Winston Churchill's War Leadership - Martin Gilbert [13]
In the first few months of Churchill’s wartime premiership, one of his hardest tasks and greatest achievements was projecting confidence, even at the blackest of times. In the summer of 1940, during the dangerous, long-drawn-out days and nights of the German invasion and conquest of Belgium, Holland and France and the subsequent German aerial bombardment of Britain, Churchill did not see how Britain could avoid defeat. On returning from Buckingham Palace after becoming Prime Minister—as German forces were breaking through the frontiers of the three northern European nations—he told the detective who was with him: “I hope that it is not too late. I am very much afraid that it is. We can only do our best.” An extraordinary feature of his war leadership in those first months, and at other times of crisis, was his ability to hide his doubts and fears from the public. He understood from the outset of his premiership that if he was seen to waiver, public confidence in continuing at war would not be sustained.
The main vehicle by which Churchill sustained that confidence was through his speeches and broadcasts. The twin pillars of his oratory were realism and vision. One complemented the other. When he spoke in Parliament or broadcast to the nation (Parliament having refused to allow his speeches in the House of Commons to be broadcast), he instilled confidence in a way he himself had not anticipated. He made his first public broadcast as Prime Minister at the urging of his predecessor and former opponent, Neville Chamberlain. Those who listened to Churchill’s early broadcasts expected to be told, as indeed they were, that times were dangerous and the future dire. What they did not expect to hear, after the stark warnings, was that the Prime Minister looked forward to something very different from a state of siege.
In his first speech in the House of Commons as Prime Minister, on 13 May 1940, while he was still in the process of forming his government, Churchill began by setting out the dangers that were confronting Britain: “I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this 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 us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will 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, lamentable catalogue of human crime. This is our policy.”
Churchill then went on to present the Members of Parliament with his astonishing vision. “You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory. Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”
The words “a monstrous tyranny” highlighted another facet of Churchill’s leadership—his clarity as to the purpose of the war. From the outset of the fighting, when he was First Lord of the Admiralty and a member of Chamberlain’s War Cabinet, he was able to convey to the British public something they overwhelmingly felt within themselves: that it was a just war, a war being fought against evil. Even earlier, at the height of the pre-war debate about whether Nazi Germany could, or should, be appeased, Churchill had understood, and conveyed, that what was at stake was the survival of humane values. “War is terrible,” he had written on 7 January 1939, “but slavery is worse.” From the first months of Nazi rule in Germany, Churchill had spoken out in the House of Commons against the racism of the new regime and the cruel nature of Nazi anti-Semitism. He had argued in 1938 that any appeasement of Germany was a sign not only of British military weakness but also of moral weakness, and that, sooner or later—“and most probably sooner”—both would have to be redressed, since the object of appeasement—to satisfy Hitler by acceding to his territorial demands—would only encourage