Churchill as War Leader

Lamb, a Churchill admirer, has written an instructive study of the British prime minister's wartime mistakes and questionable directives. His greatest blunder, according to Lamb ( The Drift to War ), was the 1940 order to sink the French fleet at Mersel-Kebir, which indirectly led to thousands of British casualties in the subsequent Syrian campaign. He also discusses Churchill's decision to shuttle a high proportion of British Middle East forces to Greece in 1941 and his weakening of the British outpost in Malaya by sending tanks and planes to Russia. Lamb examines Churchill's cavalier treatment of his field generals and the extraordinary influence upon him of the incompetent Adm. Roger Keyes, head of Combined Operations. Lamb also uncovers from the archives several instances in which Churchill later attempted to ``sanitize'' the offical record: he falsely claimed, for instance, that the Mers-el-Kebir decision was strongly supported by the War Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff. Despite Churchill's impetuous wartime operations, a few of which boomeranged badly, Lam believes that only one verdict is possible: Winston Churchill was a great war leader. Photos. (Apr.)