Winston Churchill was a monster

[LuisDantas]

Of course they would. The point is that Oppenheimer was opposed to the dropping of the bomb.

And I praise him for it and regret that he did not have his way. But what do you mean by "of course they would"?

 

[Mycroft]

And I praise him for it and regret that he did not have his way. But what do you mean by "of course they would"?

That the general public would have supported the attacks.

American positions on WW2 can only be generally held with a sense of irony, since they supplied the enemy throughout most of the war.

 

[LuisDantas]

That the general public would have supported the attacks.

I would rather hope they did not. It is a very depressing thought that they did.

American positions on WW2 can only be generally held with a sense of irony, since they supplied the enemy throughout most of the war.

What do you mean here?

 

[Mycroft]

I would rather hope they did not. It is a very depressing thought that they did.




What do you mean here?

American multinational companies supplied goods to the Nazi's during the second world war. Ford. Standard Oil, Chase Bank and members of the State Department, Dupont.

Anecdotal: My Grandfather was denied permission to bomb a German's munitions factory. He could never figure out why, but later found that the factory had been owned by Dupont - an American company.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Hey @Mazdaian , nice to see you tackling the less controversial topics these days...


As an overall takeaway, what was the main thrust of what you were trying to argue?
(eg. Churchill was racist, was a douche, etc)

Just trying to work out when or if I need to disagree with you.

 

[Augustus]

Lol I posted a factual article and all the Churchill fanboys are crying because their role model was nothing more than a vicious tyrant.

And btw America saved Western Civilization. Not the Brits, or the Dutch or anyone else.

U.S. of A.

This seems to rely on a Disney Prince version of heroes and a knowledge of WW2 gleaned from US sitcoms where everyone 'would have been speaking German if it wasn't for us'.

You seem to be saying "You thought Churchill was a hero but I've proved he was actually a massive dick so na na nana na". If we go by the Disney Prince version of heroes, we don't really have any. The real world is a bit more nuanced than that. Even a 'saint' like Nelson Mandela was a loyal supporter of Assad, Ghaddafi and Mugabe, actions that are pretty hard to square with his image as a great freedom fighter. Very few people (if any) who have wielded great power have done so without doing many things that could be considered barbarous or contemptible from someone's perspective. A hero is rarely a hero to everybody, just the one group that they represent.

A hero is someone who displayed the ideal characteristics for the situation they were in and achieved great things as a result; it takes great endeavour in ONE area of their life to be eligible. They may well have been a total dick in other areas of their lives and held some horrendous or indefensible views, but that doesn't discount them from being heroes. It just means people should avoid sanctifying such people as being beyond reproach. You can be both a hero and a massive dick at the same time, they aren't mutually exclusive categories.

The precise characteristics that made Churchill a great war leader - conviction, stubbornness, defiance, ruthlessness, etc. - made him a poor leader in many other contexts. If someone kind and empathetic like Noam Chomsky had been the Prime Minister though, WW2 would have been over in 1940. I can also guarantee that the person who write the article you quoted would have been an apologist for Stalin had he lived at that time, seeing him as an anti-imperialist champion.

For Indians it is understandable that Churchill isn't viewed positively, but for many others he is still a hero due to what he did in WW2, regardless of other failings. So it is factually incorrect to say he was' nothing more than a vicious tyrant'.

As for the 'America saved the West' playground level boast, WW2 wasn't 'won' by any one country. You can argue about who made the most important contribution, but the British Empire, USSR and America all played different, but still vital, roles. If you don't understand why, might want to read a bit more.

 

[Wirey]

So, I got into contact with a friend of mine who both owns & has read this book. He told me the biggest problem with the book is as follows;

It tries to paint the Nazis(as a whole) having fought an honorable war, with the Allied & Comintern armies raping & pillaging their way through Germany. While the latter did happen, it was not remotely to the extent the author tries to claim. And regards to the former..just no.

He has other books. One is called 1938: Hitler's Gamble. It's about how honourable Hitler got ransacked by the evil Allies. When people genuinely believe propaganda like that, there is no point talking to them.

As an aside, I read this one. It was crap.

 

[Laika]

Indeed, and I'd love to see someone argue that Stalin wasn't a monster. The Allies were not without their crimes against humanity, such as terror bombing/fire bombing cities and razing much of Germany and Japan to the ground. Not to mention the post-war treatment of the German people during which millions of Germans starved to death.

But I digress.

The most common defence is sheer denial; that evidence was fabricated by the "imperialist-fascist bourgeis dogs", etc as in the case of the Ukrainian Famine, the Katyan Massacre (and probably others). There are some legitimate historical debates on 'how many died' and over variations of what happened in time and place, but taken as a whole it still very grim.
A more subtle one is to attack the concept of crimes against humanity as a product of "bourgeois legality and morality", that it is not universal or that today's moral standards cannot retrospectively be applied onto past events or onto 'other' systems. There is some substance to this line of reasoning if you look at how often the concept of natural rights was used by European colonisers to justify slavery, genocide etc, but the implication is that what was legal was moral and that the state was the source of an individuals rights. (see: Socialist Law). In a similar way, you can argue that because the Soviet Union was not a 'capitalist system' it was not subject to 'capitalist' international law because it is it's own law and does not derive legal-moral conceptions from an ideology shared with the capitalist west.

I often have inner monologues as to how this could be done as it helps deal with the sense of guilt that "my side" was responsible for it, but the truth is that exactly the same set of arguments against international law could be employed to attack the legality of the Nurumburg Trials as a 'trial by the victors' and that it was 'might makes right', but this is only so such a power could be legitimised to commit whatever crimes it sees fit. Whilst there is a great deal of substance to this from an academic perspective, if you put yourself in the position of a lawyer in a mock trail defending Stalin (or any other of the communist dictators), or in the jury watching these proceedings, it would be absolutely stomach churning because it challanges the very legitimacy of the conception of human rights and the definition of 'humanity'. It's not impossible, but you probably couldn't win by challanging the law in a court, or public opinion in a debate and chances are, you wouldn't want to win anyway. Communism was supposed to be better than that.

[Edit: Most of these arguments would challange the Nuremburg Principles and therefore the validity of international law.]

Lend lease helped to ease the burden on the USSR, but in the end they would have won either way.

The extent to which lend lease contributed to the Soviet victory in eastern europe is subject to Cold War propaganda. It certianly came at a critical moment in the war and undoubtably helped until the Soviets were able to re-establish some of their industrial capacity (moving around 8 million people and industrial equipment away from the front lines) and re-build there army. If the Germans had concentrated their attack on Moscow, rather than heading to less important strategic objectives such as Leningrad, Stalingrand and the Oil in the Causcuses, I'm pretty sure the USSR would have lost the War. it was only the fact that the germans ran out of steam in the battle for Moscow that the russians had a chance to turn the tide.

Except of course that wasn't how military command worked in the USSR.

Unfortunately, to a great extent military command in the USSR was run by Stalin. In the later half of the 1930's a very large portion of the general staff in the Red Army were purged meaning that there were very few comptent generals avaliable. This was demonstrated by the Soviet failure in the "Winter War" between Finland and the USSR in 1939. The Soviets were expected to win and didn't.When the Germans invaded in 1941, the General Staff were simply too scared (of Stalin, not the Nazis) to order a strategic retreat resulting in the loss of many lives. Stalin had something akin to a 'breakdown' when the Germans invaded because he had rejected reports that Nazi invasion was imminent even through Soviet Intelligence and diplomatic channels were saying at much. When members of the politburo confronted Stalin, it is possible that he was afriad he was about to be overthrown in a coup, but instead they demanded that he lead them. It wasn't until the end of the war that Stalin came to trust and respect the comptence of his generals to let them do their job.

It tries to paint the Nazis(as a whole) having fought an honorable war, with the Allied & Comintern armies raping & pillaging their way through Germany. While the latter did happen, it was not remotely to the extent the author tries to claim. And regards to the former..just no.

If I said that the Red Army "raped" its way accross eastern europe and east germany, that would be a fairly accurate description. There was a defacto policy of accepting rape as 'part of the war' and as a form of revenge against the german people for the suffering of the Soviet people under Nazi occupation. It continues to be debated how far it was offical policy, but it was unquestionably a war crime. As far as I know the western allies are not as much to blame as it was not a policy of the armed forces to accept rape.

 

[leibowde84]

Winston Churchill: the Imperial Monster » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names


As Gandhi’s support increased, Churcill announced:
“I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.”


In 1943 a famine broke out in Bengal, caused by the imperial policies of the British. In reply to the Secretary of State for India’s telegram requesting food stock to relieve the famine, Churchill wittily replied:
“If food is scarce, why isn’t Gandhi dead yet?”
Up to 3 million people starved to death. Asked in 1944 to explain his refusal to send food aid, Churchill jeered:
“Relief would do no good. Indians breed like rabbits and will outstrip any available food supply.”


In 1920 Churchill advocated the use of chemical weapons on the “uncooperative Arabs” involved in the Iraqi revolution against British rule.
“I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas,” he declared. “I am strongly in favor of using poison gas against uncivilized tribes. It would spread a lively terror.”


Addressing the Peel Commission (1937) on why Britain was justified in deciding the fate of Palestine, Churchill clearly displayed his white supremacist ideology to justify one of the most brutal genocides and mass displacements of people in history, based on his belief that “the Aryan stock is bound to triumph”:

“I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.”



Prime Minister Churchill had said earlier:

“I do not want suggestions as to how we can disable the economy and the machinery of war, what I want are suggestions as to how we can roast the German refugees on their escape from Breslau.”

In Dresden he got his wish. Those who perished in the centre of the city could not be traced, as the temperature in the area reached 1600 degree Centigrade. Dresden’s citizens barely had time to reach their shelters and many who sought refuge underground suffocated as oxygen was pulled from the air to feed the flames. Others perished in a blast of white heat strong enough to melt human flesh.

Keep in mind, Churchill's responsibility was to do what was best for England.

 

[MD]

Keep in mind, Churchill's responsibility was to do what was best for England.

I'm sure if Germany had won the war, some German descendant would have said the same for Hitler.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

I'm sure if Germany had won the war, some German descendant would have said the same for Hitler.

Maybe. But Churchill didn't set up the largest genocide attempt known to man. Regardless who won. I don't even think Hitler was that "evil" of a person for invading Europe. In many ways it was no different than Napoleon. We don't have a seething hatred for Napoleon. This is in part because Napoleon didn't have anything similar to the Holocaust and America never fought him so we never had to vilify him in our history.

 

[oldbadger]

Winston Churchill: the Imperial Monster » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names


As Gandhi’s support increased, Churcill announced:
“I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.”


In 1943 a famine broke out in Bengal, caused by the imperial policies of the British. In reply to the Secretary of State for India’s telegram requesting food stock to relieve the famine, Churchill wittily replied:
“If food is scarce, why isn’t Gandhi dead yet?”
Up to 3 million people starved to death. Asked in 1944 to explain his refusal to send food aid, Churchill jeered:
“Relief would do no good. Indians breed like rabbits and will outstrip any available food supply.”


In 1920 Churchill advocated the use of chemical weapons on the “uncooperative Arabs” involved in the Iraqi revolution against British rule.
“I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas,” he declared. “I am strongly in favor of using poison gas against uncivilized tribes. It would spread a lively terror.”


Addressing the Peel Commission (1937) on why Britain was justified in deciding the fate of Palestine, Churchill clearly displayed his white supremacist ideology to justify one of the most brutal genocides and mass displacements of people in history, based on his belief that “the Aryan stock is bound to triumph”:

“I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.”



Prime Minister Churchill had said earlier:

“I do not want suggestions as to how we can disable the economy and the machinery of war, what I want are suggestions as to how we can roast the German refugees on their escape from Breslau.”

In Dresden he got his wish. Those who perished in the centre of the city could not be traced, as the temperature in the area reached 1600 degree Centigrade. Dresden’s citizens barely had time to reach their shelters and many who sought refuge underground suffocated as oxygen was pulled from the air to feed the flames. Others perished in a blast of white heat strong enough to melt human flesh.

Ah ha!
Churchill.......... that old bull terrier!
Bull Terriers are not the most loved creatures, but when the chips are down, and millions of people are wondering if they can go on, that is just what is needed to keep them together, chins up, going strong regardless.
Keeping on..... keeping on.....
And so we, the British, forgive Churchill for most of his sins.
We love his memory........ you see.....
A leader with guts.............. guts

So print your anecdotes about him........... you'll never change our minds.

 

[oldbadger]

It's revisionist if it disagrees with you. How cute.

He didn't stop Hitler, Stalin did. To be honest, aside from acting as a land base for the Americans to invade Europe I don't see what else Britain really did to contribute to WW2.

Ha ha!
We, with the help of our friends, such as Canadian, Kiwi, Aussie, Pole and Free French pilots, held off the German Luftewafte long enough for Hitler to give up hope of invasion.

And that old dog Churchill, who we will love forever, kept the Brit people together during the BofB and Blitz.
In those dark days we were alone..,........

 

[Whiterain]

Winston Churchill had gaul. I don't agree with most of what he done in WW2.

It's off topic but say your peace with the droves of Hitler/Aryan youth he executed, those were mere children.

I'm not a fan of his work but he was the Man of the Hour and executed his commands with proper rank, he had the rights on the battlefield.

He was equally cruel as he was bold. I'm not a sympothiser but I just seen kids get hanged or executed via firing squad, watching any kid die is hard.

Watching many children die is a burden.

It's a sick cruel screwed up world we have here on Earth. I guess it's getting better, you're better off being heartless.

 

[dust1n]

Ha ha!
We, with the help of our friends, such as Canadian, Kiwi, Aussie, Pole and Free French pilots, held off the German Luftewafte long enough for Hitler to give up hope of invasion.

And that old dog Churchill, who we will love forever, kept the Brit people together during the BofB and Blitz.
In those dark days we were alone..,........

Not to mention the Congonese, South Africans, Indians, Bengals, the Gurkhas...

 

[dust1n]

If I said that the Red Army "raped" its way accross eastern europe and east germany, that would be a fairly accurate description. There was a defacto policy of accepting rape as 'part of the war' and as a form of revenge against the german people for the suffering of the Soviet people under Nazi occupation. It continues to be debated how far it was offical policy, but it was unquestionably a war crime. As far as I know the western allies are not as much to blame as it was not a policy of the armed forces to accept rape.

To be fair, there has always been a defacto policy of accepting rape as part of war. They pretty much go together.

 

[MD]

Maybe. But Churchill didn't set up the largest genocide attempt known to man. Regardless who won. I don't even think Hitler was that "evil" of a person for invading Europe. In many ways it was no different than Napoleon. We don't have a seething hatred for Napoleon. This is in part because Napoleon didn't have anything similar to the Holocaust and America never fought him so we never had to vilify him in our history.

The Mongols probably killed more people than Hitler did through their wars of conquest and expansion. Those are all but forgotten now.

I think the main thing about the Holocaust was not the genocide, but the systematic method with which it was carried out.

 

[dust1n]

The Mongols probably killed more people than Hitler did through their wars of conquest and expansion. Those are all but forgotten now.

I think the main thing about the Holocaust was not the genocide, but the systematic method with which it was carried out.

Well, I mean, it wasn't even a century ago, so is going to be a lot of residual emotions for a while. Maybe a handful more generations, the full weight of the impact won't be seen as much. Much like Alexander plundering and destroying and what not.

 

[oldbadger]

Not to mention the Congonese, South Africans, Indians, Bengals, the Gurkhas...

No.........

When we faced invasion, which we expected at any time, all we had was the remains of our broken army (from Dunkirk), our Navy and Air Force, and the boys-and-pensioners of the Home Guard.

But there were some South African pilots as well.

When things are very bad, you definitely need an old dog like Churchill to keep up the determination to resist.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

The Mongols probably killed more people than Hitler did through their wars of conquest and expansion. Those are all but forgotten now.

I think the main thing about the Holocaust was not the genocide, but the systematic method with which it was carried out.

Its not how many killed its how they were killed. It wasn't on the battlefield it was in a gas chamber. That is what made the difference.