Quote:
Originally Posted by ovcatto
Of the Big Three, Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill was Churchill a real partner or just the chubby kid that the bigger boys let hang out with them. After all, outside of defeating the Germans Churchill's wartime objectives, thwarting the invasion of France, keeping Poland out the Soviet sphere and more importantly the preservation of the British Empire were pretty much ignored by Roosevelt and Stalin. In short would it have matter who was Britain's prime minister during the war, the outcome would have been the same.
(I may have to take JohnUK off my ignore list just for the amusement of it all)
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I have to disagree.
Churchill's predecesor, Chamberlain, was one of the leaders who allowed Hitler to move into other neighboring nations starting in the late 30's. At the time, Hitler's war machine was far from being ready to mount a large scale war with any of the European powers, and most of the early blitzkriegs were a bluff, as Germany was still building armaments and training the military as fast as it could.
At that time, Churchill, as leader of the Conservatives, had been out of power for a long time. He was the oldest of the three you mentioned, and most British thought he was all done. His prior service as Prime Minister did not end well, and Churchill himself believed he was washed up, doomed to a retirement at his estate Chartwell.
But Churchill saw the conflict coming with Hitler. He spoke about it in Parliament as often as he was allowed to, and his core group of followers kept him well apprised of the goings-on in Parliament daily. Two years before Britain finally declared war with Germany, Churchill had already developed plans, both military and civilian, on how to oppose Germany.
Part of his plans dealt with convincing Roosevelt of the seriousness of the gathering storm. Roosevelt was not at all eager to jump into war in Europe again, and neither were the Americans.
Churchill was a masterful speaker and writer. Without those abilities, he would never have been able to convince a reluctant President and the American citizens to support his nation with food, armaments, ships, and diplomatic support long before Pearl Harbor.
Not everyone in the U.S. believed supporting the British was a smart thing to do. There was a lot of opposition for well over a year, but as soon as Pearl Harbor was attacked, the opposition stopped, and the realization that the U.S. was much better prepared for a war due to Churchill's efforts to militarize us sank in.
Of the three, only Churchill ever served in military combat, and he had a very large reputation for personal courage that had served him well in his years in Parliament. When war was declared, the British all saw him as the man they needed to lead the nation, and though old by then, still had all the courage he had as a young man.
It is true that preserving the British empire was one of his prime objectives, but in wartime, the British empire became a bulwark that blocked the Japanese as much as the Germans. While we were desperately trying to build a military that could successfully oppose the Japanese in the Pacific, it was those in the Empire who kept the war against Japan going on all fronts from China all the way across the Pacific Rim. And this was happening while the Empire was stopping the German advance into Africa and the Mediterranean at the same time. At tremendous costs to both Britain and the Empire.
This could have only been accomplished by a true military tactician with experience on the ground. In comparison, Stalin was only a party hit man in his youth, and was as terrible as a strategist as Hitler was. Roosevelt was not strategist either, but he had some brilliant strategists in the Pentagon; Marshall was easily Churchill's equal, and there were others.
At Yalta, Churchill dominated the terms of the conference. Roosevelt was dying, and very weak there, and Stalin did not care what the peace was to be as long as he got Berlin and a buffer zone of small Eastern European countries the Germans had conquered. Stalin did not respect Roosevelt, but he respected Churchill, and bowed to most of Churchill's demands. Marshall played the largest part in creating the peace terms for the U.S. in Yalta.
Neither Churchill nor Roosevelt were very concerned over Poland, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Yugoslavia, or any of the Soviet buffer states. Only Churchill saw the potential of the Russian post-war threat, but he was unable to contain the Soviets as much as he wanted. Churchill was the first to warn of the Iron Curtain, and he coined that term.
Churchill did not have enough time to prevent France's downfall, but he did prevent Germany from getting France's naval fleet, which was the 3rd largest in the world.
If Germany had been able to use the French fleet, Hitler could have done a lot more damage to America and Canada, all along the Atlantic coastline, than his German fleet could do. New York City and Washington D.C. could have both come under severe threat.
The French had an aircraft carrier and a seaplane carrier, 3 modern battleships, 7 old battleships, 7 heavy cruisers, 11 light cruisers, 70 destroyers, and 80 submarines.
A fleet of this size and scope, combined with either the German or the Japanese fleet, could have stopped any of the Allied fleets cold in either theater of the war. Such a combined fleet could have controlled either the Atlantic or Pacific oceans, and both the American and British homelands would have come under severe threat on all coasts.
Churchill had to double cross his oldest and most respected allies to destroy the French fleet, but in doing so, the British, not the Germans, controlled the Mediterranean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, allowing America time to build it's own Pacific fleet. The scuttling of the French fleet was as much a winning event for the Allied war in Europe as the invasion of France was 4 years later.
Could another British politician have been able to prosecute the war so strongly while the British homeland and capital was being destroyed at the same time?
Certainly the British, who were doing the fighting and dying, did not think so. They kicked out Chamberlain in less than a month after war was declared and put Churchill back in charge.
I don't think there is a single historian who does not acknowledge Churchill was the single best national leader of the war. War was what Churchill knew and did best.
Evidence of that was how fast he lost the Prime Ministership after the war was over. He lost in 1945, came back in 1951, and was out for good by 1955. Peacetime leadership was not Winston's thing, and never was.
he may have been chubby by WWII, but when he was a young officer, he once fought an opponent on the tops of a train, and stood up and shot his enemy between the eyes. He wasn't always slow or chubby, and if they had let him, he would have manned an anti-aircraft gun in the London blitz. His staff always struggled to keep him away from the bombings. He always ran toward the sound of the guns.