-David Drake quoted on the front cover of Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010).
London, 1944, is much closer to our present but is still the past, increasingly so as we now make our way through the twenty-first century.
17 November
early winter night
thin cold wind
dark empty streets
explosion
red flames above roofs
V-bombs falling
public phone booth with directory
fire and thunder
whistling glass
younger Everard somewhere across the Channel
London from the air like Walpurgisnacht
dreary brick Streatham whose petite bourgeoisie stood up to the European conqueror
There is always more than we think.
11 comments:
And it all happened because Winston Churchill was -not- killed in that traffic accident in New York City in 1931, when he looked the wrong way before crossing a street -- Americans and Brits often make that mistake when visiting the other country, subliminally forgetting traffic uses different sides of the street.
"Churchill sustained a fractured nose and ribs, along with a contusion to the head. The car which hit him was reportedly going 35 miles an hour. Being a 57-year-old man, not in the best shape, an accident of this sort could have been deadly depending upon the impact."
Because if Churchill had died in 1931, the odds are Lord Halifax would have been PM in 1940 -- he was the only other realistic choice, and much more popular in the Tory party and with Chamberlain's supporters.
And Halifax wanted to cut a deal with Hitler after the fall of France in June 1940. Wanted to very badly and tried to get the Cabinet to go along with it several times, until Churchill put his foot down strongly.
And Hitler badly, badly wanted to make a deal with Britain and was prepared to offer quite good terms, from a British point of view.
A middle-aged man absently stepping two inches further into the street, and the world would be unrecognizably different.
Another moment when a Neldorian or Exaltationist might intervene.
or conversely, put a sniper to take out Hitler during the 'Beerhall Putsch'.
Would that mean no WWII or just change the timing, possibly lead by someone more militarily competent?
Jim: it would probably mean no war. Hitler acquired, by 1939, an unprecedented position of being able to dictate policy in Germany.
The General Staff and most of the German elite were against another war -- not for moral reasons, but because they basically believed they couldn't win it.
The turning point was when Daladier and Chamberlain backed down over Czechoslovakia. After that, real internal opposition to Hitler from significant elements (eg., the armed forces) pretty much collapsed.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
How contingent human affairs are! Because a chauffeur made a WRONG TURN in Sarajevo we got WW I and horrors like the Russian Revolution. If Churchill had died in 1931 because of that accident, Hitler might have won his war.
I think I read somewhere that the Germans could have completely destroyed the BEF in 1940, preventing the evacuation from Dunkirk. Was that a decision by Hitler, to show he was willing to end the war with the UK?
Yes, up to the Munich disgrace, Hitler's grip on power was not wholly secure. At the very least, if HE had been forced to back down about Czechoslovakia, Hitler very likely would have been compelled not to attack Poland.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yup. Internal opposition to the attack on Poland wasn't because any substantial number of Germans liked the Poles(*); it was fear of being dragged into war with France and Britain.
But the Czech crisis undercut any such opposition, which had been strong enough to prompt plots for a coup in 1938.
Internal opposition to Hitler reached an absolute nadir in the summer of 1940, when he pulled off what the Kaiser failed at, knocked France out of the war and marched through Paris.
If he'd dropped dead on June 1st, 1940, he'd probably have gone down as the greatest German ruler of all time, with a few unfortunate foibles. Even more likely if it had been June of 1939, because Hermann Goering (his successor at that time) wouldn't have dared start WWII and the generals probably wouldn't have let him anyway.
(*) "Polnische Wirtschaft", which literally means "Polish Management" is a longstanding German slang term for "total **ckup".
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Absolutely! No wonder Churchill rightly called WW II "the unnecessary war," because up till the Munich Appeasement Hitler could have been stopped, even removed from power, at any of several different times.
I'm sure the Poles are no more incompetent, on average, than most peoples. Some might think the Russians have that monopoly on incompetence!
Ad astra! Sean
Traditionally Germans have had an even lower opinion of Russians... 8-).
OTOH, Germans are great at -doing- things, but chronically bad at deciding -what- to do.
Which is why they often win a lot of battles and lose the war.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
The Russians seem to have a genius for being incompetent, as the war with Ukraine shows!
And the Germans also seem to be bad at deciding WHEN to do something!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: more particularly, that was the Prussian historical tradition, which dominated German military and political institutions after 1871.
It's fairly easy to explain.
Prussia made its mark by fighting short, sharp wars and incorporating the territorial booty, won by qualitative tactical and operational superiority.
In other words, they never had to make a distinction between operations and strategy.
The one time Prussia fought a really long war -- the 7 Years War -- it was a near-disaster.
Saved only by the "Miracle of the House of Brandenburg", when the Czarina died and her son had a besotted man-crush on Frederick the Great and dropped out of the war just when Prussia was on the ropes.
1/3 of the total population of Prussia died in that war, btw, and Frederick never got into another serious conflict -- he spent the rest of his (long) reign repairing the damage.
Bismarck managed to unite Germany while fighting traditional, separate, short wars -- against Denmark, against Austria-Hungary, and then against France. Classic "cabinet wars", fought for a specific, limited objective.
He spent the rest of -his- reign doing a diplomatic fandango to prevent France from putting together an alliance which would threaten the new German Empire.
And the way he did -that- was to carefully refrain from threatening any of the powers who'd make logical allies of France -- Britain and Russia, particularly.
Then Kaiser Wilhelm 'dropped the pilot' and things went from bad to worse.
Contrast with the British experience, mostly characterized by long coalition wars like the ones against Spain, Bourbon and Revolutionary France, etc. -That- promoted strategic thinking.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That does make sense of what would otherwise seem very puzzling, the non-strategic way Germany fought wars, after Bismarck.
It does make me wonder, what kind of world might we have seen if Empress Elizabeth of Russia, that implacable enemy of Frederick the Great, lived long enough to utterly CRUSH Prussia?
I agree, Wilhelm II made bad mistakes, alienating both the UK and Russia. If he had avoided doing that, France would have been impotent vis-a-vis Germany.
Ad astra! Sean
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