ABSTRACT
The conventional picture of Winston Churchill, especially of his role in World War II, was first of all the work of Churchill himself, through the distorted histories he composed and rushed into print as soon as the war was over. He attacked socialism before and after World War I, while during the War he promoted war-socialism, calling for nationalization of the railroads, and declaring in a speech: "Our whole nation must be organized, must be socialized if you like the word." Churchill's opportunism continued to the end. A historian of the blockade concluded: "the victimized youth were to become the most radical adherents of National Socialism." It was also complications arising from the British blockade that eventually provided the pretext for Wilson's decision to go to war in 1917. Churchill had been a strong Zionist practically from the start, holding that Zionism would deflect European Jews from social revolution to partnership with European imperialism in the Arab world.
