Airstrip One

Contra Churchill

Brian Micklethwait writes a thoughtful piece on Churchill in Samizdata in which he points out that Churchill was not, against common belief, a British nationalist but an Anglospherist (although our own Philip Chaston disagrees). That is he was prepared to sacrifice the nation he led for a higher ideal in the same way that Hitler did sacrifice Germany in persuit of the dream of Aryan unity. Although both are accepted as nationalists, neither in any sense were.

All very well, and true, and then it comes to the point at which he goes off on a tangent. You see Britain saved herself by being willing to sacrifice herself, or at least having a leader who was willing to do so. It's something to do with game theory, and the idea that fearlessness saves you. Why this did not work for Hitler is hardly explained. Why France, who made a similarly selfless decision in 1939, was occupied is also not explained. I tend to prefer the explanation that it was the English Channel and the fortuitous pre war decision to divert some of the money from building the offensive technology of bombers to the defensive technology of fighters. If geographical good fortune and good defensive weapons did not favour us then the fighting spirit would probably not have worked.

So what about the objection that Hitler could not be trusted? Of course he couldn't, but then if we ever had leaders who thought that other nations could ever be trusted then we would be in dire straights indeed. There I go blasting Churchill trusting his mother's nation again. The point was not to trust other powers, but to prepare the defences against them. After all we certainly could not trust the Soviet Union, but they were kept in check for almost half a century not by warm words but by threat of arms.

A defensive build up saved Britain when the foolish decision was made to go to war rather than rash adventures such as the failed Norweigan invasion (Churchill avoiding the rap for this rerun of Galipoli is one of the greatest feats of political spin). A defensive build up would have similarly put off Hitler from going North and West when it diverted him from his favoured pickings East and South.

This is not to excuse Halifax and Chamberlain (in case you were wondering). They may have been genuinely patriotic, but they got us into the mess that Churchill perpetuated. The stance, under French prodding, that the balance of power in Mittle-europe was any of our concern can be listed as one of the most stupid strategic conceits in British history, although admittedly it would join a long list. The case against Munich was not that they trusted Hitler (they did not, no matter what they said to newsreel cameras) but that they thought that the survival of the post-Habsburg states were of any concern. No sea route to the Empire was threatened, the Channel coastline would have been as diverse as before and the sea lanes would still have been secure.

However a deal in 1940 after France fell would have meant that we would have survived as an independent state secure behind the sea, solvent, independent of America and with our Empire in tact (well you can't have it all). Instead we paid for our finest hour by bankrupting the country and depending for forty five years on American troops and bombs.