Remembering the Why of WWII.

It’s a sight that might be difficult to imagine in 2020: the Prime Minister of Great Britain and the President of the United States of America sitting side-by-side in a religious worship service on the deck of a battleship one Sunday in the middle of a world war.

But this was exactly the spectacle when President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) joined Prime Minister Winston Churchill aboard the Prince of Wales battleship, off Newfoundland on August 9, 1941.

Churchill wasn’t an observant Christian, but in reflecting on the hymns that were sung at the service he later wrote that, “Every word seemed to stir the heart and none who took part in it will forget the spectacle presented. It was a great hour to live.” 

In a later radio broadcast, Churchill explained his choice to sing the hymn Onward Christian Soldiers: “I felt that this was no vain presumption, but that we had the right to feel that we are serving a cause for the sake of which a trumpet has sounded from on high.” The cause, as he put it, was “saving the world from measureless degradation.”

When photographs of the service were published, Felix Frankfurter, a trusted adviser to FDR, wrote to him with the following reaction: “We live by symbols and we can’t too often recall them. And you two in that ocean, in the setting of that Sunday service, gave meaning to the conflict between civilization and arrogant, brute challenge; and gave promise more powerful and binding than any formal treaty could, that civilization has brains and resources that tyranny will not be able to overcome.”

Not So Inevitable

Nowadays it’s perhaps taken for granted that Britain and America joined forces in fighting Nazi Germany in WWII. It shouldn’t be. Both Churchill and FDR encountered significant domestic challenges in opposing the tyranny of Naziism’s assault on democratic, liberal values.

The main challenge to surmount in Britain was fear; fear of another war following the horrors of WWI, which was supposed to be the war to end all wars. After the invasion of Poland, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain feebly addressed parliament giving no indication that Britain would keep its commitment to the Poles. Before Arthur Greenwood, acting leader of the Labour opposition, had chance to reply to Chamberlain’s address, Leo Amery, a prominent Conservative who was outraged by Chamberlain’s craven stance, shouted aloud, “Speak for England, Arthur!” Greenwood then did exactly that to a resoundingly positive reception: “I wonder how long we are prepared to vacillate… when Britain, and all Britain stands for, and human civilization are in peril.” Britain had finally awoken.

In America, FDR’s efforts to support Britain and the rest of Europe in the fight against the Nazis were long stifled by the America First Committee, a non-interventionist lobby group that was strongly against America’s entry into the war. America First’s position was that it was in America’s best interests to stay out of the war. The group had the support of powerful, prominent figures, such as aviator Charles Lindbergh, and was intransigent in its opposition to any moves to support Britain in some of its darkest, loneliest hours in the war. It was FDR’s innovative Lend-Lease Act of March 1941 that enabled America to adequately support Britain before it sunk into the abyss of what would have been almost inevitable bankruptcy and Nazi invasion.

A Better Choice

Perhaps WWII can be more plausibly positioned as a war of good versus evil than many others, but it would be inaccurate to assume, on that basis, that everything that allied leadership decided to do during the war was above reproach (think of the merciless bombing of Dresden in Germany and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, for example). 

Notwithstanding some notoriously tragic mistakes during the war, however, the allies’ choice to overcome fear and self-interest in opposing the evil and tyranny inherent within Nazi ideology was the right one. At a certain point in time the path of least resistance may have been to accept Nazi dominance of mainland Europe as inexorable and instead of opposing Hitler’s regime seek to work with it.

The grim costs that would have been associated with complete capitulation in the face of Nazi terror are incomprehensible; it would have been unconscionable for allied leaders to have chosen to do so.

Gratitude for Good Values

Remembrance Sunday is a time to remember and express gratitude for British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women in the two World Wars and subsequent conflicts. Those who paid the ultimate price are especially remembered.

This year I have had an extra sense of gratitude for leaders such as Churchill and FDR who came together, united by good values, to take the harder road in fighting against an overwhelming force of evil and tyranny.

The Sunday service that the two men shared together symbolised their commitment to a truly righteous cause, their hope and faith in a better future, their love of freedom, and their humility in deferring to a divine power and authority that is far greater than any physical force. These values are some of the key ingredients of civilisation itself. Because in a world full of distractions, temptations and challenges, neutrality is not enough.