Dunkirk movie Archives - Richard M. Langworth

“Amnesia” or Fantasy? The Indian Contribution in World War II

2 August 2017 Comments 6 Comments

Indian amnesia? “Dunkirk, the War, and the Amnesia of the Empire,” by Yasmin Khan. New York Times Opinion page, 2 August 2017.

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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.…

“Dunkirk” film: What if Hitler had Launched an Invasion?

30 July 2017 Comments 0 Comments

Invasion in 1940? Timothy Egan poses a thoughtful question in The New York Times. What if Hitler, not hesitating after Dunkirk, had rapidly launched an invasion of Britain? In conveying the movie Dunkirk‘s importance, Egan’s first paragraph is a much better introduction than the film provides: For more than a thousand years, the tribes of Europe have stared into the gun-metal-gray chop of the English Channel and thought of conquest. “We have six centuries of insults to avenge,” said Napoleon. I was just there, on the same spring week when the great bedraggled scraps of the French and British armies were cornered for slaughter by the Nazi war machine 77 years ago.…