Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On Ministers At War 2

CSPAN2 Book Discussion On Ministers At War May 10, 2015

Jonathan schneer is a professor of modern british history at Georgia Tech School of History Technology and society where he has taught modern european and british history since 1989. Hes the author of several major works including the thames and wind river london 1900 the imperial megalopolis, metropolis and the Balfour Declaration origins of the arabisraeli conflict. The last of which won the 2010 National Jewish book award. Dr. Schneers writings can be seen in journals and periodicals. His extensive editorial experience includes work as a board member of the 20th century british history. Dr. Schneers book ministers at war spotlights minister churchvilles divisive cabinet cabinet. The work illustrates how churchills own team of rivals made up of tories and Labour Party Members proved instrumental in combating nazi germanys dance to the weird british isles. Please join me in welcoming jonathan schneer. [applause] good evening. And thank you everybody for coming on a spring night and there are other things you could be doing. I want to thank first jon golden who is the director of the livingston lecture series and i want to thank sheffield hailed which escape me that generous introduction and i would like to thank kate whitman who expedited much of my arrangements to speak here tonight. Im very glad to be here. Thank you all three of you very much indeed. All right, so now we are going to begin. I will speak for about 45 minutes maybe a little less than that and then i will take questions. I have just written a book about Winston Churchills war cabinet. The war cap net was a subset of the larger body. The war cabinet dealt with only the most important issues raised by world war ii and originally its members had no departmental responsibilities to distract them. The larger cap net included war cabinet ministers and also ministers and secretaries of various compartments, ministers of supply town and country planning, ministries of mines and so on. I will be mentioning both the cabinet and the war cabinet in my talk to you tonight. Churchill formed his war cabinet in may 1940. It had five members including himself at the start. Over the course of the war he enlarged it to suit circumstances the cast of characters shifted over time but it never had more than eight members at once and here is a photo of the original eightman team. It is supposed to be. There we go. Now only two members remained constant. Churchill himself of course and also Clement Attlee who is a leader of the labour party. Most serbs are the war and they were the conservative the great trade unionist and Labour Party Member ernest bevan and then a nonparty man with conservative inclinations whose name was john anderson. Furthermore this man Herbert Morrison and member of the labour party served for nearly three years in the war cabinet. Moreover to quite extraordinary individuals flashed through like comets. When was the conservative lord beaverbrook and the second was the socialists, stafford crypts. Tonight i cant talk about all of them but i guess i do not discuss the roles of noble chamberlain for Kingsley Wood and other conservatives doesnt mean that they were unimportant however for their roles for the roles of others who served at one time or another in churchills war cabinet i have a suggestion. Please read my book. [laughter] so anyway led by Winston Churchill the men whose names i have mentioned and some whose names i havent mentioned successfully steered britain through the greatest crisis in our modern history and churchills war cabinet has been deservedly celebrated ever since since. But the story is more complicated than is often thought. The title of my book ministers at war has a double meaning. Churchills war cabinet ward against the nazis of course, but also its members sometimes ward against each other. This has been mentioned by historians but it has been generally downplayed and i try in the book to present a more nuanced, a more complex portrait of the war cabinet than is commonly offered. You could say that i shake the kaleidoscope to show familiar pieces in unfamiliar patterns and that is what i intend to try to do tonight in the time remaining to me. I take it as given that everybody here is familiar with and accepts the common assessment. Winston churchills work cap has saved britain and help to save the world from nazi horror. I agree. I would never minimize the greatness of Winston Churchill or his Wartime Coalition government. We all owe it an unpayable debt but, life is not blackandwhite. Life is not simple. Churchills war cabinet was not simply a smooth functioning machine. Its members, including the Prime Minister were highpowered ambitious hard men. They had great talent. They have great capacity for work but also they had great egos. They Work Together to save their country but it was not always smooth sailing. On more than one occasion conflict within the war cabinet threatened to cap size the ship altogether. Moreover, today we think of churchill as the indispensable man but its impossible for us to mention britain during the Second World War without churchill as Prime Minister. But believe me, it was not impossible then and i will be explaining that. I want to just pull out the water. In the book, i show how churchill assembled this highpowered team in may, 1940. It included men whose politics conflicted more starkly than do those of american liberal democrats and tea partier republicans of today. Socialists like attlee Beth Van Morrison Cripps believed in nationalizing the means of distribution and exchange. No american liberal democrat believes in that. Cripps moreover was not even that nationalization could be carried out or maintained peacefully. He thought it might require revolutionary violence. The socialists also believed that government should sponsor farreaching social welfare programs, more farreaching than those of american liberals today. On the other hand conservatives like chamberlain, halifax beaverbrook, believe firmly in free enterprise. They thought government should usually keep hands off the economy. They did not believe that it had a major role to play with regard to social welfare either and churchill himself was instinctively a man of the right right. Yet, he was determined during the war to keep his disparate Team Together and by and large he did it. In the book i show how that team fix the problems of the war. For a year pertinent for empire faced the nazis alone and during that period war cabinet ministers largely suppressed whatever ideological and personal tensions existed among them. But also i show in the book that once russia and then america entered into the fray the war cabinet ministers began to argue argue. The emergency beast. Britain seemed likely to win the war after all and now cabinet ministers could vent jealousies, admitees strained always present but previously always favored over. Ideological conflict grew ever more fierce and i show how churchill strove quite heroically but with decreasing effect to contain it all. In 1945 labour pulled out of his coalition government. As soon as germany surrendered and with the war against japan still raging, churchill called a general election. It proved to be one of the worst tempered of the 20th century. All the pentup frustrations of the previous five years finally burst forth. It was like the longdelayed eruption of a volcano and that by the way is a quick resume of my book. What i intend to do tonight is to give you just a further taste. Im going to try to show you how members of the war cabinet functioned for good or for ill before 1945. I will show you how one of the war cabinet ministers came to the conclusion that he could run the war and the war better than Winston Churchill could and i will show you how churchills off the threat posed by this man man. So the men of the war cabinet sat around a table every monday afternoon at 5 30 00, every wednesday and thursday at noon tempting to hammer out policy on the most pressing domestic foreign and imperial issues raised by the war. During periods of crisis, they met more than three times a week week, sometimes even three times a day. At first, the war cabinet met in the cabinet ram at 10 downing street. During the blitz and the b1 and b2 attacks they usually met in a suite of underground rooms in the basement of the new government offices at the corner of horse guards road and king charles street just across from saint james park. Today that site is a museum called the war cabinet rooms. I suspect some of the world have visited the place and for those who have and i strongly recommend it. Its a Wonderful Museum and its well worth the trip. Anyway the war cabinet sat and debated and argued in those two venues about matters of life and death. Secretaries took notes. Afterwards the notes were compiled and an accurate summary of the meeting was produced and circulated to the proper recipients. The original notes were supposed to be destroyed. One secretary however named john burgess kept his notes and today they may be found at the churchill archive Churchill College cambridge university. Burgess employed an idiosyncratic shorthand. His handwriting varied between legible and execrable. Moreover as the war progressed his notes grew ever more cryptic cryptic. Deciphering them is a great sure sure, believe me but on occasion they provide a better sense of how the war cabinet functioned than the official minutes to and tonight when i repeat war were cabinet discussions for you i am largely quoting from burgess notes. Now here is an example. I cant see it from here but i hope that you can see it where you are. Its from september 11, 1940. By the way this is an uncharacteristically legible example. [laughter] so september 11, 1940, some months after dunkirk when the british had managed to evacuate most of their army from the european mainland before the germans could kill or capture them but stating off what would have been an absolute disaster. However, britains ally france was about to surrender. Neither the soviet union nor the United States had entered the war yet. The British Empire would soon stand alone against hitler to have most of europe at his feet. It should stay up in the northeast. Alexander expected this in size of attacks have the matter in hand. This reveals the war cabinet at a moment of extreme peril absolute focused on saving their country and confident they can do it despite all odds. Yet there are obvious divisions among the groups with an ideological divide i will not talk about it more in this talk but instead first of all, about a fairly obvious to by the conservative ministers were all more or less will be some more aristocrats. As they come from next backgrounds cripps was the son of the lord but morrison was from a policeman and. The illegitimate son of a of a woman who has labored on the docks the only member of the cabinet to earn his living as a manual laborer. One can perceive the notes in the letters they wrote to one another in the consciousness to divide the group. Here is anthony eden after the war. Recalling Herbert Morrison he is recalling him and his work in the war cabinet he was the kind of man you promote to Lance Corporal one week but he will be back up again soon. Herbert morrison. With that quotation is an officer referring to his subordinates. So in that war a cabinet with something to prove it does not sound as if he tries to do just that to the lord chancellor mr. John simon. With the exclusive publicschool effects had a firstclass degree from the oxford union when the liberal split just as they make a speech how much i enjoyed reading your speech from yesterday. To give the date of the publication of the great poem at 1694 instead of 1649 even looking at them you could see what he was up against. Is easy to imagine the unspoken assumption and tension hesitation and resentment that must have been part of the atmosphere the war Cabinet Meetings. In fact, church had assembled his own team of rivals as the linking cabinet was deemed during the civil war. Maneuvering for a position. The minister of aircraft employed flattery to get what he wanted and sometimes it worked. And to pass a note to serve as first lord of the admiralty i will do all i can to help you. I believe you will do the job better than anyone else. Alexander became the chief supporter in the cabinet. Sometimes however the flattery failed. Can we make a platform for you where i can stand by your side . I am sure you can do so if you build it. He wrote to the minister. , the minister of labour. He seemed to be suggesting that he build a platform to rival Winston Churchill and he thought this photograph was dangerous and replied i have no intention of building any platforms during the war outside of the platform of the government itself i have seen letters where he would try to flatter morrison or where he tried to flatter crips but with churchill there was of flattery of the trial. [laughter] maybe one dozen such examples and i will give you one. I send this letter of gratitude and devotion to the leader of the nation, the savior of our people in this single place of resistance in the free world. Church hill enjoyed receiving these letters i think but the surprisingly he never trusted him. By the time the war had finished practically nobody trusted bill llord in 1945 it was cautioned the newly elected labor members to the house of commons. There are many people it is easy to talk i warn you that if you talk to him no good will come of it. Be aware of flattery. You may object to any group of strong individuals will jockey for position and that is all he was doing. I agree. Still i was struck by the intensity of discord with a war cabinet celebrated 40 opposite. He described despised Clement Attlee. Once he quit trying to flatter him he rifled so bitterly that they threatened to sue him. He dismissed him and once called him the religious lord halifax. We are missing a wonderful picture of lord halifax that beaverbrook would call a sort of jesus is not long boots. [laughter] and he says the long boots are needed because he has to wade through the muddy is not responsible for the mud he could never make anything so dirty as mud in the last thing you would think is to throw with at the others. This kind of talk was not limited to llord beaverton. Everybody looked at the deputy leader of the labor party birth the greenwood. Martha had a drinking problem. He cannot even sign his name at 2 00 in the afternoon. And i think if you look at this photograph bill looks like he had a drink or to. Anthony eden, a conservative , sat between the two men and founded a rather uncomfortable because whenever morrison spoke he provided the accompaniment of torrance. Someone once said of morrison that he was his own worst enemy. Not while im alive he aint he quipped. [laughter] so how did churchill attempt to keep his team in good temper . He to be solicitous. I was sorry to see he looked very tired the other night i hope you will not hesitate to take a welder and holidays he wrote this to one minister recently recovered from the flu. He could be encouraging. Your speech was magnificent to give strength and resources. When members of the team disagreed with each other you woodwork to conciliate them in one meeting even declared he would not attend a celebration of the and cinnamon dash anniversary of the bolshevik revolution because it is promoted under communist influence but why should that be comparable to the of birthday . You mean the is our death day food distrusted and disliked the Crips Churchill intervened why not have the meeting in november no specific russian day to celebrate the russian resistance and with this compromise the meeting concluded. When churchill thought he was barking up the wrong tree he could throw humor to change his mind. In 1940 the minister of food recommended bridges have a more balanced diet and churchill found time in the midst of the greatest emergency to write to the lord. Almost all the food facts i have ever known have died young after senile the k. [laughter] the way to lose the war is to force the British Public into a diet of milk oatmeal and potatoes washdown with someone and jews. [laughter] like im jus. Churchill would not back down. In june 1942 the nazis slaughtered 1,300 innocent czechoslovakian civilians and burned to the ground to villages in which they had lived. As an appraisal the war cabinet met to advocate the next nine lignite and to agree with him and his secretary of state for india to be more ferocious advocated bombing highly populated towns not just the near villages. But then Clement Attlee introduced a moral consideration it would be interesting to enter into the frivolous with the germans. Morrison back to much. Of the right your force purposely bombed german civilians the cycle would ince do and public will say why did you draw this down on to us . The secretary of state, a liberal, sinclair introduced a practical consideration to bomb civilians would represent a divergent of effort from the military objective. And anders said and agreed paul mack it cost us something and then nothing nothing by which he meant it it bombed defenseless towns or villages she would lose the opportunity to bomb important military objectives while germany would lose its own civilian lives. Now anthony eden in swung decisively against the proposed action waste of the moonlit night. Bigger diversion that i have thought. . Five opposed three in favor in churchill argued my instinct is to go the of their way but i submit unwillingly to the view of the cabinet against. A solicitous supported humorous democratic Prime Minister kept his fractious war cabinet on that even keel and it sounds to a good to be true and often it was. First of all war cabinet ministers deemed churchill to be unrealistic and rump romantic. It drives me to despair when he works himself up in a passion of the motion to m

© 2025 Vimarsana