NUMBER ONE: WINSTON CHURCHILL’S ACCOUNT OF WORLD WAR TWO 

This set of six books, each over 500 pages, describes the main developments of The Second World War, and is appropriately titled just that. When I first read these books about ten years ago my main motive was to learn about the war which I lived through as a child. Now I am starting to re-read these volumes, mostly because I have found that I do not remember those events well at all. After re-reading them I would like to share with you a sort of “short” account of what Lord Churchill had to say. I had the privilege years ago of visiting Churchill’s grave next to the family’s Blenheim Palace near-bye to Oxford, England. You might like to know that Churchill wrote many books along with guiding England to victory in the Second World War.  

         1.

            The first volume published in this series of books, published in 1949, is entitled Their Finest Hour, and serves as an overview of the British people’s experience of the war during the four or five years of its continuance. It records how France fell to the Germans, how the British withstood the years of the “blitz” bombing of London by the Germans, and how the rise of Germany affected the surrounding world of the Mediterranean Sea, including North Africa. This book is meant to stand as a tribute to the British people for their courageous stand against Nazism. It is odd but this book reads as if it were a full account of World War Two, but it serves more as an introduction to the rest of the series, as a brief survey of some of its early developments.               

Actually, the set of books begins with Volume Two (first published in 1948) is entitled The Gathering Storm and describes the British struggle to take its place amidst the against several years of Nazi air attacks, especially on London. It gets its title from Churchill’s belief that the rise of Adolph Hitler was the source of the evil perpetrated upon the world in this war. The British public’s endurance and survival during the war was absolutely remarkable. They simply refused to give up to the Nazi warlords. Their homeland and major city, London, were almost completely demolished by the Nazi air-raids over a period of several years in what is known as “The Blitz”.  The Nazis forces forged their way across Western Europe, conquering France, as well as dominating the and chased the Brits fighting there to the sea at Dunkirk from whence hundreds of thousands were miraculously rescued by thousands of British ships of all sorts in the fog and taken back to England.

            Hitler soon conquered France and offered Britain a peace which they straight-way refused. France split into a minority government, which in order to save themselves from extinction surrendered to the Nazis plague, while others followed General De Gaulle and joined with the Brits. The Brits withstood several years of constant Germany air attacks and ultimately the Germans stopped their incessant bombing raids. Things remained terrible all around the Mediterranean region, including North Africa and the Egyptian desert. Fortunately, the conflict in the North African desert ended with a temporary victory for the British in 1941. But Hitler’s Germany continued to grow and threaten its surrounding countries.