>> he was a hail fellow well met. he liked the party, he liked a drink or two. and as long as you didn't talk about communism, you couldn't ask for a more fun guy to be with. but he is very serious about that and he was also someone who did not take advice very well. he consequently said things and even did things that hurt the cause of anti-communism for some time. >> q&a, sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span. now more from the annual winston churchill conference with historian kevin ruane. he talks about winston churchill and the development and use of nuclear weapons. this is 45 minutes. all right, ladies and gentlemen. welcome back. and to introduce our next speaker of the morning we have another very special lady, please welcome edwina sandys.

[ applause ] >> good morning. can you hear me all right? clear as a bell, i hope. well, it's lovely to be here for another conference. each one i come to seems to be even better than the last. now we have kevin, kevin ruane, here, who has written this very, very good book, "churchill and the bomb." so i -- one of my grandfather's best quotations, and there are so many to choose from -- is this one. the farther backward we can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

we think, most of us, that history is past. done and dusted. over with. just a memory. but history has a way of coming back to bite us. as ronald reagan said, here we go again. i remember when the cold war was over, but then it wasn't. i remember farther back when people were scared of the a-bomb and then, worse, of the h-bomb. and now, today, the specter of nuclear war has once again reared its ugly head. kevin ruane is professor of modern history at canterbury christ church university in

united kingdom. he has written quite a few books, one on vietnam, and one is coming out very shortly on anthony eden. that will be a very interesting one because, for me, because he had such a long history with grandpapa. he is going -- he is working on now something that i am really, really longing to get my hands on, but it's not in physical form yet. it's a book on graham green, and it's going to be called "graham green in love and war." so there is a lot to be said. i think that it's going to show how fact and fiction is hard to separate. and we get a bit of that today here.

nobody thought that was funny. okay. [ laughter ] anyway, kevin's book "churchill and the bomb, in war and cold war" is timely today. it covers, amongst other things, the close relationship with lord charwell. i knew him slightly, like i was a fly on the wall because he was often at chartwall. he wasn't -- he didn't relate well -- i mean, he didn't relate much to the children or the children didn't relate much to him. we had a much more fun time with monty, field marshal montgomery who would play croquette and

took an interest in people. it was important for grand papa because he could bat ideas back and forth with him on science. it wasn't in the house of commons, he could just find out -- try to work out his own ideas and what he felt and understood. so it was a very important person. that's one of the things i have been interested in in this book. so now i give you the wonderful kevin ruane who will tell us some things about his book. [ applause ] >> thank you, edwina. that was -- is this mike okay? thank you, edwina.

very generous introduction. it's great to be back again. so thank you to michael bishop and the ics, the family, for giving me this platform two years in a row. it's an honor. i'll begin by saying a little bit about how i came to write this book, how i came to churchill and the bomb. it's a big man, big subject. churchill, the nuclear statesman. it really began about five years ago when i was asked to do work by the churchill archive. that's to say, the online, digital repository of all -- virtually all of churchill's papers which you heard about from lawrence amongst others already in the conference. i am told close to a million individual images. so letters as a home-sick border to his mother all the way through world war i, world war ii, the cold war and so on. the archive is a joint venture between churchill college or the

archiv archive center and bloomsbury publishes. it's a jewel in the crown of the digital age. though it is subscription only for universities and other what i call grown-up organizations, thanks to the spectacular generosity of lawrence geller it is, as has been pointed out already, at this conference, it's absolutely free to school kids in the usa, uk and other places around the world. lawrence deserves, i think, a round of applause for that, frankly. [ applause ] there are not many fantastic things around that are totally free these days, it seems, but this is, if you are school kids, one of them. anyway, i was asked to do a web essay on churchill and nuclear weapons to illustrate the aladdin's cave of riches that is

this online archive. in doing the original research, i came across a churchill that i only dimly knew existed. this was a churchill of fantastic scientific imagination and scientific vision, a churchill who, as a teenager, was devouring science fiction. particularly the work of h.g. wells. before i give the quote, i am no gary oldman. i think the oscar is safe, i hope, after that magnificent performance but churchill's speech pattern was so idiosyncratic, i must try a churchillian rumble. the time machine he said was one of the books i would like to take with me to purgatory. and in 1931 he went on to say that he had read all of h.g. wells's output with such

closeness that i can take an examination in them. beyond this, i discovered a churchill of striking scientific vision, who in the inter-war years regularly published on scientific themes. in mass circulation newspapers like "news of the world" and others. from this inter-war churchill science writing two things emerge. firstly, he recognized that scientific and technological progress would be ongoing. it would be revolutionary and probably a force for good. it was a new enlightenment and was going to bring betterment to the masses. he saw the positive side. at the same time he also worried that mankind might not be mature enough to deal with the gifts that science was about to bestow and that science might actually have its dark side. one of those potentially dark gifts, or double-edged sword gifts, was something called

nuclear energy. the '20s and '30s see modern nuclear physics come of age, with newspapers carrying loads of stories about the potentialities if the power of nature could be harnessed. potentialities of a constructive kind. chief electricity. if you could get at the thing called atomic energy. also newspapers carrying stories about the potential of something else, maybe, maybe, atomic weapons. i would like to give you a couple examples of the things that churchill was writing in the inter-war period. he is inspired by h.g. wells and as edwina said he is mentored by the professor of experimental philosophy at oxford university, physics to you and i. churchill got to know the prof in the early 1920s and it's a very close friendship but also

scientific mentoring relationship. this piece, 1924. ominously entitled "shall we commit suicide." in this article, churchill writes as follows. he suggests that the poison gas of the first world war might be the first chapter of a terrible book of destructive science. then there are explosives. as science turned its last page on them. might not a bomb, no bigger than an orange, be found in time to possess a secret power, to destroy a whole block of buildings, nay, to concentrate the force of a thousand tons and blast a township at a stroke. 1924. what about this from december 1931. it appeared in the bumper

christmas edition of "strand" magazine a well-known piece called "50 years hence." he says, nuclear energy is incompraably greater than the energy we use today. the coal a man can get in a day can easily do 500 times as much work as the man himself. nuclear energy is at least one million times more powerful still. there is no question among scientists that this gigantic source of energy exists. what is lacking is the match to set the bonfire alight. the scientists are looking for this, the match. you know, within a year, that's 1932, two cambridge scientists, an englishman and irishman split the atom. at liverpool university, another english scientist james chadwick showed the neutron can penetrate

the power chambers of the atom. the nucleus of the atom where most of its mass and most of its energy and power resides. 1932. the match has been found. 1933. january. adolf hitler becomes chancellor of germany. six years on. january 1939. two german scientists in berlin otto hahn and fritz strassman prove in their laboratory experimentally that something called nuclear fission is realizable. in other words, the nuclear chain reaction using the heavy element uranium. they did it on a tiny laboratory scale, but all around the world, 1939, as europe slips closer to

the abyss, all around the world physicists corroborate their findings, and it is agreed that, if this could be done. nuclear fission on a large enough scale you would have the most tremendous power source. cheap electricity for everybody. but by the same token, nuclear fission could also make for a superlative weapon of mass destruction. what a year to discover that, 1939. i would like to share with you one more piece of inter-war churchill pop science, i suppose you would call it. mass effects on modern life. it was written in 1925 but received a much bigger audience when it appeared in this very famous collection of thoughts and adventures in the early '30s. in it, churchill gave us the following prediction. he said that it might be that the military leader of some future world agony could

extinguish london or paris, tokyo or san francisco by pressing a button. or by putting his initials neatly at the bottom of a piece of paper. 1925. on the 2nd of july 1945 as war time prime minister he put his initia initials and gave his approval to a request from the u.s. government that he agree with them to use the atomic bomb against japan. in so doing churchill didn't just eerily live out his own premonition he ensured the bombs that would ultimately hit hiroshima and nagasaki bore a british as well as an american seal of approval. more on that later.

let me go back to today's theme. in expanding that small web essay into a book-length treatment, i discovered the nuclear churchill. the nuclear statesman. churchill's career as a nuclear statesman splits into three chronological phases. and if i may, i would like to run through those now. the first phase. it's the war-time phase, the first phase is what i call the atomic bomb maker phase. let me take you back in time to 1941. more precisely to the 30th of august, 1941. churchill is, what, 15 months into his war-time premiership. his country in a desperate struggle for survival. on that day his love of science fiction, his love of the

appliance of science to warfare. his belief in innovation and technology, all come together along with the urgent promptings of the man in the bowler hat. lindemann. his nuclear mentor. they all come together on that day to produce churchill's approval for a top-secret british effort to develop an atomic bomb. it's code-named tubalos. the great spur is the thought, the dread thought that nazi scientists could put one of these things in hitler's hands. this was a race that simply had to be won. december 1941, of course, the united states enters the war. by late 1942 this pioneering british atomic project becomes subsumed in the juggernaut, the

leviathan, the monster that is the u.s. manhattan project. from that point on, the united states drives the atomic bomb project, but the british are still there, as junior partners, maybe, but they are atomic bomb project but the parish are still there. as junior partners, maybe, but they are still there. until we come to 1945. out in the wilds of new mexico the world enters the nuclear age. a plutonium device is tested to spectacular effect july 1945. the test is code famed trinity. by then, of course, hitler is dead, the third reich is a smoldering ruin and the war in europe is over. it turns out the race, although won by the allies, turned out the nazi atomic program was nowhere near as advanced as one time feared. but nonetheless, out in the

distant reaches of the pacific, in asia, the war with japan grinds on and on and on. and so come full circle. on the 2nd of july, 1945, winston churchill, as i already said, gave a british green light to a request from the u.s. government to the use of the bomb against japan. he gave that approval in keeping with the mutual consent clause of a secret atomic agreement he signed with president franklin d. roosevelt in quebec in august 1943, the mutual consent clause." just over three weeks later, the 2nd of july, winston churchill isn't prime minister anymore. he lost the general election. not too long after that, of

course, we have the atomic end game. on the 6th of august, 1945, little boy, the codename for the uranium bomb is dropped on hiroshima. it's an air blast. it's not dropped literally on. on the 9th of august, 1945, fat man, the codename for the plutonium bomb is used against nagasaki. i think the results of the bombing, the impact of these two weapons of mass destruction is so well-known i really don't need to underscore it. for churchill, the most important thing, although he's leader of the opposition, hin 1945 japan surrenders. cause and effect, bomb drops, surrender comes within five days of the atomic bombing. eight years later, 1953, '54, final volume of his history of the war churchill maintains two

things. first, the decision to use the bomb in 1945 was a joint decision between himself and from the truman, a joint decision. the second thing he maintains, and i'm going to quote him again, the decision to use the bomb was never even an issue. his thinking went like this. in war bombs get used. the allies were at war with japan in the summer of 1945. the atomic bombs were weapons of war. ipso facto you used those weapons. moral qualms, ethical qualms were for churchill a luxury for others to indulge in. not one he saw himself tossed in -- task in 1940 with country, civilization. bombmaker, phase one. the second phase of churchill's nuclear career runs roughly mid

1945 to 1950. it's maybe slightly more controversial. it's what i call the would be atomic warrior phase. let me begin this one with v day, victory in europe 1945. when churchill looked at the map of europe, as he must have done, and we know he did, he did not like what he saw. stalin's army in eastern europe, balkans, baltic state, half of germany. no sign stalin was going to abide by earlier wartime agreements to allow freedom, democracy, free elections and so forth to flourish. no sign. for churchill this was a staggeringly distressing and upsetting outcome to the war in europe. having fought the war in a sense to save the continent from the tyranny of the right, naziism, fascism, was the ter any of the

less, communism to prevail. eastern europe, what about western europe. democracies needed to get their act together. you know, it's here that this thing called the atomic bomb began to enter churchill's mind. churchill first learned of the successful test of the bomb 16th of july 1945 trinity when he was attending the final big three conference of the war. potsdam. the diary, chief of the imperfectly -- imperial general, the reaction into the first atomic test. church hill said we now have something in our hands which would redress the balance with the russians. writes in his diary, churchill pushing his chin out and scowling. now we could say to stalin, if

you insist on doing this or that, well, we can just plblot t moscow, stalin grad, kiev, and now where are the russians? three days after that diary entry, that's the 23rd of july, 26th of july churchill isn't prime minister or so. a fortnight later the atomic bombs are visited upon japan. my point is churchill did not have time to factor this new atomic power into his russia policy, his soviet policy. we've got a good idea of his thinking. for example, on the 7th of august, that's the day after hiroshima, he had launch. churchill of the opinion with the manufacturer of this bomb in their hands, america can dominate the world for the next five years. if he continued in office, he's of the opinion that he could have persuaded the american

government to use this power to restrain the russians. churchill starts talking about a showdown. that's the word he uses. he uses it repeatedly, showdown. a nuclear-themed showdown. what he means is diplomatic head-to-head with stalin, in which stalin is told in so many words, pull the army out of eastern europe, wartime agreements, or else, dot dot dot. a nuclear infused showdown. for the next five years, until early 1950 really, this was churchill's repeatedly, if privately expressed view, to all who listen particularly successive u.s. ambassadors to london. politicians in opposition are much freer we all know to express themselves than those who are actually in power. but you know, even allowing for

that, even allowing for churchill's showmanship, the consistency over five years, the individual medl ve vehemenence. the clock runs against me. he met his old friend canadian prime minister and king's diary told us what churchill wanted to do was tell stalin directly, quote, the nations who fought the last war of freedom have had enough of this war of nerves and intimidation. if you do not agree to pull out of poland and eastern europe here and now within so many days, we will attack moscow and your other cities and destroy them with atomic bombs from the air. we will not allow tyranny to continue.

in the end, of course, the atomic menaces that churchill had in line, this punishment for the kremlin for not abiding by democratic principles in eastern europe was never in churchill's gift to deliver. it was in a sense harry truman's, it was in america's gift. the united states in the late 1940s never got remotely close to using its atomic monopoly in the kind of threatening diplomatic manner churchill evidently desired. the final phase of churchill's nuclear career begins in early 1950. i say begins. it's the beginning of a transformation and it's extraordinary. it will see churchill move in the space of four years from would be atomic warrior to

nuclear peacemaker. extraordinary transition. it begins in 1950. let me give you a tiny, tiny little bit of background. in august 1949, the american atomic monopoly ended when the soviet union tested its first atomic bomb nicknamed in the west. it was long anxiety and fear occasioned by this soviet atomic breakthrough. in january 1950, the united states responded. president truman announced that the united states would forge ahead with developing the hydrogen bomb, the super it was nicknamed, the thermonuclear weapon. i say a weapon. a monstrous device potentially 1,000 times as powerful, think about that, as the puny things used against japan. this was a serious, serious weapon, if it could be made.

now, against this backdrop, there was a general election. ladies willia lady williams mentioned it yesterday. an election in february 1950. in the midst of that election church hi churchill calls for east-west summit. apparently the word had been used to describe meeting of leaders of great powers at the very apex of world affairs. he called for an east-west summit to see if regulations can't be regulated so that cold war does not escalate into hot war with all its nuclear menaces. now, labor immediately accused churchill of electioneering, exploiting anxiety at that point in time. there may be something in that. but equally he was worried by the soviet bomb. he was worried as well by soviet bombers have the range to reach

western europe and britain but not north america in the early '50s. he was aware that britain, this small land mass, concentrated population in 10 or 12 big cities was especially vulnerable. well, labor wins the 1950 election, but they don't win it by very much. another election happens in october 1951. this time winston wins it. not by much, 16th seat overall majority, i think. the point is winston is back against. a year on, october 1952, britain tests its own nuclear weapon, october 1952. suddenly the nuclear club has three members, america, russia, and now britain. but it is not a club of nuclear

equals. a few months later, august 1953, britain is left standing. the soviet union announces to the world that it now has the hydrogen bomb. its won the thermonuclear race. it hadn't won the race. united states tested a device in 1952 but eisenhower didn't confirm that until 1954. it doesn't matter. to churchill, this development was distressing. it chilled him to the marrow. by the end of 1953, he can be found privately predicting that if hot war now came, and with the uk vulnerable to soviet bombing, all we hold dear, ourselves, our families, and our treasures will be immolated. if some of st. louis survive

under contaminated rubble there will be nothing left to do but take a pill to end it all. out of the dark, dark shadow of the hydrogen pom in 1954 emerges churchill the nuclear peacemaker. churchill, the disciple of detente. at leaooeeast churchill looking peaceful co-existence. no more did he talk of showdowns. his last campaign -- again, as lady williams stressed so eloquently yesterday -- was a campaign of peace. it became his obsession. there must be a summit, because the summit was the first step to what he called chaining the nuclear monster. sadly it was not to be. churchill never made it to the summit. president eisenhower, amongst

other things, was not madly keen to rush to the summit table. stalin died in 1953, stalin successors began talking the talk of peace. stalin said i want words before i run to the conference table. no need to rush, winston, but that's really not an 80-year-old winston needed to hear, who knew the clock was running down. and the clock does rundown. in april 1955, he finally stands down, steps down as prime minister in favor of anthony eaton. the cold war continued and so did the danger of hot war and nuclear war. but the final great surprise of my work on this was to discover churchill the nuclear visionary. at the very end really of his

political life. it would be a good 10 years before this concept really got traction. the mid-60s. mutually assured destruction. dr. strangelove, we all know a concept related to the '60s. winston got there first. i want to close by giving you two examples of what i, if you will forgive me, i called the madness of winston churchill, at least m.a.d. of winston churchill. first october 1953, nearly 81 years of age. he talks in the house of commons about nuclear saturation, saturation. both sides having lots of these weapons. he looked forward to a future when the advance of destructive weapons enables everyone to kill everybody else, because then

nobody will want to kill anyone at all. if that's not a description of mutually assured destruction, i don't know what is. yet his final great speech before parliament in march 1955 on the hydrogen bomb, he left the same message. there might in the future be a nuclear balance in the world, and that might not be a bad thing. it would be a sublime irony, he admitted, but it could be the safety will be the sturdy child of terror and survival the twin brother of annihilation. in the meantime he closed. never flinch, never weary, never despair. with that he sat down after 55 years as a parliamentarian and never got up to make another

major speech in the house of commons again. what a way to go. two fine speeches. but that speech is up there for me without any of his great speeches. look, i'm effectively done. that for me is the nuclear stat statesman. you get three in one. the bombmaker, would be early cold war, would be atomic warrior, and then you get the great transformation into a conviction-driven disciple of detente. it was quite a journey from his nuclear starting point to his nuclear ending point. but i have to say i've not had as much fun, if you can have fun with a subject like this, as i did in writing that book. thank you for your time and attention. [ applause ]

>> i need the mic. the ladies first. >> the mic. >> of course a rather terrifying story about my grandfather gets one a bit worried, very worried. but i'm glad that it all turned out well in the end and he ended up with peace. >> i think i described him as a nuclear learner. but in the space of 10 years, 1945 to 1955, he went across the spectrum. he had to return, like a lot of people learned. what he learned in the end is if you stick rigidly to dogmatic

and ideological positions and churchill was, if nothing, an inveterate anti-communist, in the nuclear age sticking to those ambitions could lead to calamity. that is why ultimately by 1954 he's talking about peaceful co-existence which was a very hard thing for him to do. peaceful co-existence effectively meant no longer overtly trying to free eastern europe, trying to challenge and confront soviet control. it was simply too dangerous particularly for a united kingdom within range. at that point he felt uniquely vulnerable. sir? >> so you mentioned that the bomb that was dropped on hiroshima had uranium base while the bomb on nagasaki had a plutonium base. i classified them as atomic bombs that did a lot of damage.

wonder if you could explain why they switched the type of bomb they dropped. >> okay. i won't go heavy into the science. initially the heavy element uranium was the thing everyone was working on early in the war. now in trying to enrich uranium, it's a particular isotope, u 25. trying to get the core of the uranium bomb, a by-product in what we call reactors today, a by-product was plutonium, which they were able to farm. plutonium, as by-product trying to make an explosive uranium core, plutonium as the by-product turned out to be just as fissionable, more fissionable, explosive. that wasn't even tested in new mexico.

they were confident the uranium bomb would work. they weren't so confident about the detonation for the plutonium bomb and that's why the trinity test was a plutonium test. so without going into the science too much, plutonium was a by-product of either to create uranium bomb. they ended up with two versions. does that help? >> thanks very much. >> there's a gentleman -- do we need to wait for the mic? i'm sorry, this gentleman first and we'll pass it down the table. >> two points you might elaborate on. that is number one, the soviets obtained information to create a bomb through espionage. they didn't do the original research. number two, somewhere along the line, the u.s. disallowed the

relationship with the brits in terms of information on further atomic energy development. >> yeah. >> comment? >> well, briefly there is no doubt that the atomic project was penetrated by soviet agents. the information, as i understand it, that was funneled, not least to the soviet to contribute to the soviet bomb in 1949. so i think that's accepted. despite the fact that general groves, amongst others went to drastic efforts to keep this thing hermetically sealed. the second point, the british decide they can no longer do a bomb project on their own. they decide that really early 1942-ish. it's too expensive. if you start building this stuff in the uk you're vulnerable with bombing. there's reasons why merger with the united states was a good idea. the two come together in 1942

but very, very quickly the united states outstrips anything that the uk can contribute to this project. and there are interests within the manhattan project that don't see the need anymore, have atomic interchange with uk. churchill finds distressing. top secret, people in the know. those around him find it rather distressing. i mentioned quebec agreement of august 1943. it takes seven or eight months of personal churchill diplomacy working on fdr to actually get the british back into the partnership but it isn't a partnership of equals. it's a partnership of one dominant partner. the british there has a support act. the biggest exclusion comes after the war, which doesn't just shut the uk out but shuts other countries out as well.

>> pure speculation but would churchill feel more comfortable with nixon kissinger detente or ronald reagan peace school that ultimately wound up the cold war? >> i think -- i have thought about this, because clearly you can't research this episode of history without having contemporary resonances in your mind. i think it depends on where along that nuclear journey you halt churchill and say what would he be like. i think the church hiill at the end, the peacemaker. i think if you accept that churchill's anti-communism ran very, very, very deep, notwithstanding efforts to get on with stalin, for him by 1953, '54 to embrace peaceful co-existence suggests to me one

of the most remarkable acts of statesmanship. that his view was you cannot remain locked into dogmatic ideological positions in this thermonuclear age, because if you do we're going somewhere very bad very, very soon. as for how he would manage world affairs today, nuclear affairs today, that's a very difficult one. it makes me as a historian a little bit uncomfortable to extrapolate. one thing i'll say briefly because i suspect my time is running out. i don't think he ever foresaw proliferation. for all his vision and scientific interests, i think he probably suspected that britain, russia, and america would be the only members of the nuclear club. i'm not sure he would ever have anticipated what we've currently got. not just talking about north korea but seven or eight other -- six or serve other nuclear powers in the world.

i think that would have been a challenge to him. okay. [ applause ] >> congress has a busy week ahead with the revised tax reform bill and government funding on the agenda. the house is expected to debate and quote on the tax reform bill today. it's possible there could also be action in the senate, which would put tax bill on the president's desk to sign by midweek. the house and senate also have until midnight friday to pass a short-term spending bill that extends government funding until january 19th. as always, you can follow the house live on c-span and the senate live on c-span2. >> sunday on c-span's q&a, distinguished fellow lee edwards chronicles his 60 year involvement in the conservative movement. >> i met joe mccarthy through my father who was something of a

confidante to him. he was a fellow well met, he liked to party. he liked a drink or two. as long as you didn't talk about communism, you couldn't ask for a more fun guy to be with. but he was very serious about that. he was also someone who did not take advice very well. he consequently said things and even did things that hurt the cause of banning communism for sometime. >> q&a, sunday night 8:00 eastern on c-span. >> there's more american history tv coming up next with father and son historians paul bew and john bew. they give separate talks on churchill's relationship with ireland and his influence on british prime minister from mid 1940s to