First World War

Churchill’s views about borders and “captive nationalities” differed between the World Wars. In 1918 he opposed shifting populations against their will, condemning Germany’s 1870 annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. In 1945 he was agreeable, even anxious, to shift the Polish state at the expense of Poles in the east and Germans in the west. But by then there were graver worries, and no one was speaking of a “war to end wars.”

Churchill’s account of Romania in the Great War expresses his lifetime view that in the face of aggression, there is no room for neutrality. In 1940 he remarked of the neutrals: “Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last.” He had no better use for Romania’s “ambiguous watchfulness” in the previous war. It was, he insisted, utterly ineffective.

“So they said: ‘It is no use setting up a League of Nations without Russia. If we are to accomplish this it can only be with the aid of Germany. Germany knows more about Russia than anyone else. Germany let Lenin loose on Russia. Ought she not to play her part in clearing up this whole eastern battlefield like the others?’”

There is no doubt that British naval thinkers were concerned that Germany might steal a march on Diesel-propelled submarines, and even Churchill’s “land caterpillars” (tanks). It is well known that Diesel intended to meet with the British about licensing his invention when he disappeared overboard in 1913. We continue to search for evidence of Churchill’s involvement, as First Lord of the Admiralty, with inventor himself.

“Lloyd George was not indifferent to all the past, of his struggles with a Church and an aristocracy he deemed alien to his own simple people of Wales. Churchill was infused with a broader sense of history. He felt that he represented not only the living electorate but also the mighty hosts of the dead, who had made the immense and majestic national heritage which he must tend and improve and hand on to the generations yet to come. He stood between the past and the future, and felt that he must not fail either.”

Churchill’s words are eerily current a century after he wrote them: “It is difficult for a man to do great things if he tries to combine a lambent charity embracing the whole world with the sharper forms of populist strife.” As a statesman after the Great War President Wilson failed to understand either his opponents or his friends. “As Captain, he went down with his ship.”

“I beseech you at this crisis not to make a mistake in falling below the level of events. Half-hearted measures will ruin all.... No armies can reach Constantinople but those which we invite, yet we seek nothing here but the victory of the common cause. Tell the Russians that we will meet them in a generous and sympathetic spirit.... But no impediment must be placed in the way.” (WSC to Sir Edward Grey, 6 March 1915)

Despite the innovations in air power, Churchill recognized that it was “not reasonable to speak of an air offensive as if it were going to finish the war by itself.” If anything, air attacks would see “the combative spirit of the people roused, and not quelled.” This lesson, learned at a time when “the Few” were much fewer, would instruct Churchill in another even greater human conflict to come.

“Churchill was right to focus on the stakes, for one of the most difficult decisions of the Battle of Jutland was whether to fight it at all. The British already held naval superiority and need not engage unless they expected to emerge victorious. The Admiralty and the Fleet Commander, Sir John Jellicoe, thought they could defeat the Germans in a traditional naval battle. But one variable gave them pause: the torpedo.”

For Churchill, Verdun, the Somme and Passchendaele were lessons on what to avoid: protracted trench warfare and slaughter in exchange for a few yards of territory. The first great killing ground, Verdun, typified the horrors ahead. It was also a proving ground for terrible new technologies like machine guns, poison gas, anti-aircraft guns and flamethrowers. All these were features of a war Churchill had feared and tried to stop.

Winston Churchill usually avoided making the same mistake twice. He certainly regarded the Dardanelles and Gallipoli as his worst experience. “I was ruined for the time being in 1915 over the Dardanelles,” he wrote. “[A] supreme enterprise was cast away, through my trying to carry out a major and cardinal operation of war from a subordinate position. Men are ill-advised to try such ventures. This lesson had sunk into my nature.”

What a story! A prime minister unwilling to be prime; a war minister reluctant to make war; backbiting among colleagues; idle babble to outsiders; changes of tune; dreams about the spoils of war; unwillingness to hear those who understood. It doesn't sound so far removed from the criticism now thrown at Western governments who have inherited the mistakes of a generation, and are expected to mend them overnight.