The Wilderness Years

by Citizen Warrior

I just finished a book called Winston Churchill – The Wilderness Years: Speaking out Against Hitler in the Prelude to War. The term “wilderness years” refers to the span between 1929 and 1939 when Churchill was warning people about the danger of Naziism while the leaders of the UK, France, and the US were all busy disarming.

They were disarming because they thought since they had disarmed Germany (with the Treaty of Versaille), it was only fair for the rest of them to disarm too. That way, they thought, another cataclysmic war could not happen. The US, the UK, France, Russia, and others were drafting mutual agreements to destroy their own armaments, limit military service, restrict the size of their air forces, etc. Meanwhile, the Nazis ignored the Treaty and were furiously building their war capability in secret.

Churchill spoke out against universal disarmament, and he fell out of favor with the public and with his fellow politicians. He could see that the Nazis were militant, imperialistic and supremacist, and everyone could see they were gaining power. Churchill thought that disarming was the last thing the non-Germans should do. But almost everyone but Churchill felt that the first World War was so horrible that war must never happen again. Within this “logic,” making weapons and building armies would be going in the wrong direction. It was considered “a provocation and a danger.”

Churchill was well-versed in the history of war and saw that historically, the most reliable way to prevent a war had always been to be capable of winning a war (because it discourages others from starting conflicts). He believed in building strong alliances between a well-armed UK, France, and America, and he pushed for a pact between them that they would defend each other in the case of German aggression, but he failed to convince the politicians of any of those three countries that this was how they could make sure that Germany would not rearm and go on the offensive.

Before 1929, Churchill had been a successful, well-known and greatly respected politician. From 1929 until WW2 started, he was no longer popular with political leaders. He was labeled a “scaremonger,” and in 1934 in the German press, Churchill was dismissed as “an incorrigible Germanophobe.” That is a quote. I kid you not.

People in high office, including the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, believed Churchill’s criticism of the Nazis made the Nazis more hostile. They thought Churchill saying that the Nazis were dangerous would push the Nazis to war. They just wanted Churchill to stop talking and go away.

The reason I thought this was interesting is because, of course, we are in our own wilderness years. The parallels are startling. We have several modern day Winston Churchills (and in fact, there were more people than only Churchill speaking out in his day too), but I would say our modern day Churchill, if I had to choose just one person, would be Geert Wilders. And the majority of today’s European political leaders want Wilders to stop talking and go away too.

Churchill reached out to the general public, through newspapers and radio, just as Wilders is doing now. In The Wilderness Years, the author, Martin Gilbert, wrote:

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