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This is garbage. The real villains are Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax. They would have condemned half a billion people to death just to give Britain a few
by Bucephalus355 8y ago
This is garbage. The real villains are Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax. They would have condemned half a billion people to death just to give Britain a few extra years of peace.
- KSS42 8y agoWhich part is garbage? What do Chamberlain and Halifax have to do with whether Churchill is considered a villain?
- darkpuma 8y agoEvidently fighting Nazis absolves you any crime against humanity. Vae victis I suppose. Edit: response to Ntrails: People find comfort in black and white worldviews. Pointing out that somebody who was a hero in one respect was a villain in other seems to induce some sort of dissonance that gets some people angry. The article says that Churchill was a villain with respect to British colonies, not in every conceivable respect. But this has made some people angry, they see Churchill as a hero in the fight against Germany, so they're unwilling or unable to see Churchill as a villain in Ireland or India. There is no logical contradiction here, but there is an emotional contradiction. I don't consider this a moral failing on the part of those upset, it just seems to be how people are wired.
- Ntrails 8y agoHe Was Both Hero And Villain Why on earth do people find this so hard to comprehend?
- spamizbad 8y agoIf you’re going to bring up their blunders you should perhaps also mention how Churchill completely cocked-up several crucial naval operations that could have ended the war early. If he was around today he’d be what they call a “failson” Oh and then there’s the whole Indian famine thing...
- KSS42 8y agoWhich naval operations? WW1 or WW2?
- Svip 8y agoI am not sure what the parent specifically has in mind, but Churchill wasn't Navy Minister during WW2, and didn't have the same direct control over the navy like he did in WW1, where he really blundered through it. Indeed, I might imagine the UK doing better in WW2, because Churchill was less in direct control of operations.
- smacktoward 8y agoAlthough in those times when Churchill did take direct control in WW2, he tended to screw things up. The disastrous campaigns in Norway and Greece, for instance, both had his fingerprints all over them.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y agoChurchill was First Lord of the Admiralty before he took over from Chamberlain. He was very much responsible for the Norwegian Campaign, which was widely considered a fiasco that handed Hitler a decisive victory and gave the latter enough political momentum to continue with his war plans. https://www.historynet.com/scandinavian-twist-churchills-1940-fiasco-in-norway.htm https://www.historynet.com/scandinavian-twist-churchills-194...
- Taniwha 8y agoChurchill was directly responsible for the Gallipoli disaster (and the naval disaster it was intended to support), he resigned from the government in disgrace
- YinLuck- 8y agoHalf a billion foreigners should be worth less than 1 Briton to a British leader.
- _bxg1 8y ago/s? I dearly hope?
- frostburg 8y agoAs it often happens to truly extreme moral bankrupcy (as opposed to just regular moral bankrupcy), this is position is self defeating. A victorious nazi Germany, leveraging its new resources after consolidating the gains in continental Europe, could have successfully invaded the UK.
- dang 8y agoWe've banned this account for trolling. Would you please stop creating accounts to break the site guidelines with? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html