How Churchill Saw the Second World War as a Moral Conflict

Hitler appealed to everything that is darkest in the human heart. Churchill himself appealed to different passions. He summoned the virtues of the British people and helped them find strength within themselves. He sought to elevate rather than to debase; to raise Britons from a desire for security above all to a contemplation of the just and the noble; to embolden them to face sacrifice and death rather than see the armies of evil pound their booted rhythms on the earth.

In Book 2 of  “The Birth of Britain,” Churchill encapsulates the power of 13th century English political developments. Magna Carta began the slow but steady process of the English-speaking peoples toward liberty and the rule of law. Without this necessary document, that “great fire” for representative rule might never have been ignited.

Thirty years ago, we made a day-long visit to the Chartwell library. We were booksellers, and had encountered copies of the books Sir Winston’s son had removed. Invariably they contained a small oval label reading: “From the Library of Sir Winston Churchill.” We were anxious to know their origins, and how they fitted into the original scheme of things at Chartwell’s library.

John Strange Spencer-Churchill (1880-1947) is revealed as a real unsung hero of the family. A better student and more financially stable than his mother or brother, his career as a stockbroker and the family “brains” often staved off financial disaster.

There is no glory in war and no victory in retribution. Each of these leaders could look beyond war to Churchill’s “broad sunlit uplands.” Washington warned against aggravating the Patriot-Loyalist divide lest it destabilize the new nation. Abraham Lincoln took that precept to sublime heights in 1865: “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds.”

The impossible dream of an Anglo-American atomic monopoly was Churchill’s and Roosevelt’s most ambiguous, hubristic, geopolitical legacy.

In a highly technical but well written naval documentary, Buckey reaffirms the long established conclusions of Arthur Marder.