Attempting to gain perspective on Churchill

[kenneth505]

Certain divisive issues seem to remain. Last month I participated in a thread that helped to put Haig into a useful, for me, perspective. Now I would like to attempt the same regarding the perception of Winston S. Churchill. To begin this I'm going to paraphrase and then quote forum member George Armstrong Custer, GAC, extensively from a different thread: page 7 of Slow Horses and Fast Women from this, The Western Front section, of this forum. Forgive me if I'm not following established quoting protocol. I can't seem to import a quote to this new topic with the distinctive formatting that we can do within a thread.

• Churchill was a discredited 'Easterner.'
• Churchill only ceased to be a little man on the world stage due to his admittedly brilliant performance in 1940 -1. In the aftermath of the Great War he was widely regarded by many as either a self-serving political turncoat or a strategic incompetent.
• Churchill's The World Crisis was the figleaf held up to give his own disastrous strategic visions in the late war a specious credibility.

If Churchill hadn't got his strategic ideas so wildly wrong in the Great War, and sought to disguise that at the expense of the victorious 'Westerners' in his postwar writings, he and Haig would have had few differences. As it was, the central object of Churchill’s

The World Crisis

was self justification in respect of the discredited ‘Easterner’ position which he’d held. The books of

The World Crisis

were to plant the idea that, despite the war having been won by defeating the main German army in the main theatre of war, the Western Front, it could have been won more cheaply if only Churchill’s schemes had been given greater backing. I’m not a great fan of Robin Prior, but he was undoubtedly correct when he wrote of Churchill’s volume three that

“It is {..] hard to avoid the conclusion that when Churchill wrote this volume the failure of Gallipoli was still very much on his mind. Thus throughout the first half of the volume Churchill is anxious to demonstrate the immense cost of the war on the Western Front and to point to easier alternatives in the east. For 1916 he actually recommends a second invasion of Gallipoli. In 1917 his major plan consists of a landing in Palestine. ‘The Blood Test’ and Somme chapters are designed to show what the failure at Gallipoli meant in terms of manpower. The section on tanks demonstrates to his own satisfaction the incorrigibility of the military, whom it is claimed were incapable of adapting to this new and cheaper way of waging war.”

To borrow a phrase from Paul Newman’s Butch Cassidy, the explicit motif of Churchill’s history of the Great War is that “I’ve got vision and the rest of the world’s wearing bifocals.” This placing of himself at the centre of his narrative caused A J Balfour to remark that

The World Crisis

was "Winston's brilliant autobiography, disguised as a history of the universe."

Clearly Churchill's 'Great Man' status requires his WWII participation. But I don't believe he gets the chance in 1940 if he doesn't have some perception of 'Pretty Good Man' about him as a result of his efforts in the first war. If WSC's strategic vision really was disastrous would he have been given the chance to lead in 1940? Or was he and his efforts, like so much else of the Great War somewhere in the middle? GAC asserts that WSC is attempting to justify poor vision from late war strategy. Should I assume that we accept Antwerp and Gallipoli as useful, good strategic thinking because they were early war visions?

I get the sense that when people slag on WSC it's those two items that are commonly trotted out for display. In The World Crises WSC opines that the Antwerp effort may have added five to seven days to the defense of that city keeping valuable troops from the attack at Ypres. This may not have been much but could have been enough. True the men and supplies sent were not of the first caliber but they 'went to war with the army they had.' The Belgium Army entry into Antwerp drew two (corps?) away from German first and second armies in Aug/Sept. Again this was 'not much' of the German potential but possibly enough. This lead the defense to be consistently called heroic in part because it began the release of air from the German effort in the west.

It seems to me that part of the heartbreak of the Gallipoli concept is how dramatic its effect would have been if it had the success it could have.

Relying on GAC again, this time from yet another thread, Prelude to "The Black Day"

Jack Sheldon has made the telling point about Third Ypres that "There had always been an assumption on the German side that the Allies would continue to press their attacks there until worsening winter weather brought operations to a halt." Haig couldn't shut down Third Ypres early enough from the German point of view - but they knew why he would want to press on and pragmatically expected him to do so as long as possible. Other key strategic imperatives also impinged upon Haig's decision making. But combine the fact that the Germans saw pressing Third Ypres as the logical thing to do from the British point of view with the added potential which the 1917 battle (and the Somme the previous yesr) robbed from the German Spring 1918 offensive and seeing Haig's point of view becomes inevitable.

So if all the tremendous effort, blood and energy of Haig's large endeavors become more clear don't WSC's ideas gain some credibility as well? If the idea was to add and keep pressure on German strategy (see final pages of The World Crises Vol. I) and not allow them to marshal coherent efforts of their own then eastern or western perspectives begin to recede. So 'discredited easterner' how? Has the debate been finished and I've missed it? It seems to me that the agony of 1915 shows that the Allies weren't capable of taking advantage of success, Nueve Chapelle, and weren't capable of forcing success, Loos. (An admitted oversimplification and a topic for another thread.) So other strategies deserved examination. Is 'Easterner' discredited simply because the final outcome was decided in the West?

Thanks to any who bother to read this lengthy missive. I am admittedly currently pro Churchill due to having just finished The Last LIon 1874 - 1932 and am currently about half way thru The World Crises. I'm sure it'll fade but one does get influenced but the current input. Still it seems to me that my vote on the topic matters not. What I'm trying to get to is perspective.

[Old Tom]

You have posed a large question. Your mention of the 'Last Lion' caught my eye, I read it a while ago. May I air my thoughts briefly. There is no doubt that WSC was an ambitious politician. In 1914, I think, he was possibly the only civilian member of the government with military experience. The government were perhaps more concerned with events in Ireland than in Europe. He had done excellent work in the Admiralty. His views and actions on Antwerp while somewhat 'ad hoc' have often seemed to me to have been soundly based, and might well have been more effective if, before the war, there had been better bi-service co-ordination. A prolonged defence of Antwerp might have had significant effects on the western front, although, as far as I know, the Belgians, French and British lacked the sort of artillery needed for such a campaign. His later time in the Ministry of Munitions is also much to his credit. As to his views on whether or not to further the war by operations in the east. These again had potential but seem to have been beyond the military capability at the time.

Old Tom

[bob lembke]

My oh my, what a luscious topic!

I have the conceit to feel that both my father and grand-father did their bit to screw up Churchill in the WW I period, in particular my grand-father, who was the "Id" in the Generalkommando of von Beseler's III. Reservekorps, the German unit attacking Antwerp. (There is a lot of rubbish flying about that engagement.) My g-f in particular was involved with the German and Austrian "super-heavy" guns in Belgium, the 30.5 cm mortars, and the 42 cm howitzers, and these guns "un-did" Churchill in a couple of ways.

My father fought at Gallipoli as a volunteer in the Turkish Army. So he too contributed a bit to mucking up Churchill.

I have to run out, but plan to participate in this discussion as it develops. I have been actively working on, among other things, Antwerp and Gallipoli, from the German/Austrian/Turkish side of the coin, for 11 years, and am currently writing a book in part on Antwerp.

Bob Lembke

[17107BM]

Hello Ken Santa Fe.

Before others suggest reading may i offer CHURCHILL by Roy Jenkins. This book for me was one of the best biography reading on the man. I would read this, as it may help you on making further comments on the man...

isbn 0-330-48805-8

[kenneth505]

It occurred to me to elaborate a bit on the Discredited Easterner question. Are there any other types of easterners then discredited ones? If not this suggests that there is some evidence or reason why the eastern positions were wrong.

[truthergw]

From a fairly wide reading of politically oriented books covering the era from the death of Churchill's father to the immediate post-war, it is surprising how many political commentators did not take Churchill seriously. He seems to have struck his contemporaries as being unstable with occasional flashes of brilliance. I am unsure as to how to respond to your second post. I'll assume that it is an invitation to comment on the Easterner v Westerner question. Certainly the search for an alternate strategy to that of attrition on the Western front was legitimate. No one could be unmoved by the appalling losses, especially on the Somme and at 3rd Ypres. When the war was finally won and the Westerners, i.e. Haig and his supporters had demonstrated that defeating the main enemy's main forces had indeed been the winning strategy , to persist in the notion that a better strategy would have been to defeat Turkey in Gallipoli or Austria in the Balkans surely deserves to be described as a discredited notion.

[bob lembke]

I get the sense that when people slag on WSC it's those two items that are commonly trotted out for display. In The World Crises WSC opines that the Antwerp effort may have added five to seven days to the defense of that city keeping valuable troops from the attack at Ypres. This may not have been much but could have been enough. True the men and supplies sent were not of the first caliber but they 'went to war with the army they had.' The Belgium Army entry into Antwerp drew two (corps?) away from German first and second armies in Aug/Sept. Again this was 'not much' of the German potential but possibly enough. This lead the defense to be consistently called heroic in part because it began the release of air from the German effort in the west.

I think that, in regard to Antwerp, both the numbers and the dates cited are wrong. The entire Belgian Army, less one division, pulled back to Antwerp; a total of six divisions. But Belgian divisions, like American divisions, were huge, easily twice the size of German divisions at full strength. All of these should be considered "first class" divisions, active, line units. Added to that was the British Naval Division, one brigade (the Marines) first-rate, the other two probably third-rate. Then add 30,000 Belgian fortress troops, arguably third-rate, but more reasonably even less effective, except for defensive fortress duty.

The III. Reservekorps' core was its own 5. Reserve= and 6. Reserve=Division, very good second-rate troops (just mobilized from civilian life a few weeks before), to which had been added four divisions of third-rate troops, two divisions of which had just been formed days before out of sailors and soldiers found in replacement depots. So most of the Allied troops at Antwerp were nominally first rate troops, while the attacking troops were one-third second rate troops, and two-thirds third-rate troops.

However, the Allied troops defending at Antwerp outnumbered the attacking troops two and a half to one! One reads in some sources about the Germans attacking Antwerp "in overwhelming force". Additionally, although German Reserve divisions had the same basic structure as a line division, they only had half of the artillery, and had other deficiencies, perhaps in machine guns, for example. I have not carefully studied the other four ad hoc divisions, but their situation in artillery and other supporting arms must have been at least as deficient.

So much for the opposing forces. It states above the opinion that the "Antwerp effort" (I assume that this means the British effort supporting the Belgians there) extended the defense of Antwerp five to seven days. However, I think that the Germans only opened the attack, with shelling, on September 29th, and I think began an infantry attack on the 1st or 2nd of October. The British only began arriving a couple of days later, and were in full retreat only about 4-5 days after their arrival, one brigade having to flee into Holland and internment. So it is hard to se how their arrival extended the defense by 5-7 days, unless the assumption is that the roughly 150,000 Belgian troops (that might be a bit high, but not by much) would have evaporated in a day or two without the additional 10,000 British troops.

What quickly cooked the Allied goose at Antwerp was the arrival of about 13 German and Austrian "super-heavies" (I am running on memory, I have exact numbers, calibers and exact models, battery designations, battery commanders, and an accounting of shells fired to the last shell), which forced fortresses designed to hold out for three months without support to actually fall in 2-3 days, and to quickly break up any formation of mobile troops who attempted to rally and make a stand.

So while the British reenforcement helped hold the Antwerp position for a few days more, if that, perhaps preventing 60,000 German troops from moving west (of which 40,000 were probably not fit for fighting the elite enemy in western Belgium), the defense delayed 150,000 or more Allied troops at Belgium from also moving west, and taking part in the fray developing there. (The 30,000 Belgian fortress troops were not fit for taking part in the open fighting at Ypers, admittedly.)

So the calculus of the defense of Antwerp presented above really does not hold water, in my opinion.

Bob

[JimSmithson]

When the war was finally won and the Westerners, i.e. Haig and his supporters had demonstrated that defeating the main enemy's main forces had indeed been the winning strategy , to persist in the notion that a better strategy would have been to defeat Turkey in Gallipoli or Austria in the Balkans surely deserves to be described as a discredited notion.

Tom

Dangerous to discredit one strategy, improperly carried out, when another eventually leads to victory. One argument could be that if the Balkans had been properly and strategically approached in the first place (i.e. in 1914/15) then the war might have been brought to a more rapid conclusion. I am not saying I adhere to that argument, just that it has to be made alongside the 'our way won in the end' one.

Jim

[George Armstrong Custer]

One argument could be that if the Balkans had been properly and strategically approached in the first place (i.e. in 1914/15) then the war might have been brought to a more rapid conclusion.

Whilst I appreciate that you're not advocating it yourself, Jim, even if we were to give credence to that incredibly tenuous 'what if', its fatal flaw is that it rests on the assumption that the German army on the Western Front would sit idly holding the line whilst most of the Allied resources were shipped east. Not much point in taking Constantinople if in the meantime the Germans have seized Paris and the Channel coast. Which is why, of course, the Westerners were correct to argue that the war could only be won by defeating the main Germany army in the field, which was squatting on French and Belgian territory.

As I see this thread was kicked off with references to some of my own posts about Churchill, it might be opportune to add one more - this gives a darkly comic insight into Churchill busily engaged upon the kind of self-serving activity which would later inform the writing of his The World Crisis: Churchill Stitch Up

PS - Anyone interested in seeing the images which have now disappeared from that linked to thread can find them, together with an extended version of the text, here: Photo Essay (click each thumbnail in turn to bring up the text).

George

[kenneth505]

I think that, in regard to Antwerp, both the numbers and the dates cited are wrong.

I thought Kluck or Bulow had to detach some portion of their contingents during the battle of the frontiers to protect against the Belgium Army harassing their flank. That this is continually cited as another example of Moltke's failure to heed Schlieffen's directive to 'Keep the right flank STRONG.' Maybe wrong about this, I too am going on memory here.

Citing The World Crises Vol. 1 page 305 "Minister Sir Francis Villiers, sent from Antwerp at 8:20 PM and received in London at 10PM on October 2 - The Government have decided to leave to-morrow for Ostend..."

At this point WSC rallies what defense he can muster because in his words "to the small gropu of Ministers who met that midnight in Lord Kitchener's house, the duty of making sure that Antwerp was not cast away without good cause while the means of saving it might well be at hand was clear." (pg 306) Over the next several days a tremendous mobilization is attempted and seems to number about 30,000 British Troops, see page 313 but ulitmately it is all for naught and (paraphrasing) 'Antwerp is evacuated on the night of the 8th... German patrols .. entered Antwerp towards the evening on the 9th ... and on the 10th the stouthearted Governor,... capitulated.

WSC concluds this chapter with the following line: "The resistance of the city had been prolonged by five days."

Bob is quite right, the German 'heavies' proved to difficult to deal with. They would probably have been to much to handle even if the two divisions of French Territorials promised, see page 314, had arrived.

---

GAC, thanks for referencing the 2010 thread, I'll read it over. Your links to the Churchill / Hamilton images much appreciated.

If we're attempting to apportion blame doesnt the first portion rest with Hamilton but KofK deserves some? Didn't he drag his heels on supplying men for the effort? While the effort did end in failure and since it was a favorite of WSC he is certainly to be tarred with it's stink what part of the actual disaster is his? Finally, wasn't it time for KofK to go in June 1916 albeit perhaps no in as you say such a 'blackly humourous' way. Of course his exit did leave his reputation unsullied in some ways, similar to James Dean but without perhaps a beautiful corpse.

[truthergw]

Tom

Dangerous to discredit one strategy, improperly carried out, when another eventually leads to victory. One argument could be that if the Balkans had been properly and strategically approached in the first place (i.e. in 1914/15) then the war might have been brought to a more rapid conclusion. I am not saying I adhere to that argument, just that it has to be made alongside the 'our way won in the end' one.

Jim

One day, we must try conclusions on the relative merits of our arguments, Jim. I am of the opinion that sideshows weakened the war effort.

[truthergw]

I thought Kluck or Bulow had to detach some portion of their contingents during the battle of the frontiers to protect against the Belgium Army harassing their flank. That this is continually cited as another example of Moltke's failure to heed Schlieffen's directive to 'Keep the right flank STRONG.' Maybe wrong about this, I too am going on memory here.

Citing The World Crises Vol. 1 page 305 "Minister Sir Francis Villiers, sent from Antwerp at 8:20 PM and received in London at 10PM on October 2 - The Government have decided to leave to-morrow for Ostend..."

At this point WSC rallies what defense he can muster because in his words "to the small gropu of Ministers who met that midnight in Lord Kitchener's house, the duty of making sure that Antwerp was not cast away without good cause while the means of saving it might well be at hand was clear." (pg 306) Over the next several days a tremendous mobilization is attempted and seems to number about 30,000 British Troops, see page 313 but ulitmately it is all for naught and (paraphrasing) 'Antwerp is evacuated on the night of the 8th... German patrols .. entered Antwerp towards the evening on the 9th ... and on the 10th the stouthearted Governor,... capitulated.

WSC concluds this chapter with the following line: "The resistance of the city had been prolonged by five days."

Bob is quite right, the German 'heavies' proved to difficult to deal with. They would probably have been to much to handle even if the two divisions of French Territorials promised, see page 314, had arrived.

---

GAC, thanks for referencing the 2010 thread, I'll read it over. Your links to the Churchill / Hamilton images much appreciated.

If we're attempting to apportion blame doesnt the first portion rest with Hamilton but KofK deserves some? Didn't he drag his heels on supplying men for the effort? While the effort did end in failure and since it was a favorite of WSC he is certainly to be tarred with it's stink what part of the actual disaster is his? Finally, wasn't it time for KofK to go in June 1916 albeit perhaps no in as you say such a 'blackly humourous' way. Of course his exit did leave his reputation unsullied in some ways, similar to James Dean but without perhaps a beautiful corpse.

Apportioning blame for Gallipoli started while the men were still fighting. There was an investigation by a commission and despite immense efforts by Hankey, the commission decided that much of the blame had to be laid at Churchill's door. The arguments have gone on since. As a guide to Churchill's genius or lack of it, we can perhaps look at Antwerp and Gallipoli and their effects on the war. As far as Lord Kitchener goes, he was put under immense pressure to take on a job which he did not want but was persuaded that it was his duty to undertake. Attacked by politicians from early on, he did his best. It was Asquith's duty to remove him from the position if he was not capable of filling it. The similarity between Lord Kitchener and James Dean is one which I confess, I do not see.

[kenneth505]

The similarity between Lord Kitchener and James Dean is one which I confess, I do not see.

Kitchener exits before the mud really starts to sling. James Dean may have personified an extension of what I've heard called the Cult of the Beautiful Death, live fast, die young...

My pairing was meant to be a bit fanciful.

[salesie]

I can see a similarity between Lord Kitchener and James Dean i.e. their untimely deaths meant their reputations remained intact, and, thus, the metaphor that each became a "beautiful corpse" is valid. The great dissimilarity, of course, is that Kitchener, prior to WW1, had a long and glorious career but Dean's was tragically short and glittering - Kitchener's long established reputation at the time of his death ensured that much of his glory would remain, whereas Dean's standing when he died could not be sullied by any potential future career decline.

As for putting Churchill into perspective - George and I agree about plenty of things, but I find his portrayal of Churchill as being some darkly comic character, because he was "plotting" Kitchener's downfall at the precise moment of his death, to be highly misleading because it lacks a hell of a lot of context. And not only that, by George's own admission, Churchill was not aware of Kitchener's death when the "plotters' dinner" was held - are we to accept that no one should seek re-dress of their grievances just because the target of said re-dress may actually die? I think even George would agree that such a premise would be a recipe for stagnation of thought and action.

George has given us a link to his version of what he sees as dark comic opera - here's my counter argument to it in the same thread

Cheers-salesie.

[bob lembke]

I thought Kluck or Bulow had to detach some portion of their contingents during the battle of the frontiers to protect against the Belgium Army harassing their flank. That this is continually cited as another example of Moltke's failure to heed Schlieffen's directive to 'Keep the right flank STRONG.' Maybe wrong about this, I too am going on memory here.

Still flying on memory, hopefully not on empty: For a brief while there seemed to have been another German army corps near Brussels/Antwerp, but by the time of the actual attack on Antwerp they seem to have wandered off somewhere, and I don't think that they engaged in any fighting. For most of September the 3. RK was in a blocking position north of Brussels facing off against the bulk of the Belgian Army, as the German troops headed west streamed through Brussels behind them. Its reenforcements (Marine Division, commanded by Admiral Schroder, and 4. Ersatz Division, both I believe formed days before from spare troops found in naval and army replacement depots, plus three or four Landwehr brigades, assembled from older reservists a few weeks before) were filtering in during september, and I believe that the first super-heavies began firing on 2-3 forts at the south end of the outer ring of forts on September 29th (my grandfather visited those batteries on those days, I have his letters reporting that), and I think that the first infantry assault was at 5 PM on either October 1st or 2nd. So I don't think that any troops from the army headed west was diverted. West of Antwerp the sole (and very large) Belgian Cavalry Division (a second was formed later in the war, from, I think, the cavalry regiments belonging to each Belgian infantry division) was streched out east to west protecting the lines of communication stretching west from Antwerp, possibly units were detached to face off against this force, but they were not at Antwerp itself.

Moltke uttering "keep the right flank strong" on his deathbed is a nice story, but only that. I have his last words; he was feverish, and they are cryptic. Anyway, the 3. RK was on the extreme right flank, north of the troops passing west.

Citing The World Crises Vol. 1 page 305 "Minister Sir Francis Villiers, sent from Antwerp at 8:20 PM and received in London at 10PM on October 2 - The Government have decided to leave to-morrow for Ostend..."

Seems premature, as the Germans were only starting their attack well to the south, but perhaps they understood that Antwerp could not been held. The big guns had already quickly reduced a number of Belgian forts, usually in 2-3 days, forts that were intended to hold for three months, so perhaps the handwriting was on the wall. They finally fled without telling the inhabitants of Antwerp, causing considerable panic and disorder when it was discovered.

At this point WSC rallies what defense he can muster because in his words "to the small gropu of Ministers who met that midnight in Lord Kitchener's house, the duty of making sure that Antwerp was not cast away without good cause while the means of saving it might well be at hand was clear." (pg 306) Over the next several days a tremendous mobilization is attempted and seems to number about 30,000 British Troops, The three brigades of the Naval Division numbered about 2000 men each, and few other troops were sent to Antwerp. Perhaps 30,000 troops in all of Belgium? Not at Antwerp. see page 313 but ulitmately it is all for naught and (paraphrasing) 'Antwerp is evacuated on the night of the 8th... German patrols .. entered Antwerp towards the evening on the 9th ... and on the 10th the stouthearted Governor,... capitulated.

The Governor was nowhere to be found (I think he was later captured at one of the 44 Belgian forts) and the German staff had a long argument with the Mayor before they convinced him that since the Governor had fled the Mayor had the authority and responsibility to surrender the city.

WSC concluds this chapter with the following line: "The resistance of the city had been prolonged by five days." The British forces only arrived at about the 3rd, first the Marines, then the two brigades of reserve naval infantry. I am not sure that the naval infantry were even put in line, the Marines certainly were, where they relieved exhausted Belgian troops at one point. But they were only at Antwerp barely (or a day less) than five days. At most they may have delayed the fall of Antwerp a day, actually probably not that, realistically. The probably less than 10,000 UK troops were not a big factor; there already was about 140,000 Belgian troops at Antwerp.

Bob is quite right, the German 'heavies' proved to difficult to deal with. They would probably have been to much to handle even if the two divisions of French Territorials promised, see page 314, had arrived.

There already were 150,000 Belgian and British troops at Antwerp, perhaps 110,000 of them active-duty, nominally first rate troops. 60,000 German reservists (2nd and 3rd rate troops, nominally) were able to chase them out of Europe's third largest fortress complex in 5-6 days. Another 20,000 French second or third-rate troops would not have made much of a difference, I submit. In open fighting they would have been the worse troops on the field, except probably for the Belgian fortress troops.

---

GAC, thanks for referencing the 2010 thread, I'll read it over. Your links to the Churchill / Hamilton images much appreciated.

If we're attempting to apportion blame doesnt the first portion rest with Hamilton but KofK deserves some? Didn't he drag his heels on supplying men for the effort? While the effort did end in failure and since it was a favorite of WSC he is certainly to be tarred with it's stink what part of the actual disaster is his? Finally, wasn't it time for KofK to go in June 1916 albeit perhaps no in as you say such a 'blackly humourous' way. Of course his exit did leave his reputation unsullied in some ways, similar to James Dean but without perhaps a beautiful corpse.

Bob

[phil andrade]

The unexpurgated War Diaries of Alanbrooke make the personality foibles of Churchill abundantly clear. Wrong war, of course, but the same traits were surely apparent in 14-18 as well. The ordeal of working with WSC is excruciating for poor Alanbrooke....but throughout the nightmare, he never ceases to be amazed by the larger than life, transcendental qualites of the man.

Those who pour scorn on Churchill's discredited view of strategy in the Great War ought - IMHO - to address the uncannily accurate assessment of the Somme fighitng he gave in his August 1916 Memorandum. Was this actually his own work, or had it been drafted by one of his political cronies with an axe to grind ?

I think that Ken is right to invite us to countenance the prospect that Winston's strategic vision might not have been so flawed.

For all the efforts of Terraine, Sheffield and others - and I will always be grateful to Terraine for rescuing me from the clutches of Alan Clarke & Co. - I still cannot read WSC's chapter THE BLOOD TEST without an unsettling feeling that his arguments had validity.

Phil (PJA)

[Jim_Grundy]

Churchill was summed up for me by Aneurin Bevan, "The medicority of his thinking is concealed only by the majesty of his language". If more is needed, I'd check out Peter Hart's 'Gallipoli' and Gordon Corrigan's 'Blood, Sweat, Tears and Folly'.

However, and it is a big, 'however', as much as I think he was a deeply flawed leader who contributed to many of our military misfortunes (such a polite way of referring to the suffering and deaths of very, very many people) in both world wars, the fact remains that he had every opportunity to do a deal with the Nazis in 1940 and didn't. That is what created the man's reputation - and the need for a national myth.

[cdr]

Just a couple of things on Antwerp.

Joffre is in his memoirs rather scathing on Churchill's plan to bring English troops to Antwerp. He claims that this put the entire Belgian army at risk.

The Belgian cavalry division was smaller than a German cavalry division (4 regiments to 6, 2 companies cyclists to one jäger bataillon, no mg company to one mg company)

The Belgian divisions d'armee (only introduced in 1913) started changing already in 08/1914 (3 DA started with 24 bataillons in 4 brigades, by 15/08 they had reformed with 12 bataillons); All divisions d'arme had abandoned their original organisation by half october 1914.

Equipment for the fortress troops. As there were not enough rifles available they had use French lebel rifles

Hope this is of some use

Carl

[George Armstrong Custer]

As for putting Churchill into perspective - George and I agree about plenty of things, but I find his portrayal of Churchill as being some darkly comic character, because he was "plotting" Kitchener's downfall at the precise moment of his death, to be highly misleading because it lacks a hell of a lot of context. And not only that, by George's own admission, Churchill was not aware of Kitchener's death when the "plotters' dinner" was held - are we to accept that no one should seek re-dress of their grievances just because the target of said re-dress may actually die? I think even George would agree that such a premise would be a recipe for stagnation of thought and action.

George has given us a link to his version of what he sees as dark comic opera - here's my counter argument to it in the same thread http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=99546&view=findpost&p=1438705

Salesie, me old mucker, I'm getting concerned about you. As you say, we do on occasion differ - but even then you don't usually entirely miss the point, and twice in the same post to boot! I can only hope that it's not a sign of you losing your grip, and is instead due to the late hour of your post, or the fact that you need to put more water in whatever's in that glass - or a combination of the two!

First, I don't portray Churchill as 'some darkly comic character'. It is the situation of two plotters having the rug pulled from under them in mid plot that I highlight as not being without a certain dark humour. This was a situation comedy, not one of inherently comic characters. Churchill himself was of course far more than a comic character - which is why he was able to be so dangerous with his ideas on occasion. My intent was to illustrate the lengths Churchill would go to to shift responsibility for failure to another man, K of K, despite there being no question that he himself was inextricably caught up in the commissioning of that failure. Similarly, his co-plotter in shifting blame to K of K, Hamilton, was indisputably responsible for much that went wrong in the execution of the ill conceived side show that was Gallipoli.

Secondly, I do not make a case, either explicit or implicit, for refraining from assembling a case against a guilty party in case that party might turn his toes up and you'd look bad. But as Hamilton's wife's diary entry shows, she at least - unlike her husband and Churchill - felt some distaste in retrospect that K of K's public downfall was being plotted even as he was - albeit unknown to the plotters - in his death throes. Her diary entry also suggests that she appreciated that K of K was not entirely the guilty party which Churchill and her husband sought to scapegoat him as in order to distract from their own responsibilies in the Gallipoli fiasco. The point my post made (particularly in the extended illustrated version on FB) was that this episode gives a very clear insight into the kind of moral bankruptcy when it came to personal damage limitation which later informed Churchill's writing of his The World Crisis. Hamilton was a man of similar stamp, whose postwar writings sought to shift any blame away from himself. In order to validate the failure of the strategies he'd advocated during the war, Churchill's The World Crisis, was a deliberate and serious distortion of the war on the Western Front. As Robin Prior rightly put it, "It is {..] hard to avoid the conclusion that when Churchill wrote this volume the failure of Gallipoli was still very much on his mind. Thus throughout the first half of the volume Churchill is anxious to demonstrate the immense cost of the war on the Western Front and to point to easier alternatives in the east." When you add to Churchill's books the influential War Memoirs of Lloyd George, written with the assistance of that fraud Liddell Hart, then you have the self-serving root of the distortion of the historiography of the war on the Western Front which has persisted amongst many credulous readers to this day. Lloyd George and Churchill's books were books written by politicians after the event with the primary purpose of salving their own mistaken strategic ideas by dishonestly pretending that the war could have been won more cheaply other than on the Western Front if only they'd been more fully supported. I have quoted, in the photo essay linked to earlier, Churchill's hubristic letter to Sir Ian Hamilton from 1898, in which he writes in terms of Napoleoic gradiosity "may we meet again when rifles are loaded and swords sharpened - if possible before an audience which will include 40 centuries." When, 17 years later, Churchill and Hamilton's names were indeed linked to a legendary feat of arms, it was one which ended in humiliating failure. Something had to be done by the politician who championed the launch and continuation of the debacle, and the general who had commanded it. What that something was we have seen not only in their plotting to scapegoat K of K for the entire Gallipoli failure, but in the clear intent of Churchill's own words: "History will be kind to me - for I shall write it!"

The thrust of my posts, Salesie, has been to highlight the evidence for Churchill's moral bankruptcy in the face of failure, by means of the twin pillars of seeking to shift the blame on to others and the rewriting of history in his own favour. Your response on that old K of K thread linked to is more concerned with making a case for K of K having been past his sell by date. That's certainly an arguable point, but one for a thread of its own I'd suggest.

I think that Ken is right to invite us to countenance the prospect that Winston's strategic vision might not have been so flawed.

For all the efforts of Terraine, Sheffield and others - and I will always be grateful to Terraine for rescuing me from the clutches of Alan Clarke & Co. - I still cannot read WSC's chapter THE BLOOD TEST without an unsettling feeling that his arguments had validity.

Well you need have no worries about me wasting any more breath responding to such delusions.

George

[PMHart]

As I read some of the postings above I can only regret that the brilliant strategic vision of the 'Easterners' remained untested during the Great War. I mourn the tragedy that the total dominance of the evil and stupid 'Westerners' meant that we never sent off hundreds of thousands of men to fight and triumph in Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, Palestine and Salonika! The war could clearly have been over in mere weeks if we had only attacked the Turks and Bulgarians and not wasted out time fighting the silly old Germans. The German Army may have been occupying a trivial portion of France, but it is after all a big country! Who cares about the unimportant Channel ports? Surely everyone now knows that never - not even in a month of Sundays - could the Germans knock the French out of war - that could never, ever happen!

Sad Pete

[phil andrade]

Well you need have no worries about me wasting any more breath responding to such delusions.

George

Not even an "Oh" ?

Phil (PJA)

[George Armstrong Custer]

No, it was not worthy of even an 'oh' in response.

George

[PMHart]

oh

Pete

[George Armstrong Custer]

[phil andrade]

At the end of the month, I'll be watching that play Three Days in May, at Trafalgar Studios in London.

This discussion will loom large in my mind.

Redemption of earlier folly ?

Or, as Ken implies, was the intirinsic quality of the man as apparent in the Great War as it was to become in May, 1940 ?

Phil (PJA)