Richard M. Langworth

“Houses, red meat, and not being scuppered…”

Richard M. Langworth — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:27:39 +0000

I have read that Churchill told his private secretary, Jock Colville, in November 1951 that his new government’s priorities were ‘houses, red meat and not getting scuppered.’ But I can’t find this in Colville’s Fringes of Power. Any thoughts?

Wonderful quote, quite appropriate in an election season, wish it were in my book. The date was May 1952 not November 1951.

It is quoted as you state it by Paul Addison in his outstanding book Churchill on the Home Front (London: Cape, 1992) 412, footnoted to Fringes of Power ”diary for 22-23 March 1952.” But Prof. Addison had the verb wrong. What Churchill said was “not being scuppered.” As such it appears in Fringes page 644 (Hodder & Stoughton first US edition 1985). Martin Gilbert also has it on page 717 of his Volume 8, Winston S. Churchill, “Never Despair” 1945-1965 (London: Heinemann, 1988), 717.

Churchill on Italian Cruise Ships: Untrue

Richard M. Langworth — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:30:08 +0000

WSC observing the Barbary apes on Gibraltar, whose population he safeguarded owing to the rumor that British rule would end if the apes disappeared, during a stop on one of his "Christina" cruises, after his retirement as Prime Minister.

It’s all over the Web. And entirely bogus.

After his retirement, goes the story, Churchill was cruising the Mediterranean on an Italian liner and an Italian journalist asked why a former British Prime Minister chose an Italian ship. “There are three things I like about being on an Italian cruise ship,” Churchill supposedly says. “First, their cuisine is unsurpassed. Second, their service is superb. And then, in time of emergency, there is none of this nonsense about women and children first.”

Amusing to some, anathema to others, including relatives of the Costa Concordia passengers and many embarrassed Italians, this is NOT by Winston Churchill. Some have attributed it to Noël Coward, but reader Nelson Bridwell (comment below) refers us to the Quote Investigator, which tracks it to travel writer Henry J. Allen in 1917. It did appear in a book of Churchill quotes which—as invariably is the case when false quotes are given—provides neither authority nor attribution.

Neither this quotation nor key words from it can be found in digital scans of Churchill’s 15 million published words in books, articles, speeches and private papers. Nor can I find any record of Churchill cruising on an Italian liner after his retirement as Prime Minister in 1955. (He voyaged frequently on the Onassis yacht Christina, a Greek vessel of Liberian registry, but not a cruise ship.)

A California congresswoman ignorantly compared the sinking of the Costa Concordia with that of the Titanic 100 years ago this April—which is historically inane, poor service to the British crewmen of 1912, and the Italians who struggled to save lives just recently. Churchill’s words to his wife about the Titanic serve equally to show how out of character would be his supposed remarks now circulating the Internet:

The strict observance of the great traditions of the sea towards women and children reflects nothing but honour upon our civilization…. I cannot help feeling proud of our race and its traditions as proved by this event. Boat loads of women and children tossing on the sea – safe and sound – and the rest Silence. Honour to their memory.

“Near Treasonous” Dukes? Not Really….

Richard M. Langworth — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:35:46 +0000

The Duke of Windsor (1894-1972)

In an American Spectator review of Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War (Dec/Jan 2011-12) Roger Kaplan says Winston Churchill did not turn against those “top toffs,” the Duke of Windsor and Duke of Westminster, for their “near-treasonous activity” and “overt support of the Third Reich.”

“Near-treasonous” and “overt support” are going some in describing their actions, which were broadly discounted. Reason? They may have been “toffs,” but they counted for nil. Nevertheless, Churchill did act to silence them.

The Duke Windsor certainly had “much to be modest about,” and Churchill got him out of Europe by appointing him Governor of the Bahamas, where he did not rehash his prewar pro-Nazi points of view and, with a little urging from WSC, mainly did as he was told (although older Bahamians still remember the local messes during his governorship).

"Bendor," Second Duke of Westminster (1879-1953)

The Second Duke of Westminster joined the anti-semitic Right Club and the Parliamentary Peace Aims Group in 1939, along with a other unimportant figures claiming to be in touch with “Nazi moderates.” The government, wrote historian Julian Jackson, “did not take any of this too seriously. None of the pro-peace peers were first-rank, or even third-rank political figures.” (The Fall of France, Oxford University Press, 2004, 204.)

Nevertheless, in September 1939, although a longtime friend, Churchill twice admonished “Bendor,” the Duke of Westminster (Martin Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, vol. I, pp. 91-92):

…there are some very serious and bad things in [your Peace Aims Group statements]….When a country is fighting a war of this kind, very hard experiences lie before those who preach defeatism and set themselves against the main will of the nation.

Bendor sent a dissembling reply and Churchill fired back (Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill Papers, CHAR 19/2A/19-20):

…in time of peace, people in a free country have a right to form their views about foreign policy; but when the country is fighting for its life against a deadly enemy, there are grave dangers in taking a hostile line to the decided plan….[Especially your] suggesting that all we were fighting for was to make money for the Jews and international finance, or words to that effect.

That seems fairly dispositive—and the Peace Aims Group faded into obscurity once the bombs started falling on London.

========

Mr. Kaplan responds: May I note that in my review which you were kind enough to notice, I mentioned near-treasonous activities, not treasonous activities, and I did not say he did not shut them up, I just said he did not turn against them. Without claiming expertise, I would say his attitude was wise.

Dear Mr. Kaplan: Well, it wasn’t even near-treasonous, and you said a little more than that. Churchill did more than you gave him credit for. He had a lot of loyalty toward his friends, though he wasn’t always wise in choosing them. But he certainly was aware of the problems and acted to squelch them. Best wishes, RML

“Stalin never broke his word to me.” Churchill’s words?

Richard M. Langworth — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 23:18:06 +0000

First Meeting, Moscow 1942: WSC's interpreter Major Arthur Birse, Churchill, U.S. envoy Averell Harriman, Stalin, and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav M. Molotov.

A fact checker from a major magazine wrote asking if Churchill ever declared, “Stalin never broke his word to me.” The short answer is yes. The long answer shows how careful we should be when quoting Churchill.

The original source of this quote is the journalist C.L. Sulzberger (1912-1993), in his 1970 book, Last of the Giants, page 304. Here Sulzberger reports his “five hours with old Winston Churchill” at Chartwell on 10 July 1956.

Churchill, wrote Sulzberger, thought Stalin “a great man, above all compared to Khruschev and Bulganin,” and quoted Churchill as follows:

Stalin never broke his word to me. We agreed on the Balkans. I said he could have Rumania and Bulgaria; he said we could have Greece (of course, only in our sphere, you know). He signed a slip of paper. And he never broke his word. We saved Greece that way. When we went in in 1944 Stalin didn’t interfere. You Americans didn’t help, you know.

Churchill was referring to the much misrepresented “naughty paper,” the “percentages agreement” with Stalin in their Moscow talks (Tolstoy Conference, 9-19 October 1944)—which Stalin did honor. The Soviets made no move to interfere when Churchill flew to Athens to broker a truce between communist and nationalist insurgents, though Stalin was soon meddling in Greece in 1948.

Sulzberger was a reliable reporter, so the source appears valid. As a gauge of Churchill’s attitude toward Stalin, it is more problematic.

By 1956 Churchill was an aged 81, out of power and still smarting over his failure to achieve a summit conference with the Russians (which Eisenhower agreed to almost immediately after Churchill left office, saying privately, that he feared “Winston might give away the store.”) Churchill had long argued for a three-power meeting and “settlement” with the Russians, based on the brand of personal diplomacy he’d practiced with Stalin during World War II.

Cyrus Leo Sulzberger in 1968. (Wikipedia Commons)

After the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Churchill said he thought he could trust Stalin. He probably was referring to Stalin’s Yalta promise to allow free elections in Poland. As early as March 1945 he had to admit, in correspondence with Roosevelt, that he’d been wrong. Even in the immediate aftermath of Yalta, on 23 February 1945, he wondered, after Germany’s defeat, “what will lie between the white snows of Russia and the white cliffs of Dover?” (John Colville, Fringes of Power, 563). Speaking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (3 March 1949) Churchill predicted the fall of communism, fueled by “a spark coming from God knows where and in a moment the whole structure of lies and oppression is on trial for its life.”

It is fair to say that Churchill believed Stalin had not broken his word through 1944. To some extent his 1956 remark to Sulzberger was meant to contrast what Churchill saw as the giant figure of Stalin. But trust in Stalin was certainly not something Churchill expressed consistently after the war. In the end, I doubt that he had very much.

Poland and the Holocaust: What Churchill Knew

Richard M. Langworth — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 17:24:22 +0000

On 12 January 2012, Mr. Paul Bonowicz staged a one-man protest against Churchill on the verge of the A40 roundabout in South Ruislip, Middlesex, against “the lies which were put in British books about Winston Churchill….I am Polish and we know he betrayed Polish people.” He added: Churchill “knew about the Holocaust, he knew Jewish people were dying, but he didn’t help. After the war there was a deal between Churchill and Stalin, and the price was Poland. Part of my country was sold to the Soviets. It was Churchill who decided which part, not the Poles.” —Uxbridge Gazette.

Churchill did know abut the Holocaust, but contrary to popular belief, he tried to do something about it—and was the only allied leader who did. See the Churchill Centre’s “Leading Churchill Myths” and Sir Martin Gilbert’s 1993 Holocaust lecture, “The Possible and the Impossible.”

In 1938, the Teschen District of Czechoslovakia was “sold to the Poles,” who happily took it, as a result of Munich; and in 1939 part of Poland was “sold to the Soviets” by the conquering Nazis. In summit conferences at the close of World War II, Churchill first protested, then acquiesced, and ultimately agonized over the shifting of Poland to the west, “selling” an eastern slice to Russia and compensating Poland with part of Germany: “I think a mistake has been made, in which the Provisional (Communist) Government of Poland have been an ardent partner, by going far beyond what necessity or equity required,” he told the House of Commons on 16 August 1945 (Churchill By Himself, 179).

Mr. Bonowicz is protesting a non-issue. With the Red Army occupying all of Poland by 1945, there was little Churchill could do except hope (forlornly), that Stalin would make good his promise of free elections. Some Poles have never forgiven him, although Churchill was first to predict Communism’s fall, thanks to patriots such as Lech Walesa. Of Poland before and during World War II, Churchill added in August 1945: “There are few virtues that the Poles do not possess—and there are few mistakes they have ever avoided.”