: Recommended for fans of Churchill. : Recommended for fans of Erik Larson : Recommended for fans of WWII
This is my fourth book by Erik Lars*** Liked it
: Recommended for fans of Churchill. : Recommended for fans of Erik Larson : Recommended for fans of WWII
This is my fourth book by Erik Larson and that would make me a fan. I got introduced to him with his 2003, "The Devil in the White City," the two-parallel-path story of the how Daniel H. Burnham architected the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and how the serial killer, H.H. Holmes, operated in and around the fair's vicinity to hunt his prey. "Thunderstruck" came next; another two-parallel-path story about Guglielmo Marconi inventing the radio and law enforcement's capture of the murderer, Hawley Crippen, by using the radio to prevent his escape across the Atlantic from Europe to America. Most recently, I loved his "Dead Wake" about the sinking of the Lusitania.
In this book,"The Splendid and the Vile," Larson tells the story behind Sir Winston Churchill's first year as Britain's Prime Minister at the start of WWII. In the reader's note at the beginning, Larson says he did not intend it to be a comprehensive account of Churchill's life and work. Instead, he was looking for a more intimate description of "how Churchill and his circle went about surviving on a daily basis: the dark moments and the light, the romantic entanglements and debacles, the sorrows and laughter, and the odd little episodes that reveal how life was really lived under Hitler’s tempest of steel."
The book, therefore, is not a blow-by-blow historical account of the war from Churchill's perspective. It is instead an account of day-to-day life during the crisis. The book centers on key characters from three groups.
The Brits: : British Primer Minister Winston Churchill (1940 - 1945): Fearless, intense, flamboyant, electric, wholly unpredictable, capricious and meddlesome, inclined toward dynamic action in every direction at once" and deeply in debt. : Frederick "The Prof" Lindemann: Churchill's closest confidant; an arrogant eccentric genius. : Lord Beaverbrook (AKA s Max Aitken): Wildly successful at accelerating the production of fighters and bombers that allowed the Brits to win the Battle of Britain. : Mary Churchill: Churchill's youngest child (17 years). : Clementine Churchill: Churchill's wife. : Randolph Churchill: Churchill's son, also deeply in debt, and had "a gift not just for spending money but also for losing it gambling, at which his ineptitude was legendary." : Jock Colville: Winston Churchill’s private secretary.
The Germans : Adolf Hitler: Dictator of Germany; Supreme Leader (The Führer)(1933 to 1945) : Joseph Goebbels: Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment for the German Third Reich; controlled all media and cultural life in Germany spreading Hitler's virulent racist ideology and maintaining morale until the bitter end of World War II. : Rudolf Hess: Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler; Flew solo to Scotland in 1941 to negotiate the UK's exit from WWII; was arrested. Convicted of crimes against peace at Nuremberg trials, served life sentence until his suicide in 1987. : Hermann Goring: The second most powerful man in the Third Reich, the chief of the Luftwaffe, the German air force; acquired hundreds of works of art that he confiscated or stole from Jewish individuals.
Americans : Franklin Delano Roosevelt: the President of the United States from 1933 to his death in 1945. Innovated the US "Lend-Lease" act. : Harry Hopkins: Roosevelt's rumpled, sickly-looking personal adviser. All of these player's actions chronicled in the book came from newspaper clippings and personal journals. The way Larson writes it though, I felt like I was in the room with these people.
But, besides the personal stories, two things really stuck with me. The first was how compressed the significant event timeline was. I had no idea.
10 May 1940 (On one day!): - Germany invades France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands - Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigns - King George VI appoints Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, to replace him.
26 May 1940 (Just over two weeks later): - Evacuation begins of Allied troops from Dunkirk, France (Depicted in the 2017 Christopher Nolan movie of the same name)
14 June 1940 (Just over two weeks later) - Germany Marches into Paris (Depicted in the 1943 movie Casablanca)
22 June 1940 (7 Days later) - France surrenders to Nazi Germany
3 July 1940 (Two weeks Later): The British navy attacks Mers-el-Kébir (neutral French Navy) on the coast of French Algeria. The attack was the main part of Operation Catapult, a British plan to destroy neutral French ships to prevent them from falling into German hands after the Allied defeat in the Battle of France.
10 July 1940 (One week later): Germans begin the first in a long series of bombing raids against Great Britain (Battle of Britain)
31 October (One week later): The Battle of Britain ends with Germany failing to gain air superiority.
Second, when I took my American History 101 course in college, I never really understood the significance of the American 1941 Lend Lease Act. This book made it clear.
When the war started, the British economy basically ground to a halt. President Roosevelt knew that Churchill needed extensive military aid, supplies, and economic assistance or they would lose the war. He also knew they couldn't pay for it. Roosevelt faced significant opposition to helping the Brits from isolationists and non-interventionists, particularly among Republicans in Congress, who feared it would draw the United States into World War II. So Roosevelt took the case to the American people using a garden hose metaphor.
If your neighbor's house is on fire and he doesn't have a hose and a water source to fight the fire, but you do, you don't argue with the guy about how much you're going to charge him for the help. You help him. Any good neighbor, like the Brits, will return the hose after use or replace it if it got damaged.
That did the trick. Whatever aid the United States gave the Brits, they would pay back after the war. It was still a close vote but the US Congress passed President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Lend lease on 11 March 1941.
I liked the book. I recommend it for Churchill fans, Erik Larson fans, and historians interested in the softer side of WWII....more
I really enjoyed this one. I am a fan of Larson and he does not disappoint with this. Things I learned:
1: President Wilson lost his first wife while hI really enjoyed this one. I am a fan of Larson and he does not disappoint with this. Things I learned:
1: President Wilson lost his first wife while he was in office. 2: The Captain of the Lusitania testified in the Titanic investigation the day he departed New York to meet his fate. 3: The British were monitoring all of the German submarine radio communications during the war without the German leaders knowing. The Germans were not using encryption as yet. The British knew were all the subs were more or less but were so afraid to use the information for fear of tipping the Germans so only a handful ever knew anything. They had not invented Game Theory yet as they did when they broke the Enigma machine in World War II. 4: It still took the U.S. two more years and numerous boat sinkings by the hands of the German submarines before Wilson got them into the war. 5: There is lots of circumstantial evidence that supports the case that the British were looking for a Lusitania-style sinking to get the Americans into the war and may have tried to arrange events to make that kind of thing happen. 6: The odds that U-Boat 20 would find the Lusitania and the right time and place are extraordinary. If one little variable would have changed, and there were many to consider, the two captains would have missed each other by hours or even days and by miles across the ocean. It is really incredible....more
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