Where France Stood in Churchill’s Geopolitical Landscape (I)

Churchill’s understanding of France, and its potential for good and ill, begins with his biography of Marlborough, redolent with his lifetime theme of resisting continental tyrants.

Critics have argued that the Allied victory in the Atlantic was delayed by Churchill’s stubborn refusal to provide Coastal Command with aircraft capable of operating in the region known as the “Air Gap”—the waters south of Greenland in which convoys could not count on air support from either land-based or carrier-borne aircraft. The implication is that millions of tons of merchant shipping and thousands of lives might have been saved if Churchill had not prioritized the bomber offensive over the U-boat war. In this article, history professor Christopher M. Bell addresses whether or not Churchill was really responsible for this delay.

“Churchill’s titanic reputation,” Roger Hermiston writes, has tended to eclipse the vast cast of men—and women—who steered Britain through the worst crisis in her history. Nevertheless, and to his credit, Churchill put them together. In his book, "All Behind You, Winston," Hermiston chronicles not only how they worked in harness, despite manifestly different backgrounds, but how Churchill—whom many say had no concern for others—orchestrated their performance.

Apocryphal quotations aside, there was no question of Churchill's lifetime faith in the Americans and what he always called "The Great Republic."