Notes for HSC Extension History
Case Study Option 18. Winston Churchill – Statesman or Career Opportunist?
Food for thought - key points and historiographical issues about Winston
Churchill
Sandra Rutter, Lindisfarne Anglican Grammar School
In Jasper Fforde’s alternative version of Britain in his Thursday Next Series
(starting with The Eyre Affair), Winston Churchill died in disgrace in an accident
in the 1930s and England was subsequently occupied by the Nazis during World
War II. Fforde’s love of historical games highlights the focal point of attempts to
understand Winston Churchill, his career and his place in both history and
historiography - what indeed might we know of him were it not for his opposition
to Hitler and the Nazis in the late 1930s and 1940s and his ‘finest hour‘ in defying
Hitler and members of the Cabinet to finally draw the United States into the war
in support of Britain and eventually the USSR?
The following notes highlight some of the key points and unresolved issues about
Churchill raised over three years by History Extension students at Kesser Torah
College in Sydney. These are their ideas as well as my own and those of the
historians cited below. These questions stemmed from and formed the basis for,
class discussion and debate.
Would he really have been forgotten/considered a failure if WW2 had never
happened?
In other words, if things had gone differently in 1940 in particular, what would
history’s assessment of Churchill be? Instigator of the disastrous Dardanelles
campaign in World War I? Last bastion of British colonialism in the 1930s, when
he seemingly disgraced himself by opposing Indian independence? The enemy of
the working man in Britain? Flip-flopping between admiration for Hitler and the
Nazis’ ability to drag Germany out of the Great Depression and dire warnings
about the consequences of appeasement?
What was the role of Churchill himself in creating/framing historical
perceptions of him, especially post-WWII, and what impact has this had on
subsequent biographers and historians?
This begins with his book and newspaper dispatches on his Boer War exploits
(earning him money and the fame that led him into Parliament – is this career
opportunism?), continues in the 1930s with his ‘History of the English Speaking
Peoples’ and biography of Marlborough and is particularly evident in the first
volume of his WWII history ‘The Gathering Storm’ (see Charmley’s take on this
in the article cited below). Was he too selective? Are his claims and corrections
about ‘THEIR Finest Hour’ uncharacteristically modest? What do we make of
disasters such as the Norwegian campaign or controversies over the bombing of
Dresden and other German and northern French cities and his order to sink ships
from the French fleet in Oran soon after the French collapse?
Why has Gilbert’s ‘definitive’ take on Churchill, supported by Namier and AJP
Taylor, led to the revisionist ’backlash’?
Churchillian historiography tends to lean towards a ‘Great Man’ approach to
History -‘his finest hour’- (arguably originating with Herodotus and definitely
supported by von Ranke) and even at times to hagiography. How wrong were
they?
The Revisionists (especially Charmley, whom Rossi sees as being the more
‘reliable’ of the Revisionists) criticise both Churchill and the ‘traditional’
historians such as Gilbert. Revisionist historians variously portray him as the
destroyer of his country, condemn him for selling Britain’s position as a world
power to the Americans or accuse him of hypocrisy given his early statements of
apparent approval of Hitler’s strong leadership in Germany, and at their most
extreme, disintegrate into rabid and incoherent anti-semitic raving. Therefore the
revision of the history of Churchill raises interesting issues alongside disturbing
slanders. This can best be seen as a backlash against too many ‘Great Man’
biographies – but how right are they?
How strongly have ‘post-revisionists‘, including Ramsden, Lukacs, Schama and
Rubin, been influenced by post-modernism?
These historians often take a more thematic approach, with their conclusions
giving some credence to some of the revisionists but, in the balance, they are still
largely favourable towards Churchill, in particular over World War II and his role
as a global statesman after the war.
Ramsden in particular points to the enduring fascination with Churchill in history
and in the media (could this be proof enough of his ‘statesman’ status?).
Lukacs’ series of essays reflects his fascination with Churchill’s relationships with
some of the other towering figures of the twentieth century (Stalin, Roosevelt, for
example) – is this more ‘Great Man’history?
Rubin tends to go for the ‘multiple viewpoints’ (v. post-modern; but is she just
fence-sitting?) approach before climbing off the fence with her own conclusions,
and Schama’s documentary recalls how his ‘angry young historian’ phase ground
to a temporary halt when Churchill died. He uses this as a launching pad for an
extended meditation on the nature and purpose of History itself - but is he really
that far from Churchill’s ‘Whiggish’ approach to British history?
Why do traditionalists such as Keegan and Jenkins seemingly ignore or dismiss
the revisionists and post-revisionists and take a more conventional approach?
Keegan the military specialist focuses on Churchill as a military man, while
Jenkins uses his position as a parliamentary insider to write an almost agonisingly
detailed study of the parliamentary Churchill, at the same time stating openly his
debt to Gilbert and distaste for a more investigative style of biography - could this
be a dig at the revisionists?
How do articles expanding our understanding of Churchill, regularly
published in monthly magazines such as ‘History Today’, underline the view of
him as a statesman despite all his many flaws and his failures?
Recent features in this magazine have included a focus on Churchill’s attitudes
towards race and empire and his role in the early phase of the Cold War. Is this
more of Carr’s approach to History, the historian’s tendency to see the past in
terms of our own values and concerns?
In addition, as Ramsden points out, the key players in the current ‘War on Terror’
call upon the inspiration and rhetoric of Churchill from the ‘dark days’ of 1940 to
rally their populations to their cause - but have they learned the ‘right’ lessons
from Churchill and from History?
With so many issues and avenues to explore and debate, the central focus of
Churchill in History Extension, that wonderfully polarising choice between
statesman and career opportunist, takes on a richness and a complexity that has the
power to evoke passionate responses from even the most ‘uber-cool’ of students.
When all else fails, there is always the wealth of wit in the endless anecdotes
about the great man himself!
Resources:
Books/articles
Barnes, H E (1980), ‘Winston Spencer Churchill: A Tribute’, Journal of Historical
Review, Volume 1, Number 2, Institute of Historical Review, USA
Best, G (October 2005), Winston Churchill, The H-Bomb and Nuclear
Disarmament, History Today, UK
Charmley, J (1993) Churchill: the End of Glory
‘Churchill: The Gathering Storm’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwtwo/churchill_gathering_storm-print.htm
(accessed 8/05/2006),
Fforde, J (2001) The Eyre Affair, Hodder and Stoughton, UK
Gilbert, M, (1992) Churchill: A Life, Random House, USA
(2004), Winston Churchill’s War Leadership, Random House, USA
Keegan, J (2003), Churchill, Phoenix, UK.
Jenkins, R (2001), Churchill, Pan MacMillan, UK
Lukacs, J (2002) Churchill. Visionary Statesman Historian, Scribe, Melbourne
MacDonald, A (2004), Winston Churchill and His Great Wars, Scholastic
Children’s Books, UK
Mauter, W R, (1998), ‘Churchill and the Unification of Europe’, Historian, USA
Namier,
Quinault, R (June 2005), ’Churchill and Black Africa’, History Today, UK
Ramsden, J (2003), Man of Century. Winston Churchill and His Legend Since
1945, Harper Collins, UK
Reynolds, D (February 2005), ‘Churchill the Historian’, History Today, UK
Rubin, G (2004), Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill, Random House, USA
Rossi, J (March 2002), ‘Churchill and the Revisionist Historians’, Contemporary
Review, USA
Taylor, AJP, (1961) The Origins of the Second World War, Hamish Hamilton,
UK
Documentaries
Schama, S (2002), ‘A History of Britain - The Two Winstons‘, BBC/History
Channel, UK