Churchill the journalist maintained a fairly high average of quality, and
his quantitative achievement was prodigious. During the '30s, which friendly
biographers have called his "wasted years," he averaged a million words
(equivalent to ten novel- length books) a year.
Churchill the historian in the '20s wrote The World Crisis, professionally
regarded as the best account of World War I. His Marlborough is not just a
tribute to a famous ancestor. It abounds with new glimpses of an age with many
lessons for the 20th Century.
Churchill the politician has the other three, especially the historian,
working for him. He is not obsessed with the past, but with the application of
the past to the present and future. The business of a serious politician is to
foretell; he uses history as an instrument of prophecy.
Cassandra. Churchill spotted Hitler early as the main enemy of Britain and
of civilization. He also foresaw that the crucial point of danger would be met
when Germany's air power overhauled Britain's. In & out of the House of
Commons Churchill began to hammer this home. Out of sheer apathy, the Tories
ignored him. The Laborites, out of a deeply ingrained pacifism, did the same.
Both parties pursued disarmament in the teeth of Hitler's rising might. In
1932, Churchill said: "Do not [believe] that all Germany is asking for is equal
status...All these bands of sturdy Teutonic youths...are not looking for
status. They are looking for weapons."
When Hitler occupied and fortified the Rhineland in 1936, Churchill's
strategic sense told him that the danger lay in Eastern Europe, now that
Germany's western border was safe against invasion. Germany was free to turn
upon Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, which became the three major steps to
war. Churchill, who knew Hitler could have been stopped in the Rhineland, calls
World War II "the Unnecessary War."
In the Czech crisis, he saw clearly that nothing could be done without
cooperation between the West and Russia. When Chamberlain came home from Munich
with "Peace for our time," Churchill called it by its right name: "A total and
unmitigated defeat." (An interlude in Churchill's Cassandra years was his
defense of King Edward VIII in the 1936 abdication crisis over Wallis Simpson.
When the abdication was decided upon Churchill walked weeping from Buckingham
Palace. He wrote Edward's speech: "At long last...")
