Churchill on sacking generals

“It is difficult to remove a bad General at the height of a campaign; it is atrocious to remove a good General.” —WSC, 6 November 1942

A reader asked how Churchill’s firing of two popular generals in 1941-42 compared to the sacking of Douglas MacArthur, the Korean War commander, by President Truman in 1951. There is no comparison.

Churchill’s generals, Archibald Wavell and Claude Auchinleck, were removed in the hope of more vigorous operations against Irwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps. Moreover, the British generals continued their careers and honorable service. MacArthur was relieved for insubordination to the civilian authority. Though briefly mooted as a presidential candidate, he never served again. “They started raising money to buy him a Cadillac,” Harry Truman cracked. “He never got that car.” (MacArthur might have replied as did Mrs. Robert Taft, who said, “I’m just mild about Harry.”)

Archibald Wavell

General Wavell (1883-1950) was relieved of the British Middle East Command on 21 June 1941. In effect, he changed places with General Claude Auchinleck, becoming Commander-in-Chief India and, two years later, India’s Viceroy.

Churchill wrote that Wavell “received the decision with poise and dignity…. On reading my message he said, ‘The Prime Minister is quite right. There ought to be a new eye and a new hand in this theatre.’ In regard to the new command he placed himself entirely at the disposal of His Majesty’s Government.” [1] Earlier, Churchill had expressed an opinion of Wavell that never wavered: “A master of war, sage, painstaking, daring and tireless.” [2]

Wavell remained in the Army until 1943, when he became Viceroy of India. His first and most important action was to take steps to relieve the Bengal Famine. There he served until 1947.

Claude Auchinleck

General Auchinleck, known as “The Auk” (1884-1981), lost his Middle East Command on 8 August 1942. Churchill offered him the Iraq and Persia Command. Auchinleck declined, believing it was wrong to separate those from the Middle East. He returned to India, and when Wavell became Viceroy he reassumed command of the Indian Army. He retired in 1947 after forty-three years of distinguished service.

The Auk had won the First Battle of Alamein in July 1942. His plans to finish Rommel were in place when he was relieved. Nevertheless, Churchill wrote, he “received the stroke with soldierly dignity.” [3]

“It was a terrible thing to have to do,” WSC added later. “He took it like a gentleman. But it was a terrible thing. It is difficult to remove a bad General at the height of a campaign; it is atrocious to remove a good General. We must use Auchinleck again. We cannot afford to lose such a man from the fighting line.” [4] Churchill—safe in his own skin and utterly disdaining opinion polls—could confidently say such a thing.

The lost art of leaving quietly

The two relieved generals placed themselves at the government’s disposal. They left their commands professing esteem for their civilian chiefs, and vice-versa. They retired years later after illustrious careers.

Leaving quietly was what you did in those bygone days. Lord Halifax in 1940 proposed negotiations with Hitler; rejected by the War Cabinet, he did not offer interviews to air his grievances. Nor would such an act of public disloyalty have occurred to him. George Marshall, a great man, had many disagreements with his civilian chiefs. Offered a million dollars for his memoirs, he declined, saying, “I have already been adequately compensated for my services.”

Endnotes

[1] Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance (London: Cassell, 1950), 310.

[2] Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963, 8 vols. (New York: Bowker, 1974) VI: 6346.

[3] Winston S. Churchill, The Hinge of Fate (London: Cassell, 1951), 422.

[4] Harold Nicolson Diary, 6 November 1942, in Nigel Nicolson, ed., Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters, vol. II 1945-67 (London: Collins, 1967), 259.

[5] World Association of International Studies, 24 June 2010.

Further reading

“On Good News from Generals: Churchill’s Experience and Methods,” 2021.

“Winston Churchill’s Three Best War Books,” 2020.

Raymond Callahan, “Great Contemporaries: Wavell, Man of Silences,” 2021.

Raymond Callahan, “Great Contemporaries: Auchinleck, Soldier of the Raj,” 2021.

Dear Superintendent Smith: I write in opposition to the petition to rename Winston Churchill High School. A hard copy of this is in the mail, but this digital version offers links which may be of interest.

The Hillsdale College Churchill Project has a digital reference to all of Winston Churchill’s 20 million published words—books, articles, speeches, private papers—and 60 million words about him in biographies, documents and memoirs. They prove that he is not guilty of the charges in the petition reported by Caitlyn Peetz in Bethesda Magazine. I would be glad to participate with your committee or students by email or Zoom if they wish to examine this question further.

The petition on India

The petition argues that Churchill “stole grain from India to feed soldiers in World War II.” Nothing of the kind occurred. Indian grain did feed soldiers (most of them Indian), but it did not come from famine areas. In 1943, Churchill ordered the new Viceroy, General Wavell: “Every effort must be made, even by the diversion of shipping urgently needed for war purposes, to deal with local shortages, [preventing] the hoarding of grain for a better market.” He also urged Wavell to ease the strife between Hindus and Muslims: “No form of democratic Government can flourish in India while so many millions are by their birth excluded from those fundamental rights of equality between man and man, upon which all healthy human societies must stand.” (Italics mine.)

In the midst of a world war, Churchill scoured every grain source from Iraq to Australia, which helped bring an end to the 1943-44 famine. Arthur Herman, Pulitzer nominee for Gandhi and Churchill, wrote: “Absent Churchill, the Bengal Famine would have been worse.” Attached is a chapter from my book, Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality, which explains Churchill’s actions in detail. I would be glad to send you a copy of the book for the school library.

“Beastly”

The petition mentions a popular Churchill “quote”—which has only one source, and no other occurrences. Supposedly Churchill said Indians and their religion were “beastly.” This is actually hearsay, from the diaries of Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India. Amery was a good and decent man, but excitable and fiery. His own diaries are not lacking in racist language. In one sentence he used more racial pejoratives than Churchill used in his life. They include the most repulsive term for black people. There is not one instance in our records of Churchill using that word.

Whatever he said, Churchill was referring not to the Indian peoples but to Delhi nationalists, with whom Amery was negotiating. Why did Churchill use the term “beastly,” if indeed he did? The Indian historian Dr. Tirthankar Roy explains. In 1942:

…everything he said about Indians and the Empire was related to the Indian nationalist movement. Negotiating with Indian nationalists during the war could be pointless and dangerous because the moderate nationalists were demoralized by dissensions and the radical nationalists wanted the Axis powers to win on the Eastern Front. No prime minister would be willing to fight a war and negotiate with the nationalists at the same time.

On Africa

The petition claims Churchill ordered Kenyans into camps “where they were subject to severe torture, malnutrition, beatings.” Churchill gave no such order. The Kenya Mau-Mau uprising had more native opponents than supporters. Both it and the local government indulged in atrocities, though the Mau-Mau’s were worse. There are only two instances where Churchill mentioned the Kenya uprising in Cabinet. In one he expressed concern over loss of life. In the second he warned against “mass executions.” Jomo Kenyatta, father of modern Kenya, said: “Mau-Mau was a disease which had been eradicated, and must never be remembered again.”

The petition says Churchill “defended the use of concentration camps in South Africa.” There is no evidence, unless this refers to POW camps in the Boer War. (Churchill himself was incarcerated in one.) From age 25 (when he argued for black rights with his Boer captor in Pretoria), to age 80 (when he denied South Africa’s perennial demand to annex native-run protectorates), Churchill constantly supported native rights in South Africa. Perhaps this is why Nelson Mandela, before addressing a Joint Session in 1994, asked me for a copy of Churchill’s last speech to Congress.

For the rights of all

Dr. Smith, I have spent forty years studying Churchill and defending his good name. He had 90 years to make political and strategic mistakes, and they were sometimes big ones. But assaults on his character and sense of justice are unjustified.

In his time, Churchill expressed support for the rights of peoples of all colors, despite the prevailing prejudices. His defenders sometimes offer the excuse that he was “just a man of his time.” “Everybody,” they say, “was racist then.” Given the truth, this is a disservice. Again and again, Churchill’s views proved far in advance of his time.  As a result, the establishment of his day often regarded him as a dangerous radical.

Your high school deserves to keep his name. I note that one of the alternatives proposed is the name of Frederick Douglass. His statue, along with Churchill’s, is on our Hillsdale campus. A few days ago, a statue of Douglass in Rochester, New York, was ripped from its pedestal and hurled into a gully. In the onward march of ignorance, it appears no hero is safe.

Respectfully, Richard Langworth

Action and inaction

Q: Could you verify the correct wording for the Winston Churchill statement:  “I never worry about action, but only inaction.” There are various iterations among the sources. —S.D.

From Churchill by Himself, page 190 (note he placed quotemarks around “worry”): “I never ‘worry’ about action, but only about inaction.”

Reference: 1940s, passim. Martin Gilbert, The Churchill Documents, Vol. 15: Never Surrender, May 1940-December 1940 (Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College Press, 2011). In his preface, page xvi, Sir Martin writes of Churchill:

Inefficiency, incompetence and negative attitudes roused his ire…. He did not take kindly to what he called “a drizzle of carping criticism.” [He despised those who] “failed to rise to the height of circumstances.” Among his injunctions to his Ministers were, “Don’t let this matter sleep,” and, “I never ‘worry’ about action, but only about inaction.”

There are several appearances of the quotation. Here is one in a letter, on page 1184 of the above work: Concerning “Operation Compass,” the first major British offensive in North Africa. Churchill wrote to General Dill on 7 December 1940:

…If, with the situation as it is, General Wavell is only playing small, and is not hurling on his whole available forces with furious energy, he will have failed to rise to the height of circumstances. I never “worry” about action, but only about inaction.

“Religion of blood and war”

Q: Did Churchill refer to Islam as “the religion of blood and war”?  —I.L.

Yes, in his first book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force (London: Longmans Green, 1898). Quoting from a newer edition (London: Leo Cooper, 1991), page 27:

But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance…. The prospects of material prosperity, the fear of death itself, are flung aside. The more emotional Pathans are powerless to resist. All rational considerations are forgotten. Seizing their weapons, they become Ghazis—as dangerous and as sensible as mad dogs: fit only to be treated as such.

While the more generous spirits among the tribesmen become convulsed in an ecstasy of religious bloodthirstiness, poorer and more material souls derive additional impulses from the influence of others, the hopes of plunder and the joy of fighting…. The religion of blood and war is face to face with that of peace.

It would be inappropriate to quote these words out of context because they referred to Pathan warriors 100 years ago. Their worst atrocities, Churchill went on, were against fellow Muslims. There are many examples of his praise of Muslim fighters, notably those in the World War II Indian Army. He considered Muslim Dervishes pictured above “as brave men as ever walked the earth.” Context matters.

From one crater to another

No sooner does the campaign for Churchill’s memory quell emissions from one crater than another one erupts. The campaign to delegitimize Churchill as Hero continues, but the main volcanos have already erupted. Now we have the odd subsidiary crater spouting the same old stuff. Not much is new, so this is only for the record.

On July 1st in Forbes emitted “Churchill the Failure: The Paraxodical Truth about the Best and Worst Leaders.” This was sent to their corrections department (no reply):

* * *

The author makes insightful points about leadership. He then constructs a narrative about Churchill based on the eruptions of critics who crop evidence to suit themselves. (1) Racial slurs in Churchill’s conversation are extremely rare. (2) Without the diaries of Leo Amery, hearsay evidence cited to show Churchill’s “hate” of Indians would not exist. Indeed, Amery’s own diaries include racist terms Churchill never used. (3) Churchill in WW2 praised “2.5 million Indian soldiers and officers, both Moslem and Hindu [and] the response of the Indian peoples, no less than the conduct of their soldiers.”

(4) Amery’s alleged Churchill quotes are all from 1942-44. In that period, according to Indian historian Tirthankar Roy: “Almost everything Churchill said about Indians was related to the nationalist movement. Negotiating with nationalists during the war could be pointless and dangerous because the moderates were demoralized and the radical nationalists wanted the Axis to win. No prime minister would be willing to fight a war and negotiate with the nationalists at the same time.” (5) In truth, Churchill and his Cabinet pulled out every stop to alleviate the Bengal Famine. Arthur Herman, Pulitzer nominee for Churchill and Gandhi, writes: “Absent Churchill, the Bengal Famine would have been worse.”

If we condemn Churchill for the rare racial epithet, should we also condemn Amery, who made them wholesale? What about Gandhi, who said nothing about the famine? In South Africa Gandhi wrote that whites should be “the predominating race.” Blacks, he said, were “troublesome, very dirty and live like animals.” Gandhi racist? Surely not. We must look at the total picture of every historical figure. Amery served honorably. Gandhi led India to independence. Churchill saved civilization. All three were good and decent men. But there are differences.

The Crater Halifax: death of a thousand Post-It notes

In Halifax, Nova Scotia, protestors surrounded the Nemon statue of Churchill in a “Walk Against Winston.” There was no spray-paint or attempts to pull it down. These polite folk were armed with Post-It notes. They included the familiar litany of false charges, out of context quotes. Of course there was hearsay from Leo Amery (see above): “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.”

Terry Reardon replied on behalf of the Churchill Society Canada: “Attacks on Winston Churchill in the Canadian media are nothing new. On our website are replies to articles in the Toronto Star and the National Post.”

Reardon referenced Arthur Herman’s definitive article on the Bengal famine (above). It laid out fact after fact on the causes of, and Churchill’s actions to alleviate, food shortages. He also attached Churchill’s 8 October 1943 directive to the new Viceroy, Lord Wavell, which is even more definitive. From The Churchill Documents, vol. 19, 421:

Every effort must be made, even by the diversion of shipping urgently needed for war purposes, to deal with local shortages…. Every effort should be made by you to assuage the strife between the Hindus and Moslems and to induce them to work together for the common good. No form of democratic Government can flourish in India while so many millions are by their birth excluded from those fundamental rights of equality between man and man, upon which all healthy human societies must stand…. The declarations of His Majesty’s Government in favour of the establishment of a self-governing India as an integral member of the British Empire and Commonwealth of Nations remain our inflexible policy.

* * *

The reply, from one of the Walk Against Winston organizers: “Churchill and his government’s policies directly and unquestionably contributed to massive death and suffering in the case of the Bengal Famine. While Churchill’s role in opposing Hitler is significant historically, I don’t think the masses of brown and black people who he and his fellow ruling elites colonized, dispossessed, exploited, and consigned to oblivion would agree with your laudatory and rose-coloured characterization.”

How do you answer people who refuse to rebut or even acknowledge facts? They know what they think.  They’ve read their Twitter and Facebook. It is all generalities, without a source or a reference. Don’t bother them with the truth. They’ve already made up their minds.

Déjà vu all over again

An article called “Rethinking Churchill” ran on ORF, a website founded in 1990 “at the juncture of ideation tempered by pragmatism.” In a two-part article, the author repeated the same charges refuted three years ago by Soren Geiger for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project: “By my count, he makes twenty-two distinct claims about or against Winston Churchill in his 900-word article,” Mr. Geiger wrote. “I could deal with each of these one at a time. But here I will examine some of the most serious. In so doing, I aim to reveal his allegations against Churchill as unfounded and his historical analysis as embarrassingly sloppy.” To read, click here.

In ORF, the author adds another one: “The vaingloriously self-serving but elegant volumes [Churchill] authored on the World War II led the Nobel Committee, unable in all conscience to give him an award for peace, to grant him, astonishingly enough, the Nobel Prize for Literature — an unwitting tribute to the fictional qualities inherent in Churchill’s self-justifying embellishments.”

This may play well in the Twitterverse. Few there will know that Churchill’s prize in literature came before his vainglorious self-serving WW2 volumes were complete. The Nobel Committee cited his works of “historical and biographical description.” They particularly singled out Marlborough and My Early Life. You can look it up. So much for that crater.

Reader response

Mr. Geiger’s article above is entitled, “Winston Churchill the Racist Warmonger.” Scroll to the comments and you will find a reader reply. It mainly repeats all the above points, which the reader had clearly accepted. I responded. Most of it you’ve heard before. But for ease of reference, I include it here:

Dear Reader: Thank you for reading. Not a bad idea at all.

(1) Now please read Arthur Herman, “Absent Churchill, the Bengal Famine would have been worse.” (2) Next read “Churchill on India,” particularly Churchill’s words to Gandhi and Nehru—hardly those of a despiser. Churchill believed India should have self-government; what he opposed—and, yes, acted against—was the Congress Party’s Brahmin dominance. Hence Churchill to Ghanshyam Das Birla: “Mr. Gandhi has gone very high in my esteem since he stood up for the Untouchables.” And Gandhi’s reply: “I have got a good recollection of Mr. Churchill when he was in the Colonial Office and somehow or other since then I have held the opinion that I can always rely on his sympathy and goodwill.”

(4) Next, read Indian historian Tirthankar Roy: “Everything [Churchill] said about Indians and the Empire was related to the Indian nationalist movement. Negotiating with Indian nationalists during the war could be pointless and dangerous because the moderate nationalists were demoralized by dissensions and the radical nationalists wanted the Axis powers to win on the Eastern Front. No prime minister would be willing to fight a war and negotiate with the nationalists at the same time.” (5) Before you accept Leopold Amery’s hearsay Churchill quotes, read “Churchill’s ‘Racist Epithets’” to learn how many occurred in Amery’s (but not Churchill’s) everyday speech. Was Amery mouthing Churchill, or himself?

* * *

(6) For what Churchill really thought about Indians read “The Indian Contribution in WW2”: “The glorious heroism and martial qualities of the Indian troops who fought in the Middle East, who defended Egypt, who liberated Abyssinia, who played a grand part in Italy, and who, side by side with their British comrades, expelled the Japanese from Burma…. The unsurpassed bravery of Indian soldiers and officers, both Moslem and Hindu, shine for ever in the annals of war.” This man hated Indians?

(7) On “poison gas,” read “Churchill and Chemical Warfare,” and learn the difference between tear gas (which he unfortunately labeled “poison”) and the gasses Germans began using in wartime. On “Aryan stock,” read “Churchill Derangement Syndrome,” for where and when he said it (and see last paragraph below). In the same piece, note that the “camel dung” crack is hearsay.

Nor is it possible to excuse Churchill as “a man of his time.” In fact he was far in advance of his time. From ages 25 to 80, examples abound of his concern for the rights of peoples of all colors, particularly in South Africa (you can read about that, too).

Bottom line: Churchill was human. He made mistakes, sometimes big ones. His language is almost absent of racial slurs, but he did believe a hierarchy of races existed back then. That is not the remarkable fact. The remarkable fact is that he consistently defended human rights. One has only to read to learn—something besides outbursts on the Twitterverse.

The “pernicious vermin” crater

The “stone him” crater

Fighting back: “The truth is great, and shall prevail.” *

Increasing signs that the search for truth survives. *”Don’t bother to read the comments”—same old stuff.

Why Churchill’s Leadership was Indispensable, Joseph Laconte, National Review.

“Churchill Out of Context,” Editorial Board, Toledo Blade

G. P. Taylor: “Stop Snowflakes and BBC Denigrating Winston Churchill,” Yorkshire Post

Cathy Gungell, “Is it Time to Stop Calling Churchill a Racist?“, UK Conservative Woman

Dominic Sandbrook, “Why should we be forced to pay for a BBC that portrays Winston Churchill as a mass murdering racist?”, Daily Mail

Edward G. Marks, “In Defense of Keeping Churchill’s Name on School,” Bethesda Magazine 

Bradley Gitz, “The Age of Dumb,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:  “In London, fake anti-fascists fighting imaginary fascists vandalized a statue of a real anti-fascist who fought real fascists by the name of Churchill. Or as another wag more succinctly put it, ‘Wait till they hear about the guys he fought against.'”

Thoughtful articles by historians

Heartening in the face of all this is the determined pursuit of truth by Indian scholars. Thanks and a tip of the hat to:

Video: “The Case for Churchill”

Churchill historian Andrew Roberts in a fair and balanced interview by Darren Grimes. Among other shibboleths, he covers Churchill “quotes” in his doctor’s diaries (minute 19). These were often imaginative afterthoughts, added twenty-five years later.

Dr. Roberts’ biography, Churchill: Walking with Destiny, calmly lays out the unvarnished truth, including Churchill’s flaws and mistakes. But as Roberts says, it’s easier to scrawl “racist” on a statue than it is to read a 1000-page book.

In our electronic Speaker’s Corner (the Internet), Winston Churchill is beset by haters. Their knee-jerk spouts are laced with out-of-context quotes and preconceived notions. Call it Churchill Derangement Syndrome. Where is the truth? Perhaps we need a Derangement Index. Click on “A” for Aryan Supremacy, “B” for the Bengal Famine, etc. A handy reference to every derangement you can access with a couple of clicks.

An e-zine called This is Local London, describing its offerings as “quality local journalism,” is a standard example. Well, maybe not so standard. “The Problem with Glorying Winston Churchill” was written not by a historian or researcher, but a student at Wallington County Grammar School. If this what they’re teaching in British grammar schools, the Prime Minister has a bigger problem than Brexit.

It’s a tongue-lashing for the ages. “Blind worship and romanticisation [sic] of Churchill…is dangerous to our understandings of race and understanding” [sic]. Especially given “the harrowing reality.” What is that? Why, you doofus, it’s Churchill’s “virulent racism, sympathy for fascist and extremist ideology.” Yet—can you believe it?—we still airbrush his “horrible actions and distasteful racist, xenophobic venom.” Why do we glorify “this self-identified white supremacist as a figure worthy of acclaim?”

Derangement Primer

Herein we encapsulate this episode of Churchill Derangement in alphabetical order. Young Reporter’s accusations are in italics. Incorrect, unsourced, inaccurate or otherwise false quotes are marked with curly brackets {like this}. They are not worthy of quotemarks.

“A” is for Aryans

Churchill’s conviction of the {superiority of the Aryan race} “is starkly reminiscent of Hitler’s.” Churchill said whites were ‘a stronger race, a higher grade race.’ ” Churchill’s “almost Nazi belief that ‘the Aryan stock is bound to triumph’…compelled him to engage in a number of imperial conquests.”

First, question: What imperial conquests?  Churchill said “The Aryan stock is bound to triumph” in 1901 when he was 27, the Empire long established. He spoke of “a higher grade race” to the Peel Commission on Palestine in 1937. Hardly reminiscent of Hitler and his plan for genocide. (N.B.: Unfortunately for him 100 years later, Churchill often said “race” when he meant “nation.” Just as he said “poison gas” when he meant tear gas—in retrospect, a bad gaffe.)

In “today’s political climate” such words sound bad. But saying “everybody thought that way in 1901 or 1937” is a poor defense of Churchill. The real defense does exist.  Anybody can read it. Perhaps “Young Reporter” should read it:

We spend a lot of time arguing that Churchill was remarkable. Then when something comes along that we do not like, we excuse it or explain it as typical of the age. I do not think Churchill was typical of the age on this question, if the age was racist…. You can quote Abraham Lincoln in precisely the same sense. The remarkable thing is that Lincoln, for the slaves, and Churchill, for the Empire, believed that people of all colors should enjoy the same rights, and that it was the mission of their country to protect those rights. Therefore to say that Winston Churchill was “a man of his time,” or that “everyone back then was a racist,” is to miss the singular feature.

“B” is for Bengal Famine

“Churchill orchestrated the Bengal famine, exporting grain and being responsible for the unnecessary deaths of four million Indians.”

This vicious, tired, and hackneyed accusation has been a routine derangement since an ill-researched book made the claim a decade ago. That book was reviewed by the distinguished Gandhi biographer Arthur Herman: “Absent Churchill, Bengal’s Famine would have been Worse.” How so? All you have to do is read.

“D” is for Dung Eaters

Churchill also likened the Palestinians to {barbaric hoards who ate little but camel dung}, Young Reporter writes..

This derangement is based on hearsay, though I wouldn’t dispute the context. Michael Makovsky, in his excellent work Churchill’s Promised Land, credited Malcolm MacDonald, then colonial secretary: “He told me I was crazy to help the Arabs, because they were a backward people who ate nothing but camel dung.” Makovsky wrote: “While these might not have been Churchill’s exact words the gist of the comment jibed with what he had thought of the Palestinian Arabs at least since encountering them in the early 1920s.” So Churchill had his prejudices—which didn’t stop him from urging fair treatment of Arabs and Jews in Palestine.

“E” is for Eugenics

Churchill was driven by a deep loathing of democracy for anyone other than the British and a tiny clique of supposedly superior races and warned the Prime Minister at the time, Stanley Baldwin, not to appoint him to Cabinet as his views on race and eugenics were so thoroughly antiquated and morally reprehensible.

Not much derangement here. Yes, circa 1912, young Churchill had a fling with Eugenics. He abandoned it within two years. Deciding it was an affront to civil liberties, he never spoke of it again. Churchill never warned Baldwin not to appoint him—from the mid-1930s he desperately wanted to be appointed. Baldwin excluded Churchill for his incessant rearmament demands. My book, Churchill and the Avoidable War, spends several chapters on all this. I would be happy to make a gift of it to Young Reporter—provided he promised to read it. By all accounts Baldwin was more of a white supremacist than Churchill.

 “G” is for Gallipoli

“Churchill was also at the helm of the diabolical Gallipoli campaign during World War II, in which tens of thousands of British civilians died unnecessarily as a result of Churchill’s needless competence.”

Yes, Young Reporter did say “World War II” and “needless competence.” He means World War I and needless incompetence. But Churchill’s diabolical helmsmanship was over the Dardanelles, not Gallipoli. He neither planned nor directed the disastrous Gallipoli landings. Also, he learned from his mistakes. After World War II he wrote of the Dardanelles: “…a supreme enterprise was cast away, through my trying to carry out a major and cardinal operation of war from a subordinate position. Men are ill-advised to try such ventures. This lesson had sunk into my nature.” Some derangement.

“H” is for Hitler

Churchill’s “sympathy for fascist ideology” begins with Hitler. In 1935, he wrote: “If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.”

Churchill wrote that in the Evening Standard on 17 September 1937, after he had been attacked by the Nazi press as an enemy of Germany. He said he’d been wronged, mentioning all his overtures to Germany after World War I. These included shipping food to blockaded Hamburg, repatriating prisoners, opposing France’s invasion of the Ruhr, and so on.

Before the sentence quoted, he wrote: “One may dislike Hitler’s system and yet admire his patriotic achievement.” At the time, Churchill was walking on eggs. His article had to clear the Foreign Office, anxious not to insult dear old Adolf. Even so, there is nothing that suggests “sympathy for fascist ideology.” In fact, Churchill had Hitler’s number from the get-go. You can look it up.

“I” is for Indians

“Churchill openly admitted his visceral hatred of Indians, referring to them as ‘a beastly people with a beastly religion,’ and that it was their fault for dying in the famine because they ‘bred like rabbits’ and because they were ‘the beastliest people in the world, next to the Germans….’ Leo Amery, British Secretary of State for India, said Churchill ‘didn’t see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s’ {regarding race and eugenics}. “But, whilst there is mostly a general consensus that Hitler is a white supremacist, authoritarian mass murdering [expletive deleted], this tag is similarly applicable to Churchill.”

Churchill Derangement has a feast of words here. WSC did make those outbursts, frustrated with disputatious demands from Delhi in the midst of all-out war. William F. Buckley put them in context: “I don’t doubt that the famous gleam came to his eyes when he said this, with mischievous glee—an offense, in modem convention, of genocidal magnitude.” Indeed so.

Amery did say that to Churchill, “which annoyed him no little.” It was Amery’s job to plead India’s case—and Churchill’s to set priorities in a war to the death. Yet in the end, Arthur Herman explained: “Even Amery admitted…the ‘unassailable’ case against diverting vital war shipping to India.” Churchill’s appointment of Field Marshal Wavell as Viceroy ultimately eased India’s famine. “Far from a racist conspiracy to break the country, the Viceroy noted that ‘all the Dominion Governments are doing their best to help.’”

This is the same Churchill who wrote of the 2.5 million-volunteer Indian Army: “the response of the Indian peoples, no less than the conduct of their soldiers, makes a glorious final page in the story of our Indian Empire.” Was that derangement?

“K” is for Kurds

Churchill “was a man who advocated gassing the Kurds and who declared himself ‘strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.’”

This Golden Oldie has been around longer even than the Bengal famine nonsense. The quote is easy trap for the gullible—if they don’t read the surrounding words…

It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected. [Italics mine.]

For those of you in Rio Linda, or Wallington County Grammar School, “lachrymatory gas” is tear gas. 

“L” is for Landslide (1945)

“It is telling that as soon as those incredibly brave soldiers returned home, they helped to vote Winston Churchill out of office in large numbers, in what was a landslide victory for the most radically left-wing Labour government in history.”

It is telling, but not in that way. In 1945, Britons voted massively for the Labour opposition (hardly the most radical in history). Not because of Churchill, who was handily reelected. Voters rejected the Conservative Party, which who had brought them a decade of appeasement and war. And for Labour, which promised a grand future. “I wouldn’t call it [ingratitude],” Churchill said. “They have had a very hard time.”

“M” is for Mussolini 

Churchill was “a raving supporter of Mussolini.” He said {fascism has rendered a service to the entire world}. And: “If I were Italian, I am sure I should have been wholeheartedly with you from the start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.”

My book, Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality, devotes a chapter to “Mussolini, Law-Giver and Jackal.” Churchill did praise Musso twice. The first time (correctly quoted above), was in 1927, when WSC was Chancellor of the Exchequer. His aim was to get Il Duce to cough up the Italian war debt. (He did get some of it.) The second was in 1940 when he tossed a few bouquets at the Italian, hoping he wouldn’t join the war with Hitler. He failed. For Churchill, Mussolini then became the “whipped jackal” yelping at the side of “the German tiger.” Early on, of course, lots of people who feared Leninism were praising Mussolini. But Churchill and the Italians delivered the final verdict. They must have suffered from Mussolini Derangement.

“N” is for Nuking the Soviets

“Churchill wanted to inflict nuclear holocaust on Soviet Union in peacetime,” Young Reporter breathlessly asserts.

The truth is less spectacular. Shortly after the war, Churchill speculated privately about taking out the Soviets in a nuclear strike. He said as much to Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King and New Hampshire Senator Styles Bridges. Often he voiced apocalyptic scenarios to visitors to gauge their reaction. He never formally proposed to bomb Moscow to American presidents or ambassadors.

Churchill’s formal statements took a different tack, as Graham Farmelo correctly wrote: “He soon softened his line. In the House of Commons he went no further than the words he used after British relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated again, in January 1948: the best chance of avoiding war was ‘to bring matters to a head with the Soviet Government…to arrive at a lasting settlement.’” He sought that settlement through 1955. When it continued to elude him, he retired as prime minister.

“O” is for Ordinary People

“Churchill just didn’t have the interests of ordinary working classes, or indeed anyone, other than a narrow circle of middle-class straight white men at heart.”

Granted, it was pretty hard to spot non-white folks in 1904 Britain, when Churchill began being called a “traitor to his class.” (Speaking of derangement.) Why? Because Churchill, and Lloyd George, instituted the most sweeping anti-poverty legislation in British history. Taxation, old age pensions, unemployment benefits, widows and orphans support—all initiatives of the great reforming Liberal governments. Churchill was in the vanguard. He shared an understanding of the actual causes of poverty, wrote Malcolm Hill: He did not believe the state should take all responsibility for retirement, education, health and welfare. But he showed “unusual stature” in his efforts to mitigate poverty.

Ordinary people? Churchill said in 1944: “At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper. No amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of that point.” Game, set and match.

“P” is for Prejudice

“Churchill’s rampant racial prejudice was considered backwards [sic], even by Victorian standards,” writes Young Reporter. “Indeed, even at the time, Churchill was seen as extremist in his ideology and at the most brutal and racist end of the British imperialist spectrum.”

By whom? Is this the same Winston Churchill who in 1899 argued with his Boer jailer in Pretoria about equal rights for black Africans? Or the Churchill remembered kindly by Gandhi for his efforts to ease inequalities for Indians in South Africa? The Churchill who, during WW2, said Americans could segregate their black soldiers if they liked, but not the British. Read the evidence. If you still want to call Churchill a racist, by all means do. But first “dig a little deeper.”

“S” is for Savages

Churchill referred to also Egyptians as “degraded savages.” He believed Pakistanis were “deranged jihadists” whose violence was explained by a {strong aboriginal propensity to kill}.

Ah, the wonders of the partial quote. By “degraded savages” Churchill was referring to a Cairo crowd which attacked the BOAC offices in January 1952. (Andrew Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, 214.) In The Story of the Malakand Field Force Churchill wrote (3): “The strong aboriginal propensity to kill, inherent in all human beings, has in these valleys been preserved in unexampled strength and vigour.” So… Some Egyptians are savages, but not all savages are Egyptians. Some Pakistanis have an aboriginal propensity to kill, but not all killers are Pakistanis. Do I have this right? Duh!

“T” is for Tonypandy

“Churchill sent soldiers to brutally crush the strikes of hundreds of innocent, oppressed Welsh miners in Tonypandy protesting for better rights, saying, and these were his own words: {If the Welsh are striking over hunger, then we must fill their bellies with lead.}”

This derangement has been around for 100 years. Neither the quote nor the assertion are correct. Churchill specifically forbade the use of troops unless demanded by police. The last Welsh strike leader alive, Will Mainwaring, spoke to the BBC in 1960: “We never thought that Winston Churchill had exceeded his natural responsibility as Home Secretary. The military did not commit one single act that allows the slightest resentment by the strikers. On the contrary, we regarded the military as having come in the form of friends to modify the otherwise ruthless attitude of the police forces.”

“W” is for White Supremacy

In the 1955 general election, Churchill wanted the Conservatives to promote white supremacy: “The Tories should campaign on a platform of preventing {degenerate} ‘coloured’ immigration from the West Indies, along with his suggested campaign slogan for the Tories’ 1955 General election, ‘Keep England White.’”

Right in the narrow sense, wrong in the broad. Here is the reality. “Keep England White” is hearsay. It was a diary entry by Harold Macmillan after January 1955 cabinet meeting, Macmillan wrote: “The P.M. thinks ‘Keep England White’ a good campaign slogan!”

Macmillan was not given to exaggeration, but the context matters. “The P.M. thinks…” is not a quote, nor did the words ever appear in public. Macmillan followed it with an exclamation mark, which could mean that Churchill was wise-cracking. Ask yourself: Would any astute politician, even then, seriously propose “Keep England White” as a campaign slogan?

Out of context, the words seem stark. In context, Churchill was arguing for limits on Caribbean immigration. He did not discuss other black or brown people. Is this racist? We report, you decide.

“X” is for X-Rated (No attribution or off the wall)

“Churchill claimed that China was a {barbaric nation that required British partition} to bring it into civilization.” There is no attribution for this statement in his published canon.

“This was a man, who let’s not forget… force-fed the suffragettes.” Churchill force-fed nobody, opposed female suffrage only once in Parliament (when he thought more women would vote Conservative). The rest of the time he was pro-suffrage.

Truth at last!

Churchill said of Baldwin: “Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.” In the end, happily, Young Reporter stumbles over the truth:

“It would be reductive to merely credit [defeating the Nazis] to Churchill and not the role of ordinary British citizens, our allies, the 27 million Soviet soldiers and civilians who died during that war, the Americans, the French Resistance and how their blood, strength, tears and sacrifice was pivotal….”

End of unreality, welcome to reality. Churchill himself said it was the British people around the world who had the lion heart. “I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.” Or as Charles Krauthammer put it:

Yes, it was the ordinary man, the taxpayer, the grunt who fought and won the wars. Yes, it was America and its allies [and] the great leaders: Roosevelt, de Gaulle, Adenauer, Truman, John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan. But above all, victory required one man without whom the fight would have been lost at the beginning. It required Winston Churchill.

Young Reporter is an earnest fellow and, like many older practitioners, convinced he’s right. He “firmly rejects” Churchill’s “overstated role,” but not his overstated sins, like “the deaths of millions” in Gallipoli. But hey, he’s very young.  Perhaps by the time he reaches A-levels he’ll have developed the curiosity, and integrity, to read a bit more widely.

A popular weekly half hour podcast, Revisionist History takes aim at shibboleths, real and imagined. This episode is Churchill’s turn in the barrel.

Scientific Nemesis

The villain, aside from Sir Winston, is his scientific adviser, Frederick Lindemann,  later Lord Cherwell, aka “The Prof.” You’ve probably never heard of him, says narrator Malcolm Gladwell. You should have. It was Lindemann who made Churchill bomb innocent German civilians and starve the Bengalis.

Ironically, the program begins with an ad for its sponsor, Chanel Perfume. After World War II Coco Chanel—“fierce, precious, sovereign,” the ad says—was spared from prosecution as a Nazi collaborator. Churchill, renowned for his loyalty to friends, rescued her. I doubt Mme. Chanel would have sponsored this program.

Accompanied by background music, uplifting or ominous as required, Mr. Gladwell unfolds his case. He claims to have read six books on Lord Cherwell (whose title he mispronounces). But his only two quoted sources are the British scientist C.P. Snow¹ (very selectively; Snow admired Churchill); and Madhusree Mukerjee, author of a widely criticized book on the Bengal Famine.² There are no contrary opinions or evidence.

The Prof: Facts and Fantasies

Lindemann met Churchill in 1921; they became fast friends. Prof had the knack of being able to reduce complicated scientific theories to a form anyone could understand. Churchill relied on his insights during Germany’s rearmament in the 1930s. In World War II, Lindemann played a key role in development of Britain’s “wizard weapons.” One of these was “H2S,” a surface mapping radar, one version of which enabled aircraft to locate surfaced submarines. He was a crack tennis player, a dazzling conversationalist, a formidable debater, a brilliant scholar. Colleagues compared him to Isaac Newton.

But Gladwell, often quoting Snow, sees Lindemann in the worst light. He cites unprovable mental attitudes—“ill at ease in the presence of black people,” for example. (We could equally ask: was Snow envious of Lindemann? Who knows?)

Snow describes Lindemann as tall, thin, pallid, Germanic, “quite un-English.” He dined on cheese, whites of eggs, rice and olive oil, and drank only at Churchill’s table. He carried with him “an atmosphere of indefinable malaise.” He was “venomous, harsh-tongued, malicious, with a sadistic sense of humour. He made a novelist’s fingers itch.” The Prof is described as “lacking in the bond of human sympathy for every chance person who was not brought into a personal relationship with him.” This, Gladwell says, was “the crucial fact about him.” It would seem a crucial fact about many people.

Was Lindemann Anti-Semitic?

Lindemann, Gladwell notes, once even tried to upstage Albert Einstein—“he didn’t like Jews very much.” He asserts this without evidence. We don’t know the truth of it. But here is a counterpoint: Lindemann booked Einstein’s lectures in England and, after Hitler came to power helped Einstein rescue Jewish scientists from Nazi Germany.³  Surely this must be considered in evaluating Lindemann’s attitude toward Jews. There is more on this, in Lindemann’s official life by the second Lord Birkenhead:

Lindemann’s dislike of Jews and the sneers which he sometimes directed against the Jewish people [was] an unworthy prejudice which was never more than skin deep. In Berlin he had come into contact with many brilliant Jews whom he had admired, and when the Hitler persecution began he went to Germany and persuaded some of the greatest Jewish physicists in Europe to join him at the Clarendon Laboratory. With all these men…he remained on terms of admiration and affection, and Professor [Sir Francis] Simon in particular became a lifelong friend.”⁴

Lindemann’s Influence

That’s the wind-up; here’s the pitch: We are asked why a leader like Churchill could promote such a flawed adviser. Why Lindemann had the power to overrule everyone, even to dictate policy? C.P. Snow: “If you are going to have a scientist in a position of absolute power, the only scientist among non-scientists, it is dangerous whoever he is.”

But Mr. Gladwell is misled. Churchill did not give Lindemann absolute power. Nor was he Churchill’s only scientific adviser. Gladwell makes the error of many revisionists before him: attributing to a single crony far more influence than he had.

Lindemann and Bombing Policy

Snow deplored Lindemann’s influence on Britain’s bombing of Germany.⁵ “The Prime Minister and the Prof” says Lindemann’s support for bombing civilian over military targets was accepted without qualm. This, we are told, led to the devastation of “innocent people” in German cities. According to Gladwell, Peter Blackett, another scientific adviser, believed that “the war could have been won six or twelve months earlier had bombers been used more intelligently.”

But hold on: another scientific adviser? Was Lindemann not the only one?

Not mentioned by Gladwell is a pantheon of scientific advisers—including Sir Henry Tizard, Solly Zuckerman and J.D. Bernall—who declared Lindemann’s estimates of civilian bomb damage 500% too high. Ironically, Lindemann had brought all of them to Churchill’s attention. For a loner so disdainful of others, Prof had an odd knack of recruiting brilliant people who disagreed with him.

* * *

Also contrary to Revisionist History, Churchill maintained independence of thought. His private secretary, Jock Colville, wrote: “Many people made the mistake of thinking that somebody—it might be General Ismay or Professor Lindemann—for whom the Prime Minister had the utmost respect and affection—would be able to ‘get something through,’ [but] unless the Prime Minister was himself impressed by the argument, pressure by others seldom had any effect….he was never persuaded by the fact that those who argued a certain course were people whom he liked and respected.”⁶ We do not get this impression from “The Prime Minister and the Prof.”

Actually, Churchill’s ultimate decision on bombing completely pleased neither Lindemann nor his opposition. To understand this, we need to know something about the argument—which the podcast doesn’t cover.

Britain’s Air Staff formuated its area bombing strategy during ​late 1941.​ The War Cabinet approved it in February 1942, before ​Arthur “​Bomber​”​​Harris’s appointment to Bomber Command. ​While Lindemann had a hand in the decision​, his​ famous 30 March ​memo arguing for prioritizing bombing cities ​and made no difference to the policy already agreed, though it reinforced the case. The scientists did not argue over area bombing—which had already been decided—but over ​Lindemann’s statistics.

Bomber Allocations

The real argument was over allocation of new bomber production, and bombers sent by the USA to the skies over Germany (under Bomber Command) or the U-boat menace to the Western Approaches (Coastal Command). Although Lindemann favored the former. Bomber Harris questioned his figures,  saying, “Are we fighting this war with weapons or slide-rules?”⁷ Professor Antoine Capet, in a recent study of Lindemann’s role, explains what really happened:

It was a wonderful row by serious people, all devoted to Churchill and the war but pulling in opposite directions…. Blackett, for instance, was known for his principled opposition to bombing civilians (and, it must be mentioned, his profound dislike of Lindemann)…. Tizard, who also disliked Lindemann, was a great believer in attacking the U-boats…. Zuckerman and Bernal agreed.

Bomber Command had a slight priority, if only to placate Stalin, who was loudly denouncing Britain’s lack of enthusiasm for a Second Front. Bombing Germany was the only “front” Churchill could offer. Likewise, the British public demanded retaliation after German air raids. Nevertheless, planes allocated to Coastal Command were sufficient to rid the Western Approaches of U-boats by the end of 1943.⁸

Thus, contrary to Revisionist History, Lindemann did not get everything he wanted. Churchill, as usual, made up his own mind. Paradoxically, Professor Capet adds, Lindemann’s role in the development of H2S enabled bombers to sink U-boats in vast numbers. “The postwar official history apportioned praise: ‘Cherwell did for Bomber Command what Tizard did for Fighter Command—he gave it the scientific means of becoming an effective instrument of war.’”⁹

The Bengal Famine

Mr. Gladwell next turns to the Bengal Famine, which broke out in autumn 1943. “Pleas for grain to relieve the famine went to Lindemann,” we are told, and “Lindemann said no.” Interviewed, Madhusree Mukerjee says Australian ships loaded with wheat sailed “right past India.” Churchill “was adamant that England could not help India.”

Whereas Lindemann played a key role in bombing policy, there is little to connect him with decisions on the Bengal Famine. Those involved the War Cabinet, the Ministers of Food and Transport, the fighting departments, and the Secretary of State for India Leo Amery. Lindemann is not prominent in War Cabinet discussions of India. Churchill, however, frequently expressed his sympathy for the suffering. A sample from the small mountain of evidence:

1943

• Churchill to the new Viceroy, Field Marshall Wavell, 8Oct43: Churchill enumerates Wavell’s duties: 1) defense of India from Japanese invasion and 2) “material and cultural conditions of the many peoples of India.” Churchill implores Wavell “to assuage the strife between the Hindus and Moslems and to induce them to work together for the common good.”¹⁰

• Leo Amery, House of Commons, 12Oct43: Shipping was provided for “substantial imports of grain to India in order to meet prospects of serious shortage.” Despite a good spring harvest, another shortfall occurred. Britain is making “every effort to provide shipping, and considerable quantities of food grains are now arriving or are due to arrive before the end of the year.”¹¹

• Churchill to Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada, 4Nov43: Churchill thanks King for offering 100,000 tons of Canadian wheat, but this would compromise King’s shipments of Canadian timber and Chilean nitrate for the war effort. Canadian wheat would take “at least two months” to reach India. From Australia it would take only “three to four weeks.” So the War Cabinet is shipping wheat from Australia, adding the 100,000 extra tons.¹²

1944

• War Cabinet Conclusions, 14Feb44: Churchill is “most anxious that we should do everything possible to ease the Viceroy’s position.” But the Minister of War Transport says he cannot continue 50,000 tons a month of imported wheat. Instead he proposes sending Iraqi barley, “cutting the United Kingdom import programme.…”¹³ (Alas Indians refused to consume barley.)

• War Cabinet Conclusions, 24Apr44: India’s needs have grown to 724,000 tons, far beyond the latest shipment of 200,000, due to unseasonable weather and the loss of 45,000 tons in a Bombay explosion. Given the danger, “we should now apprise the United States of the seriousness of the position.” Churchill says the government will replace the 45,000 tons, but can provide further relief only “at the cost of incurring grave difficulties in other directions.” At the same time “his sympathy was great for the sufferings of the people of India.”¹⁴

Appeal to FDR

• Churchill to President Roosevelt, Personal Telegram, 29Apr44: “Last year we had a grievous famine in Bengal through which at least 700,000 people died…. I have been able to arrange for 350,000 tons of wheat to be shipped to India from Australia during the first nine months of 1944. This is the shortest haul. I cannot see how to do more. I’ve had much hesitation in asking you to add to the great assistance you are giving us with shipping but a satisfactory situation in India is of such vital importance to the success of our joint plans against the Japanese that I am impelled to ask you to consider a special allocation of ships to carry wheat to India…. I am no longer justified in not asking for your help.”

Roosevelt replied that while the appeal had his “utmost sympathy,” the Joint Chiefs were unable to divert the necessary shipping.¹⁵

These are a few of the statements, letters, minutes and telegrams attesting to Churchill’s and the War Cabinet’s effort to ease the Bengal Famine. Together they provide overwhelming evidence. The Cabinet tried everything possible, in the midst of a war for survival. And it accomplished a great deal. Without that aid, the famine would have been worse.

What Churchill Believed  

“In wartime,” Revisionist History correctly states, “countries operate right at the brink.” There is scant evidence that Mr. Gladwell comprehends this. Ms. Mukerjee quotes Churchill in his war memoirs: India was “carried through the struggle on the shoulders of our small island.” It is more illuminating to consider the rest of Churchill’s statement:

But all this is only the background upon which the glorious heroism and martial qualities of the Indian troops who fought in the Middle East, who defended Egypt, who liberated Abyssinia, who played a grand part in Italy, and who, side by side with their British comrades, expelled the Japanese from Burma….

The loyalty of the Indian Army to the King-Emperor, the proud fidelity to their treaties of the Indian Princes, the unsurpassed bravery of Indian soldiers and officers, both Moslem and Hindu, shine for ever in the annals of war….upwards of two and a half million Indians volunteered to serve in the forces, and by 1942 an Indian Army of one million was in being, and volunteers were coming in at the monthly rate of fifty thousand….the response of the Indian peoples, no less than the conduct of their soldiers, makes a glorious final page in the story of our Indian Empire.”¹⁶

Let us consider those fine words before labeling Churchill an unrepentant racist who hated Indians and was content to let them starve.

From Counterfactuals to Howlers

Revisionist History commits a number schoolboy howlers: “Throughout his life Churchill lost huge amounts on investments.” (No, he mainly lost in the Depression, like everybody else.) “There was no order to Churchill’s life.” (How could a life without order produce fifty books, 2000 articles, 5000 speeches, a Nobel Prize, and high office for half a century?) Churchill’s champagne cost “the modern equivalent of $62,000” in 1935. (Yes, but as a politician he entertained lavishly; it was part of his overhead.)

Counterfactuals abound: “Churchill hated Gandhi.” (At times perhaps, but they ended with mutual respect.¹⁷) Churchill becomes prime minister “just after the war breaks out.” (Nine months later.) “There should have been a proper debate about strategic bombing in the British War Cabinet.” (There was: see above.) “To an Englishman of that generation, the only living creature you’re allowed to show affection for is your dog.” (Churchill alone contradicts that.)

“Bombing innocent people,” an appalling practice, began with the Luftwaffe over Warsaw and Rotterdam. Most of the adults among those innocent people put Hitler in power. Most loved what he said about Jews and other Untermenschen, and sustained him to the end. The worst of them then claimed they were just following orders, or didn’t know what was going on. Give us, please, broader examples of innocent people.

“He sweetened English life”

Mr. Gladwell quotes C.P. Snow so liberally to condemn Churchill that it is necessary to correct the record.“Brilliant, but without judgment” was the common description of Churchill before the war. But judgment, Snow says, has two meanings:

The bad thing is the ability to sense what everyone else is thinking and think like them. This Churchill never had, and would have despised himself for having. But the good thing in “judgment” is the ability to think of many matters at once, in their interdependence, their relative importance and their consequences….Not many men in conservative Britain had such insight. He had. That was why he could keep us going when it came to war and we were alone. Where it mattered most, there he was right. And that is why we shall never deny our gratitude.¹⁸

Writing after Churchill’s death, Snow penned words “The Prime Minister and the Prof” doesn’t include. I warmly recommend them to its sponsors and producers, and to anyone whose lack of understanding leads them far afield:

It was Churchill’s own high-hearted behaviour that became the substance of his myth. People wanted something to admire that seemed to be slipping out of the grit of everyday. Whatever could be said against him, he had virtues, graces, style. Courage, magnanimity, loyalty, wit, gallantry—these were not often held up for admiration in our literature, or indeed depicted at all. He really had them. I believe that it was deep intuition which made people feel that his existence had after all sweetened English life.¹⁹

Endnotes

1. C.P. Snow (1905-1990), novelist and civil servant, technical director in the Ministry of Labour in WW2. At Harvard in 1960, Snow heavily criticized Lindemann in his wartime arguments over strategic bombing with Sir Henry Tizard.
2. See for example Arthur Herman, “Absent Churchill, India’s 1943 Famine Would Have Been Worse,” (review of Madhusree Mukerjee, Churchill’s Secret War), in Finest Hour 149, Winter 2010-11, 50-51.
3. See Klaus Larres, “Churchill and Einstein: Overlapping Mindsets,” Hillsdale College Churchill Project, 22 November 2016.
4. Lord Birkenhead, The Prof in Two Worlds (London: Collins, 1961), 24.
5. “A Point of View: Beware of Experts,” BBC News Magazine, 9 December 2011.
6. Sir John Colville, The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries 1940-1955. 2 vols. Sevenoaks, Kent: Sceptre Publishing, 1986-87, I 145.
7. R.V. Jones, “Churchill and Science,” in Robert Blake & Wm. Roger Lewis, Churchill: A Major New Assessment of His Life in Peace and War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 437.
8. Antoine Capet, “Scientific Weaponry: How Churchill Encouraged the ‘Boffins’ and Defied the ‘Blimps,’ in The Churchillian, National Churchill Museum, Winter 2013, 13.
9. Ibid.
10. Martin Gilbert & Larry P. Arnn, The Churchill Documents, vol.19, Fateful Questions September 1943 to April 1944 (Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College Press, 2017), 421.
11. Hansard, the Parliamentary Debates, ibid., 474-45
12. Churchill Papers 20/123, ibid., 784-85.
13. Cabinet Papers, 65/41. ibid., 1740-42.
14. Cabinet Papers, 65/42, ibid. 2553-54.
15. Churchill Papers, 20/163, ibid., 2587. Roosevelt to Churchill, 1 June 1944 in The Churchill Documents, vol. 20 (Hillsdale College Press: forthcoming).
16. Winston S. Churchill, The Hinge of Fate (London: Cassell, 1950, 181-82)
17. Richard M. Langworth, “Welcome, Mr. Gandhi,” The Weekly Standard, 21 July 2014.
18. C.P. Snow, “We Must Never Deny Our Gratitude,” Reader’s Digest, 26 February 1963, 67-71.
19. C.P. Snow, A Variety of Men (London: Macmillan, 1967), 129-30.