The Syrian civil war has been going on since 2011 and is back in the news. The hitherto unsuccessful rebels have now taken over. (Whether they offer any better prospects for Syrians than the Assad regime is unclear.) So it is not entirely irrelevant to update this note about Syria from 2013.

In September that year, the political satirist Will Durst, “Pied Piper of the Potomac,” wrote in Summit Daily:

Everyone pretends not to be knee-deep in the icky, tricky, sticky Syria situation. You might say Washington is in a Semi-Syrious mode right now. And a Semi-Not-So-Syrious mode. Simultaneously. Because this whole affair is riddled with enigmas and mysteries enough to make Winston Churchill spin his conundrums right off. And rumor has it, he harbored huge conundrums.

I don’t know if Mr. Durst is a Churchillian, but he certainly has Churchill’s knack for coining words. “Syrious” ranks with Churchill’s “purblind worldlings”—the kind of people he often wished to “destrigulate.”* A lot of them are in Washington.

Forget the WW2 comparisons

The late, great  Churchillian Charles Krauthammer joined the Syria debate around the same time as Durst. The commentator Hugh Hewitt had asked CK whether  the present-day United States is the same one Churchill described in 1943 at Harvard: “The price of greatness is responsibility.”

Was America still up to that? Hewitt asked. Attitudes about America’s role in the world are far different today than in Churchill’s time.

Of course they are. And Charles Krauthammer, sage as ever, cautioned against comparing modern situations like Syria (we might now add Ukraine or Gaza) to the Second World War, or modern political leaders to Churchill.

There is a difference of scale…. The Second World War was an existential struggle where the future of civilization was in the balance. It could be that Syria, or these other trouble spots, will develop into a World War-like conflict. But that is fairly unlikely right now. It is not a conflict in which the existence of ways of life is at stake. [Remember, this was in 2013.]

Syria and Assad are (or were) supported by Russia—at least ostensibly. That makes what happens there more important than it might otherwise be. There is no shortage of opinions as to what the U.S. or the West or free peoples should do about Syria and its leading ally. That is a ft subject for debate. But as to what Winston Churchill would do….please.

Strength and weakness

We may, however, learn from a piece of Churchillian advice from 1946, which may still be applicable. He was talking about the Russians, but it applies very broadly as a guide for general policy:

Precepts for defenders (continued from Part 1)

Here are two precepts for us to follow when confronting perversions of the truth surrounding Winston Churchill.

First, “Surrender nothing”

In protecting his good name we cannot dissemble. As Mark Steyn says in another context[13], “Unless you’re prepared to surrender everything, surrender nothing. When President Macron declared that no statue or street in France would be renamed, miraculously the threats against them dissipated.” That takes courage, and the strength of one’s convictions. Churchill’s example eight decades ago is apposite.

“Surrender nothing” means never using weak precepts like “Churchill was just a man of his time,” or “everybody was a racist back then.” This is not good enough. It doesn’t do him justice. Churchill was not a man of his time—he was far ahead of it. He was demanding human rights for people of color long before it was expedient to do so. He was, in fact, considered a dangerous radical when, early on, he took up the causes of non-whites in the far reaches of the Empire.

“Traitor to his class”

It didn’t take young Winston long to start prodding the establishment. Aged 25, he was imprisoned as an accused British combatant in the Boer War. No sooner was he locked up than he engaged his Boer captors over their treatment of native Africans.

“Is it right,” his jailor demanded, that they “should walk on the pavement [sidewalk]—without a pass too? That’s what they do in your British colonies. Brother! Equal! Ugh! Free! Not a bit. We know how to treat them…. We’ll stand no damned nonsense from them.”[14] Recording this, Churchill asked:

What is the true and original root of Dutch aversion to British rule? It is the abiding fear and hatred of the movement that seeks to place the native on a level with the white man…. The dominant race is to be deprived of their superiority; nor is a tigress robbed of her cubs more furious than is the Boer at this prospect.[15]

Churchill labeled his jail time “In Durance Vile.”[16] Ever afterward he nursed a deep sympathy for convicts. As Home Secretary a decade or so later, he commuted sentences and stopped jailing people for petty offences, causing many a harrumph from the John Bulls of Edwardian Britain.

He was called a “traitor to his class” by the Tory aristocracy—even by his cousin Sunny, 9th Duke of Marlborough.[17] Churchill might have replied quoting his mentor David Lloyd George, whose name the Duke had forbidden at Blenheim Palace. “A fully-equipped Duke costs as much to keep as two dreadnoughts; and Dukes are just as great a terror and they last longer.”[18]

“Mr. Gandhi has gone very high in my esteem…”

Consider India and Gandhi, which today’s experts wish us to believe Churchill despised. In 1906, when young Winston was Undersecretary for the Colonies, Mohandas Gandhi appealed to him over the oppressed Indian minority in South Africa. A quarter century later, Churchill lost his battle against the Act which granted India more self-government. So he invited Gandhi’s friend, Ghanshyam Das Birla, to Chartwell. (Apparently he didn’t hate Indians enough not to invite them to lunch.)

“Mr. Gandhi has gone very high in my esteem since he stood up for the Untouchables,” Churchill told Birla. Indeed the abysmal treatment of Untouchables, or Dalits, had been basic to Churchill’s opposition to self-government. “You have got immense powers,” Churchill continued. “So make it a success.”

Birla asked, “What is your test of success?” Churchill replied—as he often replied when such questions arose: “Improvement in the lot of the masses, morally as well as materially. I do not care whether you are more or less loyal to Great Britain…but give the masses more butter…. Make every tiller of the soil his own landlord….Tell Mr. Gandhi to use the powers that are offered and make the thing a success.” Does that sound like a man who hated Indians?

Birla went home and repeated the conversation to the Mahatma. Gandhi replied: “I have got a good recollection of Mr. Churchill when he was in the Colonial Office and somehow or other since then I have held the opinion that I can always rely on his sympathy and goodwill.”[19]

On Segregation and Africans

Here is another quote which his detractors always ignore. In 1942, Churchill was confronted with an influx of American forces in Britain, accompanied by the segregation of black troops. In cabinet he declared:

We need not, and should not, object. But they must not expect our authorities, civil or military, to assist them…. So far as concerned admission to canteens, public houses, theatres, cinemas, and so forth, there would, and must, be no restriction of the facilities hitherto extended to coloured persons as a result of the arrival of United States troops in this country.[20]

One more example—because we must be armed to the teeth against the charge that he was racist. In 1954, when he was still Prime Minister but nearing retirement, the Apartheid government in Pretoria made one of its periodic demands to annex three black-run British protectorates within its borders. Once again, Churchill’s precepts were consistent, and he minced no words:

There can be no question of Her Majesty’s Government agreeing at the present time to the transfer of Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland to the Union of South Africa. We are pledged, since the South Africa Act of 1909, not to transfer these Territories until their inhabitants have been consulted [and] wished it. [South Africa should] not needlessly press an issue on which we could not fall in with their views without failing in our trust.[21]

Within a few years, Britain had granted all three protectorates independence. Today, Botswana, the former Basutoland, is one of the most prosperous and democratic countries in Africa.

Second, honor the whole

Among precepts frequently forgotten is Churchill’s broadness and modernity of thought. His notoriety rests on the 18 months that began 81 years ago today. Of course he didn’t win the war. His achievement was that, when Britain and the Commonwealth stood alone, he didn’t lose it.

“Take away Churchill in 1940,” wrote Charles Krauthammer, “and Britain would have settled with Hitler—or worse. Nazism would have prevailed. Hitler would have achieved what no other tyrant, not even Napoleon, had ever achieved: mastery of Europe. Civilization would have descended into a darkness the likes of which it had never known.”[22] And Churchill himself declared: “Nothing surpasses 1940.”[23]

Nevertheless, like the Nobel Prize Committee who insisted on considering not just the war but his life’s work, Churchill cannot be remembered only in terms of his finest hour. This is the mistake almost every casual admirer makes. Unlike us, they don’t know the whole story—one of the key precepts. It is up to us to tell it.

The whole of Churchill’s philosophy concludes in Part 3…

Endnotes

[13] Mark Steyn, “Surrender Nothing,” Mark Steyn Show, 18 December 2020 accessed May 2021.

[14] Winston S. Churchill, London to Ladysmith via Pretoria (London: Longmans Green, 1900), 60.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1930), 273.

[17] R.W. Thompson, The Yankee Marlborough (New York: Doubleday, 1963), 127.

[18] Non-Churchill quotes in Richard M. Langworth, ed., Churchill by Himself (New York: Rosetta Books 2016) Kindle edition, 273.

[19] Remarks by Birla, Churchill and Gandhi are in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 5, The Prophet of Truth 1922-1939 (Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College Press, 2008), 618-19.

[20] War Cabinet: Conclusions (Cabinet papers, 65/28) October 1942, in Martin Gilbert, ed., The Churchill Documents, vol. 17, Testing Times, 1942 (Hillsdale College Press, 2013), 1278.

[21] WSC, House of Commons, 13 April 1954, in Martin Gilbert & Larry Arnn, eds., The Churchill Documents, Vol. 23, Never Flinch, Never Weary, October 1951-January 1965 (Hillsdale College Press, 2019), 1538.

[22] Charles Krauthammer, Things That Matter (New York: Crown Forum, 2013), 23.

[23] Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2, Their Finest Hour (London: Cassell, 1949), 555.

Further reading

For Churchill’s lifetime support of native rights in South Africa see “‘The Art of the Possible’: Churchill, South Africa and Apartheid, in two parts starting here.

In our electronic Speaker’s Corner (the Internet), Winston Churchill is beset by haters. Their knee-jerk spouts are laced with out-of-context quotes and preconceived notions. Call it Churchill Derangement Syndrome. Where is the truth? Perhaps we need a Derangement Index. Click on “A” for Aryan Supremacy, “B” for the Bengal Famine, etc. A handy reference to every derangement you can access with a couple of clicks.

An e-zine called This is Local London, describing its offerings as “quality local journalism,” is a standard example. Well, maybe not so standard. “The Problem with Glorying Winston Churchill” was written not by a historian or researcher, but a student at Wallington County Grammar School. If this what they’re teaching in British grammar schools, the Prime Minister has a bigger problem than Brexit.

It’s a tongue-lashing for the ages. “Blind worship and romanticisation [sic] of Churchill…is dangerous to our understandings of race and understanding” [sic]. Especially given “the harrowing reality.” What is that? Why, you doofus, it’s Churchill’s “virulent racism, sympathy for fascist and extremist ideology.” Yet—can you believe it?—we still airbrush his “horrible actions and distasteful racist, xenophobic venom.” Why do we glorify “this self-identified white supremacist as a figure worthy of acclaim?”

Derangement Primer

Herein we encapsulate this episode of Churchill Derangement in alphabetical order. Young Reporter’s accusations are in italics. Incorrect, unsourced, inaccurate or otherwise false quotes are marked with curly brackets {like this}. They are not worthy of quotemarks.

“A” is for Aryans

Churchill’s conviction of the {superiority of the Aryan race} “is starkly reminiscent of Hitler’s.” Churchill said whites were ‘a stronger race, a higher grade race.’ ” Churchill’s “almost Nazi belief that ‘the Aryan stock is bound to triumph’…compelled him to engage in a number of imperial conquests.”

First, question: What imperial conquests?  Churchill said “The Aryan stock is bound to triumph” in 1901 when he was 27, the Empire long established. He spoke of “a higher grade race” to the Peel Commission on Palestine in 1937. Hardly reminiscent of Hitler and his plan for genocide. (N.B.: Unfortunately for him 100 years later, Churchill often said “race” when he meant “nation.” Just as he said “poison gas” when he meant tear gas—in retrospect, a bad gaffe.)

In “today’s political climate” such words sound bad. But saying “everybody thought that way in 1901 or 1937” is a poor defense of Churchill. The real defense does exist.  Anybody can read it. Perhaps “Young Reporter” should read it:

We spend a lot of time arguing that Churchill was remarkable. Then when something comes along that we do not like, we excuse it or explain it as typical of the age. I do not think Churchill was typical of the age on this question, if the age was racist…. You can quote Abraham Lincoln in precisely the same sense. The remarkable thing is that Lincoln, for the slaves, and Churchill, for the Empire, believed that people of all colors should enjoy the same rights, and that it was the mission of their country to protect those rights. Therefore to say that Winston Churchill was “a man of his time,” or that “everyone back then was a racist,” is to miss the singular feature.

“B” is for Bengal Famine

“Churchill orchestrated the Bengal famine, exporting grain and being responsible for the unnecessary deaths of four million Indians.”

This vicious, tired, and hackneyed accusation has been a routine derangement since an ill-researched book made the claim a decade ago. That book was reviewed by the distinguished Gandhi biographer Arthur Herman: “Absent Churchill, Bengal’s Famine would have been Worse.” How so? All you have to do is read.

“D” is for Dung Eaters

Churchill also likened the Palestinians to {barbaric hoards who ate little but camel dung}, Young Reporter writes..

This derangement is based on hearsay, though I wouldn’t dispute the context. Michael Makovsky, in his excellent work Churchill’s Promised Land, credited Malcolm MacDonald, then colonial secretary: “He told me I was crazy to help the Arabs, because they were a backward people who ate nothing but camel dung.” Makovsky wrote: “While these might not have been Churchill’s exact words the gist of the comment jibed with what he had thought of the Palestinian Arabs at least since encountering them in the early 1920s.” So Churchill had his prejudices—which didn’t stop him from urging fair treatment of Arabs and Jews in Palestine.

“E” is for Eugenics

Churchill was driven by a deep loathing of democracy for anyone other than the British and a tiny clique of supposedly superior races and warned the Prime Minister at the time, Stanley Baldwin, not to appoint him to Cabinet as his views on race and eugenics were so thoroughly antiquated and morally reprehensible.

Not much derangement here. Yes, circa 1912, young Churchill had a fling with Eugenics. He abandoned it within two years. Deciding it was an affront to civil liberties, he never spoke of it again. Churchill never warned Baldwin not to appoint him—from the mid-1930s he desperately wanted to be appointed. Baldwin excluded Churchill for his incessant rearmament demands. My book, Churchill and the Avoidable War, spends several chapters on all this. I would be happy to make a gift of it to Young Reporter—provided he promised to read it. By all accounts Baldwin was more of a white supremacist than Churchill.

 “G” is for Gallipoli

“Churchill was also at the helm of the diabolical Gallipoli campaign during World War II, in which tens of thousands of British civilians died unnecessarily as a result of Churchill’s needless competence.”

Yes, Young Reporter did say “World War II” and “needless competence.” He means World War I and needless incompetence. But Churchill’s diabolical helmsmanship was over the Dardanelles, not Gallipoli. He neither planned nor directed the disastrous Gallipoli landings. Also, he learned from his mistakes. After World War II he wrote of the Dardanelles: “…a supreme enterprise was cast away, through my trying to carry out a major and cardinal operation of war from a subordinate position. Men are ill-advised to try such ventures. This lesson had sunk into my nature.” Some derangement.

“H” is for Hitler

Churchill’s “sympathy for fascist ideology” begins with Hitler. In 1935, he wrote: “If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.”

Churchill wrote that in the Evening Standard on 17 September 1937, after he had been attacked by the Nazi press as an enemy of Germany. He said he’d been wronged, mentioning all his overtures to Germany after World War I. These included shipping food to blockaded Hamburg, repatriating prisoners, opposing France’s invasion of the Ruhr, and so on.

Before the sentence quoted, he wrote: “One may dislike Hitler’s system and yet admire his patriotic achievement.” At the time, Churchill was walking on eggs. His article had to clear the Foreign Office, anxious not to insult dear old Adolf. Even so, there is nothing that suggests “sympathy for fascist ideology.” In fact, Churchill had Hitler’s number from the get-go. You can look it up.

“I” is for Indians

“Churchill openly admitted his visceral hatred of Indians, referring to them as ‘a beastly people with a beastly religion,’ and that it was their fault for dying in the famine because they ‘bred like rabbits’ and because they were ‘the beastliest people in the world, next to the Germans….’ Leo Amery, British Secretary of State for India, said Churchill ‘didn’t see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s’ {regarding race and eugenics}. “But, whilst there is mostly a general consensus that Hitler is a white supremacist, authoritarian mass murdering [expletive deleted], this tag is similarly applicable to Churchill.”

Churchill Derangement has a feast of words here. WSC did make those outbursts, frustrated with disputatious demands from Delhi in the midst of all-out war. William F. Buckley put them in context: “I don’t doubt that the famous gleam came to his eyes when he said this, with mischievous glee—an offense, in modem convention, of genocidal magnitude.” Indeed so.

Amery did say that to Churchill, “which annoyed him no little.” It was Amery’s job to plead India’s case—and Churchill’s to set priorities in a war to the death. Yet in the end, Arthur Herman explained: “Even Amery admitted…the ‘unassailable’ case against diverting vital war shipping to India.” Churchill’s appointment of Field Marshal Wavell as Viceroy ultimately eased India’s famine. “Far from a racist conspiracy to break the country, the Viceroy noted that ‘all the Dominion Governments are doing their best to help.’”

This is the same Churchill who wrote of the 2.5 million-volunteer Indian Army: “the response of the Indian peoples, no less than the conduct of their soldiers, makes a glorious final page in the story of our Indian Empire.” Was that derangement?

“K” is for Kurds

Churchill “was a man who advocated gassing the Kurds and who declared himself ‘strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.’”

This Golden Oldie has been around longer even than the Bengal famine nonsense. The quote is easy trap for the gullible—if they don’t read the surrounding words…

It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected. [Italics mine.]

For those of you in Rio Linda, or Wallington County Grammar School, “lachrymatory gas” is tear gas. 

“L” is for Landslide (1945)

“It is telling that as soon as those incredibly brave soldiers returned home, they helped to vote Winston Churchill out of office in large numbers, in what was a landslide victory for the most radically left-wing Labour government in history.”

It is telling, but not in that way. In 1945, Britons voted massively for the Labour opposition (hardly the most radical in history). Not because of Churchill, who was handily reelected. Voters rejected the Conservative Party, which who had brought them a decade of appeasement and war. And for Labour, which promised a grand future. “I wouldn’t call it [ingratitude],” Churchill said. “They have had a very hard time.”

“M” is for Mussolini 

Churchill was “a raving supporter of Mussolini.” He said {fascism has rendered a service to the entire world}. And: “If I were Italian, I am sure I should have been wholeheartedly with you from the start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.”

My book, Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality, devotes a chapter to “Mussolini, Law-Giver and Jackal.” Churchill did praise Musso twice. The first time (correctly quoted above), was in 1927, when WSC was Chancellor of the Exchequer. His aim was to get Il Duce to cough up the Italian war debt. (He did get some of it.) The second was in 1940 when he tossed a few bouquets at the Italian, hoping he wouldn’t join the war with Hitler. He failed. For Churchill, Mussolini then became the “whipped jackal” yelping at the side of “the German tiger.” Early on, of course, lots of people who feared Leninism were praising Mussolini. But Churchill and the Italians delivered the final verdict. They must have suffered from Mussolini Derangement.

“N” is for Nuking the Soviets

“Churchill wanted to inflict nuclear holocaust on Soviet Union in peacetime,” Young Reporter breathlessly asserts.

The truth is less spectacular. Shortly after the war, Churchill speculated privately about taking out the Soviets in a nuclear strike. He said as much to Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King and New Hampshire Senator Styles Bridges. Often he voiced apocalyptic scenarios to visitors to gauge their reaction. He never formally proposed to bomb Moscow to American presidents or ambassadors.

Churchill’s formal statements took a different tack, as Graham Farmelo correctly wrote: “He soon softened his line. In the House of Commons he went no further than the words he used after British relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated again, in January 1948: the best chance of avoiding war was ‘to bring matters to a head with the Soviet Government…to arrive at a lasting settlement.’” He sought that settlement through 1955. When it continued to elude him, he retired as prime minister.

“O” is for Ordinary People

“Churchill just didn’t have the interests of ordinary working classes, or indeed anyone, other than a narrow circle of middle-class straight white men at heart.”

Granted, it was pretty hard to spot non-white folks in 1904 Britain, when Churchill began being called a “traitor to his class.” (Speaking of derangement.) Why? Because Churchill, and Lloyd George, instituted the most sweeping anti-poverty legislation in British history. Taxation, old age pensions, unemployment benefits, widows and orphans support—all initiatives of the great reforming Liberal governments. Churchill was in the vanguard. He shared an understanding of the actual causes of poverty, wrote Malcolm Hill: He did not believe the state should take all responsibility for retirement, education, health and welfare. But he showed “unusual stature” in his efforts to mitigate poverty.

Ordinary people? Churchill said in 1944: “At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper. No amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of that point.” Game, set and match.

“P” is for Prejudice

“Churchill’s rampant racial prejudice was considered backwards [sic], even by Victorian standards,” writes Young Reporter. “Indeed, even at the time, Churchill was seen as extremist in his ideology and at the most brutal and racist end of the British imperialist spectrum.”

By whom? Is this the same Winston Churchill who in 1899 argued with his Boer jailer in Pretoria about equal rights for black Africans? Or the Churchill remembered kindly by Gandhi for his efforts to ease inequalities for Indians in South Africa? The Churchill who, during WW2, said Americans could segregate their black soldiers if they liked, but not the British. Read the evidence. If you still want to call Churchill a racist, by all means do. But first “dig a little deeper.”

“S” is for Savages

Churchill referred to also Egyptians as “degraded savages.” He believed Pakistanis were “deranged jihadists” whose violence was explained by a {strong aboriginal propensity to kill}.

Ah, the wonders of the partial quote. By “degraded savages” Churchill was referring to a Cairo crowd which attacked the BOAC offices in January 1952. (Andrew Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, 214.) In The Story of the Malakand Field Force Churchill wrote (3): “The strong aboriginal propensity to kill, inherent in all human beings, has in these valleys been preserved in unexampled strength and vigour.” So… Some Egyptians are savages, but not all savages are Egyptians. Some Pakistanis have an aboriginal propensity to kill, but not all killers are Pakistanis. Do I have this right? Duh!

“T” is for Tonypandy

“Churchill sent soldiers to brutally crush the strikes of hundreds of innocent, oppressed Welsh miners in Tonypandy protesting for better rights, saying, and these were his own words: {If the Welsh are striking over hunger, then we must fill their bellies with lead.}”

This derangement has been around for 100 years. Neither the quote nor the assertion are correct. Churchill specifically forbade the use of troops unless demanded by police. The last Welsh strike leader alive, Will Mainwaring, spoke to the BBC in 1960: “We never thought that Winston Churchill had exceeded his natural responsibility as Home Secretary. The military did not commit one single act that allows the slightest resentment by the strikers. On the contrary, we regarded the military as having come in the form of friends to modify the otherwise ruthless attitude of the police forces.”

“W” is for White Supremacy

In the 1955 general election, Churchill wanted the Conservatives to promote white supremacy: “The Tories should campaign on a platform of preventing {degenerate} ‘coloured’ immigration from the West Indies, along with his suggested campaign slogan for the Tories’ 1955 General election, ‘Keep England White.’”

Right in the narrow sense, wrong in the broad. Here is the reality. “Keep England White” is hearsay. It was a diary entry by Harold Macmillan after January 1955 cabinet meeting, Macmillan wrote: “The P.M. thinks ‘Keep England White’ a good campaign slogan!”

Macmillan was not given to exaggeration, but the context matters. “The P.M. thinks…” is not a quote, nor did the words ever appear in public. Macmillan followed it with an exclamation mark, which could mean that Churchill was wise-cracking. Ask yourself: Would any astute politician, even then, seriously propose “Keep England White” as a campaign slogan?

Out of context, the words seem stark. In context, Churchill was arguing for limits on Caribbean immigration. He did not discuss other black or brown people. Is this racist? We report, you decide.

“X” is for X-Rated (No attribution or off the wall)

“Churchill claimed that China was a {barbaric nation that required British partition} to bring it into civilization.” There is no attribution for this statement in his published canon.

“This was a man, who let’s not forget… force-fed the suffragettes.” Churchill force-fed nobody, opposed female suffrage only once in Parliament (when he thought more women would vote Conservative). The rest of the time he was pro-suffrage.

Truth at last!

Churchill said of Baldwin: “Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.” In the end, happily, Young Reporter stumbles over the truth:

“It would be reductive to merely credit [defeating the Nazis] to Churchill and not the role of ordinary British citizens, our allies, the 27 million Soviet soldiers and civilians who died during that war, the Americans, the French Resistance and how their blood, strength, tears and sacrifice was pivotal….”

End of unreality, welcome to reality. Churchill himself said it was the British people around the world who had the lion heart. “I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.” Or as Charles Krauthammer put it:

Yes, it was the ordinary man, the taxpayer, the grunt who fought and won the wars. Yes, it was America and its allies [and] the great leaders: Roosevelt, de Gaulle, Adenauer, Truman, John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan. But above all, victory required one man without whom the fight would have been lost at the beginning. It required Winston Churchill.

Young Reporter is an earnest fellow and, like many older practitioners, convinced he’s right. He “firmly rejects” Churchill’s “overstated role,” but not his overstated sins, like “the deaths of millions” in Gallipoli. But hey, he’s very young.  Perhaps by the time he reaches A-levels he’ll have developed the curiosity, and integrity, to read a bit more widely.

The reader will ask: why am I plugging to a Churchill audience a set of essays by a political columnist? Answer: because many are not political, yet reflect Churchillian thought. Moreover, Dr. Krauthammer’s essay about Churchill is one of the best summaries of the man I’ve ever read. By anybody. Anywhere.

Significantly, in a book of over nearly ninety columns and essays, the Churchill article ranks second—in Part I (entitled “Personal”)—after a piece on the author’s beloved brother, Marcel, who also died young after an heroic struggle. Churchill was a very personal topic of Charles Krauthammer’s. He frequently quoted Sir Winston, always accurately.

Krauthammer’s Slant

Meg Greenfield, longtime editorial page editor of The Washington Post, called the Krauthammer’s column “independent and hard to peg politically. It’s a very tough column. There’s no ‘trendy’ in it. You never know what is going to happen next.” This reminds me of Churchill. So much does. They both “crossed the aisle.” Dr. Krauthammer was once Walter Mondale’s speechwriter. Churchill ended up a Tory, “CK” a conservative. Yet it’s risky to label either of them. Perhaps we might better define them both as classical liberals.

Krauthammer’s words make everyone listen, and sometimes reconsider. For instance, he recently convinced me to abandon tradition and support a name change for the Washington Redskins: “It is simple decency to stop using a slur.” Like me, he rooted for underdogs. We were baseball fanatics who back the Washington Nationals. Being Nationals fans is no easy task. If you want easy, root for the Yankees.

Of course if you’re going to read Krauthammer’s columns, it helps if you agree with him. (Whenever I don’t have an answer to some current question I say that I have to read him first so I’ll know what to think.) But look: I have very liberal friends who also read and admire him. His death occasioned statements of respect from all areas of opinion, except the fever swamps. Don’t succumb to labels. He had his heroes, left and right. Buy the book to enjoy elegant writing, the precise layering of facts and logic, by a deeply caring man who applied serious brainpower to contemplating everything from “Borat” to the Cosmos.

Churchillian Parallels

But why spend money on a 388-page book less than 1% of which is specifically Churchill? Because there’s a lot of other material that touches his saga: the Middle East, wars in Asia, bioethics, serious enquiries into the nature of man and the universe. (Churchill covered that in Thoughts and Adventures.)

Churchill-related columns include insults (“In Defense of the F-Word”), the “Joy of Losing” (something Sir Winston knew about), how to define democracy (Churchill laid out precepts, Krauthammer laid out Albania), the Holocaust, Zionism, Language, Leadership, the question of Germany’s “collective guilt.” There’s plenty here to interest Churchillians.

* * *

“Things That Matter”—to the author as to Churchill—include: “the innocence of dogs, the cunning of cats, the elegance of nature, the wonders of space…the difference between historical guilt and historical responsibility, fashions and follies…manners and habits, curiosities and conundrums social and ethical. Is a doctor ever permitted to kill a patient wishing to die? Why in the age of feminism do we still use the phrase ‘women and children’?”

Churchill read H.G. Wells and wrote a piece asking, “Are There Men on the Moon?” Krauthammer studied Fermi and wondered: “With so many habitable planets out there, why in God’s name have we never heard a word from a single one of them?” Fermi’s answer, as CK explained, is disquieting. These are subjects, in Krauthammer’s words, that “fill my days, some trouble my nights.”

Unlike many pundits, Dr. Krauthammer laughed at himself and cultivated a sense of humor. He read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time “as a public service—to reassure my readers that this most unread bestseller is indeed as inscrutable as they thought.” Speaking of the attempts to contact alien life forms (Voyagers 1 and 2), he mentions that the greetings they carry, on behalf of all mankind, are from the UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, a Nazi. “Makes you wish that we’d immediately sent out a Voyager 3 beeping frantically: Please disregard all previous messages.”

Indispensable Man

Do you to know what CK wrote about Winston Churchill? He spoke of him frequently on the air, but this essay is from the run-up to Time magazine’s “Person of the Century” sweepstakes in 1999. I’ve quoted it so often that I’ve almost memorized it. In Krauthammer’s view, Churchill was the only possible Person of the 20th Century. Einstein (Time’s pick) was “the best mind” of the century, true. But if he hadn’t invented all those theories, somebody else would have. Churchill, on the other hand, was indispensable. CK wrote:

* * *

Take away Churchill in 1940…and Britain would have settled with Hitler—or worse. Nazism would have prevailed. Hitler would have achieved what no other tyrant, not even Napoleon, had ever achieved: mastery of Europe. Civilization would have descended into a darkness the likes of which it had never known.”

In essence, the rap on Churchill is that he was a 19th century man parachuted into the 20th. But is that not precisely to the point? It took a 19th century man—traditional in habit, rational in thought, conservative in temper—to save the 20th century from itself…. The originality of the 20th surely lay in its politics. It invented the police state and the command economy, mass mobilization and mass propaganda, mechanized murder and routinized terror—a breathtaking catalog of political creativity.

And the 20th is a single story because history saw fit to lodge the entire episode in a single century. Totalitarianism turned out to be a cul-de-sac. It came and went. It has a beginning and an end, 1917 and 1991, a run of 75 years neatly nestled into this century. That is our story.

* * *

I’m not going to spoil it by leaking any more. Here is the keynote: it comes at the end. We are asked: who are the heroes of the last century? “Who slew the dragon?” CK provides a list, from the Greatest Generation to FDR, de Gaulle, Truman, John Paul, Reagan…. “But above all victory required one man without whom the fight would have been lost at the beginning. It required Winston Churchill.”

One more, very Churchillian thing: there’s no self-absorption here. Churchill was thrown out in 1915 and 1945. He simply ignored it, rebuilt his life and career. A third of the way into Krauthammer’s life, young Charles dove into a swimming pool and banged his head. He spent the last forty-four years of his life in a wheelchair. He also became a psychiatrist, a syndicated columnist, a writer, a husband and father, a TV personality, a Pulitzer Prize winner. Now that’s a Churchilllian performance.

________

This review is updated from the original in The Churchillian, a publication of the Winston Churchill Memorial and Library, Fulton, Missouri, Winter 2013. To hear Dr. Krauthammer himself on his book at Politics and Prose Bookshop, click here.

The best editor I ever had wrote: “There is nothing to be said when a friend dies, even among people whose trade is words.” Much nevertheless is being said about Charles Krauthammer. That is fitting, and it is what we have the Internet for. (Some of the most touching tributes are linked below. Fox News produced a very fine tribute, “Krauthammer in His Own Words” click here.)

My editor meant, rather, that for some, words are inadequate against “a big, empty hole where there was once someone you loved. And all the talk in the world won’t change that. Everybody who knew him well misses him.” For CK, those who think they knew him well include millions who encountered him only as a face on the evening news. And were mesmerized by his intellect, eloquence, humor and collegiality.

All those are very Churchillian traits. So is courage. Unlike many of those talking faces, Dr. Krauthammer never indulged in introspection or self-pity. In his forties and his seventies, Winston Churchill was thrown violently out office. He ignored it and rebuilt his life, declaring: “Never give in.” In his twenties, young Charles dove into a swimming pool, banged his head, and was confined forever after to a wheelchair. He ignored it and became a psychiatrist, a writer, syndicated columnist, a husband and father, a TV personality, a Pulitzer Prize winner. Now that is a Churchillian performance.

Things That Matter

His book is one of a score I would take with me if confined to a desert island. Significantly, among its nearly ninety columns and essays, the Churchill chapter ranks second—in Part I (entitled “Personal”)—after a piece on his beloved brother Marcel. Churchill was a very personal subject to Dr. Krauthammer, who was always quoting him (accurately). Many chapters touch on Churchill’s saga: the Middle East, wars in Asia, bioethics and the future, serious enquiries into the nature of man and the universe. (Churchill covered those in Thoughts and Adventures.)

Churchill-related columns include insults (“In Defense of the F-Word”), the “Joy of Losing” (a thing Sir Winston knew something about), how to define democracy (Churchill laid out precepts, Krauthammer laid out Albania), the Holocaust, Zionism, Language, Leadership, the question of Germany’s “collective guilt.” There’s plenty here to interest Churchillians.

* * *

And much else besides. CK was fascinated by “the innocence of dogs, the cunning of cats, the elegance of nature, the wonders of space…fashions and follies…manners and habits, curiosities and conundrums social and ethical. Is a doctor ever permitted to kill a patient wishing to die? Why in the age of feminism do we still use the phrase ‘women and children?’” Churchill wrote an essay asking, “Are There Men on the Moon?” Krauthammer studied Enrico Fermi and wondered: “With so many habitable planets out there, why in God’s name have we never heard a word from a single one of them?” Fermi’s answer, as CK explained, is disquieting. These are subjects, he wrote, that “fill my days, some trouble my nights.”

I wrote all this and more in a review, the best words I could summon up. I sent it to my hero through a mutual friend with a copy of Churchill by Himself. He didn’t have to reply, but of course, being CK, he did: “How kind and generous was your assessment of my writing. And how gratifying to receive such appreciation. As you know, being a writer as well, the point of writing is less self-expression than trying to express and impress certain ideas on others. Your kind review makes me think that I might have succeeded in some way.”

* * *

Fortune and the magic name of Churchill gave me the chance to meet him twice. The first was at a dinner for Sir Martin Gilbert hosted by a World War II Veteran’s Association in 2004. I presented him with the Sir Winston Churchill Birthday Book, which a friend and I had just republished. It contains a Churchill quote for every day of the year, with space opposite for penciling in someone’s birthday. It has an uncanny knack for providing suitable quotations for everyone. CK’s birthday was March 13th: “There is always much to be said for not attempting more than you can do….But this principle…has its exceptions.” Said Charles: “He had that one right.”

The second was just a few years ago at a Hillsdale College Churchill seminar. That video is not online, but I recommend one that is. In 2011, CK spoke to 50,000 people (99% online) at a Hillsdale Constitution Day celebration. He spoke with piercing clarity, as Brit Hume said. “He was as kind a man as I ever known. His personal grace and gentleness were just remarkable. He was one of a kind.”

One should not attach any great importance to those encounters, and hope I don’t sound like a groupie. But since Bill Buckley died, he was my go-to source of political wisdom. Forever after his Hillsdale appearance, whenever I was unsure of something I would say: I have to read Charles Krauthammer, who will tell me what to think.”

“Hinged” : Krauthammer at Large

I must present a few blades from my sheaf of Krauthammeriana.

Career choices: “How do you go from Walter Mondale to Fox News? The answer is short and simple. I was young once … It is true that I’m a psychiatrist in remission. People ask me the difference [between psychiatry] and what I do in Washington and the answer is rather simple. In both lines of work I deal every day with people who have delusions of grandeur. The only difference is that here in Washington these deluded have access to nuclear weapons….” (2011)

Donald Trump: After a heated news conference, CNN’s Jake Tapper called the President “unhinged.” Dr. Krauthammer (a devout Never Trumper before the election) replied: “I found it entirely hinged … The high point was when he mentioned me. I thought I was going to be the surprise new national security adviser, so I was somewhat disappointed. The country is really divided. He’s not the one who caused it, but his supporters will love this, and those who are skeptical about him are going to wonder about how hinged he is.” (2017; this reminded me of Churchill using “choate” as the opposite of “inchoate.”)

* * *

The Universe: “I read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time as a public service—to reassure my readers that this most unread bestseller is indeed as inscrutable as they thought.” Speaking of the attempts to contact alien life forms (Voyagers 1 and 2), CK noted that the greetings they carry, on behalf of all mankind, are from UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, a Nazi. “Makes you wish that we’d immediately sent out a Voyager 3 beeping frantically: Please disregard all previous messages.” (2000)

Vladimir Putin: “Being a good, well trained KGB agent, he lies with a smile. I love the fact that this week he’s been saying it could’ve been Russian patriots—who are artists who act on their own—who might have hacked. But of course the state is innocent. Nothing like that happens in Russia without the state. He knows it, we know it, but he’s a very good liar.” (2017)

* * *

Baseball: Rick Ankiel was the first player since Babe Ruth to have won at least ten games as a pitcher and also to hit at least fifty home runs. Recalling how Ankiel’s pitching career was destroyed by a nervous breakdown, and how he came fighting back as an outfielder, CK summoned up his own life’s impulses: “The catastrophe that awaits everyone from a simple false move, wrong turn, fatal encounter—every life has such a moment. What distinguishes us is whether—and how—we ever come back.” (2011)

And after our beloved Washington Nationals set the team record of eight home runs in a game, including four in a row and the all-time record of five in an inning: “Oh, the glory! With the White House on fire, the Congress in chaos, and the world going to hell in a handbasket, we need happy news like this. This is why God created baseball, late on the sixth day.” (2014)

Friends and Colleagues

[Churchill and Krauthammer] have many things in common. Both have a wit as dry as a properly-made martini. They both exhibit an unparalleled intellectual capaciousness, enabling a supremely wide range in their writing.  Both men dictate their prose. Charles may think my comparison of him to the great statesman is extravagant, but I do not think so, for this simple reason: Charles rightly refers to Churchill in his essay as “the indispensable man.” Well, for those of us trying to make sense of what is happening in our country right now, Charles is our indispensable man. —Steve Hayward

I remember attending an event at the Kennedy Center which Charles and his wife put on to celebrate ancient Hebrew music, and my wife saying to me, “We wouldn’t be here for anybody but Charles Krauthammer.” On the 4th of July Charles would have all his colleagues and friends out at his summer home on the Chesapeake, but it wasn’t all hot dogs and cokes, it was something special. Charles would have each of us read a passage from the Declaration of Independence. Nothing was more emotional than being among people of different political perspectives….attracted to a fine intellect, Robyn’s husband, Daniel’s dad, who loved America. —Juan Williams

* * *

Like a lot of his friends we started out as ideological adversaries …We spent many dinners together. I had the foolishness to challenge him at chess. I never beat him but they were very instructive games. He would even correct my moves before he clobbered them. We spent a lot of time splitting theological hairs … He knew Aquinas, the principle articulator of Catholic theology, better than I did, and I studied it formally… It is said that “no great man is a good man.” Charles was an exception to that. —Andrew Napolitano

The loss to America is dwarfed by the loss to his family and friends, but nevertheless it is enormous. Especially at this time. The nation is deeply divided. Americans are having difficulty separating fact from fiction. Today’s debates lack the intellectual rigor and civility that Charles championed in his columns, his appearances on Fox News, and his many speeches and essays. When Donald Trump emerged on the political scene, Charles was no cheerleader. But after the election, Charles insisted on treating Mr. Trump with the fairness and respect due the president of the United States. Still, he kept watch for dangers to the institutions the Founding Fathers put in place-the “guardrails” that constrain any president’s behavior. —Irwin Stelzer

May we all say this at the end…

Two weeks ago he wrote to all to say that his fight with cancer was lost. “I leave this life with no regrets. It was a wonderful life—full and complete with the great loves and great endeavors that make it worth living. I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended.”

That does not diminish our loss, however eloquent and typical of him. He died as he had lived, brave and unaffected, facing the most traumatic of human experiences. I have quoted this passage before, but it is irresistible now. It fits him so perfectly—almost as if Churchill in 1931, writing of Arthur Balfour, intended it for Charles:

As I observed him regarding with calm, firm and cheerful gaze the approach of Death, I felt how foolish the Stoics were to make such a fuss about an event so natural and so indispensable to mankind. But I felt also the tragedy which robs the world of all the wisdom and treasure gathered in a great man’s life and experience and hands the lamp to some impetuous and untutored stripling, or lets its fall shivered into fragments upon the ground.

_________

Learn …

Who was Winston Churchill? Why, half a century since his death, is he the most quoted historical figure? Scholars know the answers. Do you? Why does it matter?

It matters because Churchill continues to offer guidance and example today. His indomitable courage, his ability to communicate, his knowledge of history, his political precepts, are as valuable now as they were in his time.

Courage and resolution

Churchill himself said “nothing surpasses 1940.” We must look there for to learn of his greatest accomplishment. Without him the world today would be unrecognizable: dark, impoverished, tortured. Churchill didn’t win the Second World War. That took more than he alone could offer. His triumphant achievement was not losing it.

Churchill did that in two ways: pursuing the paramount goal to the exclusion of all others; and communicating that goal to a baffled and frightened world.

The great movements that underlie history are the development of science, industry, culture, social and political structures, wrote Charles Krauthammer:

These are undeniably powerful, almost determinant.  Yet every once in a while, a single person arises without whom everything would be different…. The originality of the 20th century surely lay in its politics. It invented the police state and the command economy, mass mobilization and mass propaganda, mechanized murder and routinized terror—a breathtaking catalog of political creativity. And the 20th is a single story because history saw fit to lodge the entire episode in a single century. Totalitarianism turned out to be a cul-de-sac. It came and went. It has a beginning and an end, 1917 and 1991, a run of seventy-five years neatly nestled into the last century. That is our story.

And who is the hero of that story? Who slew the dragon? Yes, it was the ordinary man and woman, the taxpayer, the grunt who fought and won the wars. True, it was America and its allies. Indeed, it was the great leaders: Roosevelt, de Gaulle, Adenauer, Truman, John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan. But above all, victory required one man without whom the fight would have been lost at the beginning. It required Winston Churchill.

Learn more: Winston Churchill’s War Leadership, by Martin Gilbert; Churchill and War, by Geoffrey Best.

Right and freedom

Almost all his life, Churchill’s quarrel was with tyranny. But singularly among politicians of his time, he saw the future—and its implications for good or ill. Churchill predicted today’s age of instant communications. He foresaw the nuclear age, the mobile phone, social media, genetic engineering. He feared the challenge to free government through what he called “Mass Effects on Modern Life.” It is useful to learn how he expressed these warnings, which still apply.

As early as 1908, Churchill’s ideas, speeches and legislative accomplishments produced pioneering reforms in the social structure. His aim was to reform what was bad and to preserve what was good, without disrupting the enterprise that produces the wherewithal to make life worth living. That is still a worthy goal.

* * *

At the same time, Churchill foresaw the all-powerful administrative state. Many an advance in science, technology and communication, Churchill argued, “suppresses the individual achievement.” He deplored the rise of the collective at the expense of the individual: “Is not mankind already escaping from the control of individuals? Are not our affairs increasingly being settled by mass processes? Are not modern conditions—at any rate throughout the English-speaking communities—hostile to the development of outstanding personalities and to their influence upon events; and lastly if this be true, will it be for our greater good and glory?” Today such questions merit examination by thoughtful people.

The newspapers do a lot of thinking for us, Churchill wrote. Substitute “media” for “newspapers” and he could be speaking today. He particularly worried about the superficiality of media. True, it provides “a tremendous educating process. But it is an education which passes in at one ear and out at the other. It is an education at once universal and superficial.” Such a process, taken to its ultimate ends, would produce “standardized citizens, all equipped with regulation opinions, prejudices and sentiments, according to their class or party.”

These considerations alone, writes Larry Arnn,

offer ample practical reasons to know Churchill’s story; but there are other reasons beyond the manifestly practical. Justice and the duty to pursue it are central to true statesmanship. It is certainly worth our time to consider how Churchill, who held to that idea as strongly as any, understood his and his country’s purposes and navigated toward them.

Learn more: Churchill’s Political Philosophy, by Martin Gilbert; Churchill’s Trial: Winston Churchill and the Challenge to Free Government, by Larry P. Arnn.

Magnanimity and generosity

Another quality worthy to learn was Churchill’s magnanimity. He was not a hater. “I have always urged fighting wars and other contentions with might and main till overwhelming victory,” he said, “and then offering the hand of friendship to the vanquished.” He proved this repeatedly.

As a young statesman Churchill fostered a generous peace with the Boers after their defeat in the Boer War. In 1918, he urged (vainly) that shiploads of food be sent to blockaded Germany. He fought the 1926 General Strike, then argued for redress of strikers’ grievances. His hate for the Germans in World War II “died with their surrender.”

* * *

He held the same attitude toward individuals—something we can only wish for among today’s politicians. Admiral Fisher nearly destroyed his career in 1915; a year later Churchill advocated Fisher’s return to the Admiralty. In 1945 the socialist Clement Attlee inflicted his greatest political defeat. Yet when confronted with jokes at Attlee’s expense, Churchill refused to be drawn into lampooning a man he described as a “gallant servant of his country.” In the 1930s he fought a bill granting India greater independence, and then urged the Indian leader Gandhi to “make the most of it,” and promised to see that India would get “much more.”

His eulogies to Neville Chamberlain and Lloyd George were masterful in their generosity, Andrew Roberts wrote: “He did not believe in vengeance against domestic political opponents, but rather in what he called, ‘A judicious and thrifty disposal of bile.’”

This was a rare quality, even then. It remains an example worth imitating. To those who had wronged him in the past Churchill would say, “time ends all things,” or “the past is dead.” In 1940, having finally risen to the pinnacle, he warned critics of his predecessors: “If we open a quarrel between the past and the present we shall find that we have lost the future.”

Learn more: Churchill as Peacemaker, James W. Muller, ed.; Great Contemporaries: Churchill Reflects on FDR, Hitler, Kipling, Chaplin, Balfour, and Other Giants of His Age, by Winston S. Churchill.

“A man of quality”

We do tend to be discouraged about how things are going—although in our time, they haven’t gone all that badly. The fall of the Soviet Union, the prevalence of free market economics, were not things people would bet on forty years ago. Churchill saw them coming twenty years earlier than that. He was always the optimist. Humanity, he believed, was not going to destroy itself.

“In every sphere of human endeavour, Churchill foresaw the dangers and potential for evil,” wrote Martin Gilbert:

Many of those dangers are our dangers today. He also pointed the way forward to our solutions—for tomorrow. That is why it is useful to learn about his life. Some writers portray him as a figure of the past, an anachronism, a grotesque. In doing so, it is they who are the losers, for he was a man of quality: a good guide for our troubled decade and for the generations now reaching adulthood.

“I am fully aware of the deep concern felt by the honorable member in many matters above his comprehension,” Churchill quipped. Which avoided responding to an unanswerable question.

Self-Preservation’s Jarring Gong

How do you answer the Korean question? There are no good choices. The Sino-Russian proposal for the U.S. to abandon joint military exercises in exchange for another promise by the North to stop building missiles and testing nukes is a non-starter. That advances their aim, to separate the U.S. from South Korea.

Have we learned anything from history? It’s true that history never repeats. But Churchill’s experience is there for the asking. As usual, there is something worth taking away.

The first lesson is Churchill’s lament for “endless repetition”:

When the situation was manageable, it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the Sibylline books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong—these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history. (WSC, House of Commons, 2 May 1935)

North Korea and Nazi Germany

Kim Jong-un is not Hitler, of course. North Korea is not Nazi Germany, writes Peter Weber. (“In some ways it’s worse.”) Kim has, if it’s possible, an even more inflated opinion of his powers than Hitler had.

These happy facts are counterbalanced by the finality of a modern nuclear exchange. We may soon reach Churchill’s “period of consequences”: choosing between going to war or accepting a nuclear North Korea. The latter would require reintroduction of the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) policy, by which we navigated in the old Cold War days. Japan has declared this unacceptable. One can understand.

Between now and then, in the opinion of journalist Charles Krauthammer, we have two moves, not without risk, which might get the attention of China, North Korea’s patron. 1) Reinstall, at South Korea’s invitation, the tactical nuclear weapons removed by President G.H.W. Bush in 1991. 2) Counsel and aid Japan to acquire the bomb.

.

Both policies are laden with risk, Krauthammer adds. “But China and Japan are ancient enemies. They have been for hundreds of years.” He thinks the specter of a nuclear Japan might finally convince China that reining in (how?) their unpredictable client is a preferable alternative.

Q: TheQuestion tries to provide our readers with the most reliable knowledge from experts in various fields. As we celebrate National Churchill Day, April 9th, we would appreciate your thoughts on three questions. These are currently posted without responses on our website: Was Winston Churchill really that good an artist? What made him a great leader? What was his greatest achievement?

 

TheQuestion: Churchill as Artist

​Please take a virtual tour of Hillsdale College’s recent exhibition of Churchill paintings and artifacts. Here your readers can decide for themselves. The consensus among experts, however, is that Churchill was a gifted amateur. He had genuine talent, but he also had good tutors: Sir John and Lady Lavery, Paul Maze, Walter Sickert. Several professionals—Picasso was one—said that if painting had been his profession, he would have done very well. (Picasso rarely shared his politics, and is reputed to have wished that happened…)

Churchill himself never pretended to be more than an amateur, referring to his 600 oils as “my daubs.” Until very late he resisted exhibiting, and was sensitive to his works being patronized because of his fame. In 1944, General Eisenhower’s chauffeur, an amateur painter, asked if he might show one of his oils to the Prime Minister. “Very good,” Churchill said, “but you, unlike myself, will be judged on talent alone”

TheQuestion: Leadership

To answer TheQuestion’s second query would require many words. ​Whole books have been written on the subject, notably Churchill on Leadership by Steven Hayward. Churchill’s Trial, by Dr. Larry Arnn, College, considers how Churchill resolved the nature and needs of the citizenry with constitutional democracy and ordered liberty​.

In my opinion two qualities of his leadership stand out: his ability to pursue the paramount goal to the exclusion of all rivals, however worthy; and his ability to communicate that goal to a baffled or frightened world. In May and June 1940, he was the only possible choice for premier, because for almost a decade he had warned of Nazi Germany as the primary threat. “I thought I knew a good deal about it all,” he wrote in his memoirs, “and was sure I should not fail.” A year later, when Hitler invaded Russia, he pledged immediate aid to the Soviet Union, which he had long excoriated: “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.”

As a communicator he was unique in his time, and perhaps any time. I remember a Belgian lady at a Churchill conference, gripping Lady Soames’s arm to tell her what her father’s wartime speeches had meant to Belgians gathered around surreptitious radios, listening to crackling broadcasts over the forbidden BBC. Ronald Golding, a former RAF pilot who was briefly Churchill’s detective after the war, said: “After one of those speeches, we wanted the Germans to come.”

TheQuestion: Achievement

Churchill himself said “nothing surpasses 1940,” and we must look there for his greatest accomplishment—there, and not the glorious victory years later. Churchill didn’t win the Second World War. Winning took the combined resources of the Empire/Commonwealth, Russia and America. His biggest achievement was not losing it.

And it was, as the old Duke of Wellington said of Waterloo, “a damn close-run thing.” By June 1940, many thought the wisest course was coming to terms with Germany. Churchill resisted, and won them over. “If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.” His colleagues rose and cheered, thumping him on the back. All possibility of making peace with Germany vanished. Promotion for the upcoming film “Darkest Hour” says the movie will for the first time disclose why Churchill fought on. The reasons have been plain since 1940.

A 19th Century Man…

The journalist Charles Krauthammer contemplated events had Churchill not been there,. Hitler, he said, “would have achieved what no other tyrant, not even Napoleon, had ever achieved: mastery of Europe. Civilization would have descended into a darkness the likes of which it had never known.” And Krauthammer eloquently describes the singularity of Churchill’s achievement:

The great movements that underlie history—the development of science, industry, culture, social and political structures—are undeniably powerful, almost determinant. Yet every once in a while, a single person arises without whom everything would be different….Churchill was, of course, not sufficient in bringing victory, but he was uniquely necessary—he then immediately rose to warn prophetically against Nazism’s sister barbarism, Soviet communism.

Churchill is now disparaged for not sharing our multicultural sensibilities. His disrespect for the suffrage movement, his disdain for Gandhi, his resistance to decolonization are undeniable. But that kind of criticism is akin to dethroning Lincoln as the greatest of 19th century Americans because he shared many of his era’s appalling prejudices. In essence, the rap on Churchill is that he was a 19th century man parachuted into the 20th. But is that not precisely to the point? It took a 19th century man—traditional in habit, rational in thought, conservative in temper—to save the 20th century from itself.

…in a Thoroughly Modern Century

The story of the 20th century is a story of revolution wrought by thoroughly modern men: Hitler, Stalin, Mao and above all Lenin, who invented totalitarianism out of Marx’s cryptic and inchoate communism. And it is the story of the modern intellectual, from Ezra Pound to Jean-Paul Sartre, seduced by these modern men of politics and, grotesquely, serving them.

The uniqueness of the 20th century lies not in its science but in its politics. The 20th century was no more scientifically gifted than the 19th, with its Gauss, Darwin, Pasteur, Maxwell and Mendel—all plowing, by the way, less-broken scientific ground than the 20th. No. The originality of the 20th surely lay in its politics. It invented the police state and the command economy, mass mobilization and mass propaganda, mechanized murder and routinized terror—a breathtaking catalog of political creativity. And the 20th is a single story because history saw fit to lodge the entire episode in a single century.

Totalitarianism turned out to be a cul-de-sac. It came and went. It has a beginning and an end, 1917 and 1991, a run of 75 years. That is our story. And who is the hero of that story? Who slew the dragon? Yes, it was the ordinary man, the taxpayer, the grunt who fought and won the wars. It was America and its allies. And it was the great leaders: Roosevelt, de Gaulle, Adenauer, Truman, John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan. But above all, victory required one man without whom the fight would have been lost at the beginning. It required Winston Churchill.

See also 

National Winston Churchill Day 2016

“I was, I think, the first in this House to suggest, in November 1949, recognition of the Chinese Communists….I thought that it would be a good thing to have diplomatic representation. But if you recognise anyone it does not necessarily mean that you like him. We all, for instance, recognise the Rt Hon Gentleman, the Member for Ebbw Vale.”*  —Winston S. Churchill, 1 July 1952.

On President Obama’s December 17th announcement restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba, a colleague writes: “Finally we’ll have access to truly great healthcare.”

“Churchill’s True Greatness: Lessons for Today”

Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar Program

This year marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of Churchill becoming prime minister in 1940, and the fiftieth anniversary of his death in 1965. At Denver, the Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar examined Churchill’s extraordinary statesmanship and the lessons that may be drawn from his example today.

Monday, April 20th

5:30 p.m.: Reception

7:00 p.m.: Dinner

8:00 p.m.: “Why Americans Should Remember Churchill,” Charles Krauthammer, columnist and author, Things That Matter.

CK in 2011: “How do you go from Walter Mondale to Fox News? The answer is short and simple. I was young once … It is true that I’m a psychiatrist in remission. People ask me the difference [between psychiatry] and what I do in Washington and the answer is rather simple. In both lines of work I deal every day with people who have delusions of grandeur. The only difference is that here in Washington these deluded have access to nuclear weapons.”

Tuesday morning, April 21st

9:30 a.m.: “The Art of Being Winston Churchill,” Barry Singer, author, Churchill Style.

10:30 a.m.: “Churchill as a Defender of Constitutionalism,” Larry P. Arnn, President, Hillsdale College and author, Churchill’s Trial (2015).

12:00 lunch: “Churchill in His Own Words,” Richard M. Langworth, Senior Research Fellow, Hillsdale College; editor, Churchill By Himself.

Tuesday afternoon

1:30 p.m.: “Lessons from Churchill’s Great Contemporaries,” James W. Muller, University of Alaska; editor of new editions of Winston Churchill’s  Great Contemporaries, Thoughts and Adventures, My Early Life and The River War.

2:30 p.m.: “Churchill and the Historians,” Andrew Roberts, author, Masters and Commanders, Napoleon The Great and Churchill: Walking with Destiny.

2018: “Walking with Destiny is a masterpiece—the finest single Churchill volume you can hope to read. To paraphrase Simon Schama on Gilbert’s volumes, it is a ‘Churchilliad,’ and Andrew Roberts is its Bard.”

Related reading

The Denver seminar was representative of the commitment to an immortal memory by Hillsdale College. Visit www.hillsdale.edu for further examples and the links below.

“Churchill Qualities: Leadership, Judgment, Humanity,” 2017.

“Churchill Now: A Life Worth Contemplating in the Digital Age,” 2022.

“D-Day +80: National Celebrations, Eighty Years On,” 2024.

“If You Can Meet with Triumph and Disaster…Charles Krauthammer 1950-2018,” 2018.

“No Cutlet Uncooked: Andrew Roberts’ Superb Biography,” 2018.