FREE BOOK PREVIEW: Churchill and the First World War

Swift Press have embarked on a project to produce small, manageable introductions on the history of Britain’s Prime Ministers. The first was perhaps the most obvious choice: Winston Churchill. The author they selected is none other than Peter Caddick-Adams, who has somehow managed to boil down a complicated career spanning decades into 50,000 or so words. It’s a laudable project. Staring down the usual biographies, which are heavy enough to knock out a baby rhino and running to many hundreds of pages, could be daunting to a beginner. Now, there’s a less terrifying option.

Peter has argued that ‘the recipe for Churchill's success during his wartime premiership of 1940-45 can be found in the First World War.’ It was, he postulates, a dress rehearsal for all that was to come with the sequel. In 1914-18 Britain experienced ‘conscription, rationing, convoys, air raids, mass production, women's uniformed services, coalitions and war cabinets… Churchill had personally witnessed and, in some cases, helped administer’ many of these wartime innovations.

Today, then, I’ll give you a sneak peak of what PCA has to say about the First World War. I’m going to skip Gallipoli, because I think most of us have read or at least been exposed to this particular failure, one which at the time Churchill believed would be the end of his political career. Instead, I’m going to let the author guide you through what happened after Churchill found himself punted out of his position at the Admiralty…

A compromise was reached, in which Churchill was demoted from First Lord, thus losing his beloved home in Admiralty Arch, and the most significant pre-Prime Ministerial job of his political life, but he remained in Cabinet as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The Churchills thereupon decamped to Hoe Farm, a sixteenth-century mansion near Godalming, Surrey, rented jointly with his brother Jack, on which the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens had once dabbled. With its serene views, four reception rooms and eight bedrooms, gardens, paddocks, stables and tennis court, it would become the inspiration for Winston's own Chartwell.

His time at the Admiralty had brought Churchill a wider insight into the mechanics of fighting and winning a global war than any other portfolio could have done. Despite its defeat, he took away much from the Gallipoli landings and campaign, including the need for air-maritime-land co-operation, amphibious doctrine with specialised landing craft, and exhaustive reconnaissance and intelligence preparation; the importance of choosing appropriate commanders; and the necessity of surprise and of a generous lead time for thorough pre-invasion training and rehearsals. Gallipoli would induce in him an understandable sense of foreboding about the Normandy landings of June 1944, but, once forced to commit himself by the Americans, Churchill was at least sustained by knowing what not to do as a result of the Dardanelles. Although the big fleet encounter at Jutland (31 May-1 June 1916), the emergence of the German U-boat menace in 1917 - necessitating home-front rationing - and its countering with convoys and depth charges were after his time at the Admiralty, he stayed in touch with naval developments. All would be repeated in the Second World War, with the difference that Churchill, initially as First Lord again in 1939, alone of all politicians (save the dying Lloyd George) would know what to do and how to do it.

He hung on for much of the year, though feeling 'like a sea-beast fished up from the depths, or a diver too suddenly hoisted', and was prompted at Hoe Farm by his brother Jack's wife Gwendoline (Goonie) to take up painting with oils to combat the stress of inactivity. Modern decision-makers may choose to work out in a gymnasium, but Churchill's stress-busting equivalent was to daub oil on canvas, at which he became quite proficient. Other artists have called his work naive, but his works, rendered in an impressionist style, are pleasing to the eye, such as the picture of Marrakech.

However, this is putting a positive gloss on Winston's post-Gallipoli mood, for Clemmie observed much later: 'The Dardanelles haunted him for the rest of his life. He always believed in it. When he left the Admiralty, he thought he was finished. I thought he would never get over the Dardanelles; I thought he would die of grief.'

It was an instance of the depression which sometimes crossed his path when successes were followed by plunging lows. Churchill nicknamed it his 'black dog'. Arguably, Winston's absurdly busy, action-packed life, accompanied by endless entertaining, writing, speechifying and politicking, and punctuated by a bizarre array of hobbies and pastimes, was the Churchillian way of keeping at bay a longer-term, deeper depressive condition. He was born into an era when adults rarely discussed their inner turmoil, and would have been ever watchful of his own psychological state, having witnessed Lord Randolph's mental decline.

Though biographer Andrew Roberts cautions against making too much of the 'black dog', and Winston clearly enjoyed his many activities, they may also represent his coping mechanism against failure. This moment also initiated his 'keep buggering on' attitude to life when faced with setbacks of any description. Often abbreviated in private correspondence and speech to 'KBO', female friends and staff were rewarded with a sanitised version: Keep plodding on,' or ‘KPO'.

Always endeavour to turn catastrophe to your own advantage,' he wrote, and, on 12 November 1915, Churchill did just this in penning a note to Asquith resigning from the government, but not from Parliament. He signed off: 'Count on me absolutely - if I am of any use. If not, some employment in the field.' In fact, Winston had already made plans to serve on the Western Front, hoping to command a brigade or a division, but accepted he needed first to 'bed in', leading first a company (of the 2nd Grenadier Guards), then a Kitchener battalion (the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers) early in 1916.

His official biographer, Martin Gilbert, records Winston's round of final dinner parties before leaving for Flanders as resembling a wake, as though he intended to commit suicide by launching himself into battle. In the event, he proved an excellent infantry commander, joining his Royal Scots Fusiliers at Ploegsteert in Belgium. His mood changed instantly, as he revelled in front-line life, instructing his officers: War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can. Going to war can be a liberating experience as the individual frees themselves of personal and professional woes and ties up their affairs in the event of death. Churchill certainly felt this, and, accompanied by his paintbox and the sound of German guns, wrote to his mother: I am happy here... I always get on with soldiers. I do not certainly regret the step I took... I know that I am doing the right thing… Do you know I am quite young again?'

Churchill sporting his French helmet.

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Sustained by supplies from Fortnum & Mason, Churchill enjoyed a 'good war', sharing the hardships of trench life (and his hampers) with his Glaswegian troops, who had answered the patriotic call to arms of August 1914. His command was no sinecure, for Winston's battalion had suffered greatly the previous September at the Battle of Loos, and needed a repair of morale and rebuilding to full strength, while his 9th (Scottish) Division was the first of Kitchener's all-volunteer army to serve on the Western Front. The Military Service Act of 27 January 1916, the inaugural introduction of conscription to the United Kingdom, would see its draftees arrive only after Churchill had left soldiering and returned to politics.

Introducing himself with the words, 'Gentlemen, I am now your Commanding Officer. Those who support me I will look after. Those who go against me I will break,' Winston drove his battalion hard in training, resulting in their losses being lower than the rest of the Scottish Division. He proved a predictably fearless leader, personally patrolling the front lines and surviving several close calls. However, after 108 days in command, when his battalion was amalgamated with its sister 7th Battalion and, on 7 May 1916, transferred to a different brigade, of the 15th (Scottish) Division, Churchill made no attempt to request a new command, still feeling the lure of politics and pull of Westminster in his bones. Of the farewell from his battalion, adjutant Andrew Dewar Gibb (author of With Winston Churchill at the Front, written in 1924 under the pseudonym 'Captain X'), recorded: 'I believe every man in the room felt Winston Churchill's leaving us a real personal loss.'

Winston had long realised his preference for being at the helm, shaping events, over being a passenger in them. Kitchener (to be drowned at sea on 5 June 1916), Field Marshal Douglas Haig and the rest of Britain's military hierarchy breathed a sigh of relief at his departure. Ever the individualist, who sported a French military helmet in preference to the British-issued 'battle bowler', Churchill made friends everywhere, but his superiors regarded his passion and curiosity for wartime innovation, and his bypassing of the chain of command when it suited him, as being at least as dangerous as the German army lurking across no man's land. Winston was again lucky, for had he remained with the 15th (Scottish) Division, he would have been sucked into the struggle for the Somme, beginning on 1 July. His division lost 1,901 men in four separate battles, of whom 137 were from his old battalion.

Asquith, meanwhile, was perceived to be steering a rudderless ship in wartime, and to be distracted by the death of his eldest son, Raymond, killed on 15 September 1916 at Flers-Courcelette, on the Somme. Partly blamed for Gallipoli and other disasters, he was replaced on 6 December in a Westminster coup. Lloyd George had been agitating for a small war cabinet (then called a war council) under his own authority, with the Conservatives in the coalition threatening to resign unless his plan was implemented. After many behind-the-scenes political machinations, Lloyd George negotiated a five-man war cabinet, formed a new administration and kissed hands with the King, becoming Prime Minister on the morning of 7 December.

Although the Conservatives explicitly demanded Churchill be excluded from ministerial office, Lloyd George was aware of his friend's organising talents and opportunistic zeal, and, seven months later, felt secure enough to appoint Winston to the Cabinet-level (but not war cabinet) post of Minister of Munitions on 17 July 1917. He was joined there by Asquith's third son, Arthur, who had served in the Royal Naval Division on Gallipoli and elsewhere, won three DSOs and attained the rank of brigadier general, but lost a leg and was invalided out of the service. The ministry was a wartime stopgap, established on 25 May 1915 to overcome the 'Shell Crisis' of the same year, which occurred in response to newspaper criticism of severe military shortages, and affected all the belligerents at this time. Initially under Lloyd George's vigorous leadership, and crucial to his rise to supreme power, the ministry soon set up a nationwide network of factories; staffed them with women (encouraged into war work by higher rates of pay than received by their absent menfolk); created a system to resolve labour disputes; breathed new life into cumbersome War Office bureaucracy; promoted factory safety (though disasters from mishandling explosives occurred); provided day care for children; limited overtime; provided transportation and lodging for some workers; and crucially oversaw a dramatic expansion in the production of weaponry and ammunition.

The ministry was less than two years old, and Churchill would be its fourth minister, but the post was no sinecure, for by the war's end it possessed a central staff of 65,000, employed 3 million workers in over 20,000 factories, including 218 purpose-built, and had become the nation's largest buyer, seller and employer. As he observed at the time: 'This is a very heavy department, almost as interesting as the Admiralty, with the enormous advantage one has neither got to fight Admirals nor Huns!' The ministry's template for industrial change management, reform and rationalisation remains one to which experts still return, over 100 years later. Despite fervent Conservative hostility to his appointment, Churchill delivered, and the portfolio brought him formally what he had been trying to achieve informally at the Admiralty: coordination with every ministry involved in the pursuit of war and cooperation with Allied nations.

It also set a host of precedents which would prove vital to him in 1940, such as the centralisation of war-manufacturing and wholesale induction of women into previously men-only trades. By the war's end, in its brief life the ministry had overseen the production of 3,000 tanks, 75 million Mills bombs, 4 million rifles, a quarter of a million machine guns, 52,000 aeroplanes, 25,000 artillery pieces and over 170 million artillery shells.

At this time Winston met Siegfried Sassoon, then a recent recipient of a Military Cross won on the Somme. The war poet recalled Churchill 'gave me an emphatic vindication of militarism as an instrument of policy and stimulator of glorious individual achievements'. At the conclusion, Sassoon was left musing on whether Churchill had been entirely serious when he observed: 'War is the normal occupation of man.' 'It had been unmistakable that for him war was the finest activity on earth. This assertion does not put Churchill in the category of warmonger, but one senses the relish with which Winston attacked any task which embraced military activity. It also implied a deeper understanding of the nature of war than was possessed by any of his contemporaries.

Winston naturally made use of every opportunity to explore the front, Douglas Haig arranging for the Château de Verchocq, near his own headquarters at Montreuil, to be placed at Churchill's disposal. He was staying with his old 9th Division when the last German offensive of 21 March 1918 began. 'The flame of the bombardment lit like flickering firelight in my tiny cabin,' he wrote, escaping in the nick of time. He conveyed the seriousness of the situation to London, helping to trigger reinforcements flowing into France. On 10 August he wrote to Clemmie of his satisfaction over the victory at Amiens, just fought. This was, then and now, generally regarded as the turning point of the war, when the British Army came of age. Churchill by then would have understood that operational success involved the coordination of aircraft, artillery, armour and infantry, and was pleased to have, through his Admiralty and Munitions portfolios, which gave him opportunities to further the development of armoured vehicles, aircraft and other pet devices of war, played his part in it. As he mused: It is our victory, won... largely through the invincible tank.’

Yet the war still had three months to run. On 28 October, Churchill, as Minister of Munitions, with brother Jack attended a victory parade in the newly liberated French city of Lille. A photographer captured them reviewing the march-past of the 47th (London) Division in the Grand Place. In the foreground is the division's chief of staff, to whom he had just been introduced, one Lieutenant Colonel Bernard Montgomery, each obviously unaware of the crucial role he would play in the other's life.

When the end came, on 11 November, it was brutally abrupt. The overall feeling was, as Charles Carrington, a literary-minded officer of the Royal Warwicks, observed: In 1918 we had not been sure even of eventual victory till the late summer, and had seen no hope of a quick ending to the war until three or four weeks before it happened. Victory was sudden and complete and the general sensation was of awaking from a nightmare.' Winston dined at No. 10 with Lloyd George, who proposed to execute the Kaiser. Churchill demurred and, aware that the menace of Bolshevism was threatening to subsume Germany, suggested loading a dozen great ships with provisions and expediting them to Hamburg. Perhaps his more humane approach might have removed one cause of the Nazis' later rise to power.

In summer 2026, Peter and I will be running a Churchill tour. You’ll get to spend several days following in the footsteps of Winston Churchill; from his hurried birth, through the ups and downs of his career, with a window into his private life. If you would like to stay up to date on announcements and find out when we start taking bookings, click on the photo below.

Winston Churchill, by Peter Caddick-Adams is available in both hardback and paperback now.