On 1st of July 1911 a German gunboat, Panther, arrived in Agadir in Morocco, under the French sphere of influence. The British government was convinced it was only the first step to full scale war with German. This was just about three months before Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. Eventually the Germans backed down, but Winston felt the lesson was clear. Agadir, he was sure, was the potent of a coming war with German.
Churchill was sure the only way to protect against German aggression was with a invulnerable Royal Navy. over the next 2 and 1/2 years he inspected ships being built and ones already under construction. He visited the Navy barracks and the submarine school at Portsmouth. He scrutinized timetables for repairs, refits, restocking of ships with ammunition and torpedoes.
NEW DISTRACTION
Winston and Clementine now had two children, Diana born on 11th of July, 1909, and Randolph their son on 28th of May, 1911. Churchill missed his family immensely when he had to be away. Sometimes Clementine would go with him. Winston did not want his children to suffer having no father around, as he had experienced with his father.
Churchill had a lifelong fascination with "innovations" and "gadgetry." He was fascinated with Admiral John Fisher's idea of a super-dreadnought battleship - powered by oil and not coal; seed of up to 25 knots; a powerful battery of eight 15 inch guns. The super-dreadnought was one of the revolutionary technological innovations of the early 20th century. It strengthened immensely the Royal Navy.
Winston was also enthralled by the exciting advance in aviation, He was already envisaging an air force. He became a keen enthusiast of aviation and starred flying lessons in early 1913.
The assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife on 28th of June, 1914 ignited the conflict churchill had expected was coming. Britain declared war on Germany on the 4th of August.
The battles lines were drawn by November - the Allies Britain, France and Russia - faced the Central Powers - Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Turkey.
THE CONFLICT WIDENS
It was a 50/50 battle on the sea. News on the Western Front in France and Belgium, with the British and French troops in retreat was no better. In france the fighting settle into trenched warfare. It was an atrocity of waste, squalor and death around barbed wire. It was a concern for the British Prime Minister to raise the people out of depression.
Churchill wanted to try and take Turkey out of the war to open up a route to Russia. But the British suffered heavy losses, loosing 9 battleships, some from undetected minefields.
DISASTROUS LANDINGS
The military results were no better than the navy ones. The landings in the Dardanells on the 25th of April were a disaster. At one landing the troops from Australia and New Zealand found themselves pinned down as the Turks raked the shoreline. Loss of life was high. Landings made at the beginning of August also failed.
By the end of 1915 the allies had to admit they were defeated, they were on the loosing end. Some 252,000 allied troops, more than half who took part, were killed or injured before the rest could be evacuated in January 1916.
Churchill was haunted for many year following this loss, and it finally precipited his political downfall.
The Conservatives seized the opportunity to punish Winston for deserting the party and, as they saw it, flaunting the political heights he attained under the Liberals. The Dardanells disaster provided the stick to beat Churchill, and they made the most of it.
DISILLUSIONED
Prime Minister Asquish needed to have both Larbor and the Conservatives unite for the war effort. The conservatives made one stipulation .... Churchill was to be "demoted" - he remained in the government but but with just a seat on the War Council." Clementine noted that he became very depressed and thought the grief would kill him. for the summer Winston settled at the family farm at Hoe Farm in Surrey. His bruised ego found relief in painting. He started with water colors but then moved up to oil paintings. It would become a life long interest and as he would say, "a means of a wonderful cure and forgetting all vexations."
The Times PAPER WOULD OFTEN COMMENT ON CHURCHILL'S "DISQUIETING PERSONAL ADVENTURE AND GREED FOR POWER."
The criticism also charged that, as First Lord, Churchill had flagrantly overruled his naval advisers on the War Council.
Winston hope Asquith would defend him in the House of Commons, but he did not; Churchill became quite disillusioned.
He felt he needed to leave England, and though it would take him away from his family, he rejoined the army. In late October he left the front lines in Flanders, where he experienced first hand the squalor and horror in the trenches. He wrote to Clementine, "graves dug into the defences and scattered about promiscuously. Feet and clothing breaking through the soil, water and much on all sides and about the scene in the dazzling moonlight, troops of bats creep and glide, to the unceasing accompaniment of rifles and machine and the venomous whining and whirling of the bullets which pass overhead."
The stalemate of the trenches was totally opposite to the daring, fast-moving warfare Winston had experienced in India, the Sudan and South Africa. His inventive mind and notions for unconventional gadgetry soon had his mind on a way the soldiers could move out of the trenches without getting blown to bits. He envisioned a huge metal shieled moving in front on wheels like or caterpillar tracks and equipped with a flame-thrower and two or three Maxim machine guns. It would be heavy enough to crush barbed wire that fronted the trenches, and could only be stopped by a direct hit by a field gun.
Winston's invention was on the lines of the engineers Walter Wilson and William Tritton in 1915-19-16....the TANK! And which came into use on the 15th of September 1916, during the five-month-long battle of Somme.
OSTRACIZED
Prime Minister Asquith wanted a volunteer army, but it was just not possible, conscription was unavoidable, the casualties were just too high. In France churchill found that out; the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers, an infantry battalion he commanded, suffered such terrible casualties that its survivors had to be placed in another unit.
Without a command post Winston return to Parliament where he first cleared himself of the blame for the Dardanells tragedy. It turned out it was no easy task, often insulted. In the "Conservative" press his "ghastly blunders" were repeatedly examined. Such being the case Churchill insisted on an exhaustive enquiry into the handling of the Dardanelles campaign. A Royal Commission was ordered and it found Winston guiltless, he was exonerated. Instead they pointed the finger at Asquish for approving every stage of the campaign, and at Kitchener [now dead] for his indecision and neglect. Asquish resigned in December 1916 and was replaced with David Lloyd George.
But it did not look like Churchill was going to find a spot in the cabinet, Conservatives hated him and it burned hot and strong. one man called him "an active danger in our midst."
It was the magnanimity of Dr. Christopher Addison, the Minister for Munitions, that saved the day for Winston. Addison gave up his post so Churchill could have it.The appointment went through on the 24th of July 1917.
Winston's "charm" was one of his great assets, and so inspired loyalty. One of the first jobs for Churchill to do was settle a strike at the important munitions works at Beardmore, on the Clyde outside Glasgow. Winston invited the strike leader David Kirkwood to London for talks. Kirkwood expected a hostile reception, but was amazed at the warm greeding he received from Churchill, with offerings of tea and cakes. It was not long before a deal was reached, which no other person in 18 months had managed to do.
Winston moved on with gusto, He streamlined his Ministry and welded armament factories to higher production rate. He smoothed up to the French and Americans, who had entered the war in 1917, to coordinate supplies of guns and shells to the armies on the front lines of battles.
World War 1 came to and end with the signing of the armistice on the 11th of November 1918.
Clementine gave birth to her fourth child four days later. But an imminent General Election was so near Winston could spend little time at home. He was re-elected Member of Parliament for dundee withy a large majority, and became Secretary of State for War and Air in Lloyd George's coalition government.
Churchill soon found himself in conflict again with the "Irish situation." The British army was locked in conflict with the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The British "Black and Tan" auxiliary police used brutal methods, but Winston soon found the IRA could not be overcome with brute force. In October 1912, Winston engaged in talks with Michael Collins, an IRA leader. They made a treaty to create an Irish Free State, dividing Ireland into a Catholic South and a Protestant North. But in the end even that did not solve the problems. Hostilities continued for decades, and only towards the later end of the 20th century has the conflict been resolved, with many lives lost on both sides.
PERSONAL TRAGEDIES
To be continued
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