Q & A that turned into an essay on WW2

The Martyr Made Substack

Hi everyone. This was meant to be follow-up Q&A, with answers to the non-religious questions from the previous one. But I thought it was pretty funny that one of the questions - which was asked months before the recent controversy in which I’ve been embroiled - was about Churchill and World War 2. At first, I thought I would just share the question for a laugh. Then, I thought, well, I guess I should at least give a brief answer. Then… well, you’ve been here long enough to know what happened next, and those of you who are new will get a proper intro to the Martyr Made Substack. A few hours later, I finished my answer and realized that the post was already too long to include another one.

BUT, fear not, for I have pasted the other questions into a new post, and I will be getting to them soon. I will try to answer more than one of them at a time in the future. Please ask any new questions in the comments below. I especially welcome questions from new subscribers who have joined since my appearance on Tucker’s show.

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Michael asks: This is a little late but I would also love to hear you talk about Churchill. I've heard you mention vaguely that you aren't a fan a couple times but I would really like to hear the full story.

What’s that, Michael? You want to hear something about Churchill? Well, it’s your lucky day! Honestly, I don’t really have much more to say about this at the moment, but I had to include it given everything that’s happened since he asked it. But I don’t want to leave Michael hanging completely, so I’ll add a few words.

If I had a do-over on the portion of my Tucker interview that dealt with World War 2, I would not focus so much on Winston Churchill. Tucker and I had been casually discussing Churchill at dinner the night before, and when he sprung the topic on me during the interview I just fell into a continuation of that casual conversation. As a result, the interview gives the impression that I have special enmity for Churchill, but that’s not really true. He was not without virtues, but I would say that the gap between his reputation and the real man is wider than the other major figures in the war. He appears small next to Roosevelt and Stalin, and it was only as a courtesy that he (and Great Britain itself) was allowed to sit at the table as a purported equal with the rulers of the two empires that conquered the world in 1945. Roosevelt and Stalin were two of the century’s truly great men, and falling short of their stature would be no fault if not for the fact that many people view Churchill as an even greater and more consequential leader than the rulers of the two empires that conquered the world in 1945. Roosevelt and Stalin (and Hitler) made their will synonymous with the ambitions of their nations, while Churchill was merely a functionary of British imperial policy - a fact which serves as a valid criticism of my focus on him during the Tucker interview.

The truth is, I have read a couple books by Churchill, a handful of them about Churchill, and a lot of books about World War 2 that featured Churchill, but my upcoming series will tell the story of the war from the perspective of Germany, so to the extent that Churchill has been front of mind it has mostly been to consider how he was perceived and understood by the German people and the leadership of the Third Reich. From their perspective Churchill was crazy, intent on total war at all costs, and acting without regard for the interests of the British Empire (which fed their paranoia about Churchill and England being under the control of international Jewry). But from a broader perspective, I think it is easy to make a harsh critique of Churchill’s leadership simply by framing it as a series of questions:

1. Could war have been avoided?

2. Once war was joined in Poland, could an escalation to worldwide total war have been avoided?

3. Would the atrocities that occurred on the Eastern Front have been possible in the absence of a total war?

4. Did Britain achieve the goals set when she declared war on Germany?

5. Did the war leave Britain better or worse off than it was before?

The answer to each of these questions is, in my opinion, a scathing indictment of British leadership.

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