The Gathering Storm

We watched Darkest Hour, a pretty good film about Winston Churchill taking the reins of the British government after the failure of the appeasement policy (with an astonishing, virtuoso performance by Gary Oldman as Churchill) – which made me interested in reading The Gathering Storm – the first of Churchill’s six-volume history and personal memoir of the period from the end of the first World War to the end of the Second World War.  Churchill was a masterful writer (he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953, though for other writings, not the history).  

The book amply fulfills its stated theme:

HOW THE ENGLISH SPEAKING PEOPLES
THROUGH THEIR UNWISDOM
CARELESSNESS AND GOOD NATURE
ALLOWED THE WICKED
TO REARM

Of course, Churchill’s stirring speeches are famous for their emotional power and The Gathering Storm includes some striking examples. Churchill first described post World War One Germany, after the allies imposed The Weimar Republic, as a tepid democracy “which was regarded as the imposition of the enemy” and then paints a vivid picture of the consequences:

Thereafter mighty forces were adrift, the void was open, and into that void after a pause there strode a maniac of ferocious genius, the repository and expression of the most virulent hatreds that have ever corroded the human breast – Corporal Hitler.

Many of his conclusions and recommendations speak forcefully to the world situation today:

When three or four powerful Governments acting together have demanded the most fearful sacrifices from their peoples, when these have been given freely for the common cause, and when the longed-for result has been attained, it would seem reasonable that concerted action should be preserved so that at least the essentials would not be cast away.  But this modest requirement the might, civilization, learning, knowledge, science, of the victors were unable to supply.  They lived from hand to mouth and day to day, and from one election to another, until, when scarcely twenty years were out, the dread signal of the Second World War was given, and we must write of the sons of those who had fought and died so faithfully and well: 

Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side,
They trudged away from life’s broad wealds of light
 -Siegfried Sassoon

In addition to his unparalleled gift for rousing and emotional language, Churchill’s narrative and persuasive writing throughout is marked by simplicity, clarity and power.  A sad story, masterfully recounted.