31st December 1942 – Britain - The End of the Beginning
The war that consumed all of Britain’s energies had taken a very different course from that which anyone in September of 1938 had envisioned. Those who thought it could be avoided had naturally been the most bitterly disappointed of all, but by and large they had recognized the necessity of opposing a Nazi regime that had proven itself brutal and untrustworthy in equal measures. Those among the opponents of war who had been motivated by some sympathy towards the goals of the Nazis had seen their farfetched schemes to remove Britain from ‘The wrong war’ fizzle out in the face of determined opposition and their fundamental misunderstanding of the attitudes of the great mass of the British people. Among those who had believed war was inevitable the pessimists had been proven wrong in their belief that the bomber would get through and that the country would be in ruins in mere weeks. They were though correct in their assessment that only the outside powers, the USA and the USSR, would benefit from another war. The optimists, if one could call those who expected a major war to break war out optimists, had anticipated something akin to the Western Front of World War I and been shocked by the Fall of France. This single stunning blow meant the war had become an existential crisis for Britain, a matter of survival rather than such abstruse matters as the balance of power, and it had finally, shockingly, expanded to a truly global conflict as Italy and then Japan had joined the war. It was hardly surprising the some in the dark days of 1940 had felt Britain had little choice except to make peace, even if meant negotiating with Adolf Hitler. Fortunately for Britain and the world those defeatists had been soundly rebuffed by more determined souls. The price of such resolution had been high, but it was one that the country had proven willing to pay in ‘blood, sweat, and tears’ [1].
By the end of 1942 Britain was no longer exercised by the question of whether the country could survive. The focus had shifted to the question of how victory over the Axis was to be achieved and if/when it was then who would dictate the terms of peace? Would the USSR hold the upper hand, something which seemed unlikely but possible at the end of 1942, or would it be the Western Allies? And if it were the Western Allies would Britain help set those terms as an equal partner or would the USA be able to impose its own vision for a post-war world? The United States was an ally every bit as determined to destroy Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan as Britain was, Roosevelt was not however an admirer of the British Empire, and neither were the captains of US industry. The Empire closed off markets and resources that the USA wanted to access, and it was expected that it would use it massive contribution to the British war effort as leverage in opening the Empire to American commerce, something that Churchill and even many of his political opponents were determined to resist [2].
Some in Britain were more concerned with the shape of British society post-war than the shape of Europe or the Empire. The Labour Party had fully committed itself to the war and its representatives in cabinet had proven themselves quite able to govern, despite much pre-war scepticism. They were however still committed to making sweeping changes to the status quo ante that had existed before the war and in this they were finding increasing support from the British public. Whether on the frontlines or the Homefront the ordinary citizens of Britain had made tremendous sacrifices for the war effort, and they expected that would be reflected in the post war settlement, they would not accept the ‘land fit for heroes’ promised after World War I being tossed aside once more when it proved inconvenient a second time. Sacrifices had also been made by the people of the British Empire and they too expected some reward for their efforts, especially in India, where Nationalists and representatives of the British administration would have to thrash out some modus vivendi to move forward [3].
That Britain had the luxury of concerning itself with such matters could be traced back to the decisions taken by Neville Chamberlain after his near-death experience at Hendon. The question that has vexed historians ever since the war is, in the crudest terms, just how much credit does Chamberlain deserve? There is a school of thought that what more sympathetic historians referred to as the Chamberlain Mandate constituted the bare minimum that could have been done and that Chamberlain was forced into even these inadequate measures by circumstances beyond his control, contributed to by a clinical depression brought on by his physical injuries after the crash, as well as the undiagnosed cancer that took his life in 1940. In this interpretation it was only after Chamberlain’s departure that the improvements wrought in the British military were finally put to good use, leading to the victories in Crete, Libya, and Malaya. This is usually referred to as the ‘Churchillian’ interpretation of events, with Churchill’s own history of the war being far from flattering to Chamberlain and his rearmament efforts.
At the opposite end of the spectrum are those who argue that the mandate made all the difference in Britain’s survival in the early years of the war. In this interpretation without the rearmament and training efforts made in 1938 and 1939 the critical men and equipment that reinforced the BEF in 1940 would not have been available, thus France would probably have fallen sooner, and with the Wehrmacht on the French coast in June or July the chances of a German invasion increased exponentially. The threat alone would have immeasurably strengthened the hand of those who wanted to seek terms from Germany and likely would have forced the government to make peace, with grave consequences for the USSR and probably leaving the USA isolated in a world dominated by the Third Reich and its Axis partners [4].
What both these interpretations miss is that Britain enjoyed a considerable amount of good fortune in the progression of the war between 1939 and 1942, however absurd that might have seemed to those in Britain who lived through the setbacks of those years. Had the Germans embraced the Manstein Sweep in May rather than July and achieved the same level of success it did, something which most Churchillian historians deny is possible, then Britain would at the very least have had to commit far more resources to the defence of the British mainland, which would in turn have encouraged the Italians and the Japanese to act [5].
It is possible to go round and round in circles arguing the merits of the different scenarios, and it is best to focus on the practical situation the British faced at the end of 1942. The government still had to balance the needs of pushing the Japanese back to their home islands against what was still the key priority, the defeat of Nazi Germany. The arguments over the best strategy to achieve the latter had finally coalesced into Operation Millennium, the overarching plan for the invasion of Normandy. Everything would now build to the D-Day landings in the Summer of 1943, though not without a few diversions along the way.
As Operation Jubilee had amply demonstrate improved tactics and weapons would be needed to take and hold a bridgehead in Normandy. The A24 Churchill and the A27 Centaur would provide the armoured spearhead and the Gloster Comet would usher in the jet age, but the key to victory would lie in the less glamourous needs of logistics and transportation. A vast flotilla of landing craft would have to be built, and a mass of supplies and equipment to be carried aboard them would have to be stockpiled. At the end of 1942 these existed mostly on paper, but as the new year opened those plans would be translated into steel, oil and flesh as a great army was assembled in Southern England and aimed at the beaches of Normandy [6].
The Japanese threat would not be ignored as this build-up went ahead. Any invasion of Japan lay far over the horizon at the end of 1942, so the objective for 1943 was to strangle their war machine, cutting it off from the resources of the territories it had conquered in 1941 and destroying its merchant marine, essentially the same plan that Germany had sought to carry out against Britain, but it would be executed out on a scale that Doenitz and his U-Boats had never come close to achieving in the Atlantic. US Navy and Royal Navy submarines would prowl the Pacific in ever greater numbers as the USA pressed on with its island-hopping campaign and the British would push the IJA ever further back in South East Asia, establishing bases from which Allied strategic bomber could reach out and deliver on the warning delivered by the Doolittle Raid, that the cities of Japan were not beyond the reach of the Allies [7].
All of this would come at a great cost, both in resources and lives, but there was no turning back now for the British and their allies, they would see the war through to a victorious end, in the east and the west [8].
[1] So this is the finale of Munich Shuffle, and an overview of where Britain stands, and where its going in 1943 and 1944.
[2] So yes Anglo-American politics is going to get a little rougher in 1943, not a falling out as much as an attempt by the British to secure a larger say in the way the peace is made. Much will of course depend on just how long the war in Europe lasts and where the armies from the East and West meet…
[3] So yes Labour is still making gains politically even if they won’t appear at the ballot box for some time and as for India, well things will be different.
[4] So Chamberlain either did nearly nothing or he saved Britain, anyone suggesting something like OTL would be laughed at by serious historians.
[5] There have been more than a few butterflies ITTL, however I have tried to limit them to small singular events impacting individuals and the larger changes I have tried to make plausible as the consequences of earlier decisions, how well I have succeeded is up to the reader to decide.
[6] And no surprise that much of the emphasis in the 1943 parts of Millennium Shuffle will be on the build-up, execution, and aftermath of D-Day.
[7] The Dutch East Indies and Thailand will also have their own series of updates, and the former already exists in draft form in fact.
[8] And with that we come to the conclusion of what has easily been the largest project I’ve undertaken on AH.com to date, though of course there is much more to come.