Layout 8 - Winston Churchill

HITLER AND
CHURCHILL...
have the grit to live up to
that slogan, and if they are
leaders, they may be able
to carry the nation with
them to heroic heights.
That “never surrender”
statement reflects the spirit
of Valley Forge and of
1940, of Russia in
September 1941 at the
edge of the abyss or the
U.S. in early 1942 battered by a succession of military disasters
(or, in sports, the Boston Red Sox in 2004 facing a
daunting 3-0 deficit in the seven-game American League
play-offs). Against all odds, the underdogs would not surrender
and went on to victory.
The truth is, however, that such life or death struggles
are relatively rare. In the course of normal democratic politics,
negotiations between the major parties of the left and
the right are necessary for a government to function.
Negotiations mean compromise, not surrender. The radicals
on both sides may yell “never,” and, when they for once had
their way, America had a bloody civil war. So one must
carefully and infrequently choose one’s last-ditch stand.
Churchill’s “Never Surrender,” like all proverbs,
indeed like all generalizations, must be applied with nuance.
Because of the many who lived by it and went on to ignominious
defeat, it cannot be mindlessly invoked.
If the “never surrender” statement turns out to have
limited application, it is even more vulnerable to the charge
of being morally simplistic. We praise the assertion because
we assume that the cause over which one will not surrender
is just. If only that were so! We are jolted when we hear
Hitler using similar rhetoric. And even more unsettling is
the thought that, depraved as he was, he nevertheless
thought that he was fighting for a righteous cause—the
God- or nature-ordained ascendancy of a superior people.
And even if he did not believe that, or is accounted
insane, he certainly imbued his armies, composed of
“normal” people, with the sense of a noble mission that
should not be compromised. So we find him in the
Churchillian “never surrender” mode time and again in
Mein Kampf and later. A good German, he asserts, must be
“trained in rigid discipline and fanatical faith in the justice
and power of his cause and taught to stake his life for it
without reservation.” The Nazis are “fighting for a mighty
idea, so great and noble that it well deserves to be guarded
and protected with the last drop of blood.” The Nazis
entered a lecture hall with the resolution “that not a man of
us must leave the hall unless we were carried out dead….
Those who attended our meetings knew full well that we
would rather have let ourselves be beaten to death than
capitulate.” 24 Thus does the Devil cite scripture.
And, indeed, Hitler was as good as his word. When
the Nazi empire began to contract and the generals repeatedly
urged prudent retreats for the purpose of achieving
better logistical conditions and of reconstituting the demoralized
German forces, Hitler overrode them and ordered
that they hold every inch of territory and fight to the last
man. So it was in Tunisia, at Stalingrad, and at other places
in Russia and France. Hitler held out until, unlike in World
War I when Germany surrendered intact, all of Germany
was in ruins and the invading “barbarians” were a few
blocks away from his bunker. So many lives thrown away, so
many cities leveled, to no purpose other than one powerful
man’s “never surrender”!
In 1940, facing possible doom, Churchill had spoken
of carrying his own pistol and being prepared to fight on
until he choked in his own blood. Fortunately, Churchill
did not have to do so, and five years later, Hitler turned out
to be the one who did.
So when someone blurts out, “never surrender,” the
wise observer must ask, “On behalf of what cause” In
1940, it was glorious; in 1945, unspeakable. ,
Endnotes
1. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, tr. Ralph Manheim (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1943), 485.
2. Winston S. Churchill, Thoughts and Adventures, ed. James W.
Muller (Wilmington, Del.: ISI, 2009), 22.
3. Winston S. Churchill, A Roving Commission (New York:
Scribner’s, 1941), 364.
4. Mein Kampf, 674; see also Hitler, Hitler’s Second Book, ed.
Gerhard Weinberg, tr. Krista Smith (New York: Enigma, 2003), 192.
Churchill, House of Commons, 6 November 1938, Richard M. Langworth
ed., Churchill By Himself (New York: Public Affairs, 2009), 346.
5. Hitler’s Second Book, xx.
6. Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1950), 370.
7. Mein Kampf, 468.
8. Ibid., 469.
9. Ibid., 473-75.
10. B. C. Sax and Dieter Kuntz, Inside Hitler’s Germany
(Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1992), 70.
11. Winston S. Churchill, Onwards to Victory (Boston: Little
Brown, 1944), 317-18.
12. Winston S. Churchill, Savrola (New York: Random House,
1956), 64.
13. Mein Kampf, 471.
14. Ibid., 476-77.
15. Savrola, 107.
16. Mein Kampf, 631.
17. Savrola, 103-05.
18. Mein Kampf, 466, 468.
19. Ibid., 366, 483-84.
20. Ibid., 483, 358, 487-90, 505.
21. Savrola, 108-09.
22. Mein Kampf, 478-9, 369-70, 500.
23. Winston S. Churchill, The Unrelenting Struggle (London:
Cassell, 1942), 275.
24. Mein Kampf, 456, 490, 504, 488.
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