May I suggest the need for further education? The points you cite were not part of Mr. Knowles’s charges, so it is rather jejune to claim my response fails because it didn’t cover them. If you click on the links I do provide, you will see whether or not the reply to Mr. Knowles was weak or not.

As for Dresden and the bombing campaign, my book Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality takes that on wholesale, in a chapter entitled “Mad Bomber.” For only $9.99 for the Kindle you can learn all about why Churchill had to back the bombing campaign, why he was the only Allied leader to question its morality, why he called for it to cease once Germany was on the ropes. You don’t even have to spend $9.99 to read the truth about Dresden, which was requested by the Soviets, and ordered by Clement Attlee. Click here.

The repatriation of Soviet citizens in the later stages of the war, if that’s what you mean by “Christian and other refugees,” is not a happy story and reflects poorly on Churchill and Roosevelt. Of course, other considerations were afoot that influenced them to acquiesce to Stalin’s demands for repatriation, and those were complicated things. It is dangerous to single out this or that unfortunate decision, from of all the decisions competing for time and resolution. WW2 was a very dangerous war.

The criticism is valid, but has a short window. Churchill abandoned Eugenics before he turned forty. For criticisms with rather longer windows see: https://richardlangworth.com/imperfections.”

I am glad you reference that article because I published it—a thoughtful appraisal of the matter by Churchill’s biographer Sir Martin Gilbert. It is available as a .pdf attachment by email to any reader who asks (click on “contact” above).

Eugenics was an irrational, non-scientific, response, in an age of supposed scientific rationality, to a social problem. Briefly it was so popular that the Mental Deficiency Bill of 1913 passed Parliament with only three votes against it.

A number of truly intelligent, learned and well-meaning men and women mistakenly bought into Eugenics. Churchill was one of them. Paul Addison wrote: “Churchill’s intentions were benign, but he was blundering into sensitive areas of civil liberty.” He recognized this early, and was done with Eugenics before World War I. As William Manchester wrote: “It was part of his pattern of response to any political issue that while his early reactions were often emotional, and even unworthy of him, they were usually succeeded by reason and generosity.”

Any attempt to provide a “nuanced and balanced” account of this vile eugenicist would be rather reminiscent of the notion that Hitler made the trains run on time. As I myself am someone that Churchill would have no doubt condemned, vilified and tormented as a “dysgenic,” I can only say (as I would say of a certain other “notable historical figure” of the time): “Tramp the dirt down.”