[KLUG Advocacy] Re: [KLUG Members] (OT) Churchill

[Peter Buxton]

On Sat, Oct 04, 2003 at 01:46:20AM -0400, Robert G. Brown was only escaped
   alone to tell thee:

> Um, WCS was himself drunk at public events, and he went in his
> fathers' footsteps in this regard. Randolph Churchill had serious
> problems with alchohol...

I was not aware that Lord Randolph was a drunk. He had a huge problem
with tertiary syphillis (described as dying, in public, by degrees) and
his youthful antics ended up with him being exiled to Ireland and later
being removed from the Tory government, but I was not aware that he was
a victim of alcoholism. (He was prescribed alcohol, tobacco and
digitalis for the syphillis, but by that time mere drunkeness was not
his main problem.)

> There's the famous story of Churchill, drunk during which he was
> capable of very nasty (and oftimes brutally honest) comments...
> 
> Besie Braddock, a socialite, in the 30's: Winston, you are drunk!
> Churchill: And you are ugly, but I shall be sober in the morning.

According to best reports, the actual victim of the remark was
temperance advocate Nancy Astor, fellow MP. And by pointing out, in
public, that Winston was inebriated Astor committed a major faux pas,
contrary to all British manners. Britons stigmatized a drunk, but being
pleasantly lit in company or a club (and Parliament was simply the best,
most exclusive club in the UK) was not a crime. Autre tempore, autre
more.

Or perhaps it was Braddock, and later tradition ascribed it to Astor, as
she and Winston crossed swords many times in public:

Astor: Winston, if I were your wife, I'd poison your soup.
  WSC: Nancy, if I were your husband, I'd drink it.

> All true, but it wouldn't stop the Churchill, if revived today, from
> dying all over again after reading of current escapades...

He might regret the escapades of today, but really, they're nothing
compared to the bad old days.

Somewhat off-topic:

One repeating meme I enjoy seeing is the idea of the British government
offing people to protect the royal bloodline and religion. Princess
Diana's boyfriend's father claimed HMG offed Diana lest she marry a
Muslim (I think Muslim) Egyptian and risk having any possible children
of that marriage in line for the throne. The recent comic book and movie
"From Hell", about the Ripper murders, claimed that the Ripper's victims
were witnesses to a secret marriage between the future Edward VII and a
Catholic prostitute, requiring HMG to off them all.

Needless to say, this is a load of bunk. In real life, George IV married
a Catholic woman. Parliament merely declared the marriage illegitimate
and did not feel the need to off the woman in the bargain. Without
marriage to Charles, Diana was, like, 800th in line for the throne, and
hardly a threat of any kind.

> Perhaps the main difference between someone like Hitler (and Stalin,
> and similar folks), is that they were defeated.

Stalin was defeated?

> I'm a lot more comfy with the idea that without Churchill as PM in
> 1940, the UK could well have fallen to the Germans, and WW-II would
> have been a much longer and dicier proposition.
> 
> And it was a close call; Germany came very close to beating the USSR
> as it was. I've stood on the spot occupied by the German artillary at
> their closest approach to Moscow; you can see the Kremlin quite
> clearly from there. The margin of victory was slimmer at Stalingrad
> (now Volgagrad).

Much as I adore and admire Churchill I must note that Nazi Germany's
mistakes were more devastating than British arms:

May-June 1940: France capitulates, Allied troops evacuate Dunkirk.
Churchill succeeds Chamberlain as PM.

1. Germany pauses before Operation Sea Lion to demob 40 divisions. They
   have until mid-September to invade Britain:

   a. the weather from Oct. to April precludes sea operations, and
   b. the British Army will be prepared for an invasion by September,
      of which the Germans are as yet unaware (and as of June '41, most
      of the Wehrmacht is in Russia).
   
2. The German Navy declares it can only open a narrow beachhead in
   England. The Wehrmacht demands a broad front so their troops won't be
   thrown back into the sea. NO ONE before this has seriously considered
   how to invade Britain. This argument stalls Sea Lion. Hitler had
   failed to press the military to plan for Sea Lion and then carry it
   out (though he had plans on whom to arrest once he got there).

3. Hitler is already thinking of Russia for spring 1941, as he always
   has: he thinks conquering Russia will free troops for Britain, if the
   government doesn't fall first anyway.

4. An anti-Nazi coup in Yugoslavia so blinds Hitler with hatred he
   pauses to occupy that nation. This single act causes a four week
   delay in the launch of Operation Barbarossa.  Other mistakes are made
   during Barbarossa, and it may never have worked anyway, but this
   first blunder dooms the entire operation from the start. 

5. After America declares war on Japan, the American mood suddenly might
   favor a war with Axis Germany. Franklin Roosevelt, knowing his mark,
   declines to ask Congress to declare war on Germany. Sure enough,
   Hitler, under NO OBLIGATION (since Japan attacked first), declares
   war on America. Congress then declares war on Nazi Germany.

It's hard not to see Hitler as the more decisive factor at this time.

> Churchill provided something England and the USA needed badly at the
> time, and that was someone who would oppose Hitler unconditionally,
> yet shared common values. Without him, I beleive the west would have
> been lost.

Churchill's rallying of Brits to King and Country is important, and
undoubtedly he was the most qualified war PM excepting only the Duke of
Wellington. Also, he carefully cultivated his relationship with FDR.
However, even Chamberlain was in a fighting mood post-September 1939, so
WSC wasn't necessarily irreplaceable for only four months. (And, as I
mentioned, I'm hugely pro-Churchill, so I can't believe I'm arguing it,
but there it is.)

> It's fun (in some ways), but it's quite different than what we were
> after earlier, which was examing the people that actually were here,
> and did what they did, and maybe judging their relative importance.

How can you tell how important they were unless you can tell how
important they weren't, so to speak?

Actually, I think Einstein the most important, but not by the criteria
Time would use. Einstein offered the first great wholesale replacement
of thought in science. Copernicus' heliocentrism was science replacing
astrology. Newton's Principia can be said to have created modern
science, but did so in a way, and in a field, that was untrammelled.
Riemann (I think he was first) created the first new geometry, but that
was a feat of mathematics, not physical science.  Einstein's relativity
theories offered new, competing models that replaced previous (working,
but flawed or limited) models. That replacement, to me, is what is best
in science.

-- 
We are the 801. We are the central shaft. -- Brian Eno