The Secret to Winston Churchill’s Greatness

Easily the most significant man of the 20th Century. Possibly the 19th and certainly the 21st.

A racist by today’s standards. It is interesting to speculate what his views would have been were he born a hundred years later and in this era of Barack 0bama how his career would have shaped.

His mother was the American, Jennie Jerome.

Obviously "the big guy" Biden did not think that Winston Churchill was that great as he had Churchill's bust removed from the Oval Office in the White House as soon as he assumed office.

Many thanks, OP, for sharing with us a worthy tribute to a man who was undoubtedly one of the greatest figures of the modern era. Churchill's life, and this column, serve to remind us: never underestimate the value, and the power, of knowledge and clear comprehension of the past. A life well lived, and in service to Humanity. I don't recall if it's from the Bible, or a work of literature, but: 'when comes such another?'

We still hear his words from speeches like "Never was so much owed by so many to so few" or “This was their finest hour”' or There are just too many to list and I doubt he had a team of writers or took polls before making any of them.

Re #6, I'm pretty sure that Churchill wrote all his own speeches. If you really want a 'soup to nuts', very detailed look at the buildup to, early, middle and late stages of WW2, although from a very European point, meaning little mention of the Pacific War, I can heartily recommend Churchill's "The Second World War." I bought a six volume paperback series in a slip case, used on ebay for something like $15 or so, I don't really remember. It took me a good while to get through it,but there was AMAZING details of the behind the scenes internationals and national political and personal intrigue and maneuvering to try to avoid, and then set up for the war. And a number of critical concepts were created by Churchill personally, although the execution into hardware required experts in the fields, after Churchill imagined a particular thing. The most prominent, and important example were the LSTs and small landing craft, mostly created in the USA, but imagined and "invented" by Churchill after decades of studying how to avoid the disaster of Gallipoli, where the Brits landed OK but found supplying the troops across the beach wasn't possible. The LST (Landing Ship, Tank) was a nearly four hundred foot long, 65 foot wide ship that could literally drive it's bow right up onto a beach, open big bow doors and a ramp and loaded trucks and tanks could drive directly onto the beach, unloading extremely rapidly. The ship could them readjust their ballast tanks, pull off of the beach and go for another load. Churchill imagined it, British naval architects designed it and a British yard built a prototype which worked. They took the designs to the USA, and we said, characteristically....."Why so small?" and scaled it up, improved it, perfected it and built over 1,000 of them from 1942 to 1945. They were critical to the landings in the Med, and on D-Day, and fundamentally transformed the island hopping campaign in the Pacific. Churchill was a genius, but not a technical man, and idea man, and understood history well.

Apologies for the second post. I should have done my homework before the first. 'when comes such another' is spoken by Marc Antony, in Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar' Act 3, scene 2.