One of the Great Hinges of World History: Wednesday History
What would today’s post-Nazi Europe and post-Nazi world (if we had been lucky) look like if not for Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill’s ascent to the Prime Ministership of the British Empire in May 1940? It surely would not be our post-New Deal Order post-modern liberal world, would it?…
Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill (1940): In the United Kingdom House of Commons, May 13 <https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1940/may/13/his-majestys-government-1>: ‘I beg to move:
“That this House welcomes the formation of a Government representing the united and inflexible resolve of the nation to prosecute the war with Germany to a victorious conclusion”.
On Friday evening last I received His Majesty’s Commission to form a new Administration. It was the evident wish and will of Parliament and the nation that this should be conceived on the broadest possible basis and that it should include all parties, both those who supported the late Government and also the parties of the Opposition. I have completed the most important part of this task. A War Cabinet has been formed of five Members, representing, with the Opposition Liberals, the unity of the nation. The three party Leaders have agreed to serve, either in the War Cabinet or in high executive office. The three Fighting Services have been filled. It was necessary that this should be done in one single day, on account of the extreme urgency and rigour of events.
A number of other positions, key positions, were filled yesterday, and I am submitting a further list to His Majesty to-night. I hope to complete the appointment of the principal Ministers during to-morrow. The appointment of the other Ministers usually takes a little longer, but I trust that, when Parliament meets again, this part of my task will be completed, and that the administration will be complete in all respects.
I considered it in the public interest to suggest that the House should be summoned to meet to-day. Mr. Speaker agreed, and took the necessary steps, in accordance with the powers conferred upon him by the Resolution of the House. At the end of the proceedings to-day, the Adjournment of the House will be proposed until Tuesday, 21st May, with, of course, provision for earlier meeting, if need be. The business to be considered during that week will be notified to Members at the earliest opportunity.
I now invite the House, by the Motion which stands in my name, to record its approval of the steps taken and to declare its confidence in the new Government.
To form an Administration of this scale and complexity is a serious undertaking in itself, but it must be remembered that we are in the preliminary stage of one of the greatest battles in history, that we are in action at many other points in Norway and in Holland, that we have to be prepared in the Mediterranean, that the air battle is continuous and that many preparations, such as have been indicated by my hon. Friend below the Gangway, have to be made here at home.
In this crisis I hope I may be pardoned if I do not address the House at any length to-day. I hope that any of my friends and colleagues, or former colleagues, who are affected by the political reconstruction, will make allowance, all allowance, for any lack of ceremony with which it has been necessary to act.
I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering.
You ask, what is our policy?
I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.
That is our policy.
You ask, what is our aim?
I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realised; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal.
But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, “Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.”
Cf. also the relevant works of John Lukacs:
Blood, Toil, Tears & Sweat: Winston Churchill & the Speech that Saved Civilization <https://archive.org/details/bloodtoiltearssw0000luka>,
Five Days in London, May 1940 <https://archive.org/details/fivedaysinlondon00luka>,
The Duel: The Eighty-Day Struggle Between Churchill & Hitler <https://archive.org/details/dueleightydaystr0000luka>,
The Last European War, September 1939/December 1941 <https://archive.org/details/lasteuropeanwar00john>,
Churchill: Visionary. Statesman. Historian <https://archive.org/details/churchillvisiona0000luka_j9z5>,
A Short History of the Twentieth Century <https://archive.org/details/shorthistoryoftw0000luka>.
I do think it is important to take a clear view of that moment back more than three-quarters of a century ago.
I recall being most strikingly reminded of this importance back in April 2022, when I opened my New York Review of Books to find—by some extraordinary perversion of editorial judgment—that they had decided to publish works that went the extra mile to provide a little support to Vladimir Putin in his mobilization of Muscovy ‘Rus to attempt to conquer Kyiv ‘Rus.
I had a reaction then:
J. Bradford DeLong (2022): <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/tankies-gonna-tank-and->: ‘What impels someone to sneer at Volodymyr Zelenskyy in these times? And what compels the New York Review of Books to publish it?
“Tankies gonna tank” is a truism:
Tariq Ali: The Churchill Cult: ‘The English cult of Winston Churchill… near-absurdist… backlash from anticolonial critics… received a further boost in March this year…. Russian president Vladimir Putin was assigned the role of Hitler. Zelensky took the part of Churchill. Members of Parliament from all four parties drooled with pleasure. NATO-land may have conferred a temporary sainthood on Zelensky, but we should not overlook how misplaced his analogy is. The spinal cord of the Third Reich was, after all, crushed at Stalingrad and Kursk by the determination and courage of the Red Army (in which many Ukrainians fought, in far greater numbers than those who deserted to Hitler). The strength of the US war industry did the rest…
LINK: <https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2022/04/18/the-churchill-cult-by-jingo/>
I really do wish I had more of an insight into the… peculiar psychology… that leads somebody today to sneer at Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians.
There was, after all, at least a kind of dishonorable grandeur in being a stooge for Stalin—if you sincerely thought that he was a brutal and unworthy standard-bearer for what would become a real utopia sometime in the future; or that you had to choose between totalitarianisms because liberalism’s day was over, and Stalin was a lesser evil than Hitler.
There is neither honor nor grandeur in being a useful idiot for Vladimir Putin.
All honor to the soldiers of the Red Army who won the decisive battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, and all honor to the workers of Magnitogorsk who built their tanks, and to the peasants enserfed on their collective farms who fed them. But you have to either be lying or have worked hard to keep yourself ignorant to think that “the spinal cord of the Third Reich was… crushed at Stalingrad and Kursk…. The strength of the US war industry did the rest.”
Up to the end of 1942, Nazi war industry produced 8600 medium and heavy tanks. Thereafter they produced 29,500. Yes, the Nazis lost about 1000 tanks at Stalingrad and Kursk each, but the Nazi army was still far more deadly after those battles than before.
Anyone even slightly well-informed about World War II in Europe who is not a liar says that all three of the major allies were essential. Without Russia, there was no path to victory for Britain and the U.S. (save, perhaps, for the one that turned Germany into a sea of radioactive glass). Without the U.S., it is very difficult to see any path to victory at all for Britain and Russia. And without Britain’s holding out from summer 1940 to summer 1941, Russia cannot hold when the Nazis attack, and the Americans never get into the war in Europe at all for they have no place to stage their army and air force to.
Without Churchill, Britain does not hold out.
But we did have Churchill, and we did have a British Labour Party, headed by Clement Attlee, that was strongly anti-fascist and insisted that Churchill had the government, rather than someone who had not been an out-and-out opponent of appeasement. The British Labour Party was right.
Churchill was a great asshole, but he was the asshole that the world needed in the summer of 1940.