Churchill's Secret War by Madhusree Mukerjee

Initially, the British repressed it harshly. In the 1930s, Mohandas Gandhi drew millions of rural and village people into the National Congress Party, whose upper-class intellectuals, like Jawaharlal Nehru, spearheaded a nonviolent independence movement. It had been a British colony for nearly 200 years. She also argues that Churchill’s attitudes toward his beloved Empire’s “crown jewel” fostered a famine that killed millions. Unlike most British leaders, he refused to admit the Empire would have to change after the war, and did all he could to block it.” In Churchill’s Secret War, the Guggenheim Fellow traces India’s colonial history and overlooked wartime role.

“India,” Madhusree Mukerjee says, “made Winston Churchill irrational. Winston Churchill may have found victory in Europe, but, as this ground-breaking historical investigation reveals, his mismanagement- facilitated by dubious advice from scientist and eugenicist Lord Cherwell- devastated India and set the stage for the massive bloodletting that accompanied independence.Conversation with Madhusree Mukerjee Close Combining meticulous research with a vivid narrative, and riveting accounts of personality and policy clashes within and without the British War Cabinet, Churchill's Secret War places this oft-overlooked tragedy into the larger context of World War II, India's fight for freedom, and Churchill's enduring legacy. The streets of eastern Indian cities were lined with corpses, yet instead of sending emergency food shipments Churchill used the wheat and ships at his disposal to build stockpiles for feeding postwar Britain and Europe. A series of Churchill's decisions between 19 directly and inevitably led to the deaths of some three million Indians. As journalist Madhusree Mukerjee reveals, at the same time that Churchill brilliantly opposed the barbarism of the Nazis, he governed India with a fierce resolve to crush its freedom movement and a profound contempt for native lives. But while he has been widely extolled for his achievements, parts of Churchill's record have gone woefully unexamined.

A dogged enemy of Hitler, resolute ally of the Americans, and inspiring leader through World War II, Winston Churchill is venerated as one of the truly great statesmen of the last century.

Churchill's Secret War by Madhusree Mukerjee