Can we put all the blame on Churchill?

[Bruce]

You are right OME, except that I wonder if the patriotism wasn't really an excuse to get away on an overseas adventure holiday with lots of excitement and mates. In those days that's what would have motivated me, although I would have pretended it was all the patriotism stuff.

 

And yes I would have got a bad surprise when I got there.

 

 

[old man emu]

The idea of a free trip to an overseas stoush may have influenced volunteers in the first six months of the war, but things changed after 1915 as the reality of modern warfare began to hit home.

 

We quite rightly remember and honour those who died as a result of the battles, but we have forgotten the maimed. Many more of our soldiers lived on after the war with horrible injuries received on the field. My grandfather had his lungs permanently damaged by the concussive effects of an artillery shell exploding near him. He spent more than two thirds of his life as an invalid. What about the men whose injuries destroyed their good looks. Many a man lost parts of his face to rifle and machine gun fire. Then there are the amputees.

 

As these men returned home I'm sure that they had the effect of making young men and their families have second thoughts about joining up.

 

OME

 

 

[old man emu]

I have finished reading "The Grand Deception" by Tom Curran. Published in 2015 ISBN 978-1-925275-00-1 and have abandoned my view that Churchill was not responsible for the Dardanelles debacle.

 

Tom Curran presents damning evidence contained in contemporary records which proves that the Dardanelles campaign was known to be a doomed project at least ten years before the outbreak of WWl, but it was Churchill's gung-ho attitude that lead him to deceive Parliament and the Military purely for his own self aggrandisement. Following the failure of the campaign, Churchill worked diligently on developing the myth that the Admiralty and Military fully supported the campaign. He went so far as to quarantine communication records from public view, using then selectively when he wrote his version of the war entitled The World Crisis, and then gagged other players in the decision making by enforcing oaths of secrecy they had sworn on taking up office. As a result, his book became the main source for historians who disseminated Churchill's version of events for fifty years until the original documents were released.

 

His story to the commission of enquiry into the disaster was that it failed because Kitchener (army) and Fisher (navy) were flawed individuals. Kitchener could not make up his mind about sending troops, and Fisher was a tired old man, fearful of the responsibility of command. These are blatant lies.

 

I strongly commend Curran's book to you. I found it to be a fair appraisal of the facts, and of the top men involved.

 

The ironic thing about the Dardanelles campaign is that, if Churchill could have been convinced to 'hasten slowly', and put in six months' planning, organising, training and equipping the army resources of Australia, New Zealand and India he could have had a much greater chance of a successful joint army/navy operation. Australia and New Zealand would not have suffered the horrendous casualties they did at ANZAC adn thre is the likelihood that the rates of volunteering wold not have fallen off as they did, creating the need for the Conscription Referendums of 1916 and 1917 and the discord those caused.

 

Old Man Emu

 

 

[Phil Perry]

I have finished reading "The Grand Deception" by Tom Curran. Published in 2015 ISBN 978-1-925275-00-1 and have abandoned my view that Churchill was not responsible for the Dardanelles debacle.

Tom Curran presents damning evidence contained in contemporary records which proves that the Dardanelles campaign was known to be a doomed project at least ten years before the outbreak of WWl, but it was Churchill's gung-ho attitude that lead him to deceive Parliament and the Military purely for his own self aggrandisement. Following the failure of the campaign, Churchill worked diligently on developing the myth that the Admiralty and Military fully supported the campaign. He went so far as to quarantine communication records from public view, using then selectively when he wrote his version of the war entitled The World Crisis, and then gagged other players in the decision making by enforcing oaths of secrecy they had sworn on taking up office. As a result, his book became the main source for historians who disseminated Churchill's version of events for fifty years until the original documents were released.

 

His story to the commission of enquiry into the disaster was that it failed because Kitchener (army) and Fisher (navy) were flawed individuals. Kitchener could not make up his mind about sending troops, and Fisher was a tired old man, fearful of the responsibility of command. These are blatant lies.

 

I strongly commend Curran's book to you. I found it to be a fair appraisal of the facts, and of the top men involved.

 

The ironic thing about the Dardanelles campaign is that, if Churchill could have been convinced to 'hasten slowly', and put in six months' planning, organising, training and equipping the army resources of Australia, New Zealand and India he could have had a much greater chance of a successful joint army/navy operation. Australia and New Zealand would not have suffered the horrendous casualties they did at ANZAC adn thre is the likelihood that the rates of volunteering wold not have fallen off as they did, creating the need for the Conscription Referendums of 1916 and 1917 and the discord those caused.

 

Old Man Emu

 

Awwww. . .but he made some TERRIFIC speeches in WW2 dinnie ?

 

The 'Remain' camp in UK are currently using him on posters. . . . .

 

ANYWAY - OFF TOPIC - SORRY.

 

 

[old man emu]

There is no denying that Churchill was a great orator. He was also a great literary personage. I forget who made the comment recorded in Curran's book, but it was an acknowledgement that Churchill's The World Crisis is a great example of English literature.

 

Churchill was probably exactly what Britain needed from 1939 to the beginning of 1944, but as the Yanks muscled in to control the European Theatre, I think that his influence waned. Britain, which had been the source of strength in the fight against Nazism from 1940 to late 1943 seemed to be pushed into the background by the USA and Russia. Britain didn't enjoy much of the spoils of victory that the other two main Allies did. I believe that Germany ended up in a better position than Britain by the mid-1950s.

 

OME

 

 

[Bruce]

Here's an invented scenario of WW2 without Churchill....

 

Britain, with Lord Halifax as PM, does not declare war on Germany. The Poms prosper like the Swedes by supplying the Germans as they fight Russia.

 

Eventually America comes into the war against the Nazis and they drop a nuke on Berlin and then everybody is happy again.