The Second World War

By Winston Churchill

https://archive.org/details/secondworldwar0000chur_y7z2

Book 5

• 558 Here we may pause in hope...for the safe and happy future of a tormented humankind
• 393 - energy of mind does not depend on energy of the body
• 377 - clear cut, logical, large scale, mass production style of thought re Overlord was formidable. Instead: concentrate on essentials - AND ecology of how it all fits together
• 339 - the three had 3/4 of the world's air force and 20 million soldiers.
• 338 In war time truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies
• 326 - no mass execution of German officers because violent opposition to executors would arise
• 323 Tehran represented 1.4 billion of the human population
• 320 Poland moved west, taking a bite out of Germany, and Russia taking a bite out of Poland
• 320 - needed strong Poland so it could be a buffer for peace on the west frontier Russia
• 319 The three powers should guide the future of the world. I do not want to enforce a system on other nations. We three must remain friends in order to ensure happy homes in all countries. NB. Episode leaves me empty because Stalin did not produce viable answer on peace, and that is probably because he was not looking for peace himself. Stupid a******.
• 318 - we are the trustees for the peace of the world. If we fail there may be perhaps a hundred years of chaos.
• 299 - Chiang Kai Shek was beating out of China by the Communists
• 273 = We should agree in principle and let difficulties manifest themselves. Certainly will in the discus,zsion of ways and means
• 500 divisions on Eastern front=5 million
• 223 -Major tactical needs must always have priority over long term strategic policy.
• 48-Hitler could have concentrated his forces and for example on the 40th day after Normandy struck at the Allies with 40 of his high quality divisions.@¿

Book 4

• 742-henceforward the danger was not destruction but stalemate
• 740-there is no doubt that people like winning very much
• 617 - meaning of unconditional surrender and how to enact it while returning the countries to respectable order while disabusing them of the Master Race notions.
• 541 Alamein was the hinge of fate. Before, no victory. After - no defeat.
• 522 - Ruskis saw aid as blow to their prestige - a government which attempted to work with Hitler until attacked
• 516 - jargon can be used to destroy thought itself, re Molotov's assholery
• 504 - 'it would be a tragedy if Russian barbarism overlaid Europe'
• In the night all cats are gray
• 472- nothing but shop was ever talked on these occasions
• 457 The number of crises at the same time does not necessarily add to the difficulty of dealing with them
• 386 equanimity to meet triumph and disaster, and to treat those two impostors just the same.

• 242 Stalin is completely ungrateful for the voluntary British aid when Britain had to stop the convoys due to excessive sinking. While colluding with hitler until attacked.
• 236 of 34 ships 23 were sunk in an Arctic convoy when they scattered
• 226 inflexibility of the Japanese in the Battle of Midway was influenced by the rigid and im precise nature of their language which made signal communication difficult.
• 218 - battle of the coral sea - first ever between aircraft carriers, turning point against japs
• 190 comparison of the constitutional convention to the plight of India and Pakistan in the second world war
• 177 By 1944 June, Us will have 400k troop transportation capacity
• P153 - Colombia in Ceylon was important for Indian Ocean theater against Japanese
• p87 nothing ever rattled him and the duty was a full q4satisfaction in itself especially if it was perilous and hard

P65.

• Rommel routed Auchinleck in January 1942
• Australia was not united. The draft was not instituted as the parties argued what to do.
• He criticized only after expressing public or formal opinion advising against something
• Churchill had the forbearance never to interfere with his commanders. For OSE the message is once approved by virtue of training and let loose, they are the Masters.
• Intro - Churchill saw history as a branch of moral philosophy

Book 3 - Grand Alliance

• 679 The time had now come when I must leave the hospitable and

exhilarating atmosphere of the White House and of the American Nation, erect and infuriate against tyrants and aggressors.

• In the military as in

the commercial or production spheres the American mind runs naturally to broad, sweeping, logical conclusions on the largest scale. It is on these that they build their practical thought and action.

• Duty and prudence alike command,

first, that the germ-centres of hatred and revenge should be constantly and vigilantly surveyed and treated in good time, and, secondly, that an adequate organisation should be set up to make sure that the pestilence can be controlled at its earliest beginnings before it spreads and rages throughout the entire earth.

• I must confess that I felt quite at home, and more sure of myself than I

had sometimes been in the House of Commons.

• Certainly there was much to fortify the faith of all who believe in the moral

governance of the universe.

• 645 I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far

from my family, yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home.

• 635The setting and

keeping in movement along our courses of the minds of so many scores of millions of men is in itself a potent atmospheric influence.

• It dwelt particularly

upon the need to multiply aircraft-carriers by improvising them in large numbers.

• 621 I recalled Napoleon’s remark about the value of being able to focus objects in the mind for a long time without being tired
• I said the other day that

four-fifths of the human race were on our side. It may well be an understatement. Just these gangs and cliques of wicked men and their military or party organisations have been able to bring these hideous evils upon mankind. It would indeed bring shame upon our generation if we did not teach them a lesson which will not be forgotten in the records of a thousand years.

• 590 We have at least four-fifths of the population of the globe upon

our side. We are responsible for their safety and for their future. In the past we have had a light which flickered, in the present we have a light which flames, and in the future there will be a light which shines over all the land and sea

• Some people did not like this ceremonial style. But after all when you

have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite .*But I had studied the American Civil War, fought out to the last

desperate inch. American blood flowed in my veins, I thought of a remark which Edward Grey had made to me more than thirty years before—that the United States is like “a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.” Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.

• 587 Silly people—and there were many, not only in enemy countries—might

discount the force of the United States. Some said they were soft, others that they would never be united. They would fool around at a distance. They would never come to grips. They would never stand blood-letting. Their democracy and system of recurrent elections would paralyze their war effort.

• It had seemed impossible that Japan would court destruction by war with

Britain and the United States, and probably Russia in the end. A declaration

of war by Japan could not be reconciled with reason. I felt sure she would be

ruined for a generation by such a plunge, and this proved true. But Governments and peoples do not always take rational decisions. Sometimes they take mad decisions, or one set of people get control who compel all others to obey and aid them in folly. I have not hesitated to record repeatedly my disbelief that Japan would go mad. However sincerely we try to put ourselves in another person’s position, we cannot allow for processes of the human mind and imagination to which reason offers no key. Madness is however an affliction which in war carries with it the advantage of surprise.

• I realise your constitutional difficulties, but

it would be tragic if Japan drifted into war by encroachment

without having before her fairly and squarely the dire character of a further aggressive step

• If

steel is the basic foundation of modern war, it would be rather

dangerous for a power like Japan, whose steel production is only

about seven million tons a year, to provoke quite gratuitously a

struggle with the United States, whose steel production is now about ninety millions;

• Naturally, if I saw any way of helping to lift this situation onto a

higher plane I would do so.

• General Tojo, who after the war was

hanged by the conquerors according to modern practice, said at his trial that

he himself took over the Home Ministry because “he faced a fearful trend

foreboding internal confusion if peace was decided upon instead of war.”

• It was

decided in spite of this to let the two fast capital ships go forward, in the

hope of steadying the Japanese political situation

• On the other hand,

the entry of the United States into the war would overwhelm all evils put

together.

• The State Department at

Washington believed, as I did, that Japan would probably recoil before the

ultimately overwhelming might of the United States.

• The American

requirements involved Japanese withdrawal, not only from their new

aggression in Indo-China, but from China itself, where they had already been fighting at heavy expense for so long. This was a rightful but a hard demand. In these circumstances the Navy associated itself with the Army in the policy of war if an acceptable diplomatic agreement could not be obtained. The fact that the Navy had now developed its air arm to a high pitch of offensive capacity hardened them in this course of actio

n.

• The Emperor and the Princes

were for peace and prudence, but had no wish to perish for such a cause.

• Ancestra

l voices prophesying war.

Must they not be worthy of their fathers who had paid with interest the vengeance they owed to the Mongols of the thirteenth century, whom they had identified with the Russia of the Czars?*Always there loomed the fear of united action by

the British Empire and the United States, with its combination of the two strongest navies afloat and with resources, which once developed were measureless and incomparable.

• He was

a highly respected and extremely subtle politician, whose method was to give the Army symbolic satisfactions without ever allowing it to drag the country into a major war.

• in the autumn of 1940, long-cherished, glittering schemes sprang

from dreamland into reality. Was Japan to gain nothing from the collapse of France, of Holland, and it might well be of Britain, with all their vast possessions in East Asia? Had not her historic moment come? Deep passions stirred in Army and Nationalist political circles

• In

August, 1939, Japan was not only engaged in the war in China which had begun in July, 1937, but was also involved in localised hostilities with Russia about the boundary between the newly created State of Manchukuo and Outer Mongolia.

• The strongest check on the power and ambitions of the Army, in the the nineteenth century the Japanese Army was trained by German

instructors, and the Navy by British. This left lasting differences of mentality, which were emphasised by the conditions of Service life. Army officers hardly ever went abroad—except to make war—and cultivated a more narrowly arrogant, nationalist spirit than naval officers,

period after the outbreak of the Second World War, came from the Navy.

• But as Japan emerged from long

seclusion into the vast world which opened about her and blithely placed lethal weapons of hitherto unimagined power in the hands of her warriors, there also formed with cold, slow growth the design to master Asia, and perhaps thereafter lead that continent to the conquest of the world.

• In war and policy one should always try to put oneself in the position of

what Bismarck called “the Other Man.” The more fully and sympathetically a Minister can do this, the better are his chances of being right. The more knowledge he possesses of the opposite point of view, the less puzzling it is to know what to do. But imagination without deep and full knowledge is a snare, and very few among our experts could form any true impression of the Japanese mind. It was indeed inscrutable. The old and new societies, with the chasm of the ages between them, were intermingled and reacted upon each other in ways that no foreigner could understand. Indeed, it is doubtful whether Japan knew her own mind,

• But all they had added was the trappings and panoply of applied

science. All was on the surface. Behind stood Old Japan

• 561 In less

than two generations, with no background but the remote past, the Japanese people advanced from the two-handed sword of the Samurai to the ironclad ship, the rifled cannon, the torpedo, and the Maxim gun; and a similar revolution took place in industry. The transition of Japan under British and American guidance from the Middle Ages to modern times was swift and violent. China was surpassed and smitten. It was with amazement that the world saw in 1905 the defeat of Czarist Russia, not only on the sea, but by great armies transported to the mainland and winning enormous battles in Manchuria. Japan now took her place among the Great Powers.

• 551 I most reluctantly decided that I must relieve General

Cunningham of his command, as I had come to the conclusion that he was unduly influenced by the threat of an enemy counter-stroke against his communications.

• 548 Rommel’s columns, virtually unsupported by their own air force, suffered

the pangs our troops had known and endured when it was Germany who dominated the battle skies.

• 540 For the first time British and Empire

troops will meet the Germans with an ample equipment in modern weapons of all kinds. The battle itself will affect the whole course of the war.

• His aim is to

establish a United States of Europe under the German hegemony and the New Order. This depends not only upon the conquest, but even more upon the collaboration, of the peoples.

• n my telegram of July 25, 1941, which I sent you before

our Atlantic meeting, I spoke of the long-term project for 1943 of the simultaneous landing of say fifteen thousand tanks from hundreds of specially fitted ocean-going ships on the beaches of three or four countries ripe for revolt. I suggested that the necessary alterations could easily be made at this stage to a proportion of your merchant ships now building on so vast a scale.

• It is one thing to see the forward path and another to be able to take it.
• This purpose was

only a hope built on a hope

• 523 I was in charge of a struggling country beset by deadly

foes.*520 All the anti-Nazi nations, great and small, rejoiced to see the first failure

of a German Blitzkrieg

• they have been overpowered by Hitler and used

as a cat’s-paw, but if fortune turns against that ruffian they might easily come back to our side.

• 510 But now

that Russia was engaged in a life-and-death struggle with Germany it was clearly impossible for the Allies to allow the Finns, acting as a German satellite Power, to cut Russia’s main northern lines of communication with the West.

• We wondered about the future, but, after all we

had surmounted, could not fear it.*for the first time in war a

submarine hoisted the white flag and surrendered to an aeroplane.*This invaluable reinforcement should make killing by

hunting groups other than escorts possible for the first time.*501 But two months elapsed before the President succeeded in freeing

his hands from the neutrality laws, by which American ships could not carry goods to Britain nor even arm themselves in their own defence.*The age of compulsory military service for men should be

raised by ten years, to include all men under fifty-one. *enabled us to mobilise for war work at home or in the field a larger proportion of our

men and women than any other country of the world in this or any previous

war. At first the task was to transfer people from the less essential occupations. *One has to do the best one can, but he is an unwise

man who thinks there is any certain method of winning this war, or indeed any other war between equals in strength.

• At the same time I was forced to cool down the claims which some of

our most trusted officers, put forward in their natural ardour.

• to convene such Ministers as may be

concerned, and to prepare for my consideration proposals for implementing the plan. *489 Our air fighter strength had now made an immense advance, and not

only gave increased security against invasion but opened other prospects to strategic planning.*Military considerations should rule your thoughts, and you should not yield to the weak elements in the country who do not understand that quality, efficiency, smartness of bearing, high discipline, are the vital characteristics of an armed force that may have to meet the Germans.

• 483 Nevermore must the Army rely solely on aircraft for its protection against attack from the air. Above all, the idea of keeping standing patrols of aircr

Headline text

aft over moving columns should be abandoned.

• 469 Chuchy to Sissy - I pledge the faith of Britain that we will not seek any advantage for ourselves at the expense of any rightful Russian interest during the war or at the end.
• The deep and delicate questions about oil, Communism, and the post-war future of Persia lay in the background, but need not, it seemed to me, impede comradeship and good-will
• 466 Inter arma silent leges. Persia.
• 457 They certainly have no right to reproach us. They brought their own fate upon themselves when, by their pact with Ribbentrop, they let Hitler loose on Poland and so started the war. They cut themselves off from an effective second front when they let the French Army be destroyed. If prior to June 22 they had consulted with us beforehand, many arrangements could have been made to bring earlier the great help we are now sending them in munitions. We did not however know till Hitler attacked them whether they would fight, or what side they would be on. We were left alone for a whole year while every Communist in England, under orders from Moscow, did his best to hamper our war effort. If we had been invaded and destroyed in July or August, 1941, or starved out this year in the Battle of the Atlantic, they would have remained utterly indifferent. If they had moved when the Balkans were attacked, much might have been done, but they left it all to Hitler to choose his moment and his foes. That a Government with this record should accuse us of trying to make conquests in Africa or gain advantages in Persia at their expense or being willing to “fight to the last Russian soldier” leaves me quite cold. If they harbour suspicions of us, it is only because of the guilt and self-reproach in their own hearts.
• The United States would be able to fulfil this increased commitment as her tank production was being doubled, to reach a figure of over twenty-five hundred tanks a month.
• 451 On September 28 our Mission arrived in Moscow. Their reception was bleak and discussions not at all friendly. It might almost have been thought that the plight in which the Soviets now found themselves was our fault. The Soviet generals and officials gave no information of any kind to their British and American colleagues. They did not even inform them of the basis on which Russian needs of our precious war materials had been estimated
• 451 There is no doubt that a long period of struggle and suffering lies before our peoples, but I have great hopes that the United States will enter the war as a belligerent, and if so I cannot doubt that we have but to endure to conquer.
• Chuchy to ambassador- You were of course right to say that the idea of sending “twenty-five to thirty divisions to fight on the Russian front” is a physical absurdity.
• 447 I can only welcome the intention of the British Government to render this assistance in aluminium, tanks, and aircraft not on the usual commercial basis [but] of comradeship and collaboration. I hope the British Government will have ample opportunity of being convinced that the Soviet Government understands how to appreciate the help received from its ally.
• M. Maisky emphasised the extreme gravity of the crisis on the Russian front in poignant terms which commanded my sympathy. But when presently I sensed an underlying air of menace in his appeal, I was angered. I said to the Ambassador, whom I had known for many years, “Remember that only four months ago we in this Island did not know whether you were not coming in against us on the German side. Indeed, we thought it quite likely that you would. Even then we felt sure we should win in the end. We never thought our survival was dependent on your action either way. Whatever happens, and whatever you do, you of all people have no right to make reproaches to us.”

1. 436 We endured the unpleasant process of exposing our own vital security and projects to failure for the sake of our new ally—surly, snarly, grasping, and so lately indifferent to our survival.
2. 428 - 8th par of Atlantic Charter - Eighth, they believe that all the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons, must come to the abandonment of the use of force. Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea, or air armaments continue to be employed by nations, which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential. They will likewise aid and encourage all other practicable measures which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of armaments.
3. 423 The imposition of the economic sanctions on July 26 had caused a shock in Tokyo. It had not perhaps been realised by any of us how powerful they were. Prince Konoye sought at once to renew diplomatic talks, and on August 6 Admiral Nomura, the Japanese Special Envoy in Washington, presented to the State Department a proposal for a general settlement. Japan would undertake not to advance farther into Southeast Asia, and offered to evacuate Indo-China on the settlement of “the China incident.” (Such was the term by which they described their six-years war upon China.)y

• 418 Atlantic Charter v1 - The President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom, being met together to resolve and concert the means of providing for the safety of their respective countries in face of Nazi and German aggression and of the dangers to all peoples arising therefrom, deem it right to make known certain principles which they both accept for guidance in the framing of their policy and on which they base their hopes for a better future for the world. First, no aggrandizement.
• The entry of Russia into the war was welcome but not immediately helpful to us. The German armies were so strong that it seemed that for many months they could maintain the invasion threat against England while at the same time plunging into Russia.
• And in this struggle a resurgent Polish army based on the many thousands of Poles now held in Russia would play a noble part. On this point the Russians were prepared to agree in a guarded fashion.
• 375 The Soviet Government had the impression that they were conferring a great favour on us by fighting in their own country for their own lives. The more they fought, the heavier our debt became. This was not a balanced view. Two or three times in this long correspondence I had to protest in blunt language, but especially against the ill-usage of our sailors, who carried at so much peril the supplies to Murmansk and Archangel.
• 371 In this he volunteered a defence of the Soviet change of side, and of his agreement with Hitler before the outbreak of the war, and dwelt, as I have already done in my first volume, on the Russians’ strategic need to hold a German deployment as far as possible to the west in Poland in order to gain time for the fullest development of Russian far-drawn military
• Their first impulse and lasting policy was to demand all possible succour from Great Britain and her Empire, the possible partition of which between Stalin and Hitler had for the last eight months beguiled Soviet minds from the progress of German concentration in the East.@…
• 365 On the other hand, by indifference to the fate of others they had gained time, and when their hour of trial struck, on June 22, 1941, they were far stronger than Hitler imagined. P

• 357 - Something like the disaster which had befallen the Polish Air Force on September 1, 1939, was now to be repeated on a far larger scale on the Russian airfields, and many hundreds of Russian planes were caught at daybreak and destroyed before they could get into the air. Thus the ravings of hatred against Britain and the United States which the Soviet propaganda machine cast upon the midnight air were overwhelmed at dawn by the German cannonade. The wicked are not always clever, nor are dictators always right.
• 353 - german weiszacker said about invading Russia - 'doubt very much, however, whether we shall be able to turn to account what we have won in the face of the well-known passive resistance of the Slavs. I do not see in the Russian State any effective opposition capable of succeeding the Communist system and uniting with us and being of service to us.
• you might point out that this change in German military dispositions surely implies that Hitler, through the action of Yugoslavia, has now postponed his previous plans for threatening Soviet Government. If so, it should be possible for Soviet Government to use this opportunity to strengthen their own position. This delay shows that the enemy forces are not unlimited, and illustrates the advantage that will follow anything like a united front.
• by early June the German High Command could count on at least a hundred and fifty divisions, supported by the main striking power of their air force, about twenty-seven hundred aircraft.eb
• We have hitherto rated them as selfish calculators. In this period they were proved simpletons as well. The force, the mass, the bravery and endurance of Mother Russia had still to be thrown into the scales. But so far as strategy, policy, foresight, competence are arbiters, Stalin and his commissars showed themselves at this moment the most completely outwitted bunglers of the Second World War.
• War is mainly a catalogue of blunders, but it may be doubted whether any mistake in history has equalled that of which Stalin and the Communist chiefs were guilty when they cast away all possibilities in the Balkans and supinely awaited, or were incapable of realising, the fearful onslaught which impended upon Russia.
• They hated and despised the democracies of the West;

but the four countries, Turkey, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia, which were of vital interest to them and their own safety, could all have been combined by the Soviet Government in January with active British aid to form a Balkan front against Hitler.

• 343 - Nemesis personifies “the Goddess of Retribution, who brings down all immoderate good fortune, checks the presumption that attends it . . . and is the punisher of extraordinary crimes.”[1] We must now lay bare the error and vanity of cold-blooded calculation of the Soviet Government and enormous Communist machine, and their amazing ignorance about where they stood themselves. They had shown a total indifference to the fate of the Western Powers, although this meant the destruction of that “Second Front” for which they were soon to clamour. They seemed to have no inkling that Hitler had for more than six months resolved to destroy them.
• 299 The German losses of their highest class fighting men removed a formidable air and parachute weapon from all further part in immediate events in the Middle East. Goering gained only a Pyrrhic victory in Crete;

for the forces he expended there might easily have given him Cyprus, Iraq, Syria, and even perhaps Persia. These troops were the very kind needed to overrun large wavering regions where no serious resistance would have been encountered. He was foolish to cast away such almost measureless opportunities and irreplaceable forces in a mortal struggle, often hand-to-hand, with the warriors of the British Empire.

• 265 Hitler certainly cast away the opportunity of taking a great prize for little cost in the Middle East. We in Britain, although pressed told the extreme, managed with scanty forces to save ourselves from far-reaching or lasting injury.
• 263 The Arab Freedom Movement is, in the Middle East, our natural ally against England. In this connection the raising of rebellion in Iraq is of special importance. Such rebellion will extend across the Iraq frontiers to strengthen the forces which are hostile to England in the Middle East, interrupt the British lines of communication, and tie down both English troops and English shipping space at the expense of other theatres of war.
• Rommel - He also deserves our respect because, although a loyal German

soldier, he came to hate Hitler and all his works, and took part in the conspiracy of 1944 to rescue Germany by displacing the maniac and tyrant. For this he paid the forfeit of his life.

• 198 Thus we see as this world drama marches on how all these three coldly

calculating empires made at this moment mistakes disastrous alike, to their ambitions and their safety. Hitler was resolved on the war with Russia, which played a decisive part in his ruin. Stalin remained, to Russia’s bitter cost, in ignorance or underestimation of the blow about to fall on him. Japan certainly missed the best chance—for what it was ever worth—of realising her dreams.

• 89 If the British Empire fell, as

then seemed to Mussolini certain, Egypt, British Somaliland, and British East Africa, added to the existing possessions of Italy, would form indeed an immense area of the earth’s surface under Italian sovereignty, the like of which had not been seen since the days of the Caesars. Here was what the ill-starred Ciano had called “the chance of five thousand years.” It was this gleaming vision which was now to be abruptly extinguished.

Book 6 - Triumph and Tragedy

• “If you had gone down like France,” he said,

“we might be fighting the Germans on the American coast at the present time.

• The moral

principles of modern civilisation seem to prescribe that the leaders of a nation defeated in war shall be put to death by the victors. This will certainly stir them to fight to the bitter end in any future war, and no matter how many lives are needlessly sacrificed, it costs them no more. It is the masses of the people who have so little to say about the starting or ending of wars who pay the additional cost. Julius Caesar followed the opposite principle, and his conquests were due almost as much to his clemency as to his prowess.

• A few years later it was Britain and Western Europe who

were urged in many quarters to play the “moderating rôle” between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. Such are the antics of fortune.

• During all this time the

Lublin Administration, under Bierut, sustained by the might of the Russian armies, had given them a complete control of Poland, enforced by the usual deportations and liquidations. They had denied us all the access for our observers which they had promised. All the Polish parties, except their own Communist puppets, were in a hopeless minority in the new recognised Polish Provisional Government. We were as far as ever from any real and fair attempt to obtain the will of the Polish nation by free

• principles for which Britain and the United States have

suffered and triumphed are not mere matters of the balance of power. They in fact involve the salvation of the world

• The Soviet

Government have a different philosophy, namely, Communism, and use to the full the methods of police government, which they are applying in every State which has fallen a victim to their liberating arms.

• 684 I objected to the implicit idea that

the new disputes now opening with the Soviets lay between Britain and Russia. The United States was as fully concerned and committed as ourselves.

• Mr. President, in

these next two months the gravest matters in the world will be decided.

• The United States, it was argued, must be careful not to let

herself be drawn into any antagonism with Soviet Russia. This, it was thought, would stimulate British ambition and would make a new gulf in Europe. The right policy should, on the other hand, be for the United States to stand between Britain and Russia as a friendly mediator

• I had seen it all before. I remembered that other joy-day

nearly thirty years before, when I had driven with my wife from the Ministry of Munitions through similar multitudes convulsed with enthusiasm to Downing Street to congratulate the Prime Minister. Then, as at this time, I understood the world situation as a whole. But then at least there was no mighty army that we need fear.

• The main bond of common danger

which had united the Great Allies had vanished overnight. The Soviet menace, to my eyes, had already replaced the Nazi foe.

• 672 Mr. Truman was indignant. He wrote to de Gaulle, pointing

out that the messages contained the almost unbelievable threat that French troops bearing American arms would fight American and Allied soldiers, whose efforts and sacrifices had so recently and successfully helped to liberate France.

• The French delegate, General

Beynet, went to Paris for instructions, and his proposals were awaited with anxiety and excitement throughout Syria. Delay occurred; no proposals arrived; and then news spread that French reinforcements were on their way.

• Although the stability of Italy and her relations with

Russia might be at stake, the present issue was not a question of taking sides in a dispute between Italy and Yugoslavia or becoming involved in Balkan politics, but of deciding whether Britain and America were going to allow their Allies to engage in uncontrolled land-grabbing or tactics which were all too reminiscent of Hitler and Japan.

• “On the continent of Europe we have yet to make sure that

the simple and honourable purposes for which we entered the war are not brushed aside or overlooked in the months following our success, and that the words ‘freedom,’‘democracy,’ and ‘liberation’ are not distorted from their true meaning as we have understood them.

• 650 there is still

a lot to do, and that you must be prepared for further efforts of mind and body and further sacrifices to great causes if you are not to fall back into the rut of inertia, the confusion of aim, and the craven fear of being great.

• But for us in Britain and the British

Empire, who had alone been in the struggle from the first day to the last and staked our existence on the result, there was a meaning beyond what even our most powerful and most valiant Allies could feel. Weary and worn, impoverished but undaunted and now triumphant, we had a moment that was sublime.

• 646. In the hour of overwhelming victory I was only too well

aware of the difficulties and perils that lay ahead, but here at least there could be a brief moment for rejoicing The new revolutionary submarines never played their part in the Second World War. It had been planned to complete 350 of them during 1945, but only a few came into service before the capitulation. This weapon in Soviet hands lies among the hazards of the future.

• The

new revolutionary submarines never played their part in the Second World War. It had been planned to complete 350 of them during 1945, but only a few came into service before the capitulation. This weapon in Soviet hands lies among the hazards of the future.

• Thus in three

successive days 2,500,000 Germans have surrendered to our British commanders.

• surrender to either

British, American, or Swedish troops. When asked what he proposed to do if the Western Allies refused his offer, Himmler replied that he would take command of the Eastern Front and die in battle. Himmler said he hoped that the Western Allies rather than the Russians would be the first to enter Mecklenburg, in order to save the civilian population.

• The Russians had not been long in Vienna before we got a

foretaste of what would happen in a zone of their occupation. They announced that a Provisional Austrian Government had been formed, and they refused to let our missions fly in.

• 610 The

Russian idea of taking these immense food supplies out of the food-producing areas of Germany to feed themselves is very natural, but I contend that the feeding of the German population must be treated as a whole and that the available supplies must be divided pro rata between the occupational zones.

• All these matters can

only be settled before the United States armies in Europe are weakened. If they are not settled before the United States armies withdraw from Europe and the Western World folds up its war machines there are no prospects of a satisfactory solution and very little of preventing a third World War.

• 595 The Russian demands on Germany for

reparations alone will be such as to enable her to prolong the occupation almost indefinitely, at any rate for many years, during which time Poland will sink with many other States into the vast zone of Russian- controlled Europe, not necessarily economically Sovietised, but police-governed.

• 589 terms of imprisonment ranging from four months to ten

years, and three were acquitted. This was in fact the judicial liquidation of the leadership of the Polish Underground which had fought so heroically against Hitler. The rank and file had already died in the ruins of Warsaw.

• bearing of the British, and above all the Londoners, kindled

fires in American bosoms far harder to quench than the conflagrations from which we were suffering.

• Amantium irae

amoris integratio est.

• 552 The Russian armies

will no doubt overrun all Austria and enter Vienna. If they also take Berlin will not their impression that they have been the overwhelming contributor to our common victory be unduly imprinted in their minds, and may this not lead them into a mood which will raise grave and formidable difficulties in the future?

• 542 The decisive, practical points of strategy and policy wiwhich this narrative seeks to deal were: First, that Soviet Russia had become a mortal danger to the

free world.

• Henceforward Russian imperialism and the

Communist creed saw and set no bounds to their progress and ultimate dominion, and more than two years were to pass before they were confronted again with an equal will- power.

• 540 Neither the

military chiefs nor the State Department received the guidance they required. The former confined themselves to their professional sphere; the latter did not comprehend the issues involved. The indispensable political direction was lacking at the moment when it was most needed. The United States stood on the scene of victory, master of world fortunes, but without a true and coherent design. Britain, though still very powerful, could not act decisively alone. I could at this stage only warn and plead. Thus this climax of apparently measureless success was to me a most unhappy time. I moved amid cheering crowds, or sat at a table adorned with congratulations and blessings from every part of the Grand Alliance, with an aching heart and a mind oppressed by forebodings.

• 515 what, it

will legitimately be asked, are the prospects of success of the new World Organisation? And is it not indeed evident that, in the circumstances, we shall be building the whole structure of future world peace on founda- tions of sand?

• Peace with Germany and Japan on our terms will

not bring much rest to you and me (if I am still responsible). As I observed last time, when the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin. There will be a torn, ragged, and hungry world to help to its feet; and what will Uncle Joe or his successor say to the way we should both like to do it?

• Our friendship is

the rock on which I build for the future of the world,

• Russia's modern bullsit and the cold war started with the sellout in Yalta.
• and also wanted to stop us seeing theFar more than

Poland was involved. This was the test case between us and the Russians of the meaning of such terms as democracy, sovereignty, independence, representative Government, and free and unfettered elections. MJ note - the only thing that could correct this would have been war against Russia. This is why a new security apparatus that prevents such corruption - is now necessary in 2023. For example, to prevent the corruption of China through its Taiwan acquisition.

liquidations and deportations and all the manoeuvres of setting up a totalitarian régime before elections were held and even before a new Government was installed. If we did not get things right the world would soon see that Mr. Roosevelt and I had underwritten a fraudulent prospectus when we put our signatures to the Crimea settlement.

• Note - it appears that Churchill and Roosevelt did not sell out Poland in Yalta, but Stalin just bullshitted them. Molotov also had withdrawn his offer to let us

send observers to Poland

• . I had based myself in Parliament on

the belief that the Yalta Declaration would be carried out in

the letter and the spirit. Once it was seen that we had been deceived and that the well-known Communist technique was being applied behind closed doors in Poland, either directly by the Russians or through their Lublin puppets, a very grave situation in British public opinion would be reached.

• I

therefore suggested to Mr. Roosevelt that Stalin should be asked to ensure that the new Government did not immediately start a purge of all anti-Communists on the ground that they had been encouraged to do so by the Yalta Declaration.

• Besides this, I was very conscious of the much more

important issue of Poland, and I did not want to do anything about Rumania which might harm the prospect of a Polish settlement.

• 500 I was deeply disturbed by this news, which was to prove a

pattern of things to come. The Russians had established the rule of a Communist minority by force and misrepresentation. But if I pressed him too much

he might say, “I did not interfere with your action in Greece; why do you not give me the same latitude in Rumania?” This would lead to comparisons between his aims and ours. Neither side would convince the other. Having regard to my personal relations with Stalin, I was sure it would be a mistake to embark on such an argument.

• 499 violation by the Russians both of the spirit and letter of our

agreements took place in Rumania. We were all committed by the Declaration on Liberated Europe, so recently signed, to see that both free elections and democratic Governments were established in the countries occupied by Allied armies. On February 27 Vyshinsky, who had appeared in Bucharest without warning on the previous day, demanded an audience of King Michael and insisted that he should dismiss the all-party Government which had been formed after the royal coup d’état of August 1944 and had led to the expulsion of the Germans from Rumania. The young monarch, backed by his Foreign Minister, Visoianu, resisted these demands until the following day. Vyshinsky called again, and, brushing aside the King’s request at least to be allowed to consult the leaders of the political parties, banged his fist on the table, shouted for an immediate acquiescence, and walked out of the room, slamming the door. At the same time Soviet tanks and troops deployed in the streets of the capital, and on March 2 a Soviet-nominated Administration took office.

• What would have

happened if we had quarrelled with Russia while the Germans still had three or four hundred divisions on the fighting front? Our hopeful assumptions were soon to be falsified.

• We are now entering a world of imponderables, and

at every stage occasions for self-questioning arise. It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a tim e

• 473 I felt bound to proclaim my confidence in Soviet good faith

in the hope of procuring it.

• 469 During the meal

we signed the final documents and official communiqués. All now depended upon the spirit in which they were carried out.

• 439 in 1939 although so ill-armed. It had nearly cost us our life,

not only as an Empire but as a nation. Great Britain had no material interest of any kind in Poland. Honour was the sole reason why we had drawn the sword to help Poland against Hitler’s brutal onslaught, and we could never accept any settlement which did not leave her free, independent, and sovereign.

• 433 If the British and French had sent a mission to

Moscow in 1939 containing men who really wanted an agreement with Russia the Soviet Government would not have signed the pact with Ribbentrop.

• 420 I answered that if you

wanted a horse to pull your wagon you had to give him some hay.

• 416 These awe-inspiring tides of feeling dominate

most people’s minds, and independent figures tend to become not only lonely but futile. There is therefore wisdom in reserving one’s decisions as long as possible

and until all the facts and forces that will be potent at the moment are revealed .

• Yalta - what the vast emotions of an outraged and

quivering world will be either immediately after the struggle is over or when the inevitable cold fit follows the hot. *400 -;Stalin sez -The position is that as early as December 27 the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. informed the Poles in reply to an inquiry on the subject that it proposed to recognise the Provisional Government of Poland as soon as the latter was formed.*395: what measures and what organisation could the three great Allies provide for the future peace and good governance of the world?

• 390 Thus ended the six weeks’ struggle for Athens, and, as it

ultimately proved, for the freedom of Greece from Communist subjugation*357 unity becomes ever more important, as danger recedes and faction arises

• 354 "I do not accept a party as necessarily

representing democracy because it becomes more violent as it becomes less numerous."

• 350 EAM-ELAS revolt in Athens
• 300 Setting up French gummit, boundary of France to be decided at negotiating table
• An episode of profound and far-reaching gravity is

created by the Russian refusal to permit American aircraft to bring succour to the heroic insurgents in Warsaw, aggravated by their own complete neglect to provide supplies by air when only a few score of miles away

• 143 he air authorities out here assured me that the

Americans wished help sent from England to Warsaw, and that the operation was quite practicable, providing of course the Russians gave their consent. - regarding airlift help to Warsaw Uprising - and landing RAF in Russia.

• 73 Even our Mosquitoes, each

of which was probably no dearer than a rocket, dropped on the average 125 tons of bombs per aircraft within one mile of the target during their life, whereas the rocket dropped one ton only, and that with an average error of fifteen mile

• P49 They wanted to call the harbour “Port Churchill.” But this forvarious reasons I forbade.

Book 1

• 499 - He who will not when he may, When he will, he shall have Nayl
• 486 - Re France in 1939 -So also in the Army the disintegrating influences of both Communism and Fascism were at work; the long winter months of waiting gave time and opportunity for the poisons to be established.
• C formed a statistics department to feed him processed info
• 399 - the hunter becomes the hunted. Worth considering as a strategy in war.
• 396 - looked for offensive ways to use navy - not just escort and defense
• 386 - Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma
• 220 - I thus acquired the chief power of the state which I wielded for 5 years and 3 months of world war, at the end of which time all of our enemies have surrendered unconditionally or were about to do so... I was conscious of a profound sense of relief. At last I had the authority to give direction over the whole scene.
• 193 Sweden was neutral and provided iron ore to the German war machine holy s*** what compliance traders bastards. Materialism wins again. There's no such thing as neutrality when you are fueling the enemy wtf
• 192 German war plans for the invasion of Belgium were captured but Belgium did nothing about it and was in denial and they could not be blamed based on all the appeasement of the day
• The human mind except in the condition of extraordinary genius can not surmount the force of the conclusions of the experience in which it was reared
• 188 it is a joke in the United Kingdom that the war office is always preparing for the last war
• 170 - Right after Poland was invaded there was a slight pause. France suggested to Britain that they don't bomb Germany because Germany would retaliate on France by destroying its war factories which were unprotected
• 165 - Churchill slept for at least 1 hour as early in the afternoon as possible and then he would work till 2:00 or so a.m. and wake up at 8:00 or 9 thus he said he had 1.5 days per day
• P161- speak for England Mr prime Minister
• P160 - war was preceded by a barrage of sabotage and murder. Churchill carried a gun
• 158 - Hitler pretended to. Negotiate with Pola d right to the day he invaded, so that England would not join and fight to help Poland, logistical move.
• 103 - england will bring the whole world against you, like last time - Churchill warned Ribbentrop
• 119 - this was the last I saw Herr Ribbentrop before he was hanged