16 Ducere Est Servire: THE LEADERSHIP JOURNAL OF DALLAS BAPTIST UNIVERSITY Harris, Churchill asked that it be communicated that “we shall together inexorably beat the life out of industrial Germany (author’s italics), and thus hasten the day of final victory.”24 Seeking to inspire the Royal Air Force, Churchill promised to pummel Germany’s manufacturing and knew his brave airmen would lead the fight. On December 23, 1940, Churchill addressed the people of Italy in both English and Italian. Churchill appealed to their long friendship by saying, “We have always been such friends . . . We have never been foes till now.”25 But Churchill directed his attack at Mussolini and his minions. “It is all because of one man. One man and one man alone has ranged the Italian people in deadly struggle.”26 Churchill continued, “after eighteen years of unbridled power he has led your country to the horrid verge of ruin.” Churchill had sought to offer peace talks with the dictator, but those requests were rejected. “Anyone can see who it was wanted peace, and who it was that meant to have war.”27 He closed with, “There is where one man, and one man only, has led you; and there I leave this unfolding story until the day comes—as come it will— when the Italian nation will once more take a hand in shaping its own fortunes.”28 Churchill spoke directly to the Italian people to denigrate the evil of their leaders. He knew doing so would embolden anti-Mussolini forces within the country and strengthen his fellow Brits’ resolve. Mussolini, however, was not Churchill’s greatest foe. Before almost anyone else in the British government, Churchill had a premonition about Adolph Hitler. Starting in the 1930s, Churchill raised concerns about that “bad man” and warned his fellow MPs to take him seriously. He had read Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and unlike many others, he took Hitler at his word. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it now!!!” he said in 1936. “Hitler constitutes the greatest danger for the British Empire!”29 The British ruling class continued to “take its weekend in the country,” Churchill criticized, while “Hitler takes his countries in the weekend.”30 Like Henry, Churchill refused to back up or back down in the face of the enemy. Both Churchill and Hitler were artists and painters, and Churchill would rhetorically paint Hitler “a wicked man,” the “monstrous product of former wrongs and shame” and said that, “Europe will not yield itself to Hitler’s gospel of hatred.”31 In one of his most
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