At a 1940s Festival, I greeted the Churchill lookalike with "I didn't expect to meet you here, Sir!," but he responded in a high-pitched, very un-Churchillian, whine. Oh, well.
In a British TV drama, the actor, with his back to the camera, got the voice right so that we knew who he was. It did not matter that, when he turned toward us, he did not look like Churchill and it was not necessary for anyone to introduce him by name. What actors do is a miracle.
10 comments:
What -good- actors do... 8-).
Churchill was a classic case of a man who's wrong for every situation except one, and has the luck to be there when that right situation comes along.
His single great accomplishment was keeping the war going in 1940, when reason and logic indicated that Britain should cut a deal with Germany if it could get acceptable terms... which were on offer, and that was generally known.
If Halifax had been PM (and he was the second choice) he -would- have made a deal.
That was precisely Hitler's plan; it was the point at which the wheels came off his wagon when the British kept plugging away.
The reason Chamberlain had been so reluctant to fight, apart from a quite genuine horror of war and its consequences, was a well-grounded apprehension that Germany was stronger than France and Britain put together -- quite true -- and that even if the Americans came in, which was not even likely in 1940 much less certain, it would mean the end of the UK as an independent Great Power. Which it did.
Halifax felt exactly the same way, which is why Chamberlain wanted him as his successor.
Churchill ended up in the job because Halifax was less acceptable to Labor and the Liberals, and a national unity government was obviously desirable.
But if Churchill hadn't been there, it would have been Halifax... and Churchill came close to dying many times in his life before that point.
I thought that Churchill had his limitations. You have put your finger on it.
I can live with Britain no longer being a Great Power!
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: While I think Sir Winston was right at many other times besides the crisis of 1940 finally enabling him to become PM, I agree it was the refusal of the UK to make a deal with Hitler that year which wrecked his plans.
What might have happened, long term, if Lord Halifax had been acceptable to the minority Labour Party and he became PM? Besides making that disastrous deal with Hitler!
Considering all the RISKS Churchill took before 1940, he certainly could have died at many different times. One of them was being seriously injured by a car while visiting the US (he looked LEFT instead of RIGHT crossing a street).
Paul: Like it not, the world is going to be dominated by contending great powers, all of them secretly hoping they can knock out the others. I would far rather it was a Power like either the US or even the UK which became top dog.
Ad astra! Sean
Paul: collectively speaking, to be not a Great Power meant less agency -- less being able to make decisions about your own actions, policy, and destiny, and more subject to the decisions of others.
This is not something a responsible leader can chose.
And Churchill didn't chose it, or at least managed to convince himself that he hadn't chosen it.
It was the unintended (but predictable) consequence of his chosen policies, -even in the best possible outcome-, which was a defeat of Germany due to the entry of the US and USSR on Britain's side.
(The worst possible one was outright German conquest, of course.)
Churchill didn't decide to sacrifice Britain's international status and global power: he thought he was preserving them, that he could have his cake and eat it too.
In terms of strategic interests, his judgment was one of romantic folly -- he just refused to accept the implications of Britain's limited resources.
Chamberlain and most of the other appeasers of the 30's weren't pro-Hitler: they hated and feared him.
What they were was realistic calculators of Britain's potential strength. They thought that fighting another World War would bankrupt the country, even if America entered the war -- and they had no confidence, for good reasons, that America would do so.
Britain did come to the end of its resources in 1941 and did not have the financial or physical means to continue the fight on any scale beyond the defense of Britain proper, and even there the country was not able to defeat the U-boat blockade on its own.
Without Lend Lease and other American aid, it would have had to drop out of the war then, and on terms far less favorable than were available in 1940.
Churchill was gambling on American entry into the war, which simply didn't look at all lightly in 1939 or 1940.
And he also thought that American entry would somehow strengthen Britain's position without making it less of a free actor in the long run.
He also grossly overestimated the altruistic component of American policy, and underestimated the degree of jealousy and dislike in American government circles towards the UK and the British Empire.
Incidentally, most of the other parties in Britain were similarly unrealistic.
Sean: Hitler wasn't planning on another World War.
What he wanted was a series of piecemeal conquests to "clear the decks" for an undistracted assault on the USSR and the rest of Eastern Europe.
This was the limit of his ambitions; he wanted Germany to rule the world, but most certainly did not expect it to happen in his own lifetime.
What he thought he could accomplish was to destroy France as a Great Power and reduce her to vassal status, get friendly neutrality from the British, and then knock out the Soviets, after which Germany would colonize and reshape the demography and economy of Europe as far as the Urals in a way which would put Germany in a position to engage in a successful long-term conflict with the US sometime generations in the future. (And, ultimately, Japan too.)
It all went well, very well indeed, until about June of 1940. After the fall of France, he expected the British to make a deal and was prepared to extend very generous terms, essentially nothing but recognition of his European hegemony and possibly a few token colonial gains if they could be had without queering the whole thing.
It was when Churchill decided to fight on after Dunkirk that the wheels came off his strategy; he started lashing out in frustration, and his judgment got steadily worse from that point.
More realistic motivations and concerns have entered popular fiction:
Bruce Wayne synthesizes Kryptonite just in case he ever needs it...;
a sniper with a Kryptonite bullet in his rifle oversees a meeting between Superman and Obama;
Superman must face a man crippled when a superhero fight demolished a building...
Going back to Churchill and the War: our existence seems very unlikely.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree with both of your basic points about the goals of Churchill and Hitler.
It was plain from Churchill's own history of WW II that he hoped to preserve the UK's Empire and her own position as a Great Power. Which I agree had become an impossibility due to limited resources, the loss of India, and the rise of the US and USSR to super power status.
I even knew of how there were still people within the US gov't hostile to the UK and the British Empire. And Churchill mentioned rebuffing FDR's interference about India.
But I have to respect a man who strove mightily even if he failed.
I did know that, at his most rational, Hitler thought of achieving his goals gradually, piecemeal, or in stages. Break France and make a deal with the UK in the West before turning on the USSR.
As you said, this all came undone when Churchill became PM and the UK refused to make peace with Nazi Germany. I have wondered what might have happened if Hitler had ordered the Wehrmacht to surround and trap the British Expeditionary Force, instead of allowing it to escape via Dunkirk? Would its destruction had led to Churchill being ousted as PM and someone like Halifax making that deal with Germany?
Again, as you said, Hitler allowed impatience and frustration to get the better of his judgment. The rational thing for Germany would be for Hitler to postpone Operation Barbarossa and consolidate the gains he had won till the war with the UK was somehow settled.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: pretty much. The crucial thing the British did in 1940 was simply to keep the war going.
If they'd made a deal, the US would have been very unlikely to have intervened, and an undistracted Germany would probably have knocked the Soviets out in 1941-42.
Plus Japan would probably have gone north and seized eastern Siberia rather than attacking the US and Britain if the Anglophone powers weren't at war with Germany as well.
Even the crazy militarists running Japan weren't -that- crazy.
Kaor, Mr. Stiring!
I agree, what you said about the UK and Germany. NOT making peace with Hitler in 1940 was crucial.
And it would make far more sense for even crazy militarists in Japan to grab eastern Siberia rather than attacking a UK and US undistracted by war in Europe.
Ad astra! Sean
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