Groundhog Thread v. 2.0 - The most important battle of WW2

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I have said it before on this forum ... there are two wars .... they can't be measured by the same yardstick, but, IMO, Midway was the pivotal Pacific battle; and in Europe, Moscow, December, 1941 - January, 1942. The Moscow BATTLE came short days after Stalin had gambled on his October Revolution parade (it could have been a disaster) - filmed and distributed around the world. Russia would fight; and Russia fought.

By December 1941 Lend Lease, not yet named had begun to flow from Britain. A fore taste of what was to come.

Had Moscow collapsed, the front line would have shifted to the Urals,IMO, behind which an administration could regroup, and the whole dynamic of the eastern campaign would be changed for Germany: Caucus's oil - easy pea see. Grain plantations in Ukraine and western Siberia, same story.
Russia's situation in this scenario, would be very similar to China's after the commencement of the second Sino-Japan war. 1935. Huge swathes of China including major cities were in Japanese hands and considerable portions of the BUSINESS class was not displeased by the stability and shit-scared approach the Japanese used.

Re-taking the USSR would have been a very different story

So Moscow matters to everybody. the Britsh, the Americans, and the Soviet citizens
 
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Shortround6 said:
There is a school of thought (or a few authors) that seems to go with the idea that he sold out Czechoslovakia not because it "secured peace in our time"
But because it bought Britain (and France) more time to rearm.
Click to expand...

That's much of what I've read, and I think there's some truth to it.

Shortround6 said:
But you can't step out of the airplane into a news conference, and wave a peace of paper and say that is what you did.
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That was probably a bad move on the level of "Hitler missed the bus"; when you're dealing with a sonofabitch, it's best not to crow. But I suppose Chamberlain had a populace to mollify, so he had to say something, right? You can't come back from Munich and say, "Well, it's not all really sorted, sorry, chaps."
 
Feeling ill and being ill are two different things .
I stick to my point that you do not become terminal ill in a few days .
 
wuzak said:
If he didn't step down after losing a motion of no confidence he surely would have been sacked by the King soon after?
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He did not lose a motion of no confidence : the result of the motion was 281 for Chamberlain and 200 against Chamberlain .
And a British King did not sack a PM .
 
He did not sell out CZ : Britain had no obligations to the Czechs .He had mobilized to prevent Hitler from attacking CZ and he would have fought if Hitler had attacked CZ , but NOT to help the Czechs. No one cared about them . He told his sisters :we can do nothing to help the Czechs, we can only wage a war of revenge which will destroy Europe and the Empire and CZ will not remain the same .
Whatever the result of the war , CZ would cease to be an independent state .
His aim was not to buy time, because he was convinced that Britain was save and the French told him that they were save .
And why should he not wave a peace of paper ? There was no war .
 
He was NOT unseated .
 
From the man who continues to claim that because Chamberlain won a non confidence vote with 281 for him and 200 against him,he lost the confidence of Parliament , that is a good one .
And the Norway Campaign (for which was responsible Churchill ) did last to 10 JUNE .
Besides the importance of the Norway Campaign was not big .
The failed Tories who voted against Chamberlain wanted a big and fast victory ,while the strategy of Chamberlain and Daladier was to fight as little as possible and to wait til Germany succumbed to her economic difficulties .
His opponents lived in the past ,Chamberlain and Daladier knew better .
The occupation of Norway was hurting Germany during the war, the benefits were insignificant .
 

"From the man who continues to claim that because Chamberlain won a non confidence vote with 281 for him and 200 against him,he lost the confidence of Parliament , that is a good one" - But Chamberlain DID lose the confidence of Parliament, or at least he felt he had lost it sufficiently to make his continuance as PM impossible. In modern, particularly American, politics, a win is a win...but Chamberlain saw things differently. He recognized that Britain couldn't win if the voices in Parliament could not be united. He felt unable to accomplish that goal and so he resigned.

"Besides the importance of the Norway Campaign was not big" - The Norway Campaign was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. There was considerable dissatisfaction in certain quarters over how the war was being prosecuted.

"The failed Tories who voted against Chamberlain wanted a big and fast victory ,while the strategy of Chamberlain and Daladier was to fight as little as possible and to wait til Germany succumbed to her economic difficulties." - It sounds like your answer to every problem is to just sit back and do nothing (not unlike your response to direct questions on this forum). Unfortunately, leaders can't always do that. Sitting back passively will only get you so far. At some point, you have to stand up and be counted, particularly if you want to wrest the advantage from the adversary. Again, I think your "wait til Germany succumbed to her economic difficulties" comment is based on hindsight. At the time, it was felt that Britain HAD to act or risk being overwhelmed...but, then again, you seem to think that those concerns weren't present in 1940.
 
GrauGeist said:
He WAS indeed unseated by the Tories.
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Proof ?
Winning by 281 against 200 is not being unseated .
We have a PM who won a non confidence debate and was supported by the cabinet ( no one resigned, even not Winston ) and resigned .
He resigned because of his health AND because Labor did put its own interests before the interests of the country .
In 1915 Bonar Law accepted a coalition with Asquith notwithstanding their mutual hostility before the war .
In 1940 Labor refused a coalition with Chamberlain,because he was a social reformer and thus an obstacle to a Labor victory in the coming elections .Cripps and the other Marxists would never accept a coalition with a man who was more dangerous for them than Hitler .
Chamberlain wanted a coalition for the best of the country and sacrificed himself .
There were only two other candidates :
Halifax,with the obstacle of being a peer and ,following Chamberlain,unfit as war leader .Halifax was another Baldwin .
Churchill : hated by the Tories as a renegade and intriguer: they did not forget what he did to Baldwin, to Lord Derby and his role in the abdication crisis .But Chamberlain considered Churchill as a better candidate for the post of war PM .
It was Chamberlain who made Churchill PM,if he had said : it will be Halifax, Attlee would have agreed .
 
It is not based on hindsight : it was the official allied policy . The alternative was another Passchendaele . The certain quarters who were not satisfied,had no other solution . Time was running for France and Britain .
British politics are not American politics .
And, Chamberlain did NOT search for a coalition government because McMillan, Keyes, Amery and other losers had voted against him ,but because he was convinced that such a government was the best solution for the country .Already before Norway, Chamberlain was already looking for a National Government . Both (Norway and the talks with Labor ) are not related .
The war was going well for the Allies but would last months or years .
 

If the war was going well, why on earth was there a no-confidence vote? You're bouncing all over the place...and you still haven't answered the direct question of why Attlee would agree to Halifax as the PM.
 
ljadw said:
From the man who continues to claim that because Chamberlain won a non confidence vote with 281 for him and 200 against him,he lost the confidence of Parliament , that is a good one .
Click to expand...
To win a no confidence vote you need a massive majority not just a majority. Thatcher won a leadership challenge by 204 to 152 and stood down.
 
ljadw said:
He did NOT lose a non confidence vote .
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The Norway Debate, sometimes called the Narvik Debate, was a momentous debate in the British House of Commons during the Second World War from 7 to 9 May 1940. It has been called the most far-reaching parliamentary debate of the twentieth century. At the end of the second day, there was a division of the House[a]​ for the members to hold a vote of no confidence which was won by the government, but with a drastically reduced majority. That led, on 10 May, to Neville Chamberlain's resignation as prime minister and the replacement of his war ministry by a broadly based coalition government which, under Winston Churchill, governed the United Kingdom until after the end of the war in Europe in May 1945.

Norway Debate - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org
 
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