Churchill wanted Hitler sent to the electric chair

Churchill wanted Hitler sent to the electric chair Chris Hastings, Arts Correspondent (Filed: 01/01/2006)

Sir Winston Churchill, Britain's wartime Prime Minister, planned to execute Adolf Hitler in the electric chair if the Nazi leader fell into Allied hands.

Churchill referred to Adolf Hitler as ‘the mainspring of evil’ Declassified documents reveal that Churchill was opposed to Allied plans for war crimes trials and wanted summarily to execute leading Nazi figures including Hitler who he regarded as "the mainspring of evil" and a "gangster".

They also show that he was willing, against the advice of his Cabinet colleagues, to "wipe out" defenceless German villages in retaliation for Nazi atrocities in Czechoslovakia.

The disclosures are contained in notebooks kept by Sir Norman Brook, the former wartime deputy cabinet secretary, who kept an account of proceedings in a form of shorthand.

On July 6, 1942, according to his notes, the Prime Minister said: "Contemplate tht. if Hitler falls into our hands we shall certainly put him to death.

"Not a Sovereign who cd be said to be in hands of Ministers, like Kaiser. This man is the mainspring of evil. Instrument - electric chair, for gangsters no doubt available on lend-lease."

Churchill's choice of the electric chair was despite the fact that it was never used in Britain before the final abolition of the death penalty in 1965.

Sir Norman's notebooks, which are being made public by the National Archives at Kew, reveal Churchill to be a ruthless commander who was prepared to override moral and legal considerations to defeat Germany.

On July 7, 1943, Churchill argued passionately that leading Nazis who fell into British hands should be treated as "outlaws" and shot rather than put on trial.

"I suggested that U.N. to draw up a list of 50 or so wd. be declared as outlaws by the 33 Nations. (Those not on the list might be induced to rat!) If any of these found by advancing troops, nearest offr. of brigade rank shd. call a military court to establish identity and shd. then execute w'out higher authority."

The papers also show that he was willing to "bump of" Himmler and shoot German prisoners of war should Germany begin doing the same to British prisoners.

Churchill's own six volume history of the conflict, The Second World War, makes no reference to this disagreement over war crimes trials and includes just a passing reference to "the unexpectedly ultra-respectable, 'no executions without trial' line being taken by Stalin".

Equally controversial will be the revelation in the notebooks, that Churchill wanted the RAF to wipe out German villages in retaliation for the massacre of civilians in Lidice, a Czech village, which was razed to the ground by the SS.

The Prime Minister abandoned his plan only in the face of opposition from Cabinet colleagues. On June 15, 1942, he said: "My instinct is strongly the other way... I submit (unwillingly) to the view of Cabinet against."

It may be that Churchill would have lived to regret the raids. Within weeks of authorising bombing raids on the German town of Dresden in 1945 he began to question the wisdom of the policy. He would later say that the deaths of up to 30,000 German civilians raised a "query against the conduct of Allied bombers".

The notebooks also reveal Churchill's preferred method for dealing with Gandhi, the Indian nationalist leader, who embarked on a hunger strike in 1942.

Churchill, almost alone among his Cabinet colleagues, did not see the need to cave into the Gandhi's demands even though many observers believed he only had days to live.

He finally agreed for a reprieve on condition that Gandhi's release did not cause Britain to lose face. On January 7, 1943 he asked colleagues: "Why give way to h-strike by Gandhi?

"Let him out as an act of State, rather than an act of submission to G' will. I wd. keep him there and let him do as he likes... But if you are going to let him out because he strikes, then let him out now... Tell Viceroy."

Churchill was equally dismissive of Gen Charles de Gaulle, one of Britain's closest allies, who he believed suffered from "an insensate ambition" and who was the "greatest living barrier to re-union and restoration of France".

The notebooks reveal that the plight of Jewish communities in Europe and the Middle East was a frequent topic of discussion at Cabinet.

On December 14, 1942, Churchill asked Anthony Eden, his Foreign Secretary, whether reports about "the wholesale massacre of Jews" by "electrical methods" were true.

Eden tells him that "Jews are being withdrawn from Norway and sent to Poland, for some such purposes evidently". Eden, is, however, unable to "confirm the method" of killing.

Churchill, himself, seems to have been more concerned with the fate of "Poles, not Jews" as the war drew to a close. On March 28, 1945, he said: "Actually we have a very small Jewish population compared with other countries. I'm only concerned with Poles - and Poles who have really fought."

Sir Norman also records on June 11, 1945, that Churchill described Russia's advance into Central Europe as "one of the most terrible events in history".

Despite the USSR's advances Churchill still believed there was a place for British values. On July 12, 1943, he said: "Propagate our language all over world is best method. Harmonises with my ideas for future of world. This will be the English speaking century."

(1) "ALCOHOL ABUSER" by MICHAEL RICHARDS

Any discussion of this subject absent John H. Mather MD, who has spent a decade researching Churchill's medical history, will be only that - a discussion. But here is a summary of what we know and why we know it.

Most historians reject the commonly held belief that Churchill was an abuser of alcohol. Perhaps "abuser" is a too broad a word. Professor Warren Kimball of Rutgers, editor of the WSC-FDR correspondence and several erudite books on the two leaders, maintains that Churchill was not an alcoholic -"no alcoholic could drink that much!"- but "alcohol dependent," citing his occasional glass of hock with his breakfast(!) and his heavy imbibing at mealtimes. A doctor attending him after he was knocked down by a car New York in 1931, Otto C. Pickhardt, actually issued a medical note that Churchill's convalescence "necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits especially at mealtimes," specifying 250 cc per day as the minimum (FH 101:51). Still, if he were truly dependent, it seems he would have had a hard time winning his 1936 bet with Rothermere that he could abstain from hard spirits for a year (FH 108:24) - which apparently he did.

The story of what his daughter calls the "Papa Cocktail" (a smidgen of Johnnie Walker covering the bottom of a tumbler, which was then filled with water and sipped throughout the morning), is confirmed by so many observers that it could hardly be untrue. WSC's observation that he learned this habit as a young man in India and South Africa (in My Early Life) appears to be literally true: the water being unfit to drink, one had to add whisky and, "by dint of careful application I learned to like it." The concoction he grew to like was, Jock Colville said, more akin to mouthwash than a highball. It barely qualifies as "scotch and water."

Where he did put away copious amounts of alcohol was at meals (see for example A.L. Rowse's description of his lunchtime visit to Chartwell, FH 81:9). Perhaps this was Churchill's secret to sobriety and health. (Dr. Mather, speaking in Boston recently, reported that WSC's blood pressure was 140/80 well into his eighties, asking his rather younger audience if they would mind numbers like those.) Churchill did not nurse a bottle, as an alcoholic would, and occasionally remarked to those who took whisky neat, "you are not likely to live a long life if you drink it like that," or words to that effect. Drinking at meals may be less deleterious than drinking at random, but in any case no colleague who can be taken seriously ever reports seeing Churchill the worse for drink. Thus WSC's famous quip, "I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me."

Judging the degree of his "dependence" is obfuscated by his own contradictory remarks. On the one hand he amused himself by allowing people to think he had a bottomless capacity. (There was his famous declaration to the King of Saudi Arabia that his absolute rule of life required drinking before, during and after meals.) At the same time in his writings you catch indications that he knew his limit: the drinking stories with the Russians were exaggerated, he wrote in The Second World War ("I was properly brought up"). Elsewhere he remarked, "my father taught me to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk." He remarked that a glass of Champagne lifts the spirits, sharpens the wits, but "a bottle produces the opposite effect." When encountered by Bessie Braddock MP with the famous "you're drunk" remark in 1946, his bodyguard, Ron Golding, was with him at the time, insisted that Churchill was not drunk, just tired and wobbly - hence his famous, devastating response. It would appear that his affinity to the bottle was at least partly a prop - like his cigars, which were often allowed to go out, rarely smoked beyond a third, and usually discarded after being well-chewed. Nevertheless he had a formidable capacity.

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Hitler would have been admired by modern liberals as they admire Castro. Remember that the hard left was well satisfied with Hitler and opposed FDR's support of the Brits because Hitler had signed a non-agression pact with uncle Joe. Naziism and Fascism both grew out of socialism. Mussolini was a socialist newspaper editor before he founded the fascisti. read the 1932 plank of the NSDAP and you would think it was written by communists.

The only difference between the mountain socialists and nazis and fascists was one of state ownership of the means of production. Hitler and Mussolini realized that as long as they had control of indistry rather than ownership they could allow the managing class to run things more efficiently. The Soviet mania of ownership and control meant their industry was passed over to amateurish management and led eventually to the demise of the soviet economy. Both the nazis and fascists were simply variants on the socialist model using different approaches to the same end.

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