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Articles
Facing the Dictator: Stalin, 1946; Hitler, 1938
- By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
- | February 2, 2023
- Category: Churchill in the Nuclear Age Churchill in WWII Q & A
Q: Dictators and private citizens, 1946
On responses to a dictator: I am trying to recall a quote (maybe I am misremembering it). After the “Iron Curtain” speech at Fulton, Churchill responded to Stalin’s criticism by saying something like: “How remarkable for the leader of this mighty empire to come down and argue with a mere private citizen.” Did he say something like this? If so, I may quote it in a piece. —A.P.H., Florida
A: Churchill’s consistent responses
You are on the right track. The words, “leader of this mighty empire” are closer to Churchill’s response to Hitler, who had criticized him similarly in 1938. But he said as much in reply to Stalin. Indeed Churchill’s two responses were remarkably consistent. Nazi or Soviet, it made no difference.1
To begin with the latter, Stalin took nine days to comment on Churchill’s Fulton speech. That would not likely happen in today’s world of 24/7 news. Churchill suspected the delay was in order to judge world reaction. True or not, Stalin made a prima facie case for the Soviet side, though it doesn’t stand up to serious consideration. A dictator tends to say these things.
Stalin’s response to Fulton:
In England today the government of one party is ruling, the Labour Party, and the Opposition is deprived of the right to take part in the government. This is what Mr. Churchill calls “true democracy.” In Poland, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Hungary, the government is made up of a bloc of several parties—from four to six parties—while the opposition, if it is more or less loyal, is assured the right to take part in the government. This is what Mr. Churchill calls “totalitarianism, tyranny, police state”….
Mr. Churchill would like Poland to be ruled by Sosnkowski and Anders, Yugoslavia by Mihailovic and Pavelic, Rumania by Prince Stirbey and Radescu, Hungary and Austria by some king or other of the Hapsburgs and so on. Mr. Churchill wants us to believe that these gentlemen from some fascist underground cellar can ensure “true democracy.” Some “democracy,” Mr. Churchill!
Mr. Churchill is wandering near the truth when he talks of the growth of the influence of the Communist Parties in Eastern Europe. It must be noted however that he is not quite exact. The influence of the Communist Parties has grown not only in Eastern Europe but in almost every country in Europe where previously the fascists held sway (Italy, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania, Finland), or where the country was under German, Italian or Hungarian occupation (France, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Denmark, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece, the Soviet Union etc.).
The growth of the influence of the Communists is not just a chance phenomenon. It is a perfectly natural happening. It is because during the difficult years of the rule of fascism in Europe the Communists were the reliable, the daring, the self-sacrificing fighters against the fascist regimes for the liberation of the peoples.2
Churchill’s reply: “Like old times”
As the words of the Soviet dictator shot round the world, Churchill was attending a New York City dinner held for him by Henry Luce. Martin Gilbert published the recollections of a journalist present, Charles Murphy. Murphy was a senior editor at Luce’s Life, which was about to serialize Churchill’s war memoirs. (In 1951, Murphy would ghost-write the former King Edward VIII’s apologia, A King’s Story.)
Churchill seemed amused that “the whole apparatus” of Soviet propaganda had turned on him, including the dictator himself. “This in itself is flattering,” Churchill said, but he did not consider it a very good job: “If I had been turned loose on Winston Churchill,” he smiled, “I would have done a much better job of denunciation.”
Brightening at the thought, Churchill recalled another dictator who had attacked him in almost identical terms, arguing that another totalitarian government had vast popular support. “Warmonger, inciter of wars, imperialist, reactionary, has-been,” Churchill mused. “Why, it is beginning to sound almost like old times.”3
What about Yalta?
After the New York dinner came a challenge. The journalist John Davenport asked a question that would continue to buzz around conservative circles in the years ahead. Was it right for Roosevelt and Churchill to have made the concessions they did at Yalta? Why, in particular, did they bring the Soviet dictator into the war against Japan, which was “then on the brink of surrender”?
Embarrassed, Henry Luce jumped to his feet: “Mr. Prime Minister, my colleagues and I had agreed before this meeting that political issues of a controversial character would be avoided. You need not answer the question, and I apologize for the rudeness of my colleague.” But Churchill was unphased, thanking Luce and bowing to Davenport. Churchill, recalled by Murphy, said that…
…the question went to the heart of the problem of cooperation with the Soviet Union. The slaughter in Europe was ending; now the Allies and the United States in particular faced the terrible task of invading Japan, and the frightful losses the Americans had already experienced in “Eye-wo Jy-ma” and “O-keenawa” were warning of the bloodier campaigns in prospect. It was to reduce these casualties that the Soviet Union was asked to enter the battle against Japan—with whom it had honored a non-aggression pact throughout the war—from the Asian mainland.
Churchill’s pronunciation of Iwo Jima brought amusement, and his masterly summing up of the case for the strategy brought hand-clapping and “hear-hears.”4
Hitler: “This man who seems to live on the moon…”
The Stalin exchange parallels that with an earlier dictator. As in 1946, Hitler’s attack came when Churchill held no political office. Again we have Martin Gilbert’s official biography to thank for our knowledge of it. Hitler, Gilbert writes, spoke a week after the Munich Agreement had bought the Allies a little more time before war (and the Reich more time to become yet more powerful).
Hitler like many of his type over the years, was bothered by freedom of speech. What he preferred, Hitler said, was “freedom from war-mongering.” He then turned to Churchill’s appeals to anti-Nazi Germans:
If Mr. Churchill had less to do with traitors and more with Germans, he would see how mad his talk is, for I can assure this man, who seems to live on the moon, that there are no forces in Germany opposed to the regime—only the force of the National-Socialist movement, its leaders and its followers in arms.” Hitler’s speech had gone on to abuse all the other British “gentry” who had criticized him.5
Each dictator essentially took same line. Hitler claimed his support within Germany was literally unanimous. Stalin at least tried to suggest there were multiple parties and even loyal oppositions behind the Iron Curtain. The emptiness of their argument—perhaps more clear by 1948—can be shown in one of Churchill’s tests of freedom. Concerning the new Italian government in 1944, he asked: “Have the people the right to turn out a Government of which they disapprove, and are constitutional means provided by which they can make their will apparent?”6
Churchill’s reply to Hitler
As in 1946, Churchill responded to Hitler within 24 hours (using words your question recalls):
I am surprised that the head of a great State should set himself to attack British members of Parliament who hold no official position and who are not even the leaders of parties. Such action on his part can only enhance any influence they may have, because their fellow-countrymen have long been able to form their own opinion about them and really do not need foreign guidance.
Herr Hitler is quite mistaken in supposing that Mr. Eden, Mr. Duff Cooper, myself, and leaders of the Liberal and Labour Parties, are warmongers. Not one of us has ever dreamed of an act of aggression against Germany. We are. however, concerned to make sure that our own country is properly defended, so that we can be safe and free and also help others to whom we are bound…..
Since he has been good enough to give me his advice I venture to return the compliment…. That he has the power, and, alas! the will, to suppress all inconvenient opinions is no doubt true. It would be much wiser to relax a little, and not try to frighten people out of their wits for expressing honest doubt and divergences….
I should like nothing better than to see a great, happy, peaceful Germany in the vanguard of Europe. Let this great man search his own heart and conscience before he accuses anyone of being a warmonger. The whole peoples of the British Empire and the French Republic…do not mean to be in anybody’s power. If Herr Hitler’s eye falls upon these words I trust he will accept them in the spirit of candour in which they are uttered.7
Endnotes
1 Churchill likened Communism and fascism to the North and South Pole: “Tweedledum and Tweedledee are two quite distinctive personalities compared to these two rival religions. They are at opposite ends of the earth, but if you woke up at either Pole tomorrow morning you could not tell which one it was.” Winston S. Churchill (hereinafter WSC), “The Creeds of the Devil,” Sunday Chronicle, 27 June 1937, republished in Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill 4 vols. (London: Library of Imperial History, 1975), II: 395.
2 Stalin interview in Pravda, 14 March 1946, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 8, Never Despair 1946-1965 (Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College Press, 2013), 212.
3 Charles Murphy to Martin Gilbert, ibid., 213.
4 Ibid., 213-14.
5 Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 5, Prophet of Truth 1922-1939 (Hillsdale College Press, 2009), 1015.
6 WSC, House of Commons, 28 August 1944, in Richard M. Langworth, ed., Churchill by Himself (New York: Rosetta, 2016), 9. Churchill was explaining how he would judge whether the new Italian government was a democracy. He added: “Will the rights of the individual, subject to his duties to the State, be maintained and asserted and exalted? Is the ordinary peasant or workman, who is earning a living by daily toil and striving to bring up a family free from the fear [of] some grim police organization…”?
7 WSC, House of Commons, 6 November 1938, in Robert Rhodes James. ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963, 8 vols. New York: Bowker, 1974, VI; 6018-19.