Free Winston Churchill's War Leadership by Sir Martin Gilbert

his travels were the Polish commander-in-chief General Wladyslaw Anders, the Chinese Nationalist leader, General Chiang Kai-shek, and the two heads of the French national movement, General Charles de Gaulle and General Henri Giraud. Among other leaders to whom Churchill travelled—and it was almost always Churchill who had to make the journeys—was Ismet Inönü, the President of Turkey, whose neutrality Churchill strongly encouraged, to prevent a Turkish accommodation with Germany that would endanger Britain’s military position in the Middle East. In seeking to create a post-war Yugoslavia that would not be dominated entirely by the communists, Churchill had talks in Italy with the former ruler of Croatia, Dr. Ivan Subasic, and the Yugoslav Communist leader, Marshal Tito, at whose headquarters, in the German-occupied Balkans, Churchill’s son, Randolph, was serving.
    At Christmas 1944, learning of the intensity of the civil war that had broken out in Greece even as the German troops were withdrawing, Churchill abandoned his family celebrations and flew to Athens, where, amid the sound of gunfire, he successfully brokered an agreement between the communist and non-communist factions. This was an extraordinary journey, which he undertook in the belief that his personal intervention had a greater chance of success than that of ambassadors and emissaries or telegraphic exhortations from afar.
    Another type of journey that Churchill made was also an integral part of his war leadership: the visits to the men and women in the front line of action and danger. In the summer of 1940 he visited the pilots at their airfields during the Battle of Britain and the British coastal areas awaiting invasion. In 1942, after his visit to the sailors of the Home Fleet, the fleet admiral reported: “Your presence with us has been an encouragement and inspiration to us all.” In 1943 his appearance at the Roman amphitheatre in Carthage was a tonic for the hundreds of troops crowded into that ancient structure. It was not only British forces Churchill inspired by his presence. When inspecting Czech and Polish troops in Britain, he had words of encouragement that their tormented countries would be liberated. Before the Normandy landings he visited troops of all the nations that would be participating, including the Americans and the Canadians.
    After the Normandy landings Churchill twice visited the forward lines, his V-sign, ever-present cigar and cheery grin welcomed with loud cheers. It was a pleasant, unexpected surprise that the Prime Minister had come to see them. “I know how much you enjoy getting near the battle,” wrote the commander of an artillery regiment that Churchill visited during his second Normandy excursion, “but also I would like to tell you how tremendously pleased, heartened and honoured every soldier was by your visit. It means very much to them that you should wish to come and see them at work in their gun pits.” Churchill was later a witness of the American landings off the South of France, of the fighting in Italy along the River Po, and of the Allied parachute crossing of the Rhine in March 1945. The victorious troops also saw him come among them in Berlin after the German surrender.
    Given the enormous complexity of making war, any successful war leader must have the ability to choose subordinates who take responsibility for the actual fighting. Once chosen, the leader must support them in their planning and, when those endeavours fail as a result of weariness or incompetence, the leader must have the strength of purpose to replace them with someone more effective. During the Second World War, to ensure the right men in the right place at the right time sometimes involved hurting many sensitivities of rank, status and popularity. Lord Halifax, Churchill’s rival for the premiership in May 1940 and a Tory grandee, was reluctant to give up the Foreign Office, but Churchill had little confidence in his strength