Search Results for: misquotes

Bombing Japan: Churchill’s View

Bombing Japan: Churchill’s View

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Scott John­son of Pow­er­line (“Why We Dropped the Bomb,” 13 April) kind­ly links an old col­umn of his quot­ing an old one of mine with ref­er­ence to Pres­i­dent Obama’s vis­it to Hiroshi­ma and the atom bomb­ing of Japan.

John­son links a lec­ture by Pro­fes­sor Williamson Mur­ray, which is worth con­sid­er­ing, along with Paul Fussell’s clas­sic essay in The New Repub­lic, “Thank God for the Atom Bomb,” which makes you think, though some con­sid­er it a rant. Fussell wrote:

John Ken­neth Gal­braith is per­suad­ed that the Japan­ese would have sur­ren­dered sure­ly by Novem­ber with­out an inva­sion.…

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The Dallying Duke of Marlborough

The Dallying Duke of Marlborough

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This his­tor­i­cal cor­ner of the Web is exer­cised over the mis­quotes and tall tales about Win­ston Churchill that clut­ter the Internet—by every­body from Wash­ing­ton quar­ter­back Robert Grif­fin III to assort­ed authors and politi­cians (see “Churchillian Drift”).   

They range from RG III’s recent “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak” (nobody knows who said that, but Churchill didn’t) to the fic­tion that Alexan­der Flem­ing twice saved Churchill’s life.

But here’s an amus­ing exam­ple of Churchill him­self destroy­ing a Churchill myth—about his ances­tor John Churchill, First Duke of Marl­bor­ough. Ref­er­ence is to the ear­ly pages of Marl­bor­ough: His Life and Times, vol.…

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Boris Says the Strangest Things

Boris Says the Strangest Things

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Boris John­son, whose book, The Churchill Fac­tor, is fet­ed wide­ly, speaks his mind with a smile. Like Mr. Oba­ma, he’s a chap I’d like to share a pint with at the local.

But fame and lik­a­bil­i­ty don’t a Churchill schol­ar make. And in that depart­ment, Boris John­son needs some help.

His remarks are quot­ed from a Novem­ber 14th speech at the Yale Club in New York City.

Boris Fact-checks

1) Lend-Lease, Roosevelt’s World War II “loan” of $50 bil­lion worth of war materiel to the Allies, “screwed” the British.

I queried Pro­fes­sor War­ren Kim­ball of Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty, edi­tor of the Churchill-Roo­sevelt Cor­re­spon­dence and sev­er­al books on World War II, who wrote:

The U.S.…

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Torture, Obama, Churchill

Torture, Obama, Churchill

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Tor­ture Top­ics: In his press con­fer­ence of 29 April 2009, in response to a ques­tion on the dis­clo­sure of top secret mem­os on the use of “enhanced inter­ro­ga­tion meth­ods,” Mr. Oba­ma said:

I was struck by an arti­cle that I was read­ing the oth­er day talk­ing about the fact that the British dur­ing World War II, when Lon­don was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, ‘We don’t tor­ture,’ when the entire British—all of the British people—were being sub­ject­ed to unimag­in­able risk and threat….the rea­son was that Churchill under­stood — you start tak­ing short­cuts, over time, that cor­rodes what’s best in a peo­ple.…

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