CHURCHILL AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR

A.L. Rowse, The Churchills

(London: Book Club Associates, 1970), 524.

‘[Winston] Churchill’s life was virtually synonymous with the history of the country during the heroic years 1940 to 1945.

To a degree hardly paralleled in recent centuries certainly to a greater extent even than with Lloyd George in the first war.

Perhaps we should have to go back for a parallel to Pitt’s leadership and inspiration in the Seven Years War; or, in more recent times, we may think of Lincoln’s heroic Presidency, without whom the [American] Civil War might never have been won.

These years were the apogee of our country’s history, when its purpose reached the fullest and ripest development.

In its resistance to Nazi Germany for what seemed at the time of going through it an age, alone it rendered a grander service to Europe than even in its resistance to the Spain of Philip II, the France of Louis XIV and Napoleon, the Germany of Bismarck and William II; for though Britain’s existence was at stake, more was involved for others – the survival of European civilisation.’

********************