Year: 2012

Did Churchill Ever Admire Hitler? 3/3

Did Churchill Ever Admire Hitler? 3/3

Part 3: Pleas­ing No One …con­tin­ued from Part 2

Churchill was cor­rect when he said his writ­ings about Hitler sat­is­fied nei­ther Hitler’s defend­ers nor Hitler’s crit­ics. One of the for­mer was Lord Lon­don­der­ry, a pro-Hitler peer who com­plained that Churchill’s Evening Stan­dard piece would pre­vent a decent under­stand­ing with Ger­many. On 23 Octo­ber 1937, Churchill replied to Lord Lon­don­der­ry (Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, 581):

You can­not expect Eng­lish peo­ple to be attract­ed by the bru­tal intol­er­ances of Nazidom, though these may fade with time. On the oth­er hand, we all wish to live on friend­ly terms with Ger­many.…

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Did Churchill Ever Admire Hitler? 2/3

Did Churchill Ever Admire Hitler? 2/3

Part 2: “Friend­ship with Ger­many” ,,,con­tin­ued from Part 1

Churchill’s crit­ics some­times quote sen­tences which they think came from his orig­i­nal Hitler arti­cle or Great Con­tem­po­raries, among which this is the most common:

One may dis­like Hitler’s sys­tem and yet admire his patri­ot­ic achieve­ment. If our coun­try were defeat­ed, I hope we should find a cham­pi­on as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.

In fact this pas­sage is from Churchill’s arti­cle in the Evening Stan­dard, 17 Sep­tem­ber 1937: “Friend­ship with Ger­many” (Cohen C548), sub­se­quent­ly reprint­ed in Churchill’s book of for­eign affairs essays, Step by Step (Lon­don: Thorn­ton But­ter­worth, 1939, Cohen A111).…

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Did Churchill Ever Admire Hitler? 1/3

Did Churchill Ever Admire Hitler? 1/3

Part 1: “Gov­ern­ment by Dictators”

The Hitler chap­ter in Churchill’s book Great Con­tem­po­raries, like the rest of the vol­ume, was derived from a pre­vi­ous arti­cle. In this case the orig­i­nal was “The Truth about Hitler,” in The Strand Mag­a­zine of Novem­ber 1935 (Cohen C481). Ronald Cohen notes in his Bib­li­og­ra­phy that Strand edi­tor Reeves Shaw, who paid WSC £250 for the arti­cle, want­ed Churchill to make it “as out­spo­ken as you pos­si­bly can…absolutely frank in your judg­ment of [Hitler’s] meth­ods.” It was.

Two years lat­er, when Churchill was prepar­ing his Hitler essay for Great Con­tem­po­raries, he char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly sub­mit­ted it to the For­eign Office, which asked that he tone it down.…

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The Lion is Back

The Lion is Back

“Then out spake brave Hor­atius, the Cap­tain of the Gate.” William Manchester’s inscrip­tion, quot­ing Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome, a Churchill favorite, on my sec­ond vol­ume of his Last Lion, reminds me that Bill was him­self for many of us “Cap­tain of the Gate”; and that his death in 2004 bid fair to deprive us of finale of the most lyri­cal Churchill work ever written.

Not quite. Twen­ty-four years on, Lit­tle Brown has pub­lished the third and final vol­ume of this famous biog­ra­phy, sub­ti­tled Defend­er of the Realm 1940-1965 (1232 pages, in hard­bound, Kin­dle and audio editions).…

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“Remember the past”: Santayana, but never Churchill

“Remember the past”: Santayana, but never Churchill

I am a librar­i­an and I have a patron who inquired about famous quote by George San­tayana (in The Life of Rea­son, 1905): “Those who can­not remem­ber the past are con­demned to repeat it.” We know the quote was orig­i­nal­ly Santayana’s, but our patron would like to know when Mr. Churchill first used it. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, my col­league and I have not been able to locate the the time or con­text of quote as it relates to Mr. Churchill. —D.J., New York

I searched Churchill’s 15 mil­lion pub­lished words (books, arti­cles, speech­es, pri­vate papers) but could find no occur­rence of Santayana’s remark.…

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Churchill & the Bombing of Coventry

Churchill & the Bombing of Coventry

The Wei­der His­to­ry Group replied to a query. “Did Churchill allow Coven­try to be burned to pro­tect his secret intel­li­gence?” Their answer was some­what equivocal:

There cer­tain­ly have been a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent accounts, even sup­pos­ed­ly by eye­wit­ness­es, that con­tra­dict each oth­er as to how much Win­ston Churchill had learned from the Boni­face (lat­er Ultra) decoders as to the main tar­get for the Ger­man “Moon­light Sonata” air raid on the Mid­lands in Novem­ber 1940, and when did he ascer­tain it. Whether he mis­took it for a feint, with Lon­don the actu­al tar­get, of whether he knew of Coven­try and left it to its fate rather than com­pro­mise Britain’s abil­i­ty to crack the Ger­man Enig­ma codes seems to depend on one’s feel­ings toward Churchill.……

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9/11/12: Ambassador Murdered, Consulate Burned

9/11/12: Ambassador Murdered, Consulate Burned

Over the last forty-eight hours I have been asked for the same two Churchill quo­ta­tions by sev­er­al per­sons in the news media or in pol­i­tics. The quo­ta­tions are in my book, Churchill By Him­self, new­ly pub­lished as Churchill in His Own Words:

“Lead­er­ship” chap­ter, page 490, “Iner­tia”:

When the sit­u­a­tion was man­age­able it was neglect­ed, and now that it is thor­ough­ly out of hand we apply too late the reme­dies which then might have effect­ed a cure. There is noth­ing new in the sto­ry. It is as old as the  Sibylline books. It falls into that long, dis­mal cat­a­logue of the fruit­less­ness of expe­ri­ence and the con­firmed unteach­a­bil­i­ty of mankind.…

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Churchill and the Kilkenny Cats

Churchill and the Kilkenny Cats

Or: “Is the U.S. Sen­ate like the Kilken­ny Cats?”

A Churchillian friend who has writ­ten to her Sen­a­tors emails:

This brief video by Sen­a­tor Rand Paul is a good exam­ple of why the Unit­ed States Con­gress has only a 10% approval rat­ing. Isn’t Sen­a­tor Reid in charge in the Sen­ate? The video explains why the Sen­ate is an insult to the Amer­i­can people.

I’ve giv­en up on the U.S. Sen­ate, myself. I’m glad some­body is still writ­ing them letters.

Will any read­er advise whether Sen­a­tor Paul won on his July 29th point of order, attempt­ing to get extra time to read a 600-page Sen­ate bill due for a vote in six or eight hours?…

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Baseball: The Amazin’ Nats

Baseball: The Amazin’ Nats

In 2012’s great­est base­ball suc­cess sto­ry, the Wash­ing­ton Nation­als went 60-40 on July 28th, hav­ing won more games as they won all year in 2008 and 2009. In the Nation­al League they’re first in pitch­ing, tied for sec­ond in field­ing, and sev­enth in hit­ting, although in the last month their bat­ters have been on fire.

Tied with the Yan­kees for the best record in base­ball, the prece­dents fall week­ly. 2012 is sup­plant­i­ng 2005 as the best year since base­ball returned to Wash­ing­ton. The Nats are now about five games bet­ter than they were at this time in 2005, when they dove from first to last place in the sec­ond half.…

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Straitjacketing Churchill (and the Truth)

Straitjacketing Churchill (and the Truth)

LONDON, JULY 19TH— In what were described as “guer­ril­la raids,” BBC Chan­nel 4 “strait­jack­et­ed” the stat­ues of four wide­ly admired Britons: Churchill and Flo­rence Nightin­gale in Lon­don, Charles Dar­win in Shrews­bury and Samuel John­son in Lichfield.

Each fig­ure was “restrained” in a bespoke strait-jack­et which had the men­tal ill­ness they are reput­ed to have had stamped across it. Churchill’s was labeled DEPRESSION.

The strait­jack­et­ing was car­ried out to pro­mote Chan­nel 4’s sea­son of prime-time pro­gram­ming chal­leng­ing men­tal health stig­ma and dis­crim­i­na­tion, “4 Goes Mad,” which start­ed on Mon­day 23 July. The stunt was also cap­tured as part of a short film aired on Chan­nel 4’s “Ran­dom Acts.”…

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