Vancouver Province
for November 12, 1999

It’s 60 years since World War II started and two new books I’ll tell you about give that time a much needed perspective.

Even his critics agree that the giant figure on the side of righteousness was Winston Churchill. But Churchill came in for much criticism in the 80s and 90s as the revisionists began, with a hell of a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking, to pooh-pooh this heroic figure.

Why, they said, after the Germans were beaten Churchill should have kept going east and beat up on the Russians thus preventing the Iron Curtain from falling. The absurdity of Britain doing that, even with the United States support, is obvious. Everyone was war-weary and the Red Army was the most powerful in the world. Moreover the atom bomb was not yet available.

Churchill was wrong, according to latter day historians, for not making peace with Germany (as Hitler offered) after the fall of France in June 1940 leaving Hitler free to turn on Russia, defeat communism and prevent the future "Cold War". Quite apart from the morality question, does anyone seriously think that Hitler would have kept his word and not turned on Britain with the whole of Europe under his thumb?

The most persistent claim by revisionists is that Churchill really isn’t entitled to credit for warning Britain and the world from the outset about Hitler.

The books are Burying Caesar, a first book by Cambridge historian Graham Stewart and 1939 by Canadian historian Michael Jabara Carley. The former traces the rivalry of the Chamberlains, starting with Joseph then sons Austen and Neville, with the Churchills beginning with Joseph’s near contemporary, Lord Randolph Churchill and ending with Sir Winston. Both these books are highly readable and meticulously researched.

Two things come through very clearly in both books – not only did Churchill start warning Britain early, but he did it often, and for the most part with better statistics (leaked by regular senior bureaucrats) than those possessed by the government. When Neville Chamberlain came back from Munich in 1938 claiming it was "peace with honour … peace in our time" the multitude including almost all MPs as well as major newspapers, (especially the Times) cheered him lustily. To a hostile Commons Churchill called it an "unmitigated disaster" and foretold with uncanny accuracy what would unfold. Powerful forces in his constituency tried to have him de-listed for his stubbornly uncooperative attitude.

Throughout the 30s, Churchill, who hated communism with a passion, warned that there could be no collective security for Britain and France without Russia’s participation. And so it proved to be. This part of the story is best told by Professor Carley who points out, with just the right amount of sarcasm, the impossible behaviour of Britain and France towards Russia in 1939 leading to the Ribbontrop-Molotov agreement of August 22 which shocked the world and gave Hitler a free hand in Poland. It was as Churchill said it would be, for without any question he was the only British politician who saw clearly, from the outset, that Hitler was a "one off" – that he couldn’t be treated by existing standards of international diplomacy because he was a madman.

Professor Stewart’s book, while vigorously condemning Chamberlain for his appeasement policy, does raise two fascinating points not much touched upon elsewhere. Prior to becoming Premier in 1938, Chamberlain was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and at least in part, because he didn’t think re-arming was a political winner, cut back on defence expenditures. With one big exception - he did increase allotments to the Royal Air Force enabling them to stockpile the workhorse fighter, the Hurricane, and develop the super fighter, the Spitfire, all just in time for the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940.

And Chamberlain performed another great service. After the remarkable events of May 10, 1940, when, may God be truly praised, Churchill replaced him as Prime Minister, instead of fighting him, Chamberlain threw every sinew of his dying body into supporting him. Churchill did not have his party – which was riddled with appeasers – behind him and simply wouldn’t have been able, without Chamberlain’s support, to stare down Hitler and rally the British people to "their finest hour."

Two first class books to set the record straight on just how it was that tiny Britain, by standing up to Nazi Germany, saved the world 60 years ago.