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Churchill suddenly said to Harold Macmillan in Cairo in 1943 late one night: 'Cromwell was a great man, wasn't he?' 'Yes, sir, a very great man.' ' But he made one great mistake. Obsessed in his youth by the fear of the power of Spain he failed to observe the rise of France. Will that be said of me?'
Whether it is said of Churchill or not, he probably underestimated the danger of Communist Russia in his single-minded determination to defeat Germany. Not that it mattered because nothing he or the Americans could do would have restrained Stalin except a negotiated peace with Germany and this was probably impossible even had it been tried.
Now the opposite mistake of overestimating the Russian threat is being made. China is a threat to the US dominated world. Illegal immigration from Africa and Asia is a defence threat to Europe. Russia is feeble and in decline.
Churchill's bigger mistake was to think the British Empire could be preserved. In fact the Americans were eager to dismantle it and we spent our cash on fighting and had neither money nor will to defend it.
Was it a mistake for Britain and France to go to war in 1939 over Poland? If so it was a mistake made by Chamberlain, Halifax and Deladier, of course, not .
In hindsight it was a mistake as France fell, along with the Low Counties, Denmark and Norway. Chamberlain, Halifax, Deladier and Churchill, however, were not given the gift of knowing the future, though Loyd George and others did warn them.
It wasn't that Churchill couldn't have known the future he just didn't care. He cared only for money and personal fame. He was a sellout. A tool:
ReplyDeleteIrving on the secret pressure group, the Focus:
"The Focus was financed by a slush fund set up by some of London’s wealthiest businessmen — principally, businessmen organized by the Board of Jewish Deputies in England, whose chairman was a man called Sir Bernard Waley Cohen. Sir Bernard Waley Cohen held a private dinner party at his apartment on July 29, 1936. This is in Waley Cohen’s memoirs … The 29th of July, 1936, Waley Cohen set up a slush fund of 50,000 pounds for The Focus, the Churchill pressure group. Now, 50,000 pounds in 1936, multiply that by ten, at least, to get today’s figures. By another three or four to multiply that into Canadian dollars. So, 40 times 50,000 pounds — about $2 million in Canadian terms — was given by Bernard Waley Cohen to this secret pressure group of Churchill in July 1936. The purpose was — the tune that Churchill had to play was — fight Germany. Start warning the world about Germany, about Nazi Germany. Churchill, of course, one of our most brilliant orators, a magnificent writer, did precisely that.
For two years, The Focus continued to militate, in fact, right through until 1939. And I managed to find the secret files of The Focus, I know the names of all the members. I know all their secrets. I know how much money they were getting, not just from The Focus, but from other governments. I use the word “other governments” advisedly because one of my sources of information for my Churchill biography is, in fact, the Chaim Weizmann Papers in the State of Israel. Israel has made available to me all Churchill’s secret correspondence with Chain Weizmann, all his secret conferences. It is an astonishing thing, but I, despite my reputation, in a kind of negative sense with these people, am given access to files like that, just the same as the Russian Government has given me complete access to all of the Soviet records of Churchill’s dealings with Ivan Maisky, Joseph Stalin, Molotov and the rest of them. I am the only historian who has been given access to these Russian records. It is a kind of horse trading method that I use when I want access to these files, because it is in these foreign archives we find the truth about Winston Churchill.
When you want the evidence about his tax dodging in 1949 and thereabouts, you are not going to look in his own tax files, you’re going to look in the files of those who employed him, like the Time/Life Corporation of America. That’s where you look. And when you’re looking for evidence about who was putting money up for Churchill when he was in the wilderness and who was funding this secret group of his, The Focus, you’re not going to look in his files. Again, you’re going to look in the secret files, for example, of the Czech government in Prague, because that is where much of the money was coming from."
No doubt had Churchill been funnelled money to push for war with Franco's Spain instead, he would have done so.