Click here for 30 selected adversaries.
Introduction
It is remarkable that Churchill managed to sleep at night, having so many formidable adversaries. Yet he did so, soundly, and also had afternoon siestas.
The selection of 30 of his adversaries on this website includes five dictators, 11 other heads of state, six national leaders, three pressure groups, three groups of subversives, a military leader and an economist. They have been chosen because they are all extraordinary in themselves and because their stories illustrate the wide range of conflicts and controversies over the course of Churchill’s 60-year career.
Churchill’s adversaries were not necessarily his enemies. He was even on good terms with some of them but they were nevertheless in conflict on certain topics. The economist John Maynard Keynes, for example, could have been included in the Friends section instead of Adversaries. The writer H.G. Wells is in Friends, although he too was a vociferous public critic of Churchill on occasions. The actor Charlie Chaplin (in Friends), who had strong political views which differed largely from those of Churchill, wrote that ‘The charm of Churchill is in his tolerance and respect for other people’s opinions. He seems not to bear malice with those who disagree with him.’1
Some were adversaries, or even enemies, for a while, but then bygones were bygones. One of his most trusted lifelong confidants was Jan Smuts, his former enemy in the Second Boer War. In 1938, he spoke glowingly of Kamal Atatürk, his enemy at Gallipoli in World War I. His motto was, ‘In War, Resolution; In Defeat, Defiance; In Victory, Magnanimity; and in Peace, Good Will.’2
However, there were some whom he opposed until death (theirs or his), because he saw them as being intractably at war with liberty. Hitler and Leon Trotsky represented the ‘infernal twins’3 of fascism and communism, until they met their grisly ends by pistol and ice pick respectively. On the fascist side was also Joseph Goebbels, who made Churchill a personal target of his Nazi propaganda. Mussolini impressed Churchill with some of his early achievements in Italy, particularly the containment of communism, but became increasingly pro-Hitler and ignored Churchill’s plea not to side with Nazi Germany.
Philippe Pétain of Vichy France also chose alignment with Germany, although with some deliberate ambiguity. Churchill undertook battles against Vichy troops in Africa and the Middle East, including sinking much of the French fleet, one of the most difficult decisions of his career. Axis supporters Prime Minister Tojo and General Yamashita of Japan inflicted humiliating defeats on British territories including Malaya, Singapore and Burma before the Allied tide turned against them.
Various nationalist leaders also sided with the Axis powers in the hope that this would advance their efforts for independence from the British Empire. Palestine’s Grand Mufti Al-Husseini and Iraq’s Prime Minister Al-Gaylani both based themselves in Germany for part of World War II. Reza, the shah (king) of nominally neutral Iran, was viewed by Churchill and Stalin as being pro-Nazi, leading to a British-Soviet invasion to depose him to secure Iran’s oil and a southern supply route into the USSR.
Indian political leader Subhas Chandra Bose tried unsuccessfully to gain Nazi support for an invasion of India. He then turned to Japan which helped him to raise an Indian rebel army that joined the failed Japanese incursion into India in 1944. Burmese leader Aung San (father of Aung San Suu Kyi) initially joined forces with Japan but switched to the Allies just before the end of the war.
Meanwhile, back in Britain, some fascist groups and individuals were deemed to pose a threat to national security, particularly Oswald Mosley and some influential figures associated with the Right Club, resulting in their detention.
On the communist side, Stalin went from being Churchill’s enemy to wartime ally to Cold War adversary. His gathering of Western secrets was aided and abetted by various British spies supportive of the Soviet cause. Chairman Mao received surprisingly little of Churchill’s attention, but Mao’s dislike of him broke out in a public spat about a gunboat incident on the River Yangtze in 1949.
Éamon de Valera’s insistence on Ireland’s neutrality during World War II attracted Churchill’s considerable ire. De Valera gave as good as he received, and more, reinforcing their antagonism going back to Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations in the early 1920s. Tensions were also high with General de Gaulle, despite his anti-Nazi stance.
Churchill and others cast Stanley Baldwin in the role of villain for failing to re-arm Britain against Nazi Germany, although Baldwin’s reputation has subsequently been partially rehabilitated.
Some other adversaries were not directly associated with the fascist or communist threat but were nevertheless a danger to Churchill’s beloved Empire. In 1942, he said, ‘I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire’,4 but it started disintegrating quickly after his first term and continued its demise during his second. Mahatma Gandhi was a particularly concerning agitator in Churchill’s eyes, seeking to pry the Indian jewel out of the imperial crown. Mohamed Ali Jinnah insisted on the partition of India to create Pakistan in 1947.
In the British Mandate of Palestine, Zionist paramilitaries were infuriated by Prime Minister Chamberlain’s 1939 revision to British policy which placed considerably more restrictions on Jewish immigration. Churchill voted against it but felt obliged to implement it during World War II, anticipating a review when the war ended. However, he was ejected from office and Britain withdrew from Palestine in 1948 under Prime Minister Attlee. 1948 also saw the independence of Burma (now often referred to as Myanmar) and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
Gamal Abdel Nasser secured the final withdrawal of British troops from Egypt by 1956, after a century of full or partial British control. In Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta was detained during Churchill’s second term, but led his country to independence in 1963. By the time of Churchill’s death in 1965, the empire was a shadow of its former self.
Although Iran was not part of the empire, its oil helped to fuel British (and American) international interests. Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh’s nationalisation of the oil industry prompted Churchill and Eisenhower to authorise a coup in 1953 to depose him.
In addition to totalitarian leaders, nationalists, and their sympathisers, Churchill also found himself in conflict with some domestic pressure groups. During his radical Liberal days, he championed David Lloyd George’s ‘People’s Budget’ of 1909, which was opposed by the Budget Protest League and the House of Lords.
The suffragettes targeted high-profile figures in their protests, including an attack on Churchill with a whip at Bristol railway station in 1909. As home secretary and minister of munitions, Churchill had to deal with strikes and riots, becoming known for confrontations in south Wales, Liverpool and Glasgow (although aspects of these have become misleadingly mythologised).
Such was the significance of Churchill’s adversaries that at least eight of them are known for their own ‘-isms’. Three are communist: Trotskyism, Stalinism and Maoism. Two were developed by ‘strong man’ nationalists: Atatürkism and Nasserism. Gandhism was also a form of nationalism but was associated with resistance rather than rule. Gaullism was nationalist but mixed with other features. Hitlerism is synonymous with Nazism.
The term ‘Mussolinism’ is not often used, with the alternative ‘Italian Fascism’ usually being preferred. Likewise, the term ‘Keynesianism’ is less often used for Maynard Keynes’s brand of economics than the adjective ‘Keynesian’.
Churchill did not establish his own ‘-ism’ as an ideology. Instead, ‘a Churchillism’ is one of his sayings or coined terms, such as a ‘terminological inexactitude’ (a lie) and ‘paintatious’ (a scene worthy of a painting).
Another indicator of significance is TIME magazine’s annual ‘Person of the Year’ title (formerly ‘Man of the Year’). It is not an endorsement but is rather a subjective editorial assessment about who has been most influential on topical issues, for better or for worse. Five of out the 30 selected adversaries were Person of the Year: Stalin (twice), Hitler, Gandhi, de Gaulle and Mossadegh. Nineteen have been on the front cover since TIME started in 1923, de Gaulle most frequently, on 11 occasions. Churchill himself was ‘Man of the Year’ in 1940 and featured on the front cover eight times from 1923 to 1951. He was ‘Man of the Half Century’ in 1949.
Gandhi was runner-up with Franklin D. Roosevelt for TIME’s ‘Person of the Century’ at the end of 1999, a title given to Albert Einstein. Churchill and four of his adversaries were in TIME’s list of the ‘100 Most Important People of the Twentieth Century’: Churchill, Hitler and Mao were included in the ‘Leaders and Revolutionaries’ category; Keynes was in the ‘Scientists and Thinkers’ category; and suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst was in the ‘Heroes and Icons’ category.
1 Charles Chaplin, My Autobiography (Penguin UK, 2003), p. [000].
2 Frontispiece for Churchill’s series The Second World War (six volumes, 1948-53).
3 Winston S. Churchill, ‘The Infernal Twins: Two Unpleasant Religions – Fascism and Communism’, Collier’s Weekly, 3 July 1937, pp. 12–13, 28.
4 Winston S. Churchill, Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897-1963: Volume 6: 1935-1942, ed. by Robert Rhodes James (Chelsea House Publishers, 1974), p. 6695.
See also