The Churchills and the Blitz

A review of Erik Larson’s new book, “The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz”

I will read absolutely anything Erik Larson writes. I picked up his masterpiece, The Devil in the White City, at the requisite time in college to be enjoyed. (I was still enthralled with serial killers and just beginning to appreciate higher-level history books.) The Devil in the White City immediately became one of my favorite books. So, of course, his thoroughly-acclaimed In the Garden of Beasts was next. If The Devil in the White City can be simplified to a dual narrative of prolific murderer H.H. Holmes and the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, In The Garden of Beasts could likewise be simplified as a dual narrative of Nazi Germany and the U.S. Ambassador to Germany’s family. While I much preferred Devil to Beasts, both were good enough for me to A) put all of Erik Larson’s books on my list. Now (tomorrow, February 25) he publishes a new historical narrative that will envelop the hearts and minds of many.

If my theory (every Larson book encompasses two interwoven narratives) is correct, then in The Splendid and the Vile it is undeniably Churchill’s family on the one hand and Churchill’s job of defending Britain (and, by extension, the world) from Nazi Germany on the other. The Splendid and the Vile leans heavily on the world-historical angle, in this case, as he frames the story around the series of German Luftwaffe air raids known today as the Battle of Britain or, more colloquially, the Blitz. This choice is partially because everything happening with Churchill’s family must happen in the context of the ongoing bombings, but I believe it is just as much a conscious choice because of the depth at which one can delve into the psychology of British society during the Blitz.

Larson hits on what is, to me, the most interesting part of the Blitz when he writes:

The censors claimed to have detected a paradox, that “morale is highest in places that have been most badly bombed.”

Malcolm Gladwell writes about this paradox in David & Goliath (only an ok book by his standards) and, if I may paraphrase, says that a “near miss” is the quickest way to think of oneself as invincible and thus contributes to morale. Some so many people experienced “near misses”, the thinking goes, that it had a positive effect on morale. There is surely some truth to this, but the same effect was not seen (as far as I know) in Berlin, where the Brits were conducting exhaustive bombing runs of their own, so to my mind, there must be more.

Larson also writes of a time when Britain, already rationing its people on almost everything else imaginable, controversially begins to ration its tea. On the heels of my review of 1774: The Long Year of Revolution, I had to laugh at the overwhelming importance those darn Brits place on their leafy beverages. But I also found it immensely interesting how, as Larson explains, the British people needed a sense of normalcy in a world of upheaval. Tea, he argues, became synonymous with carrying on, and the small routines could be considered an act of defiance against the onslaught of bombers. Compare that with Goebbels’ declaration that “(a) sloppy Christmas tree atmosphere lasting several weeks is out of tune with the militant mood of the German people” and the contrast between Britain and Germany could not be more clear.

There are so many reasons to read The Splendid and the Vile. If you want examples of what total war is like during WWII, there is no better passage than the following, during one of the raids:

Over the next six hours, 505 bombers carrying 7,000 incendiaries and 718 tons of high-explosive bombs of all sizes swarmed the sky over London. Thousands of bombs fell and ripped into all corners of the city, but they did especially grave damage in Whitehall and Westminster. Bombs hit Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, the Law Courts. One bomb sliced through the tower that housed Big Ben. To everyone’s relief, the clock’s immense bell boomed just minutes afterward, at two A.M. Fire consumed a large portion of the famous roof of Westminster Hall, built in the eleventh century by King William Rufus (William II). In Bloomsbury, flames raced through the British Museum, destroying an estimated 250,000 books and devouring the Roman Britain Room, the Greek Bronze Room, and the Prehistoric Room. Happily, as a precaution, the exhibits in these rooms had been removed for safekeeping. A bomb struck the Peek Frean cookie factory (which now also made tank parts). Two parachute mines blew up a cemetery, scattering old bones and fragments of monuments over the landscape and launching a coffin lid into the bedroom of a nearby house. The irate homeowner, in bed with his wife at the time, carried the lid out of the house and brought it to a group of rescue workers. “I was in bed with my missus when this bloody thing came through the window,” he said. “What do I do with it?”

Add to all of these mindblowing facts another paradox of the Blitz:

The odds that any one person would die on any one night were slim, but the odds that someone, somewhere in London would die were 100 percent. Safety was a product of luck alone.

The juxtaposition of the joy and horror of the Blitz makes Larson’s book unique.

One can just begin to understand why there was so much optimism and yet so much grief, even death, at once. What such a thing does to the psychology of the nation I cannot grasp, but you get little glimpses of an answer through Larson’s narrative. It is this tension that fuels the whole book and makes it worth reading, even if you already think you know plenty about the period. I would argue that the push and pull of joy and sorrow is the whole point of the book. How do I know? It’s right there in the title. Here is the titular explainer, taken from the diary of John Colville, a civil servant in Churchill’s administration:

It was magnificent and terrible: the spasmodic drone of enemy aircraft overhead; the thunder of gunfire, sometimes close sometimes in the distance; the illumination, like that of electric trains in peace-time, as the guns fired; and the myriad stars, real and artificial, in the firmament. Never was there such a contrast of natural splendor and human vileness.

It’s beautiful, and it’s woven throughout the book. The dual nature of human existence is seen in Larson’s dual narrative, and I can’t help but think it’s deliberate that the reader learns the meaning of the title very close to the exact middle of the book. This is why I will always read Erik Larson: his writing begs to be consumed slowly and purposefully.

I received an eARC of The Splendid and the Vile courtesy of Crown Publishing and NetGalley, but my opinions are my own.