Layout 8 - Winston Churchill

the Personality of the Century, while the other is frequently
portrayed as the incarnation of Satan.
Yet Churchill and Hitler had a few interesting traits in
common, traits which the other pivotal leaders of
World War II—Roosevelt, Stalin, Chiang, Mao, de
Gaulle, Tojo, Mussolini—mostly did not share. Each was
short. Each during the war spent mornings in bed. Each
had direct experience of the trenches in World War I and
consequently had strong convictions on military matters
during World War II. Each crusaded against Bolshevism.
Politically, both had reservations about universal suffrage,
with Churchill tentatively suggesting modifications to
save the system and Hitler simplifying matters by destroying
the system. Neither attended college; both engaged in a
program of self-directed reading, primarily in history. Each
painted, one in middle and late life, the other only in early
life. Each depended on writing for his major source of personal
income. Each wrote an important book about himself
before coming to power: Mein Kampf is more about the
writer’s political philosophy and ambitions than about his
personality and life, while My Early Life is the reverse.
Another shared trait is that both men had a drive for
fame so intense that it could be fulfilled, as Churchill nicely
put it, either by “notability
or notoriety.” Negative
notices, that bane of
normal politicians, were
grist for their mill. Young
Hitler’s attitude to his
Communist foes was that
“it makes no difference
whatever whether they
laugh at us or revile us,
whether they represent us
as clowns or criminals; the
main thing is that they
mention us, that they
concern themselves with
us again and again.” 1
Churchill arrived at
a similar counter-intuitive
conclusion: “Politicians
get used to being caricatured.
In fact, by a strange trait in human nature they even
get to like it. If we must confess it, they are quite offended
and downcast when the cartoons stop.” 2 Bad publicity, for
either man, was still publicity—a line of thinking that
bespeaks either political sagacity or a personal insecurity
that hogs the spotlight.
Both men indulged in curiously similar hypothetical
flourishes. In his maiden speech in the Commons,
Churchill famously said, “If I were a Boer, I hope I should
be fighting in the field,” 3 even as Hitler, while railing at the
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French as Germany’s perennial enemy, stopped long enough
to concede, quite remarkably for him: “If I were a
Frenchman, and if the greatness of France were as dear to
me as that of Germany is sacred, I could not and would not
act any differently from Clemenceau.”
Years later, before developments made them mortal
enemies, Churchill returned to that hypothetical by
declaring, in a last-ditch attempt to avert the inevitable with
a bit of flattery: “I have always said that if Great Britain
were defeated in war I hoped we should find a Hitler to
lead us back to our rightful position among the nations.” 4
Those are simple exercises in identity swapping or
sympathetic identification, but Hitler, in a speech of 1928,
carries the hypothetical into the realm of the fantastic: “If
Satan were to come today and offer himself as an ally
against France, I would give him my hand.” 5 Churchill,
whether or not he ever heard of this remark, famously used
it with reference to Hitler and added typical impishness: “If
Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable reference
to the Devil in the House of Commons.” 6
But the major common trait was that both were the
most powerful orators of their age. To be sure, Hitler’s
speeches—even if one ignores the delusions, lies, paranoia,
and hatred—do not read well these days as compositions,
while many of Churchill’s
Hitler carries the hypothetical into the
realm of the fantastic: “If Satan were to
come today and offer himself as an ally
against France, I would give him my
hand”....Churchill with reference to
Hitler added typical impishness:
“If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at
least a favourable reference to the Devil
in the House of Commons.”
are in all the anthologies.
Yet for elocution, body
language, histrionics, hysterics,
and audience
response, Hitler was
unique. As he put it
himself, “I gradually transformed
myself into a
speaker for mass meetings
[and] I became practiced
in the pathos and the gestures
which a great hall,
with its thousands of
people, demands.” 7 Here
was one of those rare
moments when Hitler told
the truth.
Equally curious is that
both men, again unlike
the other giants of World War II, have had something to say
on oratory—and these statements are not so far apart.
Hitler, in particular, celebrated the power of speech: “All
great, world-shaking events have been brought about, not
by written matter, but by the spoken word.” 8 He therefore
paid close attention to the psychology and the circumstances
of speech-making.
The time when the speech is made, for instance,
matters greatly—evening is better than morning or
afternoon 9 —as does the hall in which it is given. >>