Winston Churchill the racist war criminal

“It will always be a mystery why a few bombastic speeches have been enough to wash the bloodstains off Churchill’s racist hands.” This was how Shashi Tharoor, a successful and popular Indian politician, concluded his recent op-ed for the Washington Post. Tharoor began his piece with the sensational claim that Churchill was a mass murderer in the vein of Hitler and Stalin. One would expect such statements to have a mountain of evidence behind them. There is a mountain of evidence on these and similar issues, but from even the briefest expedition up the slopes one will see Tharoor’s arguments for what they are — revisionist, manufactured history.

By my count, Tharoor makes twenty-two distinct claims about or against Winston Churchill in his 900-word article. I could deal with each of these one at a time, but here I will examine some of the most serious. In so doing, I aim to reveal Tharoor’s allegations against Churchill as unfounded and his historical analysis as embarrassingly sloppy.