Churchill Cold War Warrior: Winston Churchill and the Iron Curtain
“. . . Churchill’s greatest post-war legacy was sounding the alarm about the Soviet ‘iron curtain’ and urging the United States to step forward to lead the free world in the ‘long twilight struggle’ against Soviet communism.”
Winston Churchill titled his sixth and last volume of his history of the Second World War Triumph and Tragedy. In it he recounted the surrender of Germany, victory in Europe, the defeat of Japan, but also the growing friction with the Soviet Union that would eventuate in the Cold War. Churchill’s role in the early years of the Cold War is the subject of Anthony Tucker-Jones’ new book Churchill Cold War Warrior.
Tucker-Jones is a former intelligence officer and author of, among other works of history, Churchill Master and Commander, in which he assessed Churchill at war between the years 1895 and 1945. That book covered Churchill as a combatant and war correspondent in Cuba, the North-West Frontier, Sudan, South Africa, and for a brief time period on the Western Front in World War I. It also covered his years in Britain’s war cabinet in the First World War and his much greater role as Prime Minister and Minister of Defense during World War II.
Churchill’s role in the Cold War, according to Tucker-Jones, began near the end of World War II, when Churchill “foolishly sowed the seeds for the Cold War” by proposing the so-called “percentages deal” to Soviet leader Josef Stalin, whereby certain countries in central, southern, and eastern Europe (Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Yugoslavia and Hungary) were to be divided into British and Soviet spheres of influence. The deal was written down on a piece of paper that Churchill later characterized as a “naughty document,” and passed to Stalin who read and approved it. Tucker-Jones writes: “As far as Stalin was concerned Churchill had just agreed to the Sovietization of the Balkans and parts of Eastern Europe as long as he kept out of Greece.”
The percentages deal was not Churchill’s finest hour, but Tucker-Jones makes too much of it. Stalin was going to Sovietize whatever territory came under the control of his armies on their way to Berlin. As Stalin once told a Yugoslavian communist: “This war is not as in the past; whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. It cannot be otherwise.”
Moreover, although Churchill at times thought he could persuade Stalin to work toward a just peace in central and eastern Europe, President Franklin Roosevelt was much more naive about Stalin and engaged in what Robert Nisbet called a “failed courtship” of the Soviet dictator. In the end, Stalin got the better of both Churchill and FDR during the wartime summits.
Toward the end of the war, Churchill began sounding the alarm about the emerging Soviet threat, especially with regard to Germany and Poland. Tucker-Jones notes that Churchill had the British chiefs of staff “draw up plans for a military operation to drive the Red Army from Germany and Poland,” known as “Operation Unthinkable.” Nothing ever came of it, but Tucker-Jones thinks it could have started World War III.
Out of power after the war, Churchill attempted to warn his countrymen and the world about the growing Soviet threat, most notably in a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri in March 1946. The speech was titled “The Sinews of Peace,” but it is more commonly known as Churchill’s “iron curtain” speech. It was a public pronouncement of the beginning of the Cold War. A month earlier, in a classified “Long Telegram,” American diplomat George F. Kennan had warned Washington of the growing Soviet threat.
Tucker-Jones notes that the early Cold War years also witnessed the end of British rule in India, Palestine, and other former colonies, the creation of the state of Israel, the Berlin blockade and airlift, the communist victory in China’s civil war, the outbreak of the Korean War and first Indochina War, and uprisings in Burma, Malaya, Egypt, and East Africa. All were initially viewed by Churchill and others in a Cold War context.
Churchill again became Prime Minister in 1951, when the Conservative Party gained a narrow majority in Parliament. He was 76 years old, soon to turn 77 at the time he reentered Downing Street. Tucker-Jones notes that Churchill wanted to replay his role as a major world leader, but Britain was exhausted and “it simply did not have the resources to do so.” He hoped to retain the special relationship with the United States and he promoted the unity of Europe.
Churchill remained wary of the communist threat wherever he perceived that it raised its ugly head. In the larger Cold War, however, he sought to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union so as to lessen the threat of nuclear war. This was especially the case after Stalin died in March 1953. But unlike the Second World War, there was no “Big Three” in the Cold War. The United States and Soviet Union were the two superpowers. Britain was at best a second-rate power.
Tucker-Jones concludes that Churchill’s “greatest post-war legacy was helping to steer the world away from nuclear Armageddon.” But Britain and Churchill had very little to do with that. Instead, Churchill’s greatest post-war legacy was sounding the alarm about the Soviet “iron curtain” and urging the United States to step forward to lead the free world in the “long twilight struggle” against Soviet communism.