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105 of 108 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Churchill, warts and all, May 4, 2010
This review is from: Winston's War: Churchill, 1940-1945 (Hardcover)
So many books have been written about Churchill, in particular about the wartime years, that another biography might be needless. However, Max Hastings presents a wonderfully balanced portrait of the man, the politician and the statesman. While in no way a revisionist history, Hastings has used distance and time to place Churchill's immense contribution in historial perspective. It is fascinating to compare the Churchill revealed in the "War Diaries of Field Marshall Lord Alanbrooke" (from which Mr. Hastings quotes) with Hastings' own work. Two brillant accounts, one immediate with short term judgements and Mr. Hastings's more measured and from a distance.
Churchill's rhetoric and prose shaped the common view of the conduct of WWII. Brave little Britain fighting alone. "The Few, we will fight them on the beaches and never surrender." How Churchill's phrases captured and continue to color the imagination. Much less widely recognized are Britain's problems during wartime. In a sense disguised by Churchill's masterful language the strikes, the attitudes and the actions of the many Communist sympathizers and the often poor performance of Britain's own Army (especially in the war's early years) have tended to fade from popular viewpoint. Mr. Hastings deals with the good, the bad and the downright ugly without flinching and without using criticism to deflect from what was an overall immense achievement.
Whatever Churchill's failings(and he was human), Max Hastings points out without Winston Churchill at the head of government, Britain would have probably capitulated in 1940-41. Churchill did not simply capture the British spirit, he to some extend, created it as this book makes clear. Had Churchill not done so, the outcome could have been entirely different or, at least, more protracted and bloody without Britain as a base to launch the killer blow upon Nazi Germany.
Initially, having read many Churchill biographies I was afraid this might be a revisionist history that so many authors are prone to write simply to sell their work. Max Hastings' book about this great man who occupied this pivotal moment is well balanced and researched.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in this period of history. I have read many books by Max Hastings and this is one of his best. I also recommend the "War Diaries of Field Marshall Lord Alanbrooke" to gain even further perspective on the effect an individual can have on history.
Enjoy the read!
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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Traveler from an Antique Land, June 2, 2010
This review is from: Winston's War: Churchill, 1940-1945 (Hardcover)
Decades following his death, Winston S. Churchill (WSC) continues to fascinate historians and attract various pundits hoping to make a critical imprint on the landscape of modern moral relativism. His detractors attempt to belittle his many accomplishments by framing them in the context of his many inconsistencies and, failing that, sometimes resort to ad hominem attacks ("alcoholic" being prominent amongst them). Recently, at least three major military historians, John Keegan, Carlo D'Este and Max Hastings, have written focused biographies of WSC in his capacity as "warlord". Keegan's book is essentially a monograph (interesting, nonetheless). D'Este wrote a somewhat more encyclopaedic book (WSC's entire military career). Hastings concentrates on WSC as British supreme commander during the years of the Second World War. While all three books are good, Hastings' penetrating assessments and candid observations on the protagonist and those who enter his orbit make for more enjoyable reading.
Hastings nominally begins his story in 1939, the year Great Britain joined France in declaring war on Hitler's Germany. However, necessary historical context from pre-war years is also provided, allowing this book to be read independently of any other biography or study. Despite the book's apparently narrow focus, it can be read without background or understanding of the War, itself.
Not too surprisingly to his more strident critics, WSC made many minor and several major errors in his capacity as wartime Prime Minister. He had a penchant for "meddling" in military affairs, one shared with at least Stalin and Hitler. In common with Hitler, WSC had actual front-line combat experience and, also in common with Hitler, demonstrated bravery in battle. Despite first-hand experience with war and direct, personal knowledge of the consequences of leadership error, both men were fond of audacious and risky enterprises, often-times creating consternation in the ranks of their professional military consultants, sometimes with lamentable results. Hastings unfavorably contrasts the British military with its German counterpart throughout the book, with the British falling far short of their adversaries in professionalism, skill, dedication, improvisation, equipment, strategy and battlefield tactics. For that matter, Hastings made the same unfavorable comparison of American troops to the Germans in "Overlord", his history of the D-Day invasion.
In order to understand the relatively dismal performance of the British Army (in particular), Hastings provides many examples of the incompetence and timidity of the major British commanders who repeatedly come up short in comparison to their North African theater adversary, Rommel and their foe in Italy, Kesselring. However, even their American counterparts seemed to view them with dismissive attitudes. On the British home front, morale was undermined by the seemingly interminable duration of the war, pro-Soviet attitudes of many workers (and their "betters" in the governing classes), residual exhaustion from the labors of the First World War and concerns regarding the post-war course of their nation. Hastings repeatedly emphasizes that, almost single-handedly, WSC provided the leadership example required to sustain the war effort from its earliest years (when the situation seemed most hopeless) through its overly long finale, when the population seemed no longer able or interested in sustaining the effort.
WSC is both lauded and attacked. His penchant for dramatic forays by small "elite" units (which proliferated under his leadership) were generally unsuccessful (1942 Dieppe raid, for example). His emphasis on the Mediterranean theater was distracting from the major war effort. His repeated solicitations to the Americans on behalf of various "pet projects" became distracting and then annoying. Nonetheless, WSC had an over-arching and penetrating understanding of grand strategy and, in service to that understanding, was able to bury his antipathy to Communism recognizing that the contributions of the USSR were arch-critical to the defeat of the Nazi armies. Perhaps the most damning (from both the perspective of Roosevelt's U.S. and from Hastings, himself) was WSC's fealty to the concept of the British Empire. Perceptions that many of Britain's military plans and perspectives were undertaken in service of post-war imperial ambitions soured relations between the Western powers, especially on the U.S. domestic front.
From my perspective, Hastings makes his greatest contribution both in this book and in "Retribution" (the Pacific War) by clarifying many now controversial wartime actions such as the use of atomic weapons ("Retribution") and "area bombing" (both theaters of war). WSC was personally conflicted and committed some of his thoughts to paper. Still, he observed that, "Morale is a legitimate military target" and advocated bombing of German cities not only for that reason (in the early war years to prop up home-front morale) but to convince Stalin that the British were making a meaningful "second front" contribution. Hastings also notes that contemporary technology did not allow "precision bombing" or anything even remotely approaching that concept. Hence, to target factories and military installations, area bombing was necessary. In Hastings' words, "In addressing the history of the Second World War, it is necessary to recognise the huge moral compromises forced upon the nations fighting under the banner of democracy and freedom. Britain, and subsequently America, strove for the triumph of these admirable principles wherever the could be secured-with sometimes embarrassing exceptions of the European overseas empires. But again and again, hard things had to be done which breached faith with any definition of absolute good. If this is true of politics at all times, it was especially so between 1939 and 1945...the moral and material price of destroying Hitler was high...". In "Retribution", Hastings commented that, "But in an imperfect world, it seems unrealistic to expect that any combatant in a war will grant adversaries conspicuously better treatment than his own people receive at their hands". This all rings true and does much to undermine the "post-modern" moral relativism which is currently fashionable. Hastings also repeatedly emphasizes that the Hitler War was won largely due to the efforts and exertions of Stalin's USSR: the role of Lend Lease and the significance of the D-Day landing have been over-amplified with the passage of time.
In summary, Hastings characterizes WSC as, "...one of the greatest actors upon the stage of affairs the world has ever known...If his leadership through the Second World War was imperfect, it is certain that no other British ruler in history has matched his direction of the nation in peril.." Certainly, WSC was the greatest statesman of the modern era and his "grand vision" enabled the eventual defeat of Hitler, cementing as it did a roiled domestic constituency and contentious allies. His "anachronistic delusions" (sometimes making him appear to FDR and others as a "traveler from an antique land") about the future of the British Empire were just that. His magnificent accomplishments dwarf his strategic shortcomings and can only serve as an example to be emulated by any current or future leader with pretensions to greatness.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A magnificient history of Churchill as war leader, August 30, 2010
This review is from: Winston's War: Churchill, 1940-1945 (Hardcover)
As I finished the last words on page 486, I yearned for more. Except for the acknowledgements, bibliography and such, there was no more.
The excellent writer and detailed-obsessed military historian Max Hastings had brought us to the end of Churchill's reign as the war leader of the British Empire.
You can measure Churchill, the man, by the thousands of books, movies, documentaries and other expositions about him.
In Hastings, we find much that is new. As with many contemporary histories of WWII, more than a little comes from the once again closed Soviet archives. But much more comes from the diaries and unpublished letters of people, particularly the little people, the ones who in a democracy elect those who lead.
Hastings leaves us in absolutely no doubt of Churchill's unique accomplishments - and his failures.
For many months, the future of any vestige of democracy in Europe and perhaps the world rested on Churchill's shoulders. Through his oratory and pluck alone, Churchill encouraged battered and, in fact, defeated Britain to rally itself and fight on, despite the fact that literally all its artillery, amour, small arms and military vehicles had been left on the battlefields of France. Churchill pleaded and cajoled to get Franklin Roosevelt into the European war, but Roosevelt basically wouldn't budge.
For a while, it was Churchill, a few hundred brave pilots, a few thousand ground crew and radar plotters who kept Britain in the war.
Hastings tracks the public opinion of the day. Churchill had long been a divisive character, long relegated to the back benches of Britain's ruling class for his outspoken opinions on the dangers of a rearmed and resurgent Germany. Neville Chamberlain had captured the support of the people who believed that giving Hitler what he wanted was the road to peace.
It was not and the 66 year old Churchill, called a war monger by so many, was asked by the King to become Prime Minister.
It is now widely agreed that Churchill was the only man who could have saved Britain.
Hastings keeps his focus on Churchill as war leader, but lets us see how the world around him reacted to his larger-than-life presence. He irritated and frustrated his military leaders by his constant interference and demands for action now. He lifted the spirits of his people in his visits to the bombed out streets of London. He bestirred the Members of Parliament (and controlled them) with his wit and guile. Finally, he roused the world through oratory of a brilliance rarely seen.
Churchill, as Hastings endlessly points out, was not perfect. Far from it. His military plans were more often than not entirely impractical and when he did succeed in getting his ideas acted upon, they often resulted in disaster. But strategically, Churchill was ahead of his generals who for the most part never rose to anything near Churchill's greatness.
Hastings correctly believes that it was the military of the Soviets that defeated Germany and that Britain and the United States played a subordinate role militarily. No serious student of the period can disagree. It was the Soviets who broke the armies of the Germans and their allies. But Churchill believed he enjoyed some kind of personal relationship with Stalin, a delusion he persisted in almost to the end of the war.
It is fascinating to read the letters and diaries of the average citizens, many, if not most, of whom revered Churchill the war leader, while reserved about Churchill the domestic leader. The letters of the committed leftists are chilling to read. Military men and Churchill's staff left behind copious memoirs, published and unpublished, about their impressions. Hastings draws upon all of this and more to produce a truly in-depth history of Churchill's six years as the most powerful leader in British history and one of the most remarkable men to have appeared in Western civilization.
The pity is that history is no longer taught in American schools and what has replaced it has little relation to history. Thus the children of today will grow up with little idea of how close the freedom they abuse came so close to being snuffed out were it nor for Winston Churchill who roused the West to save itself.
Next time, perhaps, we will not be so fortunate as to have a Churchill.
Hastings makes it clear just how remarkable Churchill, as the war leader of his people, was.
Jerry
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