1. Mussolini
Had taken over Italy in 1923
as fascist leader
Churchill was still praising Mussolini in 1937
2. Adolf Hitler
Chancellor of Germany from 1933
Fuhrer from 1934
“This movement among Jews is not new… but a world
wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for
the reconstitution of society on the
basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence
and impossible equality.”
3. In 1931 Churchill had urged that the League of Nations give Japan a free hand in Manchuria
During the Spanish Civil War, Churchill described Franco’s forces in newspaper articles
as the ‘anti-red forces’
“I hope we shall try in England to understand the position of Japan, an ancient
state… On the one side they have the dark
menace of Soviet Russia. On the other the chaos of China, four or five provinces of
which are being tortured under communist
rule”
4. Churchill had visited Germany in 1932 and had seen militarised youths etc..
He had a natural suspicion of
Germany from the First World
War
‘Pitiless ill treatment of minorities’
Yet Churchill had voted on bills
in favour of chemical castration
of the disabled
Therefore mixed views…
‘ I will not pretend that if I had to choose between Nazism and Communism that I would
choose Communism’
Opposition to Hitler potentially more to do with fear of German re-armament
1935: ‘We cannot afford to see Nazidom in its present phase of cruelty and intolerance
with all its hatreds and all its gleaming weapons, paramount in Europe’
