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5) Winston Churchill.

Winston Churchill, a giant of the 20th century, was wildly pro-eugenics but ironically became the man who would stand up to Adolf Hitler, the tyrant who brought all the logical conclusions of eugenics into horrific reality.

In a letter, Churchill advocated the sterilization of the "feeble minded and insane."

He wrote: "The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the Feeble-Minded and Insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate. I am convinced that the multiplication of the Feeble-Minded, which is proceeding now at an artificial rate, unchecked by any of the old restraints of nature, and actually fostered by civilised conditions, is a terrible danger to the race."

He called sterilization a "simple surgical operation so the inferior could be permitted freely in the world without causing much inconvenience to others."

In February 1911, Churchill urged the House of Commons to introduce compulsory labour camps for "mental defectives." The labor camps would also have plenty of room for "tramps and wastrels," to make them "realize their duty to the State." One of the chief opponents of a similar bill was GK Chesterton.

You know, I’m not going to bother. Your underlying premise is inherently bogus, for the reasons already stated in my last post. I invited you to yammer on, if you want, so you do. Even assuming that Churchill at one time advocated labor camps and forced sterilization for the feeble minded, as did SCOTUS at one time, you have failed to support your fake conclusion, that therefore Britain is so racist, they better just let Russia run roughshod over Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe. You don’t even address that point, because you can’t.

Forgive me if I’m getting short tempered, but I posted an article about training being provided in the UK and EU, and how this is giving Ukraine an edge on the battlefield, and you can’t get your head around that highly-relevant substance, because you have a bug up your a@@ about Churchill. I wish you and that bug a happy life in the past, yammering to your heart’s content.

JonPreston: "Winston Churchill, a giant of the 20th century, was wildly pro-eugenics but ironically became the man who would stand up to Adolf Hitler, the tyrant who brought all the logical conclusions of eugenics into horrific reality."

From this article on the subject.

Eugenics had its day in the sun, in the early 1900s it was state-of-the-art science, positing that "mental deficiencies" were strictly genetically caused and therefore preventing the "mentally deficient" from reproducing would increase a country's overall wellbeing.

Many in the USA believed it, resulting in over 60,000 sterilizations from 1907 to 1981.
The Brits estimated they had 120,000 "mentally deficient" people and some proposed they should be forcibly sterilized.
One of those in 1911 was a rising young politician named Winston Churchill, then Home Secretary.
And for several years the Brits considered several different proposals, and found sterilization was strongly opposed by the church and other religious leaders.
Finally Parliament decided against sterilization and in favor of confinement, depending on how severe each condition was.

In the many years since, the whole idea of eugenics has been discredited as, first of all, junk science and second, unethical.
But in the early 1900s it had its day and sparked the imaginations of many who wanted to improve the lives of their fellow countrymen & women.
In the US it led to over 60,000 sterilizations and in Germany... well...
The Brits took a few years to think it over, and after Churchill had moved on from the Home Office to become First Lord of the Admiralty, they decided sterilization was not the right answer, and that confinement would depend on individual conditions.

So, by the time Churchill met with Hitler's representative in Berlin, in 1932, Churchill's scientific and ethical world had moved on past eugenics, just as the political realm was about to demonstrate what a ghastly horror it really is.