3 December 1944 Winston Churchill’s legendary qualities of courage and defiance are often celebrated. It is taken for granted that he was motivated primarily by a moral repugnance to Nazism. If so, it’s difficult to understand his decision in 1944 to release around 12,000 Nazi collaborators from the prisons in Athens and have them uniformed…
24 September 1920 On 24 September 1920, Secretary of State for Air Winston Churchill urged the Chiefs of Staff to seriously consider the use of fighter aircraft against gatherings suspected of protesting or plotting against British rule. In Churchill’s view, strafing attacks would be ‘a great deterrent to illegal drilling and rebel gatherings.’1 General Sir…
15 September 1897 On 15 September 1897, Lieutenant Winston S. Churchill, who was temporarily freelancing as a war correspondent, joined a punitive British military expedition, under Major General Sir Bindon Blood, as it began to move against the Mamunds of the Watelai Valley on India’s North West Frontier. The provocation had been an attack the…
25 July 1943 At about 00.57 on 25 July 1943, RAF bombers unleashed hundreds of bright red and yellow marker bombs, followed by thousands of incendiary bombs, on the densely populated German city of Hamburg. It was the first of four RAF fire bombing raids endured by the inhabitants over the following ten days, which…
6 July 1944 Writing a memo to General Sir Hastings Ismay on 6 July 1944, Winston Churchill urged the Chiefs of Staff to urgently consider the use of poison gas against German towns and cities. The memo came one month after British and American soldiers had landed in France and as Germany clearly faced imminent…
18 June 1920 On 18 June 1920, Secretary of State for War Winston Churchill circulated to Cabinet ministers the comments of the chief of the imperial general staff, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson. The Field Marshal hated any interference in military matters by mistrustful politicians he derided as ‘Frocks’ and he had been incensed on…
3 June 1940 On 3 June 1940, Winston Churchill wrote a minute to the Cabinet Secretary asking anxiously: ‘Has anything been done about shipping 20,000 internees to Newfoundland or St. Helena ?’ Churchill added, ‘I should like to get them on the high seas as soon as possible.’1 Within weeks of the start of the…
3 May 1920 On 3 May 1920, Secretary of State for War Winston Churchill wrote a covering letter of support to a Cabinet memorandum by the Chief of the Imperial Staff, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, on gas warfare. Churchill declared that he was ‘in entire agreement with the views put forward by Sir Henry…
23 February 1945 On 23 February 1945, Winston Churchill, having only days earlier approved the saturation bombing of the German city of Dresden which killed tens of thousands of civilians, now expressed a wish that a similar fate could be inflicted on Indian cities. According to the diary records of his Downing Street secretary John Colville,…
13 February 1945 On 13 February 1945, during the closing weeks of the Second World War, Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander was attending a lavish lunch on board the luxurious ocean liner SS Franconia with Prime Minister Winston Churchill and a few senior government officials. As his fellow diners gorged themselves on the extravagant spread,…
