Winston Churchill's War Leadership by Sir Martin Gilbert Read Free Book Online Page A

enhanced by the American contribution. At the naval battle of Taranto in November 1940, Britain’s first major victory over the Italians, the location of the Italian fleet had been a triumph of aerial reconnaissance carried out by a squadron of Glenn Martin photographic reconnaissance aircraft newly arrived in Malta from the United States.
    The American dimension was to continue to be central to Churchill’s leadership after the entry of the United States into the war in December 1941. Four days after Pearl Harbor, Hitler made his extraordinary mistake— fatal to him in the long run—of declaring war on the United States. Within a month of America’s entry into the war, Churchill persuaded Roosevelt to put the defeat of Hitler in Europe as a priority before the defeat of Japan in the Pacific. This decision ensured that the Allied invasion and liberation of Northern Europe would take place at the earliest possible opportunity. Churchill hoped it could be done before the end of 1942, but he accepted the reality that the build-up of American forces in Britain could not be completed until early 1944.
    Despite the demands and pressures of war policy, which kept him at his desk and with his colleagues for many hours each day, Churchill was a very visible Prime Minister. His public face was an all-powerful facet of his war leadership, and he made considerable efforts to find time to be seen by the people. He was surprised to discover, at the height of the Blitz, that the Londoners he met within hours of their homes being destroyed, far from cursing him, greeted him with enthusiasm and exhorted him to defeat the enemy. His travels to bombed-out cities proved an enormous boost to public morale. His initially improvised two-finger “V-for-victory” sign became a cause for cheers and enthusiasm amid the devastation of a night bombing raid. Wherever he went, Churchill was acclaimed and cheered (even in 1945, when the crowds who were celebrating victory then went on to the polling booth and cast their votes against his Party). His military secretary and confidant, General Ismay, later recalled an episode on the third day of Churchill’s premiership: “I walked with him from Downing Street to the Admiralty. A number of people waiting outside the private entrance greeted him with cries of ‘Good luck, Winnie. God bless you.’ He was visibly moved, and as soon as we were inside the building, he dissolved into tears. ‘Poor people,’ he said, ‘poor people. They trust me, and I can give them nothing but disaster for quite a long time.’”
    Another aspect of Churchill’s war leadership that impressed itself on those who saw him at close quarters was his personal example. In his conduct of the war, Churchill set an example for those around him of extreme hard work. His standards were high. “Each night, before I go to bed,” he told one of his Private Secretaries, “I try myself by Court Martial to see if I have done something really effective during the day—I don’t mean merely pawing the ground, anyone can go through the motions, but something really effective.” He was his own severest taskmaster.
    The ability of those whom Churchill appointed—their exceptional abilities when crises came—was another aspect of his war leadership. Except in a totalitarian regime, a leader is only as strong as the sum total of those to whom he delegates responsibility. Churchill was a master of the art of delegation—a master and a past master, for his experience in working with subordinates was extensive. No man, however “Churchillian” (as the modern adjective has it), could manage the conduct of a war unless his subordinates were of the highest quality and he had confidence in their abilities. The machinery of war-making between 1940 and 1945 was vast. Every government department devoted its energies in one way or another to the conflict. A massive extension of factories and manufacture focused entirely on war production.