The Greatest Britain Unmasked
Despite Winston Churchill’s popular reputation as the ‘Greatest Briton’, history leaves us a picture of a man who achieved many victories, but did so through pulling off just as many defeats.
Churchill was aristocratic, high-handed, self-centred, energetic, impatient, prone to rhetoric, had a great presence and was most stubborn. He was ‘brilliant but unsound.’ Contrary to our picture of him as the ‘Greatest Briton,’ his brilliant but unsound judgment resulted in detrimental consequences for Britain and for the world.
Churchill’s first major contribution to world events was the calamitous ‘Gallipoli’ campaign in World War I, where he sought to break the stalemate on the Western Front with a disastrous assault upon Turkey, the most inconsequential member of the Central Powers. The principal characteristics of this adventure reoccurred several times in World War II; most notably the campaigns in Norway, North Africa, the Balkans and Italy – the latter, the ‘soft underbelly of Europe’ as Churchill called Italy, or the ‘tough old gut’ as US Lieutenant-General Mark Clark more accurately called it. Also, Churchill was obsessed with undertaking a military campaign in Sumatra in the Far East to the detriment of the war effort.
These were ‘dispersionist’ campaigns, attacking the enemy at its periphery. A direct and decisive assault upon the enemy was always avoided and instead military efforts were undertaken against objectives of little direct
strategic importance.
It was the defeat of Germany and Austria- Hungary on the Western Front in World War I which would cause the Ottoman Empire to collapse, not the other way around. Similarly in World War II the defeat of German forces in Norway, North Africa, the Balkans and Italy were not of vital importance to the defeat of Germany, yet defeating Germany by a direct assault would lead to the collapse of German forces in these countries. The outcome of World War II in Europe was decided principally by the Soviets on the Eastern Front and by the Western Allies conducting a Second Front in France, not by Churchill’s peripheral, ‘dispersionist’ campaigns, of which Gallipoli would be the most infamous and would set the paradigm.
When Churchill first became Prime Minister it was the very qualities which made his judgment so unstable which made him continue prosecuting World War II at any cost when the rational policy may have been to make terms with Germany. However, he said of his role in the war, ‘I… hope that I sometimes suggested to the lion the right place to use his claws.’ Yet his ‘dispersionist’ strategy; his recklessness with Britain’s fighter defences in the Battle of France and Battle of Britain; his failure to understand the vulnerability of armoured warships and that many more resources were really needed to address the U-boat threat– all cost time and lives.
Churchill mounted a botched raid on the French coast at Dieppe in 1942, but then procrastinated over the Western Allies mounting a Second Front in France, costing about a year, during which approximately ten million lives were lost.
(Churchill) Thinks one thing at one moment and another at another moment. At times the war may be won by bombing and all must be sacrificed to it. At others it becomes essential for us to bleed ourselves dry on the Continent because Russia is doing the same. At others our main effort must be in the Mediterranean, directed against Italy or [the] Balkans alternatively, with sporadic desires to invade Norway and ‘roll up the map in the opposite direction to Hitler!’ But more often…he wants to carry out ALL operations simultaneously irrespective of shortages of shipping!
Churchill’s policy errors were in no sense confined to wartime. His creation of Iraq and division of Ireland created problems which have lasted to this very day. His economic policies before and after World War I were also deeply ill conceived, as the greatest economist of the era, John Maynard Keynes, pointed out at the time. The introduction of social reforms which inhibited the ability of the economy to function in accordance with free market principles, whilst employing ‘classical’ macroeconomic policy, meant that people were bound to suffer. The economy was thus weakened significantly in the 1920s, with British businesses becoming less competitive and unemployment higher than otherwise would have been the case. The General Strike in 1926 was caused by this, the only national strike Britain has ever endured. The economy was weakened at a crucial time – just prior to the Wall Street crash and subsequent global Depression in the 1930s. Churchill’s economic policies thus caused the economic privations and consequent human suffering to be more severe in Britain than it would have been with more enlightened policies.
Churchill’s desire for disarmament in the 1920s weakened national defences just at the
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