The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

by Erik Larson

Coveting power for power’s sake was a “base” pursuit, he wrote, adding, “But power in a national crisis, when a man believes he knows what orders should be given, is a blessing.”

I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial….Although

fundamental truth about the war: that he could not win it without the eventual participation of the United States.

“One of Hitler’s cleverest moves has been to make Winston Public Enemy Number One, because this fact has helped to make him Public Hero Number One at home and in the U.S.A.”

“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

Here, as in other speeches, Churchill demonstrated a striking trait: his knack for making people feel loftier, stronger, and, above all, more courageous.

“Wars are not won by evacuations.”

Churchill’s great trick—one he had demonstrated before, and would demonstrate again—was his ability to deliver dire news and yet leave his audience feeling encouraged and uplifted. “Fortified”

Britain’s attack on the French fleet at Mers el-Kébir had proved that beyond doubt.

“wish” that Hess find a way of engineering the removal of Churchill as prime minister so as to clear a path for negotiations with a presumably more pliable successor. As Hess saw it, Hitler was assigning him the great mandate of securing peace in the west.

central tenet of Hitler’s geopolitical strategy set out in the book was the importance of peace with Britain, and he knew how strongly Hitler believed that in the prior war Germany had made a fatal mistake in provoking Britain to fight.

Hess hated Jews, and orchestrated many restrictions on Jewish life. He cast himself as the embodiment of the Nazi spirit and made himself responsible for perpetuating national adoration of Hitler and ensuring party purity.

Abruptly the conqueror gave way to the humble Führer. “I can see no reason why this war must go on,” he said. “I am grieved to think of the sacrifices it will claim. I should like to avert them.”

Churchill broke the silence, saying, “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.”

“It is curious,” Colville wrote, “to see how, as it were, he fertilizes a phrase or a line of poetry for weeks and then gives birth to it in a speech.”

To hear Churchill tell it, the offer of the leases was simply a magnanimous act to help out a friend and likely future ally. “There is, of course, no question of any transference of sovereignty,” Churchill assured the House.

will have to be somewhat mixed up together in some of their affairs for mutual and general advantage.”

Yet this was also the speech in which Churchill, while lauding the achievements of the RAF, offered what history would later appraise as one of the most powerful moments in oratory—the very line Churchill had tried out in the car with Pug Ismay during the fierce air battles of the previous week: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” Like many other diarists of the era, Colville made no reference to the line in his diary; he wrote, later, that “it did not strike me very forcibly at the time.”

And then, on the night of Saturday, August 24, came a navigational error destined to change the nature of the entire war—“a piece of carelessness” that Basil Collier, a leading Battle of Britain historian, pegs as the moment that set the world inexorably on the march toward Hiroshima.

sonnets of William Shakespeare and to commit

Never was there such a contrast of natural splendor and human vileness.”

Safety was a product of luck alone. One young boy, asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, a fireman or pilot or such, answered: “Alive.”

“It may be fun for you—but it is terrifying for the rest for us. Please realize that for most of us this war is a One-Man Show (unlike the last) & treat your life like a guarded flame. It does not belong to you alone but to all of us.”

“we seek no territorial gains, we seek only the right of man to be free; we seek his right to worship his God, to lead his life in his own way, secure from persecution. As the humble laborer returns from his work when the day is done, and sees the smoke curling upwards from his cottage home in the serene evening sky, we wish him to know that no rat-a-tat-tat”—here Churchill knocked loudly on the table—“of the secret police upon his door will disturb his leisure or interrupt his rest.” He said Britain sought only government by popular consent, freedom to say whatever one wished, and the equality of all people in the eyes of the law. “But war aims other than these we have none.”

This was Churchill at his most deft—candid yet encouraging, grave but uplifting, seeking to bolster his own people while reassuring, albeit somewhat disingenuously, the great mass of Americans that all he wanted from the United States was material aid.

“Here is the answer which I will give to President Roosevelt: Put your confidence in us,” Churchill said. “Give us your faith and your blessing, and, under Providence, all will be well. “We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. “Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.”

“Dearest,” she wrote, “I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do.” Her hat and cane were found on a bank of the nearby River Ouse.

“Papa has served them with his heart [and] his mind always through peace & wars—& they have given him in his finest & darkest hour their love & confidence.” She was struck by this strange power of her father to bring forth courage and strength in the most trying of circumstances. “Oh please dear God,” she wrote, “preserve him unto us—& lead us to victory & peace.”

“They have such confidence,” he said. “It is a grave responsibility.”

“We want a panzer and not a pansy Government.”

We ought to thank God for President Roosevelt every day, but it is unfair to him and to his country to overstate what is possible.”

“When I look back on the perils which have been overcome, upon the great mountain waves in which the gallant ship has driven, when I remember all that has gone wrong, and remember also all that has gone right, I feel sure we have no need to fear the tempest. Let it roar, and let it rage. We shall come through.”

“Don’t marry someone because they want to marry you—but because you want to marry them.”

“—and yet it stuck & I kept on thinking of it.”