The Whale has Wings

[PMN1]

Originally Posted by stevep

paulo

I've recently been reading a book, WWII Behind Closed Doors, Stalin the Nazis and the West by Laurence Rees. Its in conjuncture with a BBC series. Mainly about Churchill's relations with Stalin but also some interchanges with Roosevelt and later all three of them. Amazing how much of a doormat Churchill seemed to be willing to be. Admittedly we have the advantage of hindsight as to the fact Stalin couldn't really have made a separate peace before about 43-44 at the minimum but the amount of abuse Churchill took from both of them.


Steve

A very interesting read is ‘Warlords, the heart of conflict 1939 – 1945’ by Simon Berthon and Joanna Potts, like WWII Behind Closed Doors, done in conjunction with a BBC series.

Originally Posted by stevep

paulo
I have been toying for a long while with an idea for a TL, Fabius Churchill, where he's a lot more grounded in reality and far more cautious and looking to Britain's interests. This has made me think a better option might be to have a 3rd choice, as well as Churchill and Halifax to take over when Chamberlain falls.

Steve

Yep, would make an interesting timeline.

[Ramp-Rat]

Re, Winston Churchill, he was half American, his father Lord Randolph Churchill was British, and his mother Jennie Jerome was American.

[usertron2020]

Originally Posted by paulo

Ok, i'm not British, and i concur that insight is a bitch, but WC decisions are consistently way too much pro american and too costly to UK.

and don't event start with is real stupid military decision in WWI and WWII - if exist a case of a guy that story (official) have a real clean version - is that guy.

Every-time is in a position of power do shit for is country (and for europe).

Is only good as rhetoric / actions against any european power - but as no calms as to surrender UK power to USA.

I agree with all about Britain getting shafted by America in the war, but just as we have 20/20 hindsight, we are all also being influenced by time and distance in our own judgements. Specifically, we all just take for granted that the Europe First Strategy will hold forever as well as the Lend Lease pipeline. I agree that FDR had pure ice in his veins, and could well be capable of going for the Japan First Strategy if he thought it in his long term political interest. Not to mention holding off on Lend Lease to build up American forces first and to save American funds. The US National Debt was staggering at the end of WWII when compared to its GDP at the time.

Were I Winston Churchill AT THAT TIME (post-Pearl Harbor), I wouldn't trust FDR not to abandon Europe and scrimp on Lend Lease once the USA was in the war. Against the potential strategic and economic disaster of a US Japan-First/none or stripped down Lend Lease, the technical gifts sent to the USA by Britain had to be seen AT THE TIME as relatively minor. When you don't even know if you are going to win the U-Boat War, making your biggest ally stronger in that war isn't something you are going to want to haggle over.

In a 21st century world, WE TAKE FOR GRANTED things like the UN, NATO, the "special relationship", victory over the Axis, the delivery of the Atomic Bomb for the Allies FIRST, and so on, and so on, and so on. Winston Churchill could NOT take anything for granted. He knew FDR was always in the strategic position of being able to simply take his toys and go home to the Pacific. Especially when the majority of FDR's countrymen (prior to D-Day) wanted precisely that. Which is why while I agree Winston was shafted, I also feel that shafting was all but inevitable.

[perfectgeneral]

Originally Posted by stevep

I have been toying for a long while with an idea for a TL, Fabius Churchill, where he's a lot more grounded in reality and far more cautious and looking to Britain's interests. This has made me think a better option might be to have a 3rd choice, as well as Churchill and Halifax to take over when Chamberlain falls.

Steve

Subscribed.

(yes I know you haven't started - hurry up!)

[perfectgeneral]

Originally Posted by Ramp-Rat

Re, Winston Churchill, he was half American, his father Lord Randolph Churchill was British, and his mother Jennie Jerome was American.

Given the amount of time he spent with each parent, he was more than 50% American. Amazed he got the gig. Not much vetting of the old school tie (Harrow) in those days.

He used the estate of another Anglo-American as his official wartime residence until sept 1942. Even negotiated L-L there.

Shortly after the end of the war, Tree divorced Nancy and married Marietta Peabody Fitzgerald, an American woman he had met while working for the Ministry of Information. Marietta moved into Ditchley, but found English country life not to her liking. Noticing his wife's upset, and short of money, Tree sold Ditchley to Sir David Wills, descendant of the tobacco importing family, W. D. & H. O. Wills of Bristol; and moved with his family and butler Collins to New York.

Churchill's 'handler'?
BB.


Tree & BB's handler?

Economist George Goodman (also a post-war member of Special Forces intelligence group 'Psywar') proclaimed: "All women should go to Marietta Tree School". When asked to predict her own future, she wrote down: "Parties, people, and politics."

During college, Tree was courted by (and married) Harvard law graduate and New York lawyer Desmond FitzGerald. Also OSS&CIA.

BB is watching you. I'll put the foil hat back in the cupboard now.

[Shevek23]

Originally Posted by usertron2020

...
In a 21st century world, WE TAKE FOR GRANTED things like the UN, NATO, the "special relationship", victory over the Axis, the delivery of the Atomic Bomb for the Allies FIRST, and so on, and so on, and so on. Winston Churchill could NOT take anything for granted. He knew FDR was always in the strategic position of being able to simply take his toys and go home to the Pacific. Especially when the majority of FDR's countrymen (prior to D-Day) wanted precisely that. Which is why while I agree Winston was shafted, I also feel that short of having George Herbert Walker Bush as POTUS in WWII, that shafting was all but inevitable.

All very true, except I don't understand what you're getting at about Bush. He'd have put the USA first too, I'm sure.

I am absolutely not a fan of any of the Bushes. But if we're going to rake FDR over the coals for being firstly loyal to the USA that elected him, I have to give the Bush-devils that much due as well. Of course their idea of what counts as "US" interest is not mine, as far as I can tell... While GHWBush as POTUS is ASB due to his age, his father Prescott was old enough--and a US Senator.

Now bearing in mind that Churchill does not know of a certainty the Allies will win, that no one knows if an A-bomb is even practical or if it is that will be feasible any time in the 20th century--I want to remind everyone marveling over how OTL the British PM can be handing so much stuff over free to their chief rivals, that long ago I spoke up for his OTL policy of unstinting aid and support for the Soviets too. If there is some grounds for doubt which way Winston's personal loyalties lay in conflicts between Britain and America--does anyone believe he had any love for Bolshevism, or preferred Russians over either Anglo power? Of course not! He was infamous before the war for his unrelenting anti-Communism, and after it. During the war, once the Germans attacked, he put the whole matter of both his long and deep-seated hatred of Bolshevism in general and Stalin's support of the Third Reich for the past couple of years way back on the back burner, because Britain, and the whole concept of liberal Western civilization, needed all the anti-Axis allies it could get.

Perhaps as an American I am blind to the excessive degree of Churchill's America-philia and his betrayal of UK interests. But considering he treated both future superpowers with the same self-sacrificing zeal, I don't think that's really the explanation for his bending over so far backwards OTL.

For an American, with some pride in the brighter side of the USA as an ideal, I've always been an Anglophile, and it shames me to think of how Britain did get shafted after the war. We should have been more generous and considerate. The notion that much of our cold-shouldering of European interests after the war was out of love for the rights of the poor oppressed colonial peoples makes me roll my eyes, like this: , because I know exactly how we turned around and treated those same peoples once they were nominally freed of their nominal colonial shackles. We turned right around and backed the crudest lot of warlords and thugs we could find, and half the time failed to maintain Western hegemony over them regardless of our calloused brutality in the name of anti-Communism. Clearly there is a lot of justice in the European perspective that our ideals were hypocritical and cynical.

I actually hope that in this timeline, with Britain, France, and even the Netherlands much stronger in the Third World than they were at this point OTL, on the whole the colonized peoples of the world will do better with various degrees on the spectrum from a more enlightened colonial regime to autonomy and even nominal independence but with ongoing special relationships with their former colonial patrons, than the OTL American model of everyone totally free on paper and in practice run by CIA-vetted strongmen. (You know, the types of regimes the Bush family tended to be personally involved in promoting, and from time to time in the later years turning on as the designated boogeyman du jour--it's very telling that the Bush presidents could never find anyone scarier to whip up a war mobilization around than their own damn recent proteges...)

It's inevitable that ITTL the USA will gradually gain in authority in the councils of the Allies. But it could be that by the time that happens, the post-war arrangements of power within the colonial spheres that made up most of the world will be worked out between a broad spectrum of native politicians and the colonial authorities, and American demands for a more "open" economic order will be largely toothless. Perhaps instead the USA comes to mutually profitable understandings between itself and the colonial powers collectively.

As for the Bomb--I quite agree that Britain deserved better of the USA than a polite, verbal, non-binding gentleman's personal agreement between FDR and WC personally that of course Uncle Sam would share with John Bull postwar, an agreement Harry Truman was not party to, probably did not know about, and had no inclination to keep. I do think we could and should have agreed to post-war profit sharing in some form or other and this should have been formally written up and signed and binding on whoever might inherit the White House.

But one way or another it was only smart, indeed apparently vital, for Churchill to guarantee the research went forward by a nation that could spare the resources and had the security to carry it out, otherwise it would not be inconceivable--to them, in their state of ignorance at the time--that the Germans and even, in wild nightmares, the Japanese, who had some top-notch nuclear physicists--might get there first. In hindsight I think the chances of the Axis, even an Axis in a significantly better position than OTL, had no chance of doing it, because as things turned out the key to having a Bomb was access to lots and lots of riches. The Americans (and British) could import materials from most places in the world, and could produce quite a lot domestically while still gearing up for a truly massive production of conventional war materials. We had vast acreage of land reasonably accessible to high-capacity transport and yet isolated from everyday life for all but a tiny handful of people, for security both in the sense of keeping secrets and also protecting the general population and core industries from the conceivably catastrophic consequences of success. And this secret secure wide-open tract in the middle of the desert was embedded deeply in a continent where no enemy army of any size could plausibly appear and no enemy attack of any kind, however bold and suicidal, could do more than peripheral damage. It only makes sense that the Bomb project happened in North America. In contrast the Axis had no access to resources on land they didn't actually control with troops on the ground, and none of it was secure, and all of it was densely populated, and worst of all they just didn't have the economic margin for the sort of extravagant risk of resources the Manhattan Project was.

But as usetron says, no one could know in advance just what would be required, the Bomb could have been relatively easy to make. If so maybe Britain could beat the Germans to the punch on her own, maybe with some minor project that didn't create a vast paper trail leading spies to locate the secret research centers they'd have to try to hide on a few small islands, or try to relocate to Australia (with Japan running interference) or Canada--just a hop away from the USA...and maybe playing those cards close to their vest would give the Germans just the edge they needed. We know better now, they couldn't know then.

At least Churchill didn't hand the same secrets over to Stalin, to further cover the wartime bet! (This raises a whole other topic, but before Churchill-bashers raise it consider carefully what it implies about an all-UK Bomb project...that's all I'm saying...)

[perfectgeneral]

Harry Hopkins

[Faralis]

IMHO you all are being too hard with Churchill. In OTL Britain was in the worst possible situation. He had to take a lot of difficult decisions, and committed several mistakes. He also took a lot of risk, but I honestly think that his successes are more than his mistakes, and more important too...

I cannot really think in a British politician of that era who could direct the Empire as well as he did.

[perfectgeneral]

Halifax would have made use of Churchill in the Commons and as Defence Secretary anyway.

Remember the biggest argument against Halifax is that he would have compromised over Polish sovereign borders. Something that the allies did anyway. As for contemplating defeat:

'If necessary we shall continue the war alone, and we are not afraid of that. But I trust you will realise, Mr. President, that the voice and force of the United States may count for nothing if they are withheld too long.' - 15 May 1940 (Churchill as PM for 5 days)

"We shall wipe them out, every single one of one them, men, women and children, there shall not be a single Japanese left on the face of the Earth." Winston Churchill.

"Without him England was lost for a certainty, with him England has been on the verge of disaster time and again" - 10th September 1944 Alan Brooke

The best choice wasn't even at that meeting with the Queen: Herbert Morrison.


In 1939 Conservative MPs defeated Herbert Morrison's bill introducing "site value rating", a tax on similar lines to Land Value Tax, in the old London County Council area. It would have been our land we were fighting for.

[Roisterer]

Shevek et al

"Hindsight is a cruel messenger" - Lidell Hart

Regards

R

[sloreck]

While the British can (and should) get a better deal on sharing of atomic research results than actually happened, the reality is that the research has to be based in the USA. Industrial requirements, space requirements, power requirements, personnel requirements etc. dictate the USA - Canada is equally "safe" and has space to build secret facilities, but the population/industrial base is too small. No way the UK can get it done in the UK (or Empire) by itself. Even if the UK could build an Oak Ridge or Hanford, which they can't during the war, one lucky bombing raid could be disasterous. Sure it might be dumb luck for the Luftwaffe to bomb that area given how bad their air intel and recon was but....

[usertron2020]

Originally Posted by Roisterer

Shevek et al

"Hindsight is a cruel messenger" - Lidell Hart

Regards

R

My point is it can also be arrogant.

[usertron2020]

Originally Posted by perfectgeneral

Halifax would have made use of Churchill in the Commons and as Defence Secretary anyway.

Remember the biggest argument against Halifax is that he would have compromised over Polish sovereign borders. Something that the allies did anyway. As for contemplating defeat:

The best choice wasn't even at that meeting with the Queen: Herbert Morrison.


In 1939 Conservative MPs defeated Herbert Morrison's bill introducing "site value rating", a tax on similar lines to Land Value Tax, in the old London County Council area. It would have been our land we were fighting for.

Halifax was a peer. His being Prime Minister is fodder for AH, but not a serious alternative. The only person of note OTL who wanted Halifax as PM was Chamberlain. Morrison was even less a viable option. He was a Labour Party member. No way do the Conservatives take their orders from a Labour PM when the Tories have a 230+ seat majority over the Labourites.

[usertron2020]

Shevek23

You are right about Bush I. I will fix it.

[perfectgeneral]

Now that the tin foil hat has been removed I dare not say any more concerning the link between HH and BB. (nothing to do with pencils)

That 230+ majority was split down the middle. If neither Halifax nor Churchill agreed to work for the other then a minority national government is the only alternative to a snap election in the middle of a major war. Leo Amery forms a government? More unlikely. Morrison is a moderate. Lloyd-George? A proven coalition wartime PM.

[usertron2020]

Originally Posted by perfectgeneral

Given the amount of time he spent with each parent, he was more than 50% American. Amazed he got the gig.(1) Not much vetting of the old school tie (Harrow) in those days.

And just WHERE was Winston all those years? It was England, not New England. I would think being born of the Dukes of Marlborough's family would have been enough, but apparently not... He lived in Dublin from ages 2-6. Was he recruited by the IRA? Or the Black and Tans? He spent most of his youth in English boarding schools, with little contact with either parent, getting most of his affection from his nurse.

1) Because everybody else in British politics at the time were either too young, too old, in a minority party, or tarred with the Appeasement Brush?

He used the estate of another Anglo-American as his official wartime residence until sept 1942. Even negotiated L-L there.

Probably had something to do with the fact that Chequers and Chartwell were both within easy bombing range of the Luftwaffe, and easily seen from the air!

Churchill's 'handler'?
BB.


Tree & BB's handler?

Economist George Goodman (also a post-war member of Special Forces intelligence group 'Psywar') proclaimed: "All women should go to Marietta Tree School". When asked to predict her own future, she wrote down: "Parties, people, and politics."

During college, Tree was courted by (and married) Harvard law graduate and New York lawyer Desmond FitzGerald. Also OSS&CIA.

BB is watching you. I'll put the foil hat back in the cupboard now.

You call the OSS/CIA the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, yet have them ruling the British Empire? I swear, if the CIA were half as good as it's critics said it was, the USA would have conquered the whole wide world by 1967!

[usertron2020]

Originally Posted by perfectgeneral

That 230+ majority was split down the middle.(1) If neither Halifax (2) nor Churchill agreed to work for the other then a minority national government (3) is the only alternative to a snap election in the middle of a major war. Leo Amery forms a government? More unlikely. Morrison is a moderate.(4) Lloyd-George?(5) A proven coalition wartime PM.(6)

1) No, actually, it's not. There was only one person who the Liberals, Conservatives, and Socialists would accept as a leader of a Nationalist Government, and it was most certainly NOT the principal architect of Appeasement (beyond Chamberlain and Horace Wilson, of course). It was someone whose opposition to Appeasement with Adolph Hitler was totally beyond reproach.

2) Halifax was well aware of the unconstitutionality of trying to wage a war as both a Prime Minister and a peer in the 20th century. If nothing else, how does he function as PM without being able to be present at Question Time? That is why he ultimately didn't WANT the job. He would have taken it on a silver platter, I suppose. That is, if drafted. But neither he nor Neville were in a position to get him the job. He simply wasn't seen by May 10th, 1940 as having the gravitas for the job (never mind the qualifications in terms of being a potential wartime leader).

3) perfectgeneral, you are really overestimating the surviving anti-Churchill sentiments in the House by the start of Case: Yellow. Some of Churchill's worst critics were making speeches denouncing Chamberlain and his other remaining ministers for "...using the Right Honorable First Lord of the Admiralty as a bomb shelter to protect themselves from the righteous wrath of this House!" *Hear! Hear! Hear!* That doesn't sound like a split party to me. Split in September, 1939? YES! in May, 1940? NO!

4) A moderate Labour Party member in a small minority party at this time.

5) An even smaller party.

6) Plus, as old as the hills. Not to mention being ready to cut a deal with Germany after the BoB. Chamberlain could have done that.

[Garrison]

Originally Posted by perfectgeneral

Now that the tin foil hat has been removed I dare not say any more concerning the link between HH and BB. (nothing to do with pencils)

That 230+ majority was split down the middle. If neither Halifax nor Churchill agreed to work for the other then a minority national government is the only alternative to a snap election in the middle of a major war. Leo Amery forms a government? More unlikely. Morrison is a moderate. Lloyd-George? A proven coalition wartime PM.

Llyod -George was evey bit as bad at interfering with military strategy as Churchill, and he had that fixation with looking for the 'soft underbelly' of the enemy. He may have done a good job with getting industry geared up but he would probably have been a disaster at directing the war.

[Gannt the chartist]

Actually the conservatives have a majority of 159 in the commons not 233, there 50 odd liberal a dozen other labour various independents a communist and some Nats,

The practical majority prior to the Norway debate (May 8) was 213. The Norway debate dropped this to 81 with 33 voting with Labour. I.E a strong Tory majority but not for a Chamberlain led government.

Party loyalty is pretty irrelevant - this is a matter of some significance and an attempt to whip a majority especially for Halifax is simply going to backfire. As he and Chamberlain probably recognised.

The majority that clearly exists is a coalition of anti Nazi and anti Communists - in 1940 as far as the UK is concerned Hitler and Stalin are allies. Churchill is also pretty much the natural leader of that bloc and has the support of a large and growing number of Tories. Unless Churchill accepts Halifax - he did not, Churchill becomes PM on 10 May.

The 25-28 May crisis is also a blind alley the only crisis existed in the 5 man inner cabinet (Churchill, Chamberlain, Halifax, Atlee, Greenwood. ‘The Crisis’ is whether Chamberlain and Halifax withdraw support from Churchill and try to reverse the decision they had made a fortnight earlier. When the issue goes to Full Cabinet on 28 May Churchill gets spectacular support from the cabinet. If C &H then pull out any Commons debate is the whole of the cabinet except Chamberlain speaking for Churchill in the Commons. Noone is going to bring down the government in order to put in place the guy they fired 3 weeks before.

Incidentally as the British controlled the abwher and the Americans controlled the British - the communist penetration of the State Dept means that the entire war was run from the Kremlin (probably the tower on the north side where the alien space bats live) or possibly by the Mafia from the grassy knoll.

[perfectgeneral]

Originally Posted by usertron2020

TAKE. YOUR. MEDS.

You really don't have to defend yourself. Protest so strongly and tongues will wag. Just playing join the dots. A bit of fun. My Grandparents survived. As much as I could hope for. May the same be true of me and mine. Whoever is in charge, it sure as hell isn't us, no matter how many times we are told that democracy dictates the path of nations. What meds am I on, by the way?