Ministers at War by Jonathan Schneer

Author:Jonathan Schneer
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780746142
Publisher: Perseus Books, LLC

WINSTON CHURCHILL EXHIBITED PATIENCE AND CUNNING IN HIS DEALINGS with Stafford Cripps. With Lord Beaverbrook, another member of his War Cabinet who would likewise pose a significant challenge to his position, he exhibited those attributes again, as well as insight, great forbearance and sympathy. Beaverbrook represented a different kind of test for Churchill than Cripps ever did, because he only flirted with the idea of mounting a coup, or at any rate of taking the top spot should the prime minister fall. Nevertheless, he caused the prime minister more anxiety and general trouble than Cripps did. While the Canadian-born Beaverbrook was scintillating, dynamic and effective, he also could be obstreperous, conniving and stubborn. You knew where you stood with Cripps; you never knew what Beaverbrook might say or do. He made mountains out of molehills, but also he leveled real mountains. He was a less likely rival to the prime minister than Cripps only because he was more ambivalent about trying to attain the throne. Since he never showed himself to be high-minded, idealistic or naïve, however, but almost always only shrewd, calculating and hard, he also represented the greater danger.

Beaverbrook did not so much crave the top position—although occasionally he thought he could fill it better than anyone else—as crave excitement. He wanted to be where the action was. Once he had found it, he usually wanted to shape whatever followed from behind the scenes. He did not wish to be the prime mover, although, again, the time would come when he thought that for his country’s sake he should be just that. Rather, he mainly wanted to be the man upon whom the prime mover relied. He sought a leader to follow, a hero worthy of his support. In the wartime Winston Churchill, he found one.

Beaverbrook ladled out flattery to Churchill just as he did to everyone else. “Your broadcast has surpassed anything, and all America is under your influence today.” Or: “What you mean to the people in this crisis is beyond reckoning; beyond any figure in our history. . . . [T]he victory, when it comes, will all be yours.” And: “I send this letter of gratitude and devotion to the leader of the nation, the savior of our people and the symbol of resistance in the free world.” Even: “You are the only guardian of mankind.” Such effusions suggest not only the hero-worshiping aspect of Beaverbrook’s personality but also the manipulative side, for Beaverbrook always wanted Churchill’s support in the War Cabinet. Whatever Churchill made of these effusions (and it is hard to think that he did not enjoy them), they constitute a strand linking the two men and provide insight into Beaverbrook’s character.

Yet, from the distance of nearly three-quarters of a century, Beaverbrook appears in his professional capacity to have been hard, above all: manipulative, yes; dynamic, yes; but mainly driven—and therefore often harsh, argumentative, stubborn, ruthless, even cruel. If the war taxed him, it also liberated and justified him, because he could drive not only himself but also others to the absolute limit.

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