The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz
✒️ Author: Erik Larson | 📖 Published: 2020 | 🗓 Read: January 11, 2021 | 📄 Pages: 493
🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences
Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during a tumultuous time when Hitler and the German army were invading Western Europe, defeating every country that was in its way.
Within a few weeks, Germany started an air campaign on London and the surrounding area, which would go on for months, that destroyed homes, killed thousands of people and changed how many lived their lives, all to force Churchill and the government to surrender.
However, Churchill stood resolute against the Luftwaffe and never wavered, which inspired the citizens to continue to go about their day and give them hope.
🎨 Impressions
The Luftwaffe air campaign lasted a long time, almost a year, and destroyed many parts of London
Outwardly, Winston Churchill was positive and decisive, inspiring millions. Privately, he had his doubts and depression. He is the best wartime leaders in history.
There was chaos, destruction, and uncertainty, but people went about living their lives as normal as they could. People still went to work during the day and out at night to bars, pubs, and clubs.
Mundanity surprisingly permeated everyday life regardless of the chaos of the air raids.
How I Discovered It
I'm a fan of Erik Larson. I have enjoyed his previous books, Devil in the White City and Dead Wake.
Who Should Read It?
People who love WWII history. This book got too in the weeds for my taste, without much of the signature suspense that was in previous books by Erik Larson.
☘️ How the Book Changed Me
It's important to have a story, communicate it in a simple way, and repeat it over time.
Transparency is key. Acknowledge short-comings, failures, disappointments, and how you will address them in the future.
Mold your story to your audience. This can come down to word choice.
✍️ My Top 3 Quotes
ONE OF THE MOST DISTINCTIVE aspects of Churchill’s approach to leadership was his ability to switch tracks in an instant and focus earnestly on things that any other prime minister would have found trivial.
When John Colville read the initial draft, he realized he had heard bits of it before, as Churchill tested ideas and phrases in the course of ordinary conversation. The prime minister also kept snippets of poems and biblical passages in a special “Keep Handy” file. “It is curious,” Colville wrote, “to see how, as it were, he fertilizes a phrase or a line of poetry for weeks and then gives birth to it in a speech.”
As the train departed, Churchill waved at the crowd from the windows and kept waving until the train was out of sight. Then, reaching for a newspaper, he sat back and raised the paper to mask his tears. “They have such confidence,” he said. “It is a grave responsibility.”
Notable Highlights
Churchill believed marriage to be a simple thing and sought to dispel its mysteries through a series of aphorisms. “All you need to be married are champagne, a box of cigars, and a double bed,” he said. Or this: “One of the secrets of a happy marriage is never to speak to or see the loved one before noon.” Churchill had a formula for family size as well. Four children was the ideal number: “One to reproduce your wife, one to reproduce yourself, one for the increase in population, and one in case of accident.”
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Beaverbrook found other means of achieving this heightened engagement as well, these just as oblique. Like Churchill, he recognized the power of symbols. He sent RAF pilots to factories, to establish a direct connection between the work of building airplanes and the men who flew them. He insisted that these be actual fighting pilots, with wings on their uniforms, not merely RAF officials paroled briefly from their desks. He also ordered that the husks of downed German planes be displayed around the country, and in such a way that the public would not suspect the hand of the minister of aircraft production. He saw great benefit in having flatbed trucks carry the downed aircraft through bombed-out cities.
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“when each relentless aerial combat was a question of ‘you or me.’ ”
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ONE OF THE MOST DISTINCTIVE aspects of Churchill’s approach to leadership was his ability to switch tracks in an instant and focus earnestly on things that any other prime minister would have found trivial.
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The resulting prose, he wrote, “may at first seem rough as compared with the flat surface of officialese jargon. But the saving of time will be great, while the discipline of setting out the real points concisely will prove an aid to clear thinking.”
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When John Colville read the initial draft, he realized he had heard bits of it before, as Churchill tested ideas and phrases in the course of ordinary conversation. The prime minister also kept snippets of poems and biblical passages in a special “Keep Handy” file. “It is curious,” Colville wrote, “to see how, as it were, he fertilizes a phrase or a line of poetry for weeks and then gives birth to it in a speech.”
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“Since we are being opposed and calumniated throughout the world as enemies of the Jews,” he said, “why should we derive only the disadvantages and not also the advantages, i.e. the elimination of the Jews from the theater, the cinema, public life and administration. If we are then still attacked as enemies of the Jews we shall at least be able to say with a clear conscience: It was worth it, we have benefited from it.”
From Goebbel's Diary
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On Churchill’s orders, more guns were brought to the city, boosting the total to nearly two hundred, from ninety-two. More importantly, Churchill now directed their crews to fire with abandon, despite his knowing full well that guns only rarely brought down aircraft. The orders took effect that Wednesday night, September 11. The impact on civic morale was striking and immediate.
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The guns raised “a momentous sound that sent a chattering, smashing, blinding thrill through the London heart,” wrote novelist William Sansom. Churchill himself loved the sound of the guns; instead of seeking shelter, he would race to the nearest gun emplacement and watch. The new cacophony had “an immense effect on people’s morale,” wrote private secretary John Martin.
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“The dominating topic of conversation today is the anti-aircraft barrage of last night. This greatly stimulated morale: in public shelters people cheered and conversation shows that the noise brought a shock of positive pleasure.”
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He presented his vision of a United States of Europe, with Britain as its architect. He might have been speaking before the House of Commons, rather than to a small group of men fogged by cigars and alcohol in a quiet country house. “We seek no treasure,” Churchill said, “we seek no territorial gains, we seek only the right of man to be free; we seek his right to worship his God, to lead his life in his own way, secure from persecution. As the humble laborer returns from his work when the day is done, and sees the smoke curling upwards from his cottage home in the serene evening sky, we wish him to know that no rat-a-tat-tat”—here Churchill knocked loudly on the table—“of the secret police upon his door will disturb his leisure or interrupt his rest.” He said Britain sought only government by popular consent, freedom to say whatever one wished, and the equality of all people in the eyes of the law. “But war aims other than these we have none.”
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Harriman noticed that as Churchill moved among the crowds, he used “his trick” of making direct eye contact with individuals. At one point, believing Churchill to be out of earshot, Harriman told Pug Ismay, “The Prime Minister seems popular with the middle-aged women.” Churchill heard the remark. He whirled to face Harriman. “What did you say? Not only with the middle-aged women; with the young ones too.”
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As the train departed, Churchill waved at the crowd from the windows and kept waving until the train was out of sight. Then, reaching for a newspaper, he sat back and raised the paper to mask his tears. “They have such confidence,” he said. “It is a grave responsibility.”
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Churchill told his listeners that he felt a deep responsibility to bring them safely “out of this long, stern, scowling valley” and offered cause for optimism. “There are less than seventy million malignant Huns—some of whom are curable and others killable,” he said. Meanwhile, he pointed out, “The peoples of the British Empire and of the United States number nearly two hundred million in their homelands and in the British Dominions alone. They have more wealth, more technical resources, and they make more steel, than the whole of the rest of the world put together.” He urged his audience not to lose its “sense of proportion and thus become discouraged or alarmed.”
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Churchill was growing weary of Roosevelt’s reluctance to commit America to war. He had hoped that by now the United States and Britain would be fighting side by side, but always Roosevelt’s actions fell short of Churchill’s needs and expectations. It was true that the destroyers had been an important symbolic gift, and that the lend-lease program and Harriman’s efficient execution of its mandate were a godsend; but it had become clear to Churchill that none of it was enough—only America’s entry into the war would guarantee victory in any reasonable period of time.
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“Don’t marry someone because they want to marry you—but because you want to marry them.”
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“What we know is that the Prime Minister provided leadership of such outstanding quality that people almost reveled in the dangers of the situation and gloried in standing alone.” Wrote War Cabinet secretary Edward Bridges, “Only he had the power to make the nation believe that it could win.” One Londoner, Nellie Carver, a manager in the Central Telegraph Office, may have put it best when she wrote, “Winston’s speeches send all sorts of thrills racing up and down my veins and I feel fit to tackle the largest Hun!” On one of Churchill’s full-moon weekends at Ditchley, Diana Cooper, wife of Information Minister Duff Cooper, told Churchill that the best thing he had done was to give people courage. He did not agree. “I never gave them courage,” he said. “I was able to focus theirs.”
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“Here’s to a year of toil, a year of struggle and peril, and a long step forward to Victory!”