The thesis of Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s book about Winston Churchill is best stated on page 533 (out of 535 total pages):

“For so long a bitterly controversial figure, intensely disliked and distrusted, he was transformed at one extraordinary moment into a superhuman hero, and then gradually acquired an almost mythical status which made it hard to distinguish fact from fiction.”

I hesitate to characterize this book as a biography because it is much more—it is a book about (as the secondary title suggests) how the world’s perception of Churchill evolved and developed during his life and long after his death.

Churchill had uncommon moral and physical courage. As a young man he faced death as an intrepid leader of his regiments in both the Boer War and World War I, leading charges on his horse in both conflicts. On the other hand, he was a colossal failure as a military strategist, advocating for the disastrous assault on Gallipoli in World War I, and militating in favor of invading Europe from its (not so) soft underbelly, Italy, in World War II.

And then there was his unabashed racism. He despised blacks, Indians (both American and Asian), and Arabs. Moreover, he thought little of Irish Catholics and opposed any form of “home rule” or independence for Ireland. He didn’t think all that highly of Jews either, but reckoned that they were sufficiently superior to Arabs that they could be given a homeland in Palestine even if it meant displacing all the Arabs then living in the British mandate of Palestine.

But one can't gainsay his one unquestionable shining hour, when in 1940 he rallied Britain to oppose Hitler’s onslaught. His magnificent command of language and oratory united world opinion, if not military support, to galvanize opposition to the Nazis.

His performance during the rest of the war was much less impressive. He naively thought he could manage Stalin, but his strategy of avoiding an invasion of Europe in 1942 and 1943 effectively ceded Eastern Europe to the Soviets at the end of the war. He said he did not wish to oversee the dissolution of the British Empire, but that is pretty much what he did. He was soundly defeated in the elections of 1945, and did not get to represent Britain in the final negotiations ending the war.

His policy toward India during the war (he pretty much ignored a terrible famine) and thereafter was undoubtedly reprehensible — it was certainly influenced, if not caused by, his racism.

Wheatcroft avers that Churchill’s characterization of the “special relationship” of Britain and the United States was a gross exaggeration of the actual interconnection between the countries. He points out many instances where the U.S. acted contrary to Britain’s best interests or gave only lukewarm support.

So how did Churchill become such an icon of politicians, particularly American, of all positions on the political spectrum? Wheatcroft attributes his fame and popularity in large part to Churchill's own advertising, one might say. Churchill was a prolific writer of history, particularly concerning his own role in important events. His six volume account of World War II was a best seller on both sides of the Atlantic. Most significantly, in The Gathering Storm, he may have created the myth that the war could have been avoided if only England had followed his advice and showed more firmness with Hitler at Munich. Indeed, his theory of appeasement (a term which came to be almost a curse word) may have become the standard thinking of many if not most theorists of national security. Moreover, his famous “iron curtain” speech in Fulton Missouri shaped the West’s thinking about the Cold War for at least a generation.

Wheatcroft attributes the lessons “learned” from Churchill’s analysis of appeasement to have had dire consequences for Britain and the United States. He asserts that their adventures in Suez, Vietnam, and Iraq can be attributed politicians’ fear that they would be “appeasers.”

Wheatcroft’s book deals not only with Churchill’s life, but also with the development of his larger-than-life persona after his retirement and death. Notably, the American presidents who actually dealt with him (Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower) never cited him as an authority or gave him much credit, let alone the kind of reverence shown by their successors. Jack Kennedy was the first in a long line of American presidents to invoke Churchill as a shining example of wisdom and resoluteness.

Wheatcroft is also enlightening and entertaining in his many observations that have little or nothing to do with Churchill. He emphasizes the enormous disparity of the fighting on the eastern versus the western fronts of WWII, where the Russians bore the brunt of the fighting against the Germans. As he succinctly characterized the war: the Russians beat the Germans; the Americans beat the Japanese; and the British beat the Italians. His descriptions of famous British generals is cutting: Montgomery was vain, pompous, ineffective, and overly cautious; “Bomber” Harris greatly exaggerated the effect of air power; and “Lord Louis Mountbatten was a courtier, a charlatan, and one of those curious people whose careers see one failure after another, leading every time to higher promotion.”

Other prominent characters fare no better in Wheatcroft’s telling. He retells Margaret Thatcher’s opinion of Ronald Reagan:

“Thatcher liked Reagan personally [but] she had no illusions about him. . . . [She] and her Foreign Secretary were talking over a drink one evening in Downing Street, when the conversation turned to [Reagan]. ‘Peter,’ she said, tapping the side of her skull, ‘there’s nothing there.’”

If only Wheatcroft would direct his acerbic and trenchant commentary to a history of America from 2016 to 2021. But alas, as he says, “Another historian must undertake the bleak task of relating the years of the Trump presidency, quite unprecedented and unlike anything many Americans had ever imagined, or could easily comprehend, right to its lurid climax.”

Evaluation: Churchill’s Shadow provides a much needed counterpoint to the spate of hagiographies about Churchill. It is an excellent history that deserves to be widely read and studied.

(JAB) ( )