GREAT BRITAIN STANDS ALONE (AT LEAST UNTIL THE USSR AND THE USA JOIN HER)

 

My review of Winston Churchill’s The Grand Alliance (1950)

Part III of Winston Churchill’s World War II memoirs

(Rating 3 of 5)

                Sir Winston Churchill’s third volume of his memoirs on World War II show him leading the British Government through its darkest days when all the major allies had fallen and they are fighting seemingly outnumbered and outgunned with their very surveil is in doubt.  This continues on until the Germany in an act of stupidity decides to attack the USSR before they finish the British off.  Then after the Japanese attack the United States, the United Kingdom forms with them and the Soviet Union “the Grand Alliance.”

                Unfortunately the book itself is not very exciting.  It mostly consists of messages sent back and forth between Churchill and his various subordinates.  He is just receives, shouts back orders, and moves on to the next thing.  The coverage is broad.  In Churchill’s eyes you see the fighting in theaters all across the globe making it easy to understand why this is a “World War.” However Churchill is at his best as a writer when he gives his analysis on what is going on.  That is available in this book but there is little of it. 

Churchill in his Air Force Uniform

            A good example of some of Churchill’s better writing is in first section of the book where he discusses the Japanese threat to the British Empire.  The Japanese Empire, who were already on friendly terms and taking suggestions from Hitler’s Third Reich, had a lot to gain at the expense of the British.  Nevertheless they did not seem to take the Germans suggestion to ignore the Americans in the present.   

“This was for very different reasons also the German view.  Germany and Japan were both eager to despoil and divide the British Empire.  But they approached the target from different angles.  The German High Command argued that the Japanese ought to commit their armed forces in Malaya and the Dutch East Indies without worrying about the American Pacific bases, and the main fleet which lay or their flank.” (pg. 181)

Hideki Tojo, Prime Minster of Japan

My favorite part of the book had to do with the sinking of the Bismarck in a great sea battle with the Royal Navy.  There is a type of perverse beauty of a battle with great military and nautical minds going at it with fate of nations at stake.

“A northwesterly gale was blowing when the daylight came on the twenty-seventh.  The Rodney opened fire at 8:47 AM, followed a minute later by the King George V.  The British ships quickly began to hit, and after a pause the Bismarck too opened fire.  For a short time her shooting was good, although the crew after four grueling days, were utterly exhausted and falling asleep at their posts.  With her third salvo she straddled the Rodney, but thereafter the weight of the British attack was overwhelming, and within a half an hour most of her guns were silent.  A fire was blazing amidships, and she had a heavy list to port.  The Rodney now turned across her bow, pouring in a heavy fire from a range of no more than four thousand yards.  By 10:15 all the Bismarck’s guns were silent and her mast was shot away.  The ship lay wallowing in the heavy seas, a flaming and smoking ruin; yet even then she did not sink.” (pg. 318-9)

                Except she did sink, as Churchill found out the next morning and was happy to have everyone find that out when he announced it to the House of Commons.   It was one of the most daring adventures that the British had as they stood alone against the Nazi menace.

Hitler, the ever present threat 

                Then Hitler decided he didn’t like Stalin anymore and attacked the Soviet Union.  Even though the Russians were huge help as an ally, Churchill never liked Stalin or the Soviet state.  They British originally went to war to defend the rights of Poland and the two major aggressors were Hitler and Stalin.  In the book Churchill pivots back and forth from praising Russia as a great and important ally to calling them a burden and more trouble than they were worth.  In real life they extremely important and Churchill himself used the line of enemy of Hitler is our ally and even making an analogy to the biblical Satan.  In the book you can feel his contempt for them.  

“The Soviet Government had the impression that they were conferring a great favour on us by fighting in their own country for their own lives.  The more they fought the heaver that debt became.  This was not a balanced view.” (pg. 388)

Churchill didn't really want to be friends but didn't have much of a choice. 

A completely opposite view of the United States entering the war is giving by Churchill.  When the United States enters he basically declares victory.  Churchill’s mother was an American and for those of us who read his History of the English Speaking Peoples, we know Churchill considers the United States to be part of that group.   

“No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy.  I could not foretell the course of events.  I do not pretend to have measured accurately the martial might of Japan, but now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death.  So we had won after all!  Yes, after Dunkirk; after the fall of France;….England would live; Britain would live; the Commonwealth of Nations and the Empire would live.” (pg. 606-7) 

Pearl Harbor 

 

                The rest of the book deals with the formation of the Grand Alliance, the Agreement that no peace be made without the consent of all, and the taking of the name “United Nations” that would later be the banner to which a new group that would form to maintain the peace after the war had drawn to a close. 

                In closing the memoirs thus far are not for the casual reader you have to have a strong appreciation for this topic to follow along in with this book.

[Video was put up by YouTube user Henrik Herlev}