A friend who attended the 3 September 2009 Intelligence2 debate sent me the following notes.
-OT
Was Churchill More a Liability than an Asset to the Civilized World?
Supporting the motion: Pat Buchanan (billed “an advisor to three US presidents”), a Scotsman (Norman Stone, now teaching at a university in Ankara), and a Cambridge Economist (Nigel Knight).
Opposing: historian and Churchill biographer Andrew Roberts, Anthony Beevor (historian, noted for Stalingrad and Berlin), and Richard Overy.
The debate, moderated by the fragrant former BBC presenter Joan Bakewell, was held at the Methodist Hall, Westminster, a site that hosted the inaugural meeting of the UN General Assembly. The debate will be broadcast on TV and should be available in audio format via the web.
It’s worth noting that the I2 debates used to be sponsored by The Spectator, and are now sponsored by The Evening Standard, a publication now owned by Lebedev, the former Russian spy.
Your reporter needs to remind you all that this is an account of the debate, and the opinions described are those of the debaters, not mine, and that these are approximations.
Proceedings were launched by an outraged heckler “how dare you, etc…” applause.
Buchanan began the debate by allowing that judged only from his actions in 1940/41 Churchill was a great and courageous man, but in fact he was a leader for a half century during which (according to Buchanan) he left a record of “belligerence and bad decisions,” specifically actions that played a role in starting two world wars.
Principal among his bad, belligerent and ill-fated decision were
1) the 1919 naval blockade of Germany that led to the starvation of civilians, including women and children, an act which stoke a grievance that led to the rise of Hitler and the onset of WW2. [Very deterministic was Mr. Buchanan – OT]
2) The use in 1927 Iraq of “poison gas” on the Kurdish and Shiite populations, an act that when perpetrated by Saddam H was considered a war crime of a magnitude to justify his overthrow. (Robert was quick, in his turn, to quote documents from memory indicating that it was “tear gas” the British had used, of a sort used today in crowd control on the streets of London, not nerve gas such as Saddam used”).
3) The military debacle in WWI of Gallipoli.
4) The fumble, early in WW1 of Norway… a misjudged strategy compounded by Churchill’s blabbing about the impending operation to the press which alerted German command.
5) Bombing of the Rhineland, including civilian populations there, which led to the retaliatory bombings of Coventry, etc…
6) Post war UK capitulation to post-war US demands.
7) Churchill’s appeasement of Stalin at Yalta.
Taken together his acts took Britain from the greatest Empire since Rome to an island dependency of the US.
Andrew Roberts replied by correcting the bit about “poison gas” then added that given that he entered parliament in 1900 and served on and off until 1964, it was inevitable that Churchill shared in a number of misjudgments. That said, Churchill was quite simply the champion of the free world. As for WC as a military strategist, WC’s move to draw German forces to North Africa and extend them was ingenious. “Given that we now debate in a hall where de Gaulle launched the Free French Movement, where Churchill announced ‘victory is before us’ let us not sully this place with perverse arguments.”
The Cambridge economist recounted how Churchill, in 1925, as chancellor of the exchequer, against the advice of Keynes and others (other Cambridge economists), took the country back on to the gold standard, a disastrous move that led to deflation, unemployment, etc…
NK recounted Churchill’s decision, against the advice of air commander dowling, at the outset of WW2 to send fight planes to France making them unavailable to defend Britain.
“WC maintained a pre-WWII view of the navy, not recognizing the importance of Uboats or air carriers.”
NK described Churchill’s WW2 strategy as “dispersionist” and based on his WW1 Gallipoli strategy, which itself had failed. It postponed the concentration of force that is necessary to win, it cost time and lives (“ten million lives in the two European theaters”).
Beevor charged that Buchanan was making a revisionist argument akin to Putin recent comments suggesting that the UK was responsible for WW2, and that it was a false, dirty and dangerous argument. Time and again, Hitler would sign a treaty, use the pretext of defending German speaking peoples to annex a portion of territory and use that as a launching pad to take control of the rest of the country. This was Hitler’s aim, not a reaction to the British signing a defense pact.
As for his strategy of delay… the UK alone did not have sufficient forces to defeat Hitler. In early 1943 the UK did not have sufficient landing craft, the Luftwaffe was still strong, and the US army needed time to sort itself out.
In 1943 Tehran it was Roosevelt, not Churchill, who sacrificed Central Europe.
In sum, according to Beevor, he was our greatest asset.
Norman Stone, the Scot now teaching in Turkey, began with a Glasgow memory. He was a interrupted by a heckler (“How dare you...” with other sounds of approval.)
He outlined Churchill the Imperialist’s fumbling attempts in 1920s through 1930s to hold onto to empire escaping his grasp. How can WC be consider the great asset of the free world when he continually acted to deny democracy to people in Britain’s colonies. So many of our problems today are an inheritance from his bad decisions… chiefly the problem, for us here at home in Britain as well as abroad, of Pakistan.
NS condemned the 1945 bombing of Germany to bits as sadistic. WC did not, like de Gaulle, see ahead to the post-war period.
NS lays at WC’s feet Britain’s post-war decline… cue the reminisce of 1970s Glasgow [seems a non sequitor to me! – OT], and Britain’s small-minded thinking throughout that era.
Overy: “The countdown to war began in 1939. Try to imagine the consequences of that period without WC.” He recounts period, Hitler’s breaking of treaties, being presented with a basket of broken treaties on his birthday. The advocates for the motion seem to lay everything that happened in that era at Hitler’s feet, but at the very least I need to say that WC, unlike Hitler, tended to take advice. What (citing an earlier fact citation) could WC possibly do about Stalin’s decision to displace millions of ethnic Germans within the Soviet Union?”
He had a historic vision, a view that encompassed liberty, rule of law, parliamentary freedom, and a hatred of tyranny.
In 1941-42 the Liberal age was on the point of extinction. In 1940, there was discussion of a peace deal with Hitler (remember, at the time the US was neutral and the USSR was in an alliance with Nazi Germany)… and WC stood against that compromise.
In response to various questions from the audience:
Andrew Roberts rejoined the debate, remarking on Putin’s recent historical gambit: “The Munich Pact was not the trigger for WWII, the Hitler-Stalin pact was.”
Buchanan: “Churchill goaded Chamberlain to give Poland a guarantee of assistance that could not be followed through on.”
Who else could have played a pivotal role as leader?
The Cambridge economist suggested that Atlee was a more organized decision-maker.
Buchanan suggested that not only was the war unnecessary and the fault of Churchill’s belligerence, because “Hitler wanted no war in the west,” but that “if there’d been no war there would have been no holocaust.”
Andrew Roberts: What you say is monstrous. The holocaust started before Britain’s entry, and before the Wansee conference. There were both killings and preparation. The Wansee conference was simply to plan the industrialization of that effort.
Beevor:
As for the bombing of the Rhineland, it was it was designed to pull the Luftwaffe and its anti-aircraft guns from the Eastern front, and it was commenced at the request of the Red Army.
As for his handling of India… Churchill kept the Japanese out of India. During the Japanese occupation of the Philippines 17% of the population died.
Remember, in 1939, on the day France and England voted to go to war, the League of Nations votes on the standardization of rails in Europe.
Roberts, in response to a question: “Thankfully, Churchill revisionism is a minority fetish, and its proponents are not to be found among the young but rather those of a certain age.”
