Hitler and Churchill : Secrets of Leadership (9780297865254) by Roberts Andrew

Author:Roberts, Andrew
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780297865254
Publisher: Hachette Book Group USA

Plain speaking from Churchill

It is hard to conceive how Hitler’s new British adversary, Winston Churchill, could have refused to seek peace terms with the Nazis if the entire British Expeditionary Force had been captured at Dunkirk. As it was, Churchill turned the successful rescue of the Allied Army into a morale-boosting triumph in adversity. Being right about Hitler and the Nazis might have got Churchill to Downing Street in May 1940, but in order to stay there he needed to invent an entirely new kind of leadership – one that effectively abolished logic and appealed to the heart rather than to the mind. For the simple fact was that although Churchill had to tell the British people that the war was winnable, he himself did not have the first idea of how that could possibly be achieved. In a series of uplifting speeches he made a number of assertions about how the war might be won, each more improbable than the last.

He was imploring – as only remarkable leaders can, and only in extraordinary times – the public to feel rather than to calculate. If he had been proved wrong, he would have had to face the people’s wrath for grievously misleading them. In the first speech he made as prime minister, in the House of Commons on 13 May 1940, Churchill was disarmingly honest when he admitted that he had ‘nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat’. But he went on to offer much more than that when he said: ‘You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: 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.’

By the time he spoke publicly again, six days later, the Germans had broken through the French defences to the north of the Maginot Line, and further suspension of belief was needed on behalf of the British people before they could imagine how they could possibly eventually prevail. Churchill did hold out hope for the French Army, saying: ‘We may look with confidence to the stabilisation of the Front in France, and to the general engagement of the masses, which will enable the qualities of the French and British soldiers to be matched squarely against those of their adversaries. For myself, I have invincible confidence in the French Army and its leaders.’

It did not stay invincible, however, because only ten days later the British Expeditionary Force was being evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk. But by showing indomitable courage himself, Churchill effectively shamed the British – who had for the past twenty years been zealous appeasers of Germany, and who had embraced the Munich agreement as enthusiastically as they had rejected him – into being heroic. His speeches assumed that they were actually looking forward to the coming attacks on the civilian population:

There will be many men, and many women, in this island who when the ordeal comes

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