A Reform UK candidate said the UK would have been "far better" if it had "taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality" instead of fighting the Nazis in World War 2.
Ian Gribbin, who is standing for election in Bexhill and Battle, said Winston Churchill was "abysmal", instead praising Vladimir Putin.
In a series of posts from 2022 on the Unherd website - seen by the BBC - the candidate also claimed women were the "sponging gender", suggesting they should be "deprived of healthcare".
But a spokesperson for Reform UK said the remarks were not "endorsements". They said the remarks were "written with an eye to inconvenient perspectives and truths", adding that his comments about women were "tongue in cheek".
A Reform UK candidate said the UK would have been "far better" if it had "taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality" instead of fighting the Nazis in World War 2
Reform UK/PA
In July 2022, Gribbin wrote: "Britain would be in a far better state today had we taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality…. but oh no Britain’s warped mindset values weird notions of international morality rather than looking after its own people."
He later added: "In Britain specifically we need to exorcise the cult of Churchill and recognize that in both policy and military strategy, he was abysmal."
Writing on the site’s message board the previous month, he wrote a message criticisng women - saying: "Do you think you could actually work and pay for it all too like good citizens?
"Men pay 80 per cent of tax – women spend 80 per cent of tax revenue. On aggregate as a group you only take from society.
"Less complaining please from the 'sponging gender'."
He claimed that women are "subsidised by men to merely breath (sic)".
In January 2022, he wrote: "Men pay 80 per cent of tax. Women take out 80 per cent of expenditures.
"Square that inequality first by depriving women of healthcare until their life expectancies are the same as men, Fair’s fair."
In December 2021, he said female soldiers "almost made me wretch [sic]", addin that they were a "total liability".
A Reform UK spokesman said: "Through offence archaeology the BBC has found that Mr Gribbin has made a series of comments about a number of subjects.
"They were written with an eye to inconvenient perspectives and truths. That doesn't make them endorsements, just arguing points in long distance debates.
"His historical perspective of what the UK could have done in the 30s was shared by the vast majority of the British establishment including the BBC of its day, and is probably true.
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"Again no endorsement, just pointing out conveniently forgotten truths.
"As for the feminism point, his tongue is so firmly in his cheek one should be able to spot it from 100 yards."
