Talk:Winston Churchill/Archive 13

Destroyed the UK
Shouldn't the article mention that Churchill destroyed the UK as a world power, and destroyed the British Empire? It would have been far better if Britain had left the war after the Fall of France, or when Operation Barbarossa started. (LanceSorrell (talk) 16:39, 15 October 2014 (UTC))


 * This an encyclopedia not a place for speculation on what ifs, do you have a reliable sources that directly connects Churchill single handed destroying the UK or even the Empire. MilborneOne (talk) 18:32, 15 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Remaining in a war in Europe after June 1940 ensured Japan had a free hand against Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaya and Burma, thus ensuring the collapse of the British Empire. Churchill was directly responsible for the Fall of Singapore because he diverted tanks and other essential supplies to the Soviet Union. By signing the Atlantic Charter Churchill turned the UK into an American satellite, as the Suez Crisis proved. Backing Stalin over Hitler proved fatal for Britain's long-term interests. (LanceSorrell (talk) 19:07, 15 October 2014 (UTC))


 * If there were reliable independent sources that stated a historical consensus agreeing with your opinion about Churchill, I imagine you would be able to cite them. No Neonazi websites, though, please. NawlinWiki (talk) 19:39, 15 October 2014 (UTC)


 * The loss of prestige resulting from the Fall of Singapore led inevitably to Indian independence soon after the war. This would not have happened if Britain had not been tied up in a war in Europe and had been able to defend the Crown Colonies. Signing away the Empire in the Atlantic Charter and keeping Britain in a war with Germany after the invasion of the USSR led to the Suez Crisis which showed the UK was no longer a world power or an independent country. (LanceSorrell (talk) 19:42, 15 October 2014 (UTC))


 * Again (and for the last time), that is your argument. It doesn't matter how persuasive you (or I) think *you* are.  What matters is if you can cite reliable sources showing consensus, as I stated above.  If you can't, then stop.  NawlinWiki (talk) 19:46, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

It doesn't need to be a "consensus" to rate a mention, it just has to be "an important minority view". John Charmley (The End of Glory 1993 and Churchill's Grand Alliance 1995) would probably be the leading reputable historian who has argued along those lines (and the cost of war accelerated the huge growth of state power of the 1940s). His work was met with an hysterical reaction from predictable quarters but, as some of the more perceptive reviewers pointed out at the time, is thought-provoking and more worthy of reading than a lot of the guff written about Churchill. (Charmley obviously draws a bit on the views of Tories like Rab Butler and Chips Channon who quietly thought Churchill was ghastly but had to keep quiet from 1940 onwards.) However, Charmley's arguments are nuanced and would need to be quoted carefully. Best to avoid David Irving, though.Paulturtle (talk) 17:59, 25 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Britain would have been better off if Nazi Germany had won WWII? Being occupied by Germany, which would have sooner or later followed a capitulation in 1940/41 - no matter what "assurances" Hitler might have given as a sop, would have been preferable to the loss of India? (leaving aside the point of how long a Nazi-occupied Britain could have "retained" India, even as a client of Germany). Mosley type fascism to replace British democracy, which Hitler would in any case have been in a position to insist on, would have helped Britain maintain Empire/Commonwealth ties? These views are plain lunacy, and could only come from right-wing writers with a bee in their bonnet about how right (i.e. correct) that nice man Hitler was, and how silly Churchill was to oppose him. Sorry, but not here. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 00:18, 27 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Criticism of Churchill on the grounds that he was too far to the left are ludicrous - he was a very conservative politician indeed (just read the article!) The bizarre fantasies of today's looney right have no place in an encyclopedia biography. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 00:29, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

On the contrary, censorship of the reasoned opinions of reputable historians has no place in an encyclopaedia, especially when accompanied by misrepresentation, poor argument and attempts to attribute guilt by association ("only a Nazi sympathizer could come out with such views", or words to that effect, is a particularly discreditable slur). I doubt it is likely that Charmley thinks Hitler a "nice man", nor would he have found a reputable publisher if he made any such claim in print. Did Churchill think Stalin "a nice man" because he had no choice but to deal with him? No, of course not. Were Nixon and Reagan communists because they dealt with China and the USSR? No, of course not.

Nobody is suggesting that Britain should have "capitulated" in 1940-1, or allowed Oswald Mosley (who, incidentally, always insisted, rightly or wrongly, that he was a British patriot and resented what he saw as the slur that he was pro-Hitler) into power. Britain still had a navy and Air Force more or less capable of holding their own, and what would have happened when Hitler and Stalin eventually came to blows is, like any historical counterfactual, hard to determine. Or alternatively, consider this thought experiment: suppose Hitler had really been hell-bent on invading England. Suppose he had scraped together every available fighter plane in September 1940. Suppose he had managed to achieve air superiority and got across the Channel. Suppose either that, overcoming serious logistical obstacles, Rommel and Guderian had managed to lead their panzer divisions across England, leaving some British and Canadian forces fighting on in the Scottish highlands, or else that the Germans had been repulsed at ghastly cost. If that had been the case, it would be taken for granted that Churchill had been a lunatic for insisting on fighting on in May-June 1940 (in the utterly deluded belief that US entry to the war was imminent), rather than gritting his teeth and seeking some kind of palatable armistice. It would be seen as a final catastrophic misjudgement in a career positively littered with them. And if some historian were to write a book pointing out that Hitler might not have invaded and that the Americans would eventually, in their own sweet time, have come in, then some Wikipedia editor would doubtless be lecturing us all that these "looney" views don't deserve bandwidth.

Criticism of Churchill on the grounds that he was too far to the left are ludicrous 

Quite apart from the fact that Churchill was a Liberal for the main part of his career, lots of Conservatives thought him too left wing, or at any rate too willing to appease the lurch to the left of British political opinion in the 1940s. Rightly or wrongly. Maybe he went along with the shift in opinion because the Conservatives would not have been elected in 1951. Or maybe he was too old to care and just wanted Walter Monckton to keep the unions sweet whilst he devoted his efforts to the vain pursuit of a final Big Three Summit (a pursuit which President Ike regarded with exasperation). Many of Churchill's private views seem "right wing" by today's standards, but that isn't really the point.

As I said, Charmley's arguments are quite nuanced, and from memory (I haven't read either of his books since 2003, but remember thinking then that they held up very well a decade after publication) stress more that Churchill accelerated British decline in various ways (e.g. appeasing the USA excessively), took credit for a lot of things that didn't come off quite the way he had intended (e.g. US entry into the war), and failed to achieve most of the goals which he really cherished (e.g. Britain remaining a major, non-socialist world power). That makes Churchill little different from a lot of other major historical figures, and makes Charmley's books a stimulating read. As he points out in one of his introductions, the correct position of the historian is not "on his knees, worshipping the Churchills of this world" and subjecting his career to critical analysis makes him "a great deal more interesting than the plaster saint of myth".Paulturtle (talk) 21:46, 27 October 2014 (UTC)


 * This is NOT a forum - and on those grounds my remarks (no less than yours, anyway) were probably inappropriate. The point is that Hitler's big speciality (apart from persecuting Jews, and he hadn't really got into his stride on that one in 1940) was making solemn treaties that quite literally did not mean anything - he'd just done it four or five times, and was about to do it again. Any "settlement" with him was effectively a surrender. This alone makes nonsense of Charmley's arguments. In any case wild improbable speculation about what might have happened if Churchill had surrendered to Hitler in 1940 and Britain had been allowed to keep its Navy (he said he would, but see above!) has no conceivable place in an encyclopedia biography. It might be worth a mention elsewhere, like an article specifically about what might have happened IF. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 00:09, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

I did not come here looking for a forum. I came here to point out that Churchill's career, and in particular the decision to fight on in May-June 1940, has been subjected to at least some critical analysis, and that this view should not be ignored or misrepresented, and certainly not smeared as neo-Nazism. You are quite right that Hitler had a habit of ignoring treaties which he had just signed, the march into Prague in March 1939 being a particularly egregious example, but then up until 1939 Britain had shown no willingness to fight. Whether he would have attacked a Britain which was quite clear that she would continue to defend herself is harder to say. It is certainly not correct to assert that any kind of settlement with Hitler in the summer of 1940 would have been tantamount to "surrender", nor did the Lord Halifaxes of this world believe any such thing. The Treaty of Ryswick was not a "surrender" to Louis XIV, nor was the Treaty of Amiens a "surrender" to Napoleon - they were armed truces, followed by a number of years of cold war until active hostilities resumed, and a settlement in the summer of 1940 would doubtless have been much the same. If historians engage in critical analysis (e.g. of the lack of realism of Churchill's rearmament plans in the 1930s, or of his calls for a "Grand Alliance" in the late 1930s, to take but two examples where serious criticism has been made) or "what if"s, then that is as worthy of inclusion as any other aspect of the subject matter.Paulturtle (talk) 00:45, 28 October 2014 (UTC)


 * O.K. let's treat this as a forum for a moment - just to make the point! Here's an opposing point of view, and one which is infinitely more likely than yours (or Charmley's). I must stress that this doesn't belong in the article either!


 * Britain was already technically defeated after Dunkirk - continuing the fight was NOT frightfully rational. Churchill probably realised however that in the case of war with Hitler the choice was never anything but surrender and let Hitler occupy Britain "peacefully", or make him fight for it. And the first alternative is PRECISELY what his opponents on the right wanted - among other things because they admired Hitler and couldn't wait for him to take over Britain, solve all their little problems with the unions and all those other nasty leftists, and above all fix socialism/Soviet communism (the same thing in their view) for good. Along with Halifax et al. Churchill almost certainly saw the third alternative as an outside chance at best - that is that Britain might just hold Hitler off until either the U.S. (or, far from ideal, but any port in a storm, the U.S.S.R.) entered the war so that Britain (or the Empire) was no longer alone.


 * Churchill was never exactly a towering intellect, but having been manoevred into the Prime Ministership by Halifax (who very sensibly preferred to be in a position to be Hitler's quisling once Britain was formally "out of the war" rather than on the "death list"), he realised that since he (Churchill) was on the death list anyway for being rude about Hitler before the war, he personally had nothing to lose by continuing the fight, and neither, realistically, did the British people, who were also (f*****) either way. The outside chance was after all the best bet. He went with it, and although things didn't turn out quite as he expected (America delayed entering the war, and Hitler attacked Stalin rather than the other way round)


 * The point is, and I am frustrated that you haven't grasped this yet, is that a Wikipedia article talk page isn't a forum - none of this (on either side) would add one iota to an article in which real events (much less imagined possible ones) essentially form a mere background to a remarkable life. For a strongly left leaning person like me Churchill was in fact a dreadful man and if I was doing a Charmley and writing "a cracking good read" based on my own POV I'd have a wonderful time pointing out all the mistakes he made at various times, and all the many flaws and faults in his character. Even for his time he really was a colossal racist, for instance. On the other hand he saved Western Civilisation (with a bit of help) - and one has to be a bit grateful for that.


 * But an encyclopedia article, especially for an on-line encyclopedia like ours, really has to be based on clear and indispensible principles that include no partisanship (WP:NPOV) and building up an account of each topic we tackle based on the general consensus of recognised authorities rather than partisan ideas and personal opinions, however boring the first may appear, or how persuasive and interesting the latter (WP:OR). Consensus changes, but not here. There are other places for that sort of thing. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 22:28, 28 October 2014 (UTC)


 * You are overlooking the fact that Hitler never had any intention of invading the British Isles, and did not want war in the West. Britain should not have declared war on Germany in 1939, by doing so it destroyed itself economically and militarily and lost all of its empire. The UK and France should have remained neutral and allowed the Axis Powers a free hand against the Soviet Union. Nobody did more to destroy Britain's world status than Churchill, and this view is widely held today. (DanielPeggoty (talk) 21:06, 19 November 2014 (UTC))


 * Hello Daniel, new account I see. This talkpage is the only place I think I've ever seen that view expressed. DuncanHill (talk) 21:11, 19 November 2014 (UTC)


 * The vast majority of people I meet think Britain should not have started World War II. (DanielPeggoty (talk) 21:48, 19 November 2014 (UTC))


 * I've never met anyone who thinks Britain started it. Anyway, do you have any reliable sources to support your contentions? DuncanHill (talk) 22:36, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Britain broke its pact with Poland and chose to only declare war on Germany. It only became a world war because the British Empire was inevitably brought in. (2.103.233.182 (talk) 12:04, 20 November 2014 (UTC))


 * As is well known to anyone who has bothered to check, the pact only bound Britain to declare war on Germany, not on any other country, in the event of an attack on Poland. Anyway, do you have any reliable sources to support your contentions? DuncanHill (talk) 12:24, 20 November 2014 (UTC)


 * No it didn't. The pact only referred to an invasion. The British government pretended there had been a secret clause after the Soviet invasion. Anyway there are millions of sources to prove that the UK destroyed itself by starting World War II, became an American satellite (see the Suez Crisis), and helped half of Europe be overrun for the next fifty years. Churchill was by far the worst Prime Minister we ever had, in fact he must have been an American plant sent to destroy the British Empire. (2.103.233.182 (talk) 13:28, 20 November 2014 (UTC))

My point, repeatedly and courteously made earlier in this discussion (only to met with torrents of ill-informed rhetoric) is that much of the detail of Churchill’s tenure of high office has been subjected to entirely justified academic criticism, much of which (since it is based on research into contemporary records) rather more accurately represents what contemporaries thought of Churchill than the way he has come to be sanctified in popular mythology, and that such views deserve to be fairly and accurately covered, not ignorantly shouted down as “neo Nazism” or whatever. When presented with a torrent of nonsense it’s always difficult to know whether to reply carefully (in which case one will, in my experience, be accused of being “uncivil” for telling somebody he is wrong), or to walk away and leave the impression that there is more than minimal merit in the other person’s rantings. To take some examples from SoundofMusicals most recent outpouring:

1. It is not “infinitely likely” that Britain was ever going to be invaded by Hitler, or that making some kind of armed truce with him was “tantamount to surrender” or that Hitler was hell-bent on “occupying Britain”. Such a view may be peddled in rubbishy books, and may be almost universally believed in popular mythology, but that doesn’t make it true, and nor will you find such nonsense in reputable works of scholarship. For example, Ian Kershaw, Hitler’s most recent heavyweight biographer (2 vols, late 1990s), observes that the plans for Operation Sealion were half-hearted and were motivated as much as anything by Britain’s irritating refusal to accept the terms which Hitler would have been happy to offer. (For as long as I can remember, there has been dispute amongst serious historians between those who attempt to discern, by close textual analysis of “Mein Kampf” and elsewhere, that Hitler had a Masterplan to achieve World Domination in the way that Allied wartime propaganda and Hollywood would have us believe, and those who argue that his focus was on the east and that his main quarrel with the western powers was that they got in his way. Most of Hitler’s authoritative biographers – e.g. Alan Bullock (1991), Joachim Fest - are very much in the latter school.) Andrew Roberts, in one of his recent books about WW2, makes no mention of invasion, but hedges his bets by writing that a period of armed truce would have meant huge defence expenditure for Britain … well, yes, but no more so than fighting a war, and there would have been fewer unnecessary deaths.

2. Halifax did not “manoeuvre Churchill into the premiership” because he wanted to be Hitler’s “quisling”. He declined the premiership which everyone wanted him to have (even Labour, whatever they later pretended) because he would have been a figurehead PM with Churchill running the war, rather like Lloyd George had wanted Asquith to be in Dec 1916 (and Asquith quit because he didn’t want that). This was early in May 1940, a week or two before it became clear that France was about to go down to catastrophic defeat. The arguments about “making peace” were a few weeks later, when Halifax wanted to approach the Italians for armistice terms to get the BEF home because he thought better terms could be obtained by using the BEF as a bargaining chip before it was (as seemed inevitable) destroyed (Churchill at this time, and later in 1940, was deluding himself that US entry to the war was imminent). Churchill asserted that peace would mean handing over the Royal Navy, but that doesn’t make it true, nor was Hitler demanding any such thing, and nor to my knowledge was Halifax or any other responsible figure suggesting doing so.

3. Other than in bad films and bad Sunday night TV dramas, it is not the case that British upper class society was dominated by people who “admired Hitler” (although, in fairness, a lot of people said nice things about the way he got Germany back on her feet after WW1 – including Churchill himself, as late as 1938) and “couldn't wait for (Hitler) to take over Britain, solve all their little problems with the unions and all those other nasty leftists” There were some, and there were plenty who were sympathetic to Soviet Communism, but there were a much greater number, in Britain the same as the USA, who did not want their country mixed up in – as they saw it – unnecessary foreign quarrels. Trade Unions, incidentally, were not much of an issue in the 1930s as their wings had been severely clipped by the 1927 Trades Disputes Act. They became an issue again during the War and in the early 1950s a lot of Conservatives were deeply disappointed at Churchill’s refusal to reenact the 1927 Act which Labour had repealed (that is why I mentioned unions above, apropos of the fact that it is an oversimplification to see Churchill as “very right-wing” – a good discussion of Churchill, Monckton and 1951-5 Industrial Relations can be found in Andrew Roberts “Eminent Churchillians” 1994 but recently reprinted).

4. Pace the comments above, there isn’t much evidence that Churchill foresaw that Hitler and Stalin would fall out with one another until a few weeks before it happened. He sent a letter to Stalin in June 1940 offering friendship and a telegram in April 1941 warning of Ultra intelligence of redeployment of German panzer divisions from Romania to southern Poland. That’s it as far as I’m aware, and both were ignored. Like most “experts”, he expected the USSR to be defeated by Hitler (after all, Russia had crumbled in 1914-17) so one should be careful not to attribute him too much prescience; he certainly wasn’t “hanging in there” because he foresaw the epic struggle of the Eastern Front, indeed given the limited coverage which he gave it in his memoirs it’s not clear he ever did realise how epic it was.

Part of the problem with Churchill is that there is a considerable disconnect between the measured way in which he is written about by historians and what the public actually think about him. Any modern biography of Palmerston will mention – in a brief paragraph or two - how he was regarded by the public as a larger-than-life figure, after about 1850 at any rate. Almost any modern biography of Pitt the Elder will discuss how, behind the magnificent oratory, the domineering personality and the carefully-cultivated “Great Man” image, there wasn’t really a vast amount of substance there. In both cases, it gets a mention and then the historian moves on to analysing his policies the same as he would any other major public figure. Yet in Churchill’s case that process of cutting down to size has barely begun, so proper historians tend to be quite careful about what they write, particularly over the events of May 1940. Only last Christmas I met an historian for lunch who is writing a book about Churchill’s postwar Zurich Speech, and who informed me that Charmley’s works were “seminal” and that Churchill’s career and reputation had been saved by his extraordinary stroke of luck in December 1941: Hitler’s deranged and inexplicable declaration of war on the USA. Is he going to put that in his book? Probably not.

Now, as the article gradually improves and sharpens up, there will be more scholarship and less hero worship. This will need to include:


 * A proper analysis of Churchill’s calls for rearmament in the 1930s. I don’t need an historian to tell me that if anyone had actually “listened to Churchill” in the early to mid 1930s Britain would have been stuck with a fleet of obsolete biplane bombers – I was told as much by my school history teacher, a Major from the Normandy campaign, many decades ago. That said, Robert Rhodes James quotes an hilarious letter in which Churchill complains about the waste of money on these new Hurricane fighters “only equipped to fire forward” – he actually imagined that air warfare would be decided by lines of turreted aircraft firing at one another like eighteenth century battleships. He also thought the tank obsolete, the submarine pretty much the same, and aircraft unlikely to be effective against battleships or ground troops. Not quite the prophet people imagine.


 * A proper analysis of Churchill’s diplomatic proposals in the mid to late 1930s. To be fair, some historians (e.g. R.A.C. Parker) do believe that there was a bit of mileage in Churchill’s calls for a “Grand Alliance” but to be honest most don’t.


 * A proper analysis of his wartime foreign policy and domestic policy (written about by historians like Kersaudy, Thorne, Angus Calder, Toye and many others). Concerns about his - arguably – excessively cringing attitude to the USA were, for example, widely held at the time, by Beaverbrook and Anthony Eden to name but two of his senior colleagues.

Sadly I’m not volunteering at the moment, but I dare say we’ll get there eventually.Paulturtle (talk) 02:36, 4 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Hitler had no choice other than to declare war on the United States in December 1941. The US had sided with the UK from the very beginning, and the Axis Powers could and probably should have declared war when the US government violated its official neutral position with the Destroyers for Bases Agreement and Lend-Lease. (GeorgeJefferys (talk) 15:36, 5 February 2015 (UTC))

Hitler was cross about the Destroyers for Bases Agreement and Lend Lease, not to mention the de facto involvement of US warships in the Battle of the Atlantic, but he certainly had a choice as to whether or not to declare war on the USA. During 1941 there had been moves towards recasting the Tripartite Pact so that the other members would be automatically at war with the USA if any one of them was, but this was largely motivated by German concerns in 1941 that Japan might patch up her differences with the USA, leaving her free to send more aid to Britain and the USSR, and nothing had been signed by December 1941, leaving Hitler – as Ribbentrop pointed out to him – under no obligation to come to Japan’s aid after Pearl Harbor. He declared war, as far as we can see, out of frustration that his armies had been halted in front of Moscow and out of a vague desire to “keep the initiative” – it enabled the U-Boats to take the gloves off against US shipping (the “Happy Time”) and he still hoped to defeat the USSR in 1942. FDR – in so far as one can tell, as he played his cards very close to his chest – appears to been doing everything he could to court war with Germany, but US opinion had not been roused anywhere near to a declaration of war. Although the Anglo-American top brass had already agreed in principle to concentrate their efforts against Germany, it is perfectly possible that in the fit of anger after Pearl Harbor, Congress might have demanded a reappraisal and objected to so much US commitment to the European War - Hitler's declaration of war on the USA was therefore a blunder of epic proportions. Hitler’s biographers – Bullock, Fest, Kershaw etc - all discuss this, but none of them telling the whole story.Paulturtle (talk) 23:41, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

"Making peace with the Germans in the Spring of 1917?"
I have excised the following (from the "Artist, historian, and writer" section of all places)

''Churchill observed in 1936:"America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World War. If you hadn’t entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, no breakdown in Italy followed by Fascism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism in Germany." ''

This is not impossible by any means, and may need to be reinstated if we can find confirmation that the statement was made. (along with important details like where and exactly when, and to whom!) On the other hand there are numerous reasons for considering it to be highly unlikely.


 * Could (would) the Allies and Germany really have made peace in Spring 1917? It could only have been a peace largely on Germany's terms - no chance of France regaining Alsace or Lorraine, Germany would have kept her fleet, Italy have been denied her territorial demands, Britain would have had to return German colonies already seized in Africa and the Pacific - and one could go on! More to the point would Churchill have considered this very likely, and would he, writing nineteen years later, at a time when he was vigorously promoting strongly anti-Hitler (if not actually anti-German) policies, have expressed this sentiment in quite those words. And why, assumng he was on the record as saying things of this kind in 1936, did his words not come back to bite him four years later when he was desparate for the U.S. to enter the Second World War? It just doesn't ring true at all - we really do need an unimpeachable source.


 * Would what would have amounted to a German victory in 1917 have really resulted in a more peaceful world than the Allied victory of 1918? Might Britain and/or France (or both) have gone fascist instead of (or as well as) Germany and Italy? Would this not have been clear to Churchill in 1936?


 * The author of the article from which the quote is cited (Doug Bandow) is NOT a professional historian - and it shows in his writing, which while it shows wide reading and a good general (if superficial) grasp of history includes a good deal of journalistic hyperbole and simplisticity. He lists himself (among other things) as a "former advisor to President Reagan". I would not class "Forbes" as a very reliable source either. Well a source of interesting and stimulating comment on current affairs - but not necessarily for historical articles in an encyclopedia.

Finally, the quote is NOT referenced by Bandow - we have no idea where he got it and can't check its veracity. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 07:42, 31 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Wikiquote has examined this. The editor of New York Enquirer says Churchill said it in an interview with him. Churchill denies that he said it. ( Hohum  @ ) 12:05, 31 August 2014 (UTC)


 * This looks conclusive to me - utter BS and I did the right thing cutting it out. I can well believe an American isolationist saying this in 1936-42 but it is simply NOT Churchill. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 14:47, 31 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Churchill did actually make that remark in private. Most people would agree that it would have been far better for the entire world if the Central Powers had won World War I. Then there would have been no Treaty of Versailles, no World War II, no Soviet Russia, no Holocaust etc. (92.7.9.44 (talk) 17:14, 1 September 2014 (UTC))
 * I don't think I've ever met anyone who would agree that it would have been better if the Central Powers had won. DuncanHill (talk) 21:53, 8 September 2014 (UTC)


 * The evidence is that he did no such thing, and that the alleged "interview" in a strongly partisan (isolationist, if not pro-nazi) publication was a journalistic fabrication. (see the link in wikiquotes referred to above) Churchill himself certainly denied making the remarks, which are totally out of character, as well as being arrant nonsense. We can't include it here, in any case. -Soundofmusicals (talk) 22:15, 1 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Churchill said many times that the United States should never have entered World War I, as there would have been no World War II if Britain and France had been forced to negotiate with the victorious Central Powers after the collapse of Russia in 1917. (2.103.233.70 (talk) 21:27, 8 September 2014 (UTC))


 * Have never seen anything along these lines attributed to Churchill. It would be good if our anonymous colleagues could come up with reliable sources for their assertions. DuncanHill (talk) 21:33, 8 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Colville recorded these sentiments several times. Of course the UK should never have joined World War I in the first place. (2.103.233.70 (talk) 21:54, 8 September 2014 (UTC))


 * Where? When? Give us citations. I'll ignore the second part of your comment. Doesn't belong here. DuncanHill (talk) 21:59, 8 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Colville's diaries. If the UK had remained neutral in 1914 there would have been no war in 1939, which was Churchill's point. (2.103.233.70 (talk) 22:29, 8 September 2014 (UTC))


 * Dates? Editions and page numbers? Exact quotations with context? DuncanHill (talk) 22:31, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

The idea that the First World War (or its aftermath) actually "caused" the Second is an interesting one (although far from an "of course") but it is in any case totally irrelevant to this article. The point is that we have perfectly good references that Churchill very specifically denied saying anything of the kind, at any time - and the question of his (presumably in retrospect) doubting the wisdom of Britain entering the First World War in 1914 is in any case very different from a suggestion that the United States should not have entered in 1917. It would have been totally out of character for him to have made either remark. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 23:11, 10 September 2014 (UTC)


 * The Treaty of Versailles caused World War II. (2.103.233.70 (talk) 20:42, 11 September 2014 (UTC))


 * The great depression had a lot to do with it too. Plus there was that nasty fellow, what was his name? Point is, Churchill never claimed it was down to the Yanks entering WWI!! --Soundofmusicals (talk) 21:37, 11 September 2014 (UTC)


 * If the Allies had made peace with Germany then it most likely would have been in Spring or Summer 1917 - the U-Boat menace was at its height then, France was going through a period of political and military crisis after the failure of Nivelle's Offensive, which lasted until Clemenceau came to power at the end of the year. Germany would have had to be allowed to keep her conquests in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, perhaps in the west as well. Russia had toppled the Tsar by then but had not yet gone Bolshevik. The argument that US entry to the war prevented a compromise peace was much aired by right-wing writers in the inter-war period, e.g. J.F.C. Fuller in Decisive Battles of the Western World, one of the first grown up history books I ever read in my early teens. However, that does not mean that Churchill necessarily said any such thing.Paulturtle (talk) 23:40, 25 October 2014 (UTC)


 * We are starting to go in circles here - speculation about what would have happened in Germany had effectively "won" WWI in 1917, and even if this would have been a likely event if the Americans had not entered the war at just the right moment (remembering that American participation really didn't make much difference for a year or more) is perfectly legitimate, but in another place. There is no credible evidence that Churchill ever said anything of the kind, in fact he seems to have categorically denied saying it, and the man, for all his faults, was not one to change his mind lightly (or at all) or to fail to live up to the "courage of his convictions". Denying something he had said, or believed, was not his style. As has been said several times above the question here is not the rather doubtful "what if" of the comment, but the pretty much complete certain fact that it is misattributed to Churchill (in plain English, he never said it!) Hence we have no reason to mention it here at all. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 23:51, 26 October 2014 (UTC)


 * My comments, before you took it upon yourself to move them, were aimed specifically at the first of the three bullet points above, and were heavily indented to make that clear. If the Allies had given up, spring or summer 1917 would most likely have been the time. And as for your comment that "American participation really didn't make much difference for a year or more", that is true in purely military terms, but "hanging on until the Americans arrived" was one of the things which kept the French, and to some extent the British, going until then. They also played an important role in the U-Boat war, which the Allies were winning from summer 1917 onwards.Paulturtle (talk) 21:02, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

I don't know whether the quote is genuine or not, but peace in 1917 would not "have amounted to a German victory". Germany was clearly losing the war in 1917, mainly because of the naval blockade. The situation at the battlefront was largely irrelevant. (Even when the war ended in 1918, the front was on Allied territory in Belgium and France.) Sayitclearly (talk) 07:35, 15 February 2015 (UTC)


 * "Not necessarily" to all that (and the relative contributions of blockade and fighting at the front to Germany's eventual implosion have always been a matter of debate). The issue in 1917 was whether the Allies would outlast the Germans, and if they hadn't Germany would have been left in control of chunks of central and eastern Europe. Churchill was a politician and journalist, and said and wrote lots of different things at different times, but we don't (yet) have any evidence that he gave vent to this particular opinion.Paulturtle (talk) 00:06, 21 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Hear hear! --Soundofmusicals (talk) 04:07, 21 February 2015 (UTC)


 * OK, I’ve tracked this one down to a reputable book at last. He is supposed to have said it in August 1936. The story appeared on 22 October 1942. Churchill admitted the interview, but denied having said any such thing. William Griffin of the New York Inquirer tried to sue him for the then vast sum of $1m, but the lawsuit was dismissed. Irrespective of who was telling the truth, I dare say they had zero chance of winning in the political climate of 1942. See Langworth 2008, p571.


 * One should not be too quick to assume that Churchill didn’t say these words, or something similar to them – it seems unlikely that the newspaper would have threatened a lawsuit (or according to wikiquote made a sworn statement in front of Congress) if there was not at least some substance, real or perceived, to their position. Politicians say all kinds of things to friendly journalists off the record (“Chatham House Rules” so they can speak freely) or “on lobby terms” (which can be printed as “we are led to believe by sources close to the Minister that he privately thinks X”) which are not quite the same as their carefully worded public “position” on an issue – and indeed they are as prone to “venting” as any of the rest of us, perhaps more so in those days when journalists were a bit more deferential and inclined to ask “may I quote you on that, sir?” rather than just leaking the tape like they would nowadays. Churchill’s public position was always that the USA and UK were best buddies, not divided by so much as a cigarette paper, and that US entry into both World Wars was a Good Thing, with no nuances of opinion permitted.


 * In the “The World Crisis” Churchill writes at length about how France might well have made peace in the spring or summer of 1917 had the US not come in when they did. He is unequivocal that this is a Good Thing, and indeed berates Woodrow Wilson for not coming in and ending the war sooner in 1915 after the Lusitania sinking. All well and good, but although "The World Crisis" is a substantial work of history one can see how Churchill is pushing an agenda here. US public opinion was nowhere near as inflamed about the U-Boats in 1915 as it would be by Spring 1917, and Wilson never actually had much time for the Allies: he eventually “associated” with them rather than joining; indeed, I don’t think Churchill mentions another of the reasons why US entry in 1917 was vital – Wilson was furious about the British naval blockade and had turned off the financial taps late in 1916 in a bid to force the Allies to let him broker a compromise peace, and by summer 1917 the Allies would have had serious trouble rolling over their loans – see "The Deluge", Adam Tooze’s recent study of the financial history of WW1. Funnily enough, though, academic commentators like Robin Prior have pointed out that Churchill exaggerates the role which the Admiralty (under his management) played in defeating the First U-Boat War in 1915 and plays down the effect which Wilson’s protests after the Lusitania sinking had in causing the Germans to back off.


 * Churchill’s private view of the USA wasn’t always one of unqualified adoration: during the cruiser crisis around the time of the Geneva Naval Talks of 1927, his view was the same as the other leading members of the British Cabinet, namely that the Americans were behaving insufferably in the run-up to the 1928 elections and that if they continued to do so war would no longer be an entirely impossible contingency. An oft-forgotten nadir of Anglo-American relations, that one. As for the summer of 1936, when these comments were supposed to have been made, I’ve found no evidence that the USA was much on Churchill’s mind (it wouldn’t be until early 1938 that the USA would have the faintest involvement in European politics), but he was writing a series of articles about the Spanish Civil War, which had just broken out. On that topic Churchill was very far from the anti-Fascist crusader whom the uninformed might assume him to have been: publicly he strongly supported Eden’s policy of non-intervention (and exchanged warm letters with Eden on the topic), whilst privately he thought Largo Caballero “the Lenin of Spain” and favoured Franco as the lesser evil. He later changed his mind about Franco after a visit by his son-in-law Duncan Sandys, and by 1939 he deplored Franco’s victory, but by then Hitler was on the march and gobbling up adjacent sovereign states in a way he hadn’t been in 1936. Will add WSC's views on the Spanish Civil War to the article when I get a sec.


 * Churchill certainly did think that an unfortunate side-effect of WW1 had been the instability caused by the independence of Poland and the disintegration of Austria-Hungary into petty states – he wrote as much in his summer 1930 article advocating European Union (inspired by his recent trip round the USA in autumn 1929, where he met the isolationist press baron Randolph Hearst at his mansion San Simeon, and by the ideas floated by Aristide Briand – this was the article in which he wrote of Britain being “with Europe but not of her”). But of course he doesn’t mention the instability (which lingers to this day) caused by the disintegration of another Empire whose dismemberment had also been a major Allied War Aim, namely the Ottoman Empire. Hardly surprising, given his role in British land grab in the Middle East.


 * As might be inferred from my comments above, I suspect Churchill’s private opinion might have been a little more nuanced than he was willing to admit in 1942, and it’s actually perfectly possible that in the summer of 1936 he might have had an off-the-record whinge to a journalist about the “isms” sweeping the continent, but that can’t go in the article unless I come across an historian who writes along those lines.Paulturtle (talk) 21:55, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

"Leader of the opposition" inaccuracies
"Churchill also argued strongly for British independence from the European Coal and Steel Community, which he saw as a Franco-German project. He saw Britain's place as separate from the continent, much more in-line with the countries of the Commonwealth and the Empire, and with the United States, the so-called Anglosphere."

I strongly disagree with this statement, Churchill is considered one of the actual Founding Fathers of the European Union, and if you read these articles you'll see why:
 * http://eu-rope.ideasoneurope.eu/2013/11/10/winston-churchill-a-founder-of-the-european-union/
 * http://europa.eu/about-eu/eu-history/founding-fathers/pdf/winston_churchill_en.pdf

Because the article is semi-protected I can't add this there, but in any case I believe the statement currently is highly incorrect and biased. I request editing of this and the addition of the EU links to Churchill, and the 2 links above added as well. Thank you. 31.46.181.68 (talk) 01:35, 26 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you for posting those links - they are certainly food for thought. Neither source is a "reliable source" - the first is a personal blog, and while it is certainly more thoughtful and well written than most, it is certainly not unbiased in the Wikipedia sense of the word! The little European Commission leaflet makes no pretense of being a comprehensive and balanced account either, and has a (perfectly understandable) bias!


 * Having had a look at the passage (in our Winston Churchill article) that you object to - the whole subject of European Union (not a simple one) is dealt with in one sentence - reading Danzig brings home (if nothing else) that Churchill seems to have been ambivalent about European Union - his opinions seem to have changed with time (his late forties speeches give a different impression than later ones), as well as being ambivalent. Is this even the heading under which the subject should be raised? It was something that he remained interested in, from one side or the other, well into the fifties and the period of his second premiership? --Soundofmusicals (talk) 20:56, 26 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Churchill called for a United States of Europe. He was also consistent that Britain should sponsor it but not join it. Lachrie (talk) 16:54, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Lachrie is correct. European Federalists - including Danzig - tend to be a bit cheeky in quoting selectively and omitting to mention that Churchill thought Britain was too big to get involved in these petty Continental federal dreams. In that respect Churchill was little different from most other British leaders of the time. Most of the differences between his late 1940s rhetoric and his actions as PM in the early 1950s are more apparent than real - in the late 1940s he was in opposition, and able to give vent to windy rhetoric and score points off the Government of the day. Have expanded the section considerably though.Paulturtle (talk) 02:47, 22 March 2015 (UTC) The other thing which tends to be poorly understood is that Churchill was instrumental in setting up the Council of Europe, a wider pan-European body distinct from the Federal EEC (as it was then called) which grew out of the Coal and Steel Community. The European Convention of Human Rights (and the Court at Strasbourg which administers it) is, contrary to popular myth, nothing to do with the EU. Britain was "present at the creation" although the ECHR was not incorporated into English Law until 1998.Paulturtle (talk) 02:56, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Poodles
Surprised to see no mention of his beloved poodles, Rufus I and Rufus II:. This archive letter collection was recently featured by The Daily Mail and his love of animals in general was covered by The Express. It even inspired a picture book and the poodles have their own blog. Jeremy Paxman even claims that Churchill himself wished to be cremated and have his ashes sprinkled over the graves of his two dogs. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:27, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * sofixit?  Rcsprinter123    (shout)  @ 21:10, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Ah, thanks for that sensitive in-depth analysis of how this fits in with our view of Winston as national hero and archetypal Englishman. I never realised the picture was so complex. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:23, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I never knew! Just checked up on the article 7 years after helping get it to GA status. Since delisted of course. No doubt it was because of the lack of inclusion of his poodles! Who knew! LordHarris  23:12, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

The "35th Sikhs" incident
This appears, on the face of it and "assuming good faith" to be well referenced, and yet a "cn" tag was added right in the middle of the account. A citation at the end of a sentence, or the end of a paragraph, or the end of a short connected narrative should logically be taken to refer to the whole sentence, paragraph, or narrative concerned. Even if this doesn't form part of official policy, the opposite idea, that every sentence describing a single incident (or otherwise very closely connected or part of the same thought) needs to have a separate citation (particularly to the same source!) is an ugly and timewasting misapplication of the "citation needed" tag. If the description of the incident itself is at variance with what is in the sources, then the "cure" is obviously to change what is said - not to tag an errant sentence, but either eliminate it altogether or to rewrite it so that it agrees with the source rather than contradicting it. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 09:44, 8 April 2015 (UTC)


 * And with an explanation, please, so we know what's going on! --Soundofmusicals (talk) 09:51, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Ploegsteert: "Quiet sector" or "most active [sector]"?
The “Western Front” section states: “During his period of command, Ploegsteert was a “quiet sector,” and the battalion did not take part in any set battle.”

The “First World War and the Post-War Coalition" states: “While in command he personally made 36 forays into no man's land, and his section of the front at Ploegsteert became one of the most active.”

These two statements appear to be at odds with each other ("quiet sector" versus "most active"). If the source materials have differing opinions, the author should explain this to the reader. If the source materials agree with each other, then the narrative should be adjusted to reflect a consistent characterization of the activity at Ploegsteert. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.210.26.225 (talk) 16:12, 8 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Depends what you mean by "quiet" really, and I assume those sentences were written by different people at different times. In the relevant chapter of Vol III of Martin Gilbert, he mentions how the BEF was not engaged in any major offensive at that time (Loos had been the previous autumn, but now the BEF were gearing up for the Somme which kicked off on 1 July); however, he also implies that Plugstreet was a relatively dangerous part of the front, where British troops would come under fire as they moved up to the front line. At all times, well-run battalions were expected to conduct regular patrols to assert "control" over No Mans Land and even conduct raids into enemy trenches to spread fear and capture prisoners - otherwise things easily degenerated into a "live and let live" system of letting off a few shells at the same time every day. Churchill's shortcomings as a grand strategist are notorious, but by all accounts he was rather a good battalion commander. However, there is nothing in Gilbert's detailed account to suggest that Churchill's level of activity was any more than was expected of a high-calibre officer, or that if there was any increase in the level of activity that it was anything to do with Churchill.Paulturtle (talk) 04:02, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I am assuming that this means that C as a Lt.Colonel was personally leading patrols and raids. Or at the very least overseeing wirelaying parties and outpost visits. This appears an extremely high number for such a relatively senior officer and in such a short period of command. I will dig out Roy Jenkins' excellent single volume bio. I seem to recall it mentions something of his mental state at the time. A death wish? Irondome (talk) 22:07, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I think the figure of “36 forays” may be an exaggeration (or a misquote of the source, but as it’s quoting from a dead website it’s impossible to verify). I reckon he was in or near the front for about three months (give or take). No mention in Gilbert of him leading raids, just a quote from somebody called “Hakewill Smith” about how he “often” went into No Mans Land, (which may well include patrols) and often stood on the firestep, etc, displaying indifference to enemy fire. I don’t really see any evidence that he was actually courting a martyr’s death, just exerting hands-on leadership to the best of his abilities and leaving things in the hands of the Gods. He was lower on the ladder than he would have liked - originally he had been promised a brigade pending a division (!) by Asquith, and was incensed when Asquith backed off after Tory rumblings (Asquith was in severe trouble over conscription and other matters and was hardly going to stick his neck out for Churchill), just leaving him with a battalion. He was then passed over for a brigade command at least once. If there was any “death wish” it would have been very early in the year. There was press talk from Garvin of the Observer (which he discounted) early in the year about how he should be put in charge of the RFC. He returned to Parliament for a bit in March and made a fool of himself calling for Fisher’s return, and from that moment on he seems to have been set on a return to politics as soon as possible; he asked to be relieved of command after his March speech, but thought better of it and went back to the front for another month or so. He probably could have had a brigade by the end of April when he had served his time.Paulturtle (talk) 00:18, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I've dug out my Jenkins and that appears to be the sequence of events. C seems to have got the battalion up to scratch and was well regarded. The lure of parliament vied with the lure of battle and Westminster seems to have won out. After his return and the initial Fisher speech spoke constantly in the house, often making good points. A very confused period in C's career basically. The Deedes quote in mainspace about going to the front because of better booze prospects sounds like waspish crap. In any event his battalion was not Guards so that seems dubious as a source in terms of relevance, so I would question it's utility in mainspace. From his letters home he was getting 4 bottles of spirits every 10 days. To get back to the original point, I think we can say that he got a battalion into shape in a nominally "quiet" sector. Just some tweaking of wording. I see no major discrepancies. Irondome (talk) 00:39, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
 * He did spend some time, as a Major, with 2nd Battn Grenadier Guards in November (already in the article), having already been promised command of 56th Brigade by Sir John French just before the latter's enforced "resignation". It was done specifically to give him up-to-date front line experience. It's true that they drank tea & condensed milk at their HQ (near the front), but I don't find any account of him moving closer to the front so that he could quaff spirits. Whether Deedes misremembered the details of the story or somebody has misquoted it, I couldn't say.Paulturtle (talk) 05:33, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

"les absents sont toujours tort"
In section 5.3 European Unity : The right sentence in french should be "les absents ont toujours tort" and not "les absents sont toujours tort". The auxiliary used in this case is not the same, in french, "to have" is employed instead of "to be" in english : "you are wrong" -> "vous avez tort". Leo033 (talk) 13:00, 15 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Quite right, and it's right in Boris' original. An error on my part transcribing it.Paulturtle (talk) 18:04, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Churchill's "black dog"
I think that the treatment of this subject in the sections 'First term as prime minister' and 'Retirement and death' ought to better register the balance of biographical evidence and authorial opinion on the nature, incidence and severity of Churchill's psychological difficulties. I imply below that these sections should include a summary indication of difficulties at least as likely characterised by 'worry' and 'anxiety' as by 'depression' in some clinical sense of the word. Moreover, I shall allude to the case for replacing the words following the comma in a sentence found in the second of the two sections, namely, the sentence: "As his mental and physical faculties decayed, he began to lose the battle he had fought for so long against the 'black dog' of depression."

The submission I make here inevitably draws on my paper 'Churchill's Black Dog at the Home Office, 1910-1911: The Evidential Reliability of Psychiatric Inference', published in the July 2013 issue of History, and on my academic monograph published in November 2014 by Palgrave Macmillan, 'Churchill and the "Black Dog" of Depression: Reassessing the Biographical Evidence of Psychological Disorder'. My approach is perhaps not consonant with the previously published opinions of many Churchill scholars, although it is consistent with the judgements of Roy Jenkins, Geoffrey Best, Elizabeth Longford, Jock Colville, Anthony Montague Browne, Paul Reid, Wyn Beasley, and also of Churchill's official biographer Martin Gilbert -  I allude here to what Gilbert has to say in his book 'In Search of Churchill' in support of his understanding from the archives, and from interviews with Churchill's colleagues, that in much of what had been written about him since his death "... [Churchill's] depression seemed much exaggerated, and yet much repeated (and embellished)...".

The reference quoted above to Churchill's supposedly beginning "to lose the battle he had fought for so long against the 'black dog' of depression" unmistakably echoes the seminal interpretation of Lord Moran's black dog revelations made by Dr Anthony Storr several years after the publication of Moran's so called 'diaries'. In drawing so heavily on Moran for what he took to be the latter's first-hand clinical evidence of Churchill's lifelong struggle with "prolonged and recurrent depression" and its associated "despair", Storr produced a seemingly authoritative and persuasive diagnostic essay that, in the words of John Ramsden, "strongly influenced all later accounts." Storr was not aware that, as Moran's biographer Professor Richard Lovell has shown, Moran had no diary in the dictionary sense of the word of his years as Churchill's doctor; nor was Storr aware that Moran's book as published was a much rewritten account which mixed together some contemporaneous jottings of his with later material acquired from other sources. As I show in my academic monograph, the key black dog 'diary' entry for 14 August 1944 was an arbitrarily-dated pastiche in which the explicit reference to black dog -  the first of the few in the book (with an associated footnote definition of the term)  -  was taken, not from anything Churchill had said to Moran, but from much later claims made to Moran by Brendan Bracken (a non-clinician, of course) in 1958. As I also show in my academic monograph, Moran later on in his book abandons his suspicion that, by the end of the Second World War, Churchill was succumbing to "the inborn melancholia of the Churchill blood"; in his final chapter, Moran states that Churchill, before the start of the First World War, "had managed to extirpate bouts of depression from his system".

Despite the difficulties with Moran's book, the many illustrations it provides of a Churchill understandably plunged into temporary low moods by military defeats and other severely adverse developments constitute a compelling portrait of a great man reacting to, but not toppled by, worry and overstrain, a compelling portrait that is entirely consistent with the portraits of others who worked closely with Churchill, for example those to be found in: 'Action This Day' edited by Sir John Wheeler-Bennett; the Colville Diaries; Lord Ismay's memoir; and Averell Harriman's memoir, written in collaboration with Elie Abel. Moreover, it can be readily deduced from Moran's book that Churchill did not receive medication for depression - the amphetamine that Moran prescribed for special occasions, especially for big speeches from the autumn of 1953 onwards, was to combat the effects of Churchill's stroke of that year (see my academic monograph referred to above).

Churchill himself seems, in a long life, to have written about black dog on one occasion only: the reference, a backward-looking one, occurs in a private handwritten letter to Clementine Churchill dated July 1911 which reports the successful treatment of a relative's depression by a doctor in Germany. His ministerial circumstances at that date, the very limited treatments available for serious depression pre-1911, the fact of the relative's being "complete cured", and, not least, the evident deep interest Churchill took in the fact of the complete cure, are shown in my book to point to Churchill's pre-1911 black dog depression's having been a form of mild (i.e. non-psychotic) anxiety-depression, as that termed is defined by Professor Edward Shorter in 'How Everyone Became Depressed'.

Perhaps it will be agreed that enough has been said in the preceding paragraphs to raise a serious doubt about the reliability of the evidential foundations of the dominant, essentially Storrian, perception that Churchill's mental health was an open-and-shut case of clinical depression. Moran himself leaned strongly in the direction of his patient's being "by nature very apprehensive"; close associates of Churchill have disputed the idea that apprehension was a defining feature of Churchill's temperament, although they readily concede that he was noticeably worried and anxious about some matters, especially in the build up to important speeches in the House of Commons and elsewhere. And Churchill himself all but openly acknowledges in his book 'Painting as a Pastime' that he was prey to the "worry and mental overstrain [experienced] by persons who, over prolonged periods, have to bear exceptional responsibilities and discharge duties upon a very large scale". The fact that he found a remedy in painting and bricklaying is a strong indicator that the condition as he defined it did not amount to 'clinical depression', certainly not as that term was understood during the lifetimes of himself and Lord Moran.

Should the foregoing meet with a favourable response, I would be happy to submit brief, referenced revisions to the sections specified for further consideration.

Since posting the foregoing, I have made the edits envisaged, and look forward to any comments that might be forthcoming.Wattenborough (talk) 22:51, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Wattenborough (talk) 22:45, 28 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I was vaguely aware that Moran was accused of sensationalising some of his diary (I’d have to refresh my memory of the details), but the fact that it was written up after the event is not necessarily a reason to discount it altogether – this is true of lots of diaries and “eyewitness accounts”, which is why they need to be read with a sceptical eye and cross-checked against one another and against other evidence. World religions have been based on less, one might add if one were a mischievous person.


 * I remember reading Anthony Storr’s seminal essay “Churchill’s Black Dog” about 25 years ago. My recollection is that Churchill liked to talk melodramatically about his urge to commit suicide etc. when he was young, and did go through a period of black despair after the Dardanelles when his career appeared to be over, which presumably lasted until he came back from the Front and resumed active politics in mid-1916. Other than that I’m inclined to agree with you that a bit too much has been read into these things. What we know for certain is that Churchill was a pugnacious, domineering character who liked to keep busy and who had a penchant for attention-seeking grand gestures throughout his career – not that he was a clinical depressive.


 * My advice is that it’s probably best to reference other people’s work rather than your own. It might be best to pull this out into a separate section at some stage, along with an analysis of how little evidence there actually is that he suffered from anything resembling “clinical depression”. It’s the sort of thing which people may come looking for, along with discussion of his personal eccentricities, drinking habits etc.


 * Martin Gilbert (in Volume 8 of his day-by-day account of WSC’s life) does mention Churchill being rather depressed (or whatever word one chooses to use) in extreme old age, when his relations with his children and his elderly and overstrained wife were less than perfect, and he had lost his mobility and his ability to work or to enjoy his hobbies. But then that’s probably true of a lot of people at that stage of life. Will be doing some more work on his later life over the next few weeks when time allows.Paulturtle (talk) 23:51, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Anyone who knows anything about psychology who has read anything about Churchill would probably form the view that he displayed classic signs of narcissistic personality disorder; his depression when the world wasn't doing his bidding was the least of his problems, and his alcoholism probably not the worst. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.150.78.82 (talk) 21:30, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 April 2015
Winston Churchill led his Conservative Party to three elections - all after leading his nation through WWII - yet never won a majority of the popular vote.

122.108.171.140 (talk) 12:56, 26 April 2015 (UTC)  Graeme Orr Professor (University of Queensland, electoral law).
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format.  Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 14:32, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 28 May 2015
I would like to edit the page with the following text:

Winston Churchill & Racism

Churchill & Gandhi

London, Sept. 20 : Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill wanted to eliminate "bad man" Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of India’s freedom struggle. Second World War archives reveal a conversation that Churchill had with South African leader Field Marshal Jan Christian Smuts, which showed the former blaming the latter for Britain’s troubles in India. On one occasion, Churchill told Smuts: “You are responsible for all our troubles in India – you had Gandhi for years and did not do away with him.” According to The Telegraph, Smuts replied: “When I put him in prison – three times – all Gandhi did was to make me a pair of bedroom slippers.” When Mahatma Gandhi went on hunger strike during the war, Churchill told his Cabinet: “Gandhi should not be released on the account of a mere threat of fasting. We should be rid of a bad man and an enemy of the Empire if he died.” Churchill was informed by a ministerial colleague Grigg that Gandhi was getting glucose in his orange juice, and another cabinet minister said ''he had oil rubbed into him which was nutritious’, allowing Churchill to claim that: "it is apparently not a fast merely a change of diet."

•	The Guardian, Thursday 28 November 2002

"I will not pretend that, if I had to choose between communism and nazism, I would choose communism." Speaking in the House of Commons, autumn 1937

"I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilised tribes." Writing as president of the Air Council, 1919

"It is alarming and nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half naked up the steps of the viceregal palace, while he is still organising and conducting a campaign of civil disobedience, to parlay on equal terms with the representative of the Emperor-King."

Commenting on Gandhi's meeting with the Viceroy of India, 1931 (India is) "a godless land of snobs and bores."

In a letter to his mother, 1896 I do not admit... that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia... by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race... has come in and taken its place. Churchill to Palestine Royal Commission, 1937

(We must rally against) a poisoned Russia, an infected Russia of armed hordes not only smiting with bayonet and cannon, but accompanied and preceded by swarms of typhus-bearing vermin. Quoted in the Boston Review, April/May 2001

"The choice was clearly open: crush them with vain and unstinted force, or try to give them what they want. These were the only alternatives and most people were unprepared for either. Here indeed was the Irish spectre - horrid and inexorcisable.Writing in The World Crisis and the Aftermath, 1923-31

"The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate... I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed up before another year has passed." Churchill to Asquith, 1910

"One may dislike Hitler's system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as admirable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations." From his Great Contemporaries, 1937

"You are callous people who want to wreck Europe - you do not care about the future of Europe, you have only your own miserable interests in mind." Addressing the London Polish government at a British Embassy meeting, October 1944

"So far as Britain and Russia were concerned, how would it do for you to have 90% of Romania, for us to have 90% of the say in Greece, and go 50/50 about Yugoslavia?" Addressing Stalin in Moscow, October 1944 "This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States)... this worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire." Writing on 'Zionism versus Bolshevism' in the Illustrated Sunday Herald, February 1920

Research by Amy Iggulden

Themowgli1 (talk) 10:47, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. You seem to have suggested a very large textual addition, but it's not clear where you think it should go or how it could be integrated with the existing content Martinevans123 (talk) 10:57, 28 May 2015 (UTC)


 * No issue with adding specific quotes, but I don’t really see that this belongs together in a separate section. Much of it is in the article already, or at any rate touched on, e.g. his dislike of Gandhi (in which he probably spoke for grassroots British opinion, but not that of the more realistic political world) or that he was somewhat more sympathetic to fascism than the man in the street supposes. Some of it – his belief as a young man in the destiny of the Anglo-American “race”, or his belief in eugenics, is covered in many biographies, but such views were not uncommon in men of his generation. The comment about Ireland is just a brutal statement of what was going on in Ireland late in 1920, at the time full martial law was declared in Munster – to which Churchill in fact agreed very reluctantly after a great deal of lobbying by Henry Wilson.


 * The comment about India being full of “snobs and bores” dates from 1896 and almost certainly refers to the other British officers and expats whom he met at that time, although it is true that his views India never subsequently developed much.


 * The “percentages agreement” with Stalin had nothing to do with racism – it was realpolitik to keep the Soviets out of the Mediterranean, and given that the USA eventually took over Britain’s role as protector of Greece and Turkey (the Truman Doctrine) and after a few wobbles and massacres of the pro-British factions, Yugoslavia eventually finished up semi-detached from the Eastern Bloc, Churchill didn’t get it too badly wrong.Paulturtle (talk) 20:09, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Bombing Germany
Shouldn't the article mention that Churchill had already bombed German cities including Cologne from 15th May 1940, nearly four months before Hitler ordered the London Blitz on 7th September 1940? (HarryLogwood (talk) 19:34, 12 February 2015 (UTC))


 * Wasnt the 15/16 May 1940 attacks against industrial targets in the Ruhr? MilborneOne (talk) 15:59, 13 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Dortmund was one target. See Rotterdam Blitz. See also Bombing of Cologne in World War II. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:15, 13 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Cologne was bombed on 18th May 1940. The RAF had already bombed Wilhelmshaven on 3rd/4th September 1939. The article needs to mention the fact that the Blitz was in direct response to the bombing of Germany. (HarryLogwood (talk) 18:46, 13 February 2015 (UTC))


 * It might need to be mentioned, if it's a view held by a reputable historian and reported in a WP:RS. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:49, 13 February 2015 (UTC)


 * "The Daily Telegraph" says the official records show the first intentional area bombing of civilians was ordered by Churchill at Monchengladbach on 11th May 1940: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/11410633/Dresden-was-a-civilian-town-with-no-military-significance.-Why-did-we-burn-its-people.html (HarryLogwood (talk) 19:06, 13 February 2015 (UTC))


 * I don't doubt that is a fact. I'm sure Dominic Selwood is an excellent writer. The bit I was wondering about was "the fact" that the Blitz was in direct response to the bombing of Germany. And, more to the point, how relevant this is to the life of Churchill. It seems quite relevant to me, but I'm not a reputable WP:RS historian. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:13, 13 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Hitler ordered the Blitz in direct response to the bombing of German cities by the RAF. We paid a very heavy price for bombing Germany first in 1939. (HarryLogwood (talk) 19:17, 13 February 2015 (UTC))


 * That may well be true. But we need a reliable source. And for it to appear in this particular article a cogent argument, from an expert, that Churchill, and not just the Government, was "directly responsible". Martinevans123 (talk) 19:21, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The blitz was a direct attempt to terror bomb the British population into panic and insurrection, which backfired badly on the Germans in the coming years. The puny pinpricks that BC inflicted were just a propagandist excuse on the part of the Nazi leadership for mass area bombing. The september raids expressly targeted naval installations, as did the Luftwaffe with their attacks on the Firth of Forth. This cause and effect argument I find simplistic. Irondome (talk) 19:56, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
 * My word, we're awash with scholarly sources here (?). Martinevans123 (talk) 20:00, 13 February 2015 (UTC)


 * The German bombing of British cities was actually far smaller than the British bombing of German cities in 1940. (HarryLogwood (talk) 20:43, 13 February 2015 (UTC))
 * All of the above can be sourced perfectly well, but I can't be arsed frankly. I'm amazed that anyone responds to this stuff. A similar editor using very similar wording has just had his "contribution" hatted on the Bombing of Dresden in World War II talk article. WP:NOT FORUM Irondome (talk) 20:13, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The Blitz was reluctantly ordered by Hitler in retaliation for the bombing of German cities by the RAF. Germany was fighting a defensive war against an empire in 1914 and 1939. (HarryLogwood (talk) 20:12, 13 February 2015 (UTC))
 * See what I mean Martin? Chuckle. Irondome (talk) 20:20, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Poor old Adolf, eh? Martinevans123 (talk) 20:25, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Basically. Suggest hatting if it continues. Irondome (talk) 20:29, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
 * "See that homburg, that's your Mum, that is." Martinevans123 (talk) 20:37, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I loved that. I hope you are not referring to the Bombing of Homburg? Shame on you Irondome (talk) 20:44, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
 * It was Britain that was occupying a quarter of the world, holding onto India and Burma by force. The fact is that we broke our pact with Poland and then bombed Germany first - just as we had in 1914. The only good thing about World War II is that it completely destroyed the UK as a world power. (HarryLogwood (talk) 20:40, 13 February 2015 (UTC))
 * And do you still have the uniform, Harry? Martinevans123 (talk) 20:46, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

To be honest this is of only peripheral relevance to Churchill, but needs to be discussed better in the relevant articles - battle articles tend, in my experience, to be written by MilHist enthusiasts who are more comfortable with military details than with the political context. It is true that, contrary to myth, deliberate terror bombing of civilians was started by the Allies in May 1940 (the bombing of Warsaw and Rotterdam, although made much of by Allied propaganda, seem to have been aimed at military targets and in the latter case was more cockup than conspiracy), and was part and parcel with the Allied blockade in WW1, which the Germans and others regarded as a dreadful war crime (but they lost the war, so they didn't get to write the history). However, it's too simplistic to blame the Blitz just on retaliation: it was part of a three-pronged strategy (along with U-Boats and the half-hearted invasion plans) designed to bully Britain into suing for peace (and Hitler's blunder of diverting bombers from RAF airfields to London seems to have been made in the mistaken belief that the RAF was beaten, not because he was mad and angry). The final session of the Blitz in Spring 1941 (including the bombing of Liverpool) seems to have been a bluff designed to persuade the Soviets that Hitler was still intending to invade Britain, and it worked. Richard Overy (The Bombing War, recently out in paperback) discusses all this in detail.Paulturtle (talk) 03:14, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
 * That the Bombing of Warsaw in World War II was not terror bombing seems a remarkable claim. I am talking about the 1939 attacks. Indiscriminate artillery fire does not help this claim either. Deliberate terror bombing was started by the Axis forces, who graded their targets on racial lines. Pesky Slavs and Jews. Indeed they fought the entire war in that grotesque fashion. Does the well attested machine gunning and bombing of refugee columns by the Luftwaffe in both the Polish and Western campaigns not count as terror bombing? The idea that "terror bombing" was initiated by the Allies is pretty weak stuff. Irondome (talk) 01:11, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

"Terror bombing" was poor choice of words on my part. The important point is not that civilians were bombed or were terrified, but rather that bombing took place divorced from ground operations and with a major or even sole aim of killing civilians for the sake of killing civilians, the very thing that everybody had signed pious agreements not to do. The attacks on Warsaw and Rotterdam do not strictly speaking fall within this definition, although the Germans couldn't resist boasting about the power of the Luftwaffe and these attacks were used by the British to ease their qualms about launching a strategic bombing campaign. As far as the Germans were concerned, strategic bombing was, like the blockade of WW1 (which had increased mortality rates amongst children and the elderly long before it had any real impact on Germany's war-making capacity) yet more schrecklichkeit from the hypocritical British. We all like to demonise our enemies. But, as I said, retaliation wasn't the sole reason for the Blitz - Hitler was to some extent trying to "bomb Britain back to the conference table", to use the Nixon/Kissinger phrase. More on this anon, as Churchill's role in strategic bombing obviously needs better treatment.Paulturtle (talk) 00:14, 30 March 2015 (UTC)


 * It was actually the RAF that deliberately bombed civilians for the first time in World War II, on 11 May 1940. (Varislie (talk) 17:07, 3 June 2015 (UTC))