Truth Really Matters

It was January, 1940, a few months after the outbreak of World War 2, when Winston Churchill hosted a dinner party for Harry Hopkins, FDR’s special envoy to Britain.  After dinner Churchill “unfurled his sails” and made his pitch to Hopkins, hoping that the Prime Minister’s passion, conviction, and values would impress not only the envoy, but be conveyed with good effect to the American president.

“We seek no treasure, we seek no territorial gains, we seek only the right of man to be free; we seek his right to worship his God, to lead his life in his own way, secure from persecution.  As the humble laborer returns from his work when the day is done, and sees the smoke curling upward from his cottage home in the serene evening sky, we wish him to know that no rat-a-tat-tat” – here Churchill knocked loudly on the table – “of the secret police upon his door will disturb his leisure or interrupt his rest.”  He went on to insist that Britain desired only government by popular consent, freedom of speech, and equality of everyone in the eyes of the law.  “But war aims other than these we have none.”

Churchill paused and looked at Hopkins intently.  “What will the president say to all this?”

Hopkins’ delay in responding seemed interminable.  It was certainly uncomfortable.  Clocks ticked, the fire hissed in the hearth, candle flames danced.  Finally, in an exaggerated American drawl, Hopkins said, “Well, Mr. Prime Minister, I don’t think the President will give a dam’ for all that.”

Privy Councillor Oliver Lyttelton wrote in his diary that he felt a jolt of anxiety.  Had the PM miscalculated?  “Heavens alive, he thought, “it’s gone wrong . . .”

After another pause, Hopkins drawled, “You see, we’re only interested in seeing that [blankety-blank] Hitler gets licked.”

Laughter convulsed the room.

………………………..

I’ve been a student of WW2 since childhood.  It is clear that Churchill was never a born again Christian,  despite the personal witness and friendship of the famous American preacher, J. Frank Norris, but it is also evident that God used him as an instrument to preserve freedom in what was perhaps history’s darkest time.  The world would look very different today if Great Britain had failed to stand against Hitler in 1940-41.

The anecdote above is recounted in Erik Larson’s 2020 book, The Splendid and the Vile:  A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz.  There are exhaustive biographies of Churchill available; this is not one of them.  Rather, Larson focuses on the personal, daily challenges to his life from May 10, 1940, to May 10, 1941, when the Blitz (German air raids over Britain) culminated in its most massive aerial battle.  In this essay I’ll pull out the nuggets I find notable.

Larson was motivated to write the book when he considered how the events of September 11, 2001 were far more horrific for the residents of New York than for those who watched it unfold on TV.  He thought of the bombings in Britain “and wondered how on earth anyone could have endured it:  fifty-seven consecutive nights of bombing, followed by an intensifying series of nighttime raids over the next six months.  Particularly, how did Winston Churchill and his family and friends cope, while fully expecting an imminent Nazi invasion from sea and sky, possibly with paratroopers dropping into his own garden, tanks in Trafalgar Square, and poison gas wafting over the British beaches.”

On September 3, 1939, when Britain declared war against Germany in response to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, the Brits fully anticipated aerial bombardment and physical invasion.  Church bells went silent, under directives to be used only to signal invasion – paratroopers sighted nearby!  Emergency measures included, “disable and hide your bicycle and destroy your maps.”  If you owned a car, “Remove distributor head and leads and either empty the tank or remove the carburetor.”  Towns took down street signs and maps could not be bought without a police permit.  Farmers placed old cars and trucks in their fields as obstacles against gliders transporting soldiers.  The government issued 35 million gas masks to civilians, who kept them close wherever they went.  Blackout rules  made moonless nights impenetrably dark.

On the day Churchill accepted the PM job, in a private conversation with his bodyguard, Inspector Thompson, Winston expressed concern that his appointment may have come too late.  “But we can only do our best, and give the rest of what we have – whatever there may be left to us.”  The previous PM, Neville Chamberlain, resigned because he had been wrong about everything regarding Hitler, but surprisingly, recommended his nemesis – Churchill – to replace him.

Inwardly Churchill was thrilled with the opportunity – he felt his whole life had been prepared for this moment.  Publicly, he repeatedly declared a raw confidence that Britain would win the war; he knew he must convince his countrymen, his cabinet, his commanders, and most importantly, Franklin D. Roosevelt.  He knew that only the industrial might and manpower of America could overcome and eradicate Hitler and his regime.

The writer, Nella Last, kept diaries throughout the war.  In these early days, she wrote, “If I had to spend my whole life with a man, I’d choose Chamberlain, but I think I would sooner have Mr. Churchill if there was a storm and I was shipwrecked.”

Churchill was the opposite of the staid and deliberate Chamberlain, his reputation flamboyant, electric, and wholly unpredicatable.  He promptly appointed himself minister of defense, a new post overseeing the chiefs of staff who controlled the army, navy, and air force.  He had full responsibility for the war, so he took full control.

When the German blitzkrieg began to overwhelm France, Churchill experienced a deep current of appeasement emanating from the upper echelons of government and society, with calls to make peace with Hitler before Britain could be invaded.  Churchill would have none of this defeatist talk.  If Chamberlain were still in power, Britain may well have caved in the Spring of 1940.

Now, we tend to take for granted the evacuation of the BEF (British Expeditionary Forces) from Dunkirk.  At the time, however, seeing the collapse of both the French army and its will to fight, the entire loss of the BEF was likely and would put the British isles at the mercy of the German army and air force.  An analysis that Churchill embraced indicated that everything depended “on whether our fighter defenses will be able to reduce the scale of attack to reasonable bounds . . . The crux of the whole problem is the air defence of this country.”  With the fall of France, the Luftwaffe would have air bases right across the channel, rather than hundreds of miles away in Germany.

Churchill knew that London would be the primary target.  In a 1934 speech to the House of Commons he called it “the greatest target in the world, a kind of tremendous, fat, valuable cow tied up to attract the beast of prey.”  As PM, he took his cabinet out on the street and said, “Take a good look round.  I expect all these buildings will look very different in two or three weeks’ time.”

Churchill prioritized fighter production, but secondarily bombers – the only means then at hand to bring the war directly to Hitler.  He was determined to reach a point of air supremacy, a goal that seemed impossible early in the war.

Churchill knew that Hitler would try to kill him, figuring that any replacement might be susceptible to negotiation.  He kept a Bren light machine gun in the trunk of his car, vowing that if the Germans came for him, he would take as many as possible with him to the grave.  He also carried a revolver, brandishing it at times.  “You see, Thompson, they will never take me alive!  I will get one or two before they can shoot me down.”  He also kept a cyanide capsule in the cap of his fountain pen.

The personal character of leaders matters enormously in peacetime politics, as we see when America chooses corrupt leaders, not just at the national level, but locally, too.  Does it matter who the local DA is?  How about the mayor and police chief?  In war, character or the lack thereof has awesome consequences.  Larson discusses some of the foibles of the Luftwaffe chief, Hermann Goering.

Goering was initially revered by his senior officers, but they quickly grew disenchanted.  A top fighter pilot, Adolf Galland, clashed with him over tactics.  Goering did not understand the advances in aerial warfare since WW1.  Galland:  “Goering was a man with almost no technical knowledge and no appreciation of the conditions under which modern fighter aircraft fought.”

Critically, Goering hired an incompetent friend to head Luftwaffe intelligence, which included analysis of the British air force.  Beppo Schmid loved to provide Goering with ‘happy news,’ rather than grim reality.  When the British army escaped from France to reconstitute in Britain, Hitler had to rely entirely on the Luftwaffe to break the resistance of the Brits.  Goering finally had his chance for glory after watching the army dominate the ground war in France.

In the dark days leading up to Dunkirk, the appeasement sentiment was at its peak.  Churchill called his cabinet together to give them his perspective:   “If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.”  There was stunned silence, but only for a moment.  Then, unanimously, the cabinet ministers rose and shouted their approval, mobbing him and slapping his back.  Churchill was startled and relieved.

One minister, Hugh Dalton, wrote:  “He was quite magnificent.  The man, and the only man we have, for this hour.”  Churchill had the gift and the fortitude to lift people up, to make them stronger, more courageous.  John Martin wrote that Britons began to see themselves as “protagonists on a vaster scene and as champions of a high and invincible cause, for which the stars in their courses were fighting.”

Are there such leaders among the American elite today?

Despite the success at Dunkirk, Churchill was frustrated that Britain was wholly on the defense.  He wanted to play offense!  Would that Christians today were similarly frustrated at playing defense against attacks on their worldview and on their persons by overreaching government, by schools, and by the culture.  Would that Christians would realize that the Lord Jesus prescribed how to play offense two thousand years ago – the Great Commission is still our mandate.  When we play offense by preaching the Gospel, by passing tracts out to everyone we cross paths with, by speaking up with truth whenever someone in our presence speaks evil, then the Adversary will be on defense, guaranteed.

Churchill began adding red adhesive labels to his directives exhorting “ACTION THIS DAY.”  He fostered a sense of urgency which permeated the British empire.  And he knew that morale matters.  On June 4, the last day of the evacuation he addressed the House of Commons with a speech that still resonates:

“We shall go on to the end.  We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.  We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender—“

As the House roared in approval, Churchill muttered to a colleague nearby, “And . . . we will fight them with the butt end of broken bottles, because that’s bloody well all we’ve got.”  Churchill was always rooted in reality.

In his speech two weeks later he admitted that the “Battle of France” was over, but “I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin.”  Not just the British Empire but all of Christian civilization was at stake.  “The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.  Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war.”

In his climax he exhorted, “If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free, and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands; but if we fail then the whole world, including the United States, and all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more prolonged, by the lights of a perverted science.”  He finished with the memorable thought that if they did their duty and “if the British commonwealth and Empire lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”

None of this was hyperbole.  Sometimes we see ourselves in what we think are hard times.  Nothing in my lifetime (70 years) compares with what free people faced in 1940.  Nevertheless, tyranny connives and lurks and makes beachheads today around the world.  What nations today are not ruled by power-grubbing socialists?  What nations today are friendly to the Gospel and have respect for the Bible and those who love it?  Conversely, when have the opportunities been so numerous for Christians to share the Gospel?  As some famous general once observed, when you’re completely surrounded, you can attack in any direction!

Interestingly, Churchill’s speech was so uplifting that his ministers insisted he broadcast it on radio.  His delivery suffered, however . . . some thought he might have been drunk, but the problem was that he insisted on reading his speech with a cigar clenched in his mouth.

Winston got a lot of help from his wife, Clementine, who told him that his manners were deteriorating under the stress of war.  She couldn’t bear that those close to him should not love him as well as admire and respect him.  “You won’t get the best results by irascibility and rudeness.  They will breed either dislike or a slave mentality.”  Her advice calmed him down, somewhat.

In July Churchill wept over a decision he had to make.  The French fleet was scattered among a variety of ports when France fell to Germany.  The Brits were sure that Hitler would break his promises to let the fleet stand neutral, but would force it to join the Italian fleet and dominate the Mediterranean.  Churchill decided to force the issue, for the French warships to either join the British fleet or to sail to the West Indies to be placed under American control.

The ships already in British ports surrendered with little resistance.  But when a British admiral delivered the ultimatum to a French task force in an Algerian port, the French decided to fight . . . the British.  The French battleship Bretagne, was sunk, along with a destroyer.  About 1300 French officers and sailors were killed (no British losses) before the battle ended.

At 10 Downing when he received word of the engagement, Churchill told First Lord Alexander that “the French were now fighting with all their vigor for the first time since war broke out.”  A significant outcome from this unnecessary tragedy was clarity – it was now crystal clear that Britain would seek no armistice with Hitler.  The Brits were wholly committed, even risking war with Vichy France.

Hitler was confident that Britain would leave the war by August, though.  He had huge parade grounds, prepared for a victory parade to mark the end of the war, constructed in the center of Berlin.

Journalist Virginia Cowles lied down on the grass near Dover to watch a massive air battle, with anti-aircraft guns booming nearby and planes in flames arcing toward the ground.  “You knew the fate of civilization was being decided fifteen thousand feet above your head in a world of sun, wind and sky.  You knew it, but even so it was hard to take it in.”  British pilots who were forced to bail out when their plane was shot up were sometimes seen still in their flight gear hailing a cab to ride back to their airfield.  German pilots were sometimes shot by the Home Guard if they didn’t surrender quickly enough.

The first bombing raid on London, August 24^th, happened against Hitler’s and Goering’s orders due to a navigational error.  The Brits did not know about the error, of course, and Churchill was infuriated.  The attack gave him the pretext to bomb Berlin . . . the next night.  Berliners were stunned; they had been assured by Goering that no enemy planes could break through the German defenses.

In September, after a German raid against London had killed forty people in an air-raid shelter, Churchill visited the site and joined the crowd.  Someone shouted, “Good old Winnie!  We thought you’d come and see us.  We can take it.  Give it ‘em back.”  Someone there wrote, “He looked invincible, which he is.  Tough, bulldogged, piercing.”  At times, though, he wept openly at the devastation.  A woman in front of her wrecked home shouted, “When are we going to bomb Berlin, Winnie?”

Churchill whirled, shook his fist and walking stick, and snarled, “You leave that to me!”  That seemed to reassure and lift the morale of the crowd.

Churchill regularly visited parts of London hit by bombing raids.  His daughter, Mary, marveled at how the crowds loved and revered him.  But, “It is rather frightening,” she wrote, “how terribly they depend on him.”

In a speech calling out Hitler’s attempt to break the will of the British people, he said, “What he has done is to kindle a fire in British hearts, here and all over the world, which will glow long after all traces of the conflagration he has caused in London have been removed.”

During air raids Churchill was often in residence at 10 Downing Street.  To Clementine’s consternation, when the bombers came, Winston climbed to the roof to watch.  During one massive raid, he refused to interrupt a dinner party, but after dinner insisted his guests don helmets and “watch the fun” from the roof, which they did for two hours.

Goering was shattered by the Luftwaffe’s major losses.  Galland wrote, “He simply could not explain how the increasingly painful losses of bombers came about.”  Galland could see through his own eyes, though, that the RAF was as strong as ever, with undiminished spirit and a seemingly endless supply of aircraft.  The intelligence estimates about the imminent collapse of the RAF were repeatedly out of touch with reality.

William Shirer, an American correspondent in Berlin noted that a joke was making its way among the city’s cynics:  “An airplane carrying Hitler, Goering, and Goebbels crashes.  All three are killed.  Who is saved?”  Answer:  “The German People.”

Goebbels’ reassuring propaganda was contradicted by mandatory evacuations of children from Berlin.  He insisted the evacuations were voluntary and vowed that anyone spreading rumors to the contrary “must expect to find himself in a concentration camp.”  Goebbels’ spirit lives on in woke America.  It seemed that Germans were increasingly tuning in to the BBC.  Goebbels threatened heavy sentences for those caught listening to the BBC.  This edict produced an irresistible urge to defy it.

Harry Hopkins wrote to Roosevelt after the dinner party in January:  “The people here are amazing from Churchill down, and if courage alone can win – the result will be inevitable.  But they need our help desperately and I’m sure you will permit nothing to stand in the way.”  Regarding Churchill:  “I cannot emphasize too strongly that he is the one and only person over here with whom you need to have a full meeting of minds . . . This island needs our help now, Mr. President, with everything we can give them.”

So leadership matters, especially the strength of character of the senior leaders.  But strength of character and will among the nation’s people is also vital.  America today (not to mention Britain) seems filled with snowflakes, and the Christians have been slurped up into seeker-sensitive entertainment-driven megachurches.   Not hopeful.

In March 1941 (nine months before Pearl Harbor) Hitler worked to induce Japan to take action in the Pacific as soon as possible.  He hoped to focus America’s attention to the Pacific and keep them out of the European war.  He miscalculated.  When the U.S. declared war on Japan, it declared war on Germany and Italy, too.  And the lion’s share of America’s resources were devoted to defeating the Nazis.

In an April 1941 speech, Churchill noted, in a refreshing lack of the political correctness that afflicts our current culture, “There are less than seventy million malignant Huns – some of whom are curable and others killable.  The peoples of the British Empire and of the United States number nearly two hundred million in their homelands and in the British Dominions alone.  They have more wealth, more technical resources, and they make more steel, than the whole of the rest of the world put together.”

And so the key issue was will.  The same truth about resources stands today.  The challenges to the West can be met successfully simply by will and stamina.  The degradation of America and the West over the last few generations has been entirely self-afflicted.  Of course, the source of the required will and stamina must be spiritual, and led by Christians among the populace.  Especially, considering that God can choose to preserve a nation and a culture – or let it die – it is vital for Christians to be faithful in prayer and in Gospel witness, to hopefully provoke God’s favor.

At any rate, it is certainly within the power of individual Christians to be faithful and diligent.  I cannot imagine a Plan B.

At the end of the 1^st year, May 10, 1941, London had endured, though gravely injured.  Twenty-nine thousand Londoners had died, a comparable amount seriously wounded.  Across the nation, you can double that number.  Of the dead, 5,626 were children.

The War Cabinet secretary, Edward Bridges, wrote of Churchill, “Only he had the power to make the nation believe that it could win.”

I highly recommend the book.  There is much, much more fascinating content about the personalities close to Churchill, plus insight into those who served Hitler.  One benefit to reading this book is the perspective offered, that  although we may live in challenging times today, the WW2 generation lived in dark times, indeed.  And not just lived through it, but had to actively overcome the challenges at the risk, and often sacrifice of their lives.  How much more should Christians be active amidst the freedom we still enjoy?  Let’s be faithful and diligent with that freedom.  Don’t let this week go by without sharing the Gospel verbally and handing out a big stack of Gospel tracts everywhere you go.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com