#196 Winston Churchill (Leadership during WW2)

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories, and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets, they're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high, so I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today, and I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. I started thinking about London and the German aerial assault of 1940 and 1941, and wondered how on earth anyone could have endured it. 57 consecutive nights of bombing, followed by an intensifying series of nighttime raids over the next six months.
In particular, I thought about Winston Churchill. How did he withstand it, and his family, and his friends?
What was it like for him to have his city bombed for nights on end, and to know full well that these air raids, however horrific, were likely only a preamble to far worse, a German invasion from the sea and sky?
I decided to find out, and quickly came to realize that it is one thing to say carry on, and quite another to do it.
I focused on Churchill's first year as Prime Minister, May 10th, 1940 to May 10th, 1941, which coincided with the German air campaign as it evolved from sporadic, seemingly aimless raids to a full on assault against the city of London. What follows is by no means a definitive account of Churchill's life. Other authors have achieved that end.
Mine is a more intimate account that delves into how Churchill and his circle went about surviving on a daily basis. The dark moments and the light, the romantic entanglements and debacles, the sorrows and laughter, and the odd little episodes that reveal how life was really lived under Hitler's Tempest of Steel.
This was the year in which Churchill became Churchill, the cigar smoking bulldog we all think we know, when he made his greatest speeches and showed the world what courage and leadership look like.
Although at times, it may appear to be otherwise, this is a work of non-fiction.
If some of what follows challenges what you have come to believe about Churchill in this era, may I just say that history is a lively abode full of surprises.
That is an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, the one I have in my hand, and the one I'm going to try my best to convince you to buy, which is The Splendid and the Vile. A Saga of Churchill, Family and Defiance During the Blitz, and it was written by Erik Larson.
So before I jump back into the book, let me tell you why I wanted to read a book about Churchill and how he fits into everything else that we've been reading about and studying on the podcast. If you do any kind of reading in the history of entrepreneurship and as you go through these biographies, there's just a few names that are repeated over and over again that have outlasting and outstanding influence across generations. And one of those, Napoleon is an example of that. PT. Barnum, surprisingly, might be the person that's mentioned the most as a shorthand for showmanship and the importance of showmanship. But I would also say Churchill. Churchill is mentioned over and over again as inspiration to a lot of the people that we've read their biographies and that we've studied on the podcast. And he's kind of a shorthand on courage, leadership, grace under pressure and just a refusal to give up. He had one singular obsession, one single goal, and that was victory. And he wouldn't let anything or anybody derail him from that goal. So the example that sticks out in my mind of about 70 episodes ago, I did a three-part series on Larry Ellison. If you haven't listened to those, you can go back. It's Founders No. 124, 126, and 127 And there's two stories about that regarding Churchill in that series that I never forgot. One of them is that Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs were best friends. And so I think it's The Billionaire and The Mechanic. I think that's Founders No. 126 That book starts with a walk. Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison are going for a walk, and they're having a discussion and a debate about who's the greatest, like, who do they believe the greatest people in history are. They bring up Leonardo da Vinci. They bring up Gandhi. They bring up Napoleon. They bring up Churchill. But I think the most important Churchill story in those books is when Oracle is almost out of business. They're on the precipice of going bankrupt, of the company being dissolved. And it talks about, in those books, it talks about what Larry Ellison is reading during that, probably the most stressful time of his entire life. And one of the books that he was reading was a biography of on Winston Churchill. And so I want to go to the actual sources and acknowledgement section of this book all the way in the back and read two lines to you, because I think that relates to why Larry Ellison and other people have been able to draw strength from studying the life of Winston Churchill and apply it to when they're inevitably, we're all going to go through tough times, and they apply it when they're, apply the lessons they learned when they're going through those tough times. And so this is the author of this book saying, honestly, how did the Churchills and their inner circle cope?