Month: June 2020

memory
Not exactly a Nazi knee on the neck, but you get the analogy. “Your debt account, Churchill.” (Lustige Blätter, Berlin, 18 August 1944). The account book reads (with remarkable memory lapses): “England started the air war in the year 1940 against defenseless civilians! (Sylt, Freiburg.) It killed women and children, destroyed hospitals, residential quarters and churches, destroyed the cultural assets of Europe…Cologne, Hamburg…” etc. Chamberlain bombed the German airbase on Sylt on 19-20 March 1940 in reprisal for a German raid on Scapa Flow. Freiburg was mistakenly bombed by the Luftwaffe at the start of Hitler’s invasion on 10 May 1940, then by the Allies in 1944.
Defcon 1, The Battle for Churchill’s Memory: The Cause Endures

Defcon 1, The Battle for Churchill’s Memory: The Cause Endures

Here­with final install­ments by var­i­ous writ­ers in our two-month defense of Win­ston Churchill’s mem­o­ry. These and the links below cov­er his most pop­u­lar cur­rent sins—even cas­tra­tion and nuk­ing the Mar­alin­ga. So, unless we get a new one, that’s a wrap! RML

Memory: “The stars still shone in the sky”

Lost in the pell-mell rush to den­i­grate his mem­o­ry was the 8oth anniver­sary of Churchill becom­ing Prime Min­ster, 10 May 1940. I thought of his words as I read the igno­rant, ill-informed, false attacks on his char­ac­ter. They occurred amid protest over a trag­ic event that had noth­ing to do with him.…

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South Africa
South Africa, 1899. Gandhi (circled) with stretcher-bearers of the Indian Ambulance Corps, which he organized to support the British during the Boer War. Standing: H. Kitchen, L. Panday, R. Panday, J. Royeppen, R.K. Khan, L. Gabriel, M.K. Kotharee, E. Peters, D. Vinden, V. Madanjit. Middle Row: W. Jonathan, V. Lawrence, M.H. Nazar, Dr. L.P. Booth, M.K. Gandhi, P.K. Naidoo, M. Royeppen. Front Row: S. Shadrach, “Professor” Dhundee, S.D. Moddley, A. David, A.A. Gandhi. (South African photo, public domain, Wikimedia Commons)
“The Art of the Possible” (1): Churchill, South Africa, Apartheid

“The Art of the Possible” (1): Churchill, South Africa, Apartheid

Excerpts from “Churchill, South Africa, Apartheid” an arti­cle for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project, June 2020. For the com­plete text with end­notes, please click here. This arti­cle is ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of Nel­son Man­dela (1918-2013), whose Churchillian mag­na­nim­i­ty was a mod­el for his time—and even more for ours.

Part 1: 1902-1909

In “Apartheid: Made in Britain,” Richard Dow­den argued that Britain not South Africa cost black South Africans their rights. His account is fac­tu­al as far as it goes, but there is more to say about Churchill’s effort to achieve jus­tice in South Africa.…

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defense
The Churchill Statue by Ivor Roberts-Jones, Parliament Square, London. (Wikimedia Creative Commons, public domain)
Defcon 1: The Urgent Defense of Churchill’s Name and Legacy

Defcon 1: The Urgent Defense of Churchill’s Name and Legacy

Case for  the defense: “If we allow our mon­u­ments and stat­ues and place-names to be torn down because of our present-day views, and claims of peo­ple being offend­ed by our built envi­ron­ment that has been around for decades and some­times cen­turies, it speaks to a pathet­ic lack of con­fi­dence in our­selves as a nation. We are on the way to a soci­ety of com­pet­ing vic­tim­hoods, atom­ized and balka­nized into small­er and small­er com­mu­ni­ties, which iron­i­cal­ly enough is some­thing racists want too.” —Andrew Roberts

Defense of the good

The Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project has joined many oth­er groups and indi­vid­u­als in defense of the good.…

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Stalin
First Meeting, Moscow 1942: WSC’s interpreter Arthur Birse, Churchill, U.S. envoy Averell Harriman, Stalin, Soviet Foreign Minister V.M. Molotov. (Photo by Mikhail Mikhaylovich Kalashnikov, Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
“Stalin never broke his word to me.” Were these Churchill’s words?

“Stalin never broke his word to me.” Were these Churchill’s words?

A mag­a­zine fact check­er writes ask­ing if Churchill ever said, “Stal­in nev­er broke his word to me.” The short answer is yes. The long answer shows how care­ful we should be when quot­ing Churchill.

The source of this quote is the jour­nal­ist C.L. Sulzberg­er (1912-1993), in his 1970 book, The Last of the Giants, page 304. In it Sulzberg­er reports his “five hours with old Win­ston Churchill” at Chartwell on 10 July 1956.

Churchill, wrote Sulzberg­er, thought Stal­in “a great man, above all com­pared to Khr­uschev and Bul­ganin,” and quot­ed Churchill as follows:

Stal­in nev­er broke his word to me.…

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Ivison
Churchill (followed by his brother Jack) visiting bomb-damaged areas of the East End of London, 8 September 1940. (War Office photo, Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
Mr. Ivison: May we proclaim Trump no Churchill without slurring the latter?

Mr. Ivison: May we proclaim Trump no Churchill without slurring the latter?

Mr. Ivison is right. And wrong.

John Ivi­son in Canada’s Nation­al Post makes the point: “Don­ald Trump is no Win­ston Churchill, and the com­par­i­son is ludi­crous.” He refers to a June 3rd state­ment by the President’s press sec­re­tary, Kayleigh McE­nany. (She com­pared Trump’s appear­ance at St. John’s Epis­co­pal Church across from the White House to Churchill vis­it­ing the blitzed East End in 1940.)

I think from a pure­ly his­tor­i­cal point of view we can all agree with him. In 1940, Churchill wrote, “There was a white glow, over-pow­er­ing, sub­lime, which ran through our Island from end to end.”…

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wizard
Royal Air Force Boeing Fortress Mark IIA of the RAF Coastal Command, featuring ASV radar antenna, 1943. (Imperial War Museum, public domain)
Did Winston Churchill Invent the Term “Wizard War”?

Did Winston Churchill Invent the Term “Wizard War”?

Q: Churchill’s creation?

I’d like to know if you can shed light on Churchill’s use of the word “wiz­ard” for radar sci­en­tists and engi­neers (as in Their Finest Hour, Book 2, Chap­ter 4 “The Wiz­ard War”)?  He first used the term in pub­li­ca­tion in that book in 1949; is there any indi­ca­tion of his use of the word, to describe what the RAF called “boffins”, dur­ing the ear­ly days of the war itself?

“Wiz­ard” is of course a grand old Mid­dle Eng­lish word, and Churchill would have pre­ferred that to the new­fan­gled “bof­fin.” …

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RML Books

Richard Langworth’s Most Popular Books & eBooks


Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality

Churchill by Himself

Churchill in His Own Words

Churchill and the Avoidable War

The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill

The Patriot’s Churchill

Triumph Cars - The Complete Story
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