Ministers at War : Winston Churchill and His War Cabinet by Schneer Jonathan

Author:Schneer, Jonathan [Schneer, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780465040582
Publisher: Perseus Book Group
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The audience roared its approval. Beaverbrook was at the peak of his powers and riding the crest of the wave. What might he not aspire to, given his reception at events such as this, and given the national response to his campaign?

BEAVERBROOK IN FACT STOOD THAT DAY ON THE VERY PEAK OF THAT wave, but it had crested and was about to break. He may have known it even as he spoke. Moments before he strode to the rostrum, one of his journalists pulled him aside. Word had just arrived that Rommel had taken Tobruk in Libya. Beaverbrook’s eyes clouded over at the news, probably because the news was bad—but possibly also because he understood in a flash that this development doomed all his hopes. He would deliver his defiant lines. But Churchill would never agree to launch a Second Front in Europe with Suez in danger; he would do everything in his power to protect Britain’s position in the Middle East. Even the men and women presently cheering in Victoria Square would place Russia on the back burner when they learned of this most recent defeat. They would demand action to avenge it, but in Libya, not on the European mainland. “On the morning of June 21st the Second Front was a near certainty,” Beaverbrook was to say. “By the evening the odds were 100 to 1 against.”

As a result, the odds against his becoming prime minister approached the same ratio. He had persuaded himself that as the chief spear-carrier of an irresistible movement he, too, was, or might become, irresistible. Now the spear had broken in his hands. Without it he could be only Churchill’s friend and ally and, perhaps eventually, colleague again, but not his successor.

He did not wind up the campaign for a Second Front Now, but nor did he any longer drive it with his unique implacable ferocity. To almost all the organizations that had issued him invitations to speak, he sent polite refusals. To a very few he sent discreet telegrams of support, but nothing more. He no longer saw the campaign as a vehicle for his career but only as means of pressuring the government to do what he judged to be right, and he knew the government would not do it just yet. His newspapers continued to advocate the Second Front. In July he lobbied MPs for the Second Front at a cross-party dinner of which he was host. On one occasion he spoke for it at the House of Lords. He remained sufficiently associated with the diminished movement that when Churchill went to Russia in August 1942, to break the news to Stalin that there would be no Second Front that year, he did not invite Beaverbrook.

Because he had relaxed to a degree about the Second Front, the press lord no longer had to juggle ambition for himself and loyalty to Churchill. He dropped the one and took up the other. He finally faced facts. To an American friend he wrote: “Churchill’s prestige stands as high as two years ago.

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