Churchill, The Leader

urchillEduardo Rosales Castellanos
Politics and Ethics of Statecraft IGA-112

Winston Spencer Churchill and his leadership

Abstract
This paper is about the role of the leadership of Winston Churchill. I stress the importance of the historical figure of Winston Churchill in the world history, I analyze what some authors have said about different aspects of Churchill’s leadership role and Istate my opinion about the same aspects analyzed by other authors and I propose an overall personal judgment of his role as a leader.
Winston Churchill is one of the most important leaders of the history. In this sense, it is compelling and important to write about him.
I base this paper in three books: The Last Lion, by William Manchester and Paul Reid (WM); Churchill, by Paul Johnson (PJ);and Winston Churchill, a life, by John Keegan (JK).
I divide this analysis in six different perspectives of Churchill’s life: his personal skills, his character, his vision, his achievements, his ethics and his role as a leader.
Finally, I analyze Churchill from the same six perspectives.

Scope of the paper
This paper is about the role of the leadership of Winston Churchill particularly, butnot only, during the Second World War. In this document I will try to analyze how his role influenced the outcomes of his tasks, how his character and personal skills affected positively or negatively the performance of Great Britain before and during the war and how his vision and view of the world shaped his own actions.
It is also important to stress that Churchill played a key role not onlyfor his country but for the whole world. In this sense, particularly during his first term as Prime Minister, from May 1940 to July 1945, any analysis has to include the role of Churchill to understand the evolution of the conflict. The influence of Churchill, hence, has to be traced outside the boundaries of Great Britain.
On the other hand, this paper will address several facts and situationsthat happened before the war. Since Churchill was 65 when he was first elected as Prime Minister, any account of his actions must be rooted in his previous career. Moreover, many of his actions during the war were clearly influenced and affected by his past and the previous political history of Europe and the Great Britain. In this sense, in order to analyze the role of Churchill during the WorldWar II, this paper has to include many events that happened before the war.
In sum, this paper is an analysis of the role of Winston Churchill in the World War II but also before it. And in order to do the analysis, we have to go beyond those years and beyond Great Britain.
In the first part, I stress the importance of the historical figure of Winston Churchill in the world history, and for anyanalysis on the role of leadership on statecraft.
In the second part, I analyze what some authors have said about different aspects of Churchill’s leadership role.
In the last part, I state my opinion about the same aspects analyzed by other authors and I propose an overall personal judgment of his role as a leader.

The importance of Churchill
Winston Churchill is one of the most importantleaders of the history. Few leaders have been analyzed as much as Churchill. Moreover, fewer leaders have had such an influence in any event affecting practically all continents. For the purposes of a paper on Ethics and Statecraft, there must be only a handful of historic characters as compelling as Churchill.
In this sense, it is compelling and important to write about him.
It is compellingto write about Churchill, first, because of the importance of the Great Britain in the twentieth century history. The British role in both world wars was essential to shape the century. The world order, its value systems and the sake of humanity in general, was determined by these conflagrations and the order that emerged from them.
Second, it is compelling because the complexity of the...