The Gathering Storm
Monday
We just watched the 2002 movie, The Gathering Storm, starring Albert Finney. It is worth watching. Here was a man (Winston Churchill) who could see what was coming and was trying to warn people, but very few people wanted to hear it. Everybody had been so traumatized by the scale of the horror of the first World War, they didn't want to contemplate anything that made them feel another war was possible. He was harshly criticized, ignored, and accused of being a warmonger.
We felt strangely comforted by the movie. Of course, in the case of World War Two, we already know Churchill was right. Hitler was, in fact, rejecting the Treaty of Versailles and building an army. He did, in fact, have military ambitions for his country. And it was, in fact, foolish for the rest of the global powers to be busy dismantling their military. But during Churchill's "wilderness years" he was almost alone in his alarm about what was happening.
The term "wilderness years" refers to the span between 1929 and 1939 when Churchill was warning people about the danger of Nazism, and the rest of the world was trying to find a way not to believe it. In other words, it was similar to what's happening now: We're trying to get through to others about Islam and our listeners are trying to find any way they can to not believe it.
Check out the movie. And you can read more about this trying time in Winston Churchill's life here: The Wilderness Years.
