Blitzkrieg
‘The man’s mad. I suppose these figments of the imagination are
telegraphed without consulting his military advisers.’ BEF Chief of Staff Pownall
on Churchill
When Germany
invaded Holland and Belgium on 10th May 1939 and put an end to the
‘Phoney War’ the French and British had more men on the ground and more (and
better quality) tanks. But this did not deter the Germans: they were more
militarily competent, efficient, and co-ordinated in their execution of modern
warfare and they proceeded to wipe the floor with the Allies. During the
ensuing debacle the great man himself crossed the channel to give orders,
prompting Chief of Staff Pownall to make the comment which heads this chapter.
Churchill seemed to think armies were like chess pieces that could be moved
here and there at a whim, disengaging from the enemy with impunity and
repositioning themselves in a more favourable position while the enemy
patiently waited their turn to move.
Fortunately General Gort ignored Churchill’s orders, otherwise British
casualties would have been higher and the evacuation from Dunkirk would have
been less successful. In the end, about 250,000 British and over 100,000 French
soldiers were rescued to fight another day. It had taken the German forces a
mere month to see off the Allies in what is known as the Battle of France. The
51st Highland Division, the 1st Armoured
Division was left behind, along with thousands of administrative and non
combatant staff. The Highlanders, commanded by Major General Victor Fortune,
were placed under French command and were later ordered to surrender. They
obeyed with great reluctance only after General Fortune was given written
orders to do so.
But Churchill had not yet grasped the magnitude of the Allied defeat. He once
again overruled his generals and decided to start another BEF in France under
the command of General Sir Alan Brooke. He ordered The 52nd Division, a lowland
Scottish Territorial Division, and 1 Canadian Division which was in reserve in
England, to embark for Cherbourg, sending Alan Brooke ahead to co-ordinate
operations. Great military strategist? It is small wonder that Churchill had
such a difficult time getting into Sandhurst – a latrine-cleaner in the Pioneer
Corps would have more military acumen than him.
When Sir Alan Brooke arrived in France he confirmed what he already suspected:
the French Army had collapsed and a second BEF was not an option. It is
astonishing to think that these were the times that gained Churchill the
reputation as a great man. His idiotic plan was scrapped and Brooke ordered all
British personnel remaining in France to make for the nearest unoccupied ports
where, in ‘Operation Ariel’, the remnants of 1st Armoured Division
along with thousands more British and allied troops were rescued by the Royal
Navy. It has to be said that the British Expeditionary Force was the junior
partner in the Allied side, the French being in charge of operations, but it
made little difference what forces Britain might have been able to muster, they
would still have been defeated: the German Army was at that time the best in
the world. The only senior British officer to come out of this debacle with any
credit was General Gort, the unsung hero of the Battle of France, who disobeyed
Churchill’s orders and plugged the gap between Belgium and the BEF, thus
enabling much of the British forces to reach Dunkirk and be evacuated.
Of the 120,000 French troops evacuated by the Royal Navy, all but 4,000
opted under international law to return to their defeated country. Only 1,500
sailors decided to stay and be part the Free French Navy. It is easy to
criticize those Frenchmen who opted for repatriation, but it must be remembered
that they had wives and children in occupied France to worry about, and it was
probably this rather than any lack of fighting spirit which influenced their
decision.
The sinking of the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kebir in July, 1940, was opposed by
all three admirals involved. They believed that negotiation could have won the
fleet over to the British side, but Churchill’s orders had to be obeyed and he
was not prepared to do anything other than hand out ultimatums. A ‘great
statesman’, as he was supposed be, would have done everything possible to
persuade the French Fleet to join up with the Royal Navy. But Winston Churchill
was out to demonstrate what a hard man he was, and so the British Navy
reluctantly sunk the French ships, killing 1,297 naval personnel. This was the
last tragic episode in the aftermath of the Battle of France.
Throwing babies into a fire
‘What is the difference between throwing 500 babies into a fire and
throwing fire from aeroplanes on 500 babies? There is none.’
Captain
Philip Mumford
In the years
leading up to WWII the Jews had been viciously persecuted not only in Nazi
Germany, but in Eastern Europe, particularly in Poland and Romania. It is to
the everlasting shame of Britain, America and the other so-called civilized
countries of the West that little was done to help the victims of this vile
victimization, but as if that wasn’t bad enough Churchill decided to go one better.
He rounded up all the Germans living in Britain, most of them being German Jews
who had fled from this persecution, and persecuted them again by throwing them
in prison. Some were deported to Canada, where they were again imprisoned and
others were imprisoned on the Isle of Man in the Mooragh detention camp. They
started a newspaper called the Mooragh Times in which to voice their
grievances but the authorities closed it down.
Meanwhile the Battle of France was quickly followed by the Battle of
Britain which was a conflict between fighter planes. While Germany’s army was
superior to Britain’s the opposite was true of their air forces. The Spitfire
and Hurricane were technically superior and more manoeuvrable than the
Messerschmitt 110 and, because they were fighting in home skies, could stay in
the air longer than the Messerschmitt 109. The British also had the advantage
of radar which meant they could not be taken by surprise. The Royal Air Force
won the Battle of Britain which was inevitably followed by the Blitz on Britain
and the bombing raids on Germany.
The front line was everywhere during WWII. A mother and child asleep at home
were just as likely to be killed by enemy action as a soldier in battle. The
Blitz ended in May 1941, not because Hitler wished it to, but because he wanted
to concentrate on his ‘Lebensraum’ (living space) plan, which meant clearing
the ‘Untermenschen’ (sub-humans) out of Russia to provide territory for the
expansion of his Aryan super-race. The Blitz killed 43,000 civilians and
wounded about 140,000, along with the obvious destruction of property involved.
During one raid on Coventry Churchill knew in advance when the raid would take
place, but refused to send fighters to intercept the Luftwaffe’s bombers, his
explanation being that he didn’t want to put the Germans wise to the fact that
Britain had cracked the Enigma Code. So he let the Luftwaffe rain death and
destruction on the citizens of Coventry when he had an opportunity to get
fighters in the air to hack them out of the sky. It is more likely that he
sacrificed the citizens of Coventry in the hope that it would lure America into
the war. Three months earlier he had expressed great irritation because the
Germans had not bombed Coventry, explaining to Charles De Gaulle: ‘You see, the
bombing of Oxford, Coventry and Canterbury will cause such a wave of
indignation that the United States will come into the war!’
But the German civilians suffered much worse, British and American bombing raids
continuing with ever increasing intensity throughout the war. Almost as many
civilians perished (40,000) in a single raid on Hamburg as were killed in
Britain throughout the Blitz, and their deaths were horrific: firestorms
generated temperatures of 1,000 degrees Centigrade, sucking air into the flames
at 150 mph, and of course sucking men, women and children into the flames as
well; it was like being hurled alive into a huge crematorium. Throwing babies
on to the fire or throwing fire onto the babies – the Second World War brought
forth some of the worst examples of man’s inhumanity to man.
North Africa
Winston did
not like General Wavell. For one thing, the Commander-in-Chief Middle East was
obviously several rungs higher up the ladder of intelligence than his greatly
overrated Prime Minister; for another, he had the guts to say ‘No’ to the great
man, and that was unforgivable.
When the Italian forces drove the British forces out of British Somaliland in
1940 Churchill demanded that the officer in command there, Lt. General Alfred
Godwin-Austin, be sacked immediately for incompetence (the pot calling the
kettle black). Wavell refused, explaining to the angry Churchill that a general
who could conduct an orderly retreat while outnumbered 5 to 1, sustaining only
250 casualties while inflicting 2,000 on the enemy, was in fact highly
competent.
Shortly afterwards Wavell demonstrated that he himself was a highly competent
general by his plan ‘Operation Compass’, executed on the ground by General
Richard O’Connor. The Italians, who had occupied Libya, were driven Hundreds of
miles west along the North African coast all the way to Tripoli by an army half
the size, but much better organized. 110,000 prisoners were taken, including a
couple of dozen generals and one admiral, along with hundreds of tanks and
guns. Simultaneously the Italians in East Africa were defeated and Somaliland,
Eritrea and Abyssinia were freed from Italian occupation. It was a feat of
planning and operation worthy of the highest praise, but all Churchill could do
was whinge and whine about the high ratio of service/logistic personnel to
actual combatants. He was too thick too understand that in modern warfare the
infantry, artillerymen and tank crews could only operate efficiently if they
were adequately supplied with transport, food, ammunition, communications and
all the other requisites of a well-oiled military machine; it was the lack of
this that had contributed greatly to the collapse of Mussolini’s army.
Things were looking bad for Hitler’s ally and although he was not interested in
N. Africa he reinforced the Italians with what was to become known as the
Afrika Korps, the first units of which arrived in February, 1941. The commander
of this Korps was Erwin Rommel, the legendary ‘Desert Fox’. Although he was
officially under the overall command of General Batico, Commander-in-Chief of
Axis forces in North Africa, Rommel did his own thing.
Almost all of XIII Corps, which had carried out Operation Compass, was shipped
off for urgent duties elsewhere and Wavell was left with inexperienced
replacements and a large proportion of his tanks, guns and transport equipment
in need of repair. The British were aware of the German reinforcements but all
of the generals, including Wavell, were sure that Rommel would not be ready to
begin active operations before May or June, which would allow plenty of time
for the British and Commonwealth forces to reorganize themselves. Likewise
Berlin was not interested in Rommel’s North Africa campaign and more or less
told him to go away and not bother them – to take limited actions with a view
to taking Tobruk in the autumn. Both his enemies and his own side greatly
underestimated Erwin Rommel.
He was not a man to waste time. Rommel returned to Africa on March 24th,
having been given the cold shoulder by Berlin, and went into action the next
day. He attacked and took El Aghelia, then a week later took Mersa el Brega,
then on April 2nd he was in Agadabia. In just 10 days the British had been
driven back 50 miles. The following evening he took the port of Benghazi.
Rommel’s success continued, much to the annoyance of Berlin, where he was only
expected to ‘go through the motions’ of helping the Italians. Nor did it please
the British, who were thrown into headlong retreat. Wavell counter-attacked on
15th May, regaining some ground, but was driven back again two days
later. By June the British had been driven back to the border of Egypt, but
this was not through any shortcomings on Wavell’s part. He was also dealing
with problems in Greece, Crete, Syria and Iraq while the resources at his
disposal were totally inadequate.
Wavell wanted, correctly, to build up superiority in tanks and air forces and to
train troops in co-operating with tanks in desert warfare, which would have
taken about three months, before taking on Rommel. But Churchill was adamant
that an attack must be made immediately. Reluctantly Wavell launched ‘Operation
Battleaxe’. Battleaxe inevitably failed and Wavell, a very competent, dedicated
and highly respected officer, was replaced, being blamed for yet another
failure that was due entirely to Churchill’s irresponsible demand for premature
action.
Auchinleck
Any fool can learn from his mistakes, but Churchill
was not just any fool – he was an exceptional one! He could not grasp the
basics of modern warfare; not only could he not understand that every soldier,
sailor and airman fighting on the front line needs to be backed up by adequate
logistics, he also failed to realise that they had to be trained and fully
briefed before any large scale operation. Throw soldiers at an important
military objective without thorough preparation and you throw their lives away
to no avail. But then, what did he care about soldiers’ lives?
And so this dangerous dilettante continued to make the same mistakes. The next
general to fall victim to Churchill’s folly was General Sir Claude Auchinleck,
who took over as Commander-in-Chief Middle East on 4th July 1941. As
Germany had invaded Russia only twelve days earlier it was obvious that all its
military resources would be concentrated on the Eastern Front, thus allowing
the British ample time to build up the Eighth Army and train officers and men
for combined operations in Desert warfare. This was Auchinleck’s view and
everyone concerned agreed with him, everyone except Churchill. Churchill
overruled his Chiefs of Staff and ordered Auchinleck to launch an offensive
against Rommel as soon as possible. This was to be called Operation Crusader.
Another focus of Churchill’s meddling in North Africa
was Air Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, Air Officer Commander-in-Chief Middle East.
Churchill decided, in his ignorance, that the RAF personnel were too numerous
and cut the number destined for Egypt. This led to a quarrel with Tedder, whom
he would have sacked but for the fact that if he had done so his Chief of Air
Staff, Sir Charles Portal, would have resigned.
Operation Crusader was a partial success;
Rommel’s forces, outnumbered and with no renewable supplies of men, fuel and
equipment, were forced to retreat and Tobruk was recaptured. This did not
satisfy Churchill, he was expecting much better. But at least the picture had
improved from the British point of view, or so they thought. They were in for a
shock. In January 1942 Rommel received some much needed tanks and armoured
cars, along with a large supply of fuel; he wasted no time in going back into
action. His Panzer Army went into attack on January 21st and four
days later had advanced seventy miles, crushing 1st Armoured
Division and capturing ninety-six tanks and numerous guns and other vehicles.
By 4th February he had retaken the important port of Benghazi. The
complacent British and Commonwealth forces were thrown into panic and
confusion.
There was a three month respite before Rommel made another, somewhat
inconclusive attack on 26th May. The British counter-attacked on 5th
June, but were defeated with the loss of about 200 tanks. Rommel attacked
again, on 11th June and the next day gave the British an utter
pasting; they lost 260 tanks. The Germans went on to capture Tobruk and drive
the British back into Egypt. Rommel was now confronting the Eighth Army at
Mersah Mutrah, 170 mile into Egypt. Auchinleck took personal command; he knew
how dangerous the situation now was. If Rommel destroyed the Eighth Army he
would control the Middle East and the Persian oilfields, and that could lose
Britain the war. The imminent Battle of Mersah Mutrah could not be a last
stand; the Eighth Army could not be destroyed in one of Churchill’s ‘fight to
the last man’ scenarios. If the British could not achieve victory at Mersah
Mutrah then it was vital that they make an orderly retreat and reconsolidate
their forces.
Rommel’s offence continued and the British forces were driven back to El
Alamein, where the defensive line prepared by Auchinleck held fast. This
remarkable performance by Rommel, driving the British and Commonwealth forces
into a 1,000 mile retreat, earned him promotion to Field Marshal. It earned
Auchinlek the sack. Nevertheless, Auchinleck had fought well at the first
battle of El Alamein, choosing a position that, if defended by adequate troops,
armour and artillery, would be extremely difficult to overrun. Using his troops
and artillery to the best possible advantage, and armed with vital information
from British Intelligence about Rommel’s movements, Auchinleck repelled the
Germans and halted their spectacular run of victories. But it was now Rommel
who was in trouble; he had outreached himself and was now at the end of a very
long supply line, running out of fuel, and with little hope of receiving any
more help from Berlin.
Auchinleck and his Chief of Staff, Major General Dorman-Smith drew up plans for
an offensive from El Alamein which were sent to London, and later used to great
effect at the second battle of El Alamein, and at Alam Halfa. Meanwhile,
Churchill arrived in Egypt on August 3rd and replaced Auchinleck
with General Sir Harold Alexander as new Commander-in-Chief Middle East and
Montgomery took over as Commander of the Eighth Army.
The main reason why Auchinleck was sacked was because he said he could not
start an offensive before September; Churchill wanted action much sooner. But
he was wrong if he thought he could hustle Alexander or Montgomery into
premature action. Montgomery adamantly refused to budge until he was fully
reinforced and re-supplied. His offensive did not begin until the night of
October 23rd, but, although he didn’t bother to publicize the fact,
it was not his plan of attack; it was Auchinleck’s. Of course Rommel was
defeated, it could hardly be otherwise. Not only was he outnumbered in ever
department, but many of his troops were sick, his ammunition and fuel were in
short supply and Montgomery had the benefit of massive air superiority. As if
this wasn’t enough, thanks to the breaking of the Enigma code Montgomery knew
Rommel’s plans and was informed of all communications between Rommel, his
officers, and Berlin. With all these advantages Field Marshal Mickey Mouse
could have beaten Rommel.
El Alamein was trumpeted as a great victory but, and this is no
disrespect to the brave officers and men who fought and died there, it was only
a minor battle in the great WWII scheme of things; compared with Kursk it was
hardly even a skirmish. But it gained Montgomery a knighthood while Auchinleck
wasn’t even given credit for the fact that it was his battle plan. ‘Monty’ did
not publicize the fact that he had used Auchinleck’s battle plans because, like
Churchill, he was a vain and arrogant glory-seeker who stabbed his fellow
officers in the back and chose to work with officers who would not outshine
him. Furthermore, he also resembled Churchill inasmuch as that he was not
nearly as good a soldier as he thought he was.
Overlord: The invasion of Normandy
Montgomery
pursued Rommel at a snail’s pace and it was not until May 1942 that the North
Africa Campaign finally came to an end. But that was not all that was about to
end; Winston Churchill’s roll on centre stage in the drama of World War Two was
all but over. America had now entered the war, and Uncle Sam would take no lip
from Churchill or anyone else.
Another man who would not allow the Prime Minister to bully him was Admiral Sir
Andrew Cunningham, so it is not surprising that, in 1943, when the post of
First Sea Lord had to be filled Churchill tried to block Cunningham, the
natural successor to the recently deceased incumbent, from the job. He offered
the job to Admiral Bruce Fraser, but neither Fraser nor any other Admiral would
play into his hands by accepting, so Cunningham got the job. Cunningham would
not allow Churchill to squander men and ships on any hair-brained schemes.
While tough fighting was going on in Sicily and Italy plans were being made for
‘Overlord’ – the invasion of Normandy. Churchill wanted Sir Alan Brooke to be
Supreme Allied Commander but the Americans, not unreasonably, decided that as
ultimately they would be supplying most of the men and materiel an American,
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, would fill that post. Montgomery got the job of
ground forces commander. D –Day was set for June 1944 and the allies had to work
like Trojans to build landing craft, train men and get together all the
weapons, aircraft and equipment necessary for what would be the biggest
combined allied operation of the war; it was becoming increasingly obvious that
if the Allies did not establish themselves on the continent soon the
unstoppable Russian army would sweep Hitler’s hordes all the way into the
English Channel.
Overlord began on the night of June 5th-6th 1941.
Montgomery’s main task was to reach certain objectives and engage German
armoured divisions and destroy them while the Americans broke out from their
positions. He held press conferences boasting that his master plan was
going well, which was hardly the case: the Germans lost 75 tanks, the British
353. He made claims that were proved to be false then tried to cover them up
and it is only the fact that he had been hyped-up as a hero by the British that
saved him from the sack: it would have been too much of an embarrassment. But
the writing was on the wall for the Germans. They fought bravely on two fronts
against overwhelming odds, but by 5th May 1945 Hitler was dead and
the war in Europe was over.
Conclusion
All the
stories related here about Winston Churchill are straightforward facts, not in
any way distorted or exaggerated. So why, despite all the evidence to the
contrary, has he acquired the reputation as a great military/naval strategist
and a great statesman; the man who won the war, the saviour of his country,
when he was no such thing?
Any Prime Minister who serves his term during wartime gets the credit if the
country is victorious, but Churchill had more than that going for him. He had
plenty of influential friends in high places who praised him because he was
‘one of their own’. He was also his own public relations agent; he wrote his History
of the Second World War, which was of course entirely his own version of
events, and he was held in such reverence by the establishment that any
criticism of him was strangled at birth. But things are changing at last. Three
recent publications: Blood, Sweat and Arrogance, by Gordon Corrigan, Human
Smoke, by Nicholson Baker, and Lloyd George and Churchill, by
Richard Toye, have given much more honest appraisals of his character.
Churchill’s Britain was the Britain of dukes and earls, of rich and powerful
businessmen and influential press barons. For the rest of us he had nothing but
contempt. The working class riff-raff were there for one purpose – to serve him
and his kind by toiling in factory and farm to keep the rich in luxury, and to
die in the field of battle to defend the great British Empire. For that reason
they had to be fed and housed to a degree that would serve that purpose, but if
they ever showed dissent he was ready and willing to bring out the tanks and
the military to grind them into submission. He loved war, despite all the human
suffering it caused. His interference and vindictiveness during the conduct of
the war caused the deaths of thousands of British and Allied servicemen and the
failure of several military and naval operations. It cost us several ships and
could have lost us the war. He was at best an incompetent, arrogant, elitist,
self-obsessed egomaniac constantly seeking self glorification.
WWII was won, at horrendous cost to themselves, by the Russians on the Eastern
Front; that was where the cruel, hard gaze of Hitler’s fascism was focussed,
and that is where at least three quarters of the Nazi forces were destroyed.
Even if the Allies had never invaded Normandy, Hitler would still have been
defeated; when he took the insane step of invading Russia he sealed his own
fate.
Nor was it Churchill who won the war on the Western Front. It was the thousands
of working-class American, Commonwealth and British servicemen who fought and
died to rid the world of Hitler’s unspeakably evil regime who gave us victory
in the West, and not the cigar-smoking, brandy-swilling boastful little man in
the bowler hat.
