The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965

  De Gaulle, therefore, had just mucked up the works. Yet he and his cohorts appeared to be the only Frenchmen willing to die in the fight against Hitler, and for that he had earned Churchill’s respect and (guarded) support. Cordell Hull, on the other hand, treated de Gaulle with aloofness bordering on contempt. As punishment for his insolence, Hull—the “so-called Secretary of State” according to many in the American press—insisted the Free French be excluded from the roster of Allied countries that were to sign a pledge of allegiance to one another on New Year’s Day. Churchill argued for the inclusion of the Free French, but Hull, backed by Roosevelt, carried the day. Churchill sidestepped another spat, and France, free or otherwise, did not officially exist within the alliance, known around Washington as the Associated Powers.

  For a century Hong Kong had manifested handsomely the imperial British way of life. It was built on the profits of opium and piracy, ruled in fact from the offices of the towering Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, and fueled by gin slings and afternoon handicaps at the Happy Valley Racecourse. Hong Kong had been the free-wheeling, free-trade heart of Britain’s Far East empire, open for business to any sea captain of any nationality willing and able to journey there, including Franklin Roosevelt’s maternal grandfather, Warren Delano Jr., who made and lost several fortunes in the Clipper trade. Delano’s daughter Sara, having actually sailed to that city during the American Civil War, inculcated in her son, Franklin, a romantic concept of Hong Kong and China and their roles in the world. Hong Kong was about to assume a new role. Since December 8, fewer than 8,000 Scots, Englishmen, Indians, Canadians, and some local Chinese had been surrounded by more than 30,000 Japanese troops. When the Japanese crossed from the mainland and cut off the water supply, the fight was all but over. Hong Kong’s defenders understood that London considered the city a tactical position, to be held as long as possible in order to delay the Japanese and gain time to reinforce the more vital city of Singapore.

  Despite Churchill’s order to the defenders of Hong Kong to fight “from house to house” if necessary, and his exhortation “to resist to the end,” Hong Kong’s governor Sir Mark Young, surrounded and outgunned, surrendered on Christmas Day. It was the first colonial possession the British lost in the Pacific, ever. The victors took prisoner thirty Maryknoll missionaries and forced the captive proselytizers to bear witness as Japanese infantrymen bayoneted dozens of hog-tied British and Canadian prisoners. Prisoners spared the sword were beaten with rubber hoses and had water forced “down their throats until they nearly drowned.” The rape of Hong Kong’s Eurasian, Chinese, and white women began immediately. Three British nurses were raped, then bayoneted, and then burned. Three days later, Japanese troops—Time dubbed them “the dwarf-like men”—strutted through the city in triumphal review. By then, their brothers in Yamashita’s Twenty-fifth Army had negotiated one-third of the Malay Peninsula, their target, Singapore. That fortress, Churchill told Wavell, “was to be held at all costs.”82

  On the day after Christmas, Churchill addressed the U.S. Congress. Listeners in Britain, where the BBC aired programs without corporate sponsorship, were surprised to learn that their prime minister’s message was brought to them by a toothpaste company. Although such cultural divergences between the two nations lent credence to Bernard Shaw’s observation that they were two countries separated by the same language, Churchill considered that language the uniting factor and, intending to demonstrate to Americans his mastery of it, had spent more than twelve hours crafting his words. Relieved to be among friends and cousins now (he could trace his American ancestry back five generations, to an officer who served under Washington), he began on a light note and surged ahead without regard to whether the moment was proper for glib pleasantries: “I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been an American, and my mother British, rather than the other way around, I might have got here on my own.” With their applause and cheers, the assembled gave him what he came for: approval. Warming to his topic—retribution—he saw no need to inspire the Americans; Japan had done that. He saw no reason to gird Americans against the prospect of firestorms in their cities, of four-thousand-pound bombs obliterating their Parliaments and cathedrals and families, since other than the possibility of nuisance attacks on each coast, massed assaults were far beyond the technological reach of Germany and Japan. Lloyd’s of London, in fact, was offering odds of ninety-nine to one against the chance of any property damage occurring on the Atlantic coast.83

  Churchill worked in this bit of I-told-you-so, which engendered absolute silence from the gallery: “If we had kept together after the last war, if we had taken common measures for our safety, this renewal of the curse need never have fallen upon us. Do we not owe it to ourselves, to our children, to tormented mankind, to make sure that these catastrophes do not engulf us for the third time?” He excoriated the usual suspects with his usual delicious words and phrases: the “wicked men” who spread their “pestilences” and will “stop at nothing that violence and treachery can suggest.” Churchill went after the “filthy Quislings” and “the boastful Mussolini… a lackey and serf, the merest utensil of his master’s will.” Then he gripped his lapels, slowly rocked forward, and delivered the line that brought Congress to its feet, including the isolationists. Of the Japanese he asked, “What kind of a people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we will never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?”84

  The New York Times (under the headline Churchill Predicts Huge Allied Drive in 1943) called the speech, which ran for more than thirty minutes, “typical” Churchill, “full of bubbling humor, biting denunciation of totalitarian enemies, stern courage, and hard facts.” Yet some of Churchill’s so-called hard facts were flabby. Citing Auchinleck’s “victory in the Libyan campaign,” Churchill declaimed, “Had we diverted and dispersed our gradually growing resources between Libya and Malaya, we would have been found wanting in both places.” That was, at best, a lawyerly way of putting things. In spite of his autumn admonition to the British Chiefs of Staff that no diversions detract from Auchinleck’s offensive capabilities, Churchill days earlier had ordered the 18th Division, then en route to the Suez, diverted to Singapore. Then, on the day before he addressed Congress, he ordered Auchinleck “to spare at once” for Singapore’s defense heavy artillery, AA guns, trucks, one hundred new American tanks, and four squadrons (about forty-eight aircraft) of fighter planes, all of which Auchinleck was in need of, soon desperately so. Brooke lamented to his diary that Auchinleck was “struggling along with the forces at his disposal… little knowing his activities must be shortly curtailed” by Churchill’s transfer of men and matériel to the Far East. Churchill didn’t see things that way. The diminution of his forces, he told Auchinleck, could be accomplished “without compromising Acrobat,” the push through Tripoli to Tunisia. And Gymnast, Churchill told his general, was still in good shape because America was now in. He added: “All our success in the West would be nullified by the fall of Singapore.” That was true.85

  That night he was awakened by “oppressive” heat in his bedroom, which was likely caused by a radiator valve stuck in the open position, a familiar nuisance to Americans who lived with central heat but a mystery to Britons, who for the most part did not. He attempted to remedy the situation by lifting a window, which stuck fast. He heaved, and felt a pain in his left arm and chest. In his memoirs he wrote, “I strained my heart slightly.” Actually, as Dr. Wilson ascertained the next morning, Churchill had suffered a mild heart attack. Although Moran’s memoirs* were considered by Churchill’s friends and family to be self-serving and often inaccurate, the doctor’s medical sense was sound. In this case he correctly diagnosed Churchill’s heart problem, with the result that Churchill found a new detail to dwell on: his pulse. He demanded at all hours that Wilson check his heart rate, yet he also told the doctor not to impart any unsettling news. On several occasions
over the next few days, Wilson observed Churchill making quick and furtive checks of his pulse. The doctor told him to ignore his heart rate, which is akin to telling someone not to conjure an image of a polar bear. When his self-diagnosis continued, Wilson took a calculated risk; he persuaded Churchill to slow down a bit but did not tell him what had actually happened, or that what he really needed was several weeks of bed rest. Such a prescription would have terrified Churchill and, more important, Wilson believed, the Americans and Britons.86

  Two days after his heart episode, Churchill boarded a special train and chugged north to Ottawa in order to thank Prime Minister Mackenzie King and the Canadian people for their support. It seemed to Dr. Wilson that Churchill expected nothing less from the Dominions, and in fact took the Canadians for granted, especially the prudent and plodding Mackenzie King, who was prone to such banal observations as “the great thing in politics is to avoid mistakes.”87

  Canada had paid for its loyalty. Most of its merchant and cruise fleets had been placed at HMG’s disposal; many Canadian ships had been lost. The Canadians in Hong Kong were now prisoners, or dead. Churchill was most grateful for Canadian support vis à vis Vichy France. Although Canada, like America, officially recognized Vichy, the vast majority of Canadians shared Churchill’s contempt for the puppet government. When he addressed the Canadian Parliament on December 30, with full knowledge that such sentiments would further agitate Cordell Hull, he praised the fighting spirit of Charles de Gaulle. Then he reminded his audience of the prediction made by Weygand before the fall of France: “In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.” He paused, and directed a hard stare toward the assembly. Then: “Some chicken! Some neck!” That brought every man in the chamber to his feet. It was his most buoyant speech in eighteen months; the Canadians loved it, and Churchill knew it. Before departing Parliament, Churchill posed in the Speaker’s Chambers for the photographer Yousuf Karsh. Seeking to capture Churchill at his most leonine, Karsh, without warning and just before he triggered his camera, snatched Churchill’s cigar from his mouth. Karsh got the result he sought, a highly perturbed Churchill, looking more the pugilist than the statesman. The artist called his iconic photograph “The Roaring Lion.” Moments later, after the storm had passed, Karsh made another photo, this of a benign Churchill, a smile creasing his almost cherubic face. Clementine called it the “happy” picture.88

  Having regaled and thanked his obligors (though promising many more “dark and weary months of defeat” before victory was theirs), Churchill left Ottawa by train on New Year’s Eve. The outside temperature had dropped to minus fifteen degrees Fahrenheit. The mood in the cars was somber. At the stroke of midnight, as the train highballed through the Hudson River Valley, Churchill stepped into the press carriage, a glass of champagne in hand. He raised it: “Here’s to 1942. Here’s to a year of toil—a year of struggle and peril, and a long step forward towards victory. May we all come through safe and with honor.”89

  One hundred miles to the south, the biggest and gayest crowd in memory gathered in Times Square. Only the military police standing in pairs on street corners and a huge white sign that asked “Remember Pearl Harbor” served notice that this celebration was unique. Just before midnight, as the glowing ball atop the New York Times Building began its descent, Lucy Monroe, the official soloist of the American Legion, began singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The crowd listened at first in silence, but soon joined in. Radio networks beamed the anthem across the nation. In Washington, the mood was not gay. Troopers of the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, searching for saboteurs, spent New Year’s Eve crawling along the aqueduct that carried drinking water to the capital from western Maryland. Infantrymen with fixed bayonets and live ammunition patrolled the Potomac bridges, while others put a cordon around the White House. Not since Confederate general Jubal Early knocked on the city’s defenses in the summer of 1864 had so many soldiers swarmed the streets of Washington.90

  In blacked-out London, a crowd that was gathered around St. Paul’s Cathedral sang “Auld Lang Syne” when the clock struck midnight. The bells of London’s churches remained silent, as they had for more than a year and a half. Then, inexplicably, the crowd broke into a chorus of “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain,” before dispersing and breaking up into ever smaller groups, each to wander home through the dark streets, with the occasional nervous glance jerked skyward. Harold Nicolson had not ventured out, but he listened to his wireless as Big Ben struck midnight. In his diary, Nicolson wrote, “And 1941 is finished…. It has been a sad and horrible year.” No fires burned, but London could have served as a model for Destruction, the fourth painting in Thomas Cole’s five-picture series, The Course of Empire. With America in, the odds had improved that London might never resemble Cole’s final canvas: Desolation.91

  General Sir Alan Brooke, looking back on the old year, asked for God’s help in dealing with the “difficult times with the P.M. I see clearly ahead of me.” As for the status of the Dominions, Brooke concluded, “We’re not doing too bad. We’ve only lost about a quarter of the empire.” Measured in square miles, his dour estimate was exaggerated. Measured in public confidence, especially among those of the Empire’s citizens who dwelled in the Far East, it was not. Given the speed with which the Japanese were building their new empire on the ruins of Britain’s old empire, Brooke’s calculation seemed destined for fulfillment, and soon. His prediction of the looming difficulties inherent in working with Churchill was of course self-evidently correct.92

  Churchill now operated in two worlds, one London, where “Action This Day” brought immediate results, the other a new world of action (and inaction) by committees seeking consensus. Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin were in overall agreement on the broadest objective, victory, but when they set about drawing up a declaration of solidarity, the devil began insinuating himself into the details. When the Soviet ambassador to the United States, Maxim Maximovich Litvinov, objected, at Stalin’s insistence, to the inclusion of the phrase “religious freedom” in the draft declaration of the Associated Powers, Roosevelt (a religious man) lectured the ambassador “about his soul and the dangers of hell-fire.” Roosevelt then reminded Litvinov that “freedom of religion” can be also construed to mean freedom from religion. Stalin approved the insertion of the clause. The alliance between a Christian republic, a parliamentary democracy, and a murderous Godless dictator could hardly have begun otherwise.93

  Stalin wanted the declaration to reflect another position dear to him. The first article of the pact called for each signatory to employ all military and economic resources “against those members of the Tripartite Pact and its adherents with which such government is at war.” As the Soviet Union was not at war with Japan, the final seven words of article 1 gave Stalin an out should anyone suggest down the road that he declare war on Japan. Roosevelt, meanwhile, happy with the entire document but not happy with the moniker “Associated Powers,” came up with a more vivid name: the United Nations. Intent on sharing his suggestion with Churchill, the president wheeled himself down the hallway and into Churchill’s room, where the prime minister, preparing for his bath, was wandering about stark naked. Taking no notice of Churchill’s nakedness, Roosevelt suggested his proposed name change. Churchill replied, “Good,” and added that Byron employed the same choice of words in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Churchill later told King George that he was the first British prime minister in history to greet a head of state naked. He later wrote he thought Roosevelt’s “United Nations” “a great improvement” over the “Associated Powers.”94

  On December 12, the New York Times had run a list of the twenty-five* allied combatants. India—whose troops had so far fought in North Africa, Malaya, Iraq, and Persia—was absent from the Times roll call. India’s exclusion made sense to Churchill; India was, after all, part of the British Empire, its foreign policy dictated by London. Churchill had for months made clear that any change in India’s colonial status could only t
ake place after the war, and that he could not, by law, dictate terms to a postwar Parliament in which he and his coalition government might play no role. But Roosevelt sought India’s inclusion in the pact, and he instructed Hull to prod the British on the matter, an assignment Hull embraced with alacrity as a staunch anti-imperialist and still fuming over the St-Pierre incident (which he suspected Churchill of encouraging). The War Cabinet objected to India’s inclusion, rightly so in Churchill’s opinion. Halifax, keen to avoid trouble with the Americans, suggested to Churchill that India’s participation in drafting the Versailles Treaty two decades earlier might serve as a precedent for its inclusion in the allied pact, and thus mollify Roosevelt. A compromise was reached: India would be included in the roll call of allies, but without any notation that implied sovereignty. With India, as with the exclusion of the Free French, Churchill deferred to Roosevelt.95

  He did so again when Roosevelt demanded that the United States be the first signatory to the pact, followed by the other three powers: Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China. China’s emotional importance to Roosevelt was bolstered by strategic considerations. Here was a nation of almost five hundred million people, he told Churchill, which would emerge from the war armed and eager to fill the vacuum created by the defeat of Japan. Better to court the Chinese now than to have to face them later. China, for Churchill, was an ally, but “not a world power equal to Britain, the United States, or Russia.” Yet so firm was Roosevelt regarding China’s status that Churchill cabled Wavell: “If I can epitomize in one word the lesson I learned in the United States, it was ‘China.’ ” China took fourth billing.