John Lukacs is a Hungarian by birth, an American by choice, a Churchillian by conviction, and a Chestertonian by instinct. Over the years Lukacs has written better than a baker’s dozen of historical monographs, many of which deal with World War II and the Cold War.
The Chesterton in Churchill
A few are exercises in the philosophy of history and one is an autobiography. None is a biography. And until now Lukacs has never devoted an entire monograph to any aspect, large or small, of the lives of either Churchill or Chesterton. That just ended with the publication of this book, Churchill: Visionary, Statesman, Historian (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2002 202 pages, $21.95).
None of this is meant to suggest that a Lukacs book on Chesterton is in the works. In fact, such needn’t be the case, because Lukacs’ understanding of Chesterton pretty much infuses every subject he touches, especially the subject of John Lukacs himself.
A bit of truth in reviewing before proceeding. I was a loyal reader of Lukacs long before I was at all a reader of Chesterton. But one did inevitably led to the other. To read a John Lukacs book is to encounter a telling quote (or at least a baker’s dozen) borrowed from Chesterton. Eventually, my curiosity was piqued, and the rest is history. Thank you, John Lukacs.
And while I’m at it, thanks also to Mr. Lukacs for this book. Far less a biography of Churchill, it is instead a collection of essays on Churchill. The list of topics is not exhaustive, but each essay is a stand-alone gem, especially separate pieces on Churchill’s relationship with Stalin, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower. Others deal with Churchill and pre-World War II appeasement, Churchill as historian, a brief review of two recent Churchill biographies, and a rather long one on Churchill’s funeral (which is less about the deceased than it is about the mourners, including the English people in general and one forty-ish visitor/observer named John Lukacs).
The Practical and Sober Visionary
That leaves the introductory essay, which is at once vintage Lukacs, the historian, and vintage Lukacs, the Chestertonian. Titled “Churchill the Visionary,” it begins by distinguishing between the words “vision,” which tends to suggest something positive, and “visionary,” which clearly does not. Visionaries, after all, are presumed to be at best impractical and at worst fanatical. And yet Churchill, the visionary, was neither. Herein resides a Chesterton insight, not to mention the key to understanding Winston Churchill and the reason John Lukacs wrote this book.
Chesterton understood that the most practical thing one can possess is the capacity to be a visionary. It is also the sine qua non for a true statesman, which is what Churchill was.
To be a visionary and a statesman is to be farsighted in both directions. Because Churchill had a clear understanding of the past, he had a clearer vision of at least the immediate future. And because he had both of the above, he knew just what to do at the critical moment when England stood alone against Hitler in the spring of 1940. Lukacs has already written at some length on those critical days in May when Churchill replaced Chamberlain. Lukacs seeks to convey now what Churchill understood then, namely that Hitler came precariously close to winning World War II in Europe well before the United States was a participant in it.
Bad and Worse Devils
Lukacs also understands that Churchill was something more than the Last Lion; he was, more accurately, the “defender of civilization at the end of the modern age.” As such, Churchill grasped that Hitler represented exactly what Chesterton understood that he represented: “a lurch into a New Dark Age.” The line is actually Lukacs’, but it might as well have been Chesterton’s—or Churchill’s.
To be sure, Chesterton and Churchill, while born the same year, did not always operate on the same wave length. Chesterton, of course, was a little Englander; Churchill, of course, was not. Lukacs concedes that, yes, Churchill was an imperialist. But he also inclined to believe that the story of the demise of the British empire would not have been very different had Churchill remained continuously in power after 1945, and therefore in a position to preside over the liquidation of the very empire that he had promised not to liquidate when he took power in 1940.
More than that, Lukacs is thoroughly convinced that Churchill’s vision of postwar Europe was accurate, insightful, and necessarily tragic. This is really another way of saying that Chesterton and Churchill were right about something else as well, namely that Nazi Germany was a much greater threat to western civilization than Soviet Russia. Hence Churchill’s willingness to make a pact with the “devil” (Stalin) in the name of defeating an even greater evil (Hitler). Hence a postwar division of Europe that, thank God, liberated all of Europe from Nazism, but which unfortunately saw half of Europe under the temporary control of the Soviets. The emphasis must be on the word “temporary,” because Churchill and Chesterton, each in his own way, understood the essential weaknesses of a social system that ran so diametrically against human nature.
Hungarian native John Lukacs considers Churchill’s bargain to have been worth it, notwithstanding the tragedy that befell Hungary and her neighbors. So did Churchill. And so, one guesses, would have G.K. Chesterton, if only he had lived as long as his fellow rotund (if far less hirsute) Englishman with whom he just happened to share the same birth year and a bit more than that as well.
Eric Scheske is an attorney in Sturgis, Michigan and editor of Gilbert! The Magazine of G.K. Chesterton. His articles have appeared in The National Catholic Register, Our Sunday Visitor, Touchstone, The Detroit Free Press, and Detroit News, among others.
(This article reprinted courtesy of Gilbert!, The Magazine of G.K. Chesterton)
