Who are the Most Overrated Historical Figures?

[Frank Sidney]

I'll raise you a John Lennon and Yoko Ono, call:hihi:

 

Bugger, I was only bluffing, I've a pair of Tolpuddle Martyrs.....

[Harleyman]

excuse me but isn't that an obvious contradiction? When Germans make British soldiers do forced labour in Dresden, that's forced labour and against the Geneva Convention, but when the British make German soldiers do it in Sheffield, then it isn't? They're still prisoners of war, regardless of whether or not the war is over.

 

I thought it was only officers that weren't supposed to work as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention.

 

Maybe I was wrong . Perhaps enlisted POWs were required to work and not officers under the Geneva Convention. I must have seen too many of those WW2 movies where the POWs had nothing to do all day except dig tunnels under the barbed wire. They must have all been officers then

[cressida]

I didn't think much to Cleopatra.

 

You've obviously got the needle

 

boom boom:hihi:

[Harleyman]

Queen Victoria definitely overrated. Her husband Albert did her job for her for many years and after he died she became a recluse and wouldn't even hold her weekly meetings with the Prime Minister.

It was only the threat of Republicanism that got her back on the job many years later

[cressida]

Bugger, I was only bluffing, I've a pair of Tolpuddle Martyrs.....

 

:hihi: enough said about those the better, unless you're thinking of raffling them

[callippo]

Maybe I was wrong . Perhaps enlisted POWs were required to work and not officers under the Geneva Convention. I must have seen too many of those WW2 movies where the POWs had nothing to do all day except dig tunnels under the barbed wire. They must have all been officers then

 

no the camps in the movies where they put all the prisoners that had tried to escape from other camps before. The Germans put them in this new camp in the hope that they wouldn't try to escape.

 

typical Teutonic logical thinking at work.

[Treatment]

On the contrary, it is those who are ignorant about Churchill's entire life who would not include him on the list. Only WW2 redeemed his earlier reputation as a vainglorious warmonger (of whom Lloyd George said that he was always wanting to bomb or invade somewhere) and as an arch reactionary, who favoured putting down strikes by impoverished workers by force and who opposed even minimal concessions to self-government in India and elsewhere.

 

As for his reputation deriving from WW2, even this requires further serious examination (as some modern 'revisionist historians have done, to some extent). It is still not widely known, for example, that Churchill favoured the use of mass poison gas attacks on German cities prior to the end of the war. Thank goodness for German civilians and for his later reputation that his generals managed to talk him out of it. Moreover, even the wisdom of his anti-appeasement policy ought also questioned (as again, some revisionist historians have). What it amounted to was a clamour for war with Germany, at a time when Britain was woefully unprepared for war, as subsequent events would prove. Had not Hitler been so stupid as to invade Russia (and Japan so stupid as to attack the US), Churchill's war policy would have been a complete disaster for Britain. Churchill, of course, would have been off to Canada had the Germans occupied Britain.

 

His actions in ordering the troops in during a strike in Tonypandy was a particularly low point.

[Harleyman]

no the camps in the movies where they put all the prisoners that had tried to escape from other camps before. The Germans put them in this new camp in the hope that they wouldn't try to escape.

 

typical Teutonic logical thinking at work.

 

Colditz castle in the eastern part of Germany was the place that most escape happy POWs were sent to and the Germans considered it to be completely escape proof.

I think a few still managed to escape however