Taken on its own, Five Days in London is an exciting and informative,
though hyperbolic, account of the period when Mr. Lukacs contends that
Winston Churchill saved the world from Hitler. During the five days in
question--Friday, May 24, 1940 to Tuesday, May 28--Mr. Churchill, named
Prime Minister earlier in the month and still being challenged for power
within the Conservative Party by Lord Halifax, who favored appeasing Hitler,
was trying desperately to save as much of the army from Dunkirk as he could.
With prospects for continuing the fight looking bleak, particularly if
the army was lost, and with Churchill still distrusted by many colleagues,
Mr. Lukacs contends that it was a near run thing whether Halifax would
take power himself and enter into negotiations with Hitler to keep Britain
out of the war. But more than that, he argues that Britain would
have eventually been doomed had Hitler been allowed to dominate the continent
without British opposition. In effect then, by beating off the Halifax
challenge and keeping England active in the war, Churchill prevented Hitler
from consolidating his grip on Europe and preserved the possibility of
later Allied victory.
The book is very much a response to those who have contended that Britain
and America would have been better off leaving continental Europe to fend
for itself while Hitler and Stalin slugged it out in the East and then
walked in later to pick up the pieces. I have to confess that I'm
partial to that theory myself. However, I would gladly concede the
broader point that Mr. Lukacs seems to be making, that it would have been
destructive to the very soul of the West to bargain with Nazi Germany.
Even the case that we had a moral obligation to confront such evil is rather
compelling. Indeed, were Mr. Lukacs serious about these arguments
and willing to apply them generally, I'd be willing to give him the benefit
of the doubt as to the vital importance of these five days. But there's
a curious dichotomy in his writings. As much emphasis as he gives
this brief interlude in 1940 and as much credit as he gives Winston Churchill
and the British for stopping Hitler, Mr. Lukacs writing elsewhere is almost
entirely derisive of the very similar resistance that America mounted to
the Soviet Union after the War. And he's especially hostile--and
this is bizarre because Mr. Lukacs is considered a conservative--to the
great Republican presidents of the Cold War: Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald
Reagan.
The strange contempt for Mr. Reagan is a staple of an earlier book,
The
End of the Twentieth Century: and the End of the Modern Age.
The criticism of President Eisenhower happens to be available on-line,
in Mr. Lukacs's review of Eisenhower
and Churchill, by James C. Humes (John Lukacs, Harper's). In
fact, in that review Mr. Lukacs argues that Nazi Germany was powerful even
into 1944, and so had to be destroyed, but that the Soviet Union, even
in the 1950s, was in retreat and, apparently, need not have been confronted.
Mr. Lukacs even argues that Churchill tried to stop the Cold War in 1953
and 1954, urging Mr. Eisenhower to negotiate a settlement, and that it
might have been possible to end the conflict right then.
Obviously we're pretty far out in the realm of speculative history by
now. On the one hand, had Churchill not stood tall in May 1940 we
have the specter of Nazism rampant. On the other, the Soviets wanted
nothing more than peace after Stalin died. It can serve little purpose
to quarrel with either or both of these scenarios. However, we can
ask some consistency and, in that regard, it seems fair to ask of Mr. Lukacs
why Hitler and Nazi Germany were so evil that even to negotiate with them
would have been intolerable while the Soviet Union would have made a suitable
partner in peace talks. Would it have been permissible in his view
to leave Eastern Europe under communist rule in order to secure such a
peace? How far would he, who is so willing to anathematize Halifax,
have been willing to appease the Soviets?
It's hard to know why Mr. Lukacs even takes these diametrically opposed
stands with regard to Nazism and Communism, but one wonders if it's not
some kind of Eurochauvanism. He can plausibly argue that almost all
of Europe resisted Hitler to some degree and that Britain played the key
role in his eventual defeat. But Europe still has Communist parties
even today. The Soviets could always find eager collaborators in
all the European nations they dominated. And no one other than America
deserves terribly much credit for winning the Cold War. Perhaps it's
just the Hungarian patriot in him coming out and refusing to concede that
Europe spent the entire second half of the 20th Century virtually prostrate
while the upstart Americans and Russians feuded over the carcass.
Whatever the case may be, Mr. Lukacs is an anti-anti-communist, an ideology
which has no comparable form at the other side of the political spectrum--just
try to imagine someone styling himself an anti-anti-Nazi.
In light of the author's inconsistency then, and the lack of any objective
difference between Nazism and Soviet Communism, I for one am unwilling
to suspend disbelief and grant him his thesis that these five days were
necessarily pivotal in the history of the West. It's a very readable
and often thrilling book, but the situation it describes was perhaps less
dire than Mr. Lukacs would have us believe. At any rate, he fails
to convince that much more hung in the balance than a potentially humiliating
moment for England. Considering that the British ended the war with
the Empire in tatters abroad and with Socialism firmly entrenched at home
and ended the Century with sovereignty steadily shifting to the Franco-German
bureaucrats of the EU, it's hard to see what the point was of preserving
British pride for five days in 1940.
"Legend of infidelity and treason of King Leopold was propagated all over the world by Winston Churchill The cowardly declaration by Paul Reynaud and Churchill's insulting words became the base of the "Legend of infidelity and treason of King Leopold III, which, as from 28th of May 1940, was propagated all over the world.
This "legend" would, later on, cause internal problems in Belgium that lead to the abdication of King Leopold III.
All of the above are historical facts to be found in the official documents and therefore cannot be denied.
But there is more!
Sir Roger Keyes, Lord of Zeebrugge and Dover, had been appointed by Winston Churchill, on 10th of May, as a special liaison officer to King Leopold III. The Admiral remained with the King until the evening of 27th May, when he and Colonel Davy were picked up by a torpedo boat. They reached Harwich at 8h30 on 28th May.
These two officers were expert witnesses of the heroic battles of the Belgian army..but Churchill had already made up his mind: he, just like Paul Reynaud, was going to indicate Leopold III and his army as a scapegoat.
He did not want to hear the real story of the two gentlemen officers; instead he categorically did forbid Admiral Keyes to speak out publicly.
Even though King George spoke out in favour of Leopold III, Churchill persevered in his vendetta against Leopold III and the Belgian people which he seemed to dislike altogether.
Lord Keyes would, many years later, state (in his book: A sea of troubles") that the references, made by Churchill in his book "The Second World War", were in fact so unfair and misleading-due to omissions and distortions of the facts-that his son, Randolph Churchill, (according to the former archduke Otto von Habsburg) furiously said to him: "What you have said and written about this, is nothing else but a heap of lies, as you very well know".
The archduke who was present, describes in his book "Naissance d'un Continent" this heated discussion, which took place at Chequers, the official country house of the British prime minister.
He remembers how Churchill admitted, in a provocative way: "Of course these were lies, but you must not forget that the history of a period is determined by its best author. I am and will remain this author and therefore, whatever I wrote will have to be accepted as being the truth".
Winston Churchill had, nevertheless, admitted in 1943 (!): .We went at war, unprepared and almost unarmed."
Further, in his memoires, he stated about the British Expeditionary Force: ".it was only a symbolic contribution..."
When Winston Churchill died, he took his shameful lies into his grave....
The attack on the honour of King Leopold III and his army, continuous, until today, to throw a shadow of distrust and resentment in the heart of the Belgian people, certainly with the thousands of veterans and all Belgians who are still very well aware of what happened in May 1940.
I thought this was a particularly good review. That Winston may have saved England only to have the Labour Party give it to the Continentals is an intriguing idea.
I liked Lukacs memoir CONFESSIONS OF AN ORIGINAL SINNER, but was surprised that this "conservative" was too easy on the communists. Like Orrin and Thomas Fleming, I'm tending toward the view that having the Nazis and Commuinists duke it out wouldn't have been a bad idea.
