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What Churchill said and did thereafter is still famous and fresh in the world's memory. Some of the passages of his wartime speeches are as ready to the tongue of 1950 as anything in Shakespeare, and the deeds to which he was a party are still better known.
"What Will the People Think?" From his study of Marlborough's times (in which some British leaders dealt secretly with the enemy, France, and thereby consolidated Britain's reputation as "perfidious Albion"), Churchill brought a deep sense of the moral and political necessity of good faith between wartime allies. Although he was never misled about Communism's character or ultimate aims, he dealt loyally with his ally, Stalin. Through the darkest months, working more & more closely with Roosevelt, Churchill hoped for and expected that an even greater ally, the U.S., would come in. This dream might never have come true but for dreams on the other side of the world.
Japan had dreamed of progress and her course had been unprecedented in history. In a single century this isolated, feudal realm, with meager natural resources, had become master of the East. It held half of China, and was wearing down the long, masterly defense of Chiang Kaishek. All seemed clear sailing ahead, except for U.S. insistence that Japanese troops get out of Indo-China.
To deal with that, a Japanese task force left Kure harbor in mid-November 1941. Iki Kuramoto, a Japanese sailor, has left a record of how it seemed from his side:
"Finally the navigation officer . . . told us we were to make a surprise attack on Hawaii... At last Japan would be at war with Britain and the U.S.A. ... A dream come true! What will the people at home think when they hear the news? Won't they be excited!"
Not, it turned out, as excited as the
Americans were. In the succeeding four years they mobilized 14,000,000 men, built 4,900 merchant ships, sent 76,000 planes overseas with 2,000,000 tons of bombs.
Soon Japan's sun — and Hitler's — began to set. Already Montgomery's Eighth Army had captured the song Lili Marlene from the Afrika Korps. At Stalingrad, Guadalcanal, Sicily, the dictators took the road back. The German generals who had been amazed at Hitler's political successes of the '303, amazed again at their own easy victories of 1940-41, were amazed once more that their invincible troops could not hold their ground. Hitler was even amazed at the best-advertised fact in military history: Russian winters are cold.
Poison & Guilt.
When his Atlantic Wall was breached, Hitler's only hope was a rift between his Eastern and Western enemies. They held together — at the stiff (and probably unnecessary) price to the West of a compromise of moral principle at Yalta. Stalin might have taken Manchuria and Poland without the Yaltese benison; but at Yalta he got something more important than territory: proof that the West did not have enough sense to distrust him.
So Hitler, with his blowzy mistress, died in a Berlin bunker and the first half of the 20th Century survived its greatest scourge.