In preparation for Sir Winston’s 150th birthday is my 800-page book, Churchill: Master of Language: The Encyclopedia of His Greatest Words. The publisher is Hillsdale College Press, with an e-book by Rosetta and a leatherbound limited edition by Easton Press.

The fifth and final edition of Churchill by Himself, aka Churchill in His Own Words, adds 1500 new quotations for a total over 5000. Its thirty-four chapters and seven appendices contain half a million words—the most memorable or amusing Churchill said. Included is an exhaustive index to key phrases, people, places and events. Watch this site for further news.

Updated from 2012, here is a quartet of frequently asked questions about what Churchill said (or didn’t say). Two are genuine and in the book. Two are in my “Red Herrings” appendix of words Churchill never uttered.

“If God wearied of mankind”

From Churchill’s last major speech in Parliament comes a quotation devoid of his usual optimism. For some reason I can’t possibly imagine, this often comes up with regard to current global affairs:

Which way shall we turn to save our lives and the future of the world? It does not matter so much to old people; they are going soon anyway; but I find it poignant to look at youth in all its activity and ardour and, most of all, to watch little children playing their merry games, and wonder what would lie before them if God wearied of mankind. —House of Commons, 1 March 1955

“Not being scuppered”

If we could avoid getting scuppered by God, Churchill hoped we might also avoid it in politics.

A reader writes: “Can you confirm that Churchill said this? He became prime minister again in October 1951. A month later he supposedly announced three priorities to his private secretary, Jock Colville. Allegedly he said: ‘houses, red meat and not getting scuppered.’ But I can’t find it in Colville’s Fringes of Power.”

It was quoted as you state it by the late Paul Addison in his outstanding book Churchill on the Home Front (1992) 412, footnoted to Fringes of Power, the Colville diary, 22-23 March 1952. But Paul had the verb wrong.

What Churchill said was “not being scuppered.”  As such it appears in Fringes of Power (Hodder & Stoughton first U.S. edition. 1985), 644. Martin Gilbert also has it in Never Despair, volume 8 of the Official Biography (Hillsdale College Press, 2013), 717.

The past: condemned to repeat it

A librarian asked about the famous quote by George Santayana (in The Life of Reason, 1905): “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” She knew the quote was originally Santayana’s, but wished to know if Churchill said it. And if so, when?

I searched the Hillsdale College Churchill Project database: 80 million published words by and about WSC. This includes his own 20 million (books, articles, speeches, letters, private papers). Alas I could find no occurrence of Santayana in anything Churchill said.  I could not even find key phrases (“remember the past”…”condemned to repeat it”). So Churchill never repeated Santayana’s phrase in so many words, though he certainly shared the sentiment.

Churchill worried also that knowledge of the past would mean “the most thoughtless of ages. Every day headlines and short views” (House of Commons, 16 November 1948). But perhaps his best remark on the subject was this:

When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the Sibylline Books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind.

Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong—these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history. —House of Commons, 2 May 1935, after the Stresa Conference, in which Britain, France and Italy agreed—futilely—to maintain the independence of Austria.

Shooting his son-in-law

A reader asks if Churchill ever admired Mussolini. This doesn’t refer to the bouquets he threw Il Duce in 1927, when he persuaded Musso to repay the Italian war debt. It supposedly occurred in a conversation involving Churchill’s son-in-law, Duncan Sandys, who married his daughter Diana.

The story goes that toward the end of the Second World War, Sandys told Churchill that “Hitler and Mussolini have an even greater burden to bear, because everything is going wrong for them.” Supposedly Churchill replied: Ah, but Mussolini has this consolation, that he could shoot his son-in-law!

I will not dignify that with quotation marks because it is nothing Churchill said. It refers to the execution by firing squad of Count Galeazzo Ciano (1903-1944). The non-quote originated in newspaper proprietor Cecil King’s war memoir, With Malice Toward None (1970)—a diary note for 20 July 1944. But King added that it was “obviously concocted by some wag.” No other source states that Churchill made any such statement.

In fact Churchill quite liked Duncan Sandys and appointed him to important government ministries. More believable is that Churchill said this about a son-in-law he thoroughly disliked: Vic Oliver, née von Samek, an Austrian-born music hall comedian who married Sarah Churchill in 1936. Supposedly Oliver asked WSC if he admired any enemies, and Churchill named Mussolini for being able to shoot his son-in-law. It is all rubbish.

What Churchill said

Winston Churchill’s first worry was for his daughter. If war came, he told Sarah, “you will be married to the enemy.” —Sarah Churchill, A Thread in the Tapestry (1965), 52.

To his wife, WSC declared Oliver “as common as dirt. An Austrian citizen, a resident in U.S., and here on license and an American passport: twice divorced: thirty-six so he says. A horrible mouth: a foul Austro-Yankee drawl. I did not offer to shake hands.” —Martin Gilbert, ed., The Churchill Documents, vol. 10 (2008), 53.

True, Churchill called Mussolini every name in his book: ”whipped jackal”…”organ grinder’s monkey”…”absurd imposter.” But while Churchill mentioned Ciano’s execution, he did not say say he approved:

[T]he successful campaign in Sicily brought about the fall of Mussolini and the heartfelt repudiation by the Italian people of the Fascist creed. Mussolini indeed escaped, to eat the bread of affliction at Hitler’s table, to shoot his son-in-law, and help the Germans wreak vengeance upon the Italian masses whom he had professed to love. and over whom he had ruled for more than twenty years. —Broadcast, London, 26 March 1944

Italian partisans caught up with Mussolini in 1945, the same year Sarah and Vic divorced. Churchill had warmed slightly toward Oliver by then, though Vic had the infuriating habit of calling him “Popsie.” Churchill was upset over the breakup, mainly thinking about Sarah.

Desert Island Discs

For trivia fans, Vic Oliver was the very first guest on the long-running BBC programme, “Desert Island Discs” in 1942. See Alex Hudson, “The Castaway Who Annoyed Churchill,” BBC News Magazine, 26 January 2012.

Related reading

“All the Quotes Winston Churchill Never Said,” Part 1 of 4 parts, 2018.

“Paul Addison 1943-2020: What Matters is the Truth,” 2020

“‘Greatest Law-Giver’: The Truth Behind Churchill’s Mussollini Bouquets,” 2022

“Myths of Dear Benito: Churchill’s Alleged Mussolini Complex,” 2024.

“Fascists of the Future Will Call Themselves Anti-Fascissts,” 2020.

A recent article suggests that Japan’s decision to surrender in 1945 was by no means unanimous. A few years ago, Sir Ian Kershaw said the same thing about Japan’s decision to go to war in the first place. Long before the war, Winston Churchill mused:

“What a story! Think of all these people—decent, educated, the story of the past laid out before them—What to avoid—what to do etc.—patriotic, loyal, clean—trying their utmost—What a ghastly muddle they made of it! Unteachable from infancy to tomb—There is the first and main characteristic of mankind.”—Churchill to Lord Beaverbrook, 21 May 1928.

Kershaw, whose two-volume biography of Hitler is highly acclaimed, has written a fascinating book on what Churchill might call the “ten climacterics” of World War II: Britain’s decision to fight on in May 1940; Mussolini’s decision to attack Greece; Stalin’s decision to trust Hitler; Japan’s decisions to expand southward and to take on the United States; Roosevelt’s decisions to help Britain and to wage undeclared war against Germany; Hitler’s decisions to attack Russia, to declare war on the USA and to commit genocide in Europe.

Hull Reconsidered

I had no deep prejudices toward Cordell Hull until I read this book, but Kershaw paints Roosevelt’s Secretary of State the way Churchill allegedly painted John Foster Dulles: “He is the only bull I know who carries his china shop with him.”

As the clock ticked in late 1941, Hull frustrated negotiations at every turn. He rightly rejected the Japanese “Plan A,” amounting basically to letting Japan run amok in East Asia. Then he seemed to accept, but finally rejected, “Plan B,” which offered a pullback of Japanese forces from Indo-China and an agreement to vacate China “at an agreed future date.”

Nor was Roosevelt consistent: “While Hull and the State Department dampened prospects of an accommodation, the President himself appeared still open to the possiblity of one” (367). In his vacillating, don’t-tell-them-everything-you’re-thinking approach, he ran hot and cold on requested meetings with Japan’s foreign minister or Emperor. First FDR would hint that he wanted a “modus vivendi”; then he would play hardball, refusing to consider any terms by which he would normalize relations.

* * *

Finally Hull, without consulting either the military or unofficial allies like Britain (which might have had some useful warnings about piling up new enemies) replied with his “Ten Points,” including all previous demands and some new ones. In exchange for normalized relations Japan was required “to withdraw from China and Indochina, renounce extraterritorial rights and concessions dating back to the turn of the century, following the Boxer Rebellion, to recognize no Chinese government but that of Chiang Kai-shek, and effectively to abrogate the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy (369). Those were terms no Japanese government could accept. Also, Hull was unclear as to whether he also demanded Japan’s exit from Manchuria, where it had established the puppet state of Manchukuo in 1931. In fact he did not—but he didn’t bother to make this clear.

Too late FDR realized, “this means war”; he did not know Pearl Harbor would be a target, but he must have known he had backed Japan into a corner. Call me a cynic and you’ll be right: but if a modern President and his Secretary of State handled say China like Roosevelt and Hull handled the Japanese, and ended up getting into a war, there would be a full-scale outcry.

Hitler’s declaration of war

Kershaw carefully examines Hitler’s decision to declare war on America four days after Pearl Harbor. He reviews Hitler’s pronouncements and thoughts on the “American Union” from his earliest speeches. The Western Hemisphere never seriously figured in Hitler’s plans (despite the now-famous British forgery of a German map carving up South America).

Hitler thought the European armaments industry was greater than the American. “He had experienced American soldiers in the First World War [and believed] the Germans were far superior” (405). But longer term, he realized that Germany was on borrowed time. He knew when he invaded Russia that he must win quickly, compel Stalin’s surrender, and then finish off Britain with his full forces. By 1943, Hitler said, America’s mighty engine of industry would be fully engaged. Any hope in Germany for European mastery would be ended. Thus the Fuehrer warned his trigger-happy naval chief, Admiral Raeder, to avoid provocations in the Atlantic, even after Roosevelt had occupied Iceland and expanded the Atlantic security zone far to the east.

Why then did Hitler declare war after Pearl Harbor? Logic, Kershaw argues, played no part. The Tripartite Pact (Hitler’s stated reason) required Germany to declare war only if Japan had been attacked. The idea that he went to war to “fulfill a commitment” to Japan seems far-fetched. (When did Hitler honor commitments?) Pearl Harbor infuriated the Americans. Absent a German declaration, Kershaw suggests, Congress might not have declared war on Germany. Churchill’s rush visit to Washington after Pearl Harbor was predicated on his anxiety that America should adopt a policy of “Germany first.” Roosevelt would have preferred to put off that visit, lest Congress get the idea that Churchill was exerting undue influence on Administration policy.

Explaining the inexplicable

In declaring war, Hitler took little military advice other than that of Raeder. Yet even the Navy chief admitted that in December 1941 not one U-boat was anywhere near the United States. The German declaration astonished even sycophants like Goebbels. Many experienced soldiers privately (very privately) confessed they saw doom in Hitler’s act (383).

Why did Hitler do it? The answer, it seems, was a “shrug.” Hitler knew that sooner or later Germany would have to confront the Americans. Why not now? It proved fatal.

Despite his disdain of the Americans, Kershaw notes, Hitler by autumn 1941 had “contemplated for the first time the possibility of defeat,” saying “that if in the end the German people should not prove strong enough, then Germany deserved to go under and be destroyed by the stronger power.” (This reminds us of Hitler’s “scorched earth” orders to Speer as the Russians advanced on Berlin in 1945.) Kershaw sees Hitler’s war declaration as revealing. “Beneath the veneer, Hitler seems to have recognized that his chances of total victory had by now all but evaporated…. It was a characteristic attempt to wrest back the initiative through a bold move. But…doomed from the very outset to failure” (430).

Irrational rationales

“What a story!” Japan is of two minds about going to war. The United States is also of two minds—or is she? Between Roosevelt and Hull, it is hard to tell. Emperor Hirohito and his entire cabinet believe that if they go to war, they will probably lose. So…to war they go!

Hitler through December 1941 practices uncharacteristic restraint in not provoking the Americans. He couldn’t afford such a mighty enemy until the Russians were subdued. If America was involved, he surmised Germany would lose. Then…to war he goes.

Fateful Choices is a revealing commentary on the occasional (one hopes) irrationality of high-level decision-making. This book which ought to be read by our leaders (present and future), before they do something stupid. Again. 

See also: “Pearl Harbor +75: All in the Same Boat. Still.”

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. Larry Arnn, this volume offers a fresh contribution of documents crucial to our understanding of Churchill in World War II. It is a vast new contribution to Churchill scholarship.

Fateful Questions takes us from the Allied invasion of Italy to the first Big Three conference at Teheran; Russian successes on the Eastern Front; fraught arguments over tactics and strategy as the Allies begin closing in on Nazi Germany, and on to the eve of D-Day: the invasion of France in June 1944.

The majority of these documents have never before been seen in print. They illustrate the sheer volume and variety of subjects Churchill dealt with, leading Britain in the war while presiding of myriad mechanics of government.

In Fateful Questions, Churchill is called upon to alleviate, in the midst of war, a severe famine in Bengal, India. Almost simultaneously, he is confronted with Italy’s surrender, and the question of who will lead that nation after Mussolini. From America come constant requests, prods and proposals—and the growing realization that by comparison to the USA, Britain will soon play a greatly diminished role.

Militarily, Churchill has to consider siphoning resources from the Italian campaign to support the coming invasion of France. He must cope with belligerent notes from Stalin, often demanding the impossible; strained dialogue within the War Cabinet; difficulties in setting Big Three meetings; Parliamentary business; Japan and the Pacific; communications with the citizenry; appointments to fill; vacancies and losses; postwar planning—page after page, copiously footnoted by Hillsdale’s team of student associates and practiced historians.

Even now, in the digital age, Churchill’s workload in 1943-44 would be enormous for several persons, let alone one man pushing seventy. His output was extraordinary, his prescriptions understandable and wise. If he lost his temper on occasion, it is fully understandable. This is not to suggest—as the documents testify—that Churchill was right on every subject. But the average of his decisions was certainly not bad.

A sampling from Fateful Questions illustrates both the complexity of Churchill’s problems and their wide variety and the depths of detail into which he entered—and, in some cases, some rather astonishing facts which, until this book were confined to archives, or not known at all.

Palestine

Churchill’s steady support of a national home for the Jews continued during World War II, and Fateful Questions contains many evidences. In 1942-44 Walter Guinness, Lord Moyne, was Resident Minister of State in Cairo, responsible for the Middle East, including Mandatory Palestine, and Africa. He was a lifetime friend of the Churchills. His assassination by Zionist extremists in November 1944 stunned Churchill. “If our dreams for Zionism are to end in the smoke of assassins’ pistols, and our labours for its future to produce only a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany,” he declared sadly, “many like myself will have to reconsider the position we have maintained so consistently and so long in the past.”

27 October 1943. Winston S. Churchill to Sir Edward Bridges. Prime Minister’s Personal Minute C.41/3 (Churchill papers, 20/106)

It must be more than three months since the War Cabinet decided that a special committee should be set up to watch over the Jewish question and Palestine generally. How many times has this Committee met? At the present moment Lord Moyne is over here. I said at least a month ago that he should be invited to lay his views before this Committee. He has been made a member, but there has been no meeting. A meeting should be held this week, and Lord Moyne should have every opportunity of stating his full case, in which I am greatly interested. The matter might be discussed further at the Cabinet next week or the week after. Pray report to me the action that will be taken.

Destroyers for Bases 

In the Destroyers for Bases Agreement on 2 September 1940, fifty mothballed U.S. Navy destroyers were transferred to the Royal Navy in exchange for land rights to build American bases on British possessions. No one maintained that this was a fair exchange, but Fateful Questions reveals that Churchill downplayed this issue: “When you have got a thing where you want it, it is a good thing to leave it where it is.” To President Roosevelt’s advisor, Harry Hopkins, he admitted that the value of the trade was unequal—but that, to Britain, American security overrode considerations of an equable “business deal.” This was astonishing admission, characteristic of Churchill, and his loyalty to an ally. 

14 October 1943. Winston S. Churchill to Harry Hopkins. Prime Minister’s Personal Telegram T.1614/3  (Churchill papers, 20/121)

Personal and Most Secret. I am most grateful for the comments which the President made at his Press conference but there are several other important allegations which we think should be answered. I therefore propose to publish from 10 Downing Street on my authority something like the [following]…Statement begins…..

“Complaints are made about the bases lent by Britain to the United States in the West Indies in 1940 in return for the fifty destroyers. These fifty destroyers, although very old, were most helpful at that critical time to us who were fighting alone against Germany and Italy, but no human being could pretend that the destroyers were in any way an equivalent for the immense strategic advantages conceded in seven islands vital to the United States. I never defended the transaction as a business deal. I proclaimed to Parliament, and still proclaim, that the safety of the United States is involved in these bases, and that the military security of the United States must be considered a prime British interest….”

 

Famine in Bengal

Since publication of a book on the 1943-44 Bengal famine a few years ago—and a chorus of condemnations from those who read little else—Churchill and his War Cabinet have been accused near-genocidal behavior over aid to the victims. The Viceroy, Lord Wavell, and Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery, are frequently represented as Churchill’s critics. Before he died, Sir Martin Gilbert told me that the relevant documents, which he had exhaustively compiled, would be revealed in the appropriate document volume. They would, he said, completely exonerate Churchill.

That time has now come with publication of Fateful Questions. Reading it, no one could consider that Churchill and his Cabinet, in the midst of a war for survival, did not do everything they could for the plight of the starving, and for the Indian people in general. Only a few excerpts are possible here. They barely scratch the surface.

8 October 1943. Winston S. Churchill to the War Cabinet. (Churchill papers, 23/11), 10 Downing Street

DIRECTIVE TO THE VICEROY DESIGNATE (WAVELL)

1. Your first duty is the defence of India from Japanese menace and invasion. Owing to the favourable turn which the affairs of The King-Emperor have taken this duty can best be discharged by ensuring that India is a safe and fertile base from which the British and American offensive can be launched in 1944. Peace, order and a high condition of war-time well-being among the masses of the people constitute the essential foundation of the forward thrust against the enemy.
2. The material and cultural conditions of the many peoples of India will naturally engage your earnest attention. The hard pressures of world-war have for the first time for many years brought conditions of scarcity, verging in some localities into actual famine, upon India. Every effort must be made, even by the diversion of shipping urgently needed for war purposes, to deal with local shortages. But besides this the prevention of the hoarding of grain for a better market and the fair distribution of foodstuffs between town and country are of the utmost consequence. The contrast between wealth and poverty in India, the incidence of corrective taxation and the relations prevailing between land-owner and tenant or labourer, or between factory-owner and employee, require searching re-examination.
3. Every effort should be made by you to assuage the strife between the Hindus and Moslems and to induce them to work together for the common good. No form of democratic Government can flourish in India while so many millions are by their birth excluded from those fundamental rights of equality between man and man, upon which all healthy human societies must stand…. [emphasis mine]

12 October 1943. House of Commons: Oral Answers

INDIA (FOOD SITUATION)

Secretary of State for India (Mr. Amery): At the beginning of the year His Majesty’s Government provided the necessary shipping for substantial imports of grain to India in order to meet prospects of serious shortage which were subsequently relieved by an excellent spring harvest in Northern India. Since the recrudescence of the shortage in an acute form we have made every effort to provide shipping, and considerable quantities of food grains are now arriving or are due to arrive before the end of the year. We have also been able to help in the supply of milk food for children. The problem so far as help from here is concerned is entirely one of shipping, and has to be judged in the light of all the other urgent needs of the United Nations.

Canadian & Australian Aid

4 November 1943. Winston S. Churchill to William Mackenzie King (Prime Minister, Canada). PM’s Personal Telegram T.1842/3 (Churchill papers, 20/123)

1. I have seen the telegrams exchanged by you and the Viceroy offering 100,000 tons of wheat to India and I gratefully acknowledge the spirit which prompts Canada to make this generous gesture.
2. Your offer is contingent however on shipment from the Pacific Coast which I regret is impossible. The only ships available to us on the Pacific Coast are the Canadian new buildings which you place at our disposal. These are already proving inadequate to fulfil our existing high priority commitments from that area which include important timber requirements for aeroplane manufacture in the United Kingdom and quantities of nitrate from Chile to the Middle East which we return for foodstuffs for our Forces and for export to neighbouring territories, including Ceylon.
3. Even if you could make the wheat available in Eastern Canada, I should still be faced with a serious shipping question. If our strategic plans are not to suffer undue interference we must continue to scrutinise all demands for shipping with the utmost rigour. India’s need for imported wheat must be met from the nearest source, i.e. from Australia. Wheat from Canada would take at least two months to reach India whereas it could be carried from Australia in 3 to 4 weeks. Thus apart from the delay in arrival, the cost of shipping is more than doubled by shipment from Canada instead of from Australia. In existing circumstance this uneconomical use of shipping would be indefensible….

11 November 1943. Winston S. Churchill to Mackenzie King. PM’s Personal Telegram T.1942/3 (Churchill papers, 20/124)

…The War Cabinet has again considered the question of further shipments of Australian wheat and has decided to ship up to another 100,000 tons, part of which will arrive earlier than the proposed cargo from Canada….

“We should do everything possible…”

14 February 1944. War Cabinet: Conclusions. (War Cabinet papers, 65/41) 10 Downing Street

INDIAN FOOD GRAIN REQUIREMENTS

The Prime Minister informed the War Cabinet that…there had been a further communication from the Viceroy urging in the strongest terms the seriousness of the situation as he foresaw it….he was most anxious that we should do everything possible to ease the Viceroy’s position. No doubt the Viceroy felt that if this corner could be turned, the position next year would be better….

The Minister of War Transport said that it would be out of the question for him to find shipping to maintain the import of wheat to India at a monthly rate of 50,000 tons for an additional two months. The best that he could do was represented by the proposed import of Iraqi barley. If, when the final figures of the rice crop were available, the Government of India’s anticipation of an acute shortage proved to be justified he would then have tonnage in a position to carry to India about 25,000 tons a month. But even this help would be at the expense of cutting the United Kingdom import programme in 1944 below 24 million tons, this being the latest estimate in the light of increasing operational requirements. In the circumstances it was clearly quite impossible to provide shipping to meet the full demand of 1½ million tons made by the Government of India.

24 April 1944. War Cabinet: Conclusions. (Cabinet papers, 65/42) 10 Downing Street

Secret. The War Cabinet had before them a Memorandum by the Secretary of State for India (WP (44) 216) reviewing the latest position as regards the Indian food grain situation. The result was a net worsening of 550,000 tons and the Viceroy, in addition to the 200,000 tons already promised, now required 724,000 tons of wheat if the minimum needs of the civil population were to be met and the Army were also to receive their requirements.

The Secretary of State for India said that the position had been worsened by unseasonable weather, and by the disaster at Bombay, in which 45,000 tons of badly-needed foodstuffs and 11 ships had been lost. He was satisfied that everything possible had been done by the Authorities in India to meet the situation. Given the threat to operations which any breakdown in India’s economic life involved, he felt that we should now apprise the United States of the seriousness of the position. It must be for the War Cabinet to decide how far we should ask for their actual assistance….

The Prime Minister said that it was clear that His Majesty’s Government could only provide further relief for the Indian situation at the cost of incurring grave difficulties in other directions. At the same time, there was a strong obligation on us to replace the grain which had perished in the Bombay explosion. He was sceptical as to any help being forthcoming from America, save at the cost of operations of the United Kingdom import programme. At the same time his sympathy was great for the sufferings of the people of India.

Appeal to Roosevelt

29 April 1944. Winston S. Churchill to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. PM’s Personal Telegram T.996/4. (Churchill papers, 20/163)

No.665. I am seriously concerned about the food situation in India and its possible reactions on our joint operations. Last year we had a grievous famine in Bengal through which at least 700,000 people died. This year there is a good crop of rice, but we are faced with an acute shortage of wheat, aggravated by unprecedented storms which have inflicted serious damage on the Indian spring crops. India’s shortage cannot be overcome by any possible surplus of rice even if such a surplus could be extracted from the peasants. Our recent losses in the Bombay explosion have accentuated the problem.

Wavell is exceedingly anxious about our position and has given me the gravest warnings. His present estimate is that he will require imports of about one million tons this year if he is to hold the situation, and to meet the needs of the United States and British and Indian troops and of the civil population especially in the great cities. I have just heard from Mountbatten that he considers the situation so serious that, unless arrangements are made promptly to import wheat requirements, he will be compelled to release military cargo space of SEAC in favour of wheat and formally to advise Stillwell that it will also be necessary for him to arrange to curtail American military demands for this purpose.

By cutting down military shipments and other means, I have been able to arrange for 350,000 tons of wheat to be shipped to India from Australia during the first nine months of 1944. This is the shortest haul. I cannot see how to do more.

I have had much hesitation in asking you to add to the great assistance you are giving us with shipping but a satisfactory situation in India is of such vital importance to the success of our joint plans against the Japanese that I am impelled to ask you to consider a special allocation of ships to carry wheat to India from Australia without reducing the assistance you are now providing for us, who are at a positive minimum if war efficiency is to be maintained. We have the wheat (in Australia) but we lack the ships. I have resisted for some time the Viceroy’s request that I should ask you for your help, but I believe that, with this recent misfortune to the wheat harvest and in the light of Mountbatten’s representations, I am no longer justified in not asking for your help. Wavell is doing all he can by special measures in India. If, however, he should find it possible to revise his estimate of his needs, I would let you know immediately.

Without Churchill…

Fateful Questions, in these documents and others included, has put paid to the outrageous allegations that Churchill, full of racist hatred for the people of India, was responsible for exacerbating the Bengal famine in 1943-44.

The historian Arthur Herman noted two facts which Churchill’s critics have thus far studiously ignored.  (1) Had the famine occurred in peacetime, without a war for survival, it would have been dealt with competently, as famines had been dealt with before by the British Raj. (2) Without Churchill, the Bengal famine would have been worse.

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.”

Churchill myth is born both of exaggeration and criticism, created either to glorify the record or to belabor it. The former I suppose is somewhat less harmful, born of ignorance. The latter obfuscate the record and distract us from the truth, sometimes intentionally.

Paul Addison wrote, “Paradoxically, I have always thought it diminishes Churchill to regard him as superhuman,” Yet Professor Addison has no doubt about Churchill’s greatness. The most memorable words on that subject were by Churchill’s official biographer, the late Sir Martin Gilbert:

In every sphere of human endeavour, Churchill foresaw the dangers and potential for evil. Many of those dangers are our dangers today. Some writers portray him as a figure of the past, an anachronism, a grotesque. In doing so, it is they who are the losers, for he was a man of quality: a good guide for the generations now reaching adulthood.

The aim of this book is to skewer the most popular allegations about Churchill, to offer readers what he really thought and did, sometimes about matters that are still on our minds today—for as Twain wrote, history never repeats; but sometimes it rhymes.

Youth: Lady Randolph’s indiscretions…The parentage of Jack Churchill…The Menace of Education….The death of Lord Randolph…Women’s Suffrage.

Young Parliamentarian: The loss of  the Titanic…The unpleasantness on Sidney Street…”The sullen feet of marching men in Tonypandy“…Irish independence.

World War I: Warmonger image, peacemaker reality…Defense of Antwerp…Dardanelles and Gallipoli…Sinking the Lusitania…Chemical warfare...America’s involvement in the Great War.

Between the World Wars: “Taking more out of alcohol”…“The foul baboonery of Bolshevism”…Trial by Jewry…”Half-Naked Fakir“…”The Truth About Hitler.”

World War II: Broadcasting the war speeches…Refugees and enemy aliens…Torture as tool or terror…Bombing of Coventry…Pearl Harbor…The Holocaust…Famine in Bengal…Destruction of Monte Cassino…Overtures to Mussolini…Feeding occupied Europe…Firebombing Dresden.

Postwar Years: The fate of Eastern Europe…Nuking the Soviets…The Conservative Party…”Only to have accomplished nothing in the end.”

Appendix: “Things That Go Bump in the Night” (so far-fetched that they defy categorizing). Converting to Islam…A life twice-saved by Alexander Fleming...Engineering the Wall Street Crash…The myths of the Black Dog and an unhappy marriage.

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.” Soames concluded: “But it doesn’t matter. The basis of this argument is mythology, not history.”

Churchill’s view on the Lords was more nuanced than Clegg stated, and certainly did change after passage of the 1911 Parliament Act, which Churchill helped pass. It eliminated the Lords’ veto of money bills, restricted their delay of other bills to two years, and reduced the term of a Parliament to five years. You can look it up.

What to do about the House of Lords is a matter for the British people and their representatives. My task is merely to refute nonsense about Winston Churchill—which I will now respectfully proceed to do, quoting from Mr. Knowles’s treatise:

 • “We idolise Churchill because we don’t really know anything about him.”

Only sycophants idolize Churchill. But if they do, it’s not because they know nothing about him. He has the longest biography in the history of the planet. He has 15-million published words. There are a million documents in the Churchill Archives. One hundred million words were written about him. He gets 37 million Google hits. Don’t be silly.

 • “His finest hours aside, Winston Churchill was hardly a paragon of progressive thought.”

Churchill’s was at times so progressive that he was called a traitor to his class. His own Conservative Party never quite trusted him because they knew he continued to harbor principles of the Liberal Party he had been part of from 1904 to 1922. To cite examples would bore you. So let’s just say that he favored a National Health Service before the Labour Party did, and believed in a system of social security before the Labour Party existed.

 • “He believed that women shouldn’t vote – telling the House of Commons that they are ‘well represented by their fathers, brothers, and husbands.’”

Churchill never said that in the Commons. It’s a private note pasted into his copy of the 1874 Annual Register in 1897, when he was 23. At that time the majority of British women themselves were opposed to having the vote. Churchill changed his view on women’s suffrage after observing the role women played in World War I—and when he realized, as his daughter said, “how many women would vote for him.”

 • “He was fiercely opposed to self-determination for the people of the Empire….”

Was the fierce independence Churchill admired in Canadians, Boers, Zulus, Australians, Sudanese, New Zealanders and Maoris a sham and a façade, then? Churchill did have a tic about the early Indian independence movement, with its Brahmin roots. Yet in 1935 he declared that Gandhi had “gone very high in my esteem since he stood up for the Untouchables.” And Churchill was proven right that a premature British exit from India would result in a Hindu-Muslim bloodbath—how many died is still unknown.

 • “….advocating the use of poisoned gas against ‘uncivilized tribes’ in Mesopotamia in 1919.”

That Golden Oldie has been refuted repeatedly for twenty years. The specific term he used was “lachrymatory gas” (tear gas). He was not referring to a killer gas like chlorine.

 • “Even his distrust of Hitler was probably motivated mostly by a hatred of Germans.”

Is this the same Churchill who urged that shiploads of food be sent to blockaded Germany after the 1918 armistice, incurring the wrath of his colleagues, who wished to “squeeze Germany until the pips squeaked”? Is this the man who wrote to his wife in 1945: “…my heart is saddened by the tales of masses of German women and children flying along the roads everywhere in 40-mile long columns to the West before the advancing Armies”? Really, Mr. Knowles should be ashamed of himself.

 • “In 1927, he said that Mussolini’s fascism ‘had rendered service to the whole world,’ while Il Duce himself was a ‘Roman genius.’”

Lots of politicians said favorable things about Mussolini after he restored order to a reeling Italy in the 1920s. Churchill was among the first to realize and to say publicly what Mussolini really was. Churchill wasn’t always right the first time—but he was usually right in the long run.

 • “In 1915, he had to resign as First Lord of the Admiralty after the disaster of Gallipoli.”

He had to resign because of the Dardanelles, not Gallipoli, which was someone else’s idea (and hadn’t yet become a disaster). Churchill initially was even doubtful about the plan to force the Dardanelles, but he defended it and was a handy scapegoat. He vowed never again to champion “a cardinal operation of war” without plenary authority; hence his assumption of the title “Minister of Defence” in World War II.

 • “His decision in 1925 to restore Britain to the Gold Standard caused a deep and unnecessary recession.”

There was already a recession. Churchill, Keynes and the Gold Standard comprise a far more complicated subject than Mr. Knowles represents. Among other things, the Gold Standard was insisted upon by the Bank of England. Churchill was certainly wrong to buy their arguments, and saw many of its effects coming; he was also incredibly unlucky in the way things transpired.

 • ”That led directly to the general strike in 1926, in which he was reported to have suggested using machine guns on the miners.”

Mr. Knowles confused his red herrings. It was the Welsh miners at Tonypandy in 1910 against whom Churchill is mythologically supposed to have sent troops—but top marks for the machine guns, a new twist on the old myth. (In fact, Churchill opposed the use of troops, in Tonypandy and in the General Strike.)

Mr. Knowles concluded:

Yes, he was, in the most part, a brilliant war leader. His role in the creation of the modern welfare state is also worth remembering. But his views on Lords reform are as irrelevant today as his views on India or female suffrage. This is a debate we should have based on principle, and on a practical evaluation of how well the House of Lords works. Citing dead men only muddies it.

Well, it is my instinctive feeling anyone who fails to do basic research can produce only what amounts to a national myth, divorced from reality.

Churchill was not always “a brilliant war leader.” He did help create what became the welfare state–and warned against its excesses. His views on Lords reform are not irrelevant, but they do require more study than we read in the Telegraph Blogpost. His views on India are still relevant to certain Indians who have written on the subject. (As one wrote, the Axis Powers had quite different ideas in mind for India than the old British Raj).

As for female suffrage, ask all the women who voted for him. Citing live Telegraph bloggers only muddies the waters.

Mr. Knowles has tweeted that “The whole point of the post was to take down Clegg. That piece is bizarre.” I certainly agree his piece is bizarre. But Mr. Clegg lasted until 2015.