Death by chocolate: an exploding chocolate bar meant for Winston Churchill [tr]

> “I would think a poisoned bottle of brandy would have been more likely as a “gift” for Churchill.”

Even better, this would have cast suspicion on Lady Astor instead of the Nazi’s. She was the one with this exchange...

Lady to Churchill: “If you were my husband, I would put poison in your drink.”

Churchill to Lady: “If you were my wife, I would drink it.”

To paraphrase

Lady Astor: Winston, you are drunk!

Winston: madam, in the morning I will be sober, but you will still be ugly.

They were great friends.

After the fall of France in 1940, Churchill, while publicly defiant, told his closest aides not to expect to live longer than three months. He thought a German invasion was incipient. Churchill had a private bodyguard who followed him virtually everywhere. And he carried a pistol on him and said he would not be taken alive. And he meant it.

Fortunately for Britain, Germany had no plans to invade Britain right after the 1940 fall of France. In fact, Hitler thought he had won the war and had no invasion plans for Britain. He expected the English to offer surrender terms like the French. He severely misunderstood Churchill.

When Hitler finally got around to planning the invasion, it was probably too late. One year after the declaration of war, Britain had several million men under arms and a pretty adequate defense plan in case of invasion. The Germans really did not have a decent invasion plan nor the resources to implement one. Hitler hoped the Luftwaffe would destroy the RAF in The Battle of Britain. That didn't happen.

If Hitler had tried to invade Britain without the RAF being defeated and the Royal Navy vastly outnumbering the German fleet, the results of an attempted invasion would most likely have been disastrous for Germany.

"Churchill had a split of champagne for lunch each day."

Churchill drank from morning until bed time for most of his adult life. But he was able to think and work effectively despite imbibing a tremendous amount of alcohol.

There were few instances where people noticed him suffering from the effects of strong drink. He did think the American habit of drinking whisky with ice abominable.

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure,the creed of ignorance,and the gospel of envy."-

In June of 1945 after the European war had ended, Churchill gave a public speech where he condemned socialism and said it would lead to a police state. The socialists in Britain jumped on that statement as being over the top.

Churchill lost the elections of that year to socialist Clement Attlee. To his credit, Attlee had been a very loyal supporter of Churchill during the war and worked in the war ministry.

While Britain didn't turn into a police state, the socialists nationalized many industries. That crippled Britain economically for many years.

While Germany and Japan had most of their industrial capacity and many cities destroyed by the war, their post-war, free market economic policies (compared to Britain's) allowed them to recover from the devastation of the war much faster than the U.K.

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