6. A Huge Blot on the Reputation of an Otherwise Great Man
Winston Churchill was one of the twentieth century’s giants and a hero of the modern era. He is rightly celebrated for his tenacity and steadfastness early in WWII, when he rallied a reeling Britain and kept up the fight against Nazi Germany – the first step in the Third Reich’s defeat. However, Churchill was a complex man, and there was far more to him than the year or so when he and Britain held the line against the Nazis until joined by the USSR and USA. In a public career that lasted more than half a century, Churchill had no shortage of missteps, or outright villainous misdeeds, that contrast jarringly with the nobility of his heroics against Hitler.
One such misdeed was his WWII decisions about food distribution in India, which led directly to the deaths of roughly three million Indians in Bengal. Millions more were plunged into abject poverty as the crisis wreaked havoc upon the region’s economy and tore asunder its social fabric. Blunder after blunder lay at the heart of all aspects of the tragedy, from its avoidable start to policies that made things even worse, to a cruel indifference and reluctance to alleviate the resultant widespread misery.
