Stalin and Churchill

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It’s easy when we look at war, to develop pictures of good versus evil. The images of Hitler as the most evil person in history are popular and common. However, there are arguments to be made that Stalin was far more evil in his dealings with his own people, and even Churchill is not quite as rosy when we allow the full story of history to be told.

Stalin

Stalin is a very complicated individual and there are two narratives about him being told.

After World War II, Stalin was painted after his death as a crazed maniac who murdered tens of millions of his own people in Gulag prisons. This was the message not only propagated in the west where it would be expected, but even by his very successor, Nikita Khrushchev, who enacted many reforms after Stalin’s death.

But after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, Vladimir Putin came to power and the villainization of Stalin ceased. Today, you can see statues of Stalin in Russia and he is celebrated as a hero who established Russia as a great world power.

So, which is it? My western sensibilities, disdain of communism, and suspicion of Putin, lead me towards the former, but history is not always cut and dry.

Churchill

But what about Churchill? I mean, he’s the hero of Britain who stood strong in the face of the terror of Hitler’s onslaught. He was the one that we just looked at in previous weeks as having prayed for and thanked God for his delivering miracle at Dunkirk. Are we missing part of his story?

It’s easy to forget that the biggest empire in the whole of World War II was by far the British. Without the support of troops and resources from the far reaches of their empire (Southern Africa, Canada, Australia, and India), it is hard to believe that they could have held out against Germany’s blitzkrieg.

But what if I told you that as the war raged, Churchill signed off on the starvation of as many as 4 million British colonists in Bengal? Let’s make sure we don’t become hero worshipers in our telling of history.

Share your thoughts below. I’m interested to know what you think.

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