1. Churchill Flashcards
India
Estimated over 0.5 million died and 16 million permanently displaced after partition of British India into Pakistan and India Chuchill was justifiably worried about the violence between Hindus and Muslims
‘Victorian sense of racial superiority’ – Roberts
Churchill had ideas of ‘a generation ago’ Lord Irwin
Letting Indian officials into central government would be a ‘crime against civilisation’ Churchill 1935
2nd August Government of India Act 1935 expanded Indian electorate by 10% (to 35m)
Commons vote was 386 to 122 minority composing around 80 Tory MPs + 40 Labour MPs who believed bill did not go far enough
‘If India could look after herself, we would be delighted’ Churchill said
‘This campaign was undertaken out of conviction, in defence of the Empire he loved.’ Roberts
Abdication Crisis
‘After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself in twelve months’ King George V
Wallis Simpson = divorcee = fixed for 27 October 1936 began divorce proceedings against 2nd husband, decree came through on 2nd May 1937, marries 3rd June 1937
Edward told Baldwin that he had ‘no right to interfere with the affairs of an individual’ (Simpson) in reference to divorce proceedings… lie as he was the one who pressed her to divorve so they could marry
Bishop Blunt hoped that King would do ‘his duty faithfully’ intended as a lament against King’s indifference to churchgoing… HE interpreted as criticism of Edward’s relationship so press broke story.
Churchill proposed morganatic marriage (putting it forward to King in late November), stating that ‘the gent [Edward] was definitely for it’.
C initially hoped of delay about King’s future, stating in a letter to Edward that there would be ‘no final decision or [Abdication] Bill till Christmas – probably February or March’.
Churchill was ‘absolutely howled down’ when he tried to speak, and that ‘Winston… has undone in five minutes the patient reconstruction works [in relation to rearmament] of two years’. Harold Nicholson (friendly MP)
‘I do not feel that my own political position is much affected by the line I took; but even if it were, I should not wish to have acted otherwise’. Churchill
Best states that Churchill’s ‘brief campaign did Edward no good and did Churchill some harm’
Roberts said that the crisis ‘was immediately added to the long list of Churchill’s supposed misjudgements, thus undermining the public perception of his stance on Hitler’.
Edward’s pro-Nazi sympathies Nazis wanted to reinstall Edward on throne as puppet king Churchill so worried he sent them to govern in Bahamas
Rearmament context
Churchill ‘was the first British statesman of any note to identify, and to call public attention to, the dangerous twist given to German national aspirations’ Best
Britons felt ToV was too harsh, and Ten Year Rule, adopted in 1919 only abandoned in March 1932 TF Britain wasn’t ready for war (appeasement best strategy)
Rearmament 1933
1933 =
- 30 January = HItler appointed Chancellor by Hindenbury
- 9 February Oxford Union voted overwhelmingly that they would ‘refuse under any circumstances to fight for King and Country’.
- 23 March Hitler passed enabling act making him a dictator + 10 March Churchill opposed second year of cuts to air force
- 14 July all other political parties in Germany had been outlawed
- October Labour Party Conference supported a motion to ‘take no part in war and to resist it with the whole force of the Labour movement.’… 14 October Germany withrew from LoN + Hitler walked out of disarmamanet conference + 25 October East Fulham by-election swung 30% from Tory to Labour (vote for pacifism).
- 7 November Churchill warns Commons Hitler has started to rearm in contravention of ToV
Rearmament: 1934
- 8 March debate about spending increases on RAF - ‘total disarmament’ Atlee… Churchill called for spending increases (he was not alone in his consers over Luftwaffe. Baldwin declared in 1932 that the ‘bomber will always get through’, and in 1935, Britain’s military chiefs predicted that an attack on London could result in 20,000 casualties in a day).
- 30 June Night of Long Knives… + Churchill called for doubling of RAF, then doubling again when finances allowed.
- July Churchill announces that in favour of befriending SU + admit into LoN to contain Threat of Hitler. (joined in September)… 31 July Parliament approved air expansion in July but came at expense of Army + Navy budgets… Roberts rearmament was carried out in a ‘grudging, piecemeal, Treasury-led way’ as not to ‘provoke Hitler or… the British public’
- 2 August, President Hindenburg died… Hitler made himself Fuhrer on the same day.
- September USSR joins LoN
- 28 November Churchill warned Commons that Germany would reach air parity by 1935
- 5 December = Walwal incident
Rearmament: 1935
- 16 March = Hitler announces publicly rearming
- 14 April = Stresa front (triggered by Germany’s declaration of inention to dramatically increase size of its air force, its army (to 50,000 men). HE with Abyssinia agreement broke down
- May = 21st Hitler reintroduced conscription, 22nd following Hitler’s statement that Germany had reached air parity with Britain, it was announced RAF would double in size accelerated from 1939 to 1937.
- 27 June = peace ballot (11 million people had participated) if a nation insists attacking another, 10 million (over 600,000) would want other nations to compel it to stop through economic and non-military measures. 6.8 million (to 2.4 million) would want, if necessary, by military means
- 31 August = 1st Neutrality Act prohibiting exports of ‘arms, ammunition, and other implements of war’.
- 3 October = Abyssinia (although imposed some sanctions on Italy, continued to supply oil and did not close Suez canal).
- December = Hoare Laval Pact… 18 December Hoare resigns
Rearmament: 1937
- 26 April = Guernica bombing many dead insight into how conflict would go
- 1 May, US Congress passes 1937 Neutrality Act.
- 28 May = Chamberlain took over
- 6 November = anti-Comintern pact Italy joined.
- 11 December = Italy left LoN
Rearmament: 1938
- 20 February = Eden resigned over Chamberlain’s policy towards Italy
- 13 March = Anschluss more troops/raw materials + Czechoslovakia was on 3 sides.
- May = May crisis triggered by reported German activity on border. Czech mobilised reserves and strengthened border defences, Brit/France told Germany they would come to aid.
- 22 July = Britain reected a proposal for a 4-power summit on Czech because it included SU which London refused to accepet as diplomatic partner
- 9 September = FDR told reporters it was ‘100% wrong’ that UsA would join an ‘stop-Hitler bloc’.
- September = MUNICH AGREEMENT LEARN INDEPENDENTLY + CHURCHILL’s POISTION REALISTIC
Final steps to war:
The Final Steps to War, 1938-39
Nonetheless, it was not long before events vindicated Churchill. An outline of the steps to war:
* 9 November 1938: Kristallnacht is carried out in Germany, where vicious mobs attack Jews and Jewish property. One Tory MP apparently grumbled, ‘I must say Hitler never helps.’
- 13 March 1939: German troops occupied Prague, the Czech capital, in violation of the Munich agreement. A Gallup poll showed 87 per cent of Britons now favoured an alliance with France and Russia, although 55 per cent still trusted Chamberlain.
- March 1939: The Nazis repeated their Sudetenland tactic in Poland, using Danzig, an international city, and the Polish Corridor as a pretext for their aggression.
- 31 March 1939: Chamberlain informed the Commons that Britain and France will provide support to Poland if its independence is threatened. (As Tombs notes, ‘this did not mean that he was resolved to face an inevitable war’.)
- Early-mid August 1939: Britain and France sought – unsuccessfully – to form an alliance with Stalin.
- 24 August 1939: Stalin shocked the world by announcing a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. Soviet exports of food and raw materials to Germany rise by 2,000 per cent.
- 1 September 1939: Germany invaded Poland and, as Tombs describes it, ‘a furious House of Commons, in an exceptionally stormy session, pressed the flustered Prime Minister to act.’ A leading figure in the Labour Party, Arthur Greenwood, told Chamberlain that unless he sent an ultimatum to Germany ‘neither you nor I nor anyone else on earth will be able to hold the House of Commons’.
- 3 September 1939: Britain delivered an ultimatum to Germany at 9.00am demanding her troops withdraw from Poland. No reply was received. Therefore, at 11.00 a.m., Britain was once again at war with Germany. Chamberlain appointed Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty, ending Churchill’s time in the political wilderness.
Rearmament: 1936
- February Eden circulated FO memorandum detailing belief Rhineland under threat from German aggression but also inevitable that Germany will be ready for aggression long before Britain and League can be ready for defence
- 7 March Rhineland League distracted by Abyssinia had French army stood up to aggression, German army were under orders to back down, HE, France was in financial crisis and gov was facing upcoming election (little appetite for war). Hitler declared that Germany no longer had ‘territorial demands to make in Europe’…. Roberts said this was a ‘calculated sop’ to British opinion. But C saw through it calling it a ‘step… in this process’.
- 14 July = bomber command command established (believed decisive role in next conflict)
- 25 October = Rome Berlin axis (Britain + France failed to keep Italy on side).
- 25 November = Anti-Comintern pact –> Jap + ger against SU.
