As I, a smart and learned person come to the conclusion of Boris Johnson's "The Churchill Factor: How one man made history". A good read, but not a whole lot in the way of new information. Interesting analysis by Johnson regarding Churchill's political life, a bit of a cheerleader . . .
In Chapter 20: Johnson recounts the story of the meeting at Potsdam between Churchill-Stalin-Roosevelt. At that meeting Stalin proposed (allegedly jokingly - but who knows with that lunatic) that 50,000 Nazi officers had to be shot. Churchill was appalled to say the least. Stalin insisted again, Churchill got even more agitated, stating that he just assume be taken out and be shot right there, rather than to sign Great Britain up to such a plan. Roosevelt chimed in that only 49,000 should be shot, and his son stood up and declared that he was sure they could get such a proposal through Congress. They were joking - joking about slaughtering 49,000 people.
Johnson then describes how Churchill for a second entertained the notion of turning British and American arms on to Russia, pushing them back to their borders (Patton wanted to) . . . then of course realized that the British and American people at that time only thought of Russia as an ally - having no real idea of what a butcher Joe Stalin was and had been. Still the concept of World War III - just days after the end of WWII was being bantered about and discussed in the circles of (allegedly) of the greatest political brains and military figures in world history.
Absolute lunacy - the thoughts of mad men
I then
put this on the backdrop of #blueanon losing their feeble little minds when the anecdotal stories come out about Trump bantering around certain ideas.
Once upon a time the United States contemplated nuking North Korea and China, and then a few years later discussed nuking North Vietnam (as they dumped Agent Orange all over the place, and seeded clouds to make the Ho Chi Minh trail muddy) at the highest levels of our government, literally bantered those ideas around inside the Oval Office.