Andrew Roberts is an admirable historian. His biography on Churchill is surprisingly easy to digest despite the seriousness of this subject and the length of years it covers. Buy it!
One of the best interviews on Uncommon Knowledge I’ve seen so far. Andrew Roberts is such a brilliant and insightful guest. Love Peter Robinson’s style of interviewing - asks intelligent questions and actually lets his guests speak, allowing them to properly expand on their points. You learn so much more that way. Makes a refreshing change from the combative interviews we typically get on British TV.
What a wonderful conversation. Every one of these conversations, no matter the guest, no matter the topic.... Every one of these conversations informs, entertains, inspires, elevates. Thank you so much to everyone involved in making these possible.
Jesus Christ! This is a great interview. When he asked abt the one sentence, "never give in" came to my mind. Thank you so much peter! You interviews are a master class
Winston Churchill is certainly a lifelong hero for me. Right up there with Napoleon and Teddy Roosevelt. A man with the whole of the Empire on his shoulders.
Really cool, makes me respect Churchill even more than I already did. I also liked the part where the process for writing the book was discussed. Very helpful and informative for someone who looks to write one day.
"Shashi Tharoor is author of “Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India.” He chairs the Indian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. “History,” Winston Churchill said, “will be kind to me, for I intend to write it myself.” He needn’t have bothered. He was one of the great mass murderers of the 20th century, yet is the only one, unlike Hitler and Stalin, to have escaped historical odium in the West. He has been crowned with a Nobel Prize (for literature, no less), and now, an actor portraying him (Gary Oldman) has been awarded an Oscar. As Hollywood confirms, Churchill’s reputation (as what Harold Evans has called “the British Lionheart on the ramparts of civilization”) rests almost entirely on his stirring rhetoric and his talent for a fine phrase during World War II. “We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. … 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 never surrender.” (The revisionist British historian John Charmley dismissed this as “sublime nonsense.”) Remembering British wartime PM Winston Churchill Words, in the end, are all that Churchill admirers can point to. His actions are another matter altogether. During World War II, Churchill declared himself in favor of “terror bombing.” He wrote that he wanted “absolutely devastating, exterminating attacks by very heavy bombers.” Horrors such as the firebombing of Dresden were the result. In the fight for Irish independence, Churchill, in his capacity as secretary of state for war and air, was one of the few British officials in favor of bombing Irish protesters, suggesting in 1920 that airplanes should use “machine-gun fire or bombs” to scatter them. Dealing with unrest in Mesopotamia in 1921, as secretary of state for the colonies, Churchill acted as a war criminal: “I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against the uncivilised tribes; it would spread a lively terror.” He ordered large-scale bombing of Mesopotamia, with an entire village wiped out in 45 minutes. In Afghanistan, Churchill declared that the Pashtuns “needed to recognise the superiority of [the British] race” and that “all who resist will be killed without quarter.” He wrote: “We proceeded systematically, village by village, and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the great shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation. … Every tribesman caught was speared or cut down at once.” In Kenya, Churchill either directed or was complicit in policies involving the forced relocation of local people from the fertile highlands to make way for white colonial settlers and the forcing of more than 150,000 people into concentration camps. Rape, castration, lit cigarettes on tender spots, and electric shocks were all used by the British authorities to torture Kenyans under Churchill’s rule. But the principal victims of Winston Churchill were the Indians - “a beastly people with a beastly religion,” as he charmingly called them. He wanted to use chemical weapons in India but was shot down by his cabinet colleagues, whom he criticized for their “squeamishness,” declaring that “the objections of the India Office to the use of gas against natives are unreasonable.” Churchill’s beatification as an apostle of freedom seems all the more preposterous given his 1941 declaration that the Atlantic Charter’s principles would not apply to India and the colored colonies. He refused to see people of color as entitled to the same rights as himself. “Gandhi-ism and all it stands for,” he declared, “will, sooner or later, have to be grappled with and finally crushed.” In such matters, Churchill was the most reactionary of Englishmen, with views so extreme they cannot be excused as being reflective of their times. Even his own secretary of state for India, Leopold Amery, confessed that he could see very little difference between Churchill’s attitude and Adolf Hitler’s. Thanks to Churchill, some 4 million Bengalis starved to death in a 1943 famine. Churchill ordered the diversion of food from starving Indian civilians to well-supplied British soldiers and even to top up European stockpiles in Greece and elsewhere. When reminded of the suffering of his Indian victims, his response was that the famine was their own fault, he said, for “breeding like rabbits.” Madhusree Mukerjee’s searing account of Churchill’s role in the Bengal famine, “Churchill’s Secret War,” documents that while Indians starved, prices for foodgrains were inflated by British purchases and India’s own surplus grains were exported, while Australian ships laden with wheat were not allowed to unload their cargo at Calcutta (where the bodies of those who had died of starvation littered the streets). Instead, Churchill ordered that grain be shipped to storage depots in the Mediterranean and the Balkans to increase the buffer stocks for a possible future invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia. European warehouses filled up as Bengalis died. This week’s Oscar rewards yet another hagiography of this odious man. To the Iraqis whom Churchill advocated gassing, the Greek protesters on the streets of Athens who were mowed down on Churchill’s orders in 1944, sundry Pashtuns and Irish, as well as to Indians like myself, it will always be a mystery why a few bombastic speeches have been enough to wash the bloodstains off Churchill’s racist hands. Many of us will remember Churchill as a war criminal and an enemy of decency and humanity, a blinkered imperialist untroubled by the oppression of non-white peoples. Ultimately, his great failure - his long darkest hour - was his constant effort to deny us freedom. (From The Washington Post March 2018)" Gabriel Parra's comment below. Irving's Churchill Biographies were fantastic also, he was a great man and like all men both good and bad resided within him.
There is no doubt that Churchill was a great man. However, the weak and untenable apology for empire makes one question if this is an unbiased biography.
I like how he went into Churchills imperalism. And he does it in a thoughtful way. Doesnt just write Churchill off as an evil imperialist which is a simplistic and uncharitable way to see him.
Shashi Tharoor is author of “Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India.” He chairs the Indian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. “History,” Winston Churchill said, “will be kind to me, for I intend to write it myself.” He needn’t have bothered. He was one of the great mass murderers of the 20th century, yet is the only one, unlike Hitler and Stalin, to have escaped historical odium in the West. He has been crowned with a Nobel Prize (for literature, no less), and now, an actor portraying him (Gary Oldman) has been awarded an Oscar. As Hollywood confirms, Churchill’s reputation (as what Harold Evans has called “the British Lionheart on the ramparts of civilization”) rests almost entirely on his stirring rhetoric and his talent for a fine phrase during World War II. “We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. … 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 never surrender.” (The revisionist British historian John Charmley dismissed this as “sublime nonsense.”) Remembering British wartime PM Winston Churchill Words, in the end, are all that Churchill admirers can point to. His actions are another matter altogether. During World War II, Churchill declared himself in favor of “terror bombing.” He wrote that he wanted “absolutely devastating, exterminating attacks by very heavy bombers.” Horrors such as the firebombing of Dresden were the result. In the fight for Irish independence, Churchill, in his capacity as secretary of state for war and air, was one of the few British officials in favor of bombing Irish protesters, suggesting in 1920 that airplanes should use “machine-gun fire or bombs” to scatter them. Dealing with unrest in Mesopotamia in 1921, as secretary of state for the colonies, Churchill acted as a war criminal: “I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against the uncivilised tribes; it would spread a lively terror.” He ordered large-scale bombing of Mesopotamia, with an entire village wiped out in 45 minutes. In Afghanistan, Churchill declared that the Pashtuns “needed to recognise the superiority of [the British] race” and that “all who resist will be killed without quarter.” He wrote: “We proceeded systematically, village by village, and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the great shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation. … Every tribesman caught was speared or cut down at once.” In Kenya, Churchill either directed or was complicit in policies involving the forced relocation of local people from the fertile highlands to make way for white colonial settlers and the forcing of more than 150,000 people into concentration camps. Rape, castration, lit cigarettes on tender spots, and electric shocks were all used by the British authorities to torture Kenyans under Churchill’s rule. But the principal victims of Winston Churchill were the Indians - “a beastly people with a beastly religion,” as he charmingly called them. He wanted to use chemical weapons in India but was shot down by his cabinet colleagues, whom he criticized for their “squeamishness,” declaring that “the objections of the India Office to the use of gas against natives are unreasonable.” Churchill’s beatification as an apostle of freedom seems all the more preposterous given his 1941 declaration that the Atlantic Charter’s principles would not apply to India and the colored colonies. He refused to see people of color as entitled to the same rights as himself. “Gandhi-ism and all it stands for,” he declared, “will, sooner or later, have to be grappled with and finally crushed.” In such matters, Churchill was the most reactionary of Englishmen, with views so extreme they cannot be excused as being reflective of their times. Even his own secretary of state for India, Leopold Amery, confessed that he could see very little difference between Churchill’s attitude and Adolf Hitler’s. Thanks to Churchill, some 4 million Bengalis starved to death in a 1943 famine. Churchill ordered the diversion of food from starving Indian civilians to well-supplied British soldiers and even to top up European stockpiles in Greece and elsewhere. When reminded of the suffering of his Indian victims, his response was that the famine was their own fault, he said, for “breeding like rabbits.” Madhusree Mukerjee’s searing account of Churchill’s role in the Bengal famine, “Churchill’s Secret War,” documents that while Indians starved, prices for foodgrains were inflated by British purchases and India’s own surplus grains were exported, while Australian ships laden with wheat were not allowed to unload their cargo at Calcutta (where the bodies of those who had died of starvation littered the streets). Instead, Churchill ordered that grain be shipped to storage depots in the Mediterranean and the Balkans to increase the buffer stocks for a possible future invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia. European warehouses filled up as Bengalis died. This week’s Oscar rewards yet another hagiography of this odious man. To the Iraqis whom Churchill advocated gassing, the Greek protesters on the streets of Athens who were mowed down on Churchill’s orders in 1944, sundry Pashtuns and Irish, as well as to Indians like myself, it will always be a mystery why a few bombastic speeches have been enough to wash the bloodstains off Churchill’s racist hands. Many of us will remember Churchill as a war criminal and an enemy of decency and humanity, a blinkered imperialist untroubled by the oppression of non-white peoples. Ultimately, his great failure - his long darkest hour - was his constant effort to deny us freedom. (From The Washington Post March 2018)
We LL find common traces in various characters who dominate the power throw the humankind. For sure Napoleon was not great, like the Czars or the Monarchs. Constantine or emperor Justinian of the Byzantine empire did the same.
that same shashi Tharroor comes from a Nair caste. the nair caste are a lower caste compared to brahmins, the nair caste women had to sleep with upper caste brahmins, they were not allowed to cover their upper part of the bodies. This heinous practise was stopped when neighboring madras British governor forced the travancore state king to put an end to this.If not for the British, shahsi Tharoor would have not had access to education, and speak in English in Oxford union. I am an India, I know what a shithole India is. Please save us this sjw BS.
Stalin had the best comment on Churchill - Churchill was “the kind of man who will pick your pocket of every kopeck if you don’t watch him. Roosevelt was “not like that. He dips his hand only for bigger coins. But Churchill? Churchill will do it for a kopeck!”
"churchill couldnt control his emotions" enough said. winston was a fool that destroyed his country. britain had no reason to be involved in this war, it was between germany and russia
FDR broke in. 'Yes. Those Empire trade agreements are a case in point. It's because of them that the people of India and Africa, of all the colonial Near East and Far East, are still as backward as they are.' [...] ‘You mentioned India,’ he [Churchill] growled. ‘Yes. I can’t believe that we can fight a war against fascist slavery, and at the same time not work to free people all over the world from a backward colonial policy.’ As a commonwealth, she [India] would be entitled to a modern form of government, an adequate health and educational standard. But how can she have these things, when Britain is taking all the wealth of her national resources away from her, every year? Every year the Indian people have one thing to look forward to, like death and taxes. Sure as shooting, they have a famine. The season of the famine, they call it.' There’s no doubt that Roosevelt lobbied hard for the freedom of colonised peoples of the world, including India, against Churchill’s fierce opposition. His determination is best seen in this exchange with Churchill, recounted As He Saw It: Roosevelt: 'You see,' said FDR slowly, 'it is along in here somewhere that there is likely to be some disagreement between you, Winston, and me.’ 'I am firmly of the belief that if we are to arrive at a stable peace it must involve the development of backward countries. Backward peoples. How can this be done? It can't be done, obviously, by eighteenth-century methods. Now-” Churchill: 'Who's talking eighteenth-century methods?' 'Whichever of your ministers recommends a policy which takes wealth in raw materials out of a colonial country, but which returns nothing to the people of that country in consideration. Twentieth-century methods involve bringing industry to these colonies. Twentieth-century methods include increasing the wealth of a people by increasing their standard of living, by educating them, by bringing them sanitation - by making sure that they get a return for the raw wealth of their community.'
"It would have been disastrous for Britain in the long run" and instead Churchill chose disaster in the short run. From a purely pro-British perspective, submission to America in 1941 was arguably worse than gradually becoming a European Partner in the late 40s or 50s.
Sry to object - Prof. Roberts understanding of Germany's role initiating WW1 is no longer the dominant narrative in the history departments. Imperial Germany was not by far the only aggressive country and all the others protagonists were not remaining passive until a saber rattling Kaiser attacked them. France, in denying Germany a place at the table in both Moroccan crisis's, while coming to terms with every other power, Russia, GB, Italy, Spain, successfully ostracized Germany. Surely, Germany hold former French territories - that had been lost after France declared war in 1870 and lost the engagement. This, and the endangerment of its pretended role of the 'Grand Nation', dominating central Europe, by an upcoming industrial powerhouse - makes a strong motive for seeking revenge. Russia with its enormous military, together with an overdue aristocratic system, sought likewise for a reestablishment of its imperial dominance over east central Europe, Turkey and Persia. The Russian empire was actively searching internal stabilization by external war especially after its defeat against Japan, trying to enlarge its empire westwards and south (Turkey and the Dardanelles) - both countries follow a longterm established motive for engaging in war. Means and motive add together - Russia's aggressive stance, backed up by a revenge seeking France, both used the sad but minor Sarajevo incident for a wargame of reestablishing their lost hegemony over central Europe; so Russia came to stiffening a Serbian government, that denied Austria-Hungary any active role in the investigation of the Sarajevo murders. France and Russia were the prime actors to convert a diplomatic crisis, maybe a small border war, successfully into the European conflagration, and sadly the Brits and Americans went along. Without the British (and American) hawkishness to engage in war against an upcoming power, the war between Germany and its allies vs. France and Russia would have come to terms by exhaustion in 1917 - maybe earlier - with a negotiated peace, what would have given the Kerensky government in Russia a realistic chance, and could have prevented the ascent of the monsters Lenin/ Stalin and Hitler - and here lies an overlooked liability of the Great Britain as well as the USA for the massive bloodshed of WW1 and its aftermath - including Winston Churchill's overlooked responsibility - for a devastated century … [See - Niall Ferguson - Pity of War/ Christopher Clark - Sleepwalkers/ Sean McMeekin - The Russian Origins of the First World War,]
The empire that has given so much to the people of india, which was the largest economy when the British appeared and among the poorest when they were evicted. Also was the so much given commensurate with the 46 trillion! taken?
Peterson you have a moral responsibility to seek an explanation from Andrew Roberts what he meant by Churchill greatness towards India. We were robbed, massacred, enslaved and treated as worms by British Empire. The wound is still fresh and it will never heal. It’s a Pox in world’s history. Nazi would have been inspired by British Empire to massacre non violent people. I agree missionaries indeed heal a few wounds.
this massacre, that massacre blah blah. what you're forgetting is if NOT for the BRITISH you would not be able to bark in English and access UA-cam in India. Modern India is a brainchild of Britain. That country , despite all it's 1000s of diversity, still exists as one because of the strong system that British laid . Even Gandhi, Nehru and other Indian leaders acknowledge this.
from a primary school to the Parliament everything in modern India is British given. can you deny that? in fact, you can comment in English and access youtube in India because of the British.
Andrew Roberts is an admirable historian. His biography on Churchill is surprisingly easy to digest despite the seriousness of this subject and the length of years it covers. Buy it!
Got it. Read it. Loved it!
One of the best interviews on Uncommon Knowledge I’ve seen so far. Andrew Roberts is such a brilliant and insightful guest. Love Peter Robinson’s style of interviewing - asks intelligent questions and actually lets his guests speak, allowing them to properly expand on their points. You learn so much more that way. Makes a refreshing change from the combative interviews we typically get on British TV.
Absolutely brilliant. The interviewer really brought out some brilliant responses.
What a wonderful conversation. Every one of these conversations, no matter the guest, no matter the topic.... Every one of these conversations informs, entertains, inspires, elevates. Thank you so much to everyone involved in making these possible.
“Napoleon: A Life” was a wonderful piece of biographical literature.
Andrew Roberts should do a cradle-to-grave on Bismarck or Fredrick the Great.
Agree re: Napoleon, and I would read those.
I have his book Napoleon the Great on my bookshelf. Beautiful piece of work.
Just finished this great book on Kindle. 67% at the final word. Remaining 33% consists of photos, notes, and bibliography! Excellent.
"Reducing an ox to a bouillon cube" :D brilliant!
these are the BEST interviews
Absolutely loved this interview. Roberts should be knighted. Big American Churchill fan here.
You hero for saying that about the beautiful British Empire.
Jesus Christ! This is a great interview. When he asked abt the one sentence, "never give in" came to my mind. Thank you so much peter! You interviews are a master class
Winston Churchill is certainly a lifelong hero for me. Right up there with Napoleon and Teddy Roosevelt. A man with the whole of the Empire on his shoulders.
Every UKN episode is great but this episode is easily top 10.... 100%
The man's fantastic.
5 million words of notes. I feel like they aren't making them like this guy anymore and that's extremely sad.
Outstanding Andrew! A book with a great blueprint for future leaders to draw from.
Uncommon Knowledge is better than anything on TV like the moon is bigger than a wheel of cheese.
You speak for many of us Simon. Excellent comments.
The best Uncommon Knowledge Interview I've watched yet
Brilliant. Keep writing - keep standing up for truth
Really cool, makes me respect Churchill even more than I already did. I also liked the part where the process for writing the book was discussed. Very helpful and informative for someone who looks to write one day.
"Shashi Tharoor is author of “Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India.” He chairs the Indian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee.
“History,” Winston Churchill said, “will be kind to me, for I intend to write it myself.” He needn’t have bothered. He was one of the great mass murderers of the 20th century, yet is the only one, unlike Hitler and Stalin, to have escaped historical odium in the West. He has been crowned with a Nobel Prize (for literature, no less), and now, an actor portraying him (Gary Oldman) has been awarded an Oscar.
As Hollywood confirms, Churchill’s reputation (as what Harold Evans has called “the British Lionheart on the ramparts of civilization”) rests almost entirely on his stirring rhetoric and his talent for a fine phrase during World War II. “We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. … 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 never surrender.” (The revisionist British historian John Charmley dismissed this as “sublime nonsense.”)
Remembering British wartime PM Winston Churchill
Words, in the end, are all that Churchill admirers can point to. His actions are another matter altogether.
During World War II, Churchill declared himself in favor of “terror bombing.” He wrote that he wanted “absolutely devastating, exterminating attacks by very heavy bombers.” Horrors such as the firebombing of Dresden were the result.
In the fight for Irish independence, Churchill, in his capacity as secretary of state for war and air, was one of the few British officials in favor of bombing Irish protesters, suggesting in 1920 that airplanes should use “machine-gun fire or bombs” to scatter them.
Dealing with unrest in Mesopotamia in 1921, as secretary of state for the colonies, Churchill acted as a war criminal: “I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against the uncivilised tribes; it would spread a lively terror.” He ordered large-scale bombing of Mesopotamia, with an entire village wiped out in 45 minutes.
In Afghanistan, Churchill declared that the Pashtuns “needed to recognise the superiority of [the British] race” and that “all who resist will be killed without quarter.” He wrote: “We proceeded systematically, village by village, and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the great shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation. … Every tribesman caught was speared or cut down at once.”
In Kenya, Churchill either directed or was complicit in policies involving the forced relocation of local people from the fertile highlands to make way for white colonial settlers and the forcing of more than 150,000 people into concentration camps. Rape, castration, lit cigarettes on tender spots, and electric shocks were all used by the British authorities to torture Kenyans under Churchill’s rule.
But the principal victims of Winston Churchill were the Indians - “a beastly people with a beastly religion,” as he charmingly called them. He wanted to use chemical weapons in India but was shot down by his cabinet colleagues, whom he criticized for their “squeamishness,” declaring that “the objections of the India Office to the use of gas against natives are unreasonable.”
Churchill’s beatification as an apostle of freedom seems all the more preposterous given his 1941 declaration that the Atlantic Charter’s principles would not apply to India and the colored colonies. He refused to see people of color as entitled to the same rights as himself. “Gandhi-ism and all it stands for,” he declared, “will, sooner or later, have to be grappled with and finally crushed.”
In such matters, Churchill was the most reactionary of Englishmen, with views so extreme they cannot be excused as being reflective of their times. Even his own secretary of state for India, Leopold Amery, confessed that he could see very little difference between Churchill’s attitude and Adolf Hitler’s.
Thanks to Churchill, some 4 million Bengalis starved to death in a 1943 famine. Churchill ordered the diversion of food from starving Indian civilians to well-supplied British soldiers and even to top up European stockpiles in Greece and elsewhere. When reminded of the suffering of his Indian victims, his response was that the famine was their own fault, he said, for “breeding like rabbits.”
Madhusree Mukerjee’s searing account of Churchill’s role in the Bengal famine, “Churchill’s Secret War,” documents that while Indians starved, prices for foodgrains were inflated by British purchases and India’s own surplus grains were exported, while Australian ships laden with wheat were not allowed to unload their cargo at Calcutta (where the bodies of those who had died of starvation littered the streets). Instead, Churchill ordered that grain be shipped to storage depots in the Mediterranean and the Balkans to increase the buffer stocks for a possible future invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia. European warehouses filled up as Bengalis died.
This week’s Oscar rewards yet another hagiography of this odious man. To the Iraqis whom Churchill advocated gassing, the Greek protesters on the streets of Athens who were mowed down on Churchill’s orders in 1944, sundry Pashtuns and Irish, as well as to Indians like myself, it will always be a mystery why a few bombastic speeches have been enough to wash the bloodstains off Churchill’s racist hands.
Many of us will remember Churchill as a war criminal and an enemy of decency and humanity, a blinkered imperialist untroubled by the oppression of non-white peoples. Ultimately, his great failure - his long darkest hour - was his constant effort to deny us freedom. (From The Washington Post March 2018)" Gabriel Parra's comment below. Irving's Churchill Biographies were fantastic also, he was a great man and like all men both good and bad resided within him.
The one line to describe Winston Churchill should be:
Never dull.
Good discussion.
I went to Spain with him on a IFBT , very nice chap
Really appreciate your work Mr. Roberts
Absolutely fabulous interview…I want to read the book!
The game is afoot: Follow your spirit, and upon this charge Cry 'God, for Harry, England, and St. George
Peter Robinson, Thank you!
Germans loosing in Kaukasus wasnt a question of Air Support, it was a question of running out of supply.
How long before UA-cam censors this discussion?
Yay! I've been waiting to see if there was going to be an interview!
Another encomium!!!! OTT
There is no doubt that Churchill was a great man. However, the weak and untenable apology for empire makes one question if this is an unbiased biography.
no! back to bach!
Lincoln Doyle I loved the old intro. This one is too generic
Great interview, very enjoyable albeit a low dig at Irving, "former historian", lol. Tut tut
I like how he went into Churchills imperalism. And he does it in a thoughtful way. Doesnt just write Churchill off as an evil imperialist which is a simplistic and uncharitable way to see him.
The second last empire to fall. Like fashion, things will repeat itself.
Shashi Tharoor is author of “Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India.” He chairs the Indian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee.
“History,” Winston Churchill said, “will be kind to me, for I intend to write it myself.” He needn’t have bothered. He was one of the great mass murderers of the 20th century, yet is the only one, unlike Hitler and Stalin, to have escaped historical odium in the West. He has been crowned with a Nobel Prize (for literature, no less), and now, an actor portraying him (Gary Oldman) has been awarded an Oscar.
As Hollywood confirms, Churchill’s reputation (as what Harold Evans has called “the British Lionheart on the ramparts of civilization”) rests almost entirely on his stirring rhetoric and his talent for a fine phrase during World War II. “We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. … 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 never surrender.” (The revisionist British historian John Charmley dismissed this as “sublime nonsense.”)
Remembering British wartime PM Winston Churchill
Words, in the end, are all that Churchill admirers can point to. His actions are another matter altogether.
During World War II, Churchill declared himself in favor of “terror bombing.” He wrote that he wanted “absolutely devastating, exterminating attacks by very heavy bombers.” Horrors such as the firebombing of Dresden were the result.
In the fight for Irish independence, Churchill, in his capacity as secretary of state for war and air, was one of the few British officials in favor of bombing Irish protesters, suggesting in 1920 that airplanes should use “machine-gun fire or bombs” to scatter them.
Dealing with unrest in Mesopotamia in 1921, as secretary of state for the colonies, Churchill acted as a war criminal: “I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against the uncivilised tribes; it would spread a lively terror.” He ordered large-scale bombing of Mesopotamia, with an entire village wiped out in 45 minutes.
In Afghanistan, Churchill declared that the Pashtuns “needed to recognise the superiority of [the British] race” and that “all who resist will be killed without quarter.” He wrote: “We proceeded systematically, village by village, and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the great shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation. … Every tribesman caught was speared or cut down at once.”
In Kenya, Churchill either directed or was complicit in policies involving the forced relocation of local people from the fertile highlands to make way for white colonial settlers and the forcing of more than 150,000 people into concentration camps. Rape, castration, lit cigarettes on tender spots, and electric shocks were all used by the British authorities to torture Kenyans under Churchill’s rule.
But the principal victims of Winston Churchill were the Indians - “a beastly people with a beastly religion,” as he charmingly called them. He wanted to use chemical weapons in India but was shot down by his cabinet colleagues, whom he criticized for their “squeamishness,” declaring that “the objections of the India Office to the use of gas against natives are unreasonable.”
Churchill’s beatification as an apostle of freedom seems all the more preposterous given his 1941 declaration that the Atlantic Charter’s principles would not apply to India and the colored colonies. He refused to see people of color as entitled to the same rights as himself. “Gandhi-ism and all it stands for,” he declared, “will, sooner or later, have to be grappled with and finally crushed.”
In such matters, Churchill was the most reactionary of Englishmen, with views so extreme they cannot be excused as being reflective of their times. Even his own secretary of state for India, Leopold Amery, confessed that he could see very little difference between Churchill’s attitude and Adolf Hitler’s.
Thanks to Churchill, some 4 million Bengalis starved to death in a 1943 famine. Churchill ordered the diversion of food from starving Indian civilians to well-supplied British soldiers and even to top up European stockpiles in Greece and elsewhere. When reminded of the suffering of his Indian victims, his response was that the famine was their own fault, he said, for “breeding like rabbits.”
Madhusree Mukerjee’s searing account of Churchill’s role in the Bengal famine, “Churchill’s Secret War,” documents that while Indians starved, prices for foodgrains were inflated by British purchases and India’s own surplus grains were exported, while Australian ships laden with wheat were not allowed to unload their cargo at Calcutta (where the bodies of those who had died of starvation littered the streets). Instead, Churchill ordered that grain be shipped to storage depots in the Mediterranean and the Balkans to increase the buffer stocks for a possible future invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia. European warehouses filled up as Bengalis died.
This week’s Oscar rewards yet another hagiography of this odious man. To the Iraqis whom Churchill advocated gassing, the Greek protesters on the streets of Athens who were mowed down on Churchill’s orders in 1944, sundry Pashtuns and Irish, as well as to Indians like myself, it will always be a mystery why a few bombastic speeches have been enough to wash the bloodstains off Churchill’s racist hands.
Many of us will remember Churchill as a war criminal and an enemy of decency and humanity, a blinkered imperialist untroubled by the oppression of non-white peoples. Ultimately, his great failure - his long darkest hour - was his constant effort to deny us freedom. (From The Washington Post March 2018)
They must keep on propagating the Churchill myth.
We LL find common traces in various characters who dominate the power throw the humankind. For sure Napoleon was not great, like the Czars or the Monarchs. Constantine or emperor Justinian of the Byzantine empire did the same.
that same shashi Tharroor comes from a Nair caste. the nair caste are a lower caste compared to brahmins, the nair caste women had to sleep with upper caste brahmins, they were not allowed to cover their upper part of the bodies. This heinous practise was stopped when neighboring madras British governor forced the travancore state king to put an end to this.If not for the British, shahsi Tharoor would have not had access to education, and speak in English in Oxford union. I am an India, I know what a shithole India is. Please save us this sjw BS.
Stalin had the best comment on Churchill - Churchill was “the kind of man who will pick your pocket of every kopeck if you don’t watch him. Roosevelt was “not like that. He dips his hand only for bigger coins. But Churchill? Churchill will do it for a kopeck!”
Churchill was worth a billion Stalins
I hate Winston Churchill for Bengal famine. And racism towards and hatred of Indians.
That's like hating jesus for having bad teeth... two bad and ignore the good?
Really, you hate someone based on no knowledge of the facts? What a pitiful, sad person you are.
@@zayan6284 How dare you dismiss and trivialize genocide like that?
26:57 what a lame answer. Nobody wants to take responsibility for Dresden and such.
What part of the answer? When he says it wasn't 30k people dead it was only 25k?
@J M Churchill admitted Dresden was a war crime at the time.
Churchill was a complete naïf in is relation with Stalin, he wrote he was impressed each time they meet.
"churchill couldnt control his emotions"
enough said. winston was a fool that destroyed his country. britain had no reason to be involved in this war, it was between germany and russia
I think you should read up on the Second World War.
You're painfully ignorant.
Forming an unworkable pact with fascist Poland was a huge mistake.
A German-dominated Europe would not have been good for Britain. Use you're brain kiddo!
The general gentle deal visually educate because check rhetorically inform since a obeisant blouse. empty, awake cauliflower
Churchill lost the British Empire amidst the embers of Dresden.
Some one should write a book called Churchill the mass murderer .
FDR broke in. 'Yes. Those Empire trade agreements are a case in point. It's because of them that the people of India and Africa, of all the colonial Near East and Far East, are still as backward as they are.'
[...]
‘You mentioned India,’ he [Churchill] growled.
‘Yes. I can’t believe that we can fight a war against fascist slavery, and at the same time not work to free people all over the world from a backward colonial policy.’
As a commonwealth, she [India] would be entitled to a modern form of government, an adequate health and educational standard. But how can she have these things, when Britain is taking all the wealth of her national resources away from her, every year? Every year the Indian people have one thing to look forward to, like death and taxes. Sure as shooting, they have a famine. The season of the famine, they call it.'
There’s no doubt that Roosevelt lobbied hard for the freedom of colonised peoples of the world, including India, against Churchill’s fierce opposition. His determination is best seen in this exchange with Churchill, recounted As He Saw It:
Roosevelt: 'You see,' said FDR slowly, 'it is along in here somewhere that there is likely to be some disagreement between you, Winston, and me.’
'I am firmly of the belief that if we are to arrive at a stable peace it must involve the development of backward countries. Backward peoples. How can this be done? It can't be done, obviously, by eighteenth-century methods. Now-”
Churchill: 'Who's talking eighteenth-century methods?'
'Whichever of your ministers recommends a policy which takes wealth in raw materials out of a colonial country, but which returns nothing to the people of that country in consideration. Twentieth-century methods involve bringing industry to these colonies. Twentieth-century methods include increasing the wealth of a people by increasing their standard of living, by educating them, by bringing them sanitation - by making sure that they get a return for the raw wealth of their community.'
I like the way he talks. Well both of them actually.
"It would have been disastrous for Britain in the long run"
and instead Churchill chose disaster in the short run.
From a purely pro-British perspective, submission to America in 1941 was arguably worse than gradually becoming a European Partner in the late 40s or 50s.
Sry to object - Prof. Roberts understanding of Germany's role initiating WW1 is no longer the dominant narrative in the history departments. Imperial Germany was not by far the only aggressive country and all the others protagonists were not remaining passive until a saber rattling Kaiser attacked them. France, in denying Germany a place at the table in both Moroccan crisis's, while coming to terms with every other power, Russia, GB, Italy, Spain, successfully ostracized Germany. Surely, Germany hold former French territories - that had been lost after France declared war in 1870 and lost the engagement. This, and the endangerment of its pretended role of the 'Grand Nation', dominating central Europe, by an upcoming industrial powerhouse - makes a strong motive for seeking revenge. Russia with its enormous military, together with an overdue aristocratic system, sought likewise for a reestablishment of its imperial dominance over east central Europe, Turkey and Persia. The Russian empire was actively searching internal stabilization by external war especially after its defeat against Japan, trying to enlarge its empire westwards and south (Turkey and the Dardanelles) - both countries follow a longterm established motive for engaging in war. Means and motive add together - Russia's aggressive stance, backed up by a revenge seeking France, both used the sad but minor Sarajevo incident for a wargame of reestablishing their lost hegemony over central Europe; so Russia came to stiffening a Serbian government, that denied Austria-Hungary any active role in the investigation of the Sarajevo murders. France and Russia were the prime actors to convert a diplomatic crisis, maybe a small border war, successfully into the European conflagration, and sadly the Brits and Americans went along. Without the British (and American) hawkishness to engage in war against an upcoming power, the war between Germany and its allies vs. France and Russia would have come to terms by exhaustion in 1917 - maybe earlier - with a negotiated peace, what would have given the Kerensky government in Russia a realistic chance, and could have prevented the ascent of the monsters Lenin/ Stalin and Hitler - and here lies an overlooked liability of the Great Britain as well as the USA for the massive bloodshed of WW1 and its aftermath - including Winston Churchill's overlooked responsibility - for a devastated century … [See - Niall Ferguson - Pity of War/ Christopher Clark - Sleepwalkers/ Sean McMeekin - The Russian Origins of the First World War,]
The empire that has given so much to the people of india, which was the largest economy when the British appeared and among the poorest when they were evicted. Also was the so much given commensurate with the 46 trillion! taken?
Peterson you have a moral responsibility to seek an explanation from Andrew Roberts what he meant by Churchill greatness towards India. We were robbed, massacred, enslaved and treated as worms by British Empire. The wound is still fresh and it will never heal. It’s a Pox in world’s history. Nazi would have been inspired by British Empire to massacre non violent people. I agree missionaries indeed heal a few wounds.
Absolutely!
this massacre, that massacre blah blah. what you're forgetting is if NOT for the BRITISH you would not be able to bark in English and access UA-cam in India. Modern India is a brainchild of Britain. That country , despite all it's 1000s of diversity, still exists as one because of the strong system that British laid . Even Gandhi, Nehru and other Indian leaders acknowledge this.
from a primary school to the Parliament everything in modern India is British given. can you deny that? in fact, you can comment in English and access youtube in India because of the British.