15 thousand upvotes on :reddit-logo: :yes-honey-left:

  • Changeling [it/its]
    ·
    2 years ago

    For anyone not familiar:

    In his six-volume history, The Second World War, Churchill provides the following account of what happened at Tehran:

    STALIN: Some fifty or a hundred thousand German officers must be liquidated. The entire General Staff must go.

    CHURCHILL: The British Parliament and public will never tolerate mass executions. Even if in war passion they allowed them to begin, they would turn violently against those responsible after the first butchery had taken place. The Soviets must be under no delusion on this point.

    STALIN: Fifty thousand must be shot!

    CHURCHILL: I would rather be taken out into the garden here and now and be shot myself rather than sully my own and my country's honor by such infamy.

    ROOSEVELT: I have a compromise to propose. Not fifty thousand, but only forty-nine thousand should be shot.

    This conversation has been corroborated by numerous sources, which state that Churchill at this point left the meeting and walked off into an adjacent room. Stalin and Molotov followed him in. Stalin insisted he was only joking, and convinced Churchill to resume his place at the table

    • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      "The British Parliament and public will never tolerate mass executions"

      -man who spent years facilitating the mass executions of millions in Russia and elsewhere in a deliberate attempt to use fascism as a weapon against socialism

      "I am strongly in favor of using poison gas on uncivilized tribes"

      -Bonus quote from very same epic bacon hero regarding Afghanistan

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Churchill literally oversaw the mass killing by starvation of around 2 million Indians and an unknown number, but as many as 3-4 million Iranians during the course of the war.

        Can't shoot a hundred thousand Nazis though.

    • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      CHURCHILL: I would rather be taken out into the garden here and now and be shot myself

      Stalin did one thing wrong: not taking him up on this.

      ROOSEVELT: I have a compromise to propose. Not fifty thousand, but only forty-nine thousand should be shot.

      Roasted his ass