Churchill Visionary Statesman , Historian by John Lukacs 2002 201pg

  Churchill's writing tellד us a lot about him. 14/2/23

Very few understood how close Hitler had come to winning the war before summer of 1940 well before the Battle of Britain but as long as Churchill was in power Hitler could not win. Democracy is more vindictive than cabinets, and wars of people will be more terrible than those of kings. Churchill understood Hitler more than Hitler understood Churchill and this was a great asset. Churchill understanding can be considered a visionary. "Fear will not a clear vison make."  

In 1930 Churchill warned about the danger of Hitler when nobody in both England and Germany  though that Hitler could become Chancellor. He understood that Hitler with National Socialism could unite Germany leaving a  Dark Age  protracted by perverse science. Churchill also understood that Russia's help was needed to beat Germany. "If Hitler invaded hell I would make a favorable reference to the Devil"

When De Gaul complained how much territory in Eastern Europe Russia got. Churchill said that Russia will not be able to digest what she has swallowed  and that Communism would only last 3 score and 10 years., which is what happened.  By 1900 Pax Britannia was already being replaced by Pax Anglo American but his vision of the closer union of the English speaking world was snot to be.

Stalin

The historian unlike a judge is permitted t try a case over and over often after finding newer evidence.. By Chamberlain abandoning Czechoslovakia to Germany it was also abandoning Poland to Russia. Stalin preferred to cut a deal with Germany than with the western Democracies.  Churchill realized that Russia's national interests were more important than their International Communism.   Churchill saw a lot  of Ivan Maisky the Soviet ambassador to London  but he told Churchill thing that he wanted to hear. Stalin was suspicious of the indirect and direct  warnings of Hitler invasion April to June 1941.

Stalin showed his ignorance by asking Britain to invade western Europe and to send British division to Russia through Archangel and Persia. Britain and Russia in days made an agreement and jointly subdued Persia.

1941 Dec after Pearl Harbour, Churchill now knew that both Japan and Hitler were doomed.

Churchill told Stalin there would not be a Western Invasion in 1942 and managed to dissuade Roosevelt and Marshall from invading Europe. After Stalingrad, Stalin still had to understand that a second front in Europe would not occur in 1943. A 100,000 Polish soldiers made their way to Britain. Churchill also realized that through Poland Germany would march on Russia and later Russia would march on Germany.

Churchill wanted to give the Curzon line but to ensure Poland's independence.  Greece was worrying where a partisan Communist's army was growing every day, the percentages program saved Greece.

Churchill realized that geography and territory mattered and not ideology. At Yalta, Poland was the principle subject discussed.  Allan Dulles was secretly negotiating with a German General to surrender German cities to American and draw a wedge to put a wedge between the American and Russians. Churchill instructed Montgomery to collect the weapons in Germany ready for a confrontation with Russia. Churchill wanted to meet the Russians well east of the agreed line, so that returning to that line would be contingent on concession  Russia over  Poland.

Truman saw eye to eye with Churchill and stood up to Stalin

1946 Churchill Fulton speech about the Iron Curtain. Both Truman and Dean Acheson disavowed this speech but it was soon apparent Churchill was right.

1944 Churchill did manage to save Greece.

Roosevelt 

There are 3 volumes of correspondence  between them. 1161 from Churchill and 788 from Roosevelt both letters and telegrams.  Once the war began Chamberlain was forced to invite Churchill into the war cabinet and a few days later the correspondence with Roosevelt began. Churchill knew that American would have to come into the war and it was agreed that it would conquer first Europe and then Japan.

With Churchill as PM all talk of armistice with Hitler ceased. By Nov.1940 the Battle of Britain in the air was over.  The German economy would accomplish miracles despite the bombing. Hitler's pretext of attacking the Soviets on account of Communism saved Britain.

Churchill persuaded the American that an invasion of Europe would be a disaster and persuaded them to attack North Africa, then Italy from Sicily. Churchill was right about Hitler and about Stalin and the Soviets, some of Roosevelts opponents thought Communism was the greater danger.

The British had relinquished the Victorian Empire  ideal by 1939, Churchill not quite. Churchill knew that if someone like Hoover had sat in the White House, Germany would have won.?

Eisenhower

1945 March Eisenhower told Stalin that Allied armies rushing forward in Germany  would not take Berlin or Prague

1948 Eisenhower was suggested for the Democratic nomination but 4 years later he declared himself a Republican church goer. Churchill was pleased to see he pal elected but was to be disappointed. In the book Triumph and Tradgedy he as curtesy left out the controversy he and Ike had.

1953 March,  Eisenhower  inaugurated  and Stalin died 6 weeks later, but thought it made very little difference now Stalin gone. All foreign policy in the White house was influenced and guided by John Forster Dulles. Churchill wanted to have a meeting in Moscow between him Ike and the new Soviet leader. Ike refused referring to Churchill as senile. In the US there was a rising wave of Mc McCarthyism.

1955 Russia withdrew from Austria in exchange of Western troops reciprocating and the neutrality of Austria. Russia also gave up their naval bases in Finland for neutrality there. To Churchill the ideology of communism was becoming feeble and would not last. Russia recognized the West German government without demanded western recognition of East Germany. After the first uprising in East Germany Russia and China split. Ike was weak and abrogated power to John Forster Dulles. Churchill attempts to contact Moscow were opposed by Edan and Salisbury as well as Ardanauer the Chancellor of West Germany. Interesting but of Ike and Churchill, Ike was the ideologue while Churchill vision was not wrong. Churchill view of the world was historical.

Europe 

Immediately after WW1 Churchill spoke  up against mistreating the Germans as he did again after WW2.

1932 and 1933 at the disarmaments conferences the German demands were ratcheted up higher and Churchill knew that meant that Germany was rearming. The presents of a new Germany was a welcome thing a bulwark against communism  by people like Lord Rothemere who met Hitler.

Appeasement was first used by Antony Eden who later became an anti- appeaser. While Chamberlain was engaged in appeasement he was also rearming. However Chamberlain was Russophobic , Francophobic and anti communist, but knew very little about Europe and Britain's ties to her.

Historian

Churchill was a writer and historian. He was the Nobel Prize for literature in 1953 only one other historian won a Nobel prices for literature and that was  the Great German historian Theodor Mommsen in 1902. Churchill did not treat history as a science.

He wrote about the Indian and Sudan Wars , a political history of his father Lord Randolph, a biography of his ancestor Marlborough , WW1 and WW2 and the History of the English speaking peoples.

In WW1 he tried to justify his decision to attack the Dardanelles. On WW2 he said that had the French mobilized in 1936 Hitler's General Staff would have withdrawn. 

History permeated everything that Churchill did was the mainspring of his politics and secret   of his immense mastery . He was influenced by Gibbons and Macaulay.  His book on Marlborough shows his detailed knowledge of Europe and it Geography and history and he had access to all the papers at Blenheim Palace (Marlborough's home) of his cousin there. Churchill always had a big readership and was a popular writer.

Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris 2022 448pg

 This  is a work of fiction but explains the period very well and I researched events mentioned.   3/2/23

1642 to 1651 English Civil War 

1651 till 1658 Cromwell became Lord Protector of England.

 1660 to 1685  Charles II 

This starts in 1660 in Boston when Daniel Gookin arrived back home from England with 2 regicides Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe. They wanted shelter as the Charles 11 who had given amnesty to the soldiers in the Roundhead army but wanted everyone who had signed his fathers death warrant executed.

Colonel Hackers wife had been forced to hand over this death warrant certificate. It goes back to describe the Execution of Charles1 that he was brought out of the window of Banqueting house Whitehall onto a platform that had (no ladder  or access to it from below) where he was decapitated.

1549 The Book of Common  Prayer was the first English prayer book for the Anglican church during the reformation.

Richard Nayler had a grudge against these 2 regicides as they had arrested him when his wife was ready to give birth and when he came out of Newgate prison found that his wife and baby had died of premature birth due to shock.

1650 Battle of Dunbar was a decisive victory for Cromwell and 3000 prisoners were sent off to the colonies as indentured servants.  The rest of Charles I family had fled.

Reports came to London from Boston by a ships captain that he had seen the 2 regicides sheltered by the Massachusetts governor.

1660 By this time many of the regicides were had already died, 10 caught was hung, drawn and quartered in public view at Charring Cross, this was 11 years after Charles I execution.

1661 The body of Cromwell was exhumed and it was treated the same as the living regicides, and then chase in New England takes place. Puritans were translating the bible into Wampanoag the language of the Massachusetts tribe.

New Haven Connecticut was an independent colony then. 1620 The governor here had gone to the Hague and been  ejected from the church there because of his strict baptism rules. The regicides were busy training the local militia and thought perhaps they would build up and army against the king. They could escape to New Amsterdam under Peter Stuyvesant the Dutch governor(he had lost a leg in the battle against the Spanish in the indies and had a wooden leg) and ask for sanctuary. 

The one regicide was writing his memoir of his childhood friendship to Oliver Cromwell. The whole of New England had a Christian population of 30,000 while London had a million, perhaps it is easier to hide in London.

"The sole authority in New Haven is God"

An informer told them which houses to search for the regicides. The informers  wife could not fall pregnant and was accused of being a witch, this drove her to her death. The informer had been whipped by the New Haven governor for being drunk. The chance to see their wives again lured 3 people to Netherlands where they were caught and taken by ship  to England. The English could not get to those in Germany. Out of 59 regicides 11 had died of natural causes by the time Charles II came to power only 5 were alive still, the public had seen enough killing and the rest must be assassinator. A team was sent to Lausanne, they assassinated someone in broad daylight ran and got to their horses and fled the country. 

The Puritans had demolished the Globe rounded up hundred of prostitutes and exiled many to America, maypoles were taken down and merriment of Shrove (absolve, the day before the period of Lent )Tuesday were stopped.

In Cambridge the wanted to take the gold and silver plate and vandalized St Mary's at St. Peterborough Cathedral the destroyed everything from the idols , library and achieves.

1643 Gainsborough first battle of  the civil war attacking a Royalist base resulting in many Royalists fleeing and drowning in the Lincolnshire fens.

1944 Marston Moore about 4000 Royalist killed for only 300 Roundheads, the largest battle ever fought on English soil and Cromwell now controlled the whole north.

1945Nasby first battle fought with New Model Army, started at Leicester and the Royalist were outnumbered 2 to 1 led by Prince Rupert of the Rhine. Over 100 women of the Royalist were hacked to death accused of being  papist, whores and witches and were buried in a common grave. After Cromwell had beaten the Welsh at Pembroke and the Scots at Preston the Roundheads converged on London. The army now excluded all MPs that wanted a settlement with the king

The Royalist army had been destroyed but they still had to siege pockets of resistance at Bridgewater Sherburne Bristol, Dartmouth, Banbury, Exeter, Oxford Worcester  even 2 years after Naseby. 

1648 Siege of Colchester the Royalists held out for 11 weeks inside the city walls.  The king tried to escape to France but no ship was waiting for him instead he fled to the Isle of Wight where is stayed in Carisbrooke Castle and the governor sent a message to Cromwell. Cromwell had a riding accident and never recovered from that.

British expedition  troops arrived and New Netherland now no longer existed and New Amsterdam was New York named after the kings brother. These troops were sent to look for the regicides who had moved secretly from New Haven to Hadley , Connecticut. There would now be a war between England and the Netherlands.

1666 The English navy suffered a defeat  by the Dutch at Paternoster, the bubonic plague broke out, followed by the great fire of London. 1666 was meant to be the year of the Second Coming instead the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse - war, plague, famine, death as mentioned in Revelations. 1 in 4 Londoners died and 87 churches were destroyed.

1665 to 1667 The second Anglo Dutch war lasted 2 years. The war ended up with the sighning of the Treaty of Breda. Manhattan was left under English rules and the Dutch were left Isle Run  all the spice Island of the Dutch East Indies.