Hi, as a British person myself who studied History at uni, i'll give you a bit of background on Churchill.
(note: if a fan of him, look away now!)
My grandparents were alive during the War - my grandfather fought in it - yet their feelings towards Churchill were not the norm i see on our media and average ordinary opinion today. They loathed him totally. Used to mimic his voice and behaviour in a condescending way. To them he was a Conservative and all talk, looked stupid and hid deep in a protected bunker during the German bombing raids whilst the commoners faces the death and destruction. Most of his 62 years in political life were a failure. He switched parties numerous times. He was responsible for the Gallipoli disaster during WW1 and lost his cabinet post in government because of it (the British remembered him chiefly for this before WW2.) His warnings about the dangers of German Nazism were ignored when Hitler came to power in 1933 because he had a long history of overdramatic and negative speeches about other nations. All his warnings were nothing new. He was not a man of brilliant foresight you could argue... the law of averages just gave him a bit of luck. It had to come true some time. Thats why nobody particularly paid any attention to his warnings about Hitler and an impending war in Europe.
During the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, days of the British Empire, he had advocated using poison gas against African natives who rebelled against their British overlords. He was also responsible for the USSR's enduring distrust of Britain for decades after WW1 - because he was responsible for the covert British military aid being sent to Admiral Kolchak's rebel White Armies in the far east of Russia during the Russian Civil War. He wished for open military intervention by the Western nations in Russia - this was the man Stalin was forced to deal with after 1941, a man Stalin distrusted as much as Hitler because their history went back much farther. He like Hitler had once threatened Russia.
And when Churchill heard about the progroms and systematic killings perpretrated by Admiral Kolchak's rebels on the local Jewish population there, he said it wasn't important and wrote anti-semitic comments in his diaries. Comments which for a time were shown on British tv and used perhaps to explain Britain's slow attempts to help Jews in Nazi Germany (Britain denied it knew where the concentration camps were located, but that has been revealed as a lie by historians in recent years as aerial photographs were recently taken of them). The official reason is that Britain didn't have the resources to deal with these camps... but some suggest that Churchill didn't care and didn't wish to use up British resources and time on them. Whatever the case, his writings on the Jews shows that Churchill was no friend of the Jews. Even America's top officer in the far eastern region of Russia during the Civil War there (conducting America's aid operation to the rebels) condemned the White Armies and expressed sympathy for the Bolsheviks.
One time he almost ordered his American soldiers to open fire on their White allies because he realised they were barbarians and their victory would be a disaster for Jews and Russians alike! His reward for telling his American superiors that the White Army rebels were evil and supporting them was unjustifed? He was monitored by the US government for the rest of his life.
My grandparents supported the rival Labour Party at the time of the War. Its very telling how many British really felt about Churchill at the time - they voted him out of office in a landslide Labour election victory in 1945. A crushing defeat. During the election campaign, Churchill was booed and jeered at some events. He never understood why he was treated this way by the public - the short answer was that his politics were so 19th century conservative that they didn't want him in office after the War. Clement Attlee replaced him as Prime Minister.
It was only in later years that Churchill's reputation has taken on the heights it now enjoys.
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Topic: "If you're going through hell, keep going" (Read 1605 times)
September 15, 2006, 10:10:04 AM
