The Gathering Storm may not be the best known of Churchill’s six volume series The Second World War as it largely covers the period before the war began. Like similar titles on the First World War it has undoubtedly been sought out by many concerned that the world is shifting towards a new instability and asking: How does global war and instability happen and how can it be prevented?
Certainly, and as I have written elsewhere, we are not dealing with a worldwide fascist menace on the scale of Nazi Germany or even the individual fascist regimes of 1930s Europe that threatened peace. While there has been a notable increase in far-right activity, we are nowhere near the levels of popular fascism that a worldwide economic crisis helped give rise to in that time period.
While the causes of the First World War were the crumbling of the old order and the fall of various monarchies, the causes of the Second World War were, according to Churchill in The Gathering Storm more benign and even preventable. Today’s fears of an increasing instability as the old order no longer appears to be the favored form of governance has more in common with the collapse of the monarchies in pre-First World War Europe than the tragic ebbing away of security and resolve in the naive efforts for peace that led to World War Two. However the causes of both are equally important and worthy of our consideration.
In spite of the understandable drive to maintain peace at nearly any cost due to the horrific nature of the First World War, Churchill argues in The Gathering Storm that it was those like himself who were castigated as “warmongers” in Parliament that would ultimately end up saving civilization from fascism and not those who argued most strenuously for peace.
Churchill makes a compelling case that the sincere desire for peace cannot win against a more nefarious foe intent on world domination. In this volume he meticulously lays out the numerous ways in which a swift military rebuke of Germany’s violations of the Treaty of Versailles in the years leading up to 1939 could have stopped the Nazis. He further explains how meeting the threat of Panzer tanks and the deadly Luftwaffe with League of Nations condemnations was an invitation to destruction.
While at many points leading up to the war Britain had the military advantage he notes that this did not last. Britain lost “air parity” with Germany who pulled far ahead in the development of aircraft and weaponry while Britain’s strong belief in the ultimate superiority of the British Navy nearly proved fatal. While Churchill admits he was behind the times on this as much as anyone, he can be forgiven this underestimation due to his preoccupation with naval matters while serving as First Lord of the Admiralty before becoming Prime Minister.
Instead of peace, the increased militarization of Germany and corresponding lack of preparedness of France and Britain only helped to make the situation more precarious and unstable. Meanwhile Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain continued British government policy of capitulation to Hitler’s various incursions and occupations of European countries. These culminated in the Munich Pact of 1938 which not only allowed but officially sanctioned the Nazi rape of Czechoslovakia. Known as “appeasement” it became ever after associated cynically with Chamberlain’s boast that it would guarantee “peace in our time”.
The Gathering Storm details how those committed to peace and an idealist world vision cannot be on a level playing field with those who don’t abide by international law, norms or agreed upon treaties. It shows how the peace was lost and how a world conflict can begin through lack of action as much as the firing of weapons. One is continuously struck by just how much of a close run thing the continued existence of a non-totalitarian world was in this time period.
As with anything, it is easy to see how Churchill’s argument can cross the line into a jingoistic, warmongering rhetoric if left unchecked as his detractors had feared. But for this time and this enemy it was proven to be the correct approach. Churchill and the realists in the British government were given power in the nick of time after the failures of the Chamberlain government proved self evident.
In today’s world there does not appear to be a comparable state actor with the unchecked ambition and unchallenged military expansion of 1930s Nazi Germany. The largest and most militarily powerful nations have yet to stray from the path of peaceful coexistence even as lesser actors saber rattle on the sidelines. For that we can certainly be grateful. However Churchill’s warning in The Gathering Storm, that peace is maintained through vigilance and a strong and swift response when necessary is an important lesson for an increasingly unpredictable modern world.
