Preview: The Splendid and The Vile: How One Leader Can Change The World
What the choice of Churchill as PM in WW2 tells us about the leader we need today.
In The Splendid and The Vile, Eric Larson describes the surprising appointment of Winston Churchill as Prime Minister in the early days of the war. Though his fame is all-pervasive today, there was a time when he was not only less known but also criticized for earlier decisions. The tale of his early struggles and the strength of his character make an epic story – one that changed the world in 1940.
This is a Substack community of behind-the-headlines explorers who would be very interested in this, and in fact one of our members who read the book, DeduceMoi, brought up the question of where can we find such a leader today, with the walls of crises closing in again.
In this article we will lay out the portions of Lawson’s book re-tracing the Churchill story, to highlight the characteristics that we need to be on the lookout for in a post-November world…i.e. a world beyond this coming election, which we are assuming Biden will win. If he doesn’t win, we will have an even more pressing need for a Churchill-type figure.
Glancing over the narrative so see the mountain tops that were the keys to Churchill’s character:
The uniquely unpredictable magic that was Churchill, was his ability to transform “the despondent misery of disaster into a grimly certain stepping stone to ultimate victory.”
The Prime Minister provided leadership of such outstanding quality that people almost reveled in the dangers of the situation and gloried in standing alone.
He understood the anguish of what he was doing and wept.
The three attributes: He looked ahead and clearly laid out the future in terms of certain success, he made people feel privileged to be part of an heroic endeavor, and he was emotionally wrapped up in their pain, feeling deeply the wounds of his people.
He was a poet as well as a prophet; an artist as well as a scientist.
In the future, we will be looking for a leader with exactly these qualities.
Neville Chamberlain realized by May 1940 that he had no choice but to resign. France was being invaded, Poland and Norway had fallen, and one of his MP’s had called on him to resign, using the words of Oliver Cromwell: “In the name of God, go!”
Chamberlain urged Lord Halifax to take the job. Halifax seemed more stable than Churchill, less likely to lead Britain into some new catastrophe. King George VI agreed, and considered Halifax “the obvious man.” Halifax, who doubted his own ability to lead in a time of war, did not want the job.
Then Chamberlain stunned the King: he recommended Churchill. It was a surprising choice.
John Colville had the inside story. He had been Assistant Private Secretary to Chamberlain, and carried on in that role with Churchill. He had liked and respected Chamberlain, and feared what might happen now that Churchill was in power. He saw only chaos ahead. He considered Churchill to be capricious and meddlesome, inclined toward dynamic action in every direction at once. Colville kept diaries that have become a starring witness for us to those times.
King George VI told his own diary, “I cannot yet think of Winston as P.M.”
Halifax, though newly reappointed as foreign secretary, was also skeptical of Churchill and the wild energy he seemed likely to bring to 10 Downing, the P.M.’s residence. Halifax’ nickname for Churchill was “Pooh,” after the A. A. Milne character Winnie-the–Pooh.
There was no question that Churchill was a character, unafraid to imprint his signature upon the world.
He insisted on taking two baths every day. Churchill would wander the halls wearing a red dressing gown, a helmet, and slippers with pom-poms. General Brooke recalled one night when Churchill, at 2:15 A.M., suggested that everyone present retire to the great hall for sandwiches. “He had the gramophone turned on,” wrote Brooke, “and, in the many-colored dressing-gown, with a sandwich in one hand and water-cress in the other, he trotted round and round the hall, giving occasional little skips to the tune of the gramophone.” At intervals as he rounded the room he would stop “to release some priceless quotation or thought.” During one such pause, Churchill likened a man’s life to a walk down a passage lined with closed windows. “As you reach each window, an unknown hand opens it and the light it lets in only increases by contrast the darkness of the end of the passage.” He danced on.
In Berlin, meanwhile, Hitler and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels joked about a newly published English biography of Churchill that revealed many of his idiosyncrasies, including his penchant for wearing pink silk underwear, working in the bathtub, and drinking throughout the day. “He dictates messages in the bath or in his underpants; a startling image which the Führer finds hugely amusing,” Goebbels wrote in his diary on Saturday. “He sees the English Empire as slowly disintegrating. Not much will be salvageable.”
Then began the re-appraisal, as Churchill rose to the occasion.
Churchill seemed unfazed by the gravest news, and this caused a warming in Colville’s attitude toward his new employer. In his diary, Colville wrote, “Whatever Winston’s shortcomings, he seems to be the man for the occasion. His spirit is indomitable and even if France and England should be lost, I feel he would carry on the crusade himself with a band of privateers.”
Speaking to his ministers, he warned about the impending debacle in France and conceded that even he had briefly considered negotiating a peace agreement. But now, he said: “I am convinced that every man of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. 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.”
The ministers slapped his back and shouted their approval. Churchill was startled, and relieved. “He was quite magnificent,” wrote one minister, Hugh Dalton. “The man, and the only man we have, for this hour.”
Here, as in other speeches, Churchill demonstrated a striking trait: his knack for making people feel loftier, stronger, and, above all, more courageous.
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” That Churchillian line is one of the most-quoted lines in the English language, and perfectly sums up the attitude to the RAF. It took time to grow. Like many other diarists of the era, Colville made no reference to the line in his diary; he wrote, later, that “it did not strike me very forcibly at the time.” Churchill’s thoughts grew inside you.
When Churchill was inspecting bomb damage, he came to a group of dispirited people looking over what remained of their homes. One woman shouted, “When are we going to bomb Berlin, Winnie?” Churchill whirled, shook his fist and walking stick, and snarled, “You leave that to me!” At this, the mood of the crowd abruptly changed, as witnessed by a government employee named Samuel Battersby. “Morale rose immediately,” he wrote. “Everyone was satisfied and reassured.”
As his train departed from the neighbourhood, Churchill waved at the crowd from the windows, and kept waving until the train was out of sight. Then, reaching for a newspaper, he sat back and raised the paper to mask his tears. “They have such confidence,” he said. “It is a grave responsibility.”
His unique magic was his ability to transform misery of disaster into “a grimly certain stepping stone to ultimate victory.”
…and thus the story unfolds, to a conclusion that I will share with all, because it is the hinge of our coming election and beyond:
Having a leader of that calibre is vital for America today. It faces the last desperate charge of a cult of White fascists who operate under the MAGA banner. Their main banner is “abortion”, knowing that the story of abortion is not one of health care, but of control over a human body – the ultimate freedom or slavery; everything else in this election is just an ‘issue’. For decades, restricting access to abortion has also exacerbated deep-seated inequalities in America.
The movement crystallizes around abortion access and women’s rights to control their own bodies. The argument is framed in religious terms: If you got an abortion, you were going to Hell. The Roe decision helped women feel as if they were finally full participants in society like never before. The end of Roe is the first time we have seen a major civil rights protection taken away, but if it succeeds it will not be the last.
The United States ranks the worst of all wealthy nations on the metric of pregnancy-related death. It also represents the rare country to be going backward, to be enacting more restrictions while other nations are largely expanding legal abortion access.
This election is the last stand of the anti-liberal; the last hurrah of the Confederates in Richmond and the Klan marching through Washington in 1926 and the MAGA chest-thumpers on the Capitol. The demographic numbers are closing in on MAGA-world; they will never have another chance.
The story of abortion is one of health care, but also of so much more. For decades, restricting access to abortion has also exacerbated deep-seated inequalities in America.
There is more in the full story, which I hope you will read. And thanks once again to our colleague DeduceMoi, for his vital question.
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Barry, thanks for the mentions, much appreciated. I've been doing a deeper dive on Churchill and WW2 since I commented on them last here on your channel and here's a few more interesting facts. He was 66 when he became Prime Minister and was 71 when he lost that job to the opposition in 1945 after five years of all out war while working day and night six or seven days a week.
Very overweight, a daily cigar smoker, and a heavy drinker, many around the world thought he was too old then as he took a daily nap for an hour every day, always after his second bath, and often preferred to work from his bed or the tub, a whiskey or a cigar often in hand. Luckily, he chewed on them more than smoked them. He loved to stay up very late into the wee hours with friends, often working very late, and today would be called an elderly night owl and a regular party animal.
However, after leading the opposition party in Parliament for six more years he was elected PM once again in 1951 at the ripe old age of 77 and led the UK for four more years until age 81, at the dawn of the Soviet "Iron Curtain", which was coined by him while the Cold War was in full swing. In those years he was also the main British champion of building a United States of Europe along with a handful of his peers like the French diplomat and industrialist Jean Monnet on the Continent, and the beginnings of the EU were then born. He was also a staunch believer in the United Nations mission.
At 81, after being the PM for two terms and leading the House opposition in the interim for six more years, he then went back to being the opposition leader and served in the House until he was 90. A 103 year old D-Day veteran told Joe Biden this weekend "Don't get old" but it seemed to work very well for Winston Churchill 70 plus years ago when new medicines, medical technology, and nutritional supplements simply did not exist.
The best portrayal of him on film is by the phenomenal actor Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour (2017) now streaming on Netflix and Amazon. He perfected his speech patterns, walk, and mannerisms and is a joy to watch explode upon the screen. I can't recommend it enough as a companion to Larson's Splendid and the Vile, a truly wonderful read.
While searching for the next Churchill to help lead us out of the seemingly impossible political mess we are now in, perhaps we should check the retirement homes, the local golf courses, or possibly the nearest cigar bar for an energetic but paunchy old chap or lady, preferably a veteran with a ton of life experience in overcoming adversity, a passion for inspiring other people to rise up and fight the good fight, keep the faith, and to keep on keeping on.