"Churchill & Orwell" is well written and an enjoyable read. The book is not a full biography — it’s really about the 1930s and 1940s. Ricks is an admirer of both men and argues that they were key figures in the struggle against “the twin totalitarian threats of fascism and communism.” Ricks argues that they both made excellent cases for individual freedom. Neither man followed the crowd and often held views that were unpopular. Orwell warned about the evils of communism and upset his friends on the left by criticizing the Soviet Union. Ricks’ account is the standard post-war American version of Europe in the 1930s and it is wrong. We are told that appeasement was a mistake and the British should have stood up to Hitler a lot earlier. Later, we discover that the British were often difficult and ungrateful allies. Ricks is a patriot and foreigners can be tricky and hard to understand. He does not really get to grips with what was happening in Europe in the 1930s.
I read Orwell’s main works over thirty years ago and I enjoyed being reminded of his worldview. His books seem relevant today even though 1930s communism and fascism are dead. Ricks suggests that authoritarianism is on the rise again. Putin, Erdogan, Xi, Kim, Orban, ISIS, Iran, and Assad are his examples. In the U.S. we have an intrusive surveillance state. Orwell’s book, 1984, could be describing the U.S. today. We are continuously at war and told we are under attack from mysterious forces. These threats are used to justify government surveillance. As a consequence, Ricks believes we are at risk of losing many of our individual liberties.
Orwell was an obscure journalist until his breakthrough with Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). He was shot and nearly killed while fighting in the Spanish Civil War. It was there that he developed his hostility to fascism and communism. In Spain, fascists, communists and the police all tried to kill him. Orwell attended Eton College, where members of the British establishment are often educated. Eton has produced 19 British prime ministers, including David Cameron and the Duke of Wellington. Orwell's Eton education would have presented him with many opportunities, which he chose to ignore. Ricks does not really dwell on this or explain Orwell’s strange career choices for an Etonian. Orwell became a cop in Burma, a backwater of the British Empire. In the 1930s he wrote books about the poor. He always sympathized with the underdog and often despised the establishment. Despite this, Ricks believes that Orwell admired Churchill.
Until 1940, Churchill’s political career had often been a disaster. He was on the wrong side of history on many issues, from opposing Indian independence to returning Britain to the Gold Standard. Ricks focuses on Churchill's opposition to appeasement and on his role in World War 2. Ricks argues that appeasement was a mistake. He suggests that the appeasers were often unpatriotic and cowardly. This is unfair. The U.S. helped draft the Treaty of Versailles but did nothing to help enforce it. It has never been clear why Hitler became Britain's responsibility. Both Hitler's books indicate that he eventually intended to attack the U.S. Many British historians believe that Chamberlain had few good options in 1938. A lot of American politicians seem to believe that had Britain threatened Hitler with a war in 1936 or 1938, he would have backed down. However, they don't understand the military realities. Britain did declare war in 1939. Hitler then turned his army around, he was heading eastwards and crushed Western Europe. Hitler was a gambler, he declared war on both the U.S. and Soviet Union in 1941.
Britain had lost 723,000 men in WW1, and most Britons were desperate to avoid another war. Most people knew someone who had died and the war had seemed pointless. Pacifism was popular in the 1930s, and as a result, Britain only started rearming in 1936. Many senior British politicians (e.g., Churchill, Eden, Halifax, and Attlee) had fought in the trenches against the Germans twenty years earlier. It took time for the British public and their politicians to realize that the Germans wanted revenge for what happened in 1918. Psychologically, the British public was not ready for a war in 1936 or 1938. By 1939 they realized there was no alternative.
In 1938, the year of Munich, Britain was not ready to fight a war with Germany. Britain’s only real European ally was France, and Chamberlain and his advisers did not believe the French had the stomach for a fight. Britain’s allies in World War 1: France, U.S., and the Soviet Union, had no interest in confronting Hitler in 1936 or 1938, so a grand coalition was out of the question. In 1938, Britain’s generals told Chamberlain that they only had two divisions they could send to Europe to fight Germany. Chamberlain was told that Hitler had one hundred highly trained divisions. The RAF only received its first Spitfires in August 1938. It would have been suicidal to attack Germany in 1936 or 1938, Many influential Americans living in Europe believed that Germany was unbeatable. The U.S. ambassador to Britain, Joe Kennedy, and Charles Lindbergh advised that resistance was futile and Britain was finished. Lindbergh had lived in England in the 1930s and had visited Germany, he even received a medal from Goering, head of the Luftwaffe. Lindbergh claimed that the Luftwaffe was invincible and Britain did not stand a chance. Britain eventually went to war in 1939 and the extra twelve months made a difference. The country had more planes and trained pilots than it would have had in 1938. In 1940, the RAF was able to defeat the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain,
In 1940, Orwell supported Churchill’s rise to the premiership. He believed that there was nobody in British politics with the guts or imagination to fight Hitler. Churchill galvanized the British in a way nobody else could. Later, some Britons believed that Churchill had been played by FDR since Britain emerged from the war poor, and weak. Ricks disputes this and portrays America's leaders as noble, men of integrity who wanted the best for Britain. Other American writers have recently questioned this interpretation and suggested that the U.S. was much more Machiavellian. Lynne Olson in her book "Those Angry Days" points out that there was considerable anti-British feeling in America before the war and this was shared by the U.S. military. George Marshall and his top brass had been pro-German and had resisted helping Britain. This has been airbrushed from history.
According to the American economist, Benn Steil who wrote “The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order," FDR’s administration saw Britain as its main post-war rival. They wanted the U.S. to be the world's leading power and one of FDR's war aims was to dismantle the British Empire. In terms of aid, the U.S. was much more generous to the Soviet Union and China than it was to the UK. Churchill also concluded some disastrous arms deals with FDR, which Ricks ignores. Britain effectively went bankrupt in 1947.
Ricks also criticizes Tony Blair for naively invoking the “special relationship” in his support of the Iraq War in 2003. Ricks also blames Blair for damaging UK-U.S. relations by supporting the Iraq War. This is a bit rich since Blair was trying to be loyal to an ally. He faced fierce domestic opposition to the Iraq War and is extremely unpopular in Britain today. Gordon Brown, who succeeded Blair as prime minister, recently claimed that Blair was misled by George Bush. Brown believes that the U.S. knew that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The British establishment feels duped, and this could do a lot more damage to U.S.-UK relations in the long term.
Ricks believes that both Churchill and Orwell were concerned about individual freedom. For Churchill, WW2 was a war “to establish, on impregnable rocks, the rights of the individual, and it is a war to establish and revive the stature of man.” For Orwell, “If this war is about anything at all, it is a war in favor of freedom of thought.” Ricks believes that Orwell was primarily concerned about preserving privacy. The book is good on Orwell. On Churchill, Ricks gives us the legend. For all his mistakes, Churchill’s personality and drive helped save Britain in 1940 and 1941, and that is why he is celebrated in his home country.
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Top reviews from other countries
Michael Bully
Interesting and readable but ignores crucial differences between the two men
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 20, 2019
Mr. J. C. Maund
Interesting read.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 30, 2020Bücherwurm
Substanziell dünn - leider wenig Neues
Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on July 22, 2018
