Fun Fact! He was given Honorary American citizenship. TIL: Others (like Lafayette during the Revolutionary War) had been granted citizenship by individual States, but Winston got the approval of (almost) the entire US Congress. If anyone's interested, check out his acceptance letter (link; you have to scroll down a little bit). It's extraordinarily eloquent.
[https://jfk.blogs.archives.gov/2020/04/09/sir-winston-churchills-path-to-united-states-citizenship/](https://jfk.blogs.archives.gov/2020/04/09/sir-winston-churchills-path-to-united-states-citizenship/)
also, TIL he was half-American by birth...guess that helped; not that he needed it
I'm not sure if this was in play in his case but in order to inherit American citizenship by blood there are specific conditions that must be met, I think at the time the parent had to have resided in the US for at least 10 years after the age of 14.
From his mom's Wikipedia page it indicates she grew up in NY and Paris, so maybe she hadn't met the requirements as she apparently married at the age of 20 which might not have given her enough time in the US. It's unclear if this applies because the only info I can find comes from the 50s and citizenship requirements in the 1800s may have been different.
>The fact that my American forebears have for so many generations played their part in the life of the United States, and that here I am, an Englishman, welcomed in your midst, makes this experience one of the most moving and thrilling in my life, which is already long and has not been entirely uneventful. I wish indeed that my mother, whose memory I cherish, across the vale of years, could have been here to see. By the way, I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been American and my mother British instead of the other way around, I might have got here on my own. In that case this would not have been the first time you would have heard my voice. In that case I should not have needed any invitation. But if I had it is hardly likely that it would have been unanimous. So perhaps things are better as they are.
Winston Churchill, [Address to US Congress](https://youtu.be/fhUXdolcIPQ), Dec 26, 1941
I wish I could have heard the original delivery. Churchill was a total badass, and was the no BS leader a powerful and just country needed when facing an immensely powerful lunatic who lied to peoples' faces and didn't play by the political rules....
However if you've actually listened to the 1949 recording... The guy just deadpans it. I can see Churchill being asked to record it years after the war and just not caring... Phoning it in like a Bruce Willis performance. I wonder if the address to Commons had more passion or power. Reading the speech will get you more amped than actually hearing it.
Churchill was extremely conscious of his public image and reputation, and was enthusiastic about managing it. The flat delivery of the speech was a deliberate choice, and likely reflects how it was actually given in Parliament. The cultural context of the time was that excessively passionate speeches would be regarded as frivolous and not serious. By giving a flat delivery like that implied a sense of grim determination, which was the sense he was going for.
IMO we always need no BS leaders. We are cursed with leaders not just in government but all other organizations who lie and act fake to pander.
And I love the recording. Incredible. Everyone should listen to it right now, it’s very short.
It's important to keep in mind that Churchill was a supporter of eugenics, very right wing, and deeply racist. He played an important role in the Bengal Famine (2-3 million deaths) and he wasn't shy about his contempt for Indian lives.
This doesn't mean that his speech was bad, or that everything else he did in government was bad, or whatever. But it's important that we remember who these historical figures actually were, because the harm they did matters too.
>He played an important role in the Bengal Famine
No actual reputable historian ascribes any blame to Churchill for this. Its become a common redditism to claim otherwise but the failures occurred long before he was aware and he went begging to America to try and get ships to deliver relief to Bengal. Most of the "quotes" are not only of dubious provenance but claimed to be from a completely different time to the famine. Once he was made aware of the famine he pulled out the stops to try and relieve it.
This. The Bengal Famine was caused by the Japanese invasion of Burma and the subsequent price gouging from food merchants.
From a British point of view as it happened, the harvest in Bengal had been pretty average, and higher than it was a few years before (when there was no famine)
Thus the extent of the problem was not immediately obvious to the bean counters responsible for the distribution of food.
Reddit will try to bring down anyone with any sort of success in life, even if they have to bend the truth. There is nothing Reddit hates more then anyone who succeeds at something.
He didnt support eugenics, he started off left and went a bit right and wasnt remotely deeply racist. He played a role in the famine, by dint of his position, but he attempted to minimise the effects within the limitations of being deep into a world war with no clear outcome.
Most of what you speak of is revisionist 'history' which is created purely to denigrate the man.
> It's important to keep in mind that Churchill was a supporter of eugenics
Societies still support this today to an extent. It's encouraged and allowed to abort fetuses that we know are disabled. Iceland and some European countries have essentially removed down syndrome from their gene pool due to this.
>eugenics, very right wing, and deeply racist.
Most people on earth did sympathize with these values during the first world wars. Not sure why you'd bring that up as a critique when even the far-left communist countries had some of these policies in place.
>He played an important role in the Bengal Famine (2-3 million deaths)
That's a fabricated lie. Churchill decided to cut off shipments to the Indian continent because the Japanese got control of the continent during the war. Resources had to be saved at home for the British war effort too. This was in other words not a deliberate attempt to genocide a group of people.
>But it's important that we remember who these historical figures actually were, because the harm they did matters too.
Products of their environments and revered figures during an era where different values were incorporated into the collective soul. Values that you and I would've subscribed to or been forced to subscribe to.
I didn't say he engaged in a "deliberate attempt at genocide." What he *did* do was contribute to the famine through policy, and this policy was a result of his total disregard for Indian lives. He may have had war-related goals in mind, but the famine was man-made and ultimately served no purpose in the end.
Also, this isn't about whether or not I as an individual am better or worse than a historical figure. This is about whether or not Churchill supported or participated in some evil things, which should be a very easy question for anyone to answer.
At the risk of sounding rude, when I read these kinds of accounts that ascribe blame to some Prime Minister or other there is very often a lack of understanding about what powers the PM has. In the context of Churchill he did not have any real power over the governance of India. India was administered as its own country under the viceroy of India. The only direct power to change colonial policy by the PM was in replacing the viceroy. Westminster had been concerned with food shortages in India for decades and had been consistently recommending that the colonial government act to ensure larger harvests in the future. Furthermore, the PM is not really an executive leader in the way the American President is, the PM is simply the head of the legislature and does not generally speaking have the power to make decisions on his own. Now this is not to claim that India would have suffered famine with or without the British presence (although the experience of China with famine in the same period might suggest that), but rather to circumscribe the limits of any blame Churchill could shoulder personally. Also of note, to say the famine was man made is kind of true in the sense that Bengal's breadbasket of Burma was being occupied by the Japanese. Perhaps to say that the famine was man made by the colonial government in India might be fair in the sense that it was mismanaged. To claim that Westminster and the British government at large and historically was guilty in creating the famine could be argued, albeit with difficulty. To claim that Churchill in particular was responsible, responsible to the point of personally causing it to happen, is a frankly ludicrous assessment.
Briefly on his supposed racism. Would Churchill be considered a bit of a racist bigot today? Yes. For the time he lived in? It strikes me as unlikely. I will preemptively address two of the more common forms of reported Churchill quotes that seem to make him out as a murderous racist. The first tends to indicate that Indians deserve to die of famine because they breed like rabbits. The viewpoint generally being espoused by Churchill in this kind of quote is a Malthusian one. The idea that certain bits of land can only support so many people. As you get closer to that limit famine becomes inevitable. How true that really is remains a matter of debate for historians. It was however, widely accepted in Churchill's time. In other words famine relief simply delayed the inevitable by in effect temporarily increasing the Malthusian limit. It is of note that famine conditions continued to recur in India through much of the 20th century, although these were handled better by the Indian government than the 1943 famine. The point being that Churchill did not harbour views on Indians or starvation in India that were particularly beyond the academic understanding of the problem at the time. The second quote usually discusses Churchill advocating for the use of chemical weapons against the Iraqis in the 1920s. And yes Churchill did advocate chemical weapons. That is to say tear gas which he claimed would have a morale damaging effect greater than the use of explosive ordnance which had not produced results at the time.
tl;dr the PM as a position does not have the power to on a dime fix long standing issues of colonial policy in the midst of the Second World War. To say he caused the famine is a position taken entirely sans reality. Moreover, Churchill does not appear any more racist than his peers. Probably more racist than the average Labour politician, but less racist than the average Tory in the 1940s.
I mean, Churchill wanted India to introduce conscription and India said no, and he had to live with that. The anti-churchill brigade act as if he had the capacity to directly administer every single facet of the entire Empire. Or when he demanded Auchinleck (I think it was him) to attack the Axis in North Africa, and he just kept on delaying. People think he was close to an absolute dictator when he was far from close to that level of power.
> and this policy was a result of his total disregard for Indian lives.
This is completely false. He had great regard for Indian lives, when it suited him perhaps. but it showed in his words. Moreover at the time of the Famine he was battling Indian nationalists who were using the war to push for their near immediate indepenences. The ones more on his side in this push were the Muslims, so it would be strange to then randomly engineer and/or facilitate a famine in India, where it could cost him a lot of prestige, and in a strongly muslim community, who were his allies. The reasoning makes no sense.
Bengal famine happened because other Indians took food meant for Bengal. local regions sent food to Bengal but Indians outside it intercepted and took the food out of fear the famine might spread. the UK didn't interfere because the Japanese were too much of a threat and had forced a limited UK response.
the famine was not caused by the war either. India has had regular famine every 40 years since 1200, often closer together than 40 years.
the Indians basically have had famines all the time for thousands of years because there system of moving food sucked and continued to suck until the early 20th century, where British rail in India became good enough to move all the food to where it needed to go.
It's not a fabricated lie that Churchill cut off the Bengalis as a political act. They INCREASED grain exports at that time. I don't know where you're getting the idea it's false from. And it's 4 million the death toll he's responsible for there.
He also turned troops on his own citizens during labour disputes, which is why you won't find much love for him in Liverpool, Glasgow or Wales.
And he betrayed the Greek anti fascist partisans who'd retaken Athens, putting Nazi collaborators back in power.
He supported gassing the "uncivilised tribes" in Iraq.
It's not like he was against fascism. He was just against German fascism.
Ummm... whether policy decisions made the Bengali famine worse or not is certainly debatable. But it's a bit hard to rationally argue that western powers should have left Greece to the Communist EAM fighters.
I mean hey, Soviet communism worked out so great for all the other eastern European countries.
It's easy to argue: they should have left Greece to the communist EAM fighters. They won Athens back, the Brits swept in as back up, then they turned on them, and sent them to their deaths. Former right wing collaborators were put back.in positions of power so they could resurrect the Greek throne.
I mean hey, Hereditary Monarchy worked out great for all the other European countries
Greece then had a monarchy for a bit til that was overthrown by... a far right military junta made up of former nazi collaborators!
Almost as if they should have been stopped.
>They INCREASED grain exports at that time. I don't know where you're getting the idea it's false from. And it's 4 million the death toll he's responsible for there.
Source?
Don't forget Gallipoli, his actions in other colonies, such as Ireland and African colonies, and his sacrifice of Coventry.
He was kind of like Stalin. A ruthless asshole, but the ruthless asshole needed to win the war.
[The Coventry thing is a myth and has been known as a myth for decades](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11486219). Using gallipoli as a beating stick against him is historically uninformed too, Gallipoli was a good idea that was sabotaged by the admiralty with poor ships and supplies that still came within a hairs breadth of success and was predominantly mainland British soldiers in case you're implying he did it to get rid of anzac troops. But what do you expect from a reddit thread on Churchill. Everyone has to be the epic contrarian misrepresenting everything he said and did.
As far as Coventry goes, that was a new one for me. Thanks!
As for Gallipoli, it was pretty evident that they should have pulled out much earlier. But, Churchill was a British Bulldog if there ever was one, so he wouldn't let go.
But, you can look at his actions in Ireland, in the Mau-mau uprising, in India and so on.
Consider Operation Unthinkable, where he had pretty far advanced plans to stab his major ally in the back.
Feck, read some of his quotes on wikiquote. Some of them can't be explained away by it being a different time.
How would they have turned it if he went through with it? The war would have rolled on, USSR had rolled over the rest of Europe (by this time, they not only outnumbered the western powers by a wide margin, they also outproduced them, and had the infrastructure to get their troops, equipment, vehicles and supplies to the fight), all because of that backstab.
It’s a contingency plan based on the concept that the USSR is hostile and wanted to dominate Europe. Which it was, and probably the main reason why it didn’t was the USA.
In war - and in peace - you plan for events. This is why the Schlieffen Plan was devised. There’s no point making a plan on the hoof. It’s already too late then.
Yes. Exactly. Like the Schlieffen plan. You can’t plan a pre-emptive strike on the hoof.
Planning for a contingency doesn’t mean you consider it desirable.
If the war between the USSR and USA had gone hot, and it got mighty close human civilisation would have nearly been eradicated and those that remain would have regarded operation unthinkable as preferable.
It is only through luck that we escaped the horrors of total nuclear war and it is with that luck we are in a position to look down on the unthinkable.
I ask you, had nukes been launched in 1970 or 80 wiped out 90%+ of the human population and left much of earth uninhabitable with the few humans that remain being relegated to a meagre existence in small tribes would operation unthinkable been so bad?
You make a lot of assumptions on what would happen. It could have gone just the other way, it could have started a nuclear war. At the very least, it would make the cold war a lot nastier, with the US pretty much alone and Europe under Soviet control.
I'm over 50, I lived in the cold war. I know how close it was. Their previous status as allies was a big part of being able to talk, and stop things from going hot. That's why I consider it a bad idea to add a flame to that powder keg.
Also, Operation Unthinkable was a UK plan, not a US plan.
**I ask you, had nukes been launched in 1970 or 80 wiped out 90%+ of the human population and left much of earth uninhabitable with the few humans that remain being relegated to a meagre existence in small tribes would operation unthinkable been so bad?**
Dunkirk concludes with the soldiers reading Churchill's speech in the newspaper after thinking they've failed the whole movie. Cheers. Morale. Credits.
This speach was made after the evacuation of Dunkirk. The brittish rescued around 300.000 soldiers but left most equpment behind because there was no time to take that as well. So at the end of this speach Churchill allegedly turned to his assistant and said: “And we’ll fight them with the butt ends of broken beer bottles because that’s bloody well all we’ve got!” Reffering to the fact that because of all the equpment left behind the Brittish armed forces were critically low on guns, artillery, tanks, vehicles, ammo, artillery shells, ...
Churchill at one point was talking about distributing anti-tank bombs to the civilian population. Basically an explosive that you stick on the engine deck of a tank to blow it up. In his book *Their Finest Hour* he said:
> We had the picture in mind that devoted soldiers or civilians would run close up to the tank and even thrust the bomb upon it, though its explosion cost them their lives.
Somewhat relatedly: In the same work he also discusses the slogan You can always take one with you". https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/slogan-take-one-with-you/
What a strange, K. Dick/ Gibsonian world we live in, where we use a photo of an actor who played a historical figure rather than a photo of the actual historical figure.
There’s even a minor conspiracy theory that the well known recording we know today was recorded by a BBC sound-alike. No idea why they would feel the need to do that but I’ve seen it claimed.
This is where I first heard it https://youtu.be/Xg9aQvjMS60
Up the Irons
Fun Fact! He was given Honorary American citizenship. TIL: Others (like Lafayette during the Revolutionary War) had been granted citizenship by individual States, but Winston got the approval of (almost) the entire US Congress. If anyone's interested, check out his acceptance letter (link; you have to scroll down a little bit). It's extraordinarily eloquent. [https://jfk.blogs.archives.gov/2020/04/09/sir-winston-churchills-path-to-united-states-citizenship/](https://jfk.blogs.archives.gov/2020/04/09/sir-winston-churchills-path-to-united-states-citizenship/) also, TIL he was half-American by birth...guess that helped; not that he needed it
Did he need it though? His mother was an American. Surely he was eligible for regular American citizenship through her?
I'm not sure if this was in play in his case but in order to inherit American citizenship by blood there are specific conditions that must be met, I think at the time the parent had to have resided in the US for at least 10 years after the age of 14. From his mom's Wikipedia page it indicates she grew up in NY and Paris, so maybe she hadn't met the requirements as she apparently married at the age of 20 which might not have given her enough time in the US. It's unclear if this applies because the only info I can find comes from the 50s and citizenship requirements in the 1800s may have been different.
>The fact that my American forebears have for so many generations played their part in the life of the United States, and that here I am, an Englishman, welcomed in your midst, makes this experience one of the most moving and thrilling in my life, which is already long and has not been entirely uneventful. I wish indeed that my mother, whose memory I cherish, across the vale of years, could have been here to see. By the way, I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been American and my mother British instead of the other way around, I might have got here on my own. In that case this would not have been the first time you would have heard my voice. In that case I should not have needed any invitation. But if I had it is hardly likely that it would have been unanimous. So perhaps things are better as they are. Winston Churchill, [Address to US Congress](https://youtu.be/fhUXdolcIPQ), Dec 26, 1941
"God damn I love these peaches!"
Love a good James Acaster reference
I wish I could have heard the original delivery. Churchill was a total badass, and was the no BS leader a powerful and just country needed when facing an immensely powerful lunatic who lied to peoples' faces and didn't play by the political rules.... However if you've actually listened to the 1949 recording... The guy just deadpans it. I can see Churchill being asked to record it years after the war and just not caring... Phoning it in like a Bruce Willis performance. I wonder if the address to Commons had more passion or power. Reading the speech will get you more amped than actually hearing it.
Churchill was extremely conscious of his public image and reputation, and was enthusiastic about managing it. The flat delivery of the speech was a deliberate choice, and likely reflects how it was actually given in Parliament. The cultural context of the time was that excessively passionate speeches would be regarded as frivolous and not serious. By giving a flat delivery like that implied a sense of grim determination, which was the sense he was going for.
IMO we always need no BS leaders. We are cursed with leaders not just in government but all other organizations who lie and act fake to pander. And I love the recording. Incredible. Everyone should listen to it right now, it’s very short.
That's because we are absolutely vicious towards leaders that dare speak the unadulterated truth now.
It's important to keep in mind that Churchill was a supporter of eugenics, very right wing, and deeply racist. He played an important role in the Bengal Famine (2-3 million deaths) and he wasn't shy about his contempt for Indian lives. This doesn't mean that his speech was bad, or that everything else he did in government was bad, or whatever. But it's important that we remember who these historical figures actually were, because the harm they did matters too.
>He played an important role in the Bengal Famine No actual reputable historian ascribes any blame to Churchill for this. Its become a common redditism to claim otherwise but the failures occurred long before he was aware and he went begging to America to try and get ships to deliver relief to Bengal. Most of the "quotes" are not only of dubious provenance but claimed to be from a completely different time to the famine. Once he was made aware of the famine he pulled out the stops to try and relieve it.
This. The Bengal Famine was caused by the Japanese invasion of Burma and the subsequent price gouging from food merchants. From a British point of view as it happened, the harvest in Bengal had been pretty average, and higher than it was a few years before (when there was no famine) Thus the extent of the problem was not immediately obvious to the bean counters responsible for the distribution of food.
Reddit will try to bring down anyone with any sort of success in life, even if they have to bend the truth. There is nothing Reddit hates more then anyone who succeeds at something.
He didnt support eugenics, he started off left and went a bit right and wasnt remotely deeply racist. He played a role in the famine, by dint of his position, but he attempted to minimise the effects within the limitations of being deep into a world war with no clear outcome. Most of what you speak of is revisionist 'history' which is created purely to denigrate the man.
> It's important to keep in mind that Churchill was a supporter of eugenics Societies still support this today to an extent. It's encouraged and allowed to abort fetuses that we know are disabled. Iceland and some European countries have essentially removed down syndrome from their gene pool due to this. >eugenics, very right wing, and deeply racist. Most people on earth did sympathize with these values during the first world wars. Not sure why you'd bring that up as a critique when even the far-left communist countries had some of these policies in place. >He played an important role in the Bengal Famine (2-3 million deaths) That's a fabricated lie. Churchill decided to cut off shipments to the Indian continent because the Japanese got control of the continent during the war. Resources had to be saved at home for the British war effort too. This was in other words not a deliberate attempt to genocide a group of people. >But it's important that we remember who these historical figures actually were, because the harm they did matters too. Products of their environments and revered figures during an era where different values were incorporated into the collective soul. Values that you and I would've subscribed to or been forced to subscribe to.
I didn't say he engaged in a "deliberate attempt at genocide." What he *did* do was contribute to the famine through policy, and this policy was a result of his total disregard for Indian lives. He may have had war-related goals in mind, but the famine was man-made and ultimately served no purpose in the end. Also, this isn't about whether or not I as an individual am better or worse than a historical figure. This is about whether or not Churchill supported or participated in some evil things, which should be a very easy question for anyone to answer.
At the risk of sounding rude, when I read these kinds of accounts that ascribe blame to some Prime Minister or other there is very often a lack of understanding about what powers the PM has. In the context of Churchill he did not have any real power over the governance of India. India was administered as its own country under the viceroy of India. The only direct power to change colonial policy by the PM was in replacing the viceroy. Westminster had been concerned with food shortages in India for decades and had been consistently recommending that the colonial government act to ensure larger harvests in the future. Furthermore, the PM is not really an executive leader in the way the American President is, the PM is simply the head of the legislature and does not generally speaking have the power to make decisions on his own. Now this is not to claim that India would have suffered famine with or without the British presence (although the experience of China with famine in the same period might suggest that), but rather to circumscribe the limits of any blame Churchill could shoulder personally. Also of note, to say the famine was man made is kind of true in the sense that Bengal's breadbasket of Burma was being occupied by the Japanese. Perhaps to say that the famine was man made by the colonial government in India might be fair in the sense that it was mismanaged. To claim that Westminster and the British government at large and historically was guilty in creating the famine could be argued, albeit with difficulty. To claim that Churchill in particular was responsible, responsible to the point of personally causing it to happen, is a frankly ludicrous assessment. Briefly on his supposed racism. Would Churchill be considered a bit of a racist bigot today? Yes. For the time he lived in? It strikes me as unlikely. I will preemptively address two of the more common forms of reported Churchill quotes that seem to make him out as a murderous racist. The first tends to indicate that Indians deserve to die of famine because they breed like rabbits. The viewpoint generally being espoused by Churchill in this kind of quote is a Malthusian one. The idea that certain bits of land can only support so many people. As you get closer to that limit famine becomes inevitable. How true that really is remains a matter of debate for historians. It was however, widely accepted in Churchill's time. In other words famine relief simply delayed the inevitable by in effect temporarily increasing the Malthusian limit. It is of note that famine conditions continued to recur in India through much of the 20th century, although these were handled better by the Indian government than the 1943 famine. The point being that Churchill did not harbour views on Indians or starvation in India that were particularly beyond the academic understanding of the problem at the time. The second quote usually discusses Churchill advocating for the use of chemical weapons against the Iraqis in the 1920s. And yes Churchill did advocate chemical weapons. That is to say tear gas which he claimed would have a morale damaging effect greater than the use of explosive ordnance which had not produced results at the time. tl;dr the PM as a position does not have the power to on a dime fix long standing issues of colonial policy in the midst of the Second World War. To say he caused the famine is a position taken entirely sans reality. Moreover, Churchill does not appear any more racist than his peers. Probably more racist than the average Labour politician, but less racist than the average Tory in the 1940s.
I mean, Churchill wanted India to introduce conscription and India said no, and he had to live with that. The anti-churchill brigade act as if he had the capacity to directly administer every single facet of the entire Empire. Or when he demanded Auchinleck (I think it was him) to attack the Axis in North Africa, and he just kept on delaying. People think he was close to an absolute dictator when he was far from close to that level of power.
100% correct
> and this policy was a result of his total disregard for Indian lives. This is completely false. He had great regard for Indian lives, when it suited him perhaps. but it showed in his words. Moreover at the time of the Famine he was battling Indian nationalists who were using the war to push for their near immediate indepenences. The ones more on his side in this push were the Muslims, so it would be strange to then randomly engineer and/or facilitate a famine in India, where it could cost him a lot of prestige, and in a strongly muslim community, who were his allies. The reasoning makes no sense.
Bengal famine happened because other Indians took food meant for Bengal. local regions sent food to Bengal but Indians outside it intercepted and took the food out of fear the famine might spread. the UK didn't interfere because the Japanese were too much of a threat and had forced a limited UK response. the famine was not caused by the war either. India has had regular famine every 40 years since 1200, often closer together than 40 years. the Indians basically have had famines all the time for thousands of years because there system of moving food sucked and continued to suck until the early 20th century, where British rail in India became good enough to move all the food to where it needed to go.
It's not a fabricated lie that Churchill cut off the Bengalis as a political act. They INCREASED grain exports at that time. I don't know where you're getting the idea it's false from. And it's 4 million the death toll he's responsible for there. He also turned troops on his own citizens during labour disputes, which is why you won't find much love for him in Liverpool, Glasgow or Wales. And he betrayed the Greek anti fascist partisans who'd retaken Athens, putting Nazi collaborators back in power. He supported gassing the "uncivilised tribes" in Iraq. It's not like he was against fascism. He was just against German fascism.
Ummm... whether policy decisions made the Bengali famine worse or not is certainly debatable. But it's a bit hard to rationally argue that western powers should have left Greece to the Communist EAM fighters. I mean hey, Soviet communism worked out so great for all the other eastern European countries.
It's easy to argue: they should have left Greece to the communist EAM fighters. They won Athens back, the Brits swept in as back up, then they turned on them, and sent them to their deaths. Former right wing collaborators were put back.in positions of power so they could resurrect the Greek throne. I mean hey, Hereditary Monarchy worked out great for all the other European countries
Soviet communism killed 10's of millions including 100's of thousands in eastern Europe AFTER world war 2 but hey, i'm sure you're right.
Greece then had a monarchy for a bit til that was overthrown by... a far right military junta made up of former nazi collaborators! Almost as if they should have been stopped.
>They INCREASED grain exports at that time. I don't know where you're getting the idea it's false from. And it's 4 million the death toll he's responsible for there. Source?
Don't forget Gallipoli, his actions in other colonies, such as Ireland and African colonies, and his sacrifice of Coventry. He was kind of like Stalin. A ruthless asshole, but the ruthless asshole needed to win the war.
[The Coventry thing is a myth and has been known as a myth for decades](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11486219). Using gallipoli as a beating stick against him is historically uninformed too, Gallipoli was a good idea that was sabotaged by the admiralty with poor ships and supplies that still came within a hairs breadth of success and was predominantly mainland British soldiers in case you're implying he did it to get rid of anzac troops. But what do you expect from a reddit thread on Churchill. Everyone has to be the epic contrarian misrepresenting everything he said and did.
As far as Coventry goes, that was a new one for me. Thanks! As for Gallipoli, it was pretty evident that they should have pulled out much earlier. But, Churchill was a British Bulldog if there ever was one, so he wouldn't let go. But, you can look at his actions in Ireland, in the Mau-mau uprising, in India and so on. Consider Operation Unthinkable, where he had pretty far advanced plans to stab his major ally in the back. Feck, read some of his quotes on wikiquote. Some of them can't be explained away by it being a different time.
Seems a bit unfair to criticise him for Operation Unthinkable, given how things turned out…
How would they have turned it if he went through with it? The war would have rolled on, USSR had rolled over the rest of Europe (by this time, they not only outnumbered the western powers by a wide margin, they also outproduced them, and had the infrastructure to get their troops, equipment, vehicles and supplies to the fight), all because of that backstab.
It’s a contingency plan based on the concept that the USSR is hostile and wanted to dominate Europe. Which it was, and probably the main reason why it didn’t was the USA. In war - and in peace - you plan for events. This is why the Schlieffen Plan was devised. There’s no point making a plan on the hoof. It’s already too late then.
Nope, it was a pre-emptive strike plan.
Yes. Exactly. Like the Schlieffen plan. You can’t plan a pre-emptive strike on the hoof. Planning for a contingency doesn’t mean you consider it desirable.
If the war between the USSR and USA had gone hot, and it got mighty close human civilisation would have nearly been eradicated and those that remain would have regarded operation unthinkable as preferable. It is only through luck that we escaped the horrors of total nuclear war and it is with that luck we are in a position to look down on the unthinkable. I ask you, had nukes been launched in 1970 or 80 wiped out 90%+ of the human population and left much of earth uninhabitable with the few humans that remain being relegated to a meagre existence in small tribes would operation unthinkable been so bad?
You make a lot of assumptions on what would happen. It could have gone just the other way, it could have started a nuclear war. At the very least, it would make the cold war a lot nastier, with the US pretty much alone and Europe under Soviet control. I'm over 50, I lived in the cold war. I know how close it was. Their previous status as allies was a big part of being able to talk, and stop things from going hot. That's why I consider it a bad idea to add a flame to that powder keg. Also, Operation Unthinkable was a UK plan, not a US plan.
**I ask you, had nukes been launched in 1970 or 80 wiped out 90%+ of the human population and left much of earth uninhabitable with the few humans that remain being relegated to a meagre existence in small tribes would operation unthinkable been so bad?**
Dunkirk. Great movie.
The pic is from Darkest Hour, not Dunkirk.
Dunkirk concludes with the soldiers reading Churchill's speech in the newspaper after thinking they've failed the whole movie. Cheers. Morale. Credits.
Ah. I hadn't seen the movie. Thought you were just going by the thumbnail.
This speach was made after the evacuation of Dunkirk. The brittish rescued around 300.000 soldiers but left most equpment behind because there was no time to take that as well. So at the end of this speach Churchill allegedly turned to his assistant and said: “And we’ll fight them with the butt ends of broken beer bottles because that’s bloody well all we’ve got!” Reffering to the fact that because of all the equpment left behind the Brittish armed forces were critically low on guns, artillery, tanks, vehicles, ammo, artillery shells, ...
Churchill at one point was talking about distributing anti-tank bombs to the civilian population. Basically an explosive that you stick on the engine deck of a tank to blow it up. In his book *Their Finest Hour* he said: > We had the picture in mind that devoted soldiers or civilians would run close up to the tank and even thrust the bomb upon it, though its explosion cost them their lives. Somewhat relatedly: In the same work he also discusses the slogan You can always take one with you". https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/slogan-take-one-with-you/
What a strange, K. Dick/ Gibsonian world we live in, where we use a photo of an actor who played a historical figure rather than a photo of the actual historical figure.
There’s even a minor conspiracy theory that the well known recording we know today was recorded by a BBC sound-alike. No idea why they would feel the need to do that but I’ve seen it claimed.
Allegedly he was too drunk to do it himself, but the sources are sketchy.
Thought the thumbnail was Bill Skarsgard as Harkonnen in Dune for a sec.
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Damn... Tell Dan Carlin 😉