This Historian’s Twitter Thread Saying Winston Churchill Didn’t Cause Famine is Getting Flak

A historian named Andreas Koureas is receiving flak on Twitter for his thread which states that Sir Winston Churchill did not contribute to the Bengal Famine in any way. He mentioned how dated 01/03/1944, Churchill’s copy of a paper for the Chiefs of Staff Committee of the War Cabinet demonstrated the closeness of a potential Japanese battleship/carrier raiding force in the Bay of Bengal. “They had surrounded the region from near the Maldives all the way to the south coast of Burma. The October ’42 cyclone also damaged roads, telecom systems and railways,” he wrote. The historian has claimed that the famine was a “responsibility of the local administration – majority Muslim natives.”

Here is the Twitter thread:

However, netizens seem to disagree with the historian. One person wrote, “Like Holocaust denial but since this is about whitewashing Oscar winner Churchill, it is all cheerful stuff. Also without any liability to the tweeter because we are talking about millions of souls who did not know what or who killed them before they could write poignant diaries.”

Another Twitter user wrote, “Sure! Winston Churchill, a human worse than Hitler, the British Empire, which was >20x evil than the Nazis, did all they could to help the people of Bengal during the great famine. Sure! “Is selling your cars really worth white-washing the crimes of Churchill.”

Here are a few responses:

The historian has received widespread backlash on the micro-blogging platform.

As per Indian politician Shashi Tharoor, Churchill declared himself in favour of the “terror bombing” of civilians during he second world war. He wrote that he wanted “absolutely devastating, exterminating attacks by very heavy bombers”. Horrors like the firebombing of Dresden were the result: he ordered the policy though he did not pick the targets.

Churchill also recommended using chemical warfare against German civilians. “I should be prepared to do anything that would hit the enemy in a murderous place,” he declared in a 1944 letter: “I may certainly have to ask you to support me in using poison gas. We could drench the cities of the Ruhr and many other cities in Germany… let us do it one hundred per cent.”

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