Triumph and Tragedy, Vol. 6 Book

This is the last volume in Winston Churchill's war memoirs. It begins with the D-Day Normandy landings. The two chapters on D-Day are almost desultory constituting of only 33 pages. He writes more on the intervention in Greece at Christmas, 1944 (almost 44 pages) where Britain wanted to prevent the ascendancy of the communist party.

Page 181 (my book)

Communism raised its head behind the thundering Russian battlefront. Russia was the delivery, and Communism the gospel she brought.

This volume is brilliant on the origins of the Cold War.

It all started in August 1944, when Stalin withheld his troops from "liberating" Warsaw. He let the Germans to the dirty work and they ruthlessly eliminated the Warsaw Polish resistance - so that Stalin's troops would have no opposition. This was the first indicator of Stalin's real intentions in Eastern Europe. Churchill (and Roosevelt's) letters to Stalin to intervene and help the Polish resistance were ignored.

After the Yalta Agreements in February 1945, Churchill pleads passionately for the Soviet Union and Stalin to adhere to them, particularly for Poland, but to no avail. After all Stalin had millions of troops in Eastern Europe and verbal pressure from his two Allies was not going to deter him. Stalin, in violation of Yalta, was going to appoint his own stooges to the Polish Government (and to those in Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria...) and was certainly never going to allow free and unfettered elections to take place. He never permitted British or U.S. representatives to roam freely in Eastern Europe.


Still the Yalta Agreements led to the formation of the United Nations and, importantly at the time, a promise from Stalin to attack Japan once the Germans had surrendered. Churchill, with his constant bickering with Stalin over the fait accompli in Poland seemed to overlook this Soviet pledge. The U.S. saw only years of bitter and bloody struggle with the proposed Japanese invasion - the first successful atomic bomb test only occurred in New Mexico in July, 1945. Prior to this the Allies needed Soviet military participation to overthrow Japan.

Having now read these six volumes (over 4,000 pages) one does gain insights into this man Churchill. Significantly the writing can be majestic, for example in this last volume his tribute on the death of Franklin Roosevelt and his victory speech at war's end on May 13, 1945. The prose is filled with passion and there is no dryness to speak of. Someone mentioned that there are probably thousands of pictures of Churchill and in not one does he seemed bored with life. His writings reflect that.

Other observations:

Churchill brought a scientific and statistical approach to government. He wanted statistics constantly. He was able to use these for clarifications to pronounce and to judge.

He was a man of detail and would drill down to the source to determine the root of a problem. Also he was not beholden to protocol; obstacles and standard procedures could and would be removed.

Also in every volume Churchill writes page after page on the importance of Turkey in the war effort, and there were meetings with emissaries and government leaders - but nothing came of this.

He professed friendship and admiration for Franklin Roosevelt but I didn't buy into this. Churchill needed U.S. might and production to win the war, more so after the fall of France. And he knew the U.S., having read its history and he had travelled there several times before the war. He felt the common ground between Britain and the U.S. - for language, democracy, personal freedom...


But Churchill and Roosevelt were two very different personalities and governed in divergent ways. Roosevelt was more politically astute - with Churchill it was more emotional and upfront. Roosevelt was more opaque and wouldn't reveal all the cards in the deck. I could never see Roosevelt going into the details that Churchill would do almost on a daily basis; Roosevelt was much better at delegating. I would assume for example that Churchill wrote far more letters to Eisenhower then Roosevelt. The written word was far more important to Churchill. And Roosevelt was pragmatic, he knew at wars' end that "the game" was to be between the U.S. and the Soviet Union - and Britain relegated to becoming a junior player. I don't think Churchill wanted to acknowledge this new position.

However both were magnanimous and would not hold recriminations. And also both could be very flexible - if something didn't work, try something else.

These six volumes constitute a magnum opus of the Second World War. They provide a very important and impassioned portrayal of those tumultuous years.