Comments by "Itinerant Patriot" (@itinerantpatriot1196) on "Churchill was an idiot" video.

  1. Was Churchill an idiot or the greatest Britain ever? A bit of both. Certainly he was a major pain in the ass for every military commander who had to deal with or placate him. His COS Allan Brooke is quoted as saying: "Winston had 10 ideas a day, one of which was good and he didn't know which one it was." Similar quotes have been attributed to Lloyd George and FDR but the general consensus seemed to be he was an idea man, not really concerned with the application. Eisenhower threatened to quit as SCAEFE because of Churchill's insistence that landing craft needed for OVERLORD be used in Italy and that ANVIL, the attack on southern France be abandoned while attacks into the Balkans be carried out. It was part of his obsession with the soft underbelly concept he carried over from WWI. And, he was more concerned about maintaining the British Empire in the post-war-world which Eisenhower didn't give one shit about and FDR was opposed to. The best no Ike used against Churchill was when he told him his forces would stop short of Berlin and leave it to the Russians. It held zero strategic value since it was already agreed it would be in the Russian zone after the war but Churchill had an18th/19th Century mindset about capturing capitals. Ike saved thousands of US lives by standing firm on that one. You would have thought the lack of ROI the Brits got for taking Philadelphia in 1777 would have taught him that lesson but Churchill was a man of the past in a lot of ways. I will give him credit, though not as much as he gave himself, for getting Marshall and Ike to give up their notions of attacking France in 1942. Marshall was hellbent on it and saw the North African campaign as a distraction, a way to further British interests. Ike was afraid the Russians would make a separate peace with the Nazis if they didn't open a second front in Europe by 1943 at the latest. But Churchill understood sending a handful of divisions against the Wehrmacht at that time was suicide. Personally, I think the botched landings at Dieppe were criminal on his part but that's me. But he did stand up to Hitler when most of the world thought he should back down, even forces in his own government. He did rally the people of London during the Blitz by visiting bombed out cities, something Goebbels tried to get the Fueler to do with no success. That counts for something. Another leader would have buckled. In that sense, he really did save western civilization. If Britain had fallen in 1940 or 41 the game would have been up. No way the Americans could have done what they did without Britain being a launchpad. Britain was the only major allied power to fight all the way, from 1939 to 1945. Churchill played a big role in that. Was he a sucky military commander? Sure. But that wasn't his job. His main job was to keep Britain fighting until the Americans came in. And he pulled that off so I'm a big fan of Winnie. The world certainly use statesmen of his stature and resilience today. RIP Winston, even though that disgrace of a president from Kenya didn't like ya for throwing his commie old man into jail (if he even was his daddy) you still have plenty of fans this side of the Atlantic.
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