Winston Churchill once called Mahatma Gandhi "a bad man and an enemy of the Empire" who should have been done away with.
The war-time prime minister of Britain told Field Marshal Jan Christian Smuts of South Africa at a meeting of the war cabinet in London in the 1940s: "You are responsible for all our troubles in India - you had Gandhi for years and did not do away with him."
To which, Smuts replied: "When I put him in prison - three times - all Gandhi did was to make me a pair of bedroom slippers."
When the Mahatma went on a hunger strike during World War II, Churchill told the cabinet: "Gandhi should not be released on the account of a mere threat of fasting. We should be rid of a bad man and an enemy of the Empire if he died."
Churchill's behind-closed-door, candid observations at cabinet meetings about people and issues during the war were recorded for posterity by one of the war cabinet minute-takers, Lawrence Burgis.
At that time it was the law that all notes taken at cabinet meetings should be destroyed. However, Burgis apparently failed to destroy his notes which came to light six decades later when prominent British historian Andrew Roberts was recently going through the British cabinet archives for his forthcoming book Masters and Commanders.
Roberts came across several files of Burgis in which the then assistant to the deputy secretary to the War Cabinet between 1939 and 1945 kept verbatim notes of cabinet conversations.
"It was at that moment that I realised that Lawrence Burgis had broken the 1911 Official Secrets Act, and had kept his verbatim notes of Winston Churchill's War Cabinet," Roberts says.
He adds that the notes will also compel historians to reassess other famous British personalities of that time.
Views: Taken in by stalin
Churchill, whose antagonism towards Stalin is well recorded, was initially not so critical of the Soviet dictator. Roberts found in Burgis' notes how Churchill was taken in by Stalin: "Stalin about Poland said, 'Russia has committed many sins in Poland'. Stalin had a very good feeling with the two Western democracies and wants to work quite easily with us. My hopes lie in a single man, he will not embark on bad adventures."
The war-time prime minister of Britain told Field Marshal Jan Christian Smuts of South Africa at a meeting of the war cabinet in London in the 1940s: "You are responsible for all our troubles in India - you had Gandhi for years and did not do away with him."
To which, Smuts replied: "When I put him in prison - three times - all Gandhi did was to make me a pair of bedroom slippers."
When the Mahatma went on a hunger strike during World War II, Churchill told the cabinet: "Gandhi should not be released on the account of a mere threat of fasting. We should be rid of a bad man and an enemy of the Empire if he died."
Churchill's behind-closed-door, candid observations at cabinet meetings about people and issues during the war were recorded for posterity by one of the war cabinet minute-takers, Lawrence Burgis.
At that time it was the law that all notes taken at cabinet meetings should be destroyed. However, Burgis apparently failed to destroy his notes which came to light six decades later when prominent British historian Andrew Roberts was recently going through the British cabinet archives for his forthcoming book Masters and Commanders.
Roberts came across several files of Burgis in which the then assistant to the deputy secretary to the War Cabinet between 1939 and 1945 kept verbatim notes of cabinet conversations.
"It was at that moment that I realised that Lawrence Burgis had broken the 1911 Official Secrets Act, and had kept his verbatim notes of Winston Churchill's War Cabinet," Roberts says.
He adds that the notes will also compel historians to reassess other famous British personalities of that time.
Views: Taken in by stalin
Churchill, whose antagonism towards Stalin is well recorded, was initially not so critical of the Soviet dictator. Roberts found in Burgis' notes how Churchill was taken in by Stalin: "Stalin about Poland said, 'Russia has committed many sins in Poland'. Stalin had a very good feeling with the two Western democracies and wants to work quite easily with us. My hopes lie in a single man, he will not embark on bad adventures."
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