[Misc] Churchill

[carlzeiss]

Best to avoid quoting Sir Winston Churchill now otherwise you may be arrested by the hate speech Police .

You have been warned .

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...candidate-arrested-over-Churchill-speech.html

 

[MattBackHome]

Best to avoid quoting Sir Winston Churchill now otherwise you may be arrested by the hate speech Police .

You have been warned .

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...candidate-arrested-over-Churchill-speech.html

Indeed - you have been warned not to try and incite religious hatred.

 

[Biscuit]

Wait, you weren't aware Churchill was a remarkable orator?!

 

[Bladders]

Best to avoid quoting Sir Winston Churchill now otherwise you may be arrested by the hate speech Police .

You have been warned .

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...candidate-arrested-over-Churchill-speech.html

7 officers to arrest a middle age man with a megaphone.

If only they were that keen when you're being burgled

 

[Pavilionaire]

If it were not for Churchill we would all be speaking German now

Indeed. Having replaced the ersatz Neville Chamberlain, Churchill captured the zeitgeist of the day, and his weltanschauung helped shape the post-WWII era.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

I am a member of the HMS Hood Association, as my Dad served on her 37-39. I have met a couple of people who were on board when Mers-el-Kebir happened, and a French sailor, a survivor from a ship in that fleet. They went to each others memorial services.
I know Commander Keith Evans said he felt bad about having to sink the fleet, but war is a dirty business. Andre, the Frenchman also understood that it was needed at the time. Both lovely men. Commander Evans is now 97, and still going strong.

I've been trying to remember Andre's surname. Andre Jaffre who was on board the Bretagne in Mers-elKebir.

 

[Brovion]

Actually by the standards of the time he was still pretty racist. I think this whole argument feeds in to a need for us to frame people in absolute terms. So Churchill led us through world war 2 therefore he is GOOD and we can't have anything bad said about him. But to use the cliche , Hiltler was apparently very good with children and animals. The truth is good people do bad things and vice versa. Churchill had a chequered career up until the war. There is good reason he was in the political wilderness in the 1930's. Churchill was imo the most important leader Britain had in the 20th century , but that doens't gloss over what a complex character he was nor that he did and said some terrrible things.

Agreed, and in fact 'chequered career' is probably being kind. He was wrong about almost everything: India, Ireland, the Gold Standard, the Dardanelles and female suffrage (although he did change his mind) to name some of his major clangers.

I do hate it though when historical figures are judged by modern standards. Yes by our standards he was a horrible racist and he was reactionary even for a Victorian Tory - but he was spot on about Nazi Germany. And he was a brilliant war leader, indeed I will go as far as to say we would have lost if anyone else (such as Halifax) had become PM. So for all his many many faults I do think he deserves his 'war hero' status.

 

[aberllefenni]

I couldn't disagree that he was a great war leader. However, as a domestic politician he was wrong in the majority of cases. He lost the 1945 election by a landslide because he expected the returning forces to carry on as before, whereas Labour promised full employment and the introduction of the welfare state. Prior to WW2 he was not popular in certain areas of the country. In 1910, during the ha'penny strike in Tonypandy (an episode that I know something about as my great-grandfather was in the thick of it) he threatened to call in the troops, and the railway strike in Llanelli a year later where he actually followed through with that threat and two men were killed.

 

[GT49er]

I do hate it though when historical figures are judged by modern standards.

Absolutely this. The intolerance of modern liberalism. Not an appealing characteristic.

 

[Martlet]

I couldn't disagree that he was a great war leader. However, as a domestic politician he was wrong in the majority of cases. He lost the 1945 election by a landslide because he expected the returning forces to carry on as before, whereas Labour promised full employment and the introduction of the welfare state.
Prior to WW2 he was not popular in certain areas of the country. In 1910, during the ha'penny strike in Tonypandy (an episode that I know something about as my great-grandfather was in the thick of it) he threatened to call in the troops, and the railway strike in Llanelli a year later where he actually followed through with that threat and two men were killed.

All of this is absolutely correct. Between the wars he was a political disaster, he completely misjudged the people in 1945 and then returned as PM for all the wrong reasons in 1951.

That said, when it mattered, when we needed someone with his resolve, charisma and energy, he delivered - and delivered big. He was an excellent First Lord of the Admiralty in WW1 (such that when he was brought back into the War Cabinet under Chamberlain, the Navy semaphored "Winston is Back!"
The fact that when they came together in a wartime coalition government, Atlee and Labour insisted on serving under Churchill (and not Chamberlain) probably tells you all you need to know.

He wasn't just a great war leader, he was the great war leader. In my view, we would have been toast without him.

 

[cunning fergus]

That's one of the reasons I don't like films much as history is changed for the sake of entertainment, but then the film is taken as history by a lot of people.
Most Americans believe they recovered the Enigma machine, when bits of it were provided by the Polish underground. A complete Enigma machine was captured by HMS Bulldog in 1941.

As a point of order, before the war the Polish had built 3 complete Enigma machines and were breaking German codes before WW2 such was their preparations for dealing with an aggressive Germany. They offered the machines to Britain and France and their cryptologists were taken out of Poland when hostilities opened in 1939.

They were largely in France when the Germans invaded their in 1940, and most got over to the U.K. and served in Bletchley Park when France surrendered.

Your point about films and history are well made, these days Alan Turing is considered the central character at Bletchley Park (aka Imitation Game) yet the reality was there were many more individuals involved. Gordon Welchman and Tommy Flowers are just two examples who made greater contributions than Turing, not just in Bletchley but post war. The story behind Flowers is all the more impressive given his background as an east end working class boy that invented the first fully programmable computer “colossus”. Turing didn’t have the monopoly on discrimination, after all he was educated at Sherborne.

 

[GT49er]

Didn't he get an impersonator to make half his speeches including the above, or is that bollocks?

Not one I've heard, but I do believe a lot of the speeches he made in Parliament were re-recorded at a later date (in some cases not until after the war was over). I'm pretty sure this one was one of the ones recorded in the days that followed. I think the famous recording of "the few" speech was done in 1946 or '47.

The actor concerned was Norman Shelley (Freddy Danby in The Archers, and Dr. Watson in the BBC Children's Hour Sherlock Holmes stories in the 1950s), who is rumoured to have delivered the speeches on the radio at the time. Shelley himself is apparently the sauce of the rumour, which has many detractors - but which nonetheless has a ring of distinct possibility about it. Guess we'll never actually know.

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

Indeed, if that clown was PM at the time the Hood would have been sailing around with no 15'' shells.

............ a bit like huge Aircraft Carriers having no Aircraft to carry.................

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

We saw the film on Friday.

Whatever you think about Churchill, it is an extremely good film. The Guardian review described it as almost a "high-octane political thriller." Enormously entertaining, whether or not it was wholly accurate.

And Gary Oldman's portrayal of Churchill was the best I've ever seen.

And of course Churchill was a massive pro-european figure after the war.......... just saying.

 

[daveinprague]

Indeed, if that clown was PM at the time the Hood would have been sailing around with no 15'' shells.

Ironic that a German shell hit the Hoods magazine, and the resulting explosion blew it out of the water

 

[Thunder Bolt]

Ironic that a German shell hit the Hoods magazine, and the resulting explosion blew it out of the water

It's not 100% sure that it hit the magazine. It's never been proved.

 

[daveinprague]

It's not 100% sure that it hit the magazine. It's never been proved.

Well, the explosion broke her back. It was a pretty big explosion. Cant think of much else that would have done that.
When I was a kid, and living in Hova Villas I think. The handyman there was one of its crew, and was taken off before it sailed for some medical condition. Pretty lucky.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

Duplicate due to the site playing silly beggars

 

[daveinprague]

It's not 100% sure that it hit the magazine. It's never been proved.

Ive never seen an alternative version tbh Everything ive ever read about it says, it was the magazine.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

Well, the explosion broke her back. It was a pretty big explosion. Cant think of much else that would have done that.
When I was a kid, and living in Hova Villas I think. The handyman there was one of its crew, and was taken off before it sailed for some medical condition. Pretty lucky.

You should read Ted Briggs book.

I have heard of scores of sailors who were just taken off before she sailed. The Hood Association website has a complete crew list dating back to 1920 and very few left just before 24th May 1941.