The Churchill Series - Jan. 24, 2006

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

On January 24, 1965, Churchill died after having suffered a massive stroke twelve days before.

When he heard the news, France's President Charles de Gaulle wrote a condolence letter to the Queen. Of the man with whom he had frequently quarreled during the war, de Gaulle said:

In the great drama he was the greatest of all.

Clement Attlee, as leader of Labour, and Churchill, as leader of the Conservatives, had often sparred across the Commons aisle. Churchill once called Attlee a "sheep in sheep's clothing;" another time, "a modest man with much to be modest about." Attlee had bested Churchill in the 1945 General Election, and succeeded him as Prime Minister.

Now Earl Attlee, he spoke in the House of Lords of the man who had been his friend as well as political foe:

My Lords, we have lost the greatest Englishman of our time - I think the greatest citizen of the world of our time.

Thirty-five years on, as the 20th century drew to a close, the distinguished commentator Charles Krauthammer considered its horrors and the times when many reasonable people thought it certain that Nazis or Communists would dominate the world. But they were prevented from doing so. Krauthammer asked who had stopped them:

The originality of the 20th surely lay in its politics. It invented the police state and the command economy, mass mobilization and mass propaganda, mechanized murder and routinized terror--a breathtaking catalog of political creativity.

And who is the hero of that story? Who slew the dragon?

Yes, it was the ordinary man, the taxpayer, the grunt who fought and won the wars. Yes, it was America and its allies. Yes, it was the great leaders: Roosevelt, de Gaulle, Adenauer, Truman, John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan. But above all, victory required one man without whom the fight would have been lost at the beginning. It required Winston Churchill.

Winston S. Churchill, RIP
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The de Gaulle and Attlee quotes are from Martin Gilbert, Never Despair. (pgs. 1360-1361)

The Krauthammer commentary can be found at The Churchill Centre's Personality of the Century page( Here and then scroll to near the bottom.)