The Churchill Series - Nov. 30, 2005

(One of a series of daily posts about the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

Most of you know Churchill was born on November 30; many of you know the year, 1874.

That you know either or both facts suggests an interest in Churchill's life, the study of which has convinced millions they owe him something very important: their freedom.

They're right, of course. Churchill's unflinching opposition to Nazi barbarism always, and especially in the desperate days of 1940, was essential to Freedom's victory over the terrorists of his time.

In tribute this day to Churchill, here's part of historian William Manchester's appreciation of him and the long odds he faced in 1940.

The French had collapsed. The Dutch had been overwhelmed. The Belgians had surrendered. The British army ... fell back toward the Channel ports (centered on Dunkirk).
...
It was England's greatest crisis since the Norman conquest, vaster than those precipitated by Philip II's Spanish Armada, Louis XIV's triumphant armies, or Napoleon’s invasions barges massed at Boulogne.
...
It had been a thousand years since Alfred the Great had made himself and his countrymen one and sent them into battle transformed.

Now...confronted by the mightiest conqueror Europe had ever known, England looked for another Alfred, a figure cast in a mold which, by the time of (Dunkirk), seemed to have been forever lost.
...
(If England were to prevail, its new leader) would have to stand for everything England's decent, civilized Establishment had rejected. They viewed Adolf Hitler as the product of complex social and historical forces.

Their successor would have to be a passionate Manichaean who saw the world as a medieval struggle to the death between the powers of good and the powers of evil, who held that individuals are responsible for their actions, and that the German dictator was therefore wicked.

A believer in martial glory was required (who) could rally the nation to brave the coming German fury.

An embodiment of fading Victorian standards was wanted: a tribune for honor, loyalty, duty, and the supreme virtue of action: one who would never compromise with iniquity, who could create a sublime mood and thus give men heroic visions of what they were and might become.

Like Adolph Hitler he would have to be a leader of intuitive genius, a born demagogue in the original sense of the word, a believer in the supremacy of his race and his national destiny, an artist who knew how to gather the blazing light of history into his prism and then distort it to his ends, an embodiment of inflexible resolution who could impose his will and his imagination on his people.
...
(He would be a leader) who could win victories without enslaving populations, or preaching supernaturalism, or foisting off myths of his infallibility, or destroying, or even warping, the libertarian institutions he had sworn to preserve.

Such a man, if he existed, would be England's last chance.

In London there was such a man.

For the life of Winston Churchill, let us give thanks, and use our freedoms wisely and, when necessary, bravely.
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William Manchester, The Last Lion. (p. 3-4)