I published in 2010 an account of Churchill’s youthful (circa 1910-12) fling with Eugenics, a pseudo-science popular at the turn of the century. Eugenics favored sterilizing or confining the “feeble-minded” to “maintain the race.”

This drew an irate letter from a reader who said he will never think the same of Churchill, knowing that he could have supported such horrendous ideas:

No truly educated intelligent person, even in those early years, can have bought into Eugenics. Churchill’s was not just a fling of youth or immaturity but the decided opinion of a nearly middle-aged man. His support of Eugenics could only lead to the extremities practiced to by the Nazis.

Our article simply outlined the factual history of Churchill’s youthful Eugenics fling. It certainly was a fling, because he abandoned it quickly. So indeed did most intelligent people, though not all of them. Proponents included Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Louis Brandeis, Woodrow Wilson, William Howard Taft. Holmes wrote the famous 1927 Supreme Court opinion in Buck v. Bell that “three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

To say that “no truly educated intelligent person” could adopt such views reminds me that a terrible lot of educated intelligent persons quite happily adopted Nazism and Bolshevism.

Eugenics in retrospect

That aside, students of Churchill need always to consider the wider picture. A good start is the excerpt we published with that article, from Paul Addison’s Churchill on the Home Front:

Churchill’s intentions were benign, but he was blundering into sensitive areas of civil liberty. Yet it is rare to discover in the archives the reflections of a politician on the nature of man. Churchill’s belief in the innate virtue of the great majority of human beings was part and parcel of an optimism he often expressed before the First World War.

Professor Addison was always a go-to authority for balanced, thoughtful reflections on Churchill. He implies that the First World War tempered Churchill’s optimism. Certainly the Second did.

To assert that a fleeting belief in Eugenics disqualifies Churchill as a hero is to surrender his legacy. In current contentions, our maxim is: Surrender nothing, lest you lose everything. A brief encounter with bad science is a mistake many make. Few however can sensibly claim to have saved civilization.

Concluded in Part 2...

In “Jews in a Whisper” (New York Times Sunday Review), Mr. Roger Cohen argued that “Jews, with their history, cannot become the systematic oppressors of another people.” Fair enough, but we then read: “Winston Churchill, no less, argued in 1920 that Jews were part of a ‘worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development.'”

“Zionism vs. Bolshevism”

This quotation is from Churchill’s article, “Zionism Versus Bolshevism,” in the 8 February 1920 Illustrated Sunday Herald. Some quote it to suggest that  Churchill was anti-Semite.

Churchill’s article was an attack on Bolshevism (“a sinister confederacy”) not Zionism, which Churchill mainly (but not always) supported. Churchill mentioned—accurately—that many Bolsheviks were Jews—and also gave a reason: They were people “reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race.” He then named names:

Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxemburg (Germany ), and Emma Goldman (United States)…. this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence and impossible equality, has been steady growing…. with the exception of Lenin, the majority of leading figures are Jews.

But context matters:

To quote these lines out of context from the rest of his article is to misrepresent Churchill. He added that figures like Trotsky comprised only a small portion of Jews—which he calls “the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has ever appeared in the world.”

Similarly to his later indictment of Nazi Germany, Churchill wrote: “Nothing is more wrong than to deny an individual, on account of race or origin, his right to be judged on his personal merits and conduct.” For example, Martin Luther King, Jr. dreamed of judging by those same standards. Above all, Jews in every country, Churchill continued,

identify themselves with that country, enter into its national life. A Jew living in England would say, “I am an Englishman practising the Jewish faith.” This is a worthy conception, and useful in the highest degree. And in our own Army Jewish soldiers have played a most distinguished part, some rising to the command of armies, others winning the Victoria Cross for valour.

Partial quotations taken out of context distort what Churchill wrote and thought. Above all, no one can seriously use his “Zionism Versus Bolshevism” essay to accuse Churchill of anti-Semitism. Writers need to go to the source, and get it right.

Enemies and Extremists

Mr. Cohen also adds a point given him by a London professor:

A century ago, during the Sidney Street siege of 1911, it was the Jews of London’s East End who, cast as Bolsheviks, were said to be “alien extremists.’’

The Sidney Street siege was attended and conducted in part by Churchill, then Home Secretary.  I can find no contemporary reports emphasizing at the time that the Sidney Street gang were Jews. Articles mentioned “anarchists” and “Latvians,” though only one had a possible Latvian name. They were indeed Russians and Latvia was a Russian province at that time.

Bibliographic Note

“Zionism Versus Bolshevism” as originally published in 1920 contained some egregious typos and errors. The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill (1975) contains a corrected text. Bibliographer Ronald I. Cohen compared the two texts with the original errors in brackets. A copy is available by email from rlangworth@hillsdale.edu.

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.