Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [280]
The sublime consummation of Churchill’s war leadership of Britain: On the balcony of Buckingham Palace with the royal family on VE Day, May 8, 1945
The sublime consummation of Churchill’s war leadership of Britain: he addresses his nation, and the world, from Downing Street.
With Truman and Stalin at Potsdam on July 17, 1945. Though he did not know it, Winston Churchill had only nine more days to serve as Britain’s wartime prime minister.
Much grief—even perhaps the bloody strife in Greece—might have been averted if Churchill had reached this conclusion months earlier, and explicitly proclaimed it to the Greek people. But it was hard to resolve the affairs of half a world emerging from the horrors of Nazi occupation amid the new reality of Soviet expansionism. If British policy was sometimes misjudged, so too was American. The British embassy in Washington reported to London about U.S. media opinion: “Indignation with Britain has given way1019 to a kind of disgruntled and disenchanted cynicism which says that it was foolish ever to have supposed that the European, and in particular Russian and British, leopards could really have been expected to change their spots as the result of a few idealistic words from America.”
What now was to be done? On the afternoon of Saturday, December 23, Churchill drove to Chequers, where a large family party was assembled for Christmas. He had scarcely arrived before he declared his determination to abandon the celebration and travel to Athens. His decision caused consternation, above all to Clementine. This was one of the very rare moments of the war at which she broke down, fleeing upstairs in floods of tears. Her husband had just turned seventy, and in poor health. Private secretary John Martin wrote in his diary: “Glad I am not going on an expedition1020 of which I disapprove, the prize not being worth the risks.” Late on Christmas Eve Churchill and his entourage, including Anthony Eden, drove to Northolt and took off for Italy in a new American C-54 Skymaster. “Make it look British,” Churchill urged when the plane was delivered, and the aircraft had been refitted to an extraordinary standard of comfort for the times. Its principal passenger complained only that the clock in his private compartment ticked too loudly, and insisted upon disconnection of an electrically heated lavatory seat.
What did Churchill hope to achieve in Athens? It seemed to him, rightly, essential to Britain’s global prestige, and above all to relations with the United States, that he should succeed in stabilising Greece. It was implausible that this could be achieved under Papandreou. Some broadly based coalition government was needed. His advisers believed that Archbishop Damaskinos might provide the necessary sheet anchor, and supervise the creation of such a regime. Yet Churchill was mistrustful of surrendering the country to some wily local prelate. As ever, he wanted to see, and then to be seen to act, for himself. Early in the afternoon of Christmas Day, his Skymaster landed at Kalamaki Airfield.
One of the welcoming party observed cynically that the visitors “had the air of men to whom a brilliant idea1021 had been vouchsafed after the third glass of port upon which they had immediately decided to act but which they could now no longer very clearly recall.” Macmillan found the prime minister “in a most mellow, not to say chastened mood.”1022 A two-hour conference took place in the plane, the interior of which became icy cold. Churchill’s shivering typist, Elizabeth Layton, was increasingly fearful for “Master’s” health. The security situation was much worse than had been recognised in London, with snipers active in many parts of the Greek capital. Towards evening, a convoy of armoured cars took the party on a long, tense, uncomfortable journey to Phaleron, where they were transferred by launch to the light cruiser Ajax, a veteran of the 1939 river