Six Months in 1945 by Michael Dobbs

Author:Michael Dobbs
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307960894
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-10-15T21:00:00+00:00

The cheers of the crowds massed outside 10 Downing Street and along Whitehall were ringing in his ears, but Winston Churchill found it difficult to share the popular elation. The man acclaimed as Britain’s greatest wartime leader was exhausted and listless. Papers piled up in his red dispatch boxes. When it came time for his afternoon nap, a couple of marines often had to carry him upstairs to his bedroom in a chair. He told aides that he “doubted if he had the strength to carry on.”

Some Downing Street insiders viewed the prime minister’s lethargy as a function of his personality. Adversity brought out the best in Churchill; victory deprived him of the source of his energy. His generals quipped that “the P.M. can be counted on to score a hundred in a Test Match, but is no good at village cricket.” After five years of spitting defiance at Adolf Hitler, the tough old warrior was temperamentally unsuited for politics as usual. While there was much truth to this diagnosis, his inner turmoil was also a reflection of an increasingly grim international situation. As Churchill saw it, the Nazi menace had been replaced by the Soviet menace. Calamity went hand in hand with victory: Triumph and Tragedy would become the title of the final volume of his war memoir. His private secretary, John Colville, used a Latin phrase as the motto for the era that was just beginning. Bellum in Pace. “War in Peace.”

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