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Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England By Lynne Olson ( Farrar, Straus and Giroux )
Release Date: 2008-04-29
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Product Description
A riveting history of the daring politicians who challenged the disastrous policies of the British government on the eve of World War II On May 7, 1940, the House of Commons began perhaps the most crucial debate in British parliamentary history. On its outcome hung the future of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s government and also of Britain—indeed, perhaps, the world. Troublesome Young Men is Lynne Olson’s fascinating account of how a small group of rebellious Tory MPs defied the Chamberlain government’s defeatist policies that aimed to appease Europe’s tyrants and eventually forced the prime minister’s resignation.
Some historians dismiss the “phony war” that preceded this turning point—from September 1939, when Britain and France declared war on Germany, to May 1940, when Winston Churchill became prime minister—as a time of waiting and inaction, but Olson makes no such mistake, and describes in dramatic detail the public unrest that spread through Britain then, as people realized how poorly prepared the nation was to confront Hitler, how their basic civil liberties were being jeopardized, and also that there were intrepid politicians willing to risk political suicide to spearhead the opposition to Chamberlain—Harold Macmillan, Robert Boothby, Leo Amery, Ronald Cartland, and Lord Robert Cranborne among them. The political and personal dramas that played out in Parliament and in the nation as Britain faced the threat of fascism virtually on its own are extraordinary—and, in Olson’s hands, downright inspiring.
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 No Trouble with Troublesome Young Men
I thought the book was very informative about a very difficult period in Great Britain. The author(s) made a tough subject very clear and easy to read. I learned a lot about all of the countries involved, GB, France, Denmark, the US, Belgium and Germany. I am very glad I read it and plan to recommend it to my book club in 2009.
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A Tense and Exciting Tale ( 69476342 )
The late 1930's were crucial years for the Western democracies. In Great Britain, a significant majority of Conservative party members supported Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's intensive efforts to avoid war with a powerful and rearmed Germany. Although an appeaser, or "dove" in contemporary parlance, on foreign policy, Chamberlain was hard-nosed and autocratic in dealing with domestic opposition. His parliamentary whips acted mercilessly in keeping Tory party members in line behind the government.
Only after the Nazi invasion of Denmark and Norway did anti-appeasement parliamentarians led by Leo Amery and including Harold Macmillan, Robert Boothby, Harold Nicolson, and Ronald Cartland succeed in forcing Chamberlain from the Prime Minister position and replacing him with Winston Churchill. Even then, with Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, a leading appeaser, remaining in the Cabinet, Churchill had a constant struggle fending off their efforts to reach a deal with Hitler. Curiously, Churchill, showed little gratitude to those to whom he owed his leadership position; he brought few of them into his government while retaining many who had been his enemies.
Lynne Olson tells this tense and exciting tale with considerable skill, though the parliamentarians involved tend, perhaps, to be too sharply drawn as either heroes or villains. There are few gray areas in her account, and the complexities of the historic issues involved are skirted over rather lightly. Ms. Olson also veers off occasionally into gossipy anecdotes about marital discord, adultery, and other such personal foibles among the leading personalities of the saga that are, at best, peripheral to its historic nature.
These shortcomings are minor. "Troublesome Young Men" is a highly readable chronicle of the heroic political struggle which saved Great Britain from the looming Axis threat.
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Great story with many vibrant characters...and lessons to be learned or not...
What a wonderful story and history lesson! Well told and with a different and illuminating take on these important events.
We all tend to look back and think that history had to turn out the way it did, although of course it could easily have been otherwise. Here we see how an unlikely young group of Tory renegades propelled Churchill into power, often without that much help from the great man himself, who used their aid and then abandoned many of them after he ascended to power. They were an unusually honest and determined group. And Churchill was of course the right man for the hour with the ruthless determination so badly needed. You do not always need to approve of how he acted to approve of what he got done.
Now of course all times are different and applying the lessons of Munich and failed appeasement to other events is problematic, but we forget that, or our leaders do. Or did, tragically, in crafting policy in Vietnam and Iraq.
But this is a wonderful book about history, character, the nasty edge of politics and how much pain and struggle comes with involvement in public life.
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A time for war.. a time for peace ( karl101 )
I've always been interested in understanding how it was that Britain could have remained so passive when faced with the threat Hitler posed to its existence. This well written and thoroughly researched book goes a long way toward helping me understand the answer to that question. Lynne Olson has done a tremendous job of deconstructing the years of appeasement, the debate that led up to Britain going to war and the eventual ascension to power of Winston Churchill. By doing so, Olson allows us to gain great insight into Chamberlain, Churchill, the psychology of appeasement, the mentality of the ruling class of Britain, the game of power politics played by "The Troublesome Young Men" against the appeasers of Hitler, and the personalities and petty grievances that often times got in the way of doing what was best for the country. Throughout the book there are so many wonderful quotes from the players of the time and so many useful bits of historical information, that I ended up underlining nearly half the book. This book has much to say to the historian, political scientist, or even the average guy who thinks seriously about the issue of when a country should go to war.
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 Churchill's Rebels ( blacklight_knight )
Lynne Olson's "Troublesome Young Men" is more than, as its subtitle suggests, the story of the Fall of Neville Chamberlain and the "Churchill Conspiracy" of 1940. Olson has written a brilliant popular history of Britain in the 1930s, and what her book lacks in scholarly rigor it more than makes up for with the power of sheer storytelling.
With the rise of the Third Reich, Britain faced one of its greatest challenges. In his semi-autobiography, "Mein Kampf", Adolf Hitler had sketched the course of German ambitions in Europe. Once he rose to power, Hitler started to execute his grand design, expanding the "Reich" over the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.
The official response to Nazism was Appeasement - a policy of essentially capitulating to Hitler's every demand in hope of satisfying his endless appetite for conquest and expansion. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain will be forever associated with Appeasement - especially as he came back from the sell out of Czechoslovakia in Munich, and boldly declared the arrival of "Peace for Our Times".
But from the beginning there were dissenters, the "Troublesome Young Men" of the title, a group of some thirty Tory MPs who recognized the madness of Appeasement and tried, in vain, to stop it. Such men as future Prime Minister Harold McMillan, Alfred Duff Cooper, Richard Law (son of 1920s prime minister Andrew Bonar Law) and Freshman MP Ronald Cartland, who was to die before the evacuation of Dunkirk. They attacked the government, and challenged it, risking their political futures along the way. Cartland actually called the Prime Minister a dictator in the House of Commons (p.17).
But throughout the 1930s, the rebels cried in vain. They have faced a powerful, popular and authoritarian Prime Minister in Chamberlain, who imposed an iron discipline on his party, ruled the press, and did not hesitate to use wiretap and threats to keep his party united, and following him. The rebels also had to contend with a largely hostile public opinion, and with another problem, just as acute: the lack of leadership.
In the 1930s, only two men had the potential of leading an anti-appeasement movement to power. Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, who resigned over the government's appeasement of Mussolini, was one. But Eden was a most reluctant revolutionary. Far from leading a crusade against the government and its policies, he kept his criticism tame, having no desire to alienate Chamberlain's supporters, still the vast majority of Tory MPs, and even hoping to get a Cabinet job again.
The other potential leader was, of course, Winston Churchill. Churchill, Britain's leading orator and most brilliant politician, had the experience and spirits to lead Britain against Hitler. But he was widely percieved as unreliable. Having jumped ship from the Conservative to the Liberal party in the 1900s, and having returned to the fold only with the collapse of the Liberals in the 1920s, he was seen as an opportunist by many. And his stature was diminished by fighting for two inglorious and hopeless causes in the 1930s - his crusade against Indian independence, and his fight in favor of Kind Edward VIII as during the crisis of his marriage to Mrs. Simpson.
Leaderless, the anti-appeasers failed to stop Chamberlain's capitulation in Munich, and Britain failed to response to Hitler's final occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. I had always thought that after Czechoslovakia, appeasement was dead. Indeed, Chamberlain started to take action towards military preparadness, and issued a guarantee of Poland's safety. Yet Appeasement had continued up to the out break of the war. As late as august 1939, days before the German invasion, Chamberlain tried to get the United States to pressure Poland to accept Germany's demands. In effect, he was trying to engineer another Munich, with Washington as the midwife (pp. 200-201).
When the war came, Chamberlain managed to hang onto power. Brilliantly, he co-opted the opposition by appointing Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill's WW1 role. Churchill, a reluctant revolutionary at the best of times, became a loyal and devoted member of Chamberlain's cabinet, and never voted or spoke against him.
The task of removing Chamberlain fell to the rest of the rebels. Chamberlain's incompetent at waging a war he had no heart for made his position weaker and weaker. With the fiasco of Britain's Norway campaign, confidence in Chamberlain was undermined. Standing against Chamberlain in debate, Rebel Leo Amory, quoting Cromwell, made a stirring attack "You have set 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's government survived the no confidence vote that followed, but only just. With pressure for a unity government rising, and with Labour refusal to serve under Chamberlain, the die was cast. After considering Lord Halifax for the role, Churchill emerged as the natural successor.
Later, Churchill described his feeling: "I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial".
Olson gripping book offers us a front seat view of these exciting times. Along with Ian Kershaw's Making Friends with Hitler: Lord Londonderry, the Nazis, and the Road to War, "Troublesome Young Men" is the best book I know about Britain during those dark days, going through, in Churchill's phrase, The Gathering Storm.
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