Had Winston Churchill not come to power in Britain in the Forties, the entire history of the world would be different.

The political leaders of Britain that succeeded him could never compete with his iconic legacy. But the truth is, because of his triumph over Hitler’s despotic regime, they haven’t had to.

Thanks to his strong leadership during World War Two, the nation prospered in the face of idealistic adversity and against stark odds to defeat the threat of Nazi Germany. And it hasn’t faced such a challenge to its freedom since.

But his career – which included being an officer in the British Army, as well as a historian, a Nobel Prize-winning author and an artist – was not without its darker moments.

Here are some of his biggest controversies.

Churchill’s inexperience as a chancellor was a major factor in bringing about the Great Depression…

According to heralded economist John Maynard Keynes, who believes it was his decisions that put Britain back onto the gold standard in the 1920s, ultimately causing the largest national economic downturn in the 20th century.

As a politician in the 1930s, his attitudes towards some nations bordered on racist…

As Mahatma Gandhi launched his campaign for peaceful resistance, Churchill, who fought as a young army officer in British India, said he “ought to be lain bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with the new Viceroy seated on its back.”

“I hate Indians,” he later stated as the resistance movement strengthened. “They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.”

He didn’t believe Native Americans had been wronged when they were invaded between 1776 and 1887…

Nor the Aborigines of Australia. Speaking to the Palestine Royal Commission in 1937, he wrote: “I do not admit... that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia... by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race... has come in and taken its place.”

Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Show all 30 1 /30 Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill Winston Churchill leaving London for his country home, Chartwell in Kent in 1964 Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill Sir Winston Churchill with his daughter Mary and son-in-law Christopher Soames (right) in 1964 PA Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill (Seated left to right) Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal; Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, Winston Churchill; Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, (standing left to right) the Secretary to the Chiefs of Staffs Committee, Major General L C Hollis; and the Chief of Staff to the Minister of Defence, General Sir Hastings Ismay at an unknown location Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill Winston Churchill flashes the V-sign on 19 June 1963 AFP PHOTO Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill Winston Churchill feeds the deer in Richmond Park, accompanied by his private secretary Anthony Montague Brown and personal detective Edmund Murray on 25 March 1963 Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill Winston and Lady Churchill leaving their Hyde Park Gate home for an Ascot race meeting on 16 June 1961 Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill Jacob Epstein with Winston Churchill in 1958. The pair lived on the same London street Evening Standard/Getty Images Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill Prime Minister Winston Churchill kisses Queen Elizabeth II's hand as she leaves 10 Downing Street in London, after a dinner on 4 April 1955 Getty Images Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill Winston Churchill at the christening of his granddaughter, Charlotte Soames at Westerham Parish Church, Kent on 6 November 1954. Left to right: godparents Fitzroy MacLean and Diana Churchill, Sir Winston Churchill, Lady Clementine Churchill, Christopher Soames and his wife Mary Churchill. The children are Nicholas, Jeremy and Emma Soames with his grandson Nicholas Soames Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill French President Paul Ramadier awards the medaille Militaire to former British prime minister Winston Churchill on 12 May 1947 Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill Winston Churchill outside the German Reichstag during a tour of the ruined city of Berlin on 16 July 1945 PA Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill The prime minister of the wartime Coalition government Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill during a speech 0n 2 July 1945. The July 1945 general election resulted in a resounding victory for the Labour Party Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (L) walking with General Bernard Law Montgomery near the Rhine river in Germany during an advance by Allied troops on 23 March 1945 Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill Marshal Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill together at the Livedia Palace in Yalta, where they were both present for the conference on 7 February 1945 Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill Winston Churchill with his daughter Mary and General Sir Frederick Pile (GOC Anti-Aircraft Command) watch anti-aircraft guns in action against V1 flying bombs on 30 June 1944 Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill Winston Churchill and General Sir Bernard Montgomery with his dog in 1944 Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill Prime Minister Winston Churchill Prime US President Franklin D. Roosevelt seated in the garden of the villa in Morocco where they met for a war conference surrounded by British and American war correspondants, on 23 January 1943 PA Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill Winston Churchill and his wife, Clementine, on board a naval auxiliary patrol vessel during a visit to the London docks on 25 September 1940 Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill strolls in the grounds of his country home, Chartwell Manor on 31 October 1939 Topical Press Agency/Getty Images Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill Winston Churchill, recently appointed Hon Air Commodore to 615 Auxiliary Air Force Squadron, climbing out of a Gloster Gauntlet II aircraft during a visit to the Squadron at Kenley, Surrey on 16 April 1939 Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill Winston Churchill balancing a top hat on his walking stick watched by his daughter Mary, outside the Mansion House in London Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill British statesman Winston Churchill attends the Anglo-Irish Conference in Downing Street on 11 October 1921 Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill The platform party is attentive to Winston Churchill as he delivers his address opening a new YMCA hostel for munitions workers at Enfield, Middlesex, on 20 September, 1915 Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill Winston Churchill won his first parliamentary seat in 1899 Getty Images Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill 2nd Lieutenant Winston Churchill of the 4th Queen's Own Hussars in 1895 Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill Winston Churchill dressed in the uniform of Harrow School Rifle Corps Save Photo Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill Winston Churchill between the ages of 13 and 17 at the time he attended the Harrow School Save Photo Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill Winston Churchill in his school years Save Photo Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill The former Jennie Jerome, Lady Randolph Churchill, born in New York, with her sons John (left) and Winston, in 1885 Time Life/Getty Winston Churchill: Life in pictures Winston Churchill Winston Churchill as a young boy, aged 7, in Dublin, Ireland

Churchill’s blunt refusal to supply food to Bengal arguably led to the deaths of 3 million people…

British officials in the Indian region begged the Prime Minister to send aid to the Indian region, which was hit by wide-spread famine in 1943. Churchill said it was their own fault for “breeding like rabbits”. He said the plague was “merrily” culling the population.

He strongly supported the use of poisonous gas in war zones…

“I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas,” he told the House of Commons during an address in the autumn of 1937. “I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilised tribes.”

He “disliked Hitler’s system” but “admired his patriotic achievement”…

In his 1937 book Great Contemporaries, a collection of 25 essays about famous people, he wrote: “If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as admirable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.“

He touted Jewish conspiracy theories not unlike that of Hitler’s in some of his written works…

In an article for the Illustrated Sunday Herald in February 1920, titled 'Zionism versus Bolshevism', he wrote: “This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States)... this worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.”

However, Sir Martin Gilbert, Churchill's official biographer, argues that Churchill was himself a fervent Zionist…