Debunking Tucker Carlson’s Darryl Cooper Interview

​​Last week, Tucker Carlson hosted the podcaster-cum-historian Darryl Cooper on his show. Though introducing him as the “best and most honest popular historian in the United States,” Cooper spent his time peddling ahistorical conspiracies and lies.

Gaining over 34 million views on X alone, such assertions need to be challenged. Most of all, his attacks on Sir Winston Churchill.

The Timeline

Cooper calls Churchill “the chief villain of the Second World War,” viewing him as “primarily responsible for that war becoming what it did, becoming something other than an invasion of Poland.” Such reasoning makes little sense, given the chronology of events.

When Great Britain issued its guarantee of Poland’s independence in April 1939, Churchill was out of office. Chamberlain was PM when Great Britain declared war on September 3, 1939.

Hitler’s Directive No. 6 for the Conduct of the War ordered planning for the invasions of France and the Low Countries in October 1939. Even on the date that Germany launched these invasions (May 10, 1940), Churchill was not made premier until that evening—after all attacks were initiated.

Cooper’s claims about the timeline of the conflict are erroneous. His subsequent point that Churchill wanted to go to war because “the long-term interests of the British Empire were threatened by the rise of a power like Germany” is ridiculous, as the British Empire had no borders with Germany. 

The Warmonger

Cooper says, “Churchill wanted a war.” This is also untrue since Churchill did his utmost throughout the 1930s to wake up the world to the fact that she was walking herself into another global conflict. He certainly favored diplomatic talks instead of war but recognized that diplomacy could only be effective if the Western powers were armed. As he told the House of Commons in March 1934, “false ideas have been spread about the country that disarmament means peace.”

Writing for the Evening Standard in April 1936, he professed, “there may still be time. Let the States and people who lie in fear of Germany carry their alarms to the League of Nations at Geneva.” For Churchill, the avoidance of war was not merely a case of Britain and France ditching appeasement. It required worldwide commitment from many nations, who could then pressure Germany at the League of Nations,

I desire to see the collective forces of the world invested with overwhelming power. If you are going to depend on a slight margin, one way or the other, you will have war. But if you get five or ten to one on one side, all bound rigorously by the Covenant [of the League of Nations] and the conventions which they own, then you may have an opportunity of a settlement which will heal the wounds of the world. Let us have this blessed union of power and of justice: ‘Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him.’

Churchill’s warnings were—of course—ignored. As he said in 1946,

I saw it all coming and cried aloud to my own fellow-countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention. […] There never was a war in all history easier to prevent by timely action than the one which has just desolated such great areas of the globe.

During one wartime meeting, Roosevelt asked Churchill his thoughts on the name of the global conflict. Winston responded, “The Unnecessary War.”

Operation Barbarossa

Nonetheless, Cooper continues by wrongfully claiming that Hitler “felt [he] had to invade to the east” out of fear of a direct Soviet threat or plan to capture Romanian oilfields. If one reads Mein Kampf, Hitler demanded German living space (or lebensraum) to the east. That was his actual reason.

Cooper then claims that Germany invaded Russia “with no plan to care for the millions of civilians and POWs” and “millions of people died because of that.” The Nazis planned these murders. One example was their starvation policy—Hungerpolitik—which was devised prior to Operation Barbarossa. Food exported from captured Soviet territory was to feed German soldiers, with widespread famines predicted. This aligned with Nazi racial theory that deemed inferior Slavs as “useless eaters” to be liquidated with poor rations.

That Cooper tries to imply that the Germans were concerned with not being able to feed Soviet POWs is genocide denial. For reference, seven months after the invasion of the USSR, some 3.3 million POWs were murdered by starvation, death marches, exposure, mass executions, and more.

Neville Chamberlain

Cooper accuses Churchill of “demonizing [Neville] Chamberlain” in 1940. Never mind that Chamberlain brought Churchill into his war cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty on September 3, 1939. Churchill also kept Chamberlain in his own cabinet. The day after Churchill became Prime Minister, he asked Chamberlain to be Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council.

They worked closely together, and Churchill took great interest in Chamberlain’s well-being throughout his battle with cancer. He pressed Chamberlain not to overexert himself. After his surgery, Churchill wrote to him, “I have greatly admired your nerve and stamina under the cruel physical burden which you bear. Let us go on together through the storm.”

Though Chamberlain resigned from his posts due to his failing health, Churchill sought the King’s permission to keep Chamberlain supplied with the Cabinet Papers. After Chamberlain died in November 1940, Churchill gave a beautiful eulogy. In it, rather than “demonizing” Chamberlain for appeasement—as Cooper falsely states—Churchill said,

History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honour.

Bomber Command

Cooper continues by saying he resents Churchill as “he kept this war going when he had no way to go back and fight this war. All he had were bombers.” Churchill was, by 1940, “going through and starting what eventually became just the carpet bombing; the saturation bombing of civilian neighbourhoods.” He accuses Churchill of launching these “gigantic scaled terrorist attacks” as it was the “only means that they had to continue fighting at the time.”

In 1940–41, the Bomber Command focused on targeted campaigns to hamper the German war economy, such as “oil supplies, communications and industry.” If one reads through the war cabinet papers, each week an updated resume was circulated on the Naval, Military and Air Situation. They clearly line out which targets were bombed. For example, the August 8–15 papers reference bombing attacks on key German infrastructure—including airframe factories, oil plants and aluminium works.

Given its small size, Bomber Command could not afford to waste its time on a policy of urban bombardment. As the Chiefs of Staff Committee recognized on September 7, 1940, “Our programme of air expansion cannot come to fruition until 1942.” It was not until the summer of 1941 that Churchill and the war cabinet seriously discussed using aerial bombardment against German cities as the primary purpose.

This was after Germany had engaged in a relentless eight-month bombing campaign against the United Kingdom, known as the Blitz. In addition to targeting infrastructure and the British war economy, much of this bombing was indiscriminate—designed to break British morale by inflicting as much damage and destruction as possible. The result was over 43,000 civilian deaths and a further 71,000 civilians seriously injured.

Nonetheless, Bomber Command did not engage in the policy of concentrated, widespread aerial bombing of urban cities until the spring of 1942.

Of course, this did not mean that civilian casualties hadn’t been incurred prior to this. The “Butt Report” in August 1941 highlighted to the war cabinet of the low accuracy of Bomber Command. The proportion of British pilots night bombing within five miles of the target was one in three overall in Europe. Over Germany specifically, it was one in four, with places like the Ruhr being 1 in 10.

Furthermore, a secondary aim of these (inaccurate) targeted raids was the destruction of German morale. As the Chiefs of Staff Committee noted in June 1941, Bomber Command’s targeting of German communication infrastructure lay “amongst workers’ dwellings in congested industrial areas, and their attack will have a direct [morale] effect on a considerable section of the German people.”

However, a simple analysis of the difference in tonnage dropped disproves Cooper’s ridiculous assertion of Britain committing supposed “gigantic scaled terrorist attacks” in 1940–41. Between June and October 1940, the RAF dropped a total of 6,000 tons of bombs against their fascist enemies. From March to June 1941, this had almost doubled to 12,000 tons. Germany, in contrast, dropped about 41,000 tons of bombs on Britain during the Blitz.

It’s also important to note that Germany had been engaging with urban bombing from the start of the war—Warsaw in September 1939 and Rotterdam in May 1940.

Churchill’s “Plan”

Cooper speaks of the “media operations, propaganda operations they were running in the United States to eventually drag us into the war.” For Cooper, Churchill’s “whole plan was we don’t have a way to fight this war ourselves,” and Britain needed “either the Soviet Union or the United States to do it for us,” describing it as “a craven, ugly way to fight a war.”

Though Churchill knew the British Empire could not win this war alone, he ultimately failed to convince the United States to join the Allies on his own. It was a combination of Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and Hitler’s subsequent declaration of war against the United States on December 11, 1941.

Secondly, this idea that Britain sat back and let others do the fighting is ridiculous.

The Royal Navy was the largest in the world and would not be overtaken in size by the United States until 1944/1945. She was fighting multiple battles, like those of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. British forces were fighting in North Africa. In fact, in March 1941, a British Expeditionary Force from North Africa arrived in Greece, which was currently battling an Italian invasion. Germany, in response, invaded Greece to help her fascist ally in April 1941.

Paired with the BEF and Britain’s naval and air support, German forces were drawn two months south prior to Barbarossa. On the matter of Barbarossa, it was not long after that Britain came to the aid of the Soviets. In August 1941, the first convoy carrying aid left Britain heading for Russia. By the end of the year, eight of these arctic convoys were dispatched.

Britain’s continuation in the war was both distracting and deferring German resources away.

As Hitler wrote in January 1941, “The situation in the Mediterranean area, where England is employing superior forces against our allies, requires that Germany should assist for reasons of strategy, politics, and psychology.” In Fact, Hitler initially planned Operation Barbarossa for May 15, 1941. This was delayed, given Britain’s presence in Europe, particularly Greece.

For the invasion of the USSR, about 30 percent of the Luftwaffe and considerable land forces were kept back in Western Europe, given Britain’s continued presence in the war.

Much to Cooper’s annoyance, Churchill refused to bring about an ignoble peace with Germany. However, there could be no Allied victory without Britain staying in the war. Had Britain and the British Empire capitulated after the Fall of France, Nazi Germany could have dedicated its entire military might against the USSR. North Africa would have fallen to fascist Italy. Consequently, there would be no opening for an invasion of Italy or D-Day. Imperial Japan could have asserted greater dominance in the Far East, and the United States would have been geopolitically isolated.

In other words, the world would have been so dark—one not dare think of it. Churchill recognized this. As he broadcasted in November 1939, “If we are conquered, all will be enslaved and the United States will be left single handed to guard the rights of men.”

Churchill foresaw this, and for that, he saved civilization, standing at the epicenter of Britain’s campaign of resistance. This is why it was imperative that Britain and her Empire maintained the struggle after the Fall of France. As he said on June 17, 1940,

We have become the sole champions now in arms to defend the world cause. We shall do our best to be worthy of this high honor. We shall defend our island home, and with the British Empire we shall fight on unconquerable until the curse of Hitler is lifted from the brows of mankind. We are sure that in the end all will come right.

Cooper was also frustrated that Britain refused peace deals during “the phoney war.” Countering this is simple: Germany had already invaded Poland and had no wish to rescind their position. As such, in the words of Lord Roberts, “the original casus bellum remained.”

Churchill’s Character

According to Cooper, part of Churchill’s reasoning for fighting the Second World War was that he wanted redemption for his humiliating “performance in the First World War,” a reference to Churchill’s role in the failure of the Gallipoli campaign.

This reasoning is flawed given that Churchill’s Great War record is not confined to Gallipoli. In January 1916, Churchill enlisted as a Lieutenant Colonel in the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front and heroically crossed no-man’s-land thirty times. Subsequently, Churchill re-entered office in July 1917 as minister of munitions.

Nevertheless, Cooper goes on to call Churchill a “psychopath.” Though obviously intended to provoke, the psychiatric term is difficult to square with Churchill’s highly expressive and empathetic personality, which was at odds with the prevailing stoic ideal of the Victorian aristocrat. He was a romantic and wore his heart on his sleeve. He would often get emotional, be it when observing the actions of RAF Fighter Command in the Operations Room or openly bursting into tears while reporting wartime casualties to the House of Commons.

This romantic character certainly played a part in Churchill’s brilliant oratory, which was so effective in encouraging the British public to continue the war effort, much to the dismay of the Nazis. As Hitler wrote in February 1941, “The least effect of all (as far as we can see) has been made upon the morale and will to resist of the English people.”

Cooper then asserts that Churchill was a “drunk:” “I’ve often said that a good ‘litmus test’ on whether someone has researched Churchill is the question, ‘Was he a drunk?” Though often perceived to be, he was not. Churchill had a titanic tolerance for alcohol and was rarely drunk.

As Dr. Allister Vale (Consultant Clinical Pharmacologist and Toxicologist) and Dr. John Scadding (Neurologist and former Academic Dean of the Royal Society of Medicine) concluded, on the subject of Alcohol Use Disorder, “to use the familiar lay term, [Churchill] was not an alcoholic.”

Cooper also challenges Churchill’s Zionism, using the typical antisemitic tropes of Churchill being “bankrupt” and “getting bailed out by Zionists.” Though Churchill often overspent lavishly and was in constant need of money, he was never bankrupt. I’ve covered Sir Winston Churchill’s lifelong friendship with the Jewish People in a previous piece for The National Interest. A read of that should hopefully put to bed these ludicrous antisemitic conspiracies.

Winston Churchill, of course, like any human, had flaws and blunders. Be it Gallipoli, fudging the gold standard, the abdication crisis, or the India Act. However, his actions in the Second World War forever saved civilization from Nazi and fascist tyranny. Regardless of charlatans like Cooper, this truth will always shine through in the history of mankind.

Andreas Koureas is an aspiring economist and historian. He is currently studying Political Economy at King’s College London. His main research focus is on Winston Churchill and the British Empire. He has written for publications such as The Spectator and academic institutions like Hillsdale College. He is writing a paper on the 1943 Bengal Famine for a peer-reviewed journal later this year. Follow him on X: @AndreasKoureas_.

Image: Ikonya / Shutterstock.com.