Tag: Hitler

“The Wilderness Years” with Robert Hardy: Original Review

“The Wilderness Years” with Robert Hardy: Original Review

“Churchill: The Wilderness Years”

The Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project has just repub­lished “Scal­ing Ever­est,” Robert Hardy’s rec­ol­lec­tions of play­ing the Wilder­ness Years Churchill. They are from 1987, his speech to one of our Churchill Tours, at the Reform Club, Lon­don. We are grate­ful to his execu­tors, Jus­tine Hardy and Neil Nis­bet-Robert­son for per­mis­sion to reprint. For Part 1, click here.

I thought the occa­sion appro­pri­ate to repub­lish my orig­i­nal review of the “Wilder­ness Years” from 1981, some years before we met. I thought at the time I had “laid an egg”—in Churchill’s phrase­ol­o­gy, not RH’s.…

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Senator Cruz: Minor Misquote, Major Misinterpretation

Senator Cruz: Minor Misquote, Major Misinterpretation

Ted Cruz, speak­ing on 5 April, “sparked an out­cry” by mis­quot­ing Churchill: “If we open a quar­rel between the past and the present, Cruz intoned, “we risk the future.”

The Lon­don Dai­ly Tele­graph report­ed: The ref­er­ences drew a swift—and fierce—reaction from social media.”  Social media is not a like­ly place to con­tem­plate the fine points of his­to­ry. It wasn’t in this case, as you can read in the news­pa­per article.

What Cruz said was “…risk the future.” For Churchill it was more than risk. In his “Finest Hour” speech, 18 June 1940, Churchill told Par­lia­ment: “If we open a quar­rel between the past and the present we shall find that we have lost the future.”…

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Winston Churchill: Myth and Reality

Winston Churchill: Myth and Reality

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.”…

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Reviews of “Churchill and the Avoidable War”

Reviews of “Churchill and the Avoidable War”

"I’ve touched on this before: if Hitler had been assassinated in 1937, he would have gone down in history as one of the greatest Germans. If assassinated in late 1941, before the tide began to turn, he would have gone down among Germans as a military genius. Horrible as it is to say or contemplate, it was necessary for him to stay around to the bitter end so that Germans could see what fools he made of them." —Manfred Weidhorn

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Was WW2 Avoidable?

Was WW2 Avoidable?

con­tin­ued from pre­vi­ous post…

Churchill and the Avoid­able War

Pref­ace

This book exam­ines Churchill’s the­o­ry that “time­ly action” could have forced Hitler to recoil, and a dev­as­tat­ing cat­a­stro­phe avoid­ed. We con­sid­er his pro­pos­als, and the degree to which he pur­sued them. Churchill was both right and wrong. He was right that Hitler could have been stopped. He was wrong in not doing all he could to stop him. The result is a cor­rec­tive to tra­di­tion­al argu­ments, both of Churchill’s crit­ics and defend­ers. Whether the war was avoid­able hangs on these issues.

Chap­ter 1. Ger­many Arm­ing:  Encoun­ter­ing Hitler, 1930-34

“There is no dif­fi­cul­ty at all in hav­ing cor­dial rela­tions between the peoples….But…

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Churchill’s Choice: Hitler vs. Stalin

Churchill’s Choice: Hitler vs. Stalin

I find the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of Churchill quite dis­gust­ing. It is typ­i­cal British-Amer­i­can arro­gance to ignore the out­come of WW2 for the peo­ples of East­ern Europe, not to speak of the Ger­mans. Churchill knew from the begin­ning about the ter­ri­ble fate of the Rus­sians and many oth­er East Euro­pean peo­ples under Bol­she­vist dic­ta­tor­ship. He obvi­ous­ly didn’t care. He was obsessed with anti-Ger­man hatred. Know­ing that he bombed Ger­man cities, killing thou­sands of civil­ians long before the Ger­mans were retal­i­at­ing, makes him in my opin­ion even worse than Hitler. Why  did he go into alliance with Stal­in against the Ger­mans?…

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Churchill’s “Infallibility”: Myth on Myth

Churchill’s “Infallibility”: Myth on Myth

Mr. Daniel Knowles (“Time to scotch the myth of Win­ston Churchill’s infal­li­bil­i­ty,” (orig­i­nal­ly blogged on the Dai­ly Tele­graph but since pulled from all the web­sites where it appeared), wrote that the “nation­al myth” of World War II and Churchill “is being used in an argu­ment about the future of the House of Lords.”

Mr. Knowles quot­ed Lib­er­al Par­ty leader Nick Clegg, who cit­ed Churchill’s 1910 hope that the Lords “would be fair to all par­ties.” Sir Winston’s grand­son, Sir Nicholas Soames MP, replied that Churchill “dropped those views and had great rev­er­ence and respect for the insti­tu­tion of the House of Lords.”…

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Did Churchill Praise Hitler?

Did Churchill Praise Hitler?

"I am surprised that the head of a great State should set himself to attack British members of Parliament who hold no official position and who are not even the leaders of parties. Such action on his part can only enhance any influence they may have, because their fellow-countrymen have long been able to form their own opinion about them and really do not need foreign guidance." —WSC, 1938

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Churchill, Mein Kampf and the Koran

Churchill, Mein Kampf and the Koran

"All was there—the programme of German resurrection, the technique of party propaganda; the plan for combating Marxism; the concept of a National-Socialist State; the rightful position of Germany at the summit of the world.Here was the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message." —WSC

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