Churchill enters pop charts

[obiwan27]

Order your copy now!!! ;D

www.stuff.co.nz/oddstuff/4195333/Winston-Churchill-enters-pop-charts

[Dave Homewood]

I heard about this on the radio this afternoon, Jim Mora mentioned it. It's not really a surprise, Churchill's speeches have had many releases over the years. Most of them are free on the internet now, and a lot of them are actually very interesting to listen too. the man knew how to inspire and spin at the same time. I think one of the most remarkable speeches however is the full version of Neville Chamberlain announcing that he had reluctantly declared war. You can really hear the regret in his voice. He was in a dreadful position I guess.

[flyjoe180]

Not to mention Chamberlain had well and truly bought Hitler's 'promise' of no war. Go Winston, in the charts!

[obiwan27]

Yep this Winston is well worth listening to, unlike our own. I managed to find a website that had most of Churchill's post-war 'iron curtain' speech as I was writing my first history essay on the question of 'Who started the Cold War?' I got so caught up in his speech I ended up listening to the whole thing.

If anyone is particularly interested they can try this website for free downloads of his speeches.

www.archive.org/details/Winston_Churchill

[Dave Homewood]

Most of his important wartime speeches are downloadable from www.archive.org too.

There was something about him on History Channel last night. I'm housesitting so have the luxury of 200 channels of badly made mind numbing TV (ie Sky). It was talking about that Cold War speech. I never realised he was personally responsible for all the tensions that caused the Cold War, and he wasn't even PM any more. I had assumed it was the Yanks and UK Labour that ballsed that one up. Not only was that speech the first ever use of the phrase Cold War, but also the first ever use of the phrase Special Relationship when referring to the USA and Britain, a term still used now. He was such a complex and interesting man, half incredible genius and half mad with a touch of evil too. His skills with the language and in particular his knack of coining new language is akin to Shakespeare in terms of influence.

Joe, Chamberlain was never really fooled by Hitler. He signed away Czechaslovakia in the Munich Crisis purely as a way to buy time because he knew if they didn't apease Hitler, the war would start early (it's like that episode of Michael Palin and Terry Jones's series Ripping Yarns set in 1913 where Palin has to stop the Germans from starting WWI a year earlier than agreed). ;D My friend Bill Pertwee told me while touring with the Dad's Army stage show the cast were invited to a house for a party and the home was that of the son of Chamberlain. Among the other guests was Eisenhour's son Paul too. They were shown personal letters and documents from the 1938-1939 period that Bill and others found fascinating as they proved that Neville was not the gullible wimp he is portrayed to be, he was doing all he could to work out diplomatic ways to stop Hitler and to militarise and prepare the nation. It's sad he is seen as a bit of a joke nowadays.

[flyjoe180]

Thanks for that background knowledge Dave, I had always seen Chamberlain as a bit of a diplomatic 'nice guy' who was fooled by both Hitler and used by his own cabinet and motivated by the desire of the British people to sue for peace when they did not want to enter a second major conflict with the Germans, the reminders of the Great War still fresh in their memories.

Churchill's Cold War speech is indeed captivating, and an obvious cause of escalation of the tensions between the Soviets and the Western powers. Given the USA's staunch stance on communism in the 1950s, do the informed here thing that was this aimed at strenghtening further the ties between the US and Britain, rather than initiating a stand off with the Warsaw Pact nations? Either way the result was the Cold War, the 'Iron Curtain' did fall, and the 'Cold War' developed into idealogical 'hot wars' in other parts of the world. I understand from documentaries that ultimately it was the 'hot war' (or hidden war on the part of the US) in Afghanistan that finally sealed the financial doom of the Soviet union.

[obiwan27]

It's probably unfair to place all of the blame on Churchill for escalating the tensions amongst the former WW2 allies as the cause of the Cold War. Tensions between the West and USSR had been a fact of life probably from around the time of the October 1917 Revolution and things didn't improve much once Stalin gained control after Lenin's death.
The alliance between the US, UK and USSR was a marriage of conveniance against a common enemy. It was always a fractious affair with Churchill sometimes doing deals with Stalin behind Roosevelt's back and things started unraveling after D-day as Stalin had been pressing the Allies to open a second front for a long long time without success.
Stalin was hellbent on vengence and seeking reparations from Germany, the West were looking at supporting them and the rest of Western Europe financially via the Marshall Plan but didn't want to cut in Eastern Europe or the USSR into the deal. The US was worried about post-war inflationary effects on its economy, Churchill couldn't see that the sun was setting on the British Empire, although he was no longer PM by the time it all came apart.
The short story is that in time, things eventually broke down between all the various parties resulting in the Cold War. All of the politicians from all of the countries involved really were a little to blame for the Cold War kicking off as far as I can tell.
I think Churchill's speech was about putting out into the public arena his own take on things as he saw it, that was out of step with the accepted thinking at the time. Stalin made the mistake of blockading Berlin and that made public opinion turn against the USSR. The rest is history.

[Dave Homewood]

Yes, I thought it was a bit odd that the documentary was claiming it was Churchill who kicked it all off. He wasn't even in power. People forget that by the time the Cold War tensions really kicked in, Clement Atlee was the UK PM, and Eisenhour was dead, replaced by Harry Truman. Both were, shall we say, perhaps less diplomatic about retaining good relationshis than their predecessors I think.

One of the biggest things that sparked trouble between Britain and Russia was when the spies Philby, Burgess and Maclean stole the designs for making nuclear weapons and handed them to the Soviets. Before that the US and UK leaders had been very keen to not allow Stalin to get the bomb, as they knew it would end in a stalemate or worse. The WWII leders were even very hesitant about using the bombs in Japan because it would awaken Stalin to the knowlede of such power, which they'd kept secret from their great Allies. But they decided at Pottsdam to tell him, which convinced Stalin to declare war on Japan, adding weight to force Japan's surrender. Even if the bombs had been ineffective, the Japs would have been rooted with the might of the angry Russians coming at them.

Funny thing is there is that at the cessation of the war they forgot to legally make peace, and Russia and Japan were apparentlyin a state of war into the 1990's when it was finally rectified (according to a news report I saw on TV years ago).

[obiwan27]

Oct 6, 2010 21:00:47 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

People forget that by the time the Cold War tensions really kicked in, Clement Atlee was the UK PM, and Eisenhour was dead, replaced by Harry Truman.

Dave, I think you are referring to Roosevelt who was the President for most of WWII. he died in April 1945 and was replaced by Truman. He (Truman) didn't even know about the Manhattan Project until he became President. Eisenhower was mainly known as the American General with overall command and responsibility for the D-Day invasion in 1944. He did later run for office in the US and was eventually elected, replacing Harry Truman.

[Dave Homewood]

Sorry, yes absolutely. Brain fart. I meant Roosevelt indeed.