September 2012 - Richard M. Langworth

Churchill & the Bombing of Coventry

27 September 2012 Comments 2 Comments

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.……

9/11/12: Ambassador Murdered, Consulate Burned

13 September 2012 Comments 0 Comments

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.…