How Churchill was bullied into D-Day - Excerpt, one of several chapters.

 

1. Corelli Barnett has a good book on the role of the Royal Navy in WW2. He observes that at the end of the war the British Empire was like a battleship holed below the waterline but settled on the bottom. Churchill was often misguided with his ideas on how to take the war to the enemy. His enthusiasm for the offensive operation often got the better of him. The Dardanelles and Operation Catherine are two examples of this. Fortunately he was restrained by Dudley Pound on the latter. Though in the case of the Dardanelles it is arguable that if better naval forces had been available the operation might well have succeeded.

   Posted by LyndonB       08/24/2009  at  11:25 AM  



2. The number one thing you must remember is that Churchill went into the war with three primary aims: A: To preserve Western Democracy. B: To utterly crush German power on the continent. C: To preserve and grow the Empire he so loved. Secondly, you must remember that the “Big Three” went into the war with vastly diverging aims; the main emphasis is always placed on the West-Soviet split (and RIGHTFULLY so), but there were considerable differences within the Western Allies themselves, as shown by the Roosevelt-DeGaulle-Churchill squabbled that periodically erupted. In addition, while the US eventually came around to recognizing the need to crush the Germans, they- moreso than the others- failed to appreciate the vacuum this would create and plan accordingly. This was NOT helped by the general American naivety regarding the intentions of some of our larger “allies”, the Soviets being the obvious example, but the Chinese (both the Communists and the KMT) being not far behind. Ultimately, it must be remembered that the US has always been somewhat hostile to Imperial powers at the BEST of times, even when the distrust is irrational. This manifested itself by FDR’s attempts to subordinate the Brits to American control, and unfortunately payed disastrous dividends when it turned out that the Soviets and their allies would be the main beneficiaries of the Imperial vacuum left after the war.

   However, I do have something to point out:

   I’ve long had a problem btw, with the Brit thinking that was so prevalent at the time, that the US should have entered the war sooner.

   Well, I (as an AMERICAN, no less) do not. If anything, my problem is PRECISELY the opposite.

   Why?  America had some problems of its own at the time.

   True, but one prominent problem was the fact that Germany had begun to dabble in its old trade of trying to unite Latin America against us, as we VERY painfully learned in the interbellum. It might not have been as prominent as the Depression, but it had the potential to be far more deadly.

   If we were inward thinking, there was damn good reason for it.

   Perhaps, but even a cursory look at the situation in Europe would have revealed MANY “damn better reasons” for intervention.

   Most Americans really just wanted to get on with their own lives and leave Europe alone to fight its own wars.

   And the problem with that is that we once again failed to realize that the Germans had both the capability and the will to bring the war OVER here to US. And they did. Both times. Indeed, we were lucky that they were far more preoccupied with the European struggle for dominance rather than hitting us, because had they overcome their enemies in Europe, they could have posed a threat to American liberty and independence that had not been seen since the War of 1812, only vastly larger and more powerful.

   The general population I much doubt could see the threat Nazi Germany presented.

   And that is vastly more damming of “the general population” than it is of the thesis.

   We knew they were the bad guys but things were so remote in those days, you can’t blame them.

   Hardly. Germany had spend DECADES intervening in Latin America, and conflicts and/or regimes sparked or at least supported in them had popped up in Brazil, in Mexico, and in Panama (where the Panamanian nationalists were being armed to hell and back by them in preparation for a potential operation to “liberate” the canal from American “occupation") during the 30’s. And this is without going on to the atrocities of the Kaiserreich, which had- if anything- gone even FURTHER on the matter, and the bottom line is that they probably should have gotten a clue.

   Well, you can but I don’t.

   Well, I do.

   There seemed to be a greater threat from Communism, if anything.

   
   Well, possibly from a Communist breakout at home, but from the USSR, the threat from them was remarkably little. Not only did they have not navy in the Far East worthy of its salt (Ok, perhaps they might have been able to seize a few Alaskan islands, and maybe even land on a particularly desolate area of the mainland en-force if we were particularly slow, but once the USN got up there, the Soviet Far Eastern Fleet would have been crushed, and any forces it had landed would have been ripe for elimination), but they had no real way of reinforcing it. Indeed, if anything, our relations to the USSR were if anything, the most cordial of the three with WWII’s “big bads” (Germany, the USSR, and Japan), and tens of thousands of Americans actually emigrated to the USSR in search of jobs, so we had reached an uneasy understanding with Uncle Joe on them, prompted as much by the inability of either side to really hit the other in any event. It was only AFTER the war that they became a major threat.

   No, the main threat on our radar was the Japanese, and even they had some VERY tough limitations on how far into the Pacific they could advance, as we found out.

   We had no reason to join in a European war in ‘39 or ‘40.

   Oh yes we did, not the least of which being the vast number of American ecconomic assets (such as Polish and German debt) that the Germans annulled unilaterally. And this is BEFORE we get into the whole U-boat problem.

   If I have a problem with the attitude on that subject, I also have a serious problem with FDRs attitude with regard to the Empire.
   

   And this is something we agree on.

   I don’t see why it should have concerned him nor do I think it was any of his business.  Whatever the perceived evils of empire there are, not to say there were none, without the influence and civil service and education, the justice system (such as it was, not perfect but ...) bridges, water systems etc.  The Brits raised the standard of living for many millions and even if it was in their own best interest, the fact still remains that in the end, people were better off with the Brits then they were before.

   True.

   And many millions were surely better off under Brit rule then French, Belgium or German.
   

   Meh, the Belgians are debatable, given that the truly nasty things that they are associated with came during Leopold II’s private ownership of the Congo, which he ruled with some of the resources from the Belgian government that he obtained as King of the Belgians, but it was perhaps the closest to the Corporate hell so many Socialists in-vision: One man owning all, unrestrained by the limitations of Democratic governance. When Leopold was forced to turn the Congo over to the Belgian government after the outrage became so much that it became clear that he could be deposed with the popular consent of the military and the government (indeed, there were literally rallies in Brussels to have him HUNG), thing improved pretty fast, and by the end the Congo was one of the BETTER run colonies in existence.

   The French, you probably have a point, though largely because the millions would have been “better off” under British rule than for any really glaring atrocities the French comitted. Yes, you had the traditional “overclass”, yes, you had the racism, yes, you had ethnic issues, but all things considered, French rule was probably the HIGH point of much of their colonies’ existence.

   But the Germans, well, on that I agree with you. FULLY. While they HAD gotten SLIGHTLY better towards the colonies as WWI neared, that is heavily outweighed by things like the Herero/Naquama genocide, the Maji-Maji Uprising (where the Germans, through their savage overreaction, probably turned a minor “damp squib” revolt into a savage, cutthroat conflict from one end of the colony to the other), and their behavior in the “Italian” colonies of WWII all show how they probably would have treated their territories.

   And this is BEFORE we get into the fact that the decolonization, more than anything else, actually HURT Western power BADLY in the face of the Communist threat(s), and the picture is complete.

   I didn’t mean to launch a defense of 19th century empire

   Honestly, 19th-century empire needs more defending than it gets nowerdays, particularly since people will complain for years on end about the injustices of it (though, granted, they often have their points) and conveniently forget how the entire “independence” issue promptly blew up into horrific messes that we are STILL dealing with.

   Hone. Only saying that I understand it and that it wasn’t any of FDRs business. 

   Indeed, if anything, it was a bit of the stupid Yankee gung-ho that got us into the fiasco that was the Eisenhower Years.

   Especially in light of the fact that in a sense, we (America) had one too.  And when it came to minorities, our outlook was none too kind either.
   

   Not that comparable, given that minorities had largely been living in the US since the onset, and they WERE American citizens, rather than Indian, African, etc subjects; for example, minorities in the US since the Civil War nominally had the right to vote, and many did exercise that right.

   Posted by Turtler       08/29/2009  at  01:52 PM  

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