Reviews of the Week
Mr. Churchill's Panorama
Ma. CHURCHILL, pursuing, and anything but faint, in this his third volume carries his war-history from January to December, 1941. It was a dramatic year. For the first half of it the Commonwealth stood alone against the embattled might of a Germany backed by a duped and serviceable Russia. By June Hitler had converted Russia, and Tojo America, into Allied Powers. The tide of war had finally turned. The ultimate destruction of Nazism was ensured.
If in some respects this instalment is less arresting than its pre- decessors, the reason is clear and sufficient. If one man can be said to have saved the Commonwealth—that is, in fact, too much to say—it was Winston Churchill in 1940. The helm of State passed from inexperienced hands to experienced, from weak hands to un- faltering, the immediate storm was weathered, and long though the voyage was yet to be, confidence had been created and faith in vic- tory grew stronger steadily. The story of 1941 was shot with hopes disappointed and hopes realised, with set-backs and advances (most notably, and literally, in Libya), with strategy frustrated, but with progress definitely and unmistakably registered by December. There was less drama, less catastrophe, than in 1940, and Churchill no longer stood alone in the forefront of the stage. Stalin, inscrutable then as now, figured beside him ; Roosevelt, who had rendered Britain inestimable service while America was still neutral, pro- claimed the historic partnership to the world when he met the Prime Minister for the first time in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, in August, and with him drafted that challenging creed of all free nations known as the Atlantic Charter.
The general course of the war in 1941 is by now a matter of familiar knowledge. Mr. Churchill makes no notable revelations. The value of his book, of course, lies both in the unique personality of the writer and in the unique opportunities he enjoyed of surveying and directing the succession of tremendous events. Nothing is more instructive than his- judgement of men, and of Joseph Stalin among the foremost. The verdict is summary : "So far as strategy, policy, foresight, competence are arbiters, Stalin and his commissars showed themselves at this moment the most completely outwitted bunglers of the Second-World War."
The moment was the early part of 1941. By the end of March Mr. Churchill felt convinced that Hitler intended war op Russia. The Joint Intelligence Committee had definite information by April 7th. But four days before that the Prime Minister had sent to Sir Stafford Cripps, then Ambassador at Moscow, a warning message to be delivered personally to Stalin. That was on April 3rd. On April 12th Sir Stafford Cripps cabled reasons that seemed to him good for not delivering the message. On the 16th the P.M. urged delivery. On the 19th Sir Stafford gave the message to Vyshinsky. On the 22nd Vyshinsky wrote that the message had been conveyed to Stalin. Mr. Churchill's general comment is: " I cannot form any final judgement upon whether my message, if delivered with all the promptness and ceremony prescribed, would have altered the course of events. Nevertheless I still regret that my instructions were not carried out effectively. If I had had any direct contact with Stalin I might perhaps have prevented him from having so much of his Air Force destroyed on the ground."
Who can. say 7 But this at least is certain. -Nothing was gained by the delay ; something might have been by expedition. One thing Mr. Churchill makes amply clear is that the Russians were difficult Allies from the very start. The diversion of British and American tanks and aircraft to their theatre almost crippled the commanders in North Africa and elsewhere, but for nothing received was gratitude expressed. On the contrary, " the Soviet Government had the impression that they were conferring a great favour on us by fighting in their own country for their own lives. The more they fought the heavier our debt became." And the demand for a Second Front began before Russia had been at war a month. Unfortunately, Stalin had no conception of what amphibious operations meant, or of the necessity for complete air supremacy before any such enterprise could be seriously contem- plated. In September he solemnly cabled : " It seems to me that Great Britain could without risk land in Archangel twenty-five to thirty divisions or transport them across Iran to the southern regions of the U.S.S.R."—this at a time' when one division, the fiftieth, had with great difficulty been sent to the Middle East, and another, the eighteenth, was with even greater difficulty in course of being despatched. Small wonder that Mr Churchill describes Russia in the early phases of her belligerence as a liability rather than an asset.
He necessarily passes some judgements on the commanders in different theatres ; on the judgements themselves history will pan its own judgement in due time. Wavell is here praised, there criticised. Crete fell within the wide orbit of his command, and Churchill—writing, it must be remembered, more as Minister of Defence than as Prime Minister—expresses astonishment that the work of fortifying it so as to make a secure naval base was so disastrously dilatory. Wavell opposed the diversion of men and guns from Palestine to Iraq to deal with Rashid Ali's revolt. He was overruled by the General Staff, with the result that Habanniya was relieved and all Iraq made safe for the Allies. But Wavell, as Churchill came to see, had burdens on him too tremendous, for any human shoulders to bear. In June General Haining was appointed " Intendant-General " to deal with logistics and administration, and Mr. Oliver Lyttelton established at Cairo as Minister of State to cope with political problems. That made an immense difference. Despite reverses in Libya, which left the mastery of the Mediter- ranean unattained and indirectly compelled the postponement of the opening of the Second Front in France till 1944, despite the crushing disasters sustained at one period by the Mediterranean Fleet, despite the desperate menace of the U-boats in the Atlantic, despite the fear that the Bismarck ' and the Tirpitz ' might be at sea together, 1941 closed far more hopefully than it opened. America was in, and the relations already established between Prime Minister and President were in themselves a strong cement.
What is more, Spain was still out. Persons who point to Franco's notorious Blue Division as evidence of Spanish syMpathies would do well to compare the belief current in Whitehall in January, 1941, that Franco would give Hitler passage and that Gibraltar would be untenable, with the despatch (of course unknown at the time) which Hitler had addressed to Mussolini on the last day of 1940, observing that, " profoundly troubled by the situation, which Franco thinks has deteriorated, Spain has refused to collaborate with the Axis Powers. . . . I deplore all this, for from our side we had completed our preparations for crossing the Spanish frontier on January 10th and attacking Gibraltar at the beginning of February." The frontier was never crossed. Gibraltar was never attacked. The gateway to the Mediterranean was never closed.
So 1941 ended. Christmas Day saw President and Prime Minister at church in Washington together. " I found peace in the simple service and enjoyed singing the well-known hymns, and one, 0 little town of Bethlehem,' I had never heard before." Peace in the full sense was still distant, but peace with victory had been made certain, by no one's efforts more surely than by the indomitable warrior's in Downing Street, and by no event more effectively than by the conclusion of the Grand Alliance which forms the title of
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