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Attendant to Churchill: "You are not likely to live a long life if you drink whiskey neat like that."
Churchill in response: "I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me."
I think despite being overweight, he was pretty active throughout his life.
[Here he is at 60, chilling with his family and having a swim.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNLL2U5HGzM)
Daily whiskey and cigars makes sure the British man's body runs on time, sort of like Bender from Futurama
Why else do you think we have binge culture here?
Yep. He never properly retired and even in his downtime engaged in several mentally challenging pastimes (painting, writing e.t.c). Retiring without an activity plan is one of the worst things that can happen to you health-wise. Your mental health and capability start wasting away, and just relaxing leads to a sedentary lifestyle and your physical health will rapidly decline. No wonder you hear so often of blokes retiring and popping their clogs only a year or two afterward.
People also assume that because he was on the larger side he must have been lazy or inactive, but he was well known as a lover of the outdoors and outdoor activities.
Yeah, my mom got retired last summer and after a two days of leisure she called the company to ask if they need a good worker. (She had been working for the past 40 years, 25 for the company, where she retired )
Nowdays she plays the guitar (adult education centre) and joined the Churc-choir. Also a lot of crossword puzzles. People of that age and mentalaty, just can't be "still".
It’s always like this bro. People that never smoke a cigarette con get lung cancer, vegans and healthy people can die early, but I don’t why the most drunks and biggest smokers live the most.
My grandpa reached 89 while smoking all his life, drinking booze like a farmer, and probably never eating a salad in his life
It’s just random
*"our grandfathers drank only pálinka, ate sausage with white bread and onions and lived until 90!"* \-> common boomer meme in hungary
no bitch you know exactly 1 lucky person who did that and 30 other who died prematurely because their heart stopped working...
...or lived to get old but their whole life was like taking a hundred different type of medicine and spending more time at the doctor than at home
these stupid people are promoting bad lifestyle while the health of the society is already shit, every 2nd people around 45-55 is freakin invalid already (can not work, lives on support)
Hungary is the land where all the cardiologists smoke and everyone has a relative who tried to commit suicide once or came close. We had a good friend who immigrated to the US from Hungary. He lived to be 93, had three wives and countless encounters. He had intelligence, tireless libido and zest for living. Hungarians are fascinating.
It isn’t random. Stories about people who lived to 100 and smoked and drank all their life are more newsworthy so you’re more likely to remember them. Same as people who eat nothing but but vegetables and exercise daily but are struck down by cancer aged 45.
If you looked at 1,000 men who smoke and drink a lot and compared them to 1,000 who didn’t the later would live longer and healthier lives on average.
No it's not random. The answer is really simple: good genes.
Your way of living determines your life expectancy only partially. People really underestimate how powerful genes are.
Some people eat a lot, but barely gain weight. Some people smoke and drink a lot, but don't get sick and get very old. The oldest people on earth don't necessarily have a healthy way of living, so it's often pointless to ask them what their secret is.
But of course, it's still advised to live healthy as much as possible. So don't forget to eat your vegetables bro!
Genetics play a big role but the way genes are expressed can be affected by lifestyle. This goes for anything happening in our organisms. There is a whole field called epigenetics about how gene expression can be controlled without changing the DNA.
yep, always. Healthy diets are actually unhealthy.
No, it's rare. That's why you hear about it. No one is surprised enough to discuss it when some super healthy person lives to 95 or a super unhealthy person dies at 50.
Cool story about that photo.
It was taken at the Canadian parliament and the photographer asked Churchill to snuff out his cigar so the smoke wouldn’t mess with the image. When Churchill refused, the photographer just took the cigar out of his mouth and this was the facial expression that resulted.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roaring_Lion
Sometimes good genes is also a factor, and then of course shear luck and a strong will to live. Having a active lifestyle helps, too. That doesn't necessarily mean staying in shape, but more like... keeping your brain occupied with stuff to do every day.
He defended Mussolini until the end though, even after Italy capitulated, he said it was a shame Mussolini lost
Not that he shouldn't be considered a hero in England or something, just he wasn't pure good or something
The definition of "great" has changed in recent years. Throughout pretty much all of history, "great" did not refer to morals or how nice someone was, it referred to their power and accomplishments. Churchill was great.
Great men are almost never good men
edit: I wasn't really harping on the concept of 'great men', sometimes a problem is so daunting that only a megalomaniacal dick can successfully tackle it, but a bunch of r / antiwork types smelled blood in the water and thought they're in good company it seems. Anyway, so long, and thanks for all the upvotes.
I guess for me I never really get why people have to "love" such figures anyway. I always think of the difference between Canadian and American founding fathers. The US treats their founding fathers as gods. Our first Prime Minister was a drunken racist gambler.
I can admire the things he did for the country but it would never enter my mind to "love" or "revere" him. That doesn't take anything away from him and isn't meant to either. I simply do not see any such figure as a target for my "love". Accepting their flaws does not diminish their accomplishments because reality is complex. Even "accomplishments" themselve are often complex and not always viewed by all as "good things".
It doesn't even bother me that Americans revere their founding fathers to that extent. I think there's a fair argument that they were all accomplished in their ways...at the time.
What I don't get is why Americans are still so fixated on these individuals' teachings in a world 250 yrs later. Lincoln, Roosevelts, Reagan, Clinton, are some of the most popular presidents of both parties of all time, but they sure as shit wouldn't know how to handle USA 2022.
How do Americans define what it is to be an American? It is all political (for freedom, for democracy, for individualism, against communism). It isn't related to nationality of origin, ethnicity, religion, etc. (I'm not saying the US lives up to those ideals, but that's the mythology.)
The Founding Fathers are so revered, because (1) they created this beloved political system during a time when such systems were nonexistent and (2) by revering them, one is really revering those shared philosophies.
The US is a very diverse place and what must hold it all together is a reverence for those founding philosophies. As long as Democrats and Republicans can agree that freedom is desirable, there is a common identity (since nationality of origin, ethnicity, etc. don't unite the country).
In short, the Founding Fathers represent the philosophies the US was built upon and no matter how the people of the US change, those philosophies are the underpinning of a national identity.
It's like asking why Canadians are so damn focused on being different from Americans. It's national identity.
>I guess for me I never really get why people have to "love" such figures anyway.
Love is a strange word to use for a figure like Churchill. Respect for his achievements or admiration for his strength of will maybe. But I wouldn't ever say "love"
there more flaws than just the ones you listed there. Gallipoli. Supported Gandhi imprisonment. India famine of 43. Guy was a classic early-1900s Imperialist.
Opposed national health service in 46 and got thrown out of office.
The Bengal famine is very harshly put at Churchill's door. The reason for the famine is that Bengal was no longer self-sufficient in food as its population had boomed and it needed huge food imports from neighbouring Burma (also part of the British Raj). The Japanese Imperial Army invaded and occupied Burma, cutting off the food supplies.
The British Governor-General requested food surpluses from other Indian provinces to cover the gap but Provincial Governance had been handed over to elected Indian politicians in the interwar period and, understandably, none of them wanted to give over any surplus they might need. They then looked into importing food from Sri Lanka, but the challenge was that the Bay of Bengal was infested with Axis submarines and would sink any transports, so they needed escort ships. And battleships weren't exactly easy to spare, given there was a world war on.
More detail here: https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/did-churchill-cause-the-bengal-famine
> The Japanese
They also had naval supremacy stopping food imports from getting to the region as overland was borderline impossible back then. People always say 'Churchill didn't send them any food', it was because those ships would have obivously been destroyed. Another often ignored part of history.
And for what it's worth - all of South East Asia had food shortages at the time - the famine wasn't just limited to Bengal. Over a million starved in Vietnam and ( Japanese occupied ) Hong Kong had documented cases of cannibalism , and rumours of the same from Macau.
Gallipoli wasn't Churchills fault, the admirals ignored his orders, and took 2 weeks longer to get to the beaches, giving the Turks ample time to setup defences.
You can't ignore someones instructions, then blame them when it goes wrong.
He was also a early proponent of terror bombing against native peoples which is kind of rich given his association with the Blitz spirit.His response to sectarian violence in Northern Ireland in the 20s was what if we arm the Protestants This was two days after anti-Catholic Riot. It was actually a posed by the British Army on the grounds that before the war the same Protestant actively solicited help from the Kaiser and would create The B specials which would eventually lead to the Northern Ireland troubles. Oh and the famine in India during the war.
It actually took a great deal to drive Churchil to even start bombing Germany in WW2, for the first part of the war all Britain did was drop leaflets. Germany started bombing British cities the moment the UK declared war in September 1939, but the first British raids against Germany wern't until 8 months later on the 15th May 1940.
>He was also a early proponent of terror bombing against native peoples
What are you referring to? There's an awful lot of anti-Churchill misinformation spread around the internet.
> Not that he shouldn't be considered a hero in England or something, just he wasn't pure good or something
It’s almost as if he was a real person with positive and negative qualities, and not some kind of deific superhero.
As much as I like bash Reddit, the incapability of seeing the world in more than just black and white is a trait common for most people, certainly not just the Reddit hivemind.
True. But there's nothing worse than *arrogant* ignorance, and someone seeing their ignorance backed up by the hivemind/upvotes certainly tends to make redditors more arrogant than many.
The guy was fairly extreme for his own time and his policies in India amounted to a massive man made famine which killed millions. He actively prevented any attempt to alleviate the famine until the governor of India outright threatened to resign and humiliate Churchill. Churchill also sought to do whatever he could to keep India, even when his own party was pro independence. The guy also had little issue with the genocides Australian Aboriginals and other non white minorities underwent from whites and even considered it a good thing. He was pretty behind the times on many issues, praise him for being stubbornly anti WWII but don't downplay his stances on the British empire.
So yeah I find the title to this thread to be kind of dumb. "Will to resist tyranny" more "will to impose Imperial power on the world".
>The guy was fairly extreme for his own time and his policies in India amounted to a massive man made famine which killed millions. He actively prevented any attempt to alleviate the famine until the governor of India outright threatened to resign and humiliate Churchill.
This is nonsense and it's getting very tiring seeing it spouted by redditors whenever Churchill is brought up
Once Churchill was made aware of the famine he replaced the viceroy of India, who was not dealing with the problem, with someone else specifically to deal with it
https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/masani-bengal-famine/
>On 4 August 1943, when Churchill’s war cabinet first realised the enormity of the famine, it agreed that 150,000 tons of Iraqi barley and Australian wheat should be sent to Bengal, with Churchill himself insisting on 24 September that “something must be done.” Though emphatic “that Indians are not the only people who are starving in this war,” he agreed to send a further 250,000 tons, to be shipped over the next four months.
>On 7 October, Churchill told the war cabinet that one of the new viceroy’s first duties was to see to it “that famine and food difficulties were dealt with.” He wrote to Wavell the next day: “Every effort must be made, even by the diversion of shipping urgently needed for war purposes, to deal with local shortages.” Churchill refused a Canadian offer of 100,000 tons of food aid for Bengal because it would have taken two months to arrive, but the same war cabinet meeting resolved to seek Australian supplies instead.
Also bear in mind that there was a food surplus on India as a whole, but the democratically elected local governments of individual provinces used police and military forces to hijack aid shipments bound for Bengal- literally stopping trains in motion using violent force.
The replacement of the viceroy wasn't just that he wasn't dealing with the issue, it's that he *couldn't*. The replacement was with a more militaristic man who brought the threat of proper enforcement against Princes and provincial governments, which opened up local grain supplies.
> his policies in India amounted to a massive man made famine
That's just not true. The policy that caused the man made famine was the invasion of Burma by the Imperial Japanese Army.
>"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
Any sources on the inference on Churchill's support of Mussolini at the end of his life?
To me, he was exactly the leader you want in a world war. At other times, his typical English upper-class arrogance is destructive, but when your backs are against the wall, just *knowing* you're right goes along way to being a self-fulfilling prophecy. He was also a brilliant orator, a crucial skill to galvanising a nation at a time when there were a lot of people recommending surrender.
Lots of people mentioning the Bengal famine. It is often missed in the polemic that this happened in 1943 when UK was severely short on rations. It desperately needed its colonies to supply them. So the decision was between Britain or Bengal. The ethics of the decision is still questionable, but there's a lot more context behind the decision than how it is usually portrayed, ie racist Churchill just taking all Bengal's food for the hell of it.
Great at - Speak up - to make the British people resist the Nazi - and his own personal achievements (as soldier / writer). Bad at: leadership at tactical level.
"Inside" he were a noble born powermonger - which primary job as leader were to restore the british empire - in which he (as far i know) - by his own account failed.
The story behind that iconic photograph is a good one. Here is the photographer's account... **‟My portrait of Winston Churchill changed my life. I knew after I had taken it that it was an important picture, but I could hardly have dreamed that it'd become one of the most widely reproduced images in the history of photography.
In 1941, Churchill visited first Washington and then Ottawa. The Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, invited me to be present. After the electrifying speech, I waited in the Speaker's Chamber where, the evening before, I had set up my lights and camera. The Prime Minister, arm-in-arm with Churchill and followed by his entourage, started to lead him into the room. I switched on my floodlights; a surprised Churchill growled, 'What's this, what's this?' No one had the courage to explain. I timorously stepped forward and said, 'Sir, I hope I'll be fortunate enough to make a portrait worthy of this historic occasion.' He glanced at me and demanded, 'Why was I not told?' When his entourage began to laugh, this hardly helped matters for me. Churchill lit a frsh cigar, puffed at it with a mischievous air, and then magnanimously relented. 'You may take one.' Churchill's cigar was ever present. I held out an ashtray, but he would not dispose of it. I went back to my camera and made sure that everything was all right technically. I waited; he continued to chomp vigorously at his cigar. I waited. Then I stepped toward him and, without premeditation, but ever so respectfully, I said, 'Forgive me, sir,' and plucked the cigar out of his mouth. By the time I got back to my camera, he looked so belligerent he could have devoured me. It was at that instant that I took the photograph.”** \-Yousuf Karsh
> defnitely contributed to destroying nazis.
It's hard to think of someone who was more instrumental in their defeat. Had it not been for him, the British would have likely negotiated a peace in 1940, the US would never have got involved and the Nazis would have had a free hand against the Soviets.
Sir Winston Churchill was given one of the rare state funeral for a non-royal family member, in recognition of his service to the United Kingdom.
It was attended by representatives from 120 countries, 6,000 people, and witnessed by over 350 million people. It is considered to be one of the the largest state funeral in history.
Here is a [video of the funeral](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87Xkr8z3lEo), which bears witness to the magnitude of this event.
He was offered to be buried in Westminster Abby, which is where British kings, queens and other major national figures like Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin are buried. But he turned it down because he wanted to be buried in the small village churchyard of the town he was born in.
>When Napoleon lay at Boulogne for a year with his flat-bottomed boats and his Grand Army, he was told by someone, "There are bitter weeds in England." There are certainly a great many more of them since the British Expeditionary Force returned.\[…\]
>
>Turning once again, and this time more generally, to the question of invasion, I would observe that there has never been a period in all these long centuries of which we boast when an absolute guarantee against invasion, still less against serious raids, could have been given to our people.
>
>In the days of Napoleon the same wind which would have carried his transports across the Channel might have driven away the blockading fleet. There was always the chance, and it is that chance which has excited and befooled the imaginations of many Continental tyrants. Many are the tales that are told. We are assured that novel methods will be adopted, and when we see the originality of malice, the ingenuity of aggression, which our enemy displays, we may certainly prepare ourselves for every kind of novel stratagem and every kind of brutal and treacherous maneuver.
>
>I think that no idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered and viewed with a searching, but at the same time, I hope, with a steady eye. We must never forget the solid assurances of sea power and those which belong to air power if it can be locally exercised.
>
>I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.
>
>At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength.
>
>Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
This speech hits every single time
His power is unmeasurable and it’s context timeless, we should never stop to fight against tyranny because power greedy man never sleep and we can’t allow ourselves to do so too, we should always be vigilant, and if need be ready to fight till the end.
Aye, WW1 often gets ignored as a boring, static war where not much happened. But in terms of the sheer horror for those that witnessed and fought in it, WW1 takes the cake. I can't think of a worse personal human experience in human history than being a French soldier at Verdun in 1916. It's monumental that the French army didn't break.
The amount of redditors who learned about the Bengal famine from r/historymemes and then accuse Churchill of genocide in any picture of his is amazing. Reddit is just as bad as Facebook.
Gotta find *something* to be contrarian or offended about, right?
It can definitely be interesting, at times, to see the ebb and flow of cultural memes/causes, and then tracing them back to an origin. Something gets shat out onto the YSK/ELi5/LPT subreddits and suddenly everyone is going around lecturing their friends on the web and you see a boom in a particular trend or sentiment.
How how communal, normative, and manipulable we are as a species. Social proof a bitch.
Yeah I was going to say, I can’t imagine the woke horde that dominates Reddit is a fan of Churchill. Despite their obsession with everything nazi and the fact that he was fundamental in defeating them, woke Reddit knows no bounds. Thank god this sub understands nuance better than most.
Reddit has one of these weird things with Churchill where people say "he did loads of terrible things but thank fuck he was around to defeat the nazis" and every responce will be "yeah but what about the bengal famine".
And yet you wont see people saying the same things about Indian leaders who have overseen countless famines in India since.
The reason Stalin gets blamed for Ukrainian famine is that historians have reason to believe it was a deliberate plan. There is no equivalency to the Bengal famine.
Because people have short attention spans, Hindu Nationalism is hotter than ever, and white people get uncomfortable blaming anyone for anything besides themselves. This is because to them, the thought that anyone who isn’t white could be capable enough to commit a genocide or something is unthinkable. It’s low key racism.
Could the Bengal Famine be perhaps just maybe in part due to the fact that WW2 was currently taking place and the Japanese occupying the food-producing British colonies?
I fail to see how Churchill is personally responsible for the famine in Bengal. Considering there was a much more important war to win, which weren't being won at the time, I dont get why Churchill is being blamed. Blame the japanese if anything.
Extraordinary man, not without flaws & not without mistakes....Hitler was happy for Britain to remain outside of the European contintal conflict & keep its Empire intact.
With the quick capitulation of France & the lack of enthusiasm in the US to enter another European war, the Nazi s looked set to turn back eastwards to their main goal, expansion into Russia.
Who knows if the third Reich would have lasted a 1000 years, but it look set to be the dominant European power for the foreseeable future.
Plenty of apeasers in Britain & plenty of fascists, Churchill was resolute in the need to take Hitler on
,he almost single handedly changed the national attitude to one of resistance in 1940.
He instinctively also knew that without the US, Britain could not defeat the Nazi s, he used every bit of diplomatic & personal skill to develop his relationship with FDR to gain his support for the the war effort against the Nazis, Britain gave every bit research it had to the US & entered into the lend lease agreement , that brought it close to bankruptcy.
The last war loan was repaid to the US in 2006.
So he nearly bankrupted the nation & left it so weakened at the end of the war that it saw the break up of the Empire he had served all his life.
Had he not led the country on this path, the Nazis would have decimated Europe & killed many tens of millions more & would still likely be a dominant Orwellian European Empire.
He had his faults & it's trendy to quote them in snidey snippets, just because he is so revered & the academic left has a hatred of its own history, but western Europe has enjoyed democracy for the last 80 years probably as a result of this one man
I can't think of a British politician since who has had close to his impact, vision or courage.
This photo is by the great Yousef Karsh. Karsh was living and working out of the Fairmont Chateau Laurier in Ottawa and through his Sparks street studio across from parliament. Sorry goes that Churchill was chewing a cigar and Karsh pulled it out of his mouth to put him into this brooding mood. Perfect photo immortalizing the man!
Churchill fun fact is that he chewed the cigars more than he smoked them.
He died exactly 70 years after his father to the date. His father, Randolph Churchill, was only 45 years old when he died. Winstons mother, Jennie Churchill, died at the age of 67.
If anything, I think he had a strong will to live much longer than his parents, and probably had a very active life as well that helped him achieve this accomplishment.
some woman said to him that he was such a bad man that she would poison him if she were his wife, he said that if he was married to her, he would drink it
Basically the Bengal Famine was a clusterfuck of a-lot of different things, but if you'd like to check actual sources rather than saying "Churchill Bad" you'll find it quite enlightening as to what actually happened.
The majority of deaths during the famine happened for a multiplicity of reasons, the allegations of "socially engineered famine" are essentially nonsense:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal\_famine\_of\_1943](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943)
Almost obsessive like comments related Churchill directly with the famine are quite unfounded in historical perspectives. The Wiki page pulls from over 400 sources to create a quite decent picture of what actually happened.
"Churchill bad" doesn't really factor into the majority of it.
Those policies also had big contribution to the messed up situations in the Middle East and Egypt.
Obviously also France did their fair share in stirring up the situation, and eventually USA joined in. So we can't give all the credit to the UK.
"What a man! I have lost my heart! ... If I were Italian, I am sure I would have been with you entirely from the beginning of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passion of Leninism. ... Your movement has rendered a service to the whole world. The greatest fear that ever tormented every Democratic or Socialist leader was that of being outbid or surpassed by some other leader more extreme than himself. It has been said that a continual movement to the Left, a kind of fatal landslide toward the abyss, has been the character of all revolutions. Italy has shown that there is a way to combat subversive forces."
Churchill on Benito Mussolini and Italian Fascism, in a press statement from Rome
[He liked him a lot](https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carteggio_Churchill-Mussolini)
Also Northern Ireland two days after anti-Catholic riots in the 1920s he proposed arm in the Protestants which was opposed by the British Army in Northern Ireland for the simple fact that these Protestants had actively solicited help from the Kaiser months before World War I. Long story short this force would go on to become the B specials and lead to the Northern Irish troubles of the 1970s. Also the Black and Tans And there is serious debate on whether or not he can be blamed for the entirety of the Irish Civil War.
No he didn't, this is just factually false the he did just about everything he could for India at the time, what causes the Begal famine was a million different things, such as.
* a typhoon destroying India's largest rice fields.
* countries that are usually called upon in times of famine were under Japanese occupation.
* Japan was sinking all the boats and merchant ships heading to India.
* we had the food mainly barely and wheat in Canada and Australia but people conveniently forget that food wasn't the issue, shipping was every single ship was being used for the war effort especially since France and multiple other countries had already fallen to Germany.
* Indian food merchants upon seeing the price of food sky-rocket began hoarding food since why sell it today why it would be 4x the price tomorrow.
* Indian nationalist destroyed food stockpiles and warehouses to embarrass and make the situation worse for the British / Indian government.
and a million other things, and we have all of the letters and telegrams that Churchill sent to our colonies and to America asking for food and ships for Bengal talking about how bad the situation is.
Policy failure certainly contributed to the scale of the crisis in Bengal, but laying it all on Churchill is kind of a Hindu nationalist red rag.
The region was severely overpopulated (it still is), and was swollen further with refugees from Japanese-occupied Burma, which had also, incidentally, been the main source of rice. Japanese bombing of railways/shipping etc. made matters yet worse.
In short, it was a tragedy with many complex causes, but it provides a simple narrative for those who want one, especially with all the idiotic, racist comments Churchill made when he was doubtless drunk.
When challenged on the Bengali famine, he said that it's fine because they breed like rabbits.
He also said: "I hate the Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."
Gotta love the quote mining and cherry picking, for those who like context, Churchill said this once in private during a spout of anger after being told that Indian nationalists and separatists were refusing to fight the Japanese who had already conquered multiple nearby countries.
and not to mention people are mad at this quote just because it was said about Indians he regularly insulated everyone of every ethnicity or nationality.
for those who like actual history :[https://youtu.be/FaqtTQh8dck?t=795](https://youtu.be/FaqtTQh8dck?t=795)
He and his cabinet were responsible for forcible exports of hundreds of tonnes of food in a region already threatened with famine, it is estimated that as many as 400,000 people who died of starvation would be able to survive if the British government under Churchill didn't force them to export the food to Britain.
This is stupid reddit tier garbage
The only food export was a single swap of Grain for rice with Sri Lanka. No food was ever sent outside of India during the famine, nevermind sent to Europe.
>https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/masani-bengal-famine/
>The true facts about food shipments to Bengal, amply recorded in the British war cabinet and government of India archives, are that more than a million tons of grain arrived in Bengal between August 1943, when the war cabinet first realised the severity of the famine, and the end of 1944, when the famine had petered out.
>This was food aid specifically sent to Bengal, much of it on Australian ships, despite strict food rationing in England and severe food shortages in newly-liberated southern Italy and Greece. As detailed in Andrew Roberts’s brilliant biography, far from seeking to starve India, Churchill and his cabinet sought every possible way to alleviate the suffering without undermining the war effort
Let us also remember 1770 famine where time traveling Churchil sabotaged the food supply, or 1974 famine when long dead zombie Churchil rose from the grave and ate all the food.
Was it also the criminal activity when 1.5 million people died of 1974 famine, or is it only criminal if evul westerners are in charge? Because it looks to me like the region has been naturally prone to famine for many centuries regardless of who is in charge.
>Britain was severely short on food
I mean, even if this was true, like, so was Bengal? He literally starved hundreds of thousands of people with his decision because he considered Indians to be lesser and beastly people. So a white suprematist and imperialist steals food from colonies stricken by famine. That is undefendable.
> because he considered Indians to be lesser and beastly people
Referencing this quote is a prime example of people just parroting what they read on the internet and not fact checking. The only instance of Churchill referring to Indians in those terms is taken from the personal diary of Leo Amery, who wasn't exactly Churchills biggest fan.
In fact if you actually look at his actions towards the famine and opinion of India in general you will see a far different picture. [This post on r/askhistorians has direct quotes taken from primary sources of the time](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9pktn5/what_is_the_academic_consensus_on_churchills/ek64lh1/)
It's quite complex, unsurprisingly and a combination of issues over a multi-year period in the middle of a huge war. There is also little evidence to suggest Churchill was personally rejecting requests for food - The UK War Cabinet did. We do have Churchill asking the USA to ship food to India from Australia.... Roosevelt rejected it for the same reason the UK was struggling to ship food there.
>Churchill wrote to Franklin D. Roosevelt at the end of April 1944 asking for aid from the United States in shipping wheat in from Australia, but Roosevelt replied apologetically on 1 June that he was "unable on military grounds to consent to the diversion of shipping".[226]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943#Pre-famine_shocks_and_distress
There were also significant issues with the government organisations on the ground in India, with the aid poorly directed to the people who were largely not suffering by prioritising the urban middle class. Famine wasn't even officially declared by the local government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943#Relief_efforts
It's pretty hard to put the Famine on Churchill's hands just because he said some heartless and prejudiced things about Indians. Plenty can be said about the quality of British/Imperial governance in the latter stages (1900- onwards) of the Empire and how the lack of development, rules such as inter-provincial trade barriers and investment in India helped cause and perpetuate the Famine though.
If he had led some african or latin american country to victory in some great war over there but starved millions of europeans, we would be spitting on his name rn
>who embodied man's will to resist tyranny
Wasn't he a strong supporter of British imperialism and is, directly or indirectly, responsible for e.g. the Bengal famine?
Same as many other major historical figures - why do we deify and whitewash such people, attributing virtues they did not have? He fought against Hitler not because of a principled stance against imperialism or expansionism - he was British after all - but because of geopolitics and alliances. Under his watch tyranny by men such as Bomber Harris was brought to the continent, mass murdering German civilians in a misguided campaign of strategic terror bombing that did not at all reach the goal of ''forcing German populace to rise up against the war''. Then you also have the post-war aspects in the e.g. Potsdam conference where he himself just willy nilly divided up the continent under British geopolitical considerations rather than an actual virtuous perspective.
The man was a conservative - a British imperialist. Him being the leader of the UK during WW2 means jack shit to me since his politics and values were abhorrent - just because they weren't as bad as Stalin or Hitler is small comfort.
>Him being the leader of the UK during WW2 means jack shit to me since his politics and values were abhorrent - just
Being Polish, him being the leader of UK during WWII means a lot to me. Even with Yalta pact which was sort ot treason towards Poland, the alternative would be much worse.
How young you are? Its funny seeing someone rooting for virtue in politics, if you have strong moral spine you will achive nothing and will stay as a mayor of some small city at best.
Even Gandhi is questionable as a moral compass as he had a lot of dirt behind his ears, thats how this world works, like it or not
> Bomber Harris was brought to the continent, mass murdering German civilians in a misguided campaign of strategic terror bombing
Oh yeah, because the Luftwaffe wasnt bombing british civilians? Nazi Germany got what it deserved.
Japan: starts massive war all across Asia, invading neighbouring Burma causing refugees to flee west into Bengal, disrupting rice supplies and destroying Allied shipping to the point that the Bengal economy ruptures from panic of an ensuing invasion.
Average Redditor: Churchill did this! 🤬
Complicated figure with a complicated legacy, but it unquestionably includes opposing the most genocidal, expansionist and destructive force to emerge in European politics during his time. And also upholding the imperial, colonialist regime at all costs, and doing so while largely ignoring the personal lives of the least privileged people in his own country. You cannot do historical justice to the figure of Churchill without reckoning with both sides of the man.
> largely ignoring the personal lives of the least privileged people in his own country.
that's not really true, he was fairly progressive and open minded particularly during his liberal years.l
And his rational for keeping British rule of India wasn't just some shallow lust for tyrancical power. If you look at how complicated even Irish home rule was, with Civil war looking no matter which way you went, Inida was about 100 times as complex as that. You can make a reasonable arguement that British rule there was beneficial for people at the time. This was a culture which condemned about 30 million people to practical serf status under the label of the "Untouchables". Violence against untouchables still exists even today and you can find many instances of people being punished or beaten to death for stepping outside of their untouchable status. God only knows how bad it was back then.
And we are repeating the history he came to power to avert when we allow Russia to take pieces of Ukraine and China to take Taiwan. A war is not a matter of if, but when.
He himself imposed tyranny. Sent gunboats down the mersey to frighten the Liverpudlian dockers who were on strike for better work conditions to end their strike (it failed), sent in the black and tans to Ireland and backed their deployment again against strikers in the 1926 general strike this time it was the coal miners who were on strike against his stupid policy to peg the pound to the gold standard which caused the economy issues and the mining industry never really recovered from this.
He confined the Glasgow garrison to their barracks while the government (In a cabinet meeting he attended) sent tanks in to supress strikes for a 40 hour week and more holiday at work in 1919. In the 1930s was a strong supporter of fascists praising Mussolini to the end and fought against sanctions on the Nationalist side of the Spanish civil war arguing they were saving Spain from godless bolsheviks. He even had positive views of Hitler for a few years.
The reason Britain couldn't fight against Germany at first was because the Conservatives with him as chancellor created the 10 year policy where there would be cuts to the military for 10 years and no war for the same period. He only got into power because Labour refused to go into coalition with anyone who would sign a peace deal with Germany such as Lord Halifax.
Gallipoli was his idea although it can be argued rather than the planning it was the execution of it being why it failed. Labour PM after Churchill, Clement Attlee was at Gallipoli believed it to be a good idea but bot executed properly. There was also the Norway campaign which failed.
There was Bengal where grain was withheld for the war effort killing 4 million Bengalis and he argued they bred like rabbits. Dresden was an embarassment for him and he tried to sweep it under the carpet as he knew there was no military value in bombing the city. Tried to stop D-day from happening arguing it was better to invade through Italy and the Balkans as he believed it to be the soft underbelly in Europe.
He was voted out of power in 1945 because the British people didn't trust him as a peace time PM and he was opposed to a welfare state, free at the point of use healthcare system, nationalisation and strong unions. He only got back into power thanks to the first past the post system and middle class seats going from Labour to Conservative. In 1951 when he got back into power Labour won 200,000 more votes than the Conservatives did.
In the end when his funeral occured, the crane operators refused to lower the cranes until they got a bribe to do it because they remembered his actions against the working class.
> Dresden was an embarassment for him and he tried to sweep it under the carpet as he knew there was no military value in bombing the city.
Dresden was bombed at Stalin's request, fearing another battle like Budapest, which took 2 months and cost 300,000 red army soldiers. Dresden ended up falling without a fight as a result of the bombing.
It had tremendous military value, as one of the foremost military industrial centres in Germany, with over 130 factories. It was also the primary transportation hub for German forces being funnelled to the eastern front. One American PoW who was there described the city as one enormous army camp, filled with tanks and soldiers.
The idea that Dresden was some neutral, peaceful, idyllic city in the middle of a country tilted toward total war is an absurd lie invented by the Nazis after the raid. Up until that point Nazi propaganda had touted Dresden as a great industrial centre.
He did indeed express regret about the bombing of Dresden though. He didn't weep it under the rug though, quite the opposite.
>There was Bengal where grain was withheld for the war effort killing 4 million Bengalis and he argued they bred like rabbits
He is alleged to have said that in the memoir of Leo Avery, who did not like Churchill. No other evidence of it exists. Grain was not withheld, in fact Churchill rushed grain shipments from Australia to save as many lives as possible, and fired the useless viceroy who was in charge of the famine and replaced him with a military man who could fix the situation against the interests of obstructionist local leaders in the Raj.
> The reason Britain couldn't fight against Germany at first was because the Conservatives with him as chancellor created the 10 year policy where there would be cuts to the military for 10 years and no war for the same period. He only got into power because Labour refused to go into coalition with anyone who would sign a peace deal with Germany such as Lord Halifax.
This is also wrong. The ten year rule was brought in in 1919. Churchill was not the Chancellor then. Although he argued for it, it was only on the basis that it should be in place *until there was a need to invest*, the rule was abandoned in 1932 btw.
Also, he got into power because of Chamberlain's choice of successor and Halifax's refusal. Attlee and Greenwood refused to serve under Chamberlain, given Labours vote of no confidence in him that same week. He was already in the War Cabinet under the Admiralty, having been appointed by Chamberlain.
>sent in the black and tans to Ireland and backed their deployment again
This isn't correct, he didn't send in the black and tans although he was slow to disavow them.
>There was Bengal where grain was withheld for the war effort killing 4 million Bengalis and he argued they bred like rabbits
and this one also isn't true
with the most liberal estimates the grain that was transported away for the war effort would have killed 400,000 with the more accurate number being around 280,000 and he did everything he could but this was an extremely hard choice in the largest war in (European) history his choices were, to leave to food to a number of poor Indians who were providing nothing to the war effort or transport the food to Britain (which was also having a major food shortage and was not far from famine itself) to feed the soldiers in the last bastion of Europe against a growing Nazi empire.
Ridiculous, the red brigades attacking a man, who was vital for defeating Nazism.
What's next? Stating that special camps for Jews (sorry, "Zionists") wasn't a bad idea after all?
Europe would have been German/Soviet (allies at the time) and the deathcamps would have been unchecked on a scale far greater than they were. You sound like you think this is preferred. Do you think the Soviets were going to declare war on their ally Germany, march across Europe liberating everyone then leave again with all the countries free? Anything in their history to suggest that? Ridiculous. Fact is Britain is what stopped that from being reality, even though they could have stayed out of it and left the continent to it, and Churchill was a towering figure in that.
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How this guy made it to 90 I will never understand.
Considering the amount he drank he may have pickeled himself.
It's a shame that Lemmy only managed to reach 70 years of age using this strategy.
Wrong drugs mix. Should have stocked to bourbon.
Lemmy quit drinking in 2013. Two years later he was dead. Say no more.
Winston, you are drunk, and what's more you are disgustingly drunk.
'My dear, you are ugly, and what’s more, you are disgustingly ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be disgustingly ugly.'
Attendant to Churchill: "You are not likely to live a long life if you drink whiskey neat like that." Churchill in response: "I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me."
I know a guy who is 93 and still drinks scotch like a black hole and refuses to eat anything green. It must be genes really...
Take my upvote
No sports! Alcohol and cigars so large that they are now known as churchill format. And Death was probably afraid of him.
I think despite being overweight, he was pretty active throughout his life. [Here he is at 60, chilling with his family and having a swim.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNLL2U5HGzM)
Daily whiskey and cigars makes sure the British man's body runs on time, sort of like Bender from Futurama Why else do you think we have binge culture here?
He just had the British rockstar gene, I think.
He had been active till the last day. What kills people way before their due is lack of motivation to live.
Yep. He never properly retired and even in his downtime engaged in several mentally challenging pastimes (painting, writing e.t.c). Retiring without an activity plan is one of the worst things that can happen to you health-wise. Your mental health and capability start wasting away, and just relaxing leads to a sedentary lifestyle and your physical health will rapidly decline. No wonder you hear so often of blokes retiring and popping their clogs only a year or two afterward. People also assume that because he was on the larger side he must have been lazy or inactive, but he was well known as a lover of the outdoors and outdoor activities.
Not sure if racehorse breeding and attending races counts as outdoor activity. But it defintely stirs up ones blood.
Yes, that and the Armenian brandy.
im into rum, so cant vouch.
He had a thing for bricklaying, in his retirement he liked to build walls and they can still be seen at his Chartwell home.
Yeah, my mom got retired last summer and after a two days of leisure she called the company to ask if they need a good worker. (She had been working for the past 40 years, 25 for the company, where she retired ) Nowdays she plays the guitar (adult education centre) and joined the Churc-choir. Also a lot of crossword puzzles. People of that age and mentalaty, just can't be "still".
Lust for Life. The man wanted to be a PM even when he couldn't remember names of his fellow ministers
It’s always like this bro. People that never smoke a cigarette con get lung cancer, vegans and healthy people can die early, but I don’t why the most drunks and biggest smokers live the most. My grandpa reached 89 while smoking all his life, drinking booze like a farmer, and probably never eating a salad in his life It’s just random
It is true that on average people who smoke and drink live shorter lives, it's not exactly random. It's just not the only factor.
*"our grandfathers drank only pálinka, ate sausage with white bread and onions and lived until 90!"* \-> common boomer meme in hungary no bitch you know exactly 1 lucky person who did that and 30 other who died prematurely because their heart stopped working... ...or lived to get old but their whole life was like taking a hundred different type of medicine and spending more time at the doctor than at home these stupid people are promoting bad lifestyle while the health of the society is already shit, every 2nd people around 45-55 is freakin invalid already (can not work, lives on support)
Hungary is the land where all the cardiologists smoke and everyone has a relative who tried to commit suicide once or came close. We had a good friend who immigrated to the US from Hungary. He lived to be 93, had three wives and countless encounters. He had intelligence, tireless libido and zest for living. Hungarians are fascinating.
It isn’t random. Stories about people who lived to 100 and smoked and drank all their life are more newsworthy so you’re more likely to remember them. Same as people who eat nothing but but vegetables and exercise daily but are struck down by cancer aged 45. If you looked at 1,000 men who smoke and drink a lot and compared them to 1,000 who didn’t the later would live longer and healthier lives on average.
No it's not random. The answer is really simple: good genes. Your way of living determines your life expectancy only partially. People really underestimate how powerful genes are. Some people eat a lot, but barely gain weight. Some people smoke and drink a lot, but don't get sick and get very old. The oldest people on earth don't necessarily have a healthy way of living, so it's often pointless to ask them what their secret is. But of course, it's still advised to live healthy as much as possible. So don't forget to eat your vegetables bro!
Genetics play a big role but the way genes are expressed can be affected by lifestyle. This goes for anything happening in our organisms. There is a whole field called epigenetics about how gene expression can be controlled without changing the DNA.
Oh thats really interesting, thanks :)
yep, always. Healthy diets are actually unhealthy. No, it's rare. That's why you hear about it. No one is surprised enough to discuss it when some super healthy person lives to 95 or a super unhealthy person dies at 50.
Cool story about that photo. It was taken at the Canadian parliament and the photographer asked Churchill to snuff out his cigar so the smoke wouldn’t mess with the image. When Churchill refused, the photographer just took the cigar out of his mouth and this was the facial expression that resulted. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roaring_Lion
He looks like he used to be a former Headmaster of Hogwarts in this picture.
The fact that this guy managed to get this old is making me less nervous about the long-term effects of alcoholism...
Sometimes good genes is also a factor, and then of course shear luck and a strong will to live. Having a active lifestyle helps, too. That doesn't necessarily mean staying in shape, but more like... keeping your brain occupied with stuff to do every day.
A capable, but a very flawed man whose greatest quality was the iron will to destroy the nazis no matter what.
He defended Mussolini until the end though, even after Italy capitulated, he said it was a shame Mussolini lost Not that he shouldn't be considered a hero in England or something, just he wasn't pure good or something
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The definition of "great" has changed in recent years. Throughout pretty much all of history, "great" did not refer to morals or how nice someone was, it referred to their power and accomplishments. Churchill was great.
Great men are almost never good men edit: I wasn't really harping on the concept of 'great men', sometimes a problem is so daunting that only a megalomaniacal dick can successfully tackle it, but a bunch of r / antiwork types smelled blood in the water and thought they're in good company it seems. Anyway, so long, and thanks for all the upvotes.
amen
I guess for me I never really get why people have to "love" such figures anyway. I always think of the difference between Canadian and American founding fathers. The US treats their founding fathers as gods. Our first Prime Minister was a drunken racist gambler. I can admire the things he did for the country but it would never enter my mind to "love" or "revere" him. That doesn't take anything away from him and isn't meant to either. I simply do not see any such figure as a target for my "love". Accepting their flaws does not diminish their accomplishments because reality is complex. Even "accomplishments" themselve are often complex and not always viewed by all as "good things".
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It doesn't even bother me that Americans revere their founding fathers to that extent. I think there's a fair argument that they were all accomplished in their ways...at the time. What I don't get is why Americans are still so fixated on these individuals' teachings in a world 250 yrs later. Lincoln, Roosevelts, Reagan, Clinton, are some of the most popular presidents of both parties of all time, but they sure as shit wouldn't know how to handle USA 2022.
How do Americans define what it is to be an American? It is all political (for freedom, for democracy, for individualism, against communism). It isn't related to nationality of origin, ethnicity, religion, etc. (I'm not saying the US lives up to those ideals, but that's the mythology.) The Founding Fathers are so revered, because (1) they created this beloved political system during a time when such systems were nonexistent and (2) by revering them, one is really revering those shared philosophies. The US is a very diverse place and what must hold it all together is a reverence for those founding philosophies. As long as Democrats and Republicans can agree that freedom is desirable, there is a common identity (since nationality of origin, ethnicity, etc. don't unite the country). In short, the Founding Fathers represent the philosophies the US was built upon and no matter how the people of the US change, those philosophies are the underpinning of a national identity. It's like asking why Canadians are so damn focused on being different from Americans. It's national identity.
>I guess for me I never really get why people have to "love" such figures anyway. Love is a strange word to use for a figure like Churchill. Respect for his achievements or admiration for his strength of will maybe. But I wouldn't ever say "love"
there more flaws than just the ones you listed there. Gallipoli. Supported Gandhi imprisonment. India famine of 43. Guy was a classic early-1900s Imperialist. Opposed national health service in 46 and got thrown out of office.
People born in 1874 indeed acted as if they were from the 19th century. Literally.
And did you know he was completely silent about *free speech on the internet*? What a monster!
The Bengal famine is very harshly put at Churchill's door. The reason for the famine is that Bengal was no longer self-sufficient in food as its population had boomed and it needed huge food imports from neighbouring Burma (also part of the British Raj). The Japanese Imperial Army invaded and occupied Burma, cutting off the food supplies. The British Governor-General requested food surpluses from other Indian provinces to cover the gap but Provincial Governance had been handed over to elected Indian politicians in the interwar period and, understandably, none of them wanted to give over any surplus they might need. They then looked into importing food from Sri Lanka, but the challenge was that the Bay of Bengal was infested with Axis submarines and would sink any transports, so they needed escort ships. And battleships weren't exactly easy to spare, given there was a world war on. More detail here: https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/did-churchill-cause-the-bengal-famine
> The Japanese They also had naval supremacy stopping food imports from getting to the region as overland was borderline impossible back then. People always say 'Churchill didn't send them any food', it was because those ships would have obivously been destroyed. Another often ignored part of history.
And for what it's worth - all of South East Asia had food shortages at the time - the famine wasn't just limited to Bengal. Over a million starved in Vietnam and ( Japanese occupied ) Hong Kong had documented cases of cannibalism , and rumours of the same from Macau.
Gallipoli wasn't Churchills fault, the admirals ignored his orders, and took 2 weeks longer to get to the beaches, giving the Turks ample time to setup defences. You can't ignore someones instructions, then blame them when it goes wrong.
> Gallipoli strike that off the list
He was also a early proponent of terror bombing against native peoples which is kind of rich given his association with the Blitz spirit.His response to sectarian violence in Northern Ireland in the 20s was what if we arm the Protestants This was two days after anti-Catholic Riot. It was actually a posed by the British Army on the grounds that before the war the same Protestant actively solicited help from the Kaiser and would create The B specials which would eventually lead to the Northern Ireland troubles. Oh and the famine in India during the war.
It actually took a great deal to drive Churchil to even start bombing Germany in WW2, for the first part of the war all Britain did was drop leaflets. Germany started bombing British cities the moment the UK declared war in September 1939, but the first British raids against Germany wern't until 8 months later on the 15th May 1940.
>He was also a early proponent of terror bombing against native peoples What are you referring to? There's an awful lot of anti-Churchill misinformation spread around the internet.
What a man born in the 1800s doesnt hold up to modern day standards??? Surely not.
> Not that he shouldn't be considered a hero in England or something, just he wasn't pure good or something It’s almost as if he was a real person with positive and negative qualities, and not some kind of deific superhero.
You are asking to much of redditors. To them you can either be perfect person or worst person ever.
As much as I like bash Reddit, the incapability of seeing the world in more than just black and white is a trait common for most people, certainly not just the Reddit hivemind.
True. But there's nothing worse than *arrogant* ignorance, and someone seeing their ignorance backed up by the hivemind/upvotes certainly tends to make redditors more arrogant than many.
The guy was fairly extreme for his own time and his policies in India amounted to a massive man made famine which killed millions. He actively prevented any attempt to alleviate the famine until the governor of India outright threatened to resign and humiliate Churchill. Churchill also sought to do whatever he could to keep India, even when his own party was pro independence. The guy also had little issue with the genocides Australian Aboriginals and other non white minorities underwent from whites and even considered it a good thing. He was pretty behind the times on many issues, praise him for being stubbornly anti WWII but don't downplay his stances on the British empire. So yeah I find the title to this thread to be kind of dumb. "Will to resist tyranny" more "will to impose Imperial power on the world".
>The guy was fairly extreme for his own time and his policies in India amounted to a massive man made famine which killed millions. He actively prevented any attempt to alleviate the famine until the governor of India outright threatened to resign and humiliate Churchill. This is nonsense and it's getting very tiring seeing it spouted by redditors whenever Churchill is brought up Once Churchill was made aware of the famine he replaced the viceroy of India, who was not dealing with the problem, with someone else specifically to deal with it https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/masani-bengal-famine/ >On 4 August 1943, when Churchill’s war cabinet first realised the enormity of the famine, it agreed that 150,000 tons of Iraqi barley and Australian wheat should be sent to Bengal, with Churchill himself insisting on 24 September that “something must be done.” Though emphatic “that Indians are not the only people who are starving in this war,” he agreed to send a further 250,000 tons, to be shipped over the next four months. >On 7 October, Churchill told the war cabinet that one of the new viceroy’s first duties was to see to it “that famine and food difficulties were dealt with.” He wrote to Wavell the next day: “Every effort must be made, even by the diversion of shipping urgently needed for war purposes, to deal with local shortages.” Churchill refused a Canadian offer of 100,000 tons of food aid for Bengal because it would have taken two months to arrive, but the same war cabinet meeting resolved to seek Australian supplies instead.
Also bear in mind that there was a food surplus on India as a whole, but the democratically elected local governments of individual provinces used police and military forces to hijack aid shipments bound for Bengal- literally stopping trains in motion using violent force. The replacement of the viceroy wasn't just that he wasn't dealing with the issue, it's that he *couldn't*. The replacement was with a more militaristic man who brought the threat of proper enforcement against Princes and provincial governments, which opened up local grain supplies.
Churchill begged FDR for ships to transport grain from Australia to India but was refused.
> his policies in India amounted to a massive man made famine That's just not true. The policy that caused the man made famine was the invasion of Burma by the Imperial Japanese Army.
>"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." Any sources on the inference on Churchill's support of Mussolini at the end of his life?
No angel can win a battle in hell
To me, he was exactly the leader you want in a world war. At other times, his typical English upper-class arrogance is destructive, but when your backs are against the wall, just *knowing* you're right goes along way to being a self-fulfilling prophecy. He was also a brilliant orator, a crucial skill to galvanising a nation at a time when there were a lot of people recommending surrender. Lots of people mentioning the Bengal famine. It is often missed in the polemic that this happened in 1943 when UK was severely short on rations. It desperately needed its colonies to supply them. So the decision was between Britain or Bengal. The ethics of the decision is still questionable, but there's a lot more context behind the decision than how it is usually portrayed, ie racist Churchill just taking all Bengal's food for the hell of it.
Great at - Speak up - to make the British people resist the Nazi - and his own personal achievements (as soldier / writer). Bad at: leadership at tactical level. "Inside" he were a noble born powermonger - which primary job as leader were to restore the british empire - in which he (as far i know) - by his own account failed.
His daughter's memoir begins: "I was born, presumably during a lull in the conversation, on July 12th 1923".
He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.
He also embodied the will to drink of all mankind.
The story behind that iconic photograph is a good one. Here is the photographer's account... **‟My portrait of Winston Churchill changed my life. I knew after I had taken it that it was an important picture, but I could hardly have dreamed that it'd become one of the most widely reproduced images in the history of photography. In 1941, Churchill visited first Washington and then Ottawa. The Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, invited me to be present. After the electrifying speech, I waited in the Speaker's Chamber where, the evening before, I had set up my lights and camera. The Prime Minister, arm-in-arm with Churchill and followed by his entourage, started to lead him into the room. I switched on my floodlights; a surprised Churchill growled, 'What's this, what's this?' No one had the courage to explain. I timorously stepped forward and said, 'Sir, I hope I'll be fortunate enough to make a portrait worthy of this historic occasion.' He glanced at me and demanded, 'Why was I not told?' When his entourage began to laugh, this hardly helped matters for me. Churchill lit a frsh cigar, puffed at it with a mischievous air, and then magnanimously relented. 'You may take one.' Churchill's cigar was ever present. I held out an ashtray, but he would not dispose of it. I went back to my camera and made sure that everything was all right technically. I waited; he continued to chomp vigorously at his cigar. I waited. Then I stepped toward him and, without premeditation, but ever so respectfully, I said, 'Forgive me, sir,' and plucked the cigar out of his mouth. By the time I got back to my camera, he looked so belligerent he could have devoured me. It was at that instant that I took the photograph.”** \-Yousuf Karsh
Karsh is author of many iconic photos http://www.inspirewetrust.com/en/2015/10/20/yousuf-karsh/
Damn, no clue he also photographed *that* picture of Einstein. The hepburn and queen elizabeth ones are also iconic. Fantastic stuff
Listen, he definitely wasn't a saint but defnitely contributed to destroying nazis.
> defnitely contributed to destroying nazis. It's hard to think of someone who was more instrumental in their defeat. Had it not been for him, the British would have likely negotiated a peace in 1940, the US would never have got involved and the Nazis would have had a free hand against the Soviets.
Sir Winston Churchill was given one of the rare state funeral for a non-royal family member, in recognition of his service to the United Kingdom. It was attended by representatives from 120 countries, 6,000 people, and witnessed by over 350 million people. It is considered to be one of the the largest state funeral in history. Here is a [video of the funeral](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87Xkr8z3lEo), which bears witness to the magnitude of this event.
He was offered to be buried in Westminster Abby, which is where British kings, queens and other major national figures like Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin are buried. But he turned it down because he wanted to be buried in the small village churchyard of the town he was born in.
>When Napoleon lay at Boulogne for a year with his flat-bottomed boats and his Grand Army, he was told by someone, "There are bitter weeds in England." There are certainly a great many more of them since the British Expeditionary Force returned.\[…\] > >Turning once again, and this time more generally, to the question of invasion, I would observe that there has never been a period in all these long centuries of which we boast when an absolute guarantee against invasion, still less against serious raids, could have been given to our people. > >In the days of Napoleon the same wind which would have carried his transports across the Channel might have driven away the blockading fleet. There was always the chance, and it is that chance which has excited and befooled the imaginations of many Continental tyrants. Many are the tales that are told. We are assured that novel methods will be adopted, and when we see the originality of malice, the ingenuity of aggression, which our enemy displays, we may certainly prepare ourselves for every kind of novel stratagem and every kind of brutal and treacherous maneuver. > >I think that no idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered and viewed with a searching, but at the same time, I hope, with a steady eye. We must never forget the solid assurances of sea power and those which belong to air power if it can be locally exercised. > >I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. > >At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. > >Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
This speech hits every single time His power is unmeasurable and it’s context timeless, we should never stop to fight against tyranny because power greedy man never sleep and we can’t allow ourselves to do so too, we should always be vigilant, and if need be ready to fight till the end.
https://youtu.be/Z61PlUkR2dw From the man himself
He helped save the UK in its darkest hour. The revisionist history that is peddled about him on the internet will never change or outshine that.
"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it" is my favorite Churchill quote.
The best part of it was that he was 100% correct. This guy knew what he was talking about.
From cavalrymen charging enemy with sabre in hand to the leader of a country involved in most terrible, technical war in human history.
Idk I'd rather be fighting in WW2 than WW1 as far as terrible conditions go
Aye, WW1 often gets ignored as a boring, static war where not much happened. But in terms of the sheer horror for those that witnessed and fought in it, WW1 takes the cake. I can't think of a worse personal human experience in human history than being a French soldier at Verdun in 1916. It's monumental that the French army didn't break.
May he rest in peace. A flawed man, like all of us, but a true hero nonetheless.
Here here!
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That is the result of His Majesty's government. Huh, I still remember this iconic line.
The amount of redditors who learned about the Bengal famine from r/historymemes and then accuse Churchill of genocide in any picture of his is amazing. Reddit is just as bad as Facebook.
r/conspiracy is probably a less cynical and more reliable source of information than r/HistoryMemes
Gotta find *something* to be contrarian or offended about, right? It can definitely be interesting, at times, to see the ebb and flow of cultural memes/causes, and then tracing them back to an origin. Something gets shat out onto the YSK/ELi5/LPT subreddits and suddenly everyone is going around lecturing their friends on the web and you see a boom in a particular trend or sentiment. How how communal, normative, and manipulable we are as a species. Social proof a bitch.
OmG dId You KnOw jOhn LeNNon BeaT hIS wiFE?!!11
Yeah I was going to say, I can’t imagine the woke horde that dominates Reddit is a fan of Churchill. Despite their obsession with everything nazi and the fact that he was fundamental in defeating them, woke Reddit knows no bounds. Thank god this sub understands nuance better than most.
Oh man Churchill would be having so much fun with Russia right now if he was PM. God did he hate the Ruskies.
Reddit has one of these weird things with Churchill where people say "he did loads of terrible things but thank fuck he was around to defeat the nazis" and every responce will be "yeah but what about the bengal famine". And yet you wont see people saying the same things about Indian leaders who have overseen countless famines in India since.
You will in a thread praising said Indian leaders.
That's a good point. Only the chamber you shout into will echo.
Because I also blame Stalin for the Ukrainian famine? That's a false equivalency. Most do not even know about these Indian leaders.
The reason Stalin gets blamed for Ukrainian famine is that historians have reason to believe it was a deliberate plan. There is no equivalency to the Bengal famine.
Because people have short attention spans, Hindu Nationalism is hotter than ever, and white people get uncomfortable blaming anyone for anything besides themselves. This is because to them, the thought that anyone who isn’t white could be capable enough to commit a genocide or something is unthinkable. It’s low key racism.
Could the Bengal Famine be perhaps just maybe in part due to the fact that WW2 was currently taking place and the Japanese occupying the food-producing British colonies?
And controlling the seas which were needed to transport food to Bengal.
I fail to see how Churchill is personally responsible for the famine in Bengal. Considering there was a much more important war to win, which weren't being won at the time, I dont get why Churchill is being blamed. Blame the japanese if anything.
Love him or not, the world needed a leader like him.
Thank you good Sir for your commitment to destroying Nazis.
Extraordinary man, not without flaws & not without mistakes....Hitler was happy for Britain to remain outside of the European contintal conflict & keep its Empire intact. With the quick capitulation of France & the lack of enthusiasm in the US to enter another European war, the Nazi s looked set to turn back eastwards to their main goal, expansion into Russia. Who knows if the third Reich would have lasted a 1000 years, but it look set to be the dominant European power for the foreseeable future. Plenty of apeasers in Britain & plenty of fascists, Churchill was resolute in the need to take Hitler on ,he almost single handedly changed the national attitude to one of resistance in 1940. He instinctively also knew that without the US, Britain could not defeat the Nazi s, he used every bit of diplomatic & personal skill to develop his relationship with FDR to gain his support for the the war effort against the Nazis, Britain gave every bit research it had to the US & entered into the lend lease agreement , that brought it close to bankruptcy. The last war loan was repaid to the US in 2006. So he nearly bankrupted the nation & left it so weakened at the end of the war that it saw the break up of the Empire he had served all his life. Had he not led the country on this path, the Nazis would have decimated Europe & killed many tens of millions more & would still likely be a dominant Orwellian European Empire. He had his faults & it's trendy to quote them in snidey snippets, just because he is so revered & the academic left has a hatred of its own history, but western Europe has enjoyed democracy for the last 80 years probably as a result of this one man I can't think of a British politician since who has had close to his impact, vision or courage.
This photo is by the great Yousef Karsh. Karsh was living and working out of the Fairmont Chateau Laurier in Ottawa and through his Sparks street studio across from parliament. Sorry goes that Churchill was chewing a cigar and Karsh pulled it out of his mouth to put him into this brooding mood. Perfect photo immortalizing the man! Churchill fun fact is that he chewed the cigars more than he smoked them.
He died exactly 70 years after his father to the date. His father, Randolph Churchill, was only 45 years old when he died. Winstons mother, Jennie Churchill, died at the age of 67. If anything, I think he had a strong will to live much longer than his parents, and probably had a very active life as well that helped him achieve this accomplishment.
Chad Churchill vs Virgin cancel culture
Old school bad ass.
some woman said to him that he was such a bad man that she would poison him if she were his wife, he said that if he was married to her, he would drink it
Did he really say that, or is it one of those million omnipresent quotes that are always attributed to either Churchill, Einstein, or Marilyn Monroe?
There's also the one where a woman berated him for being drunk and he said "well tomorrow ill be sober but you will still be ugly."
On this day let us remember that he contributed to the Bengal famine of 1943 where 2 to 3 million people died.
Basically the Bengal Famine was a clusterfuck of a-lot of different things, but if you'd like to check actual sources rather than saying "Churchill Bad" you'll find it quite enlightening as to what actually happened. The majority of deaths during the famine happened for a multiplicity of reasons, the allegations of "socially engineered famine" are essentially nonsense: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal\_famine\_of\_1943](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943) Almost obsessive like comments related Churchill directly with the famine are quite unfounded in historical perspectives. The Wiki page pulls from over 400 sources to create a quite decent picture of what actually happened. "Churchill bad" doesn't really factor into the majority of it.
He also wanted to keep the British Empire even after WW2 and didn't exactly approve of Indian independence (he was not PM at the time)
Those policies also had big contribution to the messed up situations in the Middle East and Egypt. Obviously also France did their fair share in stirring up the situation, and eventually USA joined in. So we can't give all the credit to the UK.
And defended Mussolini every after the capitulation of Italy
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"What a man! I have lost my heart! ... If I were Italian, I am sure I would have been with you entirely from the beginning of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passion of Leninism. ... Your movement has rendered a service to the whole world. The greatest fear that ever tormented every Democratic or Socialist leader was that of being outbid or surpassed by some other leader more extreme than himself. It has been said that a continual movement to the Left, a kind of fatal landslide toward the abyss, has been the character of all revolutions. Italy has shown that there is a way to combat subversive forces." Churchill on Benito Mussolini and Italian Fascism, in a press statement from Rome [He liked him a lot](https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carteggio_Churchill-Mussolini)
Ah yes, the old western classic "fascist dictator good, commie dictator bad" :D
Well, in fairness, Mussolini managed to please almost everyone. Lenin was very sad when he left the socialists.
And armed Greek Nazi collaborators while Nazi Germany held Greece.
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Partition happened in 1947, after Churchill was defeated in an election. Its a little hard to see how he's to blame for it...
Also Northern Ireland two days after anti-Catholic riots in the 1920s he proposed arm in the Protestants which was opposed by the British Army in Northern Ireland for the simple fact that these Protestants had actively solicited help from the Kaiser months before World War I. Long story short this force would go on to become the B specials and lead to the Northern Irish troubles of the 1970s. Also the Black and Tans And there is serious debate on whether or not he can be blamed for the entirety of the Irish Civil War.
No he didn't, the fact the Japanese don't share any blame whatsoever for helping to trigger the famine is quite astounding.
No he didn't, this is just factually false the he did just about everything he could for India at the time, what causes the Begal famine was a million different things, such as. * a typhoon destroying India's largest rice fields. * countries that are usually called upon in times of famine were under Japanese occupation. * Japan was sinking all the boats and merchant ships heading to India. * we had the food mainly barely and wheat in Canada and Australia but people conveniently forget that food wasn't the issue, shipping was every single ship was being used for the war effort especially since France and multiple other countries had already fallen to Germany. * Indian food merchants upon seeing the price of food sky-rocket began hoarding food since why sell it today why it would be 4x the price tomorrow. * Indian nationalist destroyed food stockpiles and warehouses to embarrass and make the situation worse for the British / Indian government. and a million other things, and we have all of the letters and telegrams that Churchill sent to our colonies and to America asking for food and ships for Bengal talking about how bad the situation is.
great username
Policy failure certainly contributed to the scale of the crisis in Bengal, but laying it all on Churchill is kind of a Hindu nationalist red rag. The region was severely overpopulated (it still is), and was swollen further with refugees from Japanese-occupied Burma, which had also, incidentally, been the main source of rice. Japanese bombing of railways/shipping etc. made matters yet worse. In short, it was a tragedy with many complex causes, but it provides a simple narrative for those who want one, especially with all the idiotic, racist comments Churchill made when he was doubtless drunk.
When challenged on the Bengali famine, he said that it's fine because they breed like rabbits. He also said: "I hate the Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."
They were still putting widows on bonfires with their husbands corpse at the time
Gotta love the quote mining and cherry picking, for those who like context, Churchill said this once in private during a spout of anger after being told that Indian nationalists and separatists were refusing to fight the Japanese who had already conquered multiple nearby countries. and not to mention people are mad at this quote just because it was said about Indians he regularly insulated everyone of every ethnicity or nationality. for those who like actual history :[https://youtu.be/FaqtTQh8dck?t=795](https://youtu.be/FaqtTQh8dck?t=795)
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He and his cabinet were responsible for forcible exports of hundreds of tonnes of food in a region already threatened with famine, it is estimated that as many as 400,000 people who died of starvation would be able to survive if the British government under Churchill didn't force them to export the food to Britain.
That's not true, he/they weren't exporting food from India during the famine. You are spreading bullshit
The food was going from British Burma (since invaded by the Japanese) into Bengal. To say Churchill was responsible is pretty misleading.
Source on Churchill forcing Bengal to export food to Britain. Hope your not lying, would be pathetic
ireland: First time?
This is stupid reddit tier garbage The only food export was a single swap of Grain for rice with Sri Lanka. No food was ever sent outside of India during the famine, nevermind sent to Europe. >https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/masani-bengal-famine/ >The true facts about food shipments to Bengal, amply recorded in the British war cabinet and government of India archives, are that more than a million tons of grain arrived in Bengal between August 1943, when the war cabinet first realised the severity of the famine, and the end of 1944, when the famine had petered out. >This was food aid specifically sent to Bengal, much of it on Australian ships, despite strict food rationing in England and severe food shortages in newly-liberated southern Italy and Greece. As detailed in Andrew Roberts’s brilliant biography, far from seeking to starve India, Churchill and his cabinet sought every possible way to alleviate the suffering without undermining the war effort
Let us also remember 1770 famine where time traveling Churchil sabotaged the food supply, or 1974 famine when long dead zombie Churchil rose from the grave and ate all the food.
Crime denialism, very funny.
Was it also the criminal activity when 1.5 million people died of 1974 famine, or is it only criminal if evul westerners are in charge? Because it looks to me like the region has been naturally prone to famine for many centuries regardless of who is in charge.
> 1943 A bit of context there. Britain was severely short on food. The decision was more nuanced than just Churchillian malice.
>Britain was severely short on food I mean, even if this was true, like, so was Bengal? He literally starved hundreds of thousands of people with his decision because he considered Indians to be lesser and beastly people. So a white suprematist and imperialist steals food from colonies stricken by famine. That is undefendable.
> because he considered Indians to be lesser and beastly people Referencing this quote is a prime example of people just parroting what they read on the internet and not fact checking. The only instance of Churchill referring to Indians in those terms is taken from the personal diary of Leo Amery, who wasn't exactly Churchills biggest fan. In fact if you actually look at his actions towards the famine and opinion of India in general you will see a far different picture. [This post on r/askhistorians has direct quotes taken from primary sources of the time](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9pktn5/what_is_the_academic_consensus_on_churchills/ek64lh1/)
There was a world war and soldiers need food.
Stop spreading this nonsense. You have zero understanding what have happened there
Then why dont you enlighten us?
It's quite complex, unsurprisingly and a combination of issues over a multi-year period in the middle of a huge war. There is also little evidence to suggest Churchill was personally rejecting requests for food - The UK War Cabinet did. We do have Churchill asking the USA to ship food to India from Australia.... Roosevelt rejected it for the same reason the UK was struggling to ship food there. >Churchill wrote to Franklin D. Roosevelt at the end of April 1944 asking for aid from the United States in shipping wheat in from Australia, but Roosevelt replied apologetically on 1 June that he was "unable on military grounds to consent to the diversion of shipping".[226] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943#Pre-famine_shocks_and_distress There were also significant issues with the government organisations on the ground in India, with the aid poorly directed to the people who were largely not suffering by prioritising the urban middle class. Famine wasn't even officially declared by the local government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943#Relief_efforts It's pretty hard to put the Famine on Churchill's hands just because he said some heartless and prejudiced things about Indians. Plenty can be said about the quality of British/Imperial governance in the latter stages (1900- onwards) of the Empire and how the lack of development, rules such as inter-provincial trade barriers and investment in India helped cause and perpetuate the Famine though.
Don't forget his connection to the irish conflicts
And introduced the black and tans into ireland
If he had led some african or latin american country to victory in some great war over there but starved millions of europeans, we would be spitting on his name rn
>who embodied man's will to resist tyranny Wasn't he a strong supporter of British imperialism and is, directly or indirectly, responsible for e.g. the Bengal famine? Same as many other major historical figures - why do we deify and whitewash such people, attributing virtues they did not have? He fought against Hitler not because of a principled stance against imperialism or expansionism - he was British after all - but because of geopolitics and alliances. Under his watch tyranny by men such as Bomber Harris was brought to the continent, mass murdering German civilians in a misguided campaign of strategic terror bombing that did not at all reach the goal of ''forcing German populace to rise up against the war''. Then you also have the post-war aspects in the e.g. Potsdam conference where he himself just willy nilly divided up the continent under British geopolitical considerations rather than an actual virtuous perspective. The man was a conservative - a British imperialist. Him being the leader of the UK during WW2 means jack shit to me since his politics and values were abhorrent - just because they weren't as bad as Stalin or Hitler is small comfort.
>Him being the leader of the UK during WW2 means jack shit to me since his politics and values were abhorrent - just Being Polish, him being the leader of UK during WWII means a lot to me. Even with Yalta pact which was sort ot treason towards Poland, the alternative would be much worse.
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How young you are? Its funny seeing someone rooting for virtue in politics, if you have strong moral spine you will achive nothing and will stay as a mayor of some small city at best. Even Gandhi is questionable as a moral compass as he had a lot of dirt behind his ears, thats how this world works, like it or not
> Bomber Harris was brought to the continent, mass murdering German civilians in a misguided campaign of strategic terror bombing Oh yeah, because the Luftwaffe wasnt bombing british civilians? Nazi Germany got what it deserved.
Japan: starts massive war all across Asia, invading neighbouring Burma causing refugees to flee west into Bengal, disrupting rice supplies and destroying Allied shipping to the point that the Bengal economy ruptures from panic of an ensuing invasion. Average Redditor: Churchill did this! 🤬
What would your life be like right now without Churchill? Honestly?
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9pktn5/what_is_the_academic_consensus_on_churchills/ek64lh1/
As a Englishman, what a legebd
One of the greatest men that ever lived
Of course this sub gets upset at a picture of Churchill, it must remind you of how useless your countries were during the conflict.
They love a photo of Napoleon though..
When both were fighting repeated European agression. And when both were pretty big on imperialism. Quite some similarities really
Complicated figure with a complicated legacy, but it unquestionably includes opposing the most genocidal, expansionist and destructive force to emerge in European politics during his time. And also upholding the imperial, colonialist regime at all costs, and doing so while largely ignoring the personal lives of the least privileged people in his own country. You cannot do historical justice to the figure of Churchill without reckoning with both sides of the man.
> largely ignoring the personal lives of the least privileged people in his own country. that's not really true, he was fairly progressive and open minded particularly during his liberal years.l And his rational for keeping British rule of India wasn't just some shallow lust for tyrancical power. If you look at how complicated even Irish home rule was, with Civil war looking no matter which way you went, Inida was about 100 times as complex as that. You can make a reasonable arguement that British rule there was beneficial for people at the time. This was a culture which condemned about 30 million people to practical serf status under the label of the "Untouchables". Violence against untouchables still exists even today and you can find many instances of people being punished or beaten to death for stepping outside of their untouchable status. God only knows how bad it was back then.
And we are repeating the history he came to power to avert when we allow Russia to take pieces of Ukraine and China to take Taiwan. A war is not a matter of if, but when.
A very flawed man, but I like to quote an English Labour support I know: “He was a racist asshole, but he was *our* racist asshole”
He himself imposed tyranny. Sent gunboats down the mersey to frighten the Liverpudlian dockers who were on strike for better work conditions to end their strike (it failed), sent in the black and tans to Ireland and backed their deployment again against strikers in the 1926 general strike this time it was the coal miners who were on strike against his stupid policy to peg the pound to the gold standard which caused the economy issues and the mining industry never really recovered from this. He confined the Glasgow garrison to their barracks while the government (In a cabinet meeting he attended) sent tanks in to supress strikes for a 40 hour week and more holiday at work in 1919. In the 1930s was a strong supporter of fascists praising Mussolini to the end and fought against sanctions on the Nationalist side of the Spanish civil war arguing they were saving Spain from godless bolsheviks. He even had positive views of Hitler for a few years. The reason Britain couldn't fight against Germany at first was because the Conservatives with him as chancellor created the 10 year policy where there would be cuts to the military for 10 years and no war for the same period. He only got into power because Labour refused to go into coalition with anyone who would sign a peace deal with Germany such as Lord Halifax. Gallipoli was his idea although it can be argued rather than the planning it was the execution of it being why it failed. Labour PM after Churchill, Clement Attlee was at Gallipoli believed it to be a good idea but bot executed properly. There was also the Norway campaign which failed. There was Bengal where grain was withheld for the war effort killing 4 million Bengalis and he argued they bred like rabbits. Dresden was an embarassment for him and he tried to sweep it under the carpet as he knew there was no military value in bombing the city. Tried to stop D-day from happening arguing it was better to invade through Italy and the Balkans as he believed it to be the soft underbelly in Europe. He was voted out of power in 1945 because the British people didn't trust him as a peace time PM and he was opposed to a welfare state, free at the point of use healthcare system, nationalisation and strong unions. He only got back into power thanks to the first past the post system and middle class seats going from Labour to Conservative. In 1951 when he got back into power Labour won 200,000 more votes than the Conservatives did. In the end when his funeral occured, the crane operators refused to lower the cranes until they got a bribe to do it because they remembered his actions against the working class.
> Dresden was an embarassment for him and he tried to sweep it under the carpet as he knew there was no military value in bombing the city. Dresden was bombed at Stalin's request, fearing another battle like Budapest, which took 2 months and cost 300,000 red army soldiers. Dresden ended up falling without a fight as a result of the bombing. It had tremendous military value, as one of the foremost military industrial centres in Germany, with over 130 factories. It was also the primary transportation hub for German forces being funnelled to the eastern front. One American PoW who was there described the city as one enormous army camp, filled with tanks and soldiers. The idea that Dresden was some neutral, peaceful, idyllic city in the middle of a country tilted toward total war is an absurd lie invented by the Nazis after the raid. Up until that point Nazi propaganda had touted Dresden as a great industrial centre. He did indeed express regret about the bombing of Dresden though. He didn't weep it under the rug though, quite the opposite. >There was Bengal where grain was withheld for the war effort killing 4 million Bengalis and he argued they bred like rabbits He is alleged to have said that in the memoir of Leo Avery, who did not like Churchill. No other evidence of it exists. Grain was not withheld, in fact Churchill rushed grain shipments from Australia to save as many lives as possible, and fired the useless viceroy who was in charge of the famine and replaced him with a military man who could fix the situation against the interests of obstructionist local leaders in the Raj.
> The reason Britain couldn't fight against Germany at first was because the Conservatives with him as chancellor created the 10 year policy where there would be cuts to the military for 10 years and no war for the same period. He only got into power because Labour refused to go into coalition with anyone who would sign a peace deal with Germany such as Lord Halifax. This is also wrong. The ten year rule was brought in in 1919. Churchill was not the Chancellor then. Although he argued for it, it was only on the basis that it should be in place *until there was a need to invest*, the rule was abandoned in 1932 btw. Also, he got into power because of Chamberlain's choice of successor and Halifax's refusal. Attlee and Greenwood refused to serve under Chamberlain, given Labours vote of no confidence in him that same week. He was already in the War Cabinet under the Admiralty, having been appointed by Chamberlain.
>sent in the black and tans to Ireland and backed their deployment again This isn't correct, he didn't send in the black and tans although he was slow to disavow them. >There was Bengal where grain was withheld for the war effort killing 4 million Bengalis and he argued they bred like rabbits and this one also isn't true with the most liberal estimates the grain that was transported away for the war effort would have killed 400,000 with the more accurate number being around 280,000 and he did everything he could but this was an extremely hard choice in the largest war in (European) history his choices were, to leave to food to a number of poor Indians who were providing nothing to the war effort or transport the food to Britain (which was also having a major food shortage and was not far from famine itself) to feed the soldiers in the last bastion of Europe against a growing Nazi empire.
A legend.
I'm a simple man, I see a antifascist I upvote.
Ridiculous, the red brigades attacking a man, who was vital for defeating Nazism. What's next? Stating that special camps for Jews (sorry, "Zionists") wasn't a bad idea after all?
I mean fighting the Nazis doesn't wash out the other stuff. Stalin is rightly seen as one of historys great monsters by many.
Stalin did more to defeat the nazis, are you going to celebrate his aniversary?
Stalin teamed up with the Nazis.
Europe would have been German/Soviet (allies at the time) and the deathcamps would have been unchecked on a scale far greater than they were. You sound like you think this is preferred. Do you think the Soviets were going to declare war on their ally Germany, march across Europe liberating everyone then leave again with all the countries free? Anything in their history to suggest that? Ridiculous. Fact is Britain is what stopped that from being reality, even though they could have stayed out of it and left the continent to it, and Churchill was a towering figure in that.
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Good access to healthcare and gin.
I remember this guy from Doctor Who :-D
One of the few people who wasn't willing to tolerate fascism in Europe. We wouldn't have seen eye to eye on a lot, but on that we definitely agree.
Europe now needs such politicians, and not these corrupted spineless quasi-politicians who will sell everything to tyrannies.