Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England
Author: Lynne Olson
Acclaimed historian Lynne Olson’s collective biography explores one of the most important turning points in 20th-century history – the months leading up to Winston Churchill’s accession to Prime Minister and the decisive turning of the tide in Britain against the appeasement of Hitler.
They attended the same schools, went to the same country houses, married each other’s sisters. They were part of the small, clubby network that dominated English society. And now they were doing the unthinkable: trying to topple the man who led their own political party, prime minister Neville Chamberlain, from power.
It was early 1940, several months after Britain had declared war on Germany–and then had made clear it had little interest in fighting. Poland had been crushed, and Chamberlain, despite the treaties and the promises to Poland, had done nothing to save it. In Germany, military buildup continued unabated, as Hitler fine-tuned his plans for an assault on Western Europe.
In Britain there was doubt, suspicion, and despair. When war was declared, the country had braced itself: millions had been evacuated to the countryside; a blackout had been imposed–and for what? What was the justification?
A small group of dissidents within the Conservative Party drew together to fight Chamberlain and his policy of appeasing Hitler. They included the bookish Harold Macmillan, an unlikely rebel; Roland Cartland, most outspoken of the dissidents; and Anthony Eden, the Golden Boy of interwar politics and Chamberlain’s foreign secretary. The climax of months of conspiracy would come in May 1940, when the House of Commons gatheredto debate Britain’s defeat by Germany in Norway.
As the rebels worked feverishly to line up last-minute support, the dissidents feared that their odds of success were slim. Yet within days of their challenging Chamberlain over the conduct of the war in Norway, he was gone and Churchill was prime minister. Troublesome Young Men is the story of how that came to be–and of the men who made it happen.
The New York Times - Jon Meacham
Churchill was not alone in his opposition to Hitler during what he called his wilderness years, and therein lies the strength of Lynne Olson's brisk, engaging new book, Troublesome Young Men. Olson, a former White House correspondent for The Baltimore Sun, has given us a fascinating snapshot of the Tory "rebels," as she calls them, who ultimately opposed Neville Chamberlain and helped elevate the then-unbeatified Churchill.
The Washington Post - David Cannadine
…vivid and compelling…Troublesome Young Men describes and celebrates the efforts of Chamberlain's opponents within his own Conservative Party. These Tory rebels finally succeeded in bringing the prime minister down after a famous debate in the House of Commons in early May 1940 in which Leo Amery ended his powerful speech by quoting the terrible words that Oliver Cromwell had used to dismiss the Long Parliament 300 years before: "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing! Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!" Chamberlain grudgingly resigned, and Winston S. Churchill succeeded him, convinced that destiny had nurtured him and prepared him for what would soon be his finest hour. Yet while this may all seem inevitable in retrospect, there was nothing predestined about it at the time.
Publishers Weekly
In 1930s England, faced with the gathering menace of fascism, 30 or so junior members of Parliament understood that Hitler would not be dissuaded by Prime Minister Chamberlain's policy of appeasement. Their rebellion against their leader and the "elderly mediocrities" of their own Conservative Party is the subject of Olson's absorbing book. The forces opposed to Chamberlain were initially inhibited by party loyalty and the ferocious reprisals threatened against anyone who challenged the prime minister. Olson traces how Hitler's continuing depredations (Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland) served to recruit more insurgents in the House of Commons and galvanize those shamed by England's inaction. Olson's story picks up energy as she reviews the events of 1940, when at long last Chamberlain was replaced by Churchill. Olson is interested in the moral imperatives driving her protagonists. The dominant figure in the narrative, of course, is Churchill, who despised Chamberlain's defeatism but served loyally in his cabinet until Chamberlain's forced resignation. Infused with the sense of urgency felt by the young Tories, Olson's vivid narrative of a critical generational clash leaves the reader wondering what might have happened had they prevailed earlier on. (Apr.)
Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.Jim Doyle - Library Journal
Here is the engrossing story of the British Tory dissidents, upper-class MPs who denounced Neville Chamberlain's attempts to mollify Hitler's ravenous territorial ambitions in pre-World War II Europe. The "Young Rebels" despised appeasement as a diplomatic strategy and sought to remove Chamberlain from office. As back benchers, they were expected to tow the Conservative Party line strictly enforced by Chamberlain and his Tory whip, David Margesson. Yet Ronald Cartland, Harold Macmillan, Bob Boothby, Harold Nicholson, and their like-minded colleagues risked political suicide in their frustrating attempts to oust Chamberlain and to make Winston Churchill prime minister. It was only after the outbreak of hostilities and the dual defeats in Norway and France that their concerns finally gained traction: Chamberlain stepped down and the indomitable Churchill became England's leader, vindicating the Young Rebels. Olson (Freedom's Daughters) does a superb job of capturing the smoked-filled, whiskey-soaked ambience of British politics and the web of personal relationships involved. While not sympathetic to Chamberlain's diplomatic strategy, she does convey the complexities of developing an effective foreign policy in a parliamentary government. For a more sympathetic view of Chamberlain's attempts to keep the peace, see Peter Neville's Hitler and Appeasement. Olson has crafted a seamless narrative that flows from primary and secondary sources and is a worthy addition to all World War II collections.
New interesting book: Firehouse or To Sleep with the Angels
The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
Author: Jeff Sharlet
They are "the Family" -- soldiers in the army of God, waging spiritual war in the halls of American power. Their base is a quiet, leafy estate along the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia, and Jeff Sharlet is the only journalist to have reported from inside its walls. His experience with fundamentalist Christianity's elite corps launched him into a deeper examination of the movement's roots in American history, and its surprising allies past and present, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, dictators from Indonesia to El Salvador, and present-day politicians from both sides of the aisle. THE FAMILY dramatically revises conventional wisdom about American fundamentalism, revealing its crucial role in the unraveling of the New Deal, the creation of the Cold War, the no-holds-barred economics ofglobalization, and the slow but steady destruction of the wall of separation between church and state .
Part history, part investigative journalism, THE FAMILY is an eye-opening, elegantly written examination of the spiritual awakenings that have convulsed this nation, making a powerful case that these awakenings -- from Jonathan Edwards' belief that "We are sinners in the hands of an angry God" to today's alarming nexus of church and state -- are manifestations of an American mood that has been present since the beginning.
The author lived undercover with the Family at their house "Ivanwald" in Arlington, Virginia, and an article about his experience appeared as a feature article in Harper's (March 2003). His subsequent work on elite Christian fundamentalism has appeared regularly in Harper's and Rolling Stone.
Kirkus Reviews
An investigative journalist examines a Jesus-centered, fundamentalist network whose ambitions exceed "Al Qaeda's dream of a Sunni empire."It's hard to imagine a religious gathering more anodyne than the annual National Prayer Breakfast. Harper's and Rolling Stone contributing editor Sharlet (Journalism and Religious Studies/New York Univ. Center for Religion and Media; co-author: Killing the Buddha: A Heretic's Bible, 2004), however, sees something sinister, a more than merely ceremonial moment marking the achievement of Abraham Vereide and his successor, Doug Coe, founders of a ministry specializing in the care and feeding of high government, industry and military officials, an elite fundamentalist corps known as "the Family." Sharlet traces the twin threads of the Family's origins in the evangelical teachings of Jonathan Edwards and Charles Grandison Finney and its commitment under Vereide and Coe to a painstaking, prayer-cell by prayer-cell conversion of the elite-prominent Americans such as Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, politicians from Melvin Laird to Sam Brownback-to its notion of a smiling, muscular, American Christ, enthusiastically capitalist, socially conservative and fiercely anti-communist. Unashamedly modeling their leadership training along lines favored by Hitler and Lenin, the Family has insinuated itself firmly into the ruling class, its theology better suited, Sharlet insists, to empire than to democracy. The author's discussion of the Family's beginning and growth and his lengthy disquisitions on other figures prominent in the evangelical movement-Frank Buchman, Billy Sunday, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Billy Graham, Charles Colson, James Dobson, Ted Haggard-alldemonstrate his acute understanding of the theocratic streak that has long run though American history. His firsthand, critical reporting on the Family's enclave in Arlington, Va., and on the evangelical boomtown of Colorado Springs testifies to his relentlessness and, yes, even courage. Finally, however, Sharlet fails to persuade us that this "guerilla force on the spiritual battlefield" poses any significant danger to the republic. Fine research and reporting diminished by overblown analysis. Agent: Kathleen Anderson/Anderson/Grinberg
Table of Contents:
Introduction: The Avant-Garde of American Fundamentalism 1
I Awakenings
1 Ivanwald 13
2 Experimental Religion 56
3 The Revival Machine 73
II Jesus Plus Nothing
4 Unit Number One 87
5 The F Word 114
6 The Ministry of Proper Enlightenment 144
7 The Blob 181
8 Vietnamization 205
9 Jesus + 0 = X 241
10 Interesting Blood 257
III The Popular Front
Interlude 287
11 What Everybody Wants 291
12 The Romance of American Fundamentalism 322
13 Unschooling 336
14 This Is Not the End 370
Acknowledgments 389
Notes 393
Index 433
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