Churchill and His Generals (review)

Winston Churchill's six-volume history-cum-memoir of the Second World War is the most widely read account of that conflict, but it is a flawed account. Raymond Callahan is one of a growing number of historians who have set out to correct the Churchillian version of history. Callahan's efforts appear to have been made independently of the corrections laid out in the recent book by David Reynolds, In Command of History (New York: Random House, 2005), but in any case Callahan's findings are complementary to those of Reynolds. Churchill's volumes gave much prominence to his relations with military commanders and are a useful though incomplete source about British civil-military relations during the war. More than a decade-and-a-half ago, the military side of that relationship was helpfully sketched in John Keegan's 1991 collection of essays, Churchill's Generals (New York: Grove Press, 1991). But that book left out a crucial perspective: namely, that of Churchill himself. This lacuna is filled in by Callahan, a reflective and judicious senior historian who is interested equally in Churchill and his generals and who knows enough about the war to view with humane detachment the significance of their relationships for the men fighting under their orders. The result is a heavyweight contribution to the history of the war as a whole, together with some lively engagement in its accompanying controversies.

For Churchill's critics and enemies (the worst of whom, it must be remembered, were in his own party), his most dangerous characteristic was held to be his "lack of judgment." Callahan acknowledges that Churchill's judgment could indeed go remarkably wrong at times, for example in his hankering to launch an amphibious operation that would recover Singapore. Like other strategic bees in Churchill's bonnet, this proposal wasted the time of the British chiefs of staff. But Churchill sometimes was more farsighted and astute than they were, and in any event Callahan, like any good historian, never tires of demonstrating that Churchill was operating in a complicated context that would have driven less powerful minds to distraction. Many non-military considerations had to be taken into account. Simplified and partisan military histories and biographies tend to miss these things. As the prime minister of a freely functioning parliamentary democracy, Churchill had to consider public opinion and to watch his back. Callahan deftly shows how these concerns dominated Churchill's mind through the disasters of 1942 and how the prime minister's range of choices for field command of the Normandy invasion was narrowed down to General Bernard Montgomery because of the latter's unique (and carefully cultivated) popularity with the British public.

What mattered above all was that Britain was fighting the war in a coalition. The United States and the Soviet Union headed Churchill's list for consideration, but he also had to deal with the Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and South Africans, as well as the Free French and the Poles, each with their own independent divisions and with well-developed capacities for touchiness. Most of these allies were represented in the coalition of armies painfully fighting their way up Italy from September 1943 under the overall command of Churchill's favorite general, Harold Rupert Leofric George Alexander, Callahan argues that although "Alex" was none too bright, his qualities of politeness, calm, and discretion may have been just what the human and political contexts required—just as similar non-military qualities were what Dwight Eisenhower brought to the overall command up north. Alex had to cope with Mark Clark, Eisenhower with Montgomery. Churchill's admiration of Alexander and trust in him may not, after all, have been misplaced.

Part of the context of Churchill's decision-making, which Callahan illuminates better than anyone has done before, was the British army's endemic snobbery and dismissiveness regarding the Indian army and the extent to which the two armies' ignorance about one another contributed to the unsuitability of some appointments and the mishandling of some situations in the...