The Noblest Adventure

Larry P. Arnn and Martin Gilbert, The Churchill Documents, Volume 21, The Shadows of Victory: January–July 1945, Hillsdale College Press, 2018, 2149 pages, $60. ISBN 978–0916308391

Churchill entitled the final volume of his war memoirs . The final volume of the Churchill War Papers underscores that dual theme. The astounding war effort that, under his leadership, the British people produced made victory possible. Without the British decision in May-June 1940 to fight on—a decision Churchill both organized and embodied—it is all too easy to imagine the war ending in a very different way, leading to a very different world. But, as this volume opens, victory had become certain. As that victory came in sight, however, so did the enormous cost. The Britain that would celebrate victory would be a very different country from the one that went reluctantly to war in 1939—much poorer and much reduced in power. In Corelli Barnett’s striking words, Britain ended the war “a warrior satellite of the United States.” It was also a country on the brink