Chamberlain or Churchill

[Ken Estes]

Many Tanks! 'Iron Hulls Iron Hearts' by Ian W. Walker is only 20 bucks at Amazon. Ken

[Guest Sargent]

Originally posted by JohnB:

 

Originally posted by Sargent:

Excuse me, WHAT Great Soldier did I attack?

 

Somehow Brooke's name does not appear on ANY of the multitudinous "Great Commander's" lists that appear from time to time.

 

Errr.. notice I said great soldier, not great commander However if General Brookes brilliant performance in command of II Corps of the BEF is an indicator there is no doubt he would have gone on to be known as a great commander as well. He was an expert at running away from Germans, then (not that there was a lot of choice, given the situation - in no way do I consider the retreat Brooke's fault).

FWIW in the Great War Alan Brooke was six times mentioned-in-dispatches, as brigade Major Royal Artillery in the elite 18th Division his fire plan ensured the divsion captured its 1st July 1916 objectives, was credited with creating the first 'creeping barrage', as Staff Officer Royal Artillery attached to the Canadian Corps helped design the successful plan to take Vimy Ridge and by 1918 was the chief artillery officer of 1st British Army, at the age of 35. If he was in the 18th then he worked for Ivor Maxse. Pity he apparently did not recall Maxse's lessons about training troops.

 

quote:

 

Your point here is not an "attack on a Great Soldier," it is my "attack" (not hardly, you ain't seen what I do when I really attack) on a British soldier. In your eyes anyone British can do no wrong.

 

Not at all, feel free to have a pop at the likes of Auchinleck, Percival & Co.

I have taken on Percival. Looking at his photos, I am reminded of a phrase from an English humor book I read many years ago - "Utterly wet and a weed."

 

I have sort of a soft spot for the Auk, I think his problem was that he was Indian Army and didn't know the Brits under him all that well. Besides, he wasn't ruthless enough.

 

The team I would have liked to see was Wavell as ME CO and Auk as 8th Army.

 

Really, no army had more than a couple of great generals. IMHO the best ones the Brits had were Wavell, Slim, and Keyes (very junior but an outstanding performance (the only one) in Malaya).

[Guest Sargent]

Originally posted by BillB:

I'm sorry, Sargent, but in light of this I am curious to know on exactly what you base it. Largely because it seems widely at variance with my understanding of Brooke and his work under Churchill after Dunkirk.

 

all the best

 

BillB

 

 

 

I am in no way a Brooke expert (obviously), but to my mind the man stands condemned out of his own mouth with his comments about his boss. If he hated Churchill so much, why did he go on working for him?

 

Being an advocate of the France in '43 plan, I don't particularly like Brooke's Mediterranean schemes - IMHO, he lied at Casablanca in efforts to derail the plan that had been agreed upon, and I really can't see any reason except that he was afraid to face Germans on the Continent. He certainly did his damnedest to sidetrack British troops to places like Greece which accomplished very little except keeping them away from Germans.

 

Finally, his feet dragging about a British Far Eastern commitment and his politicking with the other chiefs of staff to get them to threaten mass resignation to bully Churchill is hardly the act of a loyal subordinate.

 

JohnB made a point about Brooke's "reining in" WSC about going to Norway. Granted invading Norway wasn't too great an idea (although it could have been very advantageous if it had been pulled off), but did Brooke ever offer any alternatives to Churchill's schemes? It seems to me that Churchill was at least trying to aggressively prosecute the war, while I haven't seen anything Brooke came up with.

 

Enlighten me if Brooke did contribute, please.

[BillB]

Originally posted by Sargent:

I am in no way a Brooke expert (obviously), but to my mind the man stands condemned out of his own mouth with his comments about his boss. If he hated Churchill so much, why did he go on working for him?

 

Well actually, neither am I. I assumed that you knew more from comments like those you make above, for example. What comments of Brooke's do you mean, and where did you find out about them? I am not being sarky, I am genuinely curious because my take on Brooke was that he was a competent and operationally minded soldier. JohnB has already mentioned his exemplary record in WW1. He went up against the Army hierarchy in the mid-1930s in an attempt to shake up infantry training and get it back to the standard it reached during WW1 via the divisional battle schools, and while he failed then he made sure his reforms went through after he became CIGSs in WW2. From what I can gather he also picked up on the flaws in the French Army in 1939-40, and was proved right when push came to shove. More on this below.

 

Being an advocate of the France in '43 plan, I don't particularly like Brooke's Mediterranean schemes - IMHO, he lied at Casablanca in efforts to derail the plan that had been agreed upon, and I really can't see any reason except that he was afraid to face Germans on the Continent. He certainly did his damnedest to sidetrack British troops to places like Greece which accomplished very little except keeping them away from Germans.

 

I have to say, mate, I am a bit surprised and a little disappointed to see someone with your depth of knowledge coming out with stuff like "afraid to face the Germans" and "keeping them away from the Germans". They smack of the same kind of thing you are always having hissy fits about others saying regarding the US Army at Kasserine, in my opinion, and do you no credit.

 

That aside, I think we had better agree to differ regarding the 1943 invasion, which I think was not feasible and would have been a disaster. For a force afraid to face the Germans the British and Commonwealth armies spent an awful lot of time butting heads with them. As for the bit about Greece, what troops would they have been? The ones sent there in 1941 had no bearing on the 1943 invasion as they went there and were ejected (by the Germans, incidentally) before the US even came into the war, and the numbers sent there in 1944 were minimal.

 

Finally, his feet dragging about a British Far Eastern commitment and his politicking with the other chiefs of staff to get them to threaten mass resignation to bully Churchill is hardly the act of a loyal subordinate.

 

Again, where does all this come from? And I have to say I find the idea of Churchill being bullied by anyone a bit hard to believe, especially given the number of senior officers who he had removed for not complying with his demands.

 

JohnB made a point about Brooke's "reining in" WSC about going to Norway. Granted invading Norway wasn't too great an idea (although it could have been very advantageous if it had been pulled off), but did Brooke ever offer any alternatives to Churchill's schemes? It seems to me that Churchill was at least trying to aggressively prosecute the war, while I haven't seen anything Brooke came up with.

Enlighten me if Brooke did contribute, please.

 

I dunno anything about Norway, but for a start he was instrumental in pushing through Churchill's demand for an airborne force in the way he (Churchill) envisaged it. Rather strange for someone who hated Churchill, I should have thought. This involved Brooke fighting the Air Ministry and his own colleagues at the War Office, both of whom were opposed in differing ways. Indeed, without Brooke and Dill there is good chance that British airborne Forces would have been stillborn at worst and remained a small-scale raiding outfit at best.

 

As for the bit about Brooke offering alternative schemes, why should he? That was not his job as CIGS or before, was it? His job was to do what I have always assumed he did do, which was to advise his political master on what was and was not militarily feasible. I am a big fan of Churchill, but without a lot of outside doses of common sense his mercurial temperament would have made wreaked havoc with running the war.

 

As I understand it, Brook's role was very similar to that played by Robertson in WW1, insofar as both men had to run interference on their political masters in order to allow the military to do their jobs with a minimum of disruption. I am also a bit sceptical about the antipathy between Brook and Churchill being anywhere near as bad as you suggest. Churchill was no fool, and he was also a gifted political operator and ruthless with it. Consequently I cannot see him missing the level of backstabbing you claim, nor tolerating it either. Neither can I see him nominating Brooke for the Supreme Allied Commander slot in those circumstances.

 

all the best

 

BillB

[Guest Sargent]

Originally posted by Stuart Galbraith:

Can someone explain to me why it was such a good idea to invade France in 1943, with the Lufwaffe unbroken, the Uboat fleet undefeated, and the German army still unbowed before Kursk? I mean, im all for strokes of derring do, but frankly that smacks more of wholesale bloody murder. Has anyone actually done a tonnage study of the amount of shipping needed to put those divisions ashore on DDay? I seem to recall there alterations to the plan due to not enough LSTs after the slapton sand disaster, and yet supposedly there was enough shipping a year earlier?

 

Invading in 1943 against the defences that existed in 1944 would have been a disaster, no doubt about it. The deal was, the defences did not exist in summer 1943. The Atlantic Wall work started sometime in October 43 IIRC. [To be honest, I'm running on memory here, I feel like shit and have trouble staying upright let alone digging out references, so bear with me if I can't cite chapter and verse.] The Germans had no operational mobile divisions in the West aside from Italy. There were a bunch of units with divisional designations that were more like company strength being rebuilt. There really wasn't the resistance in 1943 that there would have been in 1944. Also, the "Big Cat Edge" the Germans had in 44 wasn't so big as in 43. The PzIII was still a mainstay, and the 200 Panthers that made Kursk were all there were. The Germans formed a whole lot of new divisions between Spring 43 and Spring 44.

 

The U-Boat fleet was defeated in May of 43, although that wasn't as apparent at the time as it is now. The U-boats were a threat in Mid-Atlantic where there was no air cover. But just like short-range fighters there were all sorts of ASW a/c and ships in the UK that would have liked nothing better than for the U-boats to come into the nice narrow, shallow, mined Channel to try to get at the invasion. Once again, bait. Also planes in Normandy could make life very difficult for the U-boat bases in France.

 

As for shipping, the 1943 invasion of Sicily - HUSKY - was bigger in terms of lift than OVERLORD. The shipping was there, it was in the Med. The divisions were there too - in the Med. Aside from the three airborne divisions of OVERLORD (which didn't exist yet) there was lift for seven divisions in the first wave.

 

As for the Luftwaffe not being "broken," there were literally thousands of short-range fighters in the UK that did not have the range to escort B-17s but which could (and did) maintain air supremacy over the French coast. The Germans pulled back and just ignored the 'RODEOS' (fighter sweeps) but they would have had to come out to play if there had been an invasion. Look on the beachhead as bait to get the LW where they can be gotten at.

 

Note that I do not say the war would be over 50 weeks after a 1943 invasion as it was after OVERLORD. I see a lodgement being made and the Germans trying to push it out while the Allies build up.

[Guest Sargent]

Re BillB:

 

My computer is dying, so I couldn't do the 'quote' thing. To answer some of your questions/objections, I'll try to hit them.

 

 

I get my impression that Brooke hated Churchill from Brooke's own writings, especially portions of his diary I have seen. Now, I will grant you that a diary is a place you go to vent, but Brooke's comments strike me as truly vicious. If I felt that way about a boss, I'd have it out with him or quit and go to higher authority.

 

The "Staff Revolt" is from Wilmott's Grave of a Dozen Schemes, which is about British Far Eastern policy. Very sad reading.

 

I don't know where you get the Brooke trying to fix training thing, but in any case he didn't. I have a little tome called To Change an Army and the author doesn't think much of Brooke's efforts. Of course he sees his own guy as the thwarted hero, so there might be a bit of bias there.

 

The "afraid to face Germans on the Continent" I have picked up from several sources dealing with planning, especially the Casablanca conference. Brooke pulled assertions out of his hat there and scuppered the plan that had been agreed by the CCS.

 

As for the men sent to Greece, I was talking of 1944-45, not the 41 fiasco - that wasn't Brooke's AFAIK. I have a recollection of three divisions in the Aegean/Greece, but I'm not feeling well enough to look it up. In fact I'm so fuzzy I shouldn't be doing this, but if I wait until it all gets better, you'll never get an answer.

 

My wording may be [Hell, is] harsh, but I am not saying anything derogatory about the British Army, I am venting spleen at Brooke. The troops that went to Greece were doubtless fine soldiers, and it wasn't their fault they got sent there. I have "hissies" about Kasserine because the British historical slant was, IMHO, mistaken and the mistake started with Alexander. Now if somebody leapt all over Fredendall, I would hold their coat and cheer from the sidelines. Because I don't like Brooke doesn't mean that I am anti-British or attacking the British Army, it means I am anti-Brooke.

 

As for the 1943 trip to France, I explained my views in the previous post answering Stuart.

 

Okay, if Brooke's job wasn't to make plans to win the war, what WAS his job? From what I gather he saw his job description as obstructionism.

 

Gotta go before I fall over. Later.

[Ken Estes]

Anyone who thinks they can take offense at diaries can look at GS Patton Jr., and his references to Ike {aka 'Devine Destiny'] Bradley, Beetle Smith, et. al., not just having the Limeys for lunch! To their faces and in correspondence, though, he was the model subordinate, almost obsequious!

 

As for Normandy. Ike made clear his six preconditions for landing in France in his postwar book, among the ones not accomplished in 1943: defeat of the U-boat, defeat of the Luftwaffe, sufficient landing craft/ships.

 

[Edited by Ken Estes (31 Oct 2004).]

[Guest Sargent]

Originally posted by Ken Estes:

Anyone who thinks they can take offense at diaries can look at GS Patton Jr., and his references to Ike {aka 'Devine Destiny'] Bradley, Beetle Smith, et. al., not just having the Limeys for lunch! To their faces and in correspondence, though, he was the model subordinate, almost obsequious!

 

As for Normandy. Ike made clear his six preconditions for landing in France in his postwar book, among the ones not accomplished in 1943: defeat of the U-boat, defeat of the Luftwaffe, sufficient landing craft/ships.

 

I sort of agree on the diary thing, as I mentioned, they're a place to vent.

 

re Normandy, the U-boat was defeated in 1943, although it wasn't obvious at the time, and as I said an invasion would draw them in to waters where the ASW stuff without range to go to the mid-Atlantic can get at them.

 

The problem with the Luftwaffe was getting at it. The Germans ignored all the short-range fighter sweeps and chewed up unescorted long-range bombers in 1943. But they would have had to come to the party if we gave an invasion. And invasion doesn't mean we stop the SBC.

 

I believe I mentioned that there was more amphibious lift used in HUSKY, so why weren't there enough ships? It should also be noted that neither the German anti-invasion defenses nor their mobile reserves in France were anywhere near as formidable in 1943 as they became by June 1944.

[Ken Estes]

Originally posted by Sargent:

I sort of agree on the diary thing, as I mentioned, they're a place to vent.

 

re Normandy, the U-boat was defeated in 1943, although it wasn't obvious at the time, and as I said an invasion would draw them in to waters where the ASW stuff without range to go to the mid-Atlantic can get at them.

 

The problem with the Luftwaffe was getting at it. The Germans ignored all the short-range fighter sweeps and chewed up unescorted long-range bombers in 1943. But they would have had to come to the party if we gave an invasion. And invasion doesn't mean we stop the SBC.

 

I believe I mentioned that there was more amphibious lift used in HUSKY, so why weren't there enough ships? It should also be noted that neither the German anti-invasion defenses nor their mobile reserves in France were anywhere near as formidable in 1943 as they became by June 1944.

 

 

Don't forget cause and effect. The LW and Uboats had to be defeated, SO that the essential supplies and reinforcements to the UK could be guaranteed. Likewise, waiting for D-day to decide the fate of the LW was not what the man had in mind.

 

As far as shipping for Normandy, remmeber that it was a crossing operation, not a ship-to-shore movement, so the transport numbers were dwarfed by the numbers of L type ships and craft. Husky [and I don´t have numbers at hand] did not have the craft,a nd they were not in hand in 1943 to permit a simultaneous 5-division landing, so a more perilous 3 division landing was I think the plan. Lose one [Omaha], the Pz counter another, then what?

 

I forget the other three of Ike's requisites from Crusade in Europe, but the dropping of all the bridges over the Seine and further isolation of the battlefield might not have been in the cards. 9th TAF had not yet been formed, I think.

 

There is not a lot of support for a 1943 landing on the Atlantic Coast. It certainly was much easier to do Italy in Sept43 and advance to Rome by mid-44. Not doing that, but taking a risk in Brittany does not make sense. In reality, there were very few Allied strategic errors in WWII in Europe. But there were a lot of schemes not tried, and many of these could have ruined the previous statement.

 

You rightly point out that nobody knows that the UBoat and LW were on the run by mid-1943, and this surely poses a problem for planning and executing major strategic operations. It's not like in the Pacific, where one dealt with isolated island garrisons and doing one and not another were simple choices.

 

 

[Edited by Ken Estes (31 Oct 2004).]

[Guest Sargent]

Originally posted by Ken Estes:

 

Don't forget cause and effect. The LW and Uboats had to be defeated, SO that the essential supplies and reinforcements to the UK could be guaranteed. Likewise, waiting for D-day to decide the fate of the LW was not what the man had in mind.

You can't get at them if you can't get them out of hiding. The long-range fighters that eventually beat the LW weren't around in 1943, but there were lots of short-range fighters to maintain air supremacy over Western France.

 

As far as shipping for Normandy, remmeber that it was a crossing operation, not a ship-to-shore movement, so the transport numbers were dwarfed by the numbers of L type ships and craft. Husky [and I don´t have numbers at hand] did not have the craft,a nd they were not in hand in 1943 to permit a simultaneous 5-division landing, so a more perilous 3 division landing was I think the plan. Lose one [Omaha], the Pz counter another, then what?

I don't think Omaha was even in the original three-division plan. WHAT "Panzer counter another?" Rich and I went over this some time ago, I think there were ten StuGIIIs operational in France in summer '43. The rest was French tanks in training units. If the Germans had pulled a counter-attack force out of the hat, it could only come from Russia, and the Sovs would have loved that.

On the question of assault craft: yes, I know OVERLORD was done largely in small LCs. But there were all those assault craft on transports that went ashore in Sicily. There was nothing stopping the use of transports off Normandy as they were used off Sicily. Just because they did something in 1944 doesn't mean that there isn't another way to do it in 1943. If they could get seven divisions ashore in Sicily, why would five in Normandy be impossible?

 

FTM, a lot of stuff went to the PTO when King and Marshall took the toys to their own sandbox after WSC and Brookie scuppered the 1943 landing at Casablanca. The "Master Plan" was to put the Pacific on hold while the quickest way to get to Germany was done. When the quickest way wasn't done any more, the PTO started to get some new toys. I'll bet all the landing craft that did the hops up the Solomons chain would have been available for a 1943 French op.

 

I forget the other three of Ike's requisites from Crusade in Europe, Well, shame on you! but the dropping of all the bridges over the Seine and further isolation of the battlefield might not have been in the cards. 9th TAF had not yet been formed, I think. Not as such, no - there was no 9th TAF HQ. But the assets were available especially if the stuff in the MTO comes back to Blighty.

 

Once again, what was necessary for success in 1944 wasn't what was necessary in 1943. There were fewer Germans, fewer mobile troops, and no Atlantic Wall.

 

There is not a lot of support for a 1943 landing on the Atlantic Coast. It certainly was much easier to do Italy in Sept43 and advance to Rome by mid-44. Not doing that, but taking a risk in Brittany does not make sense. Who said anything about Brittany? It might be possible to take Brittany before winter after a summer '43 landing in Normandy, but I wasn't counting on it. In reality, there were very few Allied strategic errors in WWII in Europe. But there were a lot of schemes not tried, and many of these could have ruined the previous statement. And many could have helped. That nice easy route in the MTO tied down more Allied resources than Axis ones, and left OVERLORD to go in on 6 Jun 44 with five green assault divisions and one vet. The delay enabled the Germans to form dozens of new divisions that were not available in 1943 after the disasters in Stalingrad and Tunisia. The delay allowed the Atlantic Wall to be built. It wasn't all that much in 1944, but the beaches were pretty bare in 1943. And Italy didn't even tie up many Germans, the Germans had to garrison the country (and Balkan areas previously garrisonned by Italians) anyway.

 

You rightly point out that nobody knows that the UBoat and LW were on the run by mid-1943 Not precisely. I said that hindsight has given us May 1943 as the time the U-Boats lost it, but that the actual date and 'judgement of history' weren't known then. However the indications were that we were winning., and this surely poses a problem for planning and executing major strategic operations. The 1943 invasion had been planned for years. It was the reversal at Casablanca that threw the spanner in the works. The US contigent went to Casablanca prepared to talk about the execution of the agreed plan, and got met with the Brits changing the whole thrust of the war. It's not like in the Pacific, where one dealt with isolated island garrisons and doing one and not another were simple choices.

My point is that even if they weren't on the run, a 1943 landing would have put them there. A lodgement in Normandy would be an upscaled Guadalcanal - something that the enemy has to react to. He sends U-boats they are in water where they are vulnerable, not in mid-Atlantic. He sends air, they have to come within range of all those fighter sweeps from the UK that they were ignoring while they shot at B-17s. He sends ground forces, it's US waiting in good defensive terrain, not him.

 

 

Speaking of crazy Churchill plans, I've been thinking about Norway since JohnB mentioned it, and I think Winston might have been crazy like a fox. I haven't really looked to see if it could have been done, but if the Allies get a hold in Norway, maybe the northern half, there goes Germany's iron ore from Sweden (at least in the winter), the U-boats trying to get to the North Atlantic are in a bind, and the North Cape Lend-Lease route to the USSR isn't a deathtrap. Again, I haven't really looked to see if it was possible, but if it could have been done it would have been worthwhile.

[Yama]

Originally posted by swerve:

Define "immensely popular". The Nazis peak vote was 37%. With that, they started showing how they'd behave if they actually controlled the country, & in Germanys last free election their vote declined to 33%. The final election (with Hitler as Chancellor) was a farce, with several parties banned from taking part, the apparatus of the state turned over to getting out the vote for the Nazis, immense voter intimidation & as much fraud as they could manage. With all that, they got 44%. In  a free election they'd have been trounced. Hitler launched a constitutional coup on the back of a large minority vote. If the democratic parties had realised how dangerous he was & stopped fighting each other, he wouldn't have stood a chance.

 

In a multi-party political system, 37% of the vote is an enormous landslide victory. In Finland, biggest political parties almost never get more than 25% of the vote and usually less than that.

[Ken Estes]

Whether welcome or not, I am finally able to post the relevant reference indicating what more recent writers have said about the problem of 1937 and 1940 PMs, appeasement, military readiness, etc. [was in Europe for the month, not in touch with the books] --

 

 

Andrew Gordon, British Seapower and Procurement Between the Wars: A Reappraisal of rearmament (Annapolis, 1988), quote:

 

 

P165. British policy between 1933 and mid-1939 executed a complete, and from some points of view embarrassing, ‘U turn’. It was all the more remarkable for the continuity of government and it would have been extremely difficult to expedite without reversing the ebb-tide of pacifist feeling at home and robbing appeasement of credibility abroad. It is all too easy to forget, with the selective memory of hindsight, that, as Churchill said in August 1938, war was ‘certainly not inevitable.’

 

The compatibility of diplomatic, economic, fiscal and procurement policies is striking, as is the completeness and soundness of the whole package. It was an extremely creditable – even almost brilliant – attempt to square the tightening circle of Britain’s strategic predicament. Few historians have spared the time of day for appeasement or for the notion that Britain ‘depended upon the resources of finance for the successful fighting of a war as much as upon the production of munitions’. Even recently, historians, notably American, have vied with each other to pour scorn on Britain’s leadership of the 1930s:

 

“the Chamberlain government’s record…is unpardonably dismal. The prime minister and his advisers made the wrong choice on almost every single strategic and diplomatic question that they faced.”

 

Or, of ill-defined patent remedies attributed rather freely to Churchill:

 

“Winston Spencer Churchill, in virtue of his intellectual power and political sagacity, understood the threat of German imperialism…whereas the amateur Machiavellis around Baldwin and Chamberlain….”

 

These extracts are little more than the recycling and regilding of received opinion, and actually do Churchill the incidental disservice of making him appear less sensible of contemporary issues than was really the case.

 

In their task of assessing Britain’s pre-war endeavours, historians are blinking through the dazzle of “the Finest Hour” which discolours and refracts the image of the less incandescent statesmen of the 1930s. It is difficult, while half-anticipating the momentous, nightmarish, attractive events of 1940, to consider objectively the preceding years when the battle for peace had yet to be lost, when (even after Munich) three out of four Britons approved of appeasement, three out of five were satisfied with Chamberlain as Prime Minister, and only one out of twenty-five would have had him succeeded by Churchill. ‘When the policy of Munich failed, everybody announced that he had expected it to fail…in fact no one was as clear-sighted as he later claimed to have been.”

 

 

p. 250. The Hansards of 1933 and 1934 are not replete with Churchillian demands that the nation’s ‘so very meager resources’ be spent in this profligate and highly controversial manner. At the time Britain was publically committed to arms limitation and collective security; indeed Churchill himself continued throughout the 1930s to avow faith in the peace-keeping potential of the League of Nations with a credulity which, had it come from Chamberlain, would have been cited by historians as evidence of diminished responsibility.

 

In “the Gathering Storm,” the first volume of his war memoirs, Churchill took care to place the Government in the wrong for making no attempt ‘to introduce emergency conditions into our munitions production’ and cites a memorandum he sent to Inskip in June 1936, In fact that paper shows that at the time he fully understood that ‘it is neither necessary nor possible at this moment to take wartime powers and apply wartime methods’; and tha he visualized a supply ministry subdivided in a manner not dissimilar to the Supply Committees, which implies that he was either ignorant of the breadth of the PSOC system or somehow scornful of its competence.

 

It is a matter for regret that few historians have looked beyond those of Churchill’s pre-war statements which lead most consistently into his heroic wartime leadership – statements made while he was free of the chastening responsibilities of office. The consequence has been a set of readily-acceptable but tendentious orthodoxies which have deterred proper analysis of the rearmament years and which have led to the commission of a monumental injustice to those who formulated Government policies.