tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post839308795426204398..comments2023-04-11T09:46:53.479+00:00Comments on anticant's arena: Churchill and Polandanticanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18135207107619114891noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post-59681730589871091082007-05-18T01:36:00.000+00:002007-05-18T01:36:00.000+00:00NEJMI Mohammed has some interesting insights about...NEJMI Mohammed has some interesting insights about the /relationship/ beween /la/ Hitler & Chrchill, at:<BR/><BR/>http://bodwyn.wordpress.com/2006/05/19/they-worked-together/<BR/><BR/>(AUNTY, Pray forgive my travesty-transcription of Cockney -- 'was flang together mainly for a Yank audience & indeed Nejmi writes mostly in American and not English....Bodwyn Wookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04152813177593209096noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post-66922773331656699902007-05-17T14:46:00.000+00:002007-05-17T14:46:00.000+00:00The old lady was quite right, Richard. I've no tim...The old lady was quite right, Richard. I've no time for ignorant and spiteful Churchill-bashing such as that which inspired my original post. There are lots of things one can rightly criticise, and even dislike, about Churchill. But he was head and shoulders above his contemporaries and most of those who have followed him into No. 10. In Whitman's phrase, he was large, he contained multitudes.anticanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18135207107619114891noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post-88792096735569213222007-05-17T13:53:00.000+00:002007-05-17T13:53:00.000+00:00It is my personal conviction that wartime Churchil...It is my personal conviction that wartime Churchill saved the people in this country (England) from invasion and occupation. He was wrong about India, but he was right about Hitler.<BR/><BR/>An old lady in my lip-reading class said this : <BR/><BR/>"My hero is Sir Winston Churchill because he (especially by his speeches) inspired people to be courageous (especially during the Blitz).<BR/><BR/>"Hitler thought he could break the spirit and morale of the English people, but he failed because of the courage in the face of terrible adversity - a courage inspired by Churchill.<BR/><BR/>"This failure to break our spirit was a primary reason for Hitler's decision to turn towards Russia.<BR/><BR/>"We have a lot to thank the Russian people for too."Richard W. Symondshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11783091361323437959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post-9949213166308489512007-05-16T19:50:00.000+00:002007-05-16T19:50:00.000+00:00Apologies. It was Truman at Postdam, but it was Ro...Apologies. It was Truman at Postdam, but it was Roosevelt at Yalta, and if I am not wrong it was in the Yalta meeting where the sharing of Europe was finally drafted.<BR/><BR/>I must however revise my memory.Josehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02081096450259201426noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post-22611983531233740882007-05-16T17:15:00.000+00:002007-05-16T17:15:00.000+00:00AUNTY, I have tarted up our exchange a tad, in the...AUNTY, I have tarted up our exchange a tad, in the following 'link':<BR/><BR/>http://bodwyn.wordpress.com/2007/05/16/letter-to-england/#more-219<BR/><BR/>WOTCHER?Bodwyn Wookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04152813177593209096noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post-2966709186932281102007-05-16T14:47:00.000+00:002007-05-16T14:47:00.000+00:00WHAT May have made the gloomy fact tolerable to Ch...WHAT May have made the gloomy fact tolerable to Churchill, that England ('Britain') had finished the war bankrupt & Royal Navy reduced to "Task Force 77" of the USN Pacific Fleet, may have been his saving impressions, formed from the beginning of their first face-to-face meetings at Potsdam, of Harry Truman. Truman was called every name in the book; and, in many respects, his assent to the 'cold' war yielded dark fruit, most-notably this contemporary & ridiculous, over-duplication, of security-services, here. And, of course, he took large part in the perhaps-inevitable 'imperialisation' of the american Presidency.<BR/><BR/>BUT, In person, he was also a "dandy little complete sonofabitch" (a compliment in the american Middle-west!), an obvious fighter; and, one suspects, Churchill took comfort in knowing viscerally that /this/ post-war America, represented by Truman, would not leave the poisoned-pup Europeans all alone, to delve & foment more of /their/ "old shit!"<BR/><BR/>ON The other hand, to-day, aren't the completely and categorically, unworthy & God-damned, professional & credentialled, whorish, baby-boom baby-bombers of /my/ debased & depraved mis-generation, aren't they just? Acting just like a load of -- you guessed it! -- Tojo-Japs? I mean with this God-damned 'globalisation "New Cunt -- Same Old Shit" crypto-imperialist prosperity-sphere"?Bodwyn Wookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04152813177593209096noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post-4278071854044861492007-05-16T04:55:00.000+00:002007-05-16T04:55:00.000+00:00Excellent, Anticant. Yes, I "lived" that, too, and...Excellent, Anticant. Yes, I "lived" that, too, and cannot be more in agreement with you. It wasn't Churchill who had the definitive "say" in the struggles at Postdam it really was the US and Churchil was not in a solid position in respect of the US to dissent. Churchil was of course much more aware of European circumstances than was Roosevelt, but alas! the American prepotence prevailed.Josehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02081096450259201426noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post-53342854703707601412007-05-16T04:46:00.000+00:002007-05-16T04:46:00.000+00:00In June 1940 Churchill rightly predicted that futu...In June 1940 Churchill rightly predicted that future generations would look back and say "This was their finest hour".<BR/><BR/>Baldwin's main preoccupation in teh 1930s was healing social divisions after the industrial strife of the 1920s, and he did achieve a less bitter social climate - without, of course, attempting any redistribution of incomes towards greater equality.anticanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18135207107619114891noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post-92229728849086901782007-05-16T03:48:00.000+00:002007-05-16T03:48:00.000+00:00BEAVERBROOK, I daresay, was no gentleman; and, tha...BEAVERBROOK, I daresay, was no gentleman; and, that's the thing about Churchill, so many of his friends were from a raffish world! But, I seem to perceive that, in May of 1940, the mid-middleclass took their second wind in a rather direct way from the Churchill premiership & that Dunkirk actually consolidated the loyalty of the nation around the renewed confidence of (post-modern phrase) 'middle Britain'. It was the shop-keepers and smallholders who led the way in the initial 250,000-or-so LDV sign-ups, I think. But, I think also that popular opinion (as opposed to upper-middleclass press-lords' 'public opinion') in the slums was altogether more volatile & a touchy business. Good! indeed, that Buck House was hit....<BR/><BR/>IN All of this I am fascinated by the story of Mass Observation-reporting -- I think that the most I've ever read of it in one account is in Angus Calder's /The People's War/; and, really, I expect I could do to learn more. Now, of course, it's very different as this increasingly un-American 'elite', here, doesn't 'have to' pay any attention (they don't think!) to the common ruck -- and, yet, all these 'internet' vapourings & 'blogging', one thinks, must be a fertile resource for statisticans!<BR/><BR/>BALDWIN /Did/ out-do certain Republicans & Democrats, in placing party & polls ahead of policy, alas. As to Churchill's summit-inklings, there is an odd movemnet past one another /in opposite directions/ on that point, as between 'Eisenhowser' as we call him, here (in my maternal Lakese dialect); and, old Churchill.<BR/><BR/>AT First, Churchill was the disappointed reactionary who watched his american 'girl-friend' go waltzing away with the georgian /banditto/; whilst the grinning Eisenhower, in 1945, practically handed over lorry-loads of allied nurses to satisfy the additional unmet romantic-needs of the Red Army. Whereas, by 1952, the (north american)continentalist, Dulles, had Ike firmly in the 'He-Man Pinko-Haters' club; and Churchill, now, was pondering soviet digestive difficulties in central Europe -- and, meditating summits with whomever should be Stalin's successor.<BR/><BR/>LUKACS Says Churchill didn't win the war; but, he kept Hitler from winning /his/; and, maybe, as well he gave us an additional, final, fifty or sixty civilised years as, precisely, Westerners. Lukacs is of jewish background; but, he is also an hungarian /bourgeois/ and, alas, talks loathingly, of Gypsies and -- Iranians! Alas, I write, as in so many other ways I respect his historianship & follow his heuristic lead, at least for now.<BR/><BR/>IT Is /my/ greatest regret that I was not a young man in England, in 1940 -- my dad, his brother and cousins, they had all that. It seems, now, that 1940 will be always & always the greatest year of all, of the Old Atlantic West; standing up against /our own/ Evil; standing in the light of sun and Moon and Stars; standing there in a hurricane of blood and fear; and, there for all the World to see and marvel; and, briefly, maybe, for all the World to love.Bodwyn Wookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04152813177593209096noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post-53461550979179130532007-05-16T02:05:00.000+00:002007-05-16T02:05:00.000+00:00Wook, I don't think you would have disliked Church...Wook, I don't think you would have disliked Churchill in 1940; you may well have done so in the 1920s and '30s, and in the 1950s. [His postwar premierships were disappointing, and increasingly skewed by his unrealistic conviction that he was uniquely fitted to secure world peace, and end the Cold War, though personal summitry.] But in 1940, only pro-Nazis or pro-Communists did not support him.<BR/><BR/>Baldwin, like all politicians, had his good and bad sides. He was an emollient, too complacent character. His two most important achievements were ending the 1926 General strike peacefully, and getting rid of Edward VIII and his "Wally" without a major upheaval. <BR/><BR/>In retrospect, both of those seem small beer against his failure to recognise the gravity of the Nazi threat, and to begin rearming Britain quickly enough. He is unfairly blamed for his silence on this score during a 1930s by-election, which earned him the nickname of "Sealed Lips". During the war he was deeply unpopular. Beaverbrook's spiteful action in removing poor old Baldwin's ornamental iron front gates for munitions scrap earned cheap public<BR/>applause.<BR/><BR/>When I was an undergraduate at Cambridge just after the war, Baldwin was Chancellor of the University and I remember seeing him stumping around the Senate House Yard - he was very lame - in a degree procession. I've never seen anyone else looking so old, ill and glum, and I felt sorry for him even though I disliked his record.anticanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18135207107619114891noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580535460030164028.post-64075554682824189312007-05-16T00:16:00.000+00:002007-05-16T00:16:00.000+00:00I Reckon that, as in fact I /am/ a life-long Churc...I Reckon that, as in fact I /am/ a life-long Churchill-admirer (based on what my father and mother told me), you will be surprised when I write, now, that in fact in 1940 had I been alive, and in London, I really rather do perceive that I should have /disliked/ Churchill -- and that, perhaps, rather intensely.<BR/><BR/>I Don't know /how/ to account for this; but, it would be, I daresay, a fact of my /temperament/; and, it is curious to note at this point, that I /did/ dream of Stanley Baldwin the other night -- /he/ was on the wireless and went on, oh, for a bit: <BR/><BR/>ALL About this 'fleeting land of England, this place we see and see every day, only then we wake to see no more this place, when /we/ rise up with the smoky Sun to drift away, all like fog and smoke and time -- we run away with the ebbing tide & green stuff in our toes....' <BR/><BR/>AS To Churchill in history, I think now that the hungarian-american /bourgeois/ & historian-emeritus, John Lukacs, does the best job by Churchill by a long shot; in his three books about 1939-40; and, in his memoir of Churchill's funeral. <BR/><BR/>AND, Alas, England is in the toilet; and, America in /hers/, too, if anything even less 'constitutionally'.Bodwyn Wookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04152813177593209096noreply@blogger.com