Thread by Gray Connolly
I am finally watching the @martyrmade / Tucker discussion on Churchill. I am not sure who among the critics have actually watched it. As I dislike Twitter pile-ons, I think everyone should watch what X says before X is put in the tumbril. My response as a Churchillian below.
Darryl Cooper may be the best and most honest popular historian in the United States. His latest project is the most forbidden of all: trying to understand World War Two.
(1:20) History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict
(12:39) The Jonestown Cult
(32:10) World War Two
(45:04) How… pic.twitter.com/HJ2B8RjcCY— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) September 2, 2024
Firstly, it astounds me (and no doubt many in the old Empire) why Americans in 2024 are so invested in the British Empire in the 1930s when the Americans of the 1939-1941 period wanted no part of WW2 & the US had to be bombed into WW2 & it was the Nazis who declared war on the US
Secondly, there is very little Darryl says that was not said earlier by many Revisionist historians of the same period, esp British ones wondering why they went through two continental wars that cost them their vast seaborne empire – cf Alan Clark, John Charmley, AJP Taylor etal
In the 1930s, the British Empire’s security arrangements was faced by the assertive Dominions (Australia, Canada, NZ, South Africa) & a growing problem of securing them (Suez/Singapore). No one in the British Empire wanted another European War & assumed a French military lead
Every part & class of the British Empire had suffered grievously in WW1 and its death-toll, as well as wounded/shell shocked/mentally broken, were a part of every family’s experience, including my own – and no one wanted another War. Alan Clark on postWW1 captures this here
So in the 1930s, the focus in the British Empire, especially the Committee of Imperial Defence, headed by Colonel Sir Maurice Hankey (a great man), was ‘holding on to what we got’ & staying away from continental squabbles – this view was held by every Briton who was not a crank.
I am a great admirer of the Churchills (plural). The Churchill family gets its start when John Churchill, the patriarch & brilliant soldier, deserts James II for William of Orange. He serves Queen Anne, fights Louis XIV, becomes Duke of Marlborough, Blenheim Palance etc.
However, the price of success is the Churchills are viewed as untrustworthy & unreliable. (The late Lady Diana Spencer herself no stranger to this establishment scepticism as a Churchill). Winston bears the baggage of his dissolute father, Randolph, and his American mother.
Even Winston Churchill’s worst critic would concede he was an exceptionally brave man. My favourite Churchill story is that he, after the Gallipoli disaster (the Dardenelles plan did have merit) went to fight in France in 1916 with the Royal Scots Fusiliers as a form of penance.
But by the 1930s, Churchill is a fringe figure, he is viewed as a crank and relic, and few listen to him, even as he becomes the prophet without honour in the Parliament on the Nazi menace. Churchill was also distrusted as he was a Francophile in a way few Britons of his era were
By the late 1930s, the British Government is engaged in a massive rearmament program. Britain enters WW2 much better prepared than commonly thought. This program was opposed in whole or in part by the British Labour party, very weirdly, given it was notionally anti Nazi.
The priority in the 1930s of British security is the North Sea, the Atlantic (Canada), the Mediterranean, Suez Canal, the Middle East, India (esp), Singapore, Australia/NZ ie all seaborne concerns & esp Japan – not squabbles on the European continent.
Come the Munich conference & agreement in Sept 1938, these Empire concerns dominate. British Empire peoples do see, almost uniformly, the result of Munich as good as it avoided war & if bad, it at least buys time for more rearmament. Churchill was very much the tiny minority.
So when 1939 begins & road to war is trod, it is very reluctantly done by the British for reasons above. The British Empire is a benign empire (sorry haters) & does operate as a family affair & no one in the family wants to waste any more of the lives of the King’s subjects
I mention all this back story as Winston Churchill himself only becomes Prime Minister in May 1940 as a result of the Norway debacle & a widespread lack of confidence in Neville Chamberlain (who has cancer & dies in November 1940). Churchill is popular in the country but not SW1.
After France falls, the British Empire does have a setback, yes, but war economy is in full stride and RN command of the seas esp means war materials and troops arrive from all over the Empire. There is an invasion fear but also a grim resolution that bulldog Churchill embodies
It is inconceivable in mid 1940 that any British Government could responsibly seek a peace or even armistice with the Germans. Quite apart from the Nazis themselves, British policy aims at a divided Europe via war & economic subsidy. This was true for WW1 too cf Fritz Fischer
At the same time, there were some informal talks via the Swedes – the junior politician Rab Butler had discussions in 1940 with the Swedish envoy about an armistice with the Germans but Churchill squashed this when he heard of it. Butler suffered for it.
Sus[ect some form of talks between British personages & the Nazis took place as between mid1940/1941 there is:
– Rab Butler meeting the Swedes
– the pro Nazi former King Edward VIII suddenly exiled to the Bahamas
– Rudolf Hess lands in Scotland
Files remain classified tmk.
Churchill and his government – and the Empire, however – were never going to make peace. There would be no surrender. The formerly allied French fleet was sunk by the Royal Navy at Oran in July 1940 as a sign of British ruthlessness. Germany was bombed etc
This was not just Churchill, though – the British Empire was not in as weak a position as made out & regardless, there were no good terms to be obtained in 1940 that made fighting on a worse alternative. Also a united Europe (esp under Nazis) is unacceptable for British security.
Whether Churchill was the PM or Eden or even a Chamberlain, there was no way the British Government would have concluded a peace with the Germans in mid 1940 … and esp not given what it might signal to the Japanese about British resolve (no one knew what the Americans would do)
Winston Churchill was not any villain but simply as Prime Minister, he was the head of a wartime coalition government that was – come what may – committed, as all in the Parliament were, to the see the war through, even at the destruction of our Empire. There was no alternative.
So, in short, there was no room for a compromise peace in 1940. No British leader would ever have agreed to leaving almost all of Europe under German control & no Dominion leader would have concurred, either. It was not a war the British peoples sought – but one we would finish
I trust this has been of interest to people those who are ignorant about what the British imperial position was in the lead up to what becomes World War II & fair to @martyrmade’s position as a critic & puts plainly the British imperial position on its own terms.
The Left, dems in particular, are pulling the “he’s not Jesus,” standard again.
We already knew Trump is not Jesus, not perfect.
We see Tucker is not Jesus, either.
Tucker endorses both Trump and also likes some weird dhimmi historian.
But, being endorsed by a person doesn’t mean you align with him 100% on everything.
Look at RFKjr.
He and Trump have much daylight between them when it comes to big government.
But they can work together in food, health and chronic illness issues.
Tucker and Trump can use that Venn Diagram kamala loves to show how they can agree on much but not on all with one another.
It’s going to be an attempt at “guilt by association,” a logic fallacy, if it comes up during the debate.
Churchill was and is one of my all-time heroes of the 20th century.
I watched the entire interview with Tucker Carlson and the history guy was definitely not a fan but unless I missed it, he didn’t credit him with starting WWII, and I didn’t see Carlson agreeing with him on everything said.
That being said, every man and woman has their flaws, but Churchill was still one of the most charismatic, risk-taking leaders of the 20th century and a hero to many Brits.
And he was one of the great orators and chroniclers of his century. The only significant American who could turn a phrase like Churchill was Lincoln.
One has to wonder why a Europe under one nation was unacceptable to the Uk? Spain, Sweden, Russia, Turkey were not under Nazi control nor were they likely to be. Britain could not hope to defeat the Germans alone but it could easily be defeated by the Germans had the Germans chosen to focus their efforts on the UK. One wonders how long the British Empire in North Africa would would have withstood the onslaught of ten panzer divisions rather than the two Hitler had sent to Rommel, if he had not chosen to invade Russia. How indeed would the British have stopped the Germans had they managed to persuade the Turks to join them in the Middle East for their lost Empire. The British Empire was so badly prepared for war that had FDR not sent the US Navy to escort British convoys halfway across the Atlantic after the fall of France its doubtful the British could have survived. Remember the British Army lost all its equipment after Dunkirk, had the Germans been able to land in Britain it was all over. But Hitler was too dull to persue a southern strategy.
Allowed to consolidate control over Europe and rebuild their military capabilities and replace their losses. Unless Great Britain chose to align themselves with the Third Reich, Hitler would eventually take them out.
Replace all our Heros of the past from the Founding Fathers to Conservatve Constitutional with leftists and violent Thugs like George Floyd and those South American Invaders
This is the first article about the Carlson/Cooper interview written by someone who actually listened to the entire interview. Erik Larson’s excellent book on Churchill, The Splendid and the Vile, opens with the fact that Winston was broke and unable to pay off his debt or the debt his son was rapidly accumulating with his alcohol fueled gambling habit. But according to “historian” Andrew Roberts, writing today in the Washington Examiner Churchill was never bankrupt. Another opinion writer at the same paper stated that Cooper did a 25 hour series about the founding of Israel after “reading only six books” when Cooper actually said “I read over 80 whole books parts of another 100 at least and about 12-13 hundred academic papers and journals. I read everything I could find”. This is what I expect from paid media – lies on top of lies.
I have venerated Churchill all my life probably because my Dad did and we’re both history buffs. BUT I normally do not trust or respect morbidly obese alcoholics who lounge in their pajamas most days and are prone to wearing silly military costumes. Maybe it is time to look at Churchill with a Jaundiced eye? One thing I am certain of is that Cooper’s upcoming series on WW II will be the most comprehensive, even handed treatment of the war by an autodidactic with no ideological axes to grind.
Churchill was always on the verge of bankruptcy. He was bailed out in the 20s by the Rothchilds for his investments in the Florida real estate disaster. He lost more in the stock market crash. Combine this with his miserable spending habits and you see a man who courted the wealthy. Churchill was solely responsible for a series of military disasters that he alone inflicted on the British, Greece, Crete, North Africa, Singapore, Norway, the destruction of the French fleet, Burma. Clearly those who lounge in clown clothes in academia and have never served and lecture those who have served about the brilliance of a man who single handedly destroyed the British Empire over the independence and sovereignty of Poland should be accorded the respect they deserve. Further those who condemn the Germans for their treatment of Russian POWs during wartime might be able to explain the deaths of millions of German POWs by Americans, British and Russians after the war was over. The hypocrisy of these savants never ceases to amaze me. Nor their halos when Churchill acquiesced to turning over hundreds of millions to the tender mercies of the Russians. Do explain how Church could do this when the Russians also invaded Poland as Hitler’s ally. Oops. Let’s not talk about this shall we.