ianstone
06-05-2010, 07:18 PM
Return via Dunkirk A brief history from route to return
http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef0134828ff070970c-320wi (http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef0134828ff070970c-pi) Mr ‘Demetriou’ seems to be having one of his oppositional phases again. I shall just have to cope with it. But I'd like to pursue for a moment the question of Dunkirk, raised in my MoS column on Sunday. Among my childhood reading was an austere drab volume, printed on coarse paper under the 'War Economy Standard', called ‘Battle Dress’. Its author's name was given as 'Gun Buster'. This seems to have been the pseudonym of a Captain in the Royal Artillery called John Austin, though there may be some doubt about this. It was said on the cover to be the companion to another book called 'Return via Dunkirk', which we did not have and in those pre-Internet days had no easy way of finding (I have since tracked it down and read it).
What struck me about it then, and strikes me even more now that I have read the companion volume, is that it is extraordinarily gloomy and pessimistic. When I think of it now, it bears almost no resemblance to the idea we have of that war. This, I think, is because it was written during that period when Britain had lost the 'First' Second World War (1939-40) in which she was for the last time a major power, and had yet to be comforted by its role as ally of the two victors in the 'Second' Second World War (1941-45).
It is a series of short stories about a defeat, set in Northern France in the summer of 1940, or in England soon afterwards. The stories often have unhappy endings, concern withdrawals and retreats, and speak knowledgeably about such things as the bowel-melting horror of being at the receiving end of a Stuka attack, the nightmares soldiers have long after the battles they fought and the frustration and mystery of being trapped on a beach between the enemy and the sea, with authority breaking down and no certainty of rescue. One contains a remarkably spare account of a man's death, obviously drawn from a real event. Another deals with the anguish of a career officer ruled medically unfit for further service.
In the comforting safety of post-war southern England, in which we endlessly celebrated the fact that we had 'Won the War', I remember being faintly irritated by these stories. All we knew about the war, as Max Hastings pointed out on the radio the other day, was the 'Miracle' of Dunkirk, the glorious Battle of Britain, El Alamein and D-Day. The bits in between, and the wider truth about many of these events were largely unknown, as they still are.
Now I recognise the works of 'Gun Buster' as rather astute and grown-up war propaganda, which must have had some trouble getting authorisation from the Ministry of Information, accustoming people to the long haul ahead, its privations and pains, and the fact that we faced a tenacious and effective enemy. They were remarkably honest portrayals of what battle was like, and of retreat. Maybe we were actually more realistic about the state of things in those long months between Dunkirk and Stalingrad, than we have since become.
Much later, reading Evelyn Waugh's 'Sword of Honour' trilogy, I found a similar harsh realism. I still think this is Waugh's most important work, because of its profound rejection of idealism about the war. It is only the rather unresolved ending that spoils it. It would have been good to read an Evelyn Waugh novel about the 1960s which resulted from the failure of the war, but alas it was never written.
There is a cold moment, near the end of the trilogy, when the hero (or anti-hero) Guy Crouchback confesses that he entered the war in a spirit of crusading idealism. He is comforted by Madame Kanyi (a Jewish refugee whom he will try and fail to save from a nasty fate at the hands of Britain's Yugoslav Communist 'allies'). She says: ‘Even good men thought that by going to war, they could win a kind of honour.’ He replies: ‘God forgive me. I was one of them.’ In my view, the book would have been best ended exactly there.
Much earlier in the war (I think this is in 'Men at Arms') Guy Crouchback is in Scotland during the issuing of new boots when a near-hysterical regular officer bursts in to the hut and starts gabbling sarcastically that the boots will be fine as long as they are the right sort of boots for running away in - he has just heard the news of the collapse of the Western Front and the beginnings of the headlong retreat to the Channel, which he regards as an utter disgrace. Again, in the light of the Dunkirk myth, this mingled shame and panic do not seem right. But once again, I'm sure they were drawn from the life. There's also a brief bitter description of the defeat in Norway, when the Phoney War turned frightening and nasty in 'Put Out More Flags', another of Waugh's books that ought to get more attention than it does.
Then there was an excellent film about the great retreat ('Dunkirk', made in 1958, starring John Mills, Richard Attenborough and Bernard Lee). But it flopped because - despite one or two moments of musically-enhanced patriotic feeling - it was generally pretty gloomy about Phoney War Britain and the wretched unpreparedness of our government for what was coming. The central figure was a sceptical journalist unwilling to believe the propaganda of the time. The misery and fear of the beaches was also quite starkly portrayed. In 1958, the public didn't much want that sort of thing. They still don't. There is still a deep unwillingness to look calmly at what actually happened to this country in 1940, or to wonder if any different outcome was possible.
Almost all discussions of the 1940 disaster concentrate on the decisive few days when Churchill swung the Cabinet behind his policy of 'no negotiations'. I think this is the wrong moment. There really was no choice. Churchill was able to win them round because by that stage Britain was a defeated belligerent and talking with Hitler would have been a road to humiliation and penury without hope of rescue. To negotiate would be to admit defeat. To admit defeat would have been to demoralise the population - which had only reluctantly accepted the need for war - and destroy any remaining war effort. How could we return to war if we had opened talks with Hitler or Mussolini? The spirit would have been gone. The act of seeking terms would have changed everything.
http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef0133ef60923e970b-320wi (http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef0133ef60923e970b-pi) Also it was plain from the way the French were being treated (and from Germany's 1917 peace with Russia at Brest-Litovsk) that we would have been made to pay an appalling price for peace - not so much out of vengeance or spite, but because Germany needed things which we had, and would have taken advantage of the chance to grab them. Her leaders would have wanted us neutralised for ever, while Berlin got on with its real aim of invading the USSR. Hitler would have been an idiot (which in general he wasn't) if he had left us enough economic strength, or colonial possessions, or military hardware to rebuild our forces. We would have had to scrap or hand over much of the Navy and Air Force, much of our Merchant Marine as well, and pay very large indemnities, as well as probably supplying a lot of conscript labour and much of our Gold and Dollar reserves to the National Socialist War Machine.
I don't think Churchill really imagined that Roosevelt's terms for coming in on 'our' side (actually for coming in on his own side) would prove to be so heavy that we would still be paying off the debt half a century after and the British Empire would entirely vanish. But even if he had known I think he would have preferred them to the alternative. *By that time* there was no other sensible course but to fight on and hope for the best. The harsh laws of war say that if you declare war (as we had done), and then lose it, you can't really complain at what your enemy does to you - hence the old Roman saying 'Vae Victis' - 'Woe to the defeated'. The important question is, would we have been in a stronger position if we had stayed out of the war, either for longer, or altogether?
So the great decision to 'stand alone' was a rational one. Terms with Hitler would not gave gained us much, if anything at all. And they would have left us vulnerable to further demands once Hitler had polished off Stalin, which he would have done with ease if we were permanently out of the war (but which would have been much harder if we had still been an unresolved threat at his rear, see below). If we fought on, we at least had some chance of remaining an independent nation of some sort, even if it was much poorer and weaker and its Empire was gone (pretty much what happened). And that unpleasant bargain was the one we struck. We still live with it. But was it necessary that we should have faced that choice?
The real question was why we had allowed ourselves to get into this mess in the first place. We know from a study of history (one reader rightly recommended Pat Buchanan's largely-ignored volume 'The Unnecessary War' as a dissenting guide to the appeasement years) that even the bellicose Mr Churchill was uninterested in war in 1936, the only point at which France and Britain could effortlessly have stopped Hitler's rise.
There was likewise no serious opposition to the Austrian Anschluss. And it remains debatable whether a war over Czechoslovakia in 1938 would have been any easier to fight than the one over Poland in 1939. Yes, the Czech defences were good - but they did not cover the border with Austria which had now fallen into Hitler's hands. And it is highly doubtful that France or Britain would have tried to invade Germany from the West - an action they weren't prepared, equipped or trained for, and for which their leaders had no appetite then or later.
No, the real questions are quite different. Why did we give a guarantee to Poland in April 1939, which meant that we were completely at the mercy of the Polish state, which could decide to drag us into war at a time of its choosing? Did we really care who owned Danzig, or the corridor? And, as I have said here before, our promise was militarily worthless. We had no forces with which to fulfil it. And we didn't do anything with the forces we had except sit about in Northern France, attempt a blockade which was largely useless because Hitler's key supplies came by land from his ally Stalin, and drop leaflets on German cities from the air. It's true (and the film 'Dunkirk' makes this point) that the Navy was quite heavily engaged against the Germans. But Germany wasn't a major sea-power (at that time she didn't even have very many submarines) and could do little more than sink merchant vessels - though one U-boat did get into Scapa to sink the 'Royal Oak'. Italy at this time was also not wholly committed to Hitler.
Without the absurd Polish guarantee (which didn't save Poland) we - and the French - would have had a much greater range of choice. We could have behaved much more like Roosevelt, perhaps letting others fight for us (as we have historically done in continental wars) while building up our forces and preserving our resources. That would have compelled Hitler to keep reserves on his Western flank, and so weakened any attack he made on the USSR. A war in which Hitler and Stalin fought each other to a standstill, or which one of them won at colossal cost, while we steadily rearmed (and kept our Asian Empire) might then have taken place. I doubt very much if the fate of anyone in Europe would have been any worse under those circumstances than it was thanks to our supposedly noble intervention. It might even have been better.
So the important thing is to look away from the 'Finest Hour', by which time we were irrevocably committed, and wonder if we might have had a much finer hour later if we had shown more sense.
If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down.
GH and ChasD ....
You're both missing my point - i.e. that the North Africa campaign was as much of, if not more than a disaster for Germany as Stalingrad, but barely gets a mention.
Stalingrad was no more a single battle than North Africa - it was a campaign intended to take the Russian oilfields of the Caucasus that got hung up at Stalingrad because of Hitler's personal battle with Stalin and his desire to destroy the city that bore his name that resulted in Stalingrad being attacked. If it had been called Volgagrad he wouldn't have bothered - and the Caucasus campaign may have succeeded. Stalingrad wasn't even particularly important strategically.
Posted by: Stan (http://rantingstan.blogspot.com/) |
Regarding pre-War policy. Well from 1935 there was an attempt to "breath life" into the institutions of "collective responsibility", particularly the League of Nations. There was the attempt to create the "Strasser Front" which was to support an independent Austria (which was run by a right wing government don't forget). This fell apart when Mussolini a) sponsored Abyssinia’s entry to the League of Nations, and b) within a year decided he wanted to conqueror it! Britain and France had little choice but to condemn the attack. By admitting Abyssinia, they were admitting Abyssinia was a member of the association of Free and Civilised countries, and the League was supposed to condemn attacks upon its members. The vacillation was that they wanted to do enough to show they weren’t going to ignore aggression against a League member, but they still wanted Mussolini’s support for the Strasser Front to contain Germany! It failed of course. It enraged Mussolini, and completed his drift towards Hitler, but also failed to preserve Abyssinian independence and revealed the total lack of effectiveness of the League.
Regarding the reoccupation of the Rhineland. This was the only real point where Hitler could have been stopped without breaking the “law” or having a real war. The trouble was that the Rhineland WAS German. Fosch wanted it to be given to France in 1919, but didn’t have his way. So it was really the German’s marching their own soldiers into their own territory, and it was something the German people clearly supported. Does anyone seriously believe that most people in 1936 would have been willing to declare war on Germany for that? Yes, people knew it was a nasty dictatorship. Yes, it was clear they were vicious to Jews. However everyone knew South Africa was racist towards blacks, but I don’t remember anyone advocating invading the country because of it! Stalin’s regime was also known to be a murderous one – who was advocating declaring war on them as a result?
People were also worried about a “war by accident”. The First World War was widely seen as an example of this, and it was still fresh in people’s minds. Even HG Welles put out such a scenario in one of his books where an elderly Jewish man got an orange pip caught under his dentures as he travelled in a train in Danzig, pulled a face as he was doing so, and enraged a watching brown shirt who thought he was mocking him, and this led to a world war. This is, I think, why the Government sought to restrict Britons intervenient in Spain, and was reluctant to send aid to a Government they officially recognised. With Italian and German intervention, it was seen as a potential Balkans which could lead to a direct military confrontation leading to war, and something to avoid. Why do people think the French didn’t send a force of intervention, considering the left held power for much of the time?
Posted by: Paul T |
I have many reservations with this sort of “revisionism”. It is one thing to say that our leaders “could have” done things differently, than it is to say that they “should have”, or worse, to castigate them for NOT doing what we, in our speculations, image would have been better.
The point about Dunkirk, is that by getting the bulk of the trained ground forces away (there were another 150,000 troops left in France AFTER Dunkirk, most of which were also successfully evacuated, although this is largely ignored), Britain had the core of an army which could fight on. People often overlook the fact that you need experienced men to train new recruits, and it was the comparatively small number of trained men that was restricting Britain’s military build up in the early days of the war. The “lack of weapons” is also something that is hyped a bit. Britain was militarily weak in the immediate aftermath of Dunkirk, where the troops brought only their 0.303s and side arms back, but by August, due to mass mobilisation of industry, she was able to station 16 fully equipped divisions along the invasion coasts – in this case we still cling to this idea of June 1940, and expand it out to sometime just before D-Day!
So with Dunkirk, Britain was able to fight on, whereas it would have been much more difficult if the army had been captured. It enabled the Government to believe it could fight on, rather than seek the best terms they could get. Let’s not think Churchill had no opposition to fighting on either. People like Halifax thought it was sensible to recognise the defeat, and see what terms could be extracted from the Germans. He did come close to rolling Churchill – people need to remember that the “National Government” had received 67% of the vote in 1935 election, there were far too few Labour members to have had sufficient voice to keep Halifax at bay if he’d carried most of the Conservatives.
Posted by: Paul T |
True, Britain and France were so ineffective Sept 39-May40 that they might as well have not been in the war. There wouldn't have been much difference between declaring war in 1939 and declaring it in 1940, given that passivity. But what if France had invaded Germany while the German army was busy in Poland? Or what if Britain had invaded Norway first, or the Norwegian campaign had gone better and Germany iron imports via Narvik had been blocked?
More important, though: I am skeptical that Britain and France would have been any help at all to Russia if they'd stayed out and Hitler had turned his attention East. Knowing that France wouldn't attack, Hitler wouldn't have had to keep any troops in the West--- not even as many as he needed to occupy France in 1941. Britain wouldn't have sent convoys of aid to Russia. The US certainly wouldn't have. Japan might have joined Hitler and attacked Siberia. And by 1943, Germany would have finished with Russia and been ready to attack France.
Posted by: Eric Rasmusen |
"Sure, Stalingrad was an important point, but we have forgotten that the North Africa campaign cost the Germans even more casualties and ended with more than a quarter of a million of Germany's most experienced troops in captiviity (compared with less than 100,000 at Stalingrad) - making the North Africa campaign every bit as important as Stalingrad in terms of men and materiel."
I think it's statistically unfair to compare the North African Campaign as a whole to Stalingrad, which, whilst drawn out, was a single battle. If you directly compare German men and materiel commitment on the Eastern Front and the ensuing attrition rates to those sustained in North Africa, the former dwarfs the latter by a considerable degree.
I honestly don't think historians overstate the role of the Soviet Union in defeating Hitler at all.
Regards,
GH
Posted by: GH |
Comparing Stalingrad with the North African campaign is misleading. Stalingrad was only one battle during the entire war on the eastern front where something like three quarters of all Germanys' casualties occurred.
The other episodes mentioned such as Dieppe or Narvik were but fleabites in comparison and of little or no long term consequence.
Posted by: Chasd |
As the balance of forces in 1940 favoured the Allies (figures provided, May 31, 12.28PM), what would have transformed superior forces into the war-winning combination they should already have been? As for behaving like Roosevelt, US re-armament progressed slowly until war was forced on them by the Japanese attack and German declaration of war: ‘In the whole of 1941 military expenditure was just 4 per cent of the amount America spent between 1941 and 1945.’ (Richard Overy, ‘Why The Allies Won’, p.234)
The missed opportunities were:
1. Breaches of Versailles in 1935 and 1936. Jodl, Keitel’s deputy, questioned at Nuremburg on the entry into the Rhineland said, ‘[T]he French covering army alone could have blown us to pieces.’
2. Austria. ‘The Wehrmacht showed itself a poor performer on the Austrian “battlefield,” where the only obstacles were too-enthusiastic crowds of Austrian Nazis who rushed to the streets to throw flowers in the path of German mechanized columns … [T]hose same columns broke down near Linz because of a minor snowstorm … troops showed a lack of training and their junior officers had not mastered basic leadership skills … several cases of traffic jams caused by inexperience and indecisiveness … German officers … were embarrassed by the Wehrmacht’s performance.’ (‘Czechoslovakia between Stalin and Hitler’ by Igor Lukes, p.138–9)
3. Czechoslovakia. Defenders of Munich oft-claim that it provided time to re-arm but rarely do events occur in a vacuum: if we had more Spitfires in 1940, the Germans had more Me109s. Countries like Rumania (a major source of German oil) supported the Czechs; Poland, instead of facing alone a Wehrmacht reinforced with captured Czech equipment, would likely have entered any conflict. (Major references: Williamson Murray, ‘The Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938–1939’ and Waclaw Jedrzejewicz, ‘The Polish Plan for a “Preventative War” Against Germany in 1933’)
4. 1939. The French should have invaded whilst the Wehrmacht was busy in Poland. OKW chief Keitel stated that ‘a French attack during the Polish Campaign would have encountered only a German military screen, not a real defense.’ Halder, OKH chief, concurred: ‘The success against Poland was only possible by almost completely baring our western border.’ (Frieser, p.13)
5. The Battle of France. With better leadership the Allies could have won (see recommended reading, May 31, 12.28PM).
Our ‘Finest Hour’ should have been earlier not later.
Although World War 2 saw Britain fall from the ranks of First Rank powers, we nonetheless were on the winning side and were far better off than Japan and Germany, starving in the rubble as they were. That having won the war we then lost the peace is solely down to we, ourselves and us.
(‘Churchill, Hitler and the “Unnecessary War” ’ was not entirely ignored—it did attract many bad reviews; notably, historian Victor Davis Hanson was excoriating, particularly in his ‘Reply to Patrick J. Buchanan’.)
Posted by: D.G. Harthill |
Interesting but I think it blurs the lines between what was possible and what would be desirable.
Of course all sensible people have recognized Dunkirk as a disaster- even Churchill admitted that it was 'the greatest military defeat for many centuries.' Your analysis of the focus of historical attention is very interesting however- I had never weighed up the balance of choice in that way before and it seems as convincing as the enjoyable pursuit of armchair history is likely to get.
I feel your analysis of when Britain entered the war assumes an unjustified level of autonomy of action on the part of the British government. Following the Hitler-Stalin pact no British government would have been wise to assume that Hitler's true intentions lay to the east; both Nazism and Communism were relatively new and unstable doctrines who, although they had been bitter enemies in 1930's Europe, perhaps could have made use of their many similarities to work together. Also both Allied and German generals and military thinkers were operating on the assumption of a re-run of WW1 (which is what WW2 was in effect) WW1 had its own roots in the Franco-Prussian war and the energies fuelling both conflicts came from more classical power struggles between European nation states rather than the conventional view of WW2 as a clash of political ideologies. Under this paradigm it would be sane to assume that Hitler's interests were to the west and, certainly, vengeance for Versailles was a motivating factor in his war effort. Given this it would have seemed unlikely that Britain and France could just sit back and let Germany and Russia wear each other out.
Another factor limiting the autonomy of the British government would have been its own population. In order to gain popular support for a war effort the government needed to construct a myth about the origins of the conflict. This was just as true in 1914 with Belgium as it was in 1939 with Poland. Unlike the populations of other countries the British would not have rushed to war at the drop of a hat- they needed to feel that they were the protectors of the liberties of another country. If we had let Hitler and Stalin wipe out and absorb every small country in Europe then it would have not only violated 250 years of British foreign policy (aiming to maintain the balance of power on the continent) but would have removed any pretence that we were fighting a just war and made it much harder to generate the fervour necessary for a successful war effort.
I think you need to make it clear whether your true interest is in the good of humanity or whether it is exclusively in the strength of the British empire (although the two do overlap to some extent) at the moment it is difficult to argue against your model because it is difficult to say what it is trying to predict.
Posted by: Tom Bumstead |
What a grim, cynical and *unrealistic* attitude Mr Hitchens has developed to Britain’s pivotal involvement in WWII. Whatever the rights and wrongs of WWII, it happened and lots of people lost their lives. Is Mr Hitchens suggesting we just forget about it?
It seems, because Mr Hitchens is part of the *minority* who don’t like the modern world, unlike the rest of us, they see WWII, not as a victory of good over evil, but as the beginning of the end of traditional conservatism. Imagine if someone ‘of the left’ came out with Mr Hitchens’ negative comments about Britain’s role in WWII, he would be denounced by the trad-cons as a ‘traitor’.
Hindsight (the benefit of which Mr Hitchens liberally employs from his cosy perspective) should tell the rational observer that Britain should’ve declared war on Germany *sooner*… and had Britain not been packed to the gunnels with aristocratic and Conservative Nazi sympathizers we probably would’ve.
The most prominent British Nazi sympathizers were the Duke of Bedford, the Duke of Westminster, the governor of the Bank of England, Frank Tiarks, the chairman of ICI, Lord McGowan, Lord Nuffield, William Strang, Lord Rothermere, president of the Royal Naval College, Admiral Sir Barry Edward Domvile and Captain Ramsay MP, to name but a few notable conservatives. And one mustn’t forget the Duke of Windsor himself, the figurehead of all British Nazi sympathizers.
AK Chesterton was another prominent Nazi sympathizer and passionate anti-Semite who wrote for the British Union of Fascists’ ’Blackshirt’ magazine, and later in life co-founded the National Front… his cousin, GK Chesterton was also an outspoken anti-Semite who favoured Zionism as a way of ‘ridding’ Europe of ‘alien’ Jewish culture.
“…although I still think there is a Jewish problem, I am appalled by the Hitlerite atrocities. They have absolutely no reason or logic behind them. It is quite obviously the expedient of a man who has been driven to seeking a scapegoat, and has found with relief the most famous scapegoat in European history, the Jewish people…” - GK Chesterton (1934)
This also demonstrates that Hitler’s persecution of the Jews, and other minority groups, was already well-known in Britain 5 years before we finally declared war on one of the most ‘evil’ dictatorships in history.
As it happens, Germany’s invasion of Poland was the excuse Britain needed to declare war after years of failed diplomacy and vacillation. Indeed, Churchill wasn’t that keen on the treaty with Poland, believing we chose the wrong ally… he wanted a pact with the Soviet Union.
Mr Hitchens seems to forget that Adolf Hitler was a great admirer of Britain and its empire… he was as much inspired toward world domination by Britain’s imperial exploits in India, as he was by the bible’s Judeophobia when embarking on the Holocaust… right from the beginning Hitler sought an alliance with Britain against the forces of socialism, hence the vast number of prominent British conservative Nazi sympathizers.
Posted by: Harry Rose |
Very interesting analysis of the 'Poland question'. The guarantee to Poland, as you rightly say, was indeed worthless given our military strength and preparedness at that time. Perhaps it was a question of honour, a now outdated concept which, nevertheless, at least led to our continuing warm relations with Poland and the Polish people, despite not being able to support them at the time. Delaying our declaration of war might have had the consequence of giving extra thrust to Hitller's eastern campaign and removed his continuing concerns about a war on two fronts against an enemy, (Britain), with whom ha had great ambivalence and showed respect for its achievements in building the Empire.
Posted by: WB |
Why then, did we give 'The Guarantee' to Poland?
Could it have been to protect British investments in Poland at that time?
If so?
What were these investments?
Posted by: Leighton |
You are quite right. To fight on in 1940 was the only honourable, and probably practical option for the British empire. In 1945 Britain ended up on the winning side and despiter the disasters of 1940/41 there was plenty to be proud of, but stategically it was as defeated as had been Germany or Japan.
The empire was in ruins and the country had been gutted and filletted financially. Like your good self I can't really blame the US for taking its chance, and what a chance! How often is a country given a chance like that, to engage in a war and emerge essentially untouched when all the other major participants (i.e rivals) are destroyed.
How the US has managed its empire since 1945 (you can argue dismally) is another issue.
The delusion as you so rightly point out, was not to see that this country had actually been defeated, although you can't really blame the people in 1945. What we should have done is to emulate Japan and Germany. We should have renounced (maybe not directly or publically) the world role and got on with rebuilding our wealth. It would have been perfectly possible.
It still is but depressingly the only "strategic" options mooted seem to be to suck up either to the US or "Europe". The former doesn't seem to care, the latter is positively hostile. Will we ever get a government which genuinely looks after this countries interests?
Posted by: Mark Dobed |
"All we knew about the war, as Max Hastings pointed out on the radio the other day, was the 'Miracle' of Dunkirk, the glorious Battle of Britain, El Alamein and D-Day. The bits in between, and the wider truth about many of these events were largely unknown, as they still are."
I'm sorry, but that is such nonsense.It's the sort of thing I expect from Hastings who, knowledgeable though he no doubt is, tends to come across as smug and patronising, but I'm surprised that you would say something like that, Mr. Hitchens.
Britain's role in WW2 was well documented both at the time and since - from the build up to it, all the way through it and in the post war administration of Germany and included both our triumps and defeats. We've all - or certainly most of us - have heard about Narvik, Tobruk, Caen, Dieppe, Market Garden, the Battle of the Atlantic, Singapore, Burma, Malta, Crete and Monte Cassino to name but a few.
It's only in recent years that our part in WW2 has been boiled down to those few examples you cite and this is partly due to an over emphasis placed by modern historians on the part the Soviet Union played.
Sure, Stalingrad was an important point, but we have forgotten that the North Africa campaign cost the Germans even more casualties and ended with more than a quarter of a million of Germany's most experienced troops in captiviity (compared with less than 100,000 at Stalingrad) - making the North Africa campaign every bit as important as Stalingrad in terms of men and materiel.
And all the Soviet Union had to worry about were the Germans on their doorstep. We were fighting all over the world with all the logistical problems that entails. It's relatively easy to ship tanks and planes from your factories to your front lines when all you use is your own railway lines over your own land - a different thing altogether when those front lines are across hundreds of miles of sea in far off countries
Posted by: Stan (http://rantingstan.blogspot.com/)
All this is counterfactual history but it’s fascinating nonetheless. Had Britain stood back and Hitler and Stalin's forces slogged it out until exhaustion what would continental Europe’s fate have been? Under Germany occupation (an early form of the EU) perhaps? All of Europe behind an iron curtain? Presumably Pearl Harbour would have still taken place, so the US would have eventually joined the war. Would Europe have been liberated by a reinvigorated British or an Anglo-American force?
My feeling is that the US would not have been content with anything less than a dominant role in the post-war world; though how that would have played out I don’t know.
This was the UK's exit in a shambles from Europe prior to 1944
http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef0134828ff070970c-320wi (http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef0134828ff070970c-pi) Mr ‘Demetriou’ seems to be having one of his oppositional phases again. I shall just have to cope with it. But I'd like to pursue for a moment the question of Dunkirk, raised in my MoS column on Sunday. Among my childhood reading was an austere drab volume, printed on coarse paper under the 'War Economy Standard', called ‘Battle Dress’. Its author's name was given as 'Gun Buster'. This seems to have been the pseudonym of a Captain in the Royal Artillery called John Austin, though there may be some doubt about this. It was said on the cover to be the companion to another book called 'Return via Dunkirk', which we did not have and in those pre-Internet days had no easy way of finding (I have since tracked it down and read it).
What struck me about it then, and strikes me even more now that I have read the companion volume, is that it is extraordinarily gloomy and pessimistic. When I think of it now, it bears almost no resemblance to the idea we have of that war. This, I think, is because it was written during that period when Britain had lost the 'First' Second World War (1939-40) in which she was for the last time a major power, and had yet to be comforted by its role as ally of the two victors in the 'Second' Second World War (1941-45).
It is a series of short stories about a defeat, set in Northern France in the summer of 1940, or in England soon afterwards. The stories often have unhappy endings, concern withdrawals and retreats, and speak knowledgeably about such things as the bowel-melting horror of being at the receiving end of a Stuka attack, the nightmares soldiers have long after the battles they fought and the frustration and mystery of being trapped on a beach between the enemy and the sea, with authority breaking down and no certainty of rescue. One contains a remarkably spare account of a man's death, obviously drawn from a real event. Another deals with the anguish of a career officer ruled medically unfit for further service.
In the comforting safety of post-war southern England, in which we endlessly celebrated the fact that we had 'Won the War', I remember being faintly irritated by these stories. All we knew about the war, as Max Hastings pointed out on the radio the other day, was the 'Miracle' of Dunkirk, the glorious Battle of Britain, El Alamein and D-Day. The bits in between, and the wider truth about many of these events were largely unknown, as they still are.
Now I recognise the works of 'Gun Buster' as rather astute and grown-up war propaganda, which must have had some trouble getting authorisation from the Ministry of Information, accustoming people to the long haul ahead, its privations and pains, and the fact that we faced a tenacious and effective enemy. They were remarkably honest portrayals of what battle was like, and of retreat. Maybe we were actually more realistic about the state of things in those long months between Dunkirk and Stalingrad, than we have since become.
Much later, reading Evelyn Waugh's 'Sword of Honour' trilogy, I found a similar harsh realism. I still think this is Waugh's most important work, because of its profound rejection of idealism about the war. It is only the rather unresolved ending that spoils it. It would have been good to read an Evelyn Waugh novel about the 1960s which resulted from the failure of the war, but alas it was never written.
There is a cold moment, near the end of the trilogy, when the hero (or anti-hero) Guy Crouchback confesses that he entered the war in a spirit of crusading idealism. He is comforted by Madame Kanyi (a Jewish refugee whom he will try and fail to save from a nasty fate at the hands of Britain's Yugoslav Communist 'allies'). She says: ‘Even good men thought that by going to war, they could win a kind of honour.’ He replies: ‘God forgive me. I was one of them.’ In my view, the book would have been best ended exactly there.
Much earlier in the war (I think this is in 'Men at Arms') Guy Crouchback is in Scotland during the issuing of new boots when a near-hysterical regular officer bursts in to the hut and starts gabbling sarcastically that the boots will be fine as long as they are the right sort of boots for running away in - he has just heard the news of the collapse of the Western Front and the beginnings of the headlong retreat to the Channel, which he regards as an utter disgrace. Again, in the light of the Dunkirk myth, this mingled shame and panic do not seem right. But once again, I'm sure they were drawn from the life. There's also a brief bitter description of the defeat in Norway, when the Phoney War turned frightening and nasty in 'Put Out More Flags', another of Waugh's books that ought to get more attention than it does.
Then there was an excellent film about the great retreat ('Dunkirk', made in 1958, starring John Mills, Richard Attenborough and Bernard Lee). But it flopped because - despite one or two moments of musically-enhanced patriotic feeling - it was generally pretty gloomy about Phoney War Britain and the wretched unpreparedness of our government for what was coming. The central figure was a sceptical journalist unwilling to believe the propaganda of the time. The misery and fear of the beaches was also quite starkly portrayed. In 1958, the public didn't much want that sort of thing. They still don't. There is still a deep unwillingness to look calmly at what actually happened to this country in 1940, or to wonder if any different outcome was possible.
Almost all discussions of the 1940 disaster concentrate on the decisive few days when Churchill swung the Cabinet behind his policy of 'no negotiations'. I think this is the wrong moment. There really was no choice. Churchill was able to win them round because by that stage Britain was a defeated belligerent and talking with Hitler would have been a road to humiliation and penury without hope of rescue. To negotiate would be to admit defeat. To admit defeat would have been to demoralise the population - which had only reluctantly accepted the need for war - and destroy any remaining war effort. How could we return to war if we had opened talks with Hitler or Mussolini? The spirit would have been gone. The act of seeking terms would have changed everything.
http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef0133ef60923e970b-320wi (http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef0133ef60923e970b-pi) Also it was plain from the way the French were being treated (and from Germany's 1917 peace with Russia at Brest-Litovsk) that we would have been made to pay an appalling price for peace - not so much out of vengeance or spite, but because Germany needed things which we had, and would have taken advantage of the chance to grab them. Her leaders would have wanted us neutralised for ever, while Berlin got on with its real aim of invading the USSR. Hitler would have been an idiot (which in general he wasn't) if he had left us enough economic strength, or colonial possessions, or military hardware to rebuild our forces. We would have had to scrap or hand over much of the Navy and Air Force, much of our Merchant Marine as well, and pay very large indemnities, as well as probably supplying a lot of conscript labour and much of our Gold and Dollar reserves to the National Socialist War Machine.
I don't think Churchill really imagined that Roosevelt's terms for coming in on 'our' side (actually for coming in on his own side) would prove to be so heavy that we would still be paying off the debt half a century after and the British Empire would entirely vanish. But even if he had known I think he would have preferred them to the alternative. *By that time* there was no other sensible course but to fight on and hope for the best. The harsh laws of war say that if you declare war (as we had done), and then lose it, you can't really complain at what your enemy does to you - hence the old Roman saying 'Vae Victis' - 'Woe to the defeated'. The important question is, would we have been in a stronger position if we had stayed out of the war, either for longer, or altogether?
So the great decision to 'stand alone' was a rational one. Terms with Hitler would not gave gained us much, if anything at all. And they would have left us vulnerable to further demands once Hitler had polished off Stalin, which he would have done with ease if we were permanently out of the war (but which would have been much harder if we had still been an unresolved threat at his rear, see below). If we fought on, we at least had some chance of remaining an independent nation of some sort, even if it was much poorer and weaker and its Empire was gone (pretty much what happened). And that unpleasant bargain was the one we struck. We still live with it. But was it necessary that we should have faced that choice?
The real question was why we had allowed ourselves to get into this mess in the first place. We know from a study of history (one reader rightly recommended Pat Buchanan's largely-ignored volume 'The Unnecessary War' as a dissenting guide to the appeasement years) that even the bellicose Mr Churchill was uninterested in war in 1936, the only point at which France and Britain could effortlessly have stopped Hitler's rise.
There was likewise no serious opposition to the Austrian Anschluss. And it remains debatable whether a war over Czechoslovakia in 1938 would have been any easier to fight than the one over Poland in 1939. Yes, the Czech defences were good - but they did not cover the border with Austria which had now fallen into Hitler's hands. And it is highly doubtful that France or Britain would have tried to invade Germany from the West - an action they weren't prepared, equipped or trained for, and for which their leaders had no appetite then or later.
No, the real questions are quite different. Why did we give a guarantee to Poland in April 1939, which meant that we were completely at the mercy of the Polish state, which could decide to drag us into war at a time of its choosing? Did we really care who owned Danzig, or the corridor? And, as I have said here before, our promise was militarily worthless. We had no forces with which to fulfil it. And we didn't do anything with the forces we had except sit about in Northern France, attempt a blockade which was largely useless because Hitler's key supplies came by land from his ally Stalin, and drop leaflets on German cities from the air. It's true (and the film 'Dunkirk' makes this point) that the Navy was quite heavily engaged against the Germans. But Germany wasn't a major sea-power (at that time she didn't even have very many submarines) and could do little more than sink merchant vessels - though one U-boat did get into Scapa to sink the 'Royal Oak'. Italy at this time was also not wholly committed to Hitler.
Without the absurd Polish guarantee (which didn't save Poland) we - and the French - would have had a much greater range of choice. We could have behaved much more like Roosevelt, perhaps letting others fight for us (as we have historically done in continental wars) while building up our forces and preserving our resources. That would have compelled Hitler to keep reserves on his Western flank, and so weakened any attack he made on the USSR. A war in which Hitler and Stalin fought each other to a standstill, or which one of them won at colossal cost, while we steadily rearmed (and kept our Asian Empire) might then have taken place. I doubt very much if the fate of anyone in Europe would have been any worse under those circumstances than it was thanks to our supposedly noble intervention. It might even have been better.
So the important thing is to look away from the 'Finest Hour', by which time we were irrevocably committed, and wonder if we might have had a much finer hour later if we had shown more sense.
If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down.
GH and ChasD ....
You're both missing my point - i.e. that the North Africa campaign was as much of, if not more than a disaster for Germany as Stalingrad, but barely gets a mention.
Stalingrad was no more a single battle than North Africa - it was a campaign intended to take the Russian oilfields of the Caucasus that got hung up at Stalingrad because of Hitler's personal battle with Stalin and his desire to destroy the city that bore his name that resulted in Stalingrad being attacked. If it had been called Volgagrad he wouldn't have bothered - and the Caucasus campaign may have succeeded. Stalingrad wasn't even particularly important strategically.
Posted by: Stan (http://rantingstan.blogspot.com/) |
Regarding pre-War policy. Well from 1935 there was an attempt to "breath life" into the institutions of "collective responsibility", particularly the League of Nations. There was the attempt to create the "Strasser Front" which was to support an independent Austria (which was run by a right wing government don't forget). This fell apart when Mussolini a) sponsored Abyssinia’s entry to the League of Nations, and b) within a year decided he wanted to conqueror it! Britain and France had little choice but to condemn the attack. By admitting Abyssinia, they were admitting Abyssinia was a member of the association of Free and Civilised countries, and the League was supposed to condemn attacks upon its members. The vacillation was that they wanted to do enough to show they weren’t going to ignore aggression against a League member, but they still wanted Mussolini’s support for the Strasser Front to contain Germany! It failed of course. It enraged Mussolini, and completed his drift towards Hitler, but also failed to preserve Abyssinian independence and revealed the total lack of effectiveness of the League.
Regarding the reoccupation of the Rhineland. This was the only real point where Hitler could have been stopped without breaking the “law” or having a real war. The trouble was that the Rhineland WAS German. Fosch wanted it to be given to France in 1919, but didn’t have his way. So it was really the German’s marching their own soldiers into their own territory, and it was something the German people clearly supported. Does anyone seriously believe that most people in 1936 would have been willing to declare war on Germany for that? Yes, people knew it was a nasty dictatorship. Yes, it was clear they were vicious to Jews. However everyone knew South Africa was racist towards blacks, but I don’t remember anyone advocating invading the country because of it! Stalin’s regime was also known to be a murderous one – who was advocating declaring war on them as a result?
People were also worried about a “war by accident”. The First World War was widely seen as an example of this, and it was still fresh in people’s minds. Even HG Welles put out such a scenario in one of his books where an elderly Jewish man got an orange pip caught under his dentures as he travelled in a train in Danzig, pulled a face as he was doing so, and enraged a watching brown shirt who thought he was mocking him, and this led to a world war. This is, I think, why the Government sought to restrict Britons intervenient in Spain, and was reluctant to send aid to a Government they officially recognised. With Italian and German intervention, it was seen as a potential Balkans which could lead to a direct military confrontation leading to war, and something to avoid. Why do people think the French didn’t send a force of intervention, considering the left held power for much of the time?
Posted by: Paul T |
I have many reservations with this sort of “revisionism”. It is one thing to say that our leaders “could have” done things differently, than it is to say that they “should have”, or worse, to castigate them for NOT doing what we, in our speculations, image would have been better.
The point about Dunkirk, is that by getting the bulk of the trained ground forces away (there were another 150,000 troops left in France AFTER Dunkirk, most of which were also successfully evacuated, although this is largely ignored), Britain had the core of an army which could fight on. People often overlook the fact that you need experienced men to train new recruits, and it was the comparatively small number of trained men that was restricting Britain’s military build up in the early days of the war. The “lack of weapons” is also something that is hyped a bit. Britain was militarily weak in the immediate aftermath of Dunkirk, where the troops brought only their 0.303s and side arms back, but by August, due to mass mobilisation of industry, she was able to station 16 fully equipped divisions along the invasion coasts – in this case we still cling to this idea of June 1940, and expand it out to sometime just before D-Day!
So with Dunkirk, Britain was able to fight on, whereas it would have been much more difficult if the army had been captured. It enabled the Government to believe it could fight on, rather than seek the best terms they could get. Let’s not think Churchill had no opposition to fighting on either. People like Halifax thought it was sensible to recognise the defeat, and see what terms could be extracted from the Germans. He did come close to rolling Churchill – people need to remember that the “National Government” had received 67% of the vote in 1935 election, there were far too few Labour members to have had sufficient voice to keep Halifax at bay if he’d carried most of the Conservatives.
Posted by: Paul T |
True, Britain and France were so ineffective Sept 39-May40 that they might as well have not been in the war. There wouldn't have been much difference between declaring war in 1939 and declaring it in 1940, given that passivity. But what if France had invaded Germany while the German army was busy in Poland? Or what if Britain had invaded Norway first, or the Norwegian campaign had gone better and Germany iron imports via Narvik had been blocked?
More important, though: I am skeptical that Britain and France would have been any help at all to Russia if they'd stayed out and Hitler had turned his attention East. Knowing that France wouldn't attack, Hitler wouldn't have had to keep any troops in the West--- not even as many as he needed to occupy France in 1941. Britain wouldn't have sent convoys of aid to Russia. The US certainly wouldn't have. Japan might have joined Hitler and attacked Siberia. And by 1943, Germany would have finished with Russia and been ready to attack France.
Posted by: Eric Rasmusen |
"Sure, Stalingrad was an important point, but we have forgotten that the North Africa campaign cost the Germans even more casualties and ended with more than a quarter of a million of Germany's most experienced troops in captiviity (compared with less than 100,000 at Stalingrad) - making the North Africa campaign every bit as important as Stalingrad in terms of men and materiel."
I think it's statistically unfair to compare the North African Campaign as a whole to Stalingrad, which, whilst drawn out, was a single battle. If you directly compare German men and materiel commitment on the Eastern Front and the ensuing attrition rates to those sustained in North Africa, the former dwarfs the latter by a considerable degree.
I honestly don't think historians overstate the role of the Soviet Union in defeating Hitler at all.
Regards,
GH
Posted by: GH |
Comparing Stalingrad with the North African campaign is misleading. Stalingrad was only one battle during the entire war on the eastern front where something like three quarters of all Germanys' casualties occurred.
The other episodes mentioned such as Dieppe or Narvik were but fleabites in comparison and of little or no long term consequence.
Posted by: Chasd |
As the balance of forces in 1940 favoured the Allies (figures provided, May 31, 12.28PM), what would have transformed superior forces into the war-winning combination they should already have been? As for behaving like Roosevelt, US re-armament progressed slowly until war was forced on them by the Japanese attack and German declaration of war: ‘In the whole of 1941 military expenditure was just 4 per cent of the amount America spent between 1941 and 1945.’ (Richard Overy, ‘Why The Allies Won’, p.234)
The missed opportunities were:
1. Breaches of Versailles in 1935 and 1936. Jodl, Keitel’s deputy, questioned at Nuremburg on the entry into the Rhineland said, ‘[T]he French covering army alone could have blown us to pieces.’
2. Austria. ‘The Wehrmacht showed itself a poor performer on the Austrian “battlefield,” where the only obstacles were too-enthusiastic crowds of Austrian Nazis who rushed to the streets to throw flowers in the path of German mechanized columns … [T]hose same columns broke down near Linz because of a minor snowstorm … troops showed a lack of training and their junior officers had not mastered basic leadership skills … several cases of traffic jams caused by inexperience and indecisiveness … German officers … were embarrassed by the Wehrmacht’s performance.’ (‘Czechoslovakia between Stalin and Hitler’ by Igor Lukes, p.138–9)
3. Czechoslovakia. Defenders of Munich oft-claim that it provided time to re-arm but rarely do events occur in a vacuum: if we had more Spitfires in 1940, the Germans had more Me109s. Countries like Rumania (a major source of German oil) supported the Czechs; Poland, instead of facing alone a Wehrmacht reinforced with captured Czech equipment, would likely have entered any conflict. (Major references: Williamson Murray, ‘The Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938–1939’ and Waclaw Jedrzejewicz, ‘The Polish Plan for a “Preventative War” Against Germany in 1933’)
4. 1939. The French should have invaded whilst the Wehrmacht was busy in Poland. OKW chief Keitel stated that ‘a French attack during the Polish Campaign would have encountered only a German military screen, not a real defense.’ Halder, OKH chief, concurred: ‘The success against Poland was only possible by almost completely baring our western border.’ (Frieser, p.13)
5. The Battle of France. With better leadership the Allies could have won (see recommended reading, May 31, 12.28PM).
Our ‘Finest Hour’ should have been earlier not later.
Although World War 2 saw Britain fall from the ranks of First Rank powers, we nonetheless were on the winning side and were far better off than Japan and Germany, starving in the rubble as they were. That having won the war we then lost the peace is solely down to we, ourselves and us.
(‘Churchill, Hitler and the “Unnecessary War” ’ was not entirely ignored—it did attract many bad reviews; notably, historian Victor Davis Hanson was excoriating, particularly in his ‘Reply to Patrick J. Buchanan’.)
Posted by: D.G. Harthill |
Interesting but I think it blurs the lines between what was possible and what would be desirable.
Of course all sensible people have recognized Dunkirk as a disaster- even Churchill admitted that it was 'the greatest military defeat for many centuries.' Your analysis of the focus of historical attention is very interesting however- I had never weighed up the balance of choice in that way before and it seems as convincing as the enjoyable pursuit of armchair history is likely to get.
I feel your analysis of when Britain entered the war assumes an unjustified level of autonomy of action on the part of the British government. Following the Hitler-Stalin pact no British government would have been wise to assume that Hitler's true intentions lay to the east; both Nazism and Communism were relatively new and unstable doctrines who, although they had been bitter enemies in 1930's Europe, perhaps could have made use of their many similarities to work together. Also both Allied and German generals and military thinkers were operating on the assumption of a re-run of WW1 (which is what WW2 was in effect) WW1 had its own roots in the Franco-Prussian war and the energies fuelling both conflicts came from more classical power struggles between European nation states rather than the conventional view of WW2 as a clash of political ideologies. Under this paradigm it would be sane to assume that Hitler's interests were to the west and, certainly, vengeance for Versailles was a motivating factor in his war effort. Given this it would have seemed unlikely that Britain and France could just sit back and let Germany and Russia wear each other out.
Another factor limiting the autonomy of the British government would have been its own population. In order to gain popular support for a war effort the government needed to construct a myth about the origins of the conflict. This was just as true in 1914 with Belgium as it was in 1939 with Poland. Unlike the populations of other countries the British would not have rushed to war at the drop of a hat- they needed to feel that they were the protectors of the liberties of another country. If we had let Hitler and Stalin wipe out and absorb every small country in Europe then it would have not only violated 250 years of British foreign policy (aiming to maintain the balance of power on the continent) but would have removed any pretence that we were fighting a just war and made it much harder to generate the fervour necessary for a successful war effort.
I think you need to make it clear whether your true interest is in the good of humanity or whether it is exclusively in the strength of the British empire (although the two do overlap to some extent) at the moment it is difficult to argue against your model because it is difficult to say what it is trying to predict.
Posted by: Tom Bumstead |
What a grim, cynical and *unrealistic* attitude Mr Hitchens has developed to Britain’s pivotal involvement in WWII. Whatever the rights and wrongs of WWII, it happened and lots of people lost their lives. Is Mr Hitchens suggesting we just forget about it?
It seems, because Mr Hitchens is part of the *minority* who don’t like the modern world, unlike the rest of us, they see WWII, not as a victory of good over evil, but as the beginning of the end of traditional conservatism. Imagine if someone ‘of the left’ came out with Mr Hitchens’ negative comments about Britain’s role in WWII, he would be denounced by the trad-cons as a ‘traitor’.
Hindsight (the benefit of which Mr Hitchens liberally employs from his cosy perspective) should tell the rational observer that Britain should’ve declared war on Germany *sooner*… and had Britain not been packed to the gunnels with aristocratic and Conservative Nazi sympathizers we probably would’ve.
The most prominent British Nazi sympathizers were the Duke of Bedford, the Duke of Westminster, the governor of the Bank of England, Frank Tiarks, the chairman of ICI, Lord McGowan, Lord Nuffield, William Strang, Lord Rothermere, president of the Royal Naval College, Admiral Sir Barry Edward Domvile and Captain Ramsay MP, to name but a few notable conservatives. And one mustn’t forget the Duke of Windsor himself, the figurehead of all British Nazi sympathizers.
AK Chesterton was another prominent Nazi sympathizer and passionate anti-Semite who wrote for the British Union of Fascists’ ’Blackshirt’ magazine, and later in life co-founded the National Front… his cousin, GK Chesterton was also an outspoken anti-Semite who favoured Zionism as a way of ‘ridding’ Europe of ‘alien’ Jewish culture.
“…although I still think there is a Jewish problem, I am appalled by the Hitlerite atrocities. They have absolutely no reason or logic behind them. It is quite obviously the expedient of a man who has been driven to seeking a scapegoat, and has found with relief the most famous scapegoat in European history, the Jewish people…” - GK Chesterton (1934)
This also demonstrates that Hitler’s persecution of the Jews, and other minority groups, was already well-known in Britain 5 years before we finally declared war on one of the most ‘evil’ dictatorships in history.
As it happens, Germany’s invasion of Poland was the excuse Britain needed to declare war after years of failed diplomacy and vacillation. Indeed, Churchill wasn’t that keen on the treaty with Poland, believing we chose the wrong ally… he wanted a pact with the Soviet Union.
Mr Hitchens seems to forget that Adolf Hitler was a great admirer of Britain and its empire… he was as much inspired toward world domination by Britain’s imperial exploits in India, as he was by the bible’s Judeophobia when embarking on the Holocaust… right from the beginning Hitler sought an alliance with Britain against the forces of socialism, hence the vast number of prominent British conservative Nazi sympathizers.
Posted by: Harry Rose |
Very interesting analysis of the 'Poland question'. The guarantee to Poland, as you rightly say, was indeed worthless given our military strength and preparedness at that time. Perhaps it was a question of honour, a now outdated concept which, nevertheless, at least led to our continuing warm relations with Poland and the Polish people, despite not being able to support them at the time. Delaying our declaration of war might have had the consequence of giving extra thrust to Hitller's eastern campaign and removed his continuing concerns about a war on two fronts against an enemy, (Britain), with whom ha had great ambivalence and showed respect for its achievements in building the Empire.
Posted by: WB |
Why then, did we give 'The Guarantee' to Poland?
Could it have been to protect British investments in Poland at that time?
If so?
What were these investments?
Posted by: Leighton |
You are quite right. To fight on in 1940 was the only honourable, and probably practical option for the British empire. In 1945 Britain ended up on the winning side and despiter the disasters of 1940/41 there was plenty to be proud of, but stategically it was as defeated as had been Germany or Japan.
The empire was in ruins and the country had been gutted and filletted financially. Like your good self I can't really blame the US for taking its chance, and what a chance! How often is a country given a chance like that, to engage in a war and emerge essentially untouched when all the other major participants (i.e rivals) are destroyed.
How the US has managed its empire since 1945 (you can argue dismally) is another issue.
The delusion as you so rightly point out, was not to see that this country had actually been defeated, although you can't really blame the people in 1945. What we should have done is to emulate Japan and Germany. We should have renounced (maybe not directly or publically) the world role and got on with rebuilding our wealth. It would have been perfectly possible.
It still is but depressingly the only "strategic" options mooted seem to be to suck up either to the US or "Europe". The former doesn't seem to care, the latter is positively hostile. Will we ever get a government which genuinely looks after this countries interests?
Posted by: Mark Dobed |
"All we knew about the war, as Max Hastings pointed out on the radio the other day, was the 'Miracle' of Dunkirk, the glorious Battle of Britain, El Alamein and D-Day. The bits in between, and the wider truth about many of these events were largely unknown, as they still are."
I'm sorry, but that is such nonsense.It's the sort of thing I expect from Hastings who, knowledgeable though he no doubt is, tends to come across as smug and patronising, but I'm surprised that you would say something like that, Mr. Hitchens.
Britain's role in WW2 was well documented both at the time and since - from the build up to it, all the way through it and in the post war administration of Germany and included both our triumps and defeats. We've all - or certainly most of us - have heard about Narvik, Tobruk, Caen, Dieppe, Market Garden, the Battle of the Atlantic, Singapore, Burma, Malta, Crete and Monte Cassino to name but a few.
It's only in recent years that our part in WW2 has been boiled down to those few examples you cite and this is partly due to an over emphasis placed by modern historians on the part the Soviet Union played.
Sure, Stalingrad was an important point, but we have forgotten that the North Africa campaign cost the Germans even more casualties and ended with more than a quarter of a million of Germany's most experienced troops in captiviity (compared with less than 100,000 at Stalingrad) - making the North Africa campaign every bit as important as Stalingrad in terms of men and materiel.
And all the Soviet Union had to worry about were the Germans on their doorstep. We were fighting all over the world with all the logistical problems that entails. It's relatively easy to ship tanks and planes from your factories to your front lines when all you use is your own railway lines over your own land - a different thing altogether when those front lines are across hundreds of miles of sea in far off countries
Posted by: Stan (http://rantingstan.blogspot.com/)
All this is counterfactual history but it’s fascinating nonetheless. Had Britain stood back and Hitler and Stalin's forces slogged it out until exhaustion what would continental Europe’s fate have been? Under Germany occupation (an early form of the EU) perhaps? All of Europe behind an iron curtain? Presumably Pearl Harbour would have still taken place, so the US would have eventually joined the war. Would Europe have been liberated by a reinvigorated British or an Anglo-American force?
My feeling is that the US would not have been content with anything less than a dominant role in the post-war world; though how that would have played out I don’t know.
This was the UK's exit in a shambles from Europe prior to 1944