In a post on his blog for July 4, Robert Wenzel printed an e-mail about me from Brad DeLong:
Do you really want to carry water for a guy who claims that Winston Churchill was a war criminal for failing to make peace with Hitler in the summer of 1940?
I thought you were better than that…
Yours,
Brad DeLong
I have in many reviews criticized Winston Churchill; his policies during World War II of mass bombings of civilians and hunger blockades clearly count as atrocities. It is also correct that, in view of the appalling destruction of that war, I think that Churchill would have been well-advised to explore the possibilities of peace in 1940. There were of course arguments against doing so, and I have never suggested, nor do I believe, that Churchill was a war criminal for not accepting Hitler’s terms in 1940. Clearly, whether to do so was a matter of judgment, not a matter for legal action. DeLong often complains that his critics lie about what he said, but it appears that he is not himself above what Churchill called a “terminological inexactitude.”
3:51 pm on July 5, 2011
