{"id":8160,"date":"2015-01-23T08:12:11","date_gmt":"2015-01-23T16:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=8160"},"modified":"2015-01-23T08:12:11","modified_gmt":"2015-01-23T16:12:11","slug":"the-last-lion-remembered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-last-lion-remembered\/","title":{"rendered":"The Last Lion Remembered"},"content":{"rendered":"

Winston Churchill never once flinched in the face of the Third Reich.<\/em><\/h3>\n
by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online<\/a><\/p>\n
\n
\"Churchill
Churchill in November, 1942 (Reg Speller\/Getty)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

F<\/span>ifty years ago this Saturday, former British prime minister Winston Churchill died at age 90.<\/p>\n

Churchill is remembered for his multiple nonstop careers as a statesman, cabinet minister, politician, journalist, Nobel laureate historian, and combat veteran. He began his career serving the British military as a Victorian-era mounted lancer and ended it as custodian of Britain\u2019s nuclear deterrent.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But he is most renowned for an astounding five-year-tenure as Britain\u2019s wartime prime minister from May 10, 1940, to June 26, 1945, when he was voted out of office not long after the surrender of Nazi Germany.<\/p>\n

Churchill took over the day Hitler invaded Western Europe. Within six weeks, an isolated Great Britain was left alone facing the Third Reich. What is now the European Union was then either under Nazi occupation, allied with Germany, or ostensibly neutral while favoring Hitler.<\/p>\n

The United States was not just neutral. It had no intention of entering another European war \u2014 at least not until after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor a year and half later.<\/p>\n

From August 1939 to June 1941, the Soviet Union was an accomplice of the Third Reich. Russian leader Joseph Stalin was supplying Hitler with critical resources to help finish off Great Britain, the last obstacle in Germany\u2019s path of European domination.<\/p>\n

Some of the British elite wished to cut a peace deal with Hitler to save their empire and keep Britain from being bombed or invaded. They understandably argued that Britain could hardly hold out when Poland, Denmark, Norway the Netherlands, Belgium, and France all had not. Yet Churchill voiced defiance and vowed to keep on fighting.<\/p>\n

After the fall of France, Churchill readied Britain\u2019s defenses against a Nazi bombing blitz, and then went on the offensive against Italy in the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

As much of London went up in flames, Churchill never flinched, despite the deaths of more than 40,000 British civilians.<\/p>\n

By some estimates, the Soviet Red Army eventually killed three out of four German soldiers who died in World War II. The American economic colossus built more military ships, aircraft, vehicles, and tanks than did any other country during World War II.<\/p>\n

In comparison with such later huge human and material sacrifices, the original, critical British role in winning World War II is often forgotten. But Britain was the only major power on either side of the war to fight continuously the entire six years, from September 3, 1939, to September 2, 1945. Britain was the only nation of the alliance to have fought Nazi Germany alone without allies. Churchill\u2019s defiant wartime rhetoric anchored the entire moral case against the Third Reich.<\/p>\n

Unlike the Soviet Union or the United States, Britain entered the war without being attacked, on the principle of protecting independent Poland from Hitler. Unlike America, Britain fought Germany from the first day of the war to its surrender. Unlike Russia, it fought the Japanese from the moment Japan started the Pacific War to the Japanese general surrender.<\/p>\n

Churchill\u2019s Britain had a far smaller population and economy than either the Soviet Union or the United States. Its industry and army were smaller than Germany\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Defeat would have meant the end of British civilization. But victory would ensure the end of the British Empire and a future world dominated by the victorious and all-powerful United States and Soviet Union.<\/p>\n

It was Churchill\u2019s decision that Britain would fight on all fronts of both the European and Pacific theaters. He ordered strategic bombing over occupied Europe, a naval war against the German submarine and surface fleets, and a full-blown land campaign in Burma.<\/p>\n

He ensured that the Mediterranean stayed open from Gibraltar to Suez. Churchill partnered with America from North Africa to Normandy, and he helped to supply Russia \u2014 even as Britain was broke and its manpower exhausted.<\/p>\n

In the mid-1930s, Churchill first \u2014 and loudest \u2014 had damned appeasement and warned Europe and the United States about the dangers of an aggressive Nazi Germany. For that prescience, he was labeled a warmonger who wished to revisit the horrors of World War I.<\/p>\n

After the end of World War II, the lone voice of Churchill cautioned the West that its former wartime ally, the Soviet Union, was creating an \u201cIron Curtain\u201d and was as ruthless as Hitler\u2019s Germany had been. Again, he was branded a paranoid who unfairly demonized Communists.<\/p>\n

The wisdom and spirit of Winston Churchill not only saved Britain from the Third Reich, but Western civilization from a Nazi dark age,\u00a0when there was no other nation willing to take up that defense.<\/p>\n

Churchill was the greatest military, political, and spiritual leader of the 20th century. The United States has never owed more to a foreign citizen than to Winston Churchill, a monumental presence 50 years after his death.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 2015\u00a0Tribune Media Services, Inc.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winston Churchill never once flinched in the face of the Third Reich. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Fifty years ago this Saturday, former British prime minister Winston Churchill died at age 90. Churchill is remembered for his multiple nonstop careers as a statesman, cabinet minister, politician, journalist, Nobel laureate historian, and combat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[18,78,99,102,307],"tags":[400],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-27C","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10859,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/civilizations-darkest-hour-hits-the-silver-screen\/","url_meta":{"origin":8160,"position":0},"title":"Civilization\u2019s \u2018Darkest Hour\u2019 Hits the Silver Screen","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 2, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/National Review A masterful new film shows how Churchill saved the world from Nazi Germany in May of 1940. \u00a0 The new film Darkest Hour offers the diplomatic side to the recent action movie Dunkirk. \u00a0 The story unfolds with the drama of British prime minister\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Churchill"","block_context":{"text":"Churchill","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/churchill\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6808,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-munich\/","url_meta":{"origin":8160,"position":1},"title":"Obama’s Munich","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 2, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine\u00a0 The interim agreement negotiated by the Security Council and Germany with Iran is a serious advance toward what Winston Churchill\u00a0called\u00a0the Munich agreement: \u201ca total and unmitigated defeat\u201d\u00a0and a \u201cdisaster of the first magnitude.\u201d\u00a0Nothing in the agreement guarantees that Iran will fulfill its promises, or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iran"","block_context":{"text":"Iran","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iran\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9277,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/setting-the-record-straight-on-britain-america-and-world-war-ii\/","url_meta":{"origin":8160,"position":2},"title":"Setting the Record Straight on Britain, America, and World War II","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 30, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online While in London last week, President Obama waded into the upcoming British referendum about whether the United Kingdom should stay in the European Union. 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