WW2 Lessons on Leadership On the eve of the war Sir Winston Churchill gave a speech. The extract that came out is that there can never be friendship between the British democracy and the Nazi power that power spurns Christian ethics, which cheers its onward course by barbarous paganism, which vaunts the spirit of aggression and conquest, which derives strength and perverted pleasure from persecution and uses with pitiless brutality the threat of murderous force. That power can never be the trusted friend of British democracy.
We do not want to be led up the high road to becoming a satellite of the German Nazi system of European domination. An effort at rearmament, the like of which has not been seen ought to be made forthwith, and all the resources of this country and all its united strength. As the war raged on, Churchill used speeches to try and lift the spirits of the public, even when having to detail horrific scenarios in the war.
“Hitler knows that he will have to break us on this island or lose the war.“If we can stand up to him all Europe may be free, and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands; but if we fail then the whole world, including the United States, and all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more prolonged, by the lights of a perverted science.
“Let us, therefore, brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire lasts for a thousand years men will still say, ‘this was their finest hour’.”Should be bent to the task. Our people should know that there has been gross neglect and deficiency in our defense.WW2, terrible words were pronounced against the Western democracies “Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting and do not suppose that this is the end this is only the beginning of the reckoning”.
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The arms instrumentalities, as President Wilson called them are not sufficient by themselves. We must add to them the power of ideas. It is this very conflict of spiritual and moral ideas that gives the free countries, a great part of their strength. These dictators boast and vaunt themselves on their military strength before the world war, yet in their hearts, there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts. Words and stirrings advocating the cause of freedom terrify them.
WW2 , Lessons on Leadership We are preparing to save the whole world from the pestilence of Nazi tyranny and in defense of all that is most sacred to man. This war is not going to be a war of domination or imperial aggrandizement or material gain, no war to shut any country out of its sunlight and means of progress. It is going to be the war to establish the right of the individual, to establish and revive the stature of man.
My one aim is to extirpate Hitlerism from Europe. The question is such a simple one. Are we to move steadily forward and have freedom, or are we to be put back into the Middle Ages by a totalitarian system that crushes all forms of an individual’s life and has for its aim the subjugation of Europe and the gratification of Gangster appetites?
WW2 Lessons on Leadership Do not suppose that we are at the end of the road. Yet though long and hard it may be, I do not doubt that we shall win a complete and decisive victory over the force of evil and that victory will be a stimulus to mark our country as worthy in the days of peace as it is proving itself in hours of the war.
WW2 In wartime, there is a lot to be said for the motto “ Deeds, not words”. All the same, it is a good thing to look around from time to time and take stock. Our affairs have proposed in several directions during these last four or five months of the war.
