Churchill’s Final Moments – Ready To Depart? (Part 3)
After WWI, Churchill regained office, and in 1924 switched back to the Conservatives. He joined their government as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and quipped: “anyone can rat. It takes genius, however, to re-rat“. His stint as Chancellor proved disastrous. Churchill restored the gold standard, which resulted in an overvalued British pound and a consequent collapse in British exports. That led to massive layoffs, labor turmoil, and a general strike that paralyzed Britain. The Conservatives were defeated in 1929, Labor took over government, and Churchill was out of a job. Between the disasters of Gallipoli and his Chancellorship, Churchill entered the 1930s with a poor political reputation. When Conservatives regained office, he was not invited to join the Cabinet. He spent the decade in a political isolation that he described as his “wilderness years”.
Churchill devoted his time to writing, and to issuing warnings about the gathering Nazi menace that were ignored. He was vindicated when war broke out in 1939. Appointed Prime Minister in 1940, in his country’s darkest hour, he cemented his place in history as Britain’s greatest wartime leader. Booted out of office by British voters within weeks of final victory in Europe, he returned to writing, and won a Nobel Prize in Literature for his WWII memoirs. He returned for another stint as Prime Minister in 1951, before he finally retired in 1955. After such an eventful life, it was perhaps understandable that his final words before dying in 1965 were “I’m bored with it all“.
