Churchill's moral victory

A historical play notorious for its own history (it claimed that Churchill ordered the death of his Polish ally General Sikorski), Soldiers looks much tamer than it did in 1968.

The tone of Rolf Hochhuth's play now seems polite, the nonpolitical aspects of character and construction thin and patchy.

Yet Soldiers is well worth reviving, especially in this fluid and beautifully acted production by John Terry.

It is dominated by Trevor Cooper's Churchill, magisterial but buoyant and, fortunately for Hochhuth, one of the few world leaders who can plausibly be aphoristic.

I hadn't expected to laugh at this play, but I did twice, the first time when Churchill gives his health advice: "Never smoke when you're asleep. Drink in moderation, but hourly."

But, though Soldiers is much better written than current political plays, there is a hole in its thesis big enough to fly a Spitfire through.

Its charges against Churchill of assassination (not proven) and of covering up the Russian massacre of Poles in Katyn Forest (true) are but the prelude to a greater charge: can the English consider themselves moral if they kill non-combatants and reduce cities to rubble?

Never once, though, in a long debate, does Churchill or his opponent, the Bishop of Chichester, mention that the Germans of the Second World War were perhaps the least innocent civilians in history, having elected Hitler and enthusiastically supported his Final Solution.

Nor are we told that Sikorski wanted to bomb German cities, then offer to stop, if the Nazis called a halt to genocide. Anguished over English souls, silent about the lives of European Jews, the bishop begs Churchill: "They will not bomb on Christmas Eve!" What? No plan to stop Jews being gassed on Yom Kippur? That was the second time I laughed.

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Soldiers [Soldalten]