Churchill Winston - Churchill and the king: the wartime alliance of Winston Churchill and George VI

Y our Majestys treatment of me has been intimate and generous to a degree that I had never deemed possible. So wrote Winston Churchill to King George VI in January 1941, just after Britain had endured its darkest hour. There was more to the statement than courtesy. Some people have said that only Churchill could have saved the country at that moment. They have also said that if he had failed, the king would almost certainly have lost his throne and probably much more. The statements may be qualified in various ways, but most amount to the same thing: Winston Churchill was the necessary man. Though it has been a debatable point, few have said it about George VI. But no one who knows the kings war record would call him an idle spectator. A verdict does not issue easily for either man on his own. The real question is: Where would each man have been without the other?

Viewers of the 2010 film The Kings Speech came away with a new appreciation of the trials and triumphs of the unexpected king; those in the know detected its odd and inaccurate portrayal of Churchill. He was, as he probably had to be to some extent, the Churchill of caricature, with cigar, grimace, and growl. But to have shown him strongly in favor of abdication did a disservice. So did the superficial, even supercilious, way he appeared to treat the new king. Did it really happen this way? Was that all? What about the war?

The story of what happened between these men tells us something important about the position and purpose of the British monarchy, then and now. It has been an effective institution for binding the nation (and back then, the empire) together; if not, it would have disappeared long ago. But is it still necessary? That so many people in Britain and elsewhere continue to revere it must come down to more than tradition, sentimentality, and personal affection for a few particular members of the royal family. There must be, in other words, a better reason for its survival.

Rulership, like leadership, is a puzzle. It is not just an assemblage of policy, personality, intelligence, charisma, and power but of some changeable and often unpredictable chemistry among all these elements and also between the ruler and the ruled. It may be true that the best things in life are done in combination. Success is almost never solitary. Yet why some rulers succeed while others fail may be impossible to understand. The British case is complicated further by the existence of an unwritten constitution, enforced by custom, habit, and instinct. This book addresses the puzzle by exploring the alliance of a British king and prime minister during a most difficult time. George VI became king after the abdication of his brother in 1936. Winston Churchill became prime minister after the fall of Neville Chamberlain four years later. Britain and its empire would soon fight alone against a resurgent Germany. The two men met nearly every week whenever both were in London. Each was, in his own way, admired, even beloved, by many of his countrymen. Theirs was an alliance that came to be one of trust and fellowship, even friendship, but it was none of these things initially, nor was it simply an association of convenience. It was one of several partnerships that each man made that mattered. Partnerships are often limited. They can be dissolved. Alliances take things a step further. Genuine alliances are indivisible. In deriving its strength from the life mettle of both men, this alliance set an example and a precedent that would outlive them both.

Why did this alliance work so well? Was it the product of crisis? Or were the two men predestined for mutual sympathy? Upon what was such sympathy based? Churchill had come to power after a long and complicated political career; many people mistrusted him. He was an embattled man facing a losing war. The king came up unprepared, unconfident, and perhaps unwilling to rule. On the face of it, the two would appear to have inspired little hope, but history suggests otherwise. Churchill could not have been the leader he was without having had so strong a working relationship with his monarch. The kingand more to the point, the monarchy and the British nationcould not have endured the war without it.

These points may have more to do with the essence of modern leadership than with its exercise by this monarchy or any single leader. It has been said that todays world is leaderless. The observation tends to conflate what leadership is with what it does. How do leaders earn trust? How do they collaborate with rivals? How do they come to know themselvestheir strengths, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities? How do they manage to find what they most need from others without appearing weak and flawed? If they succeed, is a fall from popular grace inevitable? Even the Churchills of this world have limited and diminishing capacity to rule. Power usually falls after it rises. In the race to preserve it, how do they make use of allies, adversaries, interests, habits, perceptions, and expectations while maintaining or furthering their own unique, innate character, which, in most cases, compelled their urge to lead in the first place? And how do they go on to mold, meld, and adapt that character with that of others, and to augment it?

Students of history learn something when they set out to understand the past: that it is never complete; it is a perpetual argument, or what Churchill called a scenario without an end, filled with puzzles and gaps. Because it is impossible to re-create the past entirelythere are no time machinesnew attempts, no matter how exhaustive or repetitious, will always raise new questions and complicate the ones that have been asked and answered. And they will always contain holes.