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Churchill and Hitler


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There was an attempt to assassinate Churchill in june 1943. The breaking of the German code had revealed that there were observers in Lisbon looking out for Churchill and an attempt would be made to shoot down his plane when returning to England.

It appears that he ordered his bodyguard to disable an engine on his plane that was to take him from Lisbon to England. The result was that his return was delayed by a day.

Instead a civilian aircraft was shot down.

The circumstances outlined in the following article here suggests that Churchill sacrificed a number of Intelligence officers, including a leading anti-Nazi ampaigner the actor Leslie Howard.

Is it going too far to denounce Churchill for what appears to be an outcome he could have (see the changes in passenger list) avoided? Are there any of these largely intelligence connected people that died as a consequence of the apparent planting of lookalikes of Churchill and his body guard that Churchill had a reason to see dead?

http://www.law.uga.edu/academics/profiles/...er_1ashley.html

"Even if they had definitely known that Churchill was not aboard, the Germans might still have blasted the Ibis out of sky. The England-Portugal air route had a reputation as a spy-line for both Allied and Axis agents, and the passenger list for Tuesday, June 1, 1943 reveals the Ibis was a nest of Allied spies the Nazis would have been eager to eliminate en masse.

Every one of the eight men passengers had proven or likely connections with British or Allied intelligence. There was an industrial spy pretending to be a mining engineer specializing in locating tungsten, a vital war metal; a Jewish intelligence operative, working for the British, who heroically rescued Jews from the clutches of Nazi Germany; a continental director of an engineering firm, sponsored by the British Department of Overseas Trade; an inspector-general in the British consular corps on a "routine inspection tour;" a manager of Portugal Shell Co., sponsored by the British Ministry of Fuel and Power; and the Washington correspondent of Reuters news agency.

Leslie Howard himself is known to have had connections with British intelligence services, and his month-long lecture tour of Spain and Portugal, from which he was returning on the fatal airplane, may have been a cover for spying activities. His friend Chenhalls also probably had intelligence connections.

It was Chenhalls and British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden who had induced Leslie Howard, against his better judgment, to undertake the tour of Spain and Portugal, a trip which the actor deemed arduous, dangerous, and of minuscule importance to the war effort.

One of the women passengers worked in a consulate, and may therefore have been in intelligence work, using diplomatic cover; and another of the women passengers, the wife of the Reuters correspondent, might also have been involved in spying. But not all the females on the Ibis could have been spies. Two were young sisters: Petra Hutcheon, 11 years old, and Carola Hutcheon, 2, traveling with their mother.

Had Leslie Howard, to the knowledge of the Germans, been the sole passenger on board, the plane might still have been attacked. Leslie Howard was a towering figure in the British government's anti-Nazi propaganda policy, and his anti-German movies and radio broadcasts had enraged Joseph Goebbels, the fiendish Nazi propaganda minister and Howard's bitterest enemy. Goebbels had surprising influence in Nazi wartime affairs, and it would not be surprising to discover that he had arranged for German military forces to kill Leslie Howard. There is no doubt that before they attacked the airliner the Germans knew Leslie Howard was on board.

When the Ultra secret was disclosed long after WW2 ended, the public learned that the Allies had broken the Nazi codes for most of the war. Subsequently it was also revealed that the British had known in advance of possible German plans to intercept the airliner. To avoid compromising the Ultra secret, the British did not pass on their knowledge to the airline.

Amazingly, three persons who had boarded and been seated on the Ibis in Lisbon that fateful Tuesday were taken off the plane before it took off, and thereby narrowly escaped certain death. One was a Catholic priest* who benefitted from a mysterious anonymous telephone call summoning him back to Lisbon.* The other two were the young son of a British diplomatic official and the boy's nanny; the two were bumped to make room for Leslie Howard and Alfred Chenhalls""".

Leslie Howard was a great motion picture actor with a wistful face and a haunting, silvery voice; he was also a great stage actor, an author of belle-lettres, a radio broadcaster, and a movie director and producer. As an actor he specialized in playing idealists (such as Ashley Wilkes) and heroic men of action (such as the Scarlet Pimpernel). As a man he possessed ineffable sweetness of character and was filled with the noble spirit of those firmly attached to love and to just causes. Writing of Howard in 1934, the New York Herald Tribune observed: "There is a splendid air of rightness about everything he does."

Sensing the nearness of war, Leslie Howard left Hollywood and returned to his native England a few days before WW2 began. Once war commenced, he strove mightily to help his country. He made uplifting patriotic movies; in BBC radio broadcasts he castigated Nazism and defended democracy and human rights; and at the request of the British government, he even reluctantly undertook a hazardous journey which led to his premature and violent death."

I think a thorough correction of history could very well see Churchill as far less of a statesman than history currently portrays him as. He seems rather as a ruthless and arrogant anti communist with real interests in staying the hand of western forces that could have helped bring the war to an earlier end in order to permit Hitler to destroy the Soviet Union.

In fact I'd go so far as to suggest that WWII's sole purpose was to destroy the USSR. The attacks on Pearl Harbour (Japanese "Go South" Policy, expecting Hitler to take Mosow.) and on Britain were to draw in a motivated US-British soldiery to follow and if not complete the process, at least establish containment boundaries.

_________________

*It would be interesting to know the name of this catholic priest

"""Churchill's and his bodyguard's look alikes.

*It would be interesting to know the name of this catholic priest

Possible? Bishop of Salford, the Rt Rev Thomas Holland

"After serving for a short time as assistant priest at the Sacred Heart Church, Liverpool, he studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, receiving a Doctorate in Divinity. In 1936 he returned to the English College, Valladolid, to teach theology and philosophy, and from 1941 to 1943 he taught at the English College, Lisbon.

Fr Holland became a chaplain to the Royal Navy in 1943 and took part in the Normandy landings in the following year and won the Distinguished Service Cross. He also served in Ceylon and after the war he served as port chaplain in Bombay until 1948.

On his return to England he joined the Catholic Missionary Society. While at the Society he was the Catholic member of the London Public Morality Council. He was also editor of the CMS magazine, the Catholic Gazette, for seven years. With Fr George Dwyer (later Archbishop of Birmingham), he was invited by the New Zealand bishops on a six-month preaching tour where he also helped to establish the Catholic Enquiry Centre in New Zealand."

EDIT:: given that the priest who may have been teaching at the English school in Lisbon and a son of a British diplomatic official and the boy's nanny were 'mysteriously' saved to make place for Churchill and his bodyguards doubles which at a distance the Nazi observers likely took as being Churchill and his bodyguard, there is an indication that this was a Churchill sponsored killing of a number of anti Nazi persons as well as a number of English intel.

There has been a suggestion that this was to protect the cracking of ENIGMA. In hindsight, the fact that Churchill survived would have given cause for the Germans to ask how this happened. IOW the notion of protecting the breaking of the code is a sloppy cover story indicating something else. A closer Hitler-Churchill as yet uncovered connection for example.

EDIT two:: Chuchill, following D-Day was very eager/anxious that the US advance quickly on Berlin in order to prevent the Soviets covering too much westward territory. Roosevelt demurred, choosing to accept Stalins commitment to restrain himself following the fall of Berlin. The Battle of the Bulge/Ardenne also occupied the Allies for some time. Roosevelt and Stalin, and Churchill and Stalin had different relationshisps, with Stalin-Churchill being more of a mutual animosity. Greece here, I think, is a significant issue. The lack of an year-round southern warm-water port was always a problem for the USSR.

Edited by John Dolva
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