I firmly believe a pivotal moment that breaks the fever of Trumpism will come

[pat_k]

29. I just read the transcript of that May 1945 broadcast

I just read the transcript of that May 1945 broadcast (link below).

Churchill's review of the events of 1940 and 1941 was a reminder of a history I fear more recent generations are simply not aware of. He touches on the role of the U.S. before Pearl Harbor:

Great anxiety was felt by President Roosevelt, and indeed by thinking men throughout the United States, about what would happen to us in the early part of 1941. This great President felt to the depth of his being that the destruction of Britain would not only be a fearful event in itself, but that it would expose to mortal danger the vast and as yet largely unarmed potentialities and future destiny of the United States.

He feared greatly that we should be invaded in that spring of 1941, and no doubt he had behind him military advice as good as any in the world, and he sent his recent Presidential opponent, Mr. Wendell Willkie, to me with a letter in which he had written in his own hand the famous lines of Longfellow, which I quoted in the House of Commons the other day:

Sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

We were in a fairly tough condition by the early months of 1941 and felt very much better about ourselves than in the months immediately after the collapse of France. Our Dunkirk army and field force troops in Britain, almost a million strong, were nearly all equipped or re-equipped. We had ferried over the Atlantic a million rifles and a thousand cannon from the United States, with all their ammunition, since the previous June . .

And what were the fatal mistakes of which he spoke? They were the actions that brought us into the war and planted the seeds of a powerful Western Alliance against authoritarian powers that has been a bedrock of our collective security and prosperity ever since. The Alliance 47 seems hellbent on collapsing.

And if you hold out alone long enough there always comes a time when the tyrant makes some ghastly mistake which alters the whole balance of the struggle. On June 22, 1941, Hitler, master as he thought himself of all Europe, nay indeed soon to be, he thought, master of the world, treacherously, without warning, without the slightest provocation, hurled himself on Russia and came face to face with Marshal Stalin and the numberless millions of the Russian people. And then at the end of the year Japan struck her felon blow at the United States at Pearl Harbor, and at the same time attacked us in Malaya and at Singapore. Thereupon Hitler and Mussolini declared war on the republic of the United States.

Years have passed since then. Indeed every year seems to me almost a decade. But never since the United States entered the war have I had the slightest doubt but that we should be saved and that we had only to do our duty in order to win. We have played our part in all this process by which the evildoers have been overthrown. . .

And later

It may well be said that never have the forces of two nations fought side by side and intermingled into line of battle with so much unity, comradeship, and brotherhood as in the great Anglo-American army. Some people say, "Well, what would you expect, if both nations speak the same language and have the same outlook upon life with all its hope and glory." Others may say, "It would be an ill day for all the world and for the pair of them if they did not go on working together and marching together and sailing together and flying together wherever something has to be done for the sake of freedom and fair play all over the world."

When Trump and Vance attacked Zelensky in the Oval Office and made his betrayal of our allies clear, I was more overwhelmed by shame, grief, and rage than I had been by any outrage to that point.

As I read the rest of Churchill's speech -- the sacrifices of our allies, the power of our unbreakable commitments -- that shock, shame, rage, and grief came flooding back. It's a must read, but be prepared.

I wish I had a soundproof room.

https://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1945/1945-05-13a.html