Churchill’s treatment at the hands of ‘Churchill Scholars’
Grimsdyke
In general, bone fide Churchill scholars have been fairly consistent in the way they handle his record, and what comes down to us is the image of a fiercely pugnacious, infinitely creative man of genius, with an incandescently brilliant mind who made both mistakes and their decided opposite, but whose motives throughout were gallant, noble, magnanimous ……and a host of other adjectives, none of which have any truck with mean-spiritedness, littleness, or spite or malevolence, or any of those characteristics that belong to lesser men. However, I have been puzzled beyond words by the treatment of certain parts of his record at the hands of some who had always seemed to be among the most discerning of ‘Churchill Scholars’.
A few years ago the BBC put out a 4-episode programme on Churchill which was written and presented by Martin Gilbert: it is available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVQg_ehSu6A
From 21:39 to 24:39 on the first episode, he deals with Winston Churchill's involvement with the Dardanelles campaign. These 3 minutes seemed to me, as I’m sure they would seem to anybody with a sound reading of the intricacies of that episode in World War I, a travesty consisting of half-truths and deliberate omissions of crucial facts to achieve a result that places the blame unfairly and almost slanderously on Churchill.
We all know, of course, that serious researchers from Alan Moorhead to Basil Liddell Hart and numerous other biographers have found that Churchill had little to do with the failures of the campaign, and in fact had been made the scapegoat of a debacle that owed everything to the blunders and mismanagement of others (Kitchener and Fisher particularly, and of course Asquith at a political level) and little, if at all, to any actual mistakes on Churchill's part. In fact the origin of the idea wasn't actually his: it was Hankey's first, and then enthusiastically taken up by a host of others – including Fisher, Gray, Asquith, and even Kitchener, and later Lloyd George with some initial misgivings. Subsequently, Churchill was exonerated by the Dardanelles Commission, although that Commission was, “struck by the atmosphere of vagueness and want of precision which seems to have characterised the proceedings of the War Council”.
Thus, Alan Moorehead: “in 1925, when Roger Keyes was in command of the Mediterranean fleet, he’s steamed through the Dardanelles and, according to Aspinall, who was with him, he could hardly speak for emotion. ‘My God’, he said at last, ‘it would have been even easier than I thought; we simply couldn’t have failed…… And because we didn’t try, another million lives were thrown away and the war went on for another 3 years.’
Thus, Clement Attlee: “in the whole of the First World War, there was only one great strategic idea, and that was Winston’s”. Attlee had been a soldier at Gallipoli.
Thus, Alastair Cook (from Keynote Speech, Churchill Society International Conference, New Hampshire, 27 August 1988): “Kitchener had seemed an Eisenhower-Montgomery-Nimitz, all rolled into one. He wasn’t, but we thought he was. We didn’t know then that his power was declining drastically, or that he was more than anyone morally responsible for the failure of the Dardanelles: he would not support the original expedition – would not produce the manpower or the materiel. But as you may have noticed, the deaths of a famous leader, especially by assassination, confers a halo. Kitchener was drowned and he got the halo. Churchill got the blame.”
However, all this (and countless other testimonials to the mistakes and blunders made by other men, but not Churchill, and the difficulties ‘on the ground’ caused by the fatal delays during that campaign) is seemingly completely ignored by the writer and presenter, Martin Gilbert. The icing on the cake is Gilbert’s inclusion of statements by AJ Silvester (principal private secretary to Lloyd George....... as if he would be impartial!) and Jimmy Page (British Army, Dardanelles 1915) and we hear them speak words that have virtually no other purpose than to drive home the message that it was Churchill’s vaulting ambition that made him not only careless of lives, but completely bullheaded and arrogant, and that he bore unmistakably the responsibility for the whole failure.
As I say above, this is scarcely believable from such a man as Sir Martin (Winston may well intone from the grave, “et tu Brute?”) — which makes me ask myself if this is in fact the result of some ‘creative editing’ by the BBC – who, with their traditional hostility to Churchill (which seems to have begun with John Reith), may well have omitted several minutes of counterbalancing argument and statement that might have been included in the original footing by Sir Martin. I’d be grateful if anybody on this forum can throw some light on this.
Dave Turrell
Maybe it’s my generation, but I am having a huge problem getting past the mental image of Jimmy Page standing on the beaches at Gallipoli and ripping off one of his trademark solos.
In general, I tend to be cautious when it comes to “Super-hero thwarted by dullards” historical narratives. It’s rarely that simple. The Dardanelles campaign has been debated endlessly in the past century, and I do not believe that the decisive blow has ever been struck by either side.
I did watch the series in question, several years ago, and recall being impressed by it. I have never been other than impressed by the late Sir Martin’s work.
Dave
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Bob Allen
Chris Bell
Chris
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From: Chris Bell <cmb...@eastlink.ca>
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Sent: Sunday, February 19, 2017 11:57 AM
Subject: Re: [ChurchillChat] Churchill’s treatment at the hands of ‘Churchill Scholars’
Richard Langworth
Sandy Finlayson
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Jon Reinhardt
Amazon has Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality listed for preorder at $49.95 which is steep for a paperback book. Hope the price comes down before publication.
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Richard Langworth
>>Amazon has Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality listed for preorder at $49.95 which is steep for a paperback book. Hope the price comes down before publication.<<
THIS IS NOT ACCURATE. IT IS A HARDBACK, NOT A PAPERBACK. AMAZON HAS THE WRONG INFO POSTED. DO NOT PRE-ORDER FROM AMAZON.
In order to provide a hardback edition before the paperback, I had to produce 350 advance orders, and have done so.
inexplicably, Amazon sells McFarland hardbacks at full list (49.95), a price I have objected to. However, the book will be offered by Hillsdale College Bookstore at a more reasonable $30-35. There will also be a Kindle at $26 and, later, a paperback at the same price, though the bookstore will be discounting that also. Meanwhile, DO NOT pre-order from Amazon and kindly wait for an announcement when the Bookstore is ready to start taking orders.
For a PowerPoint presentation on the book, and other presentations at the February 20th Hillsdale Churchill Conference, click on:
Chris Bell
Chris
Grimsdyke
From the amount of interest it has sparked, this seems to be indeed a worthy topic; I’m now glad I began it. These are great comments so far, and their greatest fascination for me is to see how and in what form many people approach the life of this great man. I hope the others on this forum will forgive me my habit of dipping in only on weekends, because to my great regret weekdays deprive me of even the smallest chance to indulge in Churchillian and other delightful fare.
It’s quite right, I think, to say that history is rarely so simple as to be reducible to ‘superhero thwarted by dullards’ narratives. But Churchill (I cannot think of anyone less suited to being pictured as an unnaturally muscled individual with sloping brow, flashing teeth and coloured cape) at his energetic best was much more impressive than an ordinary superhero, and thwarted he certainly was – if one would read the numerous accounts of the campaign with all its details exposed. As I said before, many accounts are equally instructive, but I find that among the most readable and consecutive of these are the accounts by William Manchester (The Last Lion), Violet Bonham Carter (Winston Churchill as I knew him) and Michael Shelden (Young Titan). Michael Shelden’s book is particularly interesting, and illuminating far beyond even some of the best biographies of Churchill that I have read (and I have read more than 30), and meticulously researched. I shouldn’t spoil it for those who would like to buy the book – which I can’t recommend too highly; but pages 306 to 322 cover the Dardanelles imbroglio with zest and superlative perspicuity, and you couldn’t possibly rise from reading the book without realising how much there was about Churchill that one hadn’t known before.
I think I’m inclined to agree with you, Chris Bell; 3 minutes is a suspiciously short time to allot to something as climactic in the Churchill record as the Dardanelles, and Martin Gilbert was hardly the man to overlook this.
I don’t think I could disagree much with Jonathan, although I have grave reservations about ‘not being able to fault Kitchener’ for his part in depriving the campaign of troops, and supplying too little too late. Michael Shelden is brilliant on this, as is William Manchester. Violet Bonham Carter, who had the almost unedited confidence of her father, Prime Minister Asquith, expresses a perspective deeper and more intimate and often more direct than any of the others, although her objectivity is somewhat vitiated by her loyalty to Asquith - as concerns the special sphere in which the Prime Minister's treatment of Winston bears on these events when things began to go wrong. Also, his almost treacherous lack of decisiveness is given scant exposure by his daughter, who not surprisingly obfuscates it. For all that, hers is a tremendously valuable book; superbly written, and readable in the extreme.
Violet makes it plain that Kitchener, after receiving an urgent appeal from Grand Duke Nicholas for the British to make a naval or military demonstration to draw off Turkish forces and ease the Russian position, had then commended the Dardanelles as the decisive place for such a ‘demonstration’ to Winston Churchill on the one hand, and made a corresponding pledge to Nicolas on the other. At the War Council on January 5 and 8th 2015, “Lord Kitchener once again expressed his preference for the Dardanelles as an objective”, and Col Maurice Hankey, whose brainchild the Dardanelles campaign had been originally, had minuted the practically unanimous agreement of the War Council upon this. “It seems strange” she writes, “that no one should have questioned the decision to ‘take the Gallipoli Peninsula’ without troops when Lord Kitchener had estimated that 150,000 would be sufficient for that purpose and yet had made it clear that no troops were available.” Later on, when troops became available for the Middle East, Col Hankey expressed to Prime Minister Asquith his strong view that naval operations should be supported by a military force; on February 16 the War Council agreed that the 29th division should be sent to Lemnos as the foundation of the military attack on the Dardanelles. “But it was not, alas, adhered to by Lord Kitchener”. The War Council did not accept the doctrine that sending men to ‘chew barbed wire on the Western front was the way to achieve victory, and Churchill was foremost among those who deplored the carnage and waste intrinsic to the ‘Western school of thought’.
At the request of Churchill, Asquith arranged an interview between Lord Kitchener and Winston in his presence, where Winston asked Kitchener whether he took full responsibility for the military operations and the strength of the forces needed to achieve success. “Lord Kitchener had once replied that he did and the Royal Naval division was handed over to his command.”
On March 18 when the whole Allied fleet of 14 British and 4 French battleships advanced to the Narrows and 3 battleships struck mines and sank, Admiral de Robeck refused to move without the army and the naval chiefs of staff refused to order him to renew the attack. Although Asquith agreed with Winston and Kitchener that the Navy ought to make another big push, he shrank from overruling the old Sea dogs. Sheldon is scathing on Asquith’s handling of the war (quite deservedly), and leaves us in no doubt as to how far he fell short of the qualities required of a wartime Prime Minister. Lloyd George’s perfidy has an equally bright light shone upon it!
Although Roger Keyes had pleaded with Admiral de Robeck to reverse his decision because waiting for the army would be fatal, the Admiral seemed to be (as Asquith said) ‘in rather a funk’. If the 29th division had been sent in February as originally intended, the landing of troops would have taken place before the Turks had time to pour in reinforcements and cover the Peninsula with a network of entrenchments. Within a day of the army’s landing in Gallipoli on April 25, the slaughter began — on the beach where, as Alan Moorhead writes, “the Marines walked in perfect safety 2 months before”. Even then Kitchener continued complacent; but, writes Violet, “Winston did not share Kitchener’s complacency. He was rightly disturbed by our tremendous losses, and took Fisher with him to the War Office where they both entreated Lord Kitchener to send immediate reinforcements from Egypt. Lord Kitchener began by doubting whether these were needed, but he yielded in the end and ordered an Indian Brigade and Territorial division to be sent from Egypt…. Had they been made available for the landing they would have been ready to follow up the advance on the 28th — when the Turks, exhausted and discouraged, were retreating. Now Ian Hamilton was obliged to wait until 6th May to start his new offensive. By then opportunity had passed, and though we threw in all our forces we gained only a few hundred yards. Trench warfare had begun.” There seems no doubt about Kitchener’s role in the debacle.
Michael Shelden writes, “As the situation went from bad to worse in the next few months, mistake after mistake was made, by both the Navy and especially the army, which tried to clear Gallipoli of Turkish troops who proved to be far more disciplined and determined than the British had been willing to believe. Beginning on 25 April, Australian and New Zealand troops joined…, and though both sides showed extraordinary bravery, they found themselves bogged down in the same kind of stand-off that prevailed on the Western Front. Tens of thousands died as the fighting dragged through the rest of the year. The rugged terrain, harsh weather and military incompetence turned Asquith’s ‘unique opportunity’ into one long misadventure that did nothing to change the course of the war. The blame for this tragic campaign was widely shared, but it was Churchill who was made to pay the price of failure.…… This setback was so big that a suitably big scapegoat was needed, and Winston was it. As soon as things began to go wrong, little time was wasted in pointing the finger of blame in his direction. It was in May 1915 that his colleagues and rivals began turning on him. As Prime Minister, Asquith had been the one to decide that the risk was worth taking. It was his responsibility to accept the consequences of failure. But he evaded it, as did Kitchener, who mishandled the Gallipoli campaign. As for Jackie Fisher, he would later pretend that he had been opposed to the Dardanelles plan all along.”
Yes, as Jonathan says, “life isn’t fair”. In Churchill’s case over the Dardanelles it was more than unfair; it was dastardly. The Dardanelles was a very good idea; various military historians have considered it brilliant. The only imaginative plan of the entire war, as Clement Attlee wrote.
Sebastien Haffner wrote, “the strategic concept was grandiose. Turkey, allied with Germany since October 1914, was relatively weak. The maritime location of the capital, Constantinople, rendered it vulnerable to attack by superior naval forces. If Constantinople fell, Turkey herself would probably collapse. This would at least establish a secure sea route to Russia, whose already depleted offensive strength could be restored by means of massive arms shipments. In addition, however, Serbia was still holding out, Bulgaria had yet to ally herself with Germany, and powerful political forces in Greece and Rumania were ready to side with the Allies if they won a victory in the region. The fall of Constantinople would provide the awaited signal, and the Balkans would burst into flames like a forest fire. From there, Austria could be brought to her knees, completely isolating Germany and threatening her with a war on 3 fronts instead of 2! This was strategy on a Napoleonic scale. It was also made to measure for Britain, with her vast naval forces and small but efficient army – far more suitable than the slow recruitment and training of immense armies destined for insertion in the bone-mill operated by static battles on the Western Front.
Also, it is incredible how swiftly the Little Men turned against Churchill. He was the ablest and most courageous of them, but their littleness paradoxically made them more powerful because they constituted the majority. As Sebastien Haffner says: “Churchill had no real backers. Kitchener was universally trusted and forgiven for all his failures. Churchill, in contrast, was regarded as untried and undependable. He needed successes in order to hold his ground, even with Prime Minister Asquith, the ultimate authority, who initially let him have his head with a kind of sceptical, amused benevolence – not unappreciative of his talent and originality and not without hope, but also coolly prepared to drop him at any time. Such was the position from which Churchill set out to direct the First World War. He took no trouble to secure or reinforce that position, and he upset his closest colleagues and assistants…. In their opinion, he behaved as if he knew it all. They were not so wide of the mark: he did indeed behave like that, but the tragicomic fact was he really did know it all.”
Bob, I take your point about a work that presents ALL the evidence leaving it up to the reader to form an opinion which is out of the hands of the author. But in most cases, we are dealing with works that do not present all the evidence; in fact most authors tend to present evidence selectively to bolster their particular viewpoint. We are aware of this essential characteristic of authors from the works of such as John Charnley, David Irving etc. etc. Of course, Martin Gilbert is a million miles away in the opposite direction from such folk as Charnley and his tribe, but the point is that the BBC programme to which I refer presents anything but all the evidence, and is as tendentious and slanted as it can be on the Dardanelles campaign – which is why I found it so baffling that it could have originated from Martin Gilbert. If anything, he would be fully aware of all the intricacies of the campaign from his voluminous research, and to be made to appear as the presenter of such a partial and biased account is a libel on the man. Of course, I cannot know what the terms of his contract with the BBC were; but if ‘intellectual integrity’ counts for anything, biased editing of a historian’s production should be challengeable in court. I’m surprised that this did not happen. I am grateful to Richard Langworth for the light he has thrown on this subject (22nd of February). That is indeed the explanation that makes greatest sense.
Richard, thank you for your caution about your recent book; I prefer to wait until the hardback edition becomes available, and I look forward extremely eagerly to reading it, as I do anything from your pen.
Grimsdyke
chateaust...@att.net
From: Grimsdyke <lincol...@gmail.com>
To: ChurchillChat <church...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2017 9:37 PM
Subject: [ChurchillChat] Re: Churchill’s treatment at the hands of ‘Churchill Scholars’
Grimsdyke
Chris Bell
Many thanks to Grimsdyke for his thoughtful comments on the Dardanelles/Gallipoli campaign. I hope I will be forgiven for a little blatant self-promotion. I have been attempting to get to the bottom of this subject since I first read The World Crisis many years ago, and will be the first to admit that it hasn't been easy. But over the last few years I have gone through the original documents systematically, utilized some sources that have been neglected by other historians, or were not available to them, and taken a fresh look at everything associated with the campaign from a sympathetic but critical eye. The results of my research are embodied in my new book, Churchill and the Dardanelles, which should be available in the UK within the next week or two, and everywhere else by May: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/churchill-and-the-dardanelles-9780198702542?cc=ca&lang=en&
I won't suggest that this will be the final word on the subject, but it offers much that is new (around half the book covers the period after Churchill leaves office in 1915, including a detailed discussion of the work of the Dardanelles Commission) and the conclusions are, I think, balanced and reasonable.
Chris
Cita Stelzer
Just pre-ordered it on Amazon US, due May 1 2017. Much looking forward to it.
Cita
chateaust...@att.net
ACHILLES IN THE TRENCH
Patrick Shaw-Stewart
I saw a man this morning
Who did not wish to die;
I ask, and cannot answer,
if otherwise wish I.
Fair broke the day this morning
Upon the Dardanelles:
The breeze blew soft, the morn's cheeks
Were cold as cold sea-shells.
But other shells are waiting
Across the Aegean Sea;
Shrapnel and high explosives,
Shells and hells for me.
Oh Hell of ships and cities,
Hell of men like me,
Fatal second Helen,
Why must I follow thee?
Achilles came to Troyland
And I to Chersonese;
He turned from wrath to battle,
And I from three days' peace.
Was it so hard, Achilles,
So very hard to die?
Thou knowest, and I know not;
So much the happier am I.
I will go back this morning
From Imbros o'er the sea.
Stand in the trench, Achilles,
Flame-capped, and shout for me.
Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2017 12:22 AM
Subject: Re: [ChurchillChat] Re: Churchill’s treatment at the hands of ‘Churchill Scholars’
Quinn Bastian
Sent from my iPhone
Jonathan,Very nice poetry. In the same line of thought, attached is the memorial the great Mustafa Kemal placed on the Gallipoli battlefield. Turkey could use another Ataturk today.....
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<GallipoliAtaturk.jpg>
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Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2017 2:13 PM
Subject: [ChurchillChat] Re: Churchill’s treatment at the hands of ‘Churchill Scholars’
Lincoln Jansz
Antoine Capet
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Royal Historical Society Bibliography
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Richard Langworth
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Lincoln Jansz
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