Churchill Defiant: Fighting On 1945–1955

By the time Churchill dined with Stalin on Wednesday, 18 July, he had had a chance to talk to Truman, who assured him that he had not informed the Soviet leader about the bomb. Churchill had concluded overnight that, once they were certain of the test results, it would actually be a very good idea were Stalin to be made aware that the Western allies had a singular new weapon. What continued to worry him, however, was the possibility that Truman would agree to share technical information with Moscow. Truman said he would not, but Churchill remained uneasy. Western possession of the bomb would be of little use in the negotiations if Stalin could count on being able to build one as well.

When Churchill arrived at half past eight, Stalin’s two-storey stone villa was surrounded by machine-gun-toting thugs. A phalanx of seven NKVD – secret police – regiments and nine hundred bodyguards had accompanied the dictator to Potsdam. Stalin had lived a life of violence, fighting off rivals and would-be usurpers with murder and bloodshed, and he was perpetually fearful of being treated in kind. In the present setting, the savage vengeance the Red Army had wreaked on the Germans provided an additional motive for an assassination attempt. Still, once through the numerous layers of security, Churchill was welcomed with friendly informality. Stalin had no other guests. Only the leaders’ interpreters, Birse and Pavlov, were scheduled to join them at dinner.

Though the surviving members of the original Big Three had become antagonists, they were bonded by a sense of themselves as men apart, the last of a superior breed that had included Roosevelt. As Churchill later said, together they had had the world at their feet and commanded many millions of men on land and sea. Churchill’s personal history with Stalin had begun with their written exchanges in 1941 after Germany’s surprise attack on Russia. When they first met, in Moscow in 1942, Stalin’s insults had nearly caused Churchill to break off their talks and fly home at once. The British Ambassador, Archibald Clark Kerr, had worked hard to assuage Churchill’s fury. Kerr urged him to reflect on the relative unimportance of his own wounded feelings weighed against the many young lives that would be sacrificed if he did not swallow his pride and return to the talks. Churchill resolved that in the interest of advancing their shared objective of defeating Hitler he would do what it took to build a relationship with Stalin, even somehow find a way to ‘like’ him. In subsequent meetings – at Tehran, again in Moscow, and at Yalta – Churchill and Stalin had developed a deep fascination with and respect for each other.

Though Churchill had no idea that Stalin’s late arrival at Potsdam had been due to a minor heart attack, he thought his host tonight looked ill and ‘physically rather oppressed’. Stalin’s once black hair was a grizzled mop, as were his shaggy moustache and eyebrows. His narrow, evasive eyes were yellow, his teeth stained and broken. Short and stocky, he had a withered left arm that he held woodenly in his right hand, palms up. War had aged the sixty-seven-year-old Generalissimo prematurely. He had worked too hard, slept too little, and not had a holiday in years. Despite his physical condition, he had made no more effort to moderate his appetites than Churchill had. In the course of the dinner, which extended to the next morning, there was a prodigious amount of smoking, eating, and drinking by both men.

When Churchill and Stalin last saw Roosevelt, at Yalta, the President had been a cadaverous figure with waxen cheeks and trembling hands. At times he had been lucid, but at other moments he sat with his mouth open, staring ahead, unable to follow the discussion. Roosevelt had clung to office in the belief that he was indispensable. Five months later, the conversation between Stalin and Churchill naturally turned to the death of great men and the problems of succession. A discussion of how Roosevelt’s successor was doing under the circumstances prompted Churchill to ask if Stalin had given any thought to what would happen at the Kremlin after he died.

Churchill had designated his own political heir. In 1942 he had written to King George that in the event of his death he wanted Anthony Eden to carry on as prime minister because he possessed the ‘resolution, experience and capacity’ the times demanded. Tall, slim, graceful, debonair, the forty-eight-year-old Foreign Secretary accompanied Churchill to Potsdam. Eden had a furrowed but handsome face with penetrating pale blue eyes and a carefully trimmed grey moustache, and he spoke in a mellifluous baritone. Stalin too had brought an heir apparent to the Potsdam Conference: Eden’s opposite number, the fifty-five-year-old Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov. Recently, Stalin had anointed Molotov with the words, ‘Let Vyacheslav go to work now. He is younger.’ Small and chunky, Molotov spoke with a slight stammer and had an impassive, ‘lard-white’ face. When he was upset, though his countenance remained stony, a telltale lump in his forehead swelled and throbbed alarmingly.

Stalin insisted to Churchill that he had arranged everything. He claimed to have groomed good men and thereby to have guaranteed the continuity of Soviet policy for thirty years. He made it all sound so sensible, but then Stalin was adept at portraying himself to foreigners as utterly reasonable and rational. In fact, in the words of the American diplomat George Kennan, he was ‘a man of absolutely diseased suspiciousness’. Stalin had a history of exterminating not only his opponents but also those whose character suggested that they might oppose him later. He sniffed plots and cabals everywhere, and never more so than after the war. In 1945, the leader widely venerated as his nation’s saviour was at the pinnacle of his power. At the same time, his own physical decay left him feeling vulnerable to the machinations of the ambitious younger men who formed his circle. As the fawning Molotov and other contenders for the postwar Soviet leadership well knew, Stalin was capable of ordering their arrest or execution at any time, ‘no questions asked’. (As a precaution, Molotov slept with a loaded revolver under his pillow and never permitted his sheets or blankets to be tucked in lest he have to leap out of bed and defend himself in the middle of the night.) Stalin spoke matter-of-factly of retiring on a pension in two or three years, but he was no more inclined to leave office willingly any time soon than Churchill was.

This evening, when Churchill voiced anxiety about the British election, Stalin expressed confidence that the Conservative leader had nothing to worry about. The concept of free elections meant nothing to Stalin. Churchill was in power; surely he had arranged to stay there. The only real mystery as far as the dictator was concerned was why Churchill would go to the trouble of flying home for the result. Characteristically, Stalin suspected a ploy on Churchill’s part.

Stalin was right to sense that Churchill was up to something, though at this point the latter’s calculations had nothing to do with the British election. Churchill asked whether there would be free elections in the territories under Soviet control, and he raised concerns that the Red Army was preparing to surge westward across Europe. When Stalin sought to reassure him on every count, Churchill took care not to provoke an angry confrontation by too directly challenging anything the Generalissimo said. Churchill was biding his time until he knew what kind of hand he had to play with Stalin.

Exactly a week remained before Churchill was due to fly to London. Every day that passed without news from New Mexico with precise details of the bomb test was an agony to him. There were plenary sessions on Thursday and Friday, but still no additional information came in. At half past four on Saturday, Churchill was about to leave for the Cecilienhof when Stimson arrived with the full report. This was the document the Prime Minister had been waiting for since Tuesday; everything depended on its contents. But no sooner had he begun to read than an aide reminded him that if he did not go now, he would be late for his 5 p.m. meeting. Following the day’s talks, Stalin was due to host a party for all of the conference’s participants, and Churchill naturally was expected to attend.

As the report was of the highest secrecy, Stimson had shown the single copy personally to each individual on his list, beginning with Truman. There was no question of his leaving the document for Churchill to study later, so it was agreed that he would return to the Prime Minister’s villa in the morning. Churchill reluctantly handed the report back to Stimson. Impatient to resume reading, he found the evening that followed interminable.

It was not until 11 a.m. on Sunday that Stimson reappeared and Churchill at last had a chance to study the report in full. The details of the atomic bomb gripped him: the lightning effect equal to that of seven suns at midday; the vast ball of flame which mushroomed to a height of more than ten thousand feet; the cloud which shot upward with immense power, reaching the substratosphere in about five minutes; the complete devastation that had been wrought within a one-mile radius. Immediately, Churchill saw that this was the card he had been hoping for. The bomb completely altered the balance of power with the Soviets. Stalin’s vast armies were negligible compared to it. Truman no longer had to worry about Stalin’s willingness to fight the Japanese, and Churchill hoped that that would translate into real support for some tough bargaining to get a viable settlement in Europe. He rushed over to see Truman, both to discuss a speedy end to the war in the Pacific and to confirm that the Americans were not intending to share the bomb’s secrets.

Churchill spoke excitedly of the bomb to his physician, Lord Moran, the following morning. He swore the doctor to secrecy and assured him that it had come just in time to save the world. Again, at lunch, he laid out the new situation to Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, General Hastings ‘Pug’ Ismay, Eden, and other key members of the British delegation. Referring to the sudden shift in the diplomatic equilibrium, Churchill thrust out his chin and scowled. He spoke of threatening to blot out Russian cities if the Communists refused to behave decently in Europe. But for all his talk of bullying Stalin with the bomb, Churchill’s aim was not to start another war. As he had told Eden early on, he believed that the right bargaining counter might make it possible to secure a ‘peaceful agreement’. He calculated that Stalin did not want war any more than he did, only the fruits of war, which the Soviets felt they had earned by their signal contribution to the defeat of Hitler. If Stalin could not be persuaded to settle, it might be best, as Churchill had previously told Truman, at least to know where they stood with him – and to know it sooner rather than later.

Churchill’s optimism about what he would be able to achieve with both his fellow leaders provoked intensely sceptical reactions from British colleagues. There was sentiment in the British camp that Truman (who controlled the bomb, after all) would never provide the backing Churchill needed, that Stalin would simply shrug off any real or implied threat, and that the details in the report from New Mexico might yet prove to have been exaggerated. Still, Churchill had found reason to hope, and to him that was all that mattered. On Monday night he called Lord Beaverbrook, who had had a hand in shaping the Conservatives’ electoral strategy, for the most up-to-date predictions. Churchill had come to Potsdam empty-handed; now that he had what he believed was the basis of a real negotiation, nothing must be allowed to interfere. Beaverbrook told his friend that the Conservatives were expected to win, though perhaps by a smaller majority than first predicted.

Having proposed at the outset that the leaders take their time moving towards the most difficult questions, Churchill was ready to step up the pace and intensity of the talks. But the moment was still not right for what he saw as the climactic confrontation about Soviet intentions in postwar Europe. That, he believed, must wait until the British election results were known and the people had affirmed their confidence in him. Fresh from having submitted himself to their judgement, he would be in an optimal position to demand free elections in the territories liberated by the Russians.

He managed to put off the sharpest exchanges of the conference until Tuesday, 24 July, the eve of his departure. Speaking of reports from Romania and Bulgaria, he charged that an ‘iron curtain’ had descended in those countries. Until this point in the talks Stalin had been inclined to speak in a low, controlled tone of voice, but Churchill had succeeded in arousing his ire, and he shot back, ‘Fairy tales!’ A fierce dispute about the veracity of Churchill’s claims followed. There was a good deal of pique and perspiration on the Soviet side of the large round table, which was covered with a dark red felt cloth and arrayed with offerings of pungent Russian cigar -ettes. Both Molotov and Eden grew indignant on behalf of their respective masters. Eventually Stalin declared that his and Churchill’s views were so far apart that the discussion ought to be broken off –for now.

After everyone rose, Churchill watched anxiously as Truman walked over to Stalin. Churchill and Truman had previously agreed that at the close of that day’s session the President would tell Stalin about the bomb and the plan to use it on the Japanese. (In fact, Stalin’s spies had already notified him of the successful test blast, but neither Churchill nor Truman knew that.) There was high tension as Churchill looked on from a distance of about five yards. He longed to see Stalin’s reaction, but he was also watching Truman. What would the President do if pressed for technical information? Would he agree to a meeting of American and Soviet experts? Truman had said in advance that he would not, but Churchill was aware that there had been no firm promise and that Truman did not yet perceive the Soviet threat as he did. Both participants in the silent scene were acting: in an effort to seem as casual as possible, Truman had left his own interpreter behind and depended on Stalin’s man to translate his remarks, while Stalin made a point of appearing by turns genial and nonchalant.

Later, as the leaders waited for their cars, Churchill found himself beside Truman. He inquired how the conversation had gone. Truman reported that Stalin had not so much as asked a question. Stalin had said only that he was glad to hear the news and that he hoped they would make good use of the new weapon against Japan.

In any event, the information had been conveyed, and every element was finally in place for the dramatic confrontation Churchill expected would occur after a forty-eight-hour intermission. He was in buoyant spirits when he dined with Lord Mountbatten, the Supreme Commander in South-East Asia. Churchill again had much to say about the bomb and his plans for the future, though Mountbatten wondered whether the Prime Minister might not be assuming too much about the election outcome. That Churchill may have had deep doubts of his own is suggested by a disturbing dream he had that night. Six nights after he and Stalin had talked of death and succession, he dreamed that he too had died. He could see his corpse laid out beneath a sheet in an empty room. The face and body were draped, but the feet that stuck out were recognizably his own. On Wednesday morning, as he prepared to attend a final brief meeting with Stalin and Truman, he feared the dream meant that he was finished.

To all outward appearances his confidence had been restored by the time of the ninth plenary session. At a quarter past twelve, when Truman adjourned the meeting until 5 p.m. on Friday, Churchill added crisply that he hoped to be back. His mood on the flight home with his daughter was one of certainty that he would soon return to complete what he had begun. In London, Churchill went to Buckingham Palace to report to the King on the talks thus far and on the changes in the international situation that the bomb had wrought. Before Churchill retired for the evening at the Annexe facing St James’s Park, he was pleased by the political gossip that even Labour headquarters was predicting a Conservative majority. Fittingly, he intended to monitor the figures from the Map Room, where once he had tracked the unfolding of the Allied victory over Hitler. Family members and close friends had been invited to sit with him as numbers streamed in throughout the day on 26 July.

Churchill went to bed on Wednesday night convinced that those numbers would favour the Conservatives. Sometime before daybreak, he awakened suddenly with a stabbing pain that told him the election was lost and the power to shape the future would be denied him. In anguish, he rolled over and slept until nine. About an hour later, Churchill was in his bath when he learned from an aide that his premonition of disaster was being amply confirmed by the early poll figures.

After he had dressed in a blue one-piece zip-up siren suit, he went to his Map Room. Over the next few hours, Churchill, surrounded by charts of constituencies and of the most recent state of the election, reacted to the news of each Labour gain by silently, stoically nodding his head. He complained only of the heat and the want of air. The Conservatives were out. Churchill had been returned in his constituency, Woodford. But overall there had been a Labour landslide, and Britain was to have a new prime minister.

Mrs Churchill, tall, silvery-haired, with proud posture and a profile said to resemble a ship’s prow, suggested to her husband that the outcome of the election might prove to be ‘a blessing in disguise’.

He replied, ‘At the moment it seems quite effectively disguised.’ It was inconceivable that he had been cut off altogether from Potsdam. Initially, he insisted he would wait to take his dismissal from the House of Commons, as he was entitled to do. Then in his pride he declared that nothing would induce him to go back to Potsdam, though he was not yet ready to resign immediately either.

He spoke vaguely of stepping aside on Monday, though that would mean asking Stalin and Truman to wait in Germany until he made up his mind. Finally, Churchill accepted that under the circumstances he really had no choice but to resign at once – and let the talks go on without him. All of his great plans, everything he had so carefully set up, must remain unrealized.

Some twenty-four hours after he had raced to Buckingham Palace to speak to the King of his hopes, Churchill returned to tender his resignation. The King offered him the Order of the Garter but Churchill declined the high honour in the belief it would be wrong to accept it after what he saw as a public rebuff of his leadership. He drafted a statement to be read aloud to the nation on the BBC at 9 p.m. He stated that as a consequence of ‘the decision of the British people’, he had laid down the charge which had been placed upon him in darker times.

Thursday was devoted to immediate concerns. The next morning, he awakened to the realization of what the people’s decision meant for him personally. In years past, Churchill had been known to declare that in war one can only be killed once, but in politics many times. Politicians, he once wrote, expect to fall and hope to rise again. In the face of staggering rejection, numerous setbacks and many apparent dead ends, obstinacy had kept Churchill pounding on when fainter spirits might have given up. ‘No’ was an answer he had repeatedly refused to accept. ‘Unsquashable resilience’ had long been among his defining characteristics. He had justly been said to have more lives than a cat and to have survived as many arrows as legend planted in the flesh of Saint Sebastian.

This time, everything seemed different to him, and it was his age that made it so. By most estimates the magnitude of the Labour victory, a majority of 146 seats in the House of Commons, suggested that the Conservatives could not hope to return to power for at least a decade. Some people went so far as to say that Labour was in for a generation. For Churchill, as for his party, there was no avoiding the likelihood that by the time he had another chance at the premiership – if he ever did – he would be at least eighty.

Throughout the day, as he said goodbye to some of the people who had worked most closely with him during the war, he seemed absorbed by the idea that a comeback was impossible. The previous night he had briefly thought the new Labour Government might be turned out soon enough, but the final numbers left no such hope. After a farewell meeting with his Cabinet, he lingered privately to talk to Eden. Churchill expressed confidence that the Conservative heir apparent would surely sit in the Cabinet Room again.

‘You will,’ Churchill said with more than a dash of bitterness, ‘but I shall not.’

Churchill once observed that a man’s only real necessities in life are food and a philosophic temperament. All day Saturday at Chequers, which he had yet to vacate, he appeared remarkably cheerful and controlled, but after dinner and a film screening, his mood darkened noticeably. Attlee had returned to Potsdam a day later than scheduled and the talks resumed that very night at ten. The new Big Three worked at the conference table in the Cecilienhof until after midnight.

Cut off from all that forever, it seemed, Churchill sat into the night listening to Gilbert and Sullivan and other recordings on his gramophone.

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