How much of it is self serving? I am just into volume five. He relates a perfect relationship with Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s Secret War indicates that FDR did quite a bit to keep Churchill’s plans at bay. I understand that Churchill wanted to preserve the British Empire, Burma and India in particular, and the Americans wanted the various countries colonized by Great Britain to become democracies.
Very self serving, but still useful as a first person account, especially as you already seem to have the knowledge to cross-check. Churchill really did not want to give up on the Empire, and maybe he wouldn’t have if he’d still been PM when it started to happen. Roosevelt really seems to have made it an issue, which is interesting because I don’t think of him as being a humanitarian by reflex.
His motives may not have been humanitarian. He may have felt that UK trying to cling on to its empire and exert control over other countries would (a) have been destablising to the international order; (b) wouild have consumed UK resources and attention, and made it a less effective ally to the US; or © both.
Of course self serving. And written before a lot of what really went on was declassified.
But I still thought it was great.
The biggest problem I had with it was the way it was written.
It’s incredibly jarring at first to read world history written in the first person.
On the other hand, I really like how it gives a perspective on things that most of us just don’t get from other sources.
I agree with these. I don’t find the first-person “jarring,” but the sheer egotism of the man can be annoying. The books are full of memos from Churchill, but the replies to Churchill, even when relevant to the story, had to be very witty for Churchill to bother quoting them! The “spin” he gives in some matters, including his own feelings, are sometimes contrary to other evidence.
Still, it’s hard not to admire the man and think that his personal influence affected the outcome of the Second World War. He wasn’t reluctant to take up his duty to rescue the British Island: “In my long political experience I had held most of the great offices of State, but I readily admit that the post which had now fallen to me was the one I liked the best.”
If you’ve just started vol. 5, there’s still a lot to come about Roosevelt in vol. 5 and vol. 6. Their later relationship wasn’t as smooth as before.
Churchill makes it clear that he had serious disagreements with Roosevelt over a number of issues… and that Roosevelt was wrong, and he was right. 
I personally enjoyed the first person perspective, but we have to make allowances for what he left out, and always keep in mind that it’s only one point of view. It’s certainly well worth reading for the grand strategic perspective, unfolding month by month.
The best first person history ever written in English, IMHO, are the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. Grant was not an egotistical man by any stretch of the imagination and is happy to admit when he was wrong on more than one occasion and yet at times it STILL feels a bit seslf-serving. I do not think that can be avoided. Of course a person will tend to cast their own decisions as correct, since that is why t hey made those decisions in the first place.
So yeah, Churchill’s “Second World War” is just incredibly self serving; he had an ego the size of a skyscraper and a mercurial temper. It’s also Anglocentric and not very insightful into a lot of important matters. But… you have to read it as an insight into Churchill, not as a history. It’s not equivalent to broad, balanced histories, like Keegan’s work or Beevor’s, or ones specific to part of the war, or even official histories - the US Army produced some amazing stuff, with “Breakout and Pursuit” being the gold standard. It is, rather, better considered as a history of Winston Churchill, and an look into the man’s character.
“The Second World War” is something I should read, having gotten perspective elsewhere on Churchill’s actions and motivations.
Politicians are obviously not the best source of accurate history and objective analysis. Robert Massie in “Castles of Steel” has a withering account of Churchill’s post-Jutland writings analyzing the battle (Churchill tries to be even-handed in dealing with the Jellicoe-Beatty rivalry by first acknowledging that Jellicoe did precisely what he set out to do and what his superiors concurred with, protecting British naval superiority and bottling up the German navy. Then he pivots to promote Beatty’s more aggressive approach). Massie notes that in effect Churchill was saying Jellicoe got it exactly right, but next time we must do better. :dubious:
I particularly enjoyed the first person aspect. Of course it was self-serving, however, I don’t view that as being an impediment to enjoying it.
It’s been years since I read the series, but one thing that stands out in my memory was how peevish and petty he sounded about his meetings with Uncle Joe and FDR. He portrayed FDR at Yalta as being a sort of effete idealist. He went on at some length how he felt Stalin was intentionally slighting him by offering inferior food, drink and accommodations…this is what occupied the mind of a world leader? Really?
A very British attitude.
I will be interested in reading Churchill’s opinion of Stalin and his iron curtain. One of the many tragedies of WW II is that it was begun over Poland, and Stalin kept Poland.
I haven’t read it, so take this with a grain of salt, but isn’t it also a pretty good insight into the decision-making processes at that level? I mean, historians can go on about the decisions that came out of Yalta or Casablanca forever, but only a small handful of people can write about the *actual *conversations or decision making processes that actually went on during the conference.
The question of Poland is particularly interesting.
Churchill always distrusted Stalin, and was certain of his intention to grab Poland from the summer of 1944, when the Soviets betrayed the Polish Resistance during the Warsaw Uprising.
He strongly advocated getting Allied forces into Poland to prevent a Soviet takeover. But Roosevelt thought that the British were only trying to gain more power for themselves in central Europe, and he was more inclined to take Stalin at his word, so he ignored Churchill and wouldn’t agree to do anything.
FDR took Uncle Joe at his word? I thought Roosevelt simply acknowledged that the Allies didn’t want to take on the army that beat the Germans.
Yes, definitely. For me the most interesting part is the details of the top-level negotiations and personal interactions between the leaders.
There’s no question that emotions and personal relations made a big difference, even though they were all very rational men dealing with very serious issues, and even though all of them had large numbers of generals, diplomats, advisors, and analysts behind them. Personal meetings also mattered a lot, and were far more effective than exchanging written messages.
A fascinating example which sheds light on their characters: On one occasion Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin were all chatting together informally after dinner, and Stalin said something to the effect that the best way to remove future threats from Germany at the end of the war would be to collect together the top-ranking 50,000 German officers and simply shoot them all. Churchill was highly offended, and stood up and walked out of the room. Roosevelt just laughed and didn’t take it seriously. Stalin then walked out after Churchill, apologised and said it was ‘just a joke’ and persuaded him to come back. Roosevelt thought Churchill was overreacting. But of course we know that Stalin was fully capable of doing what he said, and was probably 100% serious.
Churchill certainly wasn’t suggesting that the Allies should fight the Soviets. He only wanted the Allies to occupy as much Polish territory as possible before the Soviets did so, and face the Soviets as far east as possible.
Yes, the actual conversations between Churchill and Stalin are among the most interesting parts of these books. I Googled for one “joke” at the Teheran Conference by Stalin that upset Churchill.
After clicking I noticed this wasn’t Churchill’s book, but a book which quoted from The Second World War. In this book, the WSC excerpt about the “joke” is followed by an excerpt* from Lord Moran’s book (Moran was Churchill’s personal physician) which tells us that that evening Churchill “could not rid himself of [a] glimpse of impending catastrophe.” This glimpse is barely mentioned in Churchill’s book, which finishes its chapter with “the rest of the evening passed pleasantly.”
(* the joke is on page 410; Moran’s description of WSC’s bedtime musing on page 411. You may need extra clicks to get Google Books to show both pages.)
When accusing Churchill of being self-serving, you should remember that he was in politics as the books were being written and published, and was Prime Minister again after most of the volumes were out. Grant was retired when he wrote his. So even if Churchill’s ego was smaller than it was, I doubt there would have been a lot of self-recrimination in the books.
He was also confined by the requirement to maintain relations with Eisenhower and De Gaulle, who by then were world-level leaders, and his belief that if he could induce Stalin to take part in another Yalta-style summit, that most of the East-West problems could be solved.
His history is valuable (only one of the Big Three who wrote their memoirs) but we do not take our bearings from it - if it were our only source (like Caesar for the Gallic Wars) we would be led astray.