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Originally Posted by horsa
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…etched in History. This was the definition of a Moral War between the Good side and the Evil side.
Time has been unable to dilute anything from what he has said
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Abraham, this is so true. Churchill was nothing if not theatrical . In that uniquely desperate moment he spelt it out for the world what this struggle was all about and appealed for resistance from any quarter. Although he was galvanising a nation he was also addressing his other (real) audience – the United States. He was Horatio on the Bridge, Davy Crockett at the Alamo, Joan of Arc and (dare I say it ) the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke.
I still maintain that militarily he was living in cloud cuckoo land and simply got lucky – but Thank God. |
I personally feel that Britains darkest hour was his greatest hour and as soon as things started to change for the better for Britain, his magic left him.
In 1940 he galvanized a nation, in 1943 he hardly survived strikes and a motion of no confidence in Parliament (if my memory serves me well). His last substantial influence on the grand strategy of World War II was at the Casablanca conference, where he (and the Chief of the Imperial Staff Alenbrook) convinced the US not to attack Western Europe in 1943 but to invade its "soft underbelly" - Italy. This turned out to be a strategic mistake in my view. The underbelly was not soft at all and provided perfect defensive opportunities and Western Europe was much more heavely defended in mid 1944 then in mid 1943.
But that is a different discussion and hardly diminishes the greatness of Churchill.