Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Independent Minds: Winston Churchill -- Into the Storm
Independent Minds: Winston Churchill-- Into the Storm
Announcer:
Production support for Independent Minds comes from HBO, presenting "Winston Churchill - Into the Storm” on May 31st.
JOHN KEEGAN:
He was what the British call a card…he was a bit of an actor and a bit of an exaggerator and that he, he went a bit further than common sense. I think that it amused them, but at the same time it convinced them.
Music: Hanson Symphony #2 top of 3rd mvmt
HUGH WHITEMORE:
He was, sort of, an every man. A man of energy. A man of insight, an artist, a writer, a politician, a soldier.
HUGH WHITEMORE:
The first question that Roosevelt asked about Churchill was: Who writes his speeches?
PATRICK BUCHANAN:
I think Winston Churchill was a radical. I think his foreign policy views were, some of them were reactionary, with regard to India, some of his views were radical. But, if you are at war and your back is to the wall, I think you want Winston Churchill.
ANDREW ROBERTS:
Everyday assumes that he loved war, that he enjoyed it and that he was immersed in it, and he actually wanted another war to break out. It wasn’t that he loved war at all – he hated it, despised it, but he realized that occasionally there are some things that are worse.
David D’Arcy:
History, from the distance of more than half a century, can look like a battle between good and evil, where good is destined to triumph. Today, it might be hard to imagine, but in the first years of World War II Adolf Hitler seemed likely to win that conflict and rule much of Europe. By 1940, the Nazis controlled Holland, and Belgium – and France would soon surrender. Mussolini’s Italy was Hitler’s ally and fascist Spain was his friend. Britain’s army was battered and in retreat, Nazi U-Boats surrounded the island, blocking shipments of food and fuel.
Things looked so bleak that many in the British government were hoping to save England from an invasion by negotiating with Hitler… rather than eventually surrendering. But When Winston Churchill took office in May of 1940 he took any idea of negotiating off the table. In his first speech as prime minister, he deployed one of the few weapons Britain had left: his oratory and the power of the English language.
Clip: from Winston Churchill’s Never Give In speech from May 13, 1940 up (window)
“I would say to the house as I would say to those who have joined the government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before many many months of struggle and of suffering. You ask me ‘what is our policy’. I would say it is to wage war by sea, land and air, with all our might, and with all the strength that God can give us, to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalog of human crime.”
David D’Arcy:
In the same speech, Churchill predicted an ultimate victory for Britain. Time and again, his oratory would inspire the British to unite. Eventually Hitler would be denied the victory that the Nazis considered the inevitable destiny of the master race. Start music 2 earlier
In this hour we’ll look at Churchill, his courage and his complexity, in Britain’s fight for its survival. This is Independent Minds: Winston Churchill -- Into the Storm. I’m David D’Arcy.
Music… HBO Film opening theme
David D’Arcy:
Looking back from the perspective of the victors, Churchill seems a man born to lead at a desperate moment when rhetoric and leadership counted so much. And as Prime Minister and Defense Minister, Churchill had unprecedented power, and won unprecedented support in Britain. But given his previous decade on the British political scene, which Churchill himself called “the wilderness years,” this was a dramatic reversal for a man who had been on the fringes of his own party. At the age of 65, when most men retire, Winston Churchill stood between Britain and Adolf Hitler, and the course of history changed.
Music bridge: film music_
David D’Arcy:
Ten years before becoming Prime Minister, while in New York on a speaking tour, Churchill the Englishman forgot the way traffic moved in America. He crossed Fifth Avenue, and was hit by a car and seriously injured.
Had he died then, he would have been remembered as a precocious gifted writer, and, says historian John Keegan, a politician with unstable judgment and a mixed record.
JOHN KEEGAN:
You have to remember the circumstances of 1931. It, it was a world depression and he had been Chancellor of the Exchequer. That’s to say in American terms, Secretary of the Treasury and he’d made, and he’d made a mess of it. He put Britain back on the gold standard and, and collapsed the British currency as a result, which is a very serious mistake on his part. And his, his reputation was at a low ebb in 1931.
David D’Arcy:
Churchill’s military record was another cause for concern. His bravery in battle was well-known, thanks in part to the many books he wrote about it, but his judgment was another thing. It was Churchill, as head of the British Navy, who helped planned the failed Gallipoli invasion in World War I that led to the death of more than forty thousand Allied troops. He also authorized an illegal raid on Norway in 1940 that freed British troops held by Germany, but led to Neville Chamberlain’s resignation.
Music: Elgar - ____________________
David D’Arcy:
Born in 1874, Winston Churchill was a poor student and attended Sanders, the military school because he couldn’t qualify for university. As a child he was already declaring his own importance, says Gretchen Rubin, author of the experimental biography, “Forty Ways of looking at Look at Winston Churchill.”
GRETCHIN RUBIN:
He would often say these incredibly boastful things like, “in the position that I shall, you know, acquire, I will save the capital and the Empire.” And which seems, you know, so arrogant for some 12 year old to have said, but of course, it all came true
David D’Arcy:
When Churchill was in his 20’s he fought in the British cavalry in India and the Sudan. Historian John Keegan says, war taught Churchill some important lessons.
JOHN KEEGAN:
That was a very formative experience and taught him - among other things - that he wasn’t physically afraid. Churchill was both morally brave and physically brave and he loved that fighting on the Northwest Frontier with Afghanistan where, curiously, the war is going on at the moment. Anyhow,
he came back from that war knowing that he wasn’t physically cowardly. He wasn’t worried by danger or violence. That was very important to him.
David D’Arcy:
And his instincts, while not infallible, were dead-on when it came to a fiery nationalist who came to power in Germany in 1933.
As early as 1934, when much of the world was grappling with economic depression, Churchill was already worrying about the new militarism in Germany that he saw emerging from the ashes of the Great War, World War I.
Clip: CHURCHILL SPEECH CLIP – NOVEMBER, 1934
“At present we lie within a few minutes striking distance of the French, Dutch and German coasts…Is it prudent or possible to turn our backs upon Europe and ignore whatever may happen there. I hope and pray that no war will fall upon us. But if in the near future the great war of 1914 is resumed again, for that is what it may come to. If that should happen, no one could tell where or how it would end -- or whether sooner or later we should not be dragged into it, dragged into it as the United States was dragged in against their will, in 1917.”
JOHN LUKACS:
English politicians are usually not terribly interested in European politics, but he recognized something about Hitler more than three years before Hitler came to power, when there was absolutely no one, including Germany, including the Nazi Party, who thought that within three years Hitler will become Chancellor of Germany.
David D’Arcy:
Historian John Lukacs – author of the Churchill study “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat.”
JOHN LUKACS:
There’s an interesting document about this. Not in Churchill’s memoirs, not in the British archives, but in the German archives. He went to a dinner party, the Germany Embassy in London in October 1930. And one of the chief German officials, I think the First Secretary of the Embassy, reported to Berlin that Winston Churchill came to dinner and he wants to know a lot about Hitler. This is amazing.
This has something to do, also, that he did not underestimate the power of German Nationalism, of which then he saw Hitler being an extreme representative.
David D’Arcy:
Churchill was particularly concerned that Hitler was rapidly rebuilding Germany’s Air Force
Clip: (FADE UP) CHURCHILL SPEECH
“With the new weapon, has come a method, or rather has come back the most brutish methods of ancient barbarism, namely, the possibility the submission of races, by terrorizing and torturing their civil populations. And worst of all, the more civilized a country is, the larger and more splendid its cities, the more intricate the structure of its social and economic life, the more is it vulnerable, the more is it at the mercy of those who may make it their prey.”
David D’Arcy:
Not everyone in the British government thought it was wise to defy Hitler, or to antagonize a remilitarized Germany. And historian Andrew Roberts says Britain was wary of another war given the bloodbath of World War One.
ANDREW ROBERTS:
The assumption was always made in Britain in the 1930s, really until the very end of the 1930s when Hitler’s saber-rattling became too obvious to ignore, that if you built up large armaments, you were effectively provoking the Germans also to bring, build up large armaments, that there was going to be an arms race, as it was popularly thought that there had been before the First World War and that actually just the sheer act of attempting to defend yourself in the most modern way was in itself a provocation to the Germans.
This was ridiculous, of course, and something that Churchill argued against. But the assumption was always there. There was a deep, I wouldn’t just say pacifist feeling in Britain at the time, but a very, very deep anti-war feeling, understandably enough, considering how many Britons – over three-quarters of a million – died in the Great War.
David D’Arcy:
There was another reason why some British politicians though they could avoid war – Hitler might have been open to negotiations with Britain.
JOHN LUKACS:
If there would have been an English leader who says at this situation, let’s see what Hitler can still offer to us, Hitler probably would have given, we have evidence for this, the British, fairly acceptable terms.
David D’Arcy:
Historian John Lukacs
JOHN LUKACS:
The acceptable terms means that Britain can keep most of the Empire, but it has to accept Germany ruling Europe and Churchill said no.
Military historian John Keegan
JOHN KEEGAN:
Most, most members of Parliament were very, very opposed to Hitler, but they weren’t strong minded in the way that Churchill was, most conservative MP’s were compromisers, as we all are. The, they felt that, you know, they could get around Hitler in some way or other without having to fight him.
David D’Arcy:
Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlin had already placated Hitler…He agreed to Hitler’s seizure of part of Czechoslovakia just two years before. But in 1939, Churchill, who had opposed Chamberlain, was proven right. In September, Hitler invaded Poland. On September 9, 1939, Chamberlin, then Prime Minister of Britain took to the airwaves to announce to the world that World War II had begun.
Clip: Neville Chamberlain - War Declaration Sept 9, 1939
“This morning the British Ambassador …unless we heard from them by eleven o clock, that they would withdraw their troops from Poland, that a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and consequently this country is at war with Germany…”
David D’Arcy:
He also acknowledged the failure of his own policy of appeasement in the face of Nazi aggression.
Clip: Chamberlin actuality:
“You can imagine what bitter blow it is to me that my long struggle to get peace has failed…Up to the very last it would have been very possible to arrange an honorable settlement with Poland, but Hitler would not have it. “
Music: film :
David D’Arcy:
A remilitarized Germany that had promised Chamberlain “Peace in Our Time” in exchange for part of Czechoslovakia, was now on the march. The political situation had quickly changed, and Churchill was now seen as having been right all along. The threat from Hitler that had seemed exaggerated a few years before now seemed like prophecy. Soon most of the British parliament would be on Churchill’s side.
Military historian and Churchill biographer Sir John Keegan.
JOHN KEEGAN:
They tried almost everybody else and Churchill was the only one who looked like being a successful successor to Neville Chamberlain. So, the House of Commons gave Churchill the chance. And in 1940, because of his consistency, the members of Parliament turned to him and had him appointed as Prime Minister virtually by acclamation.
David D’Arcy:
On May 10th, 1940, the same day Churchill took office as Britain’s Prime Minster, Germany invaded France. The Soviet Union had signed a Non-Aggression Pact with Nazi Germany. The isolationist United States was still on the sidelines, and would not enter the war for more than two years. . Great Britain led by Winston Churchill, stood alone at war with Hitler.
Clip: from HBO film “Into the Storm” (Churchill & the King)
In: (music +) “At 4:35 this morning…
Out: WC Could be coincidence, sir. Could be destiny…
David D’Arcy:
Brendan Gleeson as Winston Churchill and and Ian Brand as King George the Sixth in HBO’s new film, Into the Storm
On May 13, Churchill addressed the House of Commons in his first speech as Prime Minister. It was time, he declared for Britain to make sacrifices. He promised hardship and predicted victory, though he didn’t say when. And he assured Hitler – no doubt listening across the channel -- that the British would die fighting rather than give up.
Clip: from Winston Churchill’s Never Give In speech from May 13, 1940 (begin…then fade under)
“It must be remembered that we are at the preliminary stage of one of the great battles of history. That we are in action in many points in Norway and in Holland, that we have to be prepared in the Mediterranean, that the air battle is continuous, and that many preparations have to made here at home …”
David D’Arcy:
Events in 1940 catapulted ahead, all to Britain’s disadvantage. By the end of May, just weeks after Churchill took office, more than 200,000 British troops were trapped in the French port of Dunkirk. Pursued by the advancing German army they were being backed into the ocean. The unthinkable seemed to be happening. Germany could win the war, just days after its invasion of western Europe began. Surrender seemed imminent for the British army. In this scene from the forthcoming film “Into the Storm:” Churchill commands every craft at hand from military troop carriers to pleasure yachts and tugboats to rescue as many of the soldiers as possible from Dunkirk.
Clip: from HBO ‘Into the Storm’
Churchill:
“Admiral Pound?.
“Yes Sir.”
…As a precautionary measure the admiralty should assemble as many small vessels as it can…
… pleasure craft, everything must be called into service”
David D’Arcy:
In seven days, 226,000 British soldiers and 110,000 French troops were carried safely across the channel to England. Although the British army was saved, it was a massive defeat. Hitler’s conquest of Europe was near complete, and ended just across the English Channel. Could the first large-scale invasion of Britain since William the Conqueror be the next step?
Clip: Edward Murrow Archival clip
“For years he had sat in the house of commons like the conscience of England…Now the time had come for him to mobilize the English language and send it into battle, a spearhead of hope for Britain and the world. It sustained, it lifted the hearts of an island people when they stood alone.”
David D’Arcy:
Edward R Murrow of CBS in a program produced after the war.
We’ll hear how that was achieved just ahead, as England prepared for what seemed the inevitable: a German invasion.
Clip: Churchill
“The Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin…”
David D’Arcy:
You’re listening to Independent Minds: Winston Churchill -- Into the Storm.
Find more about Winston Churchill or hear this program again at this station’s website –or at murraystreet (dot) com slash Into the storm. I’m David D’Arcy.
ca 18:28
Station ID Break: (:60) (:59 music)
PART II
Music – from film audio
David D’Arcy:
Winston Churchill’s worst fears of the 1930s had come true. Britain’s army was in shambles, and it was clear what would likely follow. In June of 1940, France surrendered to the Germans, and Hitler seemed on the verge of victory across all of Europe. He would soon set his sights on Britain. Yet the country’s resolve grew, as it listened to Churchill on the radio.
Wireless tuning
Clip: CHURCHILL speech, June 18, 1940
“Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.
David D’Arcy:
The battle for France was now over, he declared. The Battle for Britain had begun. The former prime minister Clement Atlee was asked later what Churchill did to win the war, Atlee said, ‘talk about it.’
Clip: CHURCHILL speech, June 18, 1940
Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."
Music: top music:
David D’Arcy:
Hitler believed that once France capitulated, England would also surrender. After the defeat and mass evacuation of the British forces from Dunkirk, it was clear their army could be no match for the Germans. But on June 18, Churchill again defied the Nazis.
JOHN KEEGAN:
Churchill spoke to the French and the, the Czechs and the Poles to encourage them and to promise that the war would be won. And that was his great, great gift. He made people believe that even though everything seemed catastrophic, nevertheless, Hitler would be defeated.
David D’Arcy:
Historian John Keegan.
JOHN KEEGAN:
The thing is that the British people in 1940, I think against their better judgment, believed him. Churchill believed it himself. He didn’t say anything he didn’t believe. And, and the British people could detect that he believed what he said. It was this, it was this supreme confidence he had that gave his oratory the weight that it had.
David D’Arcy
Winston Churchill could speak in plain language that public understood, but he could also summon lyrical and stirring quotations –
Historian John Lukacs.
JOHN LUKACS:
Churchill had a tremendous memory of phrases and of history and of great prose and of Shakespearean prose, but also he had an immense memory of poetry.
Clip: Churchill – brief example of lyricism
David D’Arcy:
Churchill’s recitation of those lines, sometimes rhapsodically, galvanized his British audience – it was operatic oratory, even though Churchill wasn’t musical.
JOHN LUKACS:
He was almost totally tin eared about music. And this is a very strange thing, because to have an ear for poetry and an ear for music usually complement each other. Again, the very opposite with Hitler. Hitler had, as you know, Hitler had a great ear for music, but we know only of one instance where he would quote great German prose or poetry.
David D’Arcy:
Despite his achievements as an orator, listening to Churchill’s speeches today, it’s sometimes hard to get past how strange they sound…with their stilted language, and peculiar pronunciations. But even to the British audience of the time, Churchill was known for being unconventional, an eccentric.
Clip: from HBO film ‘Into the Storm’ (:22)
“…Sir the meeting of the War Cabinet at five, drinks with lord Beverbook ….
WC: “ and What about my sleep. …Sleep and a bath..
You’d better call a second meeting of the War Cabinet for eleven o clock tonight.”
David D’Arcy:
From the forthcoming film Winston Churchill – Into the Storm
JOHN KEEGAN:
The British thought that he was a, they thought he was a character. They thought he was what the British call a card. That he was, he was a bit of an actor and a bit of an exaggerator, and he went a bit further than common sense. And it amused it, but at the same time it convinced them.
David D’Arcy:
Historian John Keegan says that Churchill’s public flourishes, in voice and in attire, even in his open and copious alcohol consumption, were part of a deliberate political act.
And like Sir John Falstaff, the famous Shakespearean character, Churchill could even joke about how much he drank.
Here Brendan Gleeson plays Churchill meeting with pilots of the royal Air Force in “Into the Storm”.
Clip: from HBO film at 26:52
WC: How about you? How many Huns have you brought down…?.
Soldier: Seeing as it’s you Sir, I’m sure it will be fine
David D’Arcy:
Churchill was also never allergic to being famous. He enjoyed it. Gretchen Rubin says that wasn’t typical behavior for a British politician, particularly in wartime.
GRETCHEN RUBIN:
He was very un-British in that he was very pushy and he was a big self promoter and he was always trying to get himself written about and talked about. And, he got his mother to help him promote his career and, and push him forward. And he was, he was criticized for that throughout his life. He was called a medal hunter and things of that, because that isn’t very British, which is supposed to be very modest and unassuming.
David D’Arcy:
Churchill played up his character. Never without his cigar, out of his costume of top coat and hat, was he a camera-ready visual icon in a pre-television age. When people heard Churchill on the radio, they could picture the man. Actor Brendan Gleeson, portrays the Prime Minister in the new film. He said the challenge was get the voice right.
BRENDAN GLEESON:
I mean the voice is the thing. Ultimately, you know, you can dress up in black hats and you can stick cigars in your mouth and you can do all those things, but the voice was what was ultimately the most recognizable, the most essential.
He was one of those people who was so completely, he was so completely confident in his power over words that he, he customized them to himself in a very, very individualistic way
Clip: from HBO ‘Into the Storm’ setting up the Blitz
WC: What reserve do we have…
There are none
They’re so young, and so few of them,
And Yet…
WC:Make a note Job. Never in the field of human conflict, has so much been owed by so many to so few. Might use that later.
David D’Arcy:
Brendan Gleeson in HBO’s “Into the Storm.”
Again and again in his speeches, Churchill stood up to Hitler in anticipation of the worst – a Nazi invasion, which would have been the first by a foreign army since William the Conqueror in 1066. In preparation, the Luftwaffe, the German air force, began months of bombing raids across England.
Broadcaster Edward R. Murrow reported the scene in London for audiences back home in the United States as German planes arrived over the city.
Clips: EDWARD MURROW (Edward_R._Murrw_Ws_Hr)
“This is Trafalgar Square, the noise that you hear at the moment is the sound of the air raid sirens. I’m standing here just on the steps of St. Martin’s in the Fields. / A search light just burst into action, one single beam searching the sky above me now. People are walking around. I’m standing next to an air raid shelter entrance, and I must move this cable over just a bit so people can walk in…more search lights come into action. Occasionally they catch a cloud and the light seems to splash on the bottom of it…”
David D’Arcy:
Churchill recognized that if the nation could hold on against German bombing, that would itself be one victory over Hitler. And he professed that belief in his radio broadcast on August 20 of 1940.
Clip: from Winston Churchill’s Never Give In speech from May 13, 1940
“It is quite plain that Herr Hitler could not admit defeat in an air attack on Great Britain, without sustaining the most serious injury, if after all his boasting and bloodcurdling threats, and lurid accounts trumpeted throughout the world of the damage he had inflicted, of the vast numbers of our air force he had shot down – so he says, if after all this, his whole air onslaught were forced, after a while, tamely, to peter out, the Fuehrer’s reputation for veracity of statement might be seriously impugned.”
Clips: Newsreel
“In a special message of congratulations to the fighter command, Mr. Churchill said the results they have obtained give us just confidence in the coming struggle. These are some of the pilots, Canadians who are daily flying spitfires against the …sent against us. Hitler hopes to gain mastery of the air, and as long as Britain breeds men like these, it is England that will hold the mastery….”
David D’Arcy:
Churchill evoked the image of the British fighter pilots staving off the German attack.
Clip: from Winston Churchill’s Never Give In speech from May 13, 1940 (con’t) “The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the world war by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
David D’Arcy:
The battle in over the air was matched by a battle over the radio airwaves. Churchill wasn’t the only orator using words as a weapon.
Actuality: Adolf Hitler speech clip (for tone – perhaps 12 – 1:5 sec)
David D’Arcy:
Churchill’s war of words was also a chess game with Hitler,
who underestimated Churchill, Eventually, says Historian John Lukacs
Churchill recognized Hitler’s weakness: a hatred that would destabilize him. And nothing enraged Hitler more than Churchill’s determination.
JOHN LUKACS:
Hitler was a man consumed by rage and in this respect, Stalin was even better than Hitler. Stalin, we have several occasions, and this involves including Stalin and Churchill once, Stalin respected people who stood up to him. Hitler didn’t. Hitler had a special hatred for people who were in his way. A special hatred for people who obstructed his plans.
David D’Arcy:
Yet Churchill and Hitler did share something, says Gretchen Rubin. Each believed in his own destiny, and was convinced that he had been spared by a greater power for that challenge.
GRETCHEN RUBIN:
This is an interesting parallel with Hitler, because, because Churchill took, he took strength in this idea that he, that he was being saved by providence for some kind of, some kind of fate, fate or to play some role. And Hitler also, when the famous assassination attempt failed, Hitler was actually reassured by it. Because he thought that it was just a sign that providence, that, you know, he was, he was being, being saved and being watched for by some kind of divine providence. And so, it’s interesting that Churchill and Hitler both had the sense of themselves as, as sort of being chosen to play a role in history. And that they were going to be preserved to play that role no matter what happened.
ACTUALITY: Edward Murrow LP, end of track 6
“We interrupt this program to bring you a news bulletin…the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor…by air, president Roosevelt has just announced.”
ACTUALITY Murrow LP, beginning of track 7
FDR: Yesterday, December 7th 1941, a day that will live in infamy, the United States was attacked by the naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan…
David D’Arcy:
The U.S. delayed its own entry into the Second World War until it was forced to fight, in 1942. Suddenly Churchill had two enormously powerful allies: the U.S and the Soviet Union who had joined the allies after Hitler invaded Russia..
By 1943, Churchill recounted the losses of the Battle of Britain, and noted that the tides had turned in the fight for Europe.
Clip: CHURCHILL SPEECH Reaping The Whirlwind June 30, 1943
“Three years ago Hitler boasted he would rub out, that was the term, rub out the cities of Britain, and in the 9 months before he abandoned his attack, more than 40,000 of our people were killed. But now those who sowed the wind are reaping the whirlwind.”
David D’Arcy:
Yet alongside the United States and the Soviet Union, Britain became the weaker partner in the alliance, says John Keegan. Churchill was marginalized as they planned for the future.
JOHN KEEGAN:
Simply because they were so much stronger and they had so many more fighting men than Britain had. Britain had exhausted itself by 1940, 1944. It had spent all its money and it had a great number of men killed and, and captured. Britain was a very weak country in 1944.
David D’Arcy:
And, Keegan says, even though Churchill was an extraordinary orator and leader, he was far from infallible as a commander.
JOHN KEEGAN:
His deficiencies are quite easy to describe. He, he had too many good ideas, most of which were bad. His, secretary of state for war, his chief of staff, the equivalent of George Marshall to, to Roosevelt, was a solider called Alanbrook.
And Alanbrook said “Churchill has ten ideas every day. Nine of them are bad and one of them, and one of them is good. My job is to sort out the one good idea from the nine bad ideas and make him stick to the good idea.
He made many, many mistakes. I think one of his mistakes was to believe that there was a, a great decision to be won in the Mediterranean. He didn’t really want to invade France. He didn’t want D-Day. He didn’t want the Normandy landings. He wanted to invade Germany through Central Europe, from Italy. That was a bad idea.”
David D’Arcy:
If Churchill was right about something, it was the Allies’ relative weakness compared to Germany when the US entered the war. Historian Max Hastings says he found a way to minimize British casualties.
MAX HASTINGS:
In 1943 United States had been in the war for two years… and in that year, the Americans and British fighting the Germans, this is not the Japanese war, but in the West. lost 60 thousand killed that’s from Sicily, Italy, bombing campaign and so on. The Russians in 1943 lost about four million killed. That’s the degree of the disparity. And, if you want to be cynical about this, you could say that was the measure of Churchill’s achievement. But he and Roosevelt never admitted to seeing it in those terms. He and Roosevelt were able to steer their countries throughout the second world war having paid nothing like the blood price…..
David D’Arcy :
And Churchill w was determined not to move too soon with a counter-attack, even though Stalin wanted an invasion of France as early as 1942. Andrew Roberts is author of Masters and Commanders, a study of the allied military leadership.
ANDREW ROBERTS:
I think the single most important strategic contribution that Churchill made to the Second World War was to ensure that the Allies did not return to the continent too soon after their expulsion from it in Dunkirk in May 1940. That was the key issue.
If we’d gone back with a 9 or 50 divisional attack into Northwest France and had been flung off again, which is very likely to have happened, then the horrific prospect would have opened up of us never being able to return to the continent, which would have meant that either Stalin or Hitler, both of them murderous dictators and totalitarian figures, would have totally dominated the European continent well into the 1940s and 1950s.
David D’Arcy:
By 1944, Churchill had been overruled by Allied commanders and D-Day was authorized– yet the former cavalry officer was ready to lead the charge says actor Brendan Gleeson.
BRENDAN GLEESON:
He wanted to go over, for example, on D-Day, he wanted to go over with the troops. Was prepared to do so and I think people felt that intrinsically. He wasn’t asking them to do anything that he wouldn’t do himself. So, I guess it was the power of words, but also the, the purity of belief.
Film Clip: from HBO ‘Into the Storm’ at 1:07:06 (:54)
IN: On D Day minus eight, the entire coast line …foreign embassies will not be allowed to communicate with the outside world…
“ I need to speak to Admiral Cunningham about my accommodation....
I have decded to go with the troops on D Day. Morale you see. Morale up, Victory assured. I’m, good at morale….
Sir, If I may say so
Mind’s made up… change up the subject.
The Prime Minister seems determined
Out: “Put him anywhere near a dangerous situation, and you can be absolutely sure that he’ll go straight towards it.”
David D’Arcy:
Brendan Gleeson and Janet McTeer as Winston and Clementine Churchill in a scene from, ”Into the Storm.”
Gretchin Rubin:
And people around him speculate that Churchill was almost hoping that he would be killed in battle in the, //he wanted to sail with the fleet on D-Day. And in fact, only the intervention of the King stopped him.
David D’Arcy:
We’ll continue our look into Winston Churchill in a moment.
You’re listening to Independent Minds: Winston Churchill, Into the Storm.
Find more about Winston Churchill and the early years of World War Two on this station’s website – or at murraystreet dot com slash into the storm,
I’m David D’Arcy.
Announcer:
Production support for Independent Minds comes from HBO, presenting "Winston Churchill - Into the Storm on May 31"
ID break Music: :59 Hansen Sym #2 second movement:
andante con tenerezza (total :60)
PART III
Music: Hansen Sym#2 Third Mvmt excerpt
David D’Arcy:
You’re listening to Independent Minds: Winston Churchill, Into the Storm.
I’m David D’Arcy
Winston Churchill always had his critics. Some, like writer Patrick Buchanan, say Britain could have stayed out of war by negotiating with Hitler after defeating him in the Battle of Britain, instead of paying a huge price in a much longer conflict.
PATRICK BUCHANAN:
Churchill, I guess, is the individual most responsible for the defeat of Nazi Germany or an indispensable man in its defeat. However, to defeat Nazi Germany after 1940, required that the Soviet Union and the Red Army defeat him in Central and Eastern Europe and that the United States come across the Atlantic and defeat him in Western Europe. And that Great Britain fight for three, four, five more years, which meant the certain breaking and bankruptcy of the British Empire and that’s exactly what happened. That is the result of having fought a six year war against Hitler’s Germany.
David D’Arcy:
For Churchill, victory meant saving Europe from Hitler, and that had been achieved, says John Lukacs.
JOHN LUKACS:
The Russians had overrun Eastern Europe and, and Roosevelt was less interested in Eastern Europe than Churchill was…less interested in Poland than Churchill was. But then, also consider that Churchill couldn’t do very much with or without Roosevelt. Let me put it this way, I think consistently, through the ‘30s and the 40’s, what Churchill saw was that Britain had two alternatives. Either Germany rules all of Europe or the Russians rule the Eastern half of Europe and half of Europe is better than none.
David D’Arcy: (comes in hot)
By 1945, when Germany and Japan surrendered, Churchill’s reputation seemed to be at its height. As in this scene from Into the Storm, when Churchill stood with the Royal family before a huge cheering crowd.
Film Clip: from HBO ‘Into the Storm’ at 1:17:30 (cross under next clip leading to “your victory”)
Royal family and Churchill applauded by the crowd
“come along Winston: (applause)”
ACTUALITY: CROWD NOISE and CHURCHILL QUICK BIT OF SPEECH (Churchill 450508 MinistryOfHealthBldg)
“This is your victory, Victory in the cause of freedom”
JOHN KEEGAN:
In, in 1945, Churchill stood on a balcony in Whitehall, London’s main political street, and, and shouted to the crowd, this is your victory. And they shouted back, no, this is your victory. And, and that was, that was sincere on their part.
D’Arcy
Historian John Keegan
JOHN KEEGAN:
The British people did believe that Churchill had won the War, but they also believed that they’d, they’d got the War behind them and they now wanted some reward for having put up with all, all the hardship that they’d suffered.
And they thought that Churchill was not a peace leader -- That he was a war leader, but he’d done his job and they wanted, they wanted to try another political system, which the Labour Party offered.
David D’Arcy:
Churchill had shot from the hip during the campaign, predicting that the
Labour Party would appoint a Gestapo to stifle freedom of expression.
Film Clip: from HBO “Into the Storm” at 1:20:45
In: “My Friends, I must tell you that a socialist policy is abhorrent to the British ideas of freedom. No socialist government could afford to allow free sharp or violently worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo - No doubt very humanely directed //
… This would nip _ in the bud.
// Leave these socialist dreamers to their utopias --- or their nightmares. Let us make sure that the cottage home to which the warrior will return is blessed with modest but solid prosperity. Well fenced and guarded against misfortune, and that Britons remain free to plan their lives for themselves and for those they love.”
David D’Arcy:
Brendan Gleason as Winston Churchill on the stump -- from the new HBO film Into the Storm.
That statement backfired with the voters. Historian Andrew Roberts says
Churchill’ verve as an orator got the best of him
ANDREW ROBERTS:
The Gestapo gaffe made by Churchill during the campaign, really exemplified the problem with his rhetoric by 1945. It was thought to be just too ‘off the cuff.’ It was a ridiculous remark to have made…Even fellow conservatives thought it was ridiculous… and Churchill himself soon afterwards accepted that it was a ridiculous thing to have said.
David D’Arcy:
The same public that had fought the war -- voted in the Labour Party. Churchill, the wartime Prime Minister, was out of power.
Churchill was devastated. The nation he’d rallied over five dark years had now rejected him
Film clip: from HBO “Into the Storm” Churchill yells at servant for failing to bring the rights paints to his easel at 20:45
Churchill: “Why did you put it here?”
Servant: “It’s such a nice view, I thought you might want to paint it.”
Churchill: “Mind your own damn business”
Mrs. Churchill “Just treat him with respect Winston, YouTreat him like a servant”
Churchill: “That’s what he is”
Mrs. Churchill: “It’s people like him who won the war”
Churchill: “Oh, you’re in one of your bloody left-wing moods”
Mrs. Churchill: “God, you’re a patronizing bully.”
David D’Arcy:
Brendan Gleason with Janet McTreer - playing Churchill on vacation with his wife after the election -- venting his anger at a servant -- who’d setup his easel and paints.
Churchill had to live with a grim verdict after staving off a defeat at the hands of Hitler. At least Roosevelt had died a few moths earlier, as a war leader on the way to victory, says Gretchen Rubin, Author of 40 ways of Looking at Winston Churchill.
GRETCHEN RUBIN:
Churchill envied Roosevelt his death. He said, “Roosevelt died in harness”. And he knew that victory was assured and he, he died in the thick of it. And he envied that.
And people around him speculate that Churchill was almost hoping that he would be killed in battle in the, in the last, last stages of the War. That was definitely how he would have liked to have died and he wanted to sail with the fleet on D-Day. And in fact, only the intervention of the King stopped him. And that kind of dramatic death in battle in the last hours would have very much satisfied his sense of history.
Music: Bridge
David D’Arcy:
Churchill was voted back into office in 1951. He remained as Prime Minister until 1955. Throughout his life he’d accepted medals for bravery but almost no lordly titles. He reluctantly accepted a title from the new queen, who was born when Churchill was almost 50. Publicly, even then, he was reluctant to take credit for unifying Britain during the war.
HUGH WHITEMORE:
He said wonderfully, when he was an old man, somebody praised him for his speech making and he said, it was the nation who had the lion’s heart. I had the good fortune to be called upon to give the roar.
David D’Arcy:
Screenwriter of the new HBO Churchill film Hugh Whitemore.
And as often as Churchill’s name and legacy are evoked, there is no one of his stature as a speaker today, says historian John Keegan.
JOHN KEEGAN:
Well, all oratory has declined. Nobody speaks like that any longer. Everybody tries to speak in an every day, commonplace way. Churchill wasn’t frightened to use high, important, theatrical, flowery language. He, he believed that people would accept it and rise to it as they did, but nobody else does that. George W. Bush never spoke like that. Nor, nor has Barak Obama. Nor, indeed, did John McClain. I mean it just isn’t the fashion any longer. That sort of high flown rhetoric has just gone out. Perhaps it may come back again, but it’s, it’s not with us now.
MICHAEL LIND: (level/ and presence on first piece)
I think if you asked most presidential speech writers if they had a fantasy candidate they could write speeches for//, It would not be any American democrats or republicans.//It would be Winston Churchill.
David D’Arcy:
Writer Michael Lind of the New America Foundation says he isn’t sure Churchill’s rhetoric would have much of an audience today.
MICHAEL LIND:
I think devolution is not a bad word for it. If you compare the Lincoln/Douglas debates to Franklin Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats to modern televised Presidential State of the Union addresses, you find that the sentences are becoming simpler and simpler, that complex arguments are not being made. You tend to have strings of very simple talking points and I think a part of this is the shift from an oratorical culture to a visual culture where people have much shorter attention spans and are unwilling to listen to a prolonged argument.
I think that if a politician, even in Britain, used the kind of grandiose rhetoric that Churchill used at his climaxes of his oratory, this would be snickered at today. People would find it ridiculous or pompous, rather than moving,
David D’Arcy:
Still, Churchill nostalgia is strong in the United States. The neo conservative magazine The Weekly Standard, named Winston Churchill the man of the 20th century. And writer Michael Lind says former president George W. Bush borrowed a bust of Churchill from the British Embassy in Washington and placed it in the oval office.
MICHAEL LIND:
George W. Bush was a conviction politician, someone who made his decision and stuck with it and was convinced that reconsideration was a sign of weakness. And you see that in Churchill himself. He had brilliant ideas and then he had terrible ideas, which he persisted in, long after everyone else had concluded they were terrible.
For example, his idea that the way to cripple the Nazis during World War II was to strike through the Balkans, which he described as the soft underbelly of Europe. Well, it’s anything but soft, even if it is an underbelly. You can understand why that sort of example would have a lot of appeal.
David D’Arcy:
Gretchen Rubin:
GRETCHEN RUBIN:
People often see the Churchill that they’re looking for. And they overlook the things that don’t comport with what they expect to find.
David D’Arcy:
Generations since have looked to Churchill, often as a case study for the notion that an individual can change history.
But writer Max Hastings says his real genius was changing how a country saw itself.
MAX HASTINGS:
The British were very unsure of either what they could do or after the battle of Britain, and after Hitler had flinched from invasion, what they had done. Churchill told the British people that they had done something great. He enabled them – for a season anyway, and to walk ten feet tall. And you can argue that Churchill invested with grandeur a rather more equivocal or rather more ambivalent achievement. But he possessed this genius for making people feel good about what they had done and what they could which has been seldom matched in history, Except perhaps by Abraham Lincoln in this country.
HUGH WHITEMORE:
I think it’s because he was, apart from being an extraordinary leader and an extraordinary politician, he was an astonishing human being.
David D’Arcy:
Hugh Whitemore, who dramatized Churchill’s wartime years in “Into the Storm.”
HUGH WHITEMORE:
He was, sort of, an every man. A man of energy. A man of insight, an artist, a writer, a politician, a soldier. He seemed to encompass almost everything, therefore, the playwright, It’s a marvelous opportunity to explore human nature through writing about Winston Churchill. He’s sort of a conduit into humanity itself, I think.
David D’Arcy:
Churchill’s impact on history is clear Britain was never invaded by the Nazis and Hitler was defeated. But while politicians often quote him today, few can rise to the level of his oratory.
Actor Brendan Gleeson.
BRENDAN GLEESON:
We have to put an awful lot of the spin doctors on, into the dock over this. Basically what happened was, you know, there were a few politicians or politicians increasingly became kind of, you know, oratorily illiterate. And so they, they employed these people who could give them safe answers to just about every question by avoidance, you know, that you’d say some, you know, just hang some platitude out. And it meant you were never going to really get yourself in trouble.
Film Clip: from Into the Storm at 1:30:00 (:30)
Winston Churchill Speaking – after the war
In: WC: All the things I cherish most seem to be slipping away…
The empire, respect for the old order// I feel very lonely without a war. If I could do it all over again –
Voice 2: The Whole War?
WC: “ 1940, just 1940
Clip: from Winston Churchill’s Never Give In speech from May 13, 1940
“On the continent of Europe, we have yet to make sure that the simple and honorable purposes for which we entered the war are not brushed aside or overlooked in the moths following our success, and that the words freedom, democracy, and liberation are not distorted from their true meaning as we have understood them. There would be little use in punishing the Hitlerites for their crimes if law and justice did not rule.”
David D’Arcy:
The actor Brendan Gleeson – in HBO’s new film ---and the original -- Winston Churchill in 1945, after leaving the post of Prime Minister.
Winston Churchill won the Nobel prize for literature in 1953 after publishing his history of World War II -- “The Gathering Storm.”
As for his place in history, the former Prime Minister was never worried. It was another occasion for a Churchillian turn of phrase. He said: . "History will bear me out, particularly as I shall write that history myself,"
For Independent Minds, I'm David D’Arcy.
Announcer 2:
Independent Minds: Winston Churchill – Into the Storm was written by David D’Arcy. Ben Shapiro is senior editor. David Bailes is our line and post producer. Production coordination by Alexa Lim, Adam Pogoff and Tracey Schectman. Station relations Matthew Long Middleton. The Executive Producer of Independent Minds is Matthew Glass, Senior Producer is Stephen Rathe.
Thanks to our interviewees: Pat Buchanan, Brendan Gleeson, Max Hastings, John Keegan, Michael Lind, John Lucaks, Andrew Roberts, Gretchen Rubin and Hugh Whitemore.
Our new recordings were done at CDM Studios in New York City and in the US and Britain by Patrick Callier, Libby Casey, John Diliberto, Sarah Miller and Mutiny Studios and NAM Recording.
Dramatic sequences from HBO Films forthcoming “Winston Churchill -- Into the Storm:”
Recorded speeches from Never Give In: The Best of Winston Churchill’s Speeches.
And additional recordings from Edward R Murrow’s “I Can Hear it Now.:
Link to these resources or stream this program again through this stations’s website -- or at Murraystreet (dot) com (slash) Into The Storm
Independent Minds is a production of GCM and Murray Street Productions.
Announcer :
Production support for Independent Minds comes from HBO, presenting "Winston Churchill - Into the Storm on May 31st.
