A Fresh Perspective on Churchill and England’s Stand against Nazi Germany – “The Splendid and the Vile”, by Erik Larson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

World War II history, and particularly the period between the fall of France and the United States’ entry into the war, has always been of great interest to me. Most of my reading on this period has been focused on the Battle of Britain—the quite brief span of time in the late summer/early autumn of 1940 when the men and women of the Royal Air Force fought a desperate battle to prevent the Luftwaffe from achieving air superiority over the English Channel and southern England as a prelude to an invasion of the British Isles. Lately, however, I have been seeking out books that deal with the larger picture of that fateful period of over 2-1/2 years when England and the Commonwealth stood alone against the Fascist tide that had swept across continental Europe.

Erik Larson’s The Splendid and the Vile chronicles this crucial period; specifically, the first year of Churchill’s tenure as Prime Minister of England, and the author takes a unique approach, mining the journals and personal diaries of Churchill, his family members, members of his government and of his staff, ordinary Britons—and even their adversaries across the Channel—for their personal observations of the events of the time. These sources yielded some never-before-published insight into the thoughts and observations of a wide range of people who were affected by, and in many cases, directly influenced, the events of that crucial nexus of twentieth century history.

Interwoven with the narrative of the historic events are anecdotes and observations on private, personal events such as the musings of one of Churchill’s private secretaries, John Colville, about a young woman he is pursuing; the tumultuous marriage, and eventual divorce, of Churchill’s only son, Randolph—there are even excerpts from the private journals of Nazi Minister of Information Joseph Goebbels.

Particularly interesting are the observations of ordinary citizens recorded as part of the British Government’s Mass-Observation program. These comprise a record of the experiences of ordinary citizens who struggled to carry on in their daily lives in the face of food shortages, blackouts, and nightly aerial bombing.

I scratched my head at some technical misapprehensions here and there in the book—for example, Larson’s observation that the RAF’s Hurricane and Spitfire fighter aircraft were more heavily armed than their main Luftwaffe opposition, the Me109. He doesn’t go into detail, but I can only speculate that the author based this conclusion on a count of the guns carried by each aircraft: eight by the Hurricane and Spitfire vice four by the Messerschmitt—only the RAF aircraft carried only .303-caliber machine guns, while the Me109 carried two machine guns of a similar caliber, and two 20-mm cannon (later, one, firing through the propeller hub) whose exploding shells were capable of inflicting tremendous damage on opposing aircraft.

In recounting deputy-Fürher Rudolf Hess’ preparations for a surreptitious flight to Scotland in an Me110, a twin-engine fighter-bomber, to attempt to broker a peace deal, Larson noted that the aircraft ordinarily “…carried two men, but it could easily be flown solo.”; the Me110’s combat crew consisted of a pilot—only one— and a bombardier/radio operator, so the observation that it could be flown by one person seems somewhat ingenuous.

Minor technicalities aside, the result of this book’s unique admixture of personal and historic narratives is a fascinating wide-scope look at those unprecedented times that presents a humanistic perspective that is lacking in many works of historical non-fiction. What Erik Larson has achieved with The Splendid and the Vile is to provide the reader with insights into the reactions and experiences of a wide range of people affected by and involved in the events of the time, within the context of those events—an illuminating view of personal lives in tumultuous times.