Lawgiver to Jackal, 1927-1940 

The art of the out-of-context quote is practiced frequently over Churchill’s supposed views of Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini. (“Why do you spell out all his names? He doesn’t deserve them,” a pedantic proofreader once asked me. I don’t know. In view of how he ended up, hanging upside down, it’s an irony.)

Did Winston Churchill admire the fascist dictator? With careful editing, one can try to sell this argument. Churchill once praised Italy’s “renowned Chief, with his “Roman genius…the greatest lawgiver among living men.” Little more than a decade later, Il Duce had become a “jackal” in Churchill’s vernacular. What a hypocrite! Perhaps, perhaps not.  

Churchill’s early words sound damning, given what we know of Dear Benito in retrospect. And the critics pounced. “Before the war, Churchill offered Il Duce a deal,” wrote Clive Irving in the Daily Beast. “After the war, British intelligence tried to destroy their correspondence…. When Churchill became prime minister in May 1940 he tried, in a series of letters, to dissuade Mussolini from joining the Axis powers. He was ignored.”

This mixes much that is true with much that is trite, as Arthur Balfour once quipped: “The problem is that what’s true is trite, and what’s not trite is not true.” 

Caro Benito  

One of Churchill’s responsibilities as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1925-29) was recouping foreign war debts. Italy owed £600 million (£30 billion today). Churchill agreed to defer payments until 1930. Il Duce Benito sent “the warmest expressions of gratitude” and offered Churchill a decoration. Thanks but no, said WSC.  (Imagine if that was among Churchill’s medals.) 

In Rome in January 1927, Churchill had two brief meetings with Mussolini. At a press conference afterward, Churchill told Italian journalists:    

I could not help being charmed, like so many other people have been, by his gentle and simple bearing and by his calm, detached poise in spite of so many burdens. If I had been an Italian, I am sure that I should have been whole-heartedly with you from start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.

That remark was in part standard diplomatic boilerplate. But—cropped after “finish”—it has been used to damn Churchill as pro-fascist. In context, he clearly referred to the Italians, not the British.

Also, you tend to say polite things about a foreign leader when he has promised to pay back a lot of money. What Churchill wanted for Italy was to stand up to Bolshevism—which in 1927 he feared more than anything. 

Rome versus Berlin? 

Churchill always thought in terms of coalitions, so the coming of Hitler made him ponder Benito Mussolini as a potential ally. Hitler’s plans for Austria, and perhaps Trieste, did not seem in Italy’s interest. The diplomatic situation became trickier in 1935 when Mussolini invaded Ethiopia (Abyssinia). On 26 September, Churchill said Britain would support League of Nations sanctions and an arms embargo.

But Churchill remained ambivalent about challenging the Italian dictator. “I would never have encouraged Britain to make a breach with him about Abyssinia,” he wrote, “or roused the League of Nations against him unless we were prepared to go to war in the last extreme.”

In May 1937 he proposed a Mediterranean pact against “further aggression” by Hitler, hoping Mussolini might join. By then, however, the breach was far advanced. Caro Benito would not forgive Britain’s support of sanctions.  

Trying to hold Italy  

Was Churchill’s attitude toward Mussolini inconsistent or realistic? Italy’s aggression was directed far from pivotal Europe. On that continent, Churchill considered Germany a greater menace than Russia. Accordingly, he courted both Rome and Moscow, often at the same time.  It didn’t help that neither liked the other.

In early 1939, Churchill offered Soviet Ambassador Ivan Maisky proposals for collective security against Hitler. Russia, Maisky declared, would “not come in to any coalition which includes Italy…. [Russia would have] no confidence in France or ourselves if [you] start flirting with Italy.”

Churchill shot back: “[T]he main enemy is Germany.” It was always a mistake, he added, “to allow one’s enemies to acquire even unreliable allies.”

As Prime Minister in May 1940, Churchill wrote his first and only letter to Benito Mussolini. A “river of blood” threatened to engulf Britain and Italy, he wrote. “I have never been the enemy of Italian greatness.” He was not writing in a “spirit of weakness,” although of course he was. Mussolini’s answer was abrupt:  

Without going back very far in time, I remind you of the initiative taken in 1935 by your Government to organise at Geneva sanctions against Italy, engaged in securing for herself a small space in the African sun without causing the slightest injury to your interests and territories or those of others. I remind you also of the real and actual state of servitude in which Italy finds herself in her own sea…. the same sense of honor and of respect for engagements assumed in the Italian-German Treaty guides Italian policy today and tomorrow in the face of any event whatsoever.”

Fake “peace feelers”  

On 10 June 1940, Italy declared war on France and Britain. Ironically, Benito Mussolini was the first major wartime figure to fall. Three years later the Fascist Grand Council repudiated their leader of two decades. “The keystone of the Fascist arch has crumbled,” Churchill told the House of Commons. Long before then, Mussolini had long gone from “renowned chief” to “hyena” in the Churchill lexicon.

Was Churchill impressed by the Mussolini of the 1920s and 1930s? Many people were, although a realist might conclude that Churchill said what he did in British interests. Churchill redacted little from his archives; researchers can pore over a million documents searching for smoking guns. One quest involves the so-called Churchill-Mussolini “peace correspondence,” which has long been rumored to exist—somewhere. 

Three supposed letters from Churchill to Mussolini, with offers of support provided Italy left the Axis, are mentioned at least since 1954, when Giovannino Guareschi published the purported texts in his magazine Candido. Guareschi was later prosecuted and imprisoned for publishing forged letters by Alcide De Gasperi, Italy’s 1945-53 prime minister. The Churchill letters were also alluded to by Renzo De Felice, official historian of fascism and biographer of Mussolini. De Felice died in 1996, his evidence unpublished.   

In 1985 the most celebrated conspiracist, Arrigo Petacco, reproduced copies of the three letters (two dated 1940, one 1945). Ignoring their typos and stilted English, even the casual would find it difficult to believe they are genuine. The Italian researcher Patrizio Giangreco reviewed them in 2010, proving them obvious fakes. (See “Further reading” below.) 

“La pista inglese” 

The Churchill Archives hold only one Churchill letter to Mussolini—that of 16 May 1940—and Mussolini’s negative reply two days later. But the conspiracists persist. “Although there would have been copies in London of the Churchill-Mussolini exchanges,” wrote Clive Irving, “none has ever turned up and in April 1945, somebody in London was very anxious that Mussolini’s copies should never see the light of day.” Italian historians dubbed this scenario La pista inglese (The English trail).

In September 1945, the myth continues, Churchill himself joined the search. He traveled to Lake Como, an area that had been controlled by Il Duce’s rump Republic of Salò, staying at the “Villa Aprexin.” A photograph was taken and published in R.G. Grant’s Churchill: An Illustrated Biography. Ostensibly on a painting holiday, Churchill’s real purpose was to retrieve his Mussolini letters. (With so many people out to steal the correspondence, it’s amazing that none ever came up with it.)  

The problem with all this, as Giangreco noted, is that Churchill’s villa, where he stayed from 2 to 19 September, was “La Rosa.” The photograph of him painting nearby is the one in Grant’s book. From La Rosa, Churchill went to Villa Pirelli near Genoa, and from there to Monte Carlo and the French Riviera.

Conspiracies upon conspiracies  

Still the beat continued, Clive Irving fanning it in 2015: En route to Lake Como, Irving wrote, Churchill stopped in Milan to stand bareheaded at Mussolini’s unmarked grave! No evidence is offered, nor is there any. Churchill flew from London September 2nd and arrived in Como the same day.

Irving claimed Churchill flew to Milan under the cover name “Colonel Warden,” which he says was the pilot’s name. Actually that was Churchill’s code name throughout the war, derived from his title, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.

Churchill’s villa at Como, Irving continued, was “owned by none other than Guido Donegani…an industrialist and Fascist collaborator,” who was “interrogated by British Intelligence and later released.” Donegani supposedly handed him the incriminating letters, papers or diaries—they are variously described.

Irving claimed that official biographer Martin Gilbert “concluded that the correspondence had been retrieved and handed over to Churchill, but it never turned up in the Churchill archives and was never seen again.”   

Martin Gilbert dismissed the whole idea of secret Mussolini correspondence. His account does not mention Donegani, who died in 1947. If Donegani did own Villa La Rosa, there is no evidence Churchill ever met him. The day after he arrived, Churchill wrote his wife that the villa belonged to “one of Mussolini’s rich commerçants who had fled, whither is not known.”

“You haven’t looked hard enough”  

Churchill admitted in his memoirs that he had once expressed admiration for Mussolini as a bulwark against Bolshevism. He distinguished between different types of fascism. Unequivocally opposed to Nazism, he was also anti-fascist in British affairs. He was uncritical of fascism in Italy—until Mussolini fell in with Hitler and declared war in June 1940. The Prime Minister who would have “no truce or parley” with Hitler and his “grizzly gang” would never have supported the Italian “frisking up at the side of the German tiger.”

Possibly the best rejoinder to all this is by the historian Andrew Roberts:  

Leaving aside the fact that Churchill would not at that stage [1940-43] have wanted or needed peace with Mussolini, one charge goes that the relevant documents are in a waterproof bag at the bottom of Lake Como. So, when one takes issue with them, the conspiracy theorists say “go and look.” Of course, if you don’t find anything, they just say, “you haven’t looked hard enough.”

Further reading

Patrizio Romano Giangreco, “Review: Mistero Churchill by Roberto Festorazzi,” 2016.

“The Churchill-Mussolini Non-Letters,” 2015 

“Mussolini’s Consolation” (Churchill Quotes),” 2012

“Cole Porter and a Vanished Culture: Brewster and Mussolini,” 2020

Law giver Musso 

Dr. Antoine Capet, author of the indispensable Churchill: Le dictionnaire (2018) is developing an expanded English edition. “I am currently engaged on the Mussolini entry,” he writes….

Naturally I quote Churchill’s words of 17 February 1933 to the Anti-Socialist and Anti-Communist Union in London. He described Mussolini’s ‘Roman genius’ and called him ‘the greatest law giver among living men.’ Martin  Gilbert first published these quotes in 1976.   As you point out in Churchill by Himself, Robert Rhodes James provides only a truncated version of the speech in his Complete Speeches. All search results derive from Gilbert. I suspect that Churchill’s speech was never published. 

Churchill’s actual words 

As Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1927, Churchill negotiated Italy’s payment of her war debt to Britain, which Mussolini was still honoring in 1933. Politicians often say nice things about foreigners who owe them lots of money. But this is too flippant, and there is more to the question. 

Dr. Capet is right that the full speech was never published. Allen Packwood, director of the Churchill Archives Centre, came to our rescue. He supplied the next best thing: Churchill’s original speech notes, corrected in WSC’s own hand. The methodical Sir Martin read and quoted from this document years ago when researching the Churchill official biography. What he wrote was a model of fairness and balance: 

During the course of his speech Churchill praised “the Roman genius” of Mussolini, whom he described as “the greatest law giver among living men,” for his anti-Communist stance, but he rejected Fascism as a model for Britain. “It is not a sign-post which would direct us here,” he said, “for I firmly believe that our long experienced democracy will be able to preserve a parliamentary system of government with whatever modifications may be necessary from both extremes of arbitrary rule.”

The speech was not about the “law giver.” A few days before Churchill spoke, the Oxford Union had approved a motion: “That this House refuses in any circumstances to fight for King and Country.” Churchill compared this “squalid, shameless avowal” with more robust attitudes abroad, “where great nations stand determined to defend their national glories or national existence with their lives.” 

Rejecting fascism 

Churchill had consistently declared that Italian fascism was inadmissible in the British democracy. In Rome in 1927 he had told reporters:  “If I had been an Italian, I am sure I should have been whole-heartedly with you…against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism. But in England we have not yet had to face this danger in the same deadly form. We have our own way of doing things.”

In 1933 he was simply repeating that view, but he is repeatedly quoted out of context to assert the opposite. The “law giver” phrase comes up 13 times in his words or speeches. Five of the first six are in books by hostile biographers.  Each truncates the quote to avoid any suggestion that Churchill qualified his remark. No one reproduces the full context. Instead they imply that he was at home with fascism and dictatorship. 

“Subsidiary craters spouting forth” 

When the son of an unpopular minister entered Parliament, Churchill cracked: “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!” 

Law giver Mussolini continues to surface in Churchill attack books. The latest of these (2021) adds: “These were grotesque words to use about a posturing mountebank whose brutish followers beat up his opponents…. The Nottingham Evening Post’s headline ‘Winston a fascist’ may have been a little sharp…” A little?  

One gesture of balance was Nicholas Farrell’s in The Spectator. A Mussolini biographer, Farrell asserted Churchill’s admiration, but provided the “law giver” quote in full context. (Less commendably, Farrell relied on Clare Sheridan’s claim that Churchill was “the likely leader of the Fascisti party in Britain.” That flies in the face of Churchill’s own words, and Sheridan was anything but a serious observer.)

Reality 

Wanting someone to defeat someone else—like Churchill wanted Mussolini to defeat communism—does not mean you espouse someone’s politics. Approving Mussolini’s victory in 1923 does not make Churchill a fascist.

The critics then say: Well, if Churchill was not a fascist himself, he sympathized with them. As so often, investigation of what he actually said leads us to entirely different conclusions. Yes, Churchill expressed admiration for Mussolini, publicly and privately, until he allied with Hitler. Yes, if forced to choose between Italian fascism and Italian communism, Churchill unhesitatingly would choose the former. No, Churchill never believed in fascism as acceptable in a democracy.

Further reading

“The Churchill-Mussolini Non-Letters,” 2015 

“Mussolini’s Consolation” (Churchill Quotes,” 2012

“Cole Porter and a Vanished Culture: Brewster and Mussolini,” 2020

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Albrecht Forster and the Danzig Nazis

A reader refers to a Spartacus Educational article, “Was Winston Churchill a Supporter or an Opponent of Fascism?” Citing Churchill’s words to the Albrecht Forster, it argues that WSC supported appeasement and approved of Fascism.

While this is a well-written critique, it tends to magnify specifics to justify generalities. It does not establish Churchill’s attachment to Fascism and Appeasement (although he approved of some forms of the latter). It does instruct us on the kinds of fascists Churchill dealt with in the 1920s and 1930s.

Appeasement

The Forster reference is used to argue that Churchill favored appeasing Germany “for most of the 1930s”:

As late as July, 1938, he was involved in his own negotiations with representatives of Hitler’s government in Nazi Germany. During a meeting with Albrecht Forster, the Nazi Gauleiter of Danzig, he asked Churchill whether German discriminatory legislation against the Jews would prevent an understanding with Britain. Churchill replied that he thought ‘it was a hindrance and an irritation, but probably not a complete obstacle to a working agreement.

Spartacus asks: three months before Munich, Churchill still favored Appeasement? And Nazi policy toward Jews in Danzig was “probably not a complete obstacle” to peace? Before jumping to broad conclusions, we must consider the circumstances.

First, Churchill was not “involved in his own negotiations with representatives of Hitler’s government in Nazi Germany.” Forster was a gauleiter (party leader) in the then-Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk). On a visit to London, he asked to see Churchill at his Morpeth Mansions flat. Each was accompanied by a scientific advisor: Forster by industrialist-diplomat Ludwig Noé, Churchill by Professor Lindemann. Far from “negotiating,” Churchill immediately reported their conversation to Under-Secretary of State Robert Vansittart at the Foreign Office.

Forster meets Churchill 

Read in entirety, Churchill’s Forster report shows that hoped for a firm British response to Hitler’s threats against Czechoslovakia:

I remarked that I was glad they had not introduced the Anti-Jewish laws in Danzig. Herr Forster said the Jewish problem was not acute in Danzig, but he was anxious to know whether this type of legislation in Germany would prevent an understanding with England. I replied that it was a hindrance and an irritation, but probably not a complete obstacle to a working agreement, though it might be to comprehension. He appeared to attach great importance to this point, and returned to it at a later stage.

When Forster returned to Anglo-German understanding, Churchill was plain:

I said that I was not an opponent of the greatness of Germany, and that most people in England wanted to see her take her place as one of the two or three leading powers in the world: that we would not resent gradual peaceful increase of German commercial influence in the Danube basin, but that any violent move would almost inevitably lead to a world war.

To represent Germany’s anti-Jewish laws as “not a complete obstacle” accurately reflects the British government’s attitude at that time. Neville Chamberlain never expressed much concern over Hitler’s Jewish pogroms. Churchill wished then to burnish his credentials as a seeker of accommodation. It’s quite true that he favored appeasing Germany over legitimate grievances. So he tried to wheedle Forster in that direction. What he would not accept was appeasement from weakness, as at Munich three months later.

Fascism and Mussolini

Conversing with Forster did not make Churchill a fascist. Neither did his friendly gestures toward Mussolini a decade earlier. To prove otherwise, the Spartacus article offers two 1927 quotations.

In a letter to his wife during his 1927 visit to Italy, Churchill wrote: “This country gives the impression of discipline, order, goodwill, smiling faces.” At that time, Churchill was greatly exercised about the spread of Communism. Some of his friends even called it an obsession. Believing Mussolini had forestalled it in Italy, he indulged in that observation.

Likewise his statement that year to the Rome press about Mussolini’s “calm and serene manner.” Here he showed his aversion to Communism: “If I had been an Italian I am sure I should have been entirely with you from the beginning to the end of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.”

That is the kind of pabulum you dish out when a foreign leader has promised to pay you a lot of money. Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, had just secured Mussolini’s promise (ultimately unfulfilled) to repay Italy’s £592 million war debt. (About £3.6 billion in todays money.)

Qualifications

Significantly Churchill said, “If I had been an Italian.” He did not state his preferences as a Briton. Indeed we may go his 1927 statement one better. In February 1933 (when Mussolini was still paying), he tossed another bouquet. Il Duce, he said, was “the greatest law-giver among living men.” Later, as Mussolini aligned himself with Hitler, Churchill’s praise ended. Half a century later Margaret Thatcher would say of Mikhail Gorbachev, “we can do business with him.” That didn’t make her a communist.

Another thing to remember, to paraphrase Dr. Larry Arnn, was that Churchill was political man. Also he was a democratic man. He needed, and thought it was right that he needed, the votes of a majority. If he lived in an age when voters were ardent for peace (and most ages are that), then of course he would be careful not to offend their view.

Postscript: Forster and Danzig

It is true that not many Jews inhabited Danzig. By the outbreak of war in 1939, Martin Gilbert wrote, “all but 1600 of Danzig’s Jews had been allowed to emigrate…. Only 600 remained in the city when the deportations began in 1942; almost none of them survived.”

At Chartwell on 19 August 1938, another of Churchill’s German visitors was Major Ewald von Kleist, one of the German General Staff officers opposed to Hitler’s expansionist plans, who told Churchill that if they could only receive “a little encouragement they might refuse to march” against Czechoslovakia. After Kleist’s visit, Churchill appealed publicly for the German officer corps to overthrow Hitler.

What happened to Albrecht Forster? Churchill’s urgings were in vain. Forster soon demanded that Danzig be admitted to the Reich. Indeed this was one of Hitler’s pretexts for invading Poland in September 1939. Later, as Civil Administrator for Danzig and West Prussia, Forster was responsible for exterminating 12,000 to 16,000 non-Germans. He made no distinction between Jews and Poles, regarding them all as sub-human.

At the end of the war, Forster turned up in British-occupied Germany. The British transferred him to the Poles, who hanged him for crimes against humanity in 1952. His colleague Ludwig Noé spent the war in Danzig and died aged 78 in 1949.

Appeasement and Fascism

The Spartacus article contains other criticisms worth debating. On Fascism and Appeasement, however, it magnifies isolated quotations to support narrow conclusions. Concerning the latter, Churchill’s view varied with circumstances. “Appeasement from weakness and fear is alike futile and fatal,” he declared. “Appeasement from strength is magnanimous and noble, and might be the surest and perhaps the only path to world peace.”

In understanding Churchill, what matters are his broad and consistent views, not his occasional diplomatic niceties. He dealt easily with concepts and political ideas. If he had genuinely admired Fascism—as opposed to one particular fascist for a brief period—he would undoubtedly have said so. That he never did is proof that he did not admire Fascism as a political philosophy.

Question

“Is this quotation is attributed to Winston Churchill?: ‘The fascists of the future will call themselves anti-fascists.’ There does not seem to be credible information on the internet linking those words to him, but I would appreciate your input.”

A case of Churchillian Drift

Manufacturing Churchill quotes is a parlor game. Nigel Rees, host of the BBC program Quote…Unquote, described what he called “Churchillian Drift.” It’s a process whereby a quote’s originator “is elbowed to one side and replaced by someone more famous. So to Churchill or Napoleon would be ascribed what, actually, a lesser-known political figure said.” Lincoln, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr.—they are all victims.

Churchill never said anything like this, according to the Churchill Project’s digital resource of 80 million published words by and about him. Churchill accounts for about 20 million (books, articles, speeches, letters, papers), including  The Churchill Documents. We also track 60 million words of biography, specialized studies, related works and memoirs by Churchill’s associates.

The fascists quotation is certainly in vogue. It’s a popular impulse to call someone with authoritarian tendencies a fascist. Attaching it to Churchill gives it credibility. Some Churchill quotation books and websites contain it—but never with solid attribution. Nearly 150 fictitious quotes are listed on this blogsite—with notes as to their origins.

Fascists and anti-fascists

Aside from the digital evidence, such a remark would be entirely out of character. Churchill didn’t use “fascist” in the generic sense—or as a pejorative against political opponents. When he did use the word, he referred to specific fascist movements. Examples: the pre-World War II Yugoslav Anti-fascist Coalition, or the postwar Italian Anti-fascist Council.

For Churchill to label a political opponent a fascist would be inconceivable. Some might think he would have said it about Clement Attlee, his socialist opposite and successor as Prime Minister in 1945. But Churchill would never think of it.

One of the striking things about The Churchill Documents, volume 22 (1945-51) is the civility of discourse. In debate, Churchill criticized Attlee fiercely and often, and these criticisms are in the volume. Several times in the House of Commons, he called Attlee’s competence into question. Yet they worked to keep channels open with each other, especially concerning the nation’s interest. Churchill would brook no generic criticism of Attlee, despite Attlee’s authoritarian impulses. On the floor they went at it hammers and tongs. Off the floor there was mutual respect.

“The Creeds of the Devil”

There is a third reason why Churchill would not have said this popular phrase. To speak in sweeping terms about “fascists” doesn’t even sound like him. It’s too pat, too simple; unnatural, unrealistic. Churchill’s views on tyrannical government were specific. They occur in a beautiful 1937 essay, “The Infernal Twins.” In it he compares Nazism with Communism, then takes pains to distinguish Italian fascism.

Nazism and Communism imagine themselves as exact opposites. They are at each other’s throats wherever they exist all over the world. They actually breed each other; for the reaction against Communism is Nazism, and beneath Nazism or Fascism Communism stirs convulsively.

Yet they are similar in all essentials. First of all, their simplicity is remarkable. You leave out God and put in the Devil; you leave out love and put in hate; and everything thereafter works quite straightforwardly and logically.

I am reminded of the North Pole and South Pole. They are at opposite ends of the earth, but if you woke up at either Pole tomorrow morning you could not tell which one it was. Perhaps there might be more penguins at one, or more Polar bears at the other; but all around would be ice and snow and the blast of a biting wind.

“Fertile fields of freedom”

Extending his geographic analogies, Churchill contrasts these totalitarian forms of government with his own and those of the great democracies:

I have made up my mind, however far I may travel, whatever countries I may see, I will not go to the Arctic or to the Antarctic regions. Give me London, give me Paris, give me New York, give me some of the beautiful capitals of the British Dominions.

Let us go somewhere where our breath is not frozen on our lips because of the Secret Police…somewhere where there are green pastures and the shade of venerable trees. Let us not wander away from the broad fertile fields of freedom into these gaunt, grim, dim, gloomy abstractions of morbid and sterile thought.

Next Churchill explains specific differences, applying the word “fascist” only to Mussolini:

There are, of course, differences between the dictatorships. Yet they are largely discounted by one significant fact. It is easy to imagine Mussolini or Hitler as head of a Communist State or Stalin as Fascist Duce or Führer. Nothing in Communism or Fascism, as we know them, or in the characters and records of these three men, makes such a situation incredible.”

It is fair to conclude Churchill took pains not to use the generic term “fascists” as an offhand dismissal of those with totalitarian ideas. He always carefully specified which fascists he meant. Of he regarded both those of the Left and the Right as equally repugnant in their denial of liberty.

Further reading

“The Creeds of the Devil” appeared in The Sunday Chronicle, London, 27 June 1937, followed by a sequel, “A Better Way,” on 4 July. The two essays combined as “The Infernal Twins” in Collier’s (USA) on 3 July 1937. Republished in Michael Wolff, ed., The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, 4 vols., (London: Library of Imperial History, 1975), II, 394-97. At the moment, only “The Creeds of the Devil” is available in digital form. Please contact me for a copy.

Whether invented by the President or his scriptwriters, some of Trump’s nicknames were very effective. “Low-energy Jeb” torpedoed Governor Bush‘s 2016 presidential campaign better than any debate gaffe. “Mini-Mike” didn’t help Mayor Bloomberg‘s in 2020. But except in extreme cases like Hitler, Churchill’s name-calling was more effective and less wounding. Especially when he rather admired certain qualities in opponents. (He called Lloyd George a “cad” in his youth, but ever after praised the “Welsh Wizard.”)

* Asterisks indicate nicknames not used in a public setting. Churchill, after all, had some discretion. But I leave them in for fun. 

Nicknames: Admiral Row-Back to Can’t Tellopolus

Admiral Row-Back: Admiral Sir John Roebuck (1862-1928), Royal Navy officer. Commanded the initial Anglo-French attempt to force the Dardanelles in 1915. Having nearly succeeded, he turned back after losses to mines, incurring Churchill’s permanent loathing and censure and an appropriate nickname.

*Block: Herbert H. Asquith (1852-1928), Liberal Prime Minister, 1908-16. He let Churchill dangle in the Dardanelles/Gallipoli debacle, which sent WSC packing as First Lord of the Admiralty. This was a private nickname between Churchill and his wife. It may refer to Asquith’s frequent role as a block to Churchill’s proposals.

Bloodthirsty Guttersnipe: Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), German Chancellor and Führer, 1933-45. First publicly declared in a broadcast after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. It wasn’t the first Churchillian jab, nor by any means the last.. There is no shortage of insulting nicknames in Hitler’s case; but this is as good an example as any. (See also “Corporal Schicklgrüber,” in comments below.)

Boneless Wonder: James Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937), Labour Prime Minister, 1924, 1929-35. A devastating comparison to a circus attraction, applied in 1931. Churchill was ridiculing Ramsay Mac’s lack of principle and wavering domestic policies. In private he considered MacDonald a servant of Crown and Parliament. But only in private.

Canting Bus Driver: Frank Pick (1878-1941), headed London Passenger Transport Board 1933-40. “Never let me see that-that-that canting bus driver again.” Churchill wrote this in red ink on a memorandum from Minister of Information Alfred Duff Cooper when Pick resigned.

*Can’t Tellopolus: Panagiotis Kannelopoulos (1902-1986), Minister of Defense, Greek exile government in Cairo, 1942-45. Churchill was impatient with his indecision about Greek resistance to the occupying Germans. Alexander Cadogan, Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, heard these “mutterings from Churchill’s bathroom, between the splashings and gurgles.”

Chattering Cad – Green-Eyed Radical

*Chattering Little Cad: David Lloyd George (1863-1945), Liberal Prime Minister 1916-22. Said in 1901, when Churchill was still a Conservative. After he switched to the Liberals in 1904, his attitude changed. He rarely spoke ill of Lloyd George afterward, despite many provocations. WSC’s wife regarded LG as treacherous. He duly refused to join the Churchill coalition in 1940.

*Coroner: Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940). Conservative Prime Minister, 1937-40. Originally coined by Brendan Bracken (also “Ironmonger” for Baldwin), this remained in the family lexicon. In 1961, Lady Diana Cooper introduced young Martin Gilbert to Randolph Churchill by saying “he hates the Coroner.” (A bit strong—he surely didn’t hate Chamberlain).

*Dull, Duller, Dulles: John Foster Dulles (1888-1959), President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, 1952-60. After Stalin’s death, Churchill argued for a “settlement” of the Cold War, but Dulles (and Eisenhower) were obdurate. “Ten years ago I could have dealt with him. Even as it is I have not been defeated by this bastard. I have been humiliated by my own decay.” —Churchill at the Bermuda Conference, December 1953.

Green-eyed Antipodean Radical: David Low (1891-1963), New Zealand cartoonist. Churchill had a certain affinity for the left-wing cartoonist whose attacks he admired. He called Low the greatest of modern cartoonists. There was mutual respect despite political differences, and Low drew a beautiful cartoon tribute on WSC’s 80th birthday.

Half-Naked Fakir – Llama

Half-Naked Fakir: Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948, Indian independence leader. The worst sobriquet attached to the Great Mahatma, when Churchill thought Gandhi an upperclass Brahman posing as a champion of the downtrodden. Yet they both nursed a private respect for each other and, in the end, were more forgiving. See “Welcome, Mr. Gandhi” herein.

Holy Fox: Edward Wood, 3rd Viscount Halifax (1881-1959, Foreign Minister, 1938-40, Ambassador to Washington, 1940-46. Verified by Halifax biographer Andrew Roberts, who writes: “It was a Churchill family nickname, of course a reference to his High Church beliefs as well as his love of hunting. And a certain amount of political foxiness….”

*Home Sweet Home: Alec Douglas-Home, Lord Home of the Hirsel (1903-1995), British Prime Minister 1963-64. Neville Chamberlain’s “eyes and ears” in Parliament, he always maintained that the Munich deal had saved Britain by giving it an extra year to prepare for war, ignoring the fact that it also gave Hitler an extra year, and he prepared far more rapidly. (His name was pronounced “Hume,” but that didn’t stop Churchill.)

*Llama: Charles de Gaulle ( 1890-1970 ), French General and President. Lord Moran wrote: “Was it true, [Lady Limerick] asked, that he had likened de Gaulle to a female llama who had been surprised in her bath? Winston pouted, smiled and shook his head. But his way of disavowing the remark convinced me that he was in fact responsible for this indiscretion…”

Limpet to Prince Palsy

Lion-hearted Limpet Leader: Clement Attlee (1883-1967), Labour Prime Minister 1945-51. Many disparaging cracks about Attlee (arriving in an “empty taxi”) are apocryphal. But this was an April 1951 jibe at Attlee and Labour MPs clinging to power. Churchill and the Conservatives turned them out in a general election the following October.

Minister of Disease: Aneurin Bevan (1897-1960), Labour Minister of Health 1945-51, founder of the National Health Service. One of the rougher nicknames, applied in the Commons, 1948. “…is not morbid hatred a form of mental disease, and indeed a highly infectious form?” Churchill asked. He also called Bevan a “squalid nuisance.”

Old Grey Tabby: Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930), Conservative Prime Ministers, 1902-05. After he succeeded Churchill at the Admiralty in 1915, WSC feared the “Old Grey Tabby” would dissolve the Royal Naval Division. (Balfour did resemble a tabby cat in old age, but Churchill continued to admire him, and memorialized him in Great Contemporaries.)

Pink Pansies: Harold Nicolson (1886-1968) and his friends. Member of Parliament, 1935-45. I am aware this violates P.C. decorum and will no doubt be added to Churchill’s “sins.” True, Nicolson was bisexual, but a) Churchill was emphatically not homophobic, and b), the reference (Parliament, late 1945) was to non-combative young Tory MPs.

Prince Palsy: Paul of Yugoslavia (1893-1976), Prince Regent of Yugoslavia, 1934-41. His palsied hand signed a treaty with Hitler. This  assured German occupation, the end of his Regency, and Churchill’s disdain. Exiled in Kenya, he appealed for refuge in Britain, but Churchill considered him a traitor and war criminal.

Scheming Prelate to Turnip

Scheming Prelate: Damaskinos Papandreou (1891-1949), Archbishop of Athens, 1945-49. Churchill, mediating the Greek civil war in late 1944, allegedly asked if he was “a man of God or a scheming Mediterranean prelate?” Assured that he was the latter, Churchill supposedly said, “Good, he’s just our man.” (Not verified)

Snub-nosed Radical: Liberal heckler, 1887. Aged only twelve, young Winston was attending a pantomime where he heard a man hissing a portrait of his father. He burst into tears, then turned on the perpetrator: “Stop that row, you snub-nosed radical!” This may be Churchill’s first political zinger.

Spurlos Versenkt (Sunk without a Trace): Sir Benjamin Smith (1879-1964), Labour Minister of Food, 1944-46. After he resigned from Parliament, Churchill searched “for the burly ‘and engaging form of the Rt. Hon. Gentleman. He has departed ‘spurlos versenkt,’ as the German expression says—sunk without leaving a trace behind.”

Turnip: Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947), Conservative Prime Minister, 1925-29, 1935-37. Baldwin made Churchill Chancellor in 1925, but later kept him out of the Cabinet. After his final resignation, “S.B.” appeared in the House of Commons smoking room. Churchill quipped, “Well, the light is at last out of that old turnip.”

Useless Percy to Wuthering Height

*Useless Percy: Eustace Percy, First Baron of Newcastle (1887-1958). Board of Education President, 1924-29. At the Exchequer 1924-29, Churchill tried to lower the defense budget. Percy and Minister of Health Chamberlain  were opposed. “Neville is costing £2 millions more and Lord Useless Percy the same,” WSC wrote his wife on 30 September 1927.  “…these civil departments browse onwards like a horde of injurious locusts.”

Whipped Jackal: Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), Italian Prime Minister, 1922-43, Duce of Fascism, 1943-45. Churchill praised him briefly before the war, but after joining Hitler he became a “whipped jackal… frisking up at the side of the German tiger with yelpings not only of appetite—that can be understood—but even of triumph!”

Wincing Marquess: Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne (1845-1927), House of Lords, 1886-1927. Churchill, 1909: “he claimed no right…to mince the Budget, [only] the right to wince when swallowing it. Well, that is a much more modest claim…. If his Party are satisfied with the Wincing Marquess, we have no reason to protest.”

*Wuthering Height: John Charles Walsham, 1st Baron Reith (1889-1971),  BBC Director General, 1923-38. The towering Reith was briefly in the wartime Coalition Cabinet. But he’d kept Churchill off the air in the 1930s, and no love was lost between them. WSC rejoiced to have seen “the last of that Wuthering Height” around 1940.

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.

Oslo Variations

A reader reminds us of these obscure orations by sending one: Churchill’s dinner speech on May 12th. His source is Churchill’s Visit to Norway (Oslo: Cappelens, 1949). Curiously, we found wide variation and two omissions from Churchill’s Europe Unite. One omission involves Admiral François Darlan, who disgraced himself by refusing to safeguard the French fleet from a likely German takeover in 1940.

This raises a question familiar to quotations editors. Which is the authoritative text? My usual rule is to go by the final revised edition of Churchill’s own works, if possible. For Oslo 1948, that is Europe Unite, which had no later edition.  (The Complete Speeches usually duplicates, more or less, his speech volumes.)

What about the passages reported by Cappelens but not in Europe Unite? Were the Norwegians editorializing? Not likely. Translation anomalies are one explanation. But the omitted sections do sound like Churchill. So it’s more likely that Randolph Churchill, editing Europe Unite, deleted them.

Darlan (and the subsequent British destruction of the French Fleet) are sore subjects among Frenchmen. While Randolph Churchill was editing Europe Unite, Churchill’s second volume of war memoirs, L’heure Tragique, was causing controversy in France over his account of France’s fall, including Darlan’s behavior. Randolph, or his father, may have judged it unnecessary to fan more flames.

Churchill by Himself: Maxims

Starting with “Maxims,” here are the new entries from Churchill’s 12 May 1948 Oslo dinner speech, arranged by subject and referenced by title and page number.

Kindness and Humility: “The more kindness I receive, the more humble I become.” —Europe Unite, 329. Churchill continued: “I know very well how vain it is for individuals to try to gather to themselves all the credit which really belongs to the great countries and the great nations whose virtues have had the opportunity of crediting to themselves in world history.”

Right and Wrong: “The problem of life is not presented to us as a simple calculation of what is wise and what is foolish…because judgments are falsified by events.” —Cappelens, 33. Churchill continued: “…if you will obey the promptings of your spirit or nature, when your conscience gives you such lights as may be granted, you will find that there is a way which is far safer in the long run than all the calculations of the most astute and clever politicians that have ever been made.” (This passage is not in Europe Unite or the Complete Speeches.)

World War II

Political Options, May 1940: “I have often been praised for things I said at the beginning of the War, when England was fighting alone. That was only expressions of my people [because] it was their courage and great qualities I put into words. And it was what my colleagues wanted me to say. If I had not, they would have pulled me to pieces, as I certainly would have pulled them to pieces the other way round.” —Europe Unite, 329.

People

Galeazzo Ciano: “Take for instance Count Ciano who started the attack on France and England in the moment when France was beaten. “France will not come again in five thousand years,” he said. But in two years the situation was changed. That does show how even seemingly clever calculations very often do not come off at all.” —Europe Unite, 330. Gian Galeazzo Ciano (1903-1944), Second Count of Cortellazzo and Buccari, Foreign Minister of Fascist Italy 1936-42. Executed by firing squad, 11 January 1944, at the behest of his father-in-law, Mussolini, under pressure from Germany.

François Darlan: “There was a man who had the French navy in the hollow of his hand; he had only to give the word to sail away to America, or to the French colonies, and he would have gone there, carrying with him the title-deeds of the France of the future, of Free France….But he cast it all away by calculation. He thought that to become Minister of Marine would give him more power at the time; and so he lost all that he cared most about, and his life was cast away in shame, where it might have been long preserved in honour, through calculation.” —Cappelens, 32. (This passage is not in Europe Unite or the Complete Speeches.ˆ)

Oslo University Ring

“I thank you most cordially for your kindness and for all you have done for me. I wear the ring of the Oslo University on my finger and will consider it as a kind of marriage ring.I must confess that I have quite a selection of University Degrees and their insignias at home, but I have never received a ring with any degree before. “—Europe, 331. “What happened to the ring?” was the reader question that set off this trawl for Churchill’s Oslo remarks. The only University ring ever presented to him, it is unknown to his family, and its present whereabouts are uncertain.

Conjecture

Omissions from speeches pose a question for nitpickers and fussbudgets like me. Why? Cappelens probably translated the text from Norwegian news reports, That would explain part of it—but not the huge passages about Darlan and “the problem of life,” missing in the speech volumes.

Were the Cappelens people editorializing? It seems unlikely. The Darlan text sounds like genuine Churchill prose. More likely Randolph Churchill, the editor of Europe Unite, did a little culling. Perhaps he desired not to ruffle French feathers over Darlan. His father always felt Darlan lost his chance at glory by refusing to safeguard the French fleet after the Fall of France in June 1940. This caused Churchill and the Royal Navy to attack a good part of it at Mers el-Kebir, a sad chapter in wartime history.

The omission of Churchill’s musings over “the problem of life” is harder to explain. Nevertheless, this was an interesting exercise in the establishment of texts. It serves as a warning which Churchill himself often quoted: “Verify your quotations.”