I want to let you know that my friend Gary Oldman recently won the Academy Award for “Best Actor in a Leading Role.” His portrayal of Winston Churchill in the film Darkest Hour is one of the best I have seen.
Last December, Gary Oldman and producer Douglas Urbanski visited Hillsdale College for a screening and panel discussion about the film’s production and significance. One of Gary’s memorable lines—“If Winston Churchill could take on Adolf Hitler at 65, I could sit in a makeup chair for three and a half hours.”
Warm regards,
Larry P. Arnn
President, Hillsdale College
I, of course, responded to Dr. Arn,
Dear Larry,
Winston Churchill was one of the greatest villains of the 20th century. A man truly to be despised by anybody with merely a scintilla of a Christian ethos. However, he did have the advantage of living at a time when he could be compared to Stalin, Roosevelt, and Hitler.
Remember Yalta. Remember the forced repatriation of the White Russians.
Rev. Bret McAtee
In this column, I want to give the reasons why I wrote to Larry in such a fashion. I want to give just a brief insight into the Winston Churchill whom the hagiography fails to honestly present. I believe history bears out that Churchill, along with Roosevelt, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo was a figure that was to be despised. I believe history bears out Churchill has a cautionary tale that proves that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
The fact that anyone can believe that Winston Churchill was one of the greatest men of the 20th century is proof positive of the effectiveness of propaganda. Churchill was an absolute beast who in his 50 years in public office was the man most responsible for the loss of the British Empire and the decline of England.
“In fighting Hitler, Britain would quintuple her prewar debt, forfeit her world position, bring the Red Army to the Elbe, and collapse her Empire. But we know now from captured documents that despite all the saber-rattling Hitler probably never intended to invade.”
David Irving
Churchill‘s War Vol. 1, pg. 378
During the run-up to World War I Churchill could write his wife,
“My Darling,
Everything tends towards catastrophe and collapse. I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be built like that?
Winston Churchill
Writing to his wife
On the cusp of WW I
One year later Churchill writes someone else,
“Why, I would not be out of this glorious, delicious war for anything the world could give me.”
Churchill was the man, along with Roosevelt, at Yalta, who effectively ended Christendom in Europe by turning over 100 million Eastern European Christians to the Christ-hating Bolsheviks. Indeed, Churchill with his presentation of a priceless Crusader sword to Josef Stalin at the Tehran conference in 1943 provided the definitional standard for obscene.
That he was obscene was seen throughout his career. For example, Churchill was the man who ordered the slaughter of civilians as from the air via the firebombing of civilian homes.
“Churchill … was he who initiated the bombing of cities and civilians outside of battle zones. His objective was to force the Nazis to retaliate in kind and relieve pressure on the British airfields which, as legitimate war targets, were being badly hit. Actually, the bombing of German cities, reports Benjamin Colby, as attested by official British histories, began nearly four months before any bombs fell on London, and the blitz itself was deliberately encouraged Prime Minister Churchill.
One stands in horror at the callousness with which Churchill invited the suffering of the British people. For example, the second great fire-bombing of London and the disastrous losses at Coventry were permitted despite the breaking of the German code, providing foreknowledge of the raids.”
William P. Hoar
Architects of Conspiracy: An Intriguing History — pg. 242-243
Keep in mind that it was British bombing policy to bomb middle-class residential areas vis-a-vis more wealthy residential areas because middle-class homes were more densely collected and were made of material that more easily burned. One could get more bang per bomb by bombing German middle-class residential areas.
“At the same time … Sir Arthur Harris’s bomber crews were being briefed for their first major fire-raising attack on a German town, the medieval port of Lubeck on the Baltic. In every such raid, as Sir Charles Portal had directed, the aiming point would be the town’s ancient — and combustible — residential heart, and not its factories or war installations. That night, March 28, the conflagrations in Lubeck totally gutted the city centre, and killed several hundred of its citizens…. Churchill asked the air ministry to do what it could to increase the the weight of bombs actually dropped on German cities.”
David Irving
Churchill‘s War, V. II, p. 372
And we would do well to keep in mind that it was Churchill, as between Germany and England, who started the bombing of cities,
It was Winston Churchill who initiated the bombings of civilian cities outside of battle zones … long before the Nazis hit London. Indeed, Churchill‘s objective was to force the Nazis to retaliate in kind and so relieve pressure on the British airfields which, as legitimate war targets, were being badly hit.
“Actually the bombing of German cities as attested by official British histories, began nearly four months before any bombs fell on London, and the Blitz itself was deliberately encouraged by Prime Minister Churchill.” (Benjamin Colby ‘Twas a Famous Victory’)
If firebombing defenseless refugees and Germans wouldn’t do the trick (total deaths Dresden alone = 130,000) Churchill even toyed with the idea of dropping anthrax cakes all over Germany to deindustrialize and depopulate the Hun’s Deutsch-land.
Prior to the firebombings of Dresden, and Hamburg, Kassel, etc. it was Churchill who was in charge of 142,000 Allied casualties in the slaughter of the Dardanelles and the Gallipoli campaign. Churchill’s Sea policy during WW I was to fire on white flags so as to ram German submarines which had surfaced. The German subs surfaced in order to be merciful to passengers of ships who they could have just blown out of the water. Churchill gave orders to shoot German naval personnel who were floundering in the sea after their subs had been rammed in a German act of Christian forbearance.
“Churchill’s sea policy was simply outrageous and included advocacy of firing on white flags and shooting prisoners when convenient. British merchant vessels were also instructed to ram submarines if they surfaced in a humanitarian effort to allow merchant passengers to disembark. It thus became folly for German subs to surface, lose the advantage of surprise, and endanger their own crews. In fact when one U-boat captain did just that — surfaced and allowed passengers to leave a British ship — he was approached by another British ship named Baralong, flying the U.S. flag, and sunk The Baralong crew then turned on German seamen floundering in the water and brutally shot as many as were in sight.” (Architects of Conspiracy — William P. Hoar)
So cynical was Churchill that he referred to the Lusitania as “just another 45,000 tons of live bait.” Churchill used the Lusitania as bait for German subs in hopes that the sinking of such vessels with American passengers while transporting illegal munitions would be a casus belli for American entry into World War I.
Questions surround whether or not Prime Minister Churchill knew beforehand of the planned murder of Polish Prime Minister in exile General Sikorski because Sikorski desired to expose the Soviet responsibility for the Katyn forest massacre. The Polish leader in exile during WW II had discovered how the Soviets murdered 15K Polish officers in the Katyn forest and soon enough Eden is talking about “beating up” Sikorski since Sikorski’s complaining is threatening the British – Soviet alliance. Soon afterward Sikorski’s British flown jet goes down killing Sikorski and his daughter and his whole retinue. Only the pilot survived.
Churchill was responsible for the policy that was called “Operation Keelhaul” supporting the forced return of numerable anti-communist Cossacks, White Russians, and others whom Stalin had absolutely no rightful claim upon.
See, “The Last Secret”, by Nicholas Bethell and “The Secret Betrayal” by Nikolai Tolstoy.
Churchill was a constant and unmitigated drunkard who struggled with his “Black Dog,” and so should have been committed to an Asylum for the chemically dependent.
Churchill had failed to down more than one whiskey-and-soda before the meal began, and ‘therefore, according to the president, was morose and cross all through the dinner.’Like other chronic alcoholics deprived of their sustenance, Winston became first glum, then sullen, then downright rude ….
Irving – Churchill‘s War; V. II, pg. 684
The fact that for 80 years the International media has been able to convince you that Churchill (as well as FDR) was some kind of great man makes me wonder if the Truth will ever out.
Churchill’s praise for wretched and bloodthirsty men is well known. On Stalin, he could offer,
It was an experience of great interest to me to meet Premier Stalin … It is very fortunate for Russia in her agony to have this great rugged war chief at her head. He is a man of massive outstanding personality, suited to the somber and stormy times in which his life has been cast; a man of inexhaustible courage and will-power and a man direct and even blunt in speech… Above all, he is a man with that saving sense of humor which is of high importance to all men and all nations, but particularly to great men and great nations. Stalin also left upon me the impression of a deep, cool wisdom and a complete absence of illusions of any kind. I believe I made him feel that we were good and faithful comrades in this war …
Winston Churchill
1942
“Stalin is the one human being in Russia…. Stalin always kept his word.”
Winston Churchill
Churchill‘s War – Vol. 1 — pg. vii
“Well, thank God you’ve set my mind at rest! I loathe Trotsky, and I’ve been following his activities for a long time. I considered him the evil genius of Russia. I am all for Stalin’s politics. He is creating a powerful Russia, and that’s what we need — more than anything.”
Winston Churchill
David Irving
Churchill‘s War — Vol. 1, pg. 101
Speaking to Mussolini Churchill said,
“If I had been an Italian, I am sure I should have been whole-heartedly with you from the start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.”
A younger Churchill noted that when concentration camps were built in South Africa, for white Boers, that they produced “the minimum of suffering.” The Boer women and children would doubtlessly have disagreed.
Churchill had no problem with suffering as seen in his political starvation of a portion of the Indian subcontinent (Bengal) where estimates range he was responsible for the starvation deaths of 1-4 million people by purposely exporting grain from the region to keep that grain from falling into the hands of the Japanese. But as Churchill hated the Indians this very well could have been an easy decision.
“I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.”
Winston Churchill
Irving; Churchill‘s War V. II, pg. 563
The suffering that Churchill was concerned about was the suffering of his popularity.
“Churchill was deeply concerned about his popularity … He brought out bulging albums with all the press clippings about him. According to another newspaperman, there was even a chart displayed at No. 10 recording the levels of applause when newsreels of him were shown at cinemas.”
David Irving
“Churchill‘s War,” V. II, pg. 506
Winston Churchill as a great hero of the West is a completely fabricated myth. The man’s main principle was the glorification of his person no matter what contradictory principles had to be embraced in order to advance his name. If anything he was a Fabian Socialist per his early attachment to Sidney and Beatrice Webb. The Webbs described Churchill as the most progressive politician of his age.
Historian Eric Keunhult Leddihn gives this description,
“Mr. Churchill, as we have pointed out, was not a genuine conservative, but a pragmatist and Deist of a certain aristocratic cast, of a terrifying cynicism and astounding ignorance concerning most countries. Nevertheless, he was very gifted by nature in many ways but a comparatively poor schooling; He never was a student of anything. His biography, Mr. Robert Sencourt, said that to him, “Christ was a socialist” and ‘men who had principles were ‘goody goodies,….’ He seized one of the greatest occasions in history and gradually turn it into a calamity for Europe and a triumph for America.”
When WWII came to an end, Great Britain was a socialist country. British socialism was not an achievement of Mr. Clement Attlee’s Labor Government, but that of the war cabinet of Sir Winston Churchill.
Consistent with the Fabianism that Churchill was attached to early on in his career Churchill was and always remained “a man of the state: of the welfare state and of the warfare state.” Churchill was a soft Socialist.
Churchill’s character also included bias against Arabs in favor Jews
“Churchill testified to the Peel Commission on March 12, 1937. His startling proposal was that all Palestine be turned over to the Jews. He spoke of their right to immigrate and Britain’s ‘good faith’ toward them.
When Peel’s deputy Sir Horace Rumbold spoke of the injustice done to the Arabs by this invasion of a ‘foreign race,’ Churchill expressed outrage at that phrase, then offered a novel concept of ‘just invasions’ of which the incumbents of Berlin’s Wilhelmstrasse might have been proud:
‘Why is there harsh injustice done if people can come in and make a livelihood for more, and make the desert into palm groves and orange groves? Why is it injustice because there is more work and wealth for everybody? There is no injustice. The injustice is when those who live in the country leave it to be desert for thousands of years.’
As for the ‘invasion,’ it was the Arabs who had come in after the Jews, he maintained, and they had allowed the Jewish hill terraces to decay. ‘Where the Arab goes’ he generalized, ‘it is often desert.’
David Irving
Churchill‘s War — Vol. 1, pg. 84
But what was the reason for this Churchillian favor of Jewish interests that impacted more than the policy on Palestine? David Irving tells us in his work,
“Churchill owed such a debt to the Anglo-Jewish community from 1936 on that Sir Samuel Hoare would describe his ‘pro-Zionist attitude’ as a black mark against his possible premiership, and another acquaintance would tell Sir Martin Gilbert, the biographer, that ‘Winston was too fond of Jews.”
David Irving
Churchill‘s War — Vol. II, pg. xii
If one wants to follow this thread they need to look into the connection between Churchill and “the Focus,” as well as his connection to Sir Henry Strakosch.
It should be noted that Sir Winston Churchill, like a stopped clock, could be occasionally correct, and for that, he should be given credit. Churchill was correct when he wrote,
“There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution, by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews, it is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders.”
Churchill was correct when he said,
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.”
We believe that Churchill, as recorded by David Irving, was correct when he noted,
“(Churchill) added that he himself found it hard to believe in either world harmony or the deliberate mixing of the races — now known as ‘multiculturalism’; he compared the latter with the result of ‘mixing together the paints in a child’s paintbox’ as Dowding recorded.”
Irving — Churchill‘s War — V. II, pg. 152
So we gladly concede that Churchill was not always in error. There were times when Churchill could be spot on in his observations. That Churchill excelled at rhetoric (even when he had pinched and plagiarized his lines from someone else). I think it can be honestly affirmed that he threw the English Dictionary into the war effort.
But that he was a dangerous and even maniacal man was understood by
Churchill’s contemporaries as understood by the Patriarch of the Kennedy family who was then serving as US Ambassador to England,
“US Ambassador to England Joseph Kennedy knew how desperately Churchill wanted the US in WW II on the side of Britain. Churchill had made comments hoping that the inevitable Nazi air massacres might draw the US into the war. Kennedy telegraphed his US superiors at one point saying, “it appears to me that there is a feeling that if British women and children are killed… the US will tend more towards their side.”
Sometime after this “Kennedy left from Lisbon on the Manhattan in transit to New York. Before boarding the luxury liner he pleaded with the State Department to announce that even if this vessel mysteriously blew up in the mid-Atlantic with an American ambassador on board Washington would not consider it cause for war.
‘I thought,’ wrote Kennedy in his scurrilous unpublished memoirs, ‘that would give me some protection against Churchill‘s placing a bomb on the ship.'”
David Irving
Churchill‘s War — pg. 193, 207