In a year that marks the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain it is useful to remember that what it made it possible was the power of No. The question of whether Britain was to fight on or seek a negotiated settlement with the Nazis divided the British cabinet in May of 1940. The country was facing imminent invasion. Churchill wanted to fight on, while Lord Halifax looked at the facts and realized the only rational course was to make peace with Hitler. Ultimately Churchill convinced the War Cabinet, composed of five persons, to keep fighting. The May Crisis as it is sometimes called, occurred scant months before the RAF met the Luftwaffe over southern England. It decided in fact, whether they were to meet them at all.
Wikipedia writes:
From 25 May – 28 May 1940, Churchill and Halifax fought the Battle for Britain in the five-member British War Cabinet. By 28 May 1940 it seemed as if Halifax had the upper hand and Churchill might be forced from office. However Churchill out-manoeuvred Halifax and called a meeting of his 25-member Outer Cabinet. He then delivered the greatest speech of his life in which he convinced every member present that Britain must fight on against Hitler no matter what the costs. At that meeting on 28 May 1940, British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill had saved Britain and perhaps Western Civilization from threat of Nazi domination. At that meeting he had won the Second World War.
“At that meeting he had won the Second World War”. That is far from true. Churchill did not win the Second World War then by defeating Lord Halifax’s proposal to make peace with Germany. He simply made it possible for the struggle to continue. In his famous speech of 4 June 1940 there was little talk of victory; only of survival. It consisted almost entirely of bad news. Churchill first of all spoke of the great surrender in France; of the ring of steel closing around the British Isles. He then held out the slender hope that they might hold off the mighty enemy for a time.
I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do.
But the situation was far too desperate to have much confidence the mighty juggernaut could be stopped. Even if Britain prevailed in the defense the Nazis were so immeasurably powerful that a continued fight with Britain’s declining resources would be an exercise in futility. In later years Churchill admitted to almost humbugging his country into continuing. “The method was accepted because everyone realized how near were death and ruin. Not only individual death, which is the universal experience, stood near, but, incomparably more commanding, the life of Britain, her message, and her glory.”
He ended his June 4 speech by invoking things of no practical import: the Empire, more a memory than a real help; the ghosts of shattered states whose insubstantial forces sheltered, more helpless still, in London. The only puissant prospect that Churchill could even remotely descry was the distant possibility that the New World would come to aid of the Old. One wonders whether Churchill believed, more than a year before Pearl Harbor and nearly a year before Hitler brought Russia in against him, that these reinforcements would be forthcoming any more than a dying man might hope for a miracle.
My guess is he did not. In my mind Churchill was logically aware that Britain was beaten. Yet though the facts stared him in the face submission came too hard to his lips to utter them. In truth, the June 4 speech was pure defiance. It contained but one thought. No. No to Hitler. No whatever the cost.
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
In the end Churchill could save neither the British Empire nor its world power. But real legacy of the Battle of Britain is the memory of the Few and the inspiration they gave and will give generations hence. In example they live with us still. Buildings crumble to dust, and pomp and circumstance fade. But long after the last relics of the British Empire are gone men will still say of those who lived the great days of 1940: “this was their finest hour.”
embedded by Embedded VideoYouTube Direkt
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
The lessons of history are quite clear. Never give up. Never submit. Never give in. Fight to the end. When tyrants win it’s a hundred [or thousand] times worse than imagined.
But that knowledge – or instinct – is foreign to the breasts of “our betters”. Negotiate. Talk with the enemy. Work out a deal. Surely, they will be reasonable.
Rats will scurry for an advantage. Warriors will angle for a win. Which side to choose…hmmmmmm. Patrick Henry was spot on. Thanks for the reminder, W.
Btw, those war rooms still exist as a museum and are awesome.
It is hard, all these years later, to enter that world. Especially hard because of the myths and lies we were all taught as kids in the 1950s about the causes and results of the war.
Hitler and Stalin, and we teamed with Stalin, because Hitler (and Mussolini) attacked? When Mussolini was a hero in the US before the war, and the US might not have entered the war, had not Hitler attacked the Soviets (Soviets, wretchard, not so much “Russia”). Most of all, that Britain had already accepted socialism much the same as the Germans and Russians (sic) had, and that they had all learned much from – Woodrow Wilson. And Hitler didn’t have all that much, dogmatically, against the Anglo-Saxon British. One can easily imagine the peace that was possible – Saruman in the service of Sauron, but even so.
Churchill stood against all of that, as much as against Hitler.
If Churchill said “no”, it was a romantic “no”, to go down fighting or win through a miracle, a principled “no” in the preservation of something, something definite if almost lost. Of course this is in C.S. Lewis even more than in Tolkien, Ransom the secret Pendragon of Britain who musters the magic of Merlin to save the day.
Finally, Churchill did not just say “no”, he FOUGHT.
And won!
And Britain nearly destroyed itself after the war adopting yet more socialism, and has hardly fully recovered yet. Nor have we, perhaps, electing a yutz like Obama. Might was well say Margeret Thatcher said “no”, or Ronald Reagan said “no”, but neither is famous for saying “no”, they are famous for saying, “This way!”
The fall of the British Empire is one of history’s great tragedies. Would that the United States had done more to keep it together.
One now gets the sense
These many years hence
That Churchill, were he to return
Would not know the place
But show a brave face
With nary a frown to discern
But deep down inside
He’d know there’s no pride
In Britain like he surely had
The Muslims now cry
All the gentiles must die
And the burqua the latest new fad
Politicians vote no
On the army and so
With the ships and the planes put to rest
The country he left
Is now weak and bereft
Of the means to meet any new test
The Britain he knew
The proud and the few
Is gone, and would leave him quite sad
But his mood would not sour
He’d had his finest hour
And he’d scowl and say Damn but I’m mad!
Then he’d chomp his cigar
Seeing now just how far
His country had managed to fall
Then he’d walk with a sigh
Wave a grateful goodbye
To the men who had given their all
The credits list one Israeli pilot? Iran: be warned. These guys are time travelling and they have your measure.
Churchill knew that while wars in Europe are fought on land they are won at sea. So long as England held the Channel, Hitler could huff and puff all he wanted, Nazi Germany wasn’t invading England.
Even if the RAF had lost the “Battle of Britain”, there is no way the Germans could have landed and kept supplied an invasion force. In 1940, air power had no persistence. Aircraft came, ruled the sky and whatever they were flying over, then went back to base and let the real combatants get on with it. So Germany was able to control the channel for about 4 hours a day max, then they went home and what ever was floating there then did so at the mercy of the Royal Navy.
Today the US Military has the ability to put aircraft over any place on this planet and keep them there as long as POTUS wants them to stay. Only Americans can stop America. Which is another use of NO.
This administration thinks that by using NO on ourselves, others won’t. That is delusional, of course.
I remember the advice given by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago which was: When in the clutches of the police, never confess.
Apparently appeasement does not even work when you are being tortured. It seems that some “suspects” that gave the KGB nothing walked out, where those who confessed to something “harmless” died in the slave labor camps — along with friends and family who got “implicated” in their “conspiracy” (concocted from the first harmless detail). But the Secret Police and courts had their quotas to fill.
So there you have it: never surrender, even when tortured. Cheers.
When the first bomb landed on Pearl Harbor, the fate of the Japanese Empire was sealed. That was not the case in Europe, and it is hard to overestimate the part Sir Winston played in ensuring the defeat of tyranny. Would that he been able to work the same miracle at the end of the war with the Russians.
Mr. Cameron is attempting to pull off the miracle of reducing govt agencies in Britain by 20 to 40 percent in the next four years!
…according to John Burns in his interview on Hewitt Show.
—
An option not tried by Churchill:
Telling the head of the RAF that one of his primary goals was to reach out to Axis nations and make them feel good about their achievements in math and science
The only way Hitler could do a photo op in London on German occupied Britain, ala his one day in Paris, would have been to have been in the position to accept Lord Halifax’s “yes” instead of Churchill’s “No”. Churchill’s “No” denied Hitler the imprimatur of inevitability.
Please forgive me, someone highly placed in British government already had Nazi sympathies, perhaps including passing on secrets to the Germans (as did in fact american ambassador to gr. Britain Joe Kennedy). Was that Lord Halifax? or was that someone else?
(includes the end portion of Churchill’s radio speech.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuwEhXB5TJc&NR=1
One of the most tragically interesting aspects of the BoB was that the leaders, Downding and Park, were judged to have blown it after the end and were replaced by their critics – who did pretty much blow their own end of it and went on to repeat their worst mistakes under the cover of the victory they had not won. And at the end of the war Churchill himself was sent packing by the British people.
Manwile, the Germans convinced themselves that there never had been a real BoB, just a military operation that was completed before moving on to attacking the USSR. In the words of Gen Adolph Galland in the 60′s during the making of the film “We just decided that were were not getting the desired results and then stopped. There was no British victory and no German defeat.”
The race does not always go to the swift, nor rewards to the victors, and no matter what the outcome, people can delude themselves.
No. I will not submit.
“A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government.“ Thomas Jefferson
“No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.” Hannah Arendt
“If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
“We have so much room for improvement. Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory… of how we are taking responsibility.” Nancy Pelosi
“We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the difference between us two.” Osama bin Laden
“The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable. “ Oscar Wilde
“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.” Thomas Paine
I pray to the God of our forefathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who sacrificed His Son for our salvation that He grant me courage, perseverance and the peace of righteous action for the struggles that lie before me and like minded patriots.
I will say no to intimidation, lies, and injustice. I will say no to tyranny whether soft or iron.
I will say no. I will not submit.
While I cannot address the historical event as well as others here, I can address the movie itself. My friend and I went to see it with pockets full of rubber bands (we were paperboys, after all) and positioned ourselves toward the back of the theater. During the dogfight scenes, we proceeded to shoot volleys of rubber bands at the audience in front rows.
Needless to say, we lost that battle.
More from Wikipedia on Churchill’s speech to the Outer Cabinet:
“The French had failed to make a push northwards from the Somme. They had too few Divisions between the sea and Amiens and their communications had been badly bombed. Therefore, though we had done our best from the north, it had been impossible to close the gap, and we were in grave danger of being surrounded. Now, therefore, it was necessary to fight our way through to the Channel Ports and get away all we could…We should certainly be able to get 50,000 away. If we could get 100,000 away, that would be a magnificent performance… I have thought carefully in these last days whether it was part of my duty to consider entering into negotiations with That Man [Hitler]. But it was idle to think that, if we tried to make peace now, we should get better terms than if we fought it out. The Germans would demand our – that would be called disarmament – our naval bases, and much else. We should become a slave state, though a British Government which would be Hitler’s puppet would be set up – under Mosley or some such person. And where should we be at the end of all that? On the other side we have immense reserves and advantages. And I am convinced that every one of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.”
Churchill would later write of the response he received at the conclusion of his remarks. “There occurred a demonstration which considered the character of the gathering – twenty-five experienced politicians and Parliament men, who represented all the different points of view, whether right or wrong, before the war – surprised me. Quite a number seemed to jump up from the table and come running to my chair, shouting and patting me on the back. There is no doubt that had I at this juncture faltered at all in the leading of the nation I should have been hurled out of office. I was sure that every Minister was ready to be killed quite soon, and have all his family and possessions destroyed, rather than give in. In this they represented the House of Commons and almost all the people. It fell to me in these coming days and months to express their sentiments on suitable occasions. This I was able to do because they were mine also. There was a white glow, overpowering, sublime, which ran though our Island from end to end.”
This period in history is also nicely portrayed in the film “Into the Storm” available on NetFlix.
The lesson may be that Britian did not enter the war a socialist country, but left it in that condition. The duties of war are socialist in nature, and Britian had two wars of exhaustion.
We show the signs. But ours are more the duties and responsibilities of Empire without pay or thanks–policeman of the world, and the strong executive and diminishing Republic that demands.
Two curiosities.
The nature of my employment during the latter half of the 1970′s entailed meeting a number of people daily from all walks of life and circumstances.
No, not paperboy, Talnik’s got that covered.
As a consequence, I met a gentleman who travelled the world from farm to jungle recovering WW II fighter planes and completely restoring them.
As a civilian pilot, both he and one (or more) of his Spitfires were used to recreate the Battle of Britain in the movie of the same name.
Kewl
It also provided the opportunity a short time later to meet and mingle with a goodly number of the actual fighter pilots from both sides of the BoB at an activity
associated with this event:
http://books.google.ca/books?id=zVbhC2_F3XEC&pg=PA472&lpg=PA472&dq=wwII+fighter+pilots+reunion+winnipeg&source=bl&ots=eCwmOazVGN&sig=zZ0OD-s6BxCmmlouAOCYyy8OnPQ&hl=en&ei=CMpvTLirB8mXnAfN9NSGCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
I believe I spent most of the time surreptitiously hyperventilating into a brown paper bag purpose brought for the occaision.
Humbling.
I remember when the movie was made. At the time there was a movie crew doing man-on-the street interviews. They asked one young lady what she thought was the significance of the Battle of Britain. One could tell by her reaction she had no idea what the interviewer was talking about.
Finally she said that she worked for the government and felt that she should not comment on the subject.
I am still laughing these many years.
Once the political discourse starts speaking about “exit strategies,” the battle is lost.
One can argue that twentieth century consciousness was shaped by Freud and his theories, twentieth century labor (and male/female relationships) was shaped by Edison and his labor saving inventions, twentieth century health by Flemming and penicillin, twentieth century communication by von Neumann, but without Churchill we would have lost all of these.
Will our grandchildren learn history written in Arabic? Just say NO.
With Churchill in the saddle, they were bound to say no! Certainly he had his unspoken doubts. Who doesn’t? But Churchill was a man convinced of his own greatness. And he had lived the highs and lows of a long and dramatic career in politics. No other active politician had Churchill’s length and breadth of experience. On entering Parliament he gained a reputation as a boy wonder, capable of giving long, involved and persuasive speeches. Until the day his gift failed him, in public. Despite the failure of the Dardenelles, he later became Chancellor of the Exchequer, an office once held by his father. He even wore his father’s robes of office, which had carefully been stored away by his American mother. It was, to him, one of the proudest days of his life. Not many years later, Churchill was unceremoniously dumped from the safe seat he had held for years. At the instigation of Stanley Baldwin. Churchill was forced to find and fight for election to a new seat. An election where he was opposed by the regular party organization. What’s more interesting than the face off with Halifax, is that Churchill would not have achieved the prime ministership without the support of his life long foes in the Labor Party. It was their opposition to Halifax that elevated Churchill. It’s difficult for Americans to appreciate the intricacies of British war time coalition politics. Generally, the Conservatives had sufficient votes that would have put Halifax in office. But it was believed by almost all the leaders that war time required a unified political establishment. An additional factor was that as a “Lord” Halifax could not sit in Parliament as the conservative leader. And some thanks are due to Halifax for appreciating the political realities that would have attended his elevation.
As for the Germans. One thing we’ve learned was that Hitler was not a very good strategist. He had a good eye for the immediate situation but he did not think beyond one or two moves. He was a gambler, but not a very good one. Focused on the moral weakness of the Allies, he failed to recognize that even the Great Powers would only be pushed around so long. He was surprised that the French and British declared war after the attack on Poland. He had expected them to protest, but not declare war. His response? Direct the general staff to plan and execute an attack on France in December of 1939. Completely unrealistic considering the time necessary to move his forces from Poland to the west, rearm and re-equip them. His success against France was much quicker than they had expected. Which explains in part why there was no more than cursory discussion about an invasion. Sea Lion was a show. Nothing more. If the Luftwafee could not destroy the RAF and isolate Britain, there would be no invasion. They resorted to the same plan as in 1914, starve them with U boats.
Could they have invaded? Possibly. But Hitler would have to have been willing to risk his navy in the channel. Unlikely. He would also have had to provide resources for a two division parachute assault. They didn’t have the transports. Plus, have achieved at least temporary air superiority over the invasion beaches.
Of course, the British knew none of this. Which is why their decision is much more courageous in retrospect. But Churchill was prepared because after 50 years, his time of greatness had arrived.
Skip: “Only Americans can stop America.”
That needs to be remembered. Most of our problems stem from the work of the enemy within.
Clean house and we will be fine.
Die on your feet or live on your knees. It’s as simple as that.
Steve C., Hitler had only a portion of his Navy to lose invading England – the Norwegian invasion cost him one of three heavy cruisers, two of six light cruisers, and half his destroyer force, plus put a pocket battleship into drydock. In addition, the only two battleships he had were forced to flee by the weakest capital ship in the RN (HMS Renown). Rolling the dice on Sea Lion would have obliterated the rest of his fleet – a gamble Hitler almost certainly would have taken, had he even considered it. However, his outlook was purely continental, like most Germans, and he had no appreciation for sea power. So far as he was concerned, invading the UK was essentially a scaled up river crossing.
Even still, I firmly believe Sea Lion was only a bluff, to keep pressure on the British. His real goal all along was Russia.
John von Neumann Postwar.
After the war, von Neumann continued his work with computers, and was generally very active in government service. He received numerous awards, was president of the American Mathematical Society and was a member of the Atomic Energy Commission. He died in 1957 of cancer.
A good friend, Wigner, wrote;
“When von Neumann realized he was incurably ill, his logic forced him to realize he would cease to exist, and hence cease to have thoughts.
It was heartbreaking to watch the frustration of his mind, when all hope was gone, in its struggle with the fate which appeared to him unavoidable but unacceptable.”
Any one of several of his contributions would have been enough to earn him a firm place in history. Von Neumann will be remembered as one of the greatest minds of this century.
Von Neumann really was a legend in his own time, and there are a number of stories about him.
His driving (in)ability is a part of this legend. He reported one accident this way: was proceeding down the road. The trees on the right were passing me in orderly fashion at 60 miles per hour. Suddenly one of them stepped in my path.”
“He was especially pleased with and proud of his facility with numbers. When his electronic computer was ready for its first preliminary test, someone suggested a relatively simple problem involving powers of 2. (Something like, what is the smallest power of 2 with the property that its decimal digit 4th from the right is 7?). The machine and Johnny started at the same time, and Johnny finished first.”
“It is often said that modern mathematics is so vast that no one can know more than a tiny fraction of it. Someone once asked von Neumann how much of mathematics he himself knew.
Von Neumann went into one of his characteristic thinking trances. After a moment he had an answer. ‘Twenty-eight percent.‘”
…also became a legendary figure in West Coast Sports Car Racing.
—
Blago Says, Like Winston Churchill, He Can Mount Dramatic Comeback
IIRC, this story comes from one of his sons…
While shaving shortly after becoming the PM, Winston’s lightbulb came on: I’ve got to get America and Russia in to this war!
There is ample evidence that he campaigned for both outcomes.
Developments in the field, however, made it seem that any diplomatic gambits would come too late.
One gambit was to convince Hitler that Britain would cave if Russia folded. Since Hitler always intended to invade, this made him feel like Russia was a two-fer.
The second gambit was to goad Japan into open hostilities against the West, specifically the Americans.
All prior war planning called for massive naval reinforcement of Singapore. The thinking was that between the RN and the USN the IJN was stuck with a terrible force ratio.
As it became increasingly clear that Hitler would never be baited by the Americans in the Atlantic both official London and official Washington independently started to scheme the Japan option.
Both wanted America to enter the war. America because only in a hot war could the Atomic bomb project move fast enough to compete with whatever Hitler could do in dictatorship.
For Britain it was even simpler, she was already broke. It’s a lot easier to get stuff from an Ally than from a banker/ merchant.
Through various ruses, Britain indicated to Tokyo that her ability to send the battle fleet was more or less gone. This after the German surface fleet has already been destroyed or neutralized! On the facts, it made no sense. This gambit was successful. ONLY after the IJN was convinced that the RN was practically neutralized did Yamamoto begin active pursuit of the Big Stroke at Pearl Harbor.
(I wish I could remember the name, but a British naval expert published a little tome in 1925 that swept naval circles like a Tom Clancy thriller. Yamamoto’s Big Stroke was entirely derived from this fiction-before-fact book. ALL of the invasion beaches in the Philippines were the same, as was the stroke at Pearl.)
Correctly, the RN realized that the IJN would move against America once the British Pacific threat was removed. (If the IJN were way to the east at Pearl then the RN would be able to destroy essentially all of Japan’s commercial trade before the IJN could get back in time. All Britain would have to do is hunker down at all of the oil export terminals. Game Over!
After Pearl Harbor, it took the British and American leadership over a year to realize that both had been working to the exact same grand scheme!
At which point the hook-up became a marriage: our code breakers started swapping the goods and ultimately created Echelon.
By combining America, Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the Dutch — and even Nationalist Chinese listening posts — the Allies had the biggest ‘ear’ in the Pacific.
——
Britain, with her Empire, was never really all that alone. The problem was that she was way too close to the Luftwaffe.
Once Hitler turned east, the pressure was eased.
Once Echelon got rolling, the Kriegsmarine got the shaft in the North Atlantic gap. A completely integrated radio detection grid coupled to the ‘bomb’ (Bletchley Park) removed the last strategic peril. The U-boat menace collapsed within months.
Obviously, Churchill staked his all on a dream. Sometimes, that’s where you must start.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_in_World_War_II
Blert, the name you’re trying to recall is Hector Bywater. He was a journalist who specialized in naval affairs (can you imagine any professional J-school grad wasting his time on any military beat today?) who wrote, in addition to several sober analyses of seapower in the Pacific, a novel that more or less blazed the path for Tom Clancy’s genre a half century later:
“The Great Pacific War”
Bywater’s work reads uncannily prescient today, but there’s no need to assign him special powers of prediction – he spent much of his professional life studying and analyzing seapower, and had a good eye for likely trends in equipment and how they would affect tactics. He was way off in a few areas – most notably, he had the Japanese fighting with scrupulous gallantry and respect for their foe.
Some have made much of his vision and concluded that Yamamoto must have picked his brain somehow. A few have concocted lurid plots in which Yamamoto had him killed Because He Knew Too Much. But such speculations make too much of Bywater’s sharp eye and analytical skills – since the late ’20′s, the USN had been practicing air attacks on Pearl Harbor, as well as the US West Coast. They knew it was possible, nobody had to peer into a crystal ball. FDR and his advisors failed to anticipate the Japanese strike because they were focused on what seemed to them more likely targets of Japanese aggression – the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Malaya. All of which were on the table, by the way, and the only reason for the Pearl Harbor attack was to temporarily prevent the USN from responding to events in the Western Pacific before Japan had an impregnable defensive perimeter. They eliminated the USN as a fleet in being solely to free themselves up for the rampage through the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
That’s what Yamamoto meant when he promised that if it came to war, he could run wild for six months to a year, but could make no gurantees after that. Unlike the generals, Japan’s admirals knew full well what it would mean to fight the US. All Yamamoto did was buy time for the initial round of conquest, and he was under no illusions as to what he was doing.
Incidentally, I believe the US Naval Institute Press published a new paperback edition of Bywater’s Great Pacific War a few years ago. It may be available still.
great post
25 Steve
“FDR and his advisors failed to anticipate the Japanese strike because they were focused on what seemed to them more likely targets of Japanese aggression – the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Malaya.”
We’ll never know, but I think it’s likely that the US Government realized full well that an attack on Pearl Harbor was very possible. They’d war gamed it, there was a real life example in the recent past (Taranto), and they had to know it was an option. It’s hard to imagine that our military didn’t see what the Japanese did: that any attack in SE Asia with an undamaged US Navy on it’s flank was risky, to say the least.
Roosevelt obviously wanted us to get into the war, and anything less than a Japanese attack on American facilities was probably going to fall short. I think it very possible that they anticipated the attack, but because of their cultural bias believed that it would be largely ineffective, wouldn’t do much damage, and would give us a reason to get into the war with a minimum cost. I think both sides grossly underestimated the other, and this is what we got as a result. The Japanese paid their own price later.
This may be true, or not. We’ll never know, unless there’s some documentation that eventually comes to light. This makes the most sense to me, given the facts, so I think it’s likely.
Of course, it’s hard to believe in this day that our Gov’t knew that a bunch of people were taking flying lessons, with an emphasis on taking off and flying, but no interest in the landing aspect, and couldn’t put two and two together. I attribute that to total incompetence, so it could be that the FDR admin was just as incompetent.
Speaking of Churchill and the Battle of Britain, here is a little story that shows how the world can be connected in unexpected ways.
Late in the 19th Century, a young boy was fishing at an estate in England and caught a gamefish, a pike. It was such a superb example of the breed and he was so proud of it that it was mounted and displayed above the main fireplace in an English manor house.
Over 40 years later Great Britain was under air attack and was forced to relocate many of its key industries to reduce their vulnerability. The design team and prototyping workforce for the firm of De Havilland was moved to a manor house where they worked to produce a new fast bomber for the RAF. It was the same manor house that had the young boy’s prize pike displayed, and it is said that the fish served as inspiration for the design of the bomber, which became the D.H.98 Mosquito. The pike’s outline can be seen in the sleek profile of the aircraft, which incredibly enough, had a structure made out of wood. For a time the Mosquito was the fastest operational aircraft in Europe; its performance led to it being built in not only bomber but fighter-bomber, night fighter, anti-submarine, reconnaissance, and pathfinder versions as well.
The Mosquitoes drove the Germans to distraction. Goring raged about the British, who had plenty of the aluminum that the Germans were so short of, building “those incredible crates that are faster than anything we have” out of wood. Mosquitoes not only carried out bombing raids the Luftwaffe could not intercept but breached the walls of Amiens prison in France to allow French Resistance fighters to escape before D-Day, bombed Gestapo headquarters across occupied Europe, and carried out precision raids to interrupt Hitler’s birthday celebrations. The Germans managed to shoot down some Mosquitoes but they never bested them.
And they never bested the boy who caught that pike, either. His name was Winston Churchill.
28 RWE
Very interesting. I never heard that before.
28. RWE
You forgot “And now you know…the rest of the story.”
“He ended his June 4 speech by invoking things of no practical import: the Empire, more a memory than a real help”
Quite wrong. It was only because ‘the Empire’ was still functional that Britain was able to carry on, Churchill made that calculation and reviews in his memoir. The convoys from Canada and Australia/NZ, S Africa were a lifeline for materials, the Western Desert campaign was waged by an Empire army including 4th Indian Division.
Rickl #30
Yes, or rather, I left it off this time.
I sent that piece in to Paul Harvey a decade or so ago, and received acknowledgement that it would be forwarded to him, but never heard anything else.
I was inspired to send it in to Paul Harvey by the Rest of The Story piece about how Winston Churchill as a child fell into a bog and was rescued by a farmer. Churchill’s father was so grateful that he insisted that he pay for the farmer’s son to go to college.
The farmer’s name was Fleming. His son invented pencillin, which later saved Winston Churchill’s life, along with a few other less famous people.
What goes around comes around….
Hector Bywater…
Now there’s a great pen name for a naval writer!
32. RWE
Seriously? That’s cool. I hope he did use it. (Or not, if you were hoping to get paid.)
I was just making a wisecrack, but it sounded enough like a Paul Harvey story that I tried to see if I could find it online before I posted. I found a couple of book collections on Amazon, but he must have recorded thousands of them over the years.
Ambassador of Death Bomber Has a Message of Peace and Friendship
“The jet, as well as being an ambassador of death for the enemies of humanity, has a main message of peace and friendship” Ahmadinejad said.
Doug…
Can’t you just feel the love?
As for its military utility, their claims don’t make sense. The bomber is a one-way cruise missile itself.
So how is it able to launch four cruise missiles?
It greatly resembles the Snark of late 1950′s fame. The Snark had a short operational life. It was superseded by ballistic systems about as fast as one could go.
Which makes it weird that Iran is even going down that road. Of course, any Snark type missile only makes sense with an atomic warhead. Any conventional warhead is too weak to justify the airframe expense.
The general progress of Iranian weapons tells me that they’ve got quite a few Russians in their employ. The other factor is the advanced nature of commercial electronics. What had to be created from concept half a century ago is now to be found in hobby aircraft design. Scaling up the machine is duck-soup by comparison.
Rickl #34:
Yep, seriously. I e-mailed it to the contact for him and they replied, saying they would send it to him but could not guarantee that Mr. Harvey would use it. I never heard anything back.
I was not seeking payment, jut thought it was an interesting story.
Dtmack (jeez, this is – what – three posts on Richard’s blog – I am SO going to get booted!) I’m sure FDR and his advisors considered an attack on PH a possibility, but they relegated it to a lower threat level. I believe they seriously expected the first blow to fall on Philippine soil, to eliminate the threat it posed to their flank. War Plan Orange had long since given up the “Through Ticket to Tokyo” strategy in favor of a more realistic one of island hopping, in fact the identical strategy that won the war. The PI was not expected to hold out longer than half a year, and MacArthur was given over half the available B-17 force at the time as a deterrent, to increase the risk to Japan.
Of course, nobody counted on Mac obligingly leaving his air force on the ground for the Japanese to nail eight hours after the Hawaiian attack.
The Army and Navy commanders on Hawaii were specifically warned a week prior to the attack. The Navy message specifically stated it was a war warning. Both commanders chose to misinterpret the threat to be one of sabotage from fifth columnists and not a military strike. That was a fine example of not preparing for the worst your enemy could do, but selecting the option easiest for you to defend against.
Dumb.
I have never had any patience with those who claim Roosevelt deliberately sacrificed the Fleet to have a causus belli (and I am not claiming you said that). FDR loved the Navy so much that General Marshall is reported to have once complained “Mister President, when you speak of the Navy and the Army, would you please not say ‘us’ and ‘them?’” In any event, the surprise attack did not have to be a US defeat – having the USN catch the IJN and turn the tables would still have gotten us into the war, and in much more favorable circumstances.
Anyway, Secretary of the Navy Knox’s reaction to the news is revealing: “Oh no, this can’t be right, they must mean the Philippines!”
If you’re interested in this, see John Lukacs’s book, “Five Days in London: May 1940,” wherein he details the cabinet debate. It’s illuminating, and more than a little scary.
http://www.troynovant.com/Franson/Lukacs/Five-Days-in-London.html
Perhaps our Tea Parties will be our Battle of Britain. They won’t save America’s empire, but they will allow it to birth something else that maintains freedom on this planet for another 50 or more years.
SKip,
“Churchill knew that while wars in Europe are fought on land they are won at sea. So long as England held the Channel, Hitler could huff and puff all he wanted, Nazi Germany wasn’t invading England.”
Sea power is helpless in the face of air superiority. See the British navy vs the Japanese in the Pacific, or the U-boats in the Atlantic as examples.
“the great surrender of France”, but also of the Brits, of Belgium, of Neederland…
had England being France, there was no alternative to the mighty German panzer divizions and Luftwaffen, even Russia was on the verge to collapse, so it’s easy to write history when one wants it as a shakespirian legend !
France had a larger, better-equipped army than Germany did. They just did a horrible job of fighting with it.
I think most historians would agree that the British were losing the Battle of Britain until Hitler, enraged by the bombing of Berlin, told Goring to shift his attacks to the cities. The British were losing planes and pilots faster than they could replace them, and the Germans would have won had they contiued their attacks on the airfields, repair shops, and radar stations.
There are several alt-history scenarios that say the Germans could then have taken the channel from the Royal Navy, but that they too would have lost much of their fleet. At that point, the British coast is lightly defended, because the British had left almost all of their heavy equipment in France. Then air superiority would have helped the Germans get ashore and establish and expand a bridgehead.
But, as others have pointed out, Hitler was oriented towards the continent and was eager to get Lebensraum going in the east. He probably figured he could deal with the British later. I have never heard a good explanation as to why he declared war on the USA the day after Pearl Harbor. I’ll bet FDR jumped out of his wheelchair when he heard that.
A late entry to this thread.
A month back I was in Manchester, UK, and I visited the Imperial War Museum there. Not a bad place, and not too twisted by PC thinking (some, of course), with one blatant exception. There was an exhibit of the tail of a plane (or was it a bomb?), which had a stencil of a hand with a V-finger gesture.
Well, the little notes along the wall to help guide the children to the exhibit said — I almost barfed — “Can you find the peace symbol above?”
PEACE symbol?! This is what has become of the victory sign in Britain. Probably the university trained nitwit who wrote the signage had never heard of a victory symbol.
Anyway, as a side note in the only area I can ever hold my own at Belmont — literature — if you want to read a couple of great books about life in England before and during the war, I recommend R.F. Delderfield’s “The Avenue” series, which is two books, “The Dreaming Suburb” and “The Avenue Goes to War.” Not great writing, but ripping good stories with fabulous characters, and it gives you a tremendous sense of how life was lived at the time, and how folks thought about the war and Merry Olde England.
You can follow those with Delderfield’s “To Serve Them All My Days,” a great story about life in a British public school after WWI, back in the days when public school meant something.
exhelodrvr
in your dreams