Churchill's Secret War

Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II is a book by Madhusree Mukerjee. (Publisher: Basic Books, 2011) The book centres around the role played by the policies, as well as the racial worldview, of the war-time Prime Minister of United Kingdom Winston Churchill in the death and devastation caused by the Bengal Famine of 1943 and the Partition of India. ^[1][2][3]Nearly three million people perished in the Bengal famine. The book also points out how the British India was "the largest contributor to the empire's war providing goods and services worth more than £2 billion.”^[4]

Besides Churchill, the book brings out another historical character close to Churchill who casted significant influence on him, Frederick Alexander Lindemann also known as Lord Cherwell. Known as "the Prof" Cherwell was an Anglo-German scientist with "Malthusian ideas" and racist worldwview of superiority over Indians who he would characterise as "helots”^[5] Mukerjee documents how colonial policies and negligence created conditions of acute famine in Bengal. To this, the political and racial worldview of Churchill and Cherwell meant that would -- per Lord Wavell -- "feed only those Indians who were “actually fighting or making munitions or working some particular railways.” ^[6]

The book showcases another crucial point that Hitler modelled his German empire on the British empire. He admired the English and wished "to emulate, not supplant, the British Empire: the German empire would comprise the Slavic countries to the east. As he saw it, the United Kingdom would retain its colonies but assume the role of Germany’s junior partner in world domination." Churchill's own beliefs on the Britons being "a stronger race, a higher-grade race" compared to the people Britain conquered, were not very different.

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