May 8th was Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) commemorating the Allied triumph over Nazism in 1945. It was also the beginning of the end of Winston Churchill’s political career. As soon as the war in Europe was won, British voters sent him packing. Why?
Back Story
He had taken over in May 1940 from fellow Conservative prime minister Neville Chamberlain whose signature policy of appeasing Hitler, embodied in the September 30, 1938, Munich Pact, had come unraveled.
The pact had given Hitler a chunk of Czechoslovakia. On March 15, 1939, the Führer gobbled up what was left. A rearmed Germany had already annexed Austria on March 12, 1938. And on September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland triggering World War II. To make matters worse for Poland, on September 17, 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east.
The country was divided between Hitler and Stalin just as the two dictators had previously and secretly conspired.
On September 3, 1939, Chamberlain announced, “This country is at war with Germany.”
Charitable observers say that Chamberlain’s
appeasement policy was rooted in the trauma of WWI and in his desire to buy
time so that Britain could rearm. Regardless, it was clear he was not cut out
to be a wartime prime minister. Meanwhile, though, he was prime minister. Chamberlain dispatched a British
Expeditionary Force to France but not much happened until April 9, 1940, when
British troops engaged with the Germans in Norway. The battle did not end well.
Chamberlain had to go. No election was held. The politically dominant Conservative Party selected Churchill as its new leader, and he became prime minister on May 10, 1940. After all, he had been the leading Conservative voice against appeasement. Labour was no alternative; the party, too, had advocated appeasement until 1938.
It was a gloomy time. Britain was alone.
Churchill formed an all-party War Cabinet and famously declared, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” He saw the country through the most intense German air bombing of London. The worst of the Blitz happened between September 7, 1940, and May 11, 1941. Fear of a German invasion was palpable.
Only when Germany declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, and America was compelled to enter the war in Europe did Churchill have a reason for genuine optimism.
And the rest is
history.
***
The Tories had nothing worthwhile to offer except Churchill. And the diplomat Harold Nicolson, a confidante, thought even Churchill’s personal popularity would decrease once he had navigated Britain to victory.
Meanwhile, Churchill hoped against hope that Labour would stay in his government until Japan was defeated. Labour leader Clement
Attlee and his deputy Ernest Bevin signaled that was their plan too. As Deputy
Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945, Attlee was efficient and
low-key in the crucial committee work of the wartime government. For his part, Churchill was
willing to accommodate Attlee on social security and full employment.
Then came the "Let Us Face the Future," Labour Party Conference in Blackpool. On May
21, Attlee telephoned Churchill to say that Labour had a change of heart and did
not want to stay in the government until the Japanese were defeated. The
Liberals also quit.
So, on May 23, 1945, the parliamentary wartime coalition
broke up. Churchill had held office for five years and 13 days. He went to
Buckingham Palace for an audience with King George VI at which he tendered his
resignation and humbly withdrew. Summoned, he returned to the palace four hours later, and the King asked him
to head a Conservative government during the six-week election campaign. The monarch and his first minister had grown close during the war, with the sovereign writing to Churchill
as “My dear Winston.”
Churchill formed a new government because he had to replace the
Labour and Liberal members who had quit. He loved being prime minister and he was not going to give up the position without a fight.
Churchill appealed to the public to let him finish the job and defeat Japan. His approval rating had never fallen below 78 percent and in May 1945 stood at 83 percent.
***
A bestseller no one read
Back on December 1, 1942, Sir William Beveridge, an economist, had written a turgid yet bestselling book that advocated Britain become a welfare state. Paradoxically the Conservative Party, not Labour, had conceived of a National Health Service scheme and a massive state-funded housebuilding program. What 17-year-old Margaret Thatcher thought about all this I do not know. When it came to social welfare Churchill was, by no means, a small-government conservative. Nonetheless, in the public's eye, he was not perceived as a sufficiently passionate campaigner for social welfare.
In contrast, the Labour election manifesto, “Let Us Face
the Future,” promised nationalization, centralized economic planning, full
employment, and, yes, national health insurance. Atlee further promised housing, state
retirement pensions, and disability benefits.
Going Over the top against socialism
In the political campaign, rather than accentuate domestic concerns and his proven commitment
to social welfare, Churchill went on an over-the-top ideological attack
against socialism. He warned that socialists would rob citizens of their liberty
and create Gestapo-like secret police: “No socialist government conducting the
entire life and industry of the country 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 in the first instance. And
this would nip opinions in the bud; it would stop criticism as it reared its
head, and it would gather all the power to the supreme party and the party
leaders….”
Maybe this was psychological displacement on Churchill's part redirecting his revulsion of Stalinism onto Attlee’s mild-mannered democratic socialism. Churchill may also have been influenced by Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom which he'd recently read. It is a sort of gospel to free-market conservatives. Churchill's flirtation with economic libertarianism did not last but it was in full swing at this stage. In reality, it was absurd to claim that Attlee, who had served as his deputy over the past four years, was anything like the Soviet dictator.
Churchill's campaign theme was that socialism “and the abject
worship of the State” were inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism. If the Labour Party socialists took power, they would prescribe where people could work, “where
they may go, and what they may say; [and] where their wives are to queue up for
the state ration.”
By dissolving the wartime government before Japan could be defeated, Churchill declared, “our socialist and Liberal [Party] friends [had] put party before country.” Telling voters to “leave these socialist dreamers to their utopias or their nightmares,” he promised food and housing for demobilized soldiers.
Yet, his economic recovery plan sounded vague and half-hearted.
***
Divided attentions
Churchill did not give himself over entirely to the election campaign.
He kept one eye on a possible US pullback in liberated Germany, fearing with good cause that the Soviets would cast their shadow across the entire continent. They had the most enormous army in Europe (the US was still engaged in the Pacific). If Stalin wanted to take control of Poland and Eastern Europe, Britain alone would be powerless to stop him.
Meanwhile, the Americans were testing the atomic bomb. Churchill wrote President Harry S Truman asking for an update. He had already given his consent for its use
against Japan. Though Stalin wasn’t told about the Bomb until Potsdam, Soviet spies and American and British fellow travelers had been keeping him well informed.
Winston Churchill was tired but campaigned in spurts up and down the UK, sometimes
holding six events in one day.
He was also feverishly preparing to meet Truman and Stalin at the Potsdam conference outside Berlin set for mid-July 1945. He had lobbied -- unsuccessfully -- against a pre-meeting without him between Truman and Stalin as a slap in the face to Britain.
***
Election Day & the Opening of Potsdam
Polling took place on July 5, but the results would not
be tallied for three weeks so that the votes of the armed forces scattered around the globe could
be counted. Meanwhile, it was business as usual. A weary Churchill and an optimistic
Attlee – after short vacations – journeyed to Potsdam.
Churchill had previously met with Stalin and FDR in Teheran in November 1943 and at Yalta in February 1945. FDR died on April 12, as noted, and Churchill had yet to meet Truman.
The prime minister arrived in Berlin on
July 15, 1945, accompanied by Anthony Eden, his Foreign Secretary. The wide-ranging discussions involved how Germany
would be divided among the victors, whether Poland would become a Soviet satellite,
and even how Vietnam would be partitioned.
Shortly after he arrived in Berlin, Churchill was taken to see
the ruins of Hitler’s chancellery and the bunker in which the Fuhrer had shot himself.
He saw the spot where Hitler’s corpse had been incinerated.
The prime minister, at last, met the new president on July 16. He later described him as “a man of immense determination.”
The Potsdam conference opened on July 17 and lasted until August 2.
It was paused on July 25 so that Churchill
and Attlee could return from Germany to await the British election results. Some members of
Churchill’s staff didn’t bother to pack all their things figuring they’d soon
be back.
***
The man himself
He craved the love of his American mother, who was too
infrequently present while he was growing up. His father was distant, cold, and
emotionally unstable. Winston was desperate for his approval but never got it.
We know that he could be kind to his staff or so rude as to make them cry. He could behave like a spoiled child but could also be unbelievably big-hearted. He was recklessly fearless in the face of danger. He was seriously ill on more than several occasions during WWII. He was quick to tear up when his emotional strings were pulled.
Lady Pamela Lytton (died 1971), a member of his
circle, said: “The first time you meet Winston, you see all his faults, and the
rest of your life you spend in discovering his virtues.”
In July 1945, the question for voters was whether this complicated, flawed, charismatic wartime leader was suited to lead the country at a point when domestic issues were taking center stage.
Had Churchill overplayed the anti-socialism card by warning that the placid Attlee, who, after all, had been in his War Cabinet, had it in him to become a socialist dictator?
***
The votes are counted
Churchill flew from Germany into Northolt, an airport in west London, where Clementine, his brother Jack, good friend Lady Mountbatten, and Jock Colville, a civil servant long assigned to him, were waiting. They headed to the Number 10 Annexe (Number 10 Downing Street had been damaged by German bombing), where they were greeted by Churchill’s son Randolph and senior Conservative party figures.
The assembled group was expecting to win. Churchill met with the King
to brief him on Potsdam in the evening. Lord Beaverbrook, confidante, former
cabinet member, and newspaper publisher, was waiting at No 10 Annex when he got
back from Buckingham Palace.
He dined with Clementine, Randolph, daughter Mary Soames,
and brother Jack. Mary was full of confidence. Daughter Diana and her husband,
MP Duncan Sandys, who arrived after dinner, were grim because it looked like Sandys would lose in his constituency. Brenden Bracken, another cabinet member and founder
of the Financial Times, joined the group. Daughter Sarah who sometimes
accompanied Winston on trips abroad was also present.
Most observers were predicting a 100-seat Conservative
majority in the House of Commons. Of all his advisers, only Bracken, who was also a member of the “Other Club” (the dining society co-founded in 1911 by Churchill),
thought his friend would lose.
“That night Churchill worked until 1.15 a.m., then went
to bed ‘in the belief,’ as he later wrote ‘that the British people would wish me
to continue my work,’” according to his authorized biographer Martin Gilbert.
Perhaps. But Andrew Roberts, his latest biographer, reported that at lunch with the King on June 20, Churchill predicted that young men and women of the armed services would not vote for him. In fact, as it would transpire, soldiers voted overwhelmingly for Labour, desiring the welfare state that had been promised in the 1942 Beveridge Report.
Just before dawn, Churchill awoke suddenly with a sharp
stab of almost physical pain and the subconscious conviction that he was about
to go down in defeat. He went back to sleep. On the morning of July 26, he worked
in bed for an hour. Then, his military aid and keeper of maps (military and now electoral),
Captain Richard Pim, came to his bedroom suite to report the first losses for the
Conservatives.
Churchill, who had been bathing, got dressed quickly and came down to the map room wearing his blue jumpsuit. The ticker tape machine clattered rhythmically in the background. With each result, constituency by constituency, it became plain that the socialists were winning in a stunning landslide.
At 1 p.m., the BBC declared Labour the overwhelming victor. Anthony Eden
telephoned Churchill from his constituency to commiserate.
Labour, with 393 seats, won its first-ever absolute majority in the 650 seat House of Commons. (The Liberals got 12 seats.) The Conservatives dropped to 213 from 585. Churchill handily won his own constituency (which had been slightly redrawn), but Randolph and Duncan lost their places.
Lunch at 1:30 was a joyless affair. As Mary recalled: “Pappa
struggled to accept this terrible blow.”
“It may be a blessing in disguise,” Clementine offered.
“At the moment, it seems quite effectively disguised,” he
replied.
His doctor Lord Moran grumbled that the British people were
ungrateful. “Oh, no,” Churchill answered. “I wouldn’t call it that. They have
had a very hard time.”
He did not try to hold on until after Potsdam or
until Parliament reconvened. He decided to resign immediately. He wrote to “my dear Attlee”
that he would “tender my resignation to the King at seven o’clock this evening.
On personal grounds, I wish you all success in the heavy burden you are about
to assume.”
Downstairs in the kitchen, Mrs. Landemere, Churchill’s long-time cook and housekeeper, was making comfort food – honey sandwiches – while bemoaning the defeat and declaring that she didn’t know what the world was coming to. On the way out of the building for the palace, Churchill thanked her for taking such good care of him.
At 7 p.m., the King accepted Churchill’s resignation –
they had, as mentioned, grown close. The King echoed the sentiment in Churchill's camp that the people were very ungrateful after the
way they had been led in the war. Churchill declined the King’s offer of an honour.
He did arrange honours for some of his aides – Captain Richard Pim, for instance, would get a
knighthood.
He returned to the annex no longer PM to issue a press statement saying he regretted not being able to finish the job, meaning Japan. He thanked the British people for their support during the war. That night he dined at the Annexe with family, Eden, and Bracken.
Abruptly, one
of the busiest people in the world had no pressing duties. No dispatch boxes.
No meetings in which lives hung in the balance. “Thirty years of my life have
been passed in this room,” he told Eden earlier as they left the Cabinet chamber for the
last time. “I shall never sit in it again. You will. I shall not.”
He bade farewell to the three military chiefs of staff,
his private secretaries, and to the cabinet. The day that had started with sanguinity ended in tears.
***
Prime Minister Attlee
Truman was also caught by surprise. He thought Churchill perhaps long-winded yet eloquent and likable. In contrast, Attlee and Bevin struck him
as a bunch of sourpusses.
Attlee wrote Churchill to acknowledge that “my having
been present from the start was a great advantage...”
***
Ingratitude?
What explains Churchill’s loss and the seeming ingratitude of the British public for their adored prime minister? At least 10 possibilities have been offered by scholars:
* War-weariness may have been a factor. Churchill was seen as a war leader; three months after the shooting stopped, the people wanted a prime minister to win the peace. Voters vented against the government they associated with the lead-up to the war and its execution.
* Churchill had not devoted himself wholeheartedly to campaigning. He was planning for -- or away in -- Potsdam.
* His shrill attacks against Attlee as a prospective socialist dictator boomeranged with the electorate.
* Labour offered change and a more precise domestic blueprint. It promised massive housebuilding to nationalize critical industries: steel, coal, electricity, railways, the Bank of England, civil aviation, and road transport.
* Labour leaders had become known to the public and were trusted thanks to their wartime roles in Churchill’s government.
* Working people were bitter at the Tories for their policies on housing, coal, and the high cost of living.
* While Churchill was popular, he was perceived for what he was: an old Victorian, paternalistic and elitist.
* Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s authorized biographer, speculated that voters were belatedly punishing the unpopular Conservative Party of Chamberlain for its appeasement policy – and Churchill was in a sense collateral damage.
* Britain was getting more interested in equal opportunity. Labour offered egalitarianism over class distinctions.
* The British system is parliamentary -- neither proportional nor presidential. So, Churchill’s popularity over Attlee so the Tories could not win on Churchill's coattails.
***
At the time of his defeat, Churchill was just short of his 71st birthday. He stayed on as the Conservative leader.
***
WWII ends
On July 27, Japan rejected calls to surrender. The Allies, again and again, warned Japan that it would be subject to a fierce bombardment – they reiterated these warnings by leaflet.
On August 5, the US dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima. The USSR then declared war on Japan.
On August 9, the Americans dropped another A-bomb, this
time on Nagasaki. Both cities were obliterated.
On August 10, Japan pleaded for the Allies to accept its surrender. On Aug 14, the war in the Pacific was over, and so was WWII.
***
Out of Office
Churchill was personally wounded over the loss of Number
10, and it took him time to gain his bearings. He did not exactly become a
recluse. However, his mood was not great, and he was constantly bickering with family and friends.
On Sept. 15, 1945, he began an extended vacation flying
to Lake Como in Italy, and returning to London in October.
He gave some speeches and spent most of his time at Chartwell,
his dilapidated country home, purchased in 1922, located about 90 minutes south
of London. He also began working on his multi-volume history of WWII.
At Harry Truman’s urging (“This is a wonderful school in
my home state. If you come, I will introduce you. Hope you can do it.”)
Churchill gave the commencement address at Westminster College in Fulton,
Missouri, on March 5, 1946.
“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.”
The London Times was critical of the speech. But
then, it did not like Churchill and had urged him to retire sooner rather
than later after Germany surrendered in 1945.
Incidentally, Churchill had not invented the phrase “Iron Curtain” as it related to the Bolsheviks, nor was this the first time he’d used it. Still, his expression branded the essence of communist totalitarianism and the Cold War decades ahead.
***
Whatever else Attlee & Bevin were -- they were bad for the Jews
History is full of “what ifs,” but one thing is clear –
for Zionism, Attlee’s win (he was in office from 1945 to 1951) was a blow. The out-of-office Labour Party had not been especially anti-Zionist, but in-office Atlee was very much so.
At Potsdam, Truman had appealed to Churchill to admit 100,000 Jewish DPs to Eretz Israel. The prime minister implied he’d think about it -- but then lost the elections to Attlee.
Truman then tried to persuade Attlee (think Jeremy Corbyn with a pipe) to allow European Jewish
refugees from the Holocaust into Palestine. It is worth pointing out that Truman was himself not ready to
bring 100,000 Jews into America, he was ambivalent about Zionism, and his
secretary of state, Dean Acheson, was unenthusiastic.
In contrast, Churchill was a Philosemite and a Zionist sympathizer since the 1917 Balfour Declaration. That's what he told Gen. Dwight Eisenhower -- certainly no Zionist enthusiast.
Epilogue: The Sun Sets on the British Empire
In one sense, Churchill was fortunate to have lost the 1945 election. He would have had great difficulty presiding over the demise of the Empire.
Abroad, Attlee yanked Britain out of India (1947) and Palestine (1948). Both had become emotionally draining, violent, and way too costly for a near-bankrupt Britain to manage. In both instances, departure and subsequent partition were bloody affairs in part due to British policies.
In Palestine, Attlee had pursued a pro-Arab and anti-Jewish policy. In
November 1945, for example, to appease the Arabs he had limited Jewish entry to 1,500 people per month.
Attlee's number two, Ernest Bevin was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Neither he nor Attlee had been known as hostile to Jews or Zionism until they came into office. Bevin probably did not hate Jews any more than was necessary. As the Mandate was being phased down, he said: “There has been agitation in the United States, and particularly in New York, for 100,000 Jews to be put in Palestine. I hope I will not be misunderstood in America if I say that this was proposed with the purest of motives. They did not want too many Jews in New York.”
He viewed European Jews as “pushing to the front of the queue” in wanting to leave the DP camps.
For all that, Attlee's evacuation of British
military personnel from Palestine was supported by the public in
Britain.
***
Almost
In 1950, the Conservatives, still led by Churchill, narrowly lost the general election.
Truth be told, Labour had done much of what it promised. Abroad, it oversaw the dissolution of the Empire. At home, constructively, it has created the infrastructure for a welfare state as promised.
Bevin died in 1951.
The party was plagued by Soviet spy scandals.
The treasury was close to broke.
Attlee seemed to have run out of steam.
Last hurrah
He called for new elections. On October 25, 1951, the Conservatives won 321 seats to Labour’s 295, and Churchill (against the wishes of Eden), at age 77, became prime minister again, feeling much vindicated. This was his first-ever general election win!
It was his government that ended rationing. By July 4, 1954, restrictions on the sale of meat and bacon were lifted – having been introduced 14 years earlier.
In foreign policy, he tried to reengage with the Soviet Union and
negotiate an end to the Cold War.
When he was 80 years old and not in great health -- he had suffered a series of mini-strokes over the years -- Churchill finally retired on April 5, 1955.
And Anthony
Eden long waiting in the Conservative wings took over (until 1957).
***
Churchill lived another 10 years and died on January 24,
1965, age 90, on precisely the same date as his father’s death in 1895 and the day that he had predicted for his own death.
This blog is based on a talk I gave at T.E.A.M Rehovot on May 9.
Further reading
Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts - a new one-volume biography
The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill by William Manchester - an old favorite in three-volumes
Winston S. Churchill: Never Despair, 1945–1965 (Volume VIII) by Martin Gilbert the final volume of the authorized biography