He had the able bodied assistance of Patton, Bradley, Ike and the boys.
Posted on 08/14/2009 6:32:58 PM PDT by pissant
On Sunday, September 3, 1939 - 70 years ago next month - Britain declared war on Germany in fulfilment of its pledge to aid Poland, invaded by the Nazis. 'I know now that it will come to me to deal with Mr Hitler,' Winston Churchill told a cousin a few days earlier. He perceived his own hour of destiny at hand.
That same afternoon, he was summoned to Downing Street by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. For most of the decade Churchill had been a scourge of the Tory government. From 'the wilderness' of the Commons back benches, he denounced the folly of appeasing the dictators.
Only amid the crisis of war did his party overcome its bitter resentment to offer him office. He became once more First Lord of the Admiralty, the post he had occupied through the first year of World War I.
The early months of the greatest struggle in human history became known as the 'phoney war'. It seemed to many British people ridiculous and humiliating that though the country had committed itself to fight Hitler, it lacked the means to do so.
Poland was crushed in three weeks, without a French or British finger being lifted to save it. The two allies feared even to bomb Germany, lest they provoke devastating reprisals from the Luftwaffe.
On the Franco-German border, 94 French and nine British divisions confronted Hitler's army. But in neither Paris nor London was there the slightest will to launch an attack.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
He had the able bodied assistance of Patton, Bradley, Ike and the boys.
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.” Sir Winston Churchill
Without a doubt, Churchill saved the entire world from Totalitarianism ... until now.
-Winston Churchill
“If only the current batch of socialist scum would read history...”
.
They’ve read history but prefer a Stalin over Churchill.
Half American.
And the less flawed half was the American, and she was “no better than she should be.” Sometimes worse.
So, given his parents, he didn’t do too badly.
Gallipoli notwithstanding.
A good BBC Churchill documentary.
A History of Britain - The Two Winstons (2002)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0602015/
http://www.newzleech.com/?p=6916843
Like a salmon swimming upstream against the current. Is this the role that Sarah will be assuming in history?
Yup, Gallipoli, an unmitigated disaster!
The sea at your immediate rear, hills in front, snipers everywhere, bad water and too little of it, 100 billion flies...FUBAR
"In three weeks, England... will have her neck wrung like a chicken! ... SOME Chicken! ... Some Neck!"
“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
As much as I liked the guy, he pulled some doozies. A few are:
WWI
Saddling the South American cruiser squadron with the slow, antiquated battleship "Centurion" ("a veritable citadel"), resulting in their annihilation at the Battle of Coronel.
WWII
Failure to push Rommel out of North Africa early in the war because he:
Pulled troops out to fight in Crete - and lose.
Pulled troops out to fight in Singapore - just in time to surrender.
Pushing to invade Germany via the Mediterranean instead of France.
Advocating invasion via the "soft underbelly" of Italy. (As one vet there said, "It was one tough old gut.")
Reagan once noted that a Communist was someone who had read Marx.....a conservative someone who UNDERSTOOD Marx!!
I can’t help but feel Churchill is overrated historically. Sure he was better than Chamberlain (who wouldn’t be?) but England was getting her butt kicked until America got involved in the European theatre and Hitler turned on Stalin.
ALL Western leaders seem to have regarded the Japanese as beneath consideration militarily;that is ,until they took over half the Pacific!
But what if Churchill shocked Hitler by smashing the Afrika Korps and Hitler decided NOT to invade Russia?Russia was where Hitler lost WW2.If Hitler had had the use of those hundreds of divions ,thousands of tanks, and thousands of aircraft for the Western Front,D-Day would have been a massacre!And before that,Italy would have been easily swept of American and English forces.
Not really.
And if England fell,what of America?
D*mned shame some idiots charge with executing Churchill’s (actually brilliant) plan completely screwed it up. The Turkish sniper and machine gun positions on the cliffs were supposed to be subjected to heavy naval bombardment before and during the landings, but someone in the Admiralty got in a snit with the General Staff, and the moronic martinet in charge of the ground operation said go because his watch said it was time, even though the barrage hadn’t started.
Not till later.
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