There was no shortage of British politicians and cabinet members who were unapologetic imperialists or who were responsible for fatal blunders. There was a shortage of men who had the foresight to understand the Nazi threat and the power and will to oppose it. Churchill is unexceptional in his evil but extremely exceptional in his heroism.

Much of the horror at Churchill, in isolation, is completely normal and justified. The thing is, there isn’t really any single heroic historical figure who is uncomplicatedly heroic. Abraham Lincoln was a de facto dictator who violated the Constitution in order to save it, Nelson Mandela was a terrorist who killed people and refused to renounce violence, FDR interned the Japanese and had plenty of his own dictatorial impulses, Martin Luther King was a serial philanderer who plagiarized his doctoral thesis, Washington and Jefferson owned slaves, Isaac Newton was a complete asshole with eccentric and fanatical religious views, and so forth.

So yeah, true, let’s acknowledge the awful things about Churchill. But let’s not over exaggerate them or use them to draw a moral equivalency with Adolf fucking Hitler.