[cubancigar11]

FTFY: Churchill's 'policies' were supposedly intentionally "responsible" for the famine.

Link to actual wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943#Governme... (the article has NPOV problems for more than a year now).

For the British apologists, here is the quote to give you some acquaintance with the subject of Britain induced famines:

"During the first eighty years of the nineteenth century, 18,000,000 of people perished of famine. In one year alone—the year when her late Majesty assumed the title of Empress—5,000,000 of the people in Southern India were starved to death. In the District of Bellary, with which I am personally acquainted,—a region twice the size of Wales,—one-fourth of the population perished in the famine of 1816-77."

"Suppose we divide the past century into quarters, or periods of twenty-five years each. In the first quarter there were five famines, with an estimated loss of life of 1,000,000. During the second quarter of the century there were two famines, with an estimated mortality of 500,000. During the third quarter there were six famines, with a recorded loss of life of 5,000,000. During the last quarter of the century, what? Eighteen famines, with an estimated mortality reaching the awful totals of from 15,000,000 to 26,000,000. And this does not include the many more millions (over 6,000,000 in a single year) barely kept alive by government doles."

- From an article printed back in 1908 (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1908/10/the-new-...). The actual article is much more detailed and better written. And it has less reason to view history from distorted mirrors than we have 110 years later.

The reason Churchill was different from Hitler was because Hitler had an effect in Europe, while Churchill was conservatively continuing the thats-how-people-used-to-think-then policy towards his 'lesser subjects'.

[_delirium]

Even so, the comparison with Hitler and the Holocaust is a bit off, I think: the famine in India is not too similar to an industrialized extermination infrastructure, with concentration camps, gas chambers, bureaucratized selection and rail transfer, meticulous record keeping, etc. The uniqueness of the Holocaust is not just in that a lot of people died, but in how: via the application of modern infrastructure to produce a large-scale, industrial death machine.

One can still make unfavorable comparisons to other "evil" figures, where the analogy is imo closer. If indeed Churchill is responsible for an essentially deliberate famine, one could compare him to Stalin, and the probably-deliberate famine in the Ukraine. Or, if he's merely responsible for a large famine via negligence, one could compare him to Mao, and the probably-not-deliberate famine in China.

[cubancigar11]

Yes, holocaust is going to extreme. But mis-rule on India was extremely systematic and not just failure of a government. It is sad we cannot give that tragedy a name of its own.