Opinion of Winston Churchill

[Filuwaúrdjan]

One of the worst Chancellors of the Exchequer in the entire 20th century. Actually it's difficult to think what Churchill did right outside of a single year, 1940. Which is admittedly a great achievement. 

He was on the right side in a lot of the big internal disputes about social policy within the 1906-16 Liberal government. And in thinking that Imperial Preference was nonsense on stilts. But, yes. I think we can say that as soon as the First World War began, that he became a man who was in general wrong about almost everything, except that the one thing he was right about was the most important thing in the world.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

FF

[afleitch]

One of the worst Chancellors of the Exchequer in the entire 20th century. Actually it's difficult to think what Churchill did right outside of a single year, 1940. Which is admittedly a great achievement. 

He was on the right side in a lot of the big internal disputes about social policy within the 1906-16 Liberal government. And in thinking that Imperial Preference was nonsense on stilts. But, yes. I think we can say that as soon as the First World War began, that he became a man who was in general wrong about almost everything, except that the one thing he was right about was the most important thing in the world.

People forget that Churchill would never have been PM or Churchill without Attlee. I think something of the old rhetorical Churchill came to the surface in 1940 but he was clearly spent by war's end.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

People forget that Churchill would never have been PM or Churchill without Attlee. I think something of the old rhetorical Churchill came to the surface in 1940 but he was clearly spent by war's end.

Yes. As a Wartime PM he was essentially a Coalition PM in a really old fashioned, almost 18th century sense: a ministry created from finding a majority from adding together a minority faction of the majority to the opposition!

[SWE]

If defeating the nazis is enough to be considered FF, Uncle Joe is a FF too

Bit of a difference, and you know that.

What, between Churchill and a guy who killed 20 million people?  U sure?

The moderate liberal YouTuber Knowing Better debunked most of the Churchill falsehoods.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4m_BwYeIRo

He also has a great video on Columbus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEw8c6TmzGg

Don't know enough about Churchill to properly criticize his video on that, but this video is embarrassingly bad. If you submitted a paper in a 100 level history class with this level of research standards, you wouldn't receive a passing grade. He denies Adam Conover's claim that Columbus believed the earth was pear-shaped on the basis that he had never heard of such a claim and just assumes that the source Adam uses is Columbus' only mention of this belief (it's not). His attempt at "debunking" claims about what Columbus said is by dumping quotes written 500 years ago into Google Translate. This is not an individual who should be taken seriously as an authority on any historical matter, he's only interested in being contrarian and not any actual historical research.

[KaiserDave]

If defeating the nazis is enough to be considered FF, Uncle Joe is a FF too

Bit of a difference, and you know that.

What, between Churchill and a guy who killed 20 million people?  U sure?

The moderate liberal YouTuber Knowing Better debunked most of the Churchill falsehoods.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4m_BwYeIRo

He also has a great video on Columbus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEw8c6TmzGg

Don't know enough about Churchill to properly criticize his video on that, but this video is embarrassingly bad. If you submitted a paper in a 100 level history class with this level of research standards, you wouldn't receive a passing grade. He denies Adam Conover's claim that Columbus believed the earth was pear-shaped on the basis that he had never heard of such a claim and just assumes that the source Adam uses is Columbus' only mention of this belief (it's not). His attempt at "debunking" claims about what Columbus said is by dumping quotes written 500 years ago into Google Translate. This is not an individual who should be taken seriously as an authority on any historical matter, he's only interested in being contrarian and not any actual historical research.

KB goes on to update that video

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bEHMzhtwgMI

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

An evil son of a bitch who knew really evil sons of bitches when he saw them, which is more than can be said for lots of other British aristos of his generation. Big Abraham and CrabCake hit the nail on the head.

I’m going to assume you got the statistic from the propaganda hitpeice the Black Book of Communism, which counts abortion statistics and deaths in WWII on the battlefield to produce such inane inflations, along with the real criminal actions and mismanagement during the Ukrainian famine the Holodomor. Joseph Stalin was responsible for mass murders, but 20 million deaths is nothing but propaganda.

Yes; even Timothy Snyder, probably the most eminent Eastern Front historian of the moral equivalency school, concedes that the factoid that Stalin's body count was higher than Hitler's is Cold War propaganda.

People forget that Churchill would never have been PM or Churchill without Attlee. I think something of the old rhetorical Churchill came to the surface in 1940 but he was clearly spent by war's end.

Yes. As a Wartime PM he was essentially a Coalition PM in a really old fashioned, almost 18th century sense: a ministry created from finding a majority from adding together a minority faction of the majority to the opposition!

How true is it that the Tories would have ousted Churchill in favor of Halifax mid-war if Attlee hadn't refused to serve in a non-Churchill-led coalition?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

How true is it that the Tories would have ousted Churchill in favor of Halifax mid-war if Attlee hadn't refused to serve in a non-Churchill-led coalition?

Pretty much confirmed fact.

[afleitch]

Halifax gets a bit of bad rap. He was handed an impossible task by Eden (who as we know, failed upwards). But he ended up being a successful ambassador to the US at a really key moment in the transatlantic relationship.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Halifax gets a bit of bad rap. He was handed an impossible task by Eden (who as we know, failed upwards). But he ended up being a successful ambassador to the US at a really key moment in the transatlantic relationship.

The point about his (naïve, foolish) attitude is that it was the default one amongst senior Conservative politicians at the time. But thinking of him as a particular villain is useful if you want to think of the early phase of the War as a period of broad consensus in which everyone pulled together - like in that Low cartoon - against a narrow cabal of appeasers.

[afleitch]

Halifax gets a bit of bad rap. He was handed an impossible task by Eden (who as we know, failed upwards). But he ended up being a successful ambassador to the US at a really key moment in the transatlantic relationship.

The point about his (naïve, foolish) attitude is that it was the default one amongst senior Conservative politicians at the time. But thinking of him as a particular villain is useful if you want to think of the early phase of the War as a period of broad consensus in which everyone pulled together - like in that Low cartoon - against a narrow cabal of appeasers.

Going off tangent a bit, I sort of love that Goebbels hated Low because Hitler didn't like Low's cartoons of him and Goebbels knew they were effective for what they were. Which ended with Goebbels having a word with Halifax who personally met with Low to ask him to tone them down (he created the more biting composite 'Muzzler' in response.)

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

Both, actually.

[Kingpoleon]

Perhaps the most courageous leader in modern history.

[brucejoel99]

I think he's the perfect example of the right man at the right time. During the Battle of Britain, he was a truly excellent leader: literally awe-inspiring. Outside of those years, he was very polarizing, & - like most of the imperialist ruling class - incredibly racist.

Nevertheless, I have no problem calling him Britain's greatest PM. To my mind, he's fully deserving of the adulation heaped upon him. He wasn't a perfect individual (& certainly isn't by modern standards), but his wartime leadership & the positive impact thereof upon humanity is nothing short of immense.