Sunday Times 2
Sir Winston Churchill : The greatest military strategist of the 20th Century
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born to a highly respectable family. He was the son of Lord Randolph Churchill and was born at Blenheim Palace on Nov. 30 1874. How he got into Harrow is a mystery, for he showed no scholastic ability beyond a remarkable capacity for memorising poetry. He never mastered Latin and did not go beyond Junior School. He had no University education. After two failures, he was squeezed into the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. There he suddenly matured. Not only did he do brilliantly in his military studies, but he began to take a keen interest in his father’s political career. His father, Lord Randolf died of a questionable ailment.
Leaving Sandhurst in 1894, Winston was gazetted to the Fourth Hussars in 1896. In 1896 he went out with his Regiment, to India. He was a war correspondent for the Daily Telegraph and the Allahabad Pioneer. Four years later he fought in Sudan under Kitchener to crush the rebel Dervishes.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (L) are shown in this undated photograph - (Photo: Reuters)
Back in England, Winston wrote the tale of the “River War” which brought him high praise and profits. He decided to give up the Army and enter politics. In 1899, he fought and lost a bi-election at Old Ham. The Boer War started in the Autumn, and he served as the Chief War Correspondent of the Morning Post. Whilst he was in an armoured train venturing into Boer territory, the train was ambushed and he was taken prisoner, to Pretoria. He escaped to Durban. The Boers had offered a reward of 25 Pounds for his capture – dead or alive. In the 1900 election, he was elected to Old Ham, and soon made his mark in Parliament as a brilliant speaker. In 1902 he opposed Joseph Chamberlain’s Tariff Reform Campaign and he crossed the floor of the House to join his friend, Lloyd George in the Liberal Party.
In the 1906 elections, Churchill was returned as a Liberal for North West Manchester. He was then appointed undersecretary for the colonies and piloted the move to give Transvaal self government. During this period, he met Clementine Hozier, a grand daughter of the Countess of Airlie. They got married and in Winston’s own words, “they lived happily ever after”.
In 1911 he took over the Admiralty from McKenna and equipped the country with battleships. As Lord of the Admiralty, sensing danger he arranged a big naval rally and retained the fleet on an Active Service footing, without cabinet authority. When the First World War broke out in 1914, the British Navy, thanks to Churchill, was ready. In the first few months, the oceans were swept clear of German vessels and every hostile warship was either sunk or bottled up in enemy harbours.
War was Churchill’s native air, and he plunged joyously into the struggle. He organised the Royal Naval Air Service, to defend Britain’s coasts, and directed the unsuccessful defence of Antwerp. He launched an amphibious attack on Turkey through the Dardenelles, but Kitchener would not spare the men and they failed. Churchill got the blame. When the First Coalition was set up, the Tories insisted on driving Churchill away from the Admiralty into the ineffective post of Chancellor of the Dutchy of Lancaster.
In 1917 Prime Minister Lloyd George made Churchill the Minister of Munitions, and at the end of the War, he took over the War Office, to superintend demobilization. In 1924, the Tories won the election, and Churchill became Chancellor of the Exchequer.
At the 1929 elections the government fell and Labour again took office. Churchill made no secret of his opinion of Ramsay Mac Donald . He also quarrelled with Stanley Baldwin about the issue of Indian self government. In 1931 with the financial depression, Churchill was left out. During this period he wrote books, and painted. His history of the First World War and life at Marlborough are treasured by the reading public.
When King Edward VIII ascended the throne, the Prime Minister was Stanley Baldwin. The King ordered the Prime Minister to better the lot of miners. Baldwin said that Britain had no money, as they were recovering from the financial depression of 1931. The King also sought approval to marry the twice married divorcee American, Wallis Simpson. Baldwin declared to the King, that it will be done only over his dead body. The King abdicated , married Simpson and became the Duke of Windsor.
In 1939, the Second World War broke out. Holland surrendered to the Germans, and Belgium surrendered two weeks later. In the first speech to the House of Commons, Churchill said, “I have nothing to offer but blood, tears, toil and sweat”. He spoke to the heart of the British people who welcomed his tone of grim and unyielding defiance. Then followed the miracle of Dunkirk. Churchill voiced the spirit of the Nation in a broadcast, conveying its unconquerable determination , “we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets”.
Britain stood all alone, for Mussolini had joined Hitler. Now came the Battle of Britain. The Nazi aircraft the Luftwaffe, swarmed across the Channel to begin a German Invasion. They were brought down by the far smaller RAF fighter force. Churchill, in thanking the few heroic British pilots said, “never in the field of human conflict, was so much owed by so many, to so few”. He kept the morale of the British Forces and the Nation high, by his electrifying speeches, more than with weapons.
He met Roosevelt the President of the US. He also met Russia’s Stalin, laying aside his antagonism to Bolshevism and promising support to the Soviets. He signed the Atlantic Charter with Roosevelt. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour soon thereafter, and the US found herself drawn into the War. This is just what Churchill wanted, because the US all this time only spoon-fed Britain, and did not come out openly into the War.
In 1942, he placed Alexander and Montgomery in charge of the North African campaign. Rommel and his Italo-Germans were sent flying , and the Germans were in retreat. June 1944, saw the Normandy Invasion. British and American troops streamed across, and in April 1945, the German forces surrendered. It was on May 8, 1945 that the War in Europe was over. Wildly enthusiastic crowds were cheering Churchill as their hero. Had Britain lost the War, Churchill would have been blown to smithereens by the Germans.
Though Germany and Italy surrendered, their ally Japan was ordered by Emperor Hirohito to keep fighting. He told his subjects, “I am not interested in my allies Germany and Italy surrendering, we will continue to fight”. By that time the USA had perfected the atom bomb. They had no choice but to order Capt Tibbets to drop these Atom Bombs from his aircraft “Enola Gay”, on Hiroshima and a little later on Nagasaki. Nearly one million Japanese people died.
It is very strange that Emperor Hirohito was not tried at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, though he too was guilty of the carnage where millions of people died. The Japanese Military Commanders were as inhuman as the German Commanders.
At the very next elections after the War, Churchill lost, and Clement Attlee became the Prime Minister. Churchill was in the Opposition for six long years, and was elected Prime Minister in 1951. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth the 2nd , the present Queen of Britain.
Whatever the vicissitudes as Party Leader in domestic politics , Britain has known no greater leader in time of war. Sir Winston Churchill will go down in history as a soldier-citizen ,whose courage and eloquence sustained and inspired the people of his motherland Great Britain, in their darkest hour, and whose many-sided genius brought them through to victory.