Research Topics Archives - Page 14 of 20

The Anti-Semite was Diston, Not Churchill

17 June 2017

.A lifelong supporter of Zionism and the Jews, Winston Churchill is sometimes labeled an anti-Semite. The proffered evidence, an alleged article of his, has made the obligatory rounds of the Internet.

A 1937 article draft in the Churchill Archives supposedly proves that Churchill’s off-expressed sympathy for the Jews was hypocrisy. Churchill was, if this article is to be believed, a closet anti-Semite.

Origins of a slur

The allegations began with a 2007 article in Britain’s The Independent: “Uncovered: Churchill’s Warnings About the ‘Hebrew Bloodsuckers.’”

The 1937 draft, “How the Jews Can Combat Persecution,” had “apparently lain unnoticed in the Churchill Archives at Cambridge since the early months of the Second World War,” stated The Independent:

Churchill criticised the “aloofness” of Jewish people from wider society and urged them to make the effort to integrate themselves….Churchill…

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Churchill Qualities: Leadership, Judgment, Humanity

26 May 2017

Qualities

Written for a colleague who asked various contributors for 300 words on the qualities of Winston Churchill they most admire.

Leadership

Few great leaders are also great writers; none who were both compare with Winston Churchill. In 1940 he saved civilization by keeping Britain in the fight until those “who hitherto had been half blind were half ready.” His historical and biographical eloquence won a Nobel Prize. Uniquely for a politician, he thought and wrote deeply about the nature of man. He hated and tried to prevent war. He fought to preserve constitutional liberty.…

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Churchill, Smuts and Apartheid: Questions and Answers

18 May 2017

I read your article about busting four myths about Winston Churchill from The Federalist. Here is an article I’d like you to read and hear your feedback: “Apartheid, made in Britain: Richard Dowden explains how Churchill, Rhodes and Smuts caused black South Africans to lose their rights.” (The Independent, 19 April 1994.) —David E., Ohio

Accurate, But Not Dispositive

Mr. Dowden’s article seems to me broadly accurate, but not dispositive.

It is true that Britain dropped its opposition to making South Africa a “white man’s country” in 1909 by passing the Union of South Africa Act.…

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Fateful Questions: World War II Microcosm (2)

30 April 2017

Fateful Questions

Fateful Questions, September 1943-April 1944, nineteenth of a projected twenty-three document volumes in the official biography, Winston S. Churchill, is reviewed by historian Andrew Roberts in Commentary.

These volumes comprise “every important document of any kind that concerns Churchill.” The present volume sets the size record. Fateful Questions is 2,752 pages long, representing an average of more than eleven pages per day. Yet at $60, it is a tremendous bargain. Order your copy from the Hillsdale College Bookstore.

Here is an excerpt from my account, “Fresh History,” which can be read in its entirety at the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.…

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Critique Down Under: Like Shooting Fish in a Barrel

28 April 2017

Particularly on the Fall of Singapore (see earlier post), a new critique of Churchill misses the forest for the trees and fails on the facts. Really, Churchill made lots of mistakes worth contemplating. But these aren’t among them.

The article appeared in southwest Australia’s Sun Coast Daily on April 26th. Not exactly The Times, and if you don’t subscribe to Google Alerts you missed it. For the fun of shooting fish in a barrel, however, it’s worth a few minutes of your time.

Critique 1: Self-Interest

“Churchill had a long and varied career in politics, managing to swap parties as his career needs required.” …

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Fateful Questions: World War II Microcosm (1)

2 April 2017

Fateful Questions, September 1943-April 1944, nineteenth of the projected twenty-three document volumes, is reviewed by historian Andrew Roberts in Commentary.

The volumes comprise “every important document of any kind that concerns Churchill, and the present volume is 2,752 pages long, representing an average of more than eleven pages per day.” Order your copy from the Hillsdale College Bookstore.

Here is an excerpt from my account, “Fresh History,” which can be read in its entirety at the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.

Fateful Questions: Excerpts

Fastidiously compiled by the late Sir Martin Gilbert and edited by Dr.…

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Churchill Documents: The Italian Navy

23 March 2017

Excerpted from “The Italian Navy in The Churchill Documents, Volume 19,” by Andrew Roberts. To read the full article, click here.

Fateful Questions: September 1943 to April 1944, latest volume in The Churchill Documents, is available from Hillsdale College Bookstore. To order click here.

Andrew Roberts writes:

After the surrender of Italy to the Allies in September 1943, the Italian Fleet was apportioned between the Allied powers and absorbed into their navies. Although the Axis had by then been cleared out of the Mediterranean, the ships played a significant part in the rest of the war.…

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Trump, Russia, and Churchill’s Wisdom

8 March 2017

Published 8 March 2017 on the Daily Caller, under the title “A Lesson on Russia for Trump.” Their title, not mine; I do not presume to offer anyone lessons.

“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.” —Winston Churchill, 1939

“If Putin likes Trump, guess what, folks, that’s called an asset, not a liability. Now I don’t know that I’m going to get along with Vladimir Putin. I hope I do. But there’s a good chance I won’t.” —Donald Trump, 2017

Russia National Interests

Trump-Churchill comparisons are invidious and silly.…

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Galloper Jack Seely, Churchillian

11 February 2017

A colleague asks if it’s true that Churchill comrade Jack Seely was “arrested for arrogance” in the Boer War! It doesn’t sound to either of us like an arrestable offense, but fits the character—a lordly aristocrat-adventurer, and thus almost inevitable Friend of Winston.

A Churchill biographer, Esme Wingfield-Stratford, agreed: “Gallant Jack Seely, from the Isle of Wight…a light-hearted gambler with death, was about the one man who could claim a record to compare with that of Winston himself.”

C.N Trueman thinks that Jack Seely could not have lived in the 21st century. “He truly belonged to an era associated with the British Empire and the attitudes embedded into a society that at one point had a government that controlled a quarter of the world.”…

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Churchill and the Avoidable War: Outline

31 January 2017

Was the war really avoidable? Yes, it was—at Munich in particular—but with great difficulty. No one can underestimate the problems in the way. And yet, tantalizing opportunities existed. "Appeasement" is not in "Churchill and the Avoidable War." It is far over-used, and broadly misunderstood. It is not popular, Churchill wrote, "but appeasement has its place in all policy." There are lessons in Churchill's Avoidable War that serve us well today. Will we listen? We rarely have.

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