Wilderness Years

 (1929-1939)

I recently watched a wonderful series that portrayed Churchill during his wilderness years. From 1929-1939 Churchill was not a member of the cabinet. He even lost two elections for Parliament. William Manchester in his book titled The Last Lion presents a detailed account of an out-of-power minister of parliament and his trials to become the embodiment of the allied struggle against Hitler. In summary, Churchill was an outcast from the Conservative political establishment. Churchill stood almost alone as he urged Britain to resist Nazi aggrandizement and to prepare for war. Witnessing a man down of his luck, a man who carefully chronicled his own demise, a man who steadfastly voiced his beliefs rather than bowing to current fades, makes us appreciate the ultimate vindication of his principles and his personal triumph. As early as 1930 Churchill warned against Hitler’s rise to power, and England’s eventual response---“If a dog makes a dash for my trousers, I shoot him down before he can bite.”

I was particularly impressed with the two main actors, Albert Finney who played Churchill, and Vanessa Redgrave who played his wife Clementine. The series captured the complicated relationship between these two strong personalities. Despite tension in their marriage, she left him for some four months during the 1930’s for another man, she returned partially out of love and partially our of a profound belief that Winston was a great man whose destiny was to lead his nation.

During the 1930’s Churchill suffered much of the woes of the general population. He was in debt, having lost significant sums in the stock market. He had difficulty relating to his children who adored him but recognized that despite his affection for them politics was his first love. He suffered from great bouts of depression, even fearing to stand to close to the railroad tracks on a station platform fearing that he would throw himself in front of his train. 

At his home, Chartwell, Churchill sought solace. He would spend significant time painting or in physical labor to restore the mansion that dated back to 1086. The attention Churchill lavished on Chartwell made it a statement of his own personality. He lived expansively, if not extravagantly. Servants were an accepted part of his life. He enjoyed good wine, liquor, and cigars. He enjoyed extending hospitality, and celebrities and political loyalists were frequent guests at Chartwell. Churchill reveled in his hobbies: flying, brick laying, pond building, tropical fish, horse racing, and pig farming were some of hobbies during this period.

Churchill’s primary financial support came from his writings. By 1940 he had written more than 25 books and over 225 articles. In his lifetime, he wrote 56 books, winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1953. The subjects of his books and articles reveal his multifaceted genius, ranging over politics, history, painting, social issues, hobbies, and other topics. Distinguished art critics admired his paintings, many of which came to be hung in galleries and museums.

Nevertheless, Churchill during most of the 1930’s was out of step with his nation. Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain were politically successful because they stressed balancing the budget over needed military expenditures. Churchill fought a losing battle to block the ultimate independence of India or prevent the abdication of the Duke of Windsor (Edward VIII).  Unlike current politicians, Churchill never sought to hide his age. He looked old, dressed in an old-fashioned style, and spoke in old-fashioned phrases. Churchill understood well the causes of his unpopularity. He wrote in My Early Life: “to hold the leadership of a party or a nation with dignity and authority requires that the leader’s qualities and message shall meet not only the need but the mood of both.”

Churchill spoke out to a nation who failed to heed his warnings about the Nazi menace to Great Britain. Because the British Empire had suffered almost one million dead and over three million casualties, the British public feared that another war using enhance technology would be so destructive that it would destroy civilization. The British no longer took pride in their Empire; instead, they viewed it as an economic burden. Thus, Churchill’s imperialism seemed laughable to a people ravaged by the great depression.

A moral compass guided Churchill’s antagonism to Hitler. Churchill believed in the goodness of man, and viewed Nazi policies as an evil. While Churchill disliked Bolshevism, he sought an alliance with the Soviet Union rather than hoping that the two totalitarian dictatorships would embark on a bitter war. Churchill spoke out forcibly against Nazi mistreatment of Jews when British leaders viewed such policies as a regrettable German internal issue.

Baldwin and Chamberlain championed appeasement, allowing Hitler to remilitarize the Rhineland, seize Austria, and then dismember Czechoslovakia. Churchill was preventing from protesting the annexation of Austria in a newspaper column by Lord Beaverbrook, the newspaper magnate, and the British Broadcasting Corporation would not allow him to broadcast his views. After the British and French sellout of Czechoslovakia, Churchill spoke in the House of Commons “ How could honourable men with wide experience and fine records in the Great War condone a policy so cowardly? It was sordid, squalid, sub-human, and suicidal.”