So....I am currently sitting for a master's degree, as they say, at Virginia Tech (though I am not sitting at Virginia Tech but rather in my home or at the Library or at Starbucks and taking all classes virtually). I am also 30 years old, and this Thursday I will be actually 31. I am holding down a job, raising a family. I am a sometimes constructive member of the Church, especially on Wednesdays. I have many leather bound books. My house smells of rich mahogany. Maybe even a little bit of teak mixed in there as well. I've thrown out the Axe body spray and bought proper cologne. I find myself more and more appreciating jazz music.
These are the trappings of a professional, serious man.
Still, I couldn't resist doing this on my most recent homework assignment for VT's AOE 5444 Dynamic's of Small Craft Class with Dr. Leigh McCue who, in another tip of the cap to seriousness and professionalism, is a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.
Yeah, that's right: THE Winston S. Churchill, PM of Britain during the vast majority of World War II, Defender of the Realm, amateur painter, avid cigar smoker, wearer of nice hats and user of walking sticks, was actually a pretty darn good writer.
As an aside, I find it interesting that both Churchill and Hitler had connections to painting, though I have it on excellent authority that despite his otherwise incredibly fucking ginormously massive, massive shortcomings as a human being Hitler was probably the better painter.
Tasteless? Without doubt. But it always makes me laugh.
At any rate, Winston Churchill was actually a very avid writer. When he was younger he did write a novel, but as his military and political career progressed he tended more towards a range of non-fiction. During his "exile" from government in the 1930s (during which, as far as I can tell, he was still a member of Parliament but did not hold any actual ministry positions) he popped out 6 volumes on the Duke of Marlborough, John Churchill, who successfully commanded English and Allied troops against the seemingly invincible Louis XIV during the War of Spanish Succession. Hero of Blenheim and Ramilles. You should check him out.
And, after being discharged from the government post World War II, Churchill set to writing a history of the war he had been so recently played such a major part in, a work of 6 volumes of which "The Gathering Storm" is but the first.
The book starts with the First World War's end, details Hitler's rise to power and Germany's re-armament, and ends just as the Germans are invading France. Churchill was a vigorous supporter of sternly dealing with German re-armament and territorial expansion. If he had his druthers the German advance into the Rhineland, 1936, probably would have meant war -- his view seems to have been that France, with support from the League of Nations, had the manpower to defeat a relatively weaker Germany and that Hitler was gambling on the French and British reluctance for a war. As such, there are a lot of "I told you so" moments in this book, and it does get a little annoying at times.
Oh, and naturally he thinks England is the greatest thing since some wonderful, wonderful man inflated a pigs bladder and tried to kick it into a net (I wonder how many pints of mead that little revelation took?). Maybe that's true, but if you don't think so then you may not like this book. Still, one would expect Churchill to think that way.
Then of course there is Neville Chamberlain and the Appeasement at Munich, which our own politicians have spun into a morality tale concerning a lack of balls in dealing with dictators or defecit spending or a mistress with a penchant for blackmail diamonds. Chamberlain is a reviled character in our time, but one must remember that he was the Prime Minister at the start of the war and, as Churchill relates in this book, once it was clear that war would indeed come he showed far more mettle than most people give him credit for.
The book then goes into the invasion of Poland and the "Phony War" (Churchill dubs this the Twilight War -- I like the Twilight War better but we have to stick to the Phony War these days as Twilight War only conjures up images of surly teenage Werewolves fighting against damn fine looking Vampires that sparkle in the sunshine), but also very interestingly into early naval battles of the war and the botched campaign to hold key ports in Norway after the Germans invaded that country in April 1940.
This is not my first attempt at Churchill -- I have twice grappled with a very abridged version of Marlborough but have turned back twice -- and he is at his best when discussing military action. His descriptions of the action against the Graff Spree of the River Plate and the small naval actions supporting the Norwegian Campaign read like something out of O'Brien's Aubrey/Maturin series.
The other thing that strikes me as I am reading this book is that World War II was such a cataclysmic event that it just changed everything. To read Churchill's summary of the strategic situation at the outset of the war doesn't sound so far off a Wellington or a Howe spreading a map out on a table and marking enemy concentrations with crusts of bread and glasses of sherry. Churchill spent his formative years in the 19th Century and he strikes me as a 19th Century man who thinks like a 19th Century man (though his mind was certainly acute enough to grasp how the airplane and other technologies had changed the battlefield -- though he didn't seem to quite appreciate the new offensive roll of the tank). Perhaps he was a hold-over, but I will make a bold generalization and say that a person from the late 19th century could probably bop around much of antebellum Europe and be pretty comfortable after a short period of acclimation to motor vehicles, radios, movies, and wide spread electricity.
Not so after the War. It changed everything, including that mode of thinking.
I think another evidence of this fact is that nobody writes six volumes of non-fiction on anything anymore. A trilogy maybe, but a hexalogy? Six volumes? Cor!
So, I am afraid I'm going to have to leave the Germans on the doorstep of France, and leave old Winston all comfy-cozy with a large glass of whisky and one of those schmelly cigars at his new digs in Number 10 Downing Street; I need a chance to rest and recover before starting on Volume II. I also think it would be worth reading a biography, hopefully something that puts Churchill's character between that of a Savior and a Warmonger, before I continue to get a bit more perspective on the man writing the work, particularly with regards to his early life. I think it could make the remaining five volumes (five volumes!) far more rewarding.
