Versailles Treaty Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Hitler’s Sputtering Austrian Anschluss: Opportunity Missed?

26 December 2020 Comments 1 Comment

Excerpted from “Hitler’s ‘Tet Offensive’: Churchill and the Austrian Anschluss, 1938″ for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. If you wish to read the whole thing full-strength, with more illustrations and endnotes, click here.

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Announcing “Churchill and the Avoidable War”

9 November 2015 Comments 0 Comments

It is proper to consider the lessons of the past as a guide to similar challenges now and in the future. But as Churchill wrote: "Let no one look down on those honourable, well-meaning men whose actions are chronicled in these pages, without searching his own heart, reviewing his own discharge of public duty, and applying the lessons of the past to his future conduct."

“Squeeze Germany until the Pips Squeak”

14 September 2014 Comments 6 Comments

Writing in the Arizona Republic, Clay Thompson properly corrects a reader. It was not Churchill who coined the phrase, “we shall squeeze Germany until the pips squeak.” Mr. Thompson correctly replied that the author was likely Sir Eric Campbell-Geddes, First Lord of the Admiralty in 1917-19. No sooner had Geddes uttered it than the line was ascribed to Prime Minister David Lloyd George. It worked well in the 1918 British general election, which Lloyd George handily won.

Lloyd George was personally not revenge-minded. But as a politician he was all too ready to adopt the popular cry “Hang the Kaiser.”…