journal of the churchill center and societies - Winston Churchill

Left: Henry Luce's pro-British Time for 4 September 1939, quoting Churchill:
"The blow has been struck." Inside were lurid stories of war preparations, Time
anticipating "100,000 air-bombing casualties a month" in London, a somewhat
exaggerated figure, as the jolly PM would later note. Churchill appeared seven
times (six by himself) on Time covers from 1923 to 1951; four appearances came
in World War II, including one group illustration with Roosevelt and Stalin.
highly entertaining and served as valuable propaganda.
Edward R. Murrow, the leading U.S. radio reporter in
wartime London, said that Churchill had the advantage of
being the best broadcaster in Britain. 5 Murrow later
summed up the feeling of most in the news media when
he ascended Churchillian heights himself in proclaiming
that Churchill had "mobilized the English language and
sent it into battle to steady his fellow countrymen and
hearten the Europeans upon whom the long dark night of
tyranny had descended." 6
A collection of Churchill's public pronouncements
between May 1938 and February 1941 {Into Battle
in the British edition) were published in the U.S.A. under
the title, Blood, Sweat, and Tears, The book became a national
best seller and its title a Churchillian hallmark. Reviews
hailed it as a portrait of the greatest statesman of the
modern era. The Saturday Review of Literature suggested
that "If British democracy wins the war, Winston
Churchill will rank with Abraham Lincoln in the annals
of freedom." 7 Americans generally agreed that Churchill
passed the true test of democratic leadership by reaching
the masses without resorting to demagoguery or compromising
his principles.
Effective as Churchill was as a writer and speaker,
he required the assistance of the many foreign correspondents
who covered the Blitz. The most important U.S.
journalist in London was the aforementioned Ed Murrow,
head of CBS's European bureau, who broadcast war news
on a nightly 15-minute program. Beginning each program
with his famous call words, "This is London," Murrow
allowed Americans to experience vicariously what it
was like to live in London during the war. Once live
broadcasts during air raids became part of Murrow's routine,
Americans could hear sirens wailing, bombs exploding,
and anti-aircraft guns firing into the night sky. From
London rooftops, streets, and shelters, Murrow and his
colleagues brought the war to American living rooms and
communicated war sounds more powerfully than print.
Murrow later recalled that his impressions of prewar
England, like those of many Americans, were mostly
negative. Before 1939, he thought the English offensively
class conscious, indifferent and complacent: "I admired
your history, doubted your future, and suspected that the
historians had merely agreed upon a myth." 8
With the onset of war, Murrow perceived a
change. He noted that repeated visits to public air raid
shelters promoted class interaction. 9 When bombs fell on
Buckingham Palace, he discussed how the war had symbolized
the demise of old values and traditional bases of
power and prestige. 10 He later declared that Britain, then
undergoing "a revolution of consent," had signaled the
end of the age of aristocracy. 11 Having been won over by
the people of London, Murrow gave his listeners a new
image of Great Britain: its society had become less rigid,
more democratic. According to Murrow, Britain had become
more like the United States.
To Murrow, Churchill's Premiership was the most
important event of 1940. 12 He acknowledged that "so
long as Winston Churchill is Prime Minister, the House
of Commons will be given an opportunity to defend its
traditions and to determine the character of government
that is to rule this country." 13 The House of Commons
was a democratic body, the traditions he spoke of were
those of representative government. For the American
people, Murrow showed how the war had transformed
Britain into a bastion of democracy, thanks in no small
part to Winston Churchill.
The image of Churchill—courageously standing
alone against Hitler and Nazi Germany—proved irresistible,
as increasingly the U.S. media served as a vehicle
for British wartime propaganda. In articles that appeared
in Time, Life, the Saturday Evening Post, Readers' Digest,
The New York Times Magazine, and even The New Republic,
Churchill was used to symbolize values that British officials
knew were extolled in the United States: courage
and perseverance, individual initiative, self-reliance, hard
work, generosity, and love of freedom and independence.
Called a progressive Tory, a self-made aristocrat, and "the
Rough Rider of Downing Street," Churchill was depicted
as standing for tolerance, equality, and social justice,
things he had not always been feted for by his political opponents
back home. 1 ^ Such wartime characterizations
prompted sympathy for the underdog and encouraged
Americans to see admirable qualities in both the British
nation and its leader. When compared to Hitler, Churchill
symbolized all that was good in the Western World.
The superlatives used to describe Churchill became
cliches as neutrality waned in the United States and
Churchill's popularity rose. Several weeks before President
Roosevelt publicly announced his Lend-Lease plan in January
1941, Murrow implied that the United States was
obligated to aid Britain and that assistance as a non- »
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