Military Review English Edition November-December 2015 | Page 137

BOOK REVIEWS

MINISTERS AT WAR: Winston Churchill and His
War Cabinet
Jonathan Schneer, Basic Books, New York,
2015, 352 pages

W

hat more can be said or written about Sir
Winston Churchill? It has been seventy-five years since he first obtained the
position that has long since secured his place in history.
Yet, in a new work, Jonathan Schneer takes a fresh
perspective on Churchill. Schneer reminds us that not
less than two months following the surrender of Nazi
Germany, Churchill was, shockingly, defeated for a
second term as prime minister, voted out by a largely
grateful constituency that he had just led from imminent defeat to resounding victory in World War II.
The author argues that the seeds of Churchill’s political
demise in 1945 perhaps were sown in his earliest days as
prime minister while selecting the members of his cabinet.
Schneer maintains that Churchill selected an inner circle
that put a premium on talent over party affiliation, personal affinity, or other secondary considerations, in a manner similar to former U.S. president Abraham Lincoln.
Both leaders faced a direct threat to national security and
picked men with the necessary qualifications to win wars.
In building his particular team, Churchill was compelled
to form a coalition involving his own Conservative Party,
as well as the rival Labour and Liberal Parties.
Thus, Ministers at War works on several levels. To
be sure, Churchill’s talented lineup of ministers was
concerned first about national survival, especially
during the dark years of 1940-1941, and later about
winning the war, given the United States’ eventual
entry. Nevertheless, these men of great ability—including Lord Privy Seal Clement Atlee, Foreign Secretary
Anthony Eden, Minister of Aircraft Production Lord
Beaverbrook, and Minister of Labour Ernest Bevin—
were also worried about political survival, and, in some
cases, they aspired to the position of prime minister.
Atlee and Eden both eventually became prime ministers; Beaverbrook, a close confidante, would challenge
Churchill while he was still in office. Hence, this team
of rivals waged smaller “wars” with Churchill, with each
other, within their parties, and with the British public.
Indeed, it is these internal conflicts and their largely
MILITARY REVIEW  November-December 2015

domestic political implications that comprise the essence
of Schneer’s book.
In the end, Schneer makes two indelible and convincing points. The first is that no one other than Winston
Churchill could have held this particular coalition of
strong personalities together under such abject wartime
conditions. Only someone of Churchill’s personal cachet
and managerial aplomb could have held this highly
effective but equally temperamental group together for
so long—his core advisers stayed with him for five years.
The second is that Churchill never could overcome the
basic ideological differences separating him and the
other members of his war cabinet. In picking his team to
form a truly representative national government during
wartime, Churchill never embraced the increasingly
socialistic Labour agenda that proposed a very different post-war Britain than he himself envisioned. As a
consequence, he grew increasingly distant from a British
public desirous of a better future, one not necessarily
including Winston Churchill.
Jonathan Schneer’s Ministers at War makes a valuable contribution to the pantheon of work on Winston
Churchill. Eminently readable and making extensive
use of diaries and personal papers, the book represents
a fresh perspective on this venerable yet unendingly
fascinating subject.
Mark Montesclaros, Fort Gordon, Georgia

THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE: A Graphic History
of Allied Victory in the Ardennes, 1944-1945
Wayne Vansant, Zenith Press, Minneapolis,
2014, 104 pages

M

y father introduced me to the Battle of the
Bulge when I was a teenager. His roommate in college was Charles B. MacDonald,
who had just returned from World War II to complete
his college degree. I had the honor to meet MacDonald
on a few occasions, and my interest in World War II
and the Battle of the Bulge grew from there. The graphic novel The Battle of the Bulge: A Graphic History of
the Allied Victory in the Ardennes, 1944-1945 by Wayne
Vansant does a great job telling the story—good and
bad—by combining art and storyline, much like a comic book. While I would suspect most children get their
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