Churchill and the Personal

In the past two posts I have written a bit about the importance of quirks and of offensive mindedness. This leads me to one of the most unusual, and, at least before 1918 offensive-minded political figures of the last century, Winston Churchill. Joseph Maiolo notes that in war, in politics, and in his historical writing, Churchill believed in great men and "inspired leadership" as the answer to most problems. (Joseph Maiolo, Cry Havoc. New York: Basic Books, 2010, p. 173.) This is true of Churchill at man levels, and we might extend it without exaggeration by saying that politics, war, and history were all personal for WSC to an extent rarely seen. At least until he became prime minister in 1940, everything seems to have been a great adventure for him.

A couple of examples ought to suffice to make the point. In 1914 Winston was First Lord of the Admiralty, a position roughly equivalent to the American Secretary of the Navy prior to the consolidation of the armed forces in 1947. The tradition had been that the First Lord, unless an admiral, stayed out of actual operations and planning. Churchill, in the unique position of being able to stay in contact with naval squadrons all over the world through radio and telegraph, could not help but direct operations himself. As if this were not enough, he also agreed to take over the air defenses of the United Kingdom from the Army, and also popped over to Belgium, where he ended up personally directing the British forces at Antwerp for two days, possibly saving the Belgian Army from destruction. Over-and-over in the first year of the War, he became directly involved in ways that no other politician in Britain or America ever had or would again.

This deep personal involvement is also reflected in his biographical writing. His two main subjects were his father, Randolph Churchill, and his illustrious ancestor, John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough. Not only did he research and write long biographies of both men, there is strong evidence that he consciously tried to follow, and complete his father's political career, holding the same offices and exhibiting similar patterns of political behavior (indeed many contemporaries between the Wars were afraid he had inherited his father's madness as well). The case of Marlborough is more complex, for the imitation was much less direct, but it is important to note that he spends much time justifying many of his ancestor's personal and political actions, which seemed dishonorable to the Victorians and their successors. Perhaps of more import, he seems to have used Marlborough's close association with the Imperialist general Prince Eugene, and also his handling of his Dutch allies, as a model for his own cooperation with Roosevelt and Eisenhower.  I believe that Winston was able to draw both examples and comfort from his biographical and historical work. He was clearly working with a strong belief in great men. Whether his belief was due to his own perception of himself, or whether the reverse was true is not exactly clear, but it made history and biography personal for him in a way that has rarely been true for other writers.