Great Prime Minister

On May 10, 1940, on the eve of a large-scale war in Europe, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of England. He was not even the leader of the Conservative Party, but if he evaluated his personality in Max Weber, he possessed all the three qualities that contribute to the success of the political leader: adhered to traditions, rationally fulfilled and revered the law and had charisma.

If we add to this that Churchill was a brilliant speaker, a brave, stubborn and ambitious person, then a portrait of a successful politician can be considered complete.

And yet, in order to become a national leader in such difficult wartime, having only 25% of supporters among compatriots at the time of the Prime Minister’s office, and by mid-1943, 93% had to have something more outstanding. In addition, he went through the war, not tarnishing his reputation.

Churchill was suspected of many grave political sins: he knew about Japan's plans to bomb Pearl Harbor, but did not inform the Americans, wanting to draw them into the war; What else in May 1941 I thought about a separate agreement with Hitler; that he is guilty of the death of the Polish Prime Minister Vladislav Sikorsky, as he interfered with his alliance with Stalin; Finally, that he specifically pulled with the opening of the second front in order to bleed the USSR.

None of these slander was confirmed. Churchill turned out to be more complicated and noble, despite the fact that he was not alien to the “real politics” either.

The question is in the measure.

The most unpleasant event for his historical memory is the bombardment of Coventry. On the night of November 14-5, 1940, about five hundred German aircraft bombed this English city. At the same time, not a single German bomber was injured.

They hinted that Churchill, knowing about the bombing, but not wanting to show the Germans that in his hands was a unique decryption machine, which allows the British to read the coded radiograms of the Germans and take proactive steps, decided to sacrifice the Coventry in order to maintain a secret. In evidence, for example, Marshal Montgomery, for example. Nevertheless, and this accusation does not find confirmation. One way or another, Churchill remains an unfinished politician.

Winston Churchill for more than sixty years was a member of the English parliament (absolute record), twice during the years of the first and early World War II was appointed by the Naval Minister; He was the Minister of Internal Affairs, Defense, Army, Finance and in the Affairs of the Colonies; In total, he served as Prime Minister of England for almost ten years; He was awarded the Higher Order of Great Britain - the Order of the Garter, granted the knights, declared an honorary citizen of the United States; He wrote memoirs about the Anglo-Broke, first and Second World Wars, the immediate active participant of which was himself; He became the Laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature, was a talented painter, the father of five children, lived a long life and died, celebrating the 90th birthday-the only “simple mortal” in the 20th century, awarded royal funeral.

Like an extraordinary person, Churchill had his own quirks: he could take a bath several times a day, and also, feeling fatigue, fall asleep for fifteen minutes, after which he got up completely rested. He painted good paintings, even successfully exhibited in Paris and at the Royal Academy of Arts under the name Charles Morin. Even during his trip to Cuba at the age of twenty, he added to the Gavan cigars as a military correspondent, without which it was no longer possible to imagine him. Like without the world -famous Victory gesture, the index and middle fingers raised upward, denoting the first letter in this victorious word.

It is difficult to imagine that this fat man with a cigar in his mouth is an ideal image for the Soviet caricature-to which, when he became the prime minister, he was already sixty-seventh years old, there was so much energy and will.

But he was tireless and immature-becoming essentially the Prime Minister for Emergencies. Churchill immediately turned to the fellow citizens, promising them only "sweat and blood, hardships and tears." He assured the world that "we will never give up." He said that "slavery is worse than war." And when Germany attacked the USSR, he immediately declared complete and unconditional solidarity with the Soviet people in this common war with Nazi evil.

Having worthy of defending the military shift, in July 1945, Churchill was forced to pass the post of the Labor, who promised a bright, peaceful future.

But Churchill was not going to rest. He even refused at first from the knightly rank to show everyone - he did not leave the politician, he will return.

In the meantime, on March 5, 1946, having arrived in the United States as a private person at the invitation of President Harry Trumen, Winston Churchill made a speech in the town of Fulton, which is traditionally considered the beginning of the Cold War. Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan claimed that after Churchill’s speech, not only the modern West was born, but also the world on our planet.

In the speech, which Churchill himself called the "muscles of the world", he really spoke of the world. True, in the spirit of the famous saying of the ancients: "You want peace, get ready for war." He spoke of the threat of the USSR to the Western world. Sitting tribute to both the Russian people and personally to Stalin in the defeat of the German Nazism, he argued that the communist ideology is aggressive and only the superior power of the United West could stop it. Churchill emphasized - not the parity of forces, namely superiority: then there is no temptation to measure his strength. He argued: the anti -Hitler coalition is over, the era of rivalry is coming, and there is no need to build illusions regarding the future without wars, you need to be prepared to struggle for your ideals.

Until now, in our country, Churchill has preserved the reputation of the "arsonist of war." For nothing is more rooted in the public consciousness as ideology, replacing history for many years.

Yes, Churchill really called for the Cold War, but only to avoid hot. And, strictly speaking, he did not even use such a term. He was invented later. (For the first time, the American industrialist and statesman Bernard Barukh introduced it on October 24, 1948 at a meeting of the Senate Commission for the investigation of war crimes.) And Churchill spoke about the “Iron Curtain” in the sense that after the war, taking into account the creation of communist regimes on the territories of Eastern Europe, and then the territories of the Eastern European countries, and the division of these territories under the territories under ideological sign. Moreover, it is not that someone dropped this curtain-he sank.

After almost 65 years, Churchill's speech has not completely lost its relevance. Inertia has survived. But the consequences acquired a bizarre character. There was a paradoxical situation: the Western countries and the USA, which for a long time defended exclusively their national interests, learned to jointly defend the principles of freedom, democracy, human rights. Russia, on the contrary, abandoning previous principles, began to defend its national interests. Once again, contradictions arose. At the same time, accusations of double standards sound on both sides. And this is not by chance: after all, atavisms of the previous policy have been preserved in both of them.

... Churchill was a frowning, courageous Englishman, a hereditary aristocrat, a statesman who cared for the fate of the country, a politician who was ready for the most unexpected compromises, a person who never renounced his principles.

He did not believe in God (he himself admitted that he was communed once in his life), but, speaking with a high syllable, served his people, England, and not just his vanity and self -interest (by the way, his literary earnings significantly exceeded the deputy salary). This, in fact, differs a large -scale person from a small, great politician from a politician.