5 ms·

I am assuming that readers interested in the original post would be interested in India's colonial history in general. https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/r

by srean 6y ago

I am assuming that readers interested in the original post would be interested in India's colonial history in general. https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/rethinking-churchill-69080/ https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/rethinking-churchill-... Churchill is usually seen in much better light. That light, however, hides many of his atrocities. History is indeed written by the victorious. The author of the articles is Shashi Tharoor, a name that some might recognize. Part 2 is here https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/rethinking-churchill-part-ii/ https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/rethinking-churchill-...

Veen 6y ago
In the interests of providing a little balance: - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091022064745.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091022064745.h... - https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/did-churchill-cause-the-bengal-famine/ https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/did-churchill-cause-t... - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00963402.1987.11459604?journalCode=rbul20 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00963402.1987.11...
- n4r9 6y ago
  In case anyone else wants a summary of these links, they are criticisms of three historical allegations against Churchill, respectively that he: - Used gas against Iraqis - Exacerbated the Bengal famine - Used anthrax bombs against Nazi Germany I don't believe any of these allegations are made in the preceding comment's link, although it does quote him as being in favour of the option of using gas against Arab natives.
  - vixen99 6y ago
    Or if you really want to open up a can of worms - the firebombing of Dresden in which (it's suggested) 25,000 people, mostly civilians, died as a result of an attempt to intimidate/frighten the German population. But to take an overview, we should then return to the question of Hiroshima and that second bomb on Nagasaki. How far is one prepared to go to win a war?
    - robin21 6y ago
      It’s always amazing to think in the complete chaos of war there were still rules to follow. Things like after sinking a ship letting the enemy know where they should come pick up their survivors. Not using hollow point rounds. Banning gas. Etc. The problem is that in most wars there always seems to be a force of good and a force of evil who is not willing to follow the rules. The Germans, Japanese, Italians, Russians of that time were led by truly evil regimes. Or maybe this is just our collective 20th century bias. How did Europe see Napoleon for example? How did countries see the actions of other nations during the previous decades? Back to the point though, it did seem like Britain saw themselves on the side of the light and fought within the rules as much as possible. To fight an evil without becoming evil yourself is quite a challenge for humanity in general.
      - mrec 6y ago
        > Things like after sinking a ship letting the enemy know where they should come pick up their survivors. This did happen, at least early on, in the Battle of the Atlantic. And some U-boat crews not only stopped to pick up survivors but gave up their own bunks for them. Eventually Dönitz had to order them to stop, on the grounds that it put the sub at risk. You might also be interested in the Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler incident [1] - sometimes a spark of human decency shines through even when you'd least expect it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Brown_and_Franz_Stigler_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Brown_and_Franz_Stigle...
        derivagral 6y ago
        As I understand it, this generally stopped because of the Laconia incident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconia_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconia_incident
        mrec 6y ago
        That was '42; the (in)famous Dönitz order below was from November or December '39. > Rescue no one and take no one with you. Have no care for the ships’ boats. Weather conditions and the proximity of land are of no account. Care only for your own boat and strive to achieve the next success as soon as possible! We must be hard in this war. The enemy started the war in order to destroy us, therefore nothing else matters. I'm not sure what happened in between that led the U-boats in the Laconia incident to ignore that order.
  - KaiserPro 6y ago
    > - Used gas against Iraqis Proposed the use of tear gas. Didn't carry it out. > - Exacerbated the Bengal famine Its more the japanese cutting off the rice supply, However I have some sympathy with exacerbate. > - Used anthrax bombs against Nazi Germany No. Planned to use it in retaliation. The Nazis were keen to avoid using chemical weapons because they were aware that the british had a far greater capacity to create and deploy them compared to the Nazis. (well in 1939-42) There are very real faults we can lay at churchill's career. 1) the bombing campaign. lots of "dehoming" (ie attacking civilians instead of industrial targets) 2) dresden 3) hamburg 4) fucking up Galipoli
    - srean 6y ago
      Given that Bengal was a traditional grain overproduction / surplus state, it seems odd that reserves needed replenishing from Japan unless it had been stripped in the first place
    - selimthegrim 6y ago
      >Its more the japanese cutting off the rice supply, However I have some sympathy with exacerbate. Punjab banned export of grain outside its boundaries. The viceroy who answered to Churchill could have overridden that.
arethuza 6y ago
People often forget that a lot of people in the UK disliked Churchill - my father was in the RAF during WW2 and he hated him. Churchill was removed from office by a general election right after the end of the war - though he was elected again a few years later.
- robin21 6y ago
  Churchill’s ascendency to PM is an amazing story simply because everyone hated him so much. He had barely any support in parliament at the time, and even after taking over during the war he was still hated. But had he not taken over it’s likely that most of the Europe would be speaking German today.
  - juanani 6y ago
    Can I get sauce on this? You keep claiming Churchill saved the world from ze Germans, it sounds like a wild claim, where can I read more about this?
    - robin21 6y ago
      From here onwards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill#Warnings_about_Germany_and_the_abdication_crisis:_1933%E2%80%931936 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill#Warnings_abo...
robin21 6y ago
I wonder what the formula is for victories vs atrocities in terms of historical respect and modern acceptance. It seems we have entered into a period of no matter how much good you did, there is a hard red line of unacceptability set in a modern context as to which all historical figures are judged. If Churchill wasn’t made PM there is a good argument to be made that the Jewish population would have been all but wiped out, and Europe today would be a fascist slave state to Germany. But then would the communist purges in Russia and China not have happened. No Vietnam. Peace for Europe but under brutal authoritarian rule. Any criticism of Churchill’s historical significance really needs to consider the alternative outcome without him. I don’t think there is anyone who would want to take him out of history having acknowledged this. I think most criticism of him comes from ignorance to history. But yes, the facts are important and it’s good that everything about history is discussed again and again.
- cafard 6y ago
  The big purges in the USSR happened in the 1930s.
  - robin21 6y ago
    Thanks, Russia is my weak spot in history rn.
- valarauko 6y ago
  Are you really suggesting that Churchill was the singular character who determined the outcome of the war, and without him fascist Europe would stand till this day? >_Any criticism of Churchill’s historical significance really needs to consider the alternative outcome without him. I don’t think there is anyone who would want to take him out of history having acknowledged this. I think most criticism of him comes from ignorance to history._ My guess - another British PM would have made different choices, and perhaps the UK would have been overrun, or perhaps it would not. Perhaps the tide of war would have turned earlier, and the war ended in 1943, or perhaps in 1947. Perhaps it would have taken 2 or 3 British PMs to achieve it, or perhaps a better PM would have come along. Honestly, the "Great Man" approach to history is overwrought. Here's a different take on the trajectory of the war: once set into motion, the worldwide war was a systemic entity, above and beyond the actions of any singular actor, no matter how powerful. Tactics help, but the outcomes of wars turn on systemic parameters - resources, populations, infrastructure, etc. If we could redo the war a million times and change tactics/leaders each time, the Axis powers would lose close to a million times - with individual battles changing outcomes, but not the war. Perhaps in some cases the war would fizzle out immediately, and in some cases the war would drag on for some years longer.

by srean 6y ago

Veen 6y ago

In the interests of providing a little balance: - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091022064745.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091022064745.h... - https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/did-churchill-cause-the-bengal-famine/ https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/did-churchill-cause-t... - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00963402.1987.11459604?journalCode=rbul20 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00963402.1987.11...

n4r9 6y ago
In case anyone else wants a summary of these links, they are criticisms of three historical allegations against Churchill, respectively that he: - Used gas against Iraqis - Exacerbated the Bengal famine - Used anthrax bombs against Nazi Germany I don't believe any of these allegations are made in the preceding comment's link, although it does quote him as being in favour of the option of using gas against Arab natives.
- vixen99 6y ago
  Or if you really want to open up a can of worms - the firebombing of Dresden in which (it's suggested) 25,000 people, mostly civilians, died as a result of an attempt to intimidate/frighten the German population. But to take an overview, we should then return to the question of Hiroshima and that second bomb on Nagasaki. How far is one prepared to go to win a war?
  - robin21 6y ago
    It’s always amazing to think in the complete chaos of war there were still rules to follow. Things like after sinking a ship letting the enemy know where they should come pick up their survivors. Not using hollow point rounds. Banning gas. Etc. The problem is that in most wars there always seems to be a force of good and a force of evil who is not willing to follow the rules. The Germans, Japanese, Italians, Russians of that time were led by truly evil regimes. Or maybe this is just our collective 20th century bias. How did Europe see Napoleon for example? How did countries see the actions of other nations during the previous decades? Back to the point though, it did seem like Britain saw themselves on the side of the light and fought within the rules as much as possible. To fight an evil without becoming evil yourself is quite a challenge for humanity in general.
    - mrec 6y ago
      > Things like after sinking a ship letting the enemy know where they should come pick up their survivors. This did happen, at least early on, in the Battle of the Atlantic. And some U-boat crews not only stopped to pick up survivors but gave up their own bunks for them. Eventually Dönitz had to order them to stop, on the grounds that it put the sub at risk. You might also be interested in the Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler incident [1] - sometimes a spark of human decency shines through even when you'd least expect it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Brown_and_Franz_Stigler_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Brown_and_Franz_Stigle...
      - derivagral 6y ago
        As I understand it, this generally stopped because of the Laconia incident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconia_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconia_incident
        mrec 6y ago
        That was '42; the (in)famous Dönitz order below was from November or December '39. > Rescue no one and take no one with you. Have no care for the ships’ boats. Weather conditions and the proximity of land are of no account. Care only for your own boat and strive to achieve the next success as soon as possible! We must be hard in this war. The enemy started the war in order to destroy us, therefore nothing else matters. I'm not sure what happened in between that led the U-boats in the Laconia incident to ignore that order.
- KaiserPro 6y ago
  > - Used gas against Iraqis Proposed the use of tear gas. Didn't carry it out. > - Exacerbated the Bengal famine Its more the japanese cutting off the rice supply, However I have some sympathy with exacerbate. > - Used anthrax bombs against Nazi Germany No. Planned to use it in retaliation. The Nazis were keen to avoid using chemical weapons because they were aware that the british had a far greater capacity to create and deploy them compared to the Nazis. (well in 1939-42) There are very real faults we can lay at churchill's career. 1) the bombing campaign. lots of "dehoming" (ie attacking civilians instead of industrial targets) 2) dresden 3) hamburg 4) fucking up Galipoli
  - srean 6y ago
    Given that Bengal was a traditional grain overproduction / surplus state, it seems odd that reserves needed replenishing from Japan unless it had been stripped in the first place
  - selimthegrim 6y ago
    >Its more the japanese cutting off the rice supply, However I have some sympathy with exacerbate. Punjab banned export of grain outside its boundaries. The viceroy who answered to Churchill could have overridden that.

arethuza 6y ago

People often forget that a lot of people in the UK disliked Churchill - my father was in the RAF during WW2 and he hated him. Churchill was removed from office by a general election right after the end of the war - though he was elected again a few years later.

robin21 6y ago
Churchill’s ascendency to PM is an amazing story simply because everyone hated him so much. He had barely any support in parliament at the time, and even after taking over during the war he was still hated. But had he not taken over it’s likely that most of the Europe would be speaking German today.
- juanani 6y ago
  Can I get sauce on this? You keep claiming Churchill saved the world from ze Germans, it sounds like a wild claim, where can I read more about this?
  - robin21 6y ago
    From here onwards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill#Warnings_about_Germany_and_the_abdication_crisis:_1933%E2%80%931936 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill#Warnings_abo...

robin21 6y ago

I wonder what the formula is for victories vs atrocities in terms of historical respect and modern acceptance. It seems we have entered into a period of no matter how much good you did, there is a hard red line of unacceptability set in a modern context as to which all historical figures are judged. If Churchill wasn’t made PM there is a good argument to be made that the Jewish population would have been all but wiped out, and Europe today would be a fascist slave state to Germany. But then would the communist purges in Russia and China not have happened. No Vietnam. Peace for Europe but under brutal authoritarian rule. Any criticism of Churchill’s historical significance really needs to consider the alternative outcome without him. I don’t think there is anyone who would want to take him out of history having acknowledged this. I think most criticism of him comes from ignorance to history. But yes, the facts are important and it’s good that everything about history is discussed again and again.

cafard 6y ago
The big purges in the USSR happened in the 1930s.
- robin21 6y ago
  Thanks, Russia is my weak spot in history rn.
valarauko 6y ago
Are you really suggesting that Churchill was the singular character who determined the outcome of the war, and without him fascist Europe would stand till this day? >_Any criticism of Churchill’s historical significance really needs to consider the alternative outcome without him. I don’t think there is anyone who would want to take him out of history having acknowledged this. I think most criticism of him comes from ignorance to history._ My guess - another British PM would have made different choices, and perhaps the UK would have been overrun, or perhaps it would not. Perhaps the tide of war would have turned earlier, and the war ended in 1943, or perhaps in 1947. Perhaps it would have taken 2 or 3 British PMs to achieve it, or perhaps a better PM would have come along. Honestly, the "Great Man" approach to history is overwrought. Here's a different take on the trajectory of the war: once set into motion, the worldwide war was a systemic entity, above and beyond the actions of any singular actor, no matter how powerful. Tactics help, but the outcomes of wars turn on systemic parameters - resources, populations, infrastructure, etc. If we could redo the war a million times and change tactics/leaders each time, the Axis powers would lose close to a million times - with individual battles changing outcomes, but not the war. Perhaps in some cases the war would fizzle out immediately, and in some cases the war would drag on for some years longer.