Historically High - Winston Churchill

Episode Date: May 3, 2023

There have been a few times in history when a person finds themselves in the exact position they need to be at exactly the right time to alter, or in this case stay the course of human history. That time was World War 2 and that person was Winston Churchill. Coming to the position of Prime Minister of Great Britain at a time when their island stood alone against the onslaught of the Nazi Third Reich, Winston Churchill stood firm by rallying not only the people of Great Britain to resist, but inspiring the rest of the world to fight back against tyranny. That may be the most memorable part of Churchill's life but there is so much more that needs to be discussed, including his legendary daily drinking regiment. Support the show Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Oh, okay. I wanted to discuss this with you further. So when I asked you the question about Jaws, about like any movie, I think what your point is, it being comparable to it was good. I'm just trying to figure out like, because Jaws was like a worldwide phenomenon.

Uh-huh. Whereas I think it wasn't that popular. The whole reason that it, I think was even mainstream is that it wasn't like initially popular when it came out as the movie, but they showed it on TV a lot. Did they?

Yeah. And so that's where I remember first seeing it was on TV. So that's like, of course, that makes a whole, you know, shit ton of people afraid of clowns. But I think that's more of just like a U.S. thing. Whereas I think like Jaws, because of being like considered a blockbuster and everything.

I'm pretty sure it did go international. Well, and there has to be a situation for a clown to be in all there has to be for Jaws is just water. That's what I'm saying is so, like, from a psychological standpoint, I'm wondering if, like, of course it's nothing somebody's going to go and report that they have a fear of water because they went and saw this movie and everything. I'm just wondering if, like, across the board, like, places saw, like, reductions in, like,

beachgoers and all that kind of stuff within, like, I'm assuming that thing, that movie damaged probably a lot of tourism. Yeah, like, they weren't selling out. And probably in like lake areas too. They're like, we're not telling all the cabins are in the lake. Why? And they're like,

Jaws. It's like, it's a fucking lake. Why would there be a shark here? It doesn't matter. Like, it's just, it's not a logical thing.

One thing that I was surprised by two, and I think I heard this a couple weeks ago, um, Ben Schwartz, the actor was doing an interview on KFC radio. Mm-hmm. He said that part of the reason why we don't see Jaws so much in the movie, like until the end is because the animatronic,

or, the animatronic shark broke. Yeah, Bruce. It broke like two weeks into filming. Yeah. So he had to like go through and renegotiate the script as far as like just not being able to show him. There was a lot of issues. I think that's what also delayed like the production on it longer than it, you know, had to be and everything.

Was that they had the thing kept fucking breaking down. So they would have it like on its barge that was like submerged like out of the water. And it's literally just like the first third of it that's supposed to look like the shark. And then the rest of it has like the. the dorsal fin, but then it's just like open like metal structure and shit. So you just see like it comes out and the dorsal fin is just hanging off the right. It looks about like you would expect taking like the tour ride at Universal Studios. Oh yeah. That's like the technology they had to create that.

Yeah, it's super interesting to think about those. I guess it's called what mass hysteria or some shit like that. It's kind of what the phenomenon is called. but even just with us talking about it because after I went on my dinosaur escapade with Jurassic Park I was really trying to think about it and I don't really know I mean there's nothing

like there's no movies that do that in the opposite direction it's only like fear-based shit like there's nothing that you see in a movie and you're just like cool all right I'm generally just cool with whatever that is like something that lends like a hopeful optimism type Yeah, that's not going to sell a lot of tickets.

It's not, but it's kind of a good way to do things. I mean, I don't know. I don't really know how to elaborate kind of like when they do do good things, I guess, like that shitty motorcycle movie Wild Hogs with like Travolta and Tim Allen and all that. Excuse me, I think that painted like small bands of biker gangs in a good light, but then it's also like the bigger bands of biker gangs. worse. Do you think, I don't think bikers need like a bad boy movie

to try to cement their image. I think bikers are just kind of bad people anyway. Yeah, I think that just kind of... Not all bikers are bad people, but anybody that's in a biker gang is usually probably not a good person. Yeah, that's probably a fair assessment. They don't get a lot of shit either, which bugs me.

Have you ever seen, like, the news reports about the shootouts that they just have on like the Vegas freeway between, like, oh yeah, or like inside casinos and shit? Uh-huh. Yeah. That shit happens quite frequently, but we usually just hear about black people gang warfare instead of like... That's an occupational hazard of being in a biker gang, man. They don't feel like they need to report that.

That just goes with the territory. Oh, you're in a biker king. You've probably been in several shootouts. Yeah. And it feels like every once in a while, there was one that happened maybe two or three years ago, like on the patio of a restaurant. Yeah, it was, it looked like a fucking like Jimmy Buffett's. Uh-huh. It was bargaining to be a cafe or some shit.

like that, yeah. And it just happens, and they're just cool with it. But bikers, I think, probably, like, when they see themselves on the silver screen to a bad light, they're probably like, that's accurate. Yeah. It might be different. But other than that, there's no, like, movies that really instill fear. There's shit, like, insidious and different things, but none of that's logical.

Like, sharks, sharks, logical. Clowns. Clowns are illogical. Well, thanks to what were you saying, uh, John. Wayne Gacy. Yeah, John Wayne Gacy that lent it some actual like credibility to clowns being psychopaths

or something like that. And KFC because he also managed KFCs. So the clown that manages KFC both scary prospects. Speaking of KFC, I think I can move this into this. Do you know who I believe would have loved KFC

had he spent more time in the States? You don't think, when do you think KFC was made? Ooh, and like a change. form? Yeah. Because it definitely wasn't over in London by 1965, but I'd like to think that Winston

made a stop and met the colonel. I think the colonel and Winston, we could learn pretty well. Winston was in America for a little while. So I wouldn't be surprised if in one form or another he had, you know, something similar to KFC. Yeah, or even fried chicken. It's like, you guys got fish and chips. They're like, motherfucker, we got something even better.

You guys fry fish? We just decide to fry chickens. Yeah. You cut it up? Sometimes. Sometimes not. Sometimes we just throw the whole bitch in there. So we are talking Winston God damn Churchill or his, what was his legal name? Was Winston?

It was like Rupert or something. He had a, Raymond, something. He had a real bad middle name. Sir Winston, Leonard Spencer Churchill. Spencer, I think was the one that I heard. Don't like it. I love this guy. This guy, preface this with, this guy is human. So he's going to have some false. but overall, probably one of the most, I don't know, crucial people within the last couple centuries to have existed, not only politically and everything like that,

but just overall. He's, I don't know really how many people think about this word when it comes to like trying to describe a human. Winston Churchill is just undeniable. Like the man, it doesn't matter. It sounds like a fucking L'Oreal commercial. Be undeniable. He could have been.

He didn't have any hair, so L'Oreal wouldn't have done any good for him. Or a makeup commercial. No, yeah. But he, is it makeup? You probably. It might be, I don't know. But he, he just, it didn't matter how many times he fucked up. He was like the ultimate, he was the epitome of get knocked down four times, get up five, or whatever that's saying.

He just, he never stopped doing what he wanted to do until he finally achieved what he did. He learned from his mistakes. For the most part. he ran into some failures, but every time it was a failure, it was like he just escaped and did something else. And in a weird way, like, I think when he would go do something after he had been failed or lost whatever position he was in, it may have seemed like he was running from it,

but in a weird way, he went to gain experience that he lacked and kind of was the reason. Like, we'll get into that kind of stuff like your specific examples is where that sounds. So Winston Churchill was born November 30th, 1874, in Oxfordshire, Blenheim in Oxfordshire, and then the place where his family estate was, was is it Blenheim, Blenheim? Blenham Palace. So already starting off, he's born into an estate and a palace. That sounds like a pretty swanky birth.

Well, his parentage was, his father was, um, English and was a direct descendant of the first, the first Duke of Marlborough on his dad's side and then his mother was actually American. So his dad, or his grandpa was the Duke of Siggs? Yes.

Duke Marlboros? Spelled differently, I think. His Marlborough man. I don't know if it comes from that and they just got rid of the UGH. I don't know. We tend to do that with stuff. But yeah, so apparently there's this big kind of like craze in like the 19,

or sorry, not the 19, but like, sometime in like 1850s. Late 19th century. Some like that, where it was like really fashionable for members of like the British royal family, but like the outliers like the Duke in, you know, different places, to like marry their sons to wealthy American businessmen's daughters. Like it was something, it was like a trend or something. And so that's kind of where, um, Randolph, his dad, and then his mom, Jenny Jerome, had been arranged.

It's a good move. I mean, if you're trying to court business from an up-and-coming country and try to bring that money back into your country, it only makes sense to form business practices through marriage. Yeah, and it's the same thing as, like, how do you establish, like, a monarchy and everything or leadership? You would intermarry, essentially, like, the royal lineages. Uh-huh.

From the business standpoint, it doesn't seem any different, like, oh, you're a steel magnate. I'm a businessman and this. Why do we go ahead and, like, reminds me off of wedding crashers. It's like, the Lodges and the, what's there last name? It's Sack Lodge and, oh, the Clary's in the Lodges, two great American families. And as I think we talked about last week, that's where we get into the weird interbreeding, which this wasn't really an issue, because we're talking about completely different countries here. There's no way that Jenny Jerome and Lord Randolph's other family members.

members are going to start fucking like this isn't a royals a royal the royal switch yes this is like a royal to commoner to create kind of a this is harry bringing in mcgan markle the american like he was doing it back so churchill's got some got some straight credit on that the alliteration to that jenny jerome and mckel don't like it feels weird you were even mentioning this like when you heard him talk it wasn't like a thick british accent i think i figured that out Okay. And I think there was a time when they used a certain microphone to where you almost, because a lot of the times when you hear like old-timey voices, it's always the projection and they're talking like this. And the really quick, like, it's almost like everybody.

They talk like this. Yeah. Here's the news update. They have like the same accent as far as like across the board or the same speaking cadence. And I think that that had something to do with the microphones. Like that was the clearest way that they would be picked up or something like that. Maybe that was how they actually, like, if you took, like, classes on species and stuff like that, that it was something like a universal way that they're like, this is how people talk when they're being an orator or something like that. Like, they talk in this cadence and you have to learn to talk like this. It's the most appealing way to have people hear you and they're more likely to agree with you. There had to be something to that. Well, it's almost like an accent among itself. Because you couldn't come in there with like a cockney accent, but like, oh, you lot. Like, shut the fuck up and listen to you. This guy named Mittler. he's up to no good

you couldn't like fucking talk like that and have anyone want to side with you very true you wanted to be a good order and he I don't really know how to describe like his childhood because his childhood's the saddest shit ever and I think unfortunately

he kind of pushed that onto his own kids because from a very young age his dad just didn't really care to have him around like it was almost like his kids were more of a matter of convenience and I didn't really get into like how many brothers and sisters he had. But I got to wonder if it was just Winston himself

or if it was just the children as a whole were all treated that way. I think it probably would have been a children as a whole were treated that way. He was the head like the, you know, the oldest boy. So he was going to be the head of the household essentially after their dad left. But yeah, he didn't have a good relationship. I think he wishes he wouldn't have ended up doing that. It's ironic because then he had that same kind of relationship. He perpetuated that same.

Yeah. he was what it what it how did they term it he was like a servant to the country first and foremost and like a husband and a father like second or some shit like that well and if you haven't arranged marriage with jenny there's a chance that that's gonna be i'm in winston yeah but as far as like because he even had a tough relationship with his mother too yeah and it seems like they might have done a little bit better later on because she ends up sending after her father was gone a lot of the books and shit like that that he wanted. But I have to assume

that that's sort of a loveless marriage. Whereas Winston, on the other hand, him and Clementine were like peas and carrots. He really loved that lady and took a lot of... For the fact that he didn't take a lot of advice from anybody, and yes, most of the stuff that Clemmy was given him wasn't

political. But he really, like, she had his ear. They were a true kind of a team in doing... Oh yeah, there's something to be said about, you know, like Eleanor Roosevelt to FDR and everything. I think that... He was the top, she was the bottom.

Yeah, exactly. She was the legs of the presidency. Did you hear about Winston and Teddy meeting? The initial meeting didn't go well, right? No, no, no, okay. That was Teddy, though. That wasn't FDR.

No, it wasn't. But when they met... We know Teddy is like the rough rider, the guy that goes out there and shoots bears and shit. Yeah, in the Amazon and all that kind of shit. Yeah. They said that when Winston and Teddy met each other for the first time, they really didn't get along well.

and it wasn't like a shock because the aides to Teddy and the AIDS to Windsor were like they're just the same person That's what I was going to say That's what it ended up being Is they were too much like Yeah

They were too like There was no take And give and take Between their personalities It was too similar And you have to imagine When Teddy's like I shot a bear He's like

Yeah well I shot 15 men in battle Like just back and forth They just were trying to one up each other The whole entire time Which I'm sure they had a mutual respect Because I know that Churchill had a pretty good relationship with FDR, it seemed like. A dumb question.

FDR and Teddy were related, right, brothers? Not brothers. We'll find this out now. That should be an American question that I should know, I feel like, but. Roosevelt and FDR. Growing up, though, he really, like, he wasn't the smartest, he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. he didn't always enjoy school

two different two distantly related branches of the family oh really yeah like uh his oh thedo rosevelt and his fifth cousin so not even really close damn that's nuts but he didn't get along well in school

he was a troublemaker growing up didn't really take to the academic side of it he went to a place called horo school which was like a almost like a prerequisite like a military sort of like before college it was like a preparatory school. Yeah you could take

he said something like he went to the Harrow school it feels like it always took him multiple tries to get into these schools and then he finally got in like on the third try when I'm guessing like at some point Randolph was like he's getting fucking in like do you guys need like a new building or like a new wing or something like that he's getting

in. He had the money to facilitate it and he really like him going to Harrow was kind of at his father's request. I sort of, I think he went there more to try to please his dad. Yeah, do you imagine these schools as like the fully uniformed schools and like the preparatory schools? Like that's what I'm seeing like in the old, okay. So.

Almost like a Catholic style school where it's a regimented schedule. Everybody wears the same shit. And they live in dorms. And they live there at the school, I would imagine. Yeah, they live in dormitories. So, but his last three years of the Harrow School, his father wanted it to be military-centric, or I guess they had more of a military curriculum that he, could do so he did that and then after that he went to the royal military academy which was in

or called like sandhurst yeah and did that on his third try and he was accepted as like a cadet in the cavalry at a time when the cavalry was literally cavalry like the guys charging in on the horses on horses and shit well and it seems like harrow and sandhurst kind of fit his mold better because he was, like I say, not terribly smart, which is really surprising to know that he was this bad in school. Because later on, he becomes like a literary icon. Yeah, I don't know if it's necessarily that he was smart. It's one of those things where maybe, you know,

you look at what curriculum they were trying to force him to do, and maybe he was just bored with it, or that part didn't interest him in the other stuff, and that's what they deemed him to be unintelligent in regards to that. Could be. I think part of it is just kind of being, especially with his family upbringing, probably being like rebellious

and stuff like that and getting into trouble. There was something about like him being basically raised by their nanny. Her name was Elizabeth Everest. And he said something to the effect of like she was my dearest, most intimate friend for like over 20 years

or something like that. Hmm. After she had died. So I don't know if it was him just also just having like a rebellious streak. So he was getting into trouble. And at that point too, if you're rebellious and you're getting into trouble,

they probably deem you as less intellectually gifted than the people who aren't making waves. It could be. I mean, he still had to take these tests multiple times to get into these schools, so it may... Yeah, and that's the thing, too,

is it depends on what they were requiring as intelligence versus what. And I think everybody kind of runs that course now. I fucking hated math. When I made it to college, I only took one college course of math because it was just terrible. But I loved history.

I loved anthropology. And I'm sure as far as, like, his military career, and not only his military career, but his journalism career in military situations, Sandhurst and Harrow had to have been just right up his alley. Like, that was his deal. And we find out later on in life, which we'll get to eventually, he's an avid reader.

Like, the dude just eats books for dinner. Which I think is really kind of a different kind of intelligence that he may not have had to flex to get into these schools. That's the thing. He could have been just bored. And I'm not saying bored in the sense of like the subjects and topics boredom. He could have just been lazy at that point in his life and unmotivated. Wasn't challenged.

So he didn't really try to push into challenging himself. Well, he ends up graduating. And then like a month later after Winston graduates in like January 1895, Randolph dies. So he becomes the head of the household at that point. And I think he has one younger brother. Is that what it is? I think so. But he started his military service 1893.

So he was two years into the military before his dad passed. So he did kind of make it sort of to where I think his dad had wanted. And that was sort of their relationship. And I think sort of what shaped Winston the whole entire time was that desire to just always do things that his dad would be proud of. There's later on in life, I want to say it was kind of towards. the end of his life. Maybe not because of he, he, like, wrote articles about it and all that type of shit,

but he actually had a talk with his ghost father. And it was like a conversation where his dad, I'm sure he was drunk when this happened. But his ghost likelihood of that. Yeah, his ghost dad showed up and he didn't even mention, like, the prime minister parts of his career or anything like that. It was so tightly based

around his military service and what he saw and just him trying to gain that acceptance from his dad, even after his dad had passed. So what you're saying, because that's his manifestation of his dad, because that's what was important to his manifestation of his dad, that that in turn is what he thought was important to his dad. Yeah, and I think that that's really just kind of what drove him to do a lot of it.

I'm sure a lot of what drove him was the fact that everybody told him that he was crazy or that he was wrong or that his beliefs kind of wandered. And we'll talk about it, his political career, but the guy never really changed his true north. Everybody else around him changed their policies. I've kind of found that when I was looking at. I couldn't decide whether it was he just had more of a centrist view of a lot of things and was willing to actually hear out people from other and differing opinions.

And he wasn't afraid of changing his. Or if like you're saying he was just truly in the middle and there were a lot of players like coming across or like what do they call it crossing the... Crossing the aisle. Was it crossing the aisle as the term or something like that, crossing the line?

Oh yeah, he went just before we really get into his political career. Well, I have a bunch of stuff on his essential like army service even before he gets into politics. And we'll get to it, but just to kind of explain the point,

he was a conservative from 1900 to 1904, then the party sort of shifted away from what the actual beliefs were. And part of it was they went to more of like a not really in isolationism, but they didn't try to trade a lot and there weren't a lot of trade deals going anywhere. The British political system is very confusing to me. And I know saying that as an American, it's probably pretty, that's probably weird to say.

But like, their political system seems to be much more fluid in the fact that opinions can change. Kind of like how when we talked about the Civil War, how technically it was the Republicans that were more like Democrats today versus. Democrats versus Republicans today. I feel like British government and parliament and everything is a much like faster acting version of that. Like the conservatives can be like for this and everything like this in this tenure span, but then they can almost kind of change their ideology. And then you have like what the Tory Democrats who are part of the conservatives and then

you have the what's... This was even prior to the Labor Party. And when we're talking conservative, liberal and labor party, liberal is almost more of the centrist between the two of. of them. Like, it's almost like the center bridge to where they can come and meet. And because they do have these different political systems within the parliament,

you will see them team up as far as like liberals and conservatives. They might not win the majority vote. Yeah. But they'll still have enough seats together to where they can combine and kind of become the majority party. There's a lot of sharing back and forth. So kind of going along with

his flexibility for his ideas and everything like that. Some people saw it as a negative. They saw it as him being like wishy-washy jump and ship and everything like that. Basically how he described himself, he was an ideologically, an economic liberal, an imperialist. He was definitely an imperialist.

Yeah. Yep. But that's for him not to, people that were not imperialists at this time, that was the outliers. For the most part, everybody was an imperialist at that time. So that's something that when you talk about it, kind of in hindsight,

it is a negative thing. him, but at the time it wasn't outside the norm. He was just kind of, I guess, the more, the majority. Well, it's, it's a turn of phrase that I don't really enjoy because they don't feel like it gives people cover. Yeah. But the phrase, it was a different time back then. Like, you can use it in certain situations.

And at this point in history, we have French territories that have been taken over by France. We have Spanish territories that have taken over by France. We have Spanish territories that have taken over by Spain. We have British territories that have taken over India, Australia, obviously. The real big areas that's why you hear like the Dutch West Indies and shit like that. That's why what was it Beijing that was British controlled up until like, yeah, that's the craziest thing is when, if you're old enough to have heard of this stuff where you do have places like French Polynesia. Uh-huh.

And you have the Dutch East Indies. And then, you know, you have places down. in like Singapore that were British rule or India when India was under British. This is at a time when India was under like full-blown British rule. Yeah, what I think is the most populated country in the world was technically British ruled and owned. And it was just kind of how it was. That was the thing too, is Churchill did believe. This is kind of another knock kind of against Churchill and everything.

Like you're saying, I think when you use the term it was a different time back then. you can't use that as an argument to say what your opinion, why you have a similar opinion now. The argument doesn't work like that. I'm just saying it to kind of provide like context of how it was. But one thing that kind of hurt Churchill kind of later in his career, not even later in his career, actually a little bit early on his career, was politically he believed that India wasn't prepared to govern itself or didn't have the capability of governing itself. so he felt that they owed it or they had a duty to go ahead and oversee and rule the Indian people because he felt that was it as a race they weren't able to govern themselves? Yeah.

And that's, again, these are knocks for the time. We're not saying that Churchill was a bad guy. This is the same debate that we have with Washington and Jefferson and everything like that. As a whole, they did a lot of great things. People are people. Yeah. That's the whole point. Everybody's fallible.

Is everyone's fallible. And he had these. and I'm not saying these to or to try to make excuses. What I'm saying is this is kind of the complexity or complexity of Winston Churchill. So he didn't believe that the Indian people could essentially rule themselves.

But he wasn't against, it wasn't in, I'm trying to think of how to say this, because he also argued and tried to like fight for the like inhumane treatment of other like soldiers that they were, that were fighting with the British

that he deemed in areas not to be able to govern themselves. So it was weird. He was like he would fight in a certain way for the people, but then in another way he would kind of fight against those people. The easiest way that I think I can explain it is when he was a schoolboy and when he was learning and everything like that, Charles Darwin was still alive. Charles Darwin had still made his journeys around the world. And there was sort of a scientific belief at the time just vis-a-vis because Darwin was

going around to these different countries and meeting all these people, that there was like a, not a racial superiority, but like there were just people that were less... I think he, it was a cultural superiority as what it was. He felt that because of their culture. So there's not, it's not really splitting here as race or culture or anything like that.

But his wasn't an intellectual capability idea. He just felt their culture hadn't reached a certain advancement to where they were able to govern themselves effectively. And because the British were more advanced by his standard that they should step in and do that. Yeah, which, I've heard arguments both ways and I don't really get the argument of like

well look how much better off they are now because we intervene because everybody's on their own evolutionary scale. Is it great that they stopped some of the things that were going on, cannibalism and stuff like that? Yeah, that's awesome. But at the same time there's that kind of guiding hand

to where they were helping these people that they were it wasn't really like slavery they were just ruling over these countries they were also reaping the benefits Yeah, the natural resources They were under their rule and their laws So they were getting money from them

They were getting goods and different things like that Which in turn just really helped England But we also see It was obviously wrong because even Churchill was alive When they started, what does he say? The Dispansion of the Empire, he was sad to see And that's what they'd consider itself When you really think about it

It's weird to be like, oh yeah Like there were empires just until You know, within the last hundred years Like the British had a never empire because it was Great Britain, this little island. But then it was also like India and then a section of China and like islands like in the Caribbean. And then think about like Australia and New Zealand.

Like those were founded as British colonies and everything. So they had an empire that until the end of World War II was very much intact and then kind of got parsed up. And it's still, I think to this day, there's places in Africa that are heavily influenced by England. As far as India goes, we've had to talk a couple times about the national dish of England is curry. Yeah. There's no question as to how curry is the most,

or the most favorite food in England. But we also see what Churchill, which I think kind of explains more to the point, was he was very friendly with Jewish people. He believed that Jewish people shouldn't be getting the shit that they're getting from kind of everywhere because when we talk about history back then, it wasn't just the Germans that were shitting on the Jews.

Like there were a lot of different countries that were taking shots at them as far as not only immigration but like where they needed to be in the hierarchy of the world. Yeah, where they're control light as far as finances and stuff like that as far, yeah. But he didn't see it that way. He was, for lack of a better term, I think they've called him a Zionist. There's another word that's different than,

I don't even know what it was But it's not like an anti-Semite. It's like a pro-Semite. I think it was like pro-Semite something like that But he really saw the distinction of People that were being treated poorly that he didn't want to be seen and like you were saying before When they would capture Enemies that they were fighting on front lines he didn't want them to be tortured He didn't want them to be treated improperly Yeah well not only that it extended to

he saw how because again this was at a time like because of colonialism when the British Expeditionary Force which is their version of their army that's what they call their army the Expeditionary Force was made up of these huge segments

of Indian soldiers and by soldiers from like some African areas and everything and so you would have these soldiers within your army but they would essentially be different segments of soldiers. So he saw these other segments of soldiers of places that they had colonial power over being

mistreated. So we would speak out against that as well. I mean, his first, as far as like his military service and everything, it, I don't know, you hear people like talk about like, I want to see the world and everything. Like he wanted to get into it after school. He wanted to get into it as quickly as he could. He, and this is going to kind of tie into how he builds a relationship with different American politicians. But he actually in like a little after 1895, he wanted to see action, so he went to Cuba to observe the War of Independence there.

Yeah. And that ended up being over the years, didn't that switch rule from Cuba to like American backed away from like French backed or something like that? I think it was Spanish back. Spanish back, that's right. Yeah, because he went in there in his first action that he ever saw was he was trying to suppress the freedom fighters

by helping the Spanish troops in Cuba. Yeah. So he... So fighting against the Americans technically, or an American-backed forces. Yeah. Yeah, in a way. But he just, when I say that he was crazy,

he wanted to be where the action was pretty much all the time. Like, he just went over to Cuba as an observer. Yeah. I was like, fuck it, I'm going to get my hands dirty. I'm going to get in there and make things happen. There's certain things that he's done over time while he was at war, and I'm trying to get to it. He's being legitimately post.

posted by the military to these areas. He just has some influence in which, like, he's able to use a little bit of this influence to get him posted to these specific places that he wants to go. Which I'm sure being the son of Lord Randolph was probably helpful. That's what it is. Like, if you just kind of, like, look at it at a glance,

you're like, so he just took off to these places. Like, no, he was able to influence himself under being the British officer or whatever to go to these places. But to the opposite, he was trying to go to these places to get engaged. Yeah. Like he wasn't just going to watch or like have fun or anything like that. It wasn't vacation. It was like,

I'm going to make some shit happen. Yeah. And he was really driven by like his desire to get medals. And there was one point of it was during World War I where everybody was laying down. I don't know if it was in the trenches or whatever. But he was just like, fuck it. I got to earn a medal somehow and just stands up. Like stands up and basically gives himself up as they're shooting and firing at or as

they're being shot at. Like he just, he wanted to be in the action to the point to where he just stands up and doesn't get hit by bullets, but ends up surviving and he does get a medal of honor for that. Not just standing up

and doing something, right? I think he just stand up, or stood up and started firing back. He was the only guy that stood up and just started firing back. I'm going to have to look into this. Yeah, I forgot when it was. One of the things, too,

is this is kind of when he started to almost act as like a war. correspondence and really started like writing as far as like like I don't know what you would consider this type of right he would essentially write down his experiences and like the information just like a war correspondent is and he would be sending it back to uh England to have it like printed in a certain paper yeah he just crazy enough um after he got done with Cuba in 1896 he was down in India and well he he visited New York first yeah so on his way kind of from Cuba he went and he went to the United States and kind of traveled to a couple different places and then went to New York because I think that's where his mom was from and overall had like a relatively like positive experience of like the American like people and culture yeah I think he liked us I think that America was kind of a maybe a hope and a dream for him and at that point we really as far as England and America there's still I think a little bit of combingling I think there was still oh I

100% at this point there was, I'm pretty sure there was, this was like a time of like trade and everything like that. Or were 100 years after the Revolutionary War. Yeah. I think, I think a big thing too about Churchill is I think the reason that he goes like so balls in on a lot of this stuff is he's one of those people that he doesn't wait till he reaches the end of something before making the plan for the next thing. I think he had like a career plan to where he's like, I'm going to serve in the military for this much time. I need to accumulate this many accolades in order to make it to Parliament by this age. And I think the reason he kind of had that stuff in mind and everything is he knew he had to have, wanting to get where he wanted to be in like parliament or whatever that system. I think he knew he had to have certain experiences within those fields.

So that's why he went to also serve the Army and it would actually lend like, you know, he comes in with his medals and everything like that. It helped him that way, but I think it also helped him. and just learn more about what he was doing. Exactly, the world. Yeah. That's why he was trying to take things that were away from England. You know, you find that, like, he was based, you know, you were just, I think you were just about talking when he was based in India.

Yeah. And that's when his mom started sending him books when he was requesting books from all these different authors. 19 months. And that doesn't sound like a lot of times, 19 months. No, it doesn't. But back then when you're in a war, there's not really a whole lot going on. And he wasn't active, I don't think, in India. I'm not really sure what was going on.

But he had a lot of time on his hands to where he would start to read. And I think that sort of starts to shape the journalist in him and sort of begins that career. Because after that, he started his career in politics in 18909. He ran for Parliament in Oldham, Lancashire, which I think Oldham is a soccer team. Did you get to his capture and escape? No, that's coming up. Okay, there was one thing, even before that. Before his capture?

Or even before he, when you were talking about himself, educating himself, I had something on that. Just kind of the stuff that he started educating himself with, he would have his mom send him like Plato, Edward Gibbon, Charles Darwin, that you just talked about, everything.

This is also when he started really learning politics because she would have him send, have her send him the paper that, basically apparently there was an entire newspaper dedicated to all of like the political going on goings on in great britain so he would be in india during this time basically catching up on everything and keeping up on everything and learning about the different parties and all that kind of stuff that's what i mean i feel like he was very like focused on he knew exactly what the next step was going to be and was preparing for it at all times well just to kind of point out how far that took him he held 20 different political offices in his career. Yeah. Like that's just a million between parliamentary seats. He was the ambassador to the colonies as far as everywhere that they ruled over.

Like he was really a man of the people and out there. And that includes two times as prime minister, which seems, I don't know how it works over there. But he had a little time off in between his first and second term. But he just, he really knew like you're talking about at that age at a fairly young age, because we're talking 1899. He was born in 1874, so what, that's 25 years old, that he's really starting to shape his political aspirations

and kind of his career aspirations. Well, one thing, too, like you were talking about trying to cram as much experience as far as like wartime stuff. 1897, he volunteered to join a campaign against, they were called the Moment Rebels, and he was accepted to go as like a war journalist. And it was during that time, during that campaign, paid that he wrote actually his first book and an additional book which happened to be his only

like attempt at fiction so he he actually made it he tried fiction he wrote a fiction book apparently it wasn't that successful it was his only try at it well yeah he's lived so many real life experiences that fiction doesn't really seem like yeah but like 1897 at this point like you're saying he's even younger he is 22 at this point and he wrote his first book i'm not saying it was like a smash hit but it was popular and it was like well received. So he already has enough life experience to write a fucking book at this point. Yeah.

Like 22 years old. And that's prior to his political aspirations in his career. So back up to 1890, he runs for parliament, Lancashire, ends up not winning it. So after he ends up not winning, he sails to South Africa because he was going to cover the Second Boer War as a war journalist. for a paper called The Morning Post and as they're getting down there or I don't know if it was as they were getting down there

they were traveling there was a train derailment and they were taken in by the enemy as POWs and just to think about this and to think about now like he was just a prisoner of war. Yeah. Like he went to a prison camp

and was there for a couple months and then just had the balls on him to say fuck this, I'm out and escaped. Yeah. Like how you're a prisoner in a foreign war

that you have no idea about you're just going to try to escape within the first couple months. Which he ends up doing, it's like through a combination of escape hiding in like freight cars and then at one point he hid

a mine or something but then he made it like north to like Spain or Portuguese occupied. Yeah, but everyone had their hand in Africa at this point. Keep in mind. So it was either

Portuguese or Spanish occupied Africa. And then because they weren't in an adversarial position with England, they arranged for him transport. And then he got transport south back down to South Africa and like join back up. And like link back up with his where he was supposed to be. He wasn't even fighting in this war when he became a POW. He was just covering it as a journalist. Yeah.

And throughout his career at one point, he was like the highest paid war journalist around. he had that much cachet about him that people just wanted him so they were willing to pay whatever they could because they knew that he would actually get into the shit like he wasn't just going down there and trying to cover the war from a distance he's like let me get on the front lines

let me check some stuff out let me see what's going on I'm going to write you the most accurate piece of what's going on here I just the thought of being a POW in your early 20s and not actually being like actively involved The war balls in line The way they talk about it was so casual Yeah like at his train got derailed

by some shelling and then he was taken prisoner of war but don't worry he escaped flipped his eyelids inside out so he could gather water so he was able to survive in the POW camp like just so fucking casual yeah and after that at 25

he finally secures his first political victory which was a seat in the House of Commons and I think that is Is House of Commons what you consider Parliament as far as that group? I think it's a part of it I think it's like a how we have like the House of Representatives in the Senate I think House of Commons is a part of it.

Okay. What is the room that they all sit on the opposite sides of each other? In the middle is that weird desk with the three judges. And they put all of, when they're going to give a speech, they put stuff on these old wooden chests. In England? Yeah. It's got to be the House of Commons. I don't know. Hmm.

A chamber or something like that? well yeah I just know because I saw it on a few like documentaries and it always like even like they I don't know if like the little chess are still there today it's like a ceremonial thing Oh okay

For as weird as we get a Yes it's the house that you're right It's the house of commons With the tradition and the weird shit that we do In our politics I forget that there's other countries That have been around Yeah hundreds of years longer

So look at this kid They all sit on separate sides Like that There's three guys right there. Yeah. Like the three judges. And then there's these wooden, two wooden chess right here. And when they're getting up to speak, they set their papers or their speeches on the wooden.

And that's like the speaker's position is standing up at that one. And they each have one on each side. But like I'm saying it, like I look at that like it's ridiculous, but then you look at our system for it. That's all in the round and it when it's yells at each other. Yeah. And ours is like the most modern equivalent of that. Like that's the most normal thing that. other countries that have had thousands of years of history

and have kind of adapted their government from that, they're going to do some pretty goofy shit too. But he was, I think, in that position, he was 25 when that happened. So 25 years old would have been, what, 1901-ish, somewhere around there. Well, no, it would have been in October of 1900. He won that victory. Okay.

So he was 25 at the time. And he wasn't fucking around either, because literally, like, right around that time, he then writes a book called Ian Hamilton's March. So Ian Hamilton, I guess, was a either commanding officer, general, something like that. And it was during like an engagement or a campaign. I can't remember what war it was. It might have actually been during like the South Africa wars, the Boer Wars or whatever.

But he writes a book and it's so successful like he said on like a lecture tour that sent him to the United States. And this is where he actually meets Mark Twain, President McKinley. and Teddy Roosevelt. So that's where they actually met. He was on like a lecture for a book tour. I guess you just see him so much as like the political figure in World War II that it's tough to realize like he was that popular as a writer that he was just on a book tour that was worldwide.

Yes. Here's the thing like it's so crazy about, to me personally about Churchill. there's this four to five year stretch that overshadows everything else in his career so much that people are shocked to learn about the other aspects of his career other than this like four to five year stretch during World War II. Fun fact, when he went to Africa, there is a listing of the amount of alcohol he brought with him on one of them.

36 bottles of wine, 18 bottles of scotch, six bottles of brandy, and it was kind of around, it might have been a little bit after this time is when he establishes his very well-known drinking regiment during the day. He was probably there for a week

if he only had that much, right? That was, I don't know if it was as heavy yet. I think this might have been in his early days when he went to Africa and didn't have his, yeah, that drinking regiment set up yet. For everything else that he did in his life, he was a great man. And a legend, somebody that we haven't really seen

like a second of as far as like we have not seen his like since yeah but when you just strictly boil it down to his drinking he might be one of the greatest of all time oh yeah and he lived till 90 he was literally a functional alcoholic but at no point did anybody ever say that he seemed impaired or question or question like that his poor decision making might have been result of the alcohol it was so weird that he was so operable and everyone knew it wasn't it was like a well kept secret no but like he was still so capable

that it never called into question his ability to to lead that's nuts because nowadays like no that would be fucking ridiculous we saw it happen how much of a raging drunk Nixon was and how lucky we were that there were other people that surrounded him not to make the decisions fucking hand off the button uh huh yeah wait until he sobered up to make fucking decision

decisions. And for as great of a man as he is, you'll hear historians or people that were writing books about him and be like, oh, no, no, he wasn't an alcoholic. There's no fucking way he wasn't an alcoholic. Yes. And I don't mean that. The timing of his drinks throughout the day was spaced almost strategically to where he never had to really lose his buzz.

Yeah, he was always keeping a little bit of sun in the tank. And to go along with that, he was a historical cigar smoker, too. The man would light up in the morning. He'd just be smoking a cigar in bed. We'll talk about Winston Churchill Day. How cool is that to just wake up and roll over and just light a Stogie and you're sitting there reading the paper? You have an English breakfast laid out in front of you, just sitting on a platter, and you're just puffing away. You got your brandy in one hand.

You're about to dive into some beans for breakfast. It's a hell of a way to live. Okay, so his political career starts in 1900. In 1904, he joined as a member of the Conservative Party, but in 1904, he crossed the floor, is what they call. it to the liberal party. And I think here's the thing. He kind of for the majority

of his career he served as a member of the Conservative Party. He took power as a prime minister as a member of the Conservative Party, right? Okay. But like we were saying, he was kind of fluid into like how he saw the sorry, how he

kind of saw the tides flowing on like certain topics. He had a kind of tendency or a reputation of being someone who would go across what they consider or what we consider the aisle and actually like strike up like relationships like about stuff. So in other words, you're saying that he was a good politician. Yes. Yes. He wasn't so set in his ways.

He wasn't a traditional politician. He was what you want your politician to be like to be able to go ahead and see stuff from different viewpoints. And he really, as far as that goes, he sees so much of kind of his, his belief system is so solid, which not to say that he wouldn't change thoughts on issues or different things like that, but he would recognize like, okay, the conservative party's getting a little bit off the rails on something that I believe in. I'm going to back out.

We're going to take some time away. I'm just going to walk across the aisle. I want to say it had something to do with, and this is kind of a reoccurring theme up until they gained independence, but it's like Irish self-exam. Ireland self-governance or something like that. He didn't agree with what the conservatives had as far as their viewpoints on it. So he went across to the, I don't know what the specifics are of it.

I think it was that. I think it was part of like trade agreements and different things. And he, for as successful as he was, he had some major political blunders in his life. But he just kind of stayed with what he knew and did the Liberal Party thing from 1904 to 1924, which is something that would be unheard of today.

There's, you would never be able to. his switch parties in probably win re-election the next time out. It just, it doesn't happen anymore. Let alone switch back later. Yeah, and then just, yeah, yeah, yeah,

I've had enough of this liberal stuff. The conservatives are sort of back more into the center of the Venn diagram. I think that just, you don't even hear that in this, in this day. That's why he was kind of an outlier and that's why the kind of the knock on him was,

he kind of was wishy-washy on which side he was going to be. So he was even not looked upon kindly in this time. He referred to himself as like a double turn coat or something like that. Yeah, something funny. Like, he even kind of enjoyed the funness of it, I think. And I mean, he keeps getting like different appointments too. So like in 1908, he's appointed the president of the trade or the board of trade at 33 years old.

The youngest cabinet member since 1866 in February of 1910. So two years later when he's 35, he's promoted to home secretary, 35 years old, promoted to home secretary. That's the person that's giving it. That's the person that has control over the police and. prison services. And at 35 years old, he starts implementing prison reform to separate war criminals from political prisoners. That seems smart. Yep. To try them differently since, or I'm sorry, like violent criminals from political prisoners. He also wanted to give them access to like libraries and stuff like that so they could better themselves while they were incarcerated. He had a lot of

like really positive, like really forward thinking ideas. Yeah. Just looking at him politically, he got shit done. Like, it wasn't, you weren't trying to run out the clock. His idea of being a political figure was sort of to make sure that he got reelected because he was doing things, not because he was saying things. And the reform that you were talking about with the president or anything like that, it was all to benefit the people and to try to not necessarily keep the faith in the political system, but to show that they were actually making strides and doing different things.

And he runs afoul a little bit later kind of before he takes power as the Prime Minister for the first time with the gold standard debacle, which we'll talk about. But he always kind of has the best interest of the people at heart where we just don't really see that anymore. Well, he supported women's suffrage, so basically a woman's right to vote. I have no idea that that was something outside of America. I don't know why I was so America-centric about that idea. You assumed it was so truly American. Yeah. So specifically American.

We would be the only ones that would not allow like women the right to vote, right? No, not us. No idea that that was something that was an ideology outside of America, but it makes total sense. Like, I get it now. Well, you get where it probably came from. Yeah, yeah. The ideas of it came from now makes more sense. There was a lot of justification to not let women vote in America because they couldn't vote other places.

But not letting him truly off the hook on that. one because he would only back the bill if it had majority support. So he had to know which way it was already going to go through. If he had to argue for it, he's like, not, not me. I'm good. Hey, if you all are for it, I'm good.

Like, you all want pizza, I'll get pizza. Pizza sounds good, but you guys don't want pizza. I'm not going to argue for pizza. Pizza doesn't get a vote. He keeps working his way, like, very quickly. So at 36 in October, or sorry, when he's 36 years old, in October of 1911,

he's appointed the first lord of the Admiralty. That is the dude that's in charge of the entire Navy. I'm glad you explain it because I have no idea. There's terms and words that they use. Okay. This is so fucking nuts to think of it in this context. So he's like 36, 37 years old. He is being put in charge of not only just like the Navy of Great Britain.

The naval power in Great Britain, that is their bread and butter. Well, they're an island. Yeah. I know. But like, you know, you think back of, well, like British naval explorers. It was always ships and all that kind of stuff. As it's become like a war type thing,

that's been the thing too. That's the only reason why Great Britain, aside from the RAF, you know, during the Battle of Britain, was able to go ahead and, you know, stand toe to toe with Germany for a while is because they were able to control like the English Channel

and a lot of the area like in the Pacific or in the Atlantic there. So to put a 37-year-old in charge of that is fucking crazy. So he created at that point, this was 1911, he's also like, and I'll get into a little bit more detail on it, but he's also been like a student of history. And I think that came from him like doing so much reading and studying and everything. Definitely. That he kind of could see the writing on the wall with certain regimes that were getting ready to take power.

So he started paying attention like over the next two years of him being appointed the Lord of the Admiralty. He creates a naval war staff, which apparently you don't create a war staff. Like unless East time. Exactly. Unless you're preparing for war, you're already at war.

He focused on naval prep for the next two years and was really paying close attention to Germany's naval production at that point as well. And in 1912, German naval law, there was a law that was signed

to increase their ship production. So Churchill was basically like, fine. Every one battleship you build, I'm going to build two. Smart. It's staying ahead of the curve. I think part of what I

kind of saw that leads me to believe that he really saw the writing on the wall with Germany was the first time the first time yeah yeah was he had been in these areas of africa covering these different wars and he saw like the i think there were the caliphate back then um the the the muslim kind of fanaticism that went along with the religion and he kind of saw the religious fanaticism and And he started to see the same thing popping up, not in religion anymore, but in political parties and ideologies to where he knew like, okay, these people that were down there bombing for God or bombing for Allah or whoever it was, that's not just specific to religion. That can be applied to really anything in life. Like, yeah, like political extremist groups or anything or like fringe extremist groups, things like that.

He saw religious extremism and he knew that that wasn't just going to stay in the religious sphere. that was going to jump ship and go into politics. I'm not quite sure. When we actually look in and do an episode like on World War I, like specifically and everything, I'm sure there were things leading up to it because essentially World War I was, yes, bought the Axis powers

or the bad guys you would consider would have been Germany, the Ottoman Empire, which Germany was a part of, and then they were aligned with who? It was the Ottomans. Was it the Italians? No, the Turks. I think it was the Turks. Because I feel like one of the

starting points of World War I was Archduke, Franz Ferdinand getting assassinated, right? Yeah. And that was a major political shift that was occurring kind of in that Ottoman area.

So it was like the Austro-Hungary Empire and I think that was like the Ottoman Empire. Germany and Austria-Hungary. Yeah. Which another thing that is kind of odd to talk about today because we just know these places where they are.

But these empires that we see back then, like the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarians and all that kind of stuff, the reason that we have such a fucked-up Middle East now is because it was after World War I? Two. After World War II.

That's for like Iraq and Iran and everything gets divvied up. Yeah, they were just drawing arbitrary lines between these countries or between these swaths of land and turning them into countries, but there was no thought of like, okay, the Kurds live in this region, so we should probably keep them all within the same country.

They were just drawing lines willy-nilly wherever they want. They said when it came to the end of World War II, basically how they divided it up is, were you there in that theater during the last year of the war? So like the areas that the Russians were in during the last year of the war, that automatically became part of, you know, Russia and the Soviet Union. That's where you get all the division now between like, you know, when they broke up the Soviet Union, like Yugoslavia and like Slovakian, all those places got broken up and apart. Ukraine.

Yeah, those were all previously places that were claimed, that were lands that could have been different countries even before World War II when they got claimed and overtaken by the Germans. It's so weird to think about that. There were new countries formed, like, less than 100 years ago over in Europe. The Middle East was kind of like just one big, large area. Yeah. And there weren't really lines drawn towards, like, Afghanistan, Iraq.

I think Iran was sort of part of that. and it was just an area that was up for grabs. And it had not, it wasn't like up for grabs recently. Like this is an area that's been fought over for a thousand plus years. So in order to draw those lines, um, it just,

it was such a political thing. And he stayed in politics. That was the other weird thing was like you're talking about, he became the secretary of the Navy. The Lord of the Admiralty. Lord of the Admiral. Um, top Navy dog. Yeah, at such a young age, 1915 rolls around.

We start World War I. He goes and re-enlist in the army again. Well, there was, there was something that happened before that. So 19, so it starts in 1914, actually. So Churchill's overseeing the naval effort and Britain's aerial defense during that time. Um, it was, I think he went and joined the army. Was it after Gallipoli? I think so.

Okay. So this is one big knock on, on Churchill that. Oh, I forget. Yeah. That people would use against him in like parliament and everything like that. So basically it would be like if the comparison, oh shit, in the Civil War we talked about it was Robert Ely. So basically if Robert Ely had any time after Gettysburg had brilliant strategy or suggested a campaign or something, everybody would always be. always be like, hey, so remember Gettysburg?

So that would always be like their chip to counter him. Gallipoli becomes that for Winston Churchill. So basically, during this campaign, Gallipoli is through like the GNC. It's a way to access like the Baltic region or something like that. It goes between like Turkey or something like that. It was where they were trying to control like access to like oil and everything. So it was being held in World War I.

by like the Ottoman Turks or something like that. And being the Admiralty or the Force Lord of the Admiralty, he basically sets up this campaign, the Gallipoli campaign, because he's trying to, in a roundabout way, relieve pressure and have them draw troops out of France, Germans, and so then the French and the English can advance where they're like stalled in the trenches. So all this activity is going to happen down in like the Mediterranean

that's going to cause like a movement of German troops have to be pulled from northern France. And the way it's described, like, it was like a beach landing and all this kind of stuff, but the, like, oppositions, like, defenses were, like, way, way stronger. It ended up taking a lot longer than it needed to, and it ended up being a failure. There were, like, 50,000 casualties with 250,000 soldiers incapacitated from fighting. So, I mean, it was, like, it was a big fuck up. It was a big fuck up.

And I want to say that, there's according to him there were leaks within um he was lord of the admiralty he took responsibility for stuff but he would have an argument that secrecy was of like the utmost for this operation and there were leaks from somehow like within like army divisions down there not leaks but they showed their hands too early to show them that they were coming into this area and so that was like his excuse for it but one thing about churchill is he's that kind of helps him to get back is he always does take the fault for his mistakes. So he takes his lumps.

He just always seems to learn from it. Yeah. There's always at least one something that he pulls out of every failure that he has. I mean, he pays for this. He gets removed. So this raises such an issue that literally within a month, I think, they have a, like, whatever they discuss in the House of Commons,

there's so much pressure from the opposing side that they have to remove him. The, like, leading party removes him from being the, uh, First Lord of the Admiralty. And then that's when he rejoins the army and he goes back into combat northern France. And I'm sure at that point in time, because that was during his liberal years, that the conservative party that he had left probably wasn't too keen on keeping him in power still. They were probably looking for a reason to get him out of there if you're really thinking about it. And he gave him a great one.

But yeah, there was definitely added political pressure to the... But like, you just stopped being essentially the head of the Navy of like the most powerful Navy currently at the time in the world and your first instinct is to be like so I'm just going to hit me a rifle I'm going to fight going back in yeah I I just

it's so crazy to me that that's his pivot and that's his move is to go from maybe wearing a wig maybe wearing a powdered wig while he was in in parliament like you say just going out and sign him back up he'd like yeah give me old blue

give me my old rifle back, we're back to it. What you were saying about him like learning so much from all of his experiences and going into things with the specific goal of gaining experience. So he goes back into the army. He serves a little bit of time for the army. And then in 1917, so literally within two years, he's made the Minister of Munitions. And basically, the Minister of Munitions job is within, you know, parliament and everything. They're the one that makes sure that the war output for bullets and bombs.

and shells and everything for the country can match what the war's output is. So his job was to, he'd gone and got that experience on the front line or whatever. He actually came back to and he made it like standard issue for all soldiers to receive steel helmets. Because apparently he got hit in the head while he was down there and like a piece of shrapnel almost like killed him by hitting him in the head. What would they just would have been leather helmets back then? I don't know if it was standard issue. I think maybe like higher ranking officers like officers got the steel. The more important brains got more protection.

Exactly. And maybe the other helmets were made of like a less durable. But he ended up standardizing like steel helmets. But even and that was like a quick, a quick thing that he did. But that's just that kind of shows you just like, okay, I went and served this. Something almost killed me by hitting me in the head. I noticed that this is what saved me. None of my other guys have this.

Let's get this going. Yeah. We got to get this fixed. Because if we don't get this fixed, we're just going to fail. And like you were talking about with the, the output of ships. as far as trying to keep ahead of the Germans, rolling him into that minister of artillery or whatever it was. Mr. Munitions.

Yeah. Same thing. He took the same kind of approach with that that he did with the same shipbuilding. He wanted to make sure that he stayed ahead of everything because he knew the benefit that that would cause on the battlefield. Well, and then so two years is doing that, then another two years later, so in 1919 to 1921, he's made Secretary of State for War and Air. And so he's heavily, heavily involved in World War I.

From like, not what am I trying to say, not an administrative position, but from like a position of command structure. But he also has actual like experience like on the ground too. That's got to be pretty rare. Yeah. Well, and maybe this is just my lack of reading up on it. But these positions are positions that are given through the military, not through politics, right? they have to it's like the first lord of the admiralty you have to almost have approval to put them in these positions or it's like voting on cabinet positions yeah or you can you can send them to these positions but here's the thing

like cabinet positions your credibility is based upon the people you're putting into these positions so like yeah that party could put anybody in these positions but if those people fail horribly it's a knock against that party and then the other opposing party like when they kicked him out of the First Lord of the Admiralty can put enough pressure on you to make those changes. So I think they're appointed by the governing party, but I think that they can be overturned, and they have to be smart moves. You have to be successful at those. Or your party will not be in control the next go-around.

Yeah. His new positions that he's getting may be being given by people that had more of a, um, I don't know, empathetic view of the decision that he made with Tripoli. Gallipoli? Gallipoli, yeah. I don't. Maybe they saw it as, hey, he was more justified and what the shit that he took for it. There ended up, he took the full brunt of it for that operation.

Like he did. There was a, you know, when they always do like the commissions, like the Warren Commission for certain acts, they had a commission that was filed to find out essentially what caused this. Because, I mean, it was a huge fuck out. Come to find out, he wasn't the one that was solely responsible for it. So it dispersed blame. but then it came back at that point that because he took all the blame for it,

it actually made him appear in a more positive light that he would be accountable for stuff. He was willing to jump on the ground. And just before like, I know you have 1925 or sorry, 1924, just before we get to him even moving higher up the chain, he writes a six-volume series

on World War I, a huge fucking series of books. And then he writes a four-volume series on the Duke of Marlborough, the first one, that are like acclaimed. Not his grandfather, the actual first duke? The actual first duke. And during this time, I think it was maybe around 24 to 29

when he becomes the chancellor of the exchange. I don't even know to pronounce that. Exeter, I think, is the word. There's this issue about Indian, India self-governance, and it ends up passing that they should be able to govern themselves to a degree, and he ends up voting against that.

So that's just, again, kind of goes where he saw some of the same beliefs in regards to that. Do you mind if we take a bathroom break real quick? Yeah, absolutely. All right, while we take a break from class and take care of some business, you can also take care of some business. If you don't follow us on Instagram or Twitter already, our Instagram handle is historically high pod. That's historically high P-O-D.

And our Twitter is historically high. That's historically H-I. All right, and back to our show. All right, and we are back. We're getting into the meat. The deep, meaty, meaty tissue of fucking Winston's career. Yeah, for as crazy as everything that we've said, this guy's already been in multiple wars.

He was a fucking prisoner of war and then escaped and then had this whole, what could be considered a career in politics. He's at two careers. He's at a military career and a political career. And technically three, because he's writing these books and going on. booktowers. And a literary career. Yeah. He's just everywhere. Well, so 1924 to 29, he becomes the chancellor of the head of... Executor. That is literally the second most powerful position below the prime minister in parliament because he's in charge essentially of the economy.

So like, he's just gaining. He has all of the... This is where like he's so well-rounded from his skill set. He's now in charge of the economy. He knows about running Well, hold on He did run him for five years Until fucking up what you're gonna talk about Yeah What I mean though is That's why I think what made him such

What is, I can only describe it as the guy For what's gonna come Is because he has experience with everything Yeah And he's He has that can do attitude Like these aren't just positions of name for him He's actually going in

He's stubborn as fuck And not always in a good way No No, he definitely Definitely, there are some things that he believes in strongly that don't pan out. And possibly the biggest one was, I think that this had something to do with coming out of World War I being off of the gold standard. But he puts them back on the gold standard. And basically the gold standard for anybody that doesn't know in America, I think we fell off of it in the 70s or 80s.

but if you take a $1 bill and you walk into a bank and you slap it down on the table and you say, I want this much in gold, they have to give you back the exact same amount in gold. Like every bank note that we have is backed by the gold standard. So you can just turn any amount of money into gold and vice versa. How much gold? The same amount as the dollar weighs? The same amount as the value of it is. So say gold's $1,000 an ounce and you walk in and hand them $100.

bucks, they have to give you a tenth of an ounce of gold back. Okay. And when they go into it, it just completely tanks the worth of their dollar. And anybody, just because gold... The pound sterling, right?

Is that what they were using at the time? Pound sterling? Could be? I thought that they still use the British pound. I don't think that they're on the euro system. I thought they were. We're going to have to look at that. Yeah, we'll check that out. But it just completely critters

their economy. Their money is so much more devalued now that they went back on to it because I'm sure over war time when you are producing creating so many there's a reason that the military industrial complex is a thing and it's because during wartime you ramp up all these different industries yeah and so you're making more money so in turn your money is worth more well bring them back to the gold standard drop the value of their money when you have an economy that's based on a certain value of your currency and then you go to something less, it just immediately ruins everything. And it did.

So he's kind of removed from that role too as well, right? Yeah. So I think the opposing side probably raised enough of a protest and everything that they had to remove them there. I think it was that generally everybody agreed that this was a bad offense. This, I always enjoy this term when people just go into the wilderness. Yeah, their wilderness years. The wilderness ears is like

Is that you're You go out to find yourself Like did he travel around in the early version I guess not the VW van I think maybe that's kind of They call your wilderness years Because that's just when you're not doing really Anything of substance or note

Yeah you're just out there kind of wandering You're sort of like your wonderless Yeah You're traveling around And luckily he had The literary Literary career that he did So he was traveling to America

And this time He was doing tours He was speaking He was still a member of parliament. Oh, was he? He was still a member because there was, that's one of the big things about him. So, okay, so his parliament career was, I think, 62 years. Yeah, he was. It was 1900 to 1964. He only had a two year gap where he was not in parliament. So you can be a minor member, a parliament, not like a senior member of the party and still essentially have your wilderness

years of when you're not like super active or anything like that. Um, but yeah, I mean, the early 30s, that's when he began sounding the alarm against Hitler. And kind of going back to like the student of history thing, he kind of knew what to look for. And he wasn't always right. I'm not saying he's always right. But he had this knack for being able to kind of foresee someone who was going to be a problem. So like he starts sounding the alarm.

Not a lot of people are listening. They believe that after what the Treaty of Versailles, which was meant to prevent the buildup of Germany's war. industry and like ability to make war, people didn't believe that they would be in another conflict like that so quickly. Like the kids that were born during like the First World War would be coming of age just old enough to start fighting in the second one. Like no one foresaw that.

The first one was so horrible. The only reason that the first one isn't looked at as horrible as it was is because the second one was even more horrible. And it came so fast. And it came so fucking fast. So I don't think it was a combination of people not wanting to even entertain the thought. of another world war occurring. Well, we, we called World War I the Great War.

Yes. So this was something that, on the magnitude that nobody had ever seen before. And if you think that that's a once in a lifetime event, you're not planning on the greater war. No, yeah, yeah. When you call something the Great War, you're not planning on it being trumped by something, what, 20 years later? Well, going back to his viewpoint on India,

don't completely quote me on this, but I believe one of his arguments about providing India, their own self- self-governance is he had this weird thing about because there were different cultures within India, that they would begin in fighting and kind of destroy themselves and kind of get caught into that. There would be a war for independence just like there is everywhere else there's a hierarchy. Yeah, something like that. And because he had these weird like, I don't know if they were outdated or just kind of looked down upon beliefs, when he started trying to raise the alarm on Germany, that kind of lessened his credibility. You know, if someone has a really unpopular opinion, you're less likely to listen to the other opinion. that they're going to provide, even if those make complete sense. It's kind of what the situation was here.

It's because everyone, a lot of people felt, the majority felt he was wrong on India. They also felt that he might not be exactly correct on, like Hitler and Germany. This sort of a Bernie Sanders type situation. Exactly. In 36, Henry VIII becomes the new monarch. He ends up abdicating, I didn't know this,

but he ends up abdicating the throne, like, really quickly. And his younger brother, George, the 6, takes rule. and because of this happening in England this happened over the course of like an entire year of trying to figure this whole thing out with like the secession of the monarchy that also provided this huge distraction from Hitler and the Nazis

and what they were doing too because you know of course parliament's gonna probably be in like a tizzy over like the monarchy and all that kind of stuff any focus drawing away from that is going to be too much focus drawn away from what Germany is doing at this point yeah it's just

it wasn't just England France was over there we just signed this gigantic treaty because we just had a world war where there were so many different continents that took part in all this and we just don't have the oversight of Germany to just let this shit happen and to the point to where by the time I think people started getting on board and I think when Germany started taking land and advancing everybody was just caught by surprise except for Churchill. Churchill knew this was coming so kind of during Churchill's world in this years and

when he's not like super active, Chamberlain, Neville Chamberlain, becomes the prime minister. And he basically has like a policy of appeasement for Germany that's kind of, you know, the Nazi regime. At this point, Hitler's become chancellor of Germany and they've adopted essentially a one-party system. So, guess what?

1933, I believe. Was it 30? I thought it might have been a little bit. That's when I think maybe the Nazis became a recognized political party. We're going to have to cover that when we get into like the rise of that party. But so basically, Chamberlain has this thing where he's not enforcing the treaty of Versailles. He's not forcing anything. He's not like calling up France and being like, hey, like, what the fuck are these guys doing? We see that they're, you know, rearming and they're building stuff and

no, materials for war. Germany's just like, no, no, no, we're just building stuff so we can defend ourselves. It's cool. And he's like, oh, okay, is that it? And then at some point, like, during this time, Churchill's also his most vocal critic for Chamberlain. this policy of appeasement. In 1938, Austria is forced to join Germany. So they threaten Austria. And they're just like, hey, we'll just, we're just going to take you over.

You can just join us. You used to be part of our country anyway. And so they take that. In the fall of 38, Germany demands Czechoslovakia. And Churchill, after this demand is made, Churchill goes directly to Chamberlain. I think he goes like after hours to his actual personal residence to have a talk with him.

And he's like, don't do this shit. He's like, you cannot give in, you don't give them an inch. You give them an inch, they're going to keep pushing and pushing and pushing. Chamberlain within, like, I think a week to two weeks, actually flies down to meet with Hitler and signs them Munich Agreement. And basically gave this requested land, like in Czech or what would later become Czechoslovakia, this land to Hitler in Germany if the Nazis promised that they're not going to make any more land claims. And they're like, okay, we're not going to do any more land claims. claims in Chamberlain. It's like, great, I can tell everyone we're good. But he's already at this point had to give up these lands that, you know, weren't Germany, you know, a few weeks before.

Yeah. Well, and not only is Germany popping off, but Mussolini and Italy are kind of on the same pathway. Musilini is... There's like a big government shakeup down there with the fascists or something like that, or Mussolini's been in power for quite a bit. He was the senior member of the axis. He was in power, I believe it was 10 years prior to Hitler taking power in Germany. Okay. And so you already see that regime. I'm not sure as far as

geographically how close Italy in Germany are. But Mussolini's making some noise. He's starting to threaten Greece. He's starting to try to spread his wings a little bit down in that area. And that I believe Chamberlain had sort of like an appeasement treaty

with them as well. there was something when Churchill first becomes the prime minister and we'll get to that in a second where there's this big push that Mussolini has offered to act as an intermediary once they're actually at war to basically negotiate like a settlement or something so there's this weird like still interaction between certain members of the parliament and then like members of like Italian whatever their version of their government would be it doesn't take very long so that Munich Agreement

that's fall 38 March of 39 to literally about three months later Germany violates the agreement and takes Poland Oh how about that Or they have plans to take Poland They basically tell Poland

Hey we're going to You know invade you So Winston Churchill's proven correct About Hitler this entire time And then on the 1st of September of 39 Germany invades Poland And then two days later

Britain and France declare war very quickly we went from trying to appease and trying to satiate Hitler and Mussolini and this is before Japan really starts popping off which I found interesting Churchill's stance on Japan but we're talking a matter of 19 when did World War one end it was four years So it started... I just had that... In 1915? No.

I actually think it might have ended in the 1915. So World War I starts... Yeah, 1914. Sorry, 1919, I think, is when it would end. So from 1919 to 1939, we're talking about a matter of 20 years before we have a war declaration from England and France back onto Germany again.

That's... In the span of time, that's very quickly. Well, as soon as they declare war, guess who gets called up to be first Lord the Admiralty again. Old Winnie. Bring him back. Bring him back. Run it back again, baby. He knows what he's doing. You know, we're going to go ahead and look over it. In the meantime, you've kind of been a little bit of the responsibility off that Glipling thing has been taken off your back. So I think we'll give you another crack at this. And they go into this thing called, did you read about the

phony war? Uh-uh. So like there was this time after Britain and France had declared war against Germany where like not a lot was had. Like everyone was trying to like fill each other out and see the next moves would be. And so Britain thought that there was something to do with like Norway because there's so much coastal area there that they would have places to go and manufacture ships, bringing supplies, all that kind of stuff. So there was this like time period of it might have been even like like two years or something where there wasn't really a lot of action done. Like Germany was still building up its production and getting ready to do certain things. and then England really wasn't making any moves.

I think they had sent at that point the British Expeditionary Force, which was like 350,000 people, into France to establish positions or to take certain areas. Probably reinforce them. Yeah, just played the defense at that point. So there was a plan to defend Norway.

Well, what ends up happening in spring of 1940 is the Nazis invade Denmark and then take over Norway. And at this point, because there had been such a focus on that of trying to defend Norway because they kind of knew what was going to happen and everything, there's a big call for Chamberlain to resign. Because he still gets to call the majority of the shots and everything.

And his appeasement deals have fucked up. All the agreements trying to satiate Germany has proved that that's just not possible. Yeah. And so he resigns on the 9th of May in 1940 and on the 10th of May, that's when Churchill's made prime minister. and he was really the only guy that they could get into this role that had enough loyalty from both sides of both parties to be agreed upon, to be the prime minister within this time. I don't only think his resume needed to go ahead and do anything else here. I mean, he had been a wartime commander during World War I.

He has served in so many various roles that he knows the ins and outs of a lot of different areas. And he was the one, he was basically one of the sole people that was like, Hitler's bad. What the fuck are we doing here? Yeah. He, for my understanding, he was brought in as like a wartime prime minister because him and Neville had had their kind of ups and downs about appeasement and that type of thing. But he actually kept Neville as a part of like his parliamentary prime minister cabinet. And Neville was more of like he handled the stuff at home.

Like he was dealing more with the people while Winston was focused. solely basically on the war. Yeah, he created a multi-party war cabinet. So he had like people. It was like five people. Yeah, and he had people from each of the like the political like parties in there. So everyone felt like every party felt like they kind of had a voice or had information on what was going on, which was enormous because that helped galvanize him essentially as being the leader. It made everyone feel like they had a common goal. They all had a voice in what was going on. The same day that he gets elected prime minister, Germany invades Belgium, Luxembourg and Netherlands. Bad luck. Yeah, not good. Couldn't have done it a day earlier or a day later. And their advancement, it's tough to realize how fast Germany advanced on some of these places.

And granted it's because... That's why they called the Blitzkrieg, man. They didn't have a standing military, anything like that. And I think some of these places probably. So it was fairly easy to take them over. But yeah, like you say, the Blitzkrieg... I think more of it was that it was a combination of, even if they had a prepared military

or a standing military in order, you still have to be able to gather them in a location. They may be standing, but they're spread out throughout different areas in your country. That's the big thing with the French is in World War II. The French got overrun so quickly

is because the German, that whole Blitzkrieg thing, hairball. I just swallowed my lifesaver. Don't choke on your life. No, it was small enough, thank God. That, you know, France is huge. And while they were invading just across like the Maginot line, the border of Germany and France,

they still had a huge section of their soldiers down in like the south of France to help protect them against like Mussolini if anything happened down there. And so they were able to capture a huge swath of France before the French military was even able to mobilize. And at that point, if they've captured certain key territories and everything, they're not going to even once you get your troops there, they're not going to do much good. They're just going to be laid to the party. The whole point, though, is that all of this, there had to be lead up to all of this. So it's not like Germany just like all of a sudden, like tanks and shit just exploded out of the ground. Like they were making all this for a long time. They were having planes made.

So a lot of this treaty of Versailles stuff, they were able to get away with because they were designing planes that they were like, no, they're passenger planes. Like, look, these are, but they were so easy to be configured and modified into bombers. They only had to switch around like a fuselage and all of a sudden this wasn't a passenger plane anymore. It was a high level bomber or something. They were developing, they had sport flying clubs. Yeah. Because they weren't allowed to have a military or an Air Force to be able to train. So they were training fighter pilots through these sport training clubs.

So these fighter pilots had years of experience doing all this stuff, not maybe so much actual, you know, combat experience. But they were able to go ahead and be excellent pilots by the time they actually had. launched this, you know, this conquest. But I mean, early on, Churchill did not have it easy, especially when the Germans pushed in through France so easily that basically all 350,000 soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force were penned against the ocean at this place called Dunkirk on the coast of France. And it's basically like, if you're looking at a map between France and England, it's not the closest area. But I mean, it's still reachable by boat and everything.

It's on that side of the coast. And they had soldiers at, did you read any about Dunkirk? No, I wanted to hear you. So they also controlled Calais, which was a few, I don't know exactly. It might have been like 20, 30, 40, 50 miles down the coast, but like further east down the coast so closer to Britain. It was a landing point on D-Day, wasn't it? It was one that they had kind of kicked around with the idea because they had deep water

ports, but it was too heavily defended by the Germans. But they had a garrison of like 5,000 British soldiers at Calais and then 350,000 in Dunkirk that were stranded. Not enough votes getting them out. So Churchill and his cabinet basically had to come up with the decision of saying telling the commanding officer at Calais, you need to go ahead and provoke the German forces and get them to focus on you for as much time as possible to give us a chance to try to evacuate or figure out a plan for these 300.

Like, your 5,000 is going to try to buy time for this 350,000. And that's not a quick exit strategy with 350,000 soldiers. And I'm not sure who was the mastermind behind it. Of course, Churchill gets some credit because he's the one that approved the plan and it even sounded a little crazy. Is that instead of to get these soldiers off, he basically put out a call to every single vessel in Britain, luxury yachts, pleasure crafts, anything over, I think, I want to say 50 feet, he put in a call for people to go to Dunkirk and to pick up soldiers.

And they called them the little boats of Dunkirk. And so during, over the course of, I think, three days, there were enough boats that it got like 320,000 plus soldiers from Dunkirk back to England. Huh. Now, that was the entire British military at that point. Had they lost that, they would have had no bargaining chips to defend against invasion either. Well, that's I can't imagine just the To come into power as a prime minister

I don't know if that was like a A goal for his entire life Was to get into that position But as you're It was he made some weird comment Oh yeah, he was destined to lead During like the hardest time or something like that He had made some sort of premonition

That that was what he had been given but his first years as prime minister, he watched a country who probably didn't have the same might as England fall to the Germans. He watched France give up. France was supposed to have the strongest standing military of any country in Europe. And that's why it was such a shock when they ended up surrendering is he's like, you guys have like the longest or you guys have the largest military and you just got spanked. Maybe you can shed some light on it because I heard about it, but not a whole lot.

There was a point in time when after France had either fallen or they were in the process of falling, that Winston told the leader of France, he, your guys' Navy fleet is still out there. Go ahead and bring them to Britain, and we will use them to strengthen our Navy, and we will be able to fight against the Germans. If you leave them there, the Germans are going to be able to take those boats and they'll be able to use them in their Navy. And Churchill assigned a bombing raid.

Yeah, so basically what happened is when France surrendered to Germany, you had this area of Southern France that was still under control. You ever heard of the Vichy French? Yeah, that, yeah, okay. So the Navy was, in the control of the Vichy French and it was parked in luck it was parked in a it would be a Middle Eastern port at this point I can't remember which country that's where it was stationed and the Germans came to an agreement that they wouldn't like keep fighting against the Vichy French

but that the VC French couldn't help or do anything like that so they're not like hey we're going to just give you the Navy or anything like that but they told Churchill they're like no we can't send the ships here because that'll be violating the terms that we just made with the Germans and we can't, then they'll just conquer all of France. Yeah. They were going to plan on doing that anyway. They were just not creating active war against the Vichy French. They're like, we're still going to rule you, but we're just not going to try to come kill you.

That's the thing that I don't fucking understand is why is everybody trying to give Germany the benefit of a doubt after seeing all this, after seeing the blitzkrieg and everything else? Why the fuck are you just like, hey, we decided that we pounded out this? trying not to get your civilians killed. I get that. But you have to know that it's just a matter of time. Just like Churchill knew. Yeah. And if you don't have the strength to even fight against them,

long story short, what Churchill ended up doing was he was like, sorry, sorry, old boy. But he's like, well, if you aren't going to give us those ships, we definitely can't have the Germans getting those ships. So, yeah, he sent a bombing rate. No, no, he sent in ships, I think. Was it? It was a fleet.

And they ended up engaging with the French fleet. And I think it ended up killing, like, 1,300 French sailors. I thought it was more than that. I thought it was like multiple thousands. I saw the number. It might have injured a lot more than that, but I saw like 1,300 actual deaths or casualties.

Well, and then the Germans use that to their advantage because the Germans tried to start spreading propaganda and the Vichy saying, hey, they attacked you guys. So are we really the bad people in this situation? Exactly. Which is great PR for the Germans, but it was really the Vichy leaders. It's just denying the spoils. war it's like you can look at it and be like yeah but you guys also like could have just called

your soldiers off the boats and been like yeah you guys destroyed him hey we didn't help them destroy him or anything like that but you know there could have been something there they actually even fired on each other so it was like the vichy french were firing on the british ships too wow so but i mean at this point like churchill and england are standing alone like he's he's reached out for aid to the United States. So FDR, FDR knew we were going to have to go to war. He was even in favor for us going to war. But the American opinion, because of World War I, just being so close, was that this is a

European problem. This is not a problem for us to intervene in again. And so he couldn't even get to the point where he was providing aid or anything like that yet to England. So literally Churchill has his Navy and has the Royal Air Force. and is basically the only thing kind of standing between, you know, freedom in Europe and total third-right domination. Well, Churchill had this weird belief that Japan would never be a player.

Like, he didn't think that they were going to join the axis. Is that sort of what it was? He didn't think that they would ever be a threat in the Second World War. I don't know if it ever really... occurred to him. I don't know if his, I mean, I'm sure he was aware of what was going on there and also like the disputes between, you know, America and for the oil embargoes and shit like that. He probably had a general idea because they did have like in Singapore. I think Singapore was a British strong. Yeah. So he obviously had some knowledge of what was going on. But I don't think that that was his focal point at that point. I think he was trying to figure out what's happening at home and then he would figure that out. Because I know they also did have some ships down in that area and everything. um the blitz basically the bombing of london and the british home miles battle of britain yep um that was between like 40 and 41 and that was during 40 he gives that's when he gives his like three big speeches and everything like we will fight in the air we'll fight on the beaches in the land

and all that we'll never surrender he gives three of those types of speeches in 1940 and pretty much and public opinion in in britain was also like this as well it was wasn't like he was going against the will of the people. It was almost like the other people in parliament that were really pushing for him during this time to enter into like negotiations with Hitler and basically more appeasement and all this kind of stuff. Like how do you not really the ramifications of that? Like they're going to tell you that you have to disarm and everything. And then what's to stop them after you're disarmed from coming in and concoinguate? They have the rest of, you know, the European peninsula.

You're just sitting ducks. Exactly. And for some reason, Churchill had people within his own cabinet saying that they should, you know, negotiate for peace terms with Hitler. At this point, he was like, no, we're not going to do that. So he really galvanized the opinion also of, like, the British people with these speeches that, you know, surrender was not an option, that they were all that was standing between, you know, the free world and darkness and everything. So gets, you know, through the blitz. God damn, that was a deep one. But to talk about the Blitz a little bit,

I think I told you I just, I had no idea really how the Battle of Britain played out. And excuse me, the Blitz sort of started because the Germans tried to basically just overrun the R.A.F. They tried to completely shut them down, and shut them out. So it was more of like a battle between the RAF and the Luftwaffe. It was basically the Battle of Britain was all a lead up to establish.

In order for Germany, which had taken over France and was ready in reinforcing itself along the Atlantic Wall, for them to invade the British Homes, they had to establish superiority over the channel. They first had to control the channel, then they had to control the skies. And so until they controlled those two, what would end up happening is if they tried to launch an invasion, all the British would have to do is basically just fly bombers and bring the Navy into the channel. It's a short little straight and everything and just be able to pick them off. So the Blitz was to basically it served twofold. One, it was to try to draw out the RAF and their fighter aircraft and basically just through attrition and all these missions.

Because when you're bringing over bombers, you have fighters escorting them. Their jobs are to engage the other fighters who in turn are trying to shoot down the bombers. So through the war of attrition, they were basically trying to grind down both the morale by bombing England and also remove their ability to make air combat. You kind of mentioned this the other, when we were texting the other day about like the overestimation and underestimation. Yeah. So Britain overestimated the Germans' ability to replace aircraft losses and manufacture aircraft. The Germans underestimated Britain's ability to create these aircraft because they weren't creating. them, they had some aircraft factories, but during certain points of World War II, they were assembling, like, different components of the aircraft in these small, like, villages and towns, and then shipping them to be assembled. And then instead of having huge airfields, they would have, like, these airfields of, like, 10 or, you know, 20 planes scattered over a huge region. So regardless of where the Germans were coming in to do their bombing runs, there were planes close by to, like, meet up and try to meet them head on and take them out before they were able to get into, like,

populated areas. So it was just sort of like under the cover or under the veil of space that they were creating these planes that Germany didn't know about. Yeah, the other thing too is, so Germany in the beginning had the better Air Force. They had more training because they had helped fight in the Spanish Civil War. So, but what they didn't really, and when they were flying over, you know, fighting with the French Air Force and everything, if they lost a plane and a pilot had to bail out, chances are he would be able to bail out over friendly German area, occupied area or find his way back to the German lines.

If you're fighting over the channel or you're fighting over Britain and you get shot down. Water, enemy lines. Water or you're behind enemy lines. So they might have been able to meet the demand for aircraft, but for experienced pilots, they were losing on that front too.

And they lost in the channel, too, didn't they? Because they didn't, like, they didn't have a massive naval fleet of, like, carriers to drop off soldiers? they were having to try to like piecemeal together like giant like barges to try to pull them across and everything like that like with Germany Germany has um where it would like manufacture its battleships would be like in Germany on like the Rhine River and then you would have to send the battleships up the river just to then get into like the North Atlantic and everything and then they would have to make like after they had conquered France they would have to make these things called the Channel Dash where they would have to send these warships to try to like. send them really quick through the narrow gap in the English Channel to like a friendly French port, German friendly or send them up to like Norway or something like that.

So it's not like they have this huge coastal area to begin building barges and landing craft. Yeah, they're just running the risk through the channel of not being bombed. Yeah. And after the Battle of Britain, so it was called Operation Sea Lion was supposed to be the invasion of the British Islands. And I think as soon as the Battle of Britain ended and everything, they had to end up calling that off. because they figured there's not a way that we can establish our superiority over Britain in the channel. Well, and that's where I think Churchill, I'm not really a believer in premonition, but this makes me more of a believer,

was after they had tried to take out the military might to do it that way, then Hitler in the Third Reich just immediately were like, okay, we can't take them out militarily. We're going to try to grind down these people. people. And these bombing raids that started happening after there was like the open air combat and the sea combat were just specifically targeting basically like factories so they could try to knock out their powers of reproduction. But it was just like neighborhoods. Like it was, they were just bombing these people. And for those people that were in Britain at the time that

were just being bombed and blown up and just torn to shit, for them to still have the belief in Churchill to be like, hey, we need to keep fighting. Churchill had to be the guy to give those speeches to get those people to have enough resolved to be like, I understand that my whole housing area just got blown up and I didn't die. Can you imagine like the terror of like night bombing? You're just sitting there sleeping in all of a sudden you're just here though. You're never sleeping ever because you're just always trying to anticipate trying to get away from that. You go outside and all you see your spotlights and you see the anti-aircraft fire going up.

But then you can hear like the buzz of the planes above you and you're just like, so am I just running and the bombs getting up landing on like that's got to be just fucking terrifying. but to keep like the morale of your like people up there and that being like I know this is horrible but we cannot give in like if you think this is bad like living under these people would be even worse this is what we're doing while we're a war imagine what happens when they take total control yeah it just completely blows me away and some of his speeches that he gave were just so after the battle of Britain happened I think he was over in Canada when he gave the some chicken speech and basically after he had criticized the first French for giving up and basically letting Germany take them over. The German chancellor or whatever he was said something like, just wait in a month's time, Britain will die the death of like a chicken being choked or some shit like that. And after the Battle of Britain was over, Churchill was over in Canada and he gives a speech some chicken.

And he stands up and his first line is some chicken, huh? And then he goes, didn't get our next run like we thought we did or something like that. And it was just like a direct shot at the French minister or whoever said that. It was like, bro, you guys gave up. We withheld bombings of our entire cities. I mean, there's something to say to like France being like landlocked, connected with Germany, everything like that. But still, like you had the largest army at that point. And then you did like nothing in preparation for this.

Like you're the ones closer. So you should have known what they were doing. even more so than us. This falls squarely on your shoulders because you guys share a border. Like you need to have some sort of periphery around your country. Like, especially because

you're going to be the first ones fucking taken over. Yeah. Like, why aren't you on higher alert? Your, yeah, like you say, you're the first line of defense, which means that you're the first line that's going to get fucked

if you can't defend that. You need to be in charge of everything and be watching over them very closely. It just weren't. March 41, that's when the Lend-Lease Act comes in. So this is what was signed between America and Britain before we were actually in the war. Again, this is March 41.

So the Lend-Lean Act was an agreement we signed with Britain that allowed the United States to remain neutral in the war, but to provide food, fuel, and war materials to Britain. So not really being neutral. We're sending them everything basically to fight. And this is when we start the Nazi U-Boat Wolf Packs come in because we're sending just these huge shipping convoys over there. And is this, it was, when did you say in 41? That was March 41. So how close to Pearl Harbor was that?

Well, that was December, 41. Okay, so this was prior to we started. Yeah, we didn't come in, so this will be March of the third month. So nine months away, we're going to be in this. Okay. In the summer of 41, so apparently Hitler had had enough trying to take over Great Britain. So in the summer of 41, that's when he decides it's time to fucking launch the invasion of the Soviet Union or Russia.

So that's when he opens up his eastern front and starts doing that, which we all know how that turned out. December and 41, big year 41. Pearl Harbor happens and... Before Pearl Harbor, something, just not to cut you off, August 41, Churchill and Roosevelt signed what's known as the Atlantic Charter. And the Atlantic Charter laid down the blueprints for the United Nations. nations. Okay. So Churchill even had that effect of not just like during the war.

Had the foresight of saying we need something in place after this thing's over. Yeah. Because there was something. What was it? It was the League of Nations. I think it was. That was established after World War I. He's like, this league did fucking nothing. He's like, we need to set the groundwork for something that's going to be effective. He already had plans at that point. He's like, I'm setting us up to win the war. This is going to be our plan after we win this thing. We're not seeing World War three. Yeah. We're making sure that there's something in the way that's an impediment to it.

Yeah. So just like his fingerprint still, World War II, huge fingerprint over, but something that we still see today that's still working is, was enacted because he had the foresight to be like, we can't keep doing this. Like, these wars aren't good for anybody. So, yeah. So summer 41, Nazis invade Russia. December in 41 is when Pearl Harbor occurs.

and that's what is, you know, forces America into World War II. Man, can you, I don't think anything else could have made him happier. I mean, I'm sure he wishes it was a smaller event that didn't, you know, cripple our Navy for a little while in the Pacific and everything. But the fact that at that point, he, I'm trying to remember what he said, he said like, as soon as like America came in, it was like the beginning of the end or something like that for, for the axis. I think

not that he was happy that it was the size of the atrocity that it was, but had it been something lesser, like, had they had only killed like a hundred sailors or whatever, 100 military members, I don't know if that would have been enough provocation to enter the

war. I think there had to have been a certain number of loss that happened that made it necessary for them, or made it necessary for us to enter the war. So like, I'm sure when he got that call, he probably knew just because him and Roosevelt

had had so many other meetings that Roosevelt was in for it. Yeah, he knew about it before he called Roosevelt. Yeah. He called Roosevelt and he's like, is it true? And he's like, yeah, it's true. He's like, all right.

He's somehow convinced, too, like during some of their first meetings when they were figuring out how to approach the entire situation now that the entire world was literally like in this, is he did a great job. And I think it probably might have been a combination between him and Stalin, which they had a fucking weird-ass relationship and everything.

Yeah, they're very weird. Stalin's one of the weirdest guys in history. Yes. They were able to essentially convince Roosevelt and be like, listen, Germany has got to be the focal point here. And Roosevelt was on board. He's like, yep, we'll take it. Let's go ahead and take care of Europe first,

and then we'll figure out what to do about Japan. But even at that point, because I think Roosevelt was talking to me, and he's like, well, you know, how are you guys doing down in the Pacific? he's like Singapore will never fall. And then something ended up happening in which that didn't look good on Roosevelt is Singapore was British held. It was heavily defended. And they were so,

so prepared for like a naval bombardment. And it couldn't be like invaded from the sea. Well, they didn't anticipate that the Japanese army could cross this like narrow land bridge. They didn't think any army could cross it. Well, they ended up doing it and attacking Singapore from like another direction. And it was just a fucking.

blowout. They said it was actually Singapore, the loss of Singapore might be the greatest like blunder in like British British like history for like combat history or something like that. Do you think when Roosevelt agreed like hey Germany's got

to be the focal point and then we'll take care of Japan that Roosevelt our news like we got something for these Japanese people. Don't you worry. We're creating a bomb. I'm not going to bore you with the details yet but I got this guy named John Oppenheimer I got something for Japan coming.

Like, let's focus on Germany. We'll wipe out Japan later. I think Japan being so far from the United States, you know, we have our entire, like, for them to make war, for them to make more on continental United States was a long way away at that point. So I think that was probably helped to make it be like a focal point and everything. With Japan, we don't have to fuck with an Air Force or a military. All we have to focus on is the Navy because there's such a distance.

And they would still have to bring the Navy all the way this way. And we can build, you know, all that kind of stuff. Speaking of, you know, Hiroshima and Nagasaki and everything. So FDR, that's his thing. Or no, who ended up calling for that? That was Truman. Yes, it was Truman that called for that. The development of it was under FDR, though.

Churchill kind of had his own version of that with Driesden. And the bombing of Driesden. Oh, Dresden. Yeah. Oh, Dresden. Yeah, sorry. So there was a couple different Like with bomber planes

They had these things called bomber theory And they would be like the You know pinpoint bombing or blanket area bombing Like these thoughts about how they should go about it Well like different ones like pinpoint bombing Isn't effective because you're missing your target Because you're trying to hit these You don't get as much damage

The success rate's lower Blanket bombing you're going to have more success Because you're launching more bombs over a larger area but you're going to kill civilians. You're fishing with dynamite. Exactly. It's these different schools of thought, and then everything in between.

So Churchill, at a certain point, the war was like a proponent of like blanket bombing. At that point, like, you've seen your own country get bombed a shit tonne and everything. You're literally fighting against an enemy that's caused how much death and destruction up at this point. There was a city called Dresden, and they,

They bombed it with incendiaries. So, like, instead of just being, like, bombs that are going to destroy things, incendiaries are going to destroy it, plus they're going to catch everything on fire. And they firebom the city. They fire bombed the city of Dresden. And, like, the initial reports were that it could be, like, up to, like, 80,000 civilians were killed and everything like that. They've come back and said, I'm not making an excuse for the numbers because any, you know, it's terror bombing and everything is basically what it was. But they ended up coming back. It was during a war.

It is, but here's the thing, too. Like, looking at everything, would you want that done against your cities? No, no. So that's kind of what I'm saying is it's questionable. But at the same time, you know, this was also at a time when like we didn't know a lot about Germany's atrocities and everything like that. Yeah. So in comparison, Dresden is just against Churchill. In comparison to what he's done, it's the most extreme thing that he's probably done.

Well, and quote me if I'm wrong, because I really might. be. Wasn't Dresden one of the towns that Hitler assured them that they would never be bombed? Because there were towns that there were towns that got called off because of like their cultural or their historical significance and I think Dresden was one of those.

And so they just assured them that they would never be bombed. But then Churchill doing that kind of flew in the face of the promise that Hitler made for his people. Yeah, because they bombed London too. And London's a heavy civilian population. Oh yeah. So I think it was just Churchill being like

we can get fucking dirty too if we have to but still in the grand scope of wanting to be like the winners and try to keep your hands as clean as possible and win the war in the most normal way it doesn't look good in that that's a tactic that your enemy would use that you would expect

your enemy to use I think it's the biggest knock on it I guess I just look at it differently like you're saying man though like it's war at that point like it's the whole rationale behind using the atomic bomb how many is this event going to be the contributing factor that

ends the war? Are they going to be like, this is bad, we surrender? That's what I mean. The whole rationale with atomic bombs was we can do this and show them that we can inflict this amount of damage because we could have bombed

I think they said like five to six more cities in Japan and at that point we would have had the estimated casualties of an invasion of Japan. Okay. So that means that I owe you an apology. Because during the atomic bomb episode, I was the opposite way of saying, hey, maybe this was a little bit overkill. And you were the one that was justifying what I just tried to do with the bombing in Dresden. You're correct?

The atomic bomb wasn't too much. I'm saying, no, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that, like, we don't really know. Like, it's all, it's all. a matter of circumstance, like what if they wouldn't have given up and it would have taken us? How many cities would we have bombed before they finally gave up? Would it have to be three more

than the projection of the amount of casualties had we invaded Japan? Because then we're talking about something completely different. So it's just, it's one of those things. Here's the thing, the reason why it looks as bad as it does, is because we were the good guys in World War II.

We weren't supposed to do bad guy shit. But sometimes in order to do that, to win the war, you do have to do. You got to get in the mud. You do have to get in the mud. But if that's one of the bigger noxigans, Churchill, he's still got enough stuff that he did.

That's not going to overshadow anything. Yeah, I'm not hanging anything on him because desperate times call for desperate measures. And when you're living through the Blitz, there's going to be a lot of ideas that sound good to you. Churchill visited Normandy a couple days after D-Day. How crazy is that? He said that he wanted to be there before he.

he actually visited. He said he wanted to be there the day of. Did you hear the fucking king said he was going to do that? I don't know if the king meant it, but he did it to prove a point to Churchill. He's just like, I don't want you to be there before I'm there. No, no, no. So Churchill was like, I'm going to be with the first wave in one of the landing craft when we land on this beach. And you're like, no, you're not. You're fucking crazy. And so he went in like him and the king had weekly meetings. I love that. They had lunch like every year. Thursday. Yeah, and Churchill would drink during his their fucking lunches. Of course he would. He would drink during

every meal. He would drink during breakfast. Yeah, but during one of the conversations, the king was like, you know, as a beacon to my people, I think that I need to be on one of the landing craft and the first one as a symbol to the people that I'm fighting for them. And he's like, sir, he's like, I, he's like, that's ridiculous. He's like, you don't think anyone would actually let you do that. And then he just kind of looked to me, he's like, and next to me, you're the second most important person. Do you really see anybody

letting you do that? Oh, because he said something like you were the head member of the five-person war cabinet. Yeah, and so he basically proven a point. He's like, yeah, do you see how stupid you sound when you're saying something like this? Like, you're going to go. He's like, actually, I'm five more physically capable of storming

the beach than you are. Well, and so much like the Civil War with Lincoln going and sitting at Jefferson Davis's desk. Yeah. You see him wanting to be there to be like D-Day, I had my reservations about it. It wasn't something that I really fully agreed to,

but it's gonna fucking work, and I wanna be on the first ship over there. Like, he wanted to show that power to lead from the front. And I'm sure most of that was just how much time that he spent in the military, that he, like, he had desires to be back into it because he clearly enjoyed it. So he wanted to be out there.

I wonder if, like, I know that he wanted to, like, inspire and be out there and everything, but I wonder if he had a little bit of a like an invulnerability complex. Like if he hadn't been wounded up to this point or really seriously hurt, he was drinking like he does

and it wasn't knocking him out of commission or any type of thing like that. He realized that alcohol couldn't even affect it. Yeah, I don't know if he just kind of had a little bit of a thought that he was a little bit of vulnerable. Like some of the stuff he said makes me kind of think like he had that air about him. He was just the king of invincibility.

And I mean during World War II, him and Stalin, me to all these different conferences like at Tehran and um how does that work how were you just at war i i guess Stalin being on our side but there was so many things and he was even kind of at the forefront of this and i'm sure it's because he met Stalin a lot because after the war was over he's like oh next issue yess us are there it wasn't like a resting period and i think and i think that led that might have led to him not getting that re-election okay right after uh Yeah.

So he had met Stalin enough during their conferences and everything to know that after this got taken care of. I mean, it was a marriage of a convenience, like the enemy of my enemy type deal. It wasn't like, he like, hey Joe, a, no, like America and Britain, that was a mutual. Yeah. Like Russia was just something like, I'll deal with you later, but I need your help for now. And so like during their meetings, like, yeah, him and Stalin, they kept. the, you know, the allies together and everything like that and kept the peace. But yeah, that entire time you could just see the wheels working with Churchill.

Because as soon as World War II ended and everything, his focus went straight to combating communism. Well, and it makes so much sense that you would say that that's why he has that kind of cooling period between his PM runs. Is he was, like you say, he was the one that focused on the next enemy because he was looking for the next person that he had to fight off, whereas everybody else was trying to be like, let's chill out for a second. The way that he thinks about it, though, makes complete sense. So in post-World War II, so Germany ends up surrendering, like, what, a week after Hitler shoots himself? Or escaped. Because this was the other cool thing. Where was it?

Oh, May 7th, 1945. He was actually the one that got on the airwaves. and broadcast the surrender. He talked to people on the airwaves. He gave speeches on the airways all the time. Yeah. So, like, he wanted to be the one to give the people the good news.

He was the one that was out there on the forefront giving these speeches to try to give them hope. He wanted to be the one to deliver the news of victory. And that's so cool, just, and so deserving and so fitting. He went and crossed the Rhine River in Germany in March 1945.

Like, he wasn't, like, I mean, he was far from the front line, but he would, like, go into, like, the zones,

that they had just, like the Allies had just taken over. So he was definitely, like, wanting to be, I think he wanted to, you know, ingratiate himself. He wanted to be one of the boys again. He did. He wanted to be eternally one of the boys. So post-World War II, you know, when you are Germany and you've taken over that much area, what you have at that point is, France is like, no, we know we're France is. We're keeping all of France.

Germany has, like, certain areas taken from it that they had conquered. And then I think we were talking about this earlier There was this weird like rule that wherever you had been like for the last year of the campaign That country was going to be under your influence So Russia had pretty much pushed in everything like Toward the west all the way up to Germany And then like was fighting in like the Baltic area And then even like down were they down toward the Middle East?

I want to say Pakistan might have been But they still had a lot of a lot of influence in that whole area and everything. So you had all these countries that were now going to be under the influence of communism. So essentially, within the fell swoop of Germany being defeated, you then were making communism that much stronger because you were providing all these additional areas to a country that was their deal. Yeah. And then you had the other countries that were trying to be held on to by like the United States and Britain,

not like from a sovereignty perspective, but to have their influence to like Greece. So like Greece and Italy and all that kind of stuff to keep all that stuff from gaining hold there. Well, and you still had, even after the loss of World War II. He was already in the Cold War. World War II ends. And for Winston Churchill, the Cold War again right then.

Yeah, there was no lapse in timing or anything like that. He started building towards the Cold War kind of, I'm sure, when he was meeting with Stalin. Like, he just, he knew. He knew that a victory, if they could get over the hump in World War II, he was shaking his hand, making notes with the other. about this guy. Yes.

Before we keep going, one more bathroom break. This one's run a little long, but it would be great. Stick with us. All right, be back. All right, and we're back for the home stretch. This is the victory lap for Winston Churchill. The real fun stuff. So he ends up coming back in...

1951. In 51. So the reason he doesn't get... you would think that like the guy that just led you literally through like the darkest time in your country's recent memory, shoeing for another. Yeah. Keep in that position. Well, right after the war, apparently, and this makes sense, there was a movement within like British politics where there was a party that was gaining traction. And basically they implemented social services.

Welfare, like state run health care, stuff like that. Good stuff. Huh? Good stuff. Yeah. And because they were coming off a war when everyone had rationed and suffered and all that kind of stuff, it sounded so good that apparently that party that was in support of it, they ended up winning. So you have to be the major controlling party for the member to be the prime minister.

That's the controlling party. So they gained enough power where they were able to then like appoint like their own prime minister. And so that's how Winston Churchill watched that. I mean, crazy. Like everyone just assumed he was going to be a shooting. but the people are like, we'd just been a war for like four years. Some civil services or some social services sound pretty fucking good. Well, and I think part of that too may have been a, not necessarily a Winston choice,

because I'm sure he just would have preferred to stay in power. But he was kind of, like I talked about, he was a prime minister that was like a wartime prime minister. Yeah. And now that war was coming to an end and they needed to look back towards more of like a Neville Chamberlain take care of the people type Prime Minister. He may have served his purpose to get them through the war, but he wasn't

going to be able to serve the purpose to help people, which I disagree with, because I think that he's done a lot of good things for the people previously to the war. Well, and during that time, he also didn't. It's not like he got kicked out of politics. He was the leader of the opposing political party during that time, too. So that was at the time when he was starting to,

he gave his information. That's when he gave his like Iron Curtain speech about Stalin and like socialism and everything. communism in Europe. So, I mean, he was very active during that time frame. But then, yeah, in 51, he comes back around and essentially, despite like losing

the popular vote to the Labor Party, the Conservatives won an overall majority. And they were able to go ahead and then install Winston Churchill as the prime minister again. So he had a second- They took enough seats for power of parliament. It's, to me, just doing quick math, 1951 so it's 51 years plus 26 years of him being born in 1874 he's 77 when he takes office for the second time

yeah which it will ultimately come to like his his sort of age and state and not necessarily failing health but his health issues as to why he he doesn't run again yeah that math to me i don't know I know that Biden's old. I know that Trump's old. But they got to be older than this, right? I think they're around that same age and everything. Okay. So maybe it's not a leap to be like,

we're seeing in politics that these people are being older and older. This guy drinks so much, though. So how many, you know, how many years has that add on to his life? Been rode hard and put away, but he made it to 90. I know. So like 77, he takes office again.

He'd have like minor strokes. even up to this point. And they were just kind of thinking they're like, he'll probably serve due to his declining healthy. Even like King George thought that he was going to stand down after like maybe a year or two. Yeah. And he was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not going to do that.

And so in June of 53, he suffered like a serious stroke and had like paralysis on one side. Still didn't back down. And there was also, wasn't there a, a hierarchical change wasn't, didn't the king die and then Elizabeth the second took over? I'm not sure, let's see. I thought it had happened

kind of right in the middle of that. There was something about him being knighted. So he was knighted as Sir Winston. Oh, in 53. Yeah, so it was... April 24th, 1953. He was knighted, became Sir Winston Churchill.

Yeah, it was widely expected that he would retire after the Queen's coronation in June 53. That's what it was. But then, like, literally, it just caused it didn't it didn't retire him it just caused him to have a stroke he was so shocked he was fucking paralyzed him on one side

but seriously he ended up like almost making like a full recovery by like November and then he ended up but that was and then he retired his prime minister in April of 55 so he stayed for four years it's a full term I would assume because if his ministry

part of that term being paralyzed on half your body but I mean the he ended up living until 65 so he had a decade after to be able to live the good life so the thing is is that's when

they saw after World War II the British Empire being disbanded and disbanded apparently he didn't look too kindly upon that just because he was probably old British yeah and everything not saying yeah it should have been disbanded and everything like that but for him it was one of those things about do you think he had thoughts about like I fought for this like I fought to maintain all this and everything and now it's just kind of being like return it's being returned back to the people who live there god damn it there's a term that I heard that I thought was kind of fitting and it sort of goes along the lines it just sounds prettier than it was a different time but a historic like a historic like a historicly he lived in a time where he had just given everything that he'd come to try to keep England in...

When you say a historic, you're supposed to put yourself into that mindset what would have been socially acceptable and stuff back then? Yeah. Which it had to have been because like you say, he just literally put everything... He pushed all his chips into the middle of the table to try to beat Germany. And the fact that he did,

now everybody's like, well, we need to start going our own separate ways. He's like, no! I gave everything that I could to make sure this stayed this way. So he, when he was knighted, the queen actually offered him also the Duke of England, the title of Duke of England, which apparently is even way more prestigious than being knighted. It makes sense because you're the Duke of London.

Does that make you? Sorry, Duke of London. Did I say Duke of England? Yeah. Offered him Duke of London. Doesn't that make you like a member of the, like, royal family? I don't think you can, you can do that from like a biological, thing by offering someone a title.

I think it has to be like full on biological. Which you want to adopt him. Which actually when he ends up dying, only one other person has been provided this outside of the royal family. He is given a state funeral. Really? He is provided when he dies a state funeral. His body is interned at like Westminster or whatever for three days.

And then he is finally laid to rest at Oxford Shire like near his family estate of whatever I named it earlier. and everything. But yeah, he received a full on state funeral. Only one other, and it was another prime minister back in like 1890 or something like that, or 19, yeah, 1899 was

provided that. I thought you were going to say it was John Lehmann. No, no. But yeah, that's, I mean, so I mean, people definitely knew what he had did for the country and everything like that. He also, did you know, won a Nobel prize. But he didn't

win it for what you think that he would, he won it literature, right? Yeah. So he didn't, he feel like he could have won the Nobel Peace Prize, maybe? I don't know if peace was his thing, remember? It wasn't too, but... He wasn't too keen on, well, he wasn't too keen on making peace with people he knew couldn't be trusted to keep the peace.

Yeah, but he created peace by defeating them. Yeah, he won it for literature, and I think that that's maybe what he would have preferred and everything, because he was alive when he won it, he just wasn't able to go and accept the actual award. It was early on, wasn't it? I thought it was in like 63 maybe and that's why he couldn't travel to do it but it wasn't just for like

he his documentary series or like his like coverage because he ended up running another six part thing on World War II like a super detailed and like really popularly received one but he also they said as part of him receiving the Nobel Prize of literature it was part of also his speech

writing and being an orator which would make sense because speeches are written word and everything but when you look at it from that perspective, yes, his speeches were legendary. He is what I would say, probably without any sort of question, the ultimate most quotable person.

Yeah. If you know his quotes, this isn't like anchorman quotes or anything like that. Do you want to do his quotes before we get into his regiments? Yeah. Okay.

I'll start off with my first one. Okay. If you're going through hell, keep going. Yeah, we wrote a goddamn country song about that. Didn't Jason Aldine write a country song about that? Oh, there's that song. If you're going through.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I think that's Blake Shelton or some shit. My first one is never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinders in the room. Like, never tried to strike a deal with somebody who's not in complete power. who's not in their own capabilities. Yeah. Just a fucking, the weirdest thing that you could say, but it makes total sense.

Like it totally fits the idea of what Churchill was. All I can say is that I've taken more out of alcohol than alcohol is taken out of me. I don't know if that one's true for him. No, I think he won. Yeah, actually that's true. He battled through that. This one, I think, is probably the most poignant thing

that he could have ever said that, matters today. And I wish this was under our money instead of in God we trust. But the price of greatness is responsibility. Like is that not the biggest allegory for this country of people being like, hey, we deserve these rights. And it's like, no, you're fucking responsible for those rights. There's rules that we have set in place that you have to follow to be a good citizen in order to be great. And if we're the greatest country in the world, we've got to fucking take some responsibility for what we have. You have enemies?

Good. That means you've stood up for something in your life. Yeah. I like that one a lot. This one is by far and away my favorite just because

it's so, I don't know, it just hits home with me. Never stand when you can sit down. Never sit down when you can lie down. Works more or not harder. Yeah. And he totally,

you know, overliving his life with all the shit that he did. he was one of those guys where he kept a schedule that we'll talk about. Oh yeah. But he was just one of those dudes where like he had to steal every bit of rest that he could because he was doing so much shit that he wanted to make sure. His hours and ways were so unorthodox and everything. Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak.

It's also what it takes to sit down and listen. And I think that's very applicable today is that people forget about that second part. Yeah. It's okay to know that you're not the one that has all the, the answer is that you can listen to something that makes more sense. And do you have any more? No. I have two more.

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. I saw that literally on a billboard. It was like coincidence out the ass. Literally within the last week, driving out of downtown. Yeah. I look up to the left, and there's a Winchin Churchill quote, and it's that quote. Huh. It's, we make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

That's interesting. I know. Timing's perfect. I was under the assumption, too, that Jimmy V. was the guy that made the quote of, never give up, never, never give up. That was Winston. Yeah.

And this last one, I'm prepared to meet my maker. Whether my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter. I love that one. Yeah. So, yeah, the infamous Winston Churchill schedule. That's where we get Winston Churchill day from. It's a I ate the same breakfast every morning.

Yeah, a traditional English spread English spread Well, not traditional In some regards, not traditional. Yeah,

it was fried. Well, no, he also, his drink of choice during breakfast was not traditional English. Okay.

So he would wake up and spend like the first two hours and he would wake up like seven, I got you. I got the full rundown of it. Okay, go ahead. So 7.30 in the morning. Wake up,

remain in bed. eat breakfast, read newspapers, work, glass of whiskey and soda. 7.30 in the morning, he's banging out breakfast and a whiskey and soda while he's reading newspapers. 7.30 in the morning. Next check in. 11 a.m. Yeah, they said he stayed in bed for up to two hours in the morning, eating, doing his drinking, and catching up on all the papers.

Guys got to stay up to date. No more comfortable place to do that than in bed. Yeah. Why are you standing? Why are you sitting in a chair? Just staying. have like his person that like took his dictions come in as soon as he and see and he would just be in his

nightgown sitting in bed eating and just be talking and having them take down stuff and taking his correspondence and all that stuff so he was working yeah he just knew how he worked best he knew how to work from home very very well so 11 so we're talking two and a half hours later

he was out of bed he would take a stroll around the garden to supervise his estate while drinking whiskey and sodas 1,300 hours so 1 o'clock in the afternoon, multi-course lunch, he would have an imperial pint of champagne.

Or wine. A pint of wine's a lot of wine. A lot of wine. That's not just a glass. That's a lot of wine. When you're following that, when you're washing down whiskey and soda from 7.30 in the morning to wine until 1 o'clock in the afternoon, you're having yourself a day. Oh, and did you miss the part about the cigars during breakfast, too?

Oh, yeah. I know you touched on that. Yeah. He would just sit in bed just in his white linen sheets and just puff away. So, just so if people don't know what a full English breakfast is, it sounds amazing. It includes, you know, when you, they're like, hey, do you want bacon sausage or whatever? No, with an English breakfast, you don't have to choose. It is sausage, bacon, eggs, toast, and perhaps some leftover steak from dinner the night before.

And then he would enjoy that, his drinking cigars. He would have them fry it. Mm-hmm. So he would have them fry everything that they could. beans are also a part of that. This man lived to 90. Yeah. Yeah, maybe he holds the key to everything.

Maybe, oh, what's the guy from Rolling Stones? Keith Richards. Maybe Keith Richards is somehow, it shares the genetic bloodline of Winston Churchill and that's just genetic predisposition to predisposition to just put up with shit. Everything that you can. All right, so after lunch. After lunch at 1, 1530, so that would be 3.30 in the afternoon, I believe. work study with a glass of cognac in his hand.

I'm sure it wasn't just a glass. I'm sure there were many glasses. 1,700 hours, 5 o'clock. He would have an hour and a half nap or a C-E-S day. He had to have his nap, man. And when people asked, why do you, first of all, weird-ass time to take a nap. That's evening, close to bed time.

But the thing is, is he worked late. And so I don't know if it was the king that asked him. He's like, I've heard your work habits are kind of unusual. And he's, they're talking about times when they can meet and he's like, well, what about 5 o'clock? He's like, I like to have a nap at 5 o'clock. He's like, why he's like, well, I find that it reinvigorates me for my work in the evenings. He's like, I like to work quite late, you know.

And yeah, the man, he burned the candle at both ends. So after his siesta, 1830, what is that? That's 6.30. Wake up, bath, and dress for dinner. So he didn't even pop into the bath to get ready until 6.30 at night. At least he was. bathing. Yeah, that's true. Good bathing habits. Uh, 20 hundred hours. So we're looking at 10. He would have a lengthy dinner at 10 with guests and an imperial pint of champagne again.

And then followed sometimes by one to two brandies after. They were just dessert drinks. No. And you would think 10 o'clock dinner, that's got to be a pretty, uh, big ordeal with as much champagne and din, or dessert drinks that he had. midnight work and study for more cognac and then from one to three o'clock in the morning would be bedtime so you can understand working from three and getting up at 7.30 in the morning every day the guy needs to slip in a siesta

he's got to have a nap, you're tired but he was you know after he was never actively out of parliament actually until like even after he was the prime minister anymore he kind of stayed around parliament just a little bit longer. He ended up serving

he needed to scratch the age. Yeah, like 62 years. He became at some point they call him the father of parliament or the father of the house and it's the longest standing member of tenure with or in that position. So yeah, he was in it all the way up until the end and then finally

I don't know we touched on this, you know, we died in 65 but it was actually due to another stroke and then two weeks after that is when he passed. But I mean, talk about like, you know, people say Winston Churchill, they remember that four years during World War II,

which they should, you know, such an impact during that time frame, but I mean, the life that this guy lived. It was a full 90 years. Oh, yeah. You live multiple lifetimes just within that one. Just everything that he did, literally, I don't know if that's a word,

politically, and then just during war times is crazy. I can honestly say that if someone else would have been in that role. I mean, if they would have been like Winston Churchill, maybe we get kind of the same result. But there's very few moments like in history where you need a specific person in a specific role at a specific time

and all the stars align. And him being in this role, it's not, you know, I don't take it lightly in saying this or say this without really meaning it. I feel like we're looking at a much different world. Yeah. If he's not the person in that world, if Britain falls.

And here's the thing is like, People are like, well, you know, even if Britain would have fallen, we still could have been Germany. Where are we going to set up shop at? Like, you have to have a place. Like, that's the whole point was when, because he was able to hold out at that point, he kept Britain open for us to use as a forward staging area to send all of our troops where they could be on land. Yeah. And then send them in for invasion. He was kind of our plug.

Mm-hmm. All right, man. You got anything else? No. man. No, just a great man who I think gets his due, but I think

he, you know, deserves due for more than just that stretch of World War II. Yeah. All right, guys, well, thanks for listening again, and we'll see you next week. Peace. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining us for another episode. If you like what you heard, hit that subscribe and like

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