No, Winston Churchill Was Not the ‘Chief Villain’ of the Second World War

 By Mark Antonio Wright, National Review, September 4, 2024 - The podcaster Darryl Cooper, Tucker Carlson’s most recent guest on his Twitter interview show — and whom Carlson describes as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United states” — has set tongues wagging over his assertion that Winston Churchill was the “chief villain of the Second World War.”

“Now,” Cooper clarifies, “Churchill didn’t kill the most people; he didn’t commit the most atrocities” — two massive concessions, Mr. Cooper! — “but when you really get into it and tell the story right, and don’t leave anything out, you see that [Churchill] was primarily responsible for that war becoming what it did, becoming something other than an invasion of Poland.”

Cooper tends to ramble when answering Carlson’s questions, but best I can tell, he assigns Churchill “chief villain” status on the basis of several interrelated factors:

(1) Before the war, when he was not yet in government, Churchill agitated for a British guarantee of Poland’s security, should that country be invaded by Germany.

(2) As prime minister in the spring and summer of 1940, Churchill refused to entertain German peace feelers and carried on the war even after the Fall of France.

(3) Because Churchill kept the British in the war in 1940, the war ground on, and this set the conditions for German and Soviet atrocities in the east, which wouldn’t have happened if the war had ended sooner.

(4) Britain, under Churchill’s leadership,...(read more)

Top Stories