Commentary
By Frances Rice
As we prepare to ring out the old and celebrate the
beginning of a new year, it is worth taking a pause to reflect on how President
Donald Trump is working to make our country secure and prosperous again. A demonstration of how President Trump keeps close to his heart those of us who served our nation in the military is the Christmas Card he sent to me pictured here that was taken in my home.
Meanwhile, the actions of European leaders are putting
their citizens in national security and economic peril.
An alarming video is posted on YouTube which shines a bright light on Europe’s dark future and has as its subject: “The Absolute State of Vibrantly Enriched Christmas.” It is frightening and worth the few minutes it takes to watch it.
Below is an article that provides an analysis of how European nations were on the brink of extinction during World War II and was
saved by one man, Winston Churchill, who stood up against the powerful forces aligned
against him and prevailed. Western civilization owes him a debt of gratitude.
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Civilization's 'Darkest Hour'
By Victor Davis Hanson
Portrait
of Sir Winston Churchill by Adam Sherriff Scott
The new film "Darkest Hour" offers the
diplomatic side to the recent action movie "Dunkirk."
The story unfolds with the drama of British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill assuming power during the Nazi invasion of France in
May 1940. Churchill's predecessor, the sickly Neville Chamberlain, had lost
confidence of the English people and the British government. His appeasement of
Adolf Hitler and the disastrous first nine months of World War II seemed to
have all but lost Britain the war.
Churchill was asked to become prime minister on the very
day that Hitler invaded France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The armies of all
three democracies -- together larger than Germany's invading forces --
collapsed within days or a few weeks.
About a third of a million British soldiers stranded in a
doomed France were miraculously saved by Churchill's bold decision to risk
evacuating them by sea from Dunkirk, France, where most of what was left of the
British Expeditionary Force had retreated.
Churchill's greatest problem was not just saving the
British army, but confronting the reality that with the German conquest of
Europe, the British Empire now had no allies.
The Soviet Union had all but joined Hitler's Germany
under their infamous non-aggression pact of August 1939.
The United States was determined at all costs to remain
neutral. Just how neutral is emphasized in "Darkest Hour" by
Churchill's sad phone call with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR
cleverly assures Churchill that in theory he wants to help while in fact he can
do nothing.
Within days of Churchill taking office, all of what is
now the European Union either would be in Hitler's hands or could be considered
pro-Nazi "neutral."
"Darkest Hour" gets its title from the
understandable depression that had spread throughout the British government. Members
of Churchill's new War Cabinet wanted to sue for peace. Chamberlain and senior
conservative politician Edward Wood both considered Churchill unhinged for
believing Britain could survive.
Both appeasers dreamed that thuggish Italian dictator
Benito Mussolini might be persuaded to beg Hitler to call off his planned
invasion of Great Britain. They dreamed Mussolini could save a shred of English
dignity through an arranged British surrender.
Not Churchill.
In one of the few historical lapses in an otherwise
superb film, Churchill is wrongly portrayed as seriously conflicted and about
to consider the deal with Mussolini -- until he takes a subway ride and
rediscovers the defiance of the average Londoner. The subway scene is pure
fantasy.
The movie also sometimes portrays Churchill as less than
robust, when in fact he was the most traveled and physically daring of all
World War II leaders.
Alone, Churchill saw a pathway to victory against
overwhelming odds. As the film notes, Hitler may have had the world's greatest
army in the spring of 1940, but he still had no way of transporting it across
the British "moat" of the English Channel, given overwhelming British
naval mastery.
The German Luftwaffe never could defeat the Royal Air
Force.
Churchill assumed that if Britain and its overseas Empire
could hold out, then a frustrated Hitler might turn elsewhere -- and thereby
gain new enemies (and new British allies).
That is exactly what happened in 1941. A blundering and
frustrated Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Later, he would declare war on the
United States. By December 1941, Germany was at war against the world's largest
economy (American), largest navy (British) and largest army (Soviet) all at
once.
Germany and its allies could never win such a global war.
"Darkest Hour" takes place almost exclusively
indoors during Parliament sessions, private meetings and scenes between
Churchill and his equally brilliant wife, Clementine. But the dialogue is
riveting, the acting superb.
Actor Gary Oldman's masterful Churchill should be a sure
Academy Award-winning performance. Oldman reminds a generation of amnesiac
global youth that nearly 80 years ago, the dogged defiance of a 66-year-old
Victorian Englishman -- portly and not much over 5-foot-6 -- saved Western
civilization from Nazi barbarism.
Americans should watch "Darkest Hour" for
reasons beside its engaging acting and plot. We rightly believe that American
industry and Soviet manpower won World War II. Yet too often, Americans forget
the critical third allied ingredient: British leadership, courage and military
professionalism.
Churchill led the only major nation to have fought Hitler
alone. Only Britain fought from the first day to the last of World War II. It
alone entered the war without attacking a country or being attacked, but simply
on the principle of helping an independent Poland.
The world as we know it today owes its second chance to
Winston Churchill and the United Kingdom. Without them, civilization would have
been lost in the darkest hours of May 1940.
