
Churchill's policies to blame for millions of Indian famine deaths, study says - dsr12
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/29/asia/churchill-bengal-famine-intl-scli-gbr/index.html
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Isamu
Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, established this result long
ago. Specially in the case of the great Bengal famine but also modern famines
generally are not due to a lack of food in the world but are a result of
government mismanagement or war.

[edit] I believe the book is Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and
Deprivation.

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shrewduser
Not sure why Churchill shoulders all the blame and not say imperial Japan who
seem to have been the actual culprits...

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fargle
AND, in related news, "Churchill's policies saved millions of Allied lives,
helped defeat the Nazis, and preserved democracy..."

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ncmncm
Churchill provided airports for American aircraft (which had remarkably little
effect), and decryption of German communications. But it was the Soviets
(mostly not Russians, BTW) who actually defeated the Nazis. Litterally _all_
of the big battles were on the Eastern front; the ones we hear about ("Bulge")
were sideshows. The Allies spent most of the war in Africa and Italy.

The Soviets did not defeat the Nazis to preserve democracy. Except that they
could have rolled over all of Europe, but chose not to. I doubt anybody alive
knows why.

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fargle
Well, just involving the Americans, walking a tightrope of diplomacy, not
losing the battle of Britain, and basically surviving was quite a trick and
kept it a two front war. Otherwise the Russians quite likely would not have
survived, at least in eastern Europe.

> Except that they could have rolled over all of Europe, but chose not to. I
> doubt anybody alive knows why

Because obviously the allies were there holding the ground.

I'm not saying it was single-handedly, but without Churchill and a very few
other good leaders, there would have been a very different outcome. I am
saying that there were quite a few other things going on at the time, the
causes that led to this famine have very little to do with Churchill.

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ncmncm
The actual events had a very great deal to do with specific choices Churchill
made and enforced, such as refusing thousands of tons of food aid offered by
other countries. Crop failures cannot usually be blamed on a single official,
but famines usually can. Stalin and Mao are likewise personally at fault, but
for both.

Stalin could easily have rolled over most of Europe while the Allies were
still mired in Holland and south/west France, and probably beat them back,
too. But he chose not to. From 1939 to '44, the western front was barely a
distraction to Hitler. The Battle of Britain consumed some aircraft production
capacity, and not much else, but that and tank production increased every year
right up until 1945. By the time the Allies actually landed in Europe, Germany
had been pushed out of Russian-claimed territory, and there was no doubt about
its future.

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AnimalMuppet
> Stalin could easily have rolled over most of Europe while the Allies were
> still mired in Holland and south/west France, and probably beat them back,
> too. But he chose not to.

When were the Allies mired in Holland and south/west France? I'd say that
phase ended by October 1944. In October 1944, Russia was taking the Baltic
States, and still trying to get into East Prussia. Russia had exactly zero
ability to "roll over most of Europe" at that point - they still had the
problem of rolling over Germany, and it was going to be another seven months
before they even made it to Berlin. Those were not seven months of Stalin
letting his troops take their ease.

> By the time the Allies actually landed in Europe, Germany had been pushed
> out of Russian-claimed territory

Well, if you mean _USSR_ -claimed territory, the Germans weren't thrown out of
(all of) the Belorussian SSR until July 1944. D-Day was June 1944.

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ncmncm
Exactly: the war was almost over by D-Day. And Russia could have swept over
Germany, but instead stopped and waited for the Allies to catch up. The Warsaw
Uprising was crushed while Soviet troops stood back and watched.

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AnimalMuppet
Exactly? No, _not_ exactly. I am _not_ agreeing with you, no matter how much
you claim I am.

The war was almost over by D-Day? Boloney. D-Day was before Operation
Bagration! Yes, Russia had the initiative on the Eastern Front. No, they did
not keep the initiative by slowing their operational tempo.

Russia stopped and waited for the Allies to catch up? Double boloney. That
would have required Stalin to trust the Allies to keep their word on the
partition of Germany. I see exactly zero evidence that he had any such trust.
Instead, it was the western Allies that stopped at the Elbe, and waited for
Russia to take Berlin and everything east of the partition line.

The Warsaw Uprising I will give you. What cold-blooded inhumanity.

