Churchill's Triumph: A Novel of Betrayal

This is the fourth in a series of novels by Dobbs about Churchill from 1939 thru the Yalta conference in 1945. The meetings at Yalta would determine the fate of millions for not only after the war but for decades to come,and is brought vividly to life by Dobbs. Roosevelt was dying, Britain's leader aging, and both struggled to keep up with Stalin and the Russians. The result led to what Churchill would describe as an iron curtain descending over Europe. Perhaps most tragically and unfairly over Poland, as described in the novel. This is great history and a great read.

"Churchill's Triumph" is the final book in a four-book series of historical novels by British political insider Michael Dobbs. The four books, on Winston Churchill during the war years, are "Winston's War," on Britain's disastrous intervention in Norway in the early days of the war, "Never Surrender," set in May 1940 on Churchill's rise to power against all odds, and "Churchill's Hour," the year, 1940-41, when the United Kingdom stood alone against the Nazis. Few of us appreciate how desperately close England came to losing the war in 1940-41. "Churchill's Triumph" is about the Yalta Conference, which brought Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin together for the last time as the final defeat of Germany was in sight. The military "facts on the ground" gave Stalin the dominant hand, and he was after control of as much of Europe as possible. FDR, two months away from death, focused his declining strength on establishing the United Nations and keeping Stalin in the continuing war against Japan. Churchill wanted to stop Stalin short of the English Channel, and tried his best to save Poland. We know how that turned out. The book's subtitle is "A Novel of Betrayal." Dobbs writes superbly, and I found these books compulsively readable, much easier going than histories covering the same ground would be. I believe Dobbs when he says he sticks scrupulously to the well-known history of the period, but still the reader gets as close to the characters as in any well-written novel. And oddly enough,knowing the ending in advance doesn't detract at all from the suspense. I thorougly enjoyed all four books and learned a lot. Now I'm seeking out and reading everything else this author wrote.

I found "Churchill's Triumph" to be an excellent example of historical fiction. I enjoyed the books insight into not only Churchill, but also Roosevelt and Stalin. The subplot throughout the book concerning Poland and the mysterious plumber, Nowak, was chilling in it's portrayal of the treatment of Poland by the Germans as well as the Russians. I highly recommend this novel.

Michael Dobbs in his most recent historical novel, Churchill's Triumph: A Novel Of Betrayal spins another mesmerizing portrayal of one of the greatest statesman, Winston Churchill who, as we are reminded at the very beginning of the book stated: "History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passions of former days." Dobbs in his latest foray into the life and times of Churchill brings us back to Yalta in February of 1945 just before the end of World War II when a week-long series of historic meetings involving the leaders of the three largest nations of the world, Russia, England and the United States gathered. It was here where the brutal Stalin, the aging yet feisty Churchill and an ailing Roosevelt met and came with their own agendas as to how to deal and carve up Europe once Hitler was defeated. As in his past historical novels, Dobbs acts as if he were a fly on the wall as he construes what transpired and what was said during the various conversations among the three leaders. Roosevelt was particularly interested in the creation of the United Nations to replace the League of Nations, Stalin was steadfast in his desire to completely destroy Poland and Germany, and Churchill was concerned about protecting the frontiers of Poland as well as making sure of its freedom. However, as we read, it was not too much of each of the leaders to cheat and betray one another and in so doing leave a lasting legacy that would have dreadful ramifications not only affecting Europe but also the Far East. As Dobbs points out, it was quite ironic that it was Molotov the Russian Foreign Minister who informed the others how the war would be finished. It was this same Molotov who thought little of executing starving peasants and children as young as twelve, and who had endorsed the massacre in the forests of Katyn. This same beast planned the destruction of the kulaks, deporting and obliterating millions of innocent people long before Hitler entered the scene. And it was the same Molotov who signed the pact with his German counterpart, von Ribbentrop that flung the world into war. The idealist Roosevelt was so wrapped up in his desire to create the United Nations and to get Russia involved in the war on Japan that he didn't mind selling off Poland and half of Europe to Stalin. And both thought very little of betraying not only the Chinese but also the British with their wheeling and dealing. Churchill was quite upset about losing Poland however, justly or mistakenly he assumed he could not save her on his own. To Churchill, he had nothing to fight with, except words, and he realized that words alone wouldn't do the job. Poland was to be buried beneath a table of lies. Moreover, if Poland was lost, what else might he lose? As he stated, win the war, yet lose the peace-the timeless legacy of fools. Dobbs informs us in his Acknowledgments that he

"Old men, worn down by war, who couldn't properly finish what they had begun. It summed up the story of Yalta." - Author Michael Dobbs, in CHURCHILL'S TRIUMPH From February 4 - 11, 1945, Churchill, Stalin and FDR met at Yalta in the Crimea to tie up the loose ends of World War II. Each had an agenda: the American President wanted the establishment of the United Nations, Russia's entry into the war against Japan, and his personal place in history; the British Prime Minister wanted a free Poland (as, unstated, a block to Soviet westward expansion); the Communist Party Secretary General wanted territory in Eastern Europe and spoils. In the end, it was the wily, rapacious Stalin that dominated the conference. FDR, exhausted and sick and with only eight weeks to live, no longer had the mental energy to perceive and resist Uncle Joe's duplicity. And Winston, though he fought like a lion, was, much like the British Empire, no longer relevant to the larger designs of the world's two new superpowers, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. CHURCHILL'S TRIUMPH, presumably solidly based in the factual history of the summit, is a fictional narrative of the conference as seen through the eyes of Winston, who, apparently ignored and abandoned by his friend Roosevelt, is beside himself with frustration at his inability to alter the course of diplomacy and appeasement. Perhaps the most engaging character of the story is that of Churchill's manservant, the loyal but cheeky Frank Sawyers, a real person who, unfortunately, exited history after leaving his master's service in 1946. (Loyal readers of Michael Dobb's will remember Sawyers from a previous book in the Churchill series, Churchill's Hour. Indeed, Google "Frank Sawyers" and there's virtually no information on the man beyond his inclusion in the author's books - a pity.) CHURCHILL'S TRIUMPH suffers, I think, from the inclusion of a fictitious subplot involving a refugee Pole, Marian Nowak, held virtual prisoner by the Russians and pressed into service by his jailers as a plumber at Churchill's borrowed Crimean residence, the Vorontsov Palace. The uneasy relation between the British PM and Nowak, which carried through to the end of the book set in 1963, allowed Winston to pronounce what he thought his nebulous triumph at Yalta to have been. But to me, this subplot seemed contrived and, at its conclusion, overly melodramatic. Another sidebar, this taking place in the fictitious Polish village of Piorun, was sufficient to illustrate the validity of Winston's ominous forebodings regarding Soviet intent in Eastern Europe. The Yalta story, as the basis for a novel about Churchill, is powerful enough by itself and doesn't need embellishment. Particularly revelatory of the conference were the words of Octavius from Shakespeare's "Julius Ceasar" quoted by the PM as they put their signatures to paper in the concluding signing ceremony: "Let us do so, for we are at the stake and bayed about with many enemies. And some that