Hitler Archives - Richard M. Langworth

“The Wilderness Years” with Robert Hardy: Original Review

7 November 2019 Comments 0 Comments

“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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cruz churchill — Ted Cruz (L). Maybe if he’d smoke a cigar? (Daily Telegraph)

Senator Cruz: Minor Misquote, Major Misinterpretation

16 April 2016 Comments 1 Comment

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

13 January 2016 Comments 0 Comments

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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Praise for “Avoidable War”

23 November 2015 Comments 0 Comments

Churchill and the Avoidable War will cost you the price of a cup of coffee. You can read it in a couple of nights. You may then decide if Churchill was right (or wrong) that World War II could have been prevented. Click on “Buy Now” under the book image at right on this page.

Here is an excellent survey of the key “what if” junctures where history could have taken a different turn. What I like about it especially is that it conscientiously steers away from any definitive pronouncements about one zig or zag making all the difference in preventing World War II.…

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Was WW2 Avoidable?

13 November 2015 Comments 0 Comments

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

31 October 2015 Comments 2 Comments

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

10 July 2012 Comments 10 Comments

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?

25 June 2009 Comments 14 Comments

The film “Judgment at Nuremberg” suggests that Churchill offered praise to Hitler right after the Munich Pact, which would seem an odd time for Churchill to be singing the praise of the Führer. What’s the story? —K.C., Washington

In a speech to the Reichstag in early November 1938, Hitler had attacked Churchill and others who had objected to the Munich Pact by name and describing them as “warmongers.” Replying in the House of Commons on 6 November, Churchill said:

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.…

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Churchill, Mein Kampf and the Koran

25 February 2009 Comments 11 Comments

"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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