Garry Kasparov, in his book "
How life imitates chess", talks with great admiration and enthusiasm about Winston Churchill. Even further Kasporov claims that Churchill one of the biggest personality of 20th century. He is not alone. Many people share similar enthusiasm about him. Enormous studies have been conducted on him. Given that much coverage by media and scholars, i decided to read an auto/biography on him.
My research on Internet led me to a relatively recent published book: "
Churchill A study on Greatness" by Geoffrey Best whom teaches history at Sussex University. The book is compiled out of enormous literature research. In this book, Geoffrey Best aims to cover overall respects of Winston without much penetrating into details.
Although Geoffrey Best puts an incredible work to justify how great was Winston Churchill in its historical context, unfortunately, given the stories and evidence in the book, my impression and thought about Winston is completely different and, to surprise myself, it is, even worse,a disappointment. To credit to the author, he points out in the book, given the evidences and stories, readers should make their mind on Winston Churchill themselves. Unlike the author and many people, given my working class, non-white, social-democrat background, i am failed to see why Churchill is a great man in terms of international and national politics, war leader, personality, literature, family. Let me elaborate my thoughts on these subjects.
Let's start with a summary of his peculiar personality. In his all life, even though Churchill did all his best to evade any type of classification, people knew him and some historian describe Churchill as egoist, gambler, loves luxury lifestyle, rude to people working under him, difficult to work and get along together, Victorian Liberal Imperialist, opportunist, man of war (warmonger) and peace, enemy of working class people, believer of white-superiority of Anglo-Saxoinism and Tory radical, sympathetic to Zionism, imperialist, good political speaker and writer. Sure, i think some of these are over-exaggerated.
Winston Churchill is known well as politician and military background. After high school,he attended Royal Military Academy for two years and he commissioned as Second Lieutenant. As service man, he deployed to various part of British Empire, Cuba, India, South Africa, Sudan and Malakand. Even though he disliked traditional education system in his school times, he self educated himself during the service. In addition, he also wrote articles as war correspondence to several London based newspapers. He was a brave soldier and participated in several risky campaign.
Winston Churchill, first of all, was a politician. After spending five years in the army, in 1900, he started his political career in the conservative party where his father was also a hard-core MP. But he did not stayed there for a long time. In his second election, against his families and father's will and tradition, he transferred to the Liberal Party where he assumed doors and posts will be opened more quicker. He was right. Soon, he undertook important positions in the party and the governments between in 1905 and 1916 till disastrous defeat in the battle of Gallipoli against Turks in which he was Admiral. He never recovered from that bad publicity caused deu to his role in this battle.
As politician, he was big supporter of free trade and in many circumstances he comes cross as an opportunist. Especially in the beginning of his career in the Liberal Party, in election campaigns, even though he comes from aristocracy, he gave speeches that House of Lords should not be superior than House of Common upon he sensed the unhappiness among the working class electorates against aristocracy. In 1924, he rejoined the conservatives and until 1929's he undertook the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer in the conservative government. Some economics believe that, his decision to return to the gold standard at the pre-war parity in 1925, would lead to a world depression. In industrial conflicts and strikes, in many occasion, he put his preference on business elite and he made a reputation as enemy of working class people.
Upon 1929 general election lose, Churchill stayed away from politics for couple of years. This isolation is due to his personal relations with party management, his stand against India policy and his connections with dubious peoples. When he backed to Parliament in first half of 30s, he vigorously established an anti-Indian, Nazi and Communism campaign. But none of his opinions is taken into consideration by majority of people cos of his warmonger, imperialist attitude. With WW II, in 1940 he backed to main political arena again as Prime minister due to his military background.
Overall, both in Liberal and Conservative parties until 1940, he was not an extraordinary politician and not put his name under long term significant works. He made reputation as egoist, opportunist, rude to people working under him, difficult to get along together, Victorian Liberal Imperialist, warmonger, enemy of working class people, anti Nazi and Communist, opposite to Indian independence, supporter of white-superiority of Anglo-Saxinism and sympathetic to Zionism. Even more, in all his political life, it seems, because of his love to luxury lifestyle, he never hesitated to get financial help from his rich friends.
During WW II, as prime minister and leader of national coalition government, he led his country against Nazi Germany. And he owes all his popularity to this role. For his countrymen, he is the saviour of not only UK but also civilization against Nazi. I think his role in WW II is overrated. I think he was only the defender of his country. UK could not won the war by herself, and it took long time, in spite of mass colonies and resources. Fate of the war only has changed after Soviets and America joined to the war in Allies side. Besides all of these, there are doubts on his leadership skills.
Without doubt, Winston Churchill was a good speaker and boosting morale of public in war times. But I wonder if someone else would be able lead better the army and country in WW II? Because people working under him often say that he was full of ideas. For an issue, he was coming up more than 10 different ideas. Unfortunately, so often, only one of these ideas was plausible and his staff wasted quite lots of time to argue about impractical side of his other ideas. You can guess how it would be difficult to work with someone who especially thinks: "All i wanted was compliance with my wishes after reasonable discussion". Who knows maybe with a better leader, the war would have been won more faster against Nazis. I think, the public should have shared the similar frustration with his management, so after WW II, in the first election in 1945, Labour party defeated Churchill with an unprecedented seat majority in the Parliament. Besides these, short after Nazi Germany was defeated, in international meetings, Britain could not defend her interest well against Soviet Union and America. Some diplomats complaint that Winston Churchill attended meetings without much preparation, even worse, sometimes without reading the briefings.
Someone would argue that, given the historical context and resources, Winston Churchill achieved incredible results. But i can not help to think that, people can create miracles in real tough circumstances. 20th century has being witnessed many great national leaders in many wars in which superior countries attacked small, tiny countries but dramatically been defeated. I think, if opportunities were given to other people, Britain would had achieved better with a more skillful person. But without any doubt, unlike the battle of Gallipoli in WW I, Winston Churchill did not let his country down in WW II with help of Soviet and America.
Towards to end of WW II and afterwards, in government and opposition seats, he introduced the main seeds of European Union movement. After WW I, not many people in Europe was thinking there would be another war in Europe soon. But WW II proved that that assumption was so optimistic. In order to prevent such a third war in Europe and against Soviet occupation, Winston Churchill developed and introduced European Union movement. He worked and campaigned on this idea especially when he was on the opposition between 1946-1951. But when he came to power again in 1951, he put his preference on America once again and focuses on the "special relationship" with America. But on the other hand, he always iterated that UK will be always with Europe to against Soviet. To credit to him, whatever his motive was, Winston Churchill was one of the prior in European Union movement.
After WW II, having defeated Nazism, Winston Churchill turned his all attention to the old enemy, Communism. Expansion of Soviets to East Europe after WW2 caused concern among western European countries and Churchill used this atmosphere to promote his anti-Communism in UK and USA. His tone of language against Soviet got more stronger with time and he established his new political career on anti-Communism. He was even accused of being a provocateur, warmonger by some Labours. He was the principal architect of Iron Curtain betwen Soviet and West. It seems to me, in order to come power again, Churchill and some conservatives promoted a political tension in between Soviet block and Western countries which lasted until the end of the century. Once more, this tactic of seizing power and keeping people under control by creating a common enemy is used against Muslim by neocons after communism collapsed.
His stands on non-white European colonies and countries were imperialist and he was big believer and supporter of white-superiority of Anglo-Saxionism. Without much change, in his all political life, he opposed of independence of India. His following remark on Gandhi in 1930 explains his conservative, aristocratic, imperialist, politic background:
"A seditious Middle Temple lawyer now posing as a fakir of a type well-known in the East,striding half naked-up the steps of the Vice-regal place... to parley with the representative of the King-Emperor."Winston Churchill had tendency that non-white people can not run their countries themselves. For example, with irony, he claimed that Indian people would be better under the British rule because he thinks that non-white people are lack of self management. Irony is that, in his white aristocratic, imperialist world, in spite of limited academic, military and political achievement and inter personal skills, a white aristocrat can become an MP and even more a Prime Minister, but a non-white person such as Gandhi, who is a lawyer and graduated from London, loved and respected by millions in India is not capable of self management!
Luckily India has not suffered much from his opposition. But Middle East suffered dramatically cos of his and his peers's policies, prejudice, ignorance and sympathy to Zionism. After first WW I,he was in charge of determining new borders in Middle East. New borders are drawn without taking into consideration of local people's opinion and many current problems in Middle East (Palestine, Jewish, Kurdish, Arabs) are attributed to role of his role. In these talks, he did not even want to meet with Arab delegates.
Another interesting characteristic of Winston Churchill was that he earned his livelihood from his pen when he was not in the Parliament. He published several books on military, WW I and II and English speaking world. He also wrote many articles for newspapers. At the moment i am reading, his "My Early Life" book, later i would be able to comment about his writing style. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature 1953. He hired several, Oxford graduated writer to help him in his latest books after WW II. There is also not much known artistic side of Winston Churchill. In his free times, he painted and vivid colours were dominant in his paintings.
In family side, although he was close to his children and biggest admirer of his wife, his children did not catch up any of his success or popularity. His son, Randolph, followed his fathers step in terms of career, personality and lifestyle and with failure. Some of his daughters made unhappy marriages. Most interesting part of his life, surprisingly, his never lasting love to his wife. He and his wife, were biggest supporter of each other all the time.
In conclusion, I do understand admiration of Kasparov to Churchill because Winston was the first person in Western warned and even more provoked people against Communism. He was the main ideologist in the West created so-called Communist Monster. But, i think, Kasparov misses a crucial thing. Due to his character, Churchill never lack of enemies or suspicion of stranger/foreigner. In order to keep his status, he and neo-cons always created an enemy. His stand, vision on Communism is more prejudice similar to his attitude against India, Middle East, Palestine and desire and hunger to the power.
Based on this book, i think, Winston Churchill is really overrated in its historical context. I do understand this pheromone from the British, conservative point of view. Every nation or political movement has tendency to satisfy their ego anyhow with national heroes. But from an objective point of view, I think British Empire should/would have done better without Winston and there are certainly far far better statesman in 20th century in all around the world.
