Churchill's Triumph by Michael Dobbs
“You make it sound so simple, as if you had a great plan.”
“Never simple. I groped my way through darkness, but even in the dark a donkey can find its way home.”
“What donkey?” Nowak demanded, but Churchill’s mind had drifted away, distracted by a vapor trail that was stretching out across the cloudless sky, reminding him of a time when the skies above his beloved Chartwell had been filled with such trails, a time when the entire world had been balanced on the wings of a handful of Spitfires and Hurricanes.
Suddenly the old man was back. “Poland! The next potato. What could we do about Poland?”
“You could have fought for her freedom. That was what you had promised.”
“Oh, and I would have fought, most gladly, Mr. Nowak. Everyone says I was a warmonger, couldn’t resist the chance to take a potshot at someone or other. I would have led the charge myself, be in no doubt. But not a soul would have joined me. Not in 1945. By that time there was nothing to be done in Poland except what Marshal Stalin would agree to. And what he agreed to, free elections, a democratic government, independence, an entire package of liberties, had much merit.”
But by this point Nowak’s battered face was contorting with frustration. He spat the words out, one by one, like a man picking his way through a minefield: “How could you trust that monster Stalin?”
“I didn’t! No, not once. Not possible. I knew he was a creature of darkness and utter despair, insatiable in his lusts. Oh, I had to be civil, I had to do business with him, to smile and say generous things about him, but they were no more than the deceits of diplomacy. But trust the bugger? Never!”
“You washed your hands of us.”
“I washed my hands most meticulously, after every meeting with Marshal Stalin. But I never forgot Poland, never gave up hope. And I had my own victory.” He was leaning forward in his chair, wagging his finger. “I got him to agree to all those things.”
“Words! Useless words!”
“Words, indeed, Mr. Nowak. And all your fault.” Churchill began to chuckle, an old man’s laugh, hoarse and at first feeble but growing in strength.
“You blame me?” Nowak screamed, thrusting the revolver towards the other man.
Churchill laughed until tears streamed down his cheeks, but he wasn’t mocking, merely enjoying the moment.
The Pole was all but convinced he was senile.
“You remember, Mr. Nowak, that you went on at me about the importance of giving my word? For you it made a vital difference, for when a man gives his solemn word he opens up consequences which”—Churchill waved a paw in the direction of the revolver—“can be most serious. And you set me thinking. If we could get Stalin to give his word, to sign the agreements on Poland, then if there were to come a time when he blatantly disregarded them, it would have the most serious consequences.”
“Sure. He broke his word and was still enjoying the joke when they buried him.”
“And in so unashamedly breaking his word he admitted his guilt to the whole world. I was determined to give him no excuse for blaming others, no opportunity for muddying the waters. So I smiled, I courted, I praised, using words that I had to force through my craw. Had I once expressed doubt about his good intentions or questioned his honor, he would have used that as a pretext for withdrawing from his obligations and I was determined unto the point of death to give him no such chance.” Churchill’s blue eyes were staring weepily into the tortured face of the Pole. “Yes, even unto the point of your death, Mr. Nowak.”
The Pole’s face now turned from torment to confusion. “What the hell did I have to do with it?”
“Imagine if we had been discovered, you and I, if Stalin had been able to reveal to the world that even as I professed goodwill and enduring friendship towards him I was busily smuggling some notorious spy and perverted traitor from beyond the reach of Soviet justice—because that is how it would have been depicted. Imagine how the blame for failure would have fallen upon our shoulders. I had to balance the life of one Pole against the future of the whole of Poland. You lost.”
“Then I praise the mother of Christ for the life of Frank Sawyers.”
“Sawyers was his own soul. But I could not take that risk.”
“Where was the risk? The agreement was useless anyway.”
“I remember one of the American delegation, a young diplomat, Bohlen, I think his name was, who was deeply skeptical about his own country’s position at Yalta. He told me a story over dinner about a Negro slave who had been given a bottle of whisky by his owner for Christmas. The master demanded to know whether he had liked the whisky, and the slave replied that it was perfect. This puzzled the plantation owner, for it was but a cheap bottle. So he demanded to know what the slave meant. The Negro replied that if the whisky had been any better, the master would not have given it to him, and if it had been any worse, he could not have drunk it. So there could be only one response. That the whisky was perfect. You know, Mr. Nowak, at Yalta I felt much like that Negro slave.”
The Pole was clumping around the deck in agitation, dragging his bad leg behind him. “What in the name of the Blessed Virgin has whisky got to do with Poland?”
“To Mr. Bohlen, I think, it suggested the need for compromise and the acceptance of the inadequacies in any agreement. But to me it meant something more. I never forgot that, in the end, that slave was to find his freedom. You see, the agreement we reached at Yalta was far from useless. It had Stalin’s name upon it. It promised things that he was never going to allow, so when he broke his word, when, without either excuse or provocation, he took the agreement of Yalta and hurled it beneath the tank tracks of his Red Army, the entire world was clear as to what had happened and who was to blame. Stalin’s only justification was brute force. Poland was to become a subjugated nation once more, but this time an entire world would weep in sorrow and decry the injustice of it.”
“Much good did it do my country.”
“Not then, not even now. But what were we saying? That war doesn’t finish simply when the bullets no longer fly? The struggle for liberty is ceaseless. It goes on, so long as tyranny is afoot and men still suffer. Just because an Iron Curtain has fallen across the soul of Europe, that does not prevent us looking across it, to the east, and declaring our faith in the ultimate victory of civilization. We have never ceased to proclaim the great principles of freedom which are our inheritance. In the English-speaking world we have enshrined them in the Magna Carta and in the rules of habeas corpus, in trial by jury and in election by secret ballot, in the Bill of Rights and that most famous expression of freedom, the Declaration of Independence. Freedom is our unquenchable cause and it does not cease or surrender because tyranny casts its dark shadow across large parts of our planet. Liberty is no harlot to be picked up by any bully and cast aside once her services are no longer required. It is the fundamental right of all men and we shall not cease to proclaim its virtues until the walls have fallen and that Curtain is drawn aside. You see, Mr. Nowak, we are fighting not just for Poland but that the entire world might one day be free. And there, I seem to have made a speech. I think it is the last I shall ever make.” His face had grown pink with the strain of his efforts and his breath was coming in short bursts.
“Walls won’t be pulled down by words,” the Pole bit back.
The old man raised himself once more, his words coming more slowly. “So long as free men shout the words of liberty and there are subjugated souls to listen, then tyranny is in peril. I believe this with all my heart. Those walls will crumble, not now, not in my lifetime, certainly, but one day. Imagine, Mr. Nowak, if your daughter were here, what price would you pay that in her lifetime she and all other Poles would be free?”
“Any price, of course. I would gladly pay with my life.”
“And it was precisely that price I was willing to pay at Yalta.”
The two men star
“At Yalta, we lit a flame which casts a light across the whole of Europe and one day will consume all oppression. That is why I left you behind. For those who will come after us.”
“You served your own interests, nothing else!”
“I admit I am, indeed, an imperfect specimen. I have lived a long life—too long. Examine it closely and you will discover all sorts of failures and vanities. It is easy for a young man to find his way to heaven, but a man of my age must clamber over all sorts of failings and deceits. I fear in my case they may prove insurmountable. I sit here wondering what they will say when they discover my bloodied body upon this deck. Will they proclaim me another Nelson, or simply a vain and useless old man? Even though I am at the end of my life, such things still matter.” He was panting, but still fighting. “Condemn me, if you like, but on the day that our sons and daughters come together from all parts of Europe to celebrate their freedom, I hope you will allow me a small fragment of the credit for keeping their flame of hope alight all these years. But… no! That’s wrong.” He waved his fist at Nowak, his cheeks flushed with passion. “On that occasion I shall deserve not merely a small fragment but a bloody enormous slice of the glory. So, expect no apology from me. I am proud of what I have done for Poland!”
The old man slumped back in his chair. There was sweat on his brow. He raised his hand to his temple, clearly exhausted by his efforts. Champagne trickled from his tilted glass and dripped into a little puddle upon the deck. “So, get on with it. I’m tired. Tired of you, Mr. Nowak, tired of life. But as you pull your trigger, remember one thing. I don’t give a damn!”
Suddenly, Churchill felt a sharp pain in his head. It was a sensation that began to take hold inside until it consumed him, and everything went dark.
But it was not the pain of a bullet. It was another stroke. His mind was closing down.
When he opened his eyes once more, he was alone. He felt limp, shatteringly weak. From somewhere near at hand he could hear voices, but they were indistinct and unrecognizable. He was confused. Sounds, sights, all had become jumbled. His mind raced to regain its grip, stumbling along a path it did not recognize.
Who was he? Well, it couldn’t be that bad, could it? For he knew who he was. Churchill. Winston Churchill!
But where was he? Not home, for as his eyes opened and he began to focus, there was sea, blue sky, brilliant light. Ah, that was it. He knew now. He was in Yalta. And out there were dolphins who would be chasing all those sardines.
He felt so wretchedly feeble. Exhausted. Done too much. Time for a rest. A long rest.
“Sawyers!” he cried, but his tongue was thick and wouldn’t work properly and no one seemed to hear him. “Sawyers, where the bloody hell are you, man?”
***
A little more than eighteen months later, in the early days of 1965, the tide of Winston Churchill’s life reached its final ebb. He died at the age of ninety and was given a state funeral, the first commoner to be granted that honor since the Duke of Wellington more than a century earlier. Monarchs, heads of governments and leaders came from almost every nation on the globe. On that day the chimes of Big Ben were silenced, the cranes of London’s docks dipped in salute, and hundreds of thousands of ordinary men and women watched in pride and tearful silence as the coffin passed through the streets of the capital on its way to St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was said that he was the greatest Englishman of his time—of any time.
It was to be another twenty-four years before Poland once again found her freedom, along with the other oppressed nations of Europe, after the Iron Curtain that divided the continent had been torn down and left to rust. It isn’t known whether Marian Nowak lived to see that most historic of days, but many of his generation did.
As much as any single man, Winston Churchill preserved the liberties of the people of Britain. He was the man who guided them—dragged them, at times—through their finest hour. Yet the freedom of the peoples of Europe, finally secured only many years after his death, was a still greater triumph—perhaps his greatest triumph of all.
POSTSCRIPT
Stalin died in 1953. Undeservedly, he died in his own time and in his own house outside Moscow. He was eventually denounced by the new Soviet leadership for his extraordinary record of brutality, but his shadow continued to be cast across Europe for many years to come. Even today, there are those in Russia who wish to rehabilitate him.
Beria was not so fortunate. He was present when Stalin died and moved quickly to grab the reins of power for himself, but he was feared and loathed by his colleagues. They quickly arrested him on trumped-up charges and sentenced him to death. He died in the manner of so many of his own victims, hanging from a hook and with a bullet to his head.
Molotov, however, was a great survivor. His fortunes waxed and waned, but they never entirely ran out on him. He died in 1986 at the extraordinary age of ninety-six, shortly before the total collapse of the Communist empire in Europe that he had worked throughout his life to build. To the last he remained an unrepentant Stalinist.
The elegant and able British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden persevered long enough to see his ambitions fulfilled. He succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister, but not until 1955, after Churchill had returned for his second period in Downing Street. By this time Eden was well past his prime and physically ailing. He is remembered largely for the disaster of the Suez War in 1956, which ended in humiliation for the British after the United States refused to support them. Eden resigned a few weeks later.
The Suez War brought Eden into conflict not only with his wartime ally, President Dwight Eisenhower, but also with his old friend Alec Cadogan. By that time, Cadogan had retired from his glittering career at the Foreign Office to become chairman of the BBC. Eden accused the BBC of reporting the war in a biased fashion, a charge rejected by Cadogan. He, like Eden, retired from public life in the following year.
No one seems to know what happened to the delightful Frank Sawyers. His trail runs cold in 1946, after he left Churchill’s employ.
Sarah Churchill led a tumultuous life: failed marriages, an unfulfilled acting career, several scandals, but she always remained loyal to her father.
Averell Harriman served his country in many capacities and under a variety of different presidents. He was one of the most extraordinary diplomatic figures of his age. He eventually married Pamela Churchill, his wartime love, and they lived happily until his death just short of his hundredth birthday
The United Nations lives on. The United States still has only one vote. When the news leaked that Roosevelt was contemplating asking for three votes, it was greeted with so much public ridicule that he was quietly forced to drop the idea. It was one of many, many ways in which the United Nations was to disappoint the ambitions of its prime founder.
READING GROUP GUIDE
Triumph and betrayal are two words with very different, almost polar opposite, meanings. Is it a contradiction that the book is titled Churchill’s Triumph: A Novel of Betrayal? What role does betrayal play in Churchill’s triumph?
Churchill seems to have an extraordinary empathy for people he has barely met. He feels great guilt for the lot of the Polish and the suffering of the Russian peasants. But he refuses to do anything when confronted with the suffering of people he knows, such as his daughter or the Polish “plumber.” How can Churchill seem so empathetic, yet so cold?
Churchill “had always insisted that the worst sin was not to have done what might prove wrong but to have done nothing at all. His motto had been simple, forthright. Keep Buggering On!”
Do you think this code serves Churchill well at Yalta? Do you think that against a bullying Stalin and weak Roosevelt his strategy finally fails?
“History would judge him kindly, if only because he had written so much of it, but what about Eternity? What verdict would that pass on h
On the road to Yalta, Churchill encounters two impoverished and malnourished children. After years confronting the terrors of war, why does this make such an impression on him? Is it possible to be dulled to the horror of human suffering?
The author says that the English bombing of Dresden, that killed thousands, was something that always weighed on Churchill’s conscience. How are the standards of right and wrong different during wartime than during a time of peace? (I think that this is a really excellent direction for this questions, but I don’t think that you want to be strictly absolute)
How does the destroyed Russian landscape affect the foreign participants in the conference at Yalta?
Everyone at the conference knows that Stalin is ruthless. He openly spies on the English and Americans, and his own advisors are terrified of him. Yet, when the conference becomes tense, Stalin always seems to get his way. What makes Stalin such a powerful negotiator?
Stalin says to Churchill, “Your trouble, Prime Minister, is that you believe in the power of truth. But power is truth.” What does Stalin mean by this? Do you agree with his sentiments?
One of the main political arguments in the book is whether the United Nations is a realistic way to manage global politics. Today, this is remains a heated controversy. Do you feel there are other political conflicts at the Yalta conference that remain unsolved?