Churchill wanted Hitler sent to the electric chair

The Sunday Telegraph (UK) ^ | 1/1/2006 | Chris Hastings

[rcocean]

Liberals don't care about Stalin or Pol Pot. The NYT was all upset last week because someone critised Mao. According to the NYT if Mao killed 20-50 million; it was OK because China got land reform.

In fact, a lot of them go and visist Castro and say how he's a beloved figure because he gave everyone health care.

[presidio9]

I thought the whole point of the electric chair was that it was supposed to be a new, more human method of execution. Why would he prefer it over hanging?

[Solamente]

(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.

[Cacique]

Welcome to Freerepublic

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.

[cynwoody]

"I'd have wanted Hitler sent to the woodchipper" YEAH FEET FIRST.

You might enjoy this link, which describes how the GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence) dealt with loyalty and disloyalty. Once in the GRU, there was only one way out — thru the chimney!

[Williams]

It has been observed that a city of 50,000 may successfully defend its walls against an invading army of 100,000. But an armed force of 10,000 can control a city of 1 million from within. It is completely "normal" for a country to be controlled by a dictator, once he achieves power.

And yes, EVERY country has psychopaths, it's just that in many countries the head of state is a psychopath. Liberals don't understand that.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

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

I was personally told by one Battle of the Bulge veteran that they did not take SS prisoners after Malmedy.

one of the SS crew members admitted being
at Malmedy during interrogation at the
Infantry Battalion Headquarters

when asked where he obtained the
GI sweater and boots he was wearing
the German soldier replied "at Malmedy"
he should have taken the Fifth Amendment

your webmaster thinks a dogface shot him
in the back yard of the farm house
where the headquarters was located

[Hill of Tara]

"Today's liberals would be visiting Hitler and praising him, and Stalin more so."

Yep, I think you're right.

[Hill of Tara]

Thanks for your welcome :)

I completely agree with you about fascism, nazism and communism.

[Torie]

Thanks. I don't agree with it. Rendering to ashes an entire city, and all within it, was not a military necessity that late in the war. Churchill in any event had the motive of revenge, not achieving a military objective.

[1066AD]

Could have dropped the atom bomb on them for all I care.