The Second World War

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The Second World War is the title of Sir Winston Churchill's war memories . Churchill began writing the six-volume work immediately after his defeat in the general election on July 5, 1945 . The individual volumes appeared in the years 1948 to 1953. In 1953 Churchill received the Nobel Prize for Literature (contrary to what is often rumored, not explicitly for his war memories, but also for these) . His wife Clementine accepted the award in his place, as he was bedridden after a stroke in June 1953.

The volumes of the first edition had the following titles (year of publication):

  1. The Gathering Storm (1948)
  2. Their Finest Hour (1949)
  3. The Grand Alliance (1950)
  4. The Hinge of Fate (1950)
  5. Closing the Ring (1951)
  6. Triumph and Tragedy (1953)

Some of the following editions had a different subdivision.

History of origin

Even during the war Churchill was preoccupied with the plan to review the events of the war historically. Churchill had already gained experience as a historian working on various other historical and biographical works, in particular on his hexalogy " The World Crisis " about the First World War and on the multi-volume biography of his ancestor John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough . Churchill systematically provided material for the work he was planning while still in office as Prime Minister. It has the status of a prime source for the political and military history of the Second World War through the reproduction of numerous documents .

content

The first volume ( The Gathering Storm ) contains material that Churchill wrote back in the 1930s with the intention of publishing it in a book on the history of the post-1919 period. The "storm" deals with the prehistory of the Second World War and for years determined public and historical opinion about the appeasement policy of the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments . Churchill is relentlessly critical of the policies of his predecessors.

The title of the second volume ( Their Finest Hour ) alludes to the closing remarks of Churchill's famous House of Commons address of June 18, 1940 , in which, in the situation of greatest threat to the sovereignty of the British Isles, he said: “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour'. ” (“ So let's do our duty, and let them pretend that even after a thousand years, when there is still a British Empire and its Commonwealth, people will say: That was their best hour. ”In terms of content, this volume describes the chronology of German advances in the West and describes the precarious ones The situation of Great Britain after the defeat of France , until the outcome of the Battle of Britain brought about a relaxation.

In the third volume ( The Grand Alliance ), Churchill describes the expansion of the continental European war into world war: the German attack on the Soviet Union and his alliance policy with Stalin , whose non-aggression pact with Hitler of August 1939 he condemns, and the entry into the war by the United States in December 1941.

While Churchill appears up to this point as the warning Cassandra, as the inspirer and hero of the British war effort, the remaining volumes ( The Hinge of Fate , Closing the Ring and Triumph and Tragedy - Triumph and Tragedy) the tendency to justify the criticism that began after 1945 came to the fore. The focus of this criticism was, among other things, the formula of “ unconditional surrender ” (ventilated during the Conference of Casablanca ) as well as the conferences of the big three in general ( Tehran , Yalta , Potsdam ), the policy towards the Soviet Union and the Polish question.

analysis

Churchill directs the focus of his considerations almost exclusively on the political and military aspects of the war, while a discussion of economic connections and social problems is almost completely left out. The political thinking that emerges in his work is wholly indebted to the historical great power politics of the British Empire .

In keeping with the Treitschke dictum that the great men make history, Churchill creates in The Second World War a portrayal of the Second World War that is tailored to himself as the personality that has shaped history. The result is a mixture of autobiography and historiography.

Churchill's writing style is trained on the classics of British historiography and among those especially on Gibbons and Macaulays , whose works he read (sometimes several times) in his youth. The polished style, which Churchill engaged in The Second World War , brought him the Nobel Prize for Literature - together with the multi-volume biography of his ancestor John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, which he wrote in the 1930s - but it was also criticized, for example by the Swiss Carl Jacob Burckhardt , who criticized the "eternal yesterday in its tone".

expenditure

In English

  • The Second World War , 6 vols. London 1948–1954.
  • The Second World War , 6 vols. Harmondsworth 1986.

In German translation

  • The Second World War , 6 vols. Scherz, Bern 1949–1954.
  • Abridged edition: The Second World War. With an epilogue about the post-war years . Scherz, Bern 1960.
  • Slightly abridged version under the title: The Second World War. Memoirs , 6 vols. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin 1985 (with an introductory essay by Rolf Hochhuth in volume 1)

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Der Spiegel 23/1966: Hidden findings