Churchill-FDR/Truman-Stalin

Throwing a few quotes into the pot...


On Tehran meeting, ​Sir William Hayter, who was in Washington during that time, said:

Sir Frank Roberts, British Minister, Moscow, on Yalta:

and

and

Churchill at end of Yalta conference told his daughter:

Colonel Merrill Pasco, General Marshall’s Staff:

Winston Churchill MP, Grandson:

 

President Truman's version:
On July 24 I casually mentioned to Stalin that we had a new weapon of unusual destructive force. The Russian Premier showed no special interest. All he said was he was glad to hear it and hoped we would make "good use of it against the Japanese."
Harry S. Truman, Year of Decisions (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1955) p. 416

 

Don´t know how much time Truman had to discuss things with Churchill as suddenly was it July Attlee was PM, which also was a big surprise to Stalin.The hero Winston was no more PM...

 

The results of the British General Election (held Thursday 5 July 1945) were announbced on Thursday 26 July, leading to Winston Churchill's immediate resignation that day and the appointment of Clement Attlee as PM that day. Attlee had accepted Churchill's invitation to attend the first part of the Potsdam Conference as an observer, but Churchill declined Attlee's reciprocal invitation to return to Potsdam in that capacity.

 

The general historical consensus is that the 1945 election was not so much about Churchill's leadership as it was about popular discontent with the party he led.

 

He and the Conservatives were expected to win, even by the opposition, though polls suggested otherwise.

Down to domestic policies, I'd say. He'd been a reformer himself in the past, but the Labour Party were promising a better future, not more of the same. He got back in in '51 though.

See
http://ww2talk.com/forums/topic/7626-why-was-churchill-turned-out/?p=83455

also
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-general-election-1945

 

Indeed, but even at the personal level Churchill had a problem. As a mark of personal respect, both the Labour and Liberal Parties decided not to oppose Churchill in his own constituency (Woodford, Essex), with the expectation that he would be returned unopposed. However, a completely unknown man felt that the electorate should have a choice, and put himself forward. To most people's surprise, the interloper polled 10,000 votes, nowhere near Churchill's 27,000, but enough to show that even in his own constituency the Conservative Party slogan "Vote National, Vote Churchill" was not universally welcome.

 

I still don't buy that the fully mobilized manpower and full materiel force of the United States after it was battle-hardened with the air superiority of the Western Allies couldn't have beaten Germany. One country against the US and England with its Empire.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodford_(UK_Parliament_constituency)
Have a look at percentages/turnout/votes/trends. The turnout was low that year, in comparison to years following.

He may only have had one opponent fielded against him but he still polled a respectable 72%+ This despite the fact that as leader he was synonymous with an unpopular Party. (Registration may have been lower generally, but I'm not sure about that.) However, I do think that voter apathy is bound to been a factor, given that he was expected to win anyway.

 

Campaigning
It was all the more important that he should do this, since the Labour Party was fighting a strong campaign, hammering home its policies on the nationalisation of industry, full employment, social security and the issue which, according to the opinion polls, was most important in the minds of voters - housing. Churchill, however, decided that scare tactics would be more effective.

In the opening broadcast of the campaign, on 4 June, he warned that the introduction of Socialism into Britain would require '... some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance.' This preposterous allegation, apparently inspired by Friedrich Hayek's book Road to Serfdom (1944), was likely to impress no one except the most loyal and unquestioning of Tories. There is no evidence, however, to suggest that it cost Churchill many votes, still less that it cost him the election.
In a second broadcast he emphasised improvements in health and nutrition, and extolled the coalition government's plans for social insurance. But after this he reverted to negative tactics by exploiting the 'Laski affair'.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/election_01.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Laski

-----------

In public Winston Churchill accepted plans for social reform drawn up by William Beveridge in 1944. However, he was unable to convince the electorate that he was as committed to these measures as much as Clement Attlee and the Labour Party. In May 1945, Churchill made a radio broadcast where he attacked the Labour Party: "I must tell you that a socialist policy is abhorrent to British ideas on freedom. There is to be one State, to which all are to be obedient in every act of their lives. This State, once in power, will prescribe for everyone: where they are to work, what they are to work at, where they may go and what they may say, what views they are to hold, where their wives are to queue up for the State ration, and what education their children are to receive. A socialist state could not afford to suffer opposition - no socialist system can be established without a political police. They (the Labour government) would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo."
Clement Attlee's response the following day caused Churchill serious damage: "The Prime Minister made much play last night with the rights of the individual and the dangers of people being ordered about by officials. I entirely agree that people should have the greatest freedom compatible with the freedom of others. There was a time when employers were free to work little children for sixteen hours a day. I remember when employers were free to employ sweated women workers on finishing trousers at a penny halfpenny a pair. There was a time when people were free to neglect sanitation so that thousands died of preventable diseases. For years every attempt to remedy these crying evils was blocked by the same plea of freedom for the individual. It was in fact freedom for the rich and slavery for the poor. Make no mistake, it has only been through the power of the State, given to it by Parliament, that the general public has been protected against the greed of ruthless profit-makers and property owners. The Conservative Party remains as always a class Party. In twenty-three years in the House of Commons, I cannot recall more than half a dozen from the ranks of the wage earners. It represents today, as in the past, the forces of property and privilege. The Labour Party is, in fact, the one Party which most nearly reflects in its representation and composition all the main streams which flow into the great river of our national life."
In the 1945 General Election Churchill's attempts to compare a future Labour government with Nazi Germany backfired and Attlee won a landslide victory.

----------

I also recall Churchill had some ideas that only top class people´s children should go to school and there should be no hospitals etc for the working class or something like that. Great wartime leader but weird ideas about the wealth being divided inside the country.

 

Churchill's remarks might well explain some disaffection, (and are very peculiar given that he had twice proposed an extension of the coalition, with which the Labour leaders had informally agreed) but I think this is more of an indicator of the mood of the electorate. Labour ministers were the ones to be seen implementing the domestic polices during the war years, Churchill was busy with the war itself.

From the same link above
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-general-election-1945

Unknown to the public, Churchill had actually agreed to this, in his attempt to extend the coalition until the defeat of Japan:
“In the meanwhile, we should do our utmost to implement the proposals of social security and full employment contained in the White Paper which we have laid before Parliament.”

Churchill in his past was no stranger to reform: he'd initiated an Unemployment Insurance scheme, started up Labour exchanges, introduced pensions for widows and orphans, reduced taxes for the poor, and introduced the first Minimum Wage Scheme.

 

The 1944 Education Act, which had introduced the concept of selection at 11 and compulsory free secondary education for all, was based on the work of a Tory, Richard Austin 'Rab' Butler, who went on to conquer all but the tallest peak of British politics.
The introduction of the welfare state rested very largely on the work of two Liberal economists: John Maynard Keynes, who argued the virtues of full employment and state stimulation of the economy, and William Beveridge.
Beveridge's ideas were culled from every nook and cranny of Whitehall. His formidable task was to put together a coherent plan for postwar social reconstruction. What he came up with extended hugely the framework of national insurance first put in place before the first world war by David Lloyd George. Every British citizen would be covered, regardless of income or lack of it. Those who lacked jobs and homes would be helped. Those who were sick, would be cured.
The birth of the National Health Service in July 1948 remains Labour's greatest monument. It was achieved only after two years of bitter resistance by the medical establishment, with consultants threatening strike action and the British Medical Association pouring out gloomy warnings about bureaucracy and expense.Alas, those warnings proved to have more than a grain of truth, and the government was forced to retreat from its first grand vision of free, comprehensive health care for all.

It is tempting to think of the Attlee years as an anti-climax. After the clamour of victory, the peace was a drab disappointment. And after all the fervent promises of a new dawn, British life remained to a large extent grey and grim. At times, food restrictions were even tighter than during the war - bread was rationed for the first time. Class enmities flourished; social and economic inequalities remained palpable. Here and there were little pockets of a new prosperity: television broadcasts were resumed, the first Morris Minors appeared, and British designers were working on the world's first commercial jet, the De Havilland Comet. But of that great universal prosperity which seemed to glow from the 1945 manifestos, there was little sign.
And yet, and yet... Britain in the Attlee years changed more than under any other government, before or since. The welfare reforms, and to a lesser extent the great experiment of state control of industry, had a profound effect on the way the people saw themselves and their country. And what they saw, on the whole, was pleasing.


http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/mar/14/past.education

 

The Germans were very conscious of the special relationship that existed between Churchill and Roosevelt.

Roosevelt died on April 12th 1945 and the very next day after his death we were shelled with a batch of propaganda leaflets which included the one shown below.

It is stuck in my Army Album on Page 65 and the Rgtl Diary for the day follows:

13th April 1945
Regimental Diary 4th Queen's Own Hussars

A & B Sqns moved off with 2nd Armd Bde and passed through the bridgehead. Advance went very well as far as the canal crossing 315535 where the bridge was blown causing the advance to be held up. Considerable mopping-up was done on the way by the Priest borne Infantry. C Sqn moved North of the SANTERNO to pick up Infantry. 1Tp, 3Tp and half of HQ Tp formed TONIGROUP. 2Tp, 4Tp and the other half of HQ Tp formed STRAWGROUP. 9 Bde advanced parallel to Route 9 in a NW direction beyond MASSA LIMBARDA. The advance was made by Div cavalry on the left carried by STRAWGROUP and the 22nd Btn on the right carried by TONIGROUP. At first the advance was rapid but later Kangaroos met many ditches which slowed them down considerably. A number of PoW were taken. Own casualties one NCO killed and 2 wounded. The Sqn was subjected to very heavy shell and mortar fire during the whole of the day.
Personal Diary same date:
Friday 13th. April 1945
Moved over Santerno. Some M.G. nuisance & one H.E. about twenty yards away. Bags of prisoners, Kiss from signora. "Liberatoris !". Chasing after tedeschis with 30 browning blazing!

 

The 1944 Education Act did not introduce the concept of selection at 11. This was introduced by the Education Act 1902, which introduced the concept of publicly provided secondary education. The three essential differences made by the 1944 Act in relation to secondary education were:

1. Creation of "secondary modern" schools as schools in their own right, as distinct from what had been "senior" sections of "elementary schools".

2. Abolition of fees for grammar school places, although selection by written examination was continued as previously.

3. Provision for raising the minimum school leaving age (then 14) to 15, and eventually to 16.

N.B. The middle name of "Rab" Butler ("the best Prime Minister we never had") was Austen, not Austin.