Category: World Wars
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Nazi Body Count in USSR: 12,250,000 Non-Battle Deaths
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a larger project detailing the death toll inflicted by Nazi Germany outside the realm of combat. To see the full body count by country click here. Body Count: 12,250,000 ((This number is determined by taking all available estimates from various sources, averaging them, and selecting the mid-value of…
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Churchill, Buchanan, and the Unnecessary Book Part 1
Military historian John Keegan once said that historians “are committed to controversy as a way of life.” ((John Keegan, The Battle for History: Re-Fighting World War II (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 28.)) Patrick J. Buchanan, the man who referred to the 1992 Democratic National Convention as the “greatest single exhibition of cross-dressing in American political history,” is certainly…
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Nazi Body Count: 20,946,000 Non-Battle Deaths
The Nazi Body Count represents non-battle deaths caused by Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. This includes genocide, execution of civilians and POWs, forced labor that resulted in deaths, bombing of civilian populations, imposed famine and resulting diseases, and “euthanasia.” These numbers do not include civilians who got caught in the cross-fire of battle. The…
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Belgium’s Neutrality was More than a “Scrap of Paper”
On August 3, 1914, Great Britain sent an ultimatum to Germany not to invade Belgium. The next day, German troops were in the neutral country and Great Britain declared war. Great Britain’s reasoning was that Belgium was an independent, neutral state whose existence and sovereignty was guaranteed by Great Britain, France, Russia, Austria, and Germany.…
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Treaty of London, 1839: The Complete Text
The 1839 Treaty of London was the document cited by Britain when they presented Germany with an ultimatum not to invade Belgium on August 3, 1914. I have found several websites which quote the relevant portions of the treaty, but I could not find a website that had the treaty in its entirety. The following…
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Why Study Winston Churchill?
The purpose of this presentation is to give people an understanding why Churchill is worth studying today. The presentation takes look at why most of us remember Churchill, an overview of his political and writing careers, and how recent leaders saw him. Sources The Ronald Reagan quotes come from a letter sent to the…
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50 Books on World War II Recommended by John Keegan
At the end of his book, The Second World War, John Keegan offers a list of 50 books in English that “together provide a comprehensive picture of the most important events and themes of the war, which are readable and from which the general reader can derive his own picture of the war as a…
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“Hitler and His Choice”, Churchill’s Misquoted Words
Critics of Winston Churchill have been quick to quote lines from an article entitled “The Truth About Hitler”. ((Available in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill Volume V Companion Part 3 Documents: The Coming of War, 1936-1939 (London: Heinemann, 1982), 903-904.)) It was originally written in November of 1935 ((Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Vol. 5, Prophet of Truth, 1922-1939…
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“Friendship with Germany” by Winston Churchill (Sep 17, 1937)
The following is one of many articles written by Winston Churchill for the Evening Standard. This is an often quoted article used by critics of Churchill to give the impression that at one point he held uncharacteristic admiration for Hitler. These critics will quote portions from the second-to-last paragraph with no other context in order to…
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What Did Churchill Mean by “Unnecessary War”?
Patrick J. Buchanan’s Churchill, Hitler, and the “Unnecessary War” gets part of its title from a quote by Winston Churchill. Buchanan has brought the term up in several interviews a statement made by Winston Churchill in his memoirs. One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be…
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Buchanan’s Source on Churchill’s “Starvation Blockade”
This is a follow-up article to Buchanan is Wrong. Churchill Had No “Starvation Blockade” published last month. In that article, we showed how in Patrick J. Buchanan’s new book Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”, he incorrectly portrayed the blockade of Germany during World War I as something devised and executed entirely by Winston Churchill. Buchanan also incorrectly…
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“Human Smoke” on Churchill and the Blockade of Germany
Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke was released this year and aimed to be a provocative book containing a series of little-known quotes and events between World War I and World War II. The structure of the book is interesting in the sense that there is no real cohesion from page to page except that it’s all…