Darkest Hour

My wife and I took in the movie Darkest Hour.  It was pretty powerful.  Being a WW2 buff and having read a few books on Churchill I was able to gather a bit more out of the movie than I would have been able to gather if I hadn’t read the books.  I’d encourage you to see it.

For example, one scene where Churchill’s wife Clementine remarks that “they can’t pay their bills” is more than true.  Churchill was basically broke for most of his life.  In the book, No More Champagne, you can learn about how he misused money.  The book gives further insight into Churchill’s character which is on display in the movie.  He had an ability to distort reality similar to the ability Steve Jobs had.  Sometimes, that is a great characteristic of a great leader.

Clearly, if you were rational and thinking linearly, Great Britain didn’t stand a chance at survival against the Nazi’s.  Churchill’s war cabinet had some wonderful groupthink all the way from Chamberlain and Halifax to generals.

May/June 1940 was one of the darkest hours in human history.  It is truly amazing five short years later the course of that history would be spun off a predictable axis.

There are no direct parallels to our political environment today despite what a lot of people on both sides of the aisle might be thinking or chattering about.  We don’t have a new method of war sweeping across nation-states and enslaving people.  Churchill was an Elizabethian Englishman of a different age and doesn’t easily compartmentalize into morays of today.

Churchill saved western civilization as we know it.