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The Glow-Worm Churchillians by-the-Bay E-Newsletter

Northern California Affiliate of the Churchill Centre Volume 3, Issue 4 Fourth Quarter 2011 “We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow-worm.” * *(Violet Bonham Carter, Winston Churchill as I knew Him, page 16— WSC’s remark was made at a dinner given by Lady Mary Elcho.)

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CONTENTS

� Carlo D’Este Article Preview from Armchair General magazine January 2012, page 4

� Marcus Frost Event and Award, page 9

� 75th Anniversary of the Anti-Comintern Pact, page 13

� Bookworm’s Corner by Jim Lancaster, January 1965 Churchill’s Lying in State, page 22

� New Books, page 25

� Churchill in the News, page 32

Interspersed with various Churchilliana

Churchillians by-the-Bay Board of Directors: Richard C Mastio, Chairman and Contributions Editor for The Glow-Worm, Jason C. Mueller, President, Gregory B. Smith, Secretary and Liaison with Churchill Centre, Michael Allen, Treasurer. Directors: Jack Koers, Carol Mueller, Editor of The Glow-Worm, Lloyd Nattkemper, Dr. Andrew Ness, Barbara Norkus, Katherine Stathis, and Anne Steele. Glow-Worm named by Susie Mastio

© Copyright, All Rights Reserved Glow-Worm and Churchillians by-the- Bay, Inc.

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Author and historian Carlo D' Este speaks during the Kemper Lecture at Westminster College. Carlo D'Este (born 1938 in Oakland, California) is a American military historian and

biographer, author of several books, especially on World War II. He is a retired U.S.

Army Lieutenant Colonel.

Available on Amazon.com

The following article is based on his biography of Churchill and appears in the January 2012 issue of Armchair General Magazine: Reprinted from Armchair General Magazine with the permission of Col. Jerry Morelock, Editor-in-Chief. Col. Morelock is a former Director of the Churchill Memorial in Fulton, Mo. Subscribe online at www.armchairgeneral.com.

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On October 15th 2011, Churchillians by-the-Bay met at the Highlands Inn in Carmel, California to enjoy a presentation by Marcus Frost on Lord Mountbatten, the original Patron of the Churchill Centre. Marcus was surprised by the presentation of the first Glow-Worm Award for his many contributions to keeping the memory of Sir Winston green. It was an honor for our group to so recognize him.

Pictured above are Richard Mastio, Marcus Frost and Jason Mueller

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FAMILY PORTRAITS: Winston Churchill with brother Jack at Canford

FALL SCENE? The only known picture of the Victorian Branksome Dene Chine Bridge – which

many believe to be the one from which the young Winston fell

Previously unseen photographs of Winston Churchill as an 18-year-

old have emerged in a family photo album.

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The two pictures (shown above, top left and centre) were taken just

a few weeks before he almost died after falling from a bridge in

Bournemouth.

Pictured alongside his obscure brother Jack, Churchill is shown

outside his Aunt Cornelia’s home in Canford Magna during the winter

of 1892.

He is shown at the grand residence next to a stone lion and in one

photo is holding a small, terrier dog.

There is also a picture of the boys’ mother Jennie looking elegant as

she leans against one of the property’s columns.

Churchill appears confident and has the type of pose that would in

later years help him as Prime Minister to inspire the Allies to defeat

Nazism.

The picture of his younger brother John – known as ‘Jack’ – is of

interest because his life was totally overshadowed by his older

brother.

He fought in the Boer War and the First World War and was

mentioned in Dispatches in both conflicts.

During the Second World War he moved into Number 10 Downing

Street after his home was bombed by the Luftwaffe. He was a banker

and died in 1947.

The photos are contained in an album of 150 images which were

owned by a titled, but anonymous, family.

Shortly after the pictures of the Churchill brothers were taken

Winston fell 29ftt from a local bridge and almost died. Many believe

the bridge was the one that could then be found at Branksone Dene

Chine. He had been chased by his brother and a cousin and, not

wanting to be caught, leapt for a tree hoping to slide down it, but fell

instead.

He ruptured a kidney and was in a coma for three days.

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His father sent the best London doctors down to the coast to treat

him.

It was as he lay recovering that Churchill learned he had failed to get

into the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst for the second time.

He got in at the third attempt.

The album is being sold by auctioneers Bonhams on November 22

and it is expected to sell for £3,000.

A spokesman from the saleroom said: “Churchill is such an iconic

figure that anything new about him always causes great excitement.

Archive Watch: ‘A Date Which Will Live in Infamy ’

Posted: 07 Dec 2011 12:46 PM PST

Today is the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In

honor of the day, here’s a roundup of some blog posts and other media that

highlight archival resources devoted to December 7, 1941.

—”Pearl Harbor: In Their Own Words”: Among the many World War II

records the National Archives holds is a collection of the deck logs kept by

U.S. Navy ships stationed in Pearl Harbor. In this short video, Archives

technicians talk about and read from some of the logs. The entries begin

very early in the morning, with ships encountering nothing more alarming

than the delivery of “large amounts of ice cream,” one technician says. By

07:58, the log of the U.S.S. Dale, a Navy destroyer, records “waves of

torpedo planes, level bombers, and dive bombers marked with Japanese

insignia attacked Pearl Harbor. Sounded general alarm. … 0810: Opened

fire on planes with machine guns, followed by main battery.”

—At the Text Message, a National Archives blog that follows “the work and

discoveries of processing and reference archivists on the job,” Robert Finch,

a student technician, writes about finding a family connection to Pearl

Harbor as he worked on the Navy Deck Logs collection....

Source:

Chronicle of Higher Ed

Source URL:

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/archive-watch-a-date-which-will-

live-in-infamy/34565?sid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en

Date: 12-7-11

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75th Anniversary of the Anti-Comintern Pact WRITTEN BY BRUCE WALKER

FRIDAY, 25 NOVEMBER 2011

Moderns who rely upon conventional history have been spoon-fed many historical myths, which are indispensable to the perpetuation of statist collectivism and all the organs of totalitarianism in education, government, and culture. One great myth is that Nazis, Fascists, and Japanese imperialists once dwelt on the opposite end of the political spectrum (the far right) than that occupied by Bolsheviks, Maoists, and other spawn of Marx’s theories lived (the far left).

In fact, these groups — Nazis, Bolsheviks, Fascists, Japanese imperialists and the like — were all essentially the same. Today is the 75th anniversary when Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan signed the “ Anti-comintern Pact,” which was purported to be the foundation of the Axis Powers: hostility against Bolshevism. The purpose of this pact was to intellectually and morally disarm Americans, Britons, and others living in relatively free nations with significant percentages of the population who were religiously serious Christians and Jews.

Those who grasped the true nature of these ideologies also understood that the Nazis (National Socialists), Fascists, Bolsheviks, and Japanese

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Imperialists all had the same beliefs. The Anti-comintern Pact was simply a shifting of alliances between gangs.

James Waterman Wise, writing within months of when Hitler took power, observed: “Contemporary youth has a new conception of the nature of the States which is more strict and severe and disciplined. It tends in the direction of the collectivist ideal. These youths accept Communism or Fascism — which have much more in common than one might suspect at a hasty glance.”

Herbert Hoover, in his 1934 book, The Challenge to Liberty, observed in the chapter on Alternative Philosophies that the three systems running Germany, Russia, and Italy were simply collectivists, whatever names were used. Michael Freund wrote in 1935: “It is interesting to observe how various organizations of this kind, which began by favoring Fascism, are now more and more attracted by the language and ideas of National Socialism..... A natural consequence of Hitler’s National Socialism is that it approaches Communism both on the spiritual side and the economic side, as well as its educational policy.” Emil Lengyel, writing in 1936, stated: “No matter how loudly bolshevism and fascism proclaim a complete break with the past, they are heirs of yesterday.”

William Wythe in his 1937 book, Dusk of Empire, describes this religion of violent irreligion by calling Mussolini and Stalin faculty members in the “International Institute of Mumbo-Jumbo” who, f or the time being, were concentrating on their own “national religions” (i.e., Fascism and Communism). Winston Churchill, in a January 25 speech the same year in Leeds, described Bolshevism and Nazism thus:

There are those non-God religions, Nazism and Communism. We are urged from the Continent and from different quarters that we must choose which side we are on. I repudiate both, and will have nothing to do with either. As a matter of fact, they are like two peas. Tweedledum and Tweedledee were violently contrasted compared with them.

Henry Bamford Parkes, two years later, observed: “If we accept the familiar Marxist doctrine that Communism and Fascism are the only alternatives before us, and that if we reject one we must accept the other, it is difficult not to feel that mankind must, in either case, enter a new Dark Age.”

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Erica Mann, in her 1938 book, School for Barbarians, noted the common war of Bolsheviks and Nazis on God and family, and then declared, “Again, all we have to do is replace ‘Bolshevism’ with ‘National Socialism’ to get a fairly exact picture.” The same year, Fitz Marx, in his book Government in Fascist Italy, observed that the political institutions in Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union made use of identical governing mechanisms and tactics. And also the same year, Dorothy Thompson, in a short book entitled Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide, described the situation about as well as anyone. As many others had done, Thompson pointed out that Fascism, Nazism, and Communism are all forms of collectivism, and that although a great many people believed that there was a war going on between Fascism and Communism, “This theory of a war between the two was invented by Fascists and Communists.”

In his 1939 book, European Government and Politics, Frederic Ogg observed that the Italian Fascists, the German National Socialists, and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were all ruled by compact groups set far enough off from ordinary citizens that rigid party discipline could be imposed. Hermann Rauschning, prescient in so many areas, wrote in 1939: “It is in the nature of things that the planning and methods of work of the Soviet State and the Fascist and the National Socialist States should be growing more and more similar.” In Introduction to Socialism and Communism, written before WWII began, the brilliant Christian apologist Arnold Lunn observed that the authority of socialist regimes can be maintained only by repression at home and adventure abroad, and that it does not matter whether the particular socialist regime calls itself “fascist” or “socialist” in applying this principle.

The imperial Japanese had the same beliefs and were typically defined by non-Marxist writers as adopting socialism and opposing Bolshevism in Russia simply for geopolitical opportunistic reasons (i.e., the Japanese lusted after the Siberian territory). Interestingly, the Japanese had opposed Fascists in Ethiopia, which was the antithesis of what mainstream history suggests.

Japanese imperialism was sometimes a close ally of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and sometimes it was not. Fascist Italy and imperial Japan clashed over Ethiopia, with the Fascists bitterly opposed to the Japanese economic and military penetration of Ethiopia prior to the Fascist

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conquest of that African empire. One of the harshest critics of imperial Japan in the 1930s was the Fascist writer Amleto Vespa, whose 1938 book, Secret Agent of Japan, described the Japanese militarists as the worst people in the world. Carter in his 1935 book wrote of Japanese support to the Ethiopians to resist the Fascists: “Japanese arms and munitions are being supplied in profuse quantities to Ras Tafari’s soldiers.... The Japanese have not forgiven Mussolini for his references to color.... It is to their obvious advantage to be friendly to Ethiopia.”

Even the non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin in August 1939, which was reiterated in subsequent pacts between these regimes, was considered a “surprise” to many in Western nations. In March 1939, six months before the “surprise” of the Nazi-Bolshevik non-aggression pact, Dorothy Thompson wrote that the Nazis were not saying anything threatening toward the Bolsheviks about German designs on the Ukraine. Two months later Thompson noted that the attitudes of the “two revolutionaries,” Hitler and Stalin, were the same: Both hoped for the collapse of the international economy, the breakdown of democracy, the hopelessness of the unemployed, the confusion of the educated, the yearning for peace, and the shortsightedness of politicians. Also in March 1939, Life magazine reported that “He [Joseph Goebbels] belongs to the left-wing radical group of the Party.... He is aided in holding down the left side of the political see-saw by Himmler, who, like him, dreams of a rapprochement between Germany and Soviet Russia.”

Writers in early 1939 were warning readers to expect that “Russia and Germany could come to terms — either on some basis as the eight Generals favoured, or at the expense of Poland ... every Pole has at the back of his mind ... the thought that, as in the past, Germany and Russia might exploit Polish dissensions and come to terms over Poland’s dead body.” Freund wrote that the Nazis were training the German people in collectivism which was very similar to Soviet collectivism. He also noted that possibility of a Nazi-Soviet alliance. In 1938, one year before the non-aggression pact and the partition of Eastern Europe, Whittaker Chambers wrote that Soviet Russia was “Hitler’s only real ally.” Similarly, that same year Hendrik Willem Van Loon, in his book Our Battle, noted that Russia might make common cause with the Third Reich. So the nonaggression pact came as no surprise to a number of people who were writing about the logic of it long before it was announced.

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Many commentators, during the years between the ascension to power of Hitler and the signing of the non-aggression pact, noted that Nazism was very much like Bolshevism. Calvin Hoover wrote that Nazism resembled Russian Bolshevism much more than it did Italian Fascism. He quoted a Russian émigré prince who told him that the German dictatorship was more like that of the Soviets than that of the Fascists in its appeal to radicalism and that the National Socialists were not Communists but they certainly were Bolsheviks.

A. W. Zlomek, in his 1940 book, This Peculiar War, noted: “It is literally only within the past few months that we have heard the German nationalist philosophy spoken of as National Bolshevism. Farsighted observers have predicted for several years that this would be the ultimate outcome and apparently that day has come.” Lindal, in his 1940 book written while Germany was fighting in Norway, said: “Only those who understood the fundamental unity in thought and action between Hitler and Stalin, were unshaken when a non-aggression pact, signed before the outbreak of hostilities, was announced. To others, more credulous, it was startling to find the National Socialist party, anathema to the teachings of Karl Marx and Lenin, overnight welcomed as an ally by Russia. Equally startling was the revelation that the vituperations of Hitler against Stalin had been but shadow-boxing.” The Baltic people, caught between Nazis and Bolsheviks, regarded the public hostility between Brown and Red dictatorships as phony, as Henry C. Wolfe noted in The Imperial Soviets.

Eduard Heiman, in his chapter on Nazism from the 1941 book Democracy is Different, notes that not only was the non-aggression pact no surprise to the serious observer, but that the Soviets had been working to bring Hitler to power since at least 1932:

The world was stunned by the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939, which led to the fall of French democracy. The world is so short of memory that it had entirely forgotten the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1932, which lead to the fall of German democracy. Stalin himself gave out the cue that one had to "take into the bargain a few years of Hitler rule in order to rid the worst enemies of labor, the Social Democrats and the Catholic trade unions."

Accordingly the Communist papers flamed day by day with headlines to the effect that [Carl] Severing — a Social Democrats minister and the head of the republican police — "is worse than

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Hitler." This was meant literally, difficult as it now is to realize that the Communists preferred the Gestapo to the lenient republican police … It [the collaboration of Nazis and Communists] culminated, after several mutual enterprises, in the big traffic strike in Berlin, in November, 1932, three months before Hitler seized power and a few days before the last free parliamentary election. The purpose was to discredit the Republic and the trade unions, which opposed the strike. To this end the two parties, Nazis and Communist, appointed a strike committee of twelve members, six delegates from either side.

Nazism, Bolshevism, Fascism, and Japanese imperialism were all part of the same grand system, hateful of individual liberty in whatever form it existed, contemptuous of Christianity and Judaism and the adherents of those religions, and bound to attempt to destroy belief in God and the rights of man which our Founding Fathers understood flowed from that belief.

That, really, is all that the 1936 Anti-comintern Pact represented

On This Day: Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin Meet at Tehran Conference November 28, 2011 05:00 AM by findingDulcinea Staff

On Nov. 28, 1943, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin met in Tehran, Iran, to discuss Allied strategy during World War II as well as post-war matters.

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The Tehran Conference

Share The Tehran Conference, codenamed Eureka, was the first time that “Big Three” Allied leaders, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin, met together. The central issue of the conference was the military strategy of the Allied forces against Nazi Germany. Roosevelt and Churchill, who had met several times during the war, including just days earlier in Cairo, Egypt, came to Tehran seeking continued cooperation from the Soviet Union. Stalin sought the opening of a “second front” in Western Europe to take pressure of the Soviet military fighting the Nazis on the eastern front. Stalin had long pushed for a second front, raising the issue in a letter to Churchill in 1941. Soviet diplomats received assurances “concerning the urgent tasks of opening a second front in Europe in 1942” in a June 1942 meeting in Washington, but when Churchill and Stalin met that August—their only meeting prior to Tehran—Churchill explained that a second front wasn’t practical at the time. At Tehran, Churchill and Roosevelt were at last in a position to guarantee the opening of the western front. They pledged to launch an invasion of France in May 1944 (Operation Overlord, which would begin with the June 6, 1944, Normandy invasion) and asked for the Soviet Union to make an offensive on the eastern front at the same time. Stalin also promised to declare war on Japan once Germany surrendered. The three leaders also discussed their plans for post-war Europe. Stalin asked for territory in Poland and Finland to be returned to the Soviet Union, and for the Western Allies to support Josip Broz Tito in Yugoslavia. The three touched on the division of post-war Germany and the formation of an international organization that would become the United Nations. The conference concluded on Dec. 1 with the Declaration of the Three Powers. It stated that “we have concerted our plans for the destruction of the German forces,” that “common understanding which we have here reached guarantees that victory will be ours,” and that “we are sure that our concord will win an enduring Peace.” Read the U.S. Department of State’s diplomatic papers for the Cairo and Tehran Conferences. Other Allied War Conferences The “Big Three” would meet on more time, at Yalta in February 1945. Stalin and Churchill would meet with Roosevelt’s successor, Harry Truman, at Potsdam in July 1945.

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The findingDulcinea Web Guide to World War II links to the most comprehensive and reliable sources on the war

Cartoon: Merkel Channels Churchill

In this cartoon from The Guardian, Steve Bell portrays German

Chancellor Angela Merkel as British wartime PM Winston Churchill

(photo here). She is flanked by the new Greek and Italian prime

ministers holding axes (a symbol of the austerity measures they must

take to save their countries' economies).

COMMENTARY

The cartoon is inspired by a Churchillian speech Merkel gave on

Monday in which she said that the euro zone sovereign debt crisis has

plunged Europe into what is perhaps its most difficult crisis since the

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end of World War Two. Her 'toughest hour' quote sounds like

something the great man himself might have said (what he actually

said was, " This was their finest hour"). And, of course, the WW2

reference also makes one think of Churchill.

NOTES

1. Note the German helmet spike sticking through the top of the hat.

2. The underpants outside the trousers is a reference to the way that

Steve Bell used to portray former British PM John Major. Bell used the

allegation by Alastair Campbell that he had observed Major tucking his

shirt into his underpants to caricature him wearing his pants outside

his trousers, as a pale grey echo of both Superman and Supermac, a

parody of Harold Macmillan [source: Wikipedia]. Could the fact that

the new Italian PM Mario Monti has been dubbed 'Super Mario' have

something to do with it?

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Bookworm’s Corner by James R. Lancaster

Jim and Tommy

Following is an article selected by Jim of one man’s remembrance of his experience of the great historical occasion of Sir Winston Churchill’s Lying in State, an honor not bestowed on a non-Royal since Gladstone in 1898. The author, John Stewart Collis (1900-1984) was a British author the son of an Irish solicitor and was educated at Rugby and Oxford. He was a writer of biographies and other works with his first book on George Bernard Shaw being published in 1925 followed by biographies of Havelock Ellis, Strindberg, Tolstoy, the Carlyles and Christopher Columbus. (Source, Wiki Encyclopedia ) It is necessary to note that Churchill’s body was moved from Hyde Park Gate on January 27th, three days after he died and his funeral was on January 30, 1965. Collis’s memory is somewhat faulty as to the duration of Sir Winston’s Lying in State which lasted not a fortnight but three days which still allowed more than an estimated 100,000 people per day to pay their respects. Lying in State

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It was the last week of January 1965. Churchill’s funeral took place on Saturday 30 January. The Lying in State lasted throughout the previous fortnight. The queue, starting from the gates of the House of Commons, curled round over Westminster Bridge, then along Lambeth Palace Road, thence over Lambeth Bridge to Millbank leading to Westminster Hall in which the catafalque was placed. I understood that it meant about four hours in the queue before reaching the Hall. It flowed on throughout every day and every night.

It occurred to me that this was one of those historic occasions in which it would be good to participate. I was living in Ewell in Surrey at the time, and I thought that if I drove up on the Tuesday of the second week in the middle of the night, arriving at about 3 a.m., the queue would surely be short, and I wouldn’t have to join it for more than an hour before reaching the catafalque. So I went up and parked my car in the vicinity of Parliament Square - for no policeman was making the slightest objection as to where one put a car on this occasion.

I hastened to walk across the Square and was pleased to find no queue in sight. Then in high spirits I walked quickly over Westminster Bridge, and turned to the right into Lambeth Palace Road - to be confronted almost at once by an enormously wide queue, a long distance from the bridge. My heart sank. It is an eccentricity of mine to do things on impulse without taking simple precautions. It was a cold night, and I was wearing only a light overcoat and thin socks, and absolutely the wrong kind of shoes. By the time I had reached Lambeth Bridge, I had become alarmed by my predicament, but hoped that I would make it.

I looked round at this great queue of people, so long and wide. Many were young and must have been children during the war, perhaps not yet born at its outset. Many others were middle-aged – they had heard that voice coming to them over the wireless, whether to groups or into lonely rooms. Twenty years had passed since the final triumph of this man. But neither the young nor the middle-aged were thinking of those last years, but of what he had been, of what he was in their imagination. He was the man who had overcome Hitler. He had promised nothing. He did not rant. He never smiled. There was melancholy in his cadence, and there was understanding of simple people when he spoke of ‘that bad man over there’. Now his body was soon to disappear from the surface of the earth.

I spoke to nobody, and I heard no memorable remark. It had become very cold. I welcomed this. It was far more appropriate for the sombre scene than a warm summer night would have been. But on account of my faulty clothing I became anxious. Something must be done. After we had at last crossed Lambeth Bridge, the queue took an enormous loop around a Green before joining Millbank. In the middle of this Green a marquee had been erected to serve the purposes of a lavatory. I had a hat on and it occurred to me that if I stepped out of my place in the queue, entered the tent, and then emerged hatless from it, I could join the far end of the loop without attracting any notice. And indeed I did accomplish this quite easily. This reprehensible tactic cut out at least an hour of my queue-crawling, yet it was not until 6.30 a.m. that I was able to mount the steps of Westminster Hall and go inside. What a change! I came into wonderful warm air and a cathedral peace. A long staircase led down to the floor of the great hall in which the catafalque stood. Our queue, the river of people come to pay homage to Churchill, flowed slowly down this long staircase. We were not chivvied by any policemen, there was no

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‘keep moving, please’, all was discreet courtesy. In fact I paused on my way down and stood still to watch something. There were four sentinels stationed at the catafalque, one at each corner. They were relieved at regular intervals by fresh guards. It was my good fortune while descending the stairs to see a relief party in action.

From a door on the left side of the catafalque, and higher up, four sentinels appeared. The other four standing by the coffin had their rifles in the ‘at ease’ position, their legs apart, their heads bowed. They were motionless as any statue. Gradually the four men from above, in obedience to no verbal command, with incomparable grace of movement, each soundlessly approached the separate sentinels, and stood behind them. Then quietly the statues came to life; their limbs assumed slow motion; their bowed heads were raised: silently they came to attention and sloped arms, and each with the same rhythm left the catafalque by the way the others had come - who now slowly ordered arms, stood at ease, bowed their heads, until their figures too were frozen.

After passing the catafalque I stopped before the exit to look back at the steady stream of people descending the stairs. That stream had flowed during all the previous week, night and day, and would continue day and night until the ending of this second week.

As I left the Hall I stumbled and fell to the ground. Two policemen quietly restored me to the perpendicular. This indignity did not bother me at all. I had seen something I would not forget. After seventeen years I put it in words now as if, for me, it had been yesterday. There was a message too, could I but read it, as to the meaning of Homage and of Leadership.

JOHN STEWART COLLIS, Spectator, 10 January 1982

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Book Reviews

Published: Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011 3:00 p.m. MST

By Mike Whitmer, For the Deseret News

"PEARL HARBOR CHRISTMAS: A World at War, December 1 941," by Stanley Weintraub, Da Capo Press, $24, 200 pages (n f)

Stanley Weintraub, celebrated author of the World War II classic “11 Days in December,” has produced another work detailing events from that pivotal period in world history. Using detailed accounts from many sources, Weintraub gives the reader an interesting peek at different aspects of the war that would soon involve the majority of the world’s nations.

Click to view

From the archive

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• Review: 'Pearl Harbor' gives insight into FDR's leadership hours after attack – Dec. 3, 2011

Limiting the time frame from Dec. 22, 1941, to New Year’s Day 1942, the author gives a unique perspective on political, military and civilian aspects of the war.

Focusing primarily on the two principle leaders of the Western alliance, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, Weintraub looks at the inner workings of these leaders and their preparations for what will become a great world war.

Churchill, who had been trying for some time to get the United States to enter the fray, was almost excited about the Dec. 7 attack on Pearl Harbor. Now there was an ally ready to help and capable of providing the materiel needed to fight off Hitler in Europe. His enthusiasm was so great that the British prime minister set sail just a few days after Pearl Harbor, through the U-Boat-infested waters of the Atlantic, to have a private face-to-face with the American president.

In the meantime, Roosevelt was trying to get a handle on the preparations necessary to take his country into the great battle. The events in Hawaii had galvanized the nation but the work of uniting the rest of the world was a more difficult proposition.

But this book is not just about leaders, warriors and those with great names. There are also accounts of average folks who were being drawn into the battle for freedom in the world of 1941.

The crew of the “Regnbue,” a Norwegian fuel freighter bound for Corpus Christi, Texas, is followed in their adventures as they navigate the dangerous Atlantic. And American businesswoman Sylvia Beach shows grit and determination as she deals with Nazi leaders in her chosen homeland of France.

Filled with candor, wit and a wry sense of humor, “Pearl Harbor Christmas” will offer the reader a fascinating and compelling look at the events i

Monday, Dec 05 2011 9PM 1°C 12AM 1°C 5-Day Forecast

Drinks, scones, and a daring escape: How Allied troops used tea house surrounded by Gestapo to rescue Jews from the Nazis— Embassy a new book. By LEON WATSON

Last updated at 5:35 PM on 3rd December 2011

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Thousands of Jews and Allied soldiers were ghosted out of Nazi Europe from a

quaint little English tea house in Madrid, a new book has claimed.

Author Patricia Martínez Vicente says the cafe was the unlikely centre of an

escape plot operating under the noses of the Gestapo.

In her ground-breaking book Embassy, Ms Martínez reveals the role of her father

Eduardo Martínez Alonso played in the daring plan.

Eduardo Martinez Alonso with his wife and daughter Patricia Martinez Vicente. He ran an English tea sh op in wartime Madrid that acted as a front for smuggling Jews and Allied serv icemen abroad

He was a Spanish doctor who worked in General Francisco Franco's pro-Nazi

regime as a British secret agent codenamed 055.

She stumbled across his wartime diary after his death in 1972 and later

unearthed classified MI5 documents confirming his role in saving thousands of

lives.

According to the writer, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was

told about the plan.

The shop served as the headquarters for the operation that spirited refugees

across the Pyrenees and out of Spain through Gibraltar and Galicia.

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She tells how her father, who grew up in Liverpool and was a physician at the

British Embassy in Madrid, worked with his close friend Alan Hillgarth, the British

naval attaché who masterminded the operation.

Over tea in the bar, which celebrates its 80th anniversary next week, the two

men would plot how to help Jews, British servicemen and Poles flee the Nazis.

Discovery: Patricia Martinez de Vicente's new book Embassy was based on her father's diary

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Pro-Nazi: Fascist dictator General Francisco Franco speaks to naval forces before the war in 1938

Ms Martínez told The Times: 'Hillgarth told my father Winston Churchill wanted to

set up an escape for fleeing servicemen but Ms also became aware through

Poland of what was happening to the Jews, so made sure they put extra effort

into the operation.'

She says that her father's roots in Galicia, a region in northwest Spain that was

notorious as a route for smugglers, provided the perfect way to get refugees out

of Spain.

Using a trusted taxi driver called Manuel Rios, they would take the refugees to

the boats of fishermen who delivered them to British ships waiting off Galicia.

Wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill was inform ed of the plot

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Dr Martínez faked medical records for thousands of Poles, Jews and British

servicemen who were held at a concentration camp in Burgos, north of Madrid.

Secret MI5 documents and others from the Polish Institute and Sikorksi Archive

detail the names and fake diagnoses of thousands who were saved.

His subterfuge allowed the British Embassy to put pressure on Spanish

authorities to release those supposedly so ill they were at risk of dying.

'My father was a doctor. He risked his career doing this,' said Ms Martínez. 'To

have been found faking a single diagnosis could have destroyed his position as a

doctor.'

Once in Madrid the refugees were hidden by Margarita Taylor, the owner of the

Embassy bar who mixed in the capital's most fashionable circles.

She dressed the refugees like the British customers to make them pass for other

clients dropping in for tea or a Martini.

Despite being a strict Roman Catholic, she acquired a reputation in Franco's

austere Madrid as a 'bad woman' because she was seen so often with a queue

of strange men at her door.

When they had been given new false documents the refugees would be driven

south to Gibraltar or Galicia and on to freedom.

Dr Martínez was forced to flee to Britain in 1942 as the Gestapo closed in.

He was secretly paid a monthly stipend under his codename Agent 055.

Before returning to Madrid in 1946 he was awarded the King's Medal for bravery

and was decorated by the Polish Government.

Ms Martínez contacted the son of Mr Rios, who was unaware of his father's

bravery. If he had been caught he could have ended up in jail or in front of a firing

squad.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2069568/Drinks-scones-daring-escape-How-Allied-troops-used-tea-house-surrounded-Gestapo-rescue-Jews-Nazis.html#ixzz1fgvSfS4N

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CHURCHILL IN THE NEWS

Saturday December 10, 2011 WBIZ > UK NEWS > Winston Churchill is voted the greatest of gents

UK NEWS

WINSTON CHURCHILL IS VOTED THE GREATEST OF GENTS

American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt with B ritish Prime Minister Winston Churchill

Friday December 9,2011 By Tom Morgan

Have your say(4)

SIR Winston Churchill has been named the greatest B ritish gentleman.

The former Prime Minister, who inspired the nation during the Second World War, topped a poll of 4,000 people.

Churchill, who died in 1965 aged 90, will be remembered for embodying the strength and spirit of Britain in one of its darkest periods. He

roused the public with stirring speeches and broadcasts that gave hope to millions.

Runner-up was Sir David Attenborough, Britain’s best-known natural history film-maker, who brought the hidden secrets of the world to

living rooms across the country with programmes such as Life, The Blue Planet and Frozen Planet.

Stephen Fry, whose intelligent and amusing contributions to our TV screens and Twitter feeds have made him a national treasure, was in

third spot.

A spokesman for Austin Reed, who carried out the poll, said: “Sir Winston Churchill showed unprecedented courage and strength to lead

this country and is a worthy choice as the greatest British gentleman.

Winston Churchill, who died in 1965 aged 90, will be remembered for embodying the strength and spirit of Britain

“In fact, Austin Reed made Winston Churchill’s famous siren suits during the war.

“There were plenty of great contenders for the role, and the results are a pleasing reminder of the number of great characters and

personalities that inspire the general public.

“It’s nice to see modern men in the list such as David Beckham, Jenson Button and David Tennant. They all epitomise effortless style and

have a real flair for fashion – which is an essential trait for any gentleman.”

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It was a regal finish for Prince William, who came in fourth, with this year’s Royal Wedding coverage evidence of the place the young

prince holds in the British public’s hearts.

Arts & Ents | Films | Features

Colonel Blimp: The masterpiece Churchill hated Powell and Pressburger's jingoistic film was maligned, then mutilated. But, says

Geoffrey Macnab, its genius survives GEOFFREY MACNAB FRIDAY 02 DECEMBER 2011

Winston Churchill hated the idea of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). The then-Prime Minister couldn't understand why, in the middle of the Second World War, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were making a film that included a sympathetic German. Others were baffled that one of Britain's pre-eminent film-making teams was telling the story of a a fat, walrus-moustached, jingoist character originating in David Low's cartoons in the Daily Express.

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"Don't make it, because everyone will be really cross, and the Old Man will be very cross and you'll never get a knighthood," Powell was warned by the Ministry of Information. Powell did make the film – and he didn't get the knighthood. Pressburger was crestfallen to have provoked Churchill's ire.

Blimp was cut severely before its US release. The elaborate flashback structure was taken out and the film was presented as a rip-roaring adventure. Nonetheless, earlier this week at BFI Southbank, when a restored version was introduced by Martin Scorsese and his editor Thelma Schoonmaker-Powell, widow of Michael Powell, there was an absolute consensus that this was one of the greatest British films of all – and one of the most perceptive about national identity.

"Every time I revisit The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, it seems to have become more resonant, more moving, more profound," Scorsese said. "You could say it's the epic of an ordinary life. And what you retain from this epic is an overpowering sense of warmth and love and friendship, of shared humour and tenderness, and a lasting impression of the most eloquent sadness."

The film is indeed a very deceptive affair – a wartime propaganda movie that owes as much to Proust as it does to the Ministry of Information; an action drama that is really a story about love and friendship, and growing old. At the beginning of the film, the elderly Blimp (Roger Livesey) is caught out in a Turkish bath. He is supposed to be taking part in a military exercise. The steam rises as Blimp rages but the soldier arresting him is contemptuous of "the national sporting-club rules" that the old man fights wars by.

In these scenes, Blimp seems the buffoon that fans of Low's cartoon must have expected. However, we flash back to 40 years earlier in the hero's military career. The two key

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elements of the story are established: Blimp's friendship with the German officer Theo (Anton Walbrook) that will span three wars (the Boer, the First and the Second World Wars) and his romantic longing for the "girl" (three different characters, all played by Deborah Kerr). The genius of Pressburger's screenplay is that it takes stock types – a priggish British officer and his arrogant German counterpart – and gives them depth and humanity.

Powell was a quintessentially English director who surrounded himself with foreign collaborators. "It's a 100 per cent British film but it's photographed by a Frenchman, it's written by a Hungarian, the musical score is by a German Jew, the director was English, the man who did the costumes was a Czech; in other words, it was the kind of film that I've always worked on with a mixed crew of every nationality, no frontiers of any kind," he claimed of Blimp.

"Pray propose to me the measures to stop this foolish production," Churchill wrote when the film was about to go into production. Scorsese and all lovers of British film will be forever thankful that this was one occasion on which he was thwarted.

December 1, 2011, 2:29 PM

Judge Dismisses Suit Against Dallas Art Museum By ROBIN POGREBIN

A Federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit against the Dallas Museum of Art involving a collection of some

1,400 works of art, including paintings by van Gogh, Renoir, and Pissarro.

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The collection was donated to the museum by Wendy Reves, the widow of Emery Reves, a writer and publisher

who was a close friend of Winston Churchill. Ms. Reves, who died in 2007, and her husband lived in a villa in the

south of France that was originally built for Coco Chanel.

In the lawsuit, filed in Dallas federal court last March, Arnold Leon Schroeder Jr., Mrs. Reves’s son from a previous

marriage, claimed that the museum’s former director and two trustees had conspired to circumvent French law by

secreting the collection — valued by the suit at $400 million — out of France, thus cheating him of his right under

French law to half of his mother’s estate. In her opinion, United States District Judge Jane J. Boyle said the “dearth

of specificity” in the complaint “and the allegations are both generic and conclusory.”

New society to honour Winston Churchill

BY CHRIS COBB, OTTAWA CITIZEN

"The growth of population, petty as it is compared with what the future will bring, is already sufficient to sustain the

social and political conceptions of what will one day be a mighty nation rich in grain and cattle, with minerals and

oil in her bosom and with a climate to breed a sturdy race."

Winston Churchill, writing in the Daily Telegraph, 1930.

Winston Churchill wrote warmly and with admiration about Canada.

The late British prime minister, who inspired his nation in its seemingly doomed effort to rebuff and ultimately

defeat Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, visited this country on nine occasions, passing through Ottawa on six of them.

That is good enough reason for Ottawa Churchill scholar Ronald Cohen and a group of like-minded Churchillians

to form the Ottawa Winston Churchill Society to honour the great wartime leader 46 years after his death.

"He was here six times," Cohen said, "so there is a logic for a Churchill society beyond the fact that this is the

capital city of Canada."

Cohen will be inaugural president of the society when it launches today with a special reception at Earnscliffe, the

official residence of British High Commissioner Andrew Pocock.

"History has treated Churchill very well," Cohen said. "He wasn't perfect and nor were all his policies but he had

many good qualities, chief among them honesty and strong leadership. After 9/11 it astonished how many people

quoted or referred to Churchill - Mayor Rudy Giuliani and President Bush among them. He almost fares better in

North America than in the U.K."

Churchill was also something of a renaissance man and during an 1895 visit to Cuba began a journalism career

that would last for decades and lead to book writing, which in turn brought him the 1953 Nobel Prize for Literature,

cited by the Nobel Foundation "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant

oratory in defending exalted human values."

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Churchill was a "clever, witty man" Cohen said.

"He was extremely convivial and liked to say, 'I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.' "

Cohen, who has been collecting Churchilliana since 1969 and is author of a definitive three-volume bibliography of

Churchill's work, sees the Ottawa society capturing a little of that conviviality with regular lectures, discussions and

eventually conferences.

During that 1930 trip across Canada, Churchill dispatched numerous descriptions of the country as it passed by his

train and car windows.

"Montréal and Toronto, each with a population of more than a million, have quadrupled in size and multiplied still

more in wealth since I last visited them," he noted. "They are the scenes and centres of an immense economic and

social development. Their wonderful communications by water and by railway unite them not only to the continent,

but to the world."

And of passing through the prairies, he wrote.

"We leave Toronto in the Canadian Pacific car which is to be our home for some weeks to come, and plunge out

on a 1,200-mile swoop to Winnipeg. The fertile, cultivated lands of Ontario, rich in fruit and vegetables, studded

with hamlets and farms - regions definitely subjugated by man, perennial fountains of commerce and agriculture -

are left behind us. The train enters a vast 'No Man's Land.' Hour after hour, for hundreds of miles, we traverse

scenes of savage but desolate beauty. One rocky wooded hill succeeds another in every direction, and in their

recesses are innumerable lakes.

"Here and there a swift flowing river, packed with floating timber, gives some evidence of structure and activity; but

for the rest it is a wild tumult of ground, stern and lonely. Even along the railways scarcely a dwelling can be seen.

We are crossing a petrified sea whose waves are rocks, whose foam is forest. I cannot imagine how anyone

except the Indian hunter could have traversed these wilds on foot, where valley leads to valley and range

succeeds range in seemingly endless succession. A wild beauty haunts these solitudes, so plentifully supplied with

water, so clothed in forests, and yet presenting, for practical purposes, all the obstacles of a desert."

Like so many visitors to Canada before and since, it was the Rockies that truly captured his imagination.

"It would take pages to describe the glories of this Alpine scenery extending in size over 20 Switzerlands. Excellent

roads carry the traveller through the heart of the mountain regions, and giant hotels equipped with every sport or

luxury that health can conceive or wealth command await him at intervals. The guidebooks and advertisements

written in interested superlatives are surpassed by reality."

For more information about the Winston Churchill Society of Ottawa email: churchillsociety@chartwellcomm.com

Read more:http://www.ottawacitizen.com/society+honour+Winston+Churchill/5787361/story.html#ixzz1fgyg8QM1

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Churchill 'diatribe' to be auctioned In this section »

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• Crowds line streets for Kenny removal

MICHAEL PARSONS

MEMOS SIGNED by Winston Churchill in July 1920, described as “a furious diatribe on official failings in the face of the Irish rebellion”,

have come to light and will be auctioned by Christie’s in London today.

Churchill, who later became prime minister, was secretary of state for war and in charge of Britain’s military response to the War of

Independence then raging in Ireland.

The typed memos reveal that Churchill complained bitterly about the incompetence of some of his officials, who had failed to carry out his

orders to supply 5,000 revolvers to the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC).

He described their failure to act as “a very serious matter” and the “worst possible example of bureaucratic incompetence”.

On July 22nd, 1920, he noted that “exactly a month has passed since the request from Ireland for 5,000 revolvers for the police without

effective action being taken” and that “it will therefore be necessary to take disciplinary action against the officials concerned who have

caused the delay”.

Churchill had ordered that “the revolvers should be issued at once and the question of payment discussed afterwards”.

But the officials apparently dithered and, instead of carrying out his instructions, simply contacted Dublin Castle to ask if “belts and holsters

were [also] required” for the RIC and then, apparently, “let the matter rest”.

Churchill pointed out that “Ireland is in a most critical state and that the arming of the police with proper weapons must be a matter of real

importance”.

A written explanation from his officials prompted him to respond with a further incandescent memo in which he observed: “I do not

remember to have seen anything so helpless as this for a very long time.”

A year later, in 1921, the British and Irish sides agreed a truce and Churchill took part in negotiations which resulted in the Anglo-Irish

Treaty, the end of the war and the creation of the Irish Free State.

The documents, which have an estimate of £1,200 to £1,800 (€1,398 to €2,097), are among dozens of papers related to Churchill to be

auctioned at Christie’s South Kensington salesroom.

Glimmer our mascot says:

Until next issue, keep on glowing!

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© Jason C. Mueller, 2011