Churchill Defiant: Fighting On 1945–1955

I You Will, but I Shall Not Berlin, July 1945

A flashlight revealed the stairs to the concrete underground air-raid shelter. Pools of stagnant water made the steps slippery. For an old man, uneasy on his feet, the descent was treacherous. Late in the afternoon on 16 July 1945, Britain’s seventy-year-old wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, picked his way with a gold-headed walking stick to the dark, dank bunker where Adolf Hitler had put a bullet into his right temple two and a half months before.

Word had spread quickly that Churchill was in Berlin. By the time his convoy reached the Reich Chancellery, the small British party had swelled to a jostling mob as war correspondents and numerous Russian officers and officials pressed forward to join Churchill’s entourage. Anxious to witness the final scene of one of history’s greatest dramas, they followed the Prime Minister, who wore a lightweight military uniform and visored cap, into the sacked remains of the Chancellery and, later, out to the garden where the entrance to the bunker was located.

In one of his most famous wartime broadcasts, Churchill had said, ‘We have but one aim and one single irrevocable purpose. We are resolved to destroy Hitler and every vestige of the Nazi regime. From this nothing will turn us. Nothing.’ Now, the reporters hoped for a curtain speech from this master of the spoken word as he inspected the tangible evidence of his triumph. He had been fighting his way here in one way or another for more than a decade, and a statement from him would provide a thrilling end to the story.

Churchill had been a lonely voice in the wilderness during most of the 1930s, when his warnings about Hitler had gone unheeded. In 1940, Britain was already at war when he was called to serve as Prime Minister. Against seemingly impossible odds, at a time when France had fallen and Hitler’s armies had overrun the Continent, Churchill led Britain as it fought alone. While Nazi bombs rained on London and Hitler boasted that he had crushed the panic-stricken British in their holes, Churchill’s flights of oratory rallied his countrymen and offered hope that their plight might yet be reversed. After the Russians and then the Americans joined the fight on Britain’s side, Churchill battled the ‘bloodthirsty guttersnipe’ – as he referred to Hitler – for an additional four years.

By the end of the war in Europe, Churchill had accomplished what many people had once believed he could never do. At home in Britain, even long-time detractors agreed that he had saved the country. His personal story was all the more remarkable because he had spent so much of his adult life in political disrepute. The road to the premiership had been long, ‘and every foot of it contested’. Frustration, exclusion, and isolation had often been his lot before he became Prime Minister when he was sixty-five, an age that qualified him to draw an old-age pension.

The man who visited Hitler’s bunker had recast himself in just five years as one of history’s titans. Had Churchill died before 1940, he might have been remembered as a prodigiously gifted failure. On this day, he was at the apex of his glory. Yet thus far, he had appeared oddly detached and distracted. His bulbous, bloodshot, light blue eyes surveyed the devastation at the Chancellery, and he quietly asked a few questions of the Russian soldier who served as his guide, but he made no public comment. Finally, Churchill left reporters outside the bunker entrance as he followed the Russian soldier into the blackness.

He slowly made his way down the first flight of stone steps towards the chamber where Hitler’s body had been discovered, slumped over a sofa beside the lifeless form of his bride, Eva Braun, her lips puckered and blue from poison. Churchill hesitated when the Russian told him that two additional water-soaked flights remained. As if it were no longer worth the effort, he abandoned the tour without having seen for himself the site of his mortal enemy’s suicide. Churchill sent the others in his party, which included his youngest daughter, Mary, to view it without him. Then he turned and slowly began to make his way back up.

He climbed with difficulty. Five years of war had left Churchill in ravaged physical condition. In 1941, he had suffered a heart attack, the first of several episodes of heart trouble. He had repeatedly been stricken with pneumonia; on one occasion, in 1943, he had lain at the brink of death, at General Eisenhower’s headquarters in Carthage. There had been moments during the war when Churchill was so exhausted that he could barely speak, walk, stand, or concentrate. In 1944, Clementine Churchill had told a friend resignedly, ‘I never think of after the war. You see, I think Winston will die when it’s over.’ She knew better than anyone that her husband had put all he had into this war, and she was convinced it would take everything. She had watched as, whatever the state of Churchill’s health, the phones kept ringing and the red boxes laden with official papers were rushed in. When illness sapped his energies and made it difficult to work, he pressed harder. Defying predictions that he would soon have to hand over to a younger, stronger man, he had fought on with the whole strength of his gargantuan will. Lady Violet Bonham Carter, a friend of four decades, feared what the ‘last pull up the hill’ must have cost him. As victory drew near, Churchill was so physically weak that soldiers had to carry him upstairs in a chair after Cabinet meetings.

Churchill emerged from Hitler’s bunker under his own power, but when at last he reached the top of the stairs and passed through the door of a concrete blockhouse into the daylight, his hulking frame appeared so shaky and depleted that a Russian soldier guarding the entrance reached out a hand to steady him. The Chancellery garden was a chaos of shattered glass, pieces of timber, tangled metal, and abandoned fire hoses. Craters from Russian shells pocked the ground. In one of those craters, Hitler and his wife had supposedly been buried after Nazi officers burned their corpses. The rusted cans for the gasoline still lay nearby. Russians pointed out the spot where the bodies had been incinerated. Churchill paused briefly before turning away in disgust.

He moved towards a battered chair that had been propped against a bullet-riddled wall. One of the Red Army men claimed that it had belonged to the Führer. The hinges of its back were broken and the rear legs had buckled. Churchill tested it first with one hand before sitting. Gingerly perched on the front edge of the seat, he mopped his forehead with a handkerchief in the withering heat as he chewed on a cigar. When at length his daughter and the others came out of the bunker, Churchill was visibly eager to leave.

In front of the Chancellery, he was met by a cheering crowd of sightseeing British sailors and Royal Marines. The street was a sea of devastation, every roof bombed out. The glassless windows of gutted buildings stared blindly. Despite the applause that greeted him, Churchill’s mind was in turmoil; his heart ached with anxiety. This uncomfortable, even painful feeling of disconnection from the general rejoicing was not a new experience. For months, he had lived with the thought that in spite of what others might believe, the struggle was far from over. As the war came to an end, he saw that Soviet Russia, still ostensibly Britain’s ally, was fast becoming as dangerous potentially as Hitler’s Germany had been and that a third world war was already in the making. Worse, he knew that the Americans did not understand, indeed did not wish to be told, what was happening. As in a nightmare, the man who had warned in vain of the Nazi threat was again trying desperately to call attention to an emerging enemy.

In no mood to speak of victory, he acknowledged the cheers by mechanically raising his right arm and forming the familiar V-sign. Then he climbed into a waiting car for the return trip to Potsdam, outside Berlin, where he was due to face his Soviet and American counterparts. The talks, for which Churchill had been militating since May, were to have begun that afternoon, but the arrival of the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, had been inexplicably delayed. Potsdam was being billed as a victory conference, but Churchill privately regarded it as a chance to stage a ‘showdown’ with Stalin about Soviet territorial ambitions.

The Big Three – Churchill, Stalin, and President Franklin Roosevelt – had last met at Yalta, in the Crimea, in February. But by the time he had assured the House of Commons that Stalin meant to keep his promise given at Yalta of free elections in the countries the Soviets had liberated from Germany, Churchill had already begun to be troubled by doubts. He worried that by trusting Stalin he might have made the same mistake that his predecessor, Neville Chamberlain, had committed with Hitler.

In March, Berlin became the focal point of Churchill’s concerns when the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, Dwight Eisenhower, informed him that rather than try to take the Reich capital with American and British forces, he intended to let the Russians get there first. Churchill moved at once to persuade Eisenhower that he was about to make a calamitous error with far-reaching consequences. In separate messages to Eisenhower and Roosevelt, Churchill argued that, as the Soviet armies were about to enter Vienna and overrun Austria, should they also be permitted to take Berlin it would strengthen their conviction, already alarmingly in evidence, that they were chiefly responsible for Hitler’s defeat and that the spoils were rightly theirs.

Churchill had no doubt that Stalin, whom Eisenhower had also informed of his intentions, well understood the symbolic and political significance of the Reich capital falling into Soviet hands. So when Stalin fulsomely complimented Eisenhower and assured him that the Soviet Union would send only second-rate forces to Berlin – which, he underscored, had ‘lost its former strategic importance’ – Churchill’s worst suspicions were confirmed. Churchill implored Eisenhower to pay particular attention to what was obviously a lie on Stalin’s part. But Eisenhower flatly refused. Eisenhower had Roosevelt’s backing when he declined even to attempt to race the Russians to Berlin. The Americans were not a little annoyed at Churchill’s insinuations about their Soviet ally’s postwar designs. Roosevelt had long insisted that Stalin was a man of good will and good faith who wanted nothing but security for his country, and that if the US gave him whatever he asked for, he could be counted on to work for a world of democracy and peace after the war and to refrain from annexing any territory. Meanwhile, on the very day – 1 April 1945 – that Stalin had written to congratulate Eisenhower on his sound thinking, he ordered two of his top military chiefs to capture Berlin post-haste.

Driving through the ruins of the former Reich capital, Churchill sat in silence. His car passed endless rows of saluting Russian soldiers, directional signs printed in Cyrillic characters, and red-bordered posters bearing the sayings of Stalin translated into German above his signature etched in vivid red. It was as if Stalin had branded Berlin, fashioned it into his personal war trophy. The Russians all seemed ‘high as kites’, convinced, as Churchill had predicted they would be, that they were principally responsible for having won the war. The shattered capital, where street after street had been reduced to rubble and where the stench of putrefying corpses and broken sewer lines fouled the air, was an image of the collapse of the Nazi empire. Churchill grimly perceived something more. To his eye, the ubiquitous, overpowering Red Army presence augured the rise of Soviet power in postwar Europe.

Hardly had Berlin surrendered to the Russians, on 2 May 1945, when Churchill had hatched a plan. Experience had taught him that Stalin was not a man to be swayed by arguments based on abstract principles. ‘Force and facts’ were his only realities. Brutal and unscrupulous, Stalin would do whatever he perceived to be in his own interest. The Americans had penetrated 120 miles deeper into Germany than originally planned. Churchill believed that gave him the leverage he needed to settle things peacefully with Stalin. The trick was to postpone pulling American troops back to the previously agreed-upon lines until Churchill was satisfied about both the temporary character of the Soviet occupation of Germany, and conditions in the countries liberated by the Red Army. Germany as a whole had yet to surrender when Churchill urgently contacted President Harry Truman, who had succeeded to office upon Roosevelt’s death in April. He urged the former vice president that they invite Stalin to a heads of government meeting to take place as soon as possible and that in the interim they maintain their troops in existing positions in order to show the Soviets ‘how much we have to offer or withhold’. From this point, everything depended on Truman. Roosevelt and Eisenhower had failed to listen to Churchill about Berlin. Could he hope for a better response from Truman, whom he had not yet met?

Churchill’s telegram was sent on 6 May. The following day, German generals signed the act of unconditional surrender of all German land, sea, and air forces in Europe. On 8 May, Victory in Europe Day, Churchill announced in a radio broadcast that the German war was at an end; only Japan remained unsubdued. London exploded in a paroxysm of celebration. From first to last, the Prime Minister was at the centre of the festivities. When he cried out to a vast crowd assembled beneath his balcony, ‘This is your victory,’ the people roared back, ‘No, it’s yours!’ A tender man easily moved to tears whether of joy or sorrow, Churchill made no secret of his pleasure in lapping up the affection and admiration, yet he remained oppressed by forebodings as he awaited Truman’s answer. He ended the long, emotionally charged day by sharing his concerns with a friend, the newspaper proprietor Lord Camrose, who had come to dine at 10 Downing Street.

While the noisy celebrations continued in the streets, Churchill spoke sombrely and confidentially of what would happen if Truman turned him down and the troops were withdrawn. Stalin would control seven European capitals in addition to Berlin: Prague, Budapest, Warsaw, Belgrade, Bucharest, Sofia, and Vienna. As far as Churchill was concerned, that could not be permitted.

When Truman replied the next day that he preferred to wait for Stalin to propose a meeting, Churchill refused to take no for an answer. He wanted a leaders’ meeting as soon as possible and suggested that he and Truman confer first in London in order to present a united front. The new president, who seemed to have in -herited his predecessor’s unrealistic view of Stalin, demurred on the grounds that he wished to avoid any impression of ‘ganging up’. Churchill warned bluntly that the Soviets had drawn down an ‘iron curtain’ upon their front and that the rest of humanity had no idea of what was going on behind it. He argued that surely it was vital to come to an understanding with the Soviet Union or at least see how things stood before American troops retired to the agreed zones of occupation.

Truman sent an emissary to London to convey what he did not wish to put in writing: Truman wanted to see Stalin first – without Churchill. The British Prime Minister could join them later. When Churchill waxed indignant, the emissary, Joseph Davies, went so far as to blame him for having provoked Stalin with his abiding hostility towards the Soviet Union. Truman’s representative maintained that in fact it was Churchill’s attitude that ‘placed not only the future, but possibly the immediate peace in real danger’.

Furious at being told that he, not Stalin, was threatening the peace, Churchill reminded Truman that a shared love of freedom ought naturally to align their two nations against the Soviet Communists, who followed a different philosophy. With Churchill threatening to break publicly with Washington if Truman dared to see Stalin alone, the President appeared to back down. He agreed to three-power talks, but at the last minute he declined Churchill’s pleas to postpone the retreat of the American army at least until after the conference.

When Churchill returned to his rose-pink, lakeside villa in Potsdam following the visit to Hitler’s bunker, he learned that Stalin had arrived in Germany. The leaders were to meet the following day at 5 p.m. in the former palace of the German crown prince. Due to Truman’s decision to withdraw his troops, however, Churchill was to face Stalin without the bargaining counter he had been hoping for. As he prepared to go into the talks, he was further wrong-footed by the fact that he had no idea of how much time he had to get what he wanted from Stalin. Prior to coming to Potsdam, Churchill – who had promised the British people a general election as soon as Hitler was defeated – had fought the first general election campaign in a decade. Polling day had been 5 July, but three weeks had been allotted to permit the service vote to come in before the total vote was counted. On 25 July, while the Potsdam Conference was still in progress, Churchill was due to fly back to Britain (briefly, he hoped) to learn his political fate.

The rapturous reception he had received in the course of his thousand-mile electoral tour strongly suggested to him that he would still be prime minister when the second round of talks began. Everywhere Churchill had travelled that spring, multitudes had come out to see and thank him for what he had done in the war. Standing nine and ten deep, enthusiasts had waved flags, sung patriotic songs, and cried out, ‘Good old Winnie!’ Repeatedly they had closed in on the hero’s open car and the progress of the motorcade had been slowed to a walking pace. Churchill had commented at the time that no one who had witnessed his reception could have any doubt about the outcome of the poll.

But what if there was an upset? What if poor Conservative showings in recent by-elections foretold a general swing to the left in British politics, as certain commentators were suggesting? Churchill had encountered some heckling, particularly in the last days of the campaign. Had these been isolated incidents, or did they reflect broad sentiment for change as Britons considered what they wanted their lives to be like after the war? Churchill had brought his Labour oppon -ent, Clement Attlee, to Potsdam to make it clear that all of Britain was being represented at the conference table, as well as to ensure that there would be no break in Attlee’s knowledge of affairs. But by his very presence, Attlee was also a reminder that when Churchill went home for the election results, they might prevent him from completing what he had begun with Stalin.

Attlee, who had been deputy prime minister in Churchill’s wartime coalition government, attended a small luncheon at the Prime Minister’s villa on the afternoon of 17 July. Also present was US Secretary of War Henry Stimson. Churchill lingered at the table bantering with his guests until half an hour before he was scheduled to see Stalin and Truman. With Attlee, he joked about the British general election as if there had not been a harsh word between them during the often exceptionally bitter campaign; and with Stimson, he exchanged light-hearted personal reminiscences about their younger days. In the leisurely course of the meal, Stimson gave no sign that he had anything urgent to convey to his host or that he desired to speak to him privately. Only when Churchill was showing Stimson out did the latter inform him that the world’s first atomic bomb had been successfully tested the day before in New Mexico. Though Britain had been a partner in the secret project to develop the new weapon, deadlier than any yet in existence, Churchill had not known in advance the date of the test. If the bomb worked, it promised to end the Pacific war quickly and to spare a great many Allied soldiers’ lives. In his present predicament, Churchill also sensed that it might be capable of something more. Nothing could be certain for there were no details as yet, but here potentially was the card he needed to persuade Stalin to come to terms in Europe.

Until Churchill had additional information, he was intent that this first bit of news from New Mexico be withheld from Stalin. Truman had already thrown away one bargaining counter, and Churchill wanted to be sure that it did not happen again. Stimson’s insistence that the Soviets really ought to be notified of the test left Churchill to go off to his meeting both excited about the new development and worried that the Americans might be about to squander another opportunity. Churchill, who had met with Truman the previous day, knew that the President had been lunching with Stalin that afternoon. Churchill had no idea whether Truman, who had had the information since the previous evening, might already have told Stalin about the bomb or even agreed to share its secrets with his Soviet ally, as Roosevelt had once been inclined to do. The last-minute timing of Stimson’s disclosure made it impossible for Churchill to talk to the President beforehand.

At the first plenary session at the Cecilienhof Palace – in whose courtyard the Russians had planted masses of geraniums in the form of a 24-foot-wide red star – Churchill played for time. For weeks, he had been pressing Truman to agree to the earliest possible meeting; now, he meant to go as slowly as possible. Previously, he had been insistent that the most contentious issues be addressed without delay; now, he told his fellow leaders, ‘We will feel our way up to them.’ Truman was in a difficult, almost impossible position at Potsdam. In the days before the conference, he had been nervous about facing giants like Churchill and Stalin, and with good reason. Though a dying man, Roosevelt had done nothing to prepare his successor for the presidency. Roosevelt never spoke to Truman confidentially of the war, of foreign affairs, or of what he had in mind for the postwar world. When Truman suddenly landed in the Oval Office after only three months as vice president, he had to struggle to catch up. Devoid of foreign policy experience, he pored over memoranda, briefs, and correspondence on international affairs. He conferred with presidential advisers, who, to his perplexity, offered conflicting advice. On the voyage to Europe, he absorbed as much information as he could from various coaches. At his first meeting with Stalin and Churchill together, he read aloud from prepared statements and thereafter was careful to stick to positions that had been well worked out in advance.

Churchill’s newly unhurried pace irked Truman, who protested, ‘I don’t just want to discuss. I want to decide.’

Churchill came back impishly, ‘You want something in the bag each day.’

Looking ahead to subsequent plenary sessions, Truman went on, ‘I should like to meet at four o’clock instead of five.’

‘I will obey your orders,’ Churchill replied.

Clearly amused, Stalin interjected, ‘If you are in such an obedient mood today, Mr Prime Minister, I should like to know whether you will share with us the German fleet.’ When the meeting concluded, Stalin invited the others to the banquet room, the length of which was filled by a table loaded with caviar, cold meat, turkeys, partridges, and salads, as well as vodkas and wines ‘of all hues’. Truman stayed less than ten minutes. Churchill, though he had previously complained of indigestion, happily ate and drank with Stalin. Pointing out that they had much to talk about privately, Stalin asked Churchill to have dinner with him the following evening. It promised to be a late night. In contrast to Truman, who preferred to go to bed early, Churchill and Stalin were both night owls. On the present occasion, Stalin remarked to Churchill that he had grown so accustomed to working late during the war that even though the necessity had passed, he could never get to sleep before 4 a.m.