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The Churchill Project - Hillsdale College > Search results for 'wilderness years'
Meeting Hitler, 1932
05
Mar
2015
By THE CHURCHILL PROJECT
While Churchill and Hitler never met, they had a near encounter at a Munich hotel in the 1930's. During the evening Churchill dined with Ernst Hanfstaengl, Hitler’s foreign press secretary, to whom Churchill made the famous remark: "Tell your boss from me that anti-Semitism may be a good starter, but it is a bad sticker."
The Whole of Churchill and Africa, Explored by C. Brad Faught
15
Apr
2024
By WILLIAM JOHN SHEPHERD
African leaders like Jomo Kenyatta and Nelson Mandela cited the Atlantic Charter as their inspiration. Ultimately, when accompanied by civil order and democratic institutions, Churchill accepted African independence. Charges of racism are now so perversive as to be a trope, far removed from historical contextualization and based on modern notions of morality. Finely written books like Faught’s go a long way to righting the balance and revealing the truth.
“Fighting Retreat” by Walter Reid: Did Churchill Really Hate India?
26
Feb
2024
By ZAREER MASANI
The promise of Dominion status required only that Congress, the Muslim League and the princes agree on power-sharing at a federal Centre. To blame Churchill for the internal divisions that obstructed such a coalition obfuscates reality. A power-sharing deal between Nehru and Jinnah would have made nonsense of Churchill’s fears. Instead, India’s fragile imperial unity fell apart under majoritarian strains. That gave Churchill the dubious distinction of being proved right.
Best and Jenkins on Churchill, Empire, India and the Middle East
07
Dec
2023
By LARRY P. ARNN
“Let us say, for example, that we form the view that children in some distant land should not be taught the method and the rightness of suicidal murder of civilians. Let us say that they should not be taught to kill people because of their race or religion. Let us say that their families should not be paid large sums when they do it; that teenagers should not be instructed how to carry ugly bombs around as if they were knapsacks. Let us say that we propose to stop this. This is a lot to prevent.”
Cancellation Attempts, 1939: Kitty Atholl, Winston Churchill
05
Jun
2023
2
By RICHARD COHEN
Even in her time a politician could be “cancelled” for saying things deemed unfashionable by the prevailing orthodoxy. Back then the orthodoxy was the Munich agreement. Her criticisms of it cost the Duchess of Atholl her party and her seat in Parliament. She went down fighting, but never wavered in her causes: human rights and Churchill’s campaign against Appeasement.
Keen Historical Insights by Jock, the Intelligent Cat
11
May
2023
3
By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
Larry Kryske has provided Jock the cat with a translator and a publisher, offering a charming insight into Churchill’s old age. He asks you only to suspend disbelief and accept that cats, after all, are people too. Notably, Jock never refers to WSC as “my master,” but rather as “my human.” Theirs was a partnership of equals: a “Grand Alliance.” There is solid history here too, as it can be delivered by an author steeped in knowledge.
Great Contemporaries: Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound
02
Mar
2023
By ROBIN BRODHURST
Churchill and Pound were vividly contrasting types, but in the emergency of a world war they fitted together. Each recognised the strengths and weaknesses of the other. Churchill famously wrote that he felt he was walking with destiny. It was equally true to say of Pound: “He is not a Roosevelt figure; rather he is like Truman, and like Truman, he stayed in the kitchen and he took the heat.”
Great Contemporaries: George Nathaniel Curzon
16
Jan
2023
1
By BRADLEY P. TOLPPANEN
Churchill described Curzon’s funeral as “dull and dreary,” but he had “faced his end with fortitude and philosophy. I am v[er]y sorry he is gone. I did not think the tributes were v[er]y generous. I w[oul]d not have been grateful for such stuff. But he did not inspire affection, nor represent g[rea]t causes.”
Whom Did Churchill Regard as History’s Greatest Law-Giver?
25
Mar
2022
By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
“Moses was the national hero who led the Chosen People out of the land of bondage, through the perils of the wilderness, and brought them to the very threshold of the Promised Land; he was the supreme Law-Giver, who received from God that remarkable code upon which the religious, moral, and social life of the nation was so securely founded.”
Great Contemporaries: Georges Clemenceau, Tiger of France (1)
16
Dec
2021
Harold Begbie: “The Man Who Did God for the Westminster Gazette”
11
Mar
2021
By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
"All Mr. Churchill needs is the direction in his life of a great idea. He is a Saul on the way to Damascus. Let him swing clean away from that road to destruction and he might well become Paul on his way to immortality. This is to say, that to be saved from himself. Mr. Churchill must be carried away by enthusiasm for some great ideal." —Harold Begbie, 1921
Hitler’s “Tet Offensive”: Churchill and the Austrian Anschluss, 1938
05
Nov
2020
1
By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
Breathless media admiration of Hitler’s Anschluss obscured German military deficiencies that might have mattered if the democracies had stood firm.
Tags:
Adolf Hitler,
Alexander Lassner,
Anschluss,
Case Otto,
Erich Raeder,
Geoffrey Dawson,
Hapsburg Empire,
Hearst press,
Hermann Goering,
Joachim von Ribbentrop,
Kurt von Schuschnigg,
League of Nations,
Little Entente,
Neville Chamberlain,
Richard M. Langworth,
Unity Mitford,
Versailles Treaty,
Werner von Blomberg,
Werner von Fritsch,
Winston S. Churchill,