Source: BBC // Churchill making his famous V for Victory sign
Introduction
Brave, charismatic, a maverick: these are the defining virtues of two-time Prime Minister of England, Winston Churchill. In sharp contrast, his imperial subjects saw callousness, apathy and self-centredness. It is important to acknowledge that in a retrospective analysis, the impracticality of holding historical figures to today’s moral standards. Every person undergoes a journey through pressure. From this lens, Winston Churchill embodied the spirit of courage.
Childhood and Breakthrough
Born to a British-American family, Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was raised in a modest yet respected household - though he was a descendant of the Dukes of Marlborough, his family did not inherit this regal wealth. Churchill grew up in an apathetic household. He and his brother were compassionately raised by his nanny, Elizabeth Everest.
Battling through poor academic performance and multiple school transfers, he joined the British military in 1895. This year was the turning point in his life, as he lost both his father and nanny [1]. Crucially, Winston Churchill visited the five major continents and fought on three. He chronicled his journeys in the form of books and reports. After multiple campaigns throughout the world, in 1899 in the Second Boer War in South Africa, Churchill escaped the Boer Republics who held him as a prisoner of war. He returned to British-occupied Mozambique and was celebrated as a hero. It was the launchpad for his illustrious political career.
Source: History.net // A Young Winston Churchill during the Boer War
Service and the Foreshadowing
Churchill was just twenty-five when he became an MP with the Conservative Party. His allegiance quickly switched to the Liberal Party. He served in various positions in the governments of former Liberal Prime Ministers H.H. Asquith and Lloyd George. Churchill bravely commandeered the British Royal Navy in the First World War. Following this, Churchill continued his political career. He held various ministerial positions, including Secretary of State for War, Secretary of State for Air, and Chancellor of the Exchequer. [2]
In the 1930s, Churchill was prescient of the looming threat of the bellicose Nazi Germany. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had signed the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler, allowing Germany to annex parts of Czechoslovakia. Whilst Chamberlain claimed peace for his time [3], Churchill had asserted the integrity and security of the United Kingdom was compromised.
Wartime Policy
Following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain, Churchill ascended to the position of Prime Minister as a Conservative. He formed a war ministry, comprising leaders from Labour and the Tories. Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s war policy can be best summarised as erratic, but effective. He used his tremendous experience to place himself at the centre of the British military by becoming the first Minister of Defence.
The British started on the wrong foot: the Battle of Dunkirk resulted in a huge loss of soldiers and armaments. An unexpected ray of hope appeared as Nazi Germany halted their onslaught at Dunkirk. This allowed Churchill to greenlight Operation Dynamo, the biggest evacuation operation in history [4]. Within days, Paris fell, casting a bleak shadow over the future of Europe.
Source: National Archives and Records Administration // Bombing of the London Docks, September 1940
In the following months, the Blitz War and the Battle of Britain brought the Germans to Churchill’s doorstep. In the face of such adversity, Churchill sought to go for the jugular and fight fire with fire. He placed a heavy focus on the Royal Air Force (RAF), formed in 1918, and viewed it as the sole means to victory. He approved the Tizard Mission, a diplomatic move for technological cooperation between the United States and Britain. Notably, the cavity magnetron was revealed to the Americans [5]. This was used to develop H2S radars which were installed on bombers, creating a steep technological gradient between the Allies and the Axis.
Churchill championed the RAF Bomber Command and enforced a policy of Area Bombardment. This was fact-driven, commensurate with the findings of the Butt Report, which had rebuked the prior performance of British bombers. This was one of the first policies with underpinnings of fourth-generational warfare, as Churchill wanted “to break the will of the people and the workers who keep the enemy's war machine going".
Parallely, PM Churchill leveraged the size of the British Empire to expand the scope of war. He was relentless in the Mediterranean as well as North Africa. The Suez Canal was a major flashpoint in the war - had the Axis gained control of it, Britain would have been cut off from her colonies. He greatly reinforced these fronts, sending large swathes of British tanks to Egypt. It led to the routing of Germany and Italy in the Second Battle of El Alamein and various other conflicts. After a vengeful America entered the war to punish the Japanese and the rest of the Axis, Operation Torch was launched with Churchill at the forefront. The strategy involved the liberation of North African colonies controlled by the German puppet state of Vichy France.
Reverberations in Asia
From decades of experience, PM Winston Churchill knew that military resources were scarce. With Operation Torch in full swing, he refused to reinforce the colony of Singapore. This resulted in the abject defeat of the British, who in spite of having nearly twice the strength, lost to the Japanese within days. The onslaught spilled into the colony of Burma, and Rangoon fell in 1942. With the North African theatre in the grasp of the Allies, the US and Britain agreed to shift their focus to the southeastern front through the Casablanca Conference [6]. The South East Asia Command was established to consolidate the offensive.
Bigotry and the Bengal Famine
Respect for the empire was ingrained in the hearts and minds of Britons. Children were taught that they were the successors of the influential powers of the Greco-Roman world [7]. This established Winston Churchill as an ardent imperialist, going to great lengths in his premiership to defend Britain’s colonies. When Churchill grew up, segregation was the norm in England. His sojourns across the empire in military and journalistic endeavours taught him a nuanced perspective of race. He was not an outright bigot, as evidenced by his nearly spotless record of not using racial slurs or epithets. In spite of this, he had a hierarchical view of race; with white people at the top.
It is crucial to understand that Nazi Germany too held a racial hierarchy. The British were not benevolent stalwarts of equity. In fact, PM Churchill’s first foreign minister was Nazi Foreign Minister Goering’s hunting partner [8]. Churchill’s predecessor, Neville Chamberlain, projected the sentiment of the majority of Europe: appeasement of the Nazis. Throughout his career, Churchill stood up against his own party and class and condemned Nazi Germany. When the Americans joined the war, they enforced segregation amongst their rank and file. PM Churchill and his cabinet concluded that the US Army “must not expect our authorities, civil or military, to assist them in enforcing a policy of segregation” [9].
That being the case, a line must be drawn on the sheer horror of the decision-making that led to the Bengal famine. Neither the racial views of the Nazis nor the British were benevolent - and Churchill’s regressive policies certainly contributed to the estimated three million dead in the Bengal famine of the 1940s. This showcased the systematic apathy of the British Empire to the Bengalis, as a Famine Code was never invoked, stymying the efforts for greater distribution of relief. For the government, familiarity bred contempt - they were used to under-delivering on their obligations to India, and the wartime economic crunch did not help. Over multiple generations, a deep-rooted sense of cynicism was imbued in the upper Indian classes. The morsels of delivered aid never trickled to the rural Indian small farmers, and were instead, reaped by the upper-class Bengalis.
Source: Eastern Eye // Peasants during the Bengal famine
Throughout 1944, the British government turned down requests from India for imports of grain. In fact, Churchill had written to the Viceroy of India, Lord Wavell, to entirely handle the extinguishment of the famine [10]. This was due to his preoccupation with the other war fronts such as Italy, a shortage of ships and preparations for the looming Operation Overlord. In conclusion, Churchill’s first premiership was marred with inconsistent policy, underpinned by the latent racism of the time.
Prescience and The Final Push
As Britain planned to consolidate its besieged territories, the Allies knew that a launch into mainland Europe was inevitable. Thus began the plotting of Operation Overlord, and from it, the Battle of Normandy in France. In just a few short months, France was all but liberated. As the Nazis entered a frantic retreat, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin: the Big Three, began redrawing the maps of a post-Nazi Europe. With Britain’s reserve capital fully depleted, the stage was set for them to fall behind the supergiants of the USA and USSR. In an effort to favourably position the empire, Churchill sought to divide Europe into spheres of influence between the Big Three. This was initiated by Churchill through the informal “Percentages Agreement”. The move displayed Churchill’s deep and prescient understanding of the trajectory of the world. He delivered his iconic “Iron Curtain” speech, popularising the term and warning of the future encroachment of the USSR into Europe.
Duress and Determination
Churchill’s pivotal contribution to the Allies’ victory in the Second World War was done under tremendous personal duress. Churchill suffered through bouts of debilitating depression. As a result of heavy alcohol abuse, his physical health deteriorated throughout the war, in fact, he suffered a mild heart attack in 1942.
Source: ThoughtCo // Churchill during his second term as Prime Minister
Winston Churchill's legacy is a tapestry of valour, resilience, and complexity. His leadership during World War II undoubtedly steered the Allied forces toward victory yet, juxtaposed against this are the stark realities of his imperial policies and inaction. The Burmese, Indians and Malaysians and Singaporeans would have viewed Churchill as an absentee tyrant, whereas the English and Canadians were steadfast and strong under him. His decisions often reflected the prejudices and priorities of a bygone era. However, it is pertinent to humanise Winston Churchill and contextualise his actions, for without them, the flame of freedom would have been extinguished.
Article by:
Vishal Nagaraj,
Former Editor
PES MUN Society, RR Campus
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