DECEMBER 27, 2024 – This evening I finished watching Darkest Hour, directed by Joe Wright and featuring Gary Oldman in the role of Winston Churchill. Oldman won an Oscar for Best Actor for his extraordinary performance in this historical drama. I’d read quite a lot about Churchill—his harrowing experiences as a soldier and war correspondent during the Second Boer War; his entry into politics; his disastrous record (think Gallipoli) as First Lord of the Admiralty; his multiple cabinet positions in the governments of Asquith, Lloyd George, and Baldwin; his “Wilderness Years” of the 1930s, when he was out of government but railed unceasingly against the rise of militarism in Nazi Germany; his re-appointment as First Lord of the Admiralty in Neville Chamberlain’s government; and Churchill’s role as wartime prime minister from May 1940 until the end of the war five years later. But the film—this film—provided a superb and objective living, breathing portrayal of Sir Winston, probably the most consequential British P.M. in a long line of them—before and since.
When I was growing up, my dad worshipped Churchill. He read every page of Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples and his six-volume history of World War II. Dad often talked glowingly about how “Churchill won the war against the Nazis.” When Dad got his hands on an LP album of Churchill’s most famous speeches, he sat and listened to them intently as if the prime minister were there in the room speaking to Dad.
As I would later learn, however, Churchill had his personal and policy faults. And despite his role in the Allied victory and extreme popularity during the war, his party lost the first post-war election, whereupon he lost his position as prime minister.
The central tension of the film erupts over the opposition leaders push for peace negotiations with Hitler through the offices of Mussolini. Churchill, of course, is the leading pugilist in government. For years he’d been warning that Hitler could not be trusted; that Chamberlain’s appeasement policy was misguided and bound to lead to more aggression by Nazi Germany.
By May 1940 the Germans had the upper hand militarily. They’d subjugated Poland, subdued Denmark and Norway, bombed Holland into submission, invaded Belgium and were now rolling across France. The entire British Expeditionary Force had been pushed north to the Channel and was in danger of being completely wiped out. The prospects for Great Britain were dire.
That was the situation when Churchill became prime minister—and the backdrop for the campaign led by Chamberlain and Viscount Halifax to seek a negotiated peace with Hitler.
Knowing how the story of WW II ended, it’s easy for us to shake our heads at the appeasers and cheer the bellicose rhetoric of the prime minister. But at the time, no one knew for sure how matters would turn out. The military reports from France in May 1940 were frightful. There existed the very real possibility that once France capitulated, Hitler would strike against Great Britain, invade the island nation, and send it into the new Dark Ages. “Be rational,” the appeasers said to Churchill, who could be mercurial, rather emotional, and drink more than was good for a person.
Honestly, as I watched the accurate portrayal of Churchill’s quirks and eccentricities and habit of unleashing his mouth imprudently, I actually thought of similar traits in our president-elect. With that in mind, I tried to put myself in the room with Churchill’s war cabinet in late May 1940. If I’d been privy to the dire military intelligence coming out of France; if I knew what hell the Germans were likely to wreak upon the British in the face of resistance; if I knew that without entering into peace talks immediately, all 300,000 British soldiers in Dunkirk would likely be massacred, leaving the homeland wide open and defenseless . . . If I knew that the overwhelming odds were against us, which side would I have taken? Would I have signed on with the “rationalists,” the appeasers, who included the King? They were far from being traitors. They were simply horrified that the unspeakable losses of WW I were about to be re-lived by the current generations.
Or would I have cheered on, at that point, the cigar-smoking, brandy-smelling prime minister who talked tough—almost out of his mind tough—who didn’t seem to care about sacrificing the 4,000 British soldiers holding down the fort at Calais? And what if I’d known that he’d openly lied to the British public in his first radio speech as prime minister? What if I’d known that his sanguine depiction of French and British resistance against the Germans in France was a great big fib? I mean, with a war-monger at the helm, the same crazy guy whose name was closely tied to the disaster at Gallipoli in the previous war, would I have said, “Sure thing! Damn the torpedoes; full steam ahead! Let’s make a blood pact right here, right now! Let’s agree to fall on our swords if we have to. Rah! Rah! Rah! Up with Winston, down with Adolf!”
To be totally honest, without yet knowing how the Holocaust would unfold, I’m not sure how, as a British subject, which side I would have chosen in May 1940—the King, Chamberlain and Halifax or . . . the scary Mr. Churchill. In fact, there were times when Churchill himself questioned his own position and wondered if he had a duty to sue for peace.
When he was close to capitulating to the appeasers, Churchill was paid a visit by the King. The King had come to Churchill to say, “I will support you.” King George VI—yes, the stutterer—also gave Churchill wise advice: “Ask the people what they think you should do.” Churchill did just that. Without any handlers and without their knowledge, the prime minister boarded the Underground and mingled informally with everyday folks. He learned in a hurry that they had spines of steel. Churchill now had an ally in his king and the full support of the public.
There would be no peace talks, no negotiations; only a fight for total victory. We know how the story ended.
It’s difficult to say how historians a hundred years from now will treat Winston Churchill, but they would do well to remember what Viscount Halifax said after Churchill’s famous “We shall fight on the beaches” speech in the House of Commons: “Winston just mobilized the English Language and sent it into battle.” If ever “words mattered,” it was in the rhetorical power of Sir Winston Churchill.
If you don’t have the time or inclination to digest Churchill’s masterfully self-serving but brilliantly written six-volume history of World War II, at least steal a couple of hours to watch the movie, Darkest Hour. You’ll learn a whole lot about Churchill and a perhaps bit about yourself, as well.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
