Slight derail:
I am going to say something unpopular. Churchill couldn’t have succeeded without Chamberlain.
When he did that foolish “Peace in our time” thing, he pretty much had to. Our army was ridculously understaffed and under equipped, our airforce was a joke - heck they were still using biplanes! - and our navy was at it’s lowest level since before the Spanish armada.
Everyone remembers the speech. No one remembers that his first act on returning was to throw military production into high gear and start uprating regiments in both personnel and equipment. Something that was only possible thanks to Chamberlain’s insistance on aggressively expanding the British manufacturing base despite the depression.
As a war time PM, Churchill was without peer, and thank God we had him! But the war preps, especially the upgrading of the RAF that was so important to our very survival, was mostly Chamberlain.
Sorry, I seen these two mentioned a couple of times in this thread, and Chamberlain ALWAYS gets no credit.
I can’t compete with an Englishman on knowledge of your history.
All I can offer is common sense.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Chamberlain was right about something.
The most historically lauded figures were not always right in every detail, nor could they have “done it alone”...others had to help as well.
Churchill led the Brits in their darkest hours. Churchill was until that point not the Churchill that lives in history as a giant among men. When he finally became such, it was almost too late.
That was my only point.
Because that is what parallels what we were discussing about people’s reaction to the choices we have for President, with the class of the lot clearly being Newt.
That may be true but it is also due to the fact that the sellout was a cynical and knowing betrayal of eastern european democracies, leading to the murder of millions. Chamberlain died a broken man soon after, and for good reason. He knew what he had done.
It is also true that Churchill was right for years before, ignored and ridiculed for it. If the West had listened to him in 1936, when the German Army was a ragtag bunch straggling unhindered and unopposed into the Rhineland, no better than the British Army and far weaker than the French, there would have been no WWII, at least in the European theatre.
We at least have the oppportunity of not ignoring Gingrich untill it is too late and the cost too high. Whether we will seize the day is looking doubtful.