Comments on: Not Churchill, re Germany: “We butchered the wrong pig”

By: Jonathan Meldrum

Jonathan Meldrum — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 08:02:41 +0000

@marc demers –

1) If it’s in a book by Churchill it’s scanned and searchable. No search yields it. A voiceover on a YouTube video claiming to quote from his book is no substitute, on the contrary.

2) This phrase is an inversion of Churchill’s politics which are famously and unbendingly philosemitic, liberal, anti-authoritarian, and anti-Hitler. It is unthinkable he would exculpate Hitler’s Germany and instead place blame on Jews.

By: Richard Kennard

Richard Kennard — Sun, 17 Sep 2023 23:18:35 +0000

Hello, thank you for posting my reply from 11 March 2023. You are absolutely correct in saying the text does not quote what Churchill actually said. But you must admit that his sentiments come perilously close to "we butchered the wrong pig." Albeit a brief and regrettable attitude, possibly derived from the great amount of stress of the situation. Is it possible the quote was attributed to Mr. Churchill by a politician or reporter after reading this very report? - None that I can find. I can only attest to what he actually said, not his innermost thoughts. I have appended to my article his words to Anthony Montague Browne's poser in 1955: Had they fought the wrong tyrant? WSC replied: "There's not much in that." There is no indication, let alone quotation, suggesting that he ever doubted the wisdom of fighting Hitler to the finish. -RML

By: Richard Kennard

Richard Kennard — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 01:34:05 +0000

"I said that frankly, as I had listened to him inveigh so violently against the threat of Soviet domination and the spread of Communism in Europe, and disclose such a lack of confidence in the professions of good faith in Soviet leadership, I had wondered whether he, the Prime Minister, was now willing to declare to the world that he and Britain had made a mistake in not supporting Hitler, for as I understood him, he was now expressing the doctrine which Hitler and Goebbels had been proclaiming and reiterating for the past four years in an effort to break up allied unity and “divide and conquer." Exactly the same conditions which he described and the same deductions were drawn from them as he now appeared to assert." - The writer, Joseph E. Davies, former Ambassador to the USSR, does not quote Churchill as saying "we slaughtered the wrong pig," the subject of this post. For Davies' full letter, to President Truman (12 June 1945) including Churchill's alleged response, see Foreign Relations of the United States, Potsdam Conference I: 33. (Warning, Davies was not economical with words.) Critics of Churchill from both Left and Right often asserted that Churchill believed this, which oversimplifies his true views. Of Davies in particular, we need to understand why he wrote as he did. (Start with a look at his Wikipedia entry). For Churchill's reply when his Private Secretary (playing Devil's Advocate) voiced a similar question, see under "1955" above. -RML

By: Kenneth Ingle

Kenneth Ingle — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 17:45:58 +0000

I was a school child in Hove at the end of WW2, but can remember well, that Churchill was said to have spoken these words! I was therefore more than surprised and astonished recently to hear claims that he had not done so.
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Diligent research cannot turn up one attribution of the quote. Of course it’s always possible, but one would think something that noteworthy would at least have a press notice. —RML

By: Tom Hart

Tom Hart — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 15:05:31 +0000

Apparently it’s in The New Statesman and Nation, volume 35, page 373, dated 28th August 1948; it was said, “supposedly”, on a tour of bombed-out German cities. - Thanks, do you have the specific wording? He was not in Germany in 1948 though he was at the Congress of Europe at The Hague, and he did see lots of damage in 1945. The thought is not out of line with his regrets over developments, but to prove it genuine, we need a primary source or at least a reliable secondary attribution. -RML

By: Marc Demers

Marc Demers — Mon, 20 Dec 2021 23:10:49 +0000

I beg to differ...The quote seemingly comes from his book The Second World War, per YouTube. = Seemingly? "Should Germany merchandise again"...."We will force this war upon Hitler"...."Germany's unforgivable crime"....etc. is simply not among his 20 million published words, all of which the Churchill Project has scanned. People can invent quotes all day long. If one wants to be taken seriously they need to show us attribution, book, edition and pagination. It is not in his war memoirs, nor anywhere else. RML