Split Thread WWII & Appeasement

[Henri McPhee]

There was a 2016 documentary on a British TV channel yesterday, with an American commentary, called Hitler v Churchill. The trouble with it is that it wasn't the pure unadulterated historical truth.

It started off by saying that the democracies did nothing about Hitler's occupation of the Rhineland and Austria in the 1930s. Then it stated that Churchill at the time oversaw the British Army and British Navy and our secret service. That is not absolutely correct. Churchill had nothing to do with it after Churchill was in charge of the Admiralty, and then left after the Gallipoli fiasco in the 1914-18 war. The RAF was strengthened during the prime ministership of Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, and radar introduced.

Churchill was put in charge of the Admiralty at the outbreak of the second world war and he then commenced a disastrous intervention into Norway which ended in retreat. It was ill-equipped and lacking in administrative officers, or very efficient intelligence officers.

There was talk of replacing Churchill when the war was going badly in 1942, which only ceased when one dull MP suggested in parliament that the Duke of Gloucester should replace him.

Churchill suffered from want of judgement. It was only because he was guided by Field-Marshal Alanbrooke that there were not further disasters.

 

[The Don]

There was a 2016 documentary on a British TV channel yesterday, with an American commentary, called Hitler v Churchill. The trouble with it is that it wasn't the pure unadulterated historical truth.

It started off by saying that the democracies did nothing about Hitler's occupation of the Rhineland and Austria in the 1930s. Then it stated that Churchill at the time oversaw the British Army and British Navy and our secret service. That is not absolutely correct. Churchill had nothing to do with it after Churchill was in charge of the Admiralty, and then left after the Gallipoli fiasco in the 1914-18 war. The RAF was strengthened during the prime ministership of Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, and radar introduced.

Churchill was put in charge of the Admiralty at the outbreak of the second world war and he then commenced a disastrous intervention into Norway which ended in retreat. It was ill-equipped and lacking in administrative officers, or very efficient intelligence officers.

There was talk of replacing Churchill when the war was going badly in 1942, which only ceased when one dull MP suggested in parliament that the Duke of Gloucester should replace him.

Churchill suffered from want of judgement. It was only because he was guided by Field-Marshal Alanbrooke that there were not further disasters.

That sounds like an uncharacteristically inaccurate program right there. Are you absolutely sure that you are not misremembering in some way, like for example they said that Churchill had been in charge of those things at some time in the past rather than being in charge at the time ?

 

[Henri McPhee]

That sounds like an uncharacteristically inaccurate program right there. Are you absolutely sure that you are not misremembering in some way, like for example they said that Churchill had been in charge of those things at some time in the past rather than being in charge at the time ?

I suppose I might have misunderstood exactly what the commentary on that documentary was saying about Churchill having been in charge of everything before the war. It will probably be repeated so it can be checked. It's just to my mind Churchill has taken the political credit for everything just because he said he will write the history. Americans at the time thought Churchill was an armchair strategist, while now he is used by 'blame everything on Russia and Assad' Americans and Israelis as an example of what should have been done. Churchill's Foreign Secretary, Eden definitely did have want of judgment, which was proved in the Suez crisis of 1956. Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax had his head screwed on in the 1930s. It's just that he didn't want to be prime minister.

It was people like Lloyd George and the Duke of Windsor who were the appeasers.

My own opinion is that our secret service was well aware that Hitler intended to march on Moscow from at least 1934, and that the British prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries at the time would have been informed of that, if not the Russians. Chamberlain waving his piece of paper is what is known technically as political cunning and trickery. Fools and damned fools rush in where angels fear to tread. The Czechs would have lasted about three weeks.

 

[The Don]

My own opinion is that our secret service was well aware that Hitler intended to march on Moscow from at least 1934, and that the British prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries at the time would have been informed of that, if not the Russians.

Do you have any evidence to support this opinion ?

 

[Henri McPhee]

Do you have any evidence to support this opinion ?

I have always been under the impression that our secret service gave Stalin proper warning that he was about to be attacked by the Germans in 1941, but that the Russians ignored the British because of their Nazi--Soviet pact with Ribbentrop. The Russians didn't trust what the British were saying. I wasn't around at the time. All the reports I have seen about the matter say Stalin was in a state of total shock for a couple of weeks after he had previously eliminated his best officers, and that he was expecting a coup against him.

The trouble is that the media, and people like Donald Trump, and even Mrs. May, are not profound and unbiased thinkers.

There is some hard documentary evidence about all this in a book called the Ultra Secret by F.W. Winterbotham published in 1974 by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London. He was in Air Intelligence and heavily involved in the Enigma secret The prime minister and Foreign Secretary would have been informed about all this and Winston Churchill when he became prime minister.

From my personal meetings with Hitler I learned about his basic belief that the only hope for an ordered world was that it should be ruled by three super powers, the British Empire, the Greater Americas and the new greater German Reich. he gave me an assurance that the Germans themselves would destroy the Communists by the conquest of Russia. he admitted that in 1934 the generals had too much to say and told me he had had 'to sell them half his birthright'. He totally rejected the Versailles treaty and gave me the figures and plans for his great new Air Force. Conversations with him inadvertently also revealed to me that he had some sort of dual personality which he could switch on and off at will. Later, I have no doubt, the unreasonable one took over.

From General Walther von Reichenau, Hitler's favourite general, I learned in 1934, details of the German plans against Russia, and the strategy of the blitzkrieg, the massive tank spearheads supported by their mobile artillery, the dive bomber. From Air Force General Kesselring I discovered the composition to the air fleets and how the operation of dive bombing had finally been perfected. It all came true in the battle of France.

 

[Tolls]

Stalin was told about the invasion by his own spies.
He didn't need to be told by ours.

As for 1934, he talked about Germany's need to expand east in Mein Kampf, a decade prior.

And finally, Winterbotham is one of the reasons the whole Coventry bombing foreknowledge nonsense took hold. So take his book with a pinch of salt as he seems to have had a tendency to embellish things.

 

[ddt]

The Czechs would have lasted about three weeks.

Do you have any evidence to support that?

1) The Czechs had their own "Maginot line" along the German border. I concede, that was in Sudetenland, so the local population would have been more or less hostile. But when the German generals inspected it after the annexation of Sudetenland, they were relieved they didn't have to fight their way through.

2) The Czechs had a good army. In fact, most of the German tanks used in the Poland campaign were Czech ones.

3) The German generals, under leadership of Beck, had a plot to depose Hitler in case of a war with Czechoslovakia. British intelligence knew this, but they didn't quite trust it.

4) Germany didn't have any army units to spare for the West. While they could give some resistance to the token French invasion in 1939, in 1938 this would have been totally impossible. Even an army as low on morale as the French would have noticed that advance was a walk in the park.

 

[Klimax]

Britain and France did not ignore Hitler's violations, and did what they could to prevent them leading to another Great War.

The war in Europe was the action Britain and France took against Hitler when efforts to prevent a war failed.

You have to und...

Yeah, their actions like giving Hitler Czechoslovakia with high value industrial base and very good tanks were very good bright ideas. (Terminal Case of Sarcasm) Without us, Hitler couldn't do that much. Wehrmacht might have succeeded in conquering us but only after taking heavy loess and nothing would be here intact (industrial base and infrastructure).

BTW: Calling initial action by France and GB after invasion of Poland as "waging war" is terminally idiotic. They did nothing. If they did, we wouldn't have had mega war.

This your conclusion eighty years later. No doubt you have a firm opinion of what military action (aka war ; it was a simpler world in those days) should have been undertaken and at what point, given what you know of what subsequently happened. You'll appreciate that people at the time were living at the time.

That infamous piece of paper might have worked, and prevented any war, something greatly to be desired.

You'll only learn from history if you can put yourself in the position of the people involved at the time, unaware of their future and the ultimate consequences of their actions, just as we are now.

What would have been the ultimate consequences if the French had fired on German troops re-occupying the Rhineland? Not WW2 as and when it happened, but another war sometime, perhaps with a worse outcome. And so on.

They did what they thought was appropriate at the time, with the best of intentions. Perhaps it was the best they could have done.

Those "best intentions" were total and brutal failure and directly lead to biggest war to day. Oh, nad it was very clear to quite few people that appeasement was idiotic bad idea. Certain Winston Churchill. was against it and got proven totally right.

And that infamous Piece of **** (I usually don't use swear words, but that is the only correct name and descriptor for that "thing") was so great idea that it gave Hitler fresh industrial base and Wehrmacht new much better tanks. And almost got some interesting freshly developed things.

It was one of things that directly enabled entire war! It was idiotic idea, obvious already back then.

Chamberlain and co were idiots and world paid the price for their total idiocy.

I agree with JihadJane.

This website is closer to the truth about Chamberlain. He used cunning and subtlety, unlike the average Joe in America who tend to be a lot of armchair admirals. From:

www.politicalbistro.com/neville-chamberlain

All that "subtlety" and "cunning". To bad all of it lead directly top war.

It could have been worse, having 56-million killed, and the Nazis ruling an empire from the Atlantic to the Urals would do that.

We *now* know that Hitler was willing to remove his troops from the Rhineland. This wasn't known at the time.

Similarly by Munich, some people argue that it bought time for Great Britain to rearm and update the RAF in particular.
...

If they forced Germany to have to fight us, they'd get more time and they ever needed. (And it was clear back then, they just ignored all of it in favor of idiotical fantasy)

Do you have any evidence to support that?

1) The Czechs had their own "Maginot line" along the German border. I concede, that was in Sudetenland, so the local population would have been more or less hostile. But when the German generals inspected it after the annexation of Sudetenland, they were relieved they didn't have to fight their way through.

2) The Czechs had a good army. In fact, most of the German tanks used in the Poland campaign were Czech ones.

3) The German generals, under leadership of Beck, had a plot to depose Hitler in case of a war with Czechoslovakia. British intelligence knew this, but they didn't quite trust it.

4) Germany didn't have any army units to spare for the West. While they could give some resistance to the token French invasion in 1939, in 1938 this would have been totally impossible. Even an army as low on morale as the French would have noticed that advance was a walk in the park.

Precisely. Just little reminder: Large sections of defense line weren't finished at that time. (Although at bare minimum most of times bunkers were already in-place)

===

And last reminder: Especially GB was very lucky that Germans failed to get their hands on quiet few pieces of military technologies being developed here. Look up LittleJohn Adapter and Anti-tank rifle for some examples...

 

[ddt]

Yeah, their actions like giving Hitler Czechoslovakia with high value industrial base and very good tanks were very good bright ideas. (Terminal Case of Sarcasm) Without us, Hitler couldn't do that much. Wehrmacht might have succeeded in conquering us but only after taking heavy loess and nothing would be here intact (industrial base and infrastructure).

BTW: Calling initial action by France and GB after invasion of Poland as "waging war" is terminally idiotic. They did nothing. If they did, we wouldn't have had mega war.

Oh yes, they did. The French invaded the Saar over a 32km front and advanced some 8km. They tried to pass through a forest that was heavily mined, but they hadn't brought their anti-mining equipment (which they had). They had instruction to halt at least 1km before the Siegfried Line. And after two weeks, they withdrew.

If Daladier and Gamelin would have had the resolve of their predecessors Louis XIV and Comte de Mélac, the French army could easily have secured the Rhineland before Poland fell. Here's an amusing alt-history thread on that.

Even more so if the French would have done so a year earlier, instead of Munich. The Siegfried Line would have been non-existent at the time.

 

[Henri McPhee]

Stalin was told about the invasion by his own spies.
He didn't need to be told by ours.

As for 1934, he talked about Germany's need to expand east in Mein Kampf, a decade prior.

And finally, Winterbotham is one of the reasons the whole Coventry bombing foreknowledge nonsense took hold. So take his book with a pinch of salt as he seems to have had a tendency to embellish things.

That's being an armchair strategist, and an armchair admiral.

Others, especially Churchill hoped that a strong military alliance with France would permit a more robust foreign policy towards the dictators. Many shared Churchill's confidence in the large French Army, although fewer shared his belief that France would be a resilient ally.

Russia had spies but they didn't seem to get it into Stalin's head that he was about to be attacked. Stalin trusted Ribbentrop, who was later executed at Nuremberg.

It has been said that Stalin was warned by Churchill in mid 1940, and from other sources. There was a Russian spy ring in Switzerland, I think called Lucy, which some say consisted of British double agents being fed with information from our secret service. The British, with the help of some brainy people in Poland had cracked the German codes. Our secret service knew German reserves were being massed on the Russian border in January 1941. The Americans had cracked the Japanese codes.

It has also been said that the German Admiral Canaris, was one of ours, and Oster who warned of the German attack through the Ardennes in 1940, but he was not believed. They both died in concentration camps towards the end of the war.

The Coventry bombing foreknowledge was a false story because, according to Peter Calvocoressi, Enigma never deciphered that information. The first casualty of war is the truth. That may not be the historical truth.

 

[Henri McPhee]

Oh yes, they did. The French invaded the Saar over a 32km front and advanced some 8km. They tried to pass through a forest that was heavily mined, but they hadn't brought their anti-mining equipment (which they had). They had instruction to halt at least 1km before the Siegfried Line. And after two weeks, they withdrew.

If Daladier and Gamelin would have had the resolve of their predecessors Louis XIV and Comte de Mélac, the French army could easily have secured the Rhineland before Poland fell. Here's an amusing alt-history thread on that.

Even more so if the French would have done so a year earlier, instead of Munich. The Siegfried Line would have been non-existent at the time.

The French High Command was in a bad state. They still had the defensive warfare mind set of the 1914-18 war, unlike the Panzer Grenadier air and land blitzkrieg and dive bomber tactics, which are now used by Israel.

I used to think the Duke of Windsor was used by our secret service to spy on the Germans, and even to deceive them, because of his powerful political and family connections in Germany, and his wife's connection to Ribbentrop. I now think that because of his lack of a sense of proportion, and lack of discretion with his Nazi sympathiser pals, that he became a security risk, and he was then packed off to the colonies for the rest of the war.

The Duke of Windsor, as a Major-General, had a job at the beginning of the war of spying on the French Army. What he reported was reasonable and sensible, but not regarded as credible, and there were worries that those reports were going to Berlin.

There is a bit of waffle about this in a book called Edward V111 by Philip Ziegler, Collins, London 1990:

In his report he had 'dealt at length..... with the obvious weaknesses and defects of the French defences along the Belgian frontier'. The French were not digging in and were physically unfit;' They are determined if possible to give the Germans battle in Belgium. Of course they will burrow like rabbits at the sound of the first shell, but French logic says never dig unless you have to.' He was not impressed by the majority of the French commanders, the best being Georges and Billotte. Gaston Billotte, he believed, was 'a man who might well reach the very top if the war were to last a long time' - or, unhappily, as it fell out, if Billotte was to last a long time; he died in May 1940, cutting short what most people believed could have been a remarkable career and, incidentally, removing a possible rival to de Gaulle.

At times the Duke's commentaries were strikingly prescient. The French, he wrote in his final report, were obsessed by the wonders of the Maginot Line. there was no provision for defence in depth, and in the Meuse valley there were virtually no defences at all. 'It is perhaps fortunate the Germans did not attack through Luxembourg and Belgium in November. But he was by no means always right.: Hitler would attack Holland but would not march into Belgium, he assured Ironside, 'because that country will provide him with a buffer state and put Holland out of reach of the Allies by land. It would be extravagant to claim for the Duke either great strategic acumen or detailed military knowledge; what can fairly be said is that his reports were conscientious, sensible, and well worth studying by those concerned.

 

[Henri McPhee]

There is a bit about strategy and Winston Churchill in a 1947 book called The Russian Outlook, by Lieutenant-General Sir Giffard Martel, Michael Joseph, London:

Here was our golden opportunity, but the landing craft were not there. Could we take a chance and land in France without much preparation, as we did in North Africa at the end of 1942? We would be heavily attacked by the German air forces. Our Allied air forces had not yet gained any great supremacy over the Luftwaffe. Only a proportion of the American forces that would be landing were fully trained. Mr. Winston Churchill was intent on supporting the American desire to land in France in 1942, if it could possibly be carried out.

Before a decision of this nature can be made a very detailed examination of the facts is necessary. There are so many conflicting factors to balance up. Can you land in sufficient strength and sufficiently quickly to hold the ground? Will you have sufficient air cover? is the necessary shipping available? Is the U-boat menace too great at the time? Will it be possible to supply the troops after they have landed? And above all is the supply of landing craft and all the organisation necessary for an opposed landing sufficiently advanced to ensure that there will not be a ghastly failure on the beaches?.........

What would have happened if we had accepted the American plan of concentrating all our efforts on the cross-Channel operations at a much earlier date? Could we have launched these operations at a much earlier date? Could we have launched these operations in 1943? We were still very short of landing craft, but we would have been better off if all supplies had been concentrated for this purpose. Our air superiority was already very marked, but we did not have the overwhelming superiority that we eventually possessed in 1944. The American troops were not all fully trained, but they were not far behind in this respect. But even with all these points of view it would have been a difficult operation to launch the crossing in 1943.

 

[Tolls]

That's being an armchair strategist, and an armchair admiral.

I have no idea what this has to do with my response.
Or indeed much of the rest, so I've cut to the parts that at least seem related to my post.

Russia had spies but they didn't seem to get it into Stalin's head that he was about to be attacked. Stalin trusted Ribbentrop, who was later executed at Nuremberg.

And? I said he had his own spies. He ignored them quite happily, he didn't need British spies for that.

Our secret service knew German reserves were being massed on the Russian border in January 1941.

So did the Russians!
You cannot hide that sort of troop movement.

The Coventry bombing foreknowledge was a false story because, according to Peter Calvocoressi, Enigma never deciphered that information. The first casualty of war is the truth. That may not be the historical truth.

Since I brought it up because of Winterbotham, the foreknowledge fell down because none of the timings he used fitted in with documented events. As I said, he had a tendency to make stuff up.

 

[Garrison]

And? I said he had his own spies. He ignored them quite happily, he didn't need British spies for that.

Technically some of his spies were supposed to be British spies:

Kim Philby

 

[Tolls]

Well, the most well known Soviet one (though not only) was Sorge in Japan.
Stalin seems to have just been hoping none of it was true. Hell, Churchill told him.
He essentially had a breakdown in the immediate aftermath...

 

[Craig B]

Well, the most well known Soviet one (though not only) was Sorge in Japan.
Stalin seems to have just been hoping none of it was true. Hell, Churchill told him.
He essentially had a breakdown in the immediate aftermath...

Stalin's colleagues expected a German invasion too, but didn't dare to contradict their master. Here's Beria, covering his rear

Just a day before the German invasion when Beria sent Stalin a report with the prediction of Vladimir Dekanozov, the Soviet ambassador in Berlin, that the attack was imminent, the secret police chief prefaced it with the declaration: "My people and I, Joseph Vissarionovich, firmly remember your wise prediction: Hitler will not attack us in 1941!"​

Beria knew Dekanosov was right, and was insuring himself in case Stalin decided to make Beria a scapegoat in the event of an invasion. The ruse was successful.

 

[Henri McPhee]

Technically some of his spies were supposed to be British spies:

Kim Philby

I have never been clear about exactly what Kim Philby told Stalin. I agree Stalin believed his spies in Japan, who told him the Japanese were not going to attack Russia in 1941. That was crucial information as Stalin was then able to transfer Siberian troops to the defence of Moscow in the mud and frosts of 1941. The German tanks and equipment froze up in the extreme cold of a Russian winter. The German troops were not given winter clothing.

I have always had a gut feeling, though no hard documentary evidence, that for some reason the Russians knew EXACTLY where and when, and the exact time of the attack, when the Germans started that decisive tank battle at Kursk in 1943. In previous years they did not have that kind of information, a bit like the British at Dunkirk.

There is a reference in that Ultra Secret book by Winterbotham in 1974 to Kim Philby:

As our successes in breaking Ultra increased, it became obvious that these signals carried the very highest command traffic, from Hitler and his Ober Kommando Wehrmacht (OKW) High Command, from the Chiefs of the Army, Air and Naval Staffs, and from Army, Airfleet and Armoured Group Commanders. The German Abwehr, which dealt with spies and counter-espionage, used a different cypher of their own which was also broken. It was widely use by our own security services and was responsible for the picking up and neutralization of German agents. It has been referred to by Professor Hugh Trevor Roper, Kim Philby and others.

 

[Tolls]

Seriously...don't use Winterbotham.

As for Kursk, yes they did know. That's well documented. They had a spy in Bletchley, as well as their network in Switzerland, who all informed them of the build up around Kursk. All helped by the off-again, on-again nature of the German planning for the attack.

 

[Henri McPhee]

Seriously...don't use Winterbotham.

As for Kursk, yes they did know. That's well documented. They had a spy in Bletchley, as well as their network in Switzerland, who all informed them of the build up around Kursk. All helped by the off-again, on-again nature of the German planning for the attack.

I don't know about the Russians having a spy in Bletchley. Evidence and source?

In that World at War TV documentary in 1973, which keeps being repeated on British TV, there is an interview with a Russian army officer who was involved in that Kursk tank battle in 1943. He said that the Russians obtained their intelligence information from reconnaissance and information from German prisoners of war. I think that's most unlikely. Most, if not all, of those German prisoners would not have the high grade information about times and strategic and tactical decisions. That Russian army officer was being economical with the historical truth.

There is some waffle about all this in a book called Top Secret Ultra by Peter Calvocoressi published by Sphere Books , London, 1981

In practice this meant deciding how much should be imparted and how. The answer to the second question was straightforward. There was no need for the devious channels which some postwar writers have suggested such as spy rings in Switzerland. There were direct and regular links between the intelligence services in London and the British embassy in Moscow and these were used to convey intelligence of all kinds to the ambassador who in turn passed on personally to Stalin whatever secret intelligence London decided to vouchsafe. How much was conveyed varied with circumstances. In general Churchill himself, while he never considered telling Stalin whence Ultra came, was temperamentally in favour of giving more information rather than less. He was not the only one in this frame of mind, but he had on occasions to be restrained by others, who feared that he was taking too many risks.

In sum a considerable amount of intelligence was passed to the Russians. We do not know whether they guessed where it came from. If they did not, then they were of course ignorant of the peculiar authenticity of what they were being told. In the case of the great tank battles of 1942, for example, when they were warned that they were pouring men and materials into a huge German trap, it is difficult to suppose that they gave full credence to warnings which, if heeded, would have saved them terrible losses.

If on the other hand they did guess that we had a very special source which we were unwilling to share with them, what did they make of that? They must have captured Enigma machines and cypher books and they must have supposed that we did so too. They were not lacking in mathematicians and chess-players capable of appreciating what was involved in breaking the cyphers. They may themselves have been without an organisation like Bletchley Park capable of making the most of such skills, but it would be have been natural for them to harbour at least suspicion that we possessed a precious advantage which we were withholding from them. They were certainly suspicious in general, often unfairly. Yet neither directly nor indirectly did they probe Eden or anybody else on the subject of Ultra.

 

[Tolls]

John Cairncross.

As for info from prisoners, that's a very common event, especially for operations like the one planned for Kursk when they get postponed. It just gives the other side more time to get useful information.