It's not that Churchill was a different person in wartime than in peacetime, it's just that most people's morals change from wartime to peacetime. So the same atrocity could be viewed as an atrocity or heroic and brave depending on what the public at large feels like their situation was like at the time. That's the point being raised about the manager: every statement the parent made was basically an accusation, but because the team was desperate the success in the end overwrote the other things in everybody's mind.

If the team had failed in the end, all of the qualities that are presently being lauded would be held at fault. True morals may not be relative and situational, but the average person's mental implementation of morals sure can be.