All war is terrible. On the whole, however, I should prefer being hit with tear gas than phosgene, which is to say I’d prefer to sneeze and choke than to be killed.

Isn’t that a terrible thing too?

Imagine 2 situations: 1. Someone with a knife is telling you, ” I kill you” and then actually tries to kill you. 2. Someone with a knife is telling you, ” I kill you” and then ACTS, as he is trying to kill you.

Is the second situation not almost as terrible as the first one? You wish to encounter no situation of those two, both are emotional and traumatic experiences. I don’t think, it makes Churchill a better human, just because “it wouldn’t kill them”. What do you think?

Much misinformation has been published to the effect that Churchill resisted and even openly opposed the D-Day landings in Normandy. It is true that he considered and offered other invasion routes but it is not true that he had to be dragged protesting into Overlord. See Gilbert, “Churchill and D-Day,” Finest Hour 122, Spring 2004, pp 24-27, which shows that it was Roosevelt not Churchill who postponed D-Day, on sound military advice. A readable .pdf can be downloaded at: http://bit.ly/mPat3H.

Further comment and debate on this subject, by Professors Warren Kimball, Norman Rose, Sir Martin Gilbert and this writer, appeared in Finest Hour 124, Autumn 2004, pp 31-37, the .pdf for which is at: http://bit.ly/lPbawt. (In this exchange it was noted that in February 1944, “Churchill again proposed planning an invasion of Norway lest the Normandy attack fail—a proposal that would have drained resources from the campaign in France.” If the Normandy attack had failed, what campaign in France?)