If the Tories kick Churchill out ?

In March 1942, Goebbels records in his diary that the Nazi leadership expects Churchill's coalition to crumble, and either be replaced by a Leftist government under Cripps, or a purely-Tory one

But who would have led the latter ? Eden is too identified with Churchill, Halifax is in Washington, and even if he were not, he is probably the man whose time has been and gone

So, who would have led a Tory government, but one still vehemently opposed to peace with Germany ?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
It's not entirely what you asked for, but Lloyd-George was prepared to be PM if Churchill was forced out in the early years of WW2. He would have been an interim figure due to his advanced age. Then a general election and presumably a Labour government under Attlee.

By 1942, I think Churchill's position was close to impregnable. I'd say until late 1941, when the USA entered the war, there were possibilities of his removal.
 
Does anyone know what role as minister the 10th Duke of Devonshire played in Churchill's wartime government ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Cavendish,_10th_Duke_of_Devonshire
says he was

but the Wiki for the government doesn't list him...

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

Ah, from thepeerage.com

He held the office of Parliamentary Under-Secretary for India and Burma between 1940 and 1942.3 He was invested as a Knight, Order of the Garter (K.G.) in 1941.3 He held the office of Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Colonies between 1942 and 1945

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Sir Samuel Hoare is a possibility IMO.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Hoare

IMO you can normally tell people Churchill regarded to be a threat to him because he maneuvered them out of the country as ambassadors.;)

Considering he was one of the creators of the Hoare-Laval Pact, how would other Conservatives have felt about serving under him, and could they have trusted him to have stayed in the war ?

Trying to find online info, but it seems a BIT sparse !

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
RAB Butler is always a possibility.

I find my sources on him rather contradictory - one the one hand he is mentioned as being damaged by Appeasement, and on the other I recall reading that he was going to be one of the stay-behind commanders of the British Resistance if Sealion had been successful

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Considering he was one of the creators of the Hoare-Laval Pact, how would other Conservatives have felt about serving under him, and could they have trusted him to have stayed in the war ?

Trying to find online info, but it seems a BIT sparse !

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

You seem to be assuming that the Conservatives want to stay in the war, in which case why dump Churchill?

Also, bear in mind that it wasn't actually a Conservative government it was a national unity government, so you've got to find someone Labour will serve under.

Maybe if you explain what you are trying to accomplish here?
 
You seem to be assuming that the Conservatives want to stay in the war, in which case why dump Churchill?

Also, bear in mind that it wasn't actually a Conservative government it was a national unity government, so you've got to find someone Labour will serve under.

Maybe if you explain what you are trying to accomplish here?

Labour doesn't actually HAVE to serve - a minority Tory government could easily get the support of the king who wouldn't want to have elections in the middle of a disastrous year of war, and on a policy-by-policy basis the Commons would vote on bills.

Its not STABLE, but getting rid of the unity government isn't going to bring stability. What it would bring is fresh faces (to a degree) and a new direction (it would be expected)

The basic idea is that the unity government cannot survive the disastrous 1942 Nazi Germany had in mind for the Allies (so we'd be looking at no setback at El Alamein, no Stalingrad and no Torch)

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
I think that Archibald Sinclair would be a far more palatable choice for the Tories to consider (despite him being a Liberal) than a Labour politician. Eden would win over Halifax, despite him being seen as "Winston's Man".
 
OK, I found this:

On June 25, the following resolution was tabled in the House:

"That this House, while paying tribute to the heroism and endurance of the Armed Forces, in circumstances of exceptional difficulty, has no confidence in the central direction of the war."

That would be June 25, 1942. The House would be the House of Commons in London, England. And the government in which no confidence was expressed was that of Winston Churchill.

Almost three years into World War II, repeated military failures had induced considerable war fatigue in Britain. In February 1942, Singapore fell to the Japanese with 25,000 British troops being taken prisoner. In March, Rangoon fell. This was vastly damaging to Churchill's prestige in Washington as Rangoon was the only port through which aid could be shipped to China's Chiang Kai-shek -- a very high priority for the United States in Asia.

In April, the Japanese Navy drove the Royal Navy all the way back to East Africa and shelled the British Indian coastal cities.

Then on June 21, 1942, Tobruk in North Africa fell to Gen. Rommel, with 33,000 British prisoners taken and the Suez Canal (Britain's lifeline to her Asian empire and oil) threatened.

A week later, Churchill struggled to win that vote of no confidence. But shrewd political observers in London at the time (very much including Churchill himself) believed he was one more lost battle away from being removed from office -- or at best stripped of his Minister of Defense cabinet powers and rendered a mere figurehead leader.

So we are postulating something like the loss of the First Battle of El Alemein leading to another vote of no confidence and/or men in grey suits forcing Churchill to step down?

Interesting idea. Are you sure his successor would necessarily be a Conservative though? How about a military figure as minster of defence? IIRC the King also had a very high opinion of Jan Smuts.

And (drum roll) wikipedia states (so it must be true)
Smuts' importance to the Imperial war effort was emphasised by a quite audacious plan, proposed as early as 1940, to appoint Smuts as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, should Churchill die or otherwise become incapacitated during the war. This idea was put by Sir John Colville, Churchill's private secretary, to Queen Mary and then to George VI, both of whom warmed to the idea.
 
This 'alternative to Churchil' question got this reply on another bard a while back.


Churchill was not a working-class hero and not a particularly attractive personality but he had the charisma to do the job. However, the fact that he was given the boot even before the war was over shows that he was not seen as anything else but as a war leader.

I can't see any other Conservative who could have done the job. Churchill's sidekick, Eden, didn't have the determination. On the Labour side, Attlee, who steered the country through the final phase of the war, certainly had a steely determination but not the charisma. Who else on that side? Bevan, the fiery Welshman, was too volatile. If I had to choose one, I would say Ernie Bevan, a formidable leader who rose from nothing to become Foreign Secretary, the same sort of spectacular rise as Robertson's in the military in the First World War.

But, who can tell who would have risen to the occasion if they had the job? The most unlikely people achieve remarkable results.


There really were none, for Churchill was seen as the only true "Warrior" among parliamentarians of the day. WSC stated on many occasions that he was a "War-person," meaning that he thrived intellectually on conflict and battle. His record would surely indicate this.

It is interesting to note that the aged Lloyd George always fully expected to be brought into the Cabinet in some capacity or form, but of course he was too aged, too untrustworthy, and too mercurial to allow into the inner circle. One suspects that LG would have tried to cabal against WSC, as he did against Asquith in the Great War - and at any rate he would not have been given the opportunity, even if he had been young enough, which he was not.

The only possible Tory with requisite fight in him might have been Amery, but he did not hold enough gravitas among the House to even been a consideration. Halifax would have been all wrong. The rest, of them, including Labour, were all too scarred by the Great War to be as effective as WSC. Churchill for all his faults, retained the capacity to understand, in a quite Victorian way, that War was part of man's existence, and as such - was able to compartmentalise, and objectify his sentimental and emotional nature from the business-at-hand.

 
It's true that Churchill had a difficult year in '42 - there was a lot of murmuring about a possible replacement. Cripps was highly popular at this point with the public, and his name kept being mentioned, but it's difficult to see how he could have possibly been acceptable to either Labour or the Tories.

If Churchill had been forced to resign around this point, or at least had been sidelined - itself, I believe, something of a long-shot - then the actual pool of realistic successors (assuming that there is still a determination to continue the war, which I think, baring some massive disaster, we have to take as a given) is very small. Likewise, it's hard too see any Labour figure stepping in to fill the gap - remember that the Tories were still the majority party in parliament by this point, so they still had the best claim to the PM being chosen from amongst their ranks.

Hoare and Halifax were both much too far out of the loop in Madrid and Washington by this point, and in any case both were far too discredited by their association with appeasement. Lloyd George was of failing health and probably basically too old, (he was nearly eighty by this point) and was, in any case, far too partial to the idea of a negotiated peace. Amery was probably seen as past it and lacking the gravitas, and was in any case mildly distrusted by the Conservative backbenchers. Butler was much too junior at this point. (He'd only entered Cabinet - not the War Cabinet, just the regular Cabinet - the previous year) Simon was widely disliked and had been sidelined; Sinclair didn't have the experience and was in any case a Liberal. (Not a 'National' one, either.)

The strong likelihood is that Eden would have got it by default. This was historically the political reason why Churchill easily stayed on - none of the other possible contenders matched up, and Eden (really the only concievable alternative) was unwilling to press things.
 
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Oh, and you seem to be a bit confused as to what you're trying to accomplish here. Assuming the government wants to continue the war, why does the coalition break up all of a sudden?
 
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