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How do you know Britain would have lost the war without Churchill?
He was clearly an enigmatic chap but how can it be said there was nobody else to defeat Hitler?
In the months following the end of the war he , stalin and the rest stood by as people of German descent living in the lands taken by Hitler were raped and murdered by the locals
He wasn't a very nice bloke
The choice was between Lord Halifax and Churchill for Prime Minister.
Halifax wanted peace talks with Germany and indeed overtures had been made.
Churchill refused and Chamberlain backed Churchill
However if Halifax had become PM instead of Churchill who knows what might have happened.
You say some else could have done what Churchill did.
Who??????
I agree Churchill did a number of questionable things.
That does not negate what he did in time of war.
the UK had 2.5% of the war casualties. do you really think that if someone else was in charge the outcome of the war would have been different?
unfortunately we've had decades of propaganda in this country convincing us that Churchill saved the day.
I recently saw a couple of opinion polls that were held in France, one just after the war and another a couple of years ago. they asked who was most responsible for the allied powers winning the war, the options were UK, France, USA and Russia.
in the survey just after the war Russia were massively out in front, with like 75% or more of the responses.
whereas in the recent poll the USA and UK were the highest.
only goes to show what 70 odd years of Hollywood movies and other propaganda have done to influence the public's perception
Yes the head of police begged Churchill as he felt he couldn't contain the riots as folks loves were at risk and its noted that Churchill was against it and refused the police chiefs first request for the army to support ,and begrudgingly agreed in the end.
Thankfully I don't think the army's intervention caused any death. I'm guessing if it happened today, you'd be call upon other police forces, different times, and as you correctly point out not all Churchill's doing ,others involved.
I think Churchill's comment are Tonypandy and the starving were something like "Let's see how they like steel in their bellies". And nobody has mentioned India yet.
Do agree its not good in todays age it was bad rhetoric and I guess for consumption at the time thankfully no steel did meet a belly and were ever likely to do , most war like leaders were brought up in that ideology of violent threat.
A quote:
*8 November Churchill issued verbal instructions that “in no case should soldiers come in direct contact with rioters unless and until action had been taken by the police.” If police were overpowered, troops could be deployed, but even then a number of police should remain, “to emphasise the fact that the armed forces act merely as the support of the civil power.”
If Britain had sued for peace, Germany would in all likelihood have been able to divert more divisions to Russia and who knows what would have happened
Also how would the USA have been able to invade Europe if it couldn't have used the UK to base its invasion force.
In answer to your first question quite possibly.
But it must not be forgotten that we are not a dictatorship. There was a war cabinet who all played their part, but Churchill of course was the figurehead.
Reading through the comments it's interesting that in any discussion on Churchill, WW2 and his leadership throughout, is the main topic of discussion. Obviously that's his legacy and no suprise what he will be most remembered for.
But Wartime and the events during are very exceptional and I wonder if you took WW2 out of the picture, how would you appraise Churchill then?
From the little I have read about him, his time in politics seemed generally unremarkable and it was quite likely that he was racsit and had no time for the working/poorer classes. Happy for people to correct me on this.
What I find interesting is that despite leading Great Britain to victory in the War, the people of the time removed him as prime minister by voting Atlee and his labour goverment into power, straight after. That labour governemt ushered in transformative social legislation to rebuild the nation, something that would not have happened under Churchill I assume (I'm not a labour voter BTW).
He's a complex and devisive figure, easy to see why he triggers a lot of debate.
This thread is the most ill-informed discussion of WW2 I have ever had the misfortune in reading
There's so much about WW2 that isn't generally discussed - the UK's military 'strength' was smaller than Portugal in Sept. '39. Dunkirk was a disaster, not a miracle, when we left behind 75% of military hardware we had. We only 'fought' the Germans in Europe for the 1st time in 1944. Poland declared war on Germany. The USA screwed us for every penny because we never bothered to pay them for the arms we bought off them in WW1. France had a larger, stronger army and air force than Germany in 1939. We started the bombing of civilians when a German bomber missed his target of London docks and hit the East end of London We retaliated by bombing civilian areas in Berlin, and then the Germans hit us back. Large regions of Germany were never pro-nazi. Yes, we were genarally the good guys, the French were pathetic, and the German machine was pure evil, but there's a huge amount of history out there which isn't really told..
do you agree that hitlers decision to take on the red army on the Eastern front in the Russian winter and fight allied forces to the west lost him the war rather everyone thinking churchill defeated Hitler? Hitler was an egotistical psychopath who was paranoid and refused to listen to military advice
Churchill was a good wartime leader but he wasn't the messiah
Churchill was a great admirer of Fascism, check out some of his speeches from the 20s and 30s, he even negotiated with Hitler before War broke out and was very aware of what Hitler was doing to the jewish community-do some research people