CHURCHILL – THREE LESSONS OF STATEMANSHIP

 

 

This speech by Larry Arnn of Hillsdale College contains more information on Winston Churchill and the newly released film, The Darkest Hour.   Nancy  

Three Lessons of Statesmanship

December 2017 • Volume 46, Number 12The following is adapted from a speech delivered on December 1, 2017, at Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C.

“Wars and rumors of wars” are all around us. At Hillsdale College we have been thinking about the greatest of all wars, the Second World War. If we study that war and the actions of its profoundest statesman, we can find some lessons to guide us today.

We think of World War II in part because a fine film has just come out about the beginning of that war. The film is called Darkest Hour, and we know and admire its lead actor Gary Oldman and its producer Doug Urbanski, both of whom will be visiting our campus soon. We also think of that war because we have just sent to the printer Volume 20 of The Churchill Documents, the series of documentary volumes that will soon complete the official biography of Winston Churchill, of which Hillsdale College Press is the publisher. Volume 20, entitled Normandy and Beyond, ends on December 31, 1944.

The film, then, concerns the beginning of that largest and worst of wars, and the document volume covers the end of its last full year. The beginning and the end of things reveal their meaning in particular ways. From the beginning and the end of World War II, we draw three lessons, relevant to the choices we Americans must make now.

The first lesson of the war concerns what Churchill called the “profound significance of human choice, and the sublime responsibility of men.”

We see in Darkest Hour that the war begins in disaster. There was the disaster that led to the war: the advent of Hitler in 1933 and his increasing domination of Central Europe. In 1940, the disaster extended across Western Europe to the Atlantic: beginning the very day Winston Churchill became prime minister of Great Britain, Hitler launched his armies west across Belgium and France to begin an utter rout. No one, including Churchill, believed that a great nation like France could be overcome in a matter of weeks, but that is what happened. The British Army escaped from Dunkirk back to England by the skin of its teeth.

PLEASE CLICK ON THE ABOVE LINK TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

Share

Leave a Reply

Search All Posts
Categories