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John Charmley

Churchill: The End of Glory : A Political Biography Hardcover – January 1, 1993

by John Charmley (Author)

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A revisionist historian takes on the legend of Churchill, arguing that while the prime minister did indeed save England, his mistakes cost his country, and the world, dearly. By the author of Duff Cooper. National ad/promo. Tour.

Print length

742 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Harcourt
Publication date

January 1, 1993
Dimensions

6.25 x 2.25 x 9.75 inches
ISBN-10

015117881X
ISBN-13

978-0151178810
See all details

John Charmley
19
Paperback
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this reappraisal of Churchill's career from his entry into politics in 1900 until he was voted out of office in 1945, Charmley brings the great man's warts into high relief: his taste for luxury, his impetuousness, his abrasive personality, his self-absorption, his lack of foresight. This deeply researched, masterfully written biography by a British lecturer in history was a controversial bestseller in England, largely because of its argument that Churchill's political compromises with Stalin constituted appeasement. The author points out, for instance, that Churchill denounced his predecessor, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, for acceding to Hitler's annexation of Czech territory in 1938, but then pressured the Poles in 1944 to accept Stalin-imposed territorial sacrifices that made the Munich Pact "look like a simple frontier adjustment." Charmley's major reassessment is an engrossing survey of British foreign and domestic politics during the first half of the 20th century, with the emphasis on Churchill's role in much of it.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Books on Churchill continue to flourish, but this work by British historian Charmley has attracted special attention in Britain. While ackowledging Churchill's greatness, Charmley terms him a "rogue elephant" who made many mistakes and whose fascination with war for its own sake often blinded him to the consequences of his strategies. He suggests, for instance, that Churchill should have disengaged from the war earlier. Criticism of Churchill abounds these days, and Charmley's revisionism is not the novelty that the hype about this book might suggest. In addition, Charmley gives little weight to the political constraints limiting both Churchill and FDR. His prose, while readable, is overfluent and often infelicitous. Still, this is a noteworthy and engaging treatment. Recommended for all collections on Churchill.
- Nancy C. Cridland, Indiana Univ. Libs., Bloomington
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Shrewd analysis that just misses taking the full measure of the great wartime leader. ``To be a Party you must have at least one follower. You have none,'' David Lloyd-George once told Churchill. Why was someone so brilliant so often mistrusted or in the political wilderness? William Manchester's The Last Lion saw Churchill's isolation as proof of his maverick courage. Charmley (English History/Univ. of East Anglia; Chamberlain and the Lost Peace, 1989, etc.--not reviewed) finds the truth more dismaying. While he hails Churchill's energy and eloquence, he details, with perhaps more telling effect, the man's failings as politician and statesman: his egotism, insensitivity, abrupt ideological and partisan shifts that left him standing alone, and impetuosity (e.g., Churchill's advocacy as First Lord of the Admiralty of the disastrous Dardenelles and Norwegian campaigns). Charmley's reading of Churchill's fierce political jockeying is instructive, if overdetailed, and he can be waspishly funny about the great man's vanity (``Like many famous men, Churchill was fond of enlarging the obstacles which stood in the way of his success''). The author also shows how the archimperialist Churchill ironically helped ring the death knell of the British Empire by playing junior partner to the US and by not protesting the Soviet threat to Eastern Europe until it was too late. But this devil's advocate unravels his case against Churchill by comparing him with Neville Chamberlain (who, Charmley feels, has been unfairly maligned by history). While Chamberlain rightly questioned Churchill's views on India, on the attempt to invade the fledgling USSR after the Russian Revolution, and on the abdication of Edward VIII, Churchill was indisputably correct about the paramount issue of the time: the monstrous evil posed by Hitler. The case against Churchill is argued forcefully and often wittily here, but is lost in a final, too-clever summation. (First printing of 20,000) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harcourt; First Edition (January 1, 1993)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 742 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 015117881X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0151178810
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.7 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 2.25 x 9.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,057,461 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews:
28 ratings

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Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5

28 global ratings

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David Christianson

One of the best

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 24, 2016

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If you are interested in the real Churchill, not the mythic icon, you'll want to read this book.

5 people found this helpful

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Bryan Pettengill

thanks

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 10, 2012

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Received before due date, the item is in great shape and is working great. thanks for the great customer service

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 31, 2007

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great book

2 people found this helpful

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Flawed premise but some valid criticism of Churchill

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 17, 2003

I regard Churchill as one of the alltime overrated figures in history, and certainly enjoy seeing him cut down to size. Charmley provides a veritable all-you-can-eat buffet for Churchill haters, as he recounts in excrutiating detail the extraordinarily flawed personality of Churchill.

After setting the stage by illustrating Churchill's early years as a relentless opportunist and self-promoter, Charmley begins to build his case that Churchill was not the great wartime leader that posterity would have us believe, and in fact did not even have a sound grasp of military operational strategy. The most glaring example is, of course, the Gallipoli Campaign, which was an unmitigated disaster and effectively ended Churchill's political career for more than two decades. Churchill had gotten his shot at the big time (by becoming First Lord of the Admiralty) and had blown it. When he got his second chance, he showed that he had learned effectively nothing in the intervening period about military operations. Throughout World War II, he would attempt to undertake various zany military campaigns, most of which were politely ignored by the Allied commanders.

While demonstrating Churchill's ineptitude in this area, Charmley (clearly a Neville Chamberlain apologist) builds a reasonably convincing case for Chamberlain, arguing that Chamberlain was using appeasement more as a tool for buying time than anything else. Far from being the naive optimist, Chamberlain was quite sure, argues Charmley, that Hitler was not to be trusted in any agreement. While giving Hitler what he wanted, Chamberlain was quietly building up Britain's military strength for the war he was sure to come. Because one cannot create a potent fighting force overnight, Chamberlain knew he had to buy time by whatever means necessary. Churchill, by contrast, was ready to rush into war with Germany in 1937-38, when Britain was in no way prepared to fight a continental war.

Up to this point, Charmley's treatment of Churchill is reasonable from a scholarly standpoint. He can make coherent arguments and back them up with citations and evidence. However, Charmley's main beef with Churchill has never been that he was reckless & impetuous, or that he wasn't the great military mastermind. Charmley's problem with Churchill is that he lost the British Empire. At this point, Charmley's book begins to fall apart.

Charmley is writing from the perspective of someone who thinks the British Empire was a pretty neat thing, and wishes that Britain still had its empire, just like the good old days. In subsequent writings, Charmley has taken his argument even further, casting FDR as an anti-imperial villain who had, as one of his wartime goals, the deliberate destruction of the old colonial empires. In Charmley's opinion, the primary goal of the British High Command during World War II should have been the preservation of the British Empire. The defeat of the Nazis and containment of the Soviet Union? Sure, the British could have tried to do that also, but the preservation of the Empire was the important thing.

In fact, the British High Command was trying to do exactly that, and was continually butting heads with General George Marshall over priorities in strategy. The US wanted as its goal the invasion of Europe proper, and had hoped to launch the Normandy campaign in 1943, a full year before D-Day. The British, by contrast, favored a peripheral approach, sending valuable resources to reclaim portions of British territory that had been seized by Germany & Japan. The British also wanted opportunities for their commanders (such as Montgomery) to win glory on the field. The concessions the US made to Britain, it can be argued, prolonged the war in Europe by up to a year.

So Charmley's argument that Churchill did not do enough militarily to preserve the Empire is not particularly valid. Charmley probably understands this, because he also comes as close he can to stating (without actually doing it) that maybe, just maybe, Churchill might have been well-advised to cut a deal with the Nazis, keep the Empire intact, and focus on the real enemy, which was (in Charmley's conservative viewpoint) the Soviet Union. Charmley does not explicitly say this, because he would then run the risk of being lumped into the same category as the likes of David Irving. However, he makes this argument repeatedly, in as an oblique a fashion as he can muster.

The whole problem is that Charmley bases his argument on the premise that the British Empire could in fact have been saved, and this is where the biggest flaws in this book creep in. Charmley would like to ignore the fact that the British Empire had been slowly coming apart at the seams since the Boer War. Even during Victoria's reign, Britain had been struggling to provide the resources necessary to maintain Imperial control. The attrition of World War I was effectively the final nail in the Imperial coffin; it was only a matter of time before the inevitable occurred. One only has to look at post-war France, which tried to restore its colonial empire by force, to see how things probably would have turned out for Britain.

One can also ask the question, is Charmley's belief that the Empire deserved to be preserved valid? This is definitely a matter of perspective. Did the British Empire ultimately do more harm than good? Conservatives like Charmley and Thomas Sowell may think that the British Empire overall was a good thing, but I do not agree with that at all. When you get right down to it, the Empire was simply the subjugation by Britain of other peoples & cultures by naked military force. I don't recall too many subject people voluntarily entering the British Empire. If FDR wasn't bent on destroying the British Empire, he should have been.

While Charmley does provide some valid criticism of Churchill in this book, overall his most important criticisms are based on some seriously flawed premises. In the end, this calls into question the ultimate scholarly value of the book. While it has certainly been controversial enough, does this book truly contribute much to the scholarly debate over Churchill and the history of the 20th century? I don't believe so.

30 people found this helpful

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Laird M. Wilcox

Very good account of the Churchill era

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 30, 2012

I found John Charmley's account of the Churchill era fascinating. In recent years there has been some serious rethinking of the consequences of World War II in Europe. Even the Military Channel on cable has been running programs on Europe after the defeat of Germany and the takeover of Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union, the mass expulsions, slaughter of anti-Communists, the widespread rape of women by Soviet troops and so on.

We have also seen the violence and terror that has accompanied the disillusion of the British Empire. Several years ago a friend who had visited Zimbabwe remarked that "you have no idea how many older people in Zimbabwe wish it was still Rhodesia." The slaughter of black Africans by other black Africans following independence from the UK has far exceeded the number ever killed by British soldiers during the colonial period.

This is a hot potato topic but Charmley has shown signal courage in addressing the issues.

8 people found this helpful

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Tomfrom66

No war aims save victory

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 10, 2006

Charmley, and some his reviewers, have got things wrong. Sure Churchill was an empire man, that is why he got so unpopular between the wars, when he resisted efforts to give India even the most limited self-government.

But Churchill had no war aims, save victory. OK, victory was important, but we would not have had victory on Churchill's watch.

He was terrified of D-Day, believing a re-run of the Battle of the Somme was in the offing.

All his life, he was a side-show man. When troops were needed in Normandy, he pleaded for them to stay in Italy.

In 1939-40 he even floated a notion - you could not call it a plan - to attack Germany via the Caucusus! The small matter of crossing Russia didn't seem to daunt him.

Then there was his little known adventure in the Eastern Mediterranean in 1943: this was an attempt to drag Turkey into the war. It was a dismal and humiliating failure.

Unlike the other two leaders, Churchill lacked post-war aims.

Stalin was quite clear: he wanted to take Communism westwards. He got his way.

Roosevelt had clear war aims: one of which was to break down the system of trade on which the British Empire was based. He got his way, though he did not live to see it. (Globalisation started here.)

Churchill? He basked in glory, a romantic to the end. Was he good for Britain, though?

He got it wrong, very wrong on Europe: one of the biggest lost opportunities in British history was waved away by a nation that ended the war under the killer illusion that it was still a great power.

7 people found this helpful

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HistoryBuff

Disgusting

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 31, 2012

Books such as this make the world a worse place. Instead of spending time productively, authors waste their time and worse, readers' time by attempting to bring down a wonderful legacy that Sir Winston Churchill left our world. While the book analyzes some details in their historical truth, much of the book is based on the singular speculation based on the author's warped mind. Not worth supporting if you are a person with moral certainty and fundamental values.

3 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Mo Campbell

An Important Revision of Churchill's Life

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 31, 2021

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A very good book about the life of Churchill, and an important revisionist work. However, the language was stilted at times and it might not be to everyone's taste.

Bookmadlady

Huge Book!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 16, 2020

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Huge book! Yellow pages, way too heavy to even lift to read...….into the recycling it went.....

Amazon Customer

Has had some good insights so far

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 16, 2014

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Am enjoying this book although am only one third of the way through - just starting to read about re-armament post 1935. Has had some good insights so far. However, the prose style is not the best.

Don Bagley

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 8, 2015

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I had been looking for this book for some time.
Many many thanks.

One person found this helpful

Willi Wald

Four Stars

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on July 12, 2015

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