Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England

I like Lynne Olson's writing, especially the character descriptions, and I very much enjoyed Troublesome Young Men, as far as it goes. Chamberlain's fall and Churchill's rise to the Premiership in May 1940 was, however, a much more complex, multi step event involving a number of players, most of whom she does not cover adequately in this story. I guess I'd give the book a 5 for writing style and a 2 or so for the history, hence my rating of 3.This was a two step process--first, Chamberlain had to fall, then Churchill had to become his replacement. These were two separate events and the Troublesome Young Men had virtually nothing to do with the second.What is well established is the following: While Olson's featured characters were early anti-appeasers along with Churchill, Chamberlain did not fall because his appeasement policy had failed. In fact, polls showed his popularity at an all time high in late 1939, well after the invasion of Poland and the declaration of war. He fell because of 1) widening dissatisfaction with his government's lack of purpose, organization and energy in pursuing the war effort and organizing the economy for war; and, 2) his intransigent, offensive personal nature.Chamberlain's offensive personality both alienated the Labour Party leaders and left concerned Tories with no option but to vote against his government or abstain in the Norway Debate division. More moderate, but concerned Tories (eg., The "Watching Committee" organized by Bobbety Cranborne's father, the 4th Marquess of Salisbury) were rudely rebuffed by Chamberlain in attempts to speak with him privately about their concerns. This left them no alternative but to vote against the government in order to send "Neville" a message.The Norway Debate was crucial to the outcome in that it ignited an outpouring of pent up emotion against Chamberlain which led to a very poor showing for his government in the following division. Chamberlain won, but his majority was down drastically, resulting in his need to bring Labour into his government in order to continue as PM. Labour detested him personally and refused, resulting in his resignation. Had Labour agreed to join under Chamberlain, he would have been able to continue, so Labour was critical in Chamberlain's fall.Olson gives proper credit to Amery for his "In the name of God, go!" speech which, along with the intense efforts of Clement Davies, gave the Labour leaders the courage to call for a division at the end of the debate. (No division, no fall from power for Chamberlain.) In my opinion, she does not give proper credit to Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, the Tory Naval hero, who gave the first speech denouncing the Chamberlain government from the Tory side of the aisle. Nor does she, in my view, give proper weight to former PM David Lloyd George's scathing denunciation of Chamberlain on day two of the debate. These three speeches all ginned up the MP's and resulted in an embarrassing vote (though technically a win) for Chamberlain.There was also much more going on behind the scenes with especially intense lobbying by Brendan Bracken and Independent MP Clement Davies, who was almost certainly the most important player in Chamberlain's fall. Davies bolstered Amery's resolve and encouraged him to speak on the first day of the two day debate by promising to get him a crowd when the chamber was nearly empty and promptly delivering on his word. Davies also successfully lobbied Lloyd George into speaking on day two of the debate, lobbied the Labour leaders to call for a division on day 2 and then successfully lobbied Labour leaders Attlee and Greenwood to refuse to join Chamberlain's government. In fact, Attlee and Greenwood were late going to meet with Churchill, Halifax and Chamberlain to hear Chamberlain's invitation to join his government due to meeting with Davies for so long. Davies was, thus, directly responsible for two of the three most important speeches of the debate being given at all, as well as his successful interventions with the Labour leaders to encourage them to call for the crucial division (vote) and to refuse to join Chamberlain's government.Also,little attention is paid to Halifax' refusing the job as Chamberlain's successor, considering the monumental importance of this to Churchill's ascension. Whether Halifax really refused or was outmaneuvered by Churchill at the "meeting of the long silence" is still not entirely clear. His motives for refusing, if that was what he did, are also still the subject of considerable debate.One gets the impression from this book that the "Troublesome Young Men" brought Chamberlain down and installed Churchill. That's not at all accurate. They most certainly played a critical role in building opposition to Chamberlain behind the scenes. Further, Amery's speech was the most noteworthy of three in the Norway Debate which broke loose the emotions of concerned Tory MP's and led to the embarrassing (for Chamberlain) vote in the division. This vote then put in motion a chain of events which led to Chamberlain's fall and Churchill's elevation.Without Clement Davies' tireless efforts, late night advice in the wee hours of May 8-9 to Churchill from Bracken and Lord Beaverbrook, etc., not to mention Labour's critical role, Chamberlain would not have fallen and Churchill would not have risen. Even after all the events of the debate, had Labour agreed to join the government under Chamberlain, he would have survived. Given that Labour refused, had Halifax simply accepted the job when it was offered to him, Churchill would still not have ascended.Ms. Olson also implies that Churchill was an ingrate to her "Troublesome Young Men" in not giving them more high offices in his government. This flawed view completely ignores the fact that Churchill had no alternative upon taking office other than to retain most of the Chamberlain high command in his cabinet, including Chamberlain himself as Lord President of the Council. Churchill did not command anywhere close to a majority of the Tory party which was still largely controlled by Halifax and Chamberlain. Chamberlain, after all, was still the leader of the Tory party, even after his resignation as PM. Had Churchill attempted a wholesale ousting of Chamberlain, Halifax and their followers, he almost certainly would have been himself ousted by his own party.In addition to the foregoing, it is important to remember that Churchill became PM at the head of a Tory led coalition government which included the Labour and Liberal parties. Thus, he not only had to retain Chamberlain loyalists, but he also had to find senior cabinet positions for multiple Labour party leaders and also his old WWI friend, Archie Sinclair, leader of the Liberal party. Thus, he had precious few positions available with which to reward the "Troublesome Young Men," especially at the beginning of his premiership.Of the main players in this drama, Churchill immediately made Amery India Secretary, Duff Cooper Information Minister and found a senior Navy position for Keyes, despite the difficulty in bringing Keyes back from retirement and finding him a place without removing senior active duty personnel who did not deserve demotion. Later, Keyes was elevated to a peerage. Lloyd George was recruited as Agricultural Minister (over the objections and reluctant agreement of Chamberlain), but refused. Davies was told there were no suitably senior positions open, but offered a peerage as a reward (which he declined in order to stay in the Commons.)Eden began in the cabinet and was elevated to Foreign Secretary 6 or 7 months later when Churchill was able to pressure Halifax out of London to Washington as Ambassador to the U.S. Before that could happen, however, Chamberlain had to die, opening the way for Churchill to become Tory party leader due to his popularity after the Battle of Britain. Also, Lord Lothian, the Ambassador to the U.S., also had to die, opening a sufficiently senior job to which to reassign Halifax. In short, it was all much more complex than Ms. Olson suggests and it is totally unfair to Churchill to paint him as ungrateful to those she chose to feature in this book.At the end of the day, this is a much more complex (and fascinating) story than that portrayed in this book. The Troublesome Young Men were critical to Churchill's ascension, but no more so than Labour and, perhaps, Bracken, Lloyd George and Admiral Keyes. If we were to attempt to single out the most important individual in the real story, it would be very difficult to turn elsewhere than Clement Davies. In the end, it took all of these men in addition to Chamberlain's own missteps.Still, the book is a fun read. I enjoyed it.

Very well researched. I’ve read a lot about this period of time, but learned a great deal about what is a fascinating period. A good book.

This is one of the best books, I read and she written what happened to the group after they took down Chamberlin and that Chamberlain was a bully and appeaser to one the most evil man in the 20th century. I now have a reason to dislike Chamberlain. He was the worst kind of fool, he learned the wrong lessons from WW1. The worst thing Churchill did was keep him in government.

This is a story that has needed telling for some time, and the author does a tremendous job of telling it in an entertaining and highly readable manner. The lesson that these troublesome young men brought to the world needs to be told and re-told again and again. The difficulty is that the lesson of these troublesome young men and their extended fight against appeasement, however so wonderfully told by Ms. Olson, for she mostly allows the words and deeds of the troublesome young men to speak for themselves, is very quickly forgotten in the last chapter, the aftermath of the book. It is easy for her to propagandize for most of the book, for her proselytizing is exactly in line with theirs. With the history of the 20's, 30's, and 40's behind us, it is easy for the preaching of Ms. Olson to end up on the side of light and reason, for who, now, cannot completely agree that Nazism was the great evil that had to be fought and that could not be negotiated with. In the aftermath, she departs from historical certainty, and preaches in favor of appeasement, which is quite unbecoming for this tome, shines an unfortunate light on the analytical capabilities of the author, and points out how horridly history can repeat itself and that appeasement is still a clear and present danger to Western Civilization and Democracy. In briefly recanting the history of the troublesome young men postwar, she ever so briefly recants the tale of the 1956 British/French/Israeli Suez war against the IslamoNazi (my term), Gamel Abdul Nasser, who helped the Nazi Odessa organization post WWII and modeled his regime on the structure of the Nazis. "Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, the lessons of Munich and appeasement were wrongly applied to a later international crisis. Hitler had been a real threat to Britain's security and survival. Nasser was not." - P 358. The actions of the USA, to put a halt to the confrontation with Nasser, emasculated England and France. It emboldened the Islamists of the Middle East and North Africa to be able to confront the now decaying powers of the West and believe that they could win. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, shortly before leaving office at the end of his 2nd term, said that interfering in Suez was his greatest foreign policy mistake, and that he should never have done it. It helped to embolden the Baathist IslamoNazis of Syria and Iraq that bedeviled the USA for over fifty-five years, and that in Syria, still bedevil us today. The threat was not just Nasser, it was Islamists, and Nasser was a symptom that needed curing. If Hitler had been stopped at the Beer Putsch -if only the USA had allowed England and France to stand up to Radical Islam in 1956. Although much more slowly moving than the crisis before World War II, by a factor of 15, this was one of the early events that made Europe turn away from the USA, and turn to the Middle East. This helped form a partnership between Europe and the Islamist world that allowed unbridled immigration into Europe, that will result in England, the rest of Western Europe, and Russia lose the most important war of all, not just that of Democracy and Civilization, but of mere existence, as demographically England and France have already surrendered to the radical Islamist and will be 100% Islamist countries by 2100. So Suez was not like Munich, it was more like the re-arming of the Rhineland. Approving that first step enabled the steps that followed for Hitler, and for the Islamists. Now the USA needs its own troublesome young men, or troublesome men and women of all ages, and it needs a Churchill to save the USA from the onslaught of Radical Islam, partially brought on by the ignorance and appeasement of authors like Olson who cannot recognize any threat other than the one in the past that these troublesome young men so ably vanquished.

an interesting read

Very readable history

An excellent historical account of the British government and its actions during crucial years before the second world war.

This is a well written insight into the doings and workings of the British government before and during the Second World War. I found it fascinating and the actions of Winston Churchill enlightening. Not at all what I had believed beforehand. Well worth the read and I look forward to her next book about London during that same period.

A must if one wants to how WSC came to be the PM in the war years. Very very interesting the way the book presents the events. It is like one living in those days