MOSCOW, November 9 (RIA Novosti) — A previously unseen memorandum from the FBI’s archives revealed that Winston Churchill urged the US to conduct a preemptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union to win the Cold War, the Daily Mail reported Saturday.
The newly unveiled memo written by an FBI agent, details how Britain’s leader made his views about Russia to an American politician in 1947.
The note reports that Churchill spoke to Right-wing Republican senator Styles Bridges, asking him to persuade then-President Harry Truman to launch a nuclear strike against Russia.
The document shows Churchill’s belligerence to Russia was so deep that he was prepared to tolerate the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Soviet civilians in a nuclear strike, the Daily Mail notes.
The memo claims the British leader "stated 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".
"He pointed out 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," the note continues as cited by the Daily Mail.
"Churchill further stated that if this was not done, Russia will attack the United States in the next two or three years when she gets the atomic bomb and civilization will be wiped out or set back many years."
In 1946, Churchill delivered his famous "Sinews of Peace" speech in Fulton, which articulated the threat Russia presented. He used the term "iron curtain" in the context of the postwar situation in Europe.
Russia would have been defenseless against a nuclear attack at the time of the Churchill’s bellicose proposal, as the Soviets did not obtain the atomic bomb until 1949. The first Russian atomic bomb – RDS 1 – was exploded on August 29, 1949 at the Semipalatinsk test site.
The memo is set to be published for the first time in "When Lions Roar: The Churchills And The Kennedys", a new book by investigative journalist Thomas Maier.
"Churchill had been a great historian of warfare. He saw the last great cavalry charge during the First World War and championed the development of tanks," Maier told the Daily Mail.
"I think he saw a nuclear strike as just another progression of conventional warfare, until he realised there was a lot more devastation with nuclear weapons," he added.
Winston Churchill was the prime minister of Britain from 1940 to 1945. Shortly before the end of the war he was defeated in the elections. He returned to power in 1951 and stayed in office until 1955.
Maier said that Churchill was more "bellicose" when out of office, and after 1951 the idea of a nuclear strike against Russia was never mentioned again.
