5/4/2023 0 Comments Darkest hour![]() And when Clementine tells Churchill that they’re very nearly broke, Churchill promises to economize by cutting back to “four cigars a day.” When he rides the London Underground, he asks for a match-breaking the ice with his fellow travelers and inviting them to converse with him. He uses them, too: He takes his time lighting one, forcing a political rival to wait. ![]() We see Churchill lighting and smoking them often. He was rarely without his trademark cigar, either. “How do you manage to drink during the day?” an appalled King George asks Churchill as a servant pours the prime minister another glass of champagne. He usually starts his day with scotch he drinks champagne with his lunch and dinner and he and concludes his day with port or brandy. His political opponents accused him of being a “drunkard,” and they weren’t far off. They believed it was better to save what they could than chuck the whole works away, as (they thought) Churchill was doing.Ĭhurchill drank a lot-both in real life and in this movie. Neville Chamberlain, whom Churchill replaced as prime minister, as well as the ambitious Earl of Halifax, both sought peace in order to save lives and preserve what they could of Britain’s independence and culture. We should also note that while Churchill’s political opponents were wrong in wanting to seek terms from Germany, their motives were understandable and perhaps even, in some way, laudable. ![]() He admits that some in the government likely dreaded Churchill’s assumption to the country’s highest political office, but that “None dreaded it, none, like Adolph Hitler.”Ĭhurchill was also bolstered by the character and gumption of the British people themselves, embodied especially by Elizabeth Layton, Churchill’s private secretary. But when he climbs to the pinnacle of British power, she offers him a toast: “Our small sacrifice was for a far, far greater good.”Īfter a rocky beginning, King George VI becomes a firm Churchill ally, too. She and her family always knew they took a back seat to Churchill’s political career. When he grew older and more snappish, Clementine exhorted him to be “more kind.” “I want others to love and respect you, as I do,” she tells him. His wife, Clementine, stood beside him, offering love, encouragement and often advice. He combined a unique linguistic grace and power with a sheer, stubborn will that still undergirds how the British like to see themselves.īut unlike Britain in 1940, Churchill himself never stood alone. But now, all these years later, few question that he was exactly the sort of leader that Britain needed during World War II. Even his political career has its share of blemishes. He has plenty of faults, as we shall see. The Winston Churchill we see in Darkest Hour is no exemplary standard of virtue. Defeat can become victory through grit and faith and hope, as long as we never surrender. Spoiler warning: Where there’s life, the outcome is never certain. But should he? Would he simply be sending his countrymen to die in vain? Should any leader exhort his countrymen to march into almost certain annihilation? It is insane.Ĭhurchill wants to fight on. To resist-to fight on-is not only misguided, they say. It’s hopeless, some in Parliament suggest. Many believe that England-a country that’s not been invaded for nearly a thousand years-may be watching its last days unfurl. Hitler’s forces advance inexorably, as if fortified by some infernal power. The United States, the island nation’s great, shining hope, remains stubbornly neutral. “How many of them are trapped?” asks Winston Churchill, Britain’s new prime minister.īritain’s allies are gone or going. The British army stands surrounded on a small French beach near Dunkirk. Hitler needs only to exhale to blow Paris down. Hitler’s armies slice through Western Europe’s proudest nations like a scythe. We forget that there was nothing cartoonlike about him. ![]() Germany’s failure is so deeply ingrained in us that Nazis have become shorthand for flat-out villainy and Hitler’s become a cartoon nemesis. Most of us have known that for so long that we might as well have been born with that knowledge, like the way salmon instinctively know the way home. Spoiler warning: The Germans lost World War II.
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