The Gathering Storm (The Second World War)

Churchill is the biggest man of our times although now gone for 50 years. He had a ring-side seat to the two world wars and the writing skills to tell about it with humility, honesty, and humor. The Gathering Storm is the first of Churchill's six volumes of history, written during the post-war period when he and his party were thrown out of office. Churchill had been an officer and First Lord of the Admiralty during WWI. He held high office after the war but resigned in 1931 due to disagreements over policy in India.During the 1930's, Churchill was an MP but not a cabinet member. He studied the world scene carefully through his many contacts, both in and out of official duty. Since Churchill was never in any way responsible for the atrocious British policy of appeasement and non-support to allies, he was the right man to form a government in 1940 and lead the war effort.In this 700 page tome we learn how Churchill dealt with his hand. He found ways to provide input to PM's and other leaders through letters and dinner conversations. When no one took his advice, he never questioned himself or his judgment, but instead waited for the next day. Churchill certainly understood work life balance. If he was not in the government, he could watch the world scene and write letters from the south of France while painting and dining.Churchill also gives us lots of management and leadership advice here. He never accepts any task unless the role and expectations are clear and he has the support to make it a success. He understands the value of developing a strong network that he draws on later. He also relishes his naps, realizing that even during war time, one can work all night if a good late afternoon nap is taken.

I read Churchill first to enjoy the most excellent writing and second to remember the Second World War, which is steadily fading from memory. This volume is a warning of the dangers in letting political wrangling hide the dangers of the modern world.

Volume 2 of Churchill's six-volume work on World World Two provides an intriguing read. Churchill narrates the warfare in Continental Europe, the Battle of Britain, and battles in Africa. One reads about the incredible initial ease with which Hitler's forces moved through the continent, the shifting alliances of nations on the continent, the fall of France and retreat at Dunkirk, the courage and perseverance of the British (her air force, navy, army, and people) in resisting Hitler's advance, and success against Mussolini's forces in the African theatre. Churchill gives details of military strategies, how they worked and where they failed, as the war progressed in Continental Europe, over the British Isles, and in the deserts of Africa. The account is so intriguing that I find myself reluctant to lay down my iPad or iPhone while reading late into the night.As always, Churchill uses colourful language that is a joy to read. Compared with volume 1, and with the narration jumping from place to place and from time to time, one feels that the content of the second volume is rather less well organised. Throughout this volume, Churchill is also liberal, as he was in volume 1, in setting out details of his speeches, directives, minutes, telegrams, etc, which the reader may find tedious at times. Nonetheless, this is more than made up for by the excitement engendered by the intricate details of developments in the war against Nazi Germany and the Axis.In all, this volume is highly recommended to anyone interested in the history of World War Two.

As with virtually everything he did in life, Winston Churchill wrote his six volume history of the Second World War with many goals: As the Prime Minister of Britain (and--equally importantly--a member of the "right" class), Churchill had access to volumes of original documents. As the Prime Minister during the War, he was in a unique position to understand the relationship of those documents to real events. As a central actor, he had a huge incentive to prepare the first draft of history...to place himself in the best possible light. As a conservative politician out of power when he wrote, he sought to warn the world of the looming communist menace. Finally, as a long time practitioner of written English, he had an unparalleled command of the language. In this volume, Churchill successfully blends together all of these personas to create an absolutely riveting history of the prelude to the Second World War--from the close of World War One to the invasion of Belgium.Churchill's mastery of English is reason enough to read this book. For example, in describing the British government's constant debates over what to do about German rearmament, Churchill says the British were "frothing pious platitudes while foeman forge their arms". Very seldom do I have to turn to a dictionary while reading, but Churchill sent me there regularly.But do not think that this is just a book to be read to enjoy his use of language. His detailed account of how we got into the Second World War, and how we might have avoided it, is incisive and persuasively argued. And always watch for the subtext--his warning that the appeasement on Germany was then (in the 1950's) being repeated in the appeasement of the Soviet Union.Churchill's weakness flows directly from his strength. As a prime actor, he saw (and describes) the war entirely from the "balance of power", or large political perspective. The plight of the Jews in Germany is barely mentioned. He pays virtually no attention to the internal politics of the U.S.--which ultimately proved decisive in the war. And he virtually ignores the growing war in the far east.With that limitation in mind, this is a book everyone interested in understanding the Second World War--and everyone who enjoys the creative use of the English language--should read.

The first book in Churchill’s massive six-volume history of the Second World War, this covers the period from the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 to the day when Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940. The series, among his other writings, won Churchill the Nobel Prize for Literature, although the liberal intellectual snobberati like to suggest that that was out of gratitude for his wartime leadership rather than for its literary merits. The snobberati, as usual, are wrong. This is a superbly written account of the period from one man’s viewpoint – that man happening to be one of the handful of important men who decided the fate of the world for the second half of the twentieth century at least.Despite recent attempts at revisionist history, it is still, I think, generally accepted that the conditions that allowed for the rise of Hitler and the Nazis were seeded in the Treaty of Versailles that formally ended the First World War, and then fertilized by the failures of the Allies, mainly the US, France and Britain, to act at an early stage to prevent Germany from re-arming. Exhausted from WW1 and with no appetite for further war, appeasement seemed the easier option, and the old men who ran the world dithered as Hitler began to forge a massive fighting machine and revived German pride and resentment at their treatment by the victors of the 1914-18 war. Churchill was the main opponent of appeasement, arguing consistently that Germany must be dealt with before they became too powerful for the Allies to control. Alas! How different history may have been if only his views had prevailed in the mid-1930s.Of course, in this book Churchill shows that Churchill thinks Churchill was right all along, but I tend to agree with him about that so his bias in his own favour didn’t become an issue. He is remarkably personally generous to those individuals with whom he disagreed, even as he condemns their weakness and failure to act. He tries to give their side of the arguments as fairly as he can, considering that they were proved wrong time and time again.But he is pretty brutal about failures of the national policies of the WW1 allies, especially the US’s self-interested and isolationist position of neutrality. He points out that the Allies reluctantly agreed to Wilson’s League of Nations after WW1, only for the American government then to refuse to ratify it, immediately making it a toothless tiger. He talks about the damage done, economically and politically, by the reparations forced on Germany, and how the US was unwilling to cancel debt to allow the German economy to recover, not to mention the economies of America’s erstwhile allies.But France and Britain come in for plenty of criticism too, for continuing to attempt to mollify and compromise with Hitler’s Germany long after, in Churchill’s opinion, such attempts were obviously dangerous. He talks in depth about Germany’s open and secret build-up of their army, naval power and, most frighteningly, air force, while Britain and France lagged behind, hoping that somehow war could be avoided. He barely hides his disgust at the Munich agreement and the betrayal of the Allies’ commitment to Czechoslovakia. He shows how he argued forcefully for the Allies to take a military stand before Germany overtook France and Britain in terms of military force, but to no avail. And therefore, when even the appeasers finally agreed that Germany must be stopped, the Germans had built up a huge military advantage; and the British, quickly left alone as one ally, France, was defeated, and the other, the US, sat on its haunches doing nothing, had to try to fend off an invasion long enough to allow for a massive expansion in manpower, munitions, and the vital air power – defensive and offensive – that had been allowed to fall so badly behind.Although the story is told from a personal perspective, with Churchill more than most the personal is political, and so this reads like a formal history far more than a personal memoir. Churchill claims, and I have no reason to doubt him, that he asked other people to rigorously check the facts in the book, so that there is a solid historical foundation below the upper layer of Churchill’s own opinion. One sees his mastery over detail, his ability to look at the full chessboard of war, his willingness to throw away a pawn or two to capture the queen, his courage to be open about the dangers ahead, his inspirational belief in Britain’s eventual ability to prevail which meant so much to the national psyche during the war’s darkest days. We see him pull all the political levers at his command, all the contacts and loyalties he had built up over his already long lifetime in the spotlight on the world’s stage, to bring people and nations round to his views – a long task and often seemingly futile, but he never weakened or turned away, never decided to let his reputation rest on his past achievements as many men of his age may have done. Was he perfect? Absolutely not. Opinionated, demanding, a risk taker, an imperialist to the core – I imagine the people around him found him maddening and exhausting. But he also commanded deep personal loyalty and respect from those who worked closely with him, and was admired and increasingly revered by a large majority of the general public for his steadfastness and patriotism in these early days of the war. He was the right man at the right time, and how often does that happen?I really thought this might be a turgid read, but it’s actually a first-rate history with just enough of the personal to bring out the emotional drama of war. I also realised while reading it how influential it must have been on the early interpretations of the history of the period, since it chimed in almost every particular with what I was taught about the war in school in the 1970s. I will certainly go on to read the other five volumes in the series.

People in key positions on each side, their priorities, beliefs, experiences, approaches shape the war big time.There are so many channels/fronts which can be decisive - diplomatic, military, naval, aerial, technology, allies, money, trade, media, being on right side of morality, leadership style.You will get a glimpse of this in this book while looking at the world war from the eyes of one of the main guy who was right there in the thick of things throughout and played an important role in the outcome.

Excelente. As ideias , debates e eventos do gabinete ingles na segunda guerra mundial. Tudo contado pelo próprio primeiro ministro, Winston Churchill

I admit: the moment I bought "the gathering storm" (Vol 1) I still held the prejudice that the Literature Nobel prize was awarded to the former British prime minister for winning the war. After few pages and, even more deeply, in the following three months till after finishing "Triumph and tragedy" (vol 6), I felt I was reading something extraordinaire and now I regret that the tale is finished. It reads as a thriller, a very complicated one, and it's unbelievable that a book made mostly by official letters and directives can catch your attention so completely. The sense of that historical period is given with the fresh feelings of the precise moments things happened but always with a mind that could read the real meaning of events, with an accurate analysis of the past ones and a lucid forecast of the ones to come. Together, you can catch the spirit of a first class politician, a statesman, capable of operating with whatever scanty material he has, of taking difficult decisions implying sometimes sacrifices of immense gravity in view of the least damage for his people. As I wrote in the title: when the tale of history is told by one who makes and understands it, then it lasts forever

I oved it, a glimpse inside the mind of one of history's heros.