Winston Churchill: Political Master, Military Commander

From his earliest days Winston Churchill was an extreme risk taker and he carried this into adulthood. Today he is widely hailed as Britain’s greatest wartime leader and politician. Deep down though, he was foremost a warlord. Just like his ally Stalin, and his arch enemies Hitler and Mussolini, Churchill could not help himself and insisted on personally directing the strategic conduct of World War II. For better or worse he insisted on being political master and military commander. Again like his wartime contemporaries, he had a habit of not heeding the advice of his generals. The results of this were disasters in Norway, North Africa, Greece, and Crete during 1940–41. His fruitless Dodecanese campaign in 1943 also ended in defeat. Churchill’s pig-headedness over supporting the Italian campaign in defiance of the Riviera landings culminated in him threatening to resign and bring down the British Government. Yet on occasions he got it just right, his refusal to surrender in 1940, the British miracle at Dunkirk and victory in the Battle of Britain, showed that he was a much-needed decisive leader. Nor did he shy away from difficult decisions, such as the destruction of the French Fleet to prevent it falling into German hands and his subsequent war against Vichy France.

To talk about these different aspects of his leadership is today’s guest, Anthony Tucker-Jones, author of Winston Churchill: Master and commander. He explores the record of Winston Churchill as a military commander, assessing how the military experiences of his formative years shaped him for the difficult military decisions he took in office. He assesses his choices in the some of the most controversial and high-profile campaigns of World War II, and how in high office his decision making was both right and wrong.

Episode Transcription:

But actually he wasn’t boasting. He was right because of all the jobs that he’d done, first lord of the admiralty, secretary for war and air, minister for munitions. He’d seen combat up close. He’d been in supporter of the concept of the tank of naval aviation of combined operations. All these sinks and again champion of the RAF. So his grounding and all things military was quite remarkable. He really was the right man for the jaw. I don’t know who else could have done it quite frankly. History isn’t just a bunch of names and dates and facts. It’s the collection of all the stories throughout human history that explained how and why we got here. Welcome to the history unplug podcast where we look at the forgotten, neglected, strange and even counterfactual stories that made our world what it is. I’m your host, Scott rank. Winston Churchill is considered Britain’s greatest wartime leader in politician. But the way he was such a hands on leader during World War II, both as a politician and as a military leader, makes some biographers consider him a warlord. And that’s not necessarily meant as a slight. Just like his allies Stalin and his arch enemies Hitler and Mussolini, Churchill couldn’t help himself and insisted on personally directing the strategic conduct of World War II. For better or for worse, he insists on being political master and military commander. Again, like his wartime contemporaries, he had a habit of not heeding the advice of his generals. The results of this were disasters in Norway, North Africa, Greece and Crete during 1940 and 1941. Churchill’s pig headedness over supporting the Italian campaign and defiance of the Riviera landings, culminated in his threatening to resign and bring down the British government. But on occasion he got it just right. He refused to surrender in 1940. He architected the British miracle Dunkirk, and victory in the Battle of Britain showed that he was a much needed decisive leader. And he didn’t shy away from difficult decisions, such as the destruction of the French fleet to prevent it from falling into German hands. In a subsequent war against fitchy France. Today’s guest is Anthony Tucker Jones, whose author of the new book Churchill, mastering commander. Once in Churchill at war, 1895 to 1945. We look at his choices and some of the most controversial and high profile campaigns of World War II, and how in high office is decision making was both right and wrong. And while he has leadership qualities in common with people like Adolf Hitler, who was also very charismatic and personally led the military effort, Winston Churchill was grounded in a way that Hitler wasn’t, allowing him to find success. And as Tucker Jones argues, this made him the right man for the time. So I hope you enjoyed this discussion and looking at different aspects of Winston Churchill. Anthony, welcome to the show. Hi Scott. Thank you very much for having me on. Well, Churchill is a multifaceted character, and he has appeared on this podcast many times before as somebody who’s overcome great challenges in his life. He seems to be remembered as a motivating figure or speech maker among many things in the 21st century. And one aspect we’re going to discuss for the first time is him as a military tactician and strategist. But before getting into the details of that, something I’m curious about with Churchill is he’s part of one of very few figures from the 20th century who has incredible staying power. And I remember when I was reading movie reviews of the king’s speech, which came out about ten years ago, one of the chief complaints is that some people had incredible issue with the actor Timothy spall’s role as Churchill. They thought that he way overdid it with the mannerisms and the affectations of Churchill. It didn’t particularly bother me, but there was something very personal that some people took it. So I think that speaks largely to Churchill remaining a character that affects people really on a personal level after all these decades. So what do you think it is about Churchill that does that even to this day in 2021? I mean, I think Churchill, if you like, he’s your archetypal spin doctor because from the word go, he very much managed not only his career, but his image, and so he sort of created for himself this larger than life character, which for some people rub them up the wrong way, some people warm to him. But he was very much a sort of love him or hate him tight figure, and of course, in recent years, he’s become a bit of a divisive figure, but he very much was his own man, I think. Some people like that and some didn’t, but as you know, he had a reputation for changing political parties which made him unpopular. He could be autocratic at times, but he took his role as a leader, particularly during the Second World War very seriously.

Well, I’ll be interested to explore parts of his character, which you describe in very interesting ways that he was first and foremost a warlord, which isn’t necessarily a negative thing based on the context in which he’s leading. But for your description of him as a military commander, let’s go back to the beginning and he first enters the public consciousness as a correspondent in the Boer war. But what are the things that you would point to early in his life that shape him as a military commander? It’s one of those sort of fallacies that I think he really did have a sense of destiny. And I think very much deep down he wanted to be a military man from the word go. But his military career wasn’t actually that long, obviously his connection with the armed forces was what considerable. But as in a man in uniform it didn’t last very long, but as a young man in his early 20s, one of the things he was very, very, very keen on as winning medals. And obviously he wasn’t alone in that, lots of young officers joining their regiments. That’s what they wanted to see action and to gain glory. But the thing that’s quite remarkable about Churchill is the lengths that he went to to try and win his heart was set on a Victoria Cross or a distinguished service order, which were Britain’s two highest military awards. And he wanted those a I think to help boost the military career, but in the back of his mind he always wanted to embark on a political career as well. And he knew that by winning something like the Victoria Cross, of course it would bring him great publicity and bring him to public notice. It would also cost confirm his status as a war hero if he won a VC. All right, so let’s talk about the early stages of his military career. And I would like this to be a lead in to the battle of Gallipoli, which if listeners want an incredible amount of contacts on that, they can listen to the 25 or 30 part series that I did with James early key battles of World War I, of which glibly has its own episode and I mentioned so much in that episode that essentially becomes a drinking game, but tell me about the lead up to and then including the battle of Gallipoli, please. The thing that struck me when I was researching the battle of Gallipoli, it’s well known, it went horribly wrong, the operation caused bad blood between Great Britain and some of the dominion countries, most principally, of course, Australia and New Zealand who provided the anzac corps, but struck me was, of course, is that Churchill has gone down in history as the architect and the culprit of the operations in the dardanelles were actually that’s very much unfair. He certainly was a driving factor in the early part of the operation. But the fact that it went wrong wasn’t really his fault. It was always really envisaged as a combined operation involving the army and the navy, which of course in those days was a fairly new concept to the Royal Navy in the army in the marines. They cooperated in the past, but not on a scale that they envisioned for the dardanelles. But a problem that Churchill had was that there was a lot of foot dragging by both the Royal Navy and the army and getting resources in place obviously the allies were tied up on the western front. And there wasn’t really much despair. So there was much wrangling on whether or not the Gerard and elves could be forced. Purely by the Royal Navy, or whether they needed a land attack as well. And obviously, Churchill really is first lord of the admiralty was the driving force behind the naval side of things, not really. The ground force, and obviously he ended up losing his post his first sea lord over the whole thing, the navy basically pulled the rug under from under him likewise did the army. And I think the sanitary lesson at Churchill learned from Gallipoli was that in a way, and this is something that of course he’d brought to Berger on the sycamore war, is that running military campaigns by committee is a recipe for disaster that it has to be pushed along, decisively, with clear goals, a clear commitment and resources, and I think that was a fundamental lesson at Churchill learned. Unfortunately, of course, it did him politically a great deal of damage for a number of years. Ironically, there was I’m sure you’re aware of detailed inquiry afterwards. The more or less exonerated him, but of course in the history he’s gone down as the culprit for that and takes the blame for it, but I think that’s unfair, but I say I think the other key important thing that came out of the whole affair was the fact that he drew some very important lessons which actually served him well in later life right, and that would be an interesting thing to see for good or for ill, how much he goes based on his own intuition and his own research. Without the advice of generals, which leaders, whether Abraham Lincoln or others have been criticized both ways for either heating the advice or heating too closely the advice of those around them. But before exiting this era of World War I, there’s a lot of mythology around Winston Churchill’s influence on the creation of the modern Middle East with the incredible influence that Britain has over colonies over the creation of these borders that exist in the Middle East today between nations. Some of them seemingly almost arbitrarily drawn with the fallout of the Ottoman Empire, areas which there were ethnic populations, which existed historically that sometimes were cut right down the middle, such as the Kurdish people. And creating man, the divisions that we have today were their nation states such as Iraq, where there are different populations that really don’t have a unified history, there’s apocryphal stories that Winston Churchill was drunk, so when he was drawing up the map of the Middle East and that’s why they’re squiggly rain, lines around part of Jordan, which is a wonderful tale, makes no sense whatsoever, but what was his role and where do some of these stories come from? Well, again, of course, Churchill was, I think, secretary of colonies when in the early 1920s, I think it was 21 was the Cairo conference and obviously in the aftermath of the First World War, there was the tricky business of dividing up the Ottoman Empire that goes as I’m sure you’re aware of course the Ottoman Empire had become the republic of turkey and was abroad in a number of wars with its neighbors. But the allies were left obviously in control of the Middle East and there was the problem of what to do with Mesopotamia and the Levant, which would cause subsequently going to Syria or Iraq and Lebanon. And again, it’s one of those interesting stories that when I looked into the creation, particularly of Iraq, is that Churchill has held up as the blame. Again, obviously, is adherence to creation of Israel.

He carried the blame for that in popular perception, but in fact, he took an army of experts within which included T Lawrence, of course, Lawrence of Arabia, who was an Arab specialist, and also Gertrude bell, who also was a specialist in the region. And he was reliant in many ways on their advice and what to do with the region. Part of the problem that Churchill had was, of course, it was really a case of realpolitik in that Britain was pretty much bankrupt after First World War limited resources, rocketing costs on policing the British Empire and other territories that had been given to government. So Churchill was looking for if you like a quick fix for the Middle East and certainly one that would help guarantee British security in that part of the world. And of course, that was the main driving factor, particularly in terms of safeguarding sewage because during the First World War, the Turks had launched a campaign from Palestine to try and take the canal. So Churchill’s strategic thinking, of course, was how to safeguard Britain’s position, particularly in Egypt. And also, of course, the mandate of Palestine what to do with that and also because the issue of what to do with regions which were not really nice states. I mean, they didn’t exist as such. They were sort of the kingdoms, tribal kingdoms. Which paid historically lip service to the Ottoman Empire, so the problem Churchill had was how did he create a security buff of British interests? Because it wasn’t only Britain that had an interest in that part of the world. The French obviously were given a mandate over Syria, which created problems and Lebanon, so there is these sort of competing European interests, and also someone like Lawrence obviously, he wanted to see a unified Arab state that he himself had discovered that when he got to Damascus with the Arab army, but the Arabs themselves, of course, again were not a unified nation, and he found trying to get them to cooperate with very difficult. They have themselves didn’t really kind of know what it was that they wanted created in that part of the world. And of course, the upshot was that the spores of war really were parceled off to members of the royal family, which supported the allied cause, and in some cases, of course, foisted kings on to countries that had no connection with their new rulers, which created a lot of problems. And of course, as you rightly said, has since led to problems in modern times and indeed, of course, made life quite tricky for Britain and the allies during the Second World War. We can come back to that if you like, but of course obviously led to military campaigns against what became a pro Nazi Iraq and indeed Vichy controlled Lebanon and Syria. But I think Churchill, I mean, my impression is that he acted with the best of intentions. I mean, to refer to him, it was really an impossible task quite frankly. There’s been much criticism of what he did, and obviously the historical fallout, but I think pretty much I’m lost to suggest anything that he could have done better quite frankly. You should certainly could have jiggled the borders in that part of the world around some of the tribal areas, perhaps. But one of the interesting things was that actually he steered well away of keeping involved in Saudi Arabia, which of course had yet to discover very large quantities of oil. Simply because he appreciated that it would be apart from the sort of peripheral provinces that it would be a massive security headache if Britain got involved in the interior and the desert quarter just would have been an even worse proposition than the one that we had on our hands. Hey everyone, Scott here. We’re going to take a very short break for a word from our sponsors. In some senses, it’s easy to chide him for all the mistakes he made and as newspaper columnist talked about the wars in Iraq and elsewhere that these are nations that don’t have the inherent stability that let’s say nation based on an ethno national consciousness like Serbia would be if you have definite ethnic groups of people that don’t have a common heritage, that it’s easy to armchair quarterback, but this issue of what Europeans in the 19th century called the eastern question for decades and decades and decades what to do about the Ottoman Empire as our colonies grow. Do we just take part of it? Do we encourage them to become a constitutional monarchy, more along the lines of a nation state. And as the collapse of the foreign policy consensus has shown after Afghanistan is recording here in September 2021, no easy answers. So yeah, I think that’s a good way to put it. I mean, sorry. I’ll just say you’re going to say, historically, the problem we always have is that any military intervention comes at a cost and of course it’s knowing when to leave and that’s always a political decision. It’s a political decision when to send the troops in and it’s a political decision when to withdraw them. And as you Riley pointed out, of course, a lot of the newer nation states that sort of created in the early 20th century, they don’t have that sort of historical cultural common grounding amongst them nation states take a long time to become a unified coherent state, the United Kingdom has been through it America has been through it France, Italy, Germany. They all originated as sort of a conglomerate of principalities and it’s taken a long time to fuse them in together to the point where they have a common national identity. And going back to the Middle East and the Ottoman Empire, of course, what the west created were not were artificial political creations. But there wasn’t anything else there really to work with. And again, historically, of course, what have you seen is a lot of those sorts of states that were, if you like artificial political constructs, the only way they tend to unfortunately to stay together when they had a strong man ruling them. So somewhere like the Yugoslav you’re obviously the minute Tito died, it collapsed Iraq, the minute Saddam Hussein died, it collapsed. It’s somewhere like Libya, the minute Gaddafi died, it collapsed. So it’s very difficult to get the building blocks from modern state in place with recognized judiciary, infrastructure, central government, taxation system, all those things that make our modern states work. For a lot of the new estates, of course, they didn’t have those building blocks, if you like, or like you say, indeed, that sort of common national heritage that brought people together. And quite often what we did was a lot of the areas that were brought together as nations, of course, actually within them had long-standing religious and political hatreds again if we go back to the Balkans, obviously, somewhere like Yugoslavia, where there had long been tension between Muslim and Christian populations. And again, as we saw when Yugoslavia came apart, are those tensions came to a boil which really of course were historical bad blood if you liked that a dated from the Middle Ages. So going back to my original point with Churchill, I personally think he made the best of a bad job quite frankly. You know, and again, to be fair, he was sharing the conference, but he wasn’t the only one there. There was an army of representatives from across the British military, British government departments, all they’re having their say trying to guide him. Obviously, because he was the man in the hot seat, he’s the one that carried the can. I mean, again, interestingly, going back to the point of trying to address British security needs in that region because of the canal and indeed the goal for Persian Gulf Arabian gulf, whatever you want to call it these days. British Britain had naval bases in that part of the world. So having a rack with a friendly government obviously worked to British overseas interests, but the problem with someone like a rack of course was policing it again at that stage it had no national sense of identity and as you mentioned, of course, the Kurds in the north ended up largest ethnic group in the world without nation statehood.

They ended up divided between Syria and Iraq and turkey. They ended up scattered all over the place. But in the case of Egypt, of course, Churchill was subsequently to get himself into trouble because he became an advocate of what was called air control, which was to use the RAF to patrol the Iraqi tribes and try and keep Law & Order. And one of the main reasons, of course, he did that while there were two reasons key reasons, one of which was to try and keep the RAF and being after the First World War because it was costing an arm and a leg and the British government wanted to make savings. And one of those would have been to disband the RAF and simply absorb the air wings back into the army in the navy, and that it would lose its identity. So and also, of course, to save money in Iraq. So Churchill, along with lord trenchard, of course they found a good use for the RAF. And again, it was trenchard that came up with air control. It wasn’t Churchill, in Churchill gets the blame for implementing it. But it’s actually trenchard who was looking for a rationale or the RAF to continue after the First World War. And one of those who quite reasoned was, well, could the RAF not help the police operations across the British Empire, you’d have a few RAF squadrons here if they were troubled if there was trouble broke out, then they could be deployed a lot quicker than armed forces. You need fewer aircraft, et cetera. So at the time it seemed a good idea, but of course since it’s become a bit of a political hot potato because it inevitably there was civilian losses bombing targets is indiscriminate, it’s not, again, it’s not ideal. But of course, in many ways of taking that decision over implementing air control, it helps so the RAF and of course so the seeds for Fighter Command, which proved instrumental in defending Britain during 1940 and the Battle of Britain. So it’s funny how those quirks of fate have a knock on effect subsequently which actually turn out to be quite important. Well, there’s a book called Churchill, the prophetic statesman that argues that his really tries to place him as a visionary, which you can make the argument for if you look exclusively at the ways that he got things right, which having more independent air force, which the United States does not have throughout World War II. And taking it far enough, you could say that he’s envisioning police support and police pursuit with helicopters overhead, trying to track people down. But looking ahead to this period, the 1920s and the 1930s. Biographers of Churchill focus on his wilderness years that informs his character when he’s out of power and it makes him who he is as a statesman in the 1940s. You looking at him as a military commander, what do you make of his wilderness years and the impact that it had on him? That was quite interesting actually because obviously he’s out of office and he’s not holding any senior military posts. He’s no longer first sea lord, colonial secretary. He’s not minister for munitions. He’s not Secretary of State for war rare to effectively he sat on the sidelines. It has to be said entirely his own fault because of his views over India. But what he did do certainly during the during the First World War, he supported the creation of the British intelligence services most notably MI 5 and MI 6, or at least what the game was organizations. And as a favor, they kept him and also of course they knew that politically he was useful, lobbying from the back benches, but as a favor they kept him pretty well informed about the growth of Nazi Germany, and obviously he became a prophet of Duma gloom and subsequently, of course, was proved right. But the interesting fact to that, of course, is that actually he was will informed, so he wasn’t just being a merchant of doom and gloom or not on a whim. So he was very well plugged in to what’s happening to Nazi Germany, but obviously he’d been there during the First World War. He knew how Germany had been treated. He knew how the Weimar Republic had failed. He knew all about the Bolshevik threat from the east. He had been a still was a very vocal opponent to bolshevism. He was very anti Soviet Union. But what I found quite interesting actually was he’s famous for his dire warnings about the rise of Nazi Germany. It wasn’t so good with was the far east and in fact he sort of pegged his colors to the Japanese cause and he got that horribly wrong in that he felt that China was in such a state of chaos thanks to the Civil War there that actually Japan could be a force for good, which actually was obviously woefully mistaken. He’d witnessed Japanese taking over Korea and then occupying large areas of manchuria and there wasn’t really any way to justify that, but he seemed to think actually it was quite a good thing. He even blamed the performance of Chinese armies on their history of pacifism, which again was far from the truth Chinese lot simply because they did not have modern well equipped armies. They had very large armies and their armies were basically large numbers of infantry division, what they lacked, of course, was well trained well equipped troops with tanks and aircraft and artillery, which is what the Japanese had, and of course they were able to use them as a force multiplier, which time and time and again gave them victory. So what it meant was that Churchill misjudged that growing threat from Japan in the far east, and obviously the Japanese had their long-term strategy of turn north, which would have taken them into the Soviet Union or turned south back into China and then obviously into the far east into western colonial interests there. So it meant fundamentally Churchill during the wilderness years. He woefully underestimated Japan post British interests most principally, of course, Singapore, which Britain would end up losing what Japan entered the civil World War. So the development of his strategic thinking during that sort of ten year period when he was out of power is quite interesting, he was very focused on maybe his understanding on the rest of the world wasn’t so good. Again, to be fair to the man, he was pretty clued up on what was going on in the Mediterranean and Mussolini had been in power since the 1920s, so he was fully aware of the threat, the Mussolini post, and of course Britain had acquiesced in Mussolini taking over Libya and abyssinia and Churchill always thought that was a mistake because obviously Britain had shown weakness in the Mediterranean and Mussolini felt he could capitalize on that, which of course he did shortly after Hitler invaded France, Mussolini got in on the fun and attacked southern France, but also of course attacked British controlled Egypt from Libya and one of the things of course Churchill did was no pun intended, but he firmly true a line in the sand in North Africa in that he was determined that he would defeat the Italians which of course he subsequently did.

So I think he Mediterranean Europe during his world in this year’s his time was well spent. He fully understood what the Germans were doing is well conversant on the threat from their rearmament. But their insistence on reclaiming lost German lands either reabsorption of volksdeutsch into integrated Germany, the Rhineland, Sudan land, all those areas that it slowly reclaimed. He understood the threat, same with Italy. He understood the threat, but the one thing he did get wrong was the threat posed by Japan. So although he had a very good, I think world outlook, again, he understood America. He understood big half American he understood America pretty well, I think. And I’d obviously visited a lot of times. He also understood America’s growing military power at that time sort of city during the 30s America understandably was very adverse getting evolved in another European war and that’s quite understandable after what happened during the First World War, but even then Churchill understood that America had the industrial might, the Britain would need to help defeat the threat of nazism and fascism. So sort of looking to North America, Europe and the Mediterranean is grasped by think on the developing situation was good, whereas actually in the far east it was very poor. One thing real quick with that on his perception of imperial Japan, something I was surprised by in a series I did on World War II in the Pacific with, again, my co host James early, who did the World War I series, Churchill commented, it was after Japan’s supernova expansion after Pearl Harbor and the conquest of Guam of Hong Kong, Indochina and other places, there’s a British ship that sunk and I forget the name of it, but Churchill later commented that he was more devastated by that than anything else. And this is someone who survives the Battle of Britain after relentless bombing of London and all of the hardships he experienced in World War II, it was a British ship that was sunk in near India or somewhere around the Pacific theater that rattled him the most, which I was very surprised by. Was it because of wow, the repose or was it something else? That’s a good question. The already is with Churchill of course, is that he’d been one of the proponents of naval air power. So during the First World War, he was a big supporter of the development of the early carriers. What he didn’t appreciate really was actually the power that those aircraft carriers could bring. So he misunderstood the threat posed to the Royal Navy if it operated in the far east without an aircraft carrier and of course that’s what happened with the Prince of Wales and the repulsors that Japanese carriers caught them. And he was horrified. And with his sort of admiral hat on, if you like, he sort of naively assumed I think that if he sent that sort of battle fleet for tiller down there, it would be sufficient deterrent to keep the Japanese away from Singapore, but it simply didn’t work. And again, it’s one of his miscalculations is that really he of all people should have known they had allocated the battle group a carrier, but it wasn’t available and the things had sailed on their own. And the case of Singapore, I think the air cover was an adequate, all these kind of problems that mounted up. And Churchill knew in his heart that ultimately, when it came to safeguarding Britain’s strategic interests, he could do one or two things. It was either Cairo or Singapore. And he knew deep down that we simply didn’t have the resources to hold Singapore. In fact, I think he said I’m going from memory here, but it was something like he said it was like choosing which daughter was to be sacrificed. They were both jewels in The Crown of the British Empire, if you like your key naval ports, but he knew we simply did not have the money and the resources to defend Singapore properly. But it’s not that we didn’t try and certainly it wasn’t for the one to try and he did. But in terms of the resources that Britain was able to devote to defending Singapore, they simply were enough. And as you say, would the repulse and the Prince of Wales, he kind of hoped that them just showing up would be enough. And it simply wasn’t. And again, he should really see the warning signs with the Norwegian campaign where the Luftwaffe extracted a heavy toll on the Royal Navy. They were obviously able to operate from land air bases and strike the Royal Navy while we were fighting the Germans in Norway, and I think maybe Churchill to a lesser extent missed the warning signs. I mean, if you got it right in terms of the Mediterranean, we were able to get carrier as in there and they did Sterling service. They helped keep more to replenish to help safeguard the convoys. They helped safeguard Alexandria and Cairo. So he got it right there, but in the Middle East. It went horribly wrong. And as you rightly pointed out, it haunted him for a long time after. That’s the burden of being in power. You’re in the hot seat. It was prime minister and also of course the other thing is it’s important to remember and it’s something I bought out in the book. You see creative poster defense minister. He was Britain’s very first defense minister. And that goes back to our conversation about Gallipoli. Is that he wanted to be advised by the chiefs of staff and all the other military committees, but ultimately he knew he needed to be at the top of the food chain and make those decisions.

So what he did was in a way he circumvented the chiefs of staff by making all the service heads answered directly to him as defense minister, so he became Jill hatted, you know, for the sigma war, which is what fed the title of the book. Master and commander, well it’s political master, a military commander, and he did that deliberately. That’s something that he did with both eyes open is that he realized that there would be hard decisions to make and he would need to make them sometimes quite quickly. The wrangling that took place for a lot of campaigns, it delayed things. And again, in the back of his mind, he had Gallipoli and that he knew there had been so much to throwing on what was achievable what was an achievable. What resources would be committed, what resources wouldn’t be committed that ultimately, of course, when they did commit themselves to do it the whole thing came off the rails. Everyone Scott here, one more brief word from our sponsors. While this gets to the heart of your book, that in some ways his conduct is similar to a Hitler or Mussolini that Churchill is personally directing the strategic conduct of World War II in a way that’s different than Franklin Delano Roosevelt who allows his generals or his admirals. A fair amount of leeway or discretion. And with this are enormous advantages and disadvantages. So I would love for you to, as you junior book, audit the successes and failures of this approach. It shows you how I was obviously his job was to make difficult political and military decisions having made himself defense minister. The net result of that was, of course, he didn’t always agree with his service chiefs and felt as the top man. It was up to him on best available evidence to make difficult decisions. And as we’ve discussed on occasions, he got that just right, and on occasions he didn’t, a prime example of getting it right, obviously he was facing down Hitler in sort of May June 1940 when he became prime minister and obviously he had a lot of appeasement ministers. He still had Chamberlain and he had lord Halifax in his cabinet. And he had to go through the motions of maybe negotiating with it. I personally don’t think he was ever sincere in that. You know, over the years we’ve been quite a few books that have explored did he ever wave did maybe in the back of his mind? Was he prepared to seek peace with Hitler? My reading and my personal view is no he didn’t. He went through the motions because obviously initially his position was not particularly secure. He had to keep on board the appeases. And until such time as he’d consolidated his position, he needed to explore all of the avenues. So my feeling with that he was going through the motions, but of course what he did do was he took that fateful decision to rescue the British armed forces, obviously to detriment of the French situation in Northern Europe. And he also took the decision that we would resist Hitler’s air onslaught. The decision to evacuate Dunkirk was a difficult one because initially he was trying to bolster the French into resist longer, while behind the scenes obviously was getting his chiefs to organize the practicalities of evacuating the British expeditionary force and obviously for political reasons didn’t tell the French until the last minute. But of course, what it did was, by rescuing as many troops as he could, it kept Britain and the war. It was a defeat, but of course it boosted British morale. I mean, even Churchill warned the House of Commons afterwards. Withdrawals do not make victories, but the point was we’d saved a big chunk of our manpower and also after a difficult decision withdrawn most of the RAF and refused to commit any more IF squadrons to defensive French airspace. Again, it was a difficult decision for Churchill to make, but he knew that the fourth would soon be attacking British targets and therefore had a husband, the RF resources, which he did. So that was his tribe or fire if you like that the minute he was in the hot seat. He had those two difficult things to oversee. And then at the same time, of course, Mussolini was launched his attack on Egypt, so he was distracted by that.

He had to figure out what we could do because our resources at that time in Egypt were absolutely tiny. The desert force there ended up mustering about 30,000 men, or as Italians had quarter of a million across the border. So again, touch and go, it really looked like there was a good chance that Egypt could fall to the Italians. The irony is going back to my comments about Chinese armies, the Italians actually were very similar and that they were heavy on infantry, but not were not really mechanized. They didn’t have much in the way of world transport, their tank force was fairly fledgling. It was only just beginning. So unfortunately for Churchill words, it was Hitler’s blitzkrieg in Europe, a reeked havoc across the Low Countries and into France. Mussolini’s blitzkrieg actually granted a halt very quickly. Once he was inside the Egyptian border he came to a stop. So those were kind of all successes where it started to come off the rails a bit, of course, was he got Roosevelt and Eisenhower to agree to a Mediterranean first campaign in that they would clear the access out of the meds and that was particularly problematic once the Germans were in Tunisia. So it was a good idea to clear the Germans out in North Africa. It secured the whole of the North African literal, so the entire coastline came under allied control. But that wasn’t handled very well, of course, because the Germans got into Tunisia pretty quickly and saved Rommel and dragged that campaign out a much longer than it needed to last in round to what May 43. And then, of course, Churchill then prevailed that we should attack. Sicily? Well, that went pretty well obviously British American armies and the race to Messina. But unfortunately, the most of the German forces and a lot of the Italians escaped across to the mainland in Italy, and then Churchill became we D to this strategic notion that the good idea would be to strike up through Italy in the Balkans into southern Germany and that would bring the war to a rapid end. Which in theory seemed like a good idea, but of course he didn’t take into account really. The fact that much of Italy is mountains and running down that central spine of the telling boot are mountains which presented the Germans with ideal defense positions and unending stop points and as we both know the allies ended up bottled up in Italy. But of course he supported D-Day, he understood the need for opening a second front in Northern Europe and he liked Roosevelt had committed himself with Stalin that the allies would do their up nice to open a second front and again, as I’m sure you’re wire. That kept slipping much to Stalin’s irritation. But one thing Churchill did was he then opposed the landings in southern France on the Riviera, which would supposedly have been conducted at the same time as dido. And Churchill was adamant that they shouldn’t take place because he was crossed that allied forces that forces to use in those landings came from Italy. And that brought everything to a head with the Americans. Eisenhower was an absolute saint quite frankly having to put up with Churchill and the likes of Montgomery. You know, it was a great staff officer and a great diplomat. I mean, that was one of his strengths and thank goodness for the allied cause that we had him in that post as I liked supreme commander. But Churchill basically through his toys out of the pram and went to Eisenhower and basically said, if we go ahead with the Riviera landings, I’m going to resign and bring the British government down. I mean, it was appalling ultimatum to present to Eisenhower Eisenhower quite rightly stuck to his guns and those landings took place as it turned out they were largely nougat ’cause all the better units had already been drawn north to the fighting in Normandy. But it’s at that point I think clearly Churchill’s influence on the fighting was beginning to wane in terms of his other failures. He conducted an ill fated campaign in the Greek islands, that didn’t go very well. Italy, that the Germans held on there till the last never really proved decisive. So he got a lot of the stuff right, a lot of the time, but he also got a lot of things wrong a lot of the time as well. But again, I’ve argued in the book, that’s the nature of the beast in that he had to make difficult choices, and they weren’t always the right ones. Well, this gets you a very interesting question because other leaders have prosecuted their wars in a similar way that Churchill did. In fact, Hitler did to the complete disaster of Germany when some historians are asked, could Germany have ever won World War II? There’s no consensus, but a similar answer I read is that, well, if you left it to his generals and they prosecuted a very different war where the Ames were far more modest recapture different parts of the Rhineland, different parts of historical ethnically German places in Europe than perhaps. And if Hitler would have just been the champion of his people as a charismatic figure, but left all matters of strategy to his generals, it could have been done better. Churchill occupies both of these and a lot of the mythology built around him is that he’s a world historical figure who was the right man at the right time. He kept the resolve in the backbone during the darkest days of Britain in 1940. And if not for him and if Britain would have made peace, then that could have imperiled the entire war effort, which I mean, there’s an argument to be made there. So how much do you make of that for Churchill that the way that he conducted the war was it the best way that it could have been done, was he the right man at the time could somebody else who had led the war effort differently been successful in a different way or perhaps even more successful. So what do you make of all this? Scott, you make a very good point in your analogy between Churchill, Hitler and Stalin, because as you rightly point out, when a Hitler’s major failings, he micromanaged the German war effort and in fact as the war went on, he got worse to the detriment of the German war effort. One of his main mantras was never give ground, which of course deprived his generals of the initiative all the time, particularly by 44 when we’re firmly looking at what is in modern parlance is maneuver warfare that you need to keep your forces on the move in order to wrong foot the enemy. The minute you start fighting a static battle, you’re going to lose. So that’s what Hitler did with his generals is that simply wouldn’t give ground. So he took an initiative of them.

The irony is when his generals did disobey him, they actually managed to pull a rabbit from the hat to prime example of that would be kharkov in early 1943 when they gave the Red Army a bloody nose after were drawing and then counterattacking against its Hitler’s orders. Whereas Stalin tried to micromanage the Soviet Union’s war effort at the beginning and very quickly realized he wasn’t qualified to do that. So he managed Soviet strategy in the run up to the German invasion and got it horribly wrong. He convinced himself Hitler was not going to attack him. His general was kept telling him otherwise to the extent they were not allowed to mobilize the Red Army. So what they did was to get round it, they conducted a number of very large scale exercises. In the western Soviet Union and an effort to try and prepare, but of course actually that didn’t work because the Germans caught them before those units had fully deployed for the exercises. But as the Soviet union suffered increasing defeats during 1941 42, Stalin gradually began to step back when he began to recognize that generals like zhukov and rokossovsky knew what they were doing and were very competent. So he increasingly relied on his generals to get the work done and then took the credit. As you’d expect from a dictator. Whereas with Churchill, yes, in the initial stages, he tried to micromanage the war. He did take advice, but of course, by 44, particularly once a miracle was the superior partner, he increasingly didn’t meddle in and I’d strategy, he was desperate to be a spectator, you know, D days of prime example of that desperately wanted to attend D-Day till it was talked out of it. For somebody like the operation market garden and the Arnhem operation he was out of country, I think he was in the states at the time when that took place. So he had no bearing on that. And again, by the time the Rhine crossings, that was firmly in the hands of British and American generals. And again, he went along with the spectator. So he certainly sort of 1940 to 42. He was very firmly directing the war as it progressed, certainly by sort of mid 43. I think his influence was waning, and to be fair, probably for the best. I mean, point by that stage was we were firmly fighting coalition warfare. So Churchill was not really in a position to call the shorts as we’ve discussed he tried and tried on a number of occasions, but even he recognized that the allied war effort was increasingly run by a committee. It had to be the very nature of the allied war effort, but as you rightly say, was your other question, was he the right man at the right time at the right place? Yes, I mean, that’s what I argue with my book and it’s one of the central thesis because everything he’d done in his life. There’s that corny quote from him isn’t there about when he was called to be prime minister, he said, I’m paraphrasing here, but words to the effect of is this destiny was calling an all that had gone before led to that very moment. Well, the man was the master of the soundbite. We’ve got to this day numerous Churchill quote books with picky sound bites. I mean, he was a master of the soundbite, you know, as I said earlier, he was a brilliant spin doctor. But actually he wasn’t boasting. He was right because of all the jobs that he’d done. First lord of the admiralty, Secretary of State for war and air, minister for munitions, he’d seen combat up close. He’d been in supporter of the concept of the tank of naval aviation of combined operations. All these sinks and again champion of the RAF. So his grounding and all things military was quite remarkable. He really was the right man for the jaw. I don’t know who else could have done it quite frankly. The favorite obviously at the time was lord Halifax, whereas I don’t think he really wanted the job politically wise there were problems for him doing it anyway because he was a member of the lords and the prime ministers always selected from a member of parliament from the commons, so there was no precedent for him doing for lord Albert was becoming prime minister. Maybe they could have passed emergency legislation for him to do it. But I mean, he certainly didn’t have the breadth of knowledge or experience or indeed certainly in Churchill’s case. The strategic outlook, as we’ve discussed, obviously he didn’t always get it right, but he had a very good grasp of world affairs. He had remarkable understanding for military affairs, land air and sea. So God bless him. In my mind, he certainly was in the right place at the right time. Hopefully I argue that convincing in the book. Again, it goes back to the title of master and commander. He just happened to be so well qualified. He rose to the occasion and earlier you were saying about some people didn’t like him while he’s working practices were quite remarkable. He’s in his 60s when he became prime minister. His energy in his drawing was just quite remarkable. And I think that’s what a lot of people find inspiring about him. You know, he’s a bit of a polymath. He was a painter, as a writer, as a soldier. It was a journalist. It was bricklayer. You name it. He had a go at it. But he sense of duty and his dedication to the office. It was just quite remarkable. I mean, he drove his senior commanders mad at the late hours that he did. You know, he quite often invite people down to checkers or chart well, the p.m.’s home in his own home to have dinner and a bit of a chat, watch a movie into at night, would then discuss the war and then send his senior commanders Homer two in the morning for a morning. Sometimes, if you read someone like Arthur Harris memoirs, you know the bomber Harrison commander bomber command, you know, he said he found church that absolute fascinating character. And an inspiration, but he would wriggly leave Churchill absolutely exhausted and dreading the fact that the following day, he was asked to go and oversee operations there were life and death for his aircrews. Courtesy of church or who had no concept that it was a good idea to get a good night’s sleep and be up breezy in the morning. Whereas Montgomery, someone like the Marshall Montgomery, was of the other school who insisted on going to bed early and not being disturbed and getting a good night’s sleep. So he was this rested as he could be in his brain was clear for the day ahead. So you’ve got to give it to Churchill. You know, a lesser man would have buckled. I mean, you know, even after more of it and then again on top of that, you have to add his myriad of old health problems. It’s well known during the Second World War he was not a well man. His lifestyle didn’t help, you know, like to smoke like to drink, but then so did everyone else during that time. But obviously, that came at a cost. So he was quite regularly ill, had pneumonia heart problems, you know, and yet he soldiered on. You know, you can’t imagine people doing that now.

They’d be signed off 6 straight or they really speaks to his character or his incredible energy that he can lead a war effort, give speeches, rally the people, speak before parliament, entertain for several hours and doing all these things while keeping up a very heavy drinking schedule and heavy smoking schedule too. And as your point earlier that someone who’s an incredibly charismatic people who can rally them, it is a rare quality that they can do that. And we have a lot of people like that in history like going back to ancient Greece, demosthenes who convinces Athens to fight against philippa mesodon, which is a terrible decision. So he’s charismatic, but he’s a terrible strategist, a same with Hitler as well, but Hitler Churchill manages to be an incredibly inspiring figure, understands maybe a bit of his world historical importance, but manages to be ground enough that he can realistically eat his nations when he needs to, which, as you described, rare combination. So yeah, I mean, there’s a lot here to unpack about him. And we know he’s a complicated figure, but there’s always new things to unpack with Churchill. And for listeners who want to get into that story, the name of your book is Churchill master and commander. Anthony, thank you for joining us. Thank you, Sean. Thank you for having me on. All right, listeners, will that is all that I have for today’s episode. Once again, I want to start things off by thinking the spymasters of history unplug. I’ll explain what that is in a second. Or spymasters include Bill ivy, moondoggie from Ohio, Tom from Ohio, Ryan gillan, rob from Chicago, Nick Brooks, Michael from New York, Carl from Norway, Josh Reddick, Jennifer French Lee, Jay Carrington, McRae’s Salvador Sanchez, David Santi, Chris C and baron frieza. If you’d like to support the show, there’s some very easy ways to do so. First, go to the site half price history dot com. I’ve worked out an arrangement with a lot of the authors who’ve appeared on this show, and you can go there and get their books from 50% off. All you have to do is go to half price history dot com, and under the promo code unplugged to check out. Second, please leave a review and subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player of choice, whether Apple podcasts or Spotify or whatever. Third, join our Facebook group. You can go to Facebook and search for history unplugged. There, you can talk with other fans of the show about recent episodes, what you liked, what you didn’t like. Also, I have exclusive content there, such as live streams where I do live versions of podcast episodes where you can leave feedback as I’m talking, and I will address it on air. Last, and I think this is the best, is to join our membership program, the rangers. Though Nelson’s rangers were George Washington’s spies during the Revolutionary War, but it’s also the name of the membership program for history unplugged. If you go to Patreon dot com slash unplugged, you can join the membership program at three levels. If you joined the scout level, you’ll get all 400 episodes of history unplugged absolutely ad free and early access to new episodes. If you joined the second level, the intelligence officer level, get all the stuff that scouts get, along with bonus episodes. There’s currently about 40 of them, including series on Audie Murphy and operation long jump about the Nazi attempt to assassinate FDR Churchill in Stalin. In 1943. Finally, if you joined the spymaster level, you’ll get a shout out to you and or your business at the end of each episode. You get a three pack of hardcover history books, and you can find out what those are. If you go to Patreon dot com slash unplugged, finally, you can ask me a question about history on absolutely any topic on earth. And I will research it and devote an entire episode to your question. Probably about 30% of the questions in the archive for the show have been based on these sorts of questions. So there you go. Go to Patreon dot com slash unplugged to learn more. All right, well that is all for today’s episode. Thank you so much for listening and I’ll see you next time.