"Britain, in short, surrendered her own empire to defeat a chimera conjured up by Winston Churchill, a putative danger from Nazi Germany -- a threat which never existed except when Churchill needed to call upon it."
Churchill's War: Triumph in Adversity (Vol. II), by David Irving. London: Focal Point, 2001. Hardcover. 1060 pages. Photographs. Appendices. Source references. Index.
It has been fourteen years since the publication of the first volume of David Irving's three-part biography of Britain's legendary wartime leader. This second volume, subtitled "Triumph in Adversity," traces Winston Churchill's career from June 1941 through July 1943, the pivotal period when, after calamitous setbacks, the tide of the war turned decisively in favor of the Allies.
With this handsome, meticulously referenced and generously illustrated work (including many color photographs), Britain's best-known and most controversial historian once again displays his extraordinary knack for extracting information from overlooked diaries and suppressed records, and his gift for turning mountains of data into well-crafted prose. This measured, masterful examination of Britain's towering twentieth-century premier is Irving at his best.
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"In economic life there is extreme inequality and exploitation. Although colonialism no longer exists openly in the political and economic sphere, still it persists indirectly, and this should not be tolerated... In this respect you should remember that in economic life, we will have to guarantee the minimum requirements of life to one and all... There cannot be any sort of adjustment as far as this point is concerned. The minimum purchasing requirement must be guaranteed to all. Today these fundamental essentialities are not being guaranteed. Rather, people are being guided by deceptive economic ideas like outdated Marxism, which has proven ineffective in practical life and has not been successfully implemented in any corner of the world. Why do people still believe in such a theory, which has never been proved successful? The time has come for people to make a proper assessment of whether they are being misguided or not." |
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"Human beings have still not been able to form a human society, and have still not learned to move with the spirit of a pilgrim. Although many small groups, motivated by self-interest, work together in particular situations, not even a small fraction of their work is done with a broader social motive. By strict definition, shall we have to declare that each small family unit is a society in itself? If going ahead in mutual adjustment only out of narrow self-interest or momentary self-seeking is called society, then in such a society, no provision can be made for the disabled, the diseased or the helpless, because in most cases nobody can benefit from them in any way... in that case there always remains the possibility of some people getting isolated from the collective. All human beings must attach themselves to others by the common bond of love and march forward hand in hand; then only will I proclaim it a society." |