For Churchill, the bombing of Pearl Harbor brought a joy that he could hardly disguise, even when writing about it at a distance of eight years. The unrestrained passage in his memoirs can be read as a kind of hosanna: England would live; Britain would live; the Commonwealth of Nations and the Empire would live. . . . We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end. We might not even have to die as individuals. Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of
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