Churchill by Paul Johnson Read Free Book Online

architects to design him aircraft carriers. He learned to fly himself and did so, with reckless delight, as often as he could, until Clemmie, on her knees, persuaded him to give it up. He recognized no limitations to his activities and took the government, and Britain, into the oil industry by investing in Persia and creating the great Anglo-Persian Oil Company (now BP). This proved to be, over the decades, an even better investment than Disraeli’s purchase of the Suez Canal.
    Surveying the world scene from his coign of vantage at the Admiralty, now, thanks to his efforts, in direct wireless communication with every part of the world, Churchill sensed that Britain was heading for a war with Germany. While still home secretary he judged it his duty, as the minister responsible for international security, to attend German army maneuvers. The kaiser, who was part English and spoke the language fluently, made a fuss of him and Churchill got to know him quite well, insofar as anyone did. For the kaiser, as Churchill made clear in an essay in Great Contemporaries (1937), was an enigma and a mass of contradictions. It was unclear whether he was a puppet or an autocrat. What was undeniable, as Churchill saw for himself, was that Germany possessed the best professional army in the world. He attended French maneuvers, too, and, despite his lifelong Francophilia, he could see there was no comparison. Moreover, Germany was now easily the largest industrial power in Europe and, with a large and rapidly growing population, capable of expanding her war machine dramatically. On his return from German maneuvers, Churchill said, “I can only thank God that there is a sea between England and Germany.”
    The sea was defended by the Royal Navy, the largest in the world, though no longer up to the “two-power standard,” able to take on and defeat the two next largest navies in the world. That raised the question: why were the Germans, with an army capable of domination of all Europe, determined to match, or at least challenge, Britain at sea? Their navy could only be aimed at Britain and the global command of the sea. The Germans began building their High Seas Fleet, as they called it, in the late 1880s, and continued to increase the rate of ship construction, especially of armored, big-gun battleships, over the next twenty years. It was this plainly anti-British construction program which turned public opinion, hitherto pro-German, if anything, against what were now referred to as “the Huns.” (Churchill preferred the French term of abuse, boche .) When Churchill took over the Admiralty, the policy was then to maintain a 60 percent superiority over Germany in modern battleships. But this was upset by the German Naval Law of 1912 which increased their battleship construction rate by half again. Churchill responded with the Queen Elizabeth class, the largest warships ever made at 27,500 tons and eight fifteen-inch guns each, oil burning and able to maintain high speeds. A disgusted Lloyd George complained that Churchill had lost all interest in social reform “and now talks about nothing but boilers.”
    Churchill was also concerned by the German decision to build large numbers of U-boats (as they called them). What were they for? The answer was unmistakable. Britain had the largest merchant navy in the world and imported a greater percentage of her food than any other great power. The German U-boat was a potential war-winning weapon which could starve Britain to death. Churchill began to hate the U-boat passionately, and near the end of his life he declared that in both world wars the submarine threat had worried him more than any other. The only answer was to build large numbers of U-boat destroyers, or destroyers for short, very fast and equipped with a new weapon, the depth charge. This he did. But at every step in his policies, he was opposed by elderly admirals, of whom there were a large number occupying key positions. He spent as