Churchill's truly darkest hour long before World War II “forgotten and erased from history” | Movies | Entertainment

Back in 2018, Gary Oldman won the Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in “Darkest Hour.”

The World War II film chronicled his rise to prime minister as Allied troops evacuated France and Hitler considered invading the British Isles.

However, one historian claims that while the years 1940 and 1941 were Britain's darkest hour, they were certainly not Churchill's.

Philip Kay-Bujak tells Express.co.uk exclusively that another incident over 20 years ago “has been very cleverly retouched by the establishment around the Churchill myth” and that “I certainly do not consider Churchill to be the greatest man in British history – quite the opposite.”

For this historian, the Prime Minister's truly darkest hour of the Second World War was thanks to Lieutenant Colonel John Sherwood Kelly, a brave rebel and the subject of his book The Bravest Man in the British Army.

The historian reports: “Churchill's darkest hour came in 1919, when Lieutenant Colonel John Sherwood Kelly decided to bring down Churchill and destroy his political career by exposing his secret plan to crush the Bolshevik revolution. Prime Minister David Lloyd George had ordered War Secretary Churchill not to interfere and not to try to save the Russian Tsar's family. But Churchill, in typical fashion, ignored his orders and assembled a 'volunteer' force of officers and 5,000 men who secretly travelled to Archangelsk in Russia in May 1919. Ostensibly to rescue British soldiers and munitions from Lenin and the Bolsheviks, it was actually to go to Moscow and help crush the revolution. The men were ordered to leave, while six Victoria Cross recipients volunteered for the operation. When Kelly realised they were being used he complained and when he was relieved of his command for 'losing his head' he wrote to the British press – specifically the Daily Express!'

On September 6, 1919, the same newspaper published Kelly's exposure of the scandal that had nearly destroyed Churchill's political career, claiming that the British public had been “deceived.”

Kelly's letter read: “To the Editor of the Daily Express: Dear Sir – I have just returned from Northern Russia, and circumstances compel me to take the earliest possible opportunity of making known in England certain facts relating to Northern Russia, which might otherwise never come to light.”

He recounted how he had volunteered for service in the Northern Russian Auxiliary Force in the sincere belief that help was needed to withdraw exhausted troops before the situation in northern Russia could be “regulated in an efficient and decisive manner.”

Kelly had been appointed commander of the 2nd Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment, but upon his arrival in Archangel he soon discovered that the defending forces were being used on the offensive.

He concluded: “I saw British money being wasted in torrents and precious British lives being sacrificed” and said he considered it his duty to bring the news to England, regardless of the consequences it might have for him.

Bujak added that as a result, “Churchill was being asked questions in the House of Commons, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) was outraged that Britain was helping to suppress socialist colleagues abroad, and Lloyd George was having a tantrum.”

“Kelly had financial backing from South African millionaires and also from the British establishment, who wanted to get rid of Churchill. However, Kelly lost his court martial and his career, while Churchill barely survived what I would call Churchill's personal 'darkest hour.'”