Churchill and the “German Question”

Throughout his long political life Churchill frequently was confronted with the “German Question.” In fact, even prior to the First World War, dealing with Germany became a major preoccupation for him. From the 1930s to his retirement from politics in 1955, it was the German Question that dominated Churchill’s political life and turned him into one of the world’s most successful and most famous politicians.¹

Churchill’s first serious encounter with the German Question came just before the cataclysm of 1914 when, as First Lord of the Admiralty, he had to deal with the German-British naval race. At that time he grew so worried about the escalating tension between the world’s foremost empire and the globe’s most aggressive rising power that the young politician reached out to Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and Foreign Minister Edward Grey with the suggestion that he should be given permission to approach formally the German naval minister, the formidable Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, to convene a high-level meeting. Churchill wanted to overcome the naval race through personal negotiations.

On his own the First Lord had already sent an informal inquiry to Tirpitz, but Asquith and Grey hesitated and expressed their surprise and unease about this rather unusual proposal for de-escalating a major world crisis. Since Churchill never received a reply to his private letter to Tirpitz, his superiors wanted him to drop the matter. They asked him not to pursue any further the idea of high-level summitry to deal with the Anglo-German naval race. Perhaps a chance to resolve the crisis was thrown away. When war broke out in August 1914, it certainly was too late.

Changing Tides

In the 1930s and 1940s Churchill’s political fate became even more closely aligned with the German Question. It was his furious calls for British rearmament in the face of a rapidly rearming Germany and his denouncement of the appeasers in British politics around