FBI Documents Reveal: Churchill Wanted to Nuke Moscow

[The Intransigent Faction]

Winston Churchill urged the United States to launch a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union to win the Cold War, a newly released document reveals.
The previously unseen memorandum from the FBI archives details how Britain’s wartime leader made his views known to a visiting American politician in 1947.
Churchill believed a pre-emptive strike on Stalin’s Russia might be the only way to stop Communism conquering the West.


The note, written by an FBI agent, reports that Churchill urged Right-wing Republican Senator Styles Bridges to persuade President Harry Truman to launch a nuclear attack which would ‘wipe out’ the Kremlin and make the Soviet Union a ‘very easy problem’ to deal with.
The Russians would have been defenceless against a nuclear attack at that time – they did not successfully test their own atomic bomb until 1949.

Britain and the Soviet Union had been allies in the Second World War until 1945, the year Churchill lost office as Prime Minister. But he was one of the first international statesmen to recognise the post-war threat posed by the USSR, and in 1946 made a famous speech in Fulton, Missouri, about an ‘iron curtain’ having descended across Europe as Joseph Stalin consolidated his grip on the eastern half of the continent.
The FBI document shows Churchill’s belligerence towards Britain’s former wartime ally ran so deep that he was prepared to tolerate the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Soviet civilians in a nuclear strike.

The memo claims Churchill ‘stated that the only salvation for the civilisation of the world would be if the President of the United States would declare Russia to be imperilling world peace and attack Russia’.
The note continues: ‘He pointed out that if an atomic bomb could be dropped on the Kremlin, wiping it out, it would be a very easy problem to handle the balance of Russia, which would be without direction.
‘Churchill further stated that if this was not done, Russia will attack the United States in the next two or three years when she gets the atomic bomb and civilisation will be wiped out or set back many years.’
The memo is published for the first time in a book called When Lions Roar: The Churchills And The Kennedys, by award-winning investigative journalist Thomas Maier. It is due to be published in Britain next month. John F. Kennedy regarded Churchill as his hero and made him an honorary American citizen in 1963 – the first person to be given such an accolade.
The two families shared friends, such as Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, who married Jacqueline Kennedy after her husband’s assassination.
Maier said: ‘Churchill had been a great historian of warfare. He saw the last great cavalry charge during the First World War and championed the development of tanks.
‘I think he saw a nuclear strike as just another progression of conventional warfare, until he realised there was a lot more devastation with nuclear weapons.’
Maier said Churchill was more ‘bellicose’ when out of office. After he returned to power in 1951, a nuclear attack against the USSR was never mentioned again.


This is no big surprise, really, it's just interesting.

[CollectivRed]

Well, yes, this should be no surprise to anyone at all. He is like Ronald Reagan in that he is praised and revered by the media and such, but hardly anyone knows what kind of person he was and what he really stood for.

[Illegalitarian]

Heh, I'd always heard that a big reason he quickly lost popularity is because he had some zany idea about keeping US and British troops in the region, rebuilding the German and French armies, and marching on Moscow. Didn't know he was insane enough to call for adding nukes to the equation too.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I hadn't heard about the nukes before, but I thought it was already known that he wanted to keep moving east after Germany was defeated. Maybe I imagined that?

[Geiseric]

Yet another bourgeois asshole. May he burn in hell.

[Chomskyan]

Now, the next time a Right-winger quotes Churchill about how evil Socialism is, or any other garbage. I'll redirect him to this.

[John Nada]

Isn't there a theory that the US nuked Japan to prevent a Communist takeover in Japan and their territories, and to intimidate the USSR?

[Bala Perdida]

Isn't there a theory that the US nuked Japan to prevent a Communist takeover in Japan and their territories, and to intimidate the USSR?
Yeah, my old teacher said that Stalin was talking about sending vin his troops to topple Japan. The US basically rushed by nuke. Seems stupid enough to be plausible.

[Chomskyan]

Yeah, my old teacher said that Stalin was talking about sending vin his troops to topple Japan. The US basically rushed by nuke. Seems stupid enough to be plausible.

It just sounds stupid to me. Unless the people wanted it, there was no evidence that the government would've adopted Communism that I've seen.

[The Intransigent Faction]

It just sounds stupid to me. Unless the people wanted it, there was no evidence that the government would've adopted Communism that I've seen.

Yeah, I doubt they considered Japan a likely new Soviet state, but the point about it being done in part to intimidate the USSR (and perhaps other states) is certainly plausible.

[The Feral Underclass]

This doesn't really come as much of a surprising considering his history in advocating and ordering the use of other WMDs, such as chemical weapons against Iraqis. This is also the guy who quipped that one way to deal with poverty would be to sterilise the poor, was an active participant in genocide against various African tribes and advocated and defended the establishment of concentration camps in South Africa.

[The Intransigent Faction]

This doesn't really come as much of a surprising considering his history in advocating and ordering the use of other WMDs, such as chemical weapons against Iraqis. This is also the guy who quipped that one way to deal with poverty would be to sterilise the poor, was an active participant in genocide against various African tribes and advocated and defended the establishment of concentration camps in South Africa.

Then there's also the Bengal famine. How much of a role did the British government play in worsening that?

[John Nada]

It just sounds stupid to me. Unless the people wanted it, there was no evidence that the government would've adopted Communism that I've seen.Yeah, I doubt they considered Japan a likely new Soviet state, but the point about it being done in part to intimidate the USSR (and perhaps other states) is certainly plausible.Believe it or not, the Japanese Communist Party was(and still is) one of the biggest parties in Japan, though obviously persecuted and repressed during the war. There were even instances of Japanese soldiers defecting to the Chinese Communist forces. This might have been one of the reasons the US left Hirohito as King, and let many war criminals off the hook.

And not just Japan. The US, UK and France still wanted to hold on to China, Korea, Malaysia, Burma, Indochina, Indonesia and the Philippines. Even in Europe, there was a good chance that Communist could have seized power in France, Italy and Greece. The Communists made up a large part of the anti-fascist resistance during the war, so compared to the liberals and nationalists, they gained a lot of support. All of them had, to varying degrees, strong Communist Parties, with guns.

If there was any plans to directly aid them on part of the Soviets, it probably was shut down to avoid a nuclear war.

[Sasha]

here in the netherlands there was a good chance the CPN would have taken over after the war, somewhere there is a picture of a huge hammer and sickle flag hanging from the royal palace just after the liberation.

it should therefor not come as a huge surprise that in the last months of the war the royalist/right wing resistance ratted out the communist resistance to the nazi's on a massive scale.

[Illegalitarian]

The Soviets were planning an invasion of Japan, this most likely did play a role in the decision to drop nukes.

[Invader Zim]

Then there's also the Bengal famine. How much of a role did the British government play in worsening that?

The chief complaint against the British government regarding the Bengal famine was a failure to grasp the gravity of a situation 5,000 miles away and a refusal to divert resources (primarily shipping) to India. Their concerns were focussed on strategic issues and Churchill, in particular, was almost pathalogically anti-Indian and absolutely refused to accept the situation and even showed some cirumstancial evidence of buying into Mathusian ideas when it came to India.

[Redistribute the Rep]

The Soviets were planning an invasion of Japan, this most likely did play a role in the decision to drop nukes.

They invaded a day after the first nuke dropped, exactly as planned by the Allies. The SU of course was not aware of the Manhattan project, but they were scheduled to invade that day as it was exactly 3 months after the defeat of Germany which was the date the other Allied countries agreed upon. The second nuke was dropped 2 days later I believe. If the timing of the nukes is not evidence that their main purpose was to scare the SU and prevent a land grab then I don't know what is. A land invasive would have resulted in more deaths? My ass. If saving lives was what they wanted then surely they could have waited to see if Japan would have surrendered after the Soviet invasion, and there's evidence that at least a few Japanese officials had discussed surrendering due to that.

[Sasha]

its common knowledge that the nukes where not the last bombs of the second world war but the first of the cold one. i dont think the US where that scared of a prolonged soviet occupation of japan but they certainly wanted to grab the last chance to show the russians what their new toy could do to a major city.

[Invader Zim]

...The SU of course was not aware of the Manhattan project...

Yes, they were (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_spies). Just not officially.

[Gulag Simulator 2000]

churchill was also a big fan of biological weapons and wanted to use it on third worlders as they werent "human" anyway

[Chomskyan]

Now, the next time a Right-winger quotes Churchill about how evil Socialism is, or any other garbage. I'll redirect him to this.

Guess what happened today...

[The Disillusionist]

The Soviets were planning an invasion of Japan, this most likely did play a role in the decision to drop nukes.

Possibly, but the Soviets lost so many men in the war against Germany that I find it hard to see them being jumping up and down in excitement to begin another costly invasion.

[Gulag Simulator 2000]

Possibly, but the Soviets lost so many men in the war against Germany that I find it hard to see them being jumping up and down in excitement to begin another costly invasion.

they invaded manchuria and destroyed the kwantung army really easy tho, they d go for japan without having such fears

[Illegalitarian]

They invaded a day after the first nuke dropped, exactly as planned by the Allies. The SU of course was not aware of the Manhattan project, but they were scheduled to invade that day as it was exactly 3 months after the defeat of Germany which was the date the other Allied countries agreed upon. The second nuke was dropped 2 days later I believe. If the timing of the nukes is not evidence that their main purpose was to scare the SU and prevent a land grab then I don't know what is. A land invasive would have resulted in more deaths? My ass. If saving lives was what they wanted then surely they could have waited to see if Japan would have surrendered after the Soviet invasion, and there's evidence that at least a few Japanese officials had discussed surrendering due to that.

Exactly.


My problem with the "we had to do it, the Japanese would have never surrendered", ignoring the fact that's it's steeped in racism, is the fact that the logic itself makes no sense.

If the Japanese would have "never surrendered", why did they surrender after the nuclear attacks? Why did they try and surrender months before the nuclear attacks only for the allies to reject the idea of Japan keeping their emperor, and then, immediately after the attack, agree to let them keep their emperor?

[Invader Zim]

they invaded manchuria and destroyed the kwantung army really easy tho, they d go for japan without having such fears

The majority of Japan's forces were also lined up to repell a US invasion of Honshu. The Soviet Plan was to annex Hokkaido, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.

On the subject of whether the bombs had a 'point', then yes they did. Nearly all the serious research into the topic has shown that the bombs had a profound impact on the Japanese High Command and broke the deadlock between the hawks and the inaptly named pacafist camp. Of course, most modern historians also recognise the importance of the Soviet Invasion of Manchuria as well. Sadao Asada describes the bombs and the invasion as 'twin shocks' that destroyed any remaining options for the Japanese big six.

Personally, I would suggest that the Soviet Invasion removed more options, but I'm willing to discuss it. These options were:

1. Favored by the Hawks: To continue to fight a US invasion creating sufficient carnage that the US would come to the table for a negotiated surrender on more favourable terms.

2. Favored by the pacafists: Negotiate a peace using the Soviet Union as an intermediary. We have plenty of evidence that the pacafist elements had been attempting to open just such channels for years, from Ultra-Magic decrypts.

Clearly, the Soviet Invasion of Manchuria destroyed both of Japan's remaining options. While they may, though it is unlikely, have been able to inflict sufficiently significant casualties to force the US to come to the table, the threat of Soviet invasion in the north placed Japan in a pincer trap. They could not hope to successfuly mount a defence against two massive armies attacking from two different fronts. Meanwhile, the Soviet invasion, joining the pacific war on the Allied side, removed Japan's only realistic possibility to use a third party to broker a favourable peace.

The use of the atomic bombs reinforced, more-so than any other strategic bombing strike of the war, that the Allies had run short of patience and were literally willing to wipe every Japanese city from the face of the earth if that is what it would take. Other bombing raids had caused more damage and killed more people, but this was the first weapon of its kind that could replicate a massive raid with just one single bomb - the first true super weapon. And we know that they, along with the Soviet invasion, totally shifted the balance and led the Emperor to weight in personally and break the deadlock between the big six.

Of course, neither were necessary. All the Allies had to do was sit back and wait for Japan to collapse anyway. Whether or not we are to accept the findings of the US Strategic Bombing Survey which contended that Japan would have surrendered in the midst economic, agricultural and, one presumes ultimately, demographic collapse, by 1 November 1945, we can be assured that it certainly would have done by the winter. Of course, whether this would have resulted in greater mortality than either an invasion or the bombs is impossible to know, though it strikes me that a major famine would have killed more than both.