Friday, May 2, 2014

Lionizing Winston



Working Hypothesis

The elite work through government to achieve their control.  The Anglo-elite purposefully chose to transition (as their primary tool of control) from the government of Great Britain to that of the United States.  This transition began toward the end of the nineteenth century and was complete by the end of World War Two.  Besides the evidence presented with the benefit of hindsight (it happened), there is much evidence that something to this effect was intended. 

At least that’s my story.

Background

Perhaps the most significant work that I have come across that demonstrates this purposeful intention is a book by W.T. Stead: The Americanization of the World.  I cover this book in several posts, to be found here.  I also find the assassination of McKinley quite curious, for reasons explained here.

If this version of history is correct, one man should be considered as perhaps the most important political figure throughout this time – an on-again-off-again leader during most of the transition period of fifty years: Winston Churchill.  Certainly there were others: Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson come to mind – yet, while they could build-up American expansionism, they couldn’t directly control British actions.  Churchill’s presence on the global stage spanned this time period, playing a key role in many of the events that contributed to this transition and the downfall of Great Britain as empire.

Therefore I wonder – was Churchill selected to play this part, to ensure the transition that was desired by the Anglo-elite?  Did Churchill know he was playing this part?  Did he need to know?  To try to find some clues, I decided to read a biography of the man: The Last Lion, by William Manchester.  This volume covers the years 1874 to 1932.  These years would be the critical years in my chase – if he was chosen, it happened early on, and for reasons that were visible early on.

An American is struck by the facility with which so many British intellectuals slight the man who saved their country. (P. 16)

Perhaps, being British, they have a different view.  For the British, it could be concluded that Churchill was a key figure in the demise of Empire; of even a more direct and personal impact, consider the fate of the British economy in the several decades after World War II (something to consider if / when the US empire follows this same course).

Churchill certainly had a vision early on in the Second World War:

…by combining the might of the English-speaking peoples in so strong a defense of the United States and the Commonwealth that the rest of the world would be held at bay, as it had been held by the British Empire in the relatively quiescent nineteenth century. (P. 16)

For my hypothesis to hold water, it would be helpful to find evidence that some hint of this was known to the elite early on – perhaps even forty or fifty years earlier.  If the characteristics that allowed Churchill to make this statement were known to those who walk in important circles early on, perhaps my wild goose chase will have a happy ending. 

Wow, what am I thinking?

Manchester’s book is thick.  I never thought I would read a biography of Churchill; such is the world of tin foil.  I will cover the book in some detail (it will take several posts), but I am only concerned with tidbits that touch on my quest – who did Churchill know, who knew of Churchill, where might he have crossed paths with important people, what characteristics of his were visible early on that might have provided an insight into his win-at-any-cost attitude to the war (even when a fight was not necessary) – thereby ensuring that the cost would be the British Empire in favor of an American Empire – a good outcome for the Anglo-elite, not so good for too many others.

For now, an overview.


Young Winston

Churchill apparently was the man Teddy Roosevelt pretended to be.  Both were sickly and relatively weak as youth.  Churchill, sent to a “brutal boarding school” as a boy, was caned by the “sadistic headmaster until his back was a mass of welts.”  His treatment by his fellow students was worse:

Sickly, an uncoordinated weakling with the pale fragile hands of a girl, speaking with a lisp and a slight stutter, he had been at the mercy of bullies.  They beat him, ridiculed him, and pelted him with cricket balls. (P. 17)

Churchill set out to change his image, much as Teddy Roosevelt was doing (but with not nearly the same danger, and for not nearly as many years) – and at around the same time.  He was commissioned in the cavalry, Fourth Hussars, in 1894.  He saw heavy fighting in the Khyber Pass in 1897. He was in the last cavalry charge at Omdurman in 1898.  He was captured in the Boer War in 1899; he subsequently escaped from capture.

In 1913 he learned to fly and apparently founded the Royal Navy Flying Corps.  At the outbreak of the Great War, he spent three days in the trenches, inspecting the defense of Antwerp.  In 1915, after his dismissal from the Admiralty, was commissioned and sent to the front; “As a commander he continued to exhibit the reckless daring which had been a hallmark of all his military actions….”  He remained in the war throughout. (P: Chronology)

Teddy pretended to be a man of the Wild West; most of it was for show.  For now, I will leave it as curious that these two – Winston and Teddy – shared common traits and shared common war-like desires; both were moved into power at around the same time – with Winston continuing to play a role through Teddy’s cousin’s reign.  Perhaps just coincidence.

Early Connections

Winston’s career path benefited from preferential treatment.  His father was named Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1886; his American born mother apparently had connections of a different sort:

His name, not academic competence, got him through Harrow and Sandhurst.  Then his mother, finally taking an interest in his affairs, began pulling strings for him.  There were a great many available to her.  She had been intimate with many influential men in America, on the Continent, in the British establishment; even in the royal family. (P. 27)

These connections afforded him privilege:

There is a stunning line in [Churchill’s] book The River War: “With the design of thereafter writing this account, I moved to a point on the ridge which afforded a view of both armies.”  Here are two mighty forces preparing to do battle, and here is a lowly subaltern riding off to get the best perspective…. In 1900 other Englishwomen yearned to see their sons, off fighting the Boers.  Jennie Churchill simply outfitted a hospital ship and sailed down to Cape Town to see how Winston was doing. (P. 27)

Churchill was often broke – reduced to writing articles for Collier’s, and asking for payment “if possible, by Monday morning.”  Shortly before Munich, he was so deep in the red that he contemplated resigning from Parliament – only to be saved when a wealthy friend settled his debts. (P. 28)

Early on, it was clear Winston had a remarkable memory.  For example, he could recite, without a slip, the twelve hundred lines of Macauley’s Lays of Rome.  (P. 28)

What’s Inside?

The author describes the psychology of Churchill, using Jung’s description of the “extroverted intuitive”:

“Thinking and feeling, the indispensable components of conviction, are, with him, inferior functions, possessing no decisive weight; hence they lack the power to offer any lasting resistance to the force of intuition.”

As Jung pointed out, the extroverted intuitive lacks judgment. (P. 19)

From the beginning of his political life, Churchill’s character was known:

His brilliance was recognized from the first, but he was regard as erratic, unreliable, shallow, impetuous, a hatcher of “wildcat schemes.” (P. 20)

By the 1930s it was generally felt that the people were wise to him at last, that he was a figure from the past, out of touch with reality.  A newspaper editorial described him as a “genius without judgment.”  Harold Begbie wrote: “Mr. Churchill carries great guns, but his navigation is uncertain.” (P. 20)

Manchester describes Churchill’s great depressions (“Black Dog” as Churchill himself named it) during the interwar years,

Then Churchill’s prospects were dramatically altered.  Adolf Hitler entered his life…. His basic weakness became his basic strength.  Here, at last, was pure evil, a monster who deserved no pity, a tyrant he could claw and maim without admonishment from his scruples…. “This cannot be accident, it must be design.  I was kept for this job.” (P. 25)

Bernard Shaw describes Churchill: “The moment we got a good fright, and had to find a man who could and would do something, we were on our knees to Winston Churchill.” (P. 35)

Re-enters the Stage

At the time of Dunkirk, Halifax, speaking on behalf of the Conservative leadership, was urging a negotiated settlement with Germany.  Hitler also held the same view, telling Göring: “The war is finished. I’ll come to an understanding with England.” (P. 5)

It was Churchill – this erratic and impetuous man without judgment, a hatcher of wild schemes, a man who would claw and maim without admonishment from his scruple – who was summoned by King George and asked to form a government.

[Halifax] was quite right.  But Winston Churchill was not a reasonable man.  He was about as sound as the Maid of Orleans, a comparison he himself once made – “It’s when I am Joan of Arc that I get excited.” (P. 6)

  Why was Churchill chosen?  It certainly wasn’t for stability and reasoned, considered thinking.

Of course, Churchill was the right man if the only choice was a fight.  But was this the only choice?  Halifax didn’t think so.  It seems Hitler didn’t believe so, either.  At Dunkirk, it was believed at most only a few thousand Tommies could be rescued, yet – in what is called a miracle – not only were 220,000 British rescued, but an additional 100,000 French support troops.  And these, not by the Royal Navy, but by tugs and barges.  It was no miracle; Hitler stood aside. (P. 3)

What was Churchill to do?

“I have thought carefully in these last days whether it was part of my duty to consider entering into negotiations with that man [Hitler]…. If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.” (P. 6)

[Churchill] knew that peace hath not her heroes, and he meant to be heroic…. In his last days he said that 1940 and 1941 had been the best years of his life, despite the fact that for other Englishmen they had been incomparably the worst. (P. 13)

Churchill chose war and not peace in a time when war was not inevitable or even necessary.  (For a thorough yet easy-to-read exposition of this, see Buchanan’s Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War.) 

Perhaps those who put him in place knew this would be Churchill’s choice.  And they knew that this war would, inevitably and finally exhaust Britain and raise up America; and Churchill, playing the role he was chosen to play, was the key political figure in this planned transfer.

We will see.

27 comments:

  1. I recommend this book. Especially the chapter "The New Order of Freedom


    http://arcticbeacon.com/books/E_C_Knuth-The_Empire_Of_The_City,1944.pdf


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  2. Hitler was such a nice guy really. Such a good libertarian. All he wanted was to spread vegetarianism, promote love of animals and to purify the planet from various swarthy, hook nosed subhuman creatures. Damn Winston Churchill for ruining his plans to establish a Nazi paradise on Earth!

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    1. I think you have been reading the wrong sources regarding Hitler.

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    2. One wonders if "Anonymous" has ever heard of the concepts of demonization and propaganda.

      70+ years and most still have not figured it out...

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    3. anonymous believes Hitler was the head dalek and winston was Dr Who

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  3. The problem with this analysis is the faulty assumption that there was a single Anglo-elite with coherent objectives. In fact, a British Empire-oriented group formed in the nineteenth century under the influence of Sir Alfred Milner and Cecil Rhodes as much as anybody, and then this was carried forward in the form of the "Round Table" and such like well into the 1930s under the intellectual influence of Sir Lionel Curtis and Sir Reginald Coupland inter alia. But it was never dominant in Britain; policy there was always incoherent, arising from domestically oriented groups, from lobbying by people in the colonial possessions and by trade oriented groups in Britain, and from a Foreign Office view.

    The first phase of this British-based Anglo-elite (pre-Round Table) half-realistically wanted the U.S.A. to come within the British orbit. That is, that would have been realistic if only they had got their kind of imperialism self-sustaining during that period. This is what gave rise to the U.S.-based branch of the Anglo-elite.

    Only, the U.S. Anglo-elite didn't see any value in a British orbit at all. They went instead for ringbarking the British Empire and doing everything the British groups had been after without actually leaving the British in it. This they were able to do in the non-U.S. phases of both World Wars and (through diplomatic-financial-economic means, including destroying the Anglo-Japanese alliance in the 1920s) in each post-war period (when they also undercut and destroyed the other European maritime empires, most of all in the Dutch East Indies after 1945).

    That worked out very well for the U.S.A. until it was finalised, around the mid 1950s in Indochina, Egypt and Iran (where the U.S.A. got most of the oil interests that had previously been British - Britain got no benefit from the Shah's restoration), around 1960 in the East Indies, and around the time of the 1970s Carter Doctrine that finally squeezed Britain out of the Persian Gulf (apart from Oman, where Britain is still - just - active). The catch was that it was like a hostile takeover that looks good for a while but runs down the business; the U.S.A. was institutionally incapable of understanding the business of empire, and never did the things needed to keep it viable, so as soon as the U.S.A. was on its own without the Europeans holding things together their way any more, nobody was holding anything together. Naturally, blowback started to build straight away, though it took a while to become obvious in each case (around ten or twenty years in each geographical area that got dominated by the U.S.A. in turn).

    Where does Churchill feature in all this? He was affiliated with the British-based Anglo-elite that got betrayed, after growing up and forming his attitude towards the U.S.A. during the British-based Anglo-elite's earlier phase when it had genuinely been reaching out to and building up its U.S. opposite numbers. He was never part of any even inchoate scheme to shift the weight to the U.S.A. (he did once say in a speech that he didn't wish to preside over the dissolution of the British Empire, but he only missed doing that by losing the election after which that became obvious); that was only ever U.S.-based, and it is hard to assess how much even that was effective in its own right rather than propelled by domestic but parallel U.S. interests. All we can say for sure is that the U.S. Anglo-elite was pushing in the same direction as coincidentally aligned U.S. interests, and that it got what it was after in a very "be careful what you wish for, you just might get it" sort of way.

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    1. Very good article and the above comment makes a very valid point as well. I agree that there are almost always conflicting factions influencing policies and the factions' goals also tend to change over time.

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    2. “The problem with this analysis is the faulty assumption that there was a single Anglo-elite with coherent objectives.”

      I always assume there are different factions, however all factions are focused on ensuring the toolkit for control retains credibility. Primarily, this means maintaining faith by the people in the system.

      “In fact, a British Empire-oriented group formed in the nineteenth century under the influence of Sir Alfred Milner and Cecil Rhodes…”

      Rhodes seems to be one of the key figures in reaching out to American interests. Read Stead.

      “Only, the U.S. Anglo-elite didn't see any value in a British orbit at all.”

      Sure, but why does this preclude the possibility that the British elite saw value in the US? Better some of everything than none of something.

      “[Churchill] was affiliated with the British-based Anglo-elite that got betrayed…. He was never part of any even inchoate scheme to shift the weight to the U.S.A.”

      Who says Churchill knew that he was chosen to play the role he was chosen to play? It would be best if he was a true believer. What I will look for is who knew him when, and other such tidbits.

      ------------------------------

      A few random thoughts:

      1) Look, none of us mundanes can speak with any certainty about any of this. However, a) there was a time when the Rockefellers and Morgans were on different sides and later came together, and b) all of these different factions are great at turning unplanned and undesired events toward their advantage. These are a couple of many thoughts I have about how / why factions shift.

      2) The City of London still means something.

      3) I believe you make a mistake believing any of the elite actually care about Britain or the US as political bodies. They don’t think in such terms. They decide which political body / bodies they need to control, and then figure out how to gain control.

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    3. jacque sheete, I will thank you here for all of your comments.

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    4. BM, we know (separately) from their own accounts that the British elite did not see value in subordination to the U.S.A., because they simply did not entertain the possibility until it was a fait accompli. At that point the likes of Macmillan tried to work "Better some of everything than none of something" through a "special relationship", being Athens to the U.S.A.'s Rome as it was put, but that was simply never on offer. What was on offer was none of everything.

      "I believe you make a mistake believing any of the elite actually care about Britain or the US as political bodies". Certainly none do now, but again, we know from their own accounts that the British elite did believe that when they were relevant, if only so as to be able to speak to the rest of the British. And when they were no longer relevant, they could only plug into the gains by not being a British elite - by definition.

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    5. I will disagree and take the word of Stead on this until I see something more convincing:

      http://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/search/label/stead

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    6. Well, BM, I did cite some of the names of the groups and people involved when I told you you could check these matters to their own accounts, e.g. the "Round Table", Sir Lionel Curtis, and Sir Reginald Coupland, so you could google those. It may help you to track their accounts down down if I also tell you that Sir Lionel Curtis is famous for his magnum opus Civitas Dei on the topic (of which I have a copy I am part way through, and which is clearly named in imitation of Saint Augustine of Hippo's work of the same name); and that Sir Reginald Coupland is famous for his "dyarchy" and other methods of imperial rule that he refined and applied with some success in India and Mesopotamia (now called Iraq, but probably the older name will work better for searches), and somewhat less successfully when he worked up proposals for the British Mandate of Palestine.

      It is not impossible that Stead is right, but you really, really should not simply stop with reading him and ignore the sources, or you will catch confirmation bias. For my part, I will take my own advice and read up on what he has to say - though as yet I don't see how he can refute the horse's mouth, since he is at best a secondary source.

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    7. Mr. Lawrence

      I will Google these three and see where it leads. If I find something worth writing about I will do so.

      As to Stead, he may be a secondary source - but my guess is almost everyone we read is at best a secondary source. Stead was as close to Rhodes as one can be. While Rhodes may also not be primary, he isn't too far behind.

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    8. Mr. Lawrence

      See my further thoughts here:

      http://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/2014/05/my-further-thoughts-for-pm-lawrence.html

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  4. Re the Anglo-American elite.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrims_Society

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Now

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    1. Thank you for these.

      Regarding “Union Now” such thoughts of a true union were written in Stead’s book as well, at the turn of the last century.

      The Pilgrim Society is on my list to look into a bit more. On initial considerations, it seems an organization designed to ensure the special relationship will always have a caretaker.

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  5. A more in-depth look at the Pilgrims society

    https://wikispooks.com/ISGP/organisations/Pilgrims_Society02.htm#intro

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    1. Thanks for link,,cornucopia of info

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  6. Quote from Churchill, August 20th, 1941. "These two great organisations of the English-speaking democracies, the British Empire and the USA, will have to be somewhat mixed-up together in some of their affairs for mutual and general advantage. For my part, looking into the future, I do not view the process with any misgivings. I could not stop it if I wished. No one could stop it. Let it roll....... Like the Mississipi it just keeps rolling along."

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  7. anonymous believes that Adolf was the head dalek and Winston was Dr Who. Goodies and baddies and goodies win...buy the kids some toffee! have a great Sat morning pictures...then go do some growing up!!!

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  8. Cant wait for more BM.Exciting topic.He allways gave me the quivers

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  9. Sir Harry Brittain, founder of the Pilgrims Society

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Brittain

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  10. @BM. Cecil Rhodes explains his aims in 1890. "A wealthy secret society should work to secure the world's peace and a British-American federation."

    In reality the world got a century of war.

    http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F00811FB395412738DDDA00894DC405B828CF1D3

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  11. @BM. This article may interest you. Re Churchill's financial payments from certain businessmen.

    http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/10699/the-secret-of-churchills-gold/

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    1. Thank you for this. The book mentions certain benefactors as well.

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    2. Another interesting tale.

      http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/economy/bernard-baruch-winston-churchill

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  12. My father , a coal miner and combatant in the trenches of W W 1
    hated Churchill with a vengeance. I grew up thinking of Churchill as a war hero and the man who defeated the Germans. When I was had more time in later time to learn the truth about this man and myths surrounding him I can say I joined my , by then long dead , father in HIS opinion of Churchill.

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