About a couple of decades ago Winston Churchill’s name wasn’t considered as controversial in history
as it is today. Posthumously voted by his countrymen as the greatest Briton,
he was an iconic political leader credited for winning the second world war for the Allies.
For many, he still represents the active proponent of British resolve in times of adversity. But
there's another side to Churchill's politics and career that should not be forgotten amid
the endless parade of eulogies. Not everybody agrees that Winston Churchill was a hero,
a freedom fighter, and a beacon of human resilience. His well-documented life is full of
quotes and incidents that do far more than blemish his reputable image and uncovers a horrible,
grotesque truth about his personality. Welcome to Nutty History, and today let’s look at the
creepy things that were normal for former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
The 1925 Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gasses,
and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, commonly known as the 1925 Geneva Protocol
outlawed the use of chemical weapons in wars but sadly the ban hasn’t been very effective. One of
the horrible legacies of the Vietnam war is the terrible generational consequences of chemical
weapons. Recently, Sarin gas was used in Syria only 10 years ago in 2013. The British have
been no strangers to the use of chemical weapons. During the third battle of Gaza in 1917, General
Edmund Allenby fired 10,000 cans of asphyxiating gas at enemy positions. In the final months of the
first world war, British scientists at the Porton governmental laboratories in Wiltshire developed
a far more devastating weapon. This top-secret weapon was christened ‘M Device,’ an exploding
shell containing a highly toxic gas called diphenylaminechloroarsine. The man in charge
of developing it was Major General Charles Foulkes who called it the most effective chemical weapon
ever devised. Winston Churchill, then secretary of state for war, was determined to use them against
the Russian Bolsheviks. Historians have sufficient reason to believe that Churchill planned and
executed a sustained chemical attack on northern Russia in the year 1919. Armed with no less than
50,000 M-devices, the British bombed a series of Bolshevik-occupied northern Russian villages,
sending the enemy running in panic as the green gas clouds caused everyone they caught to throw
up blood and fall unconscious. Even though the M-Device proved less effective than Churchill had
hoped, partly because of the damp autumn weather, he continued to be an advocate of the continued
use of chemical warfare. He also considered using chemical weapons against the rebellious
and revolutionary locals in Northern India. These revolutionaries were mostly either peaceful
protestors of the exploitation of India by British Imperialists or at best fighting the British Raj
with homemade pistols and other weapons. According to history author Giles Milton, Churchill was
seriously considering and suggesting the use of “gas” against Indians and Afghanistanis.
He had proposed the usage of chemical weapons against the troublesome North-Western tribes
at the border of British India and Afghanistan in an internal memo to the India Office.
Churchill furthered his stance by mentioning in the memo that he doesn’t understand why
everyone is so squeamish about using poison gas as a weapon. When the India Office objected to
such policy, Churchill replied: "The objections of the India Office to the use of gas against natives
are unreasonable. Gas is a more merciful weapon than a high explosive shell and compels an enemy
to accept a decision with less loss of life than any other agency of war. The moral effect is
also very great. There can be no conceivable reason why it should not be resorted to.”
Despite the M-Device operation in Russia being a top-secret endeavor, someone leaked about it.
Churchill was asked to answer questions on the subject in the House of Commons on 29th May 1919.
The sly politician lied about the operation and counter-blamed the Red Army for the use
of chemical warfare. He also insisted that as the red army was using chemical warfare there
shouldn’t be a moral debate over whether it’s ok to employ poison gas against them. In truth,
there was no evidence or base behind his statement that Bolsheviks were using chemical weapons. After
the First World War, Churchill was appointed as Minister of War and Air by the then Prime Minister
David Lloyd George. During the Iraq uprising in 1920 after the RAF failed to end the resistance,
Winston Churchill suggested using chemical weapons again. This argument put him at odds
against the rest of the British Government. As soon as he became Prime Minister in 1940,
Churchill wanted Britain to start manufacturing and deploying chemical weapons on the battlefield.
The military intelligence managed to change his mind when they informed him that Germany
was capable of dropping three to four times more chemical bombs than Britain. The outcome
was a contingency plan to use gas warfare as a counter only if Adolf Hitler ordered an invasion
of Britain or employed chemical warfare first. On 30th May 1940, he told the Cabinet that Britain
should not hesitate to contaminate their beaches with gas. By the end of September,
with the invasion scare over, he decided against the first use of the weapon. He instructed his
Chief of Staff, General Hastings Ismay, that stocks should be maintained. So even if Britain
is not going to use gas warfare at present, they should be able to reply if the need arises.
By 1944, according to British intelligence, Britain’s stock of chemical weapons was far
larger than Nazi Germany and Churchill spared no expense in ordering five hundred thousand chemical
weapons from the USA. The Second World War had already posed a lot of questions on morality
during wartimes but Churchill had no limits. He wrote to General Ismay that it is absurd that
the Church people are arguing over the morality of chemical warfare when they had no issue over its
use in the last war. He compared their opinion to women’s fashion stating that it changes as a
woman changes between long and short skirts. Yeah, Churchill didn’t have much of a favorable opinion
about women’s choices either. But more on that later as there are more things. Churchill also
didn’t care much for the lives of millions of Indians who starved to death because of him.
As ironic as it may sound, Winston Churchill who is known for standing against Nazi values
and their fascist regime wasn’t much different in his thinking than their ideology. He even
competed with Hitler over the mass annihilation of people. Some might argue that he wasn’t half as
bad as Hitler but if you look at how many people died due to his decisions, one may change their
opinion. Hitler’s Nazi Party caused the Holocaust, which resulted in nearly 6 million Jews’ death,
Churchill’s policies during the famine of Bengal of 1943 caused the death of three million people
that could’ve been avoided. So yeah, exactly half as bad, one may say. Churchill and his cabinet did
abandon millions to starve to death. According to recent studies on the subject matter, a major part
of the responsibility for so many lives lost during the concerned famine rested squarely
on Winston Churchill's shoulders. During the course of modern history, India has been hit by
many famines, and all but one of them were caused by serious droughts. The other one was the 1943
famine in Bengal, which killed up to 3 million people, and was the outcome of something else.
Despite the eastern Indian region being affected by drought for much of the 1940s,
ironically, the famine peaked in a year when rain levels were above average. Research has presented
evidence that the British cabinet was warned repeatedly about the exhaustive use of Indian
resources for the war effort could result in famine. But Churchill and the rest of the cabinet
opted to continue exporting rice from India to elsewhere in the empire after Japan's conquest
of a major rice source, Myanmar. According to certain sources, Churchill was secretly sending
food shipments to war-stricken Britain and other European countries and denying access to Bengal.
Indian rice was transported to other parts of the empire in great quantities, and despite multiple
warnings and pleas by local officials, the country was left largely without emergency food supplies.
Of course, the world wars were fought amongst the first world countries but they were fought
for and at the expense of the third world countries. However, Churchill’s personal
opinion on the matter was entirely different. He was quoted blaming the famine on the fact
that Indians were “breeding like rabbits.” Also, if the shortages were so bad, how come
Mahatma Gandhi was still alive. Yes, the “greatest Briton” was not a fan of arguably the “greatest
Indian.” Churchill was pretty open about how he felt about Gandhi and would not shy from using
colorful language to insult the Indian Congress leader. The two leaders only met once in 1906,
long before Gandhi became a politician but Churchill’s animosity for the pacifist leader
began in the 1930s when he was campaigning for regaining the office of Prime Minister.
From calling him an Axis sympathizer to mocking his hunger protests, Churchill took every low
blow shot possible on whom people may argue was India’s greatest leader. His hate for
Gandhi was perhaps only matched with his hate for Unionization and the Suffragette movement.
In his early political career, Churchill made public comments against women's right to vote
even at the cost of endangering his own life. His stand and comments against women’s right to vote
earned him the ire of militant suffragists. During a meet and greet in Bristol, one of the radical
female activists almost succeeded in sending him under the approaching train. Ironically, it was
also a woman who managed to grab Churchill by his coattails and save his life, his wife Clementine
Churchill. Imagine if she didn’t have the choice to save him? According to Richard M. Langworth
of Hillsdale College's Churchill Project, many of Churchill’s infamous rants against why women
do not deserve the right to vote have survived despite history trying to subdue it. However,
Langforth also argues that Churchill didn't really disagree with the ideology behind suffrage,
though he had to dance around it and oppose it on rare, isolated occasions due to political
reasons. He was a by-product of the 19th century of course and was reiterating values that he was
taught. He had similar views for the laborers who wanted better living standards and union rights.
Churchill’s most infamous moment during his career was the ill-handling of the Tonypandy
Riots. The riots had erupted in November 1910 in the south Wales town because of a dispute
between workers and the mine owners, culminating in strikes that ultimately lasted almost a year.
When the strikers clashed with local police, then home secretary, Winston Churchill sent in
soldiers. Though there is no evidence supporting the claim that shots were fired by the soldiers,
the incident earned Churchill a bad name in Wales. A year later, Churchill had a chance
to prove his critics wrong when soldiers were sent to strike-related riots in Liverpool.
However, soldiers locked the rumors about Churchill by firing shots,
and two people ended up dead. According to John Charmley, author of ‘Churchill: The End of Glory,’
Winston Churchill’s despise for Unions only became more pronounced with time.
It is believed that Churchill’s contempt for unionization was rooted in his suspicion
that communism was behind the labor movement during the 1920s.
Churchill may have been the bannerman of World Leaders who united against Hitler’s
ideology of Aryan Supremacy. But history is filled with suggestions that Churchill
too subscribed to eugenics, a problematic belief that the human species could, and should, breed
out its undesirable elements. Obviously, this belief has catered to those who like to advocate
the abhorrent idea of white hegemony. He had a twisted view of Darwinism, where he saw himself
and Britain as being the winners in the social Darwinian hierarchy. He perhaps had a whole racial
pyramid in his secret study somewhere in which he put white protestant Christians at the top,
followed by white Catholics. He also rated Indians slightly better than Africans
but still called them uncivilized rabbits. Richard Toye of Cambridge University
unearthed a lost article from 1937, titled “How the Jews Can Combat Persecution.” The article
had a startling quote from Churchill stating that Jews were partly responsible for the antagonism
they were suffering. There is a controversy on the authenticity of this particular article.
However, in a 1920 article, Churchill wrote: "Some people like Jews and some do not,
but no thoughtful man can doubt the fact that they are beyond all question the most formidable and
the most remarkable race which has ever appeared in the world." If we go back in time a bit more,
Churchill’s 1899 book ‘The River War’ criticizes the culture and work ethics of the followers of
Islam as well. But Warren Dockter, author of Winston Churchill and the Islamic World,
believes that the book was written in specific reference to the Mahdists of Sudan.
Frankly, that still doesn’t acquit him from generalization any less.
Moreover, Churchill's role in Ireland is most associated with deploying the
controversial "Black and Tans" to fight the Irish Republican Army. Named after their uniforms,
these temporary constables soon developed a reputation for excessive violence. In ‘Churchill:
The Greatest Briton Unmasked’, Nigel Knight claims that Churchill repeatedly refused to have the
Black and Tans stand down ; he even advocated the use of air power to subjugate Irish resistance.
According to Richard Toye’s book Churchill's Empire, while Churchill was a member of
parliament, he advocated the British Empire's policy of conquest by saying that "the Aryan stock
is bound to triumph." So much for the opposition of Hitler. It is reported that after Churchill
became home secretary in 1910, he became royally fascinated with the subject of forced confinement,
segregation, and sterilization. He saw this as a way to cull the population of the "feeble-minded"
or the people struggling with mental illnesses. Churchill saw the "feeble-minded and insane
classes" as a threat to British racial health, and while he reportedly kept his approach at
the level of inquiries, research, and preliminary brainstorming, other politicians later put forward
various bills to deal with the poor souls. The only redeeming quality that separates
Churchill from Hitler was that Churchill didn’t always mean he was Ok with treating
non-white people in an inhumane way. People who died in the famine of Bengal may disagree.
The real nemesis of Winston Churchill were perhaps debtors, taxmen, and lawmen. Churchill
was addicted to gambling and alcohol and due to that, he ended up bankrupt several times over
his life. He squandered an inheritance with unwise stock market speculation and rampant spending over
champagne. Eleanor Roosevelt once wondered how anyone could smoke so much and drink so
much and keep perfectly well. He preferred to be called alcohol-dependent rather than an alcoholic.
Yeah, as if there’s a difference. He was often bailed out by his rich friends when debtors
came to collect and often the government would pay for his copious amount of liquor expenses.
According to his private secretary, Sir John Colville, Churchill also became involved in
an affair with socialite Doris Castleross, who was the great-aunt of celebrity Cara Delavigne,
while being out of office during the 1930s. And to think poor Clementine saved her husband’s life
for this. But the real shocker was Churchill agreeing to represent Royal Dutch Shell and
Burmah Anglo-Persian Oil Company for a merger in return for a private fee of five thousand pounds.
By modern British political standards, the 1923 payment would be considered
highly inappropriate. Was it a bribe? Technically maybe not, but was it a conflict of interest?
Debatable but most likely it was. Tell us in the comments, does this video change your view
on the “British Bulldog” also known as the Greatest Briton? And as always thanks for
watching Nutty History. Please Like, share, and subscribe if you enjoyed the video.