Winston's War

Good Read

WINSTON'S WAR IS NOT a novel about World War II. It is hardly even a novel about Winston Churchill. It ends when Churchill becomes Prime Minister. 

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It is rather a lesson that is oft repeated in history, never forgotten, simply ignored out of fear. There are always bullies. They haunt children's playgrounds. They infect workplaces. They lurk on street corners. They rape, murder, and pillage whole nations. And, all bullies love a peacemaker – an appeaser – who believes that the best way of handling a bully is by letting them have what they want. Or, maybe reasoning with them is the best course of action. The sad truth, revealed eloquently in Winston's War: A Novel of Conspiracy by Michael Dobbs, is that the peacemakers may be equally responsible for the crimes of the bully. 

If all you know about the prelude to World War II is that Neville Chamberlain negotiated a peace treaty with Adolf Hitler, you are seriously missing this lesson. As Prime Minister of Great Britain, Chamberlain not only sought to compromise with Hitler, but also did everything in his power to prevent Churchill from leading the nation in mounting an effective defense. The most frightening aspect of this story is that he almost succeeded. 

Today's appeasers probably will argue that Chamberlain may have been correct. War, they may aver, is never justified. It only became inevitable when Churchill took the reins of government and Great Britain began to strike back. Maybe Hitler would have been satisfied with simply dominating Europe. It matters not that England promised to stand by Czechoslovakia and then allowed Hitler to annex it. One's honor is a small price to pay for peace, even when Poles died in the hundreds of thousands while England hesitated to keep its word to come to their defense. And, what of Norway, Belgium, and Holland? They were such small countries, no one missed them as they disappeared down the maw of Hitler's gluttony for power. At least, Chamberlain kept England out of war, and he might have succeeded keeping it out of war forever had he persisted in compromising with this evil man.

Look, too, at the price Great Britain paid for defending itself. It lost an empire. It lost hundreds of thousands of its children. Think about it. If Churchill had not interfered, Europe would have been united under Hitler's leadership. The Jewish question would have been resolved for all times. Communism would have been eradicated from the face of the planet. America could not have stood alone once Hitler dominated the rest of the world. By this time, America would have been a socialist paradise. Need you be reminded that Nazism was a socialist movement?

Yes, those who believe in appeasement might well argue with the outcome of Churchill's rise to power. As the author notes in his novel, the appeasers are still among us, still making the same arguments “...such as whether we should appease or confront the forces of terror... how many of today's leaders in Europe and the United States can be found echoing Chamberlain's plaintiff words that their world had been turned upside down by 'a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.'”

Some might argue that we may be excused for missing this lesson of history. We are speaking of events that occurred midway through the last century. However, the lesson was repeated in our own time. 

Look at all the ways we attempted to appease the Soviets. The Truman Doctrine of “containment” was nothing more than a compromise that allowed them to persecute the peoples they had already enslaved. The Nixon Doctrine of “detente” was an elaboration of the Truman Doctrine with the same result. Only the Reagan Doctrine of “confrontation” worked, and the Soviet's will to bully was broken. Curiously, the appeasers argue to this day that Reagan's confrontational policy had nothing to do with the demise of the Soviet Union. They aver that the Soviets, led by Gorbachev, tore down “That Wall” of their own volition. That may be, but I agree with schoolchildren who know that the only effective method of handling bullies is to stand up to them, to confront them, to meet force with overwhelming force.

Beginning of the end of the Berlin Wall

Forgive me for wandering so far afield. Mr. Dobbs, the author of Winston's War did not. He restrained his story to the past and we must infer its implications for the future. However, if it was his purpose to cause a reader to think, he has succeeded with me. He has caused me to reflect on the war that we find ourselves now engaged in. Not just the war with strange people in strange lands, but also, the war for the Republic. 

I can only hope that someone in Congress will rise and utter the same words that helped depose Prime Minister Chamberlain, words uttered centuries before by Oliver Cromwell:

“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you! In the name of God – go!”