Churchill : The Unexpected Hero by Churchill; The Unexpected Hero

Author:Churchill; The Unexpected Hero
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, UK
Published: 2005-12-19T16:00:00+00:00

SIX

The Making of a Hero, 1939–1945

On 15 March 1939 German troops marched into Prague and the Czechoslovak state ceased to exist. The moral case for the Munich agreement––that Hitler’s aims were limited to the incorporation of Germans in the Reich, that a just grievance against the Treaty of Versailles was being redressed, that appeasement would bring ‘peace in our time’––collapsed overnight. By the same token Churchill’s analysis of Munich was vindicated. The argument which had been employed so often to justify his exclusion from office––that he lacked judgement––began to rebound against Chamberlain and his colleagues. Was it not they who had lacked judgement? Had not Sir Samuel Hoare, speaking a few days before the invasion of Prague, conjured up the prospect of a new Golden Age of prosperity for the world? At long last Churchill was in a position where, assisted by the tide of opinion now flowing against appeasement, he could begin to turn the tables on his critics.

Shifting his ground, Chamberlain authorized a British guarantee to Poland, but his estimate of Churchill was unchanged and he had no wish to include him in the government. His views were shared by the King. During his North American tour of June 1939 George VI, who had served in the Navy as a midshipman when Churchill was at the Admiralty, confided his thoughts to the Canadian prime minister, Mackenzie King:

He told how prior to the Dardanelles attack, Churchill had been told over and over again not to make the attack too soon, to wait some time, but was determined to go at it. At the time he had made up his mind, he had still to study the maps. The King indicated he would never wish to appoint Churchill to any office unless it was absolutely necessary in time of war. I confess I was glad to hear him say that because I think Churchill is one of the most dangerous men I have ever known.1

There was, however, nothing Chamberlain or the King could do to prevent the reinvention of Churchill as a respected elder statesman. Since he had been in the public eye for decades it is likely that he already possessed some kind of popular following, but the absence of opinion polls before the late 1930s makes it hard to detect and impossible to measure. Then in May 1939 a Gallup poll put the question: ‘Are you in favour of Mr Winston Churchill being invited to join the Cabinet?’ 56 per cent replied ‘Yes’, 26 per cent ‘No’, and 18 per cent were undecided.2

There was also much boosting of Churchill in the antiappeasement sections of the press. Even before Prague, Picture Post ran a feature in which Wickham Steed, a former editor of The Times, interviewed him at Chartwell. ‘Should some great emergency arise’, he wrote, ‘his qualities and experience might then be national assets; and the true greatness, which he has often seemed to miss by a hair’s breadth, might, by common consent, be his.’3 On the other

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