David Starkey - The Churchills episode 2

In September, 1932, a distinguished

British historian is spending a few days
in the city.

He's Winston Churchill, MP, one-time

cabinet minister but now just a

backbencher,
so this is not an official trip,

but nor was Winston simply a tourist.

He was here to carry out field research
for the book that he was writing:

his biography of his great ancestor
John Churchill, Duke of

Marlborough, whose most important victory

over the French had taken place at

Blenheim, some 40 miles from the city.

What happened next is one of the great
what-ifs of history.

[German music]

In 1932, Germany was in turmoil

destabilized by the Great Depression.

There were four million unemployed, and a

new political party, the National
Socialist Workers Party

was making rapid electoral strides.

[German music continues]

Its leader, or Führer, as he'd like to
be known, Adolf Hitler

was clearly the coming man of German
politics.

At his hotel, Winston was introduced to

one of Hitler's financial backers:

A German-American art dealer with the

memorable name of 'Putzi' Hanfstaengl.

Putzi turned out to be good company.
[playing piano]

"He was a great entertainer,

and at that time a favorite of the

Führer. He said that Herr Hitler came

every day to the hotel at 5 o'clock and

will be very glad indeed to see me.

"I had no national prejudices against

Hitler at this time – he had a perfect

right to be a patriotic German, if he
chose."

And so Putzi arranged a meeting

between Churchill and Hitler, but Hitler

failed to turn up. Apparently he didn't

think it was worth the effort.

"What part does Churchill play?"
he asked Putzi.

"After all, he's in opposition
and nobody pays

any attention to what he says."

Hitler was right –
to most people in 1932, Winston was

a political has-been. But as the decade

wore on, the British would start to listen

to Winston once again.
Part of the reason

was the biography that he was

researching here in Munich.
So this is

the story of how a book
about John Churchill,

the man who led Britain in a

world war at the beginning of the 18th

century, helped his descendant,
Winston Churchill

become the man who led Britain

in her 20th century struggle against

Hitler and the Nazis.

[Music]

Chartwell, Kent

Though Winston kept a home in London,

this is where he spent most of his time

during the ten crucial years before

World War Two, when Winston was out of

power and out of favor.

We call the years
after Churchill's loss of office in 1929

the Wilderness Years. They're not: they're

the most fertile of his entire career

being out of office, doing history, rather

than messing around with- with everyday

details of policy and civil servants and

political negotiations, it transforms him.

It turns him from the mere politician

into a statesman, and a prophet.

And it seems to me,
that the Marlborough book is

the central instrument of this
transformation.

This is Churchill's bedroom.

It's one of the smallest, and most

plainly furnished rooms in the house

with his bed here a very undistinguished

1920s bedstead.

But, despite the plainness of the room

this was the heart of that extraordinary

industrial word factory that was

Chartwell, presided over by the great

wordsmith himself: Churchill.

Often, here in this bed, dictating.

And around him of course are

the emblems, the things that matter

really in his life, the head, his father

Lord Randolph, and his mother,
Jennie Jerome

the New York heiress.

Then at the foot, visible directly

to Churchill sitting there, is this

splendid engraving of his great ancestor,

and the subject of his best biography,

John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough.

But, despite the simplicity of this room

Churchill was, or at least lived like-
he wasn't actually-

but he lived like a rich man.

Few people in the 1930s have an ensuite

bathroom, but Churchill did, famously,

dictated to mildly shocked secretaries

whilst he wallowed here.

All through the 1930s, Winston dictated

his biography of Marlborough, published in

four volumes between 1933 and 1938, and

serialized to a wide readership in the

Sunday Times.

In the first volume, Winston
told the story of how his ancestor, John

Churchill, had betrayed his
king and patron,

James II, and helped to place the

Dutch leader, William of Orange on the

throne of England.

It was an act which set Britain on a

new path towards parliamentary

government and eventually democracy.

But it also committed her to a 20-year

ideological struggle with the greatest

military power of the day:
Louis XIV's France

For 30 years Louis XIV had waged

continual war against his neighbors,

forever seeking to push outward the

frontiers of France. But in researching

Volume One, Winston has seen firsthand

the rise of a new dictator to
menace Europe.

The first thing that Winston does

when he's in Germany on that research

trip, is to look at those boys marching.

To look at them in their uniforms, to

look at that peculiar light in their eyes.

he realizes just like Louis XIV's

France, Hitler

is creating a nation,
every aspect of which

is mobilized for war.

"All these bands of sturdy Teutonic
youths, marching

through the streets and roads of Germany,

with the light of desire in their eyes,

are not looking for status. They are

looking for weapons.

But Churchill was out of step with both

Parliament and public opinion. At first

his Marlborough biography did not help

his political reputation.
I think Marlborough

helps to keep Churchill in the wilderness

to begin with. There's no doubt about this

It reinforces the sense of a

man out of his time.

[Music]

Who cares about funny old fashioned Mr.

Churchill, and his boring analyses of

Marlborough's campaigns? And it's not only

that he's seen as a warmonger.

This is the Menin Gate, at Ypres.

[Music]

A memorial to the tens and tens of

thousands of British and Commonwealth

troops who were killed in this sector of

the Western Front in World War One, but

whose bodies were never found.
Even today

a century after the first world war, it's

difficult to read these endless columns

of names. Tens and tens of thousands of

the dead, and not to choke.

In 1933, the Great
War was only a decade and a half away,

the memories was still fresh and the

grief still raw, and 'never, never again,'

was the cry. So in 1930s Britain,

pacifism was pretty much

universal. Everybody, from the royal

family, to the wildest fringes of the

left, was convinced we must never fight

another European war, we must disarm,

there must be peace. Peace, in spite of

every provocation, peace at almost any

price.
There was a single major exception:

Winston, alone amongst the leading

politicians, was reading,
writing, thinking,

predicting, war.
As England's leading

soldier, John Churchill had helped to put

William of Orange on the throne of

England. But while William wanted English

troops for his war against Louis XIV,

he was determined to keep the high

command in exclusively Dutch hands.

William's war aim was to stop Louis from

swallowing up the territories that lay

between Holland and France, mostly the

possessions of the
tottering Spanish Empire.

But William was a better politician and

diplomat than he was a general. Under his

command, the war dragged out year after

year in an inconclusive series of sieges.

The one man who could have helped him,

John Churchill, was kept from the field.

The war ended in 1697 with the peace

treaty of Ryswick.
In the treaty Louis

recognized William as King of England,

and promised not to interfere with the

Protestant succession. To the English

Parliament and public opinion, weary of

the war and the heavy taxation needed to

pay for it,
these promises were good enough.

The mood turned resolutely

pacifist. The army was disbanded and

England turned her back on Europe.

"Groaning under taxation, impatient of

every restraint, the Commons plunged into

a career of economy and disarmament,

which was speedily followed by the

greatest of the wars that England had

ever waged, and the heaviest expenditure

she had ever borne."
You're not quite sure

whether Churchill is writing about the

past the present or the future.

When he's talking about the reaction in

England, the Treaty of Ryswick, he

talks about pacifism, he talks about a

detachment from Europe, he talks about

war weariness, and of course this is

exactly what is happening in the 1930s.

But he's writing this about 1697

"This phase has often recurred in our

history. England was indeed, though she

could not know it, in an interval between

two deadly wars."
It's Churchill's genius that

he sees these big patterns. Because the

point that he's making is, when you

disarm, for very good matters, to stop

war, you make war a certainty.

In the wars against Louis XIV, the Treaty

of Ryswick proved to be not a peace,

for merely a truce.
The Treaty of

Versailles, which had ended the slaughter

of World War One, Winston was warning

could easily turn out the same way.

For Germany was now ruled
by Hitler, and was

arming fast.

On the 20th of February, 1702, King

William went out riding in Windsor Park.

His horse, Sorrel, stumbled

on a molehill. The king

was thrown, and he broke his collarbone.

He never recovered.

[Music]

He was succeeded by his sister-in-law

Anne, the daughter of the
deposed James II,

the last monarch of the House of Stuart,

and the bosom friend of John's wife Sarah.

Nothing now stood between John and

the high command he craved, for a new war

with Louis XIV was brewing.

The casus belli was another royal

death, this one long expected.

The ruler of the Spanish Empire,
Charles II,

childless and afflicted with religious

mania, had been dying for as long as

anyone could remember.
Spain, like her king,

was enfeebled, but she still held vast

territories in the Americas, Italy, and

the Netherlands, who would inherit.
On the

1st of November 1700 Charles II of Spain

performed his first decisive act in years,

and died, having first left the

whole of the Spanish Empire to Louis'

grandson, Philip, Duke of Anjou.
For Louis to

accept the legacy guaranteed war but it

also promised to make France the world

power. Louis barely hesitated, and this

painting allegorizes his decision.

France, in the blue robe embroidered with

the fleur-de-lis,

presents her young Prince. Kneeling, Spain

proffers him the crown, and the church

benignly endorses the deed.

But there was nothing benign about

French domination of Europe. A grand

alliance was quickly formed to dispute

Charles II's will, in an epic

struggle known to history as the war of

the Spanish Succession.

On the 4th of May, 1702,
the Dutch Republic, the Holy Roman

Empire, and Anne, Queen of England,

simultaneously declared war upon Louis XIV

Louis scoffed, "I must be getting old,

if women now make war upon me."
Indeed,

the Sun King was now stronger than ever.

"In every element of strategy by sea or

land, as well as in the extent of

territory and population,

Louis was twice as strong at the

beginning of the war of the Spanish

Succession, as he had been at the peace

of Ryswick. The scale of the new war

was turned by the genius of one man.

"One single will outweighed
all these fearful

inequalities, and built a structure of

surpassing success, under the leadership

of England.
Marlborough was now, at Queen

Anne's insistence, commander-in-chief of

the Allied forces.

But, more than half his troops were Dutch

and that meant Dutch politicians had a

virtual veto of how the war would be

conducted.

Early 18th century war, as it
was understood by both the French and

the Dutch, was a relatively civilized

affair, fought according to strict rules.

Armies and troops were expensive, and far

too valuable to be risked on the outcome

of a single big battle. Instead, war

advanced inch by inch, in a series of

set-piece sieges, and maneuvers, and

counter-maneuvers. This was war, as

Winston put it rather nicely, as military

Chess.
But Marlborough also realized that

this kind of war with its snail-like

pace, its absence of decisive outcomes

would place an intolerable strain on the

grand alliance, and deliver the eventual

victory to Louis.

The chessboard must be thrown over. A war

made bigger, faster, bloodier.

In the 1930s,
warfare was being made bloodier, and more

destructive, by the rise of airpower.

Winston Churchill warned Parliament that

Britain was vulnerable as never before.

"This cursed hellish development of war

from the air has revolutionized our

position. Germany is arming fast and no

one is going to stop her. Not to have an

adequate Air Force in the present state

of the world, is to compromise the

foundations of national freedom and

independence." But Stanley Baldwin's

national government was still pursuing

the politically popular policy of peace

through disarmament.
"There are a million

good reasons why you should support the

national government. I will never stand

for a policy of great armaments, and I

give you my word, and I think you can

trust me by now."

Nevertheless, in 1934 Winston extracted

from Baldwin a pledge in the House of

Commons that the RAF would keep pace

with Hitler's Luftwaffe. It was the first

small victory in the campaign Winston

waged over the next five years, to force

the government to modernize the RAF.

A campaign which would
have momentus consequences

for Britain, and for Churchill.

"This is the latest type of single-seater
fighter, and as you can see a monoplane.

"That she's going to be a great asset
to the RAF is pretty obvious."

All the while, from the word
factory at Chartwell, came more volumes in

the ever-expanding biography of the Duke

of Marlborough. Suddenly, you can see the

crossover. It's roughly between the

publication of volumes 2 & 3, in which

Churchill's warnings start to be heeded.

As the storm gathers and as the

thunderclaps get closer and closer,

people as it were, I think, start reading
Marlborough differently.

It becomes clear that he is

the only serious politician of the front

rank who's thought about war, who's

contemplated what has to be done in war.

In 1704, the Allies had been

fighting Louis XIV for two years.

But it was a war of sieges, there had not

been a single decisive battle.

And political support for the war, and for

Marlborough, was waning in England.
Now came

a crisis that threatened the
whole alliance.

Louis bribed the ruler of Bavaria, the

elector Max Emanuel, to switch sides and

ally with France. That gave Louis control

of the Danube valley.

War is about geography:
the geography of rivers, plains

and hills. Especially perhaps of rivers

like the Danube here.

Rivers are barriers to armies which is

why the capturing and holding of bridges

is so important in war. But rivers are

also lines of communication. Armies can

march along the valley. Guns, munitions

and supplies, can be booted down the

river itself.
The Danube flows from west

to east. With the defection of Bavaria

the river and its valley became an arrow

pointing at Vienna, the heart of the

Habsburg Empire.

If Vienna fell, the grand alliance would

collapse, and the war would be lost.
But this

crisis produced from Marlborough,
a campaign

which Winston describes as amongst the

finest examples of the art of war. And

from Winston an account which was itself

a demonstration to readers of his own

grasp of military strategy.

As the 1704 campaign began, Louis had

three main armies confronting the Allies

in three different theaters. The first, on

the river Meuse, faced
Marlborough and the Dutch.

A Franco-Bavarian force, under Max

Emanuel, was encamped on the Danube,

opposite an imperial army.
Whilst the Third

Army stood on the Upper Rhine, under the

senior French commander,
maréchal [marshall] Tallard

but, a transfer of troops from the

Rhine to the Danube would make Max Emanuel

strong enough to overwhelm the

Imperial Army standing between him and

Vienna. That at least was Louis' plan.

But, 250 miles away to the northward,

something happened which immediately

attracted, and thence forward dominated

the attention of all the French commanders

A scarlet caterpillar, upon which all

eyes were at once fixed began to crawl

steadfastly day by day across the map of

Europe,
dragging the whole war along with it.

Marlborough divided the army in Flanders,

leaving the Dutch behind and marching

the British contingent up the Rhine. You

have what, til that point, had been a

war of siege and counter-siege,
fought over

a few tens of square miles of Belgium.

Suddenly an army breaks out, and it

marches 50, miles 100 miles, 150 200 300

400 500 miles... it's absolutely

extraordinary!

The genius of Marlborough's move was that

even as he marched up the Rhine, he still

kept the French pinned down in Flanders.

This was because he could sail back down

the Rhine eight times faster than any

army could march up it. By keeping a

flotilla of river boats always with him,

he forced the French to hold their

troops close to Flanders in case he

suddenly doubled back.

Marlborough always possessed
the power to return at

superior speed to Flanders. It was this

curious feature of the military problem

which was so baffling to the French. They

could not be sure that the whole march

was not a feint to lure them from

Flanders.

Where would Marlborough strike? Louis

dared not move troops from France until

Marlborough's intentions were clear.
One of the

few people in the know was Marlborough's

wife, Sarah, to whom he wrote almost daily

"What you propose as to coming over I

should be extremely pleased with, but you

will see by my last letter that what you

desire is impossible, for I am going up

into Germany, where it would be

impossible for you to follow me. But love

me as you do now, and no
hurt can come to me."

The 7th of June, the army all now

wearing the change of boots, which

Marlborough had
prepared for them in advance,

suddenly turn East. At last it was clear

to the French that Marlborough's
destination

was the Danube. But by then it was too

late. He had stolen a march on all three

French armies.

The combined allied army
now outnumbered Max Emanuel's

and quickly seized the town of
Donauwörth

with its vital bridge over the Danube.

Marlborough was master of Bavaria.

But, would Max Emanuel
recognize reality and

come over to the Allies? Secret

negotiations were opened,

but the elector knew that French

reinforcements were on the way, and he

played for time.

To try to force his hand, Marlborough

ordered his troops to devastate the

countryside, burning the neat towns and

villages of Bavaria. Years later,

Marlborough bought a
set of tapestries called

the art of war. Two of them, on either

side of me here, show with surprising

frankness, the kind of atrocities which

his army, on his orders, was inflicting in

Bavaria. It was an act, which as Winston

put it, is "gloomy for his record."

But, it worked as it induced the Elector

Max Emanuel to disperse most of his own

troops to protect his own valuable

estates, scattered the length and breadth

of Bavaria. And this in turn prevented

the intended concentration of the Franco-

-Bavarian forces which had
been Marlborough's

objective all along.

"Deeper and deeper into Germany,
until the enemy can hardly

work or move or fight."

But Marlborough was riddled
with doubt. He wrote to Sarah:

"We sent this morning
3,000 horse to his chief city of

Munich, with orders to burn and destroy

all the country about it.

"This is so contrary to my nature that

nothing but absolute necessity could

have obliged me to consent to it."

But Winston who was
to experience just the

same sort of moral dilemmas, impatiently

brushes Marlborough's excuses and

justifications aside. "Men of power,"

Winston wrote, "must be judged not by what

they feel, but by what they do.

"To excuse
miseries inflicted by the will is a

cheap solve to a wounded conscience."

Winston's account of Marlborough's

Bavarian campaign was published in

October 1934, in Volume 2 of his

biography of his ancestor. In one sense

of course, the book is a kind of

testimonial.
And Churchill uses it as that,

and we make sure absolutely everybody

gets presentation copies when

you look at this book, you look at the

handsome... it's very lavish, erm, it's a

book that is made to be given, and he

gave it.
Among those who received a copy

was the leader of the government,
Stanley Baldwin.

"I am once again beholden to your

generosity, and have turned out two or

three small volumes to make way for the

Marlborough- there is much in it I

particularly enjoyed. Those pages

contrasting the responsibilities of the

commander in chief through the ages with

his function today, are illuminating as a

searchlight."

Baldwin like many others was growing to

value Churchill's military experience. In

1935, responding to the suggestion that

Winston be brought back into the cabinet,

he wrote, prophetically,
"I feel we should

not give him a post at this stage.

"Anything he undertakes he puts his heart

and soul into. If there is going to be a

war, and no one can say there is not, we

must keep him fresh to be our war

Prime Minister."

The climax of volume 2 is the battle

that took place here, August the 13th,

1704. By the beginning of the month, it

looked as if Marlborough's great march to

the Danube had achieved little.

Max Emanuel had remained
loyal to Louis XIV,

and now reinforcements under

maréchal Tallard had arrived. The Franco-

-Bavarian army of sixty thousand now

outnumbered the Allies, with 56,000.

In England Marlborough's
political opponents

were furious that the Queen's troops

have been taken to new and remote

theatres of war without parliamentary

Authority.
The Imperial commander, Prince

Eugene of Savoy, wrote to the Emperor

about the English general:
"To draw a true

picture of Marlborough, here is a man of

high quality, courageous, extremely well

disposed, and with keen desire to achieve

something, all the more as he would be

ruined in England, should he return

empty-handed."

At dawn on the 13th of August, the French

and Bavarians were camped on the north

bank of the Danube, close to the village

of Blenheim. Maréchal Tallard was

convinced that Marlborough now had no

alternative but to abandon Bavaria,

retreating back along his supply lines.

However, as the mists of dawn rose, the

sleepy French saw Allied troops

deploying before them. But there was no

alarm in the French command. They

believed that this must be a screen to

cover Marlborough's inevitable retreat.

It never entered into their minds that

they might be attacked themselves. In

this warfare of marches and counter-

-marches, battles were so rare that if

reasonable precautions were taken they

might almost be ruled out. That the

armies before which they were

grimacing in the Orthodox fashion, would

suddenly fall upon them and try to

kill them all or perish in the attempt,

seemed as unlikely as that a chess

player should knock over the board and

seize his opponent by the throat.

But Marlborough had great
confidence in his

troops, especially his infantry,
for he had

trained them himself in new, more

aggressive tactics.

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light.

Here, I'm standing
in the footsteps of giants.

From this ridge, and a
church tower down there,

Eugene and Marlborough surveyed the lie of

the land, and decided on their

dispositions of the eve of the Battle of

Blenheim. And here, two hundred and thirty

years later, Winston came to research the

site of his ancestor's great victory. He

was deeply moved as he repeopled the

scene with ghostly, but glittering armies

and decided that he could interpret it

for the first time.

[Music]

"The wide plain, bathed in the morning

sunlight, was covered with hostile

squadrons and battalions, steadily

marching on. But behind this magnificent

terrain, were the shapes of great causes,

and the destinies of many powerful

nations. All these had brought their

cases before the dread tribunal now set

up in this Danube plane."

This ridge lies to the north, and the

Danube itself over there to the south.

The line of battle stretched across the

whole of the plain, with the French to the

west, and the Allies to the east, and the

two armies separated by the little

tributary of the Danube called the

river Nebel.
The French position was

anchored in two fortified villages:

Lutzingen, over there in the foothills of

the ridge and right at the other end of

the line four miles away,

Blenheim itself, over there on the banks

of the Danube.
By noon,

Marlborough completed his deployment.
At half-past twelve,

he ordered the attack to begin.

On either flank, his troops

advanced on the French. Around Lutzingen

on the French left, and on the village of

Blenheim, on their right.

The French garrison the village with

crack troops, and they'd fortified it

with palisades. Now, to attack such a

position across open ground like this,

was suicidal. And Churchill describes how

the English attacked twice across this

killing field, and how twice

they were repulsed with heavy loss of

life amongst both men and officers.

But, the French commander, under this

furious assault, panicked.
And he summoned in

more and more reserves from the center

into the village, until finally 12,000

French troops were crammed in- packed too

close together to engage the enemy, but

unable to escape because
they were hemmed in

between the English and the Danube.

Marlborough had achieved his objective.

The French
reinforcements of their right had weakened

their center and stripped the cavalry of

most of its infantry support. Allied

cavalry meanwhile was slowly crossing

the Nebel. The French horse tried to push

them back, but were beaten off by

concentrated fire from Marlborough's
infantry.

"Upon the two-mile front from Blenheim to

Unterglau Marlborough had now nearly 80

squadrons against 50 or 60, and 23

infantry battalions against only 9 French.

"There is a grand simplicity in

two or three to one at the decisive

point. To procure it, there lies the

secret."
Marlborough now walked his cavalry

forward.
Again the French charge, and again

they were beaten off.

At about half-past five, Marlborough drew

his sword and ordered the trumpets to

sound the charge.

Now for the first time, the whole body of

the Allied cavalry broke into a trot, and

sword in hand, rode forward on all who

barred their path.

The exhausted and
outnumbered French squadrons scattered

and fled, but the Danube
barred their escape.

Thousands tried to swim their mounts

across the river, and thousands drowned.

The French infantry in Blenheim were now

completely surrounded, and had no choice

but to surrender, as did the French

commander himself, maréchal Tallard.

Marlborough, in full pursuit
of the shattered

French army, scribbled a note to Sarah on

the back of a tavern bill.
"I have not

time to say more, but to beg you will

give my duty to the Queen, and let her

know her army has had a glorious victory.

"Monsieur Tallard and two
other generals are

in my coach, and I am following the rest.

For the first time in a
generation of war, an

entire French field army had been

destroyed. Of more than

a hundred thousand troops
that Louis sent into

Bavaria, only 16,000 returned to France.

Blenheim, Winston wrote had changed the

political axis of the world.

Hitherto, it had seemed that France was

destined to dominate Europe, with Italy,

Spain, the Empire, Holland,
and England, all

becoming mere satellites, dutifully

orbiting around the Sun King.
But Marlborough

had changed that, and one of the first to

realize the fact was Louis XIV himself. As

soon as he understood what had happened

on the banks of the Danube, his sole

objective became to extricate himself

from the war, with the frontiers of

France intact. The relentless onward

expansion of his kingdom had been

stopped. And
the man who'd halted it was Marlborough.

Marlborough's reward was lavish.
Queen Anne

gave him the Royal manor of Woodstock.

Parliament voted in a quarter of a

million pounds to build a monument to

his victory: Blenheim Palace.

Everywhere you look there are
images of Marlborough's

great enemy Louis XIV, King of France.

There are portraits and portrait busts

like this, and in the woodwork there are

carved the emblems of France, the

fleur-de-lis, and the sunflower, of the

Sun King.
It's almost as though Marlborough

hadn't just captured the flags of France,

he'd also seized and made his own the

very emblems of the French monarchy.

But it would take eight more campaigns

and two more volumes to finally end the

World War against France.

Winston published the last one in

October 1938, just as Britain was making

its final desperate attempt to appease

Hitler, and avoid a world war with

Germany.

"Down the bright straight road towards
a new understanding in Europe-

"And so at Hitler's Munich headquarters,
the agreement that has made the

biggest headlines since the armistice.

Let no man criticize the bargain that

the statesmen of Britain and France have

struck. There will be peace! It's the

greatest diplomatic triumph
of modern times.

In reality the Munich Agreement was,

as Churchill said in the House of

Commons, a total and unmitigated defeat.

Within months it was clear that the

attempt to buy off Hitler by territorial

concessions at the expense of

Czechoslovakia had failed, and that

nothing would stop the Nazis, except

force.

The pressure to bring Winston back into

government was now all but irresistible.

And when war finally came a year later

he was immediately appointed to the War

Cabinet. Eight months after that Winston

Churchill, historian of war, was Britain's

wartime Prime Minister.

By then, the British
Army was once more preparing to

fight in Flanders, on ground where their

countrymen had been shedding their blood

for centuries.
This almost featureless

waterlogged, blood-soaked land is where

Marlborough fought all
his battles and sieges

with one decisive exception in a decade

of warfare. It's also the same ground

over which Edward III, Henry V,

and Henry VIII, had fought

before him. And where, after him, the Duke

of Wellington, and the Tommies of the

First World War would wage their grim

campaigns. So it's easy to see why almost

all of Winston's contemporaries were

filled with a sense of disgust at the

centuries and countless lives of

apparent futility and waste.
But Winston

almost alone was clear-headed enough to

see the underlying intellectual issue:

that, though times change, geography and

the strategic imperatives that it

creates, do not.

And he would continue to draw on the

example of Marlborough,
as he strove to prevent

the Second World War

degenerating into a slaughter
like the First.