Churchill

On the morning of 18 May 1940, just eight days after Churchill had become prime minister and while the Germans were threatening to encircle the BEF in northern France, Randolph Churchill visited his father.  The prime minister, who was shaving, told him to read the paper until he had finished.  But then he suddenly said, ‘I think I see my way through,’ and returned to scraping away.  His astounded son replied: ‘Do you mean that we can avoid defeat? . . . or beat the bastards?’

Churchill put down his razor and turned around.  ‘Of course I mean we can beat them.’

‘Well, I’m all for it, but I don’t see how you can do it.’

His father dried his face before saying with great intensity: ‘I shall drag the United States in.’

* * * * *

Wavell, a taciturn and intelligent man who loved poetry, did not inspire Churchill’s confidence.  The pugnacious prime minister wanted fire-eaters, especially in the Middle East where the Italians were vulnerable.  Churchill was also impatient.  He underestimated the ‘quartermaster’s nightmare’ of desert warfare.  Wavell, who feared the prime minister’s interference in his planning, did not tell him that he was preparing a counter-attack, codenamed Operation Compass.  He told Anthony Eden, then on a visit to Egypt, only when asked to send badly needed weapons to help the Greeks.  Churchill, when he heard of Wavell’s plan on Eden’s return to London, claimed to have ‘purred like six cats.’  He immediately urged Wavell to launch his attack as soon as possible, and certainly within the month.

(Selections from Antony Beevor’s The Second World War, pages 101 and 150 respectively in my paperback edition.)