Churchill as War Leader

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Lamb, a Churchill admirer, has written an instructive study of the British prime minister's wartime mistakes and questionable directives. His greatest blunder, according to Lamb ( The Drift to War ), was the 1940 order to sink the French fleet at Mersel-Kebir, which indirectly led to thousands of British casualties in the subsequent Syrian campaign. He also discusses Churchill's decision to shuttle a high proportion of British Middle East forces to Greece in 1941 and his weakening of the British outpost in Malaya by sending tanks and planes to Russia. Lamb examines Churchill's cavalier treatment of his field generals and the extraordinary influence upon him of the incompetent Adm. Roger Keyes, head of Combined Operations. Lamb also uncovers from the archives several instances in which Churchill later attempted to ``sanitize'' the offical record: he falsely claimed, for instance, that the Mers-el-Kebir decision was strongly supported by the War Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff. Despite Churchill's impetuous wartime operations, a few of which boomeranged badly, Lam believes that only one verdict is possible: Winston Churchill was a great war leader. Photos. (Apr.)

Library Journal

Lamb has written several books on the Churchill period; this one, published in Britain in 1991, is a readable, opinionated, but on the whole judicious examination of Churchill's role in the conduct of World War II. Lamb has made good use of the source material, highlighting Churchill's success in manipulating the development of the historical record to his advantage. The conclusions of other historians (both positive and negative) are evaluated and sometimes rejected. Lamb lays more stress than most on the strains in the Churchill-Roosevelt relationship. This work is useful but not essential for smaller general collections; larger libraries lacking the British edition will definitely want it.-- Nancy C. Cridland, Indiana Univ. Libs., Bloomington

Gilbert Taylor

Lamb produces the judgmental brand of history, which blames the bad and exalts the good. After leaving off with castigation of British appeasement in "The Drift to War" , he resumes with an assessment of Churchill's military talents during the war. Despite the PM's achievement of victory, Lamb tries to persuade his fellow admirers of the man that he committed numerous operational mistakes in the early part of the war. They include the Norway debacle, the bombardment of the French fleet, the disaster of Crete, and all-around meddling in the North African theater. In criticizing Churchill's insistence on Mediterranean operations, Lamb at least joins general opinion that these efforts delayed the cross-Channel invasion by one year. But his style is his own that asserts who was right and who wrong on particular decisions, putting in shadow elements that could freshen the familiar story, such as narrative flow or an innovative thesis. Lamb is cross with official biographer Martin Gilbert ("Churchill" ), and must follow in the wake of the noted military historian John Keegan ("Churchill's Generals" ), but no dust will gather on this work if it sits near such fellows.