

A slightly extended version of my piece on Pearl Harbor: “How, 75 years ago today, we were saved,” in The American Spectator, 7 December 2016….
Seventy-five years ago today, Winston Churchill was pondering survival. Hitler gripped Europe from France to deep inside Russia. Nazi U-boats were strangling British shipping; Rommel’s Afrika Korps was advancing on Suez. Britain’s only ally beside the Empire/Commonwealth, the Red Army, was fighting before Moscow. America remained supportive…and aloof.
Eighteen months earlier he had become prime minister. No one else had wanted the task. “God alone knows how great it is,” he muttered, his eyes filling.…
Sir Fitzroy Maclean was a swashbuckling adventurer, soldier, writer and politician. In World War II he was Churchill’s representative to Tito, who led Yugoslav Partisans against the Germans. One of my great privileges was knowing him and Lady Veronica, and hearing their captivating recollections.
Proofing galleys for Winston S. Churchill: Document Volume 20, May-December 1944, the Hillsdale College Churchill Project comes across many gems. Not least of these was Maclean’s account of Churchill’s first meeting with Tito—and a minor adventure in Bay of Naples in August 1944.
Maclean on Tito:I found him to be a tough, alert man of about fifty, at the head of a far more formidable resistance movement than anyone outside Yugoslavia could possibly have imagined….…