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| CHURCHILL’S SHADOWThe Life and Afterlife of Winston ChurchillBy Geoffrey Wheatcroft |
| 《丘吉尔的影子——温斯顿·丘吉尔的生前与身后》(Churchill’s Shadow：The Life and Afterlife)，作者：杰弗里·惠特克罗夫特(Geoffrey Wheatcroft) |
| During a protest over the killing of George Floyd last year, demonstrators in London targeted the famed statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square. Underneath his name someone had spray-painted the words “was a racist.” To guard against further damage, the government temporarily boarded up the statue, drawing a rebuke from Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a self-styled Churchill acolyte, who declared that “we cannot now try to edit or censor our past.” |
| 在去年对乔治·弗洛伊德(George Floyd)被杀的抗议活动中，伦敦的示威者把目标对准了议会广场上著名的温斯顿·丘吉尔(Winston Churchill)像。有人在他的名字下面喷绘了“是个种族主义者”字样。为了防止进一步的破坏，政府临时封住了雕像，还引来自称是丘吉尔信徒的首相鲍里斯·约翰逊(Boris Johnson)的指责，宣称“我们现在不能去编辑或者审查我们的过去”。 |
| In his new book, “Churchill’s Shadow,” Geoffrey Wheatcroft takes a literary spray can to the iconic World War II leader, attempting metaphorically at least to recast the many memorials and books devoted to Sir Winston over the years. Churchill, in this telling, was not just a racist but a hypocrite, a dissembler, a narcissist, an opportunist, an imperialist, a drunk, a strategic bungler, a tax dodger, a neglectful father, a credit-hogging author, a terrible judge of character and, most of all, a masterful mythmaker. |
| 在新书《丘吉尔的影子》中，杰弗里·惠特克罗夫特(Geoffrey Wheatcroft)用文学的方式对这位“二战”标志性领导人做了一通喷绘，试图至少在隐喻的意义上重塑多年来为温斯顿爵士修建的许多纪念碑和撰写的书籍。在他的叙事中，丘吉尔不仅是种族主义者，还是伪君子、骗子、自恋狂、机会主义者、帝国主义者、酒鬼、战略失误者、逃税者、失职的父亲、沽名钓誉的作家、糟糕的性格判断者，最重要的是，他是一个技艺高超的神话创造者。 |
| On both sides of the Atlantic, we are living in an era when history is being re-examined, a time when monuments are coming down and illusions about onetime heroes are being shattered. When I was a correspondent in Richmond a quarter-century ago, it would have struck me as unthinkable that the statue of Robert E. Lee on the city’s Monument Avenue would be removed, but the old general has been taken away, as have his Confederate brethren. Now even the likes of Lincoln, Washington and, yes, Churchill are under scrutiny if not attack. |
| 在大西洋两岸，我们都生活在一个重新审视历史的时代，一个纪念碑被推倒、对昔日英雄的幻想被粉碎的时代。25年前，当我在里士满做记者的时候，我觉得拆除该市纪念碑大道上罗伯特·E·李(Robert E. Lee)雕像这种事是无法想象的，但如今老将军已经被移走，他的南方兄弟们也是如此。现在，即使像林肯、华盛顿和丘吉尔这样的人物，就算没有受到攻击，也在接受重新审视。 |
| Whatever we think of aging statues, we constantly edit the past, re-evaluating people and events through the lens of our current times. Sometimes that is overdue and sometimes it goes too far. None of our historical idols were as unvarnished as the memorials we build to them. The question is: What are they being honored for? Which contributions to history do we celebrate? |
| 无论我们如何看待老化的雕像，我们都在不断地编辑过去，通过我们当前时代的角度重新评价人和事。有时这是迟来的，有时又做得太过分了。我们的历史偶像并不像我们为他们建造的纪念馆那样纯粹。问题是：他们是因为什么而受到赞美？我们应该歌颂他们对历史的哪些贡献？ |
| Lee may have been a military genius, but his contribution was leading a rebellion that tore apart his country to defend a system that enslaved millions based on the color of their skin. Celebrating him in the time of George Floyd became, at last, untenable. Churchill, on the other hand, has been venerated despite his manifest flaws, not because of them. Statues in Parliament Square and elsewhere are meant to remind us of his finest hour, not his darkest ones. |
| 李也许是一个军事天才，但他的贡献是领导了一场分裂国家的叛乱，以捍卫一个依据肤色奴役数百万人的制度。在乔治·弗洛伊德的时代歌颂他终归是站不住脚的。另一方面，尽管丘吉尔有明显的缺点，但他受到尊敬不是因为那些缺点。议会广场和其他地方的雕像意在提醒我们他最辉煌的时刻，而不是最黑暗的时刻。 |
| But that does not mean we should not remember the darkest, for history is not one-dimensional, nor are its protagonists. Churchill was indeed a complicated figure, one whose stirring defense of Britain at its moment of maximum peril — and by extension that of Western civilization — overshadows less worthy parts of his record. |
| 但这并不意味着我们不应该记住那些最黑暗的时刻，因为历史不是一维的，历史的主角也不是一维的。丘吉尔确实是一个复杂的人物，在最凶险的时刻，他为保卫英国乃至西方文明做出了激动人心的努力，这掩盖了他那些不怎么样的记录。 |
| “He led the British nobly and heroically during one of the great crises of history, and has misled them ever since, sustaining the country with beguiling illusions of greatness, of standing unique and alone, while preventing the British from coming to terms with their true place in the world,” Wheatcroft writes. “If I make much of Churchill’s failures and follies,” he adds, “that’s partly because others have made too little of them since his rise to heroic status.” |
| “面对历史上最重大的危机时刻，他以高尚和英勇的方式领导英国人，但此后也一直在误导他们，用具有欺骗性的幻想来维持这个国家，幻想其伟大、独特且孤军奋战，同时阻止英国人接受他们在世界上真实的位置，”惠特克罗夫特写道。“如果我过多讲述了丘吉尔的失败和愚蠢，”他还说，“部分是因为自从他跃升至英雄地位以来，这些失败和愚蠢被很多人忽视了。” |
| Churchill revisionism, of course, is almost as much of a cottage industry as Churchill hagiography. Books with titles like “Churchill: A Study in Failure” have appeared regularly for more than a half-century, all the way through “The Churchill Myths” last year. Nigel Hamilton just finished a three-volume series on Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated partly to the notion that the American president had to stop Churchill from bungling the fight against Nazi Germany. |
| 当然，丘吉尔修正主义几乎与丘吉尔的门徒传记一样像个家庭作坊的产物。半个多世纪以来，诸如《丘吉尔：失败的研究》(Churchill: A Study in Failure)之类的书经常出现，一直到去年的《丘吉尔神话》(The Churchill Myths)。奈杰尔·汉密尔顿(Nigel Hamilton)刚刚完成了关于富兰克林·D·罗斯福(Franklin D. Roosevelt)的三卷系列，专辟篇幅讲述了美国总统不得不阻止丘吉尔，以免他搞砸与纳粹德国的战斗。 |
| Still, few have argued the case as powerfully as Wheatcroft, a longtime journalist and historian who has written books on Zionism, South African mining magnates, Britain’s Tory Party and former Prime Minister Tony Blair. He seems particularly eager to debunk flattering and partly fictionalized portrayals in movies like “Darkest Hour” or “trite and breezy” biographies like that by Boris Johnson. |
| 尽管如此，在这一点上很少有人的论证像惠特克罗夫特那样有力。他是一位资深的记者和历史学家，写过关于犹太复国主义、南非矿业巨头、英国保守党和前首相托尼·布莱尔(Tony Blair)的书籍。他似乎特别渴望揭穿其他作品中谄媚和部分虚构的描绘，诸如电影《至暗时刻》(Darkest Hour)或像鲍里斯·约翰逊撰写的那篇一样“老套而随意”的传记。 |
| “This is not a hostile account,” Wheatcroft insists, eschewing the term “revisionist” in favor of “alternative.” But other than the one bright spot in 1940, it is a withering assessment of Churchill’s life, his efforts to airbrush his legacy and the so-called Churchill cult that emerged after his death. |
| “这不是一种含有敌意的叙述，”惠特克罗夫特坚持不用“历史修正主义”这个词，而是用“另类历史”。然而除了1940年那一个亮点之外，他对丘吉尔的一生，对他粉饰自己的传世形象的企图，以及在他死后出现的所谓“丘吉尔教”，给出了毁灭性的评价。 |
| The bill of particulars is long, if familiar — Churchill’s disastrous Gallipoli campaign in World War I, his fervor for maintaining Britain’s overseas empire, his misguided efforts during World War II to fight in Africa and the Mediterranean rather than invade France, his deadly lack of interest in the famine in Bengal, his support for carpet-bombing German cities and his cynical deals with Stalin, among others. And of course there was Churchill’s racism, animated by theories about “higher-grade races,” which in his mind did not include Africans, whom he referred to by the N-word; Chinese, whom he called “pigtails”; or Indians, whom he dismissed as “baboos.” |
| 这是一份长长的控诉清单，不过都不陌生——丘吉尔在第一次世界大战的那场灾难性的加里波利战役，他对维护不列颠海外帝国的热情，他在第二次世界大战中不明就里地选择在非洲和地中海地区作战，而不是进军法国，他对孟加拉饥荒的漠视导致死亡，他支持对德国城市进行地毯式轰炸，还有他和斯大林的那些令人不齿的协议，等等。另外当然还有丘吉尔的种族主义，通过“高等种族”之类的理论生动呈现出来，在他看来，应该排除在更高级种族之列的，有被他以那个N开头的词相称的非洲人；被他称为“猪尾巴”的中国人；以及他轻蔑地称为“巴布”(baboo)的印度人。 |
| By embracing legend rather than reality, Wheatcroft argues, subsequent leaders have talked themselves into military debacles out of misguided desire to be the next Churchill. “On every occasion when action has been informed by the fear of appeasement or the ghost of Munich,” he writes, “woeful failure has followed, from Korea to Suez to Vietnam to Iraq and much more besides.” |
| 惠特克罗夫特认为，扬传奇、抑现实的做法，导致后世的领导人把自己带向了军事上的溃败，因为他们都有一种受到误导的愿望——成为下一个丘吉尔。“本着对绥靖姿态或慕尼黑幽灵的恐惧而做出的行动决策，”他写道，“总是会招致惨败，从朝鲜到苏伊士到越南到伊拉克以及其他许许多多事例，屡试不爽。” |
| Wheatcroft is a skilled prosecutor with a rapier pen. Churchill is not his only target. He has acerbic asides for all manner of people, including Bernard Montgomery (“bombastic vanity”), George Patton (“barely sane”), Lord Beaverbrook (“a thoroughgoing scoundrel”), Tony Blair (“intellectually second-rate”), Charles de Gaulle (“arrogant and graceless”) and Adlai Stevenson (“pious liberal”), not to mention a variety of competing British historians and, for no discernible reason, Pearl S. Buck. |
| 惠特克罗夫特是一位笔锋犀利、技艺精湛的控诉者。丘吉尔不是他唯一的目标。他对各色人物做出了尖刻的评价，包括伯纳德·蒙哥马利(Bernard Montgomery)（“夸夸其谈的虚荣之人”）、乔治·巴顿(George Patton)（“神智不太健全”）、比弗布鲁克男爵(Lord Beaverbrook)（“彻头彻尾的恶棍”）、托尼·布莱尔(Tony Blair)（“二流的头脑”）、夏尔·戴高乐(Charles de Gaulle)（“傲慢而粗野”）和阿德莱·史蒂文森(Adlai Stevenson)（“伪善的自由主义者”），当然还有一众跟他不对付的英国史学家，以及赛珍珠(Pearl S. Buck)——最后这一个原因显而易见。 |
| He is especially disdainful of supercilious Americans who created their own Churchill cult without truly understanding who he was. He traces this to John F. Kennedy, the first president to wrap himself in Churchill’s cloak, followed by Ronald Reagan, who quoted Churchill in his first Inaugural Address, and George W. Bush, who kept a Churchill bust in the Oval Office. |
| 他尤其厌恶目中无人的美国人，他们创造了自己的丘吉尔教，却对这个人没有真正的了解。他认为这一派的源头是约翰·F·肯尼迪(John F. Kennedy)，第一个用丘吉尔来伪装自己的美国总统，接下来就是在首次就职演说中引用丘吉尔的罗纳德·里根(Ronald Reagan)，以及在椭圆形办公室里放着丘吉尔像的乔治·W·布什(George W. Bush)。 |
| Only when the likes of Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani and Ted Cruz invoke Churchill does Wheatcroft come to his defense: “In his long life Churchill had done and said many foolish, sometimes disastrous and even ignoble things, but he had profound respect for constitutional government and elected legislatures, not least Congress where he had been so loudly cheered. Nothing he had ever done deserved Trump, Giuliani and Cruz.” |
| 只有当唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)、鲁迪·朱利安尼(Rudy Giuliani)和特德·克鲁兹(Ted Cruz)这样的人在用丘吉尔壮声势时，惠特克罗夫特才会站出来捍卫他：“丘吉尔在他漫长的一生里傻话、傻事不少，其中有一些是灾难性的，甚至是卑劣的，但他对宪政和民选立法者怀有深深的敬意，特别是对美国国会，他在那里受到过热情的欢呼。他可没做过什么事能让他沦落到要跟特朗普、朱利安尼、克鲁兹为伍。” |
| If it feels as though Wheatcroft gives short shrift to the profound importance of Churchill’s courageous stand against Hitler, perhaps that is because he has written his book almost as an explicit rejoinder to Andrew Roberts, who celebrated that stand so expertly in his 2018 biography, “Churchill: Walking With Destiny.” |
| 对于丘吉尔面对希特勒拒不退缩的勇气，也许惠特克罗夫特显得有些淡化其重大的意义，而这可能是因为，他的书是在对安德鲁·罗伯茨(Andrew Roberts)做出明确答复，后者在他2018年的传记《丘吉尔——与王朝同行》(Churchill: Walking With Destiny)中以纯熟的手法赞颂了丘吉尔的这一点。 |
| Small wonder that Roberts has already fired back in The Spectator, deriding Wheatcroft’s attack on Churchill as “character assassination” and taking issue with various factual assertions. “Never in the field of Churchill revisionism have so many punches been thrown in so many pages with so few hitting home,” Roberts wrote. They are, of course, taking different views of the same man. Roberts’s book was described in these pages as the best single-volume biography of Churchill yet written. Wheatcroft’s could be the best single-volume indictment of Churchill yet written. |
| 不出意外的是，罗伯茨在《旁观者》(The Spectator)杂志上发起了反击，嘲笑惠特克罗夫特对丘吉尔的攻击是“人格暗杀”，并指出书中一些事实错误。“用了这么多笔墨，无数次出拳，结结实实打中的次数却少之又少，这在丘吉尔修正主义领域里都是闻所未闻的，”罗伯茨写道。他们当然只是在从不同角度看同一个人。有人认为罗伯茨的书是有史以来最优秀的单本丘吉尔传记。而惠特克罗夫特的这一本，可能是最优秀的单本丘吉尔控诉。 |
| With statues, it is hard to see the complexity. Which is why we have competing books like these to help shape the debate as we edit the past. |
| 从雕像中是很难看到复杂性的。这就是为什么我们需要像这样针锋相对的书，帮助我们塑造历史编辑中的争论。 |
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