Winston Churchill was a good butcher. He did not enjoy sending men to their deaths in war – in fact, his fear of WWI-scale casualties made him very sceptical about D-Day – but when it came to firing generals he deemed too timid, tired, or incompetent, he wielded the knife with relish. Was he right to do so?
Five of the leading British generals when Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940 – Gort, Ironside, Dill, Wavell, and Auchinleck – were to become victims of the PM’s aggressive and impatient nature. Belligerent, domineering, and hyperactive as a personality, Churchill brought these characteristics to his conduct of the conflict, and commanders who incurred his imperious displeasure, either by a reluctance to take the offensive before they were ready, or by arguing against his more impractical or impetuous ideas, soon found themselves sidelined or summarily sacked.
As a former war correspondent and soldier himself, Churchill had a lifelong interest in military matters, even though he had never commanded more than a battalion – for six months in the trenches of WWI. His previous experience had been as a junior officer in colonial conflicts in India and Africa.
