day in 1943. that would have meant that the western allies could have reached berlin well before the red army. this line of reasoning is absolute rubbish for the following reasons. we did not have sufficient landing craft in 1943. the shortage of landing craft was the main reason why the invasion was delayed from may to june 1944. the luftwaffe was not effectively destroyed until the spring of 1944. the u-boat's menace to reinforcements crossing the atlantic had not been eliminated in the spring of 1943. the u.s. army needed the harsh lessons of fighting in the mediterranean during 1943 to sort itself out. only during the battle for normandy did develop into the very effective fighting force which achieved a great break out in central france in late july

1944. churchill delayed the invasion of northern europe for the wrong reasons. he wanted to attack an advance northeast into central europe to prevent the red army's occupation. this is militarily unsound, i will certainly admit. it shows his determination to save central europe, something which did not concern the americans. they saw this as an example of churchill playing politics. they could not have been more wrong and underestimating the intention to impose an accord on a across central and eastern europe. the point is that he was proved right, whether or not it was for the wrong reasons. ahold allied strategy had been determined at the conference in 1943. stalin was in the driver's seat, partly because he claimed that

the soviet union was suffering the bulk of the casualties. roosevelt, and an attempt to curry favor, was cutting himself loose from his close alliance with churchill. he was agreeing on matters with stolen behind churchill's back and making jokes about the british attempt to hold on to the empire. it was roosevelt who put paid to churchill's hope to save central europe. the decision on overall strategy, the fact that the main allied effort would be to attack germany, meant that a soviet occupation of central europe and the balkans would become inevitable, and there would be nothing the allies could do about it. roosevelt rejected any idea on spheres of influence after the war. churchill, aware that stalin would do his utmost to turn the

country's into satellite states, went to moscow to try to save something from the approaching disaster. the only country he could hope to save was greece, and thus keep the soviets out of the eastern mediterranean. this was the must criticized the agreement under which he conceded majority control to it countries that led directly in the path of the red army. it was the only thing that was likely to work with stalin. it is sometimes portrayed as the great betrayal. it was the great betrayer of central and southern europe? it certainly was not churchill. if anyone was at fault, it was roosevelt.

he did not want stolen to think the western powers were ganging up on him. -- he did not want stalin to think the western powers were ganging up on him. while the british and americans had no agreed program of what they wanted to cheat. in addition, style and learn precisely where the rift lay between the two western allies -- stalin learn where the replay. he held all the trump cards, with the red army already on the ground in central europe. the agreement at yalta to a large degree simply reflected the realities and military decisions made in tehran.

roosevelt had two key objectives at yalta. one was to get stolen to agree to his great june, the united nations organizations. the other was to persuade stalin to join the european union. the basic stumbling block was poland, and stalin's attempt to impose his own puppet government on the country. roosevelt was not prepared to support churchill in a showdown on the matter if it placed in jeopardy his two projects. in the circumstances, stalin's ruthless determination was bound to win. churchill's anger over stalinist repression in poland came to a head in may 1945, just after the german surrender. he asked his chief of staff to conduct a contingency planning exercise to see whether it might be possible to push back the red army to enforce compliance of the yalta agreement.

this was code-named operation unthinkable. after steady, they had to come back and say that without support from the u.s., it really was unthinkable. poland and all the other countries occupied by the red army were doomed to over 40 years communist dictatorship. nobody with a trace of intellectual honesty could say that the fall was churchill's. ladies and gentlemen, winston churchill was not a liability to the free world. he was our greatest asset. thank you very much. [applause] >> now supporting the motion, historian norman stone. he was professor of modern history at oxford, a frequent commentator in british and

international press and one of mrs. thatcher's speech writers. his books include "of the atlantic and its enemies, 1945- 1991" will be published next year. [applause] >> i might begin by saying i am a war baby. it goes somewhat against the grain to be standing here saying what i am about to say. not only am i a war baby, i can remember the taste of wartime orange juice. horrible. my photograph was taken in a crash for the working mother, which was later used as propaganda. i must look out for it again. the problem with this type of

veneration of churchill, which i think the opposition are engaging in, is that the prospective thus linger on many things. i say this with a tongue-in- cheek. richard overy has said very prudently that churchill was galled at yalta. the myth is dangerous. the first big thing that i think the opposition are missing now is that churchill was first and foremost and imperialists. he was the product of that wonderful world of mineral lancers -- bengal lancers.

i put it to you that the attempt of the imperialists to save the empire in the 1920's and 1930's, it was just as gondi said, millions of acres of bankrupt real estate, was fatal. why do we now live with the problem of pakistan, which is occupying newspapers' most of the time? precisely because the british got in the wrong in the 1930's. churchill said india is no more of a nation and the equator. that sort of thing is dangerous. it is not a very good idea, and it misled churchill into this extraordinary strategy of trying to fight in the far east when he was already having his hands full with problems in the english channel. what an extraordinary way to behave. i put that thing first as his

greatest failure. the stubble of india was all very well for my generation. we did not have to put up with all the sort of nonsense that the french had in vietnam, let alone algeria. let's not be too smug about that. the next thing i would like to point out is, is it terribly sensible strategy, in 1944 and 1945, to bomb germany to bits? the speakers on my side have talked about that. you all note the scenes of bombing cities -- of the bomb cities in berlin. it was pointed out the extraordinary sadism with which was carried on. an utterly harmless little town

was simply obliterated in the very end of the war. why was this carried on? leaving the ins and outs of the bombing offensive on one side, is it not a little bit silly in 1944 and 1945 to be bombing into the ground a country with which you are going to be militarily allied three or four years later? i remember myself the glee with which as a small boy how would look at the pictures of the hanged war criminals and read about it. it was the world where the daily express would lead with the headline "babies bernd." a terrible, sadistic business. there were some very good

germans in england during the war. one wrote, can i help with planning for your postwar germany? that is the sort of thinking that was going on about germany. another extraordinary case, you'll have seen this film in which tom cruise is made to play a german aristocrat. what are they going to do next? elton john as an actor renna? -- as anna karenina?

it seems to me to argue something is going bury badly wrong. it is understandable, but what if we are going to been array churchill, he should have seen much further ahead. as things were, what he did see was in england in close alliance with the united states. it is true to say that he got out of it what for us was a privileged existence. the england in which i grew up was remarkably prosperous. it seemed to be doing very, very well. suddenly, in comparison with the rest of europe, it went down. you'll remember in the 1970's when you looked at to passport and felt dread traveling to somewhere in continental europe.

obviously i am not blaming churchill for that, but i think there was a mood of national complacency which developed, which grows around the sort of plinth view of churchill. the title island which had planned its war effort with great distinction, which had emancipated women during the war. the result of all that was the sort of thinking that went into the labor government of 1945. i wonder if there is a single institution created out of that period which we would not want to amend very seriously if we could go back in a time machine. to that extent, the churchill called has a certain amount of responsibility. we thought we had done absolutely wonderfully, and in fact the germans were getting their act together in a way that

we had simply failed to do. we caught up again in the 1980's, and it was a very interesting time to go through. let us not fall for this smug veneration of churchill. as patrick allan said, it was a wonderful moment to read about in history, but the rest, i have my doubts. thank you. [applause] >> our final speaker is richard overy, professor of history at exeter university and author of more than 20 books about the second world war. in his most recent book, reviewed only last weekend, was his 1939 countdown to war.

richard overy. [applause] >> it is quite difficult going sixth with such a distinguished panel. i am going to round off the debate. i thought my task would be quite difficult, really, but in fact i have heard a lot of history discussion, strategy, discussion of the gold standard. none of which it seems to me is germane to the case the opposition is trying to make. i took the motion to mean that if churchill had acted very differently or if he had not been there at all, things would have been better for the free world. listening to our opponents, you think for a moment that britain had lost the first world war and lost the second world war. every now and then i was having to do a double take when

listening to this catalog of all crimes that churchill was supposed to be responsible for. i want to approach the question into ways that have not been talked about so far this evening. i think with respect to my distinguished opposition, there is a profound misunderstanding about the nature of the historical process in which churchill himself was an actor. the second point is to come back to the question about reliability for the free world. this question of freedom that is so central to churchill's own by use is something i think we have not really talked about very much this evening. the most obvious thing about the history is that you cannot blame one person for all this. listening to what the opposition is saying, i kept having to pinch myself and say are we talking about stolen or are we talking about hitler?

-- stalin or hitler? historical processes do not work like that. churchill had to wage war just as he was having the chancellor of exchequer by committee. the important thing is that churchill, for all his strategic misjudgment, was able to take advice. did hitler takes advice? not very well, we are told. but churchill was willing to take advice, and he did on a wide range of issues. not only that, but the processes with which she was concerned, where the the first world war, munitions, fighting the battle of britain, decisions about overlord, he was not the only person involved in all these processes.

hundreds of people were involved in this decisionmaking. in many cases, things were quite beyond his control during the time we are talking about. what the opposition has done is to simply make him a lightning conductor for all their own gripes about what went wrong with the historical story in the 20th-century. many of the issues we have heard about, churchill was largely a spectator. the rise of communism in china, and even eastern europe. what the church will have done about eastern europe? it is one thing to say that he was responsible for the debts of 30 million germans, etc., but we all know there was very little that the west could do by the end of the second world war to expel the soviet union from eastern europe. certainly nothing that churchill could have done on his own.

he operated with other politicians and took the advice from the combined chiefs of staff. he took the advice from his own political staff. this is not a churchill only story. his relationship to those processes is something only to bear in mind. what is interesting is that churchill himself recognized the limitations of action, what he could and could not do. he also recognized his own limitations. it is only in the churchill industry over the last 20 or 30 years in which we have made him into a kind of saint and we all doubt his miracles. churchill recognized his own limitations as well. i would argue he was driven by a world historical vision, which barry few other wartime leaders are leaders in g8 which very few other wartime leaders enjoyed.

the crisis in the middle east -- that world historical vision was a very important one. the core of that vision is a view of liberty. we need to remember that the motion before us tonight is about the free world. it is not about a world that we might dream up or think about. it is about the question of freedom. churchill did not want to give much freedom to the indians. he came from a particular class. he headed deep loathing of communism. he did not like the labor party very much. what he was driven by was a deep hatred of tyranny. he knew what tierney was. he had an old-fashioned view of english liberty. it seems old-fashioned today, but it is a very important view of liberty. it was about rule of law.

it was about parliamentary government. it was about fundamental freedoms. you might think that is a piece of rhetoric, but in fact it is central to his vision. he was a warrior for liberal age. we need to remember that the liberal age was in deep crisis in the 1930's and 1940's. when churchill came to power in 1940, there was almost no democracy left in europe. the high point of the crisis years of 1941 and 1942, it looked as if the liberal age was on the point of extinction. we need to remember the nature of the crisis that churchill is trying to confront. this is not a better strategy here, a better economic policy there. he saw this as a central crisis

of civilization, and many of these people saw it that way as well. it seems to me that churchill's critical contribution is really to understand those values and to a line written with them at a moment of acute crisis in world history. even if his speech was rhetorical and long winded, even if he was blind to some of the problems of a democratic empire , i would still argue that this is an important part of his legacy. i want to finish by quoting churchill's last speech in the house of commons, 1955 parting speech. "a day made on when their plight, love for one's fellow man, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march 4 serene and triumphant from the hideous bebop in which we have had to dwell.

-- the hideous epoch in which we have had to welker go i think that exemplifies the kind of approach that churchill had to world issues. whatever we think of his rhetoric or its effect, a man committed to the survival of those court values -- those core values can surely only be regarded in the long run as an asset. thank you. [applause] >> before i come to you for your questions, because we will have about half an hour of questions to be put to our panel from anybody the audience, i will give you the results of the vote as you came in. before the debate, for the motion, 118.

against the motion, 1167. but don't knows, 422. that is the interesting number. so let us now have your questions. there are people with microphones ready to come to you. i would like you to stand up when you put your first question. there is one over here already. i would like you to stand up and speak clearly. i will take groups of questions. >> could i ask those opposing the motion to deal with what i think of as one of mr. reid -- mr. began his most serious allegations against churchill, which is precipitating events

that led inevitably to the disaster of that second, and that churchill's belligerence obstructed the possibility of avoiding the first world war? >> this light is very difficult to deal with. >> i have the impression that on both sides of the argument, speakers have slightly tiptoed around issue of what was really crucial about 1940. my question therefore is this. churchill had not stood out as he did against compromise and discussion with hitler and with the fascists, what with the consequences have been? after all, the soviet union was an alliance with the ossie germany and the united states was neutral.

>> the third question right over there. then we will start the answers. >> poland has loomed quite large in the debate today. i just wondered on this anniversary, what you make of the russian delegation -- and whether he can substantiate [unintelligible] the small concession of danzig. >> what was crucial that 1940 -- about 1940? >> to go to the first one, i do not believe that winston churchill did obstruct the kaiser's desperate need for peace in 1914. it strikes me that there was a it had diminished the attempt by

germany -- in order to extend the power of the central powers, and winston churchill and did nothing but his job as first lord of the admiralty. to take the second, you are absolutely right, a peace deal in 1940 would have been disastrous for britain, not least because america was not in the war and russia was allied to our enemy, but also it would have meant that we as a nation it would no longer have had that bigger and that ability to stay in the game in a way that we desperately needed to. whichever side one, either the russians or the germans, and finally, with poland, the putin government is playing extremely

-- an extremely unpleasant game. >> let me talk to the gentleman who made the point about poland. the truth is, as i wrote, i believe that a of hitler did not want war with poland after the check as a bucket crumble. poland had participated in taking a czechoslovakian apart. what germany wanted after march was simply the return of then zig -- danzig. they were willing to negotiate with the polls. gillon wanted war with poland instead of an alliance with poland, he would have demanded the whole corridor, and that would have let instantly to work. chamberlain himself himselfdanzig, 300,000 people

should be returned to germany rather than be a cause of war. the poll's other british war guarantee, which was the greatest blunder in history. the british empire and nation saying if hitler attacked poland, which they could not say, and the british had no plan to say, we will go to war on behalf of poland, thus giving polish colonel's a judge of polish colonel's the power to bring the british empire and nation into war. that was an act of insanity. many historians have said so. one of the only individuals who supported that guarantee was winston spencer churchill's. what happened to poland as a consequence of that? we know what happened. they kept danzig, the loss 6 million people, they lost their freedom for the years, and the lost half of their country to stalin's russia, which winston churchill himself acquiesced in.

. . the poles were not tested for a moment, but they knew what hitler was really about. they in fact were caught in a totally impossible position between two very predatory tyrants on both sides. timberland, after the humiliation of seeing -- chamberlain, after seeing the

humiliation of prague, had no option but to guarantee -- guaranteed poland. >> they did have an option. they could recognize after check was about to crumble, that we cannot save those countries. the option he should have taken was the same one the americans to it after world war ii, when check less about the of felt this dahlin, when stalin dishonored all of its pledges. america said it weakened only defend this line. if the british had said, we're getting together with the french and telling hitler if you cross into belgian, holland, or france, your head or with great britain -- hitler never won a war with the british empire or the british nation. he was always willing to pay a price for it. as i said, churchill was the one goading chamberlain to give that

were guaranteed. >> living on the more questions. telling people upstairs, you must move to the microphone to ask your question. there is one microphone there and one microphone there. allies are so blazingly strong, i cannot see whether you are there not there. yes, i can see someone is there. >> why does anyone believe that someone could do a deal with hitler? surely that is not a beyond belief. >> yes, good evening.

who started the war? listening to those in favor of the motion, it sounds to me as though britain started the war and churchill started the war. maybe i have gotten my history wrong. i thought i was hitler. the second question, who handed over central and eastern europe to stalin? maybe i've got my history wrong, but i thought it was the american and roosevelt.

>> some of those treaties, precise and all about, there is a very good argument for the appeasement strategy up until 1938. and then something those incredibly wrong. i imagine some in the audience know, if you talk to people who were there in 1939, as far as we're concerned, the war broke out in the 1939 summer. we all expected it. and when 1940 comes along, we got a tiny little bit of it in this country -- with of it -- whiff of it. i was in a small minority during the falklands war. but the feeling of patriotism was palpable. and in 1940, these things are simply not rational. there was one rational

calculation. hitler had threatened to to bomb western cities, and exaggerated the amount of bombing that he could do. and when the radar chain went up to protect the south, we were making more fighters in the german war. -- and the germans were. whatever the excuse, we'll go to war. it looks now the product of a mad house as many said at the time. but in its way, it is the rationalizes -- rationalization of a nightmare that is coming through. i agree with you that this is not really on a point of churchill. >> i have no opinion here. the start of the war? >> the germans started the war by invading poland. that was pretty straightforward. i would of thought.

it was hitler's 50th birthday, given a casket containing all the treaties that had been signed since he had become furher, not including the versailles treaty. only since 1993. important ones like the naval treaty, and the private secretary joked that hitler had broken every single one of them. ladies and gentlemen, that is not a man that you can do a deal with. >> more questions? yes, there's a little banged up there. let's have three questions from that -- there is a little game

up there. let's have three questions from there. but your mouth right near the microphone. >> many thanks for an interesting evening. if churchill was more a liability than an asset, who could possibly have done a better job? [applause] >> we know that nazism stood for oppression. in the 1930's, the conference made it apparent what their ulterior motive was in regard to the jews. why did the proponents not acknowledge overy's point that churchill saw through although bullshit? listening to the proponents, i know that the courageous few men who stood up to chamberlain and halifax with their -- thank god they were there alongside churchill. [applause]

>> who would have done a better job? >> although i must admit that question does not overwhelmingly interest me, i will give an answer to it. [laughter] i want to get back to fighting the war, because i am more interested in that than who started at, although i am fully prepared to believe that hitler did. all along with most historians. in terms of the notion of a good chief executive, someone who can take good decisions, a church till of course was renowned for being in a chaotic decisionmaker. the whole notion of the sumatra campaign and the norway campaigns were good examples. somebody who was actually very efficient at being a chief executive, of making decisions, not in a chaotic way but in a clear, precise, and considered

by and moving on was clement attlee. i am not a supporter of the labor party, but he actually as deputy prime minister of the second world war is the great unsung chief executive. in his own government afterward, the fact remains that he was a very efficient and well organized and chief executive. he would have actually been a much more efficient prime minister at making the proper decisions than churchill's very chaotic method of making decisions. >> many credit the conference as the beginning of the holocaust. that occurred on january 31 of 1942, 2.5 years into the war.

who started the war? hitler started the war on september 1, 1939. on september 3, britain and france declared war on germany. why? to honor a war guarantee to poland that they could not honor, they had no plans to honor, and they did not, in this sense, the french army told polls on the 15th day the whole french army will be thrown against germany. the british told the poles, if they bomb warsaw, we bomb berlin. they did not, and so the poles suffered this horrendous fate. the french and british, heroic as they were, could not conceivably honor --

that would be decided by the two great monsters, hitler and stalin. the british and french should have done what they did when stalin dishonored the yalta agreements. you said, and do not cross our redline. if britain had done that, i believe that hitler wanted no war in the west, and a lot of things he might want to do in the east, but if you cannot prevent it, why do you declare war? >> there is an important issue within that war, which is no war, no holocaust. >> it is an absolutely monstrous thing to say. the holocaust started far earlier than that conference. [applause] the ss or killing of jews in poland as soon as the invasion of poland took place.

they killed up to 1 million jews before the conference, and all the conference did was to organize the disgusting industrialization of the massacre of the jews. that predated the conference to extend of over 1 million people. [applause] >> i thought one of the best points was made by norman stone, which was the pointlessness of the bombing of germany in the closing stages of the war, which seems counterproductive and immoral, frankly. >> many people see the second

world war as a war for freedom. i would like to take up churchill's attitude toward india. he opposed the government of india and was less than enthusiastic about the mission in 1942. does this blemish his image as a great war leader? >> the whole question of the bombing of germany has two sides. one is the military side and one is the moral side. and the military side, one has to acknowledge the fact that it was a second of front. it does not justify the bombing of hamburg or dresden or anything like that.

they would not have had to withdraw the bulk of the fighting units from the eastern front to defend the right. that allowed the major breakthroughs of the eastern front. as was pointed out, the creation of the bombing force was almost a monster. once it had been created, it is very hard to stop it, and that is one of the terrible effects of the industrial and the manpower investment which had been made in bomber command, and why it was so difficult to stop it toward the end. there, churchill was certainly at all. -- churchill was certainly at fault. he should have reined in harris well before, and he certainly should have stopped those bombings in 1945. the bombing of dresden was deliberately and directly requested by the red army to prevent the transfer divisions from the western front to the

eastern front. it was the western blood guilt regarding the soviet union. >> it could have been diverted just as much if the attacks had gone as the americans suggested, against pinpoint targets and not against industrial cities and women and children and so on. if you reduce the british effort to its essentials, is taking american dollars in order to kill defenseless women and children. leading the land to the russians. >> are we debating what is strategic to do or what is moral to do? >> in this case, there were very

strong strategic arguments that the americans adopted when they got around to it. they said he should concentrate on the targets that matter. >> church hill opposed the indian independence. >> he opposed it in 1935. he did nothing to oppose it in 1948. i notice that norman seemed to blame the bad transfer of power in india it on churchill. he was leader of the opposition. the key point is that the best thing that could have happened for india between 1939 and 1945 was to keep the japanese out. when they got to the philippines, that killed 17.2% of the population there. the great struggle that took place in burma stop the japanese, and that is something that ought to be put down to churchill's credit. >> any further comments on that? everyone downstairs is very silent.

>> i have a question. it was mentioned about gallipoli. it was laid at the feet of churchill. in reading his biography, it does not look that clear. he had a strategy that was working. it was to go when and capture istanbul. the british admiral got cold feet when if french battle ship was sunk, and the british high command then reconsider the whole strategy, which would have been one if they had persevered. it gave the opposition time to rearm and stage a brilliant

defense in gallipoli at the cost of several hundred thousand allied lives. was it really churchill, or was it that his plan was not carried out, and the responsibility is the british high command who changed the whole plan? >> norman, you are a turkish expert picks if i can only suggest, go and have a look at the battlefield and think back to the circumstances of 1915. they were having to roll cans of water in full view of turkish rifle fire in order to keep hundreds of thousands of men on that baron peninsula. you have to look at the contours' on the map. they cannot have looked at the contours' on the map. >> when you walk up the battlefield, see the trenches

and the mountainous terrain. it seems impossible. the whole idea is that it was going to be captured so quickly that the turks would not be able to reinforce. when they did, that was the point at which we should have pulled out. winston churchill -- it was a fascinating, brilliant scheme that went horribly wrong and then was reinforced badly. winston churchill large his lesson. he never overrule the chiefs of staff and the second world war in the way he did in the first. >> a couple of questions from down here. who has the microphone here? 1, 2, 3. >> this is a question about which is the greater liability on assets.

someone is loved -- who loved his country would rather give up his country and give up his ideas of what a free nation was. >> the arguments about churchill's politics and colonial strategy, don't you think he was more a liability to the free world? >> mr. buchanan, we are not today living with the consequences of gallipoli norris suffering the consequences of going on the gold standard, or any of the other consequences due to churchill's errors. we are suffering the consequences are enjoying the results of one single man who was available at the time, who was able to make the right decision. surely the rest of the world has enjoyed the benefits they are up. how are you equate the

consequences -- minor consequences of the errors he has done against the consequences of the great that he did? [applause] >> could you speak more clearly? >> after hearing the argument of the opposition about churchill's politics and colonial strategy, churchill was more a liability to great britain but an asset to the free world. >> pat, would you like to respond? >> let's take churchill from 1911 to 1945.

when he came into office as first lord of the admiral to, britain was the first nation on earth. the british empire was the greatest in person from. -- the greatest empire in the world. i believe the british empire and the united states for the two greatest forces for human advancement in history. when churchill left in 1945 as prime minister after two wars, 100 million europeans were dead. all the old empires including the british empire were crumbling or work on. germany was smashed. stalin was in complete control of eastern and central europe. the americans had gone home, and as an robert said, winston churchill was going to westminster out in missouri to the college there to say and our current had descended upon europe. i think those two wars, in my judgment, are the moral ones -- the mortal wounds that may lead to the death of our

civilization. for all his heroism, winston churchill was the leading british proponent of taking his nation into both those wars and turning them into world wars. >> may have a go at this? the decisions that he took in terms of economics denuded the ability of this country to rearm effectively and fight the war. just look at afghanistan today. what is it that the armed services are insufficiently well-equipped? because gordon brown has not manage the economy properly. the economy has direct consequences on the ability to prosecute a war. let's come to the second world war. the gallipoli campaign became the paradigm of for all of churchill's this passion to strategy efforts. norway, crete, there is soft underbelly, impenetrable.

it became the paradigm for his entire strategy. we are told that the second front could not have been conducted in 1943. let's look at the arguments. we are told there was insufficient landing craft. there was more shipping, including landing craft, used in the sicily campaign in july 1943 than in the normandy campaign a year later. it is not rocket science. they could have been built, if churchill had not procrastinated over the second front. we are told that the luftwaffe had superiority. they had air superiority over northwest france, etc. from

early 1943. they will come back and say the typhoon had all these problems, structural problems. all of these were rectified by the end of 1942, and the typhoon was the air superiority fighter which established air superiority over northwestern. we are told that we cannot have had in 1943 because of the u- boat's menace. there were 19 different divisions employed in sicily. most of those came from the united states. but came across despite the u- boat's threat. only eight divisions were employed in the normandy landings. the normandy landings eventually rose to 47 divisions.

by the end of 1942, the u.s. had 73 divisions, with 5.5 million men. the british had 27 divisions domestically, 38 divisions abroad. 138 divisions in total. we are told -- >> we will give you a chance to continue that. we have come to the time when we have to vote. you have your voting card. will you tear it into and put the appropriate one in the tin that will come around. if you cannot decide, drop the entire ticket into the tin. while this is happening, i am going to ask our speakers to offer eight sum up of their

case. beginning with richard overy. >> summing up for our side is not going to be difficult to do. >> can we keep talking a bit quieter, because it is hard to be heard. >> having heard all the arguments from the other side, there seems to be a great deal of nitpicking about live issues of strategy and tactics. it does not seem to me to be answering or serving the proposition itself. we have tried to stick closely to the proposition and arguments against it, but the curious thing, churchill is still all over the place. who declares war? neville chamberlain.

he is trying to make out that neville chamberlain has churchill behind and he is somehow some kind of puppet. what we are hearing is kind of a counter history, which seems to me does not serve our cause very well at all. if we come back to the central issue of the proposition, that he was more a liability than an asset. much of what we have heard this -- nothing of what we have heard this evening persuades me that he was more a liability. [applause] >> norman stone. >> i very much approved when richard overy said yes, it was a war against tyranny. it was a war against tyranny which ended up with europe underwear churchill himself said in 1949 was worse tierney than adolf hitler's.

we have established that a lot of what churchill did before 1940 is just not really defensible. i would stress this unrealistic imperialism. it is such a strange age to read about, the 1930's. richard overy has done a very good book on the morbid side of it. i think the unreality of that whole period was summed up by what the league of nations did, it said it can we discuss the standardize asian of level -- this standardization of gllevel crossings in europe? it is an unreal world. churchill is too unreal a figure.

>> for those who seem to have attacked churchill all over the place and all at different times during his career, in fact, they have not landed a single convincing local, just a series of pinpricks and nitpicks. it stretches the imagination. pat buchanan's view of history certainly seems to be a highly original one, particularly when it comes to the united states and roosevelt. it is almost as if churchill is responsible for everything that went wrong, but roosevelts attempt to win over stalin, it was that fatal combination of arrogance and charm that he thought would somehow win him around.

it was a total failure. obviously one excess churchill's ... and loss and things like that, but one has to look at the overall picture, and that is, he was a great asset to the free world. thank you. [applause] >> i think richard is absolutely right to stick to the proposition. in terms of his decision making, what policies and strategies he actually implemented. he implemented policies that immensely damaged the economy. the strategies he employed in world war ii, that if we had stuck to them to this day, we would have still been fighting the second world war to this very day. in respect of the 10 million people who died in the last

year of the war, the range of things i was talking about before, and i have plenty more of them, demonstrates that it could and should have been done in 1943. mike one big final thing i want to say is that the 10 million people who died in the last year of the war, more than anybody responsible for perpetuating the war, keeping it going longer than it needed to have gone or should have gone, was churchill. [applause] >> andrew roberts. >> if we had undertaken to early across channeled attack in 1943, it would have set back the war to our three years. the vital thing was to ensure that did not happen. with the proposition -- what the opposition are doing is mixing up cause and effect again and again. the collapse of british power

did overlap with the core of winston churchill, but there is no cause and effect. both elf hitler and the kaiser were committed to trying to destroy the power of the country, and it was winston churchill who prevented it. [applause] >> andrew roberts said that the great moment of winston churchill's career was the iron curtain speech. in 1920 he knew better than anyone else about the bolsheviks and spoke up and urged intervention. what happened to him in 1942 through 1945 when he was over there with style and dividing up europe, saying keep the baltic republics? what happened to him there? these are all a consequence of what winston churchill told fdr

in 1941 when he asked him, what should recall this war? churchill said we should call it the unnecessary war, because there was never at work more easily avoidable than this one. our point is that many of the blunders that led to this war and led to the disaster that came out of it in eastern europe and for the british empire were directly attributable to winston spencer churchill. [applause] >> i want to keep this going, because there are interesting points on both sides. the case about the economy and the fact that churchill was responsible for the fact that we were not ready, and the economy was not able to meet the demands on it. >> again, this is quite wrong. we went into the gold standard in 1925. churchill gave up being chancellor of the exchequer in 1929. it was not until at least five

years later that he was begging for proper amounts of money to be spent on the defensive this country. it was a full 10 years after that that we finally went to war, so i cannot see that can be blamed on winston churchill. pretty much everything tonight has been blamed on him. the weakness of the british economy in the late 1930's was not his fault. he had already been in the wilderness for nine years. >> research of cambridge has clearly demonstrated that, so i am afraid that is true as i stated it. >> cambridge economists have demonstrated a lot of things. [applause] >> i am very willing to discuss the economics with you if you feel capable and competent, at any time. >> i want each side to consider

this more general question, because from the people who oppose the motion, we have heard them say that churchill made mistakes. everyone made mistakes. on the other side, they are being blamed as the liability for the free world. how extensive are you prepared to agree the mistakes that churchill made work, and that their ramifications did significantly have a counter effect? >> this is not an accountancy examination here. >> it is a debate, richard. >> what we are doing on this side is simply saying that there is a counterfactual argument being stated. if churchill had not been there, things would have been very different. how much better with a b? we have no idea. we do know that he played a vital part. without him there to engage

public enthusiasm and to maintain that commitment, things might have been very much worse. >> the fact is, dresden was not a defenseless city. many gave their lives of flying a 13 hour round trip to bomb dresden, which was a center of electrical trades in that part of southern germany. it was a point at which through the combined bomber offensive, the increase of the production of german munitions suddenly trails off at the time of the bombing in 1943. the idea that it was some kind of war crime must not just go and criticize. and criticized -- and

criticized -- uncriticized. [applause] >> the question of the errors being a computer will component of laying out churchill. >> you can go to the errors listed. norway, yes, he was responsible for that. he was the first to be embarrassed that chamberlain was blamed for it, and acknowledge his own mistake there. sumatra and the eastern edge rainey and some of those wild schemes, which certainly did lose men and items. when it came down to the key decisions, the ones that really affected the conduct of the war, churchill basically got it right. yes, he was wrong perhaps on d- day, but he was certainly right to have delayed it.

there is no doubt about that. >> i want to turn to the other side and put to use something that has only been mentioned in passing, something i think the audience would regard as very significant. churchill's eloquence and his oratory and his capacity to inspire the nation. how can that not be an asset? >> is certainly an asset, there is no question about it. the principal way of inspiring the nation is actually through military victories rather than through speeches. but you need the inspiration when you are losing. >> the point is, what are you losing? is it a lack of inspiration, or is it the wrong strategy? in respect to clement attlee, which i am amazed to find i am defending this evening, he would probably have made a more strategic decisions were correctly.

i do not want to make a big thing about him being a great war leader. at least the important point is that by making the right decisions, the right strategic decisions, then you start winning victories. once you start winning victories, that is the best possible thing for morale. when you are losing because the strategy is wrong, then of course the net result is that you need to fall back on a churchill in order to inspire you in your darkest days. >> pat buchanan? >> churchill was undeniably eloquent. his speeches were magnificent. they are still heard in the united states, and he is spoken of highly in all the colleges and universities. you have to ask yourself this. as nigel said, he was inspiring a nation to stand up and resist the german army which had thrown the british army of the

continent at dunkirk. his eloquence was splendid, but what explains why great britain, the greatest empire on earth, one of the greatest nation on earth, is in such desperate straits and almost defenseless at that. in time and was not winston churchill and some of the decisions he made, gutting the british fleet, was he not in large part responsible himself for the desperate straits in which this nation found itself? [laughter] [applause] >> we are awaiting the results of the vote at any moment. while i still have this array of historians here, i will ask the

more general question about the writing of history. 70 years we have been celebrating recently. it is the telling of history shifting and a critique of church till now, for the first time, on the agenda because the generations who remember the war are growing old and perhaps for getting are not speaking of it, and younger people are making different judgments? >> funny enough, it is rarely the younger people who are writing anti churchill books. the revisionist history still seems to be written by people of a certain age, although the second world war is moving from the realm of memory into the realm of history. churchill revisionism is still pretty much a minority fetish. [laughter]

i like to ask each of you as historians with you filled your moving into a combat zone with the revision is now for the first time. >> most historians do not debate the way we have been debating tonight. we have heard a distorted history from the other side. historians have been thinking critically about churchill for years. it is not something that has just been invented. it may be that the popular image of churchill is different from the historians image of churchill. the idea that somewhere or other this is something we are having to come to terms with for the first time is simply not the case. we are trying to come to terms with the kind of history we have been hearing this evening, which seems to be a distortion of historical reality. [applause] >> i agree entirely with richard. most historians have always

seen the two sides, the black and white, or the strengths and weaknesses in churchill. it is only really been in the last 15 or 20 years that you have had attempts to undermine the permissive churchill, as if he were perfect, which has never been the case. the revisionist myths that are more dangerous, and that is a complicated area to get into now. >> are you part of a new, growing approach to this subject? >> i think that history has always undergone revisions. there is nothing new in that at all. periodically there have been revisionist accounts of churchill in the past. i am sure that will always be

the case. i must just finish on something that richard said before we all got together here. he said that given all the fuss about these things, he wishes that the second world war had not broken out in the first place, and i concur with that. [applause] >> i have the results. against the motion, the number has increased to 1194. for the motion, the number has also increased to 181. i beg your pardon, 34 people do not know. who are they? >> stand up. [laughter] >> so the motion is not carried, but what an interesting

evening we have had. on your behalf, i would like to thank everyone. [applause] just to say that each of them will be out in the hall where there many books are on sale. thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> a look at the history of the health care debate. and in an investigation of the bernie madoff.

>> next month, a unique look at our nation's highest court, its traditions and history. >> it is not an understatement to say that this building would not have been here without the persistence of chief justice taft. >> he believed that when it was -- when he was president, and when he became a chief justice, it became an obsession. >> insights from historians and the justices, starting a tumble forth on c-span. go online now for a virtual tour of the court, historic photos, and more at c-span.org. >> it had been 15 years since hillary clinton presented a health care reform plan to congress. next, a discussion on how those past debates play into the current call for health care reform and lessons learned. we will hear from several witnesses that played a role in the 1993 debate at this event hosted by the american

enterprise institute. this is two hours. >> thank plan but until ed wednesday night, no one had actually seen it. in case you missed it here it is. -- that didn't work. there it is. now, it's a little blurry but that's appropriate. this is actually the card i read yesterday that the democrats have been given a card from the white house. and fortunately i found online somewhere the card. this is the image of the card and i'm not going to read the details because there's too much to read here but the key is that

this is a very slimmed down piece of legislation, not the 1100 pages we've grown to expect. we can read that. all of those words have some sort of meaning, although, as i think many of us found listening to the speech on wednesday night, every came away with a different sense of what that meaning was. and that, of course is one of problems that's fueling the ongoing uproar over health care reform. the house produced two versions and the senate health committee produced a fragment of legislation conveniently leaving the nasty bits about how to pay for it to the committee of jurisdiction. if in doubt, join the health committee it's easier and senator back us issued an 18-page framework for his gang

of six. might well become the final legislation, many of the things that the president referred to speech on wednesday night seemed to come out of the bacchus play book. but that remains to be seen. we're having arguments now that are likely to be moot in another month or three or more. so -- what do we know about this. this is a sharp contrast to the rollout of the clinton health reform in '93 and 94. the clinton reform, of course, really had something like a year's head start when bill clinton was elected -- inaugurated. it was completely clear there was going to be health reform just like this time. but he set into motion a complex and some people claim mysterious

but actually just boring and tedious procession. to develop within the confines of essentially the white house, detailed specifications that we're still waiting for from the congress. -- now, some people say that the health security act was released on october 27th, 1993. actually, i don't think that's true. i did a little research and i think the actual legislation doesn't become public until sometime in november. but in any event there was what will you say, nine months or so of actual policy development -- >> 20 years -- >> 20 years and nine months. so that's good news, but a very

long period of policy developments that brought in literally hundreds of experts but not vem congressman to develop a complex bill. this time -- and then we have to get to the rest of the time line, so cbo got their hands on the bill and by sometime in february of 1994 produced this volume. which would still be a best seller except it gives their product away for free. this is a very, very thorough analysis of the clinton reform. it goes in some ways beyond what most people think of as a cbo cost system. it provided a great deal of

information and i'll say something more about it specifically. then, of course we have the political process that followed throughout 1994. it seems to me that we are politically where -- we are politically where the clinton reform was in february or maybe june or maybe even september, although probably not that late of 1994. in the sense that the political process this year at least from what we heard from the president suggests that if there's going to be a bill assigned, it's going to be assigned on or before christmas eve. that gives only a few months. to complete the political process. from the policy development and anl littic standpoint, i would

argue that we haven't gotten to january of '94 and may not -- february of 94 and we may not have gotten to june of '93 either. we know some things about what is emerging but we don't an awful lot. we don't know what the bill looks like. you can't fault a cbo for not being able to analyzed in detail that that doesn't fully exist yet. i wanted to mention some of the key points by re-gailing you with a little bit of the table of contents here for this book. they did a very long summary of the proposal which is very helpful because it actually explained a very complicated provisions in actual english words that many people could understand, remarkable accomplishment.

they of course, hit the budget tri aspects of the bill. that's the main job. they also discussed a question that that could be a question this year, which is essentially, how do you treat what they call health alliances back then and you know, mugt think of it as either the changes osh the public plan. depends on what actually those things mean but how to treat those concepts in the budget. then economic effects of the proposal, including interesting questions such as how would total national health spending be affected by the bill. what would be the business reaction. how much would they end up paying or saving? who would carry the burden of additional costs or benefit from

additional savings. at least in general terms. what would happen to employment and the labor force and finally the run away best part of this whole volume section called other considerations, which raised the ugly question, just how is it possible to implement such a gigantic and complicated bill. the contrast is contained in my -- is this my folder? >> the contrast is contained in -- i think i have all of the cbo letter that's have come out this year on specific questions raised about even -- any of the versions of the house or senate bills. and it's this much. it's a lot of writing, but a lot of it is stays very close to the

kind of narrowing budget estimate and impact on the number who get covered and the other sorts of questions that come up are dealt with nearly as well as cbo was able to do 15 years ago. there's the dilemma. we really do need by we, i mean not just the public but the congress needs to have a better understanding of what they might well be voting on in the next month or two. and cbo is a reliable source of that information, may not necessarily agree with them. but they don't particularly have an axe to grind other than the tradition tradition traditional ee con mist axe

we're at the great disadvantage in terms of public policy making this year simply because the process hasn't ripened to the point where this kind of analysis can be done and yet the politics may well with that introduction, let me move briefly introduce the panel, and i will reserve some time to blither on myself about things that may have occurred to me. i think have done enough in it -- and that in the direction here. bob was the director of cbo during the clinton health reform era, and was responsible for getting this very important, complex, an interesting rt