WI Lord Halifax is appointed PM in 1940?
- Thread starter Don_Giorgio
- Start date
Churchill
Banned
You were saying?
Nice map now tell me where are Mussolini's demands?
Buy this book and do some reading http://www.amazon.com/Mussolini-Dennis-Mack-Smith/dp/0394506944
Churchill
Banned
Do you know the difference between a zone of occupation and a territorial concession?
Chilperic
Banned
Yes, and it would have been run more or less like a part of Italy. It might have been annexed to Italy later on if Hitler had been lenient..
Churchill
Banned
He didnt ask for anything for fear of embarresment as having to ask the Germans.
He did make a first request for concessions but withdrew it very quickly.
Chilperic
Banned
Well, he had to ask the Germans about things anyway, such as help for his disastrous attempt to conquer Greece and for the Italian Armys failures in the Libyan Desert.
Churchill
Banned
If he has some sense he would have demanded Corsica, Tunisia and Nice.
Then launched an attack or Malta which he could have taken at that point.
With Malta and Tunisia in Italian hands re-supply of the Italian N African forces would have been much better.
Probably would have been enough to allow the Axis to take Egypt when Rommel arrived.
Chilperic
Banned
Malta would have been hard to take with the RN patrolling the Med and the Regia Marina were no match for them, as was proved at the Battle of Taranto.
He was pointing out that the National Govt had a majority anyway, so they could technically have governed as an emergency government, without Labour participation.
General Zod
Banned
Possibly.
This is impossible. For once, it would break current treaties between Germany and the URSS, which agree to put an end to the independent Polish state as "too dangerous" (or somesuch, I don't remember the exact definition of joint German-Russian declaration) for both powers.
Getting an exclusive imperial sphere of influence in Central and Eastern Europe is the whole German war aim, even before and beside Nazi farnetications about colonialistic "Lebenstraum". If the UK can't accept that what happens in Czechia or Poland is no damned business of hers, there cannot be no peace.
Of course, it goes both ways. In order to have any peace, Germany should agree to leave Western Europe alone (after defanging France, of course) in order to have any peace with Britain.
Yes, this is reasonable, Just like the UK must leave Poland alone, so in order to have peace, Germany must withdraw from Belgium, Netherlands, and Norway, and allow them to recover political independence. No fascist puppet regimes. At most favourable economic deals.
A possible peace deal might be the definition of "zones of exclusion", akin to the spheres of influence Churchill and Stalin negotiated in 1944. Germany agrees to withdraw her troops from Netherlands, Danemark, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, and France, and to respect the political independence in such. Neither Germany nor the UK shall introduce or keep troops, planes, or ships in these countries. France shall limit her Army and Navy to the minimum necessary to police the metropolitan area and her colonial empire.
France would also make certain territorial and colonial concessions to the Axis powers: to Germany, at the very least ethnically German areas, Alsace-Lorraine and Luxemburg. Difficult to say what else, if any, Germany could have claimed in the final peace treaty: possibly the rest of Lorraine, or maybe just the French claims of the old WWI September Program: Belfort, the Briey ore-field, the western slopes of the Vosges. Possibly (even if Hitler was rather disinterested in colonies), the return of Camerun, for prestige and Middle Congo to compense for the impossibility of claiming old British-annexed German colonies. Of course, Italy would also claim their pound of flesh: Nice, Savoy, Corsica, Tunisia, Dijbouti. Hitelr would have all interest to make Mussolini appeased and less likely to stir troubler in the Balkans.
General Zod
Banned
Well, there is a big difference. France has fallen. It could be argued that this demostrates the futility of completely containing German expansionism in Europe and now Britain must focus on keeping the British Empire safe and esnruing the security of the Home Isles.
This is doable (as long as Britain is equally forbidden to introduce her forces there and France disarms, of course). Nazi Germany's expansionistic programs on Western Europe were always rather fuzzy and opportunistic and rather peripheral to the imperial progrma in Central-Eastern Europe. Of course they would keep everything if they could, but they can also give up a safely neutralized Western Europe in order to have a one-front war wit the URSS.
Withdrawing military forces from Western Europe can be agreed for, if France is disarmed. Of course, since any measure should have to be symmetrical, anything more than that would be unfeasible. I doubt the Uk would agree to demilitarize Southern England in order to demilitarize Reinland.
Well, this is not really feasible, in the sense of impractical.
Would Britain agree to demilitarise Egypt and Sudan ?
Well, pulling our German froces from Western Europe garantees the national security of the British Isles. About the broken agreements, well, the main argument would be that the Gemran conquest of Western Europe and the fall of France shows that waging a general war in Europe to deny German expansion in Central and Eastern Europe is a costly failure.
The problem being of course that the trickle of Conservatives demanding Churchill as leader (not just anyone but Chamberlain) was turning into a flood. The political mood was clearly rapidly moving towards a revolt by Conservative and National backbenchers for someone to take charge and that someone had to be Churchill.
There were over two hundred, maybe around three hundred, government members clambering for action. Chamberlain was no political fool and when he found out about it he became nervous and literally paled when he heard the cries of 'Resign' from the government benches. Halifax had neither the appeal nor the supportand certainly not the charisma needed to win these numbersd back. He refused the job because he knew he could never keep it.
It was vital that Labour be brought into the Unity government. Not all politicans act only in their party interest. At times of crisis they act in the national interest. Partizan politics and ruthless exploitation of the numbers is not the reaction of leaders when faced with such a situation.
General Zod
Banned
That is not necessary. Really, who could assume that Norwegian or Dutch armies could ever pose a true threat to the Reich. What's truly necessary, for the safety of Germany, is that neither France is allowed to rearm, nor Britain is allowed to station troops in the neutral countries.
Yep. However, once Germany pulls out, she cannot reenter those countries without another war with Britain, and Britain can rearm as much she likes.
Well, really, up to Munich the Western democracies had not really done anything else but allow ethnic Germans to reunite with their homeland: Reinland, Saar, Austria, Sudetenland. Hardly peace at whatever cost. They had been taken by surprise the one moment Germany had truly trespassed (Czechia) and bretrayed pacts and reasonable claims and reacted by going to war over Germany's next claim.
If you wish, they had chosen to be an autonomous vassal, than to refuse to compromise on anything and be destroyed like Poland. One might argue with good reason that had Poland followed the same course, they would have just sacrificed Danzig, the Corridor, and Upper Silesia, and some divisions to fight the URSS alongside Germany, instead of the carnage of occupation. Which was the wisest choice ?
True, true, but the harsh reality is that with the resurgence of German and Soviet power in the '30s, the choice in Central and Eastern Europe was to be a German vassal, or a Soviet vassal. Hope to steer wholly independent of both with Franco-British help was wholly futile. A terrible choice, sure, with the horrible regimes both great powers had in the 30s, but the choice would have existed nonetheless. The power vacuum Versailles had created was artificial and Paris or London could not hope to enforce it forever, short of creating United Europe, or bringing the Americans in the area.
As the outcome of WWII demonstrated, the day Britain could hope or ask and prevent the Continent to unify under one hegemony were over, and had done so since the rise of industrial revolution in Germany, Russia, and the USA. Striving to keep Europe divided among equal powers was futile, they could only expend themselves to substitute one continental hegemony with another: Germany, Russia, the USA, federal Europe. Truly, the options in the 30s sucked, Nazism or Stalinism, but the Britsh elite could only blame themselves for having spawned Hitler from Versailles. They could have had a reasonable co-hegemony with a reasonable and civil Germany a generation before, but they had chosen passive-aggressive France, too weak to ensure any real stable hegemony to Europe, too bullheaded to accept the second-tier rank their resources established. Now, the very most they could do was to keep Western Europe as safe as they could from both ugly regimes, and wait for their decay. As WWII outcome showed, Central and Eastern Europe was unsalvageable anyway.