Winston Churchill almost died in a car accident in 1931.
The early 1930s were a tough time for the future Prime Minster, Winston Churchill. In 1929 he lost his status as Chancellor of the Exchequer when the Conservatives lost the General Election and in the same year the Great Wall Street Crash on the stock market meant he lost a great deal of money.
The early 1930s were a tough time for the future Prime Minster, Winston Churchill. In 1929 he lost his status as Chancellor of the Exchequer when the Conservatives lost the General Election and in the same year the Great Wall Street Crash on the stock market meant he lost a great deal of money.
With this in mind Winston decided to travel to New York to earn some much needed income via a North American tour. On the 13th December 1931 he found himself in the midst of a lecture tour for this very purpose. During the evening, Winston originally planned to go to bed early at the Waldorf Astoria, his Manhattan hotel. However at around 9pm Bernard Baruch called him by telephone and invited him to his home on Fifth Avenue to meet with two mutual friends.
Unfortunately for Churchill he was unfamiliar with New York and exactly where he needed to go despite the fact he had already been to Baruch’s home before. He spent an hour fruitlessly trying to locate his friend’s home. In desperation he decided it would be easier to go on foot for a short while to get his sense of bearings as he was sure he would recognize the home when he saw it.
He got out of the cab he was in and decided to cross the road and walk along the houses nearby. Half way along the road he looked left as in Britain the cars come from the left hand side. This was a cataclysmic error or judgement but an easy one to do as being used to the cars driving on the left in Britain he had ignored that in America they drive on the right. As a consequence he did not notice a car approaching from his right as he did not look in that direction.
Winston walked across. Meantime one Edward F. Cantasano (known as Mario) saw Winston crossing but too late to brake his car in time. Winston at the last moment recognised what was happening and according to an account he wrote later he thought ‘I am going to be run down and probably killed’. Straight afterward Churchill was hit hard.
“A man has been killed!” someone cried. Lots of bystanders quickly gather around and a police officer came along to see what help he could offer. Winston describes the impact as being similar to when he was hit by an artillery explosion in Flanders during World War One, such was the power of the incoming force.
Fortunately Winston was alive but as he says ‘I do not understand why I was not broken like an egg-shell or squashed like a gooseberry’. Perhaps some of it might have been down to his heavy fur-lined coat cushioning some of the blow. An alternative explanation was that at 200 pounds in weight Churchill had some extra padding. Indeed much later after the incident when Winston asked a Professor Lindemann for a possible physics explanation he was given the following witty reply.
‘Assume average one inch your body transferred during impact at rate eight thousand horsepower. Congratulations on preparing suitable cushion and skill in taking bump. Greetings to all’.
Never the less Churchill suffered great physical pain. When the policeman came over to ask him ‘What is your name? he was given the reply ‘Winston Churchill”. Churchill then felt a compulsion to add “The Right Honourable Winston Churchill from England”. The policeman asked for some details and enquired if he wanted to blame anyone but Winston stated ‘I exonerate everyone”. A taxi driver then came up to the gathering and said “Take him in my cab. There’s the Lennox Hill Hospital on 76th Street”.
Along the way Winston fear he might be crippled for life however he started to feel pangs of pain and realised this meant he could not be paralysed. He arrived and then after informing his wife of his situation by telephone he was put under sedation to deal with his head wound. Afterward Baruch and Clementine, his wife were by his bedside. Afterwards out of curiosity and mischief Winston asked “Tell me, Baruch, what is the number of your house?”. "1055" came the reply so Winston followed up with "How near was I to it when I was smashed up?". Baruch then probably knocked his Churchill's ego as much as his body when he stated "Not within ten blocks" (about a half of a mile).
Four days later Churchill received a visit from Constasino who was terribly upset about what he had done. Churchill though put him at ease and also managed to plug himself by presenting him with a signed copy of The Unknown War, the final volume of The World Crisis that he had written.
Winston’s recovery was slow. Whilst inside hospital he caught pleurisy (tissue between lungs becomes inflamed). To deal with the pain he was suffering Winston was caught in a bind as alcohol was not allowed under Prohibition laws at the time. Never one to give up though he managed to get his American doctor, Otto C. Pickhardt, to write the following note for him:
“…the post-accident convalescence of the Hon. Winston S. Churchill necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits especially at meal times. The quantity is naturally indefinite but the minimum requirements would be 250 cubic centimeters”.
Perhaps such a ‘medicinal approach might surprise some but not others. Famously Field Marshall Montgomery once said to him ‘I neither drink nor smoke and I am one hundred per cent fit.’ To which Churchill retorted ‘I drink and smoke and am two hundred per cent fit’.
Finally on the 28th January Winston was even well enough to give a lecture in Brooklyn and during February he completed a shortened series of lectures across the United States. His close friends were very happy for him and decided to buy him a Rolls-Royce “to celebrate his recovery” and deliverance from oblivion. “We think there is a certain appropriateness in the presentation of a motor car to a man who has been knocked down by a taxi-cab!” wrote Brendan Bracken to Baruch.
His wife said he told her that he was not sure he would recover from the Wall Street Crash, loss of political status and his injury. In many ways this marked the beginning of his wilderness years. Some American journalists wondered how he felt about the USA and considering his American ancestry asked him if he might ever run for American President. Ever the joker he said “I have been treated so splendidly in the United States that I should be disposed, if you can amend the Constitution, seriously to consider the matter”.
Winston Churchill as he know went on the become Prime Minister and remarkably this was not his only brush with death. He managed to survive one house fire, two plane crashes, three car crashes, four bouts of pneumonia during World War II, five wars as a soldier and a prison break in South Africa.
He also apparently was a short distance away from Adolf Hitler at one point during World War One when both were in the trenches and in the same month of December 1931 Hitler also had a nasty car crash. Apparently he was returning home following the wedding of Dr. Goebbels, his trusted aide. He was sitting in a car with General Von Epp when it crashed into another red Fiat car used by an 18 year old John Scott Ellis (later known as Lord Howard de Walden).
At the time Ellis was just learning his way around Munich and he apparently took a right turn and bumped into a pedestrian man in his 40s. Of course this story comes from Ellis and differs from newspaper accounts of the time of two cars hitting one another. Scott Ellis was shaken by the incident but was unaware of who he had hit until his passenger remarked 'Don't you know you just knocked down Adolf Hitler?'.
In later life he used to say '‘For a few seconds, perhaps, I held the history of Europe in my rather clumsy hands. He was only shaken up, but had I killed him, it would have changed the history of the world.’
The impact of the crash on Adolf Hitler was enough to shove into the car window and break his finger and make him suffer bruising but as we know he recovered and unfortunately went on to cause World War Two.
Three years later the two once again met. This time Ellis had recently married and by now Adolf Hitler was Chancellor of Germany and de facto dictator of it all and they happen to meet in Munich for an opera where they are sat in boxes side by side. During the interval Ellis leaned across the boxes and spoke to Hitler and asked him if he remembered the car accident and Hitler did and despite his murderous reign having started by now was apparently 'quite charming to me for a few moments' to Ellis.
History will always have many what if questions such as what might have happened if Hitler had died that day but I am afraid will never be able to full answer.
At the time Ellis was just learning his way around Munich and he apparently took a right turn and bumped into a pedestrian man in his 40s. Of course this story comes from Ellis and differs from newspaper accounts of the time of two cars hitting one another. Scott Ellis was shaken by the incident but was unaware of who he had hit until his passenger remarked 'Don't you know you just knocked down Adolf Hitler?'.
In later life he used to say '‘For a few seconds, perhaps, I held the history of Europe in my rather clumsy hands. He was only shaken up, but had I killed him, it would have changed the history of the world.’
The impact of the crash on Adolf Hitler was enough to shove into the car window and break his finger and make him suffer bruising but as we know he recovered and unfortunately went on to cause World War Two.
Three years later the two once again met. This time Ellis had recently married and by now Adolf Hitler was Chancellor of Germany and de facto dictator of it all and they happen to meet in Munich for an opera where they are sat in boxes side by side. During the interval Ellis leaned across the boxes and spoke to Hitler and asked him if he remembered the car accident and Hitler did and despite his murderous reign having started by now was apparently 'quite charming to me for a few moments' to Ellis.
History will always have many what if questions such as what might have happened if Hitler had died that day but I am afraid will never be able to full answer.
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