I think our thanks are to you for bringing the topic up. The discussion has
been (in my sage and well-considered opinion) most fruitful and I have
appreciated all the insights. Well played, gentlemen!
Jonathan Hayes
From: Grimsdyke <lincoln.ja...@gmail.com>
To: ChurchillChat <churchillchat@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2017 9:37 PM
Subject: [ChurchillChat] Re: Churchill’s treatment at the hands of ‘Churchill
Scholars’
>From theamount of interest it has sparked, this seems to be indeed a worthy
>topic; I’mnow glad I began it. These are great comments so far, and their
>greatestfascination for me is to see how and in what form many people approach
>the lifeof this great man. I hope the others on this forum will forgive me my
>habit ofdipping in only on weekends, because to my great regret weekdays
>deprive me of eventhe smallest chance to indulge in Churchillian and other
>delightful fare. It’s quiteright, I think, to say that history is rarely so
>simple as to be reducible to ‘superherothwarted by dullards’ narratives. But
>Churchill (I cannot think of anyone lesssuited to being pictured as an
>unnaturally muscled individual with sloping brow,flashing teeth and coloured
>cape) at his energetic best was much moreimpressive than an ordinary
>superhero, and thwarted he certainly was – if one would read the
>numerousaccounts of the campaign with all its details exposed. As I said
>before, manyaccounts are equally instructive, but I find that among the most
>readable andconsecutive of these are the accounts by William Manchester (The
>Last Lion), Violet Bonham Carter (Winston Churchill as I knew him) andMichael
>Shelden (Young Titan).Michael Shelden’s book is particularly interesting, and
>illuminating far beyondeven some of the best biographies of Churchill that I
>have read (and I haveread more than 30), and meticulously researched. I
>shouldn’t spoil it for thosewho would like to buy the book – which I can’t
>recommend too highly; but pages306 to 322 cover the Dardanelles imbroglio with
>zest and superlative perspicuity,and you couldn’t possibly rise from reading
>the book without realising how muchthere was about Churchill that one hadn’t
>known before. I think I’minclined to agree with you, Chris Bell; 3 minutes is
>a suspiciously short timeto 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 thinkI could disagree much with Jonathan, although I have grave
>reservations about ‘notbeing 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 isWilliam Manchester. Violet Bonham Carter,
>who had the almostunedited confidence of her father, Prime Minister Asquith,
>expresses aperspective 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 makesit plain that Kitchener, after receiving an urgent appeal from
>Grand DukeNicholas for the British to make a naval or military demonstration
>to draw offTurkish forces and ease the Russian position, had then commended
>theDardanelles as the decisive place for such a ‘demonstration’ to
>WinstonChurchill on the one hand, and made a corresponding pledge to Nicolas
>on theother. At the War Council on January 5 and 8th 2015, “Lord Kitcheneronce
>again expressed his preference for the Dardanelles as an objective”, andCol
>Maurice Hankey, whose brainchild the Dardanelles campaign had beenoriginally,
>had minuted the practically unanimous agreement of the War Councilupon this.
>“It seems strange” she writes, “that no one should have questionedthe decision
>to ‘take the Gallipoli Peninsula’ without troops when LordKitchener had
>estimated that 150,000 would be sufficient for that purpose andyet had made it
>clear that no troops were available.” Later on, when troopsbecame available
>for the Middle East, Col Hankey expressed to Prime Minister Asquithhis strong
>view that naval operations should be supported by a military force;on February
>16 the War Council agreed that the 29th division shouldbe sent to Lemnos as
>the foundation of the military attack on the Dardanelles. “Butit was not,
>alas, adhered to by Lord Kitchener”. The War Council did not acceptthe
>doctrine that sending men to ‘chew barbed wire on the Western front was theway
>to achieve victory, and Churchill was foremost among those who deplored
>thecarnage and waste intrinsic to the ‘Western school of thought’. At
>therequest of Churchill, Asquith arranged an interview between Lord Kitchener
>and Winstonin his presence, where Winston asked Kitchener whether he took
>fullresponsibility for the military operations and the strength of the
>forcesneeded to achieve success. “Lord Kitchener had once replied that he did
>and theRoyal Naval division was handed over to his command.” On March 18when
>the whole Allied fleet of 14 British and 4 French battleships advanced tothe
>Narrows and 3 battleships struck mines and sank, Admiral de Robeck refusedto
>move without the army and the naval chiefs of staff refused to order him
>torenew the attack. Although Asquith agreed with Winston and Kitchener that
>theNavy ought to make another big push, he shrank from overruling the old
>Seadogs. 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 requiredof a wartime Prime Minister. Lloyd George’s perfidy has an
>equally bright lightshone upon it! AlthoughRoger Keyes had pleaded with
>Admiral de Robeck to reverse his decision becausewaiting 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 Februaryas originally intended, the landing of
>troops would have taken place before the Turks had time to pour in
>reinforcementsand cover the Peninsula with a network of entrenchments. Within
>a day of thearmy’s landing in Gallipoli on April 25, the slaughter began — on
>the beachwhere, as Alan Moorhead writes, “the Marines walked in perfect safety
>2 monthsbefore”. Even then Kitchener continued complacent; but, writes Violet,
>“Winstondid not share Kitchener’s complacency. He was rightly disturbed by
>ourtremendous losses, and took Fisher with him to the War Office where they
>both entreatedLord Kitchener to send immediate reinforcements from Egypt. Lord
>Kitchenerbegan by doubting whether these were needed, but he yielded in the
>end andordered an Indian Brigade and Territorial division to be sent from
>Egypt…. Hadthey been made available for the landing they would have been ready
>to followup the advance on the 28th — when the Turks, exhausted
>anddiscouraged, were retreating. Now Ian Hamilton was obliged to wait until
>6thMay to start his new offensive. By then opportunity had passed, and though
>wethrew in all our forces we gained only a few hundred yards. Trench warfare
>hadbegun.” There seems no doubt about Kitchener’s role in the debacle.
>MichaelShelden 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, whichtried to clear Gallipoli of Turkish troops who proved to be far
>moredisciplined and determined than the British had been willing to
>believe.Beginning on 25 April, Australian and New Zealand troops joined…, and
>thoughboth sides showed extraordinary bravery, they found themselves bogged
>down inthe same kind of stand-off that prevailed on the Western Front. Tens
>ofthousands died as the fighting dragged through the rest of the year. The
>ruggedterrain, harsh weather and military incompetence turned Asquith’s
>‘uniqueopportunity’ into one long misadventure that did nothing to change the
>course ofthe war. The blame for this tragic campaign was widely shared, but it
>wasChurchill who was made to pay the price of failure.…… This setback was so
>bigthat a suitably big scapegoat was needed, and Winston was it. As soon as
>thingsbegan to go wrong, little time was wasted in pointing the finger of
>blame inhis direction. It was in May 1915 that his colleagues and rivals began
>turningon him. As Prime Minister, Asquith had been the one to decide that the
>risk wasworth taking. It was his responsibility to accept the consequences of
>failure.But he evaded it, as did Kitchener, who mishandled the Gallipoli
>campaign. Asfor Jackie Fisher, he would later pretend that he had been opposed
>to theDardanelles plan all along.” Yes, asJonathan says, “life isn’t fair”.
>In Churchill’s case over the Dardanelles itwas more than unfair; it was
>dastardly. The Dardanelles was a very good idea; variousmilitary historians
>have considered it brilliant. The only imaginative plan ofthe entire war, as
>Clement Attlee wrote. SebastienHaffner wrote, “the strategic concept was
>grandiose. Turkey, allied with Germanysince October 1914, was relatively weak.
>The maritime location of the capital,Constantinople, rendered it vulnerable to
>attack by superior naval forces. IfConstantinople fell, Turkey herself would
>probably collapse. This would atleast establish a secure sea route to Russia,
>whose already depleted offensive strengthcould 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 theAllies if they won a victory in the
>region. The fall of Constantinople wouldprovide the awaited signal, and the
>Balkans would burst into flames like aforest fire. From there, Austria could
>be brought to her knees, completelyisolating Germany and threatening her with
>a war on 3 fronts instead of 2! Thiswas strategy on a Napoleonic scale. It was
>also made to measure for Britain, with her vast naval forces and smallbut
>efficient army – far more suitable than the slow recruitment and trainingof
>immense armies destined for insertion in the bone-mill operated by static
>battles on the Western Front. Also, it isincredible how swiftly the Little
>Men turned against Churchill. He was theablest and most courageous of them,
>but their littleness paradoxically madethem more powerful because they
>constituted the majority. As Sebastien Haffnersays: “Churchill had no real
>backers. Kitchener was universally trusted andforgiven for all his failures.
>Churchill, in contrast, was regarded as untriedand undependable. He needed
>successes in order to hold his ground, even withPrime Minister Asquith, the
>ultimate authority, who initially let him have hishead with a kind of
>sceptical, amused benevolence – not unappreciative of histalent and
>originality and not without hope, but also coolly prepared to drophim at any
>time. Such was the position from which Churchill set out to directthe First
>World War. He took no trouble to secure or reinforce that position,and he
>upset his closest colleagues and assistants…. In their opinion, hebehaved as
>if he knew it all. They were not so wide of the mark: he did indeedbehave like
>that, but the tragicomic fact was he really did know it all.” Bob, I takeyour
>point about a work that presents ALL the evidence leaving it up to thereader
>to form an opinion which is out of the hands of the author. But in mostcases,
>we are dealing with works thatdo not present all the evidence; in fact most
>authors tend to present evidence selectively to bolster their
>particularviewpoint. We are aware of this essential characteristic of authors
>from theworks of such as John Charnley, David Irving etc. etc. Of course,
>MartinGilbert is a million miles away in the opposite direction from such folk
>as Charnleyand his tribe, but the point is that the BBC programme to which I
>referpresents anything but all theevidence, and is as tendentious and slanted
>as it can be on the Dardanellescampaign – which is why I found it so baffling
>that it could have originatedfrom Martin Gilbert. If anything, he would be
>fully aware of all theintricacies of the campaign from his voluminous
>research, and to be made to appearas the presenter of such a partial and
>biased account is a libel on the man. Ofcourse, I cannot know what the terms
>of his contract with the BBC were; but if ‘intellectualintegrity’ counts for
>anything, biased editing of a historian’s production shouldbe challengeable in
>court. I’m surprised that this did not happen. I amgrateful to Richard
>Langworth for the light he has thrown on this subject (22ndof 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 thehardback
>edition becomes available, and I look forward extremely eagerly toreading it,
>as I do anything from your pen.
Grimsdyke
On Sunday, February 19, 2017 at 3:48:01 PM UTC+13, Grimsdyke wrote:
In general, bone fide Churchill scholars have been fairlyconsistent in the way
they handle his record, and what comes down to us is theimage of a fiercely
pugnacious, infinitely creative man of genius, with an incandescentlybrilliant
mind who made both mistakes and their decided opposite, but whosemotives
throughout were gallant, noble, magnanimous ……and a host of otheradjectives,
none of which have any truck with mean-spiritedness, littleness, orspite or
malevolence, or any of those characteristics that belong to lessermen. However,
I have been puzzled beyond words by the treatment of certainparts of his record
at the hands of some who had always seemed to be among themost discerning of
‘Churchill Scholars’. A few years ago the BBC put out a 4-episode programme
onChurchill which was written and presented by Martin Gilbert: it is available
onYouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=oVQg_ehSu6A From 21:39 to 24:39
on the first episode, he deals with WinstonChurchill's involvement with the
Dardanelles campaign. These 3 minutes seemedto me, as I’m sure they would seem
to anybody with a sound reading of the intricaciesof that episode in World War
I, a travesty consisting of half-truths anddeliberate omissions of crucial
facts to achieve a result that places the blameunfairly and almost slanderously
on Churchill. We all know, of course, that serious researchers from
AlanMoorhead to Basil Liddell Hart and numerous other biographers have found
thatChurchill had little to do with the failures of the campaign, and in fact
hadbeen made the scapegoat of a debacle that owed everything to the blunders
andmismanagement of others (Kitchener and Fisher particularly, and of
courseAsquith at a political level) and little, if at all, to any actual
mistakes onChurchill's part. In fact the origin of the idea wasn't actually
his: it wasHankey's first, and then enthusiastically taken up by a host of
others –including Fisher, Gray, Asquith, and even Kitchener, and later Lloyd
Georgewith some initial misgivings. Subsequently, Churchill was exonerated by
theDardanelles Commission, although that Commission was, “struck by the
atmosphereof vagueness and want of precision which seems to have characterised
theproceedings of the War Council”. Thus, Alan Moorehead: “in1925, when Roger
Keyes was in command of the Mediterranean fleet, he’s steamedthrough the
Dardanelles and, according to Aspinall, who was with him, he couldhardly speak
for emotion. ‘My God’, he said at last, ‘it would have been eveneasier than I
thought; we simply couldn’t have failed…… And because we didn’ttry, another
million lives were thrown away and the war went on for another 3years.’ Thus,
Clement Attlee: “inthe whole of the First World War, there was only one great
strategic idea, andthat was Winston’s”. Attlee had been a soldier at Gallipoli.
Thus, Alastair Cook (from Keynote Speech, Churchill SocietyInternational
Conference, New Hampshire, 27 August 1988): “Kitchener had seemed an
Eisenhower-Montgomery-Nimitz, all rolled intoone. He wasn’t, but we thought he
was. We didn’t know then that his power wasdeclining drastically, or that he
was more than anyone morally responsible forthe 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 themistakes and blunders made by other men, but not Churchill,
and the difficulties ‘onthe ground’ caused by the fatal delays during that
campaign) is seemingly completelyignored by the writer and presenter, Martin
Gilbert. The icing on the cake is Gilbert’sinclusion of statements by AJ
Silvester (principal private secretary to LloydGeorge....... as if he would be
impartial!) and Jimmy Page (British Army,Dardanelles 1915) and we hear them
speak words that have virtually no otherpurpose than to drive home the message
that it was Churchill’s vaultingambition that made him not only careless of
lives, but completely bullheadedand arrogant, and that he bore unmistakably the
responsibility for the wholefailure. As I say above, this is scarcely
believable from such a man as SirMartin (Winston may well intone from the
grave, “et tu Brute?”) — whichmakes me ask myself if this is in fact the result
of some ‘creative editing’ bythe BBC – who, with their traditional hostility to
Churchill (which seems tohave begun with John Reith), may well have omitted
several minutes ofcounterbalancing argument and statement that might have been
included in theoriginal footing by Sir Martin. I’d be grateful if anybody on
this forum canthrow some light on this.
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