I have a sketchy knowledge of lots of the European war in WWII, which I am currently filling in by slowly reading Arthur Bryant's "The Turn of the Tide", which is based on the war diaries of Alan Brooke who, although he later spent most of the war as Churchill's main military adviser as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, was a Corps commander preceding the Dunkirk evacuation.
Brooke was ordered home for a new posting while the evacuation was in progress.
The new posting was to return to France to command the 140,000 British troops still there and to create a new British Expeditionary Force from the remnants of the one which had just been defeated, in the midst of the magnificent collapse of the French under whose command he was.
Apparently this was another example of Churchill's genius, to demonstrate to the French that the British would not abandon them, despite the French being on the verge of defeat, and surrender, anyway.
I was unaware that there were such substantial British forces left in France after Dunkirk.
Brooke appreciated that the mission was doomed, but followed his orders. The end result was mass evacuation of the remaining forces.
It seems that Churchill learned nothing from this experience when, to demonstrate support for the Greeks, he did much the same less than a year later.
Hindsight is a marvellous thing, but the fact remains that in both cases senior military advisers foresaw the futility of the action.
Churchill was undoubtedly the best leader Britain could have had during the war, if only for his dogged determination to defeat Hitler; to inspire his people and peoples outside Britain; and to hang on grimly until America came in.
But on significant strategic military events, his reinforcement of failure in France in 1940 (of which I was previously unaware) could have seen troops evacuated from Dunkirk returned to France (Brooke requested Montgomery's division to return). Overall, it demonstrates a determination by Churchill to place his militarily uninformed opinion above those of his advisers qualified to advise him, to pursue fragile political motives at the cost of massive military losses.
In a different context, but motivated by political considerations to bring America into the war and ignoring his military advisers, he did the same in Malaya and presided over the worst defeat of British arms.
The more I learn of Churchill's decisions about and interference in military matters, the more I wonder whether it is testament to his character and leadership that Britain won through, or a miracle that it survived.
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