Tag: Harry Truman

generals
Western Desert, 23 August 1942: Middle East commander General Alexander, WSC and 8th Army commander Lt-General Montgomery. (Photo by Sgt. Martin, Imperial War Museum, public domain)
On Good News from Generals: Churchill’s Experience and Methods

On Good News from Generals: Churchill’s Experience and Methods

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Say what?

A New York Times cor­re­spon­dent writes:

I’ve been read­ing The Best and the Bright­est by David Hal­ber­stam, about how we got into Viet­nam. When you’re decid­ing whether to inter­vene mil­i­tar­i­ly, he says, you can count on the gen­er­als to tell you every­thing that can go awry and stress the neg­a­tive part of the pic­ture. But once they’re invest­ed, once it’s their job to cre­ate a good out­come through mil­i­tary means, it’s going to be all hap­py talk. They’re not going to report that they’re fail­ing. They’re going to give you the sun­nier side of what’s hap­pen­ing, in this case, in Afghanistan.…

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Fulton
When Churchill spoke at Fulton in 1946, The Iron Curtain extended “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic.” Vienna was then behind the Curtain, since northeast Austria was under under Soviet occupation. (BigSteve, Wikimedia Creative Commons)
Iron Curtain 75 Years On: Churchill on the Fulton Flak

Iron Curtain 75 Years On: Churchill on the Fulton Flak

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The 75th Anniver­sary of Win­ston Churchill’s “Iron Cur­tain” speech at Ful­ton, Mis­souri, was cel­e­brat­ed this week with due cer­e­mo­ny. One need look no fur­ther than his lead­ing recent biog­ra­ph­er Andrew Roberts for an emi­nent­ly read­able account of the speech and its after­math in the Dai­ly Express.

Read­ers inter­est­ed in fur­ther details may wish to watch or read three per­ti­nent pre­sen­ta­tions, the first being the speech itself, the oth­er two pro­vid­ed by the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project:

Sir Win­ston Churchill’s Ful­ton Speech, “The Sinews of Peace,” West­min­ster Col­lege, 5 March 1946 (audio; speech begins at minute 8:40) Sir Mar­tin Gilbert, “The Endur­ing Impor­tance of the ‘Iron Cur­tain’ Speech,” Hills­dale Col­lege, 22 Octo­ber 2004.…

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Iron Curtain
4 March 1946: Churchill with President Truman on the observation platform of a B&O Special, en route to Fulton, Missouri for Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” Speech. Seated at right is the President’s Military Aide, General Harry Vaughan, who would soon be trimming Churchill at poker. (See http://bit.ly/2ZIUlRN.) (Photograph by Abbie Rowe, National Archives / Public domain)
Origins of Churchill Phrases: “Special Relationship” and “Iron Curtain”

Origins of Churchill Phrases: “Special Relationship” and “Iron Curtain”

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Pregnant Phrases

The his­to­ri­an Christo­pher Har­mon capa­bly answers a ques­tion on the ori­gin of these famous expres­sions, and kind­ly asks me to con­firm his find­ings. They are right as usu­al. (Dr. Har­mon wrote a fre­quent­ly cit­ed mono­graph, “Are We Beasts?” Churchill on the Moral Ques­tion of World War II “Area Bomb­ing.” His five books include the grad­u­ate-lev­el text­book Ter­ror­ism Today .)

Special Relationship

Chris Har­mon writes:

“Spe­cial rela­tion­ship” appears sev­er­al times (and in sur­pris­ing ways) in Churchill’s 1946 Ful­ton speech, “The Sinews of Peace.” It is impor­tant nev­er to say that it was coined there. …

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Walk
The Common Touch: With sailors (and the towering Detective Sgt. Thompson) aboard HMS Ajax, which had helped pursue the Graf Spee to her ultimate scuttling in 1939.
When Presidents and Prime Ministers Would Walk Among Us

When Presidents and Prime Ministers Would Walk Among Us

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There was a time, in a long-ago and inno­cent age, when nation­al lead­ers would walk about unac­com­pa­nied by secu­ri­ty. Some­times, they would even walk alone.

Four such episodes came to mind last week which exem­pli­fy this van­ished era. Ques­tions arrived from col­leagues about Churchill: his encoun­ters with Cana­di­an sol­diers and his North Car­oli­na con­nec­tions. Then The New York Times pub­lished a ret­ro­spec­tive on Woodrow Wil­son, dur­ing the 1918 Paris Peace Con­fer­ence. This was remind­ful of a fourth episode, involv­ing Har­ry Tru­man. The sad­ness is that none of these could have hap­pened in, the last fifty years. Maybe longer.

Walk in Paris: Woodrow Wilson, 1918

The Munic­i­pal Coun­cil of Paris gave Pres­i­dent Wil­son the keys to the City, but they neglect­ed to present him with what is far more essen­tial, a good map book, with which to find his way about the city’s intri­cate streets.…

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Dewey
Governor Dewey with President Truman and Admiral Jonas Ingram, Navy Day, New York, 27 October 1945. Three years later Dewey would run again, and lose again. (United States Navy. Harry S. Truman Library & Museum)
Dewey, Hoover, Churchill, and Grand Strategy, 1950-53

Dewey, Hoover, Churchill, and Grand Strategy, 1950-53

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“Dewey, Hoover and Churchill” is excerpt­ed from an arti­cle for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the com­plete text, click here. The lat­est vol­ume 20 of The Churchill Doc­u­ments, Nomandy and Beyond: May-Decem­ber 1944, is avail­able for $60 from the Hills­dale Col­lege Bookstore.

A great joy of read­ing The Churchill Doc­u­ments is their trove of his­tor­i­cal side­lights. Vol­ume 22 (August 1945—September 1951, due late 2018) cov­ers the ear­ly Cold War: the “Iron Cur­tain,” the Mar­shall Plan, Berlin Air­lift and Kore­an War. It reminds us of the polit­i­cal bat­tles swirling around the Anglo-Amer­i­can “spe­cial rela­tion­ship.”…

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poker
Around this table, Harry and Winston played poker, March 1946. Dining car of the “Ferdinand Magellan,” President Truman’s special railcar. (Wikimedia Commons)
Churchill, Truman and Poker on the Train to Fulton, March 1946

Churchill, Truman and Poker on the Train to Fulton, March 1946

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How Harry fleeced Winston at poker, and the PM wished to be born again…

The Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project is clos­ing in on fin­ish­ing Win­ston S. Churchill, the offi­cial biog­ra­phy. At thir­ty-one vol­umes, it is the longest on record and will have tak­en fifty-six years to com­plete. It is an hon­or to be part of the team now review­ing proofs for the penul­ti­mate doc­u­ment (com­pan­ion) vol­ume. This runs from August 1945, after Churchill was turned out of office, through Sep­tem­ber 1951, when he was about to regain it. The last vol­ume (1951-65) will be pub­lished next year, with suit­able celebrations.…

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Critique Down Under: Like Shooting Fish in a Barrel

Critique Down Under: Like Shooting Fish in a Barrel

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Par­tic­u­lar­ly on the Fall of Sin­ga­pore (see ear­li­er post), a new cri­tique of Churchill miss­es the for­est for the trees and fails on the facts. Real­ly, Churchill made lots of mis­takes worth con­tem­plat­ing. But these aren’t among them.

The arti­cle appeared in south­west Australia’s Sun Coast Dai­ly on April 26th. Not exact­ly The Times, and if you don’t sub­scribe to Google Alerts you missed it. For the fun of shoot­ing fish in a bar­rel, how­ev­er, it’s worth a few min­utes of your time.

 

Critique 1: Self-Interest

“Churchill had a long and var­ied career in pol­i­tics, man­ag­ing to swap par­ties as his career needs required.” …

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Marshall: “Noblest Roman of Them All”

Marshall: “Noblest Roman of Them All”

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Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty Press releas­es this month the sev­enth and final vol­ume of The Papers of George Catlett Mar­shall: “The Man of the Age,” Octo­ber 1, 1949 – Octo­ber 16, 1959. It was mas­ter­ful­ly edit­ed by Mark Stol­er and Daniel Holt under the aus­pices of the Mar­shall Cen­ter. It joins its pre­de­ces­sors pre­sent­ing the papers of one of the great­est gen­er­als and states­men of his age (1880-1959). I quick­ly assigned it for review by the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project, for its many ref­er­ences to Churchill in George Marshall’s final phase. This and the pre­vi­ous vol­ume are indis­pens­able for any­one wish­ing to under­stand the com­pli­cat­ed inter­na­tion­al scene imme­di­ate­ly after World War II.…

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Bombing Japan: Churchill’s View

Bombing Japan: Churchill’s View

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Scott John­son of Pow­er­line (“Why We Dropped the Bomb,” 13 April) kind­ly links an old col­umn of his quot­ing an old one of mine with ref­er­ence to Pres­i­dent Obama’s vis­it to Hiroshi­ma and the atom bomb­ing of Japan.

John­son links a lec­ture by Pro­fes­sor Williamson Mur­ray, which is worth con­sid­er­ing, along with Paul Fussell’s clas­sic essay in The New Repub­lic, “Thank God for the Atom Bomb,” which makes you think, though some con­sid­er it a rant. Fussell wrote:

John Ken­neth Gal­braith is per­suad­ed that the Japan­ese would have sur­ren­dered sure­ly by Novem­ber with­out an inva­sion.…

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Churchill on Trial: Washington, 1953

Churchill on Trial: Washington, 1953

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In ear­ly 1953, Win­ston Churchill was placed on tri­al by his peers, with Pres­i­dent Tru­man the pre­sid­ing judge, for com­plic­i­ty in the use of atom­ic bombs. To any­one who may write to say that he and Tru­man were mak­ing light of events caus­ing thou­sands of deaths, the answer is twofold: 1) How do you know they were mak­ing light?; and 2) This is in answer to a his­tor­i­cal query. Sources: Clark Clif­ford, rec­ol­lec­tion, to Richard Lang­worth, 1988. Mar­garet Tru­man, “After the Pres­i­den­cy,” in Life, 1 Decem­ber 1972, 69-70. Also record­ed in her book, Har­ry S. Truman.

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Mar­garet Tru­man wrote: “Dur­ing our last weeks in the White House, Prime Min­is­ter Churchill arrived for a vis­it.…

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