Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2021
A good biography should include photos, maps, footnotes (to verify citations), bibliography, and detailed index. On those criteria, this is a superlative biography, with all of those in abundance. The author, training and residing (mostly) in England, has adapted some Anglicisms for this American audience, but be prepared to navigate from time to time the intricacies of elections to the House of Commons, which are not.
Although one volume, this paperback edition is massive, with almost 1000 pages of text alone, plus an additional nearly 40 pages of footnotes (not to mention a ‘select bibliography’ and detailed index). For such a man, who published 37 volumes of prose, mostly history, of over 6 million words (pp 972-3), in addition to his life-long commitment to politics, this hefty work of small print is barely enough to encompass the minimum needed to paint his greatness, without omitting his exasperating deficiencies – this is, to reemphasize, a biography, and not a whitewash. The author’s task, of reading all this and much more (including, especially, his letters to his wife Clementine, Soviet Ambassador Maisky’s musings, Brooke’s frustrations in his diary entries) and then organizing the thousands of notes taken to form a comprehensible logical tale, cannot ever be fully appreciated by us passive consumers, by us laymen.
Mr. Roberts has composed a captivating tale, told in accessible, ever sensible and pleasing prose, putting it into that rare class of great biographies with John Lewis Gaddis’ “Kennan” and George Packer’s “Our Man” (on Richard Holbrooke). This is especially true of the first half, 1874-1940, “The Preparation”, introducing WSC (Winston Spencer Churchill) to “The Trial”, his guiding of the UK through WW2, from 1940 and down to his death in 1965. This first part lays the groundwork in masterly fashion for the reader to understand how WSC had trained himself for this display of incomparable leadership after May 1940. Roberts interweaves, throughout, the leitmotif of WSC’s father, Randolph, showing convincingly, without the all-too-common modern psychobabble, how that absent father, dying too early, held sway over WSC his entire life (see, especially, WSC’s touching work “The Dream” described on pp 904-6). How odd it is to realize that without this demanding, psychologically distant father, WSC would have been a different, a lesser man. What parental lessons can be taken from this? WSC’s description of Soviet foreign policy seems apt: ‘A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.’ (p. 472)
While Roberts details the opportunities lost to avoid WW2 – in particular, the remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936, where Hitler had given orders for retreat on the first sign of resistance from France (p. 397), to von Kleist’s assessment that Germany could not have withstood more than three months if the Sudetenland had not capitulated in 1938 (p. 430) – Neville Chamberlain’s key role with “peace in our time” is painted in much more sympathetic and subtle colors. Roberts shows, in addition, that Hitler’s intrigues for ‘peace’ do not end after September 3, 1939 and the declarations of war from England and France. In fact, he gives a convincing counter-factual scheme for Halifax, in Churchill’s absence, suing for peace (p. 978) – it was only Churchill’s intransigent stubbornness that insured England’s opposition to one of history’s most perfect embodiments of undistilled evil.
All of this, and more (including delicious helpings of WSC’s unequalled wit) distinguishes this book. What does not:
a) The Versailles Treaty was not nearly as ‘harsh’ as he paints it (p 273). Its provisions could have been met, with good-will from Weimer Germany, but the ‘stab-in-the-back’ legend was much more damaging, making that good will politically difficult. Moreover, Clemenceau did not agree to ameliorating them, those provisions, because he couldn’t: he was barely able to get them accepted by the French Chamber of Deputies, which wanted them to be much harsher.
b) The author recognizes the moral problem of “Bomber” Harris and the indiscriminate leveling of German cities, but seems to confuse ‘strategic’ and ‘tactical’ bombing (p 781). Moreover, his ‘select bibliography’ does not include A.C. Grayling’s “Among the Dead Cities”, a required primer on this subject. (A window in the apse of Westminster Abbey is still dedicated to Harris, his crews, and his atrocities.)
c) Roberts reports of course the abomination of the death camps, but does not delineate, with any finality, when Churchill first became aware of them, implying it was July 1944 (p. 829). He notes that the Americans (the only ones who could, as it required daylight precision) refused to agree to bombing the rail lines into Auschwitz, but does not explain why that decision was made. This would have made the book even longer, but not by much. He could have added, for example, the inaccuracy of the storied Norden bombsight, with after-war surveys showing 50% of bombs missing their target by more than 1000 ft; or the average time needed during the war to repair rail lines: 2 days; or the terrible death toll of bombing raids, where it was an exceptional crewmember who survived more than 20 flights; or the overwhelming need to end the war, which such raids would not have aided and quite possibly even delayed.
d) The author’s Hoover Institute credentials, ie his conservative leanings, are evident in Churchill himself as a subject, to be sure (see, eg WSC’s support of what we call ‘right-to-work’ legislation, p. 324), but Roberts is often critical of Churchill’s most outrageous racial comments. Thus, fortunately, that conservatism does not leak out very often, but when it does, it is jarring, as in his comment that Reagan was ‘instrumental’ in destroying the Soviet Union (p 855) which is just absurd (the key was Gorbachev, and any post, any even inanimate object, in the White House could have served as that ‘instrument’). And, to assert that overthrowing Mossadegh in 1953 despite its producing the Iran Revolution of 1979 was worthwhile (p 941) is distressing, to say the least, as it throws a disturbing light on his previously nearly impeccable faculty of judgment.
The above four qualifications notwithstanding, if you are interested in WSC, buy this book. You will not regret it.
