Charismatic Leaders in
History:
Winston Churchill
History Book Club
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Wednesday,
October 30, 2019: Charismatic leaders in History. What were the keys to Hitler’s, Churchill's, Mussolini's,
FDR's successes? Keen perception of public moods? Oratory abilities? Character,
firm ideology? Connecting to the people? How did they deploy their charisma?
How could Napoleon manipulate the masses without TV ads? Why were people so
perceptive to a madman in Germany? [Proposed by
Janos Posfai]
Jenkins, Roy, Churchill,
A Biography, 2001. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1002 pp.
Johnson, Boris, The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made
History, 2014, London: Hodder & Stoughton.
What is a “Charismatic Leader”?
He (or she) leads by personality and charm. He is an excellent communicator; he is also an
excellent reader of people, their faces, their aspirations, their fears. He is
able to sense the mood of a room and shape it to his objectives.
Think of leaders you have observed—see how they communicate
with their audience. See how they respond to the needs of their audience, how
they can steer that audience to love, or hate, to take action.
Adolf Hitler seems to have been particularly effective at
firing up a gathering of many thousands to fight for the perceived needs of the
Fatherland. He drew upon natural suspicions and uncertainties of people to
carry out a devastating Holocaust, the extermination of millions of Jews, as
well as Gypsies, homosexuals, and disabled people.
I was intrigued by a discussion about a book in 2016 by Sara
E. Gorman, a public-health expert, and her father, Jack M. Gorman, a
psychiatrist and CEO of Franklin Behavioral Health Consultants. Their book is Denying
to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Facts That Will Save Us. (2017) Their
discussion about charismatic leaders tends over to the dark side.
A charismatic leader may employ certain techniques to get you
to follow.
a. They may begin by making a firm claim.
He or she will cast their arguments in ways that tickle the emotional parts of
our brains while telling the more rational lobes to shush.
b. The charismatic
leader may appeal to your insecurity, your fear, your feeling that no
one listens to you, your feeling of helplessness. (And they are telling you: “I
alone can fix it!”)
c. He or she
creates a very strong ”us-versus-them” narrative, in which they can
really point to a very large group of people—no matter what party they're
in—it's all of the government is against them and against us, our group. Once you create a sense of a “them,” you
reinforce a strong “us.” And when you reinforce a very strong “us,” a lot of
group psychology will sort of kick in. There's a lot of conformity,
there's a lot of not questioning things because other people seem to be going
along with it. It's harder for individuals who are part of groups to make
independent judgments and decisions.
d. Constantly reassuring people that they
have made the right choice ... or that there is no viable reasonable
alternative. (Remember “I alone can fix it!”)
e. Uses fear
and personal stories to heighten risk perception. He or she will lead with stories of individual people
who had what we fear happen to them. They
also positions themselves as the person who will protect all of your rights and
all of these huge issues around justice and fairness and freedom of speech. He or
she often will bring things back to those huge issues rather than going into
more specifics around various policy issues. That makes it harder to disagree
with them, and it creates a sort of authoritarian godlike aura around the
leader. Being less specific makes it
harder to disagree with them.
Jack Gorman, in his and Sara’s book, explains: This is an
oversimplification of the way the brain works…. many scientists have
identified this higher-order, rational, slow-working part of the brain, which
is basically the prefrontal cortex, and the more primitive parts of the brain
that work faster or more automatically, and subserve emotions like fear. And
there are good data showing that the first thing that you hear makes the
biggest impression—and that if it’s heard under emotional circumstances, that
it’s always associated with that emotion.
My candidate for
“Charismatic Leader” is Winston Spencer Churchill.
No one in the United Kingdom made more of an impact upon
that country, indeed the British Empire, in the Twentieth Century than Winston
Churchill.
Roy Jenkins (1920-2003) was a career politician, entering
Parliament in 1948 and staying connected with British government for 50
years. His biography of Churchill, one
of 18 books he wrote, is an excellent look at the long life of Winston
Churchill (1874-1965).
Churchill lived his life with a destiny for greatness. He was a soldier, but unlike nearly any
other. He managed to position himself
where he would experience danger, and then he managed to capture the exclusive
rights to the story. Even when he was on the Queen’s list as a young soldier,
(in India, Sudan and South Africa) he was mailing back thick dispatches to
London newspapers.
Churchill’s adventure in 1899 in the Boer War in South
Africa had him involved in a small battle on train tracks, trying to get
wrecked trucks off a track. He was captured and imprisoned by the Boers but
escaped after 24 days. You can be sure this received large attention from the
Boer government, and Churchill covered it thoroughly in his autobiography.
Roy Jenkins wrote this voluminous dissertation of parliamentary history in two
and a half years, when he was in his eighties.
At every point one can sense Jenkins’ rather tart view of
Churchill. He gives Winston his due, as
a statesman, elegant speaker and writer, but also as an almost mythical
character, who always, in the direst of
times, manages to sit down to a well-laid table and enjoy a fine meal, with
plenty of champagne, port, brandy and a good cigar.
Jenkins is clear-eyed about Churchill, and his charms. All that searching for danger, and then
writing about it, meant that Churchill was building his résumé, ensuring that
all that fine bravery and derring-do was preserved for history.
Churchill might have been one of those fine men we have seen
all through British history, and that of the United States. The man, born to a leading family, accustomed
to wealth and station, attending the “right” schools, occupies reasonably
impressive posts in government. NOTE:
Boris Johnson, The Churchill Factor, discusses this in crisp and humorous
detail.
In America, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry
Cabot Lodge, Averill Harriman, and Jack and Teddy Kennedy come to mind.
Churchill, who tried his utmost time and again to elevate
himself in British government, from his days as a “Flailing” First Lord of the
Admiralty in World War I, became the right man at the right time after Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain’s disastrous handling of relations with Adolf
Hitler put Britain at the brink of extinction.
It is not too hard to imagine that if Hitler would have
foregone attacking the USSR, and concentrated on conquering Britain, if
Chamberlain had remained in power, and if the United States had continued to
watch the war in Europe with interest, the Nazis could have gained the British Isles.
It is amazing how Jenkins, an excellent writer, can delve
into tons of letters, diaries, official journals and other material to
construct a colorful, extremely detailed picture of Winston’s life and his relations
with those around him. Churchill often
whisks himself away to the south of France or cadges a voyage in the
Mediterranean aboard the yacht of a wealthy acquaintance, and while he is thus
“resting”, churns out reams of manuscript for his next book or article.
Churchill’s lifestyle was legendary. He stayed in bed until noontime, furiously
dictating memos, letters, and newspaper articles. Then his valet drew his bath
and he lowered his fat, pink body into the tub. After dressing, he would engage in the
performance of luncheon, which routinely involved distinguished guests who
would partake of Winston’s rich wit and wisdom.
There were always good food, wine and spirits, and cigars.
In the afternoon, if Parliament were sitting, he would
attend, and perhaps deliver a speech.
Then there would be dinner, another spread of elegant food,
drink and people, usually with Winston as the principal figure.
Jenkins’ account of Churchill’s leadership of Britain after
he became Prime Minister in May 1940 is particularly interesting. Winston flew to France numerous times to try
to give the French leaders (PM Paul Reynaud et al) encouragement to resist
Hitler. At the same time, Churchill was trying his best to bring the United
States into the fray, so once he promised the French that American intervention
was nigh. Jenkins called Churchill’s
hopefulness of that “living in cloud-cuckoo land”.
Churchill tried everything to get Roosevelt to commit to
U.S. intervention. Roosevelt sent Harry
Hopkins to visit Churchill early in 1941, and Hopkins spent a month with him. The two formed a fast friendship. Jenkins
notes that Churchill’s and Roosevelt’s relationship was never that warm sort of
friendship.
Here’s this comment:
“…in joint wartime
photographs, from Placentia to Yalta, Roosevelt always looked Churchill’s superior.
He held his head higher, and his careless yet patrician civilian clothes suited
him better than the fancy uniforms which Churchill was only too inclined to
assume…..Roosevelt… often enhanced by a long cigarette holder at a jaunty
angle. In the nicotine stakes this was a more elegant symbol than Churchill’s
often spittle-sodden cigars.” p.663.
Churchill came to lead Britain in its darkest hours at the
start of the war with Hitler. He replaced Neville Chamberlain, a man who will
forever by identified with weakness and appeasement. Nazi bombers were pounding London and other
British cities, and invasion by the Germans by air and sea seemed
imminent. Morale was low. His leadership at the beginning was resisted,
and unappreciated, but he persisted, and the British people came to see him as
the figure leading them to victory.
In 1946, this irreplaceable leader of the British people was
voted out of office. Clement Atlee*, who had served as deputy prime minister
from 1942 in Churchill’s wartime coalition government, took his Labour party to
a landslide victory.
After he was voted out of office, the new United States
President Harry Truman invited Churchill to come to Westminster College in
Fulton, MO to speak. This was the famed
speech where he declared:
“From Stettin in the
Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the
Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of
Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade,
Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them
lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or
another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases,
increasing measure of control from Moscow.”
In this speech, which was met with great animosity not only
in the USSR, but in many parts of the U.S., Europe and the U.K., Churchill drew
the shape of the Cold War that would dominate our lives for the next four
decades. It was primarily important for
sounding the call for an alliance between the U.S. and the U.K. to oppose
communism, and the beginning of the idea of a North Atlantic alliance.
Churchill suffered a final stroke 12 January 1965 and died
24 January. His funeral was a grand affair, with his body lying in state in
Westminster Hall for three days. This was the first time such an affair for a
non-royal personage had taken place since the death of Gladstone in 1898.
Boris Johnson’s The Churchill Factor. Just as I was wrestling with the concept
of the Charismatic Leader and trying to untangle from the news that has
engulfed America since 2016 about a man of great charisma, some followers of
whom think he was placed in the White House by God. We shall not touch that.
Boris Johnson is a phenomenon. To Americans, his dedication to pulling
Britain out of the European Union as well as his hairdo, are his distinguishing
characteristics. At the start of his
book about Churchill he pays deep respect to Roy Jenkins and his comprehensive
biography of Churchill.
Johnson admires Churchill—I think.
The Churchill Factor is funny, interesting, and
well-worth reading, to gain more insight into the life of Churchill, and to
Johnson. Johnson is literate, educated,
and in this 2014 book he is already dedicated to pulling Britain out of the European
Union. This book draws several
references to the E.U., including the suggestion of what would have happened if
Lord Halifax, instead of Churchill, had taken over from Chamberlain at the
start of the War.
Halifax, as well as many of Britain’s leaders, including the
recent King, now abdicated and married to Wallis Simpson, were inclined to have
favored negotiating with Herr Hitler instead of fighting to save Britain. In that setting, there was a “Nazi European
Union” ready to go into operation, Johnson supposes.
Although Johnson sees Churchill as the champion who led the
salvation of Britain, which included jerking the United States into the War, he
brings up loads of dirty laundry from Churchill’s past, for all to
examine. It’s no bulletin that Churchill’s
childhood, his education, his parentage, his changing political parties, his
life style, and many of his judgements and actions, were less than sterling,
but in the end, and Johnson states this, as a man who “personally tilted the
scales of fate toward freedom and hope.”
Samuel W. Coulbourn
-end-
*Atlee was generally
considered to be lacking in charisma, but he was tremendously effective at
working behind the scenes. He and the Labour party created a welfare state,
including formation of the National Health Service, and nationalization of
public utilities and major industries.
HISTORY BOOK CLUB TOPICS FOR 2019
NO
MEETING IN DECEMBER
Wednesday, January
29, 2020. American Foreign Affairs after the Cold War. In the 1990s, America’s global primacy… The Cold War had
ended with Washington and its allies triumphant; democracy and free markets
were spreading like never before. Washington faced no near-term rivals for
global power and influence. the defining
feature of international politics was American dominance. Then came conflict in
former Yugoslavia, and more turmoil among former Soviet and American middle east
allies. Rise of Terrorism. Osama bin Laden. G.H.W Bush, Clinton, G.W. Bush,
Obama and Trump. Moscow and Beijing. Iran’s Revolution, Iraq, Arab Spring…Libya,
Syria, Iran. [Proposed by Bill Owen and Rick Heuser].
Wednesday,
February 26, 2020. America in
Reconstruction after the Civil War. It
was a terrible time. Civil war soldiers returned home, some in the south facing
freed slaves roaming the streets, plantations emptied of their work force, and
fear stoked by troublemakers warning of blacks raping white women and killing
white men, and angry whites searching out and killing blacks without
cause. The formation of the Ku Klux Klan. Northern leaders sending carpetbaggers to the
south to enforce emancipation and protect freedmen.
Wednesday,
March 25, 2020. A History of
Alcohol. Men have been fermenting fruit
and grain and honey for many thousands of years. The Babylonians, Greeks and Romans had gods
and goddesses and there have been marvelous Bacchanalian feasts and tales of
the dreadful effects of too much alcohol.
There have been anti-alcohol drives, temperance marches, Prohibition. Cultural
and health effects of alcohol usage. [Proposed by Janos Posfai]
Wednesday, April 29, 2020. China from 1900 to today. China has traveled a long way from the Boxer Rebellion of
1899-1901 when western nations felt free to wander all over the vast country.
Sun-Yat-Sen and the last Qing emperor…Military wardlordism ..Chiang Kai-Shek…War
against Japan… Mao Zedong and the Communist Revolution, founding of the People’s
Republic…”Great Leap Forward” and The Cultural Revolution…World’s No. 2
Economy, on the verge of becoming No. 1. [Proposed by Jason Shaw]
Wednesday, May 27, 2020.
Wednesday, June 24, 2020.
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