Churchill’s Military Histories A Rhetorical Study by Algis Valiunas Rowman & Littlefield, 202 pp., $35 NEW BOOKS on Winston Churchill continue to pour forth from the presses. Last year alone biographies by Roy Jenkins and Geoffrey Best appeared. This year at least four more special studies will be published, including another biography by the military historian John Keegan and a collection of essays on Churchill’s career by John Lukacs, author of the highly successful “Five Days in London, May 1940.” Some of the explanation for this explosion of interest in Churchill is obvious. He was the most influential statesman of the twentieth century: the man who saved the West in that dangerous summer of 1940. But great as he was as a wartime leader, Churchill also was a first-class historian–and with the exception of his six-volume history of the Second World War, most of Churchill’s historical writing has been forgotten. Some of the key works are not even in print. But now, in “Churchill’s Military Histories: A Rhetorical Study,” Algis Valiunas–a frequent contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD and other magazines–seeks to remind us why Churchill won the 1953 Nobel prize for literature. Focusing on Churchill’s military histories and seeking in them keys to understanding Churchill’s worldview, Valiunas shows how inseparable these two sides of Churchill are: Churchill the historian reveals much about Churchill the statesman. Valiunas examines Churchill’s prolific military writings, beginning with the four volumes of half-history, half-autobiography he wrote about Britain’s imperial wars in the late nineteenth century. Other works analyzed include Churchill’s “The World Crisis” (a history of World War I), “The Duke of Marlborough” (a biography of Churchill’s ancestor), the six-volume study of World War II, and finally the paean to the English and the Americans, “A History of the English-Speaking Peoples.” DIGGING BENEATH Churchill’s rolling prose, Valiunas shows us a first-class mind pondering the lessons that warfare teaches. One theme running through Churchill’s histories is how a prudent and clear-sighted policy could have commanded events. This is particularly true about his analysis of the events leading up to the outbreak of World War I and the failures of Britain’s appeasement policy in the 1930s. Valiunas is at his best on the now nearly forgotten four volumes of imperial history that Churchill wrote as a young man, including “The River War,” where he describes the reconquest of the Sudan by General Kitchener and in which Churchill took part as both a soldier and a journalist. “The Story of the Malakand Field Force,” about an expedition designed to punish the Pathan tribes along the Indian-Afghan border, reads at times like a commentary on the actions of United States forces in Afghanistan today. Churchill was never blind to the faults of imperialism, but he argued in these volumes that the expansion of the British empire was a positive good. He contrasted Britain’s ruthlessness and decency with her opponents’ ruthlessness and indecency. Where the empire spread, much good followed: the abolition of suttee in India, the banning of the exposure of female children, and the ending of slavery in the Sudan and other parts of Africa. In light of recent events, Churchill’s view of Islam is also interesting: “That religion, which above all others was founded and propagated by the sword–the tenets and principles of which are…incentives to slaughter and which in three continents had produced fighting breeds of men–stimulates a wild and merciless fanaticism.” All four volumes of Churchill’s imperial histories are back in print. Sadly, the same can’t be said for “The World Crisis.” Valiunas does a superb job of reminding us just how good Churchill’s history of this ghastly war was. Churchill wanted to put the war into some kind of historical perspective, and intended not just to dwell on the war as a nightmare–to make clear that the nightmare did not take place in a void. The British won, but they did so at an awful cost to Western civilization. Churchill demonstrates the incapacity, intemperance, folly, and lack of prudence at the highest reaches of both the political and military leadership. As an active participant in the war–he was First Lord of the Admiralty when it broke out–Churchill was involved in many of the crucial decisions that shaped it. As early as December 1914, four months after the war began, he told Herbert Asquith, the prime minister, that the war was deadlocked. “The position of both armies is not likely to undergo any decisive change–although no doubt several hundred thousand men will be spent to satisfy the military mind on this point.” In the last three sections of “Churchill’s Military Histories, “Valiunas examines Churchill’s “Marlborough,” “History of the Second World War,” and “History of the English-Speaking Peoples.” While good, these sections lack the freshness of Valiunas’s insights into the imperial histories and “The World Crisis.” The analysis of the World War II books is best on the first volume, “The Gathering Storm,” where Churchill set the stage for the war that he characterized as “The Unnecessary War.” Valiunas shows how in Churchill’s view the Allied leaders, especially Neville Chamberlain, lacked resolution in the face of the emerging Nazi threat. Chamberlain failed the test of prudence in developing and shaping his policy of appeasement. He sought peace and got war. CHURCHILL’S “History of the English-Speaking Peoples” was begun in the 1930s and completed and published in the 1950s. It was his last great work and one whose thesis was dear to him. He believed that the English-speaking peoples–not just in Britain, but elsewhere, especially in America–were fated to save Western civilization. His history was an attempt to call America to recognize its responsibility. With “Churchill’s Military Histories,” Algis Valiunas shows that we cannot grasp Churchill the historical figure without an understanding of Churchill the historian. John P. Rossi is a professor of history at La Salle University in Philadelphia.
