Warlords
Under scrutiny
Blood on hands
Churchill |
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Churchill was called the 'Butcher of Gallipoli' for his part in the disastrous Dardanelles landings during the First World War, which led to 43,870 Allied casualties. A leading advocate of intervention against the fledgling Soviet state, he called for Bolshevism to be 'strangled at birth' and, as secretary of state for air in 1919-21, described opposition to the use of poison gas as 'sheer affectation'. He personally authorised the fire-bombing of Dresden in 1945, which led to between 40,000 and 135,000 deaths in a city that some felt was not a legitimate military target.
