Fallacies of a Fundamentalist

Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened – Winston Churchill, 1936 (Langworth, Churchill by Himself, p.322)

The claim that Winston Churchill was antisemitic is an example of Churchill Derangement Syndrome (itself the leading cause of the Churchillian Black Legend). To believe that claim, one has to ignore considerable evidence of Churchill’s philosemitism, Zionism, and opposition to antisemitism.  Enter Ranbir Singh.

Ranbir Singh runs an organization called Hindu Human Rights (HHR). According to Edward Anderson HHR “have a primarily web - and protest-based presence, and [an Indian] diaspora-oriented, assertive Hindutva tone” (Anderson, “Neo-Hindutva”, p.52). In other words, he’s a Hindu nationalist. In my experience, while Churchill detractors often lie, none lie quite so brazenly or ridiculously as Hindu Nationalists.

To be fair, I can’t comment on the work of Ranbir Singh or HHR generally. I am not very familiar with everything they do. However, based on what conversations I have had with him on Twitter I can say that he is a dishonest man who is either trying to sell a bill of goods or has been sold one.

Ranbir’s Ravings

Ranbir’s dishonesty is apparent in this tweet in which three statements are presented as if they were statements made by Churchill:

·        Jews were “the main instigators of the ruin of the Empire”

·        Jews played a “leading part in Bolshevik atrocities”

·        Jewish involvement in radicalism was due to “inherent inclinations rooted in Jewish character and religion”

What Ranbir leaves out is that in the first two statements Churchill was describing the antisemitism of the anti-Bolshevik Russian Whites. He wasn’t stating that he agreed with them!

There is a very bitter feeling throughout Russia against the Jews, who are regarded as being the main instigators of the ruin of the Empire, and who certainly have played a leading part in the Bolshevik atrocities… This feeling is shared by the Volunteer Army and the army of the Don under General Denikin (Carlton, Churchill and the Soviet Empire, p.18; emphasis added)

Ranbir also omitted any mention of Churchill’s opposition to the murderous pogroms perpetrated by the Whites. Churchill pleaded with Denikin in terms that would be persuasive:

“Your Excellency, I know, will realise the vital importance at this time, when such brilliant results are being secured, of preventing by every possible means the ill-treatment of the innocent Jewish population. My task in winning support in Parliament for the Russian National Cause will be infinitely harder if well-authenticated complaints continue to be received from Jews in the zone of the Volunteer Armies.

Prime Minister has today sent me a letter on this subject enclosing allegations which I am referring to your Excellency by mail. I know the efforts you have already made and the difficulty of restraining anti-Semitic feeling. But I beg you, as a sincere well-wisher, to redouble these efforts and place me in a strong position to vindicate the honour of the Volunteer Army…” (quoted in Gilbert, World in Torment, p.343)

Ranbir’s third quotation - concerning Jewish involvement in political radicalism - is an outright fabrication. Churchill never said it. It was actually written by historian Gisela C. Lebzelter in her 1978 book Political Anti-Semitism in England. As we’ll see, Churchill did not attribute Jewish involvement in radicalism to any inherent racial or cultural characteristics of the Jews.  

After I pointed out this chicanery Ranbir did what any self-respecting bullshitter would do and blocked me. However, he repeatedly unblocked me to reply to my tweets and QT me before blocking me again. Clearly, he had discovered that an actual debate would be dangerous for him and so he was content just to pollute my Twitter timeline while denying me the right of reply.

Churchill On Jews

Churchill was not antisemitic. In fact, he was pro-Jewish. This attitude struck many of his contemporaries as bizarre. Antisemitism was not an uncommon prejudice among the aristocracy in Britain during Churchill’s lifetime. In 1969 Churchill’s friend General Sir Edward Louis Spears remarked to the historian Martin Gilbert that “[e]ven Winston had a fault. He was too fond of Jews” (Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews, p.xv).

In my introduction, I claimed that Churchill was a philosemite, Zionist, and opponent of antisemitism. I’ll demonstrate that he was each of these in turn.

1.      Churchill’s Philosemitism

Through his father, Churchill knew many Jews socially. His social circle included Lord Rothschild, Baron de Hirsch, Phillip Sassoon and Sir Ernest Cassel, the latter of whom Churchill would describe as:

A good and just man who was trusted, respected and honoured by all who knew him. He was a valued friend of my father’s and I have taken up that friendship and I have held it all my grown life (quoted in Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews, p.5).

Churchill’s relationship with Jews went beyond social after he became the Liberal candidate and then MP for Manchester North-West in 1904. Churchill became a very visible ally of the Jews and an admirer of their culture. According to Martin Gilbert, he was particularly impressed with the “Jewish communal emphasis on social responsibility and self-help” and became a subscriber to his constituency’s Jewish Soup Kitchen, Jewish Lad’s Club and the Jewish Tennis and Cricket Club (Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews, p.14).

Unlike many of his contemporaries who resented Jewish success, Churchill appreciated it. “He recognized Judaism as a moral and civilizing force in history” (Himmelfarb, People of the Book, p.146). Of Jewish settlement in Palestine, he said the Jews had brought the Arabs:

Nothing but good gifts, more wealth, more trade, more civilisation, new sources of revenue, more employment, a higher rate of wages, larger cultivated areas and better water supply – in a word, the fruits of reason and modern science (quoted in Himmelfarb, People of the Book, p.142).

In the fifth volume of his history/memoir of the Second World War Churchill praised the Jews (as well as the Greeks) for their contributions to humanity:

No two cities counted more with mankind than Athens and Jerusalem. Their messages in religion, philosophy, and art have been the main guiding lights of modern faith and culture (quoted in Himmelfarb, People of the Book, p.146).

2.      Churchill’s Zionism

Churchill first encountered the question of a Jewish homeland in December 1905 when he was approached by Dr. Joseph Dulberg, the Secretary of the Manchester Territorialists. Churchill wrote to Dr. Dulberg that:

I recognize the supreme attraction to a scattered and persecuted people of a safe and settled home under the flag of tolerance and freedom. Such a plan contains a soul, and enlists in its support energies, enthusiasms, and a driving power which no scheme of individual colonisation can ever command (quoted in Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews, p.12).

In March 1921 in a speech delivered in Jerusalem, Churchill said:

Personally, my heart is full of sympathy for Zionism. This sympathy has existed for a long time, since twelve years ago, when I was in contact with the Manchester Jews…. I believe that the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine will be a blessing to the whole world, and a blessing to the Jewish race scattered all over the world, and a blessing to Great Britain. I firmly believe that it will be a blessing also to all the inhabitants of this country without distinction of race and religion (quoted in Makovsky, Churchill’s Promised Land, p.117).

In the 1930s Churchill emerged as a leading Gentile champion of the Zionist goals in Palestine. To quote historian W.D. Rubinstein:

Throughout the 1930s Churchill remained a strong supporter of Zionism, and his support for and by the Jewish community in Britain increased greatly in this period, with Churchill being seen by Jews, and also by non-Jewish victims of the Nazis such as the Czechs, as their best hope among Britain's leaders or potential leaders. He remained one of the most consistent supporters of Zionism in the political mainstream: for instance in June 1937, when negotiations over the Peel Commission on the future of Palestine were being held in London, Churchill was the guest of honour at a dinner in London organized by Weizmann and attended by leading pro-Zionist political figures such as Leo Amery, Josiah Wedgwood, Victor Cazalet and also (ironically) by Clement Attlee. Churchill was one of the few speakers to support the Partition of Palestine mandate, a proposal first mooted at the time, and rejected by most Zionists as a further watering down of the Balfour Declaration, although it would have led to a Jewish State. Apparently Churchill had had too much to drink, turned to Weizmann and rather cryptically said, 'You know, you are our masters - and yours and yours [pointing to other members of the party] - and what you say goes. If you ask us to fight, we shall fight like tigers.' In March 1939 the British government issued the notorious Macdonald White Paper, heavily limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine just as the Nazis were conquering Europe; to his credit, Churchill made an outspoken attack on it in Parliament, stating on 23 May 1939 that 'I was from the beginning a sincere advocate of the Balfour Declaration ... I regret very much that the pledge of the Balfour Declaration . . . [has] been violated by the Government's proposals.' Churchill voted in a minority of 181-281 opposing the White Paper, along with Amery, Brendan Bracken, Victor Cazalet, Lloyd George, Harold Macmillan (note) and most of the Labour party (W.D. Rubinstein, “Churchill and the Jews”, p.172).

In 1954 Churchill said to journalists

I am a Zionist, let me make this clear. I was one of the original ones after the Balfour Declaration and I have worked faithfully for it…. I think it is a most wonderful thing that this community should have established itself so effectively in turning the desert into fertile gardens and thriving townships and should have afforded refuge to millions of their co-religionists who suffered so fearfully under Hitler, and not only under Hitler. I think it is a wonderful thing (quoted in Rubinstein, “Churchill and the Jews”, pp.174-175).

As writer Michael Makovsky says:

However subordinate, Zionism remained an important, largely sentimental concern that fit into Churchill’s own worldview. His romantic love of the past, determination to right historical wrongs, and broad devotion to religious values contributed to his supporting the restoration of the Jews to their ancient homeland. He was also devoted to his father and his father’s principles, attitudes, and friends. This encouraged Churchill’s comfort with Jews on a personal level, a respect for them and their abilities, and compassion for their plight…. These convictions made Churchill more favorably disposed to the Jews and their causes, and his own encounters with them only reinforced that predilection (Makovsky, Churchill’s Promised Land, pp.260-261).

3.      Churchill’s Opposition to Antisemitism

Churchill was consistently opposed to antisemitic policies throughout his life. In 1898 during the Dreyfus Affair, he praised French journalist Emile Zola’s defence of Dreyfus and attack on the antisemitism of the French army. “I am delighted to witness the complete debacle of this monstrous conspiracy”, he wrote to his mother (Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews, p.3). In 1904 Churchill spoke out against the Aliens Bill, which was intended to limit Jewish immigration into Britain. Not for the last time in his career, antisemites accused Churchill of being a Jewish puppet. Nathan Laski wrote to Churchill thanking him for his efforts in opposing that bill:

You have won the gratitude of the whole Jewish community not alone of Manchester, but of the entire country (quoted in Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews, p.9)

In 1905 Churchill condemned the pogroms in Russia as “appalling massacres and detestable atrocities”, “barbarities” and “unparalleled acts of brutality” (Makovsky, Churchill’s Promised Land, p.51). In the 1930s Churchill was appalled by the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany. Clement Attlee later recalled:

I remember the tears pouring down his cheeks one day before the House of Commons, when he was telling me what was being done to the Jews in Germany – not to individual Jewish friends of his, but to Jews as a group.

Churchill’s opposition to antisemitism was often frustrated by the indifference to antisemitism that many of his contemporaries exhibited. For example, in 1933 Churchill wrote to Professor Frederick Lindemann, asking him to bring German-Jewish students and academics to universities in Britain. The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bristol wrote to Churchill complaining that it would be hard to make them offers because of a glut of applications to the university (Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews, p.101). In 1942 he wrote to the Colonial Secretary asking him to dismiss a number of antisemitic colonial officials only to receive a sharp rebuke (Himmelfarb, People of the Book, p.144).

According to David Mandel, a Fellow in History at Melbourne University, during the Second World War:

Churchill frequently intervened to ease the escape of Jewish refugees from Europe…as First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill instructed Royal Navy vessels not to intercept ships suspected of bringing illegal Jewish immigrants to Palestine….in November 1940… General Archibald Wavell sought to have deported from Palestine a group of Jewish refugees who had reached the country aboard the Patria, Churchill intervened to prevent it and they were permitted to stay, despite the objections of officials (Mandel, “Winston Churchill”, p.170).

Churchill repeatedly, and in the face of opposition from his Cabinet, argued that Jewish immigration into Palestine should not be hindered or discouraged (Mandel, “Winston Churchill”, p.171). In April 1943 Churchill asked the Spanish ambassador to convince Franco to open Spain's borders to Jews fleeing the Third Reich (Mandel, “Winston Churchill”, p.171). Mandel concludes that:

During the war, Churchill sought many avenues to provide refuge for Jews fleeing the Nazis, including in Palestine, and in the teeth of great opposition from virtually all of his officials. Indeed, such was the perception of Churchill’s solicitude for Jews among them that, on at least two occasions, callous members of his own inner staff withheld from him Jewish requests out of fear that he would respond positively to them (Mandel, “Winston Churchill, p.172).

Steelmanning Singh

So, what is the case for the proposition that Churchill was actually an antisemite? The strongest evidence that Ranbir Singh adduces to make his case is an article Churchill wrote called “Zionism versus Bolshevism”, which was published in the Illustrated Sunday Herald on the 8^th of February 1920. According to Ranbir, Churchill is alleged to have endorsed the canard that Bolshevism was a Jewish conspiracy to achieve world domination. Ranbir claimed that antisemites such as David Duke quote this essay approvingly and think the article itself must have been an endorsement of their beliefs. Of course, Holocaust deniers, antisemites, and neo-Nazis aren’t exactly known for their honest use of historical documents so I am not persuaded by this argument.

To be fair to Ranbir though, he’s not the first person to have interpreted “Zionism versus Bolshevism” as an endorsement of antisemitic canards. One writer in Current Affairs wrote:

[Churchill] embraced much of the antisemitic rhetoric of his time without question, writing of a “sinister confederacy” of “International Jews” in the essay “Zionism versus Bolshevism”…. the average reader could be forgiven for thinking it came from Mein Kampf or the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, rather than the man credited as Hitler’s nemesis.

The contemporary reaction was also mixed, with the Jewish Chronicle condemning Churchill:

The SECRETARY OF WAR charges Jews with originating the gospel of Antichrist and with engineering a ‘world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization’…. It is the gravest, as it is the most reckless and most scandalous campaign in which even the most discredited politicians have ever engaged… It is difficult to understand the object of this tirade, with its flashy generalizations and shallow theories (quoted in Cohen, Churchill and the Jews, p.56)

However, historians who have studied Churchill’s attitudes to the Jewish people – even those critical of Churchill - tend to reject the view that Churchill was an antisemite even if they say the essay demonstrated Churchill's poor judgement. Michael J. Cohen, Professor of History Emeritus at Bar-Ilan University in Israel and author of the book Churchill and the Jews described Churchill’s article as “irresponsible” but added that “[i]t is to be doubted whether Churchill subscribed to the anti-Semitic prejudice common at the time” (Cohen, Churchill and the Jews, p.56). Michael Makovsky wrote that the essay has been “rather misunderstood” but that “the article was irresponsible in echoing the Protocols [of the Elders of Zion] and right-wing conspiratorial propaganda and suggesting that some Jews sought world revolution and domination, especially given the charged anti-Semitic environment” (Makovsky, Churchill’s Promised Land, pp. 85 & 87). On the other hand, historian W.D. Rubinstein has strongly defended Churchill:

Churchill's article is sometimes used to show that he was, at this time at least, something of an anti-Semite, accepting the view of Jews as incorrigible radicals expressed often by the extreme right wing, but he was actually saying nothing of the kind - indeed, his argument was precisely opposite (Rubinstein, “Winston Churchill and the Jews”, p.169).

So, what’s the truth? Did Churchill endorse the Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy theory, or has he been misunderstood?

Zionism versus Bolshevism

“Zionism versus Bolshevism” was not an antisemitic screed. A straightforward, honest, and complete analysis of the text shows that it was written by someone who was clearly pro-Jewish but anti-communist. Claims about Churchill making statements identical to those found in Mein Kampf can only be supported by selective quotation  – a classic technique of those afflicted by Churchill Derangement Syndrome.

Part of Churchill’s motivation for writing the article was to emphasize his support for the Jews. In January 1920 Churchill gave a speech in Sunderland warning about the damage that Bolshevism had caused to Russia and the dangers it posed to Britain. During that speech, he once referred to ‘the International Soviet of the Russian and Polish Jew’. Churchill was later informed that the prominent Jewish scholar Claude Montefiore had taken issue with Churchill’s comments. This criticism stung Churchill, who wrote that “[I]f I have any mental bias…it is rather in favour of than against the Jews among whom I am proud to number many good friends” (Gilbert, Companion Vol, V, p.1010).

Churchill’s argument was that Zionism and Bolshevism were competing for the hearts and minds of oppressed Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. While the argument that Bolshevism and Zionism were intrinsically opposed ideologies was an oversimplification there was an undeniable element of truth to it. The same point has been made by some prominent Jews. According to Michael Makovsky:

[Theodor] Herzl repeatedly argued that Zionism was a cure to Jewish seditious activity, and in 1919 [Chaim] Weizmann told peace conferees that the Zionist proposal “was the only one which would in the long … transform Jewish energy into a constructive force instead of its being dissipated in destructive tendencies”. Once these Zionist leaders advanced this argument, even if only to win over Gentiles to their cause, it became fair game for others…. Weizmann on several occasions before the First World War debated various Communist leaders such as Lenin, Trotsky, and Karl Radek over Zionism versus Communism, in effect creating a proposition of conflict and rivalry between the two movements (Makovsky, Churchill’s Promised Land, pp.87-88).

Here’s what Churchill didn’t write in “Zionism versus Bolshevism”:

1)     He didn’t generalize Jews as communists. He distinguished between Jews who had integrated into Gentile society (whom Churchill describes as National Jews), Zionists, and Bolsheviks (whom Churchill also described as International Jews and Terrorist Jews). Churchill also approvingly wrote that “many” of the National Jews in England had been prominent in anti-Communist movements and that “the Bolshevik movement is not a Jewish movement, but is repudiated vehemently by the great mass of the Jewish race”. He also said that “there are many non-Jews every whit as bad as the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries”.

2)     He didn’t describe Jews as having a negative impact on civilization. He wrote that “we [non-Jews] owe to the Jews in the Christian revelation a system of ethics…on that system and by that faith there has been built out of the wreck of the Roman Empire the whole of our existing civilization”. He praised British Jews who played a “distinguished part” in serving in the British Army. He commended the contribution to Russian life made by “National Russian Jews who, in spite of the disabilities under which they have suffered, have managed to play an honourable and useful part in the national life even of Russia”.

3)     Most importantly, Churchill did not advocate for persecution or extermination of Jews. He criticized antisemitism saying “there can be no greater mistake than to attribute to each individual a recognizable share in the qualities which make up the national character. There are all sorts of men – good, bad and, for the most part, indifferent – in every country, and in every race. Nothing is more wrong than to deny to an individual, on account of race or origin, his right to be judged on his personal merits and conduct”.

The sentences which are usually taken out of context relate to communism, which he describes as a “world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence and impossible equality”. Churchill pointed out that Jews had played a disproportionate role in the Bolshevik movement (“the part played…in proportion to their numbers in the population is astonishing”). This isn’t evidence of antisemitism; Churchill was just stating a fact. To quote historian Richard Pipes:

Jews undeniably played in the Bolshevik Party and the early Soviet apparatus a role disproportionate to their share of the population. The number of Jews active in Communism in Russia and abroad was striking: in Hungary, for example, they furnished 95 percent of the leading figures in Bela Kun’s dictatorship. They were also disproportionately represented among Communists in Germany and Austria during the revolutionary upheavals there in 1918-1923, and in the apparatus of the Communist International (Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, pp.112-113)

Churchill noted that these Jews were “for the most part atheistical” and had “forsaken the faith of their forefathers”. Therefore, it is untrue to claim that Churchill viewed Jewish involvement in political radicalism as being caused by some intrinsic flaw in Jewish culture or ethnic character. Churchill attributed it to antisemitic persecution (“The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race”). He compared the “miserable state of Russia, where of all countries in the world the Jews were the most cruelly treated” with the “fortunes of our own country” where Jews were not persecuted. “Like Disraeli, Churchill ultimately blamed the Gentiles” (Makovsky, Churchill’s Promised Land, p.87). Churchill also pointed out that while Jews were subject to antisemitism “[i]n its worst and foulest forms” at the hands of the Whites, they were also victimized by the Bolsheviks (“most [of the Jews] are themselves sufferers from the revolutionary regime”).

Conclusion

Churchill lived in a more politically incorrect age. Had Churchill harboured antisemitic beliefs he would not have felt obliged to beat about the bush. Usually people who are antisemitic never miss an opportunity to slander the Jews. However, the evidence produced by Ranbir Singh to argue that Churchill was antisemitic is weak. It relies on the classic Churchillian Black Legend tactic of cherry-picking a couple of sentences, misinterpreting them and then ignoring everything else Churchill said and did during his lifetime. Churchill was a philosemite, a Zionist and had a long track record of opposing antisemitism. 

Bibliography

Anderson, Edward, “’Neo-Hindutva’: the Asia House M.F. Husain campaign and the mainstreaming of Hindu nationalist rhetoric in Britain”, Contemporary South Asia, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp.45-66

Carlton, David, Churchill and the Soviet Union (Manchester University Press, 2000)

Cohen, Michael J., Churchill and the Jews, 1900 – 1948 (Routledge, 2013)

Gilbert, Martin, Churchill and the Jews (Pocket Books, 2008)

Gilbert, Martin, Winston S. Churchill: Volume IV: World in Torment, 1917 to 1922 (Minerva, 1990)

Gilbert, Martin, Winston S. Churchill: Companion Volume V Part 2: July 1919 - March 1921 (Houghton Mifflin, 1978)

Himmelfarb, Gertrude, People of the Book: Philosemitism in England from Cromwell to Churchill (Encounter Books, 2011)

Langworth, Richard (ed.), Churchill by Himself: The Definitive Collection of Quotations (PublicAffairs, 2008)

Mandel, David, “Winston Churchill – A Good Friend of Jews and Zionism?”, Jewish Political Studies Review, Vol. 21, No. 1/2 (2009), pp.162-175

Makovsky, Michael, Churchill’s Promised Land: Zionism and Statecraft (Yale University Press, 2007)

Pipes, Richard, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime (Alfred A. Knopf, 1993)

Rubinstein, William D., “Winston Churchill and the Jews”, Jewish Historical Studies, Vol. 39, pp.167-176

Otto vs Details

Despite being a brave defender of the truth Otto English (né Andrew Scott) has some difficulty with some tricky details. The spelling of the surname of the Labour Party leader in 1945, for example:

Fun fact: "Atlee's" name is actually spelled "Attlee".

Wiseacre

 In his Fake History, Otto English (né Andrew Scott) dismisses many of the books written about Churchill as full of “things [Churchill] never said”. He spends a good deal of his essay on Churchill debunking quotations and statements that have been misattributed to Churchill. This should be low-hanging fruit for English as there are plenty of quotations that have been misattributed to Churchill over the years. However even here English makes mistakes. Consider his take on what is arguably Churchill’s most famous retort.

In fact, we know Churchill made the “in the morning I will be sober” retort to Bessie Braddock because there was a witness.

Not original to Churchill, but world-famous and confirmed by Ronald Golding, a bodyguard present on the occasion, as WSC was leaving the House of Commons. Lady Soames, who said her father was always gallant to ladies, doubted the story – but Golding explained that WSC was not drunk, just tired and wobbly, which perhaps caused him to fire the full arsenal. However, he was relying on his photographic memory for this riposte: in the 1934 movie It’s a Gift W.C. Field’s character when told he is drunk, responds, “Yeah, and you’re crazy. But I’ll be sober tomorrow and you’ll be crazy the rest of your life" (Langworth, Churchill by Himself, p.550).

I have no idea where English got the idea that Churchill was averse to wisecracks. 

Bibliography

Langworth, Richard (ed.), Churchill by Himself: The Definitive Collection of Quotations (Public Affairs, 2008)

Close but No Cigar

 One of the more amusing errors Otto English (né Andrew Scott) makes in his essay on Churchill concerns Churchill’s time in Cuba.

Otto is right to describe Churchill as an “observer”, but he drops the ball by saying that Churchill was “fighting for the [Spanish]” and was “awarded his first medal… for helping the Spanish suppress the [Cuban] revolt”. Churchill was, as Otto writes, an observer. That means he was a spectator, not a participant. D'Este outright calls him a “non-combatant” (D’Este, Warlord, p.46). He never even fired a shot at the rebels during his time in Cuba. Churchill did not receive the Cross of the Order of Military Merit for taking part in skirmishes with the Cuban insurgents, he got it as a courtesy (Russell, Soldier, p.130). 

The only narrative spoiled is the narrative that English has crafted about himself – that he is a careful and diligent writer who is “toppling fake history from the plinth” and raising up the truth in its place.

Bibliography

D'Este, Carlo, Warlord: A Life of Churchill at War 1874 - 1945 (Allen Lane, 2009)

Russell, Douglas S., Winston Churchill, Soldier: The Military Life of a Gentleman at War (Conway, 2005)

Reductio ad Hitlerum

Statements about Churchill made by his contemporaries occasionally get misinterpreted. These days, race is a hot-button topic, and assessments of Churchill’s alleged ‘racism’ by those who knew him attract attention in the media and online. Probably the most famous example is a comment that Churchill’s Secretary of State for India, Leopold Amery, made about Churchill’s attitude to Indians. The story goes that Amery was so appalled and disgusted by Churchill’s racialist views that he said that Churchill was no different from Hitler.

Detractors cite this story frequently:

His attitude to Indians, always hostile, took on even more intemperate form leading the Conservative secretary of state for India, Leo Amery, to remark: “on the subject of India, Winston is not quite sane… I don’t see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s.”

Leopold Amery, Churchill's own Secretary of State for India, likened his boss's understanding of India's problems to King George III's apathy for the Americas. Amery vented in his private diaries, writing "on the subject of India, Winston is not quite sane" and that he didn't "see much difference between [Churchill's] outlook and Hitler's."

Churchill was a bounder, a serial failure, terrible at small talk, deluded, depressive, drunken, deficient in judgement, and systematically racist enough to be compared by his Secretary of State for India to Adolf Hitler....Leo Amery, Churchill’s previously mentioned Secretary of State who was so appalled by his views that he compared him to Hitler...

This remark is often assumed to have been provoked by Churchill’s (allegedly indifferent) attitude to the Bengal famine. For example:

Churchill’s attitude towards India did not change when he became Prime Minister. He presided over – and actively prevented any efforts to alleviate – the catastrophic 1943 Bengal famine, which killed 3 million Indians. When Churchill’s India Secretary and childhood friend Leo Amery asked him to do something, Churchill laughed about the prospect of shrinking a population that bred “like rabbits.” A horrorstruck Amery wrote that when it came to India, there wasn’t “much difference between [Churchill’s] outlook and Hitler’s.”

Let’s examine the evidence.

What Amery Actually Thought of Churchill

The first thing that should be noted is that Amery and Churchill were friends. They respected each other. They had known each other since their school days, covered the Boer War as journalists, and had jointly opposed the appeasement of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. In spite of their mutual respect, they were on opposing sides of many political issues over the course of their careers.

Their most serious disagreement concerned India. During the Second World War Amery and Churchill had numerous bitter arguments about Indian policy. Despite this, the two remained on good terms. As Amery’s biographer, Wm. Roger Louis, said:

“[T]he negative aspects must not be allowed to overshadow the mutual respect. Amery believed that Churchill saved England in 1940-45 and that no one else could have done it. For his part, Churchill on Amery’s death in 1955 described him with heart-felt emotion as ‘a great patriot’” (Louis, ‘In The Name of God Go’, p.179).

If Amery had truly thought that Churchill was as bad as a murderous tyrant like Hitler, then how could he respect and admire Churchill? This should make readers skeptical of the seriousness of the comparison.

Grumpy Old Men

The Cabinet meeting in which Amery compared Churchill to Hitler took place at 15:00 on the 4^th of August 1944. The Bengal Famine, and the related question of food imports to India, were not discussed at the meeting. Here’s a picture of the items covered:

These might seem like an odd list of topics to provoke a resort to a reductio ad Hitlerum argument. Turning to Amery’s diary, he also doesn’t mention the Bengal Famine being discussed at this meeting. It wasn’t Churchill’s attitude to the famine which provoked the Hitler comparison. So, what did?

The only two matters discussed relating to India were the draft of a response from the Viceroy to Gandhi’s letter on the 27^th of July, and the growth of India’s sterling balances (essentially Britain’s growing indebtedness to India). Both of these topics brought out Churchill at his most intemperate. On the issue of the sterling balances, as early as September 1942, an exasperated Amery wrote in his diary that ‘I confess I find myself getting very impatient when he [Churchill] talks really ignorant nonsense’ (quoted in Louis, ‘In The Name of God Go’, p. 164). Amery also wrote

“Winston…is making a fool of himself. Winston cannot see beyond such phrases as ‘Are we to incur hundreds of millions of debt defending India in order to be kicked out by the Indians afterwards? This may be an ill-contrived world but not so ill contrived as all that.’” (quoted in Louis, ‘In The Name of God Go’, p.165).

By mid-1943 whenever the sterling balances were brought up there would be a “Winstonian volcano” in the Cabinet - at one meeting he exploded into a rage for twenty minutes and continued rumbling on the subject for two hours (Louis, ‘In The Name of God Go’, p.166).

Regarding the meeting on the 4^th of August 1944, Amery wrote the following in his diary:

“Winston [let loose] in a state of great exultation describing how after the war he was going to go back on all the shameful story of the last twenty years of surrender, how once we had won the war there was no obligation to honour promises made at a time of difficulty, and not taken up by Indians, and carry out a great regeneration of India based on extinguishing landlords and oppressive industrialists and uplift the peasant and untouchable, probably by collectivization on Russian lines. It might be necessary to get rid of wretched sentimentalists like Wavell [the Viceroy] and most of the English officials in India, who were more Indian than the Indians, and send out new men. What was all my professed patriotism worth if I did not stand up for my own countrymen against Indian money-lenders? Naturally I lost patience and couldn’t help telling him that I didn’t see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s which annoyed him no little. I am by no means sure whether on this subject of India he is really quite sane” (Barnes & Nicholson, Empire at Bay, pp.992-993).

No mention of the Bengal Famine. Churchill speaks of uplifting the class most affected by hunger –landless agricultural labourers, who were mostly low caste or untouchables. According to Amery, Churchill added that he would ditch all promises claiming to advance India to self-government; abandon the policy of laissez-faire and institute greater state intervention in the Indian economy; neuter the landlords, money-lenders, and “oppressive” industrialists; and probably sack most of the British officials in India. He also attacked Amery personally – criticizing his patriotism and accusing him of doing the bidding of - or perhaps appeasing - Indian money-lenders. Amery admits he was annoyed at the insults and so retaliated by insulting Churchill back. It is clear from Amery’s account that the Hitler comparison was borne of frustration on Amery’s part.

We don’t know what Churchill said upon being compared to Hitler. Amery says that it annoyed him "no little" which is probably understating it. News of the conflagration reached the Viceroy of India, who wrote that Amery received a "first-class rocket" (Moon, Wavell, p.89) from Churchill. Given their friendship Amery must have known before making the comment how it would have been received. It is quite likely that Amery’s intention was to wind Churchill up. As historian Peter Harmsen puts it:

Much has been made in recent writings of Churchill’s alleged dislike of Indians, but some of it seems based on hyperbole and a distortion of historical sources. Amery did not make the comparison with the German dictator in “private”, but to Churchill’s face in a state of great emotion while the two were involved in a heated argument, and therefore should probably not be taken at face value (Harmsen, War in the Pacific, p.181 fn.72).

After the argument, Amery returned to his office and drafted a satirical document summarizing Churchill’s future plans for India. A piece of Swiftian satire clearly written as a way for Amery to let off some steam. Notwithstanding the fact that Amery wrote on the document that it was a skit, writer Madhusree Mukherjee took it seriously and used it to argue that Churchill would have implemented a Generalplan Ost in India if he had won the election in 1945. Presumably, she takes articles she reads in The Onion at face value too.

Killing Congress With Kindness

For all the vituperation directed at Churchill for his attitude to India, India was rarely a particularly high priority for him during the war – it was mainly an irritation. Amery complained about Churchill’s lack of interest in India:

“It really is terrible to think that in nearly five years, apart from incidental talks about appointments etc he has never once discussed either the Indian situation generally or this sterling balance question with me, but has only indulged in wild and indeed scarcely sane tirades in the Cabinet” (quoted in Louis, ‘In The Name of God Go’, p.175).

If Churchill had a plan to commit genocide you would have expected Amery to have noticed it and written about it in more detail than parodying it once. And if Churchill did have a plan for genocide, why did Amery complain about Churchill engaging in “wild and indeed scarcely sane tirades” instead of having a thought-through Indian policy?

Churchill made other statements on what he would like to happen in postwar India. As with anything, his statements need to be understood in their proper context. While Madhusree Mukerjee suggests that Churchill was under the influence of Hitler and Stalin when devising his views on postwar India, his main influence was much closer to home – the Labour party. In September 1942 Labour politician Stafford Cripps produced a note on India. As his biographer, Peter Clarke, described it:

[Cripps] crossed Marx with Machiavelli. [His argument] was to bypass communal conflicts by instigating economic reforms, thus furthering the interests of the masses against ‘the Indian millowners, landlords and money lenders, many of whom are the financial backers of the [Indian National] Congress’. In this way, ‘the struggle in India would no longer be between Indian and British upon the nationalist basis, but between the classes in India upon an economic basis’…. The Prime Minister seized on this aspect of Cripps’s analysis and asked that ‘these points should not be excluded from any statements that may have to be made on Indian policy’ (Clarke, The Cripps Version, p.351).

The India Office wasn’t impressed with Cripps’s note, but the idea of splitting the Indian masses from the Congress seems to have been on Churchill’s mind when he ranted about uplifting the peasants and abolishing the landlords and moneylenders on the 4^th of August 1944. According to Amery, in a Cabinet meeting in April 1945 Churchill returned to the same theme: ‘As usual [Churchill] poured contempt on Wavell [the Viceroy] and talked rubbish about abolishing landlords and money-lenders’ (Louis, ‘In The Name of God Go’, p.177). 

Given Churchill’s well-known hostility to communism, it may seem surprising that he thought socialism might be beneficial for India. It is worth bearing in mind though that Churchill was perhaps prone to tunnel vision, so he might have been willing to tolerate more socialism in India than he would under ordinary circumstances if it advanced the cause of the British Empire. In 1917 Lord Esher said about Churchill:

He handles great subjects in rhymical language, and becomes quickly enslaved by his own phrases. He deceives himself into the belief that he takes broad views, when his mind is fixed upon one comparatively small aspect of the question (quoted in James, ‘The Politician’, p.70).

However, we probably shouldn’t take Churchill’s comments that seriously. As the eminent historian, Sarvepalli Gopal, wrote:

“[Churchill] sought to divert attention from problems of constitutional change by a vigorous policy of social reform or the creation of large collectivized farms on the Soviet model to replace the existing system of fragmented land tenure. It would really pay the British to take up the cause of the poor peasant, to confiscate the lands of rich Congressmen and divide them up. But Churchill did not follow up these ideas and probably did not take them seriously, knowing that, in spite of him, the British might well, in his own phrase, chatter themselves out of India. At the time of the Cripps mission he cabled to Mackenzie King in Canada: ‘We have resigned ourselves to fighting our utmost to defend India in order, if successful, to be turned out.’ Later, just before the detention of Gandhi, he amazed the King by informing him that his colleagues and both, or all three, parties in Parliament were quite prepared to give up India to Indians after the war. Cripps, the press, and American opinion had all contributed to reaching the conclusion that British rule in India was wrong and had always been wrong for India and British political parties had already been talked into giving up India…. Some months later [Churchill] expressed to Amery his conviction that the Indian army was only waiting to shoot the British in the back. Out of this effervescing, confused welter of comments and suggestions what emerges is that, while Churchill would have liked to maintain the Empire in India, or even hold on to a bit of the country, he was not hopeful of it” (Gopal, ‘Churchill and India’, p.466; emphasis added).

Churchill was not the only one who thought that socialism was the future for India. US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt also believed that India required ‘reform from the bottom, somewhat on the Soviet line’ (FRUS: Tehran, Doc. 358)

Plenty of nationalist Indians would have found much of what Churchill remarked to be reasonable as far as the economics was concerned. As the economic historian BR Tomlinson wrote, "Congress radicals had been proposing a strong attack on private property rights in land since the early 1930s. The established leaders of the national movement were careful never to commit themselves to this policy unequivocally, but such ideas had some influence within the party in the 1930s and 1940s" (Tomlinson, Economy of Modern India, p.188). After independence Indian planners sought (and received) Soviet advice on their development strategy (Mehrotra, India and the Soviet Union, p.11). Some Indian nationalists were far more effusive in their praise of communism than Churchill ever was. For instance, in 1936 Nehru said:

I am convinced that the only key to the solution of the world’s problem and of India’s problem lies in socialism…. This involves vast and revolutionary changes in our political and social structure, the ending of vested interests in land and industry, as well as the feudal and autocratic Indian states system. This means the ending of private property, except in a restricted sense, and the replacement of the present profit system by a higher ideal of cooperative service. In short, it means a new civilization, radically different from the present capitalist order. Some glimpse we can have of this new civilization in the territories of the USSR… If the future is full of hope it is largely because of Soviet Russia… this new civilization will spread to other lands and put an end to the wars and conflicts which capitalism feeds on.

Nehru had no desire to copy & paste the Soviet system onto India, and he said that much happened in the USSR which pained him greatly (Gopal, A Biography, pp.207-208). The fact remains, however, that he found aspects of that regime praiseworthy, and he never criticized the Soviets to anything like the same degree that he criticized western transgressions. By Madhusree Mukerjee’s logic, Nehru and Roosevelt must have secretly desired to commit a class-based genocide in India.

Conclusion

The truth is that Amery had great respect for Churchill. He wasn’t morally appalled by Churchill’s racial views so much as he was frustrated by them. During a heated argument between the two men, and after a personal attack on his character, Amery angered Churchill by comparing him to Hitler. Amery would have known that this would annoy Churchill, and he likely made the comparison for that reason. It ought not to be taken at face value, as an objective assessment of Churchill’s racial views. For one thing, Hitler isn’t exactly known for his desire to improve the conditions of the Indian peasantry! The notion that Amery would think of Churchill as a murderer and a tyrant and still admire him contradicts the view that Amery was a humane man who supposedly shows how out-of-step Churchill’s imperialism was back in the 1940s.

Bibliography

Barnes, John & Nicholson, David (eds.), The Empire at Bay: The Leo Amery Diaries, 1929 – 1949 (Hutchinson, 1988)

Clarke, Peter, The Cripps Version: The Life of Sir Stafford Cripps, 1889 – 1952 (Allen Lane 2002)

Franklin, William and Gerber, William (eds.), Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943 (USGPO, 1961)

Gopal, Sarvepalli, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography: Volume One, 1889, 1947 (Oxford University Press, 1976)

Gopal, Sarvepalli, ‘Churchill and India’ in Robert Blame and W.M. Roger Louis, Churchill: A Major New Assessment of His Life in Peace and War (Clarendon Press, 1996), pp.457-471

Harmsen, Peter, War in the Pacific: Volume 2: Formidable Foe – 1942-1943 (Kindle edition, 2022)

James, Robert Rhodes, ‘The Politician’, in Taylor, A.J.P. (ed) Churchill: Four Faces and the Man (Allen Lane, 1969), pp.54-115

Louis, Wm. Roger, In the Name of God, Go! Leo Amery and the British Empire in the Age of Churchill (W.W. Norton & Co, 1992)

Mehrotra, Santosh, India and the Soviet Union: Trade and Technology Transfer (Cambridge University Press, 1990)

Moon, Penderel (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal (Oxford University Press, 1973)

Tomlinson, B.R., The Economy of Modern India, 1860 – 1970 (Cambridge University Press, 1996)

Besieging Fake History

 Otto English’s description of the Siege of Sidney Street is laughably bad:

In a footnote he adds the following description of the event: 

Where to start with this?

Problem #1: English Confuses Two Separate Incidents

The gunfight on Sidney Street in January 1911 did not result in the deaths of three policemen. No policemen were killed during the Siege of Sidney Street. One policeman was seriously wounded in the gunfight – Sergeant Ben Leeson – and had to retire. He published his memoirs, Lost London, in 1934.

Three policemen - Sergeants Tucker and Bentley and Constable Choate – were murdered by the criminal gang but not during the Siege of Sidney Street. Their killings took place a month earlier, in December, in Houndsditch. 

Not to be confused with the Siege of Sidney St

Problem #2: English is Wrong About the Number of Gangsters Killed

Only two gangsters were killed in the gunfight, not three. Their names were Fritz Svaars and Joseph Sokoloff. One was killed by bullets and the other suffocated in the smoke. Another member of the gang – George Gardstein – had been killed by police during the earlier Houndsditch incident.

Problem #3: English is Wrong About Churchill's Initial Reaction

Churchill did not “hot foot” it down to Stepney when he heard about the gunfight. He was first notified of the battle when he was in his London home – 33 Eccleston Square. Churchill “hot footed it” to the Home Office. However, there were no additional updates there. It was only then that he decided to go see events for himself. 

Problem #4: Churchill Didn't Take a Photographer With Him

At one point English mentions the work of Churchill's greatest biographer -  Martin Gilbert. It seems that English didn't bother to read Gilbert's work though. If he had he wouldn't have made this mistake. Churchill did not take a photographer with him to Sidney Street. Churchill himself mocked the suggestion that he did:

I am sure he [Alfred Lyttelton] does not suppose there is a branch of the Home Office to organise the movements of photographers. It is the misfortune of a good many Members to encourter in our daily walks an increasing number of persons armed with cameras to take pictures for the illustrated Press which is so rapidly developing. I would remind the right hon. Gentleman that his own Leader (Mr A.J. Balfour), when he risked his valuable life in a flying machine was the victim of similar publicity, but I certain should not go so far as to imitate the right hon. Gentleman (mr Lyttelton) by suggesting that he was himself concerned in procuring the attendance of a photographer to witness his daring feat in the way of aerial experience (quoted in Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, p.229)

Problem #5: Churchill Didn't Take Charge of the Police Operation

Churchill did not make a "show" of taking charge of events. To quote an eyewitness to the event, Sydney Holland:

The only possible excuse for anyone saying that [Churchill] gave orders is that [he] did once and very rightly go forward and wave back the crowd at the end of the road.... and you did also give orders that [he] and I were not to be shot in our hindquarters by a policeman who was standing with a 12-bore behind [us]” (quoted in Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, pp.223-224).

  Churchill also was approached by a junior firefighter and asked to overrule a police command for the fire brigade to stay back. Churchill declined to do so (or rather, he instructed the Fire Brigade to wait) because of the danger from gunfire. But this hardly amounted to him taking command of the police operations. Donald Rumbelow, a former curator of the City of London’s Police Museum, wrote that:

"[Churchill] had no wish to take personal control but his position of authority inevitably attracted to itself direct responsibility. He saw that he would have done much better to have remained in his office but it was impossible to get into his car and drive away while matters were so uncertain and – he wrote later – so ‘extremely interesting’" (Rumbelow, The Houndsditch Murders, p.136; emphasis added).

Problem #6: English Gets the Cause of the Fire Wrong

English's attribution of the cause of the blaze to artillery shot is contradicted by two eyewitness accounts. According to firefighter Cyril Morris, the opinion of the fire brigade was that the fire was caused by a bullet hitting a gas pipe:

We found two charred bodies in the debris, one of them had been shot through the head and the other had apparently died of suffocation. At the inquest a verdict of justifiable homicide was returned. Much discussion took place afterward as to what caused the fire. Did the anarchists deliberately set the building alight, thus creating a diversion to enable them to escape? The view of the London Fire Brigade at the time was that a gas pipe was punctured on one of the upper floors, and that the gas was lighted either at the time of the bullet piercing it or perhaps afterwards by a bullet causing a spark which ignited the escaping gas (Morris, Fire!, p.39).

Journalist Philip Gibbs, who witnessed the event from a nearby pub, wrote that the fire was actually caused by the criminals themselves:

In the top-floor room of the anarchists' house we observed a gas jet burning, and presently some of us noticed the white ash of burnt paper fluttering out of a chimney pot.

"They're burning documents," said one of my friends.

They were burning more than that. They were setting fire to the house, upstairs and downstairs. The window curtains were first to catch alight, then volumes of black smoke, through which little tongues of flame licked up, poured through the empty window frames. They must have used paraffin to help the progress of the fire, for the whole house was burning with amazing rapidity (Gibbs, Adventures in Journalism, p.67).

In fact, it would have been extremely difficult for the Royal Artillery to cause the fire because they didn't shell the street. The fire started around 1 PM (Rumbelow, The Houndsditch Murders, p.136), and the artillery did not arrive until c.2:40 PM, around the same time Churchill left the scene. Martin Gilbert records Churchill's denial that he ever called up the artillery (Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, p.224).

Churchill's testimony at the inquest. Note the artillery arrived after the fire had already started

Conclusion: Fake History

In the span of several sentences, English managed to make six incorrect assertions. Had he just looked at the Wikipedia page he could have avoided this. A poor effort for someone claiming to debunk “fake history”.  

Bibliography

Gibbs, Philip, Adventures in Journalism (Harper & Brothers, 1923)

Gilbert, Martin, Churchill: A Life (Pimlico, 2000)

Morris, Cyril Clarke Boville, Fire! (Blackie and Son Ltd, 1939)

Rumbelow, Donald, The Houndsditch Murders and the Siege of Sidney Street (The History Press, 2009)