Winston Churchill's War Leadership - Martin Gilbert [20]
Churchill had always been a believer in the power of the written word—from the time when, as a schoolboy, he would write his mother long letters setting out his requests and point of view and defending his actions. Throughout his political life he was convinced that if he set out an argument clearly, on paper, he might have a chance to influence even the most obdurate of adversaries. These appeals, which are found in the archives of all his political contemporaries from 1900 on, were not always successful, but he believed that the effort should be made and that there should be on record clear, written evidence that, during the war, no stone had been left unturned. One example was his appeal to the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, urging him, on 16 May 1940, not to commit Italy as an active ally of Germany.
Churchill had met Mussolini in Rome in 1925, when Churchill was the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, negotiating a settlement of First World War debts with Britain’s former Italian ally. In May 1940, Mussolini was poised to attack France—a “stab in the back” that was to outrage British opinion. Churchill desperately wanted to avert bringing Britain into war with a power that could dominate the Mediterranean and threaten the British position in Palestine, Egypt and on the Suez Canal. He wrote in his letter: “Now that I have taken up my office as Prime Minister and Minister of Defence I look back to our meetings in Rome and feel a desire to speak words of goodwill to you as chief of the Italian nation across what seems to be a swiftly-widening gulf. Is it too late to stop a river of blood from flowing between the British and Italian peoples? We can no doubt inflict grievous injuries upon one another and maul each other cruelly, and darken the Mediterranean with our strife. If you so decree it must be so; but I declare that I have never been the enemy of Italian greatness, nor ever at heart the foe of the Italian law-giver.”
Churchill then gave Mussolini his assessment of the military situation in Europe: “It is idle to predict the course of the great battles now raging in Europe, but I am sure that whatever may happen on the Continent, England will go on to the end, even quite alone, as we have done before, and I believe with some assurance that we shall be aided in increasing measure by the United States, and, indeed, by all the Americas. I beg you to believe that it is in no spirit of weakness or of fear that I make this solemn appeal, which will remain on record. Down the ages above all other calls comes the cry that the joint heirs of Latin and Christian civilization must not be ranged against one another in mortal strife. Hearken to it I beseech you in all honour and respect before the dread signal is given. It will never be given by us.”
Mussolini’s son-in-law, the Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano, found Churchill’s appeal “dignified and noble,” but Mussolini, excited by the imminent possibility of using Hitler’s assault on France to secure for Italy the French regions of Nice and Savoy, ignored it. The result was the embroilment of the Italian forces in a losing war and the destruction, within three years, of Mussolini’s Fascist regime.
Another Churchill letter, written at the end of 1940, was to be instrumental in gaining Britain the vital supplies needed from the United States in 1941. The appeal was sent when Britain stood alone and vulnerable, facing German military dominance in Europe, offensive air power, and submarine supremacy. Addressed to President Roosevelt, the letter was written after the Canadian industrialist Arthur Purvis, the head of the British Purchasing Mission in the United States, advised Churchill that Roosevelt would be influenced by a full disclosure of Britain’s military, air and naval weaknesses and by a detailed explanation of