Introduction From 1935 until the outbreak of the Second World War Winston Churchill was a determined and vociferous opponent of the British government’s policy of appeasing Hitler. In the popular imagination Churchill’s prominence at the head of the anti-appeasement movement has become a picture of the prophet crying in the wilderness. A fantasy encouraged […]
David Stafford, John Murray, London, 1997, £25 Any book dealing with Winston Churchill must situate itself within one of two rival camps. On the one hand, there are the Churchillians, who regard him as one of the great men of the twentieth century, who dominates modern times and deserves personal credit for having saved […]
Did Churchill reveal the pending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to Roosevelt two weeks before it happened? Below is what purports to a transcript of a telephone conversation recorded by the Germans during World War 2. If genuine, it shows, as has been alleged in the past, that Roosevelt was indeed warned of the […]
[…] and exchange controls, and abandoned the balanced budget in favour of the Keynesian technique of national income accounting. Desperate for American munitions, capital goods and food, the Churchill Coalition made a highly unequal exchange of strategic bases in the Caribbean for a handful of old US Navy destroyers, foreshadowing Lend-Lease and the dependence on […]
[…] among others – were dedicated to attaining peace. Losing money and apparently losing the war did not go down well with them. These people faced three problems: Churchill in Britain, Hitler in Germany, and a lack of strong leadership within their ranks.’ This is obviously true: from the point of view of the British […]
[…] of King George VI. Concerned about ‘peace and security in Europe’, they argued that British interests really lay with the Empire and overseas trade rather than Europe. Churchill only narrowly headed this off but once he had done so the Halifax/Butler point of view largely disappeared from UK politics to re-emerge, it could be […]
[…] more to it than this, however. In 1943 the Anglo-Americans were coming under pressure from the USSR to open up a second front in western Europe. But Churchill was determined not to invade until victory was certain and persuaded Roosevelt to agree with him. He did however concede that something had to be done […]
[…] history of 1940′. His aim is to debunk the Churchillian myth that in 1940 Britain was united in its determination to fight Nazism to the bitter end. Churchill may have been resolute but Halifax, the Foreign Secretary and Butler, the second in command in the Foreign Office, were keen to come to an accommodation […]
[PDF file]: EMPIRE FIRST Churchill’s War Against D-Day Graeme Bowman Self-published, 2020, h/b1 Simon Matthews Hats off to Winston? Not in this book. The continued deification of Churchill is one aspect of WW2 that is worth re-visiting, and over 450 pages Graeme Bowman proves, comprehensively – with a few specific caveats – that he was a […]
[…] removed from public access and some of them remain closed until the next century – for reasons of ‘national security’. Nevertheless, a fairly clear picture still emerges. Churchill later told the CIA officer responsible for the operation that he ‘would have loved nothing better than to have served under your command in this great […]
