Halifax appointed PM in 1940.......and he continues the war

I'm idly curious as it always seems to be suggested that if Halifax became prime minister of Britain instead of Churchill the first thing he'd do would be negotiate a peace with Hitler.
 

sanusoi

Banned
Well if Halifax did decide to continue the war against the Germans, you would see a more vigorous BOB. I expect that he would keep BOB runnig for a bit longer then OTL. As for Dowding's fate after BOB, well I think he won't be thrown away.

I don't know what he could have done in the greater sceme of things, if he kept going. Dowding was a quagmire to me, he did the BOB but then was ripped to pieces by Chuchill.

As for Halifax being a good leader, I don't know what he could acomplish in his primensitership. Also I would like to know what he could have done with the US relationship ?
 
I think he probably had as good a relationship with the US as Churchill did - he was appointed ambassador to Washington after all in OTL.
 
Well if Halifax did decide to continue the war against the Germans, you would see a more vigorous BOB. I expect that he would keep BOB runnig for a bit longer then OTL.

?? The British were defending. The Germans were attacking, The Germans, not the British, decided when to end the thing.
 
I suggested this a week or two ago, and that it might lead to better Anglo-American relations, since he wouldn't have the yearning for Empire that Churchill did to sour ties with FDR.
 
since he wouldn't have the yearning for Empire that Churchill did to sour ties with FDR.

Why not? If anything, without Churchill's sentimentality towards America (The man was, let us remember, half-American himself) Halifax is going to be more independent-minded. The whole basis of Halifax's worldview was a carefully realist one. He was the arch-appeaser, (mabye even more so than Chamberlain) after all. Churchill may have been nominally a 'die-hard' on questions of the Empire, but his actual policies in office on that issue were not, as far as I can tell, noticeably different from what those of any other Conservative politician would have been.

Oh, and to respond to an earlier point: Halifax was actually a poor Ambassador*. The Americans didn't like him at all. The man was about as out of place in the role as it was possible to be. He just didn't really understand America, and I think it's fair to say that America didn't understand him.

*In all fairness, he was given that post almost purely on the basis of internal party politicking.
 
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Well if Halifax did decide to continue the war against the Germans, you would see a more vigorous BOB. I expect that he would keep BOB runnig for a bit longer then OTL. As for Dowding's fate after BOB, well I think he won't be thrown away.

I don't know what he could have done in the greater sceme of things, if he kept going. Dowding was a quagmire to me, he did the BOB but then was ripped to pieces by Chuchill.

Churchill support Dowding, it was Sholto Douglas aided by the intrigue of Leigh-Mallory who got Dowding sacked. Having said that, he should have retired in '39 but AVM Courtney was ill so couldn't replace him, after that the pressure of events stopped it happening.
Why a more 'vigorous' BoB? Park fought it brilliantly. And as Michele wrote it was the Germans who as attackers decided when to stop.
 

sanusoi

Banned
Well I'm up for a good fight with you any day. The agressor does have the right to choose when to stop but you can twist his hand to make him feel the shove. With less pressure on Dowding to go, he could have done more things to help the RAF.

Another question to the guys and gals, assuming the UK survives until 1941.
How will Halifax deal with the Soviet Union when it's invaded ?
 
I assume that if the UK had not done a deal by September 1940 it would not do so.

I think that any UK government at war with the Nazis would want to be relatively nice to Staln after 22 June 1941.

I feel that Halifax or probably anyone other than Churchill (or maybe Lloyd George) would be likely to be seen as much less of a figure than Churchill was in OTL. (This has significance for UK politics because I am sure that Winston S mitigated the tory disaster in 1945)
 
(This has significance for UK politics because I am sure that Winston S mitigated the tory disaster in 1945)

This is a highly debatable line of reasoning. It is often suggested that the very basis of the Tory Campaign - a kind of Presidentialism centred around Churchill as an individual - was actually what contributed, in large part, to the Tory debacle.

If the Tories had been much more willing to actually get to grips with something as sordid as policy, particularly regarding the economy, then they may have done a lot better in '45. I highly doubt that the Tories could have won, but without Churchill, or any other similar figure to fall back on, there is a convincing argument to be made that they would have actually done better than they did.

No war, or a very short war, also ties into this, as the notion of 'organised planning' and the apparent benefits of it, permeated deep into the public consciousness during 1939-1945; it's exposure as defecient did not really begin until the harsh winter of 1947 when Labour had a fuel crisis.
 
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Well I'm up for a good fight with you any day. The agressor does have the right to choose when to stop but you can twist his hand to make him feel the shove. With less pressure on Dowding to go, he could have done more things to help the RAF.

So what do you think 'he could have done more things to help the RAF'?

Dowding was a 'strategist' after all Fighter Command's System was his. He was not a tactician - he had Park (and in theory Leigh-Mallory) for that.

Earlier, he should have arranged more & better gunnery training - Fighter guns were harmonised at 400 yds., experienced pilots learnt to reduce it to 250yds.
During the Battle, why didn't Dowding visit the Fighter airfields (like Park did) to listen to how different Squadrons and their 'leaders' were coping with the enemy. And therefore be able to spread 'best practise' to other Squadrons - rather than learn by natural selection!
According to S. Bungay:
Dowding later wrote that he came to doubt whether the organisation of a squadron into four sections of three was best for dogfighting, and thought it should be replace by three sections of four, allowing the four to split into two pairs. However, he states, it was 'undesirable to make any sweeping changes during a battle'' and observes that it would in any case 'upset standard arrangements for accommadation'.... !!!!!????


But if he did one thing that saved the RAF in 1940, it was IMO the memo to the Cabinet - no more Fighter Squadrons to France.
 
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