alternatehistory.com

A Death In Flanders



March 12, 1916

During a minor skirmish in the Ypres salient in Flanders, Lieutenant Colonel Winston Churchill of the Sixth Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers was killed in action. Son of Lord Randolph Churchill, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, and of Jenny Jerome an American socialite of high birth. Sir Winston was well known as a soldier, author, and politician. While his career had many notable achievements he was, unfortunately, best known as the driving force behind the Gallipoli campaign while in his role as First Lord of the Admiralty.

When Asquith became Prime Minister Churchill was removed from his office as well as from the government in general, though he did remain an MP. He requested field service on the Western Front and this request was granted with a commission of major and eventual promotion to Lieutenant Colonel.

The general public in the United Kingdom noted but did not particularly mourn the passing of Churchill. To the vast majority he was, and always would be, the ‘butcher of Gallipoli.’ Many felt his death to be poetic justice for the thousands lost in that failed campaign. At best they acknowledged his courage and his devotion to the empire; but few imagined that they had lost a great leader.

Even political allies such as David Lloyd George remarked. “He had a young man’s passion and certainty and did everything at a full run. He unfortunately also had a young man’s habit of thinking himself to always be in the right.”

With the many battles and events of the Great War the death of Churchill quickly faded into the background and became no more than a footnote to history.

Churchill was survived by his wife Clementine and three children Diana, Randolph, and Sarah.

XXX

August 26, 1939

Early in the predawn hours the German Wehrmacht invaded Poland. A force of nearly one and a half million men which included nine panzer divisions with about two thousand eight hundred tanks of various models. With the first light the Luftwaffe was bombing and strafing air fields, military units, bridges, and various cities. Within forty eight hours the antiquated Polish air force would be virtually destroyed while the disorganized and ill prepared army was reeling.

Poland was doomed.

The German dictator, Adolf Hitler, had never doubted that his forces could easily liquidate the Poles. His concern was not Poland, but rather the Western Allies, particularly Britain.

He still did not understand just why chamberlain had decided to suddenly guarantee the Poles in case they were attacked. It had made the Poled completely unreasonable about his modest demands for the restoration of Danzig to the Reich along with free access through the Polish Corridor. With typical polish arrogance they had refused to negotiate seriously with him. Obviously such an insult could not be tolerated! To treat the Reich in such a manner was impossible!

While he respected the military power of France and the British Empire. He had dealt with their leaders at Munich. They were little worms. They talked and talked and relied on treaties and empty words, never understanding that is was a leader’s will that counted above all else! Once he had come to power he had quickly taken advantage of that weakness. Time and again he had mastered the situation and rendered their greater military strength irrelevant. He had declared conscription, admitted to having a military air force, reoccupied the Rhineland, carried out the Anschluss with Austria, gained the Sudetenland, and liquidated the remainder of Czechoslovakia. Through all of that, as he tore apart the hated Treaty of Versailles and openly defied the western powers their leaders had looked on, either too cowardly or too stupid to act.

All that had made Chamberlain’s sudden guarantee to Beck and his cronies all the harder to understand. Why had Neville Chamberlain done such a thing? He was no Grey, no Lloyd George; he was not the sort to start a new World War. Especially not after the Non-Aggression Pact with Stalin had been signed.

The fact it had been necessary to come to terms with the Bolsheviks still rankled. It was the British who should have been his allies against the damn communists. Why couldn’t the English understand that? He would never threaten the supremacy of the British Empire as Kaiser Wilhelm had. Hitler had no interest in colonies or in an overseas empire. The Reich’s destiny lay exclusively in conquering lebensraum in the east. He wanted to destroy communism along with the hideous Jewish elements that controlled it. He wanted to create a greater Germany that would include all the Germans in Europe in a single state. He wanted the east; Britain could have the rest of the world. Why were the British so stubborn?

In the end it didn’t matter.

Their attempt at encirclement had failed. Chamberlain really had been a fool if he’d believed Stalin (of all people) would come to his rescue! No matter how distasteful, the agreement with Stalin meant Poland was finished. Which also meant that the British and the French would once again do nothing more than talk. Ribbentrop and his entire inner circle agreed with him.

Neville Chamberlain was not the man to lead Britain to war.
Top