photograph taken by Princess Margaret (National Trust)

21    Arriving in Jamaica with Christopher Soames and John Colville, 9 January 1953 (Churchill photograph collection)

22    With the Soviet Ambassador, Andrei Gromyko, at 10 Downing Street, 16 April 1953 (Keystone Press Agency Ltd)

23    At Margate, less than four months after his stroke, speaking at the Conservative Party Conference, 10 October 1953 (Keystone Press Agency Ltd)

24    The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh leave 10 Downing Street, 4 April 1955 (United Press International UK Ltd)

25    Speaking at Harrow, on becoming the first Freeman of the Borough, 24 November 1955, a sequence of four photographs (United Press International UK Ltd)

Section 3

26    At Chartwell, with his dog Rufus

27    On his eighty-first birthday at Chartwell, with his racehorse Gibraltar (photograph by Vivienne, Camera Press London)

28    With Anthony Eden, leaving 10 Downing Street, 15 February 1956 (United Press International UK Ltd)

29    With British troops in West Germany, 18 May 1956 (Headquarters Northern Army Group, Public Relations Photo Section)

30    With his daughter Sarah, and his host Emery Reves, in the South of France (Reves Collection, Dallas Museum of Art)

31    In the South of France (Paul Maze)

32    In the South of France, working on his last literary task (photograph by Emery Reves, Reves Collection, Dallas Museum of Art)

33    Golden Wedding, 13 September 1958 (United Press International UK Ltd)

34    With President Eisenhower at Gettysburg, 6 May 1959 (Churchill photograph collection)

35    Anthony Montague Browne (Cunard Line, Photograph by George V. Bigelow)

36    On board Christina, Capri, 27 July 1959 (United Press International UK Ltd)

37    At Chartwell, playing bezique, 1964 (Paris-Match)

38    Family mourners watch as Churchill’s coffin leaves St Paul’s Cathedral, 30 January 1965 (Topix)

One of Churchill’s pigs, drawn after his signature when writing to his wife (this one is from his letter of 11 March 1957)

Maps

1    The withdrawal of the Western Allies, July 1945

2    Eastern Europe and the ‘Iron Curtain’

3    Poland’s western frontier

4    Poland’s eastern frontier

5    Venezia Giulia

6    Turkey and the Straits

7    The Dardanelles and the Bosphorus

8    Churchill’s European journeys

9    Marrakech and the Canary Islands

10    The French Riviera

11    The journey to Potsdam, 1945

Preface

This volume spans Winston Churchill’s life from the defeat of Germany in 1945 to his death nearly twenty years later. It covers Churchill’s meetings with Truman and Stalin at the Potsdam Conference, his ‘Caretaker’ Government in the summer of 1945, his six years as Leader of the Opposition, his second premiership, from October 1951 to April 1955, and the final decade from his resignation until his death in 1965.

As with each of the preceding volumes of the biography, I am grateful to Her Majesty The Queen, who graciously gave me permission to seek guidance on various points from the Royal Archives, and to make use of the letters which both she and her father sent to Churchill on many occasions. I should also like to thank, for his guidance on a number of historical matters relating to Her Majesty, her Private Secretary, Kenneth B. Scott.

I am grateful to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother for permission to reproduce extracts from her letters to Churchill; and to her Principal Private Secretary, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Martin Gilliat, for his help. I am also grateful to His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, for his personal recollections of Churchill, and for permission to reproduce extracts from the letter which he sent to Lady Churchill following Churchill’s last dinner as Prime Minister.

For help in answering my various queries relating to the Royal Archives I should like to thank Oliver Everett, Librarian, Windsor Castle; Sheila de Bellaigue, Deputy Registrar; Miss Pamela Clark, Assistant Registrar, and the other members of the staff of the Royal Archives for their courtesy over many years. I should also like to thank Sir Oliver Millar, Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures.

I am grateful to the Editor of The Times, for allowing me to make two appeals for recollections and materials through his letter columns, the first in 1968 and the second in 1983; and to the late Roy Plomley, for encouraging me to make a similar appeal on Desert Island Discs. The response to these appeals was substantial, bringing me information about many episodes which would otherwise have gone unrecorded.

Churchill’s grandson, Winston S. Churchill MP, has also made material available to me, including the letters sent to his grandfather from Her Majesty The Queen.

In the late autumn of 1968, following Randolph Churchill’s death, I was asked to continue the work which he had taken up to the outbreak of the First World War. In doing so, I was fortunate to be able to make use of three interviews which he had conducted for the last phase of the biography, the first with Harold Macmillan (later Earl of Stockton), the second with Jock Colville (later Sir John Colville), the third with Emery Reves. I have also been able to use the notes which Randolph Churchill made of various meetings with his father after he had been asked, in 1961, to write this biography.

During the course of my researches, I was also helped considerably by Churchill’s daughter Sarah, Lady Audley, and by his daughter Lady Soames, who not only made available to me material from her mother’s archive, and her own, but has always been most encouraging to me in my task, as was her husband Lord Soames.

Since October 1968, when I began preliminary work collecting material for this volume, I was able to talk to many of Churchill’s colleagues and contemporaries who had worked with him during the post-war years. All those to whom I spoke were most generous of their time and recollections, as well as providing me with a considerable amount of historical material in the form of diaries, letters and documents. In the last months of 1968 I was fortunate to have a number of talks with Field Marshal Earl Alexander of Tunis. Earl Mountbatten of Burma gave me many vivid memories at a luncheon in London in 1975. I was later to have several talks with the Earl of Avon.

I am also grateful to Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Harris, for his help both in 1969 and again in 1984, a few months before his death; and to the Earl of Stockton for his help and encouragement over many years.

Five members of Churchill’s wartime and post-war Private Office have been exceptionally helpful in providing me with personal recollections, with documents from their private archive, and with comments and suggestions. In this regard, I am indebted to Sir John Colville, Sir David Hunt, Anthony Montague Browne, Sir John Peck and Sir David Pitblado, each of whom saw Churchill at close quarters during his years as Prime Minister. Anthony Montague Browne also gave me invaluable guidance for the years from 1955 to 1965, during which he was Churchill’s Private Secretary, guide and friend. Lady Sargant (formerly Mrs Anthony Montague Browne) has also been of considerable assistance to me in the portrayal of Churchill’s last years, when she saw so much of him.

Churchill’s secretaries of the war and post-war years have likewise been extremely generous of both time and recollections. For their indispensable help, I should like to thank Mrs Kathleen Hill, Mrs F. Nel (Elizabeth Layton), Mrs M. Spicer-Walker (Marion Holmes), Miss Elizabeth Gilliatt, Mrs R. G. Shillingford (Lettice Marston), Lady Onslow (Jo Sturdee), Lady Williams of Elvel (Jane Portal) and Miss Doreen Pugh. I am also grateful to Mrs James R. Bonar (Lorraine Bonar) for her recollections of Churchill’s visit to Miami in 1946, during which time she was enlisted as one of his secretaries. On all matters relating to Lady Churchill and to Chartwell, I am grateful, as in previous volumes, to Miss Grace Hamblin.

I have been considerably helped for many years by Sir William Deakin, who has discussed with me many of the controversial episodes in these pages, both from his personal recollections of his work with Churchill on the war memoirs, and from the perspective of one who was the first to study in detail the voluminous official and hitherto secret files of Churchill’s wartime premiership. Bill Deakin’s friendship has been a high point in my work since its very first days when, in October 1962, I was taken on by Randolph Churchill as a research assistant.

Another of those who were prominent in the preparation of Churchill’s war memoirs, Denis Kelly, has likewise given me the considerable benefit of his recollections of so much time spent working at Churchill’s side and on his behalf. I am also grateful to Eileen Wood, the daughter of Charles Carlyle Wood, for having made available to me a considerable quantity of material relating to her father’s work for Churchill on both The Second World War and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. In completing the latter work, Churchill was principally assisted after 1953 by Alan Hodge, whose widow, Jane Aiken Hodge, gave me the benefit of her recollections, both of her husband’s work with Churchill, and of her own meetings with him.

In the last years of his life, Churchill was frequently the guest of Emery and Wendy Reves at Roquebrune, in the South of France. I am grateful to both of them; Emery Reves for his vivid recollections of negotiating the foreign rights of Churchill’s post-war books, and Wendy Reves for her equally vivid memories of Churchill’s visits to their villa, La Pausa, known affectionately by Churchill as ‘Pausaland’.

Many others who worked with Churchill during the years covered by this volume, or who came in contact with him officially or socially, have given me their recollections and answered my queries in person or in correspondence. Their willingness to help is greatly appreciated. In this regard I should like to thank the Rt Hon. Julian Amery MP, Lord Annan, Paul Beards, Sir Isaiah Berlin, Natalie Bevan, Sir Francis Boyd, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, Graham Buckley, Desmond Bungey, David Butler, Lord Caccia, Alan Campbell-Johnson, Major Lord Desmond Chichester, George Christ, Lady Creswell, Lady Cromer, John Crookshank, John Davenport, Viscount De L’Isle VC, Piers Dixon, Neville Duke, Harold Edwards, His Excellency Eliahu Elath, Desmond Flower, Alastair Forbes, Donald Forbes, Lord Fraser of Kilmorack, Ronald Golding, Professor Albert Goodwin, Leslie Graham-Dixon, Kay Halle, Sir William Hayter, Lady Hayter, Jane Hoare-Temple, the Rt Hon. David Howell MP, Lieutenant-General Sir Ian Jacob, Professor James Joll, Sir John Langford-Holt, James Lees-Milne, Kenneth Lindsay, Miss Bella Lobban, Sir Donald MacDougall, Sir Steuart Mitchell, Charles J. V. Murphy, Yitzhak Navon, Philip Newman, Sir John Plumb, the Rt Hon. J. Enoch Powell, John Profumo, Hugh Pullar, Sir Denis Rickett, Professor Charles G. Rob, Lady Rowan, Sir Anthony Royle, Cecil de Sausmarez, Sir Herbert Seddon, Barbara Sharpe, Lord Sherfield, Robert Shillingford, David Stirling, Sir John Stow, Sir Charles Taylor, W. E. Tucker, Sir Ian Turbott, Colonel A. H. G. Wathen, Herman Wouk, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, Peter Woodard, Lord Wyatt of Weeford, Mrs E. L. Young and Count Stefan Zamoyski.

It would have been impossible to prepare such a substantial amount of material for publication without the help and guidance of many experts, archivists and custodians of archives, all of whom have been exceptionally generous of their time in answering my queries over many years. I am most grateful for the assistance given by J. C. Allen, Home Office; Barbara Anderson, Archivist, John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library; Phyllis Arnell, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food; Larry Arnn; His Excellency Yehuda Avner; R. Bailey, Curator, Chequers; Orly Bat Carmel; Kate Bateman, Reference Librarian, United States Information Service, London; P. Beaven, Army Historical Branch, Ministry of Defence; Judith Blacklaw, Whitehall Library, Ministry of Defence; Dr Peter Boyle; Jean Broome, Curator, Chartwell; Hinda Cantor; Julian Challis; Paula Chesterman, Manager, Punch Library Services; Meg Clarke, Loans Desk, Library and Records Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office; Michael Comay; C. R. H. Cooper, Search Department, Public Record Office; Gordon Cowan, Managing Editor, Daily Mail; Humphry Crum Ewing; Giles Curry; George H. Curtis, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri; Norman Davies, Registrar, General Dental Council; G. R. Deakin; Aenid de Vine Hunt; John Doble; the Marquess of Donegall; Sally Downes, Assistant Public Relations Manager, the Jockey Club; Dr Michael Dunnill; Feridun Cemal Erkin; Aurelius Fernandez, Press Attaché, United States Information Service; Jane Flink, Director of External Relations, Winston Churchill Memorial and Library in the United States; M. Floess, Assistant to the Cultural Attaché, Swiss Embassy, London; Dr Otto Frei, Neue Zürcher Zeitung; Tuvia Frilling, Director, Ben-Gurion Archives; His Excellency Rahmi Kamil Gümrükçüoglu; Paul A. Hachey, Assistant Curator, Beaverbrook Art Gallery; Joe Haines; Professor D. W. Hamlyn; Dr Philip Hanson; J. Harding, Army Historical Branch, Ministry of Defence; Ian Hillwood; Edythe M. Holbrook; Warren M. Hollrah, Museum Manager and College Archivist, Winston Churchill Memorial and Library in the United States; Alistair Horne; Myra Janner; Dr Martin Johnstone; Vladimir Khanzhenkov, Counsellor, Embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, London; C. Laken, Information Officer, Royal Netherlands Embassy, London; Richard M. Langworth, the International Churchill Society; David T. Leaker, Winston Churchill Society of Edmonton; Adrian Liddell Hart; W. M. Liesching; Robert Linsley, Secretary, Carlton Club; Major J. Locke, Regimental Headquarters, Coldstream Guards; Professor R. R. H. Lovell; Commander Shane Lyons, R.N., Ministry of Defence; Barb MacDonald, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick; Marilyn McLennan, Reference Library, Canada House; Joan McPherson, Library and Records Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office; Larry Mandel, Embassy of the United States of America, London; Stephen Marks; John E. Marshall, Vice President for Development, Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri; Jane Masini; Ann Mavroleon; Michael Mayne, Dean of Westminster; Charles E. Menagh; R. A. L. Morant, Chief Executive Officer, The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, Canberra; Kenneth Murphy, Archivist, Guardian; L. R. Muray, Diplomatic Correspondent, Liverpool Daily Post; Lord Napier and Ettrick; Elizabeth Ollard, Library Assistant, Royal Academy of Arts; Peter Olney, Curator of Birds, the Zoological Society of London; Nigel Owens, Home Office; Alan Palmer; Bill Phillips, Executive Director, British Technion Society; Mudgie Phipps; Professor Monte Poen; C. C. Pond, Public Information Office, House of Commons; Peter Quennell; Tim Radford, Guardian; Robert Rhodes James MP; Michael Rose; Frank E. Rosenfelt, Vice Chairman of the Board, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, United Artists; Jenny Rosser; Professor John P. Rossi; Edmund L. de Rothschild; John Sacher; Mrs Christian de Sausmarez; Marion Scheinberger, Chef du Secteur Europe 1, Comité International de la Croix-Rouge, Geneva; Eileen Schlesinger; Susanne Schumacher, Chef du Service des Archives, Comité International de la Croix-Rouge, Geneva; Erich Segal; Kevin Selly, Financial Times; Michael Sherbourne; Lord Sieff; Professor David C. Smith; Professor Denis Smith; Dr Bethel Solomons; Miss P. S. Tay; Edward Thomas; Edwin A. Thompson, Director, Records Declassification Division, National Archives and Records Service, Washington, DC; Nancy Tuckerman; Cornelius M. Ulman; Vicki Vinson, Curatorial Assistant, the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, Dallas Museum of Art; Ann Wasley, Reform Club; Gordon Wasserman; Bill West; Joan West, Conservative Central Office; Michael Whelan; John E. Wickman, Director, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas; Charles Wirz, Institut et Musée Voltaire, Geneva; Derek Wyatt; and Benedict K. Zobrist, Director, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri.

On military, naval and air matters, I have been guided once more by Dr Christopher Dowling, Keeper of the Department of Education and Publications, Imperial War Museum.

No historian of British policy in the Second World War, or of the post-war Attlee and Churchill premierships, can work without the documents available for research at the Public Record Office, Kew. My own indebtedness to the Keeper of the Public Record Office, G. H. Martin, and to his staff, particularly those of the Search Rooms and the Stacks, is immense. I am also grateful to Elizabeth Forbes, of the Cabinet Office Historical Section, to her successor, Miss P. M. Andrews, and to the Staff at Hepburn House.

As with each of the previous volumes of the biography, I am grateful to the Chartwell Trust for giving me access to Churchill’s papers, and to Lady Soames for access to the papers of Lady Spencer-Churchill, as well as to the owners, curators and custodians of several other sets of private papers for allowing me access, and for permission to reproduce in this volume material from the papers of the Earl of Avon, Lord Beaverbrook, Lorraine Bonar, Lord Boothby, Desmond Bungey, Alan Campbell-Johnson, Viscount Camrose, Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, Major-General Chater, the Hon. Randolph Churchill, Sir John Colville, Harry Crookshank, Admiral of the Fleet Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope, Lord Dalton, John Davenport, the 17th Earl of Derby, Piers Dixon, Sir Pierson Dixon, Lady Juliet Duff, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Alderman Donald Forbes, Leslie Graham-Dixon, Pamela Harriman, Sir James Hawkey, Lady Hayter, Jane Hoare-Temple, Denis Kelly, Sir John Langford-Holt, James Lees-Milne, Sir Shane Leslie, Bella Lobban, Daniel Longwell, the 11th Marquess of Lothian, the Countess of Lytton, Sir Edward Marsh, Sir John Martin, Charles V. Murphy, Gilbert Murray, the Earl of Oxford and Asquith (H. H. Asquith), Sir John Peck, Sir Richard Pim, Doreen Pugh, Hugh Pullar, Lord Quickswood, Emery Reves, the 5th Marquess of Salisbury, Lady Sargant, Sir Hugh Seddon, Robert Shillingford, Lord Soames, Lady Soames, Major-General Sir Edward Louis Spears, Lady Spencer-Churchill, Marian Walker Spicer, the Earl of Stockton (Harold Macmillan), Sir Charles Taylor, Harry S. Truman, Dr Chaim Weizmann, C. C. Wood and Herman Wouk.

I should also like to thank, for their help in access to material, F. Bartlett Watt; the BBC Written Archive Centre; the Butler library, Columbia University, New York; the Custodian of Chequers; the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library; the English-Speaking Union; Harrow School; the International Committee of the Red Cross; the Government of Israel State Archives; the National Trust; the House of Orange-Nassau Archive; the Royal Academy; the Harry S. Truman Library; and Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri.

I have indicated in the endnotes all printed sources used in this volume, and am grateful to their publishers for permission to quote from them. These sources are:

Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation, My Years in the State Department, New York 1969;

Lord Avon, The Eden Memoirs, The Reckoning, London 1965;

Lord Birkenhead, The Life of Lord Halifax, London 1965;

Sir James Bisset, Commodore, London 1961;

Lord Boothby, Boothby, Recollections of a Rebel, London 1978;

Lord Boothby, My Yesterday, Your Tomorrow, London 1962;

General Sir Tom Bridges, Alarms & Excursions, London 1938 (with a Foreword by Winston S. Churchill);

Arthur Bryant (editor), Triumph in the West 1943–1946, London 1959;

Harry C. Butcher, Three Years with Eisenhower, New York 1946;

D. E. Butler, The British General Election of 1951, London 1952;

David Butler and Anne Sloman, British Political Facts 1900–1975, 4th edition, London 1975;

Lord Butler, The Art of the Possible, the Memoirs of Lord Butler, London 1971;

Feridun Cemal Erkin, Les Relations Turco-Soviétiques et la question des Détroits, Ankara 1968;

Randolph S. Churchill (editor), The Sinews of Peace, Post-War Speeches by Winston S. Churchill, London 1948;

Randolph S. Churchill (editor), Europe Unite, Speeches 1947 and 1948 by Winston S. Churchill, London 1950;

Randolph S. Churchill (editor), In the Balance, Speeches 1949 and 1950 by Winston S. Churchill, London 1951;

Randolph S. Churchill (editor), Stemming the Tide, Speeches 1951 and 1952 by Winston S. Churchill, London 1953;

Randolph S. Churchill (editor), The Unwritten Alliance, Speeches 1953 to 1959 by Winston S. Churchill, London 1961;

Sarah Churchill, Keep on Dancing, London 1981;

Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life, London 1930;

Winston S. Churchill, Marlborough, His Life and Times, volume 1, London 1934; volume 4, London 1938;

Winston S. Churchill, Thoughts and Adventures, London 1932;

Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, volume 1, London 1948; volume 2, London 1949; volume 3, London 1950; volume 4, London 1951; volume 5, London 1952; volume 6, London 1954;

Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War and an Epilogue on the Years 1945 to 1957, London 1959;

Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, volume 1, London 1956; volume 2, London 1956; volume 3, London 1957; volume 4, London 1958;

Kenneth Clark, Another Part of the Wood, A Self-Portrait, London 1974;

Kenneth Clark, The Other Half, London 1977;

John Colville, Footprints in Time, London 1976;

John Colville, The Fringes of Power, Downing Street Diaries 1939–1955, London 1985;

Colin R. Coote, The Other Club, London 1971;

Richard Crossman (editor), The God That Failed, London 1950;

Richard Crossman, The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, 1964–1970, London 1975;

David Dilks (editor), The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, OM, 1938–1945, London 1971;

Benjamin Disraeli, Coningsby, London 1844;

William Y. Darling, Hades, the Ladies, London 1933;

Piers Dixon, Double Diploma, The Life of Sir Pierson Dixon, London 1968;

Charles Eade (editor), Victory, War Speeches by the Right Hon. Winston S. Churchill, OM, CH, MP, 1945, London 1946;

Robert T. Elson, The World of ‘Time Inc.’, The Intimate History of a Publishing Enterprise, 1941–1960, New York 1973;

Peter Evans, Ari, The Life and Times of Aristotle Socrates Onassis, London 1986;

Foreign Relations of the United States, 1946, volume 6, Washington 1976;

Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, volume 3, Washington 1974;

Walter Graebner, My dear Mister Churchill, London 1965;

Kay Halle (editor), The Irrepressible Churchill, London 1985;

Richard Harrity and Ralph G. Martin, Man of the Century, Churchill, New York 1962;

R. F. Harrod, The Prof, A Personal Memoir of Lord Cherwell, London 1959;

John Harvey (editor), The War Diaries of Sir Oliver Harvey, 1941–1945, London 1978;

Sir William Hayter, A Double Life, London 1974;

Roy Howells, Simply Churchill, London 1965;

James C. Humes, Churchill, Speaker of the Century, London 1980;

David Hunt, On the Spot, An Ambassador Remembers, London 1975;

Ralph Ingersoll, Top Secret, New York 1946;

Lord Ismay, The Memoirs of General the Lord Ismay, London 1960;

Norman McGowan, My Years with Churchill, London 1958;

Harold Macmillan, Tides of Fortune, London 1969;

Reginald Maudling, Memoirs, London 1978;

Paul Maze, A Frenchman in Khaki, London 1934;

Lord Moran, The Struggle for Survival, London 1966;

R. A. L. Morant, The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, Origins and Development, Canberra 1983;

Malcolm Muggeridge, Like It Was, London 1981;

Nigel Nicolson (editor), Harold Nicolson Diaries and Letters 1939–1945, London 1967;

Nigel Nicolson (editor), Harold Nicolson Diaries and Letters 1945–1962, London 1968;

J. W. Pickersgill and D. F. Forster, The Mackenzie King Record, volume 3, 1945–1946; and volume 4, 1947–1948, Toronto 1970;

Monte Poen (editor), Letters Home by Harry Truman, New York 1984;

Peter Quennell, The Wanton Chase, An Autobiography from 1939, London 1980;

Robert Rhodes James (editor), Chips, The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon, London 1967;

Robert Rhodes James, Anthony Eden, London 1986;

A. L. Rowse, Memories of Men and Women, London 1980;

Vasily Rozanov, Apocalypse of our Time, 1918;

Anthony Seldon, Churchill’s Indian Summer, London 1981;

Evelyn Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez, Diaries 1951–56, London 1986;

Ethel Snowden, Through Bolshevik Russia, London 1920;

Mary Soames, Clementine Churchill, London 1979;

Mary Soames, A Churchill Family Album, London 1982;

James Stuart (Viscount Stuart of Findhorn), Within the Fringe, An Autobiography, London 1967;

A. J. P. Taylor, Beaverbrook, London 1972;

H. de Watteville, Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford 1937 (entry for Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson);

Sir John Wheeler-Bennett (editor), Action This Day, Working with Churchill, London 1968;

Peter Willett, Makers of the Modern Thoroughbred, London 1984;

Harold Wilson, The Labour Government 1964–1970, A Personal Record, London 1971;

Harold Wilson, Memoirs 1916–1964, London 1986;

Frederick Woods, A Bibliography of the Works of Sir Winston Churchill, KG, OM, CH, London 1963 (revised 1969);

Philip Ziegler, Mountbatten, London 1985.

I am also grateful for permission to quote from the following newspapers, magazines and journals:

Atlantic Advocate; Birmingham Post; Chicago Sun; Daily Express; Daily Herald; Daily Mirror; Daily Mail; Dawn; Europe Today; Evening Standard; Finest Hour (the Journal of the International Churchill Society); Independent; Manchester Guardian; Miami Daily News; Modern Age; Neue Zürcher Zeitung; New York Herald Tribune; New York Journal-American; New York Times; Newsweek; Observer; Pravda; Sunday Dispatch; Sunday Express; Sunday Telegraph; Sunday Times; The Times; The Times Literary Supplement; Tribune; Woman’s Own; and Yorkshire Post.

W. Roger Smith, of William Heinemann Limited, has helped in the tracking down of several elusive queries. Elaine Donaldson scrutinized the typescript in its last phase, much to its benefit. On particular points of fact, I was helped in the proof stage by Michael A. Bentley, Manager, Claridge’s; Anthea Carver; Jeremy Carver; Terry Charman, Department of Printed Books, Imperial War Museum; Anna Girvan, Reference Librarian, United States Embassy, London; Dr Joseph Heller; Jane Masini; Captain Milewski, Polish Institute, London; Daniel Palm, Claremont Institute, California; Denis Richards; John Sacher; Christopher Sear, Public Information Office, House of Commons; Neil Somerville, Senior Assistant, BBC Written Archives Centre; Miss Wright, Reading Room, National Army Museum; and the Manager, Hôtel de Paris, Monte Carlo.

The maps were drawn, as for earlier volumes, by the cartographer Terry Bicknell, to whom I am most grateful. For help in proof reading, I should like to thank, as hitherto, both John Cruesemann and Lloyd Thomas, as well as Larry P. Arnn, Piers Dixon, Sir David Hunt and Michael Sherbourne. Until his last days, Sir John Colville, who had read the book in typescript, also gave the proofs the benefit of his thorough scrutiny, and answered my many queries. In the final weeks, I was helped in preparing the index by Paul Myer, Major Arthur Farrand Radley, Jane Steiner and Jessica Wyman. The last phase of the typing was undertaken by Angela Wharton.

For their willingness to house the Churchill papers for the duration of my work on them between 1968 and 1987, I would like to thank Bodley’s Librarian, and the Staff of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, in particular David Vaisey, Keeper of Western Manuscripts, who allowed me to use their own much needed space.

I must once more express my particular appreciation to the Warden and Fellows of Merton College, Oxford, who for twenty years have been exceptionally tolerant of a usually absent colleague.

Indispensable help in the financial aspects of the work was provided, when most needed, by Philip M. Hawley; by the Rockefeller Foundation, which in 1985 awarded me one of the annual Humanities Fellowships; and by the Churchill Society for the Advancement of Parliamentary Democracy, of Toronto, Chairman Professor McCormack Smyth, and F. Bartlett Watt, President, who first sent me material relevant to this final volume during the course of our early correspondence more than sixteen years ago.

The typing of this volume in all its stages was done by Sue Rampton, whose work has been of the highest standard, and deeply appreciated. For more than two years, the correspondence work was typed by Brenda Harry, to whom I am most grateful. I was also frequently assisted, and most ably helped, by my son David, and, in the last month of preparation of the typescript, by my daughter Natalie. Special thanks are also due to Christine Ashby.

More than seventeen years have passed since I received the first help, on the indexing of Volume 3, from my then assistant, now my wife, Susie. Her help since then has been of increasing and all-encompassing value, and indispensable. The contented reader of this volume, as of its predecessors, owes much to her criticisms, her suggestions and her guidance on all aspects of the work; her contribution to the biography is best acknowledged by the volumes themselves, and by these final words with which the work is ended.

Martin Gilbert

Merton College,

Oxford

8 February 1988

Acknowledgements

to the New Edition

The following foundations and individuals gave generous support for the publication of this volume: the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; the Earhart Foundation, Ann Arbor, Michigan; the late George B. Ferguson, Peoria, Arizona; Mr. and Mrs. Thomas N. Jordan, Jr., Healdsburg, California; Mr. and Mrs. Tim M. Roudebush, Lenexa, Kansas; Mr. and Mrs. Emil A. Voelz, Jr., Akron, Ohio; and the Saul N. Silbert Charitable Trust, Sun City, Arizona.

Part One

Victory

1

‘An iron curtain is drawn down’

Tired by the celebrations and concerns of victory, Churchill slept late into the morning of 9 May 1945. He awoke to news of the capture of Rangoon, ‘the splendid close of the Burma campaign’, as he telegraphed that day to Admiral Mountbatten.¹ After the liberation of Burma, the struggle against Japan would continue, in the Pacific, in Indo-China, in China, and in due course on mainland Japan, but, Churchill wrote to his constituency Chairman, Sir James Hawkey, ‘our greatest and most deadly foe is thrown to the ground’.²

After lunching in bed, Churchill set off by car, together with his daughter Mary, for the United States, Soviet and French Embassies. ‘At the Russian Embassy,’ noted his Private Office, ‘the Prime Minister made a short speech and toasts were drunk. At the other Embassies, the arrangements were less formal but equally cordial.’³ As he drove on to the French Embassy, Churchill’s progress was witnessed by a large crowd, among which was the writer Peter Quennell, who later recalled: ‘Around him, their horses hooves ringing over the tarmac, mounted policemen slowly cantered. Although his cherubic face shone, and he waved his hat and his cigar, he had a remote and visionary look, an air of magnificent self-absorption, as he rode in triumph high above the crowd.’⁴

In Moscow, Clementine Churchill was at the end of her long, exhausting, but equally triumphal tour of the Soviet hospitals which had been helped by her Red Cross fund. That noon, as Russia celebrated victory, she telegraphed to Churchill: ‘We all assembled here drinking champagne at twelve o’clock, send you greetings on Victory Day.’⁵

Among those whom Churchill remembered on that first day of peace in Europe were three former French Prime Ministers whom he had known before the war, and who had been held by the Germans for possible use as hostages: Léon Blum, Edouard Daladier and Paul Reynaud. ‘I send you my warmest congratulations on your liberation,’ Churchill telegraphed. ‘I need not tell you how often my thoughts were with you during the long years of your captivity nor how glad I am to be able to rejoice with you on this day of victory.’⁶ Churchill also telegraphed that day to Harry Hopkins, whose visit to him in January 1941 had marked the start of a close harmony of interests and activity. ‘Among all those in the Grand Alliance,’ Churchill telegraphed, ‘warriors or statesmen, who struck deadly blows at the enemy and brought peace nearer, you will ever hold an honoured place.’⁷

That night Churchill dined alone with his daughter Mary. He then appeared, as he had done on the night of May 8, on the balcony of the Ministry of Health, overlooking Whitehall. The crowd was equally large, and to its cheers he declared: ‘London, like a great rhinoceros, a great hippopotamus, saying, Let them do their worst, London can take it. London could take anything.’ He wished to thank the Londoners, he said, ‘for never having failed in the long, monstrous days and in the long nights black as hell’.⁸

Returning to No. 10 Annexe at Storey’s Gate, his principal home since the Blitz of 1940, Churchill worked until the early hours of the morning. Among the telegrams which he sent was one to President Truman in which he praised the ‘valiant and magnanimous deeds’ of the United States, first under Roosevelt and then, since Roosevelt’s ‘death in action’, under Truman. These deeds, Churchill declared, ‘will forever stir the hearts of Britons in all quarters of the world in which they dwell, and will I am certain lead to even closer affections and ties than those that have been fanned into flame by the two World Wars through which we have passed with harmony and elevation of mind’.⁹

Churchill had already telegraphed to Truman that day about the need for a meeting of the three heads of Government. ‘In the meantime,’ he noted, ‘it is my present intention to adhere to our interpretation of the Yalta Agreements and to stand firmly on our present announced attitude towards all questions at issue.’¹⁰ One of these questions was the control of the Italian province of Venezia Giulia, into parts of which Marshal Tito’s Yugoslav partisan forces had marched, but where the Allied forces under Field Marshal Alexander were in almost complete control. Tito’s forces had, however, entered the southern part of the Austrian province of Carinthia. ‘Trouble brewing with Yugoslavia,’ noted the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, in his diary on May 10. ‘Tito refusing to give way and occupying up to the Isonzo River and beyond. Also crossing the borders of Austria.’¹¹ To Tito, Churchill telegraphed that day, about Alexander’s armies: ‘It would be a great mistake I am sure for you to make an attack upon him. In such circumstances he has already the fullest authority to reply.’ This ‘trial of strength’, Churchill suggested, should be ‘reserved for the Peace Table’.¹²

That night, Churchill was due to broadcast to the nation. ‘I shall be listening to you tonight my darling,’ Clementine Churchill telegraphed from Moscow, ‘and thinking of you and the glorious five years of your service to the nation and to the world.’¹³

***

The first days of victory in Europe coincided with the news that fifteen Polish leaders, approved by Britain as possible members of a future Polish Government, had been arrested by the Soviet authorities and taken to Moscow, not as political negotiators, but as prisoners. ‘I do not see what we can do now in this interlude of joy-making,’ Churchill minuted to the Deputy Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, Sir Orme Sargent, on May 10. ‘Obviously this is a most grave question between the victorious States,’ Churchill added: ‘I do not feel I can say anything more to Stalin at the moment; but it may be a speech should be made in Parliament in the near future.’¹⁴ To Anthony Eden, who was then in San Francisco discussing the future of the United Nations World Organization, Churchill telegraphed on May 11:

Today there are announcements in the newspapers of the large withdrawals of American troops now to begin month by month. What are we to do? Great pressure will soon be put on us at home to demobilise partially. In a very short time our armies will have melted, but the Russians may remain with hundreds of divisions in possession of Europe from Lübeck to Trieste, and to the Greek frontier on the Adriatic. All these things are far more vital than the amendments to a World Constitution which may well never come into being till it is superseded after a period of appeasement by a third World War.¹⁵

In a second telegram to Eden on May 11, Churchill discussed two possible months for the General Election, June and October. June, he wrote, was thought by ‘general consensus’ to be better for the Conservative Party; October would leave Government ‘paralysed’ for too long and would result in the ‘many questions requiring settlement’ in the international sphere being ‘looked at from Party angles’. Eden had earlier been in favour of June, Churchill reminded him. ‘On the other hand,’ Churchill added, ‘the Russian peril, which I regard as enormous, could be better faced if we remain united.’¹⁶

Churchill set out his anxieties about Soviet policy, and the future of Europe, in a telegram to Truman, stressing the need to reach an immediate ‘understanding’ with Russia. The telegram, as sent on May 12, began:

I am profoundly concerned about the European situation. I learn that half the American Air Force in Europe has already begun to move to the Pacific theatre. The newspapers are full of the great movements of the American armies out of Europe. Our armies also are, under previous arrangements, likely to undergo a marked reduction. The Canadian Army will certainly leave. The French are weak and difficult to deal with. Anyone can see that in a very short space of time our armed power on the Continent will have vanished, except for moderate forces to hold down Germany.

Meanwhile what is to happen about Russia? I have always worked for friendship with Russia, but, like you, I feel deep anxiety because of their misinterpretation of the Yalta decisions, their attitude towards Poland, their overwhelming influence in the Balkans, excepting Greece, the difficulties they make about Vienna, the combination of Russian power and the territories under their control or occupied, coupled with the Communist technique in so many other countries, and above all their power to maintain very large armies in the field for a long time. What will be the position in a year or two, when the British and American Armies have melted and the French has not yet been formed on any major scale, when we may have a handful of divisions, mostly French, and when Russia may choose to keep two or three hundred on active service?

Churchill’s telegram continued:

An iron curtain is drawn down upon their front. We do not know what is going on behind. There seems little doubt that the whole of the regions east of the line Lübeck–Trieste–Corfu will soon be completely in their hands. To this must be added the further enormous area conquered by the American armies between Eisenach and the Elbe, which will, I suppose, in a few weeks be occupied, when the Americans retreat, by the Russian power. All kinds of arrangements will have to be made by General Eisenhower to prevent another immense flight of the German population westward as this enormous Muscovite advance into the centre of Europe takes place. And then the curtain will descend again to a very large extent, if not entirely. Thus a broad band of many hundreds of miles of Russian-occupied territory will isolate us from Poland.

Meanwhile the attention of our peoples will be occupied in inflicting severities upon Germany, which is ruined and prostrate, and it would be open to the Russians in a very short time to advance if they chose to the waters of the North Sea and the Atlantic.

Only ten days before Churchill used the phrase ‘Iron Curtain’ in this telegram to Truman, it had been used by the German Foreign Minister, Count Schwerin von Krosigk, in a broadcast to the German people. The broadcast, made on May 2, had been reported in The Times on the following day, the Count telling his listeners: ‘In the East the iron curtain behind which, unseen by the eyes of the world, the work of destruction goes on, is moving steadily forward.’¹⁷

Churchill ended his ‘iron curtain’ telegram:

Surely it is vital now to come to an understanding with Russia, or see where we are with her, before we weaken our armies mortally or retire to the zones of occupation. This can only be done by a personal meeting. I should be most grateful for your opinion and advice. Of course we may take the view that Russia will behave impeccably, and no doubt that offers the most convenient solution. To sum up, this issue of a settlement with Russia before our strength has gone seems to me to dwarf all others.¹⁸

On the most immediate cause of tension, Venezia Giulia, Churchill had received from President Truman what he described to Alexander as a ‘most robust and encouraging telegram’.¹⁹ ‘I must regard this as one of the most far-sighted, sure-footed and resolute telegrams which it has ever been my fortune to read,’ Churchill informed Lord Halifax, the British Ambassador in Washington.²⁰ In the telegram, Truman commented on reports that Tito had ‘no intention’ of abandoning the territory he had occupied in Venezia Giulia. ‘I have come to the conclusion,’ Truman wrote, ‘that we must decide now whether we should uphold the fundamental principles of territorial settlement by orderly process against force, intimidation or blackmail.’

The problem, Truman told Churchill, ‘is essentially one of deciding whether our two countries are going to permit our Allies to engage in uncontrolled land grabbing or tactics which are all too reminiscent of those of Hitler and Japan.’ It was therefore Truman’s wish that Alexander should obtain ‘complete and exclusive control’ of Trieste and Pola, the line of communication through Gorizia and Monfalcone, and an area ‘sufficiently to the east of this line to permit proper administrative control’. Truman also suggested that Stalin be informed of the Anglo-American view. ‘If we stand firm on this issue,’ Truman’s telegram ended, ‘as we are doing on Poland, we can hope to avoid a host of other similar encroachments.’²¹

In a telegram to Eden on that day Churchill stressed the need to keep before Stalin the Polish situation, including the plight of the fifteen prisoners. This should be done, Churchill explained, ‘by a vigorous press campaign and by the outspokenness which will no doubt be in any case necessary in Parliament’.²²

Truman’s telegram of May 12 confirmed a harmony of Anglo-American interests towards Russia which had not existed during Roosevelt’s wartime Presidency. It was an exchange, Churchill told Truman, ‘which shows how gravely we both view the situation’, and he added: ‘If it is handled firmly before our strength is dispersed, Europe may be saved another bloodbath. Otherwise the whole fruits of our victory may be cast away and none of the purposes of World Organization to prevent territorial aggression and future wars will be attained.’²³

***

Clementine Churchill now prepared to return to London. ‘I know of the international difficulties which have not been surmounted,’ she wrote to Stalin on May 11, before leaving Moscow, ‘but I know also of my Husband’s resolve & confidence that a complete understanding between the English Speaking World & the Soviet Union will be achieved and maintained as this is the only hope of the World.’²⁴

Early on the morning of May 12 Clementine Churchill reached Northolt. ‘Winston was determined to go and meet her himself,’ their daughter Mary has recorded, ‘but he did not leave Storey’s Gate quite in time, and Skymaster had to make a few extra tours round the airfield to allow a loving but tardy Winston to be on the tarmac to welcome home his Clemmie.’²⁵

From Northolt, Churchill and his wife drove to Chequers. The principal problem confronting Churchill there was that of the date of the General Election. He had already spoken to his principal Conservative Party colleagues on May 11, about whether the General Election should be held that summer, or in October, or postponed until the defeat of Japan, possibly not for another year or even more. James Stuart, the Chief Whip, suggested a summer election, on either June 28 or July 5. ‘Even though you may be in Conference with Allies,’ Stuart wrote, ‘this does not put me off:—I feel it might encourage the country to give you fresh strength.’

R. A. Butler preferred an October election. ‘I think it essential,’ he wrote, ‘that the Prime Minister should stand before the British public as a believer in a National broadbased Govt and should not appear to desire to go for a khaki or coupon election in the interests of his Party just after his great success in defeating Germany.’²⁶ Harry Crookshank was equally emphatic for avoiding a summer election. ‘Anything which looks like either cashing in on the Victory, or kicking out Labour,’ he wrote, ‘will in my view enormously damage the Tory party in the short run, at the Election, and in the long run all through the new Parliament if we get the majority.’

Duncan Sandys took a different view. ‘We should offer to go on as a Coalition until the end of the Japanese war,’ he wrote. ‘If this is refused, we should have an immediate June election.’ J. J. Llewellyn, in similar vein, suggested that Churchill should write to Attlee ‘& say that if there could be a continuance of the present Government for a period of, say, two years that would be the best solution’. If that ‘could not be achieved’, Llewellyn added, ‘then there is so much unsettlement in the position that there is no alternative but to seek a mandate from the people immediately’. This was also Oliver Stanley’s view.²⁷

On the following day, May 12, Clementine Churchill wrote to her husband—they were both at Chequers:

Winston,

As you wished, I have had a conversation with Leslie Rowan and have since reflected on this vexed question of the date for a General Election.

I feel that the interests of the country would be best served if the present Government could continue until the end of the war with Japan. I understand that you have suggested this to your Labour colleagues, but that they are unwilling to continue for so long? Could you not approach them again and try all your powers of persuasion? If, however, they persist in their refusal, I think if I were you I would then hold the Election when it suits you best. I do not see why you should be pinned down to October just because that is what the Labour Party want. But if it suits you best to have it in June, I feel it would be necessary to make a public announcement that you had asked your colleagues to continue until the end of the Japanese war, but that as they could not see their way to serve for so long, you think the next most appropriate date is the conclusion of the war in Europe.

Were you able to consult Anthony Eden before he left for San Francisco?

CSC.²⁸

Churchill had indeed consulted Eden before the latter’s departure. ‘When you left you were in favour of June,’ Churchill had telegraphed to Eden on May 11.²⁹ ‘I agree that a June election would probably be better for our party than an October one,’ Eden answered by telegram on May 12, ‘though Labour party will no doubt blame us for ending the coalition which the nation I believe would like to retain for a while yet. But any advantage they might derive from this would be lost as the campaign developed.’³⁰ Eden’s telegram, Churchill replied that same day, ‘is in general harmony with my own opinion and most of us here’.³¹

That weekend, at a meeting of Conservative Central Office Area Agents, ‘the majority view’, Ralph Assheton wrote to Churchill, ‘was in favour of an early election. There were only one or two who thought an advantage would be gained by postponing it until the autumn.’³² That same weekend, Colonel P. B. Blair, Political Secretary to the Scottish Whip, warned James Stuart, who at once sent the warning on to Churchill: ‘As regards the Service vote, from the purely Party point of view I should think that it would be best to have the Election as soon as possible, otherwise time will be given for the Labour Party to distribute propaganda among the Services, for instance to the effect that while Mr Churchill was everything that was good in wartime he will not do in peace time.’³³

***

At Chequers on May 12, for the first time since 1940, all Churchill’s children were together, Randolph having just arrived by air from Italy. Churchill worked that day until nearly four in the morning on his broadcast for the Monday evening. After further work on the speech during Sunday morning, he drove back to London for the Thanksgiving Service at St Paul’s. ‘The service was impressive but long,’ noted the Conservative MP, Henry Channon. ‘Winston was all smiles and Mrs Churchill, safely back from Russia, bowing and gracious.’³⁴

From St Paul’s, Churchill returned to 10 Downing Street for a meeting of the War Cabinet. The one topic for discussion was the continued presence of Yugoslav troops in Venezia Giulia and southern Austria. ‘PM very thrilled,’ Admiral Cunningham noted in his diary, ‘at getting Truman’s support over Yugoslavia.’ The ‘general opinion’ of the War Cabinet, Cunningham added, was ‘that we must stand up to Russia now or never’.³⁵

During the War Cabinet discussion, Churchill pointed out that Truman’s offer to delay the departure of American armies and air forces from Europe ‘at any rate for a few weeks’ might delay Britain’s own redeployment to the Far East, ‘with the result that some delay might be imposed on projected operations in South East Asia’, as well as delaying the British plans to begin European demobilization six weeks after the end of the war in Europe. ‘He believed, however,’ the minutes recorded, ‘that if the Governments of the United Kingdom and the United States took a firm line over the situation in Venezia Giulia and southern Austria, it would not in the event prove necessary to use force against the Yugoslav troops in these areas.’³⁶

If Tito should take ‘hostile action’, Truman telegraphed to Churchill on the following day, ‘and attack our Allied Forces anywhere, I would expect Field Marshal Alexander to use as many troops of all nationalities in his Command as are necessary’.³⁷

On the night of May 13 Churchill broadcast from Downing Street. ‘It was five years ago on Thursday last,’ he began, ‘that His Majesty the King commissioned me to form a National Government of all parties to carry on our affairs,’ and he added: ‘Five years is a long time in human life, especially when there is no remission for good conduct.’ During a short survey of Britain’s part in the war, Churchill had harsh words for the Republic of Ireland:

Owing to the action of the Dublin Government, so much at variance with the temper and instinct of thousands of Southern Irishmen who hastened to the battle-front to prove their ancient valour, the approaches which the Southern Irish ports and airfields could so easily have guarded were closed by the hostile aircraft and U-boats.

This was indeed a deadly moment in our life, and if it had not been for the loyalty and friendship of Northern Ireland we should have been forced to come to close quarters or perish for ever from the earth. However, with a restraint and poise to which, I say, history will find few parallels, His Majesty’s Government never laid a violent hand upon them, though at times it would have been quite easy and quite natural, and we left the Dublin Government to frolic with the Germans and later with the Japanese representatives to their hearts’ content.

In the course of his broadcast, Churchill had words of praise for ‘the Russian people, always holding many more troops on their front than we could’, and also of recognition of ‘the immense superiority of the power used by the United States in the rescue of France and the defeat of Germany’. Of the Anglo-American relationship, Churchill gave the view of those who ‘may say’, as he himself indeed believed: ‘It would be an ill day for all the world and for the pair of them if they did not go on working together and marching together and sailing together and flying together, whenever something has to be done for the sake of freedom and fair play all over the world. That is the great hope of the future.’

Churchill then spoke, without mentioning Stalin, the Soviet Union or Communism, of his fears for that future:

On the continent of Europe we have yet to make sure that the simple and honourable purposes for which we entered the war are not brushed aside or overlooked in the months following our success, and that the words ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’ and ‘liberation’ are not distorted from their true meaning as we have understood them. There would be little use in punishing the Hitlerites for their crimes if law and justice did not rule, and if totalitarian or police governments were to take the place of the German invaders.

We seek nothing for ourselves. But we must make sure that those causes which we fought for find recognition at the peace table in facts as well as words, and above all we must labour that the World Organization which the United Nations are creating at San Francisco does not become an idle name, does not become a shield for the strong and a mockery for the weak.

It is the victors who must search their hearts in their glowing hours, and be worthy by their nobility of the immense forces that they wield.

Churchill continued with a reference to Japan, which he described as ‘harassed and failing, but still a people of a hundred millions, for whose warriors death has few terrors’. Australia, New Zealand and Canada ‘were and are directly menaced by this evil power’. They had come to Britain’s aid ‘in our dark times, and we must not leave unfinished any task which concerns their safety and their future’. Churchill ended:

I told you hard things at the beginning of these last five years; you did not shrink, and I should be unworthy of your confidence and generosity if I did not still cry: Forward, unflinching, unswerving, indomitable, till the whole task is done and the whole world is safe and clean.

One phrase in Churchill’s broadcast struck many listeners as particularly personal. ‘I wish I could tell you tonight that all our toils and troubles were over,’ he said. ‘Then indeed I could end my five years’ service happily, and if you thought you had had enough of me and that I ought to be put out to grass I tell you I would take it with the best grace.’ This was not, however, to be, for, as Churchill went on:

…on the contrary, I must warn you, as I did when I began this five years’ task—and no one knew then that it would last so long—that there is still a lot to do, and that you must be prepared for further efforts of mind and body and further sacrifices to great causes if you are not to fall back into the rut of inertia, the confusion of aim and ‘the craven fear of being great’.³⁸ You must not weaken in any way in your alert and vigilant frame of mind. Though holiday rejoicing is necessary to the human spirit, yet it must add to the strength and resilience with which every man and woman turns again to the work they have to do, and also to the outlook and watch they have to keep on public affairs.³⁹

***

The Soviet Union had agreed in 1943 to enter the war against Japan once Germany had been defeated. A Soviet declaration of war, Churchill telegraphed to Lord Halifax on May 14, was desired ‘at the earliest moment’, but should not ‘be purchased at the cost of concessions prejudicing a reign of freedom and justice in Central Europe or the Balkans’.⁴⁰ Truman’s firm telegram, Churchill warned Field Marshal Smuts that day, ‘may result in a show-down with Russia on questions like the sovereignty and independence of Austria, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Poland’.⁴¹ As to when the British General Election would be, ‘Every rational argument points to a speedy election,’ Churchill telegraphed to Eden on May 14, ‘except the tremendous weight of unity in foreign affairs and especially towards Russia.’⁴²

During May 14 Churchill commented, on a telegram from Alexander about fresh efforts by France to take over parts of north-western Italy: ‘This is another instance of that landgrabbing on which the President animadverts in his No. 34.’ The matter should be taken up ‘at once’, diplomatically. It was at the Peace Conference that France ‘will have the opportunity of making her claims’, Churchill added, ‘and we must not forget that she was on our side, and in what shameful conditions she was attacked by Mussolini’.⁴³

A second minute on May 14 concerned the Allies’ reluctance to allow Admiral Doenitz, and those under him, among them General Busch, to give orders to the German population.⁴⁴ These orders were to tell the Germans to obey Allied instructions for the surrender of arms and the handing over of institutions and installations. ‘It is of high importance,’ Churchill wrote to the Deputy Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, Sir

Reviews for Winston S. Churchill

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

We have achieved the eighth volume in the official biography, and the long life ends. Martin Gilbert deals with the second term as Prime Minister, the final decline and the final spurts of creativity very well, I think. Looking back, an immense achievement, and not just by the subject of the biography. I especially liked the final interview of WSC with his father.

[Rob Van Es · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Everybody should read this. It is a must. I can hardly realise how much we own Sir Winston. And don’t forget to read the messages of the Queen!