November 9, 2025

Adam Howard, Executive Director

Applied history has become an increasingly important tool for understanding today’s world. Unlike academic history written primarily for scholars, applied history focuses on using lessons from the past to guide decisions in the present. It asks how studying past leaders, crises, and choices can provide perspective, caution, and guidance for those facing today’s challenges. By engaging with history thoughtfully, leaders can sharpen judgment, temper hubris, and better understand the constraints and opportunities in complex situations.

While often associated with policymakers and diplomats, applied history is useful across many fields. Corporate executives navigating organizational change, athletic coaches managing high-pressure contests, and educators leading institutions can all benefit from looking at past successes and failures. Studying history helps leaders make better-informed decisions and cultivate resilience.

Winston Churchill as an Applied Historian
Winston Churchill offers one of the clearest examples of applied history in action. Long before becoming prime minister, he was a prolific historian and biographer. His multi-volume works on his ancestor the Duke of Marlborough, World War I, and the history of the English-speaking peoples were not just literary achievements but exercises in understanding leadership and strategy. Churchill believed that knowledge of history was essential for leadership. “The longer you can look back,” he wrote, “the farther you can look forward.”¹

Churchill’s approach to history was practical, not merely academic. He studied the successes and failures of past leaders to learn lessons for contemporary decision-making. In his Marlborough biographies, he explored both military brilliance and the complex art of managing alliances—skills he later applied as prime minister. He understood that wars and political crises required not only strategy but also moral resolve, political skill, and careful timing.

During the 1930s, Churchill’s habit of mining history proved prescient. He warned repeatedly about the dangers posed by Adolf Hitler, drawing analogies to Napoleon and earlier European failures to act against aggressors. When World War II erupted, his historical perspective proved invaluable.

When he became prime minister in 1940, Churchill drew on Britain’s past—from the Spanish Armada to the Napoleonic Wars—to inspire courage and unity. In the House of Commons, he famously declared: “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”² By “their finest hour,” he referred to the British people facing the crisis of World War II. Through history, he framed the stakes, guided decisive action, and offered a model for leaders today on using the past to meet present challenges.

Churchill also applied history to military planning. He studied past examples of coalition warfare, naval strategy, and amphibious operations to shape campaigns such as Operation Torch in North Africa and the Normandy landings. His historical knowledge helped him spot opportunities others might have missed and anticipate the consequences of bold decisions. At the same time, he never treated history as a rigid template—innovation was always essential. By combining lessons from the past with the realities of the present, Churchill exemplified the adaptive use of historical insight.

Even in diplomacy, Churchill relied on history. He learned from past alliances, from the failures of the League of Nations to Marlborough’s careful balancing of European powers, and applied these lessons when negotiating with U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin. For Churchill, applied history was not imitation but informed judgment: using past experience to navigate present challenges wisely.

The Relevance Today
Applied history has reemerged as a vital tool for modern leaders. From rising powers to technological upheavals and global health crises, today’s challenges often lack exact historical precedent. Yet by looking for echoes in the past, leaders can better assess risks, opportunities, and outcomes. In their classic Thinking in Time, political scientist Richard Neustadt and historian Ernest May warned that decision-makers often misuse history, relying on oversimplified analogies or forgetting crucial lessons.³ More recently, historian Frank Gavin emphasizes in Thinking Historically that the past is not a shelf of ready-made precedents but a discipline of mind.⁴ To think historically is to cultivate curiosity, context, and humility—the skills that help leaders make wiser choices amid uncertainty.

Applied History in Practice: A Historian’s Perspective
My own experience as Chief Historian of the U.S. Department of State reinforced the value of applied history. My team worked to make history usable, helping policymakers and diplomats understand how past choices shaped present realities. Applied history is not about providing ready-made lessons; it is about asking the right questions, recognizing institutional habits, and understanding how past decisions influence present options. By drawing on precedent and institutional memory, leaders can navigate uncertainty with perspective, foresight, and humility.

Churchill embodied applied history in practice. He drew on past experience not as a crutch but as a guide, comparing threats, recalling traditions, and framing choices. Modern practitioners of applied history can similarly help leaders confront uncertainty with insight and judgment. Teaching historical thinking to students and emerging leaders cultivates strategic imagination, discernment, and judgment, ensuring lessons from the past remain relevant and actionable.

How the International Churchill Society Can Lead
The International Churchill Society is uniquely positioned to show how history can inform today’s decisions. By presenting Churchill as both a remarkable leader and a thinker who drew lessons from the past, ICS can help people understand how his example applies to modern challenges. Through conferences, publications, and educational programs, ICS can demonstrate how learning from history strengthens leadership, decision-making, and judgment. Churchill’s life reminds us that the past is not distant and that it is a rich source of wisdom we can apply today.

Churchill’s career shows how the lessons of history can guide leaders through unexpected challenges. As a writer, strategist, and wartime leader, he demonstrated that understanding the past is not just academic—it is a powerful tool for sound decisions, ethical judgment, and effective leadership. Applied history equips leaders in every field to act with foresight, resilience, and humility. In all arenas where tough choices meet uncertainty, Churchill’s example reminds us that courage, wisdom, and determination—rooted in history—remain timeless qualities for leadership.

Endnotes

The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School studies international security, science and technology policy, and applied history. Scholars such as Niall Ferguson and Graham Allison have advocated for applied history programs as a tool to help policymakers and leaders make better-informed strategic decisions.

Winston S. Churchill, A Roving Commission: My Early Life (New York: Scribner’s, 1930), 21.

Winston S. Churchill, speech to the House of Commons, June 18, 1940, in The Second World War, Vol. 2: Their Finest Hour (London: Cassell, 1949), appendix.

Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers (New York: Free Press, 1986).

Frank J. Gavin, Thinking Historically: A Guide to Statecraft and Strategy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2025).