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Articles
On Reputation: “If Churchill Had Not Been Ousted in 1942”
- By MANFRED WEIDHORN
- | February 8, 2023
- Category: Churchill in WWII Explore
Note to readers
As the quotemarks around the title signify, this is not a historical account of what happened in 1942, but a contemplation of what might have happened. The title alludes to Churchill’s famous fantasy, “If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg.” Unlike that essay, however, it does not construct an alternative history. Rather, Manfred Weidhorn asks us to contemplate how history turns on agate points which, being only slightly different, would drastically alter the outcome. And to consider, in guessing about the future, whether anyone really knows what they are talking about. —RML
“If it had happened otherwise”
One of the most common habits is to correlate a policy or sequence of events with the person officially in a leadership position. It also happens to be one of our silliest traits. Instead of dealing with long run, abstract historical forces, we prefer to assign all blame or credit to those who happen to be in charge at the time of disaster or victory—regardless of whether they had anything definitive to do with the event.
Winston Churchill came to learn that lesson in each world war by being a survivor. In 1911 he became the civilian head of the Royal Navy. On his own initiative during the world crisis of August 1914, he sent the Fleet to its war station. War broke out a few days later. Later, when fate led to Churchill’s dismissal, Lord Kitchener consoled him. “Well, there is one thing at any rate they cannot take from you. The Fleet was ready.”1
Writing later of his daring action, Churchill remarked that if, instead of war, peace had been maintained—as it was indeed during several war scares in preceding years—he would have been accused of warmongering, of acting in excess of his authority, of increasing the nation’s financial liabilities, and of losing his head. He might well have been sacked. Nothing, he concluded, is sooner forgotten than preparation for a danger successfully guarded against. It was a close call.
Watershed in 1942
An even more momentous close call occurred during the Second World War. That war lasted six years. The first half, 1939 to 1942, saw Britain go from one disaster to another. The second half, late 1942 to 1945, saw Britain, together with her two powerful new allies, go in the main from one triumph to another.
Churchill was, of course, prime minister in both halves (except for the first seven months). But at exactly the half-way mark, in 1942, on the eve of what he calls the turning of the Hinge of Fate, he confronted a challenge to his leadership: two parliamentary votes of no confidence. He passed those tests with triumphant majorities. But that they occurred at all would seem, from the perspective of toda,y hardly credible. Still, in 1942, after three years of disasters, the political crisis was understandable.
In reflecting in his war memoirs on this critical year 1942, Churchill was struck by the narrow escape of his reputation. If the hinge-turning battle of Second Alamein four months later had been indecisive or even a defeat, the chances were good that he would not have survived politically.
Suppose, then, that Churchill had indeed been ousted in 1942. In his own inimitable language, “I should then have vanished from the scene with a load of calamity on my shoulders, and the harvest, at last to be reaped, would have been ascribed to my belated disappearance.”2
Then 1945, people would have said, “What a poor leader Churchill was! Under him we had nothing but defeats. How great, by contrast, his successor was! Under him we had nothing but victories. No sooner did we cashier that albatross Churchill than victories started coming. Why did we not get rid of him earlier?”
Harvests take time to be reaped
Churchill has here put his finger on a serious flaw in all our historical judgments. Policies take time to work themselves out. But people are impatient, short-sighted, eager for scapegoats. The period through 1942 was so awful because Churchill’s predecessors took belated, half-hearted steps in preparing the nation for the onrushing peril. This sluggishness Churchill himself had often criticized. From 1942 to 1945 things went well in good part because during the preceding two years, Prime Minister Churchill had put Britain on a war footing, infused the nation with his dynamism, and forged an impressive alliance.
This was the “harvest at last to be reaped.”3 Suppose the Prime Minister been replaced by someone in 1942? Simply by being in place while the consequences of Churchill’s activism played out, the successor surely would have the credit. The reasoning would have been—in a delicious irony—that the triumphs could not possibly be Churchill’s, because 1939-42 proved that he simply did not know how to win. The 1915 Gallipoli fiasco would have come to be seen as a central indicator of Churchill’s lamentable untrustworthiness. Surely it was a warning sign ignored by those rushing to give him power in 1940. But Churchill survived. So Gallipoli is viewed as an unfortunate detour in an experience-rich journey to supreme personal triumph.
Likewise Hitler
The fragility of reputations is likewise seen in the career of Churchill’s arch foe. Suppose Hitler had been assassinated in 1937, before the war and the unimaginable Holocaust? Would he have gone down in history as a martyr and one of Germany’s greatest leaders? If assassinated in late 1941 or early 1942, at the zenith of his power and success, he would be seen as a supreme military genius.
The disasters Germany experienced from 1942 to 1945 would then have been attributed to the presumed incompetents who replaced him—attributed to the absence of his focused vision and intense will. Surely the brilliant leader who conquered most of Europe in two short years (it took Napoleon a dozen) could not be held responsible for the debacle that followed his removal? “Ach, if only Der Führer were still alive…!”
This is not merely speculative. Here it is as a representative sentiment: The disillusioned German former ambassador to Rome, Ulrich von Hassell, was writing about the outcome of Stalingrad:
There has been exposed for all eyes the lack of military ability of “the most brilliant strategist of all time,” that is our megalomaniac corporal…. It is clear to all that precious blood has been shed foolishly or even criminally for purpose of prestige alone…. The eyes of the generals were opened, too.4
These words would have been utterly unthinkable in 1941 or 1942.
So to educate the Germans and Nazis about the self-destructiveness of the man they worshiped—and for disabusing innocent bystanders—it was necessary for the horrors of 1942-45 to take place under his command. Everyone could then see with blinding clarity the ultimate results. The working of his uniquely destructive genius could not shift to any blundering successor.
Defining victory
What is the conclusion to be drawn from these slices of history? It is that the dividing line between notability and notoriety, between hero and scapegoat is thin indeed. People want results, and want them soon. The “how,” the background, the in-depth analysis, the working out of complex forces is not for them. Winning is the only thing.
As Machiavelli put it, “people are always impressed by appearances and by the outcome of events.” Or in Adam Smith’s version: “That the world judges by the event, and not by the design, has been in all ages the complaint, and is the great discouragement of virtue.” Nor is this insight confined to the West. The ancient Chinese sage, Sun Tzu, says in his famous Art of War: “The multitudes…know the traces of attainment of victory but do not know the abstract form that makes for victory. Victory in war is apparent to all, but the science of ensuring victory is a mysterious secret, generally unknown.”5 These words form a fitting commentary on Churchill’s passage. “Victory apparent to all” means history as commonly written and popularly understood, which usually assigns credit to the incumbent.
Churchill’s insight
These incidents are thus a humbling reminder of how easily one jumps to false conclusions about history. They call into question all the irresponsible oversimplifications we make every day—in the polling booth, on the editorial page, over the airwaves, at the dinner table. The sad fact is that, life being complex, cause and effect often being a mystery, and the future being inscrutable, no one knows truly what he is talking about. Churchill wisely said that he always tried to “avoid prophesying beforehand, because it is much better policy to prophesy after the event has already taken place.”6
Imagine what would have happened to the history book presentation of George Washington and Benedict Arnold if the Battle of Yorktown and the war itself had gone the other way. The same individuals, the same character traits, the same actions and decisions would still apply. But because of external developments, their reputations would have been the opposite of what they are now.
Building on Churchill’s experiences and insight, we may conclude that not a few eminent persons in the history books have inflated reputations even as others have been unfairly relegated to the footnotes. It is therefore curious that the man who urged us to “Study History! Study History!”7 ironically gave us powerful reasons to distrust history.
Endnotes
1 Winston S. Churchill (hereinafter WSC), The World Crisis, vol. 2 1915 (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1923), 375.
2 WSC, The Hinge of Fate (London: Cassell, 1950), 494.
3 Ibid.
4 Ian Kershaw, The Hitler Myth: Image & Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 193).
5 Manfred Weidhorn, An Anatomy of Skepticism (Bloomington, Ind.: IUniverse, 2006), 188.
6 WSC, Casablanca, 1 February 1943, in Richard M. Langworth, ed., Churchill by Himself (New York: Rosetta, 2016), 527.
7 WSC to James Humes, 27 May 1953, ibid., 18.
The author
Manfred Weidhorn is the dean of scholars on Churchill’s literary heritage. His seminal Sword and Pen is still the best survey of Churchill’s writings. Born in Vienna in 1931, he came to the United States in 1941. He earned graduate degrees in English from the University of Wisconsin and from Columbia University. He has published over seventy essays in scholarly journals, two books on 17th century literature, four books on Churchill, three biographies for young adults, and one self-help book. In 1998, he received the Churchill Centre’s Farrow Award for Excellence in Churchill Studies. This essay is derived from his book An Anatomy of Skepticism (2006).
The conclusion seemed to suggest that the study of history on the whole should not be trusted. Is this the author’s intention? Perhaps qualification or at least greater clarity in drawing such conclusions about the proper manner of responsible historical inquiry is warranted. There are qualitative differences between too superficial a reading of history and an understanding based upon worthy scholarship informed by academic skepticism. The article itself suggests that a more careful examination of history may yield better insights; not that the study of history is entirely untrustworthy or without value. “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?” —Cicero
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Dr. Weidhorn replies: I agree with the last two sentences. My point is not to shut down the history profession but to urge upon people trying to use its findings a heavy dose of modesty—because whatever insights may be gained from the past have little to do with the future. Above all, we should be wary of all the predictions we are exposed to in daily life—especially in politics and economics. To wit, the great red wave of a few months ago.