Comments on: Today we mourn those who died on the Somme

By: mikestallard

mikestallard — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:54:08 +0000

A footnote to this comment:
OK, so the Russians were fouled up by Communism for the first part of the Second World War and then, thanks to their bringing men from the East and also thanks to the Arctic convoys of the British convoys, they were able to advance. And they lost many, many brave men.
In the Far East, of course, the Chinese were slaughtered in droves. But – hey – they don't get a mention!
In the West, we really did carry on through North Africa, knocked out Italy, then invaded Northern europe. I reckon the honours are pretty even myself. And then, of course, there was the bombing which we did almost exclusively.

In the First World War, it is often overlooked that the Germans won it. In the East, at Brest Litovsk, the Russians gave huge chunks of their territory away and the Germans had their army stationed in the middle of the Borderlands right up unto 1920. They assumed they had won in the West too, right up until the autumn of 1918.
Russian sufferings were awful. German sufferings were awful. In Italy and Turkey, too, quite a number of very brave men died. It really was a war on two fronts.

By: Neil Craig

Neil Craig — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:28:33 +0000

And Yugoslavia's entry into the war (A) meant Hitler had to redeploy & his invasion of Russia started a month late, which considering he got within 20 miles of Moscow may have been decisive & (B) according to Churchill their resistance occupied the attention of more troops (albeit some of them also Yugoslavs & of little combat use) than Britain & America combined prior to D-Day. As Wellington said in another case "A damned close run thing" & afterwards everybody says everybody else should be grateful to them.

By: Paul Barton

Paul Barton — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:00:36 +0000

John, OK, perhaps we now know more about the Soviet contribution to winning WW2 than we did in the days of 1950s/1960s war films. It is also true that the Soviets were rather more dependent on US equipment (boots, trucks, jeeps, machine guns, rebuilt railways as they moved west again and above all aviation fuel shipped into Vladivostok under Soviet flag) than they care to remember.

My point is that in terms of men fighting and dying on the ground, in WW1 the Western Front (where the Germans deployed between 150 and 200 divisions, two thirds of their forces, at various times) was the main theatre of operations, just as the Eastern Front was in WW2. To see the Somme and Passchendaele in perspective they have to be compared to the vast battles on the Eastern Front in WW2 – Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad etc. Normandy (1944) was the only battle fought by the Western Allies on that scale, and it was half the length and half the size of the Somme, and the Allies enjoyed massive air superiority.

Another way of looking at this is to say that the Germans were never going to be defeated by small campaigns in Salonika and Palestine in WW1 any more than they were defeated by the smallish (10-20 divisions per side) campaigns in the Desert and Italy in WW2.

If you fight a war on that scale, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of men, are going to die. In WW2 it was the Soviets. In WW1 it was the French and British on the Western Front.

By: mikestallard

mikestallard — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 09:39:26 +0000

Japan had to expand in 1940 simply because it had run out of resources.
It could, yes, have expanded North into Russia, but how much easier to go South and take over the Pacific ocean! Its brilliant and hugely successful strategy nearly worked, too.
The Japanese high command discussed all this thoroughly. And, of course, their deliberations were carefully reported to Moscow by Richard Sorge, Stalin's "brothel keeper". 400,000 troops were rushed across Siberia by Kaganovitch just in time to save the day. 12th -14th October 1941 were the dates of this outstanding achievement.
Had the Americans lost the battle of Midway, for instance, or if the crucial invasion of Australia had succeeded (the invasion was scuppered by the loss of just one Japanese vessel) the war might well have dragged on far longer.
Without the Russians and the Americans, the British Empire might well have gone under. In 1945, for instance, we were broke.

By: John

John — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:30:11 +0000

Au contraire, for years and years all I seem to have heard about is how the War was won in the East by the Soviets. What we tend to forget is that the Soviets only came into the War in 1941, and if the British Commonwealth and Empire had been defeated first, the Nazis and their Allies would have been much better placed to defeat the Soviets, something they very nearly achieved in 1941/2. The Soviets were never threatened in the East either, mainly because of their defeat of Japan in Manchuria, but if Japan had not been occupied fighting the US and other Allies, it's involvement in a War with the Soviets as a Nazi ally could have been crucial.

By: Paul Barton

Paul Barton — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 12:50:57 +0000

Coming late to this discussion, most of the points have already been made – we had to send a major land commitment to France otherwise she would have been beaten as in 1870, the British (and other countries) did develop new tactics as the war went on but the sheer weight of manpower made a vast butcher's bill inevitable, etc etc.

One other thing that needs to be pointed out is that in World War Two it was the Soviets (20 m dead) who were doing most of the fighting. That was what gave Monty the luxury of "conserving manpower". In the West we tend to forget this.

By: John

John — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:54:07 +0000

We might not have stayed out of WW1, but did we have to see it to it's bloody conclusion? Why not in 1915 to have made a peace? Or even in 1916? When did war become so total?

Still, it's all water under the bridge now. I think eventually we will come to regret our neglect and banishment of our Commonwealth ties, and see that as a colossal blunder on a par with going to war in 1914.

As for what is happening today, we probably have to make the best for now that we can out of being in Europe as it's likely that the US will look to it's own interests more and more.

By: DBC Reed

DBC Reed — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:01:00 +0000

Having suggested that the Hess mission was to start peace negotiations, I thought I'd check it out and according to Spartacus Educational on the Net,not regular reading on this site I expect, Eden announced to the Commons that Hess was here for peace negotiations but not with Churchill (!!)This account of Hess is controversial to say the least but the most provocative assertions :that Liddell Hart had evidence that the German tanks stopped short of Dunkirk to allow us to escape IS in his"The Other Side of the Hill" and most histories of the Blitz do ,in fact, give the end of the campaign as 10th May 1941 which coincided with Hess's arrival.This would mean that some kind of negotiations might have taken place,perhaps along the lines of we'll stop bombing you ,if you stop bombing us and anyway we're going to invade the USSR so you're off the hook.So what would have happened if Hitler had succeeded in his Eastern Campaign? Idle speculation no doubt but the whole peace negotiation process during the war is very murky and challenging to a straightforward account of the conflict.

By: mikestallard

mikestallard — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 10:44:34 +0000

Churchill was probably, by our standards an alcoholic. He was outrageously sexist by our standards too. Worse, he actually was proud of smoking. Yes, he did flash a V sign at Hitler and insisted on not calling him "Herr Hitler." He was very old fashioned too – he loved the British Empire and he simply could not understand what Beveridge was on about with his "Welfare State". Hence the arrival of Major Attlee.
History seems so obvious to us.
But it isn't.
Conservatives of all sorts wanted to appease Hitler and Hitler (and Hess) wanted to be appeased. That was (probably) why Hess flew to England – to arrange peace. Hitler loved the British Empire and admired the British for having it. It would have been so easy to make peace between the two great Empires – Germany on European land and England on the Seas. Little Japan could still have been "gallant little Jap" as in the First World War. Italy was, of course, a joke, but as figurehead, Mussolini could have been a sort of mascot for Imperialism.
Churchill's achievement was to focus and strengthen our resistance to Hitler and the Third Reich. That can never be taken away from him. It would have been so easy to accept Hess' demands and give in – and to have saved so many innocent lives in the blitz.
He didn't.
And therefore this really was "our finest hour."

By: Puncheon

Puncheon — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:13:42 +0000

John – I am sorry to have given you a problem. I find your response fascinating in that it shows just how powerful the Churchill mythology still is. I think we will have to wait many years, and long after I am dead – for an objective assessment. Such an assessment will include his contribution to the great recession of the 1920s as a less than glorious Chancellor of the Exchequor. But that is another story. As to his war career, I suppose my main point is that history, in the short term at least, is truly the propaganda of the victors.