How Should History Treat Unsung Heroes?

Ralph Wigram was a British civil servant who died on the last day of 1936. He was a young man, only in his mid-40s. Some people said it was a suicide. Others said it was a pulmonary embolism brought on by illness, strain and overwork. Still others, notably Winston Churchill, suggested it was some combination of the two: that poor Wigram had died in his wife’s arms, heartbroken by the sight of the path down which his country and Europe were heading.

Why do we remember Wigram today?

He is known mainly as Churchill’s secret informant. It was Wigram who supplied him with many of the official documents demonstrating German rearmament and warned of the danger it posed. Churchill made use of this information in sounding the alarm to Parliament and in the popular press. It did not win him many friends but he, like Wigram, had been right.

Wigram headed the Central European department in the Foreign Office and was known for his mastery of this region’s complexities, and for his perspicacity. He was one of the few people to note the direction of Hitler’s aims in Poland and Czechoslovakia. His fears about the security the Rhineland — and its link to Britain’s own security — proved accurate, as did his estimates of the consequences of German airpower. He even foresaw the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

It is strange to honor such a figure now beside another cult — the cult of the leaker. Edward Snowden’s motives are rated honorable by some, traitorous by others. But hardly anybody has said he wants to be unsung. 

Wigram was different. He was as obscure in death as he was in life. He has no biography. There are only brief references to him in a few memoirs and histories of the war, including Churchill’s. Few had otherwise heard of him, that is, until he was featured prominently in a couple of films: "The Wilderness Years" in 1980 and "The Gathering Storm" in 2002.

Wigram appears there as the classic unsung hero: the man who whispered in Churchill’s ear and gave him the vital evidence — and conviction — he needed to warn, and save, the nation. 

Historians are skeptical of this claim. Rather, his case is important for a different reason. It reminds that we need unsung heroes as much as we need the traditional sort.

Historians love unsung heroes. Real ones are so hard to come by. They and their character usually call for a debunking. Whereas unsung heroes allow historians to show and tell at the same time; to say, look who I found and here's why they matter.

The problem with this is that unsung heroes are more complicated than they appear.

Wigram mattered not simply for what he did, but also for who he was. Churchill had other sources of information; and he was already predisposed to believe nearly all Wigram told him. But this source also happened to be one of the bureaucracy’s best experts on Germany and its neighbors, and with one of the best reputations in Whitehall. 

So it wasn’t just the facts and figures he gave to Churchill that merit recognition. It was also, probably even more importantly, the authority and, yes, the confidence, his efforts imparted to their foremost public champion. His real contribution, in other words, was subtly, and more powerfully, indirect. 

Wigram was a sickly man. He had only one child, a son with cerebral palsy who died in 1951. His widow remarried, and hers appear to be the only collection of private papers available that contain some of Wigram’s own. He left behind, in other words, few indelible fingerprints. We are left with just the idea of him and what he may have stood for at a particular moment.

What is so heroic about that? Winston Churchill was known for many things, including the occasional fit of exaggeration; but blatant deceit and mendacity were not at the top of the list. 

Here we may take him at his word. Wigram mattered to him, and to history. Without such vital people in the background there would be no real heroes in the foreground. We needn’t hesitate, in retrospect, to sing their praises. But we should also remember to convey as much prestige to being unsung — in the moment and in posterity — as we do to fame. For we need them as much as we do the Hollywood heroes we often crave.