theatrical good looks and sartorial elegance contrasted sharply with Cranborne’s less photogenic appearance, attended the meeting on 1 August 1945 to discuss Churchill’s future.
Also present was Britain’s Ambassador to the US, Lord Halifax, who had returned from Washington on leave the previous day. When Chamberlain resigned in 1940, Halifax had been his choice to replace him as prime minister, as well as that of King George VI and much of the Conservative Party, but Halifax had declined in favour of Churchill. (Halifax calculated that the public clamour for Churchill was so great that any other appointment would inevitably be overshadowed by his looming presence in the Government. Halifax took consolation in the judgement that Churchill’s character flaws made it likely that his tenure would be brief.) When Churchill became prime minister, he returned the favour by shipping Halifax off to Washington lest he re-emerge as a political rival.
For Churchill, who could be as passionate about fighting off real and potential rivals for power as he was about fighting the war, there had been an additional advantage to replacing Halifax as Foreign Secretary with Anthony Eden. As the Conservative Chief Whip James Stuart later observed, Churchill ‘knew he could bully Anthony … but not Halifax’. By exiling him to the US, Churchill lowered the curtain on Halifax’s political career. Five years later, Halifax was one of those who believed the time had come for Churchill to bow out, and by his reckoning, Churchill was fortunately not one of those individuals whose sole interest in life is his work. There were many activities that afforded him much pleasure, but that he had had little time to pursue during his premiership. Among other things he was an author and painter, and Halifax believed he might actually welcome a chance to be free of the burdens of leadership and retire of his own accord.
Eden thought he knew Churchill’s mood better. Cranborne, as well, was far from optimistic that Churchill would willingly step down, and his strategy was to ease him out of power. Churchill had been asked to go to New Zealand to be honoured for his war service, and Cranborne was determined that he accept that invit ation, as well as many similar ones that were sure to follow from around the world. While Churchill was abroad, Eden would run the party in his stead. Halifax was set to see Churchill at 5 p.m. that day, and Eden was to dine with him after that. Cranborne urged both visitors to press Churchill to go to New Zealand, and generally to entice him with the joys of retirement. Halifax readily agreed, but Eden hesitated.
This was partly a matter of propriety on Eden’s part, partly a matter of self-preservation. He flinched at the unseemliness of trying to push Churchill aside in open pursuit of his own interests. He did not wish to appear vulgarly ambitious. Was that not among the very qualities in Churchill that had long repelled him and many others? At the same time, Eden longed to lead the Opposition and he did not want to do or say anything to provoke Churchill to turn against him at this late date and to name another successor. During the war, Churchill had been known to taunt him with the names of other ‘possibles’ – Oliver Lyttelton, John Anderson, Harold Macmillan. By Eden’s lights, the wait to succeed Churchill had been long and excruciating, and he did not want to jeopardize his position before the handover actually took place. But Cranborne was insistent, and as had often been the case between the two friends, Eden reluctantly gave in to the stronger will.
As it happened, 1 August was also the closing day of the Potsdam Conference. The plenary sessions were set to wind up that night, and Halifax was scheduled to be present at the King’s meeting with Truman in England the following day. The talks had failed to produce anything like the settlement Churchill had been chasing. When the newly configured British delegation returned to Potsdam, Stalin had viewed Attlee warily and had insisted on grilling him and Ernest Bevin, the new Foreign Secretary, about Churchill’s fate. Long preoccupied with averting his own removal from office, Stalin was palpably shaken by the news from London. If Churchill was dispensable, presumably the same was true of Stalin. He did not like the change. He would not have it. For two days he failed to show up at the conference table. Ostensibly he was ailing but Truman suspected the real reason was that he was upset about Churchill. When Stalin did reappear, he seemed to have lost interest in the proceedings.
Under the circumstances, Potsdam and all it signified to Churchill cast a shadow over Halifax’s visit to Claridge’s. Rather than listen to his guest’s paean to memoir-writing and other activities to be looked forward to in retired life, Churchill preferred to mourn the loss of power and efficacy. In conversation, he dwelled on the fact that only a week had passed since he had been at Potsdam. He found that impossible to believe. How could everything have changed so quickly?
By the time he saw Eden, he had begun to dwell on the mistakes that might have led to his defeat. It was widely believed that by attacking Labour too violently Churchill had diminished his hard-won status as a national hero who stood above the political fray. On the present occasion, he lamented that if only Eden had not been ill with a duodenal ulcer during the campaign he would have had the advantage of his heir’s advice and avoided that perhaps fatal error. In making such a claim, Churchill was flattering Eden in the conviction – which had helped to sustain the number two man during the war – that he served as a ‘restraining hand’ on Churchill’s often monstrously poor judgement. (As Pug Ismay once put it, ‘Some men need drink. Others need drugs. Anthony needs flattery.’) Over the course of the evening, Churchill clutched Eden to his bosom, insisted the younger man was his ‘alter ego’, and otherwise strove to convey how much he valued and depended on him. But the love fest was short-lived. When Eden dared to suggest that the party vice-chairmanship be awarded to a close friend of his own, a man associated in people’s minds with Eden’s interests, Churchill exploded. The charm, the flattery, the unctuous affection – all dissolved in an instant. Furious at being pushed, Churchill made it clear that he had his own candidate for the post.
After Eden left at midnight, Churchill swallowed a sleeping pill and went to bed. Since Saturday when the Potsdam talks had resumed without him, he had found that even after taking a ‘red’ he was unable to sleep through until morning. For the fifth night in a row, he shot awake at 4 a.m., his thoughts racing uncontrollably, and he required a second barbiturate pill to sleep.
In the days that followed, Churchill in his misery was of various minds about how to proceed. He tested some of the suggestions others had made, but none appeared to satisfy him. He spoke of his war memoirs, but despaired of the taxes he would be required to pay on the earnings. He said he might go abroad indefinitely, but complained that he had no appetite for travel. He talked of honours and invitations, but added that he was in no mood to accept them. By turns he vowed to fight to retain control of the Conservative Party and admitted that he did not know how much longer he wished to lead. He groused that it would have been better had he died during the war but also insisted that he was not ready to die.
On 6 August, the first atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima. A second bomb targeted Nagasaki three days later. The new weapon, which reduced innumerable victims to tiny black bundles of smoking char, proved to be everything described in the report Churchill had seen at Potsdam, and more. The news jolted him out of his lassitude and self-pity, for it vividly suggested what a world war fought with atomic weapons might be like. The prospect made it more urgent than ever to get a proper postwar settlement in Europe, but political defeat had left Churchill helpless to do anything except try to warn the world in time.
Japan surrendered unconditionally on 14 August. That evening, Churchill dined with Eden and other Conservative colleagues in a private room at Claridge’s. After the meal, he and his guests listened to Attlee’s midnight broadcast to announce the end of the war. Inviting people to relax and enjoy themselves in the knowledge of a job well done, Churchill’s successor decreed two days of victory holidays.
V-J Day, 15 August, coincided with the state opening of Parliament. An estimated one million celebrants lined the route from Buckingham Palace as the King and Queen rode to Westminster in an open red-and-gold coach drawn by the Windsor greys. Elsewhere, in a scene reminiscent of his thousand-mile electoral tour, Churchill, travelling in an open car, was mobbed by well-wishers. Shouting ‘Churchill forever’ and ‘We want Churchill’, they greeted him as the saviour of his country, the leader who had snatched Britain from the jaws of defeat, the man who more than any other had made this day possible. Three weeks after he had been hurled from power, the ovations comforted and reassured him. When he went to the Palace