-Caveat Lector-
>From http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/raico-churchill2.html
}}}Parts 3, 4, 5 accerssible from linque above{{{
A definitive debunking of the Churchill myth in five parts , by our greatest historian
of
liberty, from The Costs of War . . . .
Rethinking Churchill, Part 2
by Ralph Raico
Part 1
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
d
World War I
In 1911, Churchill became First Lord of the Admiralty, and now was truly in his
element. Naturally, he quickly allied himself with the war party, and, during the
crises
that followed, fanned the flames of war. When the final crisis came, in the summer of
1914, Churchill was the only member of the cabinet who backed war from the start,
with all of his accustomed energy. Asquith, his own Prime Minister, wrote of him:
"Winston very bellicose and demanding immediate mobilization. . . . Winston, who
has got all his war paint on, is longing for a sea fight in the early hours of the
morning
to result in the sinking of the Goeben. The whole thing fills me with sadness."
On the afternoon of July 28, three days before the German invasion of Belgium, he
mobilized the British Home Fleet, the greatest assemblage of naval power in the
history of the world to that time. As Sidney Fay wrote, Churchill ordered that:
The fleet was to proceed during the night at high speed and without lights through
the Straits of Dover from Portland to its fighting base at Scapa Flow. Fearing to bring
this order before the Cabinet, lest it should be considered a provocative action likely
to damage the chances of peace, Mr. Churchill had only informed Mr. Asquith, who
at once gave his approval.
No wonder that, when war with Germany broke out, Churchill, in contrast even to the
other chiefs of the war party, was all smiles, filled with a "glowing zest."
>From the outset of hostilities, Churchill, as head of the Admiralty, was instrumental
>in
establishing the hunger blockade of Germany. This was probably the most effective
weapon employed on either side in the whole conflict. The only problem was that,
according to everyone's interpretation of international law except Britain's, it was
illegal. The blockade was not "close-in," but depended on scattering mines, and
many of the goods deemed contraband for instance, food for civilians had never
been so classified before. But, throughout his career, international law and the
conventions by which men have tried to limit the horrors of war meant nothing to
Churchill. As a German historian has dryly commented, Churchill was ready to break
the rules whenever the very existence of his country was at stake, and "for him this
was very often the case."
The hunger blockade had certain rather unpleasant consequences. About 750,000
German civilians succumbed to hunger and diseases caused by malnutrition. The
effect on those who survived was perhaps just as frightful in its own way. A historian
of the blockade concluded: "the victimized youth [of World War I] were to become
the most radical adherents of National Socialism." It was also complications arising
from the British blockade that eventually provided the pretext for Wilson's decision to
go to war in 1917.
Whether Churchill actually arranged for the sinking of the Lusitania on May 7, 1915,
is still unclear. A week before the disaster, he wrote to Walter Runciman, President
of the Board of Trade that it was "most important to attract neutral shipping to our
shores, in the hopes especially of embroiling the United States with Germany." Many
highly-placed persons in Britain and America believed that the German sinking of the
Lusitania would bring the United States into the war.
The most recent student of the subject is Patrick Beesly, whose Room 40 is a history
of British Naval Intelligence in World War I. Beesly's careful account is all the more
persuasive for going against the grain of his own sentiments. He points out that the
British Admiralty was aware that German U-boat Command had informed U-boat
captains at sea of the sailings of the Lusitania, and that the U-boat responsible for
the sinking of two ships in recent days was present in the vicinity of Queenstown, off
the southern coast of Ireland, in the path the Lusitania was scheduled to take. There
is no surviving record of any specific warning to the Lusitania. No destroyer escort
was sent to accompany the ship to port, nor were any of the readily available
destroyers instructed to hunt for the submarine. In fact, "no effective steps were
taken to protect the Lusitania." Beesly concludes:
unless and until fresh information comes to light, I am reluctantly driven to the
conclusion that there was a conspiracy deliberately to put the Lusitania at risk in the
hope that even an abortive attack on her would bring the United States into the war.
Such a conspiracy could not have been put into effect without Winston Churchill's
express permission and approval.
In any case, what is certain is that Churchill's policies made the sinking very likely.
The Lusitania was a passenger liner loaded with munitions of war; Churchill had
given orders to the captains of merchant ships, including liners, to ram German
submarines if they encountered them, and the Germans were aware of this. And, as
Churchill stressed in his memoirs of World War I, embroiling neutral countries in
hostilities with the enemy was a crucial part of warfare: "There are many kinds of
maneuvres in war, some only of which take place on the battlefield. . . . The
maneuvre which brings an ally into the field is as serviceable as that which wins a
great battle."
In the midst of bloody conflict, Churchill was energy personified, the source of one
brainstorm after another. Sometimes his hunches worked out well he was the chief
promoter of the tank in World War I sometimes not so well, as at Gallipoli. The
notoriety of that disaster, which blackened his name for years, caused him to be
temporarily dropped from the Cabinet in 1915. His reaction was typical: To one
visitor, he said, pointing to the maps on the wall: "This is what I live for . . .
Yes, I am
finished in respect of all I care for the waging of war, the defeat of the Germans."
Between the Wars
For the next few years, Churchill was shuttled from one ministerial post to another.
As Minister of War of Churchill in this position one may say what the revisionist
historian Charles Tansill said of Henry Stimson as Secretary of War: no one ever
deserved the title more Churchill promoted a crusade to crush Bolshevism in Russia.
As Colonial Secretary, he was ready to involve Britain in war with Turkey over the
Chanak incident, but the British envoy to Turkey did not deliver Churchill's ultimatum,
and in the end cooler heads prevailed.
In 1924, Churchill rejoined the Conservatives and was made Chancellor of the
Exchequer. His father, in the same office, was noted for having been puzzled by the
decimals: what were "those damned dots"? Winston's most famous act was to return
Britain to the gold standard at the unrealistic pre-war parity, thus severely damaging
the export trade and ruining the good name of gold, as was pointed out by Murray N.
Rothbard. Hardly anyone today would disagree with the judgment of A.J.P. Taylor:
Churchill "did not grasp the economic arguments one way or the other. What
determined him was again a devotion to British greatness. The pound would once
more 'look the dollar in the face'; the days of Queen Victoria would be restored."
So far Churchill had been engaged in politics for 30 years, with not much to show for
it except a certain notoriety. His great claim to fame in the modern mythology begins
with his hard line against Hitler in the 1930s. But it is important to realize that
Churchill had maintained a hard line against Weimar Germany, as well. He
denounced all calls for Allied disarmament, even before Hitler came to power. Like
other Allied leaders, Churchill was living a protracted fantasy: that Germany would
submit forever to what it viewed as the shackles of Versailles. In the end, what
Britain
and France refused to grant to a democratic Germany they were forced to concede
to Hitler. Moreover, if most did not bother to listen when Churchill fulminated on the
impending German threat, they had good reason. He had tried to whip up hysteria
too often before: for a crusade against Bolshevik Russia, during the General Strike of
1926, on the mortal dangers of Indian independence, in the abdication crisis. Why
pay any heed to his latest delusion?
Churchill had been a strong Zionist practically from the start, holding that Zionism
would deflect European Jews from social revolution to partnership with European
imperialism in the Arab world. Now, in 1936, he forged links with the informal London
pressure group known as The Focus, whose purpose was to open the eyes of the
British public to the one great menace, Nazi Germany. "The great bulk of its finance
came from rich British Jews such as Sir Robert Mond (a director of several chemical
firms) and Sir Robert Waley- Cohn, the managing director of Shell, the latter
contributing �50,000." The Focus was to be useful in expanding Churchill's network
of contacts and in pushing for his entry into the Cabinet.
Though a Conservative MP, Churchill began berating the Conservative governments,
first Baldwin's and then Chamberlain's, for their alleged blindness to the Nazi threat.
He vastly exaggerated the extent of German rearmament, formidable as it was, and
distorted its purpose by harping on German production of heavy-bombers. This was
never a German priority, and Churchill's fabrications were meant to demonstrate a
German design to attack Britain, which was never Hitler's intention. At this time,
Churchill busily promoted the Grand Alliance that was to include Britain, France,
Russia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Since the Poles, having nearly been conquered
by the Red Army in 1920, rejected any coalition with the Soviet Union, and since the
Soviets' only access to Germany was through Poland, Churchill's plan was worthless.
Ironically considering that it was a pillar of his future fame his drumbeating about
the
German danger was yet another position on which Churchill reneged. In the fall of
1937, he stated:
Three or four years ago I was myself a loud alarmist. . . . In spite of the risks which
wait on prophecy, I declare my belief that a major war is not imminent, and I still
believe that there is a good chance of no major war taking place in our lifetime. . .
. I
will not pretend that, if I had to choose between Communism and Nazism, I would
choose Communism.
For all the claptrap about Churchill's "far-sightedness" during the 30s in opposing the
"appeasers," in the end the policy of the Chamberlain government to rearm as
quickly as possible, while testing the chances for peace with Germany was more
realistic than Churchill's.
The common mythology is so far from historical truth that even an ardent Churchill
sympathizer, Gordon Craig, feels obliged to write:
The time is long past when it was possible to see the protracted debate over British
foreign policy in the 1930s as a struggle between Churchill, an angel of light,
fighting
against the velleities of uncomprehending and feeble men in high places. It is
reasonably well-known today that Churchill was often ill-informed, that his claims
about German strength were exaggerated and his prescriptions impractical, that his
emphasis on air power was misplaced.
Moreover, as a British historian has recently noted: "For the record, it is worth
recalling that in the 1930s Churchill did not oppose the appeasement of either Italy or
Japan." It is also worth recalling that it was the pre-Churchill British governments
that
furnished the material with which Churchill was able to win the Battle of Britain.
Clive
Ponting has observed:
the Baldwin and Chamberlain Governments . . . had ensured that Britain was the first
country in the world to deploy a fully integrated system of air defence based on radar
detection of incoming aircraft and ground control of fighters . . . Churchill's
contribution had been to pour scorn on radar when he was in opposition in the
1930s.
Part 1
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
d
Ralph Raico is professor of history at Buffalo State College and a senior scholar of
the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Due to space limitations, the 169 detailed footnotes � which thoroughly document all
assertions in Professor Raico's paperRaico's paper � are not included. They are, of
course, included in the printed version of the paper, published in The Costs of War,
available from the Mises Institute.
A<:>E<:>R
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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