Browse content similar to Churchill's First World War. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
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AIR-RAID SIREN AND BOMBING | 0:00:02 | 0:00:03 | |
On becoming Prime Minister in 1940, | 0:00:03 | 0:00:06 | |
Winston Churchill said | 0:00:06 | 0:00:08 | |
that all his past life had been preparation | 0:00:08 | 0:00:10 | |
for a moment of destiny. | 0:00:10 | 0:00:13 | |
But no chapter had prepared him more than the First World War. | 0:00:14 | 0:00:18 | |
In 1914, he had felt the same call of destiny and glory, | 0:00:23 | 0:00:27 | |
but would experience humiliation and disgrace. | 0:00:27 | 0:00:32 | |
Gallipoli, this great Napoleonic strategic stroke, when it failed, | 0:00:33 | 0:00:38 | |
was more than simply, "This is a failed campaign." | 0:00:38 | 0:00:41 | |
This got to his very soul. | 0:00:41 | 0:00:43 | |
In early 1916, he was an infantry officer serving in the trenches, | 0:00:44 | 0:00:49 | |
where his battle to clear his name and regain war command began. | 0:00:49 | 0:00:53 | |
This is a classic story of hubris and nemesis and then redemption. | 0:00:54 | 0:00:59 | |
The story of his fall and rise can be told largely in his own words, | 0:01:01 | 0:01:07 | |
for Churchill confided all to his young wife, Clementine, | 0:01:07 | 0:01:11 | |
in an intimate correspondence. | 0:01:11 | 0:01:13 | |
I cannot tell you how much I love and honour you, and how sweet | 0:01:14 | 0:01:19 | |
and steadfast you have been through all my hesitations and perplexity. | 0:01:19 | 0:01:23 | |
His "darkest hour" would prove to be Clementine's finest, | 0:01:23 | 0:01:27 | |
as war transformed the most important relationship of his life. | 0:01:27 | 0:01:33 | |
This is a woman who's a great political strategist, | 0:01:33 | 0:01:35 | |
who is his confidante and is the only person who can talk to him | 0:01:35 | 0:01:39 | |
openly, frankly, honestly. | 0:01:39 | 0:01:41 | |
Churchill would make thrilling contributions to the war | 0:01:43 | 0:01:47 | |
on land, sea and air. | 0:01:47 | 0:01:49 | |
But the hardest battle lay within himself. | 0:01:50 | 0:01:53 | |
He was a simply astonishing man | 0:01:54 | 0:01:55 | |
who'd never understood the meaning of stop, finish, over, | 0:01:55 | 0:01:59 | |
and was just going to press on till the very end. | 0:01:59 | 0:02:02 | |
This is the story of Churchill and the First World War. | 0:02:02 | 0:02:06 | |
The cauldron in which a greater warlord would be forged. | 0:02:06 | 0:02:10 | |
In July 1914, as Europe spiralled suddenly toward war, | 0:02:24 | 0:02:29 | |
a young British Minister stood apart from his troubled peers. | 0:02:29 | 0:02:33 | |
The First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Spencer Churchill, | 0:02:35 | 0:02:39 | |
was the political head of the Royal Navy. | 0:02:39 | 0:02:41 | |
Brilliant, but vain, he believed he had a special gift for war. | 0:02:43 | 0:02:48 | |
In August 1914, Winston Churchill is best described | 0:02:50 | 0:02:53 | |
as a bundle of excitement and energy. | 0:02:53 | 0:02:57 | |
He's a man who's gone a very long way in a short time. | 0:02:57 | 0:03:01 | |
He's been a leading social reformer in the House of Commons. | 0:03:01 | 0:03:05 | |
He has been Home Secretary | 0:03:05 | 0:03:07 | |
and now he's the political head of the Royal Navy. | 0:03:07 | 0:03:10 | |
And I think all of his virtues are there but also his vices. | 0:03:10 | 0:03:15 | |
Above all, he's not trusted by many people. | 0:03:15 | 0:03:18 | |
War was in Churchill's blood. | 0:03:20 | 0:03:23 | |
A Sandhurst-educated cavalry officer, his dashing accounts | 0:03:23 | 0:03:27 | |
of imperial adventures | 0:03:27 | 0:03:29 | |
and a prisoner-of-war escape in the Boer War | 0:03:29 | 0:03:32 | |
helped spur him to the top of the ruling Liberal government. | 0:03:32 | 0:03:35 | |
Two things are essential for understanding | 0:03:37 | 0:03:40 | |
Winston Churchill's character. | 0:03:40 | 0:03:42 | |
First of all, he thinks of himself as a soldier - | 0:03:42 | 0:03:45 | |
actually, a warrior might be a better way of putting it - | 0:03:45 | 0:03:47 | |
but he, fundamentally, sees himself as a military man. | 0:03:47 | 0:03:50 | |
The second thing is that he is an imperialist. | 0:03:50 | 0:03:53 | |
He has an unquestioning belief in the British Empire, | 0:03:53 | 0:03:57 | |
as, indeed, almost everybody did, at that point. | 0:03:57 | 0:03:59 | |
Churchill was no warmonger. | 0:04:01 | 0:04:04 | |
But since 1911, he and the Admiralty had responded vigorously | 0:04:04 | 0:04:08 | |
to the growing naval ambitions of the German Empire. | 0:04:08 | 0:04:12 | |
He would not flinch from conflict. | 0:04:12 | 0:04:14 | |
Aged just 39, and at the very peak of his powers, | 0:04:18 | 0:04:23 | |
he wrote to his wife of heady events and emotions. | 0:04:23 | 0:04:26 | |
My darling one and beautiful. | 0:04:30 | 0:04:32 | |
Everything trends towards catastrophe and collapse. | 0:04:33 | 0:04:36 | |
I am interested, geared up and happy - | 0:04:37 | 0:04:41 | |
is it not horrible to be built like that? | 0:04:41 | 0:04:43 | |
The preparations have a hideous fascination for me. | 0:04:44 | 0:04:47 | |
29 years old and nicknamed "The Cat", Clementine Spencer Churchill | 0:04:51 | 0:04:55 | |
was on a seaside holiday with their two young children. | 0:04:55 | 0:04:58 | |
Clementine Churchill was an Edwardian beauty. | 0:04:59 | 0:05:02 | |
She was highly strung, she was quite emotional. | 0:05:02 | 0:05:06 | |
In July 1914, there's a great deal of anticipation | 0:05:06 | 0:05:09 | |
and excitement in the air that's about the war, | 0:05:09 | 0:05:11 | |
and she's very excited about what Winston is doing. | 0:05:11 | 0:05:14 | |
She's also expecting their third child | 0:05:14 | 0:05:16 | |
and she's really thinking about sort of domestic things, what is to come. | 0:05:16 | 0:05:19 | |
They had no idea then what would come, | 0:05:19 | 0:05:22 | |
what suffering they would go through. | 0:05:22 | 0:05:24 | |
They were naive. | 0:05:24 | 0:05:25 | |
My darling, I much wish I were with you during these anxious, | 0:05:27 | 0:05:32 | |
thrilling days. | 0:05:32 | 0:05:34 | |
I know how you are feeling, | 0:05:34 | 0:05:36 | |
tingling with life to the tips of your fingers. | 0:05:36 | 0:05:39 | |
Surely every hour of delay must make the forces of peace more powerful. | 0:05:39 | 0:05:45 | |
It would be a wicked war. Your loving Clemmie. | 0:05:45 | 0:05:49 | |
During the July crisis and leading up to the outbreak of war, | 0:05:53 | 0:05:56 | |
Churchill has, very naturally, | 0:05:56 | 0:05:57 | |
been at the forefront of all political decision-making. | 0:05:57 | 0:06:00 | |
He controls Britain's only first-class strategic instrument, | 0:06:00 | 0:06:04 | |
the Royal Navy, | 0:06:04 | 0:06:05 | |
the thing that is going to have to control the world, if war breaks out, | 0:06:05 | 0:06:09 | |
and getting it into the right place at the right time, at the outbreak | 0:06:09 | 0:06:12 | |
of war, is absolutely critical, so the timing is everything. | 0:06:12 | 0:06:16 | |
On July 28, the First Fleet was concentrated at Portland, | 0:06:18 | 0:06:22 | |
far from its war station at Scapa Flow | 0:06:22 | 0:06:25 | |
in the North Sea, where it could blockade Germany. | 0:06:25 | 0:06:28 | |
A peace-time mobilisation risked provoking Germany, | 0:06:30 | 0:06:34 | |
yet Churchill gambled, ordering the Fleet to slip back secretly | 0:06:34 | 0:06:38 | |
through the Dover Straits at night. | 0:06:38 | 0:06:41 | |
An exultant First Lord had made the Fleet "ready for war". | 0:06:44 | 0:06:48 | |
Diplomatic ultimatums were set to expire at 11pm on August 4. | 0:06:52 | 0:06:56 | |
Cat, dear, it is all up. | 0:06:58 | 0:07:02 | |
Germany has quenched the last hopes of peace. | 0:07:02 | 0:07:06 | |
The world has gone mad, and we must look after ourselves | 0:07:06 | 0:07:09 | |
and our friends. | 0:07:09 | 0:07:10 | |
At the sound of Big Ben, it was Churchill who launched Britain | 0:07:14 | 0:07:18 | |
into war, with a signal sent to fleets across the globe. | 0:07:18 | 0:07:22 | |
"Admiralty to all ships - commence hostilities, at once, with Germany." | 0:07:26 | 0:07:32 | |
The only Cabinet member with experience of war, | 0:07:34 | 0:07:37 | |
he could not fail to imagine greater glories ahead. | 0:07:37 | 0:07:40 | |
Churchill left to brief the senior colleagues most aware | 0:07:42 | 0:07:46 | |
of his mix of genius and egotism. | 0:07:46 | 0:07:48 | |
Prime Minister Herbert Asquith was still sitting in grave silence, | 0:07:51 | 0:07:55 | |
together with David Lloyd George, | 0:07:55 | 0:07:57 | |
when the First Lord crashed noisily in. | 0:07:57 | 0:08:01 | |
The Chancellor noted with disquiet that Churchill seemed | 0:08:01 | 0:08:05 | |
"a really happy man". | 0:08:05 | 0:08:08 | |
In some ways, he is the Churchill of the Second World War | 0:08:08 | 0:08:11 | |
and even after - he's just a very young, | 0:08:11 | 0:08:13 | |
rather green version of that Churchill. He's just quite immature, | 0:08:13 | 0:08:18 | |
politically, and he's going to learn some very interesting lessons. | 0:08:18 | 0:08:22 | |
The First World War will destroy the world that he grew up in, | 0:08:22 | 0:08:25 | |
it will destroy the social order that he's familiar with, | 0:08:25 | 0:08:28 | |
it will destroy the kinds of ambitions that he might have had. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:31 | |
That August, the Navy successfully ferried | 0:08:40 | 0:08:43 | |
the British Expeditionary Force, without loss, to war in France. | 0:08:43 | 0:08:48 | |
But Churchill's mood had changed - | 0:08:50 | 0:08:53 | |
the Navy's passive blockade strategy seemed almost to bore him. | 0:08:53 | 0:08:58 | |
The former Hussar was restless, yearning for action. | 0:08:58 | 0:09:03 | |
Clementine was troubled by his impatient state of mind. | 0:09:05 | 0:09:09 | |
Frequent trips to Army headquarters in France | 0:09:09 | 0:09:12 | |
were irritating his colleagues. | 0:09:12 | 0:09:14 | |
She begins to see in this time, in Winston, a war lust | 0:09:16 | 0:09:20 | |
and she begins to see that he needs some sort of containing, | 0:09:20 | 0:09:23 | |
some sort of restraint. | 0:09:23 | 0:09:25 | |
I think she realises, at this stage, that there's nobody else | 0:09:25 | 0:09:27 | |
who's going to do that, and so very subtly and quietly in her letters, | 0:09:27 | 0:09:31 | |
she begins to, kind of, draw attention to it and warn him. | 0:09:31 | 0:09:35 | |
Yet Churchill was more than a "death or glory" Hussar - | 0:09:37 | 0:09:41 | |
he was a sophisticated thinker on the science of war. | 0:09:41 | 0:09:45 | |
Although Churchill had taken part in the last cavalry charge | 0:09:45 | 0:09:50 | |
of the British Army at Omdurman, | 0:09:50 | 0:09:52 | |
although he was a Victorian figure, | 0:09:52 | 0:09:55 | |
he was a very modern military thinker. | 0:09:55 | 0:09:58 | |
He understood the importance of exploring, | 0:09:58 | 0:10:02 | |
of exploiting, science, technology. | 0:10:02 | 0:10:05 | |
He saw that wars were going to be won by a combination of arms, | 0:10:05 | 0:10:09 | |
manoeuvre on land, sea power and air power. | 0:10:09 | 0:10:13 | |
This passion for military technology had seen both the Navy - | 0:10:14 | 0:10:18 | |
and Churchill himself - take to the skies. | 0:10:18 | 0:10:22 | |
At the turn of the 20th century, the Royal Navy | 0:10:25 | 0:10:27 | |
is the world's leading technological fighting force. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:30 | |
It masters all of the new technologies. | 0:10:30 | 0:10:32 | |
When the aeroplane comes along, the Navy very quickly works out | 0:10:32 | 0:10:35 | |
this is going to be an asset, it's going to allow you to scout, | 0:10:35 | 0:10:38 | |
it's going to allow you to fly over the land from the sea. | 0:10:38 | 0:10:41 | |
Churchill himself is a great enthusiast for aviation, | 0:10:41 | 0:10:45 | |
but it turns out, a very poor pilot. | 0:10:45 | 0:10:47 | |
He manages to crash and he's persuaded not to try to learn | 0:10:47 | 0:10:50 | |
ever again, so other people do the flying. | 0:10:50 | 0:10:53 | |
But Churchill can see the potential | 0:10:53 | 0:10:55 | |
and he's prepared to back the junior officers who have these enthusiasms. | 0:10:55 | 0:11:00 | |
His airmen gave the First Lord a ticket to the land war in France. | 0:11:01 | 0:11:06 | |
In September, the Navy won responsibility | 0:11:08 | 0:11:10 | |
for the aerial defence of Britain against Zeppelin airships. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:14 | |
Churchill's obviously wanting to get more involved in the land battle, | 0:11:17 | 0:11:20 | |
that's where the action is. | 0:11:20 | 0:11:22 | |
He's got the excuse of sending over the Royal Naval Air Service, | 0:11:22 | 0:11:26 | |
and they're actually sent out across to Dunkirk, | 0:11:26 | 0:11:30 | |
where they have the excuse to be there, | 0:11:30 | 0:11:32 | |
because the Royal Naval Air Service, | 0:11:32 | 0:11:34 | |
the planes, can go and bomb the German Zeppelins | 0:11:34 | 0:11:38 | |
which might bomb our ships. There's a reason for doing it. | 0:11:38 | 0:11:40 | |
That autumn, Navy pilots launched the first-ever bombing raids | 0:11:43 | 0:11:46 | |
on Germany, targeting Zeppelin air sheds in Dusseldorf and Cologne. | 0:11:46 | 0:11:51 | |
The "Dunkirk Circus" also allowed Churchill to deploy | 0:11:56 | 0:11:59 | |
another mechanised unit, the dashing squadron of Naval Armoured Cars. | 0:11:59 | 0:12:04 | |
He's getting reports back that, actually, with this war of movement | 0:12:08 | 0:12:11 | |
that's still going on, we need some armoured cars, | 0:12:11 | 0:12:14 | |
to protect our air force base. | 0:12:14 | 0:12:16 | |
And they go on, sort of, almost like buccaneering patrols, | 0:12:16 | 0:12:20 | |
to try and bump into the enemy | 0:12:20 | 0:12:21 | |
and to try and shoot up some German columns advancing, etc. | 0:12:21 | 0:12:25 | |
So they have machine guns fitted - | 0:12:25 | 0:12:26 | |
he sees the value of a mobile armoured vehicle. | 0:12:26 | 0:12:30 | |
Yet, as the duelling armies raced westward, | 0:12:32 | 0:12:35 | |
it was the First Lord himself who now made | 0:12:35 | 0:12:38 | |
a highly-controversial intervention. | 0:12:38 | 0:12:40 | |
The Belgian city of Antwerp was under siege. | 0:12:44 | 0:12:47 | |
A protective chain of forts ringed a port commanding a key position | 0:12:49 | 0:12:54 | |
on the Allied left flank. | 0:12:54 | 0:12:55 | |
Yet, German howitzers were smashing these redoubts one by one. | 0:13:00 | 0:13:05 | |
If Antwerp held, the German advance in the north would stall. | 0:13:08 | 0:13:12 | |
The Germans would simply not be able to get into northern France, | 0:13:12 | 0:13:14 | |
and their whole campaign would fail at that point. | 0:13:14 | 0:13:17 | |
Churchill instinctively puts his finger on the spot | 0:13:17 | 0:13:20 | |
and he says we must do something about this. | 0:13:20 | 0:13:22 | |
On October 3, Churchill arrived in "Fortress Antwerp", | 0:13:24 | 0:13:29 | |
on an urgent fact-finding mission. | 0:13:29 | 0:13:31 | |
The Belgians were poised to surrender, | 0:13:33 | 0:13:35 | |
leaving open the road to the Channel ports. | 0:13:35 | 0:13:38 | |
Alarmed, Churchill called for a defiant last stand. | 0:13:38 | 0:13:43 | |
And he would stay on to lead their resistance. | 0:13:44 | 0:13:47 | |
The First Lord would not fight alone. | 0:13:52 | 0:13:55 | |
He summoned Marines and his "private army", | 0:13:55 | 0:13:58 | |
the Royal Naval Division. | 0:13:58 | 0:14:00 | |
He's actually involved in sending troops from Dunkirk up to Antwerp, | 0:14:02 | 0:14:07 | |
again to help reinforce the Belgians, | 0:14:07 | 0:14:09 | |
and he uses buses to do this - | 0:14:09 | 0:14:11 | |
he actually commissions 100 buses from London. | 0:14:11 | 0:14:14 | |
They're driven down to the coast, taken across, | 0:14:14 | 0:14:16 | |
and he does this quickly. That's the thing about Churchill - | 0:14:16 | 0:14:19 | |
he gets things to happen relatively quickly, for the First World War. | 0:14:19 | 0:14:22 | |
Consisting of fresh-faced volunteers and surplus sailors, | 0:14:26 | 0:14:30 | |
this brand-new infantry force was neither trained nor equipped. | 0:14:30 | 0:14:34 | |
But they were rushed to the front line. | 0:14:35 | 0:14:37 | |
Here, journalists observed Churchill, too, | 0:14:40 | 0:14:42 | |
smoking large cigars under a rain of shrapnel. | 0:14:42 | 0:14:46 | |
In this supercharged state, the warrior over-reached himself. | 0:14:48 | 0:14:52 | |
What happens next, however, | 0:14:54 | 0:14:56 | |
is that he, rather excitedly, sends a telegram back to London, | 0:14:56 | 0:15:01 | |
saying that he wants to, in effect, | 0:15:01 | 0:15:03 | |
give up his government post and take command | 0:15:03 | 0:15:06 | |
of the British Forces there. | 0:15:06 | 0:15:08 | |
Oh, and by the way, can he be a general? | 0:15:08 | 0:15:10 | |
And the very idea of General Churchill carrying out | 0:15:11 | 0:15:15 | |
this role in Antwerp just provokes laughter among his colleagues, | 0:15:15 | 0:15:20 | |
and I suspect they're laughing AT him, not laughing WITH him. | 0:15:20 | 0:15:23 | |
On October 10th, Antwerp finally capitulated. | 0:15:25 | 0:15:29 | |
Six days had been won. | 0:15:29 | 0:15:32 | |
But there was a price to pay. | 0:15:35 | 0:15:38 | |
Over 1,000 of his new soldiers were left stranded. | 0:15:38 | 0:15:41 | |
Fleeing into neutral Holland, | 0:15:41 | 0:15:43 | |
they were interned for the rest of the war. | 0:15:43 | 0:15:46 | |
Some hailed him a hero. | 0:15:48 | 0:15:50 | |
But a hostile press branded Churchill a reckless adventurer, | 0:15:50 | 0:15:54 | |
and his Antwerp mission a blunder. | 0:15:54 | 0:15:57 | |
Churchill's neither a hero nor a buffoon over Antwerp. | 0:16:00 | 0:16:04 | |
It was a sensible idea | 0:16:04 | 0:16:06 | |
and actually, it probably did make a bit of a difference, | 0:16:06 | 0:16:09 | |
but Churchill has a very unfortunate habit | 0:16:09 | 0:16:12 | |
of making himself look foolish, as a result, | 0:16:12 | 0:16:15 | |
and he does look foolish in the eyes of his peers. | 0:16:15 | 0:16:17 | |
Clementine was anxious, | 0:16:19 | 0:16:22 | |
knowing Churchill's military ardour had powerful unseen roots. | 0:16:22 | 0:16:27 | |
Both believed he was destined to achieve greatness. | 0:16:28 | 0:16:33 | |
Yet, Churchill harboured boyish dreams of emulating the epic deeds | 0:16:33 | 0:16:37 | |
of his ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough. | 0:16:37 | 0:16:40 | |
For Churchill, there's an acute consciousness of destiny. | 0:16:41 | 0:16:44 | |
There's an acute consciousness of a man | 0:16:44 | 0:16:47 | |
who really should achieve greatness. | 0:16:47 | 0:16:49 | |
His ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough had a meteoric | 0:16:49 | 0:16:52 | |
and highly-successful career, leading to the construction | 0:16:52 | 0:16:55 | |
of his vast palace, | 0:16:55 | 0:16:56 | |
far larger than any King of England has ever lived in, | 0:16:56 | 0:16:59 | |
as a prize for his war-winning efforts. | 0:16:59 | 0:17:02 | |
And Churchill was born in this house | 0:17:02 | 0:17:03 | |
and he grew up there acutely conscious of that legacy. | 0:17:03 | 0:17:07 | |
So he's very much aware that he stands in a family tradition. | 0:17:07 | 0:17:11 | |
He was acutely conscious of being Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill - | 0:17:11 | 0:17:15 | |
these were important names. | 0:17:15 | 0:17:17 | |
Early 1915 would see the warlord seduced by a daring idea | 0:17:18 | 0:17:24 | |
which inflamed this sense of destiny. | 0:17:24 | 0:17:27 | |
He told Lloyd George that, if it worked, | 0:17:27 | 0:17:29 | |
he would be "the biggest man in Europe". | 0:17:29 | 0:17:32 | |
But he was hurtling toward the greatest disaster of his life. | 0:17:34 | 0:17:38 | |
Churchill was an egomaniac, there's no doubt about it. | 0:17:47 | 0:17:51 | |
He possessed enormous faith in himself and self-confidence | 0:17:51 | 0:17:55 | |
and an almost manic energy. | 0:17:55 | 0:17:57 | |
He was driven. | 0:17:57 | 0:17:59 | |
He had endless ideas, a fertile mind, | 0:17:59 | 0:18:02 | |
but he sometimes found it rather difficult to work out | 0:18:02 | 0:18:06 | |
what was a good idea and what was a bad idea. | 0:18:06 | 0:18:08 | |
By Christmas 1914, a scar of trenches ripped across Europe | 0:18:11 | 0:18:16 | |
from the Alps to the sea, locking armies in a murderous stalemate. | 0:18:16 | 0:18:21 | |
Churchill applied his prodigious imagination | 0:18:23 | 0:18:26 | |
to the breaking of the deadlock. | 0:18:26 | 0:18:28 | |
"My dear Prime Minister, | 0:18:28 | 0:18:30 | |
"are there not other alternatives | 0:18:30 | 0:18:32 | |
"than sending our armies to chew barbed wire in Flanders? | 0:18:32 | 0:18:36 | |
"Further, can not the power of the Navy be brought more directly | 0:18:38 | 0:18:41 | |
"to bear upon the enemy? | 0:18:41 | 0:18:43 | |
"Ought we not to engage him on new frontiers?" | 0:18:44 | 0:18:47 | |
Churchill is still very excited - he loves war. | 0:18:49 | 0:18:53 | |
You know, he's not a cruel man, but, nonetheless, he finds war | 0:18:53 | 0:18:58 | |
to be tremendously exciting, | 0:18:58 | 0:18:59 | |
and the Royal Navy had swept enemy ships from the seas. | 0:18:59 | 0:19:04 | |
And from that point onwards, it's a slow, grinding campaign | 0:19:04 | 0:19:08 | |
of starving the Germans into submission, and he longs for action. | 0:19:08 | 0:19:13 | |
He's throwing out ideas left, right and centre, | 0:19:13 | 0:19:15 | |
memoranda are flowing out from his office. | 0:19:15 | 0:19:18 | |
You would have thought he'd had enough to do running the Royal Navy, | 0:19:18 | 0:19:21 | |
but actually he wants to really run the entire war himself. | 0:19:21 | 0:19:25 | |
Early 1915 saw strange contraptions called "Winston's Follies" | 0:19:28 | 0:19:34 | |
emerge from engineering sheds. | 0:19:34 | 0:19:36 | |
Struck by the success of his armoured cars, | 0:19:38 | 0:19:41 | |
the Navy head was sponsoring | 0:19:41 | 0:19:43 | |
the development of a trench-crossing machine or land ship. | 0:19:43 | 0:19:48 | |
We have been sending men forward, | 0:19:49 | 0:19:51 | |
trying to break through the barbed wire, | 0:19:51 | 0:19:53 | |
trying to attack German positions, | 0:19:53 | 0:19:55 | |
and they are, literally, at times, getting mown down. | 0:19:55 | 0:19:58 | |
So what are we going to do to save those men's lives? | 0:19:58 | 0:20:02 | |
Let's investigate. Could we use things like steam engines | 0:20:02 | 0:20:06 | |
to actually crush down the wire? | 0:20:06 | 0:20:08 | |
Now, part of those experiments, | 0:20:08 | 0:20:10 | |
he actually gets a small tracked truck | 0:20:10 | 0:20:14 | |
on Horse Guards Parade, | 0:20:14 | 0:20:15 | |
and it's filled through half a tonne of bricks. | 0:20:15 | 0:20:18 | |
And First Lord of the Admiralty actually is there | 0:20:18 | 0:20:20 | |
on Horse Guards Parade pushing this thing | 0:20:20 | 0:20:23 | |
and understanding that tracks are really the way | 0:20:23 | 0:20:26 | |
that you can get across awkward ground | 0:20:26 | 0:20:28 | |
and they've fantastic mobility. | 0:20:28 | 0:20:30 | |
Yet his imagination was fired by a dazzling alternative | 0:20:33 | 0:20:36 | |
to costly trench war in the west. | 0:20:36 | 0:20:38 | |
The aim was to knock Germany's eastern ally, | 0:20:42 | 0:20:44 | |
the Ottoman Turks, out of the war. | 0:20:44 | 0:20:47 | |
Churchill had a very romantic view of war, | 0:20:50 | 0:20:53 | |
and the Western Front simply didn't match up to that. | 0:20:53 | 0:20:56 | |
Gallipoli, this great Napoleonic strategic stroke | 0:20:56 | 0:21:00 | |
which could win the war, | 0:21:00 | 0:21:02 | |
I think very much played to Churchill's sense | 0:21:02 | 0:21:07 | |
of not only what warfare should be like, | 0:21:07 | 0:21:09 | |
but where his position in warfare lay. | 0:21:09 | 0:21:12 | |
This was his chance to emulate his great ancestor, | 0:21:12 | 0:21:16 | |
the 1st Duke of Marlborough, | 0:21:16 | 0:21:18 | |
by bringing off a war-winning, strategically brilliant stroke. | 0:21:18 | 0:21:22 | |
The plan envisaged the Fleet running the gauntlet | 0:21:22 | 0:21:25 | |
of the narrow Dardanelle Straits. | 0:21:25 | 0:21:27 | |
The Army would occupy the Gallipoli peninsula, | 0:21:30 | 0:21:34 | |
while the Navy stormed on to the glittering prize of Constantinople. | 0:21:34 | 0:21:39 | |
This is strategic thinking on a very large scale | 0:21:43 | 0:21:46 | |
and, in that sense, I think, you know, | 0:21:46 | 0:21:49 | |
Churchill is showing a great deal of imagination. | 0:21:49 | 0:21:52 | |
Unfortunately, the planning was, I think, | 0:21:52 | 0:21:57 | |
far beyond the capability of the British | 0:21:57 | 0:22:00 | |
to put into practice in 1915. | 0:22:00 | 0:22:03 | |
Decision-making in Whitehall was muddled. | 0:22:03 | 0:22:07 | |
Lord Kitchener at the War Office delayed badly | 0:22:07 | 0:22:11 | |
over the despatch of his Armies. | 0:22:11 | 0:22:13 | |
But Churchill's zeal and enthusiasm swept doubts aside. | 0:22:13 | 0:22:17 | |
That's the paradox of Churchill. | 0:22:20 | 0:22:23 | |
Someone who was brilliant insightful and energetic, but at the same time | 0:22:23 | 0:22:28 | |
sometimes reckless and quite often blind to the mistakes | 0:22:28 | 0:22:32 | |
that he was making, until it was too late to do anything about them. | 0:22:32 | 0:22:36 | |
In early spring, the Admiralty faced a choice - | 0:22:37 | 0:22:41 | |
to wait for Kitchener's armies, or to strike fast with ships alone. | 0:22:41 | 0:22:46 | |
Churchill chose to gamble and sent the Fleet in. | 0:22:47 | 0:22:51 | |
The Naval attack on the Dardanelles | 0:22:59 | 0:23:01 | |
was a very difficult operation of war. | 0:23:01 | 0:23:03 | |
It involved steaming up a very narrow passage under direct gunfire | 0:23:03 | 0:23:07 | |
from heavy and medium-calibre guns | 0:23:07 | 0:23:09 | |
and through minefields, with a very strong current | 0:23:09 | 0:23:12 | |
running against the ships trying to get up the Straits. | 0:23:12 | 0:23:15 | |
Churchill says we must press on, we must push this attack far faster, | 0:23:17 | 0:23:20 | |
we must really go for a... a high-risk offensive operation, | 0:23:20 | 0:23:23 | |
directly into the main waterway and to use the whole Fleet. | 0:23:23 | 0:23:26 | |
And three battleships were sunk - one French, two British - | 0:23:26 | 0:23:30 | |
running into minefields | 0:23:30 | 0:23:32 | |
and, from that point on, the Naval offensive stalled. | 0:23:32 | 0:23:35 | |
The abortive naval assault saw the Turks rush reinforcements | 0:23:38 | 0:23:42 | |
to the peninsula. | 0:23:42 | 0:23:43 | |
Kitchener's armies finally arrived, | 0:23:46 | 0:23:49 | |
but the landings he planned at Anzac Cove, Helles and later at Suvla | 0:23:49 | 0:23:54 | |
all met with huge loss of life. | 0:23:54 | 0:23:57 | |
And bloody trench war resumed. | 0:23:58 | 0:24:01 | |
His brother, Major Jack Churchill, was there, | 0:24:03 | 0:24:07 | |
and his accounts of heroism and sacrifice | 0:24:07 | 0:24:10 | |
fuelled Churchill's frustration. | 0:24:10 | 0:24:12 | |
Churchill could see the disaster unfolding before his eyes. | 0:24:15 | 0:24:19 | |
The men who'd been appointed to command the Dardanelles operation | 0:24:19 | 0:24:22 | |
were a series of incompetents, at best, or men who simply lacked | 0:24:22 | 0:24:27 | |
experience and confidence, and yet he couldn't do anything about that. | 0:24:27 | 0:24:33 | |
He had to stand by on the sidelines | 0:24:33 | 0:24:36 | |
and watch this awful mess deteriorate. | 0:24:36 | 0:24:39 | |
His frustration was enormous, but he had set it in motion and eventually | 0:24:39 | 0:24:44 | |
he had to pay the political price for the failure at Gallipoli. | 0:24:44 | 0:24:48 | |
Tragic events in the Mediterranean were not the immediate cause | 0:24:56 | 0:25:00 | |
of Churchill's downfall. | 0:25:00 | 0:25:03 | |
The man responsible was a close friend | 0:25:03 | 0:25:05 | |
and father figure inside the Admiralty... | 0:25:05 | 0:25:07 | |
..Lord Jacky Fisher. | 0:25:08 | 0:25:10 | |
This 74-year old Naval legend had been brought back | 0:25:12 | 0:25:15 | |
from retirement to lead the Navy in October, 1914. | 0:25:15 | 0:25:19 | |
The two men were kindred spirits. | 0:25:22 | 0:25:25 | |
But Navy insiders like Admiral Beatty foresaw | 0:25:26 | 0:25:29 | |
a messy clash of egos. | 0:25:29 | 0:25:31 | |
One old, wily and of vast experience. | 0:25:33 | 0:25:37 | |
One young, self-assertive, with a great self-satisfaction, | 0:25:37 | 0:25:43 | |
but unstable. They cannot work together. | 0:25:43 | 0:25:47 | |
They cannot both run the show. | 0:25:47 | 0:25:50 | |
These are two men who are simply at opposite ends of every spectrum. | 0:25:51 | 0:25:55 | |
Churchill is a young, dynamic politician | 0:25:55 | 0:25:58 | |
who wants to run the Navy like an Admiral, | 0:25:58 | 0:26:00 | |
and Fisher is an elderly, astute and very experienced Admiral | 0:26:00 | 0:26:04 | |
who wants to run the Navy like a politician, | 0:26:04 | 0:26:06 | |
and both of them actually wanted each other's job. | 0:26:06 | 0:26:09 | |
By April 1915, Fisher had cold feet about both the Dardanelles operation | 0:26:11 | 0:26:17 | |
and an interfering, autocratic First Lord. | 0:26:17 | 0:26:21 | |
Tensions evident in letters held in Churchill College, Cambridge. | 0:26:21 | 0:26:25 | |
What we have here is a wonderful exchange of letters, | 0:26:27 | 0:26:33 | |
which I think captures the deteriorating relationship | 0:26:33 | 0:26:36 | |
between Admiral Fisher and Winston Churchill. | 0:26:36 | 0:26:40 | |
Here you can see that Fisher has written, | 0:26:40 | 0:26:43 | |
"Damn the Dardanelles! They'll be our grave!" | 0:26:43 | 0:26:46 | |
And at the bottom, he signs off, | 0:26:46 | 0:26:48 | |
"Procrastinations, vacillations, Antwerps." | 0:26:48 | 0:26:51 | |
How did Churchill respond on receiving letters like this? | 0:26:51 | 0:26:54 | |
Well, I think you can see his gut reaction here, | 0:26:54 | 0:26:57 | |
in this handwritten note, which he's addressed at the top | 0:26:57 | 0:27:00 | |
to the First Sea Lord, 8th April 1915, quoting Napoleon, | 0:27:00 | 0:27:05 | |
"We are defeated at sea because our admirals have learned - | 0:27:05 | 0:27:08 | |
"where I know not - that war can be made without running risks." | 0:27:08 | 0:27:12 | |
On May 15, Lord Fisher went missing from the Admiralty. | 0:27:15 | 0:27:19 | |
Fisher, ultimately, has had enough and he resigns | 0:27:20 | 0:27:23 | |
and writes a big resignation letter | 0:27:23 | 0:27:26 | |
in which he demands that they get rid of Churchill, | 0:27:26 | 0:27:28 | |
that he be allowed to essentially run the Navy, | 0:27:28 | 0:27:31 | |
and he sets out a huge, kind of, list of... | 0:27:31 | 0:27:33 | |
"You must do exactly as I tell you, | 0:27:33 | 0:27:36 | |
"because I'm the only man who can win the war." | 0:27:36 | 0:27:38 | |
And they call his bluff. | 0:27:38 | 0:27:40 | |
Fisher was out. | 0:27:42 | 0:27:43 | |
But he had badly damaged Asquith's already teetering government. | 0:27:43 | 0:27:48 | |
The Conservative opposition scented blood | 0:27:49 | 0:27:52 | |
and pressed for a share in government. | 0:27:52 | 0:27:55 | |
Churchill was in acute danger. | 0:27:56 | 0:27:59 | |
For he was the "Blenheim rat", the "renegade" and "class traitor" | 0:28:00 | 0:28:05 | |
who had deserted the Tories to join the ruling Liberals in 1904. | 0:28:05 | 0:28:09 | |
That weekend, the Churchill's journeyed | 0:28:13 | 0:28:16 | |
to Asquith's Thames-side home, to plead for his job. | 0:28:16 | 0:28:19 | |
But the game was up. | 0:28:20 | 0:28:22 | |
Within days, Asquith would agree to lead a coalition. | 0:28:23 | 0:28:27 | |
After the four years they called a "golden age", | 0:28:27 | 0:28:31 | |
the Churchills would leave Admiralty House. | 0:28:31 | 0:28:34 | |
He was sacked. Clementine leapt fiercely to her husband's defence. | 0:28:35 | 0:28:41 | |
"My dear Mr Asquith, if you throw Winston overboard, | 0:28:43 | 0:28:47 | |
"you will be committing an act of weakness | 0:28:47 | 0:28:50 | |
"and your coalition government will not be as formidable a war machine. | 0:28:50 | 0:28:54 | |
"Winston may, in your eyes, have faults, | 0:28:54 | 0:28:56 | |
"but he has the supreme quality which I venture to say | 0:28:56 | 0:28:59 | |
"very few of your present, or future cabinet, possess - | 0:28:59 | 0:29:03 | |
"the power, the imagination and the deadliness to fight Germany." | 0:29:03 | 0:29:08 | |
That's what she says to the Prime Minister - you are weak. | 0:29:11 | 0:29:14 | |
She talks about how wonderful Winston is, | 0:29:14 | 0:29:16 | |
but basically, she's saying, you are a weak man, | 0:29:16 | 0:29:19 | |
and that is devastating, I think, it's a devastating thing to do. | 0:29:19 | 0:29:23 | |
It potentially ruptures their relationship, | 0:29:23 | 0:29:26 | |
but it shows that she's got claws and she will fight for him. | 0:29:26 | 0:29:28 | |
As it happens, it's Margot who really takes issue with her. | 0:29:28 | 0:29:33 | |
She calls Clementine "a fish wife". | 0:29:33 | 0:29:36 | |
She describes her as having "the soul of a servant". | 0:29:36 | 0:29:39 | |
But no, she does not have the soul of a servant - | 0:29:39 | 0:29:42 | |
she's fighting for her man. | 0:29:42 | 0:29:44 | |
Obsessed with the Dardanelles, | 0:29:46 | 0:29:48 | |
Churchill accepted a lowly government post, | 0:29:48 | 0:29:51 | |
hoping in vain to influence policy. | 0:29:51 | 0:29:54 | |
Privately, he expressed shock and despair. | 0:29:56 | 0:30:00 | |
I am the victim of a political intrigue. I am finished. | 0:30:01 | 0:30:04 | |
Finished in respect of all I care for - the waging of war, | 0:30:04 | 0:30:08 | |
the defeat of the Germans. | 0:30:08 | 0:30:10 | |
The memory of his famous father Randolph's own political downfall | 0:30:12 | 0:30:16 | |
now weighed heavily. | 0:30:16 | 0:30:19 | |
Now, that, of course, made the fall that Winston himself suffered | 0:30:19 | 0:30:23 | |
in the wake of the Dardanelles disaster | 0:30:23 | 0:30:26 | |
all the more awful and all the more bitter. | 0:30:26 | 0:30:29 | |
It was very difficult for him to see the way back, | 0:30:29 | 0:30:32 | |
and he felt that, not only had he failed, | 0:30:32 | 0:30:34 | |
but he'd confirmed everyone's view of the Churchills, | 0:30:34 | 0:30:38 | |
that they were bound to fail. | 0:30:38 | 0:30:41 | |
First Randolph and then Winston - it was like a family curse. | 0:30:41 | 0:30:45 | |
And Churchill thrashed around in desperation, | 0:30:45 | 0:30:48 | |
wondering how could he find a way back? | 0:30:48 | 0:30:51 | |
The Churchills retired to Hoe Farm, | 0:30:54 | 0:30:56 | |
a weekend retreat, to lick their wounds. | 0:30:56 | 0:31:00 | |
Clementine recognised that her husband was battling | 0:31:00 | 0:31:03 | |
with dark inner demons. | 0:31:03 | 0:31:05 | |
People tend to talk about Churchill's "black dog". | 0:31:08 | 0:31:14 | |
He's gone from being at the centre | 0:31:14 | 0:31:16 | |
to being a, sort of, mere observer of events, | 0:31:16 | 0:31:19 | |
and I think it's that that he finds incredibly difficult. | 0:31:19 | 0:31:23 | |
I think it does hit him like a hammer blow, | 0:31:23 | 0:31:26 | |
but another great Churchillian trait is his capacity | 0:31:26 | 0:31:30 | |
to recover from these seemingly, sort of, knockout blows, | 0:31:30 | 0:31:33 | |
and it's interesting to look at how he does that | 0:31:33 | 0:31:37 | |
and the strategies he uses. | 0:31:37 | 0:31:40 | |
You can see him looking around at ways in which to fill the void | 0:31:40 | 0:31:44 | |
that has been created in his life, | 0:31:44 | 0:31:46 | |
and one of the things that he seeks solace in is painting. | 0:31:46 | 0:31:49 | |
Churchill came across painting as a form of enjoyment, | 0:31:51 | 0:31:54 | |
relaxation and almost therapy. | 0:31:54 | 0:31:56 | |
One of his very first paintings is the farm itself, Hoe Farm. | 0:31:56 | 0:32:01 | |
Churchill often painted himself into his paintings later, | 0:32:03 | 0:32:06 | |
but there's one right near the beginning of his career, | 0:32:06 | 0:32:09 | |
that he actually painted during the First World War. | 0:32:09 | 0:32:11 | |
And it's a very intense, full sort of frontal look at himself | 0:32:11 | 0:32:16 | |
and it's very dark and very unusual, | 0:32:16 | 0:32:18 | |
because the rest of his paintings are almost entirely | 0:32:18 | 0:32:21 | |
colourful, sunshine scenes, | 0:32:21 | 0:32:23 | |
but this is a real psychological sketch of himself, | 0:32:23 | 0:32:26 | |
at a time when he was obviously feeling very wretched. | 0:32:26 | 0:32:29 | |
That summer, contemplating a visit to the warzone, | 0:32:33 | 0:32:36 | |
Churchill wrote Clementine an intimate letter, | 0:32:36 | 0:32:40 | |
to be opened in the event of his death. | 0:32:40 | 0:32:42 | |
"Do not grieve for me too much. | 0:32:43 | 0:32:46 | |
"I am a spirit confident in my rights. | 0:32:46 | 0:32:49 | |
"Death is only an incident | 0:32:50 | 0:32:52 | |
"and not the most important one which happens to us. | 0:32:52 | 0:32:55 | |
"On the whole - and especially since I met you, my darling one - | 0:32:57 | 0:33:02 | |
"I have been happy. | 0:33:02 | 0:33:03 | |
"If there is another place, I shall be on the lookout for you. | 0:33:05 | 0:33:10 | |
"In the meantime, look forward, feel free, | 0:33:12 | 0:33:17 | |
"rejoice in life, | 0:33:17 | 0:33:19 | |
"cherish the children | 0:33:19 | 0:33:22 | |
"and guard my memory." | 0:33:22 | 0:33:24 | |
Yet, Churchill's reputation was falling to its nadir. | 0:33:26 | 0:33:30 | |
A December evacuation from Gallipoli would mark total Allied defeat, | 0:33:30 | 0:33:35 | |
at a cost of 53,000 dead. | 0:33:35 | 0:33:38 | |
The campaign's loudest champion | 0:33:40 | 0:33:42 | |
was publicly denigrated | 0:33:42 | 0:33:44 | |
as the man solely responsible. | 0:33:44 | 0:33:46 | |
The disappointment that he felt, when it failed, was more | 0:33:49 | 0:33:53 | |
than simply, "This is a failed campaign." | 0:33:53 | 0:33:55 | |
This got to his very soul. | 0:33:55 | 0:33:57 | |
This was, I think, his chance, | 0:33:57 | 0:33:59 | |
he thought, to become a great warlord, | 0:33:59 | 0:34:03 | |
and it hadn't happened. | 0:34:03 | 0:34:05 | |
And to the end of his days, he resented that, | 0:34:05 | 0:34:08 | |
and I think he thought that his chance for glory | 0:34:08 | 0:34:11 | |
in the First World War had passed him by. | 0:34:11 | 0:34:14 | |
For decades, Churchill would be taunted by the cry, | 0:34:15 | 0:34:19 | |
"Remember the Dardanelles!". | 0:34:19 | 0:34:21 | |
Clementine feared that he would die of grief. | 0:34:23 | 0:34:27 | |
This is a man who's been at the centre of government | 0:34:29 | 0:34:31 | |
for close on a decade, by this stage, | 0:34:31 | 0:34:34 | |
and suddenly, to be pushed to the sidelines, | 0:34:34 | 0:34:37 | |
where he could write as many memoranda as he liked | 0:34:37 | 0:34:40 | |
but no-one paid any attention to them, was deeply wounding to him. | 0:34:40 | 0:34:45 | |
In November, he could bear political impotence no more - | 0:34:47 | 0:34:50 | |
his response was typically audacious. | 0:34:50 | 0:34:54 | |
He already held a commission with the Oxfordshire Hussars, | 0:34:57 | 0:35:00 | |
a territorial regiment. | 0:35:00 | 0:35:02 | |
Major Churchill volunteered for "death or glory" in the trenches. | 0:35:04 | 0:35:09 | |
"My dear Asquith, I ask you to submit my resignation to the King. | 0:35:12 | 0:35:17 | |
"I'm an officer and I place myself unreservedly at the disposal | 0:35:18 | 0:35:22 | |
"of the military authorities, | 0:35:22 | 0:35:23 | |
"observing that my regiment is in France. | 0:35:23 | 0:35:26 | |
"I have a clear conscience. | 0:35:27 | 0:35:29 | |
"Time will vindicate my administration of the Admiralty. | 0:35:30 | 0:35:34 | |
"With much respect and unaltered personal friendship, | 0:35:35 | 0:35:38 | |
"I bid you goodbye." | 0:35:38 | 0:35:40 | |
On November 18th, Churchill joined the troop train to Boulogne. | 0:35:45 | 0:35:49 | |
Clementine's first letters were raw | 0:35:53 | 0:35:55 | |
with the anguish felt by every soldier's wife. | 0:35:55 | 0:35:58 | |
"My darling Winston. | 0:36:00 | 0:36:02 | |
"I long for news of you. | 0:36:02 | 0:36:05 | |
"Although it's only a few miles, | 0:36:05 | 0:36:08 | |
"you seem to me as far away as the stars, | 0:36:08 | 0:36:11 | |
"lost among a million khaki figures. | 0:36:11 | 0:36:14 | |
"Write to me, Winston. | 0:36:14 | 0:36:16 | |
"I want a letter from you badly." | 0:36:16 | 0:36:18 | |
Both would write, almost daily. | 0:36:19 | 0:36:23 | |
And their passionate correspondence sustained them | 0:36:23 | 0:36:26 | |
through his perilous days on the Western Front. | 0:36:26 | 0:36:29 | |
Within days of his arrival, Churchill had experienced | 0:36:40 | 0:36:43 | |
the first of numerous close encounters with death. | 0:36:43 | 0:36:46 | |
"Yesterday, a curious thing happened. | 0:36:49 | 0:36:51 | |
"A telegram arrived that the corps commander wished to see me. | 0:36:51 | 0:36:56 | |
"I thought it rather a strong order to bring me | 0:36:56 | 0:36:58 | |
"out of the trenches by daylight - a three-miles walk. | 0:36:58 | 0:37:02 | |
"Anyhow, I had no choice. | 0:37:02 | 0:37:05 | |
"I arrived muddy, wet and sweating at the rendezvous. | 0:37:05 | 0:37:09 | |
"No motor! | 0:37:09 | 0:37:12 | |
"You may imagine how I abused to myself the complacency | 0:37:12 | 0:37:15 | |
"of this general dragging me about in the rain and the mud for nothing. | 0:37:15 | 0:37:19 | |
"And then I learned that a quarter of an hour after I had left, | 0:37:19 | 0:37:23 | |
"the dugout in which I was living had been struck | 0:37:23 | 0:37:26 | |
"by a shell, which burst a few feet from where | 0:37:26 | 0:37:28 | |
"I would have been sitting, killing the mess orderly who was inside. | 0:37:28 | 0:37:32 | |
"When I saw the ruin, I was not so angry with the general after all. | 0:37:33 | 0:37:38 | |
"Now, see from this how vain it is to worry about things. | 0:37:38 | 0:37:42 | |
"It is all chance or destiny. | 0:37:42 | 0:37:45 | |
"One must yield oneself simply and naturally to the mood of the game." | 0:37:46 | 0:37:52 | |
Clementine's anxieties were not assuaged. | 0:37:55 | 0:37:59 | |
But her husband was upbeat, walking in the footsteps of the Great Duke. | 0:37:59 | 0:38:04 | |
"My dearest soul" - this is what the Great Duke of Marlborough | 0:38:07 | 0:38:12 | |
"used to write from the Low Countries to HIS Cat." | 0:38:12 | 0:38:15 | |
Marlborough's "Cat" was Sarah Churchill, | 0:38:15 | 0:38:19 | |
a formidable political operator in the 18th-century corridors of power. | 0:38:19 | 0:38:23 | |
Yet Clementine was a very different wife, | 0:38:26 | 0:38:29 | |
finding it noble and romantic | 0:38:29 | 0:38:31 | |
that her husband was serving as a mid-ranking officer. | 0:38:31 | 0:38:35 | |
The Daily Mail rings me up and asks | 0:38:36 | 0:38:38 | |
if I have had any news from "Major Churchill". | 0:38:38 | 0:38:42 | |
"Major Churchill" has a strange sound, | 0:38:42 | 0:38:45 | |
but I am prouder of this title than of any other. | 0:38:45 | 0:38:49 | |
Churchill revealed he was being schooled in trench warfare | 0:38:50 | 0:38:53 | |
by the Grenadier Guards, a regiment the Great Duke himself had led. | 0:38:53 | 0:38:58 | |
All is very well arranged. | 0:39:00 | 0:39:03 | |
I saw Lord Cavan, to whom I said, | 0:39:03 | 0:39:05 | |
"I should regard it as a very great honour | 0:39:05 | 0:39:07 | |
"to go into the line with the Guards," | 0:39:07 | 0:39:09 | |
to which he replied, "We shall be proud to have you." | 0:39:09 | 0:39:13 | |
The Army is willing to receive me back as the prodigal son. | 0:39:13 | 0:39:17 | |
I am very happy here. | 0:39:17 | 0:39:19 | |
But these letters did not tell the whole story. | 0:39:20 | 0:39:24 | |
I think it would be difficult to imagine a more difficult place | 0:39:24 | 0:39:27 | |
for Churchill the politician, the outsider, | 0:39:27 | 0:39:30 | |
the peripatetic adventurer, to embrace the First World War | 0:39:30 | 0:39:34 | |
than with the 2nd Battalion Grenadier Guards. | 0:39:34 | 0:39:37 | |
The Guards' reputation is for ruthless discipline, | 0:39:37 | 0:39:41 | |
professionalism, attention to detail. | 0:39:41 | 0:39:45 | |
Not only was this a guy, a politician, an outsider, | 0:39:45 | 0:39:49 | |
coming to a close-knit regiment of professional soldiers, | 0:39:49 | 0:39:52 | |
but he's also everything | 0:39:52 | 0:39:54 | |
that, culturally, they would have been suspicious of. | 0:39:54 | 0:39:56 | |
He's ambitious, he doesn't take well to authority, | 0:39:56 | 0:40:00 | |
the officers in the Guards battalion, | 0:40:00 | 0:40:03 | |
one suspects, would have been very, very suspicious and hostile to him. | 0:40:03 | 0:40:06 | |
Colonel Jeffreys, the battalion commander, | 0:40:06 | 0:40:08 | |
he's already got a fearsome reputation, | 0:40:08 | 0:40:10 | |
even for a commander of a Guards battalion, | 0:40:10 | 0:40:12 | |
and I think he says something wonderfully cold | 0:40:12 | 0:40:14 | |
on their first meeting, like, | 0:40:14 | 0:40:16 | |
"Just so you know, we didn't ask to have you sent here." | 0:40:16 | 0:40:19 | |
Arriving with excess kit, the newcomer was put firmly his place. | 0:40:20 | 0:40:26 | |
A batman delivered the revised allocation to his dugout - | 0:40:27 | 0:40:31 | |
a pair of socks and a shaving kit. | 0:40:31 | 0:40:34 | |
Sir John French, Commander of the British Army, now intervened. | 0:40:36 | 0:40:41 | |
He was a close personal friend | 0:40:41 | 0:40:44 | |
and keen that Churchill command a brigade. | 0:40:44 | 0:40:47 | |
Clementine was unconvinced, fearing he would lose newly won respect | 0:40:50 | 0:40:56 | |
if he became a "Chateau General" so quickly. | 0:40:56 | 0:40:58 | |
What she knows and understands, | 0:41:00 | 0:41:02 | |
in a way that he just doesn't quite appreciate, | 0:41:02 | 0:41:04 | |
is that at home, that would be seen as just going too far, too quickly. | 0:41:04 | 0:41:08 | |
He's already got a reputation for being a little bit too ambitious, | 0:41:08 | 0:41:12 | |
a little bit too egotistical - he is more important than anybody else. | 0:41:12 | 0:41:16 | |
She knows that if he were to accept that promotion, | 0:41:16 | 0:41:19 | |
it would be negative. | 0:41:19 | 0:41:20 | |
That December, Churchill was on tenterhooks - | 0:41:22 | 0:41:25 | |
awaiting confirmation of his rank | 0:41:25 | 0:41:28 | |
whilst flitting between the trenches and Allied HQ. | 0:41:28 | 0:41:31 | |
General Fayolle gave him a blue helmet that he wore with pride. | 0:41:33 | 0:41:37 | |
Sir John French's offer of a British general's uniform soon followed. | 0:41:38 | 0:41:43 | |
"My darling, I am to be given command | 0:41:46 | 0:41:49 | |
"of the 56th Brigade in the 19th Division. | 0:41:49 | 0:41:53 | |
"Please order another khaki tunic for me as Brigadier General. | 0:41:53 | 0:41:57 | |
"Let the pockets be less baggy than the other two." | 0:41:57 | 0:42:01 | |
Yet French was in trouble. | 0:42:01 | 0:42:04 | |
Failure at the recent Battle of Loos saw him recalled | 0:42:04 | 0:42:07 | |
by Asquith to London to be dismissed. | 0:42:07 | 0:42:09 | |
"My darling one, I am back here at GHQ. | 0:42:11 | 0:42:15 | |
"I don't know what effect this change of command | 0:42:15 | 0:42:18 | |
"will produce on my local fortunes. | 0:42:18 | 0:42:21 | |
"In the Grenadiers, the opinion is that I am to have a division." | 0:42:21 | 0:42:26 | |
Two letters on the same day capture the moments | 0:42:28 | 0:42:31 | |
when hopes of a General Churchill evaporated. | 0:42:31 | 0:42:34 | |
"Later. | 0:42:37 | 0:42:39 | |
"I reopen my letter to say that French has telephoned from London. | 0:42:40 | 0:42:44 | |
"The PM has written to him that I am not to have a brigade | 0:42:44 | 0:42:48 | |
"but a battalion. | 0:42:48 | 0:42:50 | |
"You should cancel the order for the tunic." | 0:42:50 | 0:42:53 | |
Field Marshal Sir John French, a great friend of Churchill's, | 0:42:58 | 0:43:01 | |
had been replaced by General, as he was then, Sir Douglas Haig. | 0:43:01 | 0:43:06 | |
And Haig had a much more realistic view, I think, | 0:43:06 | 0:43:10 | |
of Churchill's abilities. And he insisted that, | 0:43:10 | 0:43:13 | |
first of all, he win his spurs, as it was, | 0:43:13 | 0:43:17 | |
by commanding a battalion. | 0:43:17 | 0:43:19 | |
His first trench experiences encouraged Churchill | 0:43:23 | 0:43:26 | |
to pen a memorandum brimming with new tactical ideas... | 0:43:26 | 0:43:30 | |
..including a vision of a mass attack of his land ships. | 0:43:31 | 0:43:35 | |
Variants of the offensive. One, attack by armour. | 0:43:37 | 0:43:42 | |
The cutting of the enemy's wire and the general domination | 0:43:42 | 0:43:45 | |
of his firing line can be effected by engines of this character. | 0:43:45 | 0:43:49 | |
None should be used until all can be used at once. Above all, surprise! | 0:43:49 | 0:43:56 | |
But no-one was listening to a yesterday's man. | 0:43:57 | 0:44:01 | |
Churchill now faced a searching test of character - | 0:44:01 | 0:44:05 | |
the command of men in battle. | 0:44:05 | 0:44:07 | |
On January 4, 1916, Lieutenant Colonel Churchill took command | 0:44:17 | 0:44:21 | |
of the 6th Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers. | 0:44:21 | 0:44:24 | |
Well, he gets off to a disastrous start | 0:44:27 | 0:44:29 | |
with 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers. His own sense of importance | 0:44:29 | 0:44:32 | |
and history, I think, overtakes him. He's a cavalry officer, | 0:44:32 | 0:44:35 | |
with no experience of infantry drill, | 0:44:35 | 0:44:37 | |
he gives all the wrong words of commands. | 0:44:37 | 0:44:39 | |
The private soldiers haven't got a clue what to do, his junior officers | 0:44:39 | 0:44:42 | |
who are already probably ill-disposed towards his presence | 0:44:42 | 0:44:44 | |
are having to whisper in his ear. I mean, he makes a fool of himself, | 0:44:44 | 0:44:47 | |
there is no two ways about it. | 0:44:47 | 0:44:49 | |
What's so interesting is that, having got off to this awkward start | 0:44:49 | 0:44:52 | |
he turns it around, and he turns it around very quickly. | 0:44:52 | 0:44:55 | |
They were stationed by the small Belgian town the Tommies called | 0:44:56 | 0:44:59 | |
Plug Street, on the southern part of the Ypres Salient. | 0:44:59 | 0:45:03 | |
This was a time, early 1916, | 0:45:05 | 0:45:08 | |
on a front, Plug Street, which was not an active one. | 0:45:08 | 0:45:12 | |
He did not command in a major battle, this was trench holding. | 0:45:12 | 0:45:15 | |
That was nasty enough, that was dangerous enough, | 0:45:15 | 0:45:18 | |
but it's a very different thing than leading men over the top. | 0:45:18 | 0:45:20 | |
As MP for Dundee, Churchill was proud to join a Scottish regiment, | 0:45:22 | 0:45:26 | |
but he was horrified by what they had experienced at Loos. | 0:45:26 | 0:45:30 | |
CHURCHILL: It fought with the greatest gallantry in the big battle | 0:45:30 | 0:45:34 | |
and was torn to pieces. | 0:45:34 | 0:45:36 | |
More than half the men and three quarters of the officers | 0:45:36 | 0:45:39 | |
were shot and these terrible gaps have been filled up | 0:45:39 | 0:45:42 | |
by quite young, inexperienced officers. | 0:45:42 | 0:45:45 | |
His first pep talk signalled the arrival | 0:45:48 | 0:45:50 | |
of an unconventional commander. | 0:45:50 | 0:45:52 | |
Laugh a little and teach your men to laugh. | 0:45:54 | 0:45:57 | |
Show good humour under fire. | 0:45:58 | 0:46:01 | |
War is a game played with a smile. | 0:46:01 | 0:46:05 | |
If you can not smile, grin. | 0:46:06 | 0:46:08 | |
If you can not grin, then stay out of the way until you can. | 0:46:08 | 0:46:11 | |
And now, gentlemen, we shall make war on the lice! | 0:46:12 | 0:46:17 | |
This is an example of Churchill as a, sort of, free-thinker. | 0:46:19 | 0:46:22 | |
Recognising what's important that other people haven't recognised. | 0:46:22 | 0:46:26 | |
And lice were misery in the trenches. You think of the shelling | 0:46:26 | 0:46:30 | |
and the sniping and the danger, but actually, what gets a soldier down, | 0:46:30 | 0:46:33 | |
on a day-to-day basis, is the mud and the cold and the hunger | 0:46:33 | 0:46:36 | |
and the discomfort and, in recognising that, | 0:46:36 | 0:46:39 | |
here was something that could be targeted with a bit of extra work, | 0:46:39 | 0:46:43 | |
Churchill's actually showing an incredible compassion to his men, | 0:46:43 | 0:46:46 | |
and they liked it | 0:46:46 | 0:46:47 | |
and, apparently, for the rest of the war, 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers | 0:46:47 | 0:46:50 | |
were one of the least lice-plagued battalions in the army. | 0:46:50 | 0:46:53 | |
Immersing himself enthusiastically in trench life, | 0:46:53 | 0:46:57 | |
the new Colonel was attentive to the needs of his men. | 0:46:57 | 0:47:01 | |
He commands a battalion almost as though you'd | 0:47:03 | 0:47:05 | |
expect him to command a platoon. | 0:47:05 | 0:47:07 | |
This is probably the first time that Churchill's really | 0:47:07 | 0:47:11 | |
in a front line of a conflict, in command | 0:47:11 | 0:47:14 | |
and what is interesting is the Churchill that comes out, | 0:47:14 | 0:47:17 | |
the Churchill that shines through in those circumstances | 0:47:17 | 0:47:19 | |
is not so much the ambitious Churchill, | 0:47:19 | 0:47:23 | |
the Churchill that rubs people up the wrong way, | 0:47:23 | 0:47:25 | |
it is a much more caring, much more focused, | 0:47:25 | 0:47:28 | |
much more sensitive Churchill, if you will, and | 0:47:28 | 0:47:31 | |
that's what makes him a very good commander in the First World War. | 0:47:31 | 0:47:34 | |
It's almost as though, in the trenches, | 0:47:34 | 0:47:36 | |
surrounded with the responsibility, and it must be a huge responsibility | 0:47:36 | 0:47:40 | |
for a battalion of men, the proximity of death, | 0:47:40 | 0:47:43 | |
the fact that your horizons have really narrowed. | 0:47:43 | 0:47:46 | |
He's forgotten his political ambitions. | 0:47:46 | 0:47:49 | |
For once, he doesn't have half an eye on Westminster, | 0:47:49 | 0:47:51 | |
even if it's only briefly, | 0:47:51 | 0:47:52 | |
and what comes out is this very impressive Churchill. | 0:47:52 | 0:47:56 | |
He was a decidedly eccentric commander. | 0:47:58 | 0:48:01 | |
You know, there are stories of him, for example, | 0:48:01 | 0:48:03 | |
going out into no-man's land on a patrol, | 0:48:03 | 0:48:06 | |
making all sorts of noise in doing so, | 0:48:06 | 0:48:09 | |
lying on his electric torch and thus switching it on and, | 0:48:09 | 0:48:12 | |
you know, basically giving a real target for the enemy, | 0:48:12 | 0:48:15 | |
but there's no doubt at all that Churchill, I think, proved to be | 0:48:15 | 0:48:18 | |
a very effective battalion commander. | 0:48:18 | 0:48:21 | |
Demands for extra tuck for his mess added to the burdens | 0:48:24 | 0:48:27 | |
of a busy mother of three. | 0:48:27 | 0:48:29 | |
"About food, the sorts of things I want you to send me are these - | 0:48:31 | 0:48:36 | |
"large slabs of corned beef, | 0:48:36 | 0:48:38 | |
"Stilton cheeses, cream, hams, | 0:48:38 | 0:48:41 | |
"sardines, dried fruits. | 0:48:41 | 0:48:44 | |
"You might almost try a big beef steak pie, | 0:48:44 | 0:48:46 | |
"but not tinned grouse, the simpler the better | 0:48:46 | 0:48:49 | |
"and substantial, too, for our ration meat is tough and tasteless. | 0:48:49 | 0:48:54 | |
"Peach brandy seems to be a hopeful feature in the liquor department. | 0:48:54 | 0:48:58 | |
"I fear you find me very expensive to keep." | 0:48:58 | 0:49:01 | |
The Western Front offered a diversion | 0:49:03 | 0:49:05 | |
from ugly political intrigues. | 0:49:05 | 0:49:07 | |
But Churchill still needed his Sapient Cat | 0:49:08 | 0:49:11 | |
to be his eyes and ears in Westminster. | 0:49:11 | 0:49:14 | |
CHURCHILL: Don't neglect these matters, | 0:49:16 | 0:49:19 | |
I have no-one but you to act for me. | 0:49:19 | 0:49:22 | |
Keep in touch with the Government. | 0:49:23 | 0:49:25 | |
Show complete confidence in our fortunes. | 0:49:25 | 0:49:29 | |
Hold your head very high. | 0:49:29 | 0:49:31 | |
When you look at the role that Clementine Churchill is playing | 0:49:34 | 0:49:37 | |
during this period, she really is acting as an anchor. | 0:49:37 | 0:49:42 | |
She is listening out for how he is being perceived in the newspapers, | 0:49:42 | 0:49:48 | |
but also amongst her contemporaries and also in high political circles. | 0:49:48 | 0:49:55 | |
She's guarding his reputation very carefully, | 0:49:55 | 0:49:59 | |
she's alerting him to potential dangers, | 0:49:59 | 0:50:01 | |
to things that she thinks that he has missed, | 0:50:01 | 0:50:06 | |
and she is, of course, also prepared to take up the cudgel | 0:50:06 | 0:50:11 | |
and absolutely to defend his reputation. | 0:50:11 | 0:50:14 | |
My darling, today I lunched with Lloyd George. | 0:50:15 | 0:50:19 | |
Now don't scold your Cat too much for being a hermit. | 0:50:19 | 0:50:22 | |
Here, in two days I have hobnobbed with Montague, Birrell, | 0:50:22 | 0:50:27 | |
Lloyd George, and a South African potentate. Please send me home | 0:50:27 | 0:50:32 | |
the Distinguished Conduct Medal at once and much praise. | 0:50:32 | 0:50:36 | |
Clementine had volunteered to help the YMCA organise workers canteens | 0:50:40 | 0:50:45 | |
in some of the new munitions factories | 0:50:45 | 0:50:47 | |
set up to meet the voracious demand for shells. | 0:50:47 | 0:50:50 | |
She's involved in, I think, about nine, | 0:50:53 | 0:50:56 | |
some of which have 500 people to feed. | 0:50:56 | 0:50:58 | |
She has to open them, she has to visit them. She talks a lot about | 0:50:58 | 0:51:01 | |
the difficulties in getting there, the trains. | 0:51:01 | 0:51:03 | |
All this is going on whilst he is asking her | 0:51:03 | 0:51:06 | |
to, basically, be Winston Churchill at home. | 0:51:06 | 0:51:08 | |
The Munitions Minister was David Lloyd George, | 0:51:10 | 0:51:13 | |
the one dynamic star in a lacklustre coalition. | 0:51:13 | 0:51:17 | |
Clementine was well placed to monitor his steady rise. | 0:51:19 | 0:51:22 | |
Trench life settled into a pattern of dull routine | 0:51:27 | 0:51:31 | |
and sudden danger. | 0:51:31 | 0:51:32 | |
"My darling, I take up my pen to send you my daily note. | 0:51:34 | 0:51:37 | |
"At six, I went round my trenches | 0:51:38 | 0:51:40 | |
"and was saluted on my doorstep by a very sulky bullet. | 0:51:40 | 0:51:44 | |
"All the morning, I laboured in the small business of the battalion | 0:51:46 | 0:51:49 | |
"and dealt with my company commanders | 0:51:49 | 0:51:52 | |
"and sent off the numerous reports for which our superiors clamour. | 0:51:52 | 0:51:56 | |
"I send you some copies of the photo | 0:52:00 | 0:52:02 | |
"of Archie and I, taken at Armentieres. | 0:52:02 | 0:52:04 | |
"I never expected to be so completely involved | 0:52:06 | 0:52:08 | |
"in the military machine." | 0:52:08 | 0:52:10 | |
As winter turned to spring, | 0:52:12 | 0:52:14 | |
old political instincts began to reawaken. | 0:52:14 | 0:52:17 | |
He's genuinely interested, | 0:52:19 | 0:52:22 | |
but, of course, the challenges you face in commanding a battalion | 0:52:22 | 0:52:25 | |
on the Western Front are not quite the same as running a Navy or | 0:52:25 | 0:52:29 | |
running a government department, and again, I think you can gradually see | 0:52:29 | 0:52:34 | |
over the next five months, politics and Whitehall luring him back in. | 0:52:34 | 0:52:39 | |
The loss of air superiority in the skies above Plug Street | 0:52:41 | 0:52:44 | |
further inflamed irritation with weak political leadership. | 0:52:44 | 0:52:49 | |
-CHURCHILL: -Air fights have been going on overhead this morning. | 0:52:50 | 0:52:53 | |
Since I left the Admiralty, the whole naval wing has been let down | 0:52:53 | 0:52:57 | |
and all previous ascendency has been dissipated. | 0:52:57 | 0:52:59 | |
War is action, energy, hazard, | 0:52:59 | 0:53:03 | |
these sheep only want to browse among the daisies. | 0:53:03 | 0:53:06 | |
Clementine knew a political return would be dangerously premature. | 0:53:08 | 0:53:13 | |
My own darling, patience is the only grace you need. | 0:53:15 | 0:53:20 | |
As sure as day follows night, you will come into your own again. | 0:53:20 | 0:53:25 | |
But a disorientated Churchill did not listen. | 0:53:27 | 0:53:30 | |
Granted ten days home leave in early March, | 0:53:30 | 0:53:33 | |
his next political humiliation was to be self-inflicted. | 0:53:33 | 0:53:38 | |
The former First Lord was expected at the National Liberal Club, | 0:53:49 | 0:53:53 | |
to unveil a new portrait of himself. | 0:53:53 | 0:53:56 | |
But he never showed up. | 0:53:59 | 0:54:01 | |
He'd fallen in with a group of fellow dissidents, | 0:54:03 | 0:54:06 | |
eager to plot the downfall of Asquith. | 0:54:06 | 0:54:08 | |
There's no glory to be won on the Western Front, | 0:54:09 | 0:54:11 | |
it's a miserable, dirty business, | 0:54:11 | 0:54:13 | |
hiding in a trench with a French tin hat on. | 0:54:13 | 0:54:15 | |
He can't restore his reputation by fighting, | 0:54:15 | 0:54:18 | |
and eventually, he comes back to London and there, | 0:54:18 | 0:54:22 | |
almost miraculously, he rebuilds his relationship with Jacky Fisher. | 0:54:22 | 0:54:25 | |
Clementine was horrified that her husband was drawn once again | 0:54:27 | 0:54:31 | |
to the admiral who had destroyed his career. | 0:54:31 | 0:54:33 | |
Fisher took advantage of Churchill's troubled state of mind, | 0:54:39 | 0:54:42 | |
with wild talk of "destiny" and Churchill becoming Prime Minister. | 0:54:42 | 0:54:47 | |
On March 7, Churchill went to Parliament to make a speech | 0:54:51 | 0:54:54 | |
critical of the Admiralty's performance. | 0:54:54 | 0:54:57 | |
Its conclusion stunned the House. | 0:54:57 | 0:55:00 | |
I urge the First Lord of the Admiralty without delay | 0:55:01 | 0:55:03 | |
to fortify himself. | 0:55:03 | 0:55:06 | |
To vitalise and animate his board of Admiralty, | 0:55:06 | 0:55:09 | |
by recalling Lord Fisher to his post as First Sea Lord. | 0:55:09 | 0:55:14 | |
SHOUTING AND HECKLING | 0:55:14 | 0:55:17 | |
An astonishing appeal for the return of Fisher | 0:55:17 | 0:55:20 | |
was met with derision and scorn. | 0:55:20 | 0:55:23 | |
Margot Asquith's waspish verdict reflected a wider belief | 0:55:26 | 0:55:30 | |
that Churchill remained impulsive and lacking in statesmanship. | 0:55:30 | 0:55:34 | |
I hope and believe Winston will never be forgiven | 0:55:37 | 0:55:40 | |
his yesterday's speeches. | 0:55:40 | 0:55:42 | |
He is a hound of the lowest sense of political honour, | 0:55:42 | 0:55:46 | |
a fool of the lowest judgement, and contemptible. | 0:55:46 | 0:55:50 | |
A contrite Churchill returned to Plug Street. | 0:55:54 | 0:55:57 | |
He had felt keenly the hostility and mistrust | 0:55:57 | 0:56:00 | |
his wife had warned of, and acknowledged her loving support. | 0:56:00 | 0:56:04 | |
"My dearest soul, | 0:56:07 | 0:56:09 | |
"You have seen me very weak and foolish | 0:56:09 | 0:56:13 | |
"and mentally infirm this week. | 0:56:13 | 0:56:16 | |
"Dual obligations, both honourable, both weighty have rent me. | 0:56:16 | 0:56:20 | |
"I can not tell you how sweet and steadfast you have been | 0:56:21 | 0:56:24 | |
"through all my hesitations and perplexity." | 0:56:24 | 0:56:27 | |
Yet bonds of trust were being forged with his Fusiliers. | 0:56:33 | 0:56:37 | |
His indifference to danger was a constant inspiration. | 0:56:38 | 0:56:41 | |
Captain Andrew Gibb recalled an invitation | 0:56:42 | 0:56:45 | |
to the fire-step during a fierce artillery duel. | 0:56:45 | 0:56:48 | |
We felt the wind and swish of several whizz-bangs | 0:56:49 | 0:56:52 | |
flying past our heads. | 0:56:52 | 0:56:54 | |
Then I heard Winston say, in a dreamy, far away voice, | 0:56:55 | 0:57:00 | |
"Do you like war?" | 0:57:00 | 0:57:02 | |
There was no such thing as fear in him. | 0:57:02 | 0:57:05 | |
It is a feature that seems to be common to great military commanders. | 0:57:05 | 0:57:09 | |
It's not fearlessness as such, | 0:57:09 | 0:57:12 | |
but it's an ability to be unperturbed by | 0:57:12 | 0:57:15 | |
the personal danger of the situation they might be in. | 0:57:15 | 0:57:18 | |
It inspires troops if they see someone who is, | 0:57:18 | 0:57:21 | |
seems to be impervious to danger. | 0:57:21 | 0:57:23 | |
It's that great thing of leadership by example. | 0:57:23 | 0:57:25 | |
Also, soldiers want to be led by someone who has an air | 0:57:25 | 0:57:28 | |
of invincibility and more than one person observes of Churchill that | 0:57:28 | 0:57:31 | |
he's just one of those guys that you knew he was going to get through | 0:57:31 | 0:57:34 | |
and you want to be close to people like that. | 0:57:34 | 0:57:36 | |
Her advice to stay in the trenches tormented Clementine. | 0:57:38 | 0:57:42 | |
This is a woman who knows he is under great risk every day. | 0:57:44 | 0:57:48 | |
People are dying, he could be the next person, | 0:57:48 | 0:57:51 | |
but she urges him to stay. | 0:57:51 | 0:57:53 | |
She urges him to stay because she knows, actually, | 0:57:53 | 0:57:56 | |
his political career is more important to him than his life. | 0:57:56 | 0:58:00 | |
But her belief in his destiny gave him solace. | 0:58:03 | 0:58:07 | |
"My darling, own dear Winston, don't be vexed. | 0:58:08 | 0:58:12 | |
"I know barring all tragic accidents that someday you will have | 0:58:12 | 0:58:18 | |
"a great and commanding position in this country. | 0:58:18 | 0:58:22 | |
"You will be held in the people's hearts and in their respect." | 0:58:23 | 0:58:27 | |
Churchill ventured out around 40 times into no-man's land | 0:58:31 | 0:58:35 | |
to inspect the wire and forward listening posts. | 0:58:35 | 0:58:39 | |
But the stress of events now left Clementine feeling exhausted... | 0:58:40 | 0:58:43 | |
..and lonely. | 0:58:45 | 0:58:46 | |
My darling, these grave anxieties are very wearing. | 0:58:48 | 0:58:52 | |
When next I see you, I hope there will be | 0:58:53 | 0:58:56 | |
a little time for us both alone. | 0:58:56 | 0:58:58 | |
We are still young, but time flies, | 0:58:58 | 0:59:02 | |
stealing love away and leaving only friendship, | 0:59:02 | 0:59:06 | |
which is very peaceful, but not stimulating or warming. | 0:59:06 | 0:59:11 | |
Clemmie. | 0:59:11 | 0:59:12 | |
-CHURCHILL: -Oh, my darling, do not write of friendship to me. | 0:59:16 | 0:59:19 | |
I love you more each month that passes | 0:59:21 | 0:59:23 | |
and feel the need of you and all your beauty. | 0:59:23 | 0:59:26 | |
I, too, feel, sometimes, the longing for rest and peace. | 0:59:27 | 0:59:31 | |
So much effort, so many years of ceaseless fighting | 0:59:32 | 0:59:35 | |
makes my older mind turn for the first time, I think, | 0:59:35 | 0:59:39 | |
to other things than action. | 0:59:39 | 0:59:41 | |
She is at her low, she's been his rock for a very long time. | 0:59:44 | 0:59:48 | |
Perhaps because they've been so open with each other, | 0:59:48 | 0:59:51 | |
she is worried about their more romantic side. | 0:59:51 | 0:59:54 | |
She's worried that they will just become friends. | 0:59:54 | 0:59:57 | |
She's worried that time is moving on | 0:59:57 | 1:00:00 | |
and she wants some sort of reassurance from him. | 1:00:00 | 1:00:04 | |
In fact, it's probably the only time that she really asks | 1:00:04 | 1:00:06 | |
for reassurance. Thankfully, he gives it to her immediately. | 1:00:06 | 1:00:10 | |
No chance of just being friends, girl. | 1:00:10 | 1:00:13 | |
The toll inflicted by even trench holding troubled Churchill. | 1:00:15 | 1:00:19 | |
To ward off all his frustrations, he surprised his comrades... | 1:00:20 | 1:00:23 | |
..by starting to paint. | 1:00:25 | 1:00:26 | |
"From our farm I watched yesterday afternoon | 1:00:30 | 1:00:33 | |
"the shelling of the little town whose name I can not mention. | 1:00:33 | 1:00:36 | |
"Three of our men who were strolling in the town were hit, one fatally. | 1:00:37 | 1:00:42 | |
"In the last two days of rest, I have lost eight men. | 1:00:43 | 1:00:46 | |
"I'm now reduced to under 680 men instead of 1,000." | 1:00:47 | 1:00:51 | |
It was 6th Battalion's numerical weakness, | 1:00:52 | 1:00:55 | |
which brought the Plug Street days to an end. | 1:00:55 | 1:00:58 | |
An amalgamation in May allowed him to return home... | 1:00:58 | 1:01:01 | |
..with honour intact. | 1:01:02 | 1:01:04 | |
"My darling, the Germans have just fired 30 shells at our farm | 1:01:06 | 1:01:10 | |
"hitting it four times, but no-one has been hurt. | 1:01:10 | 1:01:13 | |
"This is, I trust, a parting salute." | 1:01:13 | 1:01:16 | |
Flanders had schooled Churchill in the realities of trench war. | 1:01:19 | 1:01:23 | |
Haig and the generals were committed to a war of attrition by men. | 1:01:25 | 1:01:28 | |
Churchill deemed this killing game futile. | 1:01:30 | 1:01:33 | |
He believed in attrition by metal and machines. | 1:01:34 | 1:01:37 | |
Fortified by this sense of purpose, | 1:01:38 | 1:01:40 | |
he resumed political battles at home. | 1:01:40 | 1:01:43 | |
Churchill returned to Clementine, shorn of vain dreams of glory. | 1:01:54 | 1:01:58 | |
He was an outcast still. | 1:01:58 | 1:02:01 | |
Clementine urged stoic resolve through difficult days. | 1:02:02 | 1:02:06 | |
War is a terrible searcher of character. | 1:02:08 | 1:02:11 | |
One must try to plod and persevere and absolutely stamp self out! | 1:02:11 | 1:02:18 | |
The angry scapegoat had to clear his name over the Dardanelles. | 1:02:20 | 1:02:24 | |
He pressed Asquith to publish the full facts | 1:02:25 | 1:02:28 | |
and a Commission of Inquiry was set up. | 1:02:28 | 1:02:30 | |
But he would be made to wait nearly a year for its verdict. | 1:02:30 | 1:02:34 | |
Churchill was not used to waiting. | 1:02:36 | 1:02:38 | |
He must have found this an incredibly, sort of frustrating time | 1:02:38 | 1:02:43 | |
because he's neither one thing or the other, at this point. | 1:02:43 | 1:02:48 | |
He is no longer a man of strategy, | 1:02:48 | 1:02:52 | |
he's no longer a man of action. | 1:02:52 | 1:02:54 | |
This was the greatest crisis to have beset the British nation | 1:02:54 | 1:02:58 | |
for hundreds of years. And living at the heart of great events, | 1:02:58 | 1:03:01 | |
believing that it was his destiny to play a role in those great events | 1:03:01 | 1:03:06 | |
and not being able to do so | 1:03:06 | 1:03:08 | |
must have been an enormous challenge for him. | 1:03:08 | 1:03:10 | |
Parliament saw him establish a reputation as a soldiers' friend | 1:03:12 | 1:03:16 | |
and leading critic of the generals. | 1:03:16 | 1:03:19 | |
When Churchill gets back to London, he's at a loose end and | 1:03:20 | 1:03:24 | |
he's a man of such huge energy that because he doesn't actually have | 1:03:24 | 1:03:28 | |
a proper job to do, he's a pretty effective and annoying gadfly. | 1:03:28 | 1:03:34 | |
He begins to criticise British high command | 1:03:36 | 1:03:39 | |
and, to some extent, the Government. | 1:03:39 | 1:03:42 | |
I do not see how we are to avoid being thrown back on those dismal | 1:03:43 | 1:03:46 | |
processes of waste and slaughter which are called attrition. | 1:03:46 | 1:03:50 | |
-Machines save life! -Hear! Hear! | 1:03:51 | 1:03:55 | |
Machine power is a substitute for manpower. | 1:03:55 | 1:03:58 | |
Brains will save blood. | 1:03:59 | 1:04:02 | |
Newspaper headlines in autumn 1916 | 1:04:06 | 1:04:08 | |
announced the baptism of his landships | 1:04:08 | 1:04:10 | |
in the battle of the Somme, | 1:04:10 | 1:04:12 | |
but there was no mass attack. | 1:04:12 | 1:04:15 | |
Only 50 tanks were actually used | 1:04:17 | 1:04:19 | |
and they're not actually that successful. | 1:04:19 | 1:04:22 | |
Churchill and a number of other people | 1:04:22 | 1:04:24 | |
that are enthusiasts for the tank think, "What a waste, | 1:04:24 | 1:04:27 | |
"you've given away the secret," | 1:04:27 | 1:04:29 | |
and it was kept as a brilliant secret from the Germans | 1:04:29 | 1:04:32 | |
"and you've shown your hand," as it were. | 1:04:32 | 1:04:34 | |
They wanted many more to be used in a massive initial tank attack. | 1:04:34 | 1:04:39 | |
He yearned for war direction... | 1:04:41 | 1:04:44 | |
..and all hopes were invested in the "Wizard", Lloyd George, | 1:04:45 | 1:04:49 | |
who took over at the War Office after the death of Lord Kitchener. | 1:04:49 | 1:04:53 | |
He thought that, with Lloyd George in the Cabinet, a friend, | 1:04:56 | 1:05:01 | |
a colleague in arms, someone who had influence, | 1:05:01 | 1:05:05 | |
that his return was imminent. | 1:05:05 | 1:05:07 | |
But it was not to be, | 1:05:07 | 1:05:09 | |
and he expressed his frustrations in a letter to his brother Jack. | 1:05:09 | 1:05:13 | |
"Is it not damnable that I should be denied all real scope | 1:05:15 | 1:05:18 | |
"to serve this country? | 1:05:18 | 1:05:20 | |
"Great instability prevails | 1:05:20 | 1:05:22 | |
"and at any moment a situation favourable to me might come. | 1:05:22 | 1:05:26 | |
"Meanwhile Asquith reigns, supine, sodden and supreme. | 1:05:26 | 1:05:32 | |
"Though my life is full of comfort, pleasure and prosperity, | 1:05:34 | 1:05:38 | |
"I writhe hourly not to be able to get my teeth effectively | 1:05:38 | 1:05:42 | |
"into the Bosch. Jack, my dear, I am learning to hate!" | 1:05:42 | 1:05:47 | |
By winter, the pressure for a change in leadership | 1:05:49 | 1:05:52 | |
was becoming irresistible. | 1:05:52 | 1:05:54 | |
Lloyd George's strengths are that he has now got a reputation | 1:05:57 | 1:06:03 | |
as a figure of great energy and dynamism, | 1:06:03 | 1:06:06 | |
"a man of push and go", | 1:06:06 | 1:06:08 | |
to use his own phrase about the kind of people | 1:06:08 | 1:06:10 | |
that he wanted in Government. Therefore, | 1:06:10 | 1:06:13 | |
although many Conservatives continued to distrust him, | 1:06:13 | 1:06:16 | |
they certainly saw him as a better alternative | 1:06:16 | 1:06:19 | |
than Asquith, who they saw as weak and ineffectual. | 1:06:19 | 1:06:22 | |
On December 5th, Lloyd George was finally ready to topple Asquith, | 1:06:24 | 1:06:28 | |
with the backing of the Conservatives. | 1:06:28 | 1:06:30 | |
Churchill's hopes soared that night when, relaxing at a Turkish bath, | 1:06:33 | 1:06:38 | |
he was unexpectedly invited to a dinner | 1:06:38 | 1:06:41 | |
attended by Lloyd George himself. | 1:06:41 | 1:06:44 | |
But he had badly misread the signals. | 1:06:46 | 1:06:48 | |
A mutual friend was given the unhappy task | 1:06:48 | 1:06:51 | |
of deflating his dreams. | 1:06:51 | 1:06:53 | |
These are the exact words I used. | 1:06:55 | 1:06:58 | |
"The new Government will be very well disposed towards you, | 1:06:58 | 1:07:01 | |
"all your friends will be there." | 1:07:01 | 1:07:03 | |
He suddenly felt he had been duped | 1:07:04 | 1:07:07 | |
and he blazed into righteous anger. | 1:07:07 | 1:07:09 | |
With that, Churchill walked out into the street. | 1:07:10 | 1:07:13 | |
He later described that as the hardest moment of his life. | 1:07:16 | 1:07:19 | |
The disparity between his high hopes and the crushing of them | 1:07:19 | 1:07:24 | |
and a sensible calculation might well have told him | 1:07:24 | 1:07:28 | |
that Lloyd George was not yet politically strong enough | 1:07:28 | 1:07:32 | |
to take that risk of bringing him back into the Government. | 1:07:32 | 1:07:36 | |
Yet his own belief in himself | 1:07:36 | 1:07:39 | |
had overcome his more rational judgement. | 1:07:39 | 1:07:42 | |
Yet, this latest of so many crushing humiliations since May 1915 | 1:07:44 | 1:07:50 | |
was also the last. | 1:07:50 | 1:07:51 | |
The spring of 1917 saw the Churchills buy Lullenden Manor. | 1:07:55 | 1:07:59 | |
Here, they celebrated together the largely positive findings | 1:08:01 | 1:08:04 | |
of the Dardanelles inquiry. | 1:08:04 | 1:08:06 | |
Dark developments in the war further loosened the chains of exile. | 1:08:10 | 1:08:14 | |
The Germans take the decision to defeat the British | 1:08:18 | 1:08:22 | |
by sinking merchant shipping in the Atlantic, | 1:08:22 | 1:08:25 | |
cutting the so-called Atlantic lifeline, | 1:08:25 | 1:08:28 | |
seeking to starve Britain to submission. | 1:08:28 | 1:08:31 | |
By the spring of 1917, Britain is running out of food | 1:08:32 | 1:08:35 | |
and actually, we reach the point in which Britain | 1:08:35 | 1:08:39 | |
appears to be in real danger of losing the war at sea, | 1:08:39 | 1:08:43 | |
even though they're holding their own at land, | 1:08:43 | 1:08:47 | |
and it's against that background | 1:08:47 | 1:08:49 | |
that Lloyd George takes the risk in the summer of 1917 | 1:08:49 | 1:08:54 | |
of re-introducing Churchill into government. | 1:08:54 | 1:08:57 | |
Lloyd George needed his friend's spirit | 1:09:00 | 1:09:03 | |
and imagination at a time of national peril. | 1:09:03 | 1:09:06 | |
Ignoring fierce Tory protests, | 1:09:07 | 1:09:10 | |
the Prime Minister summoned him back in July. | 1:09:10 | 1:09:13 | |
Despite being in coalition with the Conservatives | 1:09:16 | 1:09:18 | |
he gets Churchill back, he makes it a political priority, | 1:09:18 | 1:09:21 | |
because he knows this is a man with energy, drive, vision. | 1:09:21 | 1:09:24 | |
He's exactly the kind of man that he's picking out of industry. | 1:09:24 | 1:09:26 | |
Lloyd George is creating a meritocratic Cabinet | 1:09:26 | 1:09:30 | |
of go-getters, and Churchill is one of those key figures. | 1:09:30 | 1:09:33 | |
He was excluded from the War Cabinet and policy-making. | 1:09:35 | 1:09:38 | |
His job was to man the anvil and forge the weapons of war. | 1:09:40 | 1:09:44 | |
"My darling, we had a very pleasant fly-over | 1:10:00 | 1:10:03 | |
"and passed fairly close to Lullenden. | 1:10:03 | 1:10:06 | |
"I could follow the road through Croydon and Caterham quite easily. | 1:10:06 | 1:10:11 | |
"We landed here in good time for dinner." | 1:10:11 | 1:10:13 | |
As the war entered its climatic Hundred Days, | 1:10:15 | 1:10:18 | |
French villagers grew accustomed to the sight | 1:10:18 | 1:10:21 | |
of a hyperactive British minister flying in and out. | 1:10:21 | 1:10:24 | |
The chateau was the forward base of a man in his element. | 1:10:26 | 1:10:29 | |
From here, he could visit Haig's HQ at Montreuil. | 1:10:33 | 1:10:37 | |
The two worked closely together, | 1:10:37 | 1:10:40 | |
knowing victory would be secured as much on the home front as in France. | 1:10:40 | 1:10:44 | |
He had a very modern view of war. | 1:10:47 | 1:10:49 | |
It was very much a view of total war, | 1:10:49 | 1:10:53 | |
of war in which all the resources of a state | 1:10:53 | 1:10:55 | |
are committed to the overthrow of the enemy, | 1:10:55 | 1:10:59 | |
those resources of course including industrial and economic resources. | 1:10:59 | 1:11:03 | |
This huge factory near Hereford was just one cog | 1:11:05 | 1:11:09 | |
in a vast industrial machine, | 1:11:09 | 1:11:11 | |
served by 2.5 million munitions workers. | 1:11:11 | 1:11:15 | |
Clementine had kept her husband closely informed | 1:11:21 | 1:11:24 | |
about the women workers now in his charge. | 1:11:24 | 1:11:27 | |
I was very much interested in the girls. | 1:11:29 | 1:11:33 | |
They are nearly all quite young, | 1:11:33 | 1:11:35 | |
very fresh and pretty and rather hoydenish. | 1:11:35 | 1:11:38 | |
Some of them were snowballing with boys outside the canteen. | 1:11:38 | 1:11:41 | |
The women are full of beans | 1:11:43 | 1:11:44 | |
and become terribly skilful very quickly. | 1:11:44 | 1:11:47 | |
Rapid growth had given the ministry | 1:11:51 | 1:11:53 | |
an inefficient, ramshackle structure. | 1:11:53 | 1:11:56 | |
Churchill moved quickly to reform it, | 1:11:58 | 1:12:01 | |
energising Britain's war machine, just in time. | 1:12:01 | 1:12:04 | |
One of the things that people tend not to appreciate | 1:12:08 | 1:12:11 | |
about Churchill is that, while he was this great orator, | 1:12:11 | 1:12:16 | |
this great leader, he was also a man of detail. | 1:12:16 | 1:12:20 | |
He was capable of absorbing and understanding | 1:12:20 | 1:12:23 | |
and manipulating huge amounts of information. | 1:12:23 | 1:12:27 | |
It involves him with complex deals about different materials | 1:12:27 | 1:12:31 | |
all over the world | 1:12:31 | 1:12:32 | |
and it's the sort of challenge that he clearly relished. | 1:12:32 | 1:12:35 | |
Ambitious new targets were set for the production | 1:12:39 | 1:12:42 | |
of planes, gas and shells. | 1:12:42 | 1:12:45 | |
A less autocratic Churchill had emerged. | 1:12:46 | 1:12:49 | |
His appointment is a moment where we see | 1:12:51 | 1:12:54 | |
a maturing, politically, of Churchill, that up until this point, | 1:12:54 | 1:12:59 | |
he was now in his 40s of course, he was somebody who had charged around, | 1:12:59 | 1:13:03 | |
acted impulsively, continually rubbed people up the wrong way, | 1:13:03 | 1:13:08 | |
interfered in other people's territory, put their backs up. | 1:13:08 | 1:13:12 | |
Now, almost for the first time, he calms down a bit, | 1:13:13 | 1:13:17 | |
and does a straightforward job of work, | 1:13:17 | 1:13:20 | |
acts much more as a team player. | 1:13:20 | 1:13:23 | |
He actually also shows a little bit of humility. | 1:13:23 | 1:13:26 | |
"This is a very heavy department, | 1:13:29 | 1:13:31 | |
"almost as interesting as the Admiralty | 1:13:31 | 1:13:33 | |
"with the enormous advantage that one has neither got to fight | 1:13:33 | 1:13:36 | |
"admirals or Huns. | 1:13:36 | 1:13:38 | |
"It is very pleasant to work with competent people." | 1:13:39 | 1:13:42 | |
That November, | 1:13:45 | 1:13:47 | |
the tank became a top priority as it demonstrated war-winning potential. | 1:13:47 | 1:13:52 | |
In 1917, tanks are used in a mass attack at Cambrai | 1:13:54 | 1:13:58 | |
and this is done in the manner that the people who'd invented the tank | 1:13:58 | 1:14:02 | |
and the actual tank crews wanted to see the tank used. | 1:14:02 | 1:14:05 | |
So we're looking at 400 tanks do a dawn attack | 1:14:10 | 1:14:13 | |
on ground that hasn't been chewed up by shellfire weeks beforehand. | 1:14:13 | 1:14:18 | |
There's a pre-arranged barrage, very short one, the tanks go forward | 1:14:18 | 1:14:23 | |
and a three-mile gap is cut in the German frontline, | 1:14:23 | 1:14:27 | |
about three miles deep, as well. | 1:14:27 | 1:14:29 | |
This is a fantastic initial advance. It really is one | 1:14:29 | 1:14:33 | |
of the great high points of the British Army in 1917, | 1:14:33 | 1:14:36 | |
and, back at home, the church bells are actually rung | 1:14:36 | 1:14:38 | |
for such a great victory. | 1:14:38 | 1:14:41 | |
The bells had pealed too soon. | 1:14:44 | 1:14:46 | |
There was no victory at Cambrai, | 1:14:47 | 1:14:50 | |
yet it greatly influenced Churchill's war plan for 1919. | 1:14:50 | 1:14:54 | |
Churchill is looking at that strategic overview, | 1:14:56 | 1:14:59 | |
which is, "How and when | 1:14:59 | 1:15:02 | |
are we significantly going to be able to use the tank?" | 1:15:02 | 1:15:05 | |
and Cambrai is a, kind of, vindication of his ideas. | 1:15:05 | 1:15:09 | |
That's a taster. | 1:15:09 | 1:15:11 | |
And he actually says, "Really, up to now, all we've been doing, | 1:15:11 | 1:15:14 | |
"is actually experimenting. | 1:15:14 | 1:15:16 | |
"What we really want to do is build a massive tank fleet." | 1:15:16 | 1:15:19 | |
His aims were 10,000 tanks built within the following year, | 1:15:19 | 1:15:24 | |
so that we could do huge tank attacks in 1919. | 1:15:24 | 1:15:28 | |
Churchill, frankly, did not want to see a repetition | 1:15:30 | 1:15:33 | |
of the great bloody, attritional battles of 1916 | 1:15:33 | 1:15:37 | |
and 1917. 1916 - the Somme. 1917 - Arras | 1:15:37 | 1:15:43 | |
and third Ypres, or Passchendaele, as it became known. | 1:15:43 | 1:15:46 | |
He was very much an advocate of building up resources, | 1:15:46 | 1:15:51 | |
waiting for the Americans, who'd entered the war in 1917, | 1:15:51 | 1:15:55 | |
to deploy their vast armies, | 1:15:55 | 1:15:56 | |
which he knew could not happen until the second half of 1918. | 1:15:56 | 1:16:00 | |
The problem was, though, that the enemy always has a vote in any plan. | 1:16:00 | 1:16:04 | |
The German War Plan changed when the Bolsheviks seized power | 1:16:07 | 1:16:10 | |
and took Russia out of the War. | 1:16:10 | 1:16:12 | |
A million fresh German troops poured back toward the Western Front. | 1:16:17 | 1:16:22 | |
Churchill shared his profound anxieties with the Prime Minister. | 1:16:32 | 1:16:36 | |
"The imminent danger is on the Western Front | 1:16:38 | 1:16:41 | |
"and the crisis will come before June. | 1:16:41 | 1:16:43 | |
"A defeat here will be fatal. | 1:16:43 | 1:16:45 | |
"I do not like the situation now developing. | 1:16:45 | 1:16:48 | |
"If this went wrong, everything would go wrong. | 1:16:50 | 1:16:53 | |
"The Germans are a terrible foe | 1:16:53 | 1:16:55 | |
"and their generals are better than ours." | 1:16:55 | 1:16:58 | |
By March, 75 German divisions were marshalled opposite just 37 British, | 1:17:01 | 1:17:07 | |
holding the weakest, southern-most part of the line. | 1:17:07 | 1:17:10 | |
General Ludendorff aimed to drive a wedge between | 1:17:12 | 1:17:14 | |
the British and French, and to annihilate Haig's armies. | 1:17:14 | 1:17:19 | |
Momentous days, foreshadowing the summer of 1940, would now unfold. | 1:17:19 | 1:17:24 | |
On March 20, 1918, Churchill drove into the eye of the storm, | 1:17:33 | 1:17:38 | |
with a visit to frontline South African troops at Gauche Wood. | 1:17:38 | 1:17:42 | |
Through the narrow paths we picked our way gingerly. | 1:17:46 | 1:17:48 | |
The sun was setting as we took our leave of the South Africans. | 1:17:48 | 1:17:52 | |
I see them now, | 1:17:52 | 1:17:55 | |
serene as the Spartans of Leonidas on the eve of Thermopylae. | 1:17:55 | 1:18:00 | |
He stayed that night just seven miles behind the front, | 1:18:05 | 1:18:08 | |
and so became an eyewitness to the furious launch | 1:18:08 | 1:18:12 | |
of Germany's spring offensives. | 1:18:12 | 1:18:14 | |
Suddenly, the silence was broken | 1:18:17 | 1:18:19 | |
by six or seven very loud and very heavy explosions. | 1:18:19 | 1:18:24 | |
And then, exactly as a pianist runs his hand across the keyboard | 1:18:25 | 1:18:28 | |
from treble to bass, there rose, in less than one minute, | 1:18:28 | 1:18:33 | |
the most tremendous cannonade I shall ever hear. | 1:18:33 | 1:18:36 | |
The flame of the bombardment lit like flickering firelight | 1:18:36 | 1:18:40 | |
my tiny cabin. | 1:18:40 | 1:18:42 | |
6,000 guns unleashed a firestorm | 1:18:44 | 1:18:48 | |
as German Stormtroopers pierced the lines. | 1:18:48 | 1:18:51 | |
A non-stop battle raged for 40 days... | 1:18:58 | 1:19:01 | |
..and Churchill became a key actor in the emergency. | 1:19:04 | 1:19:08 | |
Suddenly, the Western Front, in the spring and the summer of 1918, | 1:19:13 | 1:19:19 | |
turns from a stalemate into a war of movement | 1:19:19 | 1:19:23 | |
and a war of movement is a war that requires | 1:19:23 | 1:19:27 | |
tanks, trucks, munitions, logistics. | 1:19:27 | 1:19:32 | |
Vast numbers of tanks and guns had been lost. | 1:19:35 | 1:19:38 | |
And enormous amounts of ammunition were being consumed. | 1:19:39 | 1:19:43 | |
Field Marshal Haig was dependent on Churchill to make up the losses | 1:19:46 | 1:19:50 | |
and sustain embattled armies with their backs to the wall... | 1:19:50 | 1:19:54 | |
..and the war machine delivered. | 1:19:56 | 1:19:59 | |
"I have been able to replace | 1:20:01 | 1:20:03 | |
"everything in the munitions sphere without difficulty. | 1:20:03 | 1:20:05 | |
"Guns, tanks, aeroplanes | 1:20:07 | 1:20:09 | |
"will all be ahead of personnel. | 1:20:09 | 1:20:11 | |
"It has been touch and go on the front." | 1:20:12 | 1:20:14 | |
Lloyd George valued Churchill's cool head in a crisis, | 1:20:20 | 1:20:24 | |
and used him as a personal envoy to the French high command. | 1:20:24 | 1:20:28 | |
It marks a stage in Churchill's rehabilitation. | 1:20:31 | 1:20:35 | |
Ostensibly, Churchill's role is to act as personal liaison officer | 1:20:35 | 1:20:40 | |
between Foch and the British Government. | 1:20:40 | 1:20:43 | |
In reality, he's there to take the temperature. | 1:20:43 | 1:20:46 | |
Are the French Army really going to fight? | 1:20:46 | 1:20:49 | |
And Churchill gives a wonderful description | 1:20:49 | 1:20:51 | |
of this bravura performance, | 1:20:51 | 1:20:54 | |
explaining how the battle is going to run down, | 1:20:54 | 1:20:58 | |
as the Germans run out of impetus | 1:20:58 | 1:21:01 | |
and his chance to seize the initiative will come. | 1:21:01 | 1:21:03 | |
Churchill is really inspired by Foch. | 1:21:03 | 1:21:07 | |
Here is a man who fights, here is a man who can be trusted. | 1:21:07 | 1:21:12 | |
Ludendorff's offensive had burnt itself out. | 1:21:14 | 1:21:17 | |
Allied retribution would come in August. | 1:21:21 | 1:21:24 | |
A mass of tanks and crack Dominion troops | 1:21:26 | 1:21:28 | |
were to spearhead a surprise counter-offensive at Amiens. | 1:21:28 | 1:21:32 | |
Churchill flew out specially to a battlefield | 1:21:34 | 1:21:37 | |
still littered with German dead. | 1:21:37 | 1:21:39 | |
My darling, the tracks of tanks were everywhere apparent. | 1:21:41 | 1:21:46 | |
On our way to the battlefield | 1:21:46 | 1:21:48 | |
we passed nearly 5,000 German prisoners. | 1:21:48 | 1:21:50 | |
Our cavalry are still out in front | 1:21:51 | 1:21:53 | |
and in some parts of the line there are, at the moment, no Germans left. | 1:21:53 | 1:21:58 | |
I am so glad about this great and fine victory of the British Army. | 1:21:59 | 1:22:03 | |
There is no doubt that they have felt themselves abundantly supplied. | 1:22:03 | 1:22:09 | |
The British Army puts in some tremendous counter attacks | 1:22:12 | 1:22:17 | |
and, in August of 1918, at the Battle of Amiens, | 1:22:17 | 1:22:20 | |
we actually completely defeat the German army | 1:22:20 | 1:22:23 | |
and the German army starts retreating. | 1:22:23 | 1:22:26 | |
And tanks, aeroplanes, artillery, combined tactics, | 1:22:26 | 1:22:29 | |
all-arms tactics, as they're sometimes used, come together | 1:22:29 | 1:22:34 | |
and, in actual fact, we beat the Germans ahead of the game. | 1:22:34 | 1:22:38 | |
To his surprise, | 1:22:45 | 1:22:46 | |
Churchill's plans for a war-winning campaign in 1919 were shelved, | 1:22:46 | 1:22:51 | |
as Haig's army advanced in an epic Hundred Day victory roll. | 1:22:51 | 1:22:56 | |
As the weapons maker and godfather of the tank, | 1:22:56 | 1:22:59 | |
Churchill had a share in their battle honours. | 1:22:59 | 1:23:02 | |
This, I think, is Winston's hidden secret - | 1:23:07 | 1:23:11 | |
his single most important contribution | 1:23:11 | 1:23:14 | |
to Britain winning the war in the First World War, | 1:23:14 | 1:23:18 | |
and, next to his Prime Ministership in Britain 1940, | 1:23:18 | 1:23:23 | |
the greatest thing that Churchill ever did | 1:23:23 | 1:23:26 | |
for the security of the United Kingdom. | 1:23:26 | 1:23:29 | |
The last wartime letters expressed quiet pride in his fortunes. | 1:23:33 | 1:23:37 | |
"My darling, | 1:23:39 | 1:23:42 | |
"coming out here makes me thoroughly contented with my office. | 1:23:42 | 1:23:46 | |
"I do not chafe at adverse political combinations | 1:23:47 | 1:23:50 | |
"or at not being able to direct general policy. | 1:23:50 | 1:23:53 | |
"I am content to be associated | 1:23:53 | 1:23:56 | |
"with the splendid machines of the British Army." | 1:23:56 | 1:23:59 | |
Clementine's thoughts could turn at last to peace and Winston's future. | 1:24:03 | 1:24:09 | |
"My darling, I would like you to be praised | 1:24:11 | 1:24:15 | |
"as a reconstructive genius, as well as for a mustard gas fiend, | 1:24:15 | 1:24:19 | |
"tank juggernaut and flying terror. | 1:24:19 | 1:24:22 | |
"I have got a plan. Can't the men munition workers | 1:24:22 | 1:24:26 | |
"build lovely garden cities and pull down slums, | 1:24:26 | 1:24:30 | |
"and can't the women make all the lovely furniture for them? | 1:24:30 | 1:24:33 | |
"Do come home and arrange all this. | 1:24:35 | 1:24:38 | |
"Tender love, from Clemmie." | 1:24:38 | 1:24:40 | |
For Winston and Clementine, looking back in 1918, | 1:24:42 | 1:24:46 | |
on the previous four years, must have been | 1:24:46 | 1:24:49 | |
a rollercoaster of emotion, I would think. | 1:24:49 | 1:24:52 | |
After all, this is a classic story of sort of Hubris and Nemesis | 1:24:52 | 1:24:56 | |
and then, redemption, but I think, he would also have seen it | 1:24:56 | 1:24:59 | |
as a period of lost opportunities for him, personally, | 1:24:59 | 1:25:04 | |
because he would have wanted to remain at the centre of affairs | 1:25:04 | 1:25:08 | |
and that, politically, he ends the First World War | 1:25:08 | 1:25:11 | |
in a slightly weaker position than the one in which he started it, | 1:25:11 | 1:25:14 | |
the first sort of real set back that he'd had, | 1:25:14 | 1:25:17 | |
but also in terms of lost opportunities, generally, | 1:25:17 | 1:25:21 | |
in what he might have been able to bring towards this struggle. | 1:25:21 | 1:25:24 | |
But for all the setbacks in his public life, | 1:25:27 | 1:25:30 | |
Churchill acknowledged a special private gain - | 1:25:30 | 1:25:33 | |
an enduring bond, created by the love and faith | 1:25:33 | 1:25:36 | |
of his Cat, Clementine. | 1:25:36 | 1:25:40 | |
CHURCHILL: It was a few minutes before the 11th Hour. | 1:25:45 | 1:25:49 | |
My mind strayed back across the scarring years | 1:25:49 | 1:25:52 | |
to the night at the Admiralty, when I listened for these same chimes, | 1:25:52 | 1:25:56 | |
in order to give the signal of war against Germany. | 1:25:56 | 1:25:59 | |
And now, all was over. | 1:26:02 | 1:26:05 | |
It was with feelings which do not lend themselves to words | 1:26:05 | 1:26:09 | |
that I heard the cheers of the brave people who had given all, | 1:26:09 | 1:26:13 | |
who had never wavered, | 1:26:13 | 1:26:16 | |
who had never lost faith in their country or its destiny. | 1:26:16 | 1:26:20 | |
And then, Winston was back in the Cabinet. | 1:26:24 | 1:26:27 | |
In January, 1919, he was made Secretary of State... | 1:26:27 | 1:26:31 | |
for War. | 1:26:31 | 1:26:33 | |
Churchill's experience in the First World War, | 1:26:39 | 1:26:42 | |
of being at the pinnacle of the war effort, | 1:26:42 | 1:26:44 | |
then being unceremoniously kicked out of office | 1:26:44 | 1:26:47 | |
and slowly, but surely, rebuilding his political career, | 1:26:47 | 1:26:49 | |
convinced him that he was a man of destiny, | 1:26:49 | 1:26:52 | |
that he could recover from anything. | 1:26:52 | 1:26:54 | |
A simply astonishing man who'd never understood the meaning | 1:26:54 | 1:26:58 | |
of stop, finish, over, | 1:26:58 | 1:26:59 | |
and was just going to press on till the very end. | 1:26:59 | 1:27:02 | |
Later, he wrote that, | 1:27:05 | 1:27:07 | |
"All had to suffer, | 1:27:07 | 1:27:08 | |
"and all had to learn." | 1:27:08 | 1:27:11 | |
Millions had suffered. | 1:27:13 | 1:27:14 | |
But no man had learnt more of war command. | 1:27:16 | 1:27:19 | |
It was a bitter, but complete, apprenticeship. | 1:27:20 | 1:27:23 | |
In 1922, the Churchills moved to Chartwell, | 1:27:33 | 1:27:37 | |
a home dotted with wartime relics. | 1:27:37 | 1:27:40 | |
That decade, he wrote The World Crisis - | 1:27:44 | 1:27:48 | |
a multi-volume study of the Great War. | 1:27:48 | 1:27:50 | |
Yet, this work of history concluded on a dark and prophetic note. | 1:27:54 | 1:27:59 | |
"Is this the end? | 1:28:01 | 1:28:02 | |
"Will our children bleed and gasp again in devastated lands?" | 1:28:04 | 1:28:07 | |
First would come more wilderness years... | 1:28:12 | 1:28:14 | |
But when summoned again, | 1:28:16 | 1:28:18 | |
a greater warlord, steeled by the Great War, | 1:28:18 | 1:28:23 | |
was ready and prepared to fulfil his destiny. | 1:28:23 | 1:28:27 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 1:29:02 | 1:29:05 |