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Alan Saltman Looks at Churchill’s Decision to Fight On—Again
Alan I. Saltman, No Peace with Hitler: Why Churchill Chose to Fight WWII Alone Rather than Negotiate with Germany, Wallingford, Oxfordshire: Hobart Books 2022, 784 pages, $45.99, paperback $35.99, Kindle $17.99.
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Alan Saltman is a Washington contracts lawyer and Boston College law professor. His book examines Churchill’s critical thinking as he became prime minister in May 1940. Churchill was beleaguered—abroad by Hitler’s war machine, at home by hesitant politicians hoping for an armistice. The Tory grandee Lord Halifax headed the defeatists, seeking almost any way out of a fearful war.
Saltman focuses on the events that put Britain in peril and issues affecting Churchill behind the scenes. He considers Churchill’s psychological makeup and his interpersonal dynamics with his predecessor, Neville Chamberlain. The book ranges over the analyses of major historians like William Shirer, Martin Gilbert, William Manchester and Andrew Roberts. Saltman also addresses the more controversial views from such as Patrick Buchanan and Darkest Hour scriptwriter Anthony McCarten. He also offers an insightful foreword from one of the historians he cites most, Andrew Roberts.
The Saltman chronology
The author frames his narrative with a chronology of British history within the Churchillian context, from 1837 through 1965. Fourteen of his 22 chapters offer a fairly conventional, episodic, though often uneven account of Churchill’s life through 28 May 1940. That was the fateful day when Churchill shut the door on Halifax and others willing to consider peace with “that man,” as WSC contemptuously referred to Hitler.
Saltman adopts the standard defenses of Churchill on the Tonypandy labor upheaval, Gallipoli and the Bengal Famine. He agrees with criticism of Churchill’s impetuosity during the “Battle of Sidney Street” and besieged Antwerp (on which there is much to say in WSC’s favor). He scolds Churchill over military intervention against Bolshevik Russia, the India Act and Edward VIII’s Abdication. Saltman is strangely silent on the Iraq rebellion, or the Cairo Conference that controversially redrew Middle Eastern borders. He does raise a new charge: Churchill’s initial impulse to ease the naval blockade of German food imports after the Armistice changed to maintaining it—to force Germany to sign the Versailles Treaty.
The real core of these chapters, though, is the repeated psychological observation—making his case to the historical jury, as it were, Saltman believes Churchill’s legendary bulldog fighting spirit was engendered by his childhood. Winston’s parents’ aloofness, and brutal beatings by school masters, bred a resentment to authority and taught him love had to be earned. These became his defining lifelong character elements, along with sweeping ambitions, grim determination, and wicked humor.
May 1940
Four chapters cover the four crucial days of 25-28 May 1940. They focus on pressure to negotiate via Mussolini with Hitler and the Nazis. Saltman cites a range of historians, but primarily addresses the critics McCarten and Buchanan, respectively, arguing that Churchill was not serious about parley, and Hitler not serious about sparing Britain.
Saltman argues that Churchill was by temperament incapable of negotiating from a position of such apparent weakness. At first he stalled for time—not yet strong enough politically to survive a Halifax resignation. He also shows the remarkable turnaround in the Churchill-Chamberlain relationship, from rivalry to mutual loyalty. This was seen both when Chamberlain was prime minister and after Churchill replaced him.
The crux came with Churchill’s rousing speech to the outer cabinet on 28 May: “If this long island story is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.” He said that, not yet knowing the outcome of the Dunkirk evacuation. It secured him the position to fight on. The influence of the appeasers waned as Britain’s valiant resistance mounted. Buchanan’s arguments are shown to be fallacious. It was the English Channel, RAF and Royal Navy that primarily hindered Hitler—not the Führer’s wish to preserve the British Empire.
Why Churchill was the right man
The concluding chapters go into further detail about Churchill’s thinking. Saltman offers 18 points, some redundant, that favored fighting on: Hitler might be deposed or assassinated, or lose domestic support; Germany might run out of oil or invasion materiel; American aid might sustain Britain; Britain had sufficient planes, ships and supplies; France might keep fighting. He also offers points of principle: Never negotiate from weakness; never become a vassal state. always resist the strongest continental power; sacrifice is noble, and so on. Some of these sound jejune, such as “Hitler could not be trusted,” or “Britain had a duty to defend the world.”
Saltman augments these points with what he calls “psychodynamics,” acknowledging the then-common view that Churchill was an eccentric with questionable judgement and mixed achievement. Yet he was right for this job for several reasons. Churchill was a warrior whose earliest personal achievements were in battle. He had risen from a broken child to a self-reliant statesman. He wanted redemption for Gallipoli, and he had survived many other failures. A pugnacious lone wolf, he was a daredevil and risk taker, and—perhaps most important—he recognized true evil.
The last chapters conclude with a mostly non-controversial summation of Churchill’s final years. While there are no photographs, maps, or glossary, there is an index, bibliography, a mix of footnotes for commentary, and endnotes for sources.
Was this book necessary?
Saltman presents a compelling answer to those who have written that Churchill seriously considered negotiations with Hitler—if anyone really still thinks he did. Once Churchill became prime minister, ignominious vassalage à la Vichy France was never a serious possibility. But his psychological profile of why Churchill fought on omits a crucial dimension: Churchill’s belief in constitutional democracy. That didn’t come from his upbringing or the military, but from his wide reading of the classic philosophers and his broad understanding of representative government.
The book suffers from poor editing, including awkward subheadings, some sections comprising just one paragraph, others as long as 13 pages. Its unwieldy chapters often run to more than 70 pages. It is too long and too repetitive. Many pages have more notes than text, and it is too laden with incorrect dates and factual errors.
For example, we find Churchill writing for the Daily Telegraph in Cuba in 1895 (18); it was the Daily Graphic. In 1904 he crosses the floor to “Liberal leader David Lloyd George” (31)—but the leader was Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. The Paris Peace Conference opened in 1919, not January 1918. Hitler was released from prison in 1924, not 1923. The Versailles Treaty took the Tyrol from Austria, not Germany. We are told Churchill, Wellington, and Gladstone were the only non-royals to receive state funerals. But there were seven others, including Newton, Nelson and Palmerston. Finally, there are some bizarre observations regarding “the infamous British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli” (224). Disraeli was many things, but “infamous” is not a word that sticks.
The author
William John Shepherd is a veteran archivist and long time contributor to The Churchill Project.
The whole section on the sinking of the Lusitania is missing. Only one footnote is included. This was a significant event. Please call back or email where I can find the Churchill papers on this subject.
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Lusitania is not mentioned in this review of a book on events of 25 years later. If you are referring to “Sinking ‘Lusitania’: A Long-Lived Conspiracy Theory,” that was an answer to a reader’s question, not an article. It does, however, offer Dr. Jaffa’s extensive paper and link George Will’s article on the subject, and a link to my book, Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality, Chapter 13, “Losing the Lusi,” which is extensively footnoted. —RML