CHURCHILL, Winston S. - BALDWIN, Hanson W.

£20,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Great Mistakes of the War. First edition, first printing, Winston Churchill's copy, with his irate annotations to 18 pages.Baldwin was the military editor of the New York Times. His polemic outlined examples of what he saw as political and strategic mistakes by the Allies in the war. Churchill was in the process of writing The Second World War, published in six volumes from 1948 to 1952, and as rival accounts of the conflict appeared, he incorporated or refuted their arguments. This publication especially incensed Churchill. He takes particular issue with Baldwin's contention that an alternative to D-Day, attacking through Italy and the Balkans, was possible. "In early April 1950 Churchill carefully read this part of Great Mistakes. He did not deny that he wanted to push north-east from Italy towards Vienna - indeed that became a theme of volume six. But Baldwin's assertions, many of them from Elliott Roosevelt that Churchill wanted to mount a 'Balkan Invasion' or 'jump eastward into the Balkans' provoked angry annotations in the margin - 'rubbish', 'wrong', even 'crazy'" (Reynolds, pp. 373-4). Churchill's comments and markings are largely confined to the first part of the book, "The Struggle for Europe", but he does add a notation in the Pacific War section of the book, and later to one to the notes.Churchill sent the book to Bill Deakin, his key historical advisor for the writing of his memoirs. A typed note is loosely inserted, dated 3 April, and sent by Jane Portal of his

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