In which Nick Reads "The Grand Alliance" By Winston Churchill

Every new year I want to read big, and I decided to start this one off by returning to the grand saga of Winston Churchill's six volume history of the Second World War.

Churchill:  Man of Action, Man of Letters, Lover of Cigars, Drinker of...Drinks.

This was the third book of the set, and concerns the year 1941.  It begins with the decision of Britain to aid Greece against Nazi invasion (Churchill had grander hopes of opening a Balkan front with the Slavs and the Turks fighting alongside the Greeks), which doesn't go very well.  There is the Battle of Crete; the success against the Italians in Africa and the emergence of Erwin Rommel and the Afrika Corps; British intrigue in the Middle East - including fighting in Iraq and Iran - to keep the Germans out and to link up with the Russians who, in the Summer of 1941, are themselves invaded.  The book ends with the bombing of Pearl Harbor (or Harbour, if you are so inclined) and the forming of the Grand Alliance between the UK, the US, and the USSR.

It is also the story of America's growing involvement in the conflict.  America was already sending the British supplies as of 1941 but the effort is always increasing and as the year goes on Roosevelt decides to extend US Naval Patrols to free up British naval assets and increase the efficacy of convoys. From the start of the war Churchill had hoped to get America involved, and when at last Pearl Harbor happens Churchill, at least privately in an understated British way, rejoices.  The war, he believes, is won.

There are those who believe, I know, that Pearl Harbor was engineered or at least allowed to happen by Roosevelt and Churchill to get America into the war.  I've never believed it, and Churchill goes through some efforts to disabuse people of such theories.  The skeptics will not be convinced...still, it is interesting that even as early as 1950 Churchill feels some need to assure everyone that the attack came as a complete surprise.  

Relations with Russia were never so good.  At the start of the German invasion the initial telegrams are brusque, Churchill rather indignant over Stalin's immediate demands for a second front after two years of seeing Russia stand on the sidelines while Britain fought for their very lives.  But by the end of 1941, with the German advance stalled by stubborn resistance and the onset of winter, Stalin is already looking towards a post-war world, rather boldly asking Churchill about soviet control over the Baltic states . Maybe even he sees that the war is won, though the "Grand Alliance" still has it all to do.  

The Soviet contribution to the war is underplayed somewhat by Churchill, understandably, because he feels England is the greatest thing since sliced bread.  He goes through great pains to show the generosity of Britain, who diverted much material to Russia, but there is only passing reference to the Soviet agony of 1941 in comparison to his fairly detailed account of the fall of France in 1940.  But that may have to do with the time this book was written:  by 1950 the Cold War was already in full swing.  It's also possible that not much was really known about the Eastern Front, it's true story hidden behind the iron curtain.  

A good read.  The value of reading a recount if the war in six volumes is that it is detailed, often laboriously so.  Many Americans know the history of the war in broad brush strokes;  but here the gaps are filled in, with recounts of smaller actions and events rendered with the care of a man to whom the significance of every day of a six year struggle was still clearly vivid, or at least made so by his staff and the perusal of some key documents.