A wartime British Official War Office press photograph of Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill, French General Charles de Gaulle, and Polish General W adys aw Sikorski at a tank demonstration in 1941.
England: The British War Office, printed by Keystone Press Agency Ltd., 1941. Photograph. This is an original, War Office press photo of Winston Churchill (1874-1965), General de Gaulle (1890-1970) of France, and General Sikorski (1881-1943) of Poland among a group of military officers watching a tank demonstration in 1941. The photo measures 4.75 x 6.5 inches (12 x 16 cm). Condition is good plus, the glossy photo surface clean with no tears or folds and some overall wrinkling. The photo has evidently been cropped at some point, excising small margins of the right and left sides along with a fraction of the caption text on the original printed slip affixed to the verso. The caption text, in ten lines printed in purplish blue ink, reads: “BRITISH OFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPH. No. BH 3588 | WAR OFFICE PHOTO – Crown Copyright Reserved). | PRIME MINISTER AT TABK [sic] DEMONSTRRATION. [sic] | The Prime Minister recently witnessed a tank demonstration in | which he was shown the capabilities of various armoured fighting | vehicles over rough country. With him were General de Gaulle (G.O.C. | Free French Forces) and General Sikorski (G.O.C. Free Polish Forces). | Photo Shows: The Prime Minister watches the “battle” from a | hill-top. On left is General de Gaulle and on | right, General Sikorski. FO.” A stamp in purple ink directly on the verso reads “KEYSTONE | Press Agency Ltd., | Fleet Street, London, E.C.4”. A final stamp reads “9769”.
This undated photo may have been taken on 7 March 1941. Churchill was a soldier before he was a politician and maintained a lifelong informed fascination with the minutiae and machinery of combat. The man who began his career as a cavalry officer and participated in the ‘last great cavalry charge in British history’ would later help design the tank, pilot aircraft, direct use of some of the earliest computers (for WWII code breaking), and ultimately preside as Prime Minister over the first British nuclear weapons test. During the Second World War he showed keen interest in – and critical support for – the struggle for technological mastery that would prove as critical to winning the war as men, material, and logistics. The tank was of particular note. As First Lord of the Admiralty during the First World War Churchill advocated development and application of the tank as a decisive offensive battlefield weapon. The tank would, of course, revolutionize offensive warfare during the Second World War.
de Gaulle was also a noted figure in development of the tank. In 1934 de Gaulle published Vers l'Armée de Métier (Toward a Professional Army) in which he proposed an orderly and mechanized army with a cavalry of tanks. Despite the fact that the book only sold 700 copies in France, apparently de Gaulle was appreciated in Germany; in 1940, German Panzer Units, utilized in accordance with de Gaulle’s principles, conquered France in a matter of weeks. Appropriately and consistently contrarian, in this image de Gaulle is looking through field glasses in a direction different than everyone else.
The Polish General W adys aw Eugeniusz Sikorski would not survive the war. On 5 July, 1943, the Liberator bomber carrying the General, the preeminent Polish figure of the Second World War and leader of the Polish government in exile, crashed immediately after taking off from Gibraltar. Sikorski's death fueled conspiracy theories, as the cause of Polish sovereignty, for which Sikorski advocated, was a thorn in the side of relations between the American, British, and Soviet Allies; Poland would be effectively ceded to the Soviet sphere of influence for the long Cold War that followed the Second World War. Item #009006
Price: $275.00