February 2020 - Richard M. Langworth

Bombing Auschwitz: “Get everything out of the air force you can.” -WSC

29 February 2020 Comments 4 Comments

“Bombing Auschwitz” is Chapter 31 in my book, Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality: What he Actually Did and Said. Available in Kindle or paperback from Amazon.

The Auschwitz myth

“War is mainly a catalogue of blunders,” Churchill wrote. [1] A war leader is “the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. Antiquated War Offices, weak, incompetent or arrogant Commanders, untrustworthy allies, hostile neutrals, malignant Fortune, ugly surprises, awful miscalculations—all take their seat at the Council Board….” [2]

Churchill’s most flagrant inaction, according to many critics, was failing to bomb Auschwitz, the notorious Nazi death camp, or the rail lines leading to it.…

Update: How Many Words did Winston Churchill Produce?

26 February 2020 Comments 4 Comments

How many words, how many speeches?

“How many speeches did Churchill make, and in how many words? Also, how many words did he write in his books and articles? [Updated from 2014.]

Word counts

Through the wonders of computer science (Ian Langworth and the Hillsdale College Churchill Project), we know that the present corpus of works by and about Winston S. Churchill exceeds 80 million words (380 megabytes). This includes 20 million (120 megabytes) by Churchill himself (counting his letters, memos and papers in the 23 volumes of Churchill Documents. Here are his the top word counts among his books:

The Churchill Documents: 10,000,000*

Winston S.…

Question for Readers: What did Churchill Mean by “Man is Spirit”?

22 February 2020 Comments 4 Comments

“Man is spirit”

Winston Churchill retired as Prime Minister on 5 April 1955. On April 3rd, he met with his non-Cabinet ministers. His last words were reported by William Sidney, Viscount De L’Isle and Dudley, his neighbor in Westerham, to Martin Gilbert. “Man is spirit,” he told them. Then he added: “Never be separated from the Americans.”

The latter is well understood. In 1956, when he wasn’t around, there was quite a serious separation, over Suez. “Man is spirit” is harder to understand. What did Churchill mean?

A professor teaching Churchill’s statesmanship says his class is going back and forth on that.…