Research Topics Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Churchill’s Hitler Essays: He Knew the Führer from the Start

15 April 2024 Comments 0 Comments

"The astounding thing is that the great German people, educated, scientific, philosophical, romantic, the people of the Christmas tree, the people of Goethe and Schiller, of Bach and Beethoven, Heine, Leibnitz, Kant and a hundred other great names, have not only not resented this horrible blood-bath, but have endorsed it and acclaimed its author with the honours not only of a sovereign but almost of a god.... Can we really believe that a hierarchy and society built upon such deeds can be entrusted with the possession of the most prodigious military machinery yet planned among men? —WSC, 1937

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Did Eisenhower Offer to Quit Over WW2 Bombing Policy?

31 March 2024 Comments 0 Comments

As supporters of Israel argue over the civilian casualties in Gaza, this history lesson is relevant. It seems that civilian casualties only occur to leaders of civilized governments. Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and certainly Hamas never worried about them. In 1944, the arguments, heart searchings and constant changes of targets continued almost up to D-Day. In 1945, the battle of Manila resulted in 250,000 civilian casualties including 100,000 deaths. When told that statistic recently, Prime Minister Netanyahu was astonished. "100,000...well, we have incurred considerably fewer."

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No, Churchill Didn’t Sink the Lusitania, Either

10 February 2024 Comments 0 Comments

The scholar Harry V. Jaffa placed most of the blame on human error: “Not only was Lusitania's steam reduced; her crew was also. The best men had been taken by the Royal Navy; lifeboat drills were listless…. The davits by which they had to be lowered were virtually unworkable from the moment the ship began to list. But the greatest of all the failures was the captain’s, since he navigated almost exactly as he would have done in peacetime.” Captain Turner had slowed down after striking the Irish coast, in order to arrive with the tide at Merseyside.

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Churchill and the Rhineland: “Terrible Circumstances”

5 January 2024 Comments 2 Comments

Churchill would have backed French reoccupation of the Rhineland, but he soon gathered that the League of Nations was toothless. Churchill’s theme did not dramatically change in 1936; it merely evolved. As early as 1933 he had declared: "Whatever way we turn there is risk. But the least risk and the greatest help will be found in re-creating the Concert of Europe." The failure of a concerted response over the Rhineland was to be repeated. Each time western statesmen hoped the latest Hitler inroad would be his last.

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Generals Wavell and Auchinleck, and the Lost Art of Going Quietly

10 December 2023 Comments 0 Comments

Leaving quietly was what you did in those bygone days. Lord Halifax in 1940 proposed negotiations with Hitler; rejected by the War Cabinet, he did not offer interviews to air his grievances. Nor would such an act of public disloyalty have occurred to him. George Marshall, a great man, had many disagreements with his civilian chiefs. Offered a million dollars for his memoirs, he declined, saying, “I have already been adequately compensated for my services.”

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Cars & Churchill: Blood, Sweat & Gears (3): Humber…

25 October 2023 Comments 2 Comments

Churchill’s staff remembered the sense of urgency so characteristic of the man. In the old Humber, “Murray, the detective, would sit at [the chauffeur’s] side, quietly murmuring, ‘slow down here’ or ‘pull in to the left a little more,’” wrote Roy Howells, a male nurse. “At the back Sir Winston would be…tapping on the glass partition and calling out, ‘Go on!’ Whenever he felt Bullock was slow in overtaking he would lean forward and bellow, ‘Now!’ It does Bullock great credit that he never really took the chances his passenger would have liked….”

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John Morley, Victorian Eminence: “Such Men Are Not Found Today”

15 August 2023 Comments 0 Comments

Morley pronounced the epitaph for his age in May 1923, four months before he died. His words sound more like 2023. "Present party designations have become empty of all contents…. Vastly extended State expenditure, vastly increased demands from the taxpayer who has to provide the money, social reform regardless of expense, cash exacted from the taxpayer already at his wits’ end—when were the problems of plus and minus more desperate?"

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Visitor’s Guide to the REAL “Churchill’s London”

30 July 2023 Comments 1 Comment

"Cast your eye from the entrance on the War Rooms slightly to the right. You’ll see a doorway well above ground. To the right of that doorway you will see a set of six windows ending in a curved window at Storey’s Gate. Those are the actual rooms in which Winston Churchill slept and worked during the Second World War."

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Churchill Anecdotes: Epping, Woodford, “Lili Marlene,” Fitzroy Maclean

5 July 2023 Comments 0 Comments

"On 4 July 1942 the 8th army held the line at El Alamein.... You’d see the glow from their cigarettes and pipes, and the little glow from the radio dial. After the news we'd switch over to the "Message from Home" program from Germany. And before long it would go Ompa Ompa—and there was Lili Marlene.... And the 8th Army swept on, capturing on its way 800 miles of desert, 75,000 prisoners, 5000 tanks, 1000 guns, and the famous enemy song of Lili Marlene." —Denis Johnston

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Nashville (6): The Myth of Dresden and “Revenge Firebombing”

8 February 2023 Comments 2 Comments

The Martin Gilbert Learning Centre offers a free Zoom presentation by Lady Gilbert herself, on the 1945 bombing of Dresden. The date is Monday 13 February 2023 at 2pm Eastern, 11 am Pacific, 7pm Greenwich Mean Time. Email Deputy Director Dr. Bethany Gaunt to be put on the Zoom invitation list. Lady Gilbert will include Sir Martin's story about how a Soviet general corroborated the truth about who ordered the bombing—in Moscow!

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