One of the nation’s pre-eminent biographers called his new book, “Warlord,” both a biography of Winston Churchill and a study in “a very different kind of leadership than you may be used to.”
Carlo D’Este, speaking June 4 at the Lemnitzer lecture series at the Association of the United States Army’s headquarters in suburban Washington, said, Churchill “is a subject that has always fascinated me” even though the career of Great Britain’s prime minister during World War II has been the subject of hundreds of earlier biographies. |
Undertaking six years of researching and writing, D’Este wanted to concentrate on the military aspects of Churchill’s life and was determined “to write something new” about him. Churchill “always saw himself first and foremost as a soldier. He had a lifelong obsession with all things military.” This became obvious during World War II when he held the twin positions of prime minister and minister of defense, “the only PM ever to do it.”
Churchill “was, by any criterion, far too old, at age 66, to carry the enormous burden of a deadly and prolonged war,” and he was given to bouts of depression, drank heavily and was a fat man with a waddling walk. But he Churchill succeeded in carrying Great Britain through the storm of seeing Germany conquer much of Europe, surviving round the clock bombing of the home island, turning aside members of his own Conservative Party’s please to make peace with Adolf Hitler and trying to hang on until the Americans entered World War II.
“Winston Churchill was born for war,” the product of an unhappy but privileged childhood of one of Victorian and Edwardian Britain’s leading political figures, Lord Randolph Churchill and his American-born wife, Jennie Jerome Churchill. He was sent to Sandhurst, Great Britain’s military academy with his father’s expectations that he become an infantry officer.
Instead, Churchill became a cavalry officer and participated in the last major British cavalry charge against an enemy in the Sudan in 1898. In addition, he saw combat as an observer in Cuba, in the Swat Valley of what is now Pakistan, in the Boer War in southern Africa, and as a battalion officer in World War I after being forced to resign from the cabinet.
- D’Este said Churchill’s life was distinguished by four things: Unbounded courage and like Gen. George Patton he could “take on physical challenges and think nothing of them;”
- A willingness to take risks “to do anything to shorten a war,” such as pushing a plan to invade Germany early in War I through the straits of Denmark that was never carried out to the idea of attacking Turkey through the Dardanelles a year later that turned into a military disaster;
- Using “oratory as a leadership tool” as he did during the Battle of Britain in his “This Is Their Finest Hour” 1940 address followed by his “Blood, Sweat and Tears” speech days before many members of the British Expeditionary Force and French soldiers were evacuated from Dunkirk – without their equipment and weapons;
- Possessing “an incredible mind for fresh ideas,” such as seeing the value of a tank in breaking the stalemate of trench warfare while serving as First Lord of the Admiralty.
AUSA and the Army Historical Foundation jointly sponsor the series.