Another famous politician that's highly esteemed, even by people you'd think would have taken the trouble to know better. If you want to know about his official history, you will learn precious little here; better check the Triple-Double-U. Or an encyclopedia, a history book, whatever. The guy certainly left his mark, it's no use denying it.

Most people would not agree, but to some nasty minds he was not as much of the goods as he himself made out to be.
Let's have a look:
He more or less started his public career by pushing the WWI Gallipoli Campaign along: A disastrous affair resulting in a total of over 500,000 deaths, almost equally distributed on British and Turkish sides, and accomplishing exactly nothing. It only ended when general Charles Monro took over command and withdrew all troops without the Turks even noticing.
As a result, Churchill was kicked out of the Conservative Party, switched sides and returned again, now as chancellor of the exchequer. In that function he restored the gold standard. The ultimate result of this smart action was to push along the Crash of 1929, which gave Hitler a lot of help in his rise to power.
Churchill was kicked out of government once again, to bounce back, with all his chutzpah unimpaired and as a conservative once more, when in 1939 he became first lord of the Admiralty. In that function he made the most foolish mistakes, like rejecting the decision for ocean convoy transports until this was forced by others, regardless of what he thought. Like most of his colleagues, he had leard nothing about this in WWI when the same mistake had been made.
After the war ended, he was kicked out of government again, only to return in 1951 and finally leaving office in 1955.

On an official visit to the USA at Prohibition time, he just had to smuggle booze into the country (he drank like a fish). His whole jaunty attitude reminds me of an actor or an undergraduate student. Just like his counterpart Adolf Hitler, he was a mere demagogue, a great orator (and a so-so painter.) Shakespeare would have liked him, also because he was so disgustingly fat. Then, he smoked these filthy cigars as part of his act, just like Alfred Hitchcock — also much too fat and (like anybody) completely dependent on the work of his cooperators, while (not like anybody) routinely stealing all their credit. And he was as dangerously short as most dictators are (as Jan de Hartog said in The Captain: Beware of small men, because they hate you for every inch you're longer.)



If you think the comparison with Hitler unfair, remember how Churchill, just like the Nazis
a 'social darwinist', thought el Generalissimo Franco was a fine Christian gentleman. He also deplored that England hadn't succeeded in putting aside democracy for the duration, as it would have been much easier to fight Hitler's totalitarianism then. Really! Bully for England, his intention failed and, probably as a result, Hitler was beaten.
John Kenneth Galbraith remarks that Churchill was all for the Zionist movement:
not so much because it was a good thing for the Jews, but because he hoped they would all leave England.

umm, those cigars

When I checked it on their site, they weren't ready yet; but February 2011 blog stories claimed that in the London Churchill Museum they are removing all his cigars. Out of political correctness, no doubt. Why, it was as good as his trade mark! Turns out, they only did it for one picture; the management never noticed.

"King of the Apes"

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