Sykes' Hero Probably a Bum--Or Worse

When Charlie Sykes was actually a good guy--many years ago--he spent some time now and then idolizing Churchill.

Maybe not the best example of "hero."  Herewith a VERY minor excerpt from a 20K-word piece by Ron Unz:

...My impression is that individuals of low personal character are those most likely to sell out the interests of their own country in exchange for large sums of foreign money, and as such usually constitute the natural targets of nefarious plotters and foreign spies. Churchill certainly seems to fall into this category, with rumors of massive personal corruption swirling around him from early in his political career. Later, he supplemented his income by engaging in widespread art-forgery, a fact that Roosevelt later discovered and probably used as a point of personal leverage against him. Also quite serious was Churchill’s constant state of drunkenness, with his inebriation being so widespread as to constitute clinical alcoholism. Indeed, Irving notes that in his private conversations FDR routinely referred to Churchill as “a drunken bum.”

During the late 1930s, Churchill and his clique of similarly bought-and-paid-for political allies had endlessly attacked and denounced Chamberlain’s government for its peace policy, and he regularly made the wildest sort of unsubstantiated accusations, claiming the Germans were undertaking a huge military build-up aimed against Britain...

We know that Roosevelt forced the Japanese to attack Pearl; and it is apparent from the rest of Unz' essay that Churchill and his British allies may well have forced Germany into WWII.

But that's an unpopular diagnosis; witness the fact that half-a-dozen VERY prominent historians and geo-political commentators of the pre-WWII era, all holding and/or proving the same theory, have been "disappeared" from today's history books and reviews.

Curious, no?

As it turns out, Churchill was the living proof of the (ancient) Catholic teaching on the causes of war, too.

 ...Hitler had always wanted friendly relations with Britain and certainly had sought to avoid the war that had been forced upon him. With France now defeated and British forces driven from the Continent, he therefore offered very magnanimous peace terms and a new German alliance to Britain. The British government had been pressured into entering the war for no logical reason and against its own national interests, so Chamberlain and half the Cabinet naturally supported commencing peace negotiations, and the German proposal probably would have received overwhelming approval both from the British public and political elites if they had ever been informed of its terms.

But despite some occasional wavering, Churchill remained absolutely adamant that the war must continue, and Irving plausibly argues that his motive was an intensely personal one. Across his long career, Churchill had had a remarkable record of repeated failure, and for him to have finally achieved his lifelong ambition of becoming prime minister only to lose a major war just weeks after reaching Number 10 Downing Street would have ensured that his permanent place in history was an extremely humiliating one. On the other hand, if he managed to continue the war, perhaps the situation might somehow later improve, especially if the Americans could be persuaded to eventually enter the conflict on the British side....

Huh.