Tag: Josef Stalin

Fulton
WSC and President Truman, flanking Truman’s military aide General Harry Vaughan, arriving at Fulton after a long night of poker (see http://bit.ly/2ZIUlRN), 4 March 1946. (US National Archives, public domain)
Churchill’s Consistency: The Fulton Warning Continues

Churchill’s Consistency: The Fulton Warning Continues

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Excerpt­ed from “Churchill’s Steady Adher­ence to His 1946 ‘Iron Cur­tain’ Speech in Ful­ton,” writ­ten for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the Hills­dale post with end­notes and more images, please click here. (Part of the text is tak­en from “Iron Cur­tain 75 Years On,” while adding rel­e­vant timelines.)

Fulton then and now

Ini­tial­ly con­demned as a war­mon­ger for telling the truth about Sovi­et inten­tions in his 1946 “Iron Cur­tain” speech, Churchill was soon acknowl­edged as a prophet—sometimes by the same indi­vid­u­als and media who exco­ri­at­ed him. Churchill him­self nev­er backed off.…

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Athens
Have you seen this much of your desktop in years? Not I! Archbishop Regent Damaskinos of Greece with his service advisors: Wing Cdr. Angelopoulos (Air Force) Lt. Col. Vassilikopoulos (Army), Lt. Cdr. Boudouris (Navy), Athens, 15 February 1945. (Imperial War Museum, Wikimedia Commons)
Athens, 1944: Some Lighter Moments in a Serious Situation

Athens, 1944: Some Lighter Moments in a Serious Situation

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“There’s a lot of ruin in any nation…”

The Greeks are still not laugh­ing about their mid-1940s civ­il war, so lev­i­ty may be inap­pro­pri­ate. Nor was at the time was Win­ston Churchill. “There is a lot of ruin in any nation,” he once mused. In Athens, 1944, Britain was “respon­si­ble for build­ing up the nest of cock­a­tri­ces for EAM [com­mu­nist par­ti­sans] in Greece.” (His vocab­u­lary was broad: A cock­a­trice is a myth­i­cal, two-legged drag­on or ser­pent-like crea­ture with a cock’s head.)

Nev­er­the­less, the peace deal Churchill bro­kered between war­ring Greeks in 1944 had so many hilar­i­ous moments that, 75 years lat­er, we may be per­mit­ted to indulge in lighter aspects.…

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Hull
Any lies galloping here? U.S.. Secretary of State Cordell Hull (right) confers with British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden during the Second World War. (U.S. State Department, public domain)
Galloping Lies, Bodyguards of Lies, and Lies for the Sake of Your Country

Galloping Lies, Bodyguards of Lies, and Lies for the Sake of Your Country

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About lies. Can you please advise whether or not Sir Win­ston Churchill said: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”  Many thanks. —A.S., Bermuda

That one lies with Cordell Hull

It was Franklin Roo­sevelt‘s Sec­re­tary of State, Cordell Hull, not Churchill. I have a slight vari­a­tion of it in the “Red Her­rings” appen­dix of  Churchill by Him­self, page 576: “A lie will gal­lop halfway round the world before the truth has time to pull its breech­es on.”  Although com­mon­ly ascribed to Churchill (who would have said “trousers,” not “breech­es”), this is def­i­nite­ly down to Hull.…

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Athens
Negotiations by lamplight: Churchill in Athens, December 1944, assured the survival of Greek democracy by installing Archbishop Damaskinos (to WSC’s left) as regent in a coalition government. (Hillsdale College)
Athens 1944: Not Churchill’s Finest Hour? Hmm….

Athens 1944: Not Churchill’s Finest Hour? Hmm….

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Question:

A r ead­er writes: “Rather late in the day, I have been read­ing The Spec­ta­tor (UK) Christ­mas Spe­cial dat­ed 15/21/29 Decem­ber 2018. Page 28 refers to one Ron­nie Boyd, who had been a teenage Ordi­nary Sea­man aboard HMS Ajax in Decem­ber 1944, when Win­ston Churchill arrived in Athens to try to end the ongo­ing civ­il war.

 “British forces ‘helped put down, with con­sid­er­able force of arms, a per­ceived partisan/communist uprising—the so-called Bat­tle of Athens, or the Dekemvri­ana in Greece,’ the arti­cle states. There fol­lows the extra­or­di­nary state­ment ‘Not Win­ston Churchill’s Finest Hour, it has to be said.’…

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Thompson
Thompson with Churchill for the Harvard Speech, 6 September 1943. (Harvard/Wikimedia)
“Churchill’s Bodyguard” Mini-series: Walter H. Thompson

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

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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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Baltic
“Here we stir the embers of the past and light the beacons of the future. Old flags are raised anew; the passions of vanished generations awake.” —Churchill, 1929. Riga Castle (1330), today home to the President of Latvia. (Foto.sanne.lv)
Churchill and the Baltic States: From WW2 to Liberation

Churchill and the Baltic States: From WW2 to Liberation

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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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Peck
“This is your Victory!” Churchill waves to the crowds on VE Day, 8 May 1945. On his left is Chancellor John Anderson; on his right is Minister of Labour Ernest Bevin. (Wikimedia Commons)
John Peck, 1945: General Eisenhower asks if the war is over….

John Peck, 1945: General Eisenhower asks if the war is over….

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Col. Gault (Mil­i­tary Assis­tant to Gen­er­al Eisen­how­er, 29 April 1945): “John Peck, is that you? The Gen­er­al told me to ask you if the war is over.”

Peck: “I beg your pardon?”

Gault: “Seri­ous­ly, we’ve got a press mes­sage here which says quite clear­ly that it’s all over. If so, nobody has told the Gen­er­al and he thought you would be the most like­ly to know at your end.”

Peck: “Well, if it has end­ed, nobody has told the Prime Min­is­ter either.”

Gault: “Do you think we had bet­ter car­ry on?”

Peck: “Yes, I think so.”…

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Maisky and Churchill: Hard to Put Down

Maisky and Churchill: Hard to Put Down

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Ivan Maisky: “The great­est sin of mod­ern states­man is vac­il­la­tion and ambi­gu­i­ty of thought and action.”

Gabriel Gorodet­sky, ed., The Maisky Diaries: Red Ambas­sador to the Court of St. James’s. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 634 pages, $28.80, Kin­dle $19.99, audio­book $36.32.

Excerpt­ed from the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. To read in full, click here.

____________________________

A strik­ing work of schol­ar­ship (actu­al­ly an abridge­ment of a three-vol­ume com­plete work com­ing in 2016), this book will inspire fresh schol­ar­ship on Churchill, Rus­sia and World War II. Ivan Maisky was a pen­e­trat­ing observ­er of 1932-43 Britain, and Gabriel Gorodet­sky con­nects every long gap in his diaries with informed accounts of what was hap­pen­ing.…

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Britain’s Leave Debate: Who’s Churchill? Who’s Stalin?

Britain’s Leave Debate: Who’s Churchill? Who’s Stalin?

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The cam­paign to Leave is heat­ing up. Take Grass­roots Out, a “com­bined oper­a­tion” sup­port­ing Brexit—the cam­paign for Great Britain to exit the Euro­pean Union. G-O field­ed a broad spec­trum of speak­ers in Lon­don Feb­ru­ary 19th. Along with UK Inde­pen­dence Par­ty leader Nigel Farage were Con­ser­v­a­tive Sir William Cash, Labour’s Kate Hoey, econ­o­mist Ruth Lea, and a Lon­don cab driver.

The most unex­pect­ed Leave speak­er was the far-left for­mer Labour MP and head of the social­ist Respect Par­ty. Mr. George Gal­loway was imme­di­ate­ly queried about his new colleagues.

“We are not pals,” Gal­loway replied.…

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Was WW2 Avoidable?

Was WW2 Avoidable?

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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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Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality

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