LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Winston Churchill saved the modern era

OPINION:

From my perspective of 80 years, “Darkest Hour” is the most important film ever made. It shows clearly why British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was Time’s “Man of the Century.” Against the opposition of the leaders of his own Conservative Party, the members of his Cabinet and the Labor and Liberal parties, Churchill refused to negotiate with Hitler after the surrender of the French — even with most of the British army trapped at Dunkirk. The film depicts the wonderful words Churchill used to win Parliament’s consent to fight alone against Hitler.

Had Britain surrendered in 1940, Hitler would have concentrated against the Soviet Union and won. Later Germany, with all of the rest of Europe and Japan, would have concentrated against the United States. As Charles Krauthammer wrote, “Only Churchill was indispensable. Without him, the world today would be unrecognizable — dark, impoverished, tortured.” Was this divine intervention?

A poor Scottish farmer saved a young boy from drowning in a bog, so the boy’s rich father paid to educate the farmer’s son at Oxford. The farmer’s son was Alexander Fleming, the bacteriologist who discovered penicillin. The little boy in the bog, Winston Churchill, would have died from double pneumonia in 1940 but for penicillin. Perhaps that, too, was divine intervention.

CARL H. MIDDLETON

Arlington