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Churchill the journalist maintained a fairly high average of quality, and his quantitative achievement was prodigious. During the '303, which friendly biographers have called his "wasted years," he averaged a million words (equivalent to ten novel-length books) a year.
Churchill the historian in the '203 wrote The World Crisis, professionally regarded as the best account of World War I. His Marlborough is not just a tribute to a famous ancestor. It abounds with new glimpses of an age with many lessons for the 20th Century.
Churchill the politician has the other three, especially the historian, working for him. He is not obsessed with the past, but with the application of the past to the present and future. The business of a serious politician is to foretell; he uses history as an instrument of prophecy.
Cassandra.
Churchill spotted Hitler early as the main enemy of Britain and of civilization. He also foresaw that the crucial point of danger would be met when Germany's air power overhauled Britain's. In & out of the House of Commons Churchill began to hammer this home. Out of sheer apathy, the Tories ignored him. The Laborites, out of a deeply ingrained pacifism, did the same. Both parties pursued disarmament in the teeth of Hitler's rising might. In 1932, Churchill said: "Do not [believe] that all Germany is asking for is equal status ... All these bands of sturdy Teutonic youths . . . are not looking for status. They are looking for weapons."
When Hitler occupied and fortified the Rhineland in 1936, Churchill's strategic sense told him that the danger lay in Eastern Europe, now that Germany's western border was safe against invasion. Germany was free to turn upon Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, which became the three major steps to war. Churchill, who knew Hitler could have been stopped in the Rhineland, calls World War II "the Unnecessary War."
In the Czech crisis, he saw clearly that nothing could be done without cooperation between the West and Russia. When Chamberlain came home from Munich with "Peace for our time," Churchill called it by its right name: "A total and unmitigated defeat."-Churchill's warnings had two effects of transcendent importance: i) they speeded up expansion of the R.A.F. to the point that saved Britain, 2) they left Churchill with a clear record, giving the free world a man to trust, after so many other leaders stood disgraced by unpreparedness and appeasement.
On Sept. 3, 1939, His Majesty's ships on the seven seas cheered a signal from the Admiralty's Sea Lords: "Winston is back." The disasters of early 1940 had finished Chamberlain. Calling in Churchill and Lord Halifax, he told them that a coalition government had to be formed. Labor Party leaders would not serve under other Conservatives tainted with appeasement; the new Prime Minister had to be either Churchill or Halifax. For once, the voluble Churchill was silent. For a long minute he stared fixedly into space until Halifax modestly declined the task. Churchill, at 65, had attained the supreme responsibility at a moment of supreme crisis.