My thoughts on “The Daughters of Yalta” by Catherine Grace Katz.

The Daughters of Yalta – The Churchills, Roosevelts and Harrimans: A story of love and war (William Collins, 2020) was written by American historian Catherine Grace Katz.  It tells of the part played behind the scenes at the Allied Powers conference at Yalta in February 1945 by Sarah Churchill, Kathleen Harriman and Anna Roosevelt Boettiger.  Their letters and observations describing the atmosphere in the Crimea and the character and mood of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, and their military chiefs, make absorbing and illuminating reading.

Katz also chronicles the fascinating and eventful lives the three women led both before and after the ten days they spent in Yalta as aides to their fathers.  Although Averell Harriman did not attend the plenary sessions, he and his daughter played key roles in setting up the conference and were there throughout.

My favourite quote from the book was that of Roosevelt’s chief of staff Admiral William Leahy concerning the Polish agreement Roosevelt and Churchill had negotiated with Stalin: “Mr. President, this is so elastic that the Russians can stretch it all the way from Yalta to Washington without technically breaking it.”

Stalin got, or would shortly get, everything he wanted.  Everything being control of Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe which was something Churchill opposed, but, not having Roosevelt’s backing, did not have the power to prevent.  The fact that Britain went to war in the cause of Polish freedom did not interest Roosevelt who seems to have been obsessed with setting up the United Nations, and receiving Stalin’s backing for it, above all else.

The book also notes the role played during the war by Sarah Churchill and her sister-in-law Pamela in promoting Anglo-American relations.  Churchill’s habit of welcoming US diplomats into his family home resulted in their affairs with, respectively, the American ambassador to Britain, John Gilbert Winant, and American ambassador to the Soviet Union, Averell Harriman. The two women doubtless did as much to foster the “special relationship” as Churchill, Eden or anyone else in the British Government of the day!

My thoughts on Roy Jenkins’ biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

This short biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by Roy Jenkins packs a good deal of information into its 173 pages.  Very sadly Lord Jenkins died of a sudden heart attack before the book was finished.  It was completed by his friend Richard E. Neustadt of Harvard University who took up the task from page 155.

I have read other, much longer, biographies of FDR by American authors H. W. Brands and Jean Edward Smith.  Their books provide much more background detail and scene-setting for FDR’s personal conflicts and political battles.  Despite their greater length they are much easier to read being written in plain and straightforward language.  One has to have a dictionary to hand when reading Lord Jenkins’ work.

However, I did add some words to my vocabulary.  Those listed below are just some which had me reaching for my Collins.

Contumaciously

Eleemosynary

Riparian

Semi-Lacuna

Readers of this blog may enjoy looking up the definitions.

Roy Jenkins’ Franklin Delano Roosevelt was first published in 2003 by Times Books of New York.

Theodore Roosevelt in praise of the English blackbird.

We are in the bleak mid-winter, but on my daily wanderings along the byways and hedgerows of this corner of South Somerset I have noticed a goodly number of blackbirds.  They are obviously not singing yet, but the warmer months should see them break into their wonderful song.

I was reminded of Theodore Roosevelt’s delightful tribute to the English blackbird in his autobiography.  I quote from it below.

In 1910 the former American president, having spent several weeks in England, was due to sail home from Southampton on June 10.  Being a lover of birds and birdsong he managed to arrange a day of birdwatching in Hampshire the day before his departure.

Roosevelt travelled by train to Basingstoke accompanied by his friend Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary.  With Sir Edward acting as guide the two avid ornithologists drove to the valley of the River Itchen to view the birdlife of the area and listen to its birdsong.

Having walked for several hours in the area Roosevelt described the valley as follows: “It is very beautiful in every way, with a rich, civilised, fertile beauty – the rapid brook twisting among its reed beds, the rich green of trees and grass, the stately woods, the gardens and fields, the exceedingly picturesque cottages, the great handsome houses standing in their parks.  Birds were plentiful; I know but few places in America where one would see such an abundance of individuals . . . “.

The two men then drove to the New Forest where they had tea at an inn before tramping on through the forest to Brockenhurst.

Roosevelt wrote of his tramp: “The New Forest is a wild, uninhabited stretch of heath and woodland, many of the trees are gnarled and aged, and its very wildness, the lack of cultivation, the ruggedness, made it strongly attractive in my eyes, and suggested my own country”.

Roosevelt and Sir Edward reached Brockenhurst at nightfall and spent the night at an inn which was in Roosevelt’s words: “. . . as comfortable as possible, and the bath and supper very enjoyable after our tramp; and altogether I passed no pleasanter twenty-four hours during my entire European trip”.

The bird which impressed Roosevelt most during his walking tour was the blackbird.  “I did not know what beautiful singers they were”, he writes. He goes on to say: “I knew he was a singer, but I had no idea how fine a singer he was”.  Roosevelt concludes: “. . . it is far easier to recognise him as the master singer that he is.  It is a fine thing for England to have such an asset of the countryside, a bird so common, so much in evidence, so fearless, and such a beautiful singer”.

My thoughts on Peter Hitchens' "The Phoney Victory - The World War Two Illusion".

Peter Hitchens’ The Phoney Victory – The World War Two Illusion (I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2018) is an extremely thought provoking read which argues that Great Britain did not have much of a victory in WW2.  By the end of hostilities this country was broke, the Empire unsustainable, and the Poles - for whom we went to war - were left under Soviet communist rule and were not even allowed to participate in any victory parades.

He also exposes the harsh reality of Churchill’s romantic idea of the “special relationship” with the USA.  Churchill’s flawed decision making and his manipulation of events come under scrutiny as well.

The book chapter by chapter.

Ch.1. The British Guarantee to Poland of March 1939.

Mr Hitchens argues that there were some in the British political establishment who wanted war with Germany at all costs.  He suggests that one of the reasons was to prove Britain’s standing as a “great power”, another was that “something must be done” to stop German expansion.

The British guarantee to Poland was a pretext for war with Germany, and Germany alone.  It excluded coming to Poland’s aid if attacked by Russia.

Ch.2 Plucky little Poland.

Hitchens points out that Poland was not a paragon of democratic virtue.  It was governed by a military dictatorship and was passively anti-Semitic.  Furthermore, after Czechoslovakia was occupied by Germany, parts of that stricken country were seized by Poland, with Hitler’s approval.

 Ch.3 Appeasement and Pacifism . . . or “The Left has its Cake and Eats it.”

In the late 1930s Tory Prime Ministers Baldwin and Chamberlain had begun building up the RAF and RN for defence, but the British economy could not support the spending required for a large “continental army”.  Labour and the Left opposed such defensive rearmament, but hypocritically campaigned against appeasement.

Ch. 4 The war we could not afford.

With British rearmament under way the government sought to buy armaments from the USA, but the USA refused to give any loans or credit as Britain, and indeed France, had reneged on debts owed to the USA following WW1.   Consequently, American politicians would only allow the sale of supplies and war materials on a cash and carry basis.  By January 1941, after only 16 months of war, Britain had run out of cash!

Ch.5 America First.

Of the British belief that they have with the USA some sort of “benevolent and sweet-natured ‘special relationship’”, Hitchens has this to say: “Not only is there no such thing, there is a case for saying that the USA has often singled this country out for exceptionally harsh treatment”.

Twice in the book he tells us that in 1919 Woodrow Wilson warned the British to stop imagining Americans were their cousins, or even Anglo-Saxons.

As in the twentieth century the USA became evermore economically powerful it grew increasingly resentful of British naval supremacy, and had absolutely no intention of going to war to protect or save the British Empire.  In fact, I would point out that Theodore Roosevelt once advocated seizing Canada, a British Dominion, by force.

Hitchens also notes that: “If Hitler had not voluntarily declared war on the USA after Pearl Harbour, it is far from certain that America would ever have become directly involved in the European War”.  I have heard similar comments from American historians and commentators in Ken Burns’ documentary The Roosevelts – An Intimate History, and Jeremy Isaacs’ The World at War.

Ch.6 The Invasion That Never Was.

Hitchens suggests that both Hitler and Churchill did not take an invasion of Britain seriously.  As Hitchens states: “The idea of an invasion, never a reality, suited both men at the time.  For Hitler it was a way of persuading a battered, unhappy British population to press their leaders to give in.  For Churchill, more successfully, it was a way to raise morale, production and military effectiveness by creating a constant atmosphere of tension and danger”.

Mr Hitchens informs us that as early as 12 July 1940 Jock Colville, Churchill’s private secretary, overheard Churchill in conversation with leading British generals stating that he doubted whether invasion was a serious menace, but intended to give the opposite impression.

After naval losses in the Norwegian Campaign, the Germans did not have, if they ever did, enough cruisers and destroyers to protect an invasion on a narrow front, let alone a broad front.  On 7 August 1940, before the Battle of Britain began in earnest, General Franz Halder expostulated, according to Hitchens: “I regard their (his naval counterparts) proposal as complete suicide. I might just as well put those troops that have been landed straight through a sausage machine.”

Hitchens also points to the decision taken, while the Battle of Britain was at its height, to despatch tanks and Hurricanes to the Middle East!

Ch.7  In Peril on the Sea.

This chapter is centred on the meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland.  Mr Hitchens seems unimpressed by its outcome.  Be that as it may, he ‘sails’ off all over the world to opine on Atlantic Convoys, British Mediterranean strategy, convoying supplies of British military hardware to Russia, the defence of Singapore and Malaya, and British obligations to Australia and New Zealand.

Hitchens appears to support A. J. P. Taylor (The Second World War and its Aftermath) who submits both that Britain should have abandoned the Mediterranean when Italy entered the war, and the attempt to build a strategic bomber force.  Mr Hitchens suggests that the resources saved should have been used to protect Atlantic Convoys and confront Japanese expansion in the Far East.  Such policies would have resulted in Britain not being engaged with German land forces anywhere or being able to attack Germany itself from the air.  In such circumstances I question whether there was any point in being at war with Germany at all.

Hitchens quotes A. J. P. Taylor’s opinion that in 1941 Crete was lost for the lack of three fighter squadrons.  He also points out that the defence of Singapore and Malaya would have been transformed if the 676 fighters and 446 tanks sent by Churchill to Russia in 1941 had gone there instead.  They are correct.

However, I would point out that there were even more fighter aircraft available in 1941 than Hitchens and Taylor were aware of.  From the start of 1941 hundreds of Spitfires and Hurricanes from Fighter Command were being sent almost daily on fruitless operations over northern France in an ineffective attempt to divert Luftwaffe fighter groups from The East.  In the course of that year over 462 British fighter pilots were lost – more than in the Battle of Britain.*  I suggest those pilots and aircraft would have been of very much more use in Crete, the wider Mediterranean area, and the Far East.

*Denis Richards, Royal Air Force 1939-1945 Vol 1, The Fight at Odds (HMSO 1953).

Ch.8 Gomorrah.

The title of this chapter was the code name for RAF Bomber Command’s attack on Hamburg in the summer of 1943.  Hitchens believes the policy of carrying out such attacks on cities was immoral and ineffective.   However, he attaches no blame to the bomber crews themselves and his verdict on their chief, Sir Arthur Harris, is very fair, as this extensive quote from the book reveals:

“Not long after Dunkirk, the language of British leaders began to take on a rather fearsome tone.  Winston Churchill speculated in a letter of 8 July 1940 to his friend and Minister of Aircraft Production, the press magnate Lord (Max) Beaverbrook, that an ‘absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland’ would help bring Hitler down.  Arthur Harris, later the chief of RAF Bomber Command, realised the significance of these extraordinary words.  Perhaps not wholly trusting politicians to defend the actions they had ordered if they later became unpopular or not respectable (as they did), he kept a copy of the letter.

Harris commendably refused a peerage in 1946 because postwar sensitivity had denied his bomber crews a campaign medal.  Harris, though an unattractive man, emerges from this with some integrity.  When a man of his sort was needed to pursue a bloody form of warfare without hesitation, he was welcomed in the councils of the great and treated with courtesy.  When, later, a startled and chastened world understood what he had actually done, he was urged to leave by the tradesmen’s entrance.  He made it very clear that he knew what was happening, and despised those who had once fawned on him and now dismissed him.  They had given him his mandate.  As far as he was concerned, they bore the ultimate responsibility.”

I would argue that Bomber Command’s campaign was far from ineffective.   Albert Speer, the Minister of Armaments and War Production, when interviewed on Jeremy Isaacs’ The World at War said that another six raids on German cities such as that carried out on Hamburg would have ended the war.  He also considered that from 1943 the bombing of Germany was, in effect, a “second front”.

Furthermore, Adam Tooze in his The Wages of Destruction – The Making and Breaking of The Nazi Economy (Penguin Books, 2007) writes of speeches made by Speer in the autumn of 1943:

“Speer reminded his audience of his triumphant address to the Sportspalast only a few months earlier, at which he had promised increases in armaments production of 15 – 20 per cent per month.  The RAF’s sustained attack on the Ruhr had put paid to that.  ‘Since the beginning of the air attacks,’ Speer explained, ‘we have it is sure, had a slow rise in production but only 3 to 5 per cent monthly.  That is absolutely insufficient’.  In fact, Speer was over-optimistic.  The monthly index of armaments showed no consistent increase whatsoever in the second half of 1943.”

Ch.9 Orderly and Humane.

This chapter deals with the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Germans from large parts of central Europe after the ‘Good War’.

My concluding thoughts.

Peter Hitchens suggests in The Phoney Victory that Britain entered World War Two at the wrong time for the wrong reason with insufficient finances and inadequate military resources, and then fought the war with a highly dubious strategy only to end bankrupt with the Empire disintegrating, and a ‘pensioner’ of the USA.  After such a devastating analysis, I find it surprising, to put it mildly, that he thinks Winston Churchill was correct in continuing the war in 1940!

Epitaphs of interest. At rest in the Churchyard of Christ Church, Redhill, North Somerset is C.T.D. "Sox" Hosegood FRAeS.

 The epitaph on his gravestone includes the description “A good egg”.

Charles Thomas Dennehy “Sox” Hosegood FRAeS is best remembered for his career in aviation.  He joined the Royal Navy just after the outbreak of World War Two and gained his Fleet Air Arm wings in July 1940.  Late in the war he was one of the first six Naval Pilots sent to America to convert to helicopters on the Sikorsky R4.  In March 1945 Hosegood became the Navy test pilot at the Joint Service Helicopter Test Unit of the Airborne Forces Experimental Establishment (AFEE) at Beulieu.  He left the Navy in November 1946.

In 1952 Hosegood became Chief Test Pilot of the Bristol Aeroplane Company’s Helicopter Division.  He worked on the Bristol Sycamore, the first British helicopter to gain its Certificate of Airworthiness.  He made the initial flights of the Bristol Belvedere and saw it into service with the RAF.

After Westland took over Bristol’s Helicopter Division in 1963 Hosegood joined the South Western Electricity Board to set up their Helicopter Unit for power line inspection duties.  He managed the Helicopter Unit for 20 years up to his retirement by which time it had expanded to cover power line inspections for 4 neighbouring Boards.

He is buried in the churchyard of Christ Church in the village of Redhill, North Somerset.

Source:

https://www.aerosociety.com/news/obituary-charles-thomas-dennehy-sox-hosegood/

On this day in 1944 the 16th Infantry Regiment, First Infantry Division, US Army went ashore in Normandy. Its First Battalion is remembered in Lyme Regis, Dorsetshire.

I was going through my archives again recently and came across some photos I took in Lyme Regis, Dorsetshire back in 2016.  One of them, a memorial plaque, I could not remember taking, but it must have been somewhere near the Marine Parade.  Be that as it may, the memorial plaque commemorates the First Battalion, 16^th Infantry Regiment US Army and the time it spent in and around the town prior to D-Day 6^th June 1944.

Below are some of those photos, including the one of the memorial plaque.

Looking east along the Dorsetshire coast from Lyme Regis on 23 May 2016.

Marine Parade at Lyme Regis in Dorsetshire on 23 May 2016.

Memorial plaque in Lyme Regis, Dorsetshire commemorating the men of the 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, United States Army.

The 16^th Infantry Regiment left the USA for England in April 1942.  It sailed from England to take part in Operation Torch and on November 8 1942 landed at Arzew in French Morocco and subsequently helped in the capture of Oran.

After the defeat of German forces in North Africa it then took part in the invasion of Sicily, Operation Husky, on 10 July 1943. The landing was relatively unopposed, but the regiment later took part in heavy fighting especially during the capture of Troina where it endured a 4 day battle against the 15^th Panzer Grenadier Division.

After the capture of Sicily the regiment returned to England and on 11 October 1943 left Liverpool by train for Dorchester, its First Battalion being billeted in and around Lyme Regis. The regiment then undertook intense training for Operation Overlord.

Embarking from Weymouth on 1 June 1944 and setting sail from the port during the late afternoon of June 5, the regiment went ashore at Omaha beach in Normandy on June 6. After a morning of hard fighting and heavy casualties the 16^th Infantry Regiment had fought its way off the beach by midday and had moved inland.  After D Day the regiment was placed in reserve to recuperate.  On 27 July it participated in the breakout from St. Lo in Operation Cobra.

The regiment advanced across Europe and took part in the infamous Battle of the Hurtgen Forest after which it was sent to rest camp on Dec. 12, but it had little respite as 4 days later Hitler launched the Battle of the Bulge.  The regiment was moved to a defensive position on the northern shoulder of the bulge where it held the line until 15 January 1944 when it took part in the counter offensive.

It was present at the capture of Bonn on 8 March 1945 and then, with the rest of the First Division, moved north to clear German forces from the Hartz Mountains.

On April 28 the regiment moved with the First Division to Selb in Czechoslovakia and had pushed on to Falkenau where it halted on May 7 with the end of the war in Europe imminent.
During its 443 days of combat in World War Two the 16^th Infantry Regiment lost 1,250 officers and men killed in action and a further 6,278 were wounded or missing.

Admiral Sir James Somerville, commander of Force H, the squadron which crippled the Bismarck, at rest in a Somerset churchyard in the village of Dinder.

In the shadow of Somerset’s Mendip Hills, just north of the A371 between Wells and Shepton Mallet, is the little village of Dinder.  Within the village is Dinder House, formerly a manor house dating from the twelfth century, rebuilt by the Somervilles in 1801.  It remained their family home up until the death of Admiral of the Fleet Sir James Somerville on this day in 1949.   

Sir James Fownes Somerville was born in Weybridge, Surrey, on 17 July 1882, the second son of Arthur Fownes Somerville of Dinder and his wife Ellen, daughter of William Stanley Sharland, of North Norfolk, Tasmania.  The Somervilles were related to that great naval family, the Hoods.

Somerville joined the RN in 1897 and became a lieutenant in 1904. He qualified in the vital new field of wireless telegraphy in 1907.

He was fleet wireless officer during the Gallipoli campaign where his outstanding work in ship to shore communications brought him the award of the DSO.

In 1921 Somerville was promoted to captain and commanded the battleships HMS BENBOW, HMS BARHAM and HMS WARSPITE.  Following the mutiny by seamen in ships of the Atlantic Fleet at Invergordon on 15 and 16 September 1931, Somerville and Captain James Tovey, another future admiral, undertook an enquiry to establish its causes.   

During the Spanish Civil War Somerville spent two years as senior British naval officer off the Spanish Mediterranean Coast.  In 1937 he was promoted to vice-admiral and subsequently became Commander-in-Chief East Indies in October 1938.  However, in July 1939 he was forced to retire with suspected pulmonary tuberculosis, a diagnosis he contested.

The outbreak of World War Two soon saw Somerville back in the service of his country.  After overseeing the development of naval radar and its rapid installation aboard ships he gave valuable assistance to Admiral Ramsay who oversaw the Dunkirk Evacuation.

After the defeat of France Somerville took command of Force H, a squadron based at Gibraltar to act as gatekeeper to the Mediterranean and operate in the Central Atlantic as necessary.  He then commanded what was, in my opinion, one of the most inglorious and mistaken actions ever undertaken by the Royal Navy.   Somerville was tasked with arranging, either by negotiation or force, the demobilisation of major units of the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kebir near Oran in French Algeria.  When talks failed Somerville, with the insistence of Churchill, ordered his ships to open fire on the anchored French warships.  The bombardment resulted in the deaths of 1,297 French servicemen, the sinking of one capital ship and heavy damage to another.  Somerville himself described it as a “filthy job”.

Many senior officers in the Royal Navy thought at the time, and after the war, that the order from Churchill and the War Cabinet to open fire on erstwhile allies was wrong.  Stephen Roskill in his Churchill and the Admirals (Pen & Sword Books Ltd. 2013) writes:  

“While working on my war history I had many interviews and much correspondence with Cunningham, Somerville and North, the three admirals concerned in the attack on Oran and related plans.  None of them ever budged from the view that, given more time for negotiation, the tragedy could have been averted.  On 9 January 1950 Cunningham wrote to Admiral Lord Fraser, then First Sea Lord, that 90 per cent of senior naval officers, including myself, thought Oran a ghastly error and still do.”

In May 1941 Force H was called on to help the Home Fleet in the hunt for the BISMARCK.  Somerville’s masterly handling of his squadron led to HMS ARK ROYAL’s Swordfish aircraft crippling the BISMARCK with torpedoes thus allowing Admiral Sir John Tovey’s battleships to catch and sink her.

In 1940 and 1941 Somerville’s ships regularly and successfully supported vital convoys to Malta, but after flying off reinforcements of aircraft to that besieged island HMS ARK ROYAL was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine  U81 on 13 November 1941.

Following Japan’s entry into the war Somerville was sent to the Far East in February 1942 to command a reformed Eastern Fleet.  Many of his ships were obsolete and his fleet was in no condition to confront the powerful Japanese carrier group which forayed into the Indian Ocean in the spring of 1942.  All Somerville could do was to retreat out of range of the Japanese until they withdrew to the Pacific for their next confrontation with the American Navy.

It was not until the spring of 1944 that Somerville was able to undertake offensive operations.  By this time his fleet had been reinforced by more modern units including the aircraft carrier HMS ILLUSTRIOUS and, operating alongside the American carrier USS SARATOGA, air strikes were launched against Japanese oil installations on Sumatra and Java.

In August 1944 Somerville left the Eastern Fleet to take up the post of Head of the British Admiralty delegation in Washington, a position he held from October 1944 to December 1945.  He made a great success of this mission and even became friends with the blunt and short-tempered Admiral Ernest J. King, the anglophobic American chief of naval operations.

On leaving the Royal Navy in 1946 he retired to Dinder House becoming Lord Lieutenant of Somerset.  He died in Dinder on 19 March 1949 of a coronary thrombosis and is buried there in the village churchyard of St. Michael and All Angels.   His wife Mary, whom he married in January 1913, predeceased him in August 1945.

Sources.

Churchill and the Admirals, Stephen Roskill (Pen & Sword Books Ltd. 2013)

Oxford Dictionary of National Biographies.

https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/36191

The Somerset Village Book. Almost 200 villages described in this chronicle from the Somerset Federation of Women's Institutes.

When visiting my local public library recently I came across a charming little book compiled by the Somerset Federation of Women’s Institutes entitled The Somerset Village Book (Countryside Books, 1988).  It gives a brief, but fascinating record of the history, people and events relating to almost 200 of Somerset’s villages.

One example of the book’s engrossing morsels of historical information is found in the entry for the village of Charlton Mackrell which is situated 3 miles east of Somerton in South Somerset.   A connection to the US Presidency is revealed!

We learn that one Henry Adams was married in Charlton Mackrell’s village church in 1609 and in 1638, at the age of 55, he and his family crossed the Atlantic to America.  The entry informs us that: “Henry Adams’ great grandson was John Adams who steered through the United States Congress the Declaration of Independence in 1776.  He became the 2nd President of the USA and his son John Quincy Adams was the 6th President.” 

The Church of St. Mary the Virgin in the village of Charlton Mackrell, Somerset.

Apparently when the book was published in 1988 there were still descendants of the Adams family living in the nearby village of Charlton Adam.

It is ironic that Lord North, the British Prime Minister who “lost America”, also lived in South Somerset at Dillington House near Ilminster.

I found The Somerset Village Book such an illuminating read that I have obtained a copy for my own library.

"Did the RAF win World War Two?" asks the April 2018 issue of BBC History Magazine.

“Did the RAF win World War Two?” asks the front page cover title of the April 2018 issue of BBC History Magazine.  I know this month sees the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Royal Air Force and that it played a vital role in defeating Nazi Germany, but I think such a cover title is just a little bit over the top.  After all, it could be more easily argued that the war in Europe was won by the Russian Army and the US Eighth Air Force.  The Russian Army won a decisive victory at Kursk in the summer of 1943 and began its inexorable advance west.   The bombers and fighters of the Eighth Air Force achieved air superiority over Germany in the spring of 1944 allowing the destruction of German industry and the crippling of the Luftwaffe.

The BBC History Magazine editors may as well ask if the Royal Navy’s British Pacific Fleet, the most powerful fleet Britain ever sent into battle, won the war against Japan.  It achieved much, and not without sacrifice, but the American Army and Navy were well capable of dealing with the Japanese on their own.

Incidentally, another attention seeking question on the front page of the same magazine asks: “Brunel: is his genius a myth?”  What next I wonder?  Perhaps a cover title, “Winston Churchill: the Tony Blair of the 1940s?”

UPDATE 28th May 2018.
I am pleased to say I had a letter, based on the above post, published in the June edition of BBC History Magazine.  It was nicely edited and I reproduce the letter as it appeared.

Did the RAF really win the war?

How the RAF Won the War, read the title of your April cover feature.  Now, I know this year marks the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Royal Air Force, and that the RAF played a vital role in defeating the Nazis, but I thought that title was a bit over the top.  After all, it could be easily argued that the war in Europe was won by the Russian Army or the United States Army Air Forces. 

The Russian army won a decisive victory at Kursk in the summer of 1943, before beginning its inexorable advance west.   And the bombers and fighters of USAAF’s Eighth Air Force achieved daylight air superiority over Germany in the spring of 1944, ensuring the virtual absence of the Luftwaffe during the Normandy landings, and the eventual destruction of Germany’s war industries by bombing.

As for the Far East, one may as well ask if the Royal Navy’s British Pacific Fleet - the most powerful fleet Britain ever sent into battle - won the war against Japan.  It achieved much, and not without sacrifice, but I suspect the American army and navy were well capable of dealing with the Japanese forces on their own!

S.W., Somerset

Dillington House near Ilminster in South Somerset. The country home of the Prime Minister who lost the American colonies.

Dillington House near Ilminster in South Somerset was the country home of Lord North who was Prime Minister from 1770 to 1782.  His half-hearted supervision of the war effort during the American War of Independence led to him being blamed for the loss of the American colonies.



Dillington House in South Somerset

Dillington is now a centre for adult education, conferences, business meetings and weddings. I was fortunate enough to have a seat there at a very well attended lecture by General Sir Michael Rose KCB, CBE, DSO, QGM entitled "Recent Lessons of History". His talk reflected on how, in his opinion, some recent decisions on military interventions were ill-conceived from the very beginning.

I have also read Sir Michael's book Washington's War: From Independence to Iraq published by Phoenix, which is all the more interesting for having heard his lecture. He draws parallels between the mistakes made during the Invasion of Iraq to those of the British in the American War of Independence.  Both wars give examples of too little too late.