Editor’s Note: The quotes and the data used below come from an extraordinary book titled “Churchill’s Secret War“, a meticulously researched and extensively referenced book. But the opinions and the journey of thought described below are all Ours. Neither the book nor the author are responsible for our analysis or opinions.
The title seems ludicrous at first glance. Today, virtually the entire world believes Churchill to be a great hero and Hitler to be the great villain of World War II. There isn’t any doubt in our mind that calling Hitler a villain is actually being kind to him. We think of him as The Worst Evil human being of the twentieth century.
It is easy to see why Churchill is a hero to England. His determination, his valor to stand up to Hitler have made him legendary in England. But should he be a hero to non-English people? As we learn more about Churchill, we begin to wonder.
In this article, we take you on our journey of thought and let you come to your own conclusions.
The quotes, references and page numbers included below are from an extraordinary book titled “Churchill’s Secret War“.
1. Hitler’s Inspiration – The British Empire?
We had heard that Adolf Hitler admired the British and that he wanted Britain as an ally. This is one of the reasons he did not attack England immediately after his conquest of France. But what we did not know how many of Hitler’s own ideas were modeled after the tactics of the British Empire.
- According to Hitler, if anyone had asked Lord Robert Clive by what right he had seized the riches of Bengal, he would have replied, “I am an Englishman!”. Racial superiority entitled the British to the possession of India, Hitler informed a student body in Munich…..”The Nordic race has a right to rule the world and we must take this racial right as the guiding star of our foreign policy” he said in 1930.5 – page 33
- In two books…in prewar speeches, and in wartime after-dinner monologues, Hitler laid out a blueprint for the economic regeneration of Germany that drew on the British Empire as a prototype. White men, he stated in a 1932 address….., had exercised their “extraordinary brutal right to dominate others” in order to reorganize the economy of lesser peoples, in India and in the Americas – thereby procuring their own prosperity. The English, in particular, had achieved a “wonderful marriage of economic conquest with political domination“6 – page 33
- The fuhrer would repair German fortunes by creating sources of cheap food and raw materials, as well as expansive export markets: this would necessitate acquiring fresh territories. The Ukraine would supply the ruling race with bread, the Black sea with an inexhaustible supply of fish, the Crimea with oranges, cotton and rubber; and the crowing glory, Russia, would be an insatiable captive market for German “cotton goods, household utensils, all the articles of current consumption.”8 – page 34.
- Because Germany would deploy divide and rule to retain control, only a selected officers would be needed to administer the vast new territory. “The Russian space is our India.” Hitler elaborated. “Like the English, we shall rule this empire with a handful of men.”8 – page 34.
2. A Fertile Ground for Racial Supremacism – Hitler & Churchill
Planting seeds is not easy unless the ground is prepared. This is as true of ideas as it is of agriculture. The prejudice in Europe against Jews goes back centuries before Hitler. The British prejudice against “Hindus” did not go back that long because Britain did not enter India till the late 17th century. But what Britain lacked in time, it made up in intensity.
- (scholar James) Mill had declared that “the Hindu, like the eunuch, excels in the qualities of a slave,“37 – page xxiv
- popular historian Thomas Babington Macaulay had dwelt on the emasculation of Bengalis, who’d “found the little finger of the Company thicker than the loins” of the prince Siraj-ud-daula37.- page xxiv
- (Rudyard Kipling) – It was the Bengali male’s “extraordinary effeminacy“, as evinced by his diminutive physique, his flowing clothes, and his worship of goddesses, that best illustrated why he, and by extension India, had to be guided by the firm, benevolent hand of a supremely masculine race.”37 – page xxiv
- “All those arts which are the natural defence of the weak are more familiar to this subtle race than to…the Jew of the dark ages,” Macaulay had written of the Bengali, who compressed into his diminutive form every loathsome aspect of the Hindu.41 – page 235
- The Bengali babu, another writer had joked in 1911, was “something of an Irishman, something of an Italian, something of a Jew: if one can conceive of an Irishman who would run away from a fight instead of into it, an Italian without a sense of beauty and a Jew who would not risk five pounds on the chance of making five hundred.”41– page 235
3. Advisers & Sycophants – Hitler & Churchill
It is hard for any leader to design and implement policies, especially brutal policies, without a core group of trusted advisers and sycophants to quell any nascent human impulses either in the leader or in society. We all know of Goebbels, Jodl, Himmler and the notorious SS organization that fed and implemented Hitler’s evil plans.
But what about Churchill? We did not know much about Churchill’s own coterie. What we discovered appalled us:
When it came to civilian advisers, however, the prime minister had picked too many cronies, whose sycophantic counsel on the Indian famine he would rely on rather heavily. “All I want is compliance with my wishes after a reasonable amount of discussion,” the prime minister said of the War Cabinet and he was only half joking. Lord Woolton, Lord Leathers, and Sir Percy James Grigg owed their positions to him and deferred to him. Lord Beaverbrook, who served on the War Cabinet in a variety of positions, was an old friend and ally. Brendan Bracken, the minister of information once circulated rumors that Churchill was his father, so enamored was he of the older man.59 – page 214
Leopold Amery was Churchill’s hand-picked secretary of state for India:
- In 1934 Amery had read Mein Kampf and found it “very interesting and stimulating,” as he wrote in his diary. Hitler’s “intense sincerity and clear thinking on some points, as well as really careful study of propaganda methods, attracted me very much.” On the other hand, the author was clearly “quite insane about Jews and Socialist,” Amery observed.11 – page 35
According to historian William D. Rubinstein, Amery’s mother came from a distinguished Jewish family, many of whose members had converted to Christianity.
3.a – “Love me, love my dog” – Churchill’s Most Trusted Adviser & Friend
Churchill’s recruited a trusted old friend, the physicist Frederick Alexander Lindemann. Lindemann was known as Prof to admirers and Baron Berlin to detractors. by By 1942, Lindemann had the title of paymaster-general and had also achieved a peerage. So Lindemann became Lord Cherwell. Churchill and Cherwell were totally loyal to each other:.
- “Love me, love my dog, and if you don’t love my dog, you damn well can’t love me, ” muttered a furious Churchill in 1941, after a member of the House of Commons had raised questions about the Prof’s influence.27 – page 42
- As for Cherwell and the S Branch, their allegiance was unabashedly to Churchill alone.59 – page 214
Cherwell was responsible for the British government’s scientific divisions, including the S Branch (how eerie!). Cherwell saw Churchill almost daily for the duration of the war and wielded more influence than any other civilian adviser.
- Churchill declared that the Prof had a “beautiful brain” and came to seek his assistance with practically everything that needed research.29 – page 42
3.b – The Views of Cherwell (Lindemann)
Goebbels defines Hitler as Hitler defines Goebbels. We think the same of Churchill and Cherwell. When we read the views of Cherwell (Lindemann), we wondered whether the comparison to Goebbels could possibly be unfair to Goebbels.
- Lindemann had been to India once. In 1929, he visited an Indian mountain resort to serve on a panel on forestry. He was repelled by blacks, but he took along his English valet and did not have to be touched by native hands.30 – page 42
- Apart from a distaste of dark-skinned foreigners and working class Britons (the latter being insufferably “stupid”), Lindemann had a horror of ugly faces. These “set up a violent prejudice, which only the most supreme intellectual merits could counterweigh.”31 – page 43
- A measure of his racism can be found in his assertion that “20 percent of white people and 80% of the coloured were immune” to mustard gas.63 – page 215
- Instead of subscribing to what he called the “fetish of equality“, he recommended that human differences be accepted and indeed enhanced by means of science. It was no longer necessary, he wrote, to wait for “the haphazard process of natural selection to ensure that the slow and heavy mind gravitates to the lowest form of activity.”64 – page 216
- New technologies such as surgery, mind control, and drug and hormone manipulations would one day allow humans to be fine-tuned for specific tasks. Society could create “gladiators or philosophers, athletes or artists, satyrs or monks” at will…64 – page 216
- At the lower end of the race and class spectrum, one would remove from “helots“ (the Greek word for slaves) the ability to suffer or to feel ambition. Science could yield a race of humans blessed with “the mental make-up of the worker bee.” This subclass would do all the unpleasant work and not once think of revolution or of voting rights.64 – page 216
- The outcome would be a perfectly peaceable and stable society, “led by supermen and served by helots.”64 – page 216
- To consolidate the rule of supermen – to perpetuate the British Empire – one need only to remove the ability of slaves to see themselves as slaves.65– page 217
And this was Churchill’s trusted friend and adviser. How does that define Churchill?
Physicist and writer C.P. Snow described Professor Lindemann, “He was formidable, he was savage.”
- “The Prof’s close relationship with Churchill had given him “more direct power than any scientist in history“, Snow argued , and power so unchecked was harmful.61 – page 215
Cherwell (Lindemann) and his S Branch were responsible for collecting and analyzing data and for advising Churchill about the Bengal Famine of 1943. Given his views above, are you surprised that 3-5 million Indians died in that famine? Do you now understand why we wonder about the comparison to Goe
bbels being possibly unfair to Goebbels?
Legal doctrine puts the responsibility of the savage actions of a dog on the dog’s owner. Cherwell was Churchill’s beloved, trusted dog. So shouldn’t we hold Winston Churchill liable for the beliefs & actions of Cherwell?
4. Churchill’s Own Views
When we read about Hitler & Himmler, we do wonder which one was more evil. When we read Churchill’s own words, we do wonder whether Churchill or Cherwell was more evil. Was the beloved, trusted dog more evil or was the master more evil?
When we read views of and about Winston Churchill, we see evidence of tyranny, rage, megalomania (qualities that Hitler possessed as well) in Churchill addition to his inherent “Nazi”-level racism:
- “Churchill on the top of the wave has in him the stuff of which tyrants are made,” (Lord) Beaverbrook had once warned. Lord Moran. Churchill’s doctor, similarly noted: “when the sun shines his arrogance, intolerance and cocksuredness assume alarming proportions.”60 – page 215
Below are many quotes that show, at least to us, the evil within Churchill:
- Churchill exclaimed, “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.”56 – page 78
- According to Amery, the next day he “went off the deep end in a state of frantic passion on the whole subject…….India by the beastliest people in the world next to the Germans.”9 – page 106
- “Winston may be right in saying that the starvation of anyhow under-fed Bengalis is less serious than sturdy Greeks…” – Amery on Churchill – page 196
- Churchill had corroborated….writing of an 1898 Indian plague:” a philosopher may watch unmoved the destruction of some of the superfluous millions, whose life must of necessity be destitute of pleasure.36 – page 204.
Who but Churchill and Hitler could speak of “superfluous millions” of human beings and “watch unmoved (their) destruction”?
- “Winston, after a preliminary flourish on Indians breeding like rabbits…….asked Leathers for his view.”38 – page 205
- More often that not the small, brown, fangless, and numberless Indians whom the frail old pacifist personified brought to Churchill’s mind a prey species. – page 206
- “The trouble is that Winston so dislikes India and all to do with it that he can see nothing but the mere waste of shipping space involved in the longer journey.”40 – page 207
The last quote above is by Leopold Amery after Churchill had resolved to stop the consignment of 10,000 tons of wheat from Canada to India on a Canadian ship. Not British wheat, not on a British ship. But, Canadian Wheat on a Canadian Ship. But Churchill was still resolved to stop it from reaching people dying of starvation in Bengal.
Is this still an act of omission on Churchills’s part or does it reach the level of an affirmative act of commission? An act to kill Indians by starvation?
If there is any doubt about Churchill’s intent, read what Churchill told his private secretary:
- Back in London, Churchill told his private secretary that “the Hindus were a foul race ‘protected by their mere pullulation (rapid breeding) from the doom that is their due.'”20 – pages 246-247
A doom that is the due of the foul race of Hindus? Replace Hindus by Jews and you have Hitler.
5. Difference between England & Germany – The United States of America
At this point, we admit we wonder what would happened in Germany had Hitler been a mere prime minister, an elected leader who would have been forced to run in another election? We wonder what would have happened in a democratic Germany had the Wehrmacht, the German Military, would have been able to resist or refuse Hitler?
We wonder so because of the next sentence of Churchill after the “doom that is their due” comment just above:
- ..from the doom that is their due. He wished that Air Chief Marshall Arthur Harris, the Head of the British bomber command, could “send some of his surplus bombers to destroy them.”20 – page 247
Consider the millions of Indians Churchill “killed” or more appropriately “let die” by deliberately stopping shipments, by exporting Indian grain to other countries while Indians were starving. He was able to do so without having the dictatorial authority of Hitler.
Imagine now that Churchill had a totally obedient military like the Wehrmacht. Would Churchill have used the captive military to “destroy” the foul race of Hindus? Would Churchill have killed many many more millions of the foul race of Hindus to stop them from breeding like rabbits? Would Churchill have watched such destruction of Hindus and remained unmoved by the destruction?
The answer, in our opinion, is Yes.
Now what if Hitler had been merely a prime minister in a democratic society with strong institutions like in England? Would that Hitler been able to construct concentration camps and kill millions of Jews, Slavs and other races? We don’t know but we are inclined to believe No.
We must not forget another factor, a huge factor – the United States of America.
Britain was not an independent fighting machine. It was critically dependent on the USA for military assistance. And there is no way President Roosevelt would have stood by and allowed their ally to kill millions of people just because the prime minister consider them a ‘foul race that was escaping the doom that was their due by pullalation’. It would not have mattered whether the prime minister was named Churchill or Hitler.
So we will never know how Churchill would have behaved with a totally obedient military and without the moral, ethical & physical limits imposed on him by the USA.
6. But are Churchill and Hitler Birds of a Similar Feather?
Based on the journey we have taken above, Our Verdict is Yes. We leave it to the Readers to come to their own verdict.
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