AH Challenge: Churchill comes to power before 1940.

Is it possible for Winston Churchill to takes power before 1940? If yes, how far would the POD need to go? Would it need to go back as far as 1919-1929 or could we just have Chamberlain suffer an unfortunate accident involving stairs and a banana skin soon after the start of WW2?





Churchill coming to power between September 1st 1939 and January 1st 1940 are good but the earlier, the better!

Of course, scenario/ideas on how he may come to power before the start of WW2 are welcome too.
 
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Putting Churchill in a position of power earlier than OTL would probably require some major changes to his earlier political career. Avoiding some of his bigger political disasters, like Gallipoli*, or the return to the gold standard in the 1920's*, or being on the wrong end of the Abdication Crisis would help a lot.

Honestly, if you look at his political career, it is rather impressive how he managed to survive things that should have destroyed him over and over again. The only reason he got the Prime Ministership in 1940 was the fact that by then he had been repeatedly proven right about Germany and it's plans, while everyone else in the government kept getting things horribly wrong.

* In fairness, Churchill did not deserve all the blame he got for Gallipoli and the Gold Standard, but the fact remains that at the time these were largely perceived as his personal failures.
 
I'm not a Churchill expert, but some of the biographies I've read intimate that the Arms and the Covenant movement was making Churchill a real influence on British politics again until he got derailed by Edward VII and la Simpson.

Is it possible for Winston Churchill to takes power before 1940? If yes, how far would the POD need to go? Would it need to go back as far as 1919-1929 or could we just have Chamberlain suffer an unfortunate accident involving stairs and a banana skin soon after the start of WW2?





Churchill coming to power between September 1st 1939 and January 1st 1940 are good but the earlier, the better!

Of course, scenario/ideas on how he may come to power before the start of WW2 are welcome too.
 
Edward VIII

IRL Stanley Baldwin had the opposition parties promise that if he were to resign they would not form a govt if a general election was called. So just have them not do that, Baldwin resigns, labor picks up only enough seats that it has to form a coalition govt with the liberals and conservatives. Maybe Churchill could sweep in on the corpse that is the conservative party and become the new leader. OR maybe churchill could remain a liberal.

This all depends on Edward VIII not abdicating and marring morgantically. Which many people did support the king doing. It was only the church and other arch conservativees who opposed the king's marrige.
 
Is it possible for Winston Churchill to takes power before 1940? If yes, how far would the POD need to go?
To give Wiston a chance we must to go back at least untile Gallipoli.
If the GW attack on bosphorus is OTL utter failure, poor Wiston has the chances of a chocolate kettle in a red-hot oven
 
As far as I know, Churchill hoped to became PM after the election of 1929. He expected, that the conservatives would lose their majority, but still be the strongest party in the House. In this case he wantted to form a coalition with the liberals.
 
If the Conservatives were the largest party in the House of Commons after the general election on 30 May 1929, Stanley Baldwin would not have resigned as Tory leader. Depending on how close the Tories were to an overall majority I expect he would have tried to stay on as Prime Minister with support from pro Tory Liberals and independents.
 
If Gallipolli succeeded, Churchill would almost certainly be PM at some point in the 20s. Honestly, there's almost no chance that he'd be as remembered and respected in such a TL.

As far as the attractive scenario of a later POD with Churchill rising in the early 30s and confronting Hitler over the Rhineland; well, I really fear it's ASB. He was called the modern Cassandra for a reason... he was right about a lot of things, bit at the time he was something of a fringe figure.
 
If Gallipolli succeeded, Churchill would almost certainly be PM at some point in the 20s. Honestly, there's almost no chance that he'd be as remembered and respected in such a TL.

As far as the attractive scenario of a later POD with Churchill rising in the early 30s and confronting Hitler over the Rhineland; well, I really fear it's ASB. He was called the modern Cassandra for a reason... he was right about a lot of things, bit at the time he was something of a fringe figure.

He was right about Hitler yeah, what is often overlooked though in popular treatments of him is that the reason he was ignored about Hitler was he spent most of his energy ranting about how India must never be independant and how they were a inferior people incapable of ruling themselves.
This attitude was of course completely passe in the 30s with Indian independance (or at least dominion status) accepted as an inevitability in the next decade or two.


So yeah. Pre ww2 Churchill for president....Its ironic but the phrase ringin around in my head right now is 'Fascist Britain'- an exageration of course but still...Britain would be that way leaning...
 
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