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Hitler essays — Churchill’s perceptive article about Hitler in The Strand Magazine, November 1935. (Ronald I. Cohen collection)

Nashville (5). The Myth that Churchill Admired Hitler

4 November 2017 Comments 0 Comments

Part 5 of Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality examines multiplying fables between the two World Wars. Churchill was an alcoholic, we are often assured. He flip-flopped over Bolshevism. All Jews were communists, he said. He despised Gandhi. A closet fascist, he supported Mussolini. But one tall tale perhaps eclipses all the others. It is the idea that Churchill admired Hitler. Remarks to the Churchill Society of Tennessee, Nashville, 14 October 2017. Continued from Part 4…

Judging Hitler

It is important to understand just how right Churchill was about Hitler. In May 1935 the Führer wrote a revealing letter to the British newspaper magnate Esmond Harmsworth, Lord Rothermere, one of his promoters.…

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Civil War Memorials: What We Need to Remember

26 August 2017 Comments 2 Comments

Of Civil War…

“We think we are wholly superior people,” said the Civil War historian Shelby Foote. The 50th and 75th Anniversaries of the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg were poignant, inspiring moments. The words spoken of those occasions give cause to wonder. In the welter of emotions, have we forgotten what we need to remember?

Footage of Civil War Veterans at 50yr Anniversary in 1913 & 75yr Anniversary in 1938
Watch this video on YouTube “We may be given to meet again…”

Shelby Foote:

We think we are wholly superior people. If we’d been anything like as superior as we think we are, we’d never have fought that Civil War.…

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Amnesia or Fantasy? The Indian Contribution in the Second World War

2 August 2017 Comments 6 Comments

"The glorious heroism and martial qualities of the Indian troops...shine for ever in the annals of war…. Nearly three million Indians volunteered to serve, and by 1942 an Indian Army of one million was in being, and volunteers were coming in at the monthly rate of fifty thousand…. The response of the Indian peoples, no less than the conduct of their soldiers, makes a glorious final page in the story of our Indian Empire." Churchill

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New Churchill Documents, Vol. 19, “Fateful Questions”

18 February 2017 Comments 2 Comments

The longest biography in history takes a long step to completion with publication of The Churchill Documents, Vol. 19, Fateful Questions, September 1943-April 1944. (Order your copy here). Fastidiously compiled by the late Sir Martin Gilbert and edited by Dr. Larry Arnn, these 2700 pages serve up another fresh contribution of documents crucial to our understanding of Churchill in World War II. It is a vast new contribution to Churchill scholarship.

Winston S. Churchill, the official biography consists of eight narrative volumes and now nineteen companion or document volumes, all kept in print and offered at modest prices as both hardback and electronic editions.…

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Tech Start-Ups: Dan Lyons’ Eye-Opener

28 January 2017 Comments 0 Comments

Because my son works in Silicon Valley, and has start-up experience both as an employee and a founder, I found this book of interest and devoured it in three nights. It’s the story of a journalist who, at 52, tries his hand as a tech marketer, and is gravely shocked and disappointed with the culture he discovers in a start-up tech firm with hundreds of employees and bazillions in venture capital. . Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble, by Dan Lyons. Hachette Books, $15.16 from Amazon, Kindle $13.99. . Tech morphs constantly; humanity never changes. I bookmarked descriptions which reminded me of people my son has described—and people I’ve met in my own career, which is as far away as it gets from the Silicon Valley tech world.…

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Justice Thomas on Antonin Scalia

20 November 2016 Comments 2 Comments

He spoke to us about Winston Churchill in San Francisco in 2009. Ever since, I have sought out the uncommon speeches of Justice Clarence Thomas. Invariably I find them moving, eloquent, and instructive on things I haven’t considered sufficiently.

Such was his November 2016 tribute to Antonin Scalia, given to the Federalist Society. He began with examples of the late Justice’s wit (beloved alike by Justice Thomas and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Respectively, they agreed with Scalia most of the time—and little of the time.):

In PGA Tour vs. Martin [Scalia] wrote: “I am sure that the framers of the U.S. Constitution aware of the 1457 edict of King James II of Scotland, prohibiting golf because it interfered with the practice of archery, expected that sooner or later the paths of golf and government, the law and the links, would once again cross, and that the judges of this August Court would some day have to wrestle with the age-old jurisprudential question for which their years of study in the law have so well prepared them: Is someone riding around a golf course from shot to shot really a golfer?”…

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Celwyn Ball, British First Army 1940-46

14 July 2016 Comments 0 Comments

Celwyn 1922-2016

In 1992, I told Celwyn of my Latvian forebears and wish to visit the Baltic. He said he knew the area well, volunteered to join me, and made arrangements for a tour. Generously he showed me places I never expected to see. I remember our strolling Bralu Kapi, Latvia’s Arlington, where heroes lie. There I heard Celwyn musing, from his own experience, about what they must have gone through. A veteran had told us of digging ditches in the flat country, against oncoming Russian tanks, in 1945 as the Red Army rolled west. They were Shermans sent through Lend-Lease, their white stars recently repainted red.…

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