Winston Churchill was an interesting guy and so was Adolf Hitler.
Yes, really.
Winston Churchill was a great man – everyone says so!
Then again, Adolf Hitler was too.
Think: who else could have convinced seventy million people in one of the most forward thinking and advanced nations in the world circa 1930, his crack-pot ideas were worth following en masse?!
Not even Winston Churchill.
And there’s more.
Winston Churchill razed half of London
Old Adolf (who by the way gets such a bad press these days) was surely, in part, a kind man with a generous spirit. We know he was vegetarian, refusing to kill, let alone eat, anything with four legs walking alongside him on God’s Good Earth, and that he also earned the love of a Good Woman (albeit for a sum total of two days).
Winston, on the other hand, was a heavy drinker (frown) and in general, treated women shabbily, although his marriage to Clementine Hozier, which bore five children, is regarded by the same people who consider Hitler a mass murdering fuckhead, as close and affectionate.
Hmm.
Who is right, who is wrong?
Who is better, who is worse?
Removing all subjectivity from infringing on A Reasonable Man’s Objectivity, there are some facts missing which may or may not help us reach a decision.
Churchill, in his lifetime, was awarded a total of seven Honorary Degrees (Rochester , Harvard, McGill, Westminster College Fulton, Miami , Lieden and Copenhagen
Hitler, none.
Oh dear.
But this first factoid really doesn’t help us decide anything at all. Legacy in itself can be a very subjective thing (rose tinted ocular apparatus excetera) and besides it was not the German custom to award such accolades.
Indeed, you might put it another way and to equally spurious effect – Iron Crosses: Churchill 0 – Hitler 2.
An away win, but so far, in reality, we are still no nearer an outcome. Moreover, we’ve neither recourse to Facebook statistics, including number of friends (neither World Leader had a Facebook page!) or Twitter followers (ditto) to help us.
#shucks!
Nevermind.
Already it seems we need a short interlude to consider some amusing asides.
Here goes:
The surname ‘Hitler’ means ‘he who lives in a hut’. Ironic in the sense Hitler spent his last days on planet earth living in an underground hut made of reinforced steel, concrete and corrugated iron called a ‘bunker’. Or was it Destiny? Either way, fate has decreed his last piece of real estate is now a municipal car park. Surely men and women everywhere who have made that long overdue return to see (the long gone remains) of their former home can, to an extent, sympathise with him on this!
You know, people often remark on Hitler being a frustrated artist, and his painting must have been damn poorly received given the frustration he vented all over Europe in between 1939 and 1945. What most people aren’t aware of is that Churchill was a landscape painter himself and unlike poor old Adolf was rather successful. Visit Dallas and the Emery Reeves Collection to see for yourself!
Meanwhile, here’s something I picked up from the New York Times recently: a clothing store in Ahmedabad, Gujarat Province , India
That’s enough irony and amusement for the moment.
And, let’s get back to our comparative argument.
Forget Honorary Degrees, what about Nobel Prizes?
Churchill won one in 1953. Hitler was never even in the running! The mitigating circumstance being this: Hitler swallowed a cap of cyanide in 1945. He died and his body was thrown in a ditch, covered with petroleum and burned to a cinder before it befell an even less desirable end at the hands of none other than Winston Churchill and his buddies.
It should also be noted that the Nobel Prize was won in 1938 by Enrico Fermi – precisely a year before Hitler, the frustrated artist, let one of his moods get the better of him. Enrico was hailed for his work on induced radiation. His legacy? Hiroshima , Nagasaki
Not to mention the Cold War.
Scientists eh?
..Anyway, on the subject of the Cold War, or the war that was always about to but never quite happened, school children in the West were told to hide under their desks in the event of a nuclear attack. While the world beyond the classroom was atomised I can just imagine them carrying on as normal, playing noughts and crosses, cards and so on.
Cards!
How about a simple children’s card game to decide a winner between Churchill and Hitler? What about Top Trumps?
Churchill first –
Height: five feet, ten inches
Hitler –
Five feet, ten inches.
Both cards in the middle please!
Now for Hitler’s turn.
Arithmetic: zero
Churchill – zero.
Again, both cards in the middle.
Shoe size anyone?
I know.
It’s either all too silly or it’s all just too much.
For instance:
Take the millions of young men (and women) who were sent by Hitler and Churchill and actually went to their deaths in the Second World War, or as it has been previously referred to, the World’s Second Attempt To Commit Suicide. Some of them wanted to go! How silly!
Take the view of British historian, Paul Addison, that the same war that caused the extermination of over sixty million people was a ‘good war’. How silly again!
Take the suggestion that Churchill distorted the truth in his war memoirs to paint himself in a better historical light. How outrageously silly!*
*people who agree with this suggestion must be German
Or take the fact Mein Kampf can be purchased these days from an Amazon reseller for just thirty three pence, and they’ll even pay for the postage. Too much!
(No, really it’s a worthless piece of crap – the implications for the future of the human race expressed within are unnecessary)
Indeed, take Hitler’s views on just about everything (except vegetables, and our four legged brethren) and it’s all too much.
And as for the Jewish Holocaust. How about settling on: too much and enough for the rest of time.
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