[Misc] Churchill

[DJ NOBO]

Well that's rubbish. For all his faults Churchill didn't shy away from a battle, he took part in a cavalry charge in Sudan, went to South Africa to fight during the boer wars and reenlisted during the first world war ( though was kept away from the front)

You, sir, have owned me.
Don’t get my grandad started on bomber command though.

 

[dejavuatbtn]

Good film though.........

 

[jakarta]

Well that's rubbish. For all his faults Churchill didn't shy away from a battle, he took part in a cavalry charge in Sudan, went to South Africa to fight during the boer wars and reenlisted during the first world war ( though was kept away from the front)

The last bit isn't correct, he actually served in the Trenches in 1915 as a Colonel in the Royal Scots Fusiliers.

Although he didn't take part in any of the big battles he went out into No Mans Land on patrol around 30 times.

Certainly a PM who knew a lot more about war at the sharp end than ANY of his successors.

 

[vegster]

After seeing Darkest Hour this weekend, I've been listening to some of Churchill's speeches on YouTube. I wasn't fully aware of what a remarkable orator this man was, and thought I would bring it to the attention of the class. If you have the time and inclination, this half hour is a GREAT listen, especially towards the end...

[yt]jB5wZtV1MWM[/yt]

What General Vagon has called the Battle of France, is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions, and our empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island, or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all of Europe may be freed, and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age, made more sinister and perhaps more protracted by the likes of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bare ourselves, that if the British Empire and its commonwealths last for a thousand years, men will still say, this was their finest hour.

Can't see Theresa May coming out with something like that, can you ?

He wasn't very prescient about the future of " The Empire " ? a man of his time, an author, historian and deep thinker but with a few nasty facets mixed in too. However, an intellectual giant compared to Mrs May who seems intent on clinging on to power for the sake of it.

 

[Leekbrookgull]

If the French fleet had of falling into German hands the home fleet would have been out numbered, a scenario that could not become reality. Churchill gave the French the option the sail with the Royal Navy but they declined, its sad that people like to use this decision to label Churchill as a war criminal.

http://www.historynet.com/operation-catapult-naval-destruction-at-mers-el-kebir.htm

 

[5mins-from-amex]

http://www.historynet.com/operation-catapult-naval-destruction-at-mers-el-kebir.htm

Yes I have read that article before, what's your point?

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

What an intresting thread, and one where differences of opinion have prompted others to provide facts that illustrate the nuances.

With regards to WC's more unpalatable attitudes (by today's standards), it is doubtful that many people would have heard of racism before the 1950s, let alone in the 20s or 30s. Back then it was widely accepted that the dark skinned races, along with most Europans and very certainly the Irish and of course all women of any race or class are inferior to white British men. Moreover the working classes were also widely regarded as inferior by those with power and money. This is probably how some 'men of rank' could feel so comfortable dismissing the loss of the lives of front line soldiers so easily: "What's a few men" indeed.

Sometimes its easy to forget how much society has changed in the last 60 years.

My view of WC? A man of his time, and since time cannot be rerun we should be generous and accept that we would probably be speaking german now if it were not for him. Probably. Who can tell? I am not sure I particularly feel the need to listen to the recordings of his re-readings of his wartime speaches, however. Can you imagine listening to recordings of Thatcher re-reading her 'the lady is not for turning' speech? A bit weird? A bit self-indulgent?

Great thread, though

 

[Eeyore]

Best to avoid quoting Sir Winston Churchill now otherwise you may be arrested by the hate speech Police .

You have been warned .

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...candidate-arrested-over-Churchill-speech.html

What actually happened there is the bloke was arrested for failing to comply with a dispersal order. You know it too.

Churchill is remembered as a great wartime leader, and few seem to dispute that.

But it doesn't give free passage to some of the views he held when applied to the modern age.

If I preached parts of the Torah, or the Koran for that matter, as a blueprint for a new social order I would likely be moved on, or arrested. Police tend not to arrest as the first line of intervention (as was the case here). Similarly, if I quoted some of Winston Churchill's texts as a blueprint for social understanding I am inciting hatred or sowing a deliberate discord.

So quote Churchill as oft as you wish. But stick to stick to his inspiration not his prejudices. Unless, of course, you subscribe to them.

 

[Saunders]

Its really worth visiting Churchills War rooms. There is a lot of information on him and his speaches there too.

 

[Questions]

If it were not for Churchill we would all be speaking German now

I think with our record of learning foreign languages I would find that highly unlikely.

 

[Saunders]

As a point of order, before the war the Polish had built 3 complete Enigma machines and were breaking German codes before WW2 such was their preparations for dealing with an aggressive Germany. They offered the machines to Britain and France and their cryptologists were taken out of Poland when hostilities opened in 1939.

They were largely in France when the Germans invaded their in 1940, and most got over to the U.K. and served in Bletchley Park when France surrendered.

Your point about films and history are well made, these days Alan Turing is considered the central character at Bletchley Park (aka Imitation Game) yet the reality was there were many more individuals involved. Gordon Welchman and Tommy Flowers are just two examples who made greater contributions than Turing, not just in Bletchley but post war. The story behind Flowers is all the more impressive given his background as an east end working class boy that invented the first fully programmable computer “colossus”. Turing didn’t have the monopoly on discrimination, after all he was educated at Sherborne.

The problem with history and films is that not all the facts are known due to the official secrets act. There is a memorial to the Polish part in cracking the Enigma machines at Bletchley Park (they did a lot of work on the simpler model) they massively helped by giving us all they had an act that could have been seen as treason by their own country.

A great example of this is that Enigma wasnt even the hardest code to crack and the Collssus machines cracking the "Tunny' codes are much more praiseworthy but this was kept quiet for decades because the Russians were still using the captured machines and codes thinking they were uncrackable. Colossus was the brainchild of Thomas H. Flowers, the first real computer as we know it. I doubt many have heard of him. Also Gordon Welchman who we only recently heard about how deep his involvement was (not even mentioned in the Turing film) when he wrote Hut 6 which very much upset the Americans because his revolutionary way of looking at networks of communications (the work he did in hut 6 at Bletchley) was the heart of the foundation of the American electronic spy network after he was employed by them at the end of the war.

Edit got a bit excited there and repeated a lot of what you said sorry

 

[dangull]

In Germany the' Battle of Britain' was considered as just an air offensive as they didn't think Hitler was serious about invading Britain. It was more a tactic to force the countries to a negotiated peace settlement, so Hitler could have a free hand in his real aim which was to invade Russia.

In fact before the war Hitler sent Ribbentrop as Ambassador to England to try to form an alliance between the 2 countries. He actually admired the British Empire, and racially thought the English were similar to the Germans with the Saxon connections.

 

[cunning fergus]

We had no army whatsoever. The British army was woefully under equipped and, had British policy been more aggressive then the likelihood is that the invasion of Britain would have come earlier than expected, and the American would have been negotiating with Hitler for peace.

Chamberlain was an appeaser through necessity.

Too much of our understanding of Chamberlain has been shaped by wartime and post war accounts like The Gathering Storm (by Churchill) which, written in the excitement of victory, tend to airbrush the past and conveniently paint certain characters as 'the bad guys'. It's also appalling that authors like Churchill did so when the protagonists were not around to defend themselves - Chamberlain had died during the war.

Churchill was a great leader when we needed him to be. The right man at the right time. He led the country brilliantly when it was needed. But let's polarise the characters.

Chamberlain's weakness was in not surrounding himself with enough driven and decisive characters. His cabinet was too wet in it's approach to arming the country from 1937 onwards. Even had he done so, it would still have been too late to do anything other than negotiate with Hitler over Czechoslovakia. We had no army or air power, so could do little.

After the failed Norway campaign - led by Churchill - and with our entire army defeated in France, the way was open for Hitler to invade, so Chamberlain was far from alone in thinking that a course of action was negotiation. The only thing that stopped Hitler invading was his inability to organise forces before the winter of 1940/41 and his concern with air superiority. Goerring was incensed that Hitler didn't strike faster and he was right. The Battle of Britain - had it gone on just a day or two more - would have resulted in the destruction of the RAF and a walk in the park for Germain forces.

In conclusion, Chamberlain did appease Hitler at the right time. But was he a naive fool as you state, and was he a died in the wool appeaser? No.

Britain’s army post WW1 returned to its pre WW1 size, which meant GB remained a major global military power. GB still had the Empire and outside of its four “home” commands (made up of dozens of divisions) it also had military assets around the world. The RN was still the world’s biggest and like most powers its sizeable Air Force was changing to accommodate developments in air power.

That is not to deny the difficulties in budgets, but in the 20s and 30s the Govt was committed at that time to a rolling 10 year plan, an entirely reasonable assumption that GB would not fight a war in Europe for 10 years. Far from “no army whatsoever”.

As for aggression leading to an earlier invasion, what absolute rot. Hitler’s first and most important gamble was re-militarising the Rhineland, he had such little support for the operation amongst his Govt he had to effectively bribe his high command. In 1936 a mere 19 German battalions marched in and France and Britain had the opportunity to crush Hitler before he had established himself. By not doing a thing in response to this flagrant breach of the Versailles treaty for multiple reasons including rank appeasement, they helped establish Hitlers credibility. That was a fatal mistake.

You are so keen to deminish the military strength of GB you ignore the fact that Germany was even weaker, and it was far from an invincible force. The German army as determined by Versailles was 100k and with nothing in the way of heavy arms. The re-armament only came when Hitler understood the lack of will in both French and GB Govts. Appeasement by the British establishment was rife, PMs Baldwin and Chamberlain were front and centre of that policy.

Chamberlain continuously ignored the warnings and conduct of Germany under Hitler and by the time he changed tack it was too late, and why in the HoP in 1940 Leopold Emery delivered a devasting speech that incorporated Cromwell’s insult to the Long Parliament 300 years before........”in the name of God go”.

At best you can argue Chamberlain was well intentioned in his premiership to avoid war, but he couldn’t be more wrong, he was out of step with the public mood, ultimately out of step with his party, and subsequently Parliament. His (and Baldwin’s) nievety coupled with the French lack of will to fight lead to a longer and deeper war. That is how history should remember him.

 

[cunning fergus]

The problem with history and films is that not all the facts are known due to the official secrets act. There is a memorial to the Polish part in cracking the Enigma machines at Bletchley Park (they did a lot of work on the simpler model) they massively helped by giving us all they had an act that could have been seen as treason by their own country.

A great example of this is that Enigma wasnt even the hardest code to crack and the Collssus machines cracking the "Tunny' codes are much more praiseworthy but this was kept quiet for decades because the Russians were still using the captured machines and codes thinking they were uncrackable. Colossus was the brainchild of Thomas H. Flowers, the first real computer as we know it. I doubt many have heard of him. Also Gordon Welchman who we only recently heard about how deep his involvement was (not even mentioned in the Turing film) when he wrote Hut 6 which very much upset the Americans because his revolutionary way of looking at networks of communications (the work he did in hut 6 at Bletchley) was the heart of the foundation of the American electronic spy network after he was employed by them at the end of the war.

Edit got a bit excited there and repeated a lot of what you said sorry

Ha, no problem. I think your point makes sense when there are secrets to protect, however the imitation game was just trite schmaltz, and a tragic waste of opportunity to provide the much richer story there was at Bletchley. When I saw the scene about Turing breaking a code then saving a convoy in the same night I could have chucked my chair at the screen in disgust. There were many involved in the Bletchley story. I think it is an insult to all those who quietly served that the media now disproportionately venerate Turing, and frankly I think Turing would agree with that too.

 

[Saunders]

Ha, no problem. I think your point makes sense when there are secrets to protect, however the imitation game was just trite schmaltz, and a tragic waste of opportunity to provide the much richer story there was at Bletchley. When I saw the scene about Turing breaking a code then saving a convoy in the same night I could have chucked my chair at the screen in disgust. There were many involved in the Bletchley story. I think it is an insult to all those who quietly served that the media now disproportionately venerate Turing, and frankly I think Turing would agree with that too.

I highly recommend a visit to Bletchley for anyone interested, so many people overlooked and misrepresented in the movie. It also brushed over the fact that we had to be very careful how we used the information we got and not instantly saving a convoy at the first opportunity. We let people die to preserve the fact that we were reading everything they transmitted very hard choices to be made. Also I forgot his name but there was a language expert who taught himself Japanese in 3 weeks or so and helped crack the Japanese Enigma machine which had more wheels IIRC. There were some amazing people at Bletchley and Turing was just one of them and certainly not the most talented.

 

[cunning fergus]

I highly recommend a visit to Bletchley for anyone interested, so many people overlooked and misrepresented in the movie. It also brushed over the fact that we had to be very careful how we used the information we got and not instantly saving a convoy at the first opportunity. We let people die to preserve the fact that we were reading everything they transmitted very hard choices to be made. Also I forgot his name but there was a language expert who taught himself Japanese in 3 weeks or so and helped crack the Japanese Enigma machine which had more wheels IIRC. There were some amazing people at Bletchley and Turing was just one of them and certainly not the most talented.

Agreed, just finished Max Hastings The Secret War that provides an insight into all the main protagonists intelligence arrangements in WW2. Your point about the secrecy of ULTRA is well made, interestingly when the US were bought into the tent they took a different view. I think it was Nimitz or one of his senior staff who said that ULTRA needed to be treated like money, and it was only by taking risks with it that you got the greatest return. The British he said took the view it was safer keeping it in the vault of a bank!

An interesting insight into the different cultural values there were at play at the highest levels of GB/US relations.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

I highly recommend a visit to Bletchley for anyone interested, so many people overlooked and misrepresented in the movie. It also brushed over the fact that we had to be very careful how we used the information we got and not instantly saving a convoy at the first opportunity. We let people die to preserve the fact that we were reading everything they transmitted very hard choices to be made. Also I forgot his name but there was a language expert who taught himself Japanese in 3 weeks or so and helped crack the Japanese Enigma machine which had more wheels IIRC. There were some amazing people at Bletchley and Turing was just one of them and certainly not the most talented.

I've been at a lunch sitting next to a Bletchley Wren. She wore a specific badge which denoted it.
I've visited Bletchley myself.

 

[Return of the Rev]

nah, he was a massive racist

No that was Hitler wasn't it?

 

[ac gull]

Book that Boris Johnson wrote on Churchill three or four years ago is a good read too

 

[Hamilton]

Britain’s army post WW1 returned to its pre WW1 size, which meant GB remained a major global military power. GB still had the Empire and outside of its four “home” commands (made up of dozens of divisions) it also had military assets around the world. The RN was still the world’s biggest and like most powers its sizeable Air Force was changing to accommodate developments in air power.

That is not to deny the difficulties in budgets, but in the 20s and 30s the Govt was committed at that time to a rolling 10 year plan, an entirely reasonable assumption that GB would not fight a war in Europe for 10 years. Far from “no army whatsoever”.

As for aggression leading to an earlier invasion, what absolute rot. Hitler’s first and most important gamble was re-militarising the Rhineland, he had such little support for the operation amongst his Govt he had to effectively bribe his high command. In 1936 a mere 19 German battalions marched in and France and Britain had the opportunity to crush Hitler before he had established himself. By not doing a thing in response to this flagrant breach of the Versailles treaty for multiple reasons including rank appeasement, they helped establish Hitlers credibility. That was a fatal mistake.

You are so keen to deminish the military strength of GB you ignore the fact that Germany was even weaker, and it was far from an invincible force. The German army as determined by Versailles was 100k and with nothing in the way of heavy arms. The re-armament only came when Hitler understood the lack of will in both French and GB Govts. Appeasement by the British establishment was rife, PMs Baldwin and Chamberlain were front and centre of that policy.

Chamberlain continuously ignored the warnings and conduct of Germany under Hitler and by the time he changed tack it was too late, and why in the HoP in 1940 Leopold Emery delivered a devasting speech that incorporated Cromwell’s insult to the Long Parliament 300 years before........”in the name of God go”.

At best you can argue Chamberlain was well intentioned in his premiership to avoid war, but he couldn’t be more wrong, he was out of step with the public mood, ultimately out of step with his party, and subsequently Parliament. His (and Baldwin’s) nievety coupled with the French lack of will to fight lead to a longer and deeper war. That is how history should remember him.

Quite simply, you don’t know your history. I’m not going to debate with someone who is making things up.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk