The Question of Churchill
The character and legacy of Winston Churchill has come under attack in recent days for his allegedly racist views and in particular that decisions concerning food movements led to the death by starvation of an estimated 3 million people in India. This has been described as a war crime. They have led to calls for Churchill’s statue to be removed from Parliament Square, to it being defaced with slogans and graffiti and to it presently being encased in a metal box for its protection. These are serious charges, before we rush to judgement let us imagine what might have happened if Churchill had not been in charge and not made those decisions.
Through the late 1930s Britain had been led by a government under Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain that sought to appease Nazi Germany and avoid conflict at all cost, due in part no doubt to memories of the terrible losses of the First World War of 1914-18 and the severe economic depression that had gripped the world in the 1930s. There were also elements within the British government and Establishment that were pro-Nazi. Churchill had been the stand out politician opposing this policy of appeasement throughout, often a lone voice. When war inevitably came in September 1939, with the German invasion of Poland, Chamberlain was forced out of office and Churchill became Prime Minister in a government of national unity. The rapid deterioration of our military position in early 1940 as Germany invaded France brought us to the point that by the second half of May the British Expeditionary Force – the greater part of the professional British Army – was in danger of complete annihilation. At this point there were loud voices within Britain calling for peace, to make terms with Hitler before our forces were completely overwhelmed and suffered crushing military defeat. Churchill resisted these voices, steeled the British resolve to fight on and managed to organise a successful evacuation from the beaches of Dunkirk.
But what if Churchill had listened to the calls for peace, or had stood down as Prime Minister to make way for say Lord Halifax, the appeaser Chamberlain’s former Foreign Secretary? Peace would have been made and Britain would have withdrawn from the war. Very likely we would have been required to disarm, as Germany had been in 1918 and, again mirroring the 1918 peace, war reparations been levied upon us. The Jews would have been required of us too. Large parts of the Home Fleet would either have been decommissioned or worse still handed over to Germany. The French fleet, which Churchill ordered destroyed while it lay at anchor in port, would also have fallen into Nazi hands. The Atlantic Ocean would have become a German pond. Our forces in North Africa and the Middle East would have stood down, or if they had fought on under some independent command, been quickly overwhelmed as forces that Hitler massed on the Channel coast for the invasion of Britain were diverted there while our own British forces were left without recourse to reinforcement or re-supply. With the oil resources of the Middle East in his hands Hitler would have had no need to invade Russia at this time.
What next? With the Middle East and its resources secured it is a short thrust through Iran to India where, if they were still fighting, British Imperial force would have crumbled before the two-pronged assault of Germany from the West and Japan in the East. Somewhere in India German and Japanese forces would have met and the Axis would have an empire that girdled the entire Eurasian land mass. They could pick the time and places of their invasion of the USSR. Fighting on multiple fronts and without the support that came from Britain and the North Atlantic convoys how long would the Soviet Union have lasted? Meanwhile the Jews would continue to have been killed and the Slavs of central Europe, the blacks and other untermenschen or enemies of the Aryan people would continue to be enslaved or exterminated.
With the conquest of the Eurasian continents the only effective opposition to the Axis powers could come from North America; the USA and Canada. Would they fight or make peace? Perhaps the USA would look at its own people and decide, that perhaps after all, the slavery of the blacks had been no bad thing, that the Jews really were a threat to the world order and adopted the ideology of the new Nazi empire. I am glad that they were never asked that question.
So what about the famine in Bengal and the death of three million Indians from starvation? The first thing to say is that it is a disputed issue, first raised as an accusation in 2009. Not that the deaths are disputed but that the deaths are a result of decisions made by Churchill. The problem of food shortages in India began in 1943 with a poor harvest. In 1944 the famine deepened with another poor wheat harvest, exacerbated by the loss of 50,000 tons of wheat in a dockside explosion so Lord Wavell, the Viceroy of India, turned to Churchill for help, requesting 1 million tons of grain as food aid. According to Cabinet Office records1 Churchill responded positively, the Canadians and Australians offered grain supplies and Churchill accepted the offer of 350,000 tons from Australia on the basis it could reach India in half the time the Canadian grain could. He authorised the diversion of shipping away from military support to facilitate this. As the famine deepened the Indian authorities made further requests for grain and Churchill responded as best he could, supplying a further 200,000 tons, replacing the 50,000 lost in the dockside explosion and authorising the trading of excess rice stocks for 150,000 tons of Ceylon produced wheat. Beyond that he could not go for lack of shipping. Further deliveries of grain could only be made to India if shipping was diverted from supplying Britain or the Italian and Balkan civilian populations that were also dependent on British support. Churchill wrote to Roosevelt asking for assistance but received a negative response, the Americans too did not have sufficient ships. So, Churchill did not create the famine, or worsen the famine by transporting food out of India but rather sought ways of resolving it and helped alleviate it in part. But he did not divert scarce shipping resources away from supplying British and European populations. Given the acute needs in Britain and Europe this is probably not surprising but does leave him open to the charge of not doing enough to solve the famine or of prioritising Europeans over Indians. Are these the actions of a war criminal?
Your decision on how to view Churchill is up to you but do not be quick to judge, first walk a mile in the other man’s shoes and listen to both sides of the argument.
1. https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/did-churchill-cause-the-bengal-famine/
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