[KLUG Advocacy] Re: [KLUG Members] (OT) Churchill

[Robert G. Brown]

On Sun, 05 Oct 2003 03:07:13 -0400, Peter Buxton <somercet@core.com> wrote:

>On Sat, Oct 04, 2003 at 01:46:20AM -0400, Robert G. Brown was only escaped
>   alone to tell thee:
>
>> Um, WCS was himself drunk at public events, and he went in his
>> fathers' footsteps in this regard. Randolph Churchill had serious
>> problems with alchohol...
>
>I was not aware that Lord Randolph was a drunk.....
Most of the other stuff you've said being true, this is also true.

>> There's the famous story of Churchill, drunk during which he was
>> capable of very nasty (and ofttimes brutally honest) comments...

>> Bessie Braddock, a socialite, in the 30's: Winston, you are drunk!
>> Churchill: And you are ugly, but I shall be sober in the morning.
>
>According to best reports, the actual victim of the remark was
>temperance advocate Nancy Astor, fellow MP....

I'd like to see a source for this. Churchill and Lady Astor had 
several OTHER encounters, and were quoted on several occasions 
saying things about the other.

>Or perhaps it was Braddock, and later tradition ascribed it to Astor, as
>she and Winston crossed swords many times in public:
>
>Astor: Winston, if I were your wife, I'd poison your soup.
>  WSC: Nancy, if I were your husband, I'd drink it.

THIS is an accurate and well-documented encounter.

Here's possibly the BEST quote of Churchill about the Lady Astor:

  "She combines a kindly heart with a sharp and wagging tongue, denouncing
   the vice of gambling in unmeasured terms and is closely associated with
   and almost unrivaled racing stable. She accepts Communist hospitality and
   flattery and remains the Conservative member for Plymouth. She does all
   the opposite things so well and so naturally that the public, tired of
   criticizing, can only gape."

>> All true, but it wouldn't stop the Churchill, if revived today, from
>> dying all over again after reading of current escapades...
>He might regret the escapades of today, but really, they're nothing
>compared to the bad old days.
Probably, but it's Churchill's sensibilities and values we were discussing.

>Somewhat off-topic:
>
>One repeating meme I enjoy seeing is the idea of the British government
>offing people to protect the royal bloodline and religion...
Probably untrue, in general, at least in recent centuries.

>> Perhaps the main difference between someone like Hitler (and Stalin,
>> and similar folks), is that they were defeated.
>Stalin was defeated?
Not in his lifetime, but the system that he (to a great degree) put in place
was defeated, eventually. It collapsed really, under it's own weight, 
contradictions, and absurdities. For the purposes of this discussion, that's
what matters, to a great degree.

The 20th century may well have been a period when various forms of 
totalitarian rule had a good shot (maybe its best shot) as solving
a lot of problems, and to a very great degree, they failed.

>> I'm a lot more comfy with the idea that without Churchill as PM in
>> 1940, the UK could well have fallen to the Germans, and WW-II would
>> have been a much longer and dicier proposition.
>> 
>> And it was a close call; Germany came very close to beating the USSR
>> as it was. I've stood on the spot occupied by the German artillery at
>> their closest approach to Moscow; you can see the Kremlin quite
>> clearly from there. The margin of victory was slimmer at Stalingrad
>> (now Volgagrad).
>
>Much as I adore and admire Churchill I must note that Nazi Germany's
>mistakes were more devastating than British arms:
>
>May-June 1940: France capitulates, Allied troops evacuate Dunkirk.
>Churchill succeeds Chamberlain as PM.
Without Churchill to rally the working population of coastal Britain, the
evacuation from Dunkirk would not have recovered nearly as many as it did.

>1. Germany pauses before Operation Sea Lion to demob 40 divisions. They
>   have until mid-September to invade Britain:
Demobilize? please explain...

>   a. the weather from Oct. to April precludes sea operations, and
>   b. the British Army will be prepared for an invasion by September,
>      of which the Germans are as yet unaware (and as of June '41, most
>      of the Wehrmacht is in Russia).
Well, oriented toward the USSR, anyway. They jumped off way too late to
get there, for several reasons, one of which is commented on more below.
   
>2. The German Navy declares it can only open a narrow beachhead in
>   England. The Wehrmacht demands a broad front so their troops won't be
>   thrown back into the sea. NO ONE before this has seriously considered
>   how to invade Britain. This argument stalls Sea Lion. Hitler had
>   failed to press the military to plan for Sea Lion and then carry it
>   out (though he had plans on whom to arrest once he got there).
This is one inning of a rather lengthy game between different services in
the German military. There never were any reasonable plans for a cross-
channel invasion before the autumn of 1938, and the Navy was not indoctrinated
into the notion of supporting amphibious operations. They had very different
ideas regarding the purpose of the Navy, and they had trained, built, and
organized for different kinds of operations.

One of their most important missions, in their own minds at least, was 
to resist and harass the superior British Navy (credit to Winston Churchill), 
and disrupt the supply lines (courtesy of the nascent alliance with the 
United States, cultivated by none other than Winston Churchill, and FDR) 
that Britain would require in time of war.

The Army also had problems getting it's collective mind around this notion;
never having pursued such a campaign in its history.

At the same time, Hermann Goering, head of (among other things) the Luftwaffe,
was eager to take on the British from the air, and prove the superiority of
this kind of warfare while knocking off the only opponent left in Western
Europe. It would be a personal triumph, and a triumph of a new kind of
warfare, in the hands of a new kind of man... the Nazi superman-flyer/fighter.

Much of the rest of the German military (I'm referring to the highly ranked
officers in the professional military) harbored some degree of distaste for
many of the highly place Nazi leaders, and were inclined to let Goering give
it a shot (so to speak), even though many had their own doubts. As far as a
lot of them were concerned, a better volunteer would have been hard to find.

>3. Hitler is already thinking of Russia for spring 1941, as he always
>   has: he thinks conquering Russia will free troops for Britain, if the
>   government doesn't fall first anyway.
Planning for this had really been going on since 1938, but the German 
military counseled knocking Britain out of the war before turning east.
Hitler and others had pretty much agreed to this in 1937. As a result,
Many of them felt betrayed as the leadership sort of waffled its way out
of that agreement, allowed Goering to take on the RAF, and order many
divisions, bloodied only against the French but with boots still free of
Channel waters, east to the Polish frontier.




>4. An anti-Nazi coup in Yugoslavia so blinds Hitler with hatred he
>   pauses to occupy that nation. This single act causes a four week
>   delay in the launch of Operation Barbarossa.
Actually, it was more like 6 weeks, and it was largely instigated by an
American (Bill Donovan) and partisans, organized by Tito, but largely 
inspired by the example of (you may have guessed it) Winston Churchill.

>   Other mistakes are made during Barbarossa, and it may never have worked
>   anyway but this first blunder dooms the entire operation from the start. 
Again, we can't really-second guess what might have happened due to every
error in planning or execution, but one thing is pretty clear: had the 
Wehrmacht been given the extra 6 weeks and 60,000 (fairly good) troops that
the foray in Yugoslavia denied them, they might have taken Moscow (or at
least achieved a much better lock-hold on the land in front of it) before 
the Winter had REALLY set in.

>5. After America declares war on Japan, the American mood suddenly might
>   favor a war with Axis Germany. Franklin Roosevelt, knowing his mark,
>   declines to ask Congress to declare war on Germany. Sure enough,
>   Hitler, under NO OBLIGATION (since Japan attacked first), declares
>   war on America. Congress then declares war on Nazi Germany.
Yes, everyone agrees this was an error. 

>It's hard not to see Hitler as the more decisive factor at this time.
In terms of strictly on-field military activity, you have made a good
case; on the whole my comments do not dispute what you've written.

However, there are other dimensions to war.. political, cultural, and
psychological aspects of conflict that may, over the long run, have as
much or more impact on the outcome than force of arms alone.

>> Churchill provided something England and the USA needed badly at the
>> time, and that was someone who would oppose Hitler unconditionally,
>> yet shared common values. Without him, I believe the west would have
>> been lost.
>
>Churchill's rallying of Brits to King and Country is important, and
>undoubtedly he was the most qualified war PM excepting only the Duke of
>Wellington. Also, he carefully cultivated his relationship with FDR.
Churchill and FDR were men made for each other in many ways. They understood
almost instinctively what was needed, and they also knew that each had to
deal with formidable domestic opposition and barriers.

>However, even Chamberlain was in a fighting mood post-September 1939,....
And Ralph Nader was also, on September 12th, 2001.

My point is, of course, that crisis sometimes forces people to say, think
and do things that would not be so otherwise. Chamberlain, while not a wuss,
was content to meddle along and manage things. Churchill had been convinced
for years that great ill would come to Europe and beyond at Hitlers' hand,
all he needed was power to enable ideas and actions already in place for
some time. Just as Hitler had spent the 30's making Germany the instrument
of his dreams, Churchill had spent that same period making himself in to the 
one leader who had the persistence and courage to oppose him.  

>> It's fun (in some ways), but it's quite different than what we were
>> after earlier, which was examining the people that actually were here,
>> and did what they did, and maybe judging their relative importance.
>How can you tell how important they were unless you can tell how
>important they weren't, so to speak?

We use different techniques to reach the same endpoint. For me, it is 
enough of an illustration to remove the man and the consequences of his life 
from the scene, and see what happens without him. The basic question of a
someones contribution can be valued that way. This approach does not result
in realistic assessments of how history would have unfolded, but that was
not part of the original question.

Now, taking it a step further is interesting in some ways, but for what
was posed initially, its not needed. I have other difficulties with assessing
how things would have gone, but I'll stop here...

>Actually, I think Einstein the most important, but not by the criteria
>Time would use.
I don't really know what criteria they used, and it has changed over the
years.

>Einstein offered the first great wholesale replacement
>of thought in science. Copernicus' heliocentrism was science replacing
>astrology. Newton's Principia can be said to have created modern
>science, but did so in a way, and in a field, that was untrammeled.
Yes, Principia and related works brought an entire new mode of thinking
the the study of natural science. Almost anything that comes after is 
refinement.

Einstein offered a new vision, but not as radical as Newton and others in
the 14th, 15 and 16 century. You've said this well; Newton would have 
understood Einstein, Cardinal Richelieu would have burned both of them.

>Riemann (I think he was first) created the first new geometry, but that
>was a feat of mathematics, not physical science. 
That's true, but Riemann was interested in the real world, and his mentor,
Gauss, made a lot of mathematical contributions there. Gauss challenged
his student to find applications for his differential geometry, but he never
did so. Later, Einstein, De Sitter, Zeeman and others picked up the tools
that Riemann had forged and used them to show how compelling their vision
of nature really was.

>Einstein's relativity theories offered new, competing models that replaced
>previous (working, but flawed or limited) models. That replacement, to me,
>is what is best in science.
Yes, quite so.

Einstein lived in Churchill's world, however, and was a character that played
several important roles. We'd certainly be poorer in the absence of either,
but I remain convinced that without Churchill, many of us would be speaking
German, or maybe nothing at all.
							Regards,
							---> RGB <---