Winston S. Churchill (1) (1874–1965)

At the end of the Great War, the victorious Allies dismembered the Austro-Hungarian and Turkish Empires, and buried Germany beneath a mountain of restrictions so heavy that she could never again menace the European order. Within two decades, like a dark Phoenix, Nazi Germany forever shattered that order with overwhelming force and shocking brutality. What happened?

In this first volume of Winston Churchill’s history of the Second World War, Churchill offers tremendously fascinating show more insights, both personal and historical, into how the great democracies frittered away their victory to the brink of national suicide and the sunset of the democratic ideal itself. Authors of memoirs naturally cast themselves in the best possible light, but Churchill has the unique advantage of being proven right about Hitler and the Nazis. As the voice in the wilderness whose warnings went unheeded for many years, his narrative of the interwar years is well worth reading to understand the descent of Western Europe’s democracies from total victory to total war. show less

Winston Churchill’s first book. Churchill got himself attached as a war correspondent to a force sent to “chastise” border tribes; an interesting accomplishment since he was on active duty with another unit and already had a reputation for reporting that was less than fully complementary to the military. Rumor has it that this assignment was accomplished by his mother’s bedroom negotiations with commanding officer Sir Bindon Blood. Perhaps; Churchill certainly is more complimentary show more to Blood than he is to Kitchener in The River War. Relatively straightforward accounts of action on the Northwest Frontier. Mullahs rouse the local tribes; skirmishes with garrisons ensue, an expeditionary force gets organized to “teach them a lesson”; it does so (it doesn’t take, though). Contains the famous quote “There is nothing in life so exhilarating as to be shot at without result”, although it’s applied to a cavalry unit Churchill observes returning from action, not to himself personally. Churchill’s politics are interesting; he’s contemptuous of home politicians who don’t understand the realities of war on the frontier, particularly how civilian casualties are unavoidable since there aren’t any civilians. However, Churchill is sympathetic to native units in the Indian Army, suggesting that the Victoria Cross be awarded regardless of race and that British and native officers be treated equally (he suggests that since they meet as equals on the polo field they should meet as equals elsewhere). A short, quick read; much of the book is appendices consisting of dispatches mentioning various officers (this, of course, is back when being “mentioned in despatches” was a major boost to promotion chances). show less

I have a fondness for ornate, old-fashioned pen-portrait essays like those to be found in Great Contemporaries by Winston Churchill. A great benefit of the book is that Churchill knew many of the historical and political figures he discusses personally, and so such essays can be coloured by interesting anecdote and personal insight.

Articles on his contemporaries from British politics naturally form the bulk of the book (former prime ministers and the like). At first glance, these look less show more interesting, but the personal side of things Churchill is able to give provides them with some uniqueness and colour. However, it does also mean Churchill ends up writing more like a politician than an essayist – safely, diplomatically, and with an eye on posterity for himself.

There's a lot of magnanimity in the book, not only for Churchill's domestic allies and opponents, but also, surprisingly, for the likes of Kaiser Wilhelm and Adolf Hitler. Churchill excuses the Kaiser much of the blame for the start of World War One and, writing in 1935, credits Hitler for Germany's revival and suggests that, while the outlook is bleak and the character sinister, he may yet prove to be an asset to his country and the world.

Of course, we now know that not to be the case, but the excessive political even-handedness of the pieces does limit their interest today (an entertaining condemnation of Trotsky is an outlier in the book), for Churchill is not necessarily giving us his full views. He writes well, even if he overdoes it sometimes with the lofty prose we know from his wartime speeches (an essay on King George V lays it on very thick), but nor is he at the level of bold mythologising we can find in William Bolitho's Twelve Against the Gods – a gold standard for this sort of thing.

Ultimately, Great Contemporaries is a dated book that could have retained a stature if it had not so effectively restrained itself. By enabling Churchill's caution, diplomacy and indulgence, rather than allowing his boldness, humour and energy to flourish, the book maintains itself for modern readers largely as a curiosity (particularly for that Hitler essay) rather than a commentary. show less

Winston Churchill closes his 1930 memoirs with the line that, in September 1908, he “married and lived happily ever afterward.” The irony of this sentence works at two levels. First, there’s a roguish twinkle in the authorial eye since he and we both know that the Great War awaited those newlyweds. Second, we alone know what Churchill at the time could not: that his greatest adventure, and his place in history, lay ten years ahead in the shadow of the swastika.

We can, of course, show more forgive Churchill a certain complaisance. At age 55, he had already outlived his father by nearly a decade and hadn’t expected to live even this long. He was out of office and politically isolated with no reason to expect a twilight revival. His best days were behind him, and this was as good a time as any to reminisce about a youth spent trotting the globe in defense of Queen and Empire.

That perhaps is the best way to understand “My Early Life,” which is otherwise a book about nothing. I mean this in the most complimentary way possible. Apart from some sophistical but charming digressions about his flirtation with atheism (which he rejected in favor of holding head and heart in a pleasant tension), Churchill has no agenda beyond jotting down the best memories of an adventurous life. The result is a book that is light, breezy, witty, and takes itself none too seriously.

Of course, in our decolonized and decolonizing era, the murderous underbelly of the British Empire is hard to miss. Young Churchill’s military jaunts in Cuba, India, the Sudan, and South Africa run alongside or through a lot of dead locals. Without his later service in rallying Britain against Hitler, no doubt he would be remembered (if at all) as a quintessential Victorian never quite able to understand why the rest of the world should put up such a fuss about being managed well.

That’s not to say that he doesn’t recognize the ironies of empire, and this is one of the book’s graces. Beneath the rakish style is a recognition that Europeans aren’t always all they’re cracked up to be. For instance, Churchill observes that the “genial influence” of modern rifles on the Indian frontier allowed local tribes to kill each other more efficiently and thus improved “the respect which [they] entertained for Christian civilization.” He writes not as a secret revolutionary, but as a committed imperial who is nevertheless willing to puncture the fiction that empire’s side effects are unfailingly benign.

This dry British humor runs the length of the book, and Churchill is not averse to aiming that wit at his own follies. He’s the hero of his own story, but is more likely than not to stumble accidentally into triumph. As a student, he failed at classical languages and dropped into the study of English, turning him into one of history’s great orators. He attributes his political career to his celebrity status as an escaped P.O.W., but that escape succeeded only because he chanced to knock on the door of the only British sympathizer within 20 miles. Time and again Churchill ruminates that we never can anticipate or control life’s twists, concluding that fate and free will are just two sides of the same coin.

I couldn’t help but contrast Churchill’s boyish and self-aware realism with the overweening arrogance of Adolf Hitler as revealed in “Mein Kampf,” published five years prior. Where the one author thinks himself fading into the sunset, the other promotes himself as humanity’s new dawn. One is suffused with wry amusement at himself, the other with towering self-regard. One recoils from the bloody jaws of industrial war, and the other hungers to close them on the world’s neck. One rides fate to a grand adventure, and the other seeks to master it. The divergence between these books — not just in content, but in tone — reminds me that you’re usually better off not with the leader consumed by cosmic destiny, but with the one who frankly finds it all a bit funny. show less