Dan Snow's History Hit - Winston Churchill

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

Winston Churchill was many things a writer, politician, journalist, painter but the defining aspect of his career was as a war leader. Warfare infused his life from its very beginning due to his relation to the Duke of Marlborough and a childhood re-enacting the Battle of Waterloo in the ground of Blenheim Palace. As a young man, he saw conflict at first hand both as a soldier and a reporter in Cuba, India, Sudan and South Africa. In the political wilderness following the disaster of Gallipoli during the First World War, he undertook service on the Western Front. These experiences were what made Churchill uniquely qualified as Prime Minister in 1940 to lead Britain through its great ever military crisis and onto victory in the Second World War. Joining Dan to discuss how the military experiences of his formative years shaped him for the difficult military decisions he took in office is Anthony Tucker-Jones. Anthony is a former defence intelligence officer, widely published military expert and author of the upcoming book: Churchill, Master and Commander: Winston Churchill at War 1895–1945. They examine Churchill's military career, his role as commander in chief and the decisions he took both good and bad.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. We're talking about Winston Churchill today. It's his birthday on the 30th of November. It's his 147th or so birthday, which he achieved many things. He achieved many things in his life. He didn't achieve immortality. He did of course die in January 1965, but he packed a lot into that life of his. Given it's his birthday weekend or birthday week, we thought we'd talk about him and the military as a soldier, as a journalist, as a politician. He saw a lot of war in Cuba, in South Asia, in the subcontinent, in South Africa, Sudan, the Western Front, and elsewhere. He served and he observed war in its rawest form. Anthony Tucker-Jones is a former British intelligence officer.

He's a widely published military expert, and he's just about to publish Churchill, Master and Commander Winston Churchill at War, 1895-1945. And this chat with Antony gave me a chance to talk about some of the bits of his record that I'd perhaps forgotten about his early service, about the things he saw in Cuba or the subcontinent, and also a chance to go back over some of Churchill's great successes and failures during the Second World War and the First. It's a lot to talk about. He didn't live many boring years, did Winston Churchill. Absolutely remarkable. If you want to watch documentaries about Winston Churchill, then you can do so, History Hit TV. In fact, I recently went to Blenheim Palace, where I worked with the team there to produce a documentary about the palace. We saw the bed when Churchill was born in,

looked at archival material related to him, but also his illustrious great ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough, the first Duke, who was one of Britain's greatest generals. So plenty of Blenheim Palace material available at History Hit TV and lots of other Churchill stuff too, into the war rooms, into Downing Street. It's all there. We've been going four years now. We've got quite a lot of documentaries on there. Terrifying. Hundreds of documentaries. Head over to historyhit.tv to sign up today. And because it's Black Friday, this hellish tradition, it dates back deep into the mists of a few years ago. If you use the code Black Friday, you get half price on History Hit TV for six months. Historyhit.tv, type in Black Friday Friday or one word, you get half price. So for

the price of a couple of pounds, a couple of dollars, a couple of euros, if you listen to this podcast, you can get History.tv. That's the rules. That means you're not in North Korea. So you get History.tv anywhere in the world. And for the price of like a bottle of water a month, you get the world's best history channel. Go and check it out. You're going to absolutely love it. But in the meantime, here's Anthony Tucker-Jones talking about Churchill. Enjoy. Anthony, hello there. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Thank you very much for having me on, Dan. Absolute pleasure. Has there been a military political career in British history like Winston Churchill? I'm

trying to think. I mean, you've got Cromwell, you've got Wellington, but there's something extraordinary about Churchill, isn't there? Not that I'm aware of. I mean, Churchill is one of those unique characters that seem to be in the right place at the right time, all of the time, if that makes sense. His actual military career was quite short, but his political career subsequently had an awful lot to do with the armed forces, which of course is what ultimately made him qualify for the job in 1940. So he was this odd mix of career politician, but also with his toe firmly dipped in the Navy, the Army, and the RAF. So he understood how the British Armed Forces worked, probably in a unique way,

because no one else had had that sort of breadth of experience on the services. And similarly with defence production, obviously, he'd worked as the Minister of Munitions during the First World War. So again, he understood the sort of logistics backchain that you needed to support a nation in wartime. It's funny, whether it's Omdurman in Sudan, he witnesses that extremely lopsided battle, that terribly one-sided battle. In the Boer War, he seems to be at the heart of the action, or he makes himself appear to be at the heart of the action. And even there's times like in the spring offensive of 1918, when he actually happens to be visiting the Western Front, and he hears the great bombardment that held the beginning of the great German offensive trying to win the war in 1918.

He's always where the action is. Yes, I mean, he had no real business, quite frankly, being on the Western Front. But as I'm sure you're aware, after the fiasco of the Dardanelles, he was kind of cast out into the wilderness and held responsible. And therefore, I think, felt that he wanted to get away from Parliament, from Westminster, from the House of Commons for a bit. And also, I think he generally wanted to do his bit. The sense I got when I wrote this book was he really was a frustrated soldier. From the very beginning, he was very keen to win the VC or the DSO. But ultimately, what he didn't want to do was put his time in.

His ultimate goal was to become a politician and follow in the footsteps of his father. But he wasn't prepared to undergo a prolonged military career, which is why he sort of flopped from being into uniform, then became a war correspondent, and then effectively a paramilitary in South Africa, where he fought with some of the Yomuri units. He desperately wanted to be a soldier I think and he desperately wanted to lead men. I mean that's the other thing. Certainly the impression I got from his time in the trenches is that after the men got over his initial shock of him arriving you know the tin bath and his paints and all the other paraphernalia that a gentleman would lug to the front they actually warmed to him fairly quickly and certainly

he led from the front. I'm sure you're probably well aware that he led I think almost 40-odd patrols into no man's land. Much to the alarm of many of his men, didn't seem terribly frightened at the sound of snipers or shrapnel whizzing about. He very bravely refused to throw himself to the ground every time they came under fire on the simple expedient that he argued if you'd heard the crack of the round then it had already gone by so there was no point worrying after the event. He was brave. He wanted to lead troops. I think probably he would have made a first cast general, maybe a field marshal. But as I say, he never put his time in long term in the army. How seriously do you take his kind of early, his youthful experience on the battlefield, both as a journalist and as a soldier himself? I mean, he saw a lot of

conflict. Yes, I mean, he saw a lot of conflict. Yes, I mean, you're right. He obviously went to Cuba and he witnessed the Spanish fighting a guerrilla war there against Cuban nationalists. He went to India and he fought the tribes on the northwest frontier. As you rightly point out, he went to Omdurman and fought the dervishes there. He then went to South Africa and was involved in fighting the Boers. So he had a fairly broad breadth. And again, the Boers obviously initially fought a conventional war and then moved it over to guerrilla warfare once their number of troops had dwindled to the point that they couldn't field armies. So yes, you're right. He was exposed to a lot of different types of warfare. And indeed,

Omdurman actually really, for him, probably gave him a flavour of what the First World War was going to be like, because it was industrial killing. I think a lot of people were horrified with the level of efficiency with which the Anglo-Egyptian army had exterminated the Dervish army at Omdurman. But I think the other thing that was very important for Churchill in those formative years is that he got into all these terrible life-threatening scrapes and survived. And I think in a way it made him feel invulnerable, invincible. And I think a lot of that helped shape his risk-taking as a politician, that he had that thirst for adventure, taking risks, exposing himself to danger. And I think he carried that over from his military career to being a politician. Again, going back

to what we were just saying about him wanting to be a leader, that was very much illustrated by the Sydney Street siege, you know, when he was Home Secretary, that he packed himself off to watch a police operation while they were besieging some anarchists. Today, if a Home Secretary did that, there'd be an almighty outlaw in the media. In fact, there was with Churchill. But he sort of circumvented the chain of command by that urge to get himself involved, to get up there, to have a look. involved to get up there to have a look and I think I say that sort of attitude was very much formulated in his early years when he reveled in being under fire. But actually going even further back, I think about his upbringing isn't there, he grew up in a world which emphasised service, which emphasised war, which emphasised leadership in terms of his family, his ancestor was the great Duke of Marlborough. He played endless repetitions

of the Battle of Waterloo in the parks of Blenheim Palace when he was a child. Churchill's upbringing, it kind of reminds me of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast, you know, and Titus Grone and those books that he wrote, because military history and being a soldier was woven into Churchill's DNA by the very virtue of the fact that, of course, his ancestor was the first Duke of Marlborough and one of the country's most famous generals. So you're right, he had all that hanging over him. He was born in Blenheim Palace. He spent a lot of time there when he was researching his history on the first Duke. Once he took up painting, he painted the famous tapestries there. So I think very much that sense of history, it must have percolated into him to the extent

that maybe I think it did convince him he was a man of destiny, which again goes back to him taking all sorts of risks and him being impervious. I mean, that's again, one of the things that sort of inspired me and informed me to write the book was that off-quoted comment of his that when he became PM, you know, he said he felt as if he was walking with destiny. And initially, when you read that, you just think, well, Churchill was the master of spin. I mean, he was the prototype spin doctor. He created the myth through his own actions, through his writings. And you just think, well, was that Churchill a historian with an eye onto the future? Whereas actually, I think he was right. He was walking with destiny because his whole life had literally led up to that very point by a quirk of fate where he'd done lots of jobs that ultimately made him suitable as prime minister and indeed as war leader.

I mean, he made himself defence minister. So he very quickly assumed strategic control of Britain's war effort by doing that. In fact, he created that post. That was the first time he had a defence minister because he wanted to make sure that he was in the driving seat. That was the first time he had a defence minister because he wanted to make sure that he was in the driving seat. And then again, that goes back to his First World War experiences that he knew that running military campaigns by committee was a disaster. I mean, Gallipoli was a prime example of that. None of the major players could agree on the commitment of resources or indeed timelines, who would be involved, when they would be involved. And as a result, the whole thing was a shambles. And I think he very much took that to heart and knew that that mustn't be repeated during the Second World War. Speaking of running military campaigns by committee, how did Churchill, let's

come to him as a warlord in the Second World War. I mean, I often find historians kind of split really between celebrating his extraordinary grasp of detail and some genuinely good ideas and others who say he was interfering, he overruled people, he didn't particularly understand the Navy. What do you think about, well, what do you think about him as the supreme warlord of British and imperial effort? I'm always fascinated by the key war leaders during the Second World War. I mean, Hitler famously micromanaged his war effort to the detriment of Germany. And of course, it was that micromanagement that lost him the war. Stalin actually went the other way. So when Germany invaded the Soviet Union,

Stalin initially tried to micromanage the Soviet war effort, again, with disastrous results. But surely, but gradually, he kind of came to trust generals like Rokossovsky and Zhukov. And he took his foot off the pedal and allowed them to do their own thing. I mean, as they gained more and more experience, they became more competent. And so actually Stalin stepped back and let them get on with it, a damn good job that they made of it. Whereas Churchill, well, he was one of those men whose brain was obviously fizzing with ideas all the time. And some of them were marvellous and some of them were a disaster. I mean, his war record is certainly a mixed bag when you look at his

successes and his failures. One of the problems that Churchill had, and certainly it was a criticism made by his generals and his chiefs of staff, was that Churchill had this feeling all the time that it was better to do nothing. And of course, the net result of that was that he quite often acted in haste to the detriment of the British war effort. Prime example of that, of course, is North Africa in 1941, when he kept on badgering his generals to counter-attack Rommel when they weren't ready. And of course, they did as they were told. Obviously, they answered to their politicians. So they did as they were told with things like Operation Crusader and Battle Axe. And they very quickly came unstuck simply because the British forces were not ready. They hadn't trained up enough with their tanks, they'd not

sorted out all the faults with them, and all those sorts of things. And of course that stopped by the time it got to Al-Alamein, where Montgomery very pointedly said to him, you're to stop meddling, stop breathing down my neck, essentially. I know what I'm doing. I'm a field commander. You will not let me get on with it. Or otherwise the implication was to sack him. And obviously Churchill let Montgomery bide his time until Eighth Army was ready. And obviously the rest is history. I often say on this podcast, I'm really struck by the fact that unlike David Lloyd George in the First World War, with Churchill, every time there's a success or a breakthrough, a bit of innovation around sort of radar or new tanks or Mulberry Harbours or Enigma, people always say, well, Churchill specifically asked for this to happen.

We seem to give him credit for a huge range of decisions. I mean, of course, he was Minister of War as well as Prime Minister. But do you think he was really as activist as we sometimes think he was? I think there's a case of both with Churchill. It's that history of one figure, isn't it? So everyone else around him sort of vanishes into the shadows, which is terribly on flair. So he tends to get the credit for everything. But actually, he was an ideas man. So he was involved in a lot of the sort of technical stuff, things like Enigma, like you're saying, Bletchley, it enabled him to have a much

better feel for something like the Battle of Britain, where we kind of think he managed it on the seat of his pants. And he appeared several times at Fighter Command's headquarters to have a look and put the fear of God into all the RAFs and all the radar operators and all the intel guys that were there. But actually, the reason he turned up was because he'd been briefed beforehand that the Germans were going to launch something big. So there's always that narrative that Churchill did a lot of things by his seat of the pants, whereas that's actually it's not true because he was well informed. And also it's things like D-Day. He blew hot and cold on that. But of course, he famously had a lot of good ideas for that. Things like the Mulberry's popular mythology is that it originated

with him. He came up with the idea of a need for floating jetties. And again, why wouldn't he? He'd seen what happened at Gallipion in D.A. It's like invention of the tank during the First World War. Churchill took credit for that and made no real effort to dissuade anyone otherwise. But of course, the reality is he supported the concept. It was Ernest Swinton that actually came up with the idea, having seen tractors on the Western Front. And it was Kitchener and the Admiralty that were toying with armoured cars and tanks anyway. But really, actually, the driving force, particularly during the First World War, for the tank, of course, was Lloyd George, you know, his Minister of Munitions initially and then Prime Minister. He's the one that drove that. He's the one that insisted the

army use them. So ironically, if anyone should get credit for it's Lloyd George because overall he was in the main chair if you like but the popular history is because Churchill was at the Admiralty and they produced a prototype little willy is that Churchill got the credit for it whereas actually it wasn't just him but of course that's the case with lots of things that he's given credit for and indeed to be fair lots of the things he's given credit for. And indeed, to be fair, lots of the things he's criticised for actually weren't all entirely his fault. He's taken a battering in recent years over things like the Bengal famine, his treatment of Ireland, the Quit India movement, all those sorts of things. And you go, well, he was the prime minister, so he was a top political figure. But ultimately, there were lots of other people who day to day were responsible for those issues,

not Churchill. So ironically, he's had to day were responsible for those issues, not Churchill. So ironically, he's had to take the rough with the smooth, you know, in that he gets credit for lots of things he was involved with, but not necessarily ultimately responsible for. But likewise, he gets criticised in the same manner. So I think, yes, he made sure that he was briefed on absolutely everything. I mean, his energy and his drive, that's one of the things that makes him such a remarkable character. Us lesser mortals would have been exhausted at the sheer thought of it without actually doing it. If you listen to Dan Snow's history, we're talking about Churchill. More coming up.

I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes.

Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. Right, Anthony, let's go through some big decisions.

Let's try and analyse what Churchill was thinking and just how important he was. Yeah. Let's start right at the beginning. Before he was Prime Minister, in fact, the Norway invasion, which actually arguably was his op, didn't quite work out well, but caused his great rival, Neville Chamberlain, to resign and he took his job. Quite nice.

Yes. I mean, you're right down with Norway. It all was a bit of a disaster and the Allies were unceremoniously shoved out of Norway after trying to pre-empt the German invasion there. Of course, it happened on Churchill's watch while he was First Lord of the Admiralty, so ultimately he was the one left carrying the can. The irony with Norway is it's always seen as a bit of an embarrassing disaster. Of course, it's subsequently overshadowed by what happened in France. But the irony with Norway is that the German Navy lost so many ships. Actually, it did us a favour and it lessened the threat of Operation Sea Lion and Hitler's subsequent plans for the invasion of Britain.

So there was a slight upside to Norway, although we lost a lot of ships, we lost a lot of aircraft. A lot of our guys were captured and what have you, and we failed to save Norway. It did do considerable harm to the German fleet. it did do considerable harm to the German fleet. The other thing is I think it also showed us and I'm not sure that we took notice straight off was the impact of air power on warships. Up until that point I think everyone had been a little bit ignorant that aircraft could pose a significant threat to warships if they were not protected by aircraft carriers or as subsequently later in the war they developed these anti-aircraft cruisers, which would sail the fleet and could put up an awful lot of flak to fend off air attack. So I think on the plus side, two things came out of that that were quite useful. And obviously,

the most significant one was the mauling the German Navy suffered. How about a theatre he was particularly obsessed with? How about North Africa, the battle for Egypt and the critical Suez Canal? In terms of North Africa, Churchill's impatience and the critical Suez Canal? In terms of North Africa, Churchill's impatience caused us a lot of grief there. What initially started out as a raid against the Italians after they invaded Egypt, or at least had got so far across the Egyptian border and stopped, is the generals in North Africa launched counter-operations, sort of combat patrol, if you like, which very rapidly turned into a major defeat for the Italians. They were defeated at a place called Bidefom. Their army there in eastern Libya

completely crushed. But at that crucial moment when Churchill could have taken Mussolini out of the war, or at least in North Africa, by rolling on to Tripoli, which would effectively of course kill the Italian war effort because they wouldn't have been able to ship in any more troops or supplies. He decided that he needed to help the Greeks. Mussolini had earlier invaded Albania and then had set about the Greeks. And Churchill gets the blame, but actually it's more Anthony Eden, his foreign secretary, who flew to Athens to talk to the Greeks as to what Britain could do to help. And Eden committed us to helping. It wasn't a good idea because what it meant was we had to divert troops from North Africa to send them to Greece. That meant momentum was lost against the

Italians in Libya and also what it meant was our intervention in Greece spooked Hitler who then subsequently invaded Yugoslavia and Greece to help out the Italians. We obviously were kicked out of Greece and retreated to Crete. That then, of course, sparked the German airborne invasion of Crete. So it kind of became a perfect storm there in the sort of eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean because of that decision. And then likewise, the failure, of course, to close Tripoli to the Axis forces meant that Hitler sent Rommel and a few divisions to help the Italians. And Rommel turned up and the war in North Africa took on a completely different complexion

and obviously was to drag on until 1943 when the Axis forces were finally defeated in Tunisia. So those early decisions that Churchill made regarding Greece and North Africa were all a bit of a disaster. Likewise, his decision to hold Crete, I mean, I suppose diplomatically and politically, he couldn't have abandoned the Greeks. But that, again, resulted in a major defeat. So all in all, it was quite embarrassing. And again, they're kind of symptomatic of his impatience militarily to get things done. If he'd listened to his generals, he might have been a bit more considered. But of course, we were still in the opening stages of the war there.

Churchill, quite rightly, was desperate to try and stem the tide, if you like, of German and Italian expansionism in the Med and in Europe. So those were difficult decisions that he took, but he got them wrong, obviously. Right, let's go further. Let's go east of Suez. Let's go east of Suez, the great Gibraltar of East Singapore, the loss of Singapore, the loss of Burma, the defeats in Malaya. How should we evaluate Churchill in relation to these defeats? Yes, Churchill's loss of Burma, Malaya and Singapore, again, it's held up as an example of his failure of leadership. But the reality was that he didn't have the resources to hold both North Africa and Cairo and Malaya and Singapore. Something had to give. And ultimately, holding the Suez Canal was more important than holding Singapore and Churchill was well aware of that dilemma he knew that he had to choose there wasn't anything he could do about it he did what he could to try and defend both Malaya and Burma but of course it all ended in disaster what's slightly bad is the warning signs were

already there with the Japanese moving into Indochina, ready to attack Thailand and Burma and Malaya. And also, obviously, they attacked the Americans at Pearl Harbor and in the Philippines. But Churchill actually had good intelligence. Bletchley and other organizations had outstations in the Far East. So we're actually intercepting Japanese military and diplomatic traffic. So they knew it was coming, but there wasn't really anything that they could do. There's always the racist argument that they never expected the Japanese to be good pilots because they had to wear glasses. There's that, again, apocryphal claim that tanks were no good in the jungle, so they didn't send in the armour to help. But of course, what the Japanese

had already been doing has been conducting prototype blitzkrieg warfare against China for a number of years during the 1930s so actually were very quick very well trained at getting their troops in position quickly and acting quickly which of course is what they did when they surprised Britain and America in December 1941 and early 42 when they invaded the far east. I don't really see that there's anything Churchill could have done any better. Also the chain of command was muddled so traditionally Burma had been controlled from India. It was considered part of the Indian defence zone but just before the Japanese invaded Burma on a step to give it sort of more independence had been separated from the

Indian command so it was sort of a separate military entity on its own. That then confused Mattis with the CNC down in Singapore who was also also responsible for malaya so there was this sort of muddled chain of command and of course it was his decision to send the repulse and the prince of wales to battleships down there in a sort of old style display of gunboat diplomacy which went horribly wrong you know again the alliance had yet to fully appreciate the impact of air power on warships a carrier was not available at the time to support them and of course they were sent down there like sacrificial lambs i mean churchill was forever after haunted by the loss of those two warships because it had been his decision to send them and it'd been his decision to send them unprotected so all in all it was a pretty sorry saga the only good thing was of course is that on the whole the ind Indians had rallied to the British cause anyway.

The Indian army remained loyal, which meant the British were able to fend the Japanese off in northeastern India and eventually turn the tide and liberate Burma and Malaya and get back into Singapore. But all that took time and a lot of the early losses, maybe with better generals and more resources, wouldn't have happened. Unfortunately, someone like General Percival who was in command of Singapore, he just proved completely lacklustre. I mean, the ultimate humiliation for the loss of Singapore

was the Allied forces there, you know, British, Indian, Australian troops outnumbered the Japanese. And that made that loss even more humiliating that they'd been out fought, outmanoeuvred by a much more smaller force. Okay, let's get back to Europe. Let's talk about the invasion. Let's talk about the Second Front. By 1944, you know, when the Americans were taking a much greater leading role in the Second World

War, and particularly once D-Day had taken place, where they very much became, and quite rightly, the senior partner in the Allied operations in Europe, Churchill's control and direction over strategic direction of the war began to wane and he was very very well aware of that. He'd been lucky when the Americans first intervened in that he managed to prevail upon them that they would go for a Mediterranean first policy in which the Italians would be cleared and in fact indeed the Germans would be cleared out of North Africa in order to secure the Med and that they would be defeated obviously in Libya and subsequently Tunisia and that would be a priority and then it was also agreed that to keep the

Italians away from North Africa and also clear the shipping lanes in the central Med that they would invade Sicily and it was also agreed that they would attack Italy as well subsequently and all those were pretty much Churchill's ideas. But he began to lose ground with the Americans once it became apparent that Italy was not going to be liberated very quickly. And in fact, the Allies were fairly slow with their operations in Italy. And that resulted in the Germans being very, very swift in their response to that, in that they disarmed much of the Italian army in northern Italy and then proceeded to occupy the country, or at least the northern half of the country, which meant the Allies then had a long slog up the rest of the Italian army in northern Italy and then proceeded to occupy the country or at least the northern half of the country which meant the allies then had a long slog up the rest of the

Italian mainland fighting Germans what Italians that did continue to support the German forces tended to be used for anti-partisan operations there in the mountains but it became very very rapidly apparent that the allies were not going to fight their way up Italy, swiftly get into Austria and menace southern Germany, which is what Churchill had hoped. And also, of course, once Churchill and Roosevelt pledged to Stalin that they would commit to opening the Second Front in France, and indeed part of that Second Front involved the Riviera landings, landings it meant ultimately that troops and resources would have to be diverted from Italy and also of course they were diverted from the far east as well which slowed up British operations in Burma and Churchill was not happy with that. Troops were diverted obviously to take part in Normandy landings and then further troops were diverted from Italy to take part in the Riviera landings and Churchill adamantly opposed them to the point that he threatened that

he would resign. Thankfully Eisenhower, the Allied Supreme Commander, ever the diplomat, just said well look we've already committed to Stalin to do this, we can't back out at this late stage of things and those landings took place. But ultimately Churchill was right because the landings in the Riviera were neutral anyway, they didn't support the D-Day landings because they took place two months afterwards, they took place in mid-August whereas D-Day landings because they took place two months afterwards. They took place in mid-August, whereas D-Day was on the 6th of June. So they took place a long time after D-Day had taken place. And also by the time the Riviera landings commenced, the Germans were in flight from Normandy anyway, having been surrounded pretty much

all the better units that were in southern France had already been drawn north to Normandy to fight there. So the landings in southern France didn't really achieve a great deal. Other, ironically, than to put General Charles de Gaulle on the road to becoming the French president after the war, because it was French troops that liberated Toulon and Marseille. And ultimately, de Gaulle manoeuvred himself. So he got into Paris and was seen as the saviour of Paris as well. A cunning politician he was. I think Churchill's strategic thinking by that stage was a bit clouded. It was clear in Italy that they were not going to punch their way through the Italian mountains. They were not going to punch their way through the German defences without a continued slog.

Rome was not liberated until June 1944, so it showed that ultimately Italy was not a quick fix. till June 1944. So it showed that ultimately Italy was not a quick fix. Churchill had always favoured some sort of landing in the Balkans, perhaps Yugoslavia or Greece, part of which of course was to forestall Stalin from occupying Eastern Europe and the Balkans. He favoured that, but of course because the Allies had committed themselves to a secondary operation in France, there simply were not the resources to go around. Another one of Churchill's failures, of course, was after the Allied landings in Sicily in July 1943. They triggered a political crisis in Italy, which most Italians woke up to the fact

that their participation in the Axis alliance was not a good idea. The Italian government was looking to treat the Allies with a view to disentangling themselves from Hitler. Mussolini was arrested and Italy ended up partitioned. And Churchill wanted to secure the Eastern Mediterranean, which was occupied by Italian troops, at least the Eastern Mediterranean islands. And he looked at Crete, which had a very large German garrison on, so decided that that would probably be too tough enough to crack. There was roads but again the Allies didn't act quick enough to help the Italian garrison there and they were

swiftly overwhelmed by the Germans and that left the Dodocanese Islands in the eastern Aegean as another potential target for liberation there. So Churchill authorised an operation to secure them for the Allies. They tried to do it with inadequate resources and the Germans who had a fire track record of reacting very quickly to anything the Allies did responded in kind and again the Allies suffered a bloody nose trying to secure those islands and indeed failed, lost quite a lot of troops and again a lot of warships were lost to the Luftwaffe and the whole thing proved rather embarrassing and also quite frankly didn't really gain anything for the Allies. It was sort of in a way Churchill making second best because he knew he couldn't get Crete and he'd failed to secure Rhodes. Well in fact it made

them third best really didn't it but they just simply weren't the resources available to do it properly. His commanders knew that but he wanted it done so they tried it so it ended unfortunately in disaster but it's another one of those examples where he acted, but he wanted it done. So they tried it. So it ended, unfortunately, in disaster. But it's another one of those examples where he acted quickly and he wanted results quickly and paid the price. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries.

The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions,

and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. What about things Churchill got right? Come on, let's give him some credit. First of all, presumably, the decision to fight Hitler. The recognition that Hitler's Germany represented an existential threat to everything that was good or halfway decent in the world.

You know, I think in terms of Churchill's finest moment, it clearly is 1940. The narrative of his history is firmly that. I think most of us growing up grew up with that sort of fascination with Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain. And Churchill, of course, arrived at the very moment that Britain needed firm leadership. The government was dithering about the appeasement under Chamberlain. It didn't really know what to do. appeasement under Chamberlain. It didn't really know what to do. There was a gathering body of thought that maybe we should treat with Germany and disentangle ourselves from the Second World War.

And I think Churchill, you know, during his wilderness years, he'd been well fed by the intelligence community. So he was fully aware of what Nazi Germany was about and what its plans were. I mean, he knew fundamentally that resurgence of Germany was based on rearmament and the Western allies and everyone else had let him get away with it, despite that he violated the Treaty of Versailles on numerous occasions, reoccupied the Rhineland, unified with Austria, took the Sudetenland, ultimately took Czechoslovakia. All these things he kept on doing, nothing was done to prevent it. Of course, that told Hitler that he could get his own way pretty much in doing anything he wanted, and obviously encouraged him to invade Poland. I think Churchill knew that long term there would be no trusting Hitler, no matter what he offered,

and that we were actually better off fighting it out. Also, I think probably he felt on a dictated that would continue resisting. And like the fact, of course, that very swiftly once the Germans invaded, which was pretty much the point that he took over, is that once it became apparent that the French army were not capable of fending off the Germans, and the British Expeditionary Force had effectively got itself trapped in northern France, Churchill took that very, very difficult decision not to send any more RAF fighters, even though the French wanted more air power to help them fend off the Luftwaffe. He took that difficult decision not to send any more fighter pilots.

And then likewise, in early June, took that decision to evacuate the British Expeditionary Force, because if Britain was going to stay in the war, then it needed to retrieve those troops. I mean, politically, diplomatically and morale of the nation wise, if we'd lost BEF, I think, then it would have been almost impossible for Britain not to sue for peace. So, again, he took that difficult decision essentially to abandon the French and evacuate from Dunkirk. As we know, that operation actually was pretty successful, even though it was a shameful withdrawal, if you like, shameful retreat. You know, the British abandoned all their equipment and everything else. But ultimately, of course, they retrieved nearly a quarter of a million men, you know, British, French and Belgian.

So it was an achievement. But that was down to Churchill taking that very firm decision. So, yes, I think 1940 is clearly his final hour. But the other things that he did that were good was he took the decision not to abandon Malta, which, of course, sits in the middle of the Mediterranean and therefore sat astride Italy's lines of communication with Italian Libya. Likewise, he clung to Gibraltar, which controls the entrance to the Mediterranean. So those two things ensured Britain's strategic hold on the Med was maintained, and likewise of course meant that we could push supply ships through the western

Mediterranean to the eastern Mediterranean and reach Cairo and Alexandria, and also, of course, use the Suez Canal, which was important for getting troops and people and stuff off to India going that route. There was initially some talk when the Italians started bombing Malta that maybe Britain should abandon the island and withdraw all its naval facilities to Gibraltar. But course if they'd done that the Italians and the Germans would have been able to turn Malta into an air base to supplement obviously nearby Sicily and that probably would have made it almost impossible to get through the Med and likewise holding Malta contributed to the victory in North Africa because of course once the Royal Navy submarines and smaller warships and the RAF were firmly ensconced on Malta, they were able to attack Italian and German shipping lanes from southern Italy and Sicily

across to Libya very, very successfully. The result of that was that Rommel obviously was slowly strangled in North Africa because he ran out of supplies, replacement equipment and troops. That's one of the things that contributed to his defeat, is that every time he scored a victory against the British, he'd be at the end of his supply lines and then had to wait to be resupplied. But slowly but surely, of course, those supplies were cut because of Britain's operating from Gibraltar. I mean, it was a complete thorn in Rommel's side. But that decision to hold on to Malta was firmly Churchill's and it was a wise decision. Obviously the summer of 1940, following defeat on the continent, Churchill, that extraordinary moment, he rallies the nation, he rallies the world really in defence of liberty.

In terms of the Battle of Britain, one of the things that Churchill did obviously was firm leadership. He made himself very much the face of the battle in that, particularly once the Blitz commenced, is that he toured British cities regularly. He saw everyday folks, he saw families, he showed his face, he showed solidarity, he toured all Britain's major cities that had been hit. Whereas in stark contrast, once the Allied strategic bomber campaign started against Germany, Hitler never visited any of Germany's bombed cities. I mean, it's just appalling callousness, I think. But Churchill toured those cities. Also, he kept a very close eye on what fighter commanders were doing. He was lucky in that Hugh Downing had built fighter command up to what it was by the late 1930s. By a stroke of luck, it had new aircraft

coming online, obviously the Hurricane and the the spitfire by an incredible good fortune and forward thinking of course britain had this radar system the battle of britain narrative always is that it's the royal observer corps you know on the clister dover watching the bombers coming over and getting on their telephones and calling back whereas britain actually had a highly sophisticated early warning system the low and high chain radar systems which could pick up German aircraft taking off from France, so we knew that they were leaving, and again could pick them up coming across either the North Sea or across the English Channel. So actually we had a very, very good edge. The problem was, of course, that the Germans outnumbered us very rapidly, and all the times

that they concentrated on hitting the RAF, that almost put them out of the war. But of course, that they concentrated on hitting the RAF. That almost put them out of the war. But of course, by a quirk of fate, German bomber got lost and bombed southern London. And of course, Churchill, in an act of fury, then ordered the RAF to bomb Berlin. And then, of course, Hitler in turn began to bomb Britain's cities. For us, of course, a terrible decision. But actually, it saved the RAF because it meant the Luftwaffe were concentrating on bombing urban areas and factories. That gave fighter command a much needed breathing space while it put its airfields back into functioning order, trained more pilots, took more fighters from the factories and obviously slowly but surely turned the tide against the Germans.

The Germans have a rather ambivalent view of the Battle of Britain in that I don't think they really see it as a battle. They see it as an air campaign that was in part and parcel supporting the long-term goal of invading Britain. Ironically, the Germans conducted the Blitz without the Krieg. So there was lightning, but there was no war. They didn't cross the Channel. So they didn't follow up on the air campaign. And in a way, that made the air campaign completely nugatory. I don't personally believe that Hitler ever intended to invade Britain. It would have been too costly, too time consuming. His goal was firmly in Eastern Europe and Russia. He wanted to invade the Soviet Union. If he'd invaded Britain, that could have led to a very prolonged campaign

and also led to inordinate losses with the Luftwaffe and the German fleet that wasn't very strong anyway. So I think that threat of invasion was pretty minimal, which is not to say, of course, it looked very real to Churchill and his generals, because Hitler massed all his troops in France, German coal barges were turned into sort of rudimentary landing craft, bomber command spent a lot of time bombing those in French ports to prevent their use. So if Hitler was bluffing to force Churchill to the negotiating table, it looked fairly convincing from where Churchill and

the British government were sitting. And also, of course, we had to prepare for the worst eventuality, which would have been invasion. So the country had to be put on an invasion alert, war footing. And in fact, memorably, at one point, the code word Cromwell was issued, which meant invasion potentially possible within the next 24 hours. A lot of folks thought it meant invasion is imminent. Bless them, led to chaos with the Home Guard, who started rushing around ringing church bells, blocking roads and doing all sorts of things. And that was simply sparked by the ferocity

of that particular German bombing raid that night. They'd looked for and put so many aircraft in the air, it convinced the British chain of command that invasion was imminent if they were going to launch that many aircraft. So for a while, Cromwell caused a bit of chaos once everyone kind of realised what was going on and it was all calmed down. But for those of us that grew up on things like the comedy Dad's Army, I mean, you can imagine the sort of chaos that was caused on poking fun at the Home Guard and the British Army. But of course, actually, if the invasion started, then they were alert and ready.

Anthony, thanks so much for coming to the podcast. What is the book called? My book is called Churchill, Master and Commander, Winston Churchill at War, 1895 to 1945. Thank you, Dan, for having me on. I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thank you for making it in this episode of Dan Snow's History. I really appreciate listening to this podcast. I love doing these podcasts. It's a highlight of my career. It's the best thing I've ever done. And your support, your listening is

obviously crucial for that project. If you did feel like doing me a favor if you go to wherever you get your podcast and give it a review give it a rating obviously a good one ideally then that would be fantastic and feel free to share it we obviously depend on listeners depend on more and more people finding out about it depend on good reviews to keep the listeners coming in. Really appreciate it. Thank you.