Mr. Gandhi: another myth exploded

For many years Churchill’s view of India has been distorted, quoted out of context or based on hearsay. The Prime Minister’s attitude toward Mohandas Gandhi is part of this demonology. Now Hira Jungkow, an Indian student at the London School of Economics, has blown away another lie—one of the more despicable. It is that Churchill wished Gandhi dead as a casualty of the 1943 Bengal Famine. Mr. Gandhi certainly raised Churchill’s hackles on many occasions. But wishing he would starve to death is not in the record.

In a 2021 interview with one of Churchill’s foremost defenders, Andrew Roberts, The New Yorker raised this old canard: “It is just striking to read about Churchill being alerted to the massive number of deaths of Indians in territory that his government ruled, and asking questions like why Gandhi hadn’t died—which he hoped for—if things were so bad.” (The bad things were food shortages and famine in Bengal.)

Research however indicates Churchill didn’t say that. And what he did say was not in context of the Bengal Famine. After reading the New Yorker interview, Mr. Jungkow did the research and published his findings, which are summarized and amplified below. Why didn’t The New Yorker?

Why Gandhi hadn’t died yet

In September 1943 Churchill appointed Field Marshal Archibald Wavell Viceroy of India. Arthur Herman noted the irony: Churchill, long blamed for ignoring it, had appointed the very man “who would halt the famine in its tracks.”

Wavell’s and Churchill’s actions to ease the famine are explained elsewhere. We focus here only on the specific misrepresentation of Churchill in two frequently quoted books. Both cite Wavell’s diary from July 1944: “Winston sent me a peevish telegram to ask why Gandhi hadn’t died yet! He has never answered my telegram about food.”

Wavell did write this, but it was not a quote—and fairly peevish itself. Why don’t the critics publish what Churchill actually said? Here it is:

Surely Mr. Gandhi has made a most remarkable recovery, as he is already able to take an active part in politics. How does this square with the medical reports upon which his release on grounds of ill-health was agreed to by us? In one of these we were told that he would not be able to take any part in politics again.

Wavell replied that Gandhi was released from detention because it was thought he was near death, but he “can hardly be said to have resumed an active part in politics yet.” Wavell added: “His release has not worsened [the] situation on the whole and I am clear it was right and justified.” Churchill did not contest this, and the correspondence ended.

“He has never answered my telegram about food”

Mr. Jungkow did not investigate Wavell’s complaint that Churchill hadn’t answered him about food, but that has a qualification too. Published documents reveal that Wavell’s requests for food mainly went to Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India. It is odd that Amery, often described as India’s sympathizer, did so little himself to ease the Famine. It was a lot less than Churchill and Wavell. And Amery’s diaries, laced with nasty Churchill hearsay about Indians, are full of Amery’s (but not Churchill’s) racial pejoratives.

This misrepresentation is peculiar in its timing: July 1944, when the Famine was easing. In January Bengal received 130,000 tons of Iraqi barley, 80,000 tons of Australian wheat (with 100,000 more to come), 10,000 from Canada. Wavell wanted more, so on 14 February, Churchill called an emergency meeting of the War Cabinet. Could they find more grain without wrecking plans for D-Day? In April, Churchill declared that “his sympathy was great for the sufferings of the people of India.” The War Cabinet referred him to Roosevelt. No, said the President. D-Day and the Pacific had stretched U.S. shipping too thin.

Churchill kept at it, wrote Zareer Masani. “By the end of 1944 Wavell’s much-requested one million additional tons had been secured from Australia and the allied South East Asia Command…” Churchill’s actual words to Wavell referred to Mr. Gandhi’s “fasts to death,” not the Famine.

Lots of blame to go round

Another prominent figure never questioned for ignoring the famine is Gandhi himself. “For all his reputation as a humanitarian,” wrote Arthur Herman,

Gandhi did remarkably little about the emergency. The issue barely comes up in his letters, except as another grievance against the Raj. Yet in peacetime throughout the 20th century, the Raj always handled famines with efficiency. In February 1944 Gandhi wrote to Wavell: “I know that millions outside are starving for want of food. But I should feel utterly helpless if I went out and missed the food [i.e. independence] by which alone living becomes worthwhile.” Gandhi felt free to conduct his private “fast unto death” even as the rest of India starved.

Leo Amery, however little he’d done to help, was still full of advice as the famine ended. Acknowledging “His Majesty’s Government’s help over food grains,” he advised Churchill: “…you may say that you cried wolf unnecessarily to [Roosevelt], and you may wish to send him a personal telegram explaining that the additional 200,000 tons has only been found by a drastic cutting down of our military maintenance provision….”

Churchill was not willing to carry Amery’s bleat to the President. “I do not propose to send a personal telegram on this,” he wrote on Amery’s note.  Will you be so kind as to explain the matter to the State Department, quoting my personal [appeal] to the President as the key?” It would appear that Amery, like Wavell, expected the Prime Minister to attend every detail of the famine problem personally.

More evidence

Printed War Cabinet Paper, note by the Prime Minister and Minister of Defence [WSC] on “India” (9 October 1943) with a copy of a “Directive to the Viceroy Designate” [Lord Wavell] by WSC (8 October). Subjects of the directive include the need for India to be a “safe and fertile base” for the British and United States offensive against Japan in 1944; famine in India and the need to make every effort to deal with local shortages, stop grain hoarding and ensure a fair distribution of food between town and country; the gap between rich and poor needing examination; that [Wavell] should make every effort to ease tension between Hindus and Muslims and encourage them to work together, as a democratic government can not work without equality.

Wavell’s main aims should be to defend the frontiers of India, appease communal differences, rally all sections of society to support the war effort, and maintain the best possible standard of living for the largest number of people; and the British Government’s commitment to establishing a self-governing India as part of the British Empire and Commonwealth of Nations. —Notes by the Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge

Further reading

Arthur Herman, “Absent Churchill, the Bengal Famine Would Have Been Worse,” 2017

Zareer Masani, “Churchill and the Genocide Myth: Last Word on the Bengal Famine,” 2021

Richard M. Langworth, “Hearsay Doesn’t Count: The Truth about Churchill’s ‘Racist Epithets,’” 2020

“The Aryan stock is bound to triumph”

Sufferers from “Churchill Derangement Syndrome” hold “Aryan stock” high among Winston Churchill’s appalling utterances. The remark rose again in correspondence with a journalist. I dug out for him the background of that remark, but his report omitted it. Out of context the quote is misleading, so I guess that’s just as well. But rather than write off several hours’ research, the facts might here serve to advance reality.

Wales in its Welsh Wisdom is thinking of moving statues of Churchill, Nelson and Gandhi to a museum, the Daily Telegraph informs us. My correspondent wrote: “Churchill is again under fire, this time from the Welsh government. It cites his support for the British Empire and his supposed belief in the superiority of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ race. The official Welsh government report examines what monuments and streets commemorate various figures. It throws in Gandhi for good measure.”

I wondered idly what Mohandas Gandhi, who didn’t suffer fools gladly, would say about all this? I think he would be amused, but then depressed, by the onward march of invincible ignorance. Gandhiji said some regrettable things about black Africans around 1906. Against that, the statue of this great man who led India’s quest for independence is to be proscribed in Wales? I should think the Welsh would approve of this champion of Home Rule. (And of Churchill, who campaigned for devolution before it became popular.)

“The Anglo-Saxon race”

Hillsdale College’s Churchill Project holds digital references to 80 million words of Churchill’s writings, speeches, letters, papers, plus biographies and memoirs about him. This resource reveals that he used the term “Anglo-Saxon race” exactly twice. The first referred to U.S. and British sailors, the second to US-UK Free Trade. You tell me whether either sounds racist:

The union of the Anglo-Saxon race is a great ideal, and if ever it is to be achieved it will be by increasing and not diminishing the friendly intercourse of trade between this country and the United States. Against such wanton folly as a tariff war with the United States, Free-traders appeal with confidence to Lancashire, and we hope that, as in years gone by, Lancashire will point the path of honour and wisdom to the people of the British islands. —Speech supporting Home Rule for Ireland, Public Hall, Cheetham Hill, Manchester, 16 June 1904, Complete Speeches I, 317

Churchill’s comment on Aryan stock occurred in an interview with Gustavus Ohlinger of Michigan University in January 1901. Ohlinger published part of that interview, entitled “Success in Journalism,” in the university’s journal The Islander. But much of the interview, including the Aryan remark, went unpublished. Decades later, Ohlinger published the full transcript.  (Michigan Quarterly Review, February 1966).

The context is significant. Ohlinger was born and grew up in China, where his parents were missionaries. Naturally, he and Churchill talked about the confrontation then going on between China and Russia. Ohlinger asked: what was his opinion? Churchill’s replied:

…we shall have to take the Chinese in hand and regulate them…as civilized nations become more powerful they will get more ruthless, and the time will come when the world will impatiently bear the existence of great barbaric nations who may at any time arm themselves and menace civilized nations. I believe in the ultimate partition of China—I mean ultimate. I hope we shall not have to do it in our day. The Aryan stock is bound to triumph. Personally, I am not greatly concerned about Russian development in China.

Now, most today would object to “barbaric” as a description of China, or at least its people. One hundred twenty years ago, perhaps not. Churchill was however predicting the outcome of a Russia-China dispute. (Cynics will smirk over his idea “to take the Chinese in hand.” That’s still in vogue among certain politicians 120 years later.)

Who were the Aryans, anyway?

Taken out of context, “the Aryan stock is bound to triumph” certainly sounds racist today. In the original context, Churchill was talking about a rivalry between Chinese and Russians. Undoubtedly they are of two races, and Churchill thought the Chinese needed taking in hand. Did he mean absolute dominance of the white race? I think not. Nor do I think “Aryan” is quite the right term for Russians.

It took Adolf Hitler to give the word “Aryan” a bad name. It wasn’t aways thus. Defending Churchill from being called a “barbaric Monster” in a Canadian newspaper, Terry Reardon wrote:

The Toronto Star doesn’t inform us that Aryan horseman warriors from Central Asia migrated into the Indus Valley in the third millennium B.C. They were “as arrogant as they were tough,” wrote historian Arthur Herman. “Their very name, Arya, meant ‘master’ or ‘noble.’” They evolved into four classes, led by the Brahmins. Ironically, in view of the Star’s charges, “Aryan stock” is today the dominant demographic group in India.

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

Memory: “The stars still shone in the sky”

Lost in the pell-mell rush to denigrate his memory was the 8oth anniversary of Churchill becoming Prime Minster, 10 May 1940. I thought of his words as I read the ignorant, ill-informed, false attacks on his character. They occurred amid protest over a tragic event that had nothing to do with him. He wrote at the end of Their Finest Hour:

And now this Britain, and its far-spread association of states and dependencies, which had seemed on the verge of ruin, whose very heart was about to be pierced, had been for fifteen months concentrated upon the war problem….With a gasp of astonishment and relief the smaller neutrals and the subjugated states saw that the stars still shone in the sky….

And now his defenders in far-spread association have concentrated on the slur problem. The battle for accurate information is still being fought. Who’d have thought his memory would ever be in jeopardy? Many faithful colleagues have joined the effort. The work goes on, the cause endures.

Letters to the Editors

“Donald Trump is no Winston Churchill, and the comparison is ludicrous.” John Ivison, National Post, 4 June 2020.

Mr. Ivison correctly writes that the comparison is ludicrous. Then he proceeds to state that Churchill was “massively flawed.” He says “Churchill ‘signed off’ on terms at the Yalta Conference that consigned tens of millions to Soviet Rule.” At that time Soviet troops occupied almost the whole of Eastern Europe. The only alternative for Churchill would have been to start a third World War. Next: “Churchill was prime minister at the time of the Bengal famine in 1943 when an estimated three million people died. His only possible defence was that he was preoccupied by the war in Europe.” The fact is that on 8 October 1943 Churchill sent an order to Lord Wavell, the Viceroy of India, on the “actual famine,” saying “every effort must be made, even by the diversion of shipping urgently needed for war purposes to deal with local shortages.” —Terry Reardon, International Churchill Society Canada

Churchill as Racist

“Was Churchill a racist? Yes, but he still deserves respect.” —Max Hastings, The Sunday Times 14 June 2020.

Max Hastings writes that Winston Churchill’s decisions at the time of the 1943-44 Bengal famine were “the gravest blots on his lifetime reputation.” In fact my great-grandfather felt strongly the responsibility of empire and saw himself as bound in duty to advancing the well-being of its indigenous peoples.

Of course Britain did not meet all requested food deliveries in the famine: not only was Japan in control of the Bay of Bengal at the time, as well as Burma, Thailand and Malaya, but as Dr. Tirthankar Roy, of the London School of Economics, wrote: “The war cabinet . . .  believed what the Bengalis told it: there was no shortage of food in Bengal.” And as Arthur Herman, nominated for a Pulitzer prize for his book Gandhi & Churchill, concluded: “Absent Churchill, India’s 1943 famine would have been worse.”  —Randolph Churchill, Kent

Bengal: What Did Gandhi Say?

A week later a reader quoted Viceroy Wavell that Churchill didn’t answer him about food relief, so I had a go. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel…

Mr MacShane should educate himself on what Gandhi not Churchill did about the Bengal Famine. As did Arthur Herman, Pulitzer nominee for Gandhi and Churchill: “For all his reputation as a humanitarian, Gandhi did remarkably little about the emergency. The issue barely comes up in his letters.” In February 1944, Gandhi finally brought himself to reply to British anxieties about food relief, writing to Wavell: “I know that millions outside are starving for want of food. But I should feel utterly helpless if I went out and missed the food [i.e. independence] by which alone living becomes worthwhile.” Which of them was the humanitarian?

India (again)

“How Has Winston Churchill Become a Central Figure in the British Black Lives Matter Debate?” —Alex Hudson, Newsweek, 17 June 2020. 

Since Churchill was manifestly not “a man of his time,” you incorrectly represent his racial attitudes. From his twenties to his eighties, his views on the rights of native peoples marked him as a dangerous radical to the establishment of the day. Most of his alleged slurs of Indians, for example, are hearsay from Leopold Amery, who crammed more racist epithets into one of his personal diaries than Churchill ever imagined. Churchill  meanwhile praised “the unsurpassed bravery” of 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,” in World War II. —Richard M. Langworth

Africa

“The Churchill factor: Boris Johnson would rather everyone talked about Winston.” —Otto English, Politico, 15 June 2020.

Castrating people is a new Churchill outrage, and I thought I’d heard them all. Churchill did not advocate for Boer War concentration camps. In his maiden speech (18 February 1901) he complimented the Boers’ “unusual humanity and generosity” in the war and urged a generous peace. He did fruitlessly argue with his Boer jailer about equal rights for native Africans. He did say dreadful things about Gandhi, though the elephant crack is pure fiction. And he also said: “Mr. Gandhi has gone very high in my esteem since he stood up for the Untouchables.” (Gandhi replied with a “good recollection” of Churchill and “that I can always rely on his sympathy and goodwill.”) Gandhi took a regrettably detached view of the 1943 Bengal famine; Churchill didn’t. Arthur Herman, biographer of them both wrote: “Absent Churchill, Bengal’s Famine would have been worse.”

The Mau Mau uprising in Kenya had more native opponents than supporters. Both it and the local government indulged in atrocities, though the Mau Mau’s were worse. If Mr. English would consult the cabinet minutes, however, he would find only two instances where Churchill mentioned the Mau Mau. In one he was concerned over loss of life. In another 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.” —RML

Ireland and the Jews

“What Churchill’s legacy means for the country now.” Jessica Baldwin, Camden News Journal, June 18th.

Ms. Baldwin says it is immoral to look at the “reality” of Churchill “and still believe him to be unsullied.” Of course he was sullied. She correctly notes his support for the Dardanelles/Gallipoli operation and the Black and Tans. As to the rest of her catalogue, Churchill once said: “…it would hardly be possible to state the opposite of the truth more compendiously.”

Churchill didn’t “partition” Ireland. He negotiated the Irish Treaty which gave the Republic independence. Tanks to Tonypandy? They hadn’t been invented yet. In cabinet he spoke of the Mau Mau twice, once to warn against “mass executions.” Bengalis starved from several factors, despite Churchill’s efforts. (What was Gandhi’s position on the famine? Detached and non-committal.)

Britain didn’t go to war “to save the Jews” but to save liberty. Churchill jailed Britain’s leading fascist Oswald Mosley—an odd act for an alleged fascist. The colonial war effort was often cited by Churchill. He praised “the unsurpassed bravery” of 2.5 million “Indian soldiers and officers, both Moslem and Hindu.” Serious inquiry will show that Churchill believed people of all colors should enjoy the same rights, and that it was the mission of his country to protect those rights.

We can believe Churchill was always right, and we can believe with Ms. Baldwin that we’ve been “fed a line.” Churchill himself offered a middle approach: “It seems to me, and I dare say it seems to you, that the path of wisdom lies somewhere between these scarecrow extremes.” —RML

“Nuking the Maralinga people”

In March I published a modest glossary,  “Churchill Derangement Syndrome: A is for Aryans, R is to Racism.” How far “CDS” has progressed since may be seen by a correspondent who replied: “N is for nuking the Maralinga people.”

I seriously investigated this charge, which was new to me.  I carefully read the link above, and about Australians who witnessed and remembered the 1952 nuclear tests. The Churchill Documents and several scholars offer accurate data. Conclusions:

(1) You can’t have nuclear weapons without testing whether they work. (2) Australian permission for testing in the uninhabited Monte Bello islands was sought in 1950 by Prime Minister Clement Attlee. (3) Churchill had replaced Attlee when the tests occurred: two on the islands in 1952, two in the Great Victoria Desert in 1953.

* * *

Moral considerations were considered, but they involved wildlife, not people. On 21 May 1952 Lt. Col. Lipton (Lab., Lambeth Central) questioned Churchill over the destruction of animal life. Churchill replied, trying to be humorous:

The report of a recent special survey showing that there is very little animal or bird life on Monte Bello Islands was one of the factors in the choice of the site for the test of the United Kingdom atomic weapon. I should add, however, that an expedition which went to the  islands fifty years ago reported that giant rats, wild cats, and wallabies were seen, and these may have caused the Hon. Member some anxiety. However, the officer who explored the islands recently says that he found only some lizards, two sea eagles and what looked like a canary sitting on a perch.

Emrys Hughes (Lab., South Ayshire) was not amused: “There are still civilized people in this country who are interested in bird and animal life.” This finally produced a mention of humans—by Mr. Churchill: “Certainly I think everything should be done to avoid the destruction of bid life and animal life and also of human life.” Churchill may been referring to his well-known belief that the bomb’s apocalyptic nature might discourage its use.

* * *

(4) The next tests occurred in 1956, on the Monte Bellos and Australian mainland. These did produce fall-out exposure for some people (the numbers are uncertain). The buck stops with the Prime Minister, but the PM was now Anthony Eden. Churchill was over a year retired. (5) Therefore, Churchill did not “nuke the Maralinga people.”

(6) Massive deserts and uninhabited islands are obviously the best places for nuclear testing. (7) Sixty years later, some Australian veterans who witnessed the original tests developed cancer. Their opinions were divided as to why they contracted it.

(8) The tests led to the nuclear umbrella Britain and America provided Australia, close to two expansionist communist states. (9) The Soviet Union’s last nuclear test was in 1990, the UK’s in 1991. America stopped in 1992, France and China in 1996. The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty of 1996 placed a de facto moratorium on testing. India (twice), Pakistan (twice) and North Korea (six times) have since violated the moratorium.

“Subsidiary craters spouting forth”

Churchill said when attacked by the son of a harsh critic: “Isn’t it enough to have this parent volcano continually erupting in our midst? And now we are to have these subsidiary craters spouting forth the same unhealthy fumes!”

To Arthur Herman’s truths about the Bengal Famine, a reader asked about Japan’s post-invasion plans for India, on which I had offered the Japan’s occupation of the Philippines:

A better example would be Malaya where there was a large resident Indian community. How many Indians did the Japanese slaughter there? And how could the Japanese have topped the British record for allowing famines in its colonies? While you’re at it, could you please present any evidence that Japan had actually intended to conquer India? Did it have the capability to do so without compromising its main objective in China?

This is easily answered: Imperial Japan sought to change Malaya’s official language to Japanese. Malayans were expected to bow to Japanese. Chinese fared particularly harshly, but Malays and Indians were not exempt. The 11/43 Greater East Asia Conference did not include Malaya because the Japanese military wished to annex it. Japan’s plans for India are well detailed. Of course, in 1941, Imperial Japan believed it could do much that turned out to be a little optimistic.

The occupations moderated when Japan started to lose the war. Thanks, in part, as Churchill said, “to the unsurpassed bravery” of 2.5 million “Indian soldiers and officers, both Moslem and Hindu [and] the response of the Indian peoples.” As Arthur Herman wrote, in the 20th century in peacetime, the Raj “handled famines with efficiency.” For balanced pros and cons on Britain’s role in India see Dr. Tirthankar Roy, How British Rule Changed India’s Economy.

In 1927, Winston Churchill wrote to his wife Clementine, “I am becoming a film fan.” He had projection equipment installed at Chequers, the country home of British prime ministers, in 1943, and at his family home Chartwell in 1946. “Churchill and the Movies” is the fourth and final event of the Center for Constructive Alternatives in the 2018-19 academic year. We will view and discuss two films widely regarded as Churchill’s favorites, and two Churchill biographic movies in their historical context.

Hillsdale’s Center for Constructive Alternatives (CCA) is the sponsor of one of the largest college lecture series in America. CCA seminars are held four times each year. Students are required to complete one CCA seminar during their undergraduate years. They may elect to enroll in more. Lectures are open to the public, and out-of-town guests are welcomed. There is no registration fee and the program includes dinners and lunches. “Churchill and the Movies” is now sold out, and up to 400 guests are expected plus students. Watch this space for the web stream video locations.

Partial Schedule:

Sunday 24 March

4:00pm Showing of That Hamilton Woman (1941, 125 minutes). Produced and directed by Alexander Korda, this was Winston Churchill’s clear favorite among movies. It stars two actors he vastly admired, Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier.

8:00 p.m. Filmmaker John Fleet: “Churchill and Alexander Korda.”  Mr. Fleet has made a study of their long and fruitful relationship might have produced several more epic movies, had not World War II intervened.

Monday 25 March

10:00 a.m. “Assault on Churchill”: John Miller interviews Richard Langworth on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 fm. The station will offer an audio stream.

4:00 p.m. Showing of Henry V (1944, 137 mins.) Arguably runner-up in Churchill’s affections was the 1944 British Technicolor adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “Henry V.” The on-screen title is “The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agin Court in France” (derived from the title of the 1600 quarto edition). It stars WSC’s longtime friend Laurence Olivier, who also directed.

“The Play’s the Thing…”

8:00 p.m. Richard Langworth: “Churchill, Shakespeare, and Henry V.”  Excerpt:

How well did Churchill know Shakespeare? Well enough, I think, to ace a Hillsdale Shakespeare course. Both by formal quotations, and by well-known phrases almost hidden in his text, Churchill draws allusions and understanding from sixteen Shakespeare plays, from Macbeth to A Midsummer Night’s Dream—though not, surprisingly, the sonnets.

The producer Marlo Lewis says Henry V introduces us “to urgent problems of statesmanship and, through them, to questions of political philosophy….the delicate matters of legitimacy and the founding of regimes.” I think that is an aspect, but not the most important aspect. Above that and first, the importance of Henry V is what it teaches about leadership.

Churchill wrote in his History of the English-Speaking Peoples that when one of Henry’s officers “deplored the fact that they had ‘but one ten thousand of those men in England that do no work to-day,’ the King rebuked him and revived his spirits in a speech to which Shakespeare has given an immortal form: ‘If we are marked to die, we are enough To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honour.’” Compare that to Churchill’s greatest speech, 18 June 1940: “If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”

Tuesday 26 March

4:00 p.m. Showing of Young Winston (1972, 143 mins.)

8:00 p.m. “Young Winston and My Early Life,” with James W. Muller, University of Alaska Anchorage. An expert on Churchill’s autobiography, Professor Muller is well qualified to survey of this remarkable 1972 biopic, starring Simon Ward as Young Winston. The cast was sensational. Anne Bancroft as Lady Randolph, is leered at by Lloyd George (Anthony Hopkins). Robert Shaw is Lord Randolph (remember “Quint” in Jaws?). Young Winston’s evil headmaster at St. George’s School is the great Robert Hardy, who would memorably play Churchill many times in later years.

Wednesday 27 March

2:00 p.m. Richard Langworth: “Current Contentions- Winston Churchill and the Invasion of the Idiots.” A review of the virulent attacks on Churchill in the wake of Gary Oldman’s Oscar for his role as WSC in Darkest Hour. We will discuss four slanders in detail: Fake history in the television series The Crown. Churchill’s alleged 1930s “secret affair” with Lady Castlerosse. The continuing fable that Churchill exacerbated the 1943-44 Bengal Famine. And a renewed “golden oldie” beloved of socialists for a century: the Tonypandy riots of 1910. Excerpt:

Netflix’s The Crown is a not-so-crowning-achievement about the present Queen’s ascent to the throne and her first years as monarch. It starts off well enough. Claire Foy is an honest Elizabeth II.  Matt Smith is a gaudy Prince Philip, acting the foolish playboy. Dame Harriet Walter plays a graceful Clementine Churchill.

John Lithgow as Churchill is good on the voice and mannerisms, minimizing his 6-foot-4 stature with a stoop, and by sitting down a lot. But the script gives him a cartoonish image, far from reality. All too quickly, Lithgow becomes a wheezing old gaffer, clinging stubbornly to power. Productions like The Crown suggest that truth and accuracy matter less than style and perception; that reality must bend to fit the creator’s mindset.

* * *

4:00 p.m. Showing of The Gathering Storm (2002, 96 mins.) Stars the late Albert Finney as Churchill and Vanessa Redgrave as Clementine. This is one of the better World War II biographical movies. Even in a cynical and anti-hero age, filmmakers still can avoid reducing Churchill to a flawed burlesque or a godlike caricature. Except for huge gap in the story line, The Gathering Storm is outstanding. (The gap is Munich, because the film skips it in the rush to war.)

8:00 p.m. Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn: “Churchill as War Leader.” Dr. Arnn is co-editor with Martin Gilbert of The Churchill Documents. Few scholars have devoted more time over the years to studying Churchill’s statesmanship; his remarks stand to be the outstanding feature of this event.

Thursday 28 March

4:00 p.m. Faculty Round Table: Daniel Coupland, James Brandon, Darryl Hart, David Stewart

Most popular by far: On both the Hillsdale College Churchill Project website and this one, more reader comment is engendered over Churchill’s role in the 1943 Bengal Famine than any other subject. A lot of it, pro and con, is by Indians themselves. This is understandable. The food shortage that ravaged Bengal in 1943-44 was the greatest humanitarian crisis in India’s history. Up to three million people died—5% of the province’s population. Proportionally, think 16 million Americans.

The book that started the controversy, Churchill’s Secret War, is now eight years old. Despite vast evidence to the contrary, notably in Hillsdale’s The Churchill Documents, Winston Churchill continues to be blamed by the ignorant who haven’t done their homework. The critics don’t say he caused the famine. They say he did nothing to help, and even hindered the help that was offered.

In reality, Churchill and the British War Cabinet did their level best to alleviate Bengal’s plight. They considered Canada, Iraq, Australia and the USA, with varying options, for shipments of wheat and even barley. Australia proved the largest source. In the end they eased the tragedy, thanks to Field Marshal Wavell, the Indian Viceroy Churchill had appointed.

Historical discussion by calm voices is always welcome, though increasingly scarce. Here is one such that makes some new points, pro and con. It is a 2018 comment on the 2015 Churchill Project article, “Did Churchill Cause the Bengal Famine?”

This is not a rehash of the whole story, or facts already established. For that, please refer to the links at the bottom of this article.

Latest Case Against

The article,  “Did Churchill Cause the Bengal Famine?,” an Indian reader writes, “implies that Winston Churchill was a savior (again), in that he completely and truly believed that Indians were worth saving. If this was case please tell me why the Denial Policy existed….

Don’t use the reason that he wanted to allow the Japanese to not have food supplies. If you checked the colonization of Indonesia by the Dutch, you’ll find that their scorched earth policy did nothing to frustrate the Japanese slightly and make the denizens of Indonesia a living hell.

To all the posts showing the benefits that India gained of the colonial rule from the British, well that is no better than saying that torture induces pain tolerance. The idea of India, although primitive, did exist at the time. The unification of the provinces would likely have occurred naturally in a changing world. Our own constitution learned and improvised on other people’s democracy to create a better democracy for India in general.

Indians are very forgiving of the past atrocities that occurred: famines (not just 1943), Jallianwala Bagh (Amritsar Massacre) the Rowlett Act, the 1857 mutiny. ‘Scientific Forestry’ caused a major change and problems for forest villages Education: the current education system in India focuses majorly on rote memorization instead of concept learning. This technique is only useful for few but is applied to all. This system was introduced first by the British.

The only way I feel that the British helped in any way are the removal of slavery and of Sati; and helping to remove of the caste system by letting Dalits, such as the great B.R Ambedkar, have an enemy to focus on, allowing him become a major influence on the creation of the constitution of India.

Response

If all the British did was remove slavery and Sati, and diminish the caste system, those were pretty big things.

But the article did not say Churchill was a savior. It said he did not willfully exacerbate the crisis and moved every means available to him to alleviate the Bengal famine. Ironically, it was ultimately ended by the Viceroy he had appointed.

If by “unification” the reader means a united India emerging after independence, he greatly underrated the vast divides among the many religions and nationalities. In 1926, over two decades before independence, Churchill wrote his wife:

Reading about India has depressed me for I see such ugly storms looming up…. Meanwhile we are holding on to this vast Empire, from which we get nothing, amid the increasing abuse and criticism of the world, and our own people, and increasing hatred of the Indian population, who receive constant and deadly propaganda to which we can make no reply.…only a Muslim-majority state in the northern part of the Indian sub-continent would protect Muslim minority rights if and when the British left.

It is fair to mention the British Raj’s abolition of slavery and Sati. (“The ladies went to their deaths with dignity, in the manner of a celebration,” reads one account of the latter.) And Britain tried to break down the caste system. Yes, there were atrocities. Churchill railed against them, like Jallianwala Bagh (Amritsar) in 1919, demanding the perpetrators be punished. His early objections to Gandhi were over fear of Brahmin domination, particularly over the Dalits. Yet in 1935 he said Gandhi “has gone very high in my esteem since he stood up for the Untouchables.”

Case for the Defense

In 1944 Churchill told Sir Arcot Ramasamay Mudaliar, India’s representative to the War Cabinet that “the old idea that the Indian was in any way inferior to the white man must go.” Specifically he said: “We must all be pals together. I want to see a great shining India, of which we can be as proud as we are of a great Canada or a great Australia.” **

These are not the remarks of a white supremacist, but a man who exalted above all, despite his imperialist upbringing, the rule of law under a just constitution—inspired in India’s case by Britain’s. That was another good thing the old Raj left in its wake.

It is true that the “Denial Policy” (denying rice and sea transport to Japanese invaders of Burma). was a factor in the Bengal famine. But the destructive weather and subsequent hoarding were much greater problems. It should be obvious to any fair-minded person that the invading Japanese had far less benign intentions for a conquered India than the old British Raj. War is hell—which is why nations spend so much of their effort trying to avoid it.

** Duff Hart-Davis, ed., King’s Counsellor: Abdication and War: the Diaries of Sir Alan Lascelles (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006), 173.

Further Reading

Please see and consider the facts of the matter, and the truth:

“Chastising Churchill,” by the Indian scholar Zareer Masani.

“Absent Churchill, Bengal’s Famine Would Have Been Worse,” by Arthur Herman, author of Gandhi and Churchill.

“Indians are Getting Post-Truth History,” by Andrew Roberts at the Jaipur Literary Festival.

Update for 2019

Assault and battery…

* * *

* * *

Nearly forty years ago an equally great Churchill performance, Robert Hardy in The Wilderness Years,  was received with equal acclaim by press and public. Most importantly, there was no chorus of hate, no trumped-up charges, no hint that Churchill’s overall record was in anything except positive. Alas times have changed.

No doubt some people also wonder if it rains up.

Fair and Balanced?

Mr. Blackwell makes a weak effort at balance, quoting Arthur Herman, eminent author of Gandhi and Churchill. “Absent Churchill,” Herman says, “Bengal’s Famine Would Have Been Worse.” He lists the true causes of the Bengal famine—which were many and varied—and Britain’s efforts to relieve the plight of Indians. These words deserve more ink than they get.

The rest of this piece mostly relies on a discredited 2010 book which failed to look at context and sources. And a historian who thinks perhaps that Churchill “didn’t prize the lives of people in Bengal very highly.” To vapid assertions not backed by fact, Churchill’s biographer Sir Martin Gilbert used to say, “Perhaps not!”

I was part of the editorial team on The Churchill Documents, Volume 19, Fateful Questions, September 1943 to April 1944 (2017). Numerous entries show that Churchill and the War Cabinet did their utmost to relieve suffering among Indians. This included shipping 350,000 tons of Australian wheat. They even offered Iraqi barley, but were frustrated to find that Indians wouldn’t eat it.

Documentary Evidence

The War Cabinet acted quickly on the danger to Indians.  On 4 November 1943 Churchill acknowledged Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s offer of Canadian wheat. This, he said, would take “at least two months” to reach India. Instead he was relying on Australian wheat,w hich would take only “three to four weeks.”

In early 1944 the British Empire exhausted its sources of food relief. Churchill turned to President Roosevelt. Desperately he appealed for help (which FDR denied, saying America, too, had insufficient shipping). Churchill wrote:

I am seriously concerned about the food situation in India and its possible reactions on our joint operations. Last year we had a grievous famine in Bengal through which at least 700,000 people died….By cutting down military shipments and other means, 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.

We have 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 from Australia…. have resisted for some time the Viceroy’s request that I should ask you for your help, but…I am no longer justified in not asking….

To the War Cabinet, Churchill said “his sympathy was great for the sufferings of the people of India.”

Does any of this sound like a war criminal?

Further evidence of Churchill’s efforts are cited in detail by the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.

“I hate Indians…”

Frustrated once with Delhi officialdom, Churchill exclaimed, “I hate Indians.” In modern convention, that is an offence of genocidal magnitude. But it is hardly dispositive. In his World War II memoirs he wrote quite differently about Indians:

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.

A little more balance would be welcome at the Vancouver Sun.

“Bludgeon of choice”

A historian friend says the Indian Bengal Famine (1943) “is on its way to surpassing the Dardanelles (1915) as the bludgeon of choice for Churchill’s detractors.” He was commenting on the latest outburst of Bengal Famine nonsense—contested by a thoughtful Indian, as well as myself: scroll to comments.

“Bloody Indian” tracks to Ben Pimlott, editor, The Second World War Diary of Hugh Dalton 1940-45 (Jonathan Cape 1986), 126. Hugh Dalton was a socialist Member of Parliament who served as Minister of Economic Warfare in Churchill’s World War II coalition. Later he became President of the Board of Trade. He agreed with Churchill on nothing domestically, but greatly admired his war leadership.

In 1929, Parliament began to debate the future of India, its evolution toward independence. The end result was the Government of India Act 1935, which provided for a federation of the Raj (British India) and the “princely states,” with a wide degree of autonomy.

The Indian argument

Churchill said such ideas advanced only the Indian ruling classes and the Congress Party, at the expense of common people. Particularly affected, he said, were the 60 million “Untouchables,” lowest level of the Hindu caste system. His detractors say this was just a smokescreen for his wish to preserve the Raj. In reality it was a little of both.

Churchill loved the British Empire, but he had a lifetime affinity for the unfortunate. In the midst of World War II, for example, he railed over the disproportionate tax burden in Egypt. It mainly fell, he said, on the Fellaheen (peasantry), rather than “the rich pashas and landowners and other pretended nationalists.” In 1941 he said: “A little of the radical democratic sledgehammer is needed in the [Nile] Delta, where so many fat, insolent class and party interests have grown up under our tolerant protection.” (Thanks to Andrew Roberts for this snippet his upcoming Churchill biography.)

Lord Irwin, later Halifax, was Viceroy of India from 1926 to 1931. Naturally, he favored the 1930-32 Round Table Conferences, which took up the case for eventual Indian autonomy. There, Indian and British leaders met in London to discuss the future of the subcontinent along independent lines. Halifax and Churchill disagreed, so….

Dalton’s 1929 diary note:

Halifax one day said to Winston, “You have the ideas about India of a subaltern a generation ago. There are a number of interesting Indians coming to the Round Table Conference and I really think it would be very valuable to you to talk to some of them and bring your ideas up to date.” Winston replied, “I am quite satisfied with my views of India, and I certainly don’t want them disturbed by any bloody Indian.”

It was the kind of thing you’d say in private conversation, if not in public. I recall an altercation in a car park in Stratford-upon-Avon. It was between the Welsh coach driver on my one of my Churchill tours and an irate local motorist. My driver had blocked his car, and had grown unpleasant when the English motorist asked him to move. “Sorry, sir,” said the Englishman, as I tried to mediate. “I’m not about to take that from any bloody Welshman.”

Perfectly ordinary? Fair enough. But in the Churchill context—even though it was from 1929—such a crack about an Indian is today an offense of genocidal magnitude.

Accurate or hearsay?

The rather pedantic point of all is this one your teachers probably made to you, as they did me: “Verify your sources.” Did Churchill say it? Maybe. It fits his attitude at the time. But we can’t prove it. Why not?

Isn’t Hugh Dalton an accurate witness? After all, he’s the primary source for Churchill’s great, unrecorded speech to the wider cabinet on 28 May 1940, portrayed in the movie Darkest Hour: “If this island story of ours is to end, let it end only when each of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.” And yes, Dalton is regarded as reliable by most historians.

But there’s a good rule for Churchill quotes, even from sources like Dalton. If the source says he heard it from Churchill directly (like “choking in our own blood”), that’s acceptable. But if he says somebody else told him Churchill said it, it remains hearsay and thus unprovable. To verify it we need something Halifax himself wrote. And, despite our best efforts to find it—he didn’t.

At least that was my rule when compiling Churchill by Himself, and I recommend it to you.

Politics of 1940

Their will was resolute and remorseless, and as it proved unconquerable. It fell to me to express it, and if I found the right words you must remember that I have always earned my living by my pen and by my tongue. It was the nation and the race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.

What if?

Oldman’s portrayal

Tears came into his eyes as he answered gravely: “God alone knows how great it is. I hope that it is not too late. I am very much afraid that it is. We can only do our best.” As he turned away he muttered something—to himself. Then he set his jaw and with a look of determination, mastering all emotion, he began to climb the stairs of the Admiralty. It was the greatest privilege of my life to have shared those few moments with him.

Setting a mark

__________________________________

We should be grateful to Professor Yasmin Khan. Why? Because in deploring the absence of Indian troops in the new movie Dunkirk, and the tragic 1943 Bengal famine, she blames “the imperial state,” not the usual culprit, Winston Churchill:

At least three million Bengalis died in a catastrophic famine in 1943, a famine that is almost never discussed. The famine’s causes were a byproduct of the war, but as Madhusree Mukerjee has proved in her book Churchill’s Secret War, the imperial state also failed to deliver relief. Many soldiers signed up as volunteers to fill their belly.

Curiously, the link above is a semi-critique in Harpers, itself a mixture of truth and counterfactuals. For a balanced review of Churchill’s Secret War, see Arthur Herman, “Absent Churchill, India’s 1943 Famine Would Have Been Worse.” (Arthur Herman was nominated for a Pulitzer for his book Gandhi & Churchill—an elegant account of the two leaders. It captures both Churchill’s generosity of spirit and Gandhi’s greatness of soul.)

An endless supply of victims…

Yes, the film leaves out Indian troops at Dunkirk. But why stop there in the quest for victims? The film omits the Canadians. It doesn’t show one Belgian! Except for a couple of nurses, it leaves out women. (A gallant band of female telephonists of the Auxiliary Territorial Service were among the last off the beaches. Heroic women were in some of the rescue craft. Others worked 24/7 in Admiral Ramsay‘s Dover bunker, which directed the operation.)

If we are going to accuse Britons of amnesia over the Indian war effort, we ought at least to grasp the facts. Like Prof. Khan, we begin with the 1943 Bengal Famine. Arthur Herman was right: without Churchill and his cabinet, it would have been worse. See also the Indian historian Zareer Masani: “Last Word on the Bengal Famine,” 2021.

Churchill mined his resources for Indian food supplies—amidst global conflict, strained shipping, hostile U-boats, and shortages everywhere. He even tried to substitute Iraqi barley, which Indians wouldn’t eat. In vain he pleaded for help from Roosevelt. He got much from Australia. Not all of Australia’s grain ships bypassed India, as the author of Churchill’s Secret War has stated.

To tell the truth…

It is quite untrue that “the imperial state failed to deliver relief.” The opposite is the case. Vast supplies of grain reached Indian ports. There are other villains in the story. The Japanese seem always to escape blame—yet their inroads into Burma and India had much to do with the shortages. So did hoarding by Indian grain merchants. Before accusing “the Imperial state” of starving the Bengalis, one ought to consider more than one discredited book.

After the British left the government contained famines (1967, 1973, 1979, and 1987 in Bihar, Maharashtra, West Bengal, and Gujarat respectively).  That is greatly to India’s credit. Of course there was no global war going on. There were no Japanese submarines torpedoing cargo ships in the Bay of Bengal.

The famine is not “almost never discussed.” The evidence is there for any researcher to consider. See for example “Did Churchill Cause the Bengal Famine?” (Hillsdale College Churchill Project). Review the proof itself  in Hillsdale’s The Churchill Documents, Volume 19 (scroll this link to “Bengal Famine”).  Read Arthur Herman’s Finest Hour article. Consult “Churchill and the Bengal Famine” on this site. The record is clear. Again and again and again.

Churchill on Indian contributions

Since Prof. Khan is concerned about British “amnesia” over Indian contributions in the Second World War, perhaps this will enlighten her. Author Mukerjee often quotes Churchill’s postwar assertion: “India was carried through the struggle on the shoulders of our small island.” That quote is badly truncated. Pray consider the full context. (Chapter XII, The Hinge of Fate, 1951):

British Government officials in India were wont to consider it a point of honour to champion the particular interests of India against those of Great Britain whenever a divergence occurred…. Contracts were fixed in India at extravagant rates, and debts incurred in inflated rupees were converted into so-called “sterling balances” at the pre-war rate of exchange…. we were being charged nearly a million pounds a day for defending India from the miseries of invasion which so many other lands endured. We finished the war, from all the worst severities of which they were spared, owing them a debt almost as large as that on which we defaulted to the United States after the previous struggle.

It is worth adding that the Indian Army was professional and volunteer, made up of those who chose it as a career, unlike conscripts from Britain who had no choice.

In Victory, Magnanimity

Churchill’s magnanimity will out. Those who accuse him of racist disregard for the Indian people might look at what he writes next. Think about it:

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….

Nearly three 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.

As historian David Reynolds has detailed, the six volumes of Churchill’s history [sic; it was memoir not history] of the Second World War were built upon selective memory forged out of ego, not least the “great man’s” fleeting memory of the 1943 Bengal famine, in which more than 3.5 million people perished, to a large extent as a direct consequence of Churchill’s policies and actions. His hatred of the peoples of the Indian subcontinent is a matter of record.

It is always intriguing to read a new chapter in the unfolding catalogue of Churchill’s Perfidy. Even if the evidence offered consists of misunderstanding Professor Reynolds, swallowing an empty myth, and seizing on an untoward comment in a moment of frustration (“I hate Indians”).

What the Nobel was for…​

Caesar and Cicero

Who Wrote What

Bengal Famine: again

Priorities for India

Why?

The volumes comprise “every important document of any kind that concerns Churchill, and the present volume is 2,752 pages long, representing an average of more than eleven pages per day.” Order your copy from the Hillsdale College Bookstore.

Here is an excerpt from my account, “Fresh History,” which can be read in its entirety at the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.

Fateful Questions: Excerpts

Fastidiously compiled by the late Sir Martin Gilbert and edited by Dr. Larry Arnn, this volume offers a fresh contribution of documents crucial to our understanding of Churchill in World War II. It is a vast new contribution to Churchill scholarship.

Fateful Questions takes us from the Allied invasion of Italy to the first Big Three conference at Teheran; Russian successes on the Eastern Front; fraught arguments over tactics and strategy as the Allies begin closing in on Nazi Germany, and on to the eve of D-Day: the invasion of France in June 1944.

The majority of these documents have never before been seen in print. They illustrate the sheer volume and variety of subjects Churchill dealt with, leading Britain in the war while presiding of myriad mechanics of government.

In Fateful Questions, Churchill is called upon to alleviate, in the midst of war, a severe famine in Bengal, India. Almost simultaneously, he is confronted with Italy’s surrender, and the question of who will lead that nation after Mussolini. From America come constant requests, prods and proposals—and the growing realization that by comparison to the USA, Britain will soon play a greatly diminished role.

Militarily, Churchill has to consider siphoning resources from the Italian campaign to support the coming invasion of France. He must cope with belligerent notes from Stalin, often demanding the impossible; strained dialogue within the War Cabinet; difficulties in setting Big Three meetings; Parliamentary business; Japan and the Pacific; communications with the citizenry; appointments to fill; vacancies and losses; postwar planning—page after page, copiously footnoted by Hillsdale’s team of student associates and practiced historians.

Even now, in the digital age, Churchill’s workload in 1943-44 would be enormous for several persons, let alone one man pushing seventy. His output was extraordinary, his prescriptions understandable and wise. If he lost his temper on occasion, it is fully understandable. This is not to suggest—as the documents testify—that Churchill was right on every subject. But the average of his decisions was certainly not bad.

A sampling from Fateful Questions illustrates both the complexity of Churchill’s problems and their wide variety and the depths of detail into which he entered—and, in some cases, some rather astonishing facts which, until this book were confined to archives, or not known at all.

Palestine

Churchill’s steady support of a national home for the Jews continued during World War II, and Fateful Questions contains many evidences. In 1942-44 Walter Guinness, Lord Moyne, was Resident Minister of State in Cairo, responsible for the Middle East, including Mandatory Palestine, and Africa. He was a lifetime friend of the Churchills. His assassination by Zionist extremists in November 1944 stunned Churchill. “If our dreams for Zionism are to end in the smoke of assassins’ pistols, and our labours for its future to produce only a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany,” he declared sadly, “many like myself will have to reconsider the position we have maintained so consistently and so long in the past.”

27 October 1943. Winston S. Churchill to Sir Edward Bridges. Prime Minister’s Personal Minute C.41/3 (Churchill papers, 20/106)

It must be more than three months since the War Cabinet decided that a special committee should be set up to watch over the Jewish question and Palestine generally. How many times has this Committee met? At the present moment Lord Moyne is over here. I said at least a month ago that he should be invited to lay his views before this Committee. He has been made a member, but there has been no meeting. A meeting should be held this week, and Lord Moyne should have every opportunity of stating his full case, in which I am greatly interested. The matter might be discussed further at the Cabinet next week or the week after. Pray report to me the action that will be taken.

Destroyers for Bases 

In the Destroyers for Bases Agreement on 2 September 1940, fifty mothballed U.S. Navy destroyers were transferred to the Royal Navy in exchange for land rights to build American bases on British possessions. No one maintained that this was a fair exchange, but Fateful Questions reveals that Churchill downplayed this issue: “When you have got a thing where you want it, it is a good thing to leave it where it is.” To President Roosevelt’s advisor, Harry Hopkins, he admitted that the value of the trade was unequal—but that, to Britain, American security overrode considerations of an equable “business deal.” This was astonishing admission, characteristic of Churchill, and his loyalty to an ally. 

14 October 1943. Winston S. Churchill to Harry Hopkins. Prime Minister’s Personal Telegram T.1614/3  (Churchill papers, 20/121)

Personal and Most Secret. I am most grateful for the comments which the President made at his Press conference but there are several other important allegations which we think should be answered. I therefore propose to publish from 10 Downing Street on my authority something like the [following]…Statement begins…..

“Complaints are made about the bases lent by Britain to the United States in the West Indies in 1940 in return for the fifty destroyers. These fifty destroyers, although very old, were most helpful at that critical time to us who were fighting alone against Germany and Italy, but no human being could pretend that the destroyers were in any way an equivalent for the immense strategic advantages conceded in seven islands vital to the United States. I never defended the transaction as a business deal. I proclaimed to Parliament, and still proclaim, that the safety of the United States is involved in these bases, and that the military security of the United States must be considered a prime British interest….”

 

Famine in Bengal

Since publication of a book on the 1943-44 Bengal famine a few years ago—and a chorus of condemnations from those who read little else—Churchill and his War Cabinet have been accused near-genocidal behavior over aid to the victims. The Viceroy, Lord Wavell, and Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery, are frequently represented as Churchill’s critics. Before he died, Sir Martin Gilbert told me that the relevant documents, which he had exhaustively compiled, would be revealed in the appropriate document volume. They would, he said, completely exonerate Churchill.

That time has now come with publication of Fateful Questions. Reading it, no one could consider that Churchill and his Cabinet, in the midst of a war for survival, did not do everything they could for the plight of the starving, and for the Indian people in general. Only a few excerpts are possible here. They barely scratch the surface.

8 October 1943. Winston S. Churchill to the War Cabinet. (Churchill papers, 23/11), 10 Downing Street

DIRECTIVE TO THE VICEROY DESIGNATE (WAVELL)

1. Your first duty is the defence of India from Japanese menace and invasion. Owing to the favourable turn which the affairs of The King-Emperor have taken this duty can best be discharged by ensuring that India is a safe and fertile base from which the British and American offensive can be launched in 1944. Peace, order and a high condition of war-time well-being among the masses of the people constitute the essential foundation of the forward thrust against the enemy.
2. The material and cultural conditions of the many peoples of India will naturally engage your earnest attention. The hard pressures of world-war have for the first time for many years brought conditions of scarcity, verging in some localities into actual famine, upon India. Every effort must be made, even by the diversion of shipping urgently needed for war purposes, to deal with local shortages. But besides this the prevention of the hoarding of grain for a better market and the fair distribution of foodstuffs between town and country are of the utmost consequence. The contrast between wealth and poverty in India, the incidence of corrective taxation and the relations prevailing between land-owner and tenant or labourer, or between factory-owner and employee, require searching re-examination.
3. 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…. [emphasis mine]

12 October 1943. House of Commons: Oral Answers

INDIA (FOOD SITUATION)

Secretary of State for India (Mr. Amery): At the beginning of the year His Majesty’s Government provided the necessary shipping for substantial imports of grain to India in order to meet prospects of serious shortage which were subsequently relieved by an excellent spring harvest in Northern India. Since the recrudescence of the shortage in an acute form we have made 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. We have also been able to help in the supply of milk food for children. The problem so far as help from here is concerned is entirely one of shipping, and has to be judged in the light of all the other urgent needs of the United Nations.

Canadian & Australian Aid

4 November 1943. Winston S. Churchill to William Mackenzie King (Prime Minister, Canada). PM’s Personal Telegram T.1842/3 (Churchill papers, 20/123)

1. I have seen the telegrams exchanged by you and the Viceroy offering 100,000 tons of wheat to India and I gratefully acknowledge the spirit which prompts Canada to make this generous gesture.
2. Your offer is contingent however on shipment from the Pacific Coast which I regret is impossible. The only ships available to us on the Pacific Coast are the Canadian new buildings which you place at our disposal. These are already proving inadequate to fulfil our existing high priority commitments from that area which include important timber requirements for aeroplane manufacture in the United Kingdom and quantities of nitrate from Chile to the Middle East which we return for foodstuffs for our Forces and for export to neighbouring territories, including Ceylon.
3. Even if you could make the wheat available in Eastern Canada, I should still be faced with a serious shipping question. If our strategic plans are not to suffer undue interference we must continue to scrutinise all demands for shipping with the utmost rigour. India’s need for imported wheat must be met from the nearest source, i.e. from Australia. Wheat from Canada would take at least two months to reach India whereas it could be carried from Australia in 3 to 4 weeks. Thus apart from the delay in arrival, the cost of shipping is more than doubled by shipment from Canada instead of from Australia. In existing circumstance this uneconomical use of shipping would be indefensible….

11 November 1943. Winston S. Churchill to Mackenzie King. PM’s Personal Telegram T.1942/3 (Churchill papers, 20/124)

…The War Cabinet has again considered the question of further shipments of Australian wheat and has decided to ship up to another 100,000 tons, part of which will arrive earlier than the proposed cargo from Canada….

“We should do everything possible…”

14 February 1944. War Cabinet: Conclusions. (War Cabinet papers, 65/41) 10 Downing Street

INDIAN FOOD GRAIN REQUIREMENTS

The Prime Minister informed the War Cabinet that…there had been a further communication from the Viceroy urging in the strongest terms the seriousness of the situation as he foresaw it….he was most anxious that we should do everything possible to ease the Viceroy’s position. No doubt the Viceroy felt that if this corner could be turned, the position next year would be better….

The Minister of War Transport said that it would be out of the question for him to find shipping to maintain the import of wheat to India at a monthly rate of 50,000 tons for an additional two months. The best that he could do was represented by the proposed import of Iraqi barley. If, when the final figures of the rice crop were available, the Government of India’s anticipation of an acute shortage proved to be justified he would then have tonnage in a position to carry to India about 25,000 tons a month. But even this help would be at the expense of cutting the United Kingdom import programme in 1944 below 24 million tons, this being the latest estimate in the light of increasing operational requirements. In the circumstances it was clearly quite impossible to provide shipping to meet the full demand of 1½ million tons made by the Government of India.

24 April 1944. War Cabinet: Conclusions. (Cabinet papers, 65/42) 10 Downing Street

Secret. The War Cabinet had before them a Memorandum by the Secretary of State for India (WP (44) 216) reviewing the latest position as regards the Indian food grain situation. The result was a net worsening of 550,000 tons and the Viceroy, in addition to the 200,000 tons already promised, now required 724,000 tons of wheat if the minimum needs of the civil population were to be met and the Army were also to receive their requirements.

The Secretary of State for India said that the position had been worsened by unseasonable weather, and by the disaster at Bombay, in which 45,000 tons of badly-needed foodstuffs and 11 ships had been lost. He was satisfied that everything possible had been done by the Authorities in India to meet the situation. Given the threat to operations which any breakdown in India’s economic life involved, he felt that we should now apprise the United States of the seriousness of the position. It must be for the War Cabinet to decide how far we should ask for their actual assistance….

The Prime Minister said that it was clear that His Majesty’s Government could only provide further relief for the Indian situation at the cost of incurring grave difficulties in other directions. At the same time, there was a strong obligation on us to replace the grain which had perished in the Bombay explosion. He was sceptical as to any help being forthcoming from America, save at the cost of operations of the United Kingdom import programme. At the same time his sympathy was great for the sufferings of the people of India.

Appeal to Roosevelt

29 April 1944. Winston S. Churchill to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. PM’s Personal Telegram T.996/4. (Churchill papers, 20/163)

No.665. I am seriously concerned about the food situation in India and its possible reactions on our joint operations. Last year we had a grievous famine in Bengal through which at least 700,000 people died. This year there is a good crop of rice, but we are faced with an acute shortage of wheat, aggravated by unprecedented storms which have inflicted serious damage on the Indian spring crops. India’s shortage cannot be overcome by any possible surplus of rice even if such a surplus could be extracted from the peasants. Our recent losses in the Bombay explosion have accentuated the problem.

Wavell is exceedingly anxious about our position and has given me the gravest warnings. His present estimate is that he will require imports of about one million tons this year if he is to hold the situation, and to meet the needs of the United States and British and Indian troops and of the civil population especially in the great cities. I have just heard from Mountbatten that he considers the situation so serious that, unless arrangements are made promptly to import wheat requirements, he will be compelled to release military cargo space of SEAC in favour of wheat and formally to advise Stillwell that it will also be necessary for him to arrange to curtail American military demands for this purpose.

By cutting down military shipments and other means, 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 have 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 from Australia without reducing the assistance you are now providing for us, who are at a positive minimum if war efficiency is to be maintained. We have the wheat (in Australia) but we lack the ships. I have resisted for some time the Viceroy’s request that I should ask you for your help, but I believe that, with this recent misfortune to the wheat harvest and in the light of Mountbatten’s representations, I am no longer justified in not asking for your help. Wavell is doing all he can by special measures in India. If, however, he should find it possible to revise his estimate of his needs, I would let you know immediately.

Without Churchill…

Fateful Questions, in these documents and others included, has put paid to the outrageous allegations that Churchill, full of racist hatred for the people of India, was responsible for exacerbating the Bengal famine in 1943-44.

The historian Arthur Herman noted two facts which Churchill’s critics have thus far studiously ignored.  (1) Had the famine occurred in peacetime, without a war for survival, it would have been dealt with competently, as famines had been dealt with before by the British Raj. (2) Without Churchill, the Bengal famine would have been worse.

Excerpt

Winston Churchill is in the news, as is often the case.  On February 11th, Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders had words of praise for Churchill’s war leadership. Vox Media has criticized him and Churchill in sharp language.  Are the criticisms of Churchill true?

During the Democrat debate on 11 February 2-16, candidates were asked to name two leaders, one American and one foreign, who would influence their policy decisions.  Senator Bernie Sanders chose Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.

Fair enough, we thought; they saved western civilization.

But Churchill? Of course he mounted the effort to defeat Hitler, Vox said, but Sen. Sanders put his credibility on the line. He praised “a chemical weapons enthusiast and unreconstructed racist who cut a swath of suffering and death….” Churchill’s fight against tyranny in Europe “doesn’t look quite as principled when contrasted with his commitment to maintaining it elsewhere.”

Vox Mythology

Vox offers a familiar litany of Churchill mythology, citing alleged sins which have long since been refuted by reputable historians.

1. Bengal Famine, 1943: In fact, without Churchill’s intervention, the famine would have been worse.
2. Chemical warfare, 1918-20: What Churchill referred to as “poisoned gas” was “lachrymatory gas” (tear gas). There is no evidence that he was an “enthusiast” of chemical weapons, in fact quite the contrary.
3. Black and Tans, Ireland, 1920-22: Churchill did not personally propose the Black and Tans, though he stubbornly defended them despite atrocities that exceeded their remit. Against that, credit him with a leading role in forging Ireland’s independence­.
4. Mau Mau, Kenya, 1950s: The Mau Mau uprising had as many or more native opponents as it had supporters. Both it and the colonial government indulged in atrocities. Examination of the Gilbert Papers yields only two instances where Churchill mentioned the matter in Cabinet; in one he warned against “mass executions.” Jomo Kenyatta, the father of modern Kenya, said : “Mau Mau was a disease which had been eradicated, and must never be remembered again.”

See full article.

Per the previous post, I append for reader comment the contents of my next book, Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality: What Churchill Stood For.

I have written on most of these matters in the past; the book recasts it afresh. I also acknowledge and cross-reference the work of experts who know far more than I, particularly in the fields of genealogy and medicine. I would be glad to hear your thoughts; please use the “contact” page.

The historian David Stafford wrote: “Myth only develops and takes hold when the time is right, and the climate has long been ripe for the emergence of myths about a wartime hero who stood firm against a totalitarian foe and smote an evil empire.”

Churchill myth is born both of exaggeration and criticism, created either to glorify the record or to belabor it. The former I suppose is somewhat less harmful, born of ignorance. The latter obfuscate the record and distract us from the truth, sometimes intentionally.

Paul Addison wrote, “Paradoxically, I have always thought it diminishes Churchill to regard him as superhuman,” Yet Professor Addison has no doubt about Churchill’s greatness. The most memorable words on that subject were by Churchill’s official biographer, the late Sir Martin Gilbert:

In every sphere of human endeavour, Churchill foresaw the dangers and potential for evil. Many of those dangers are our dangers today. Some writers portray him as a figure of the past, an anachronism, a grotesque. In doing so, it is they who are the losers, for he was a man of quality: a good guide for the generations now reaching adulthood.

The aim of this book is to skewer the most popular allegations about Churchill, to offer readers what he really thought and did, sometimes about matters that are still on our minds today—for as Twain wrote, history never repeats; but sometimes it rhymes.

Youth: Lady Randolph’s indiscretions…The parentage of Jack Churchill…The Menace of Education….The death of Lord Randolph…Women’s Suffrage.

Young Parliamentarian: The loss of  the Titanic…The unpleasantness on Sidney Street…”The sullen feet of marching men in Tonypandy“…Irish independence.

World War I: Warmonger image, peacemaker reality…Defense of Antwerp…Dardanelles and Gallipoli…Sinking the Lusitania…Chemical warfare...America’s involvement in the Great War.

Between the World Wars: “Taking more out of alcohol”…“The foul baboonery of Bolshevism”…Trial by Jewry…”Half-Naked Fakir“…”The Truth About Hitler.”

World War II: Broadcasting the war speeches…Refugees and enemy aliens…Torture as tool or terror…Bombing of Coventry…Pearl Harbor…The Holocaust…Famine in Bengal…Destruction of Monte Cassino…Overtures to Mussolini…Feeding occupied Europe…Firebombing Dresden.

Postwar Years: The fate of Eastern Europe…Nuking the Soviets…The Conservative Party…”Only to have accomplished nothing in the end.”

Appendix: “Things That Go Bump in the Night” (so far-fetched that they defy categorizing). Converting to Islam…A life twice-saved by Alexander Fleming...Engineering the Wall Street Crash…The myths of the Black Dog and an unhappy marriage.