[poof131]

Thanks for posting your comment and showing another side of Churchill that I was unaware of. [1] But I think you are being down voted because the comparison with Stalin is ill chosen. Churchill seems to have been a bigger racist than was common for his time, and although he played a roll in the tragedy you link to, it was in the middle of WW2 and placing all the blame on him for 3m lives seems unfair. And to then compare him to Stalin, who inflicted tyranny upon large parts of the word and who killed between 20-60m people with possibly the worst “machinery of killing” ever created does an injustice to the point you where trying to make.[2]

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/not-his-finest... [2] http://www.ibtimes.com/how-many-people-did-joseph-stalin-kil...

[hartpuff]

His comparison with Stalin may be hyperbolic, but the article you cited gives Churchill's response to the famine you think is unfair to blame on him:

   Up to 3 million people starved to death while
   British officials begged Churchill to direct food
   supplies to the region. He bluntly refused. He
   raged that it was their own fault for "breeding
   like rabbits". At other times, he said the plague
   was "merrily" culling the population.

>[Stalin] killed between 20-60m people with possibly the worst “machinery of killing” ever created does an injustice to the point you where trying to make

And quoting or arguing that kind of unsubstantiated claptrap does a disservice to the point you are making.

I don't believe you are a neo-Nazi, I think you just pulled the first result from Google on "how many people did Stalin kill", but in my experience it's usually people with right or extreme right agendas who try to paint Stalin as worse than Hitler by quoting such nonsensically high figures.

[poof131]

My issue isn’t with placing some of the blame on Churchill but all of it. The world was in a war where untold millions were killed and the outcome was anything but certain. My guess is that Churchill had to juggle multiple aspects of the decision, but the outcome and his words were used to paint the most unflattering picture in the linked article, perhaps justified, perhaps not, likely somewhere in-between. And I truly do appreciate counter viewpoints that expand my understanding of the world. The tragedy and his racist viewpoints clearly deserve more prominence in the histories of him.

You attempt to discredit my take on Stalin with rhetorical flourish, so generously implying that “you don’t think I’m a neo-nazi”, yet you provide no evidence that he wasn’t a butcher. While I don’t think you are an “uneducated fascist”, most attempts to propagandize pro-Stalin viewpoints come from… Not a good way to change someone’s opinion if that is your goal. You did make a good catch on the first google link, but hardly surprising when providing supporting references in HN comments. Wikipedia has the number at 3-60 million, with 3 being the “officially” recorded number. [1] Perhaps you are right that Stalin was better than my interpretation, but you haven’t convinced me.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin

[hartpuff]

>You attempt to discredit my take on Stalin with rhetorical flourish, so generously implying that “you don’t think I’m a neo-nazi”, yet you provide no evidence that he wasn’t a butcher.

I didn't say he wasn't a "butcher", so why should I have to provide evidence to that effect?

As for my "rhetorical flourish", most of the people online I see making the ludicrous claim that Stalin killed 50+ million people turn out to be Hitlerites.

>Wikipedia has the number at 3-60 million, with 3 being the “officially” recorded number. [1] Perhaps you are right that Stalin was better than my interpretation, but you haven’t convinced me.

Apparently neither has Wikipedia and every historian who places the figure at less than 20 million, such as William Rubinstein and Yale University's Timothy Snyder.

As that Wikipedia article states, the 3-60 million wild guesses were before records became available after the demise of the Soviet Union. When researchers were able to study and analyse the records the ridiculously high estimates were revised drastically down.

[argonaut]

There is a difference between refusing to send aid, and actively attempting to exterminate democracy, governments, and populations. Churchill largely did the first, and perhaps in small amounts did the second. Stalin generously and with great relish did the second. It's quite ridiculous to claim that Churchill is just as evil as Stalin, even if you believe Churchill is on-the-balance evil.

[hartpuff]

>There is a difference between refusing to send aid, and actively attempting to exterminate democracy, governments, and populations.

Perhaps you can explain the difference between deliberately not sending food to people you know will die without it, while revelling in their deaths, and "actively attempting to exterminate" them? Preferably from the point of view of the people being killed.

>Churchill largely did the first, and perhaps in small amounts did the second.

Of course. The 25% of the entire planet that made up the British Empire was a hotbed of free elections and democracy.

>It's quite ridiculous to claim that Churchill is just as evil as Stalin, even if you believe Churchill is on-the-balance evil.

I'll try and remember that, if I ever say Churchill was just as evil as Stalin.

[argonaut]

Direct causality, for one.

If a person on the street who is starving asks me for food, and I decline and yell some epithet about the homeless, and keep walking, any reasonable person would consider that less evil than if I shot that person while yelling that epithet.

At the end of the day, the direct cause of the famine were crop failures and the invasion of Burma, not Churchill's inaction. At the end of the day, the direct cause of the millions of deaths in famines in the USSR was Joseph Stalin's mass collectivization.

You should remember it, because, to put it bluntly, if you ever said that in Western society, you would be laughed out of the room.

[at5]

Maybe because we in the west are biased towards our own and vilify the other? And quite frankly who gives a damn what the west thinks about one of its leaders? Hardly an objective POV is it? Why not ask the victims or observers with data and facts?

In this case, given that Churchill was prime minister of a colonial power, its more akin to starving POWs while siphoning their crops to a different locale; a crime in any post war court. Your analogy is way off base.

Would also add that part of the crop failures thing is because the British forced the locals to grow cash crops over several centuries. Funny how independent India has yet to have a drought that escalated into a famine and has effectively dealt with droughts huh?

[hartpuff]

Your analogy of some random stranger on the street is so fatuous I'm just going to ignore it to save you any further embarrassment.

As for "Western society", that you modestly imagine yourself as a representative of/spokesperson for, I'm British. I have never met a single person in my entire life who had a positive opinion of Churchill, with views ranging from contempt to indifference.

Outside of Conservative/Establishment circles, among people who know more about him than a handful of speeches he made, Churchill is rightly loathed. He was an objectively bad person.

He was supported during WWII because, unlike others in the cowardly Quisling British Conservative Establishment, he actually wanted to fight Hitler, albeit for his sense of 'supremacy' over Germany/Hitler than any particular morality.

Once Hitler was defeated, in spite Churchill's ego-maniacal interference in the war effort that caused countless unnecessary deaths and catastrophes, he was rejected by the people in every single general election.

Unfortunately for Britain, and for Obama's grandfather who Churchill tortured along with thousands of others, the "democratic" British electoral system allowed him to become PM again, despite receiving far fewer votes than his opponent.

Sounds like an election Stalin would be proud of.

[at5]

Making the point that views of Stalin and Churchill are quite far apart from each other despite similar actions. Churchill denied food aid from other allied countries that wanted to feed the starving in Bengal. His role went beyond prioritizing his country over the colonies; he actively prevented the Indians from being helped. http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2031992...

The point you're making is that they can't be compared because Stalin killed more people? I suppose there is a minimum number in millions that must die to be considered a terrible person?

You should read up on the relish Churchill took in killing "savages". Read Late Victorian Holocausts too.