Interesting article on Prime Minister Churchill’s mindset. Not surprising, coming from the man used weapons of mass destruction against the Kurds, and thus set an example for Saddam to follow…
Also, Churchill wanted to execute Germans without trial, and was in favour of letting Mahatma Gandhi starve himself to death ifhe wished in British custody.
Winston Churchill wanted the RAF to wipe out German villages in retaliation for the massacre of Czech civilians in the village of Lidice, wartime cabinet documents have revealed.
The same declassified papers show that Churchill also wanted Adolf Hitler executed “like a gangster” in an electric chair borrowed from the Americans, if the dictator were captured alive by British troops.
The plan to attack small villages “on a three-for-one basis” was formed in the summer of 1942 five days after German forces murdered most of the 450 occupants of Lidice, a village north of Prague, in retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, deputy leader of the SS.
Churchill abandoned the plan only in the face of opposition from cabinet colleagues, who feared that the lives of aircrews would be placed needlessly at risk.
In April 1945, the home secretary, Herbert Morrison, expressed the opinion, seemingly popular with his colleagues, that a “mock trial” for Nazi leaders would be “objectionable”, and said that it would be “better to declare that we shall put them to death”. Churchill agreed that a trial for Hitler would be “a farce”, adding that “all sorts of complications ensue as soon as you admit a fair trial”.
Churchill supported a proposal to circumvent the allies’ commitment to such trials by writing to the Soviets and Americans explaining Britain’s justification for summary justice, and then carrying out the executions before either had time to reply. A list of Nazis who were to be shot without trial was to have been prepared.
As the war came to an end, and with many of Germany’s wartime leaders taking their own lives, Churchill apparently decided that it was not worth “a big fight” with the other allied nations. Even then, however, he was asking cabinet colleagues whether they could, in theory, negotiate with Himmler, “and bump him off later?”
Churchill’s ruthlessness emerges elsewhere in Sir Norman’s notes, where he is quoted as saying that German PoWs in British hands should be shot if the Nazis began killing British captives.
Winston Churchill was prepared to let Mahatma Gandhi die if he went on hunger strike while interned during the second world war, according to declassified war cabinet documents.
The wartime prime minister felt that the Indian leader should be treated like any other prisoner if he stopped eating after he had been detained in 1942 for condemning Indian involvement in the war against Hitler and for calling for civil disobedience.
Some leading figures feared an uprising if Gandhi died. But Churchill was incensed by the prospect of granting him a moral victory: “I would keep him there and let him do as he likes,” the papers quote him as saying. “But if you are going to let him out because he strikes, then let him out now.”
Eventually, ministers decided in January 1943 that although they could not publicly give in to a hunger strike, they would be willing to release Gandhi on compassionate grounds if he seemed likely to die. He was freed the following year.