© RIA NovostiThe Yalta (Crimea) Conference of Allied leaders (February 4-11, 1945). First row, sitting: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and U.S.S.R. Marshal Josef Stalin before a meeting.
A secret memo from the FBI's archives has revealed that Britain's Winston Churchill once urged the US to drop an atomic bomb to "wipe out" the Kremlin. He reportedly thought it was the only remedy against the spread of communism to the west.
Churchill, Britain's prime minister during World War II and again during the Cold War 1950s, made his views known to a visiting American politician in 1947,
The Daily Mail reported in a preview of a new book,
When Lions Roar: The Churchills and The Kennedys by investigative journalist Thomas Maier. The book containing the secret FBI memo is to be published next month.
Britain and the Soviet Union had been allies during WW2. However, according to the memo written by an FBI agent, Churchill asked a Right-wing Republican senator, Styles Bridges, to help persuade then-President Harry Truman to launch a nuclear attack which would make the former USSR easy to deal with.
The FBI memo claims Churchill insisted that the
"only salvation for the civilization of the world would be if the President of the United States would declare Russia to be imperiling world peace and attack Russia."
The Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in 1949, much to the surprise to the United States, which was apparently unaware that the Soviet Union possessed nuclear weapons.
Britain's wartime leader allegedly pledged that if an atomic bomb could be dropped on the Kremlin, "wiping it out," it would be "a very easy problem to handle the balance of Russia, which would be without direction." Churchill, who served as British PM twice, from 1940-45 and 1951-55, warned that if this was not done, Russia would attack America within "the next two or three years, when she gets the atomic bomb and civilization will be wiped out or set back many years."
Churchill, in spite of being revered by many, was completely ruthless when it came to advancing what he saw as the interests of the British Empire.
Not only did he enthusiastically support use of poison gas against those struggling against British subjugation (“I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against the uncivilized tribes… it would spread a lively terror.”) both in the Middle East and in India, he was responsible for the development of poison gas weapons that Britain used against the Bolsheviks in 1919.
As outrageous as it might seem, the advocacy of a nuclear attack on the Kremlin at that time was not necessarily without merit. With the benefit of hindsight, the loss of life due to such an attack would likely have been far less than the loss of life that did occur due to the continued existence of the Soviet Union for another 40+ years. However, it's probably fair to say that Churchill's motivation was probably NOT saving lives, but in saving the British Empire, no matter what the cost.