It should also be pointed out that the article (which you’ve shown to be probably overly biased) indicates that Churchill “contributed” to the famine, which I take to mean he didn’t initiate it.
Yeah as long as it’s millions of just brown people dying.
And make no mistake about it, he would have gladly killed every non white person on the face of the Earth to save white Great Britain.
He would have done anything to win the war against Hitler.
He killed French Sailors- who were- white. And Churchill didnt kill those Bengalis. Kimstu has shown that he did not. So, you need to stop pretending he did, because he didn’t.
If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." Lincoln
“Just” brown people? I mean… he wasn’t exactly shy about killing millions of white people to keep Britain safe, either. It’s kind of his whole deal, when you get right down to it.
Germany wasn’t really going to invade. They could just have made peace after their defeat in France.
I think you’re overlooking the reason why even the appeasers finally went to war with Germany in the first place, and why Chamberlain himself sided with Churchill against Halifax when the possibility of seeking terms was considered in May 1940: Hitler’s promises had been broken once too often already. Nobody knew “Germany wasn’t really going to invade”, not even Hitler: planning was pretty far advanced. Even if deep down he wanted anything but an invasion, even if he’d got the peace deal he talked about, how long would it have been before he pressed for more? It look less than two years in France.
The impression that I’ve always gotten from Churchill is that he was British first, second, third, and fourth - a true apex jingoist.
What do we know about Churchill’s attitudes towards non-white British folks? Not colonial subjects, but English-born citizens.
I’m sure his views were retrograde by our standards. But I’m curious whether he perceived a difference between, say, a person born in Mumbai and a second or third generation immigrant born in London.
It is absolutely true that Churchill (even by the standards of the early 1900s Britain) was a bigoted racist colonialist, who was resoundingly uncaring and ineffective in his response to the Bengal Famine, (but that doesn’t make him a genocidaire.) However he was also a committed unabashed anti-facist at a time when when that an unpopular position to have, and was directly, personally, responsible for the Nazis failing to conquer all of Europe. These are not opposing viewpoints, they are two aspects of his character that both sides of the argument need to accept. It is completely logically and morally consistent to laud him for opposing Nazi Germany and condem him for his racism and colonialism.
Without Churchill its hard to see any outcome except a negotiated peace with the Nazis after the fall of France. In that case the Nazi invasion of Russia has a much, much, greater chance of success (little known fact: most of the Soviet tanks at the battle of Moscow were supplied by Britain*), and the chances of the US intervening in the war in Europe is basically nil. The chances are the Nazis don’t even declare war on the US, and even if they do there is no D-Day, no Operation Torch without Britain, and no chance of “Germany first” being a thing (and very little chance of Germany ever being a thing)
One aspect of this that is often overlooked (not that it changes what I say above) is how out of step he was even by the attitudes of the time. His kind of extreme colonialism and prejudice seemed like a throw back to the Victorian age to many of his contemporaries, particularly those on the left who were his main allies in the pre-war years when it came to opposing Hitler. His patently ridiculous opinions on the colonies made it much harder to accept what he was saying about the Nazis.
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- They were really shite tanks, but the battle of Moscow was a very close run thing.
There was a genocide in India in 1948. A grim affair, where a couple of million lost their lives during the partition of the country into India and Pakistan, victims the vicious fighting between Hindhus and Muslims.
Does Churchill get the blame for that as well?
I mean partially, he actively and vociferously supported the colonial system that was one of the underlying reasons for that genocide. Though he was out of office when it happened, so he doesn’t get the blame for the short term direct causes. Lord Mountbatten on the other hand…
OK, how many white male world leaders, born in 1874 or thereabout werent bigoted colonialists? King Leopold? Kaiser Wilhelm? Stalin? Hitler? Wilson? Félix Faure? (Dreyfus affair)
I am not saying that Churchill wasnt a bigoted colonialist, but I dont think he was exceptional in that regard.
This is patently untrue. This idea that there was no way Germany was going to invade overlooks a ton of very detailed planning and troop movements that were done to prepare for an invasion. The idea there was some carefully crafted Nazi master plan that didn’t include invading Britain, and all that preparation was just sabre rattling, just isn’t supported by the facts. Hitler did get distracted by Russia when things went badly in the Battle of Britain, but that’s not the same thing as saying Germany was never going to invade Britain.
I mean, if you only had records up to June 1941 you would say Germany was “wasn’t really” going to invade Russia. There were lots of very good reasons to say it would never happen.
Well specifically Clement Attlee the PM who replaced Churchill (and who was, as I say one, of the few anti-facist allies he had in the lead up to WW2, Attlee was originally a pacifist but came round to Churchill’s way of thinking during the rise of Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s) He wasn’t radically anti-empire but he could see that the Churchill’s attitude to empire was completely detached from reality and throw back to bye-gone age.
Re post 52. Just for clarity, I agree entirely on that point. I was quoting (to rebut) someone else’s idea.
Good one, sure he was a racist but but did slowly give up the Imperialist ideas of his younger days.
Especially those notoriously swarthy German National Socialists…
The British Empire reached its height in 1925. Empires were still very much in fashion until WW2. It would have been very strange for Churchill not to be an imperialist at that time. As for racism. I believe eugenics was a pretty widely embraced notion at the time in intellectual circles. People believed in a social hierarchy that they thought could be defined by racial characteristics and matched the imperial notions of a political order in the colonies. A useful notion for keeping the colonial district officers trained in British public schools loyal and discouraging then from ‘going native’. The idea eugenics came into disrepute when the Nazis showed where it can lead when taken to its darkest conclusion.
So what of Churchill? He was a product of Edwardian Britain and his attitudes and politics were consistent with those times. His political career was not successful, he made a lot of mistakes and found himself outside of the corridors of power for many years.
But in 1940 he provided the leadership the country needed when it was fighting a ruthless enemy in the form of the Nazis and the Japanese in the Far East. He was desperately trying to save the country from invasion and hold onto the British Empire.
If it were not for Churchills resolute opposition to the Nazis the UK would have been invaded and the country would been subject the to genocidal activities of the Nazi Final Solution. There would have been death camps up and down the country and mass exterminations. It would have suffered the same fate many of the other countries invaded by the Nazis.
For that, I think he deserves to be cut him a bit of slack, despite all the other mistakes he made.
With respect to Bengal, what did happen there? Why would Churchill want a famine when he was relying on the Indian Army to fight the Japanese? That really does not make sense. I am sure there have been books written about it.
Placing the weight of responsibility on Churchill is, I am sure, the standard Indian nationalist position. But was this like Stalin and his genocide by starvation of the Ukrainians? Or Hitlers slave labour camps?
I don’t think so.
Churchill is regarded as a hero for his leadership during WW2. But he had a political career that stretched over six decades covering two world wars and his reputation was called into question several times. Some never forgave Churchill for ordering troops to confront striking coal miners in 1910 in Tonypandy, Wales were one one man died.
His reputation is very mixed.
Somewhat like the leaders of Indian Independence.
They weren’t mistakes. They were done for the intended purpose of mass death and terror.
I generally agree with this except:
A: As I point out above Churchill’s kind of rabid imperialism, was out of step with the mainstream political opinion of the 1930s. There were still plenty of imperialists around but most politicians could see the writing on the wall to some degree at that point. I mean if that was not the case, Britain’s, empire would not have disappeared so fast after WW2. Literally the next administration after Churchill’s presided over the independence of India.
B: I don’t think you can really claim Churchill save Britiain from invasion. It wasn’t like his military innovations won the battle of Britain, it was all (begrudging) Chamberlain-era defense spending and the genius of Dowding (who can I think make that claim, Dowding’s preparations for fighter command were technologically well ahead of their time and a little known story ). Though he absolutely saved Europe from Nazi domination. There is no way any other leader would not have made peace with Hitler in 1940, and for the rest of Europe (and Russia in particular) that would have been worse than having the Nazis tied up in an expensive invasion of Britain.
Cite?
Heck, America was still engaging in unfettered colonialism past WWI - it looks a little different in the Philippines and Central America than what the British were doing in India, but it was still colonialism. (Arguably, we were doing it in Central America until the 1980s or so).