Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [0]
REPORTAGE
America 1968: The Fire This Time
Ulster 1969: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland
The Battle for the Falklands (with Simon Jenkins)
BIOGRAPHY
Montrose: The King’s Champion
Yoni: Hero of Entebbe
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Going to the Wars
Editor
MILITARY HISTORY
Bomber Command
The Battle of Britain (with Len Deighton)
Das Reich
Overlord
Victory in Europe
The Korean War
Warriors: Extraordinary Tales from the Battlefield
Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944–1945
Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45
COUNTRYSIDE WRITING
Outside Days
Scattered Shots
Country Fair
ANTHOLOGY (Edited)
The Oxford Book of Military Anecdotes
In memory of Roy Jenkins,
and our Indian summer friendship
It may well be that the most glorious chapters of our history have yet to be written. Indeed, the very problems and dangers that encompass us and our country ought to make English men and women of this generation glad to be here at such a time. We ought to rejoice at the responsibilities with which destiny has honoured us, and be proud that we are guardians of our country in an age when her life is at stake.
—Winston Spencer Churchill, April 1933
History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days.
—Winston Spencer Churchill, November 1940
Contents
List of Maps
Introduction
1. The Battle of France
2. The Two Dunkirks
3. Invasion Fever
4. The Battle of Britain
5. Greek Fire
Insert 1
6. Comrades
7. The Battle of America
8. A Glimpse of Arcadia
9. “The Valley of Humiliation”
Insert 2
10. “Second Front Now!”
11. Camels and the Bear
12. The Turn of Fortune
13. Out of the Desert
14. Sunk in the Aegean
Insert 3
15. Tehran
16. Setting Europe Ablaze
17. Overlord
18. Bargaining with an Empty Wallet
19. Athens: “Wounded in the House of Our Friends”
Insert 4
20. Yalta
21. The Final Act
Acknowledgements and References
Notes
Select Bibliography
Illustration Credits
Maps
Europe
The Mediterranean
May 1940 Deployments
The German Advance
The Dunkirk Perimeter
Operation Sealion
Operation Compass
The North African Campaign
Operation Torch
The Italian Campaign
The Dodecanese
Overlord and Anvil
Introduction
CHURCHILL was the greatest Englishman and one of the greatest human beings of the twentieth century, indeed of all time. Yet, beyond that bald assertion, there are infinite nuances in considering his conduct of Britain’s war between 1940 and 1945, which is the theme of this book. It originated nine years ago, when Roy Jenkins was writing his biography of Churchill. Roy flattered me by inviting my comments on the typescript, chapter by chapter. Some of my suggestions he accepted; many he sensibly ignored. When we reached the Second World War, his patience expired. Exasperated by the profusion of my strictures, he said: “You’re trying to get me to do something which you should write yourself, if you want to!” By that time, his health was failing. He was impatient to finish his own book, which achieved triumphant success before his death.
In the years which followed, I thought much about Churchill and the war, mindful of some Boswellian lines about Samuel Johnson: “He had once conceived1 the thought of writing The Life Of Oliver Cromwell … He at length laid aside his scheme, on discovering that all that can be told of him is already in print; and that it is impracticable to procure any authentick information in addition to what the world is already possessed of.” Among the vast Churchillian bibliography, I was especially apprehensive about venturing anywhere near the tracks of David Reynolds’s extraordinarily original and penetrating 2005 In Command of History. The author dissected successive drafts of Churchill’s war memoirs, exposing contrasts between judgements on people and events which the old statesman initially proposed to make, and those which he finally deemed it prudent