Churchill's Alternate History, Pt. 1

Recently I have been consuming with great gusto a couple of biographies of Winston Churchill, and I've pretty much decided he was the most important person in the first half of the 20th Century (as corny as that sounds.) The events he was personally involved in! Most of them were wars, of course, and that's what he's generally associated with in the public consciousness. He wouldn't mind. He loved warfare himself, regarded it as a brutal but glorious fact of life--the proving-ground of nations, citizens, and leaders like, well, him. And he always made sure he was in the thick of things.

Now history can be quite a fascinating study. If people think of it as boring, it is because of a certain lack of imagination--you have to realize that these were real people dealing with the problems of the day, just as we do know, with one vital difference: we know how it turned out. It has been said (by whom I cannot remember right at this moment) that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. Many people who fit into this category are skeptical of this statement. Those who do know history know it's happened several times just this millennium, only eight years old that it is. (For example, did you know the British were driven out of Iraq by insurgency leaving behind an unstable semi-democratic government they had set up to fend for itself? Read the Foreign Affairs article. It's fascinating--and Churchill was involved in that for a bit too, though not much.) However, for history to transcend mere study and become something absorbingly relevant, one must open up one's mind even further and think about what didn't happen, what might have happened, and why not.

Thinking about Churchill's career in this manner is, to put it succinctly, amazing. The man was so often frustrated in his plans by incompetent subordinates and superiors, which, in their inertia and narrow-mindedness, sabotaged his efforts for victory and peace while blaming him for their failure. I am, of course, speaking of his involvement in World War I, something which is often overlooked, overshadowed by his leadership in World War II. The latter is interesting of course, but the more fascinating for the imaginative historian is the more turbulent, controversial and, yes, failure-ridden time of WWI. (And don't let that term, "historian," scare you off--anyone can be a historian to a certain extent, just as anyone with a copy of the Bible can be a theologian.) These years, when Churchill was a hyperactive and ambitious Cabinet minister, are marked by a triptych of failed attempts to fend off the preventable disaster: Antwerp, Gallipoli, and the Russian Civil War. All three of these were derided as follies by some, supported weakly by others, and, if "put through with vigor," would have saved literally millions of lives. The problem was, Churchill put all the vigor he could into them--more than most people would even be capable of giving. But he couldn't be everywhere, nor did he have the authority to get things done the way he wanted. And when others blundered or dawdled, he took most of the blame, further diminishing his political capital and credibility.

"Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter."

"I never worry about action, but only inaction."

The quotes above seem to me to stem directly from Churchill's experience in WWI. This is what he learned from the actions of the other managers of the war. WWI, you will remember, was defined by the wholesale slaughter of trench warfare, largely because of a lack of vision and intense inertia possessed by those in power: overwhelmed, they threw men at each other in futile offensives, ironically, out of a fear of taking risks. Churchill tried to find creative ways to circumvent this slaughter, both technological (such as the tank) and strategic (such as the Dardanelles), but he was hampered by the realities of war by committee. Maybe I've said that just a bit too much. Reading through the unfolding facts, it got beaten into my head--this recurring pattern of Churchill's life during this time. He also said, "Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm," which is what he did. It wasn't all bad, obviously. Some of the leaders of the time, such as David Lloyd-George, recognized his usefulness and kept him around as much as they could, considering the political furor that followed him.

(To be continued?)