Franklin Roosevelt Archives - Page 2 of 3

Roosevelt and Churchill: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza?

19 June 2018 Comments 2 Comments

A colleague asks whether Winston and Clementine Churchill’s private name for President Roosevelt was “Don Quixote.” Also, who compared Roosevelt and Churchill to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza? This offers an interesting trawl through the sources.

So far as I can learn, the Quixote – Panza analogy for Roosevelt and Churchill (also FDR and his devoted adviser Harry Hopkins) occurred only during the 1943 Casablanca Conference (SYMBOL). Roosevelt proposed those code names, and I rather think Churchill had different image of them than FDR. (Oxford English Dictionary: “Quixote: Enthusiastic visionary, pursuer of lofty but impracticable ideals.”)…

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How Churchill Saw the Future: Prescient Essays, 1924-1931

27 April 2018 Comments 2 Comments

"While men are gathering knowledge and power with ever-increasing and measureless speed, their virtues and their wisdom have not shown any notable improvement as the centuries have rolled. The brain of modern man does not differ in essentials from that of the human beings who fought and loved here millions of years ago. The nature of man has remained hitherto practically unchanged. Under sufficient stress—starvation, terror, warlike passion, or even cold intellectual frenzy—the modern man we know so well will do the most terrible deeds...." —WSC

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“Churchill’s Bodyguard” Mini-series: Walter H. Thompson

24 February 2018 Comments 2 Comments

The success of the movie Darkest Hour has prompted many to look up other film and video presentations of the Churchill saga. One of these is the 2005 series on Walter Thompson, Churchill’s Bodyguard, which a colleague tells me is a useful documentary. It is. All thirteen episodes are on YouTube. I watched several without complaint—rare for me.

Walter Henry Thompson

…was Winston Churchill’s protection officer and detective, on and off between 1921 and 1945. They had many adventures together, and Thompson wrote four books about his experiences. The first, Guard from the Yard (1938, now very rare) involved Churchill and others whom Thompson protected.…

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Churchill’s Ersatz Meeting with Lincoln’s Ghost

31 January 2018 Comments 5 Comments

Unless the ghost of Abraham Lincoln was in the habit of switching rooms, he is unlikely to have appeared in Churchill's bedroom (which was not the famous Lincoln Bedroom). Even less likely did the apparition appear as Churchill was emerging from his bath.

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Churchill and the Baltic States: From WW2 to Liberation

25 January 2018 Comments 1 Comment

EXCERPT ONLY: For the complete text of “Churchill and the Baltic” with endnotes, please go to this page on the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.

“No doubt where the right lay”: 1940-95

Soviet Ambassador Ivan Maisky was a “Bollinger Bolshevik” who mixed support for Communism with a love of Western luxury. Friendly to Churchill, he knew the Englishman hoped to separate Hitler and Stalin, even after World War II had started.

But Maisky tended to see what he wished to see. In December he recorded: “The British Government announces its readiness to recognize ‘de facto’ the changes in the Baltics so as to settle ‘de jure’ the whole issue later, probably after the war.” There…

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Civil War Memorials: What We Need to Remember

26 August 2017 Comments 2 Comments

Of Civil War…

“We think we are wholly superior people,” said the Civil War historian Shelby Foote. The 50th and 75th Anniversaries of the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg were poignant, inspiring moments. The words spoken of those occasions give cause to wonder. In the welter of emotions, have we forgotten what we need to remember?

Footage of Civil War Veterans at 50yr Anniversary in 1913 & 75yr Anniversary in 1938
Watch this video on YouTube “We may be given to meet again…”

Shelby Foote:

We think we are wholly superior people. If we’d been anything like as superior as we think we are, we’d never have fought that Civil War.…

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Frederick Lindemann: Churchill’s Eminence Grise?

21 August 2017 Comments 6 Comments

Revisionist History, Season 2, Episode 5, “The Prime Minister and the Prof [ Frederick Lindemann ],” podcast by Malcolm Gladwell.

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

Scientific Nemesis

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

Ironically, the program begins with an ad for its sponsor, Chanel Perfume.…

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Churchill’s 1943 Speech to Congress

10 July 2017 Comments 2 Comments

A friend writes asking for the audio of Churchill’s second of three speeches to Congress, and poses a question: “Roosevelt attended neither the 1941 nor 1943 speeches. Why not?”

Click here for clear audio of the 50-minute speech.

Presidents never attend speeches to Congress by foreign heads of state or government. Part of this is certainly courtesy, so as not to steal focus from the guest. In a deeper sense, it is an assertion of the separation of powers between Congress and the Executive. A similar tradition in Britain is when the House of Commons slams the door on Black Rod, when he summons Members to the House of Lords to hear the Queen’s Speech.…

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75 Years On: What We Learn from the Fall of Singapore

26 April 2017 Comments 0 Comments

This article first appeared as “Churchill and the Fall of Singapore” in The American Spectator, 22 February 2017.

“There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away…people can face peril or misfortune with fortitude and buoyancy, but they bitterly resent being deceived or finding that those responsible for their affairs are themselves dwelling in a fool’s paradise.” —Winston S. Churchill, 1950

On the last day of January, 1942, the British blew up Singapore’s central causeway to the mainland in a vain attempt to stop the onrushing Japanese.…

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Fateful Questions: World War II Microcosm (1)

2 April 2017 Comments 0 Comments

Fateful Questions, September 1943-April 1944, nineteenth of the projected twenty-three document volumes, is reviewed by historian Andrew Roberts in Commentary.

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.…

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