- Churchill, Winston S.
The World Crisis.
London: Penguin, [1923–1931, 2005] 2007.
ISBN 978-0-14-144205-1.
-
Churchill's history of the Great War (what we now
call World War I) was published in five volumes
between 1923 and 1931.
The present volume is an
abridgement of the first four volumes, which appeared
simultaneously with the fifth volume of the complete work.
This abridged edition was prepared by Churchill himself; it
is not a cut and paste job by an editor. Volume Four
and this abridgement end with the collapse of Germany
and the armistice—the aftermath of the war and the
peace negotiations covered in Volume Five of the full history
are not included here.
When this work began to appear in
1923, the smart set in London quipped, “Winston's
written a book about himself and called it The
World Crisis”. There's a lot of truth in that:
this is something somewhere between a history and memoir of
a politician in wartime. Description of the disastrous
attempts to break the stalemate of trench warfare in 1915
barely occupies a chapter, while the Dardanelles Campaign,
of which Churchill was seen as the most vehement advocate,
and for which he was blamed after its tragic failure,
makes up almost a quarter of the 850 page book.
If you're looking for a dispassionate history of World War I, this is
not the book to read: it was written too close to the events of the
war, before the dire consequences of the peace came to pass, and by
a figure motivated as much to defend his own actions as to provide a
historical narrative. That said, it does provide an insight into
how Churchill's experiences in the war forged the character which
would cause Britain to turn to him when war came again.
It also goes a long way to explaining precisely why Churchill's
warnings were ignored in the 1930s. This book is, in large part, a
recital of disaster after disaster in which Churchill played a part,
coupled with an explanation of why, in each successive case, it wasn't
his fault. Whether or not you accept his excuses and justifications
for his actions, it's pretty easy to understand how politicians and
the public in the interwar period could look upon Churchill as
somebody who, when given authority, produced calamity. It was not just
that others were blind to the threat, but rather than Churchill's
record made him a seriously flawed messenger on an occasion where his
message was absolutely correct.
At this epoch, Churchill was already an excellent writer and
delivers some soaring prose on occasions, but he has not
yet become the past master of the English language on
display in The Second World War
(which won the Nobel Prize for Literature when it really
meant something). There are numerous tables, charts, and maps
which illustrate the circumstances of the war.
Americans who hold to the common view that “The Yanks
came to France and won the war for the Allies” may be
offended by Churchill's speaking of them only in passing. He
considers their effect on the actual campaigns of 1918 as
mostly psychological: reinforcing French and British morale
and confronting Germany with an adversary with unlimited
resources.
Perhaps the greatest lesson to be drawn from this work
is that of the initial part, which covers the darkening
situation between 1911 and the outbreak of war in 1914.
What is stunning, as sketched by a person involved in the
events of that period, is just how trivial the proximate
causes of the war were compared to the apocalyptic bloodbath
which ensued. It is as if the crowned heads, diplomats, and
politicians had no idea of the stakes involved, and indeed
they did not—all expected the war to be short and
decisive, none anticipating the consequences of the superiority
conferred on the defence by the machine gun, entrenchments,
and barbed wire. After the outbreak of war and its freezing
into a trench war stalemate in the winter of 1914, for
three years the Allies believed their “offensives”,
which squandered millions of lives for transitory and insignificant
gains of territory, were conducting a war of attrition against
Germany. In fact, due to the supremacy of the defender, Allied
losses always exceeded those of the Germans, often by a factor
of two to one (and even more for officers). Further, German
losses were never greater than the number of new conscripts in
each year of the war up to 1918, so in fact this “war of
attrition” weakened the Allies every year it
continued. You'd expect intelligence services to figure
out such a fundamental point, but it appears the
“by the book” military mentality dismissed such
evidence and continued to hurl a generation of their
countrymen into the storm of steel.
This is a period piece: read it not as a history of the war
but rather to experience the events of the time as
Churchill saw them, and to appreciate how they made him
the wartime leader he was to be when, once again, the lights
went out all over Europe.
A U.S. edition is available.
February 2010 