Road to Victory: Winston S. Churchill, 1941-1945

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

This impressive volume is the seventh in a series recounting the life and accomplishments of one of the most outstanding men of modern times, Winston S. Churchill. (Volumes I and II were undertaken by Randolph Churchill, Winston’s son; all subsequent volumes have been written by Gilbert.)

Covering the years 1941 to 1945, the author follows the course of events from the Japanese attack on British, Dutch, and American possessions in the Far East in December 1941 to V-E Day, marking the defeat of Germany in May, 1945. The work is based mainly on two sets of unpublished material: Churchill’s own private papers, which were put at the author’s disposal, and the papers of the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Defence, which are available for public research. However, he has also drawn on a wealth of private correspondence and reminiscences. A list of those who have lent their assistance to this exhaustive work begins with Her Majesty the Queen, and continues for more than a page. Almost every page of the manuscript is peppered with footnotes. There is no guesswork or conjecture as to what may have been said or done on any given occasion; these are the documented facts, times, people, and places.

Churchill was astonishingly active for a man of his years (and as this book clearly reveals, a man whose uncertain health was kept secret as far as possible). He raced from one high-level meeting to another, doing his best to keep at least as much semblance of amity as would serve the war effort between Stalin (known, not very affectionately, as Uncle Joe or U.J.) and Roosevelt. Stalin he found difficult and untrustworthy; De Gaulle he found unbearable. Tensions often ran high, and statecraft was sorely needed: statecraft was what Churchill could supply.

Not that he was universally or blindly admired by his own people, Churchill too could be extremely difficult. Those who had to work at close quarters with him and were subjected to his whims and flights of vanity were under no illusions. Yet even those who were so well aware of his faults for the most part loved and admired him.

This particular segment of the war story, especially the closing chapters in which the approaching victory over Germany was clearly foretold, reveals the emerging differences among the victors, whose “only bond was their common hate.” Plainly, the Russians had plans for Eastern Europe and for their own nationals that the Western powers could not support. Roosevelt, in failing health, barely took in what was occurring at the final “big three conference” at Yalta. Two months later he was dead. The world was rapidly changing. But on one thing alone they could all agree — victory in Europe was a triumph indeed.