In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War - Hardcover

Reynolds, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679457437 ISBN 13: 9780679457435

Publisher: Random House, 2005

Synopsis

Winston Churchill was one of the giants of the twentieth century. As Britain’s prime minister from 1940 to 1945, he courageously led his nation and the world away from appeasement, into war, and on to triumph over the Axis dictators. His classic six-volume account of those years, The Second World War, has shaped our perceptions of the conflict and secured Churchill’s place as its most important chronicler. Now, for the first time, a book explains how Churchill wrote this masterwork, and in the process enhances and often revises our understanding of one of history’s most complex, vivid, and eloquent leaders.

In Command of History sheds new light on Churchill in his multiple, often overlapping roles as warrior, statesman, politician, and historian. Citing excerpts from the drafts and correspondence for Churchill’s magnum opus, David Reynolds opens our eyes to the myriad forces that shaped its final form.

We see how Churchill’s manuscripts were vetted by Whitehall to conceal secrets such as the breaking of the Enigma code by British spymasters at Bletchley Park, and how Churchill himself edited the volumes to avoid offending postwar statesmen such as Tito, Charles de Gaulle, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. We explore his confusions about the true story of the atomic bomb, learn of his second thoughts about Stalin, and watch him repackage himself as a consistent advocate of the D-Day landings.

In Command of History is a major work that forces us to reconsider much received wisdom about World War II. It also peels back the covers from an unjustly neglected period of Churchill’s life, his “second wilderness” years, 1945—1951. During this time Churchill, now over seventy, wrote himself into history, politicked himself back into 10 Downing Street, and delivered some of the most vital oratory of his career, including his pivotal “iron curtain” speech.

Exhaustively researched and dazzlingly written, this is a revelatory portrait of one of the world’s most profiled figures, a work by a historian in full command of his craft.

“A fascinating account that accomplishes the impossible: [Reynolds] actually finds something new and interesting to say about one of the most chronicled characters of all time.” –The New York Times Book Review

A New York Times NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

A BEST HISTORY OF THE YEAR SELECTION –The New York Sun

About this title

About the Author

David Reynolds is a professor of international history at Cambridge University. He has held visiting positions at Harvard University and Tokyo’s Nihon University and is the author of eight books, including Rich Relations: The American Occupation of Britain, 1942—1945, one of his two prizewinning studies of Anglo-American relations in World War II. He lives in Cambridge, England.

Reviews

"We are all worms," the young Winston S. Churchill confided. "But I do believe I am a glow-worm." In his spin on World War II, told over six volumes and nearly 2 million words in which he depicts himself as seldom guilty of a mistake, Churchill indeed glows. Between 1923 and 1931, he had published a six-volume history of World War I and its aftermath, The World Crisis, which A.J. Balfour, a former prime minister, described as "Winston's brilliant Autobiography, disguised as a history of the universe." In that vein, David Reynolds, a Cambridge University historian, adroitly dissects Churchill's second vast war memoir, illuminating how and why it was written and its worth as narrative and chronicle. Churchill used his epics to build and buttress his reputation; In Command of History dismantles it.

The 1953 Nobel laureate for literature comes off here as rather deficient as a historian and human being. Eight years in the making, The Second World War earned millions in syndication and royalties that Churchill drew on to facilitate his self-indulgent lifestyle. Still, he was motivated more by his zeal for vindication than by financial greed or necessity. Ousted from office a month before the surrender of Japan in August 1945 as voters registered reluctance about having him manage the peace, he wanted to manipulate the way "his" war would be remembered.

When Churchill became prime minister in May 1940, he began to order official documents and correspondence set in type for his personal file, anticipating the history he knew he would one day publish. Having already "done" one war, he knew that it was easier to exploit contemporary papers than to write retrospective history. Also, time pressed. In his seventies when the war ended, he had survived several strokes, but he itched to be back in Downing Street. The project had to be completed while he was still in the political wilderness. And he had a plan.

He wrote history, Churchill once remarked, "the way they built the Canadian Pacific Railway. First I lay the track from coast to coast, and after that I put in the stations." He set up a sequence to shape the content, then employed research assistants, whom he called his "Syndicate," to gather relevant material and even ghost-write many of the chapters, each elaborately padded with "key pieces of evidence." (For The World Crisis, he apparently only cherry-picked his own documents.) His team included experts drawn from government, academe and the army. Churchill tweaked their drafts into his Augustan rhetorical style. He also deleted "many of the embarrassing parts" about his failures, especially where public bravado concealed private doubt.

To his credit, Reynolds reveals some haunting -- and humanizing -- examples drawn from the Churchill papers at Cambridge. Returning in June 1940 from visiting his tottering allies in France, the prime minister confessed to his military secretary, Gen. Hastings Ismay (later one of the Syndicate), "We fight alone."

"We'll win the Battle of Britain," Ismay insisted.

Bleakly, Churchill replied, "You and I will be dead in three months time."

Recalling this episode in July 1946, Ismay appealed to his interlocutor not to use it: "I would prefer that this intimate heart to heart conversation were never given to the world." Reynolds gives it to us.

The ongoing texts were typeset into galleys so that Churchill could see how they looked in print, but the Syndicate had no professional proofreader. That led to the description in one volume of the prewar French army as "the poop of the life of France." (Churchill meant "the "prop.") The error was more accurate than intended, but thereafter he engaged a professional to oversee the books' spelling and grammar.

Although Churchill was incensed when Time magazine referred in 1948 to his "squad of helpers," the press hardly noticed. As with many hyped books, critics reviewed the celebrity author, not the work. In a rare exception, Michael Foot, a journalist and member of Parliament, derided the initial volume in the Labour-affiliated Tribune newspaper as Churchill's Mein Kampf. And when parts of Samuel Eliot Morison's history of American naval operations were lifted for a chapter on the war at sea, Churchill only "rewrote the opening and sharpened some phrases." Morison noticed; unawed, he demanded future credit.

In the study at his home, Chartwell, usually after a well-lubricated dinner, Churchill would dictate dramatic, often embellished reminiscences that became the most striking aspects of the volumes. Some recollections were so personal (and so self-serving) that the Syndicate could not validate their authenticity. Having it both ways, Reynolds asserts that while "factual inaccuracy was balanced by poetic truth," the history, especially those parts told in the first person, is "willfully inaccurate," replete with "attempts to deceive his readers" (as in falsifying his schemes to thwart D-Day) and blatant cover-ups. As always, the purpose was to "reposition the image of Churchill."

Several tactics contributed to this. Churchill's centrality is enhanced by concealment and distortion (as with the agreements at Yalta, the advance on Berlin and various Churchillian strategic fiascos). Also, 20/20 hindsight is employed through a plethora of "counterfactuals," retrospective cases for the "ifs" of history -- things that allegedly weren't done, despite his urging. Reynolds also cites the gross suppressions in these pages. British anti-Semitism and the Nazi extermination camps vanish. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union remains only on the margins of Churchill's vision: The sweeping work includes almost nothing about the German catastrophe at Stalingrad, while El Alamein -- a lesser British victory at about the same time -- is magnified as the hinge of the war.

As the volumes soldiered on, and as his Labour successors began faltering, Churchill was also situating himself for a comeback. Writing now not only to vindicate his past stewardship but also to foreshadow his return to Downing Street (which he again inhabited from 1951 to 1955), he pulled his punches about autocrats and allies whom he abhorred (including Stalin, Tito and de Gaulle) and watered down his wrangles with Eisenhower.

Although Churchill conjured an epic, he wound up creating "a complicated literary text -- not entirely Churchill's work and not simply memoirs." Reynolds does not think this diminishes Churchill's achievement and suggests a parallel in the field of science, "where it is the norm for a major figure to direct a research group." Yet in a scientific publication, associated researchers are identified along with the primary author. Here, as Churchill intended, he stands alone. Beyond his financial incentives, he was fighting and managing two wars -- the historical one in which he was a senior statesman and a meddling strategist, and the emerging historiographical one that questioned his leonine self-image. The memoirs furnish an opportunity for Reynolds to examine Churchill's reinvention of his wartime role and the mechanics of his egocentric revisionism. Ironically, that may be their ultimate value. The history he wrote now seems much less magisterial than the history he made!

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Reviewed by Stanley Weintraub
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

For many, the fact that Churchill won his Nobel for literature comes as a surprise, but he was a prolific—and very well paid—historian and journalist. Awarded Britain's Wolfson History Prize, this highly readable book by Cambridge historian Reynolds supplies the backstory to Churchill's massive postwar publishing project: the epic The Second World War. As the author notes, he's writing "a book about personal biography and public memory," beginning with Churchill's crushing defeat in the July 1945 election and offering a unique perspective on WWII, the onset of the Cold War and Churchill's determination to write the history of the 20th century's signal conflict. But Reynolds's real achievement is his grasp of the motives behind that determination: "Churchill's sense of the fickleness of fame... impelled him to be his own historian." He quotes a 1944 letter to Stalin in which Churchill writes, "I agree that we had better leave the past to history, but remember if I live long enough I may be one of the historians." Packed with detail and vivid characterizations (but still clearly a scholarly, thoroughly researched work), it's a different take on one of the few men capable of both making history and writing it. 16 pages of b&w photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Subjecting Winston Churchill's monumental six-volume work The Second World War (1948-53) to historical scrutiny, Reynolds delivers a mixture of conclusions that, on the whole, reinforce the work's unique stature. In small and large ways, it has shaped popular and professional historians' perceptions of the global war of 1939--45, from naming it "the Second World War" to theses of its origin in appeasement and its outcome in the cold war. Reynolds seems all the more impressed because the work has survived abundant criticism. Churchill was not comprehensive; he was forced to omit the Ultra secret and was inclined to overlook the war in Russia and the Far East. Sometimes he got his facts wrong; sometimes he altered his text for his own purposes, such as his desire to return to power; and in Reynolds' view, he overindulged in counterfactual speculation. But Churchill was there at the center of events, portraying them with unsurpassed eloquence. Important scholarship, Reynolds' inquiry will intrigue the multitude that has read The Gathering Storm and its sequels. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 1

TO WRITE OR NOT TO WRITE?

Had churchill won the election of 1945, he would probably not have written his memoirs--certainly not in the form they did take. A further spell in office for such an exhausted man, assuming he survived, would have sapped his energy and dulled his appetite for any major writing project. But while electoral defeat made possible literary triumphs, Churchill did not retire from politics and statecraft. Such was the scale of his defeat in 1945 that he burned for political vindication, and the story of The Second World War is inextricably bound up with his zeal to keep on making history. Nor, despite expectations, did he embark straightaway on the war memoirs. He was to take the plunge only when the conditions were right, and they took time to establish. It was not until the spring of 1946 that Churchill resolved the conundrum: to write or not to write.

Between 1923 and 1931, Churchill had published six bulky and remunerative volumes on the First World War, entitled The World Crisis, which A. J. Balfour, the former Prime Minister, described as "Winston's brilliant Autobiography, disguised as a history of the universe." It seemed certain that another set of memoirs would follow the conflict of 1939-1945, and he made many comments during the war to this effect. One was recorded by his private secretary Jock Colville--a diarist with Boswellian aspirations--as Churchill mused expansively over brandy at Chequers in December 1940. He said that after the war he had no wish to wage a party struggle against the Labour leaders who were now serving so well in the coalition. "He would retire to Chartwell and write a book on the war, which he had already mapped out in his mind chapter by chapter. This was the moment for him; he was determined not to prolong his career into the period of reconstruction."

In November 1941, Churchill had a dinner conversation with William Berry, Lord Camrose--a close friend and also owner of the Daily Telegraph and Morning Post. According to Camrose, Churchill said that his intention was to retire immediately after England had "turned the corner," by which Camrose understood him to mean once victory had been achieved. He added that he was determined not to repeat the "ghastly error" made by David Lloyd George after his war premiership of 1916-1918, carrying on in office till humiliatingly pulled down in 1922. "While he did not say so," Camrose noted, "I am sure he also had in mind that he would make provision for his family. To do this he would have to be able to write."

Publishers had long been salivating about a new set of Churchill war memoirs. As early as 28 September 1939, Thornton Butterworth, who published The World Crisis, reminded Churchill that "although we are only in the early days of the war, there must come a time when authors will be able to lay down their arms and take up their pens once more." Butterworth hoped that Churchill would then write the history of the second "World Crisis" and entrust it to the publishers of the first World Crisis. He received only a curt acknowledgment from Churchill's secretary at the Admiralty. The following summer, Prime Minister Churchill was more interested by a proposal from Lord Southwood of Odhams Press for a £40,000 deal for four volumes. But with the Battle of Britain about to break, he scribbled on 2 August 1940, "I do not feel able to give this consideration yet." The following spring, the literary agency Curtis Brown, who had represented him for some years, constructed a bigger package involving Odhams and American publishers such as Houghton Mifflin, amounting to £75,000. From this point onward, such proposals received a standard reply from Kathleen Hill, Churchill's personal secretary, stating that he would make no decision about his war memoirs while in office.

After the 1945 election, however, the offers started flooding in. King Features, one of the world's leading newspaper syndicates, reminded him of their interest via a telegram sent at 6:36 P.M. on 26 July, before Churchill had even gone to the Palace to resign. That night, Emery Reves, who had handled foreign rights for many of Churchill's prewar articles, sent urgent telegrams from New York assuring Churchill that he could arrange the best possible terms for the memoirs and articles: "Could come [to] London for negotiations anytime." Curtis Brown sent equally importunate letters pressing their services. But Churchill was not to be tempted. The standard reply from Hill stated that Churchill was "not undertaking any literary work at the present time."

There were several reasons for Churchill's coyness. Having lost job, home, and reason for living in a matter of hours, he needed time to recover. In August 1945, the accumulated exhaustion of five years took hold. Also important was his tax status. On legal advice, Churchill had officially ceased to exercise his "professional vocation" as an author on 3 September 1939--the day he became First Lord of the Admiralty. Although his wartime speeches were published in six volumes between 1941 and 1946, all the editorial work was done by a journalist. Churchill was able to claim that he had not resumed his profession as an author. Thanks to this tax loophole, the substantial income earned by the war speeches was not subject to income tax at the punitive wartime rates. Any return to writing, even a single article, could jeopardize that favorable status, both in the present and retrospectively.

In secret, Churchill had already half promised any war memoirs to the London publishers Cassell and Company. On 24 November 1944, Churchill wrote to Sir Newman Flower, the head of Cassell's--who in the 1930s had published his four volumes on the first Duke of Marlborough--stating that "I shall be very pleased to give your firm a first refusal, at the lowest price I am prepared to accept, of publishing rights in serial and book form . . . in any work I may write on the present War after it is over." This was hardly a firm commitment. Churchill made clear, "I undertake no obligation to write anything," and, even if he did, "the lowest price I am prepared to accept" gave him plenty of room to refuse an unattractive offer.

In the weeks after the election, Churchill's intentions about the war memoirs remained unclear. According to Sir Edward Bridges, the Cabinet Secretary, on 28 July, Churchill "said he was not sure whether he would write his memoirs of the present war." He "thought he would do so but the work would not be completed for four or five years." On 7 August, Lord Camrose noted: "At the moment, he has decided that he will not publish his account of the war direction in his lifetime." And on 31 August, Churchill told Charles Eade, the editor of his war speeches, that he had received an offer of £250,000 ($1 million) from America for the memoirs and was confident he could write them in a year. But his present idea was that they should not be sold and published until some ten years after his death. Laughing, he said that he would quite like to have £250,000, but "in fact, I should get only 250,000 sixpences." Given current rates of income tax and surtax, Churchill faced the prospect of paying nineteen shillings and six pence in every pound (97.5 percent) of his literary earnings to the government. He told Eade, in a quip he had been using for half a century, "I agree with Dr. Johnson that only a block-head writes except for money."

Churchill's mood that summer was often very bleak. He complained to his doctor of depression and insomnia: "I go to bed at twelve o'clock. There is nothing to sit up for." He would wake at four, his mind full of "futile speculations," unless he took another sleeping tablet. "It would have been better to have been killed in an aeroplane, or to have died like Roosevelt," he said. Nor was family life much consolation. At the end of August, Mary Churchill received a poignant letter from her mother, written among the dustcovers and mildew of Chartwell: "I cannot explain how it is but in our misery we seem, instead of clinging to each other, to be always having scenes. I'm sure it's all my fault, but I'm finding life more than I can bear. He is so unhappy & that makes him very difficult." Winston was totally undomesticated. He had little understanding of the difficulties of daily life outside the official cocoon, complaining about the lack of meat, staff, and so on. For her part, Clementine was highly strung and needed frequent rests from her husband's emotional and practical demands. In a few days, she told Mary, "we shan't have a car. We are being lent one now. We are learning how rough & stony the World is."

The only ray of light was that Churchill spent most of September on vacation in Italy, staying in villas placed at his disposal by Field-Marshal Sir Harold Alexander and General Dwight D. Eisenhower. On 5 September he wrote to his wife, "I feel a great sense of relief which grows steadily, others having to face the hideous problems of the aftermath." Alluding to her comment on Black Thursday, he now struck a more positive note: "It may all indeed be 'a blessing in disguise.'"

At Lake Como, between painting fifteen pictures, he regaled his companions with recollections of 1940 and 1941, such as the "magic carpet" of Dunkirk and his first wartime meeting with Roosevelt, off Newfoundland. These had been brought ...

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679457437
• ISBN 13: 9780679457435
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 656