Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

No Finest Hour

The historical May of 1940 saw a series of significant if improbable events. The French Army, reputed to be the strongest in the world, collapsed. Hitler launched an offensive that seemed to have won the war for him, which was a better result that he had expected in his wildest dreams. An aging British politician, one Winston Churchill, was rewarded for his mishandling of the Norwegian Campaign by being made Prime Minster of Britain. Churchill’s refusal to make peace after the disasters in France helped create the world we live in today. But if…

Britain had gone to war in 1939 for a variety of reasons. The key one was Neville Chamberlain’s personal pique at Hitler’s blatant lies to him. The logic of Chamberlain and the bulk of the Tory Party leadership hadn’t changed. Financially, Britain simply couldn’t afford massive rearmament, much less war. Versailles was an unjust peace. Britain had no interests in Central or Eastern Europe worth the human, financial, political or social cost of another world war. Even a victorious war would leave the UK bankrupt and a financial vassal to the US. Let Hitler and Stalin kill each other over their absurd ideologies and the control of places no sensible Englishman could pronounce, much less spell.

Through Munich, Chamberlain and his predecessor Stanley Baldwin had restrained the French. Then, at Munich, Hitler had assured Chamberlain that this was his last territorial demand in Europe. Hitler had lied. He took Prague and destroyed the rump Czechoslovakia that winter.

Chamberlain was personally offended. He had been made to look the fool on the floor of the House of Commons by a small band of war hawks led by Churchill. Chamberlain’s response was a set of guarantees given to other European states, the most important of which was to Poland.

Germany had valid territorial and historical claims against the Poles. If Versailles was to be abandoned, the Polish frontier was badly in need of revision. Needless to say the Polish government did not see matters in that light. They had made a nonagression pact with Hitler. They had helped themselves to a piece of Czechoslovakia. They refused Hitler’s suggestion to move the frontier and take a piece of the Soviet Ukraine with Hitler’s help. Unlike the Czechs, the Poles would fight.

Poland had a military pact with France. It obligated the French to attack Germany within 10 days of a German attack on Poland. This terrified France. The French government had no wish to fight Germany for Poland. They regarded the Poles as ingrates both for their deal with Hitler and their attitude at the time of Munich. They also did not expect Poland to hold out for long against Germany. They saw a war as being a Polish collapse followed by a bloody repeat of WW1 in the West. In 1914 the British had sent six divisions to help France. This time they would barely field one for the opening battles. It seemed to the French that Britain was prepared to fight to the last Frenchman.

In the event, Chamberlain left the French with no choice. If France refused to follow Britain into war, Britain proposed to dissolve their alliance. France was even more scared of facing Germany by herself than of declaring war. So the two Western Allies declared war on Germany…and sat there doing precisely nothing while Hitler and Stalin destroyed Poland.

They did precious little more for the next six months. The combined High Commands came up with hare brained schemes to attack Russia. The political leadership waited for the blockade to beat Germany or a miracle to happen. Neither Cabinet wanted war. Neither Cabinet wanted the political disgrace of abandoning Poland after seven months of war.

In the meantime, Churchill had been put in charge of the Admiralty, where he pushed schemes to mine Norwegian waters, interdict the iron ore trade from Sweden through Narvik, in general just do something – Churchill was a great believer in action for action’s sake. He infuriated the bulk of the Tory members of parliament with his antics. However, he had a loyal clique of supporters in Parliament and the press. Chamberlain felt it was safer to keep him in the Cabinet than sniping from the outside.

In April of 1940, Hitler invaded Norway and Denmark. It was an amazing gamble. He pulled it off. The British Army and Navy intervened to stop him. At heavy cost they failed completely. While there is more than enough blame to go around, one of the main reasons for the British failure was Churchill’s poor handling of the RN and its senior commanders. He was a 19^th century mind trying to micromanage a 20^th century war.

The fiasco in Norway led to a serious crisis in the House of Commons. A younger, physically stronger Chamberlain could have tried to tough it out. Chamberlain was already weary from the failure of his prewar policies, from running a war he regarded as senseless, and from the undiagnosed cancer that within a year would kill him. He had the votes to prevail but chose to step aside for the formation of a new national unity government.

There were two possible candidates to succeed him. They were Churchill and Lord Halifax. We all know what happened. Halifax withdrew his name. Churchill became Prime Minister and ultimately leads Britain to victory.

Yet Halifax was the first choice of Chamberlain, the vast bulk of the Tory Party and the Royal Family. The official excuse given was that Labor refused to join a coalition headed by a known appeaser. The truth was that Labor was willing to serve with either man, but had reservations about both.

Halifax simply didn’t want the job. He regarded the war as a mistake and saw a looming disaster. He had constitutional quibbles about being a member of the House of Lords, and thus ineligible to attend floor debates in the House of Commons. He did not think his health was up to the stress of the job, especially the difficulties of dealing with a subordinate as difficult as Churchill.

Let us presume that Labor agreed to an end run on the constitutional problems (probably by allowing him to temporarily waive his title while being appointed to the House in a resurrected rotten borough – forget what fig leaf is used, he is allowed on the floor and can speak in debate). He is PM and the war begins in the West.

Now changing Prime Ministers does not change anything through Dunkirk. It takes a different AH to avoid the Allied disaster. So we are now at the end of May, with the British Army being taken off the beaches, probably under Churchill’s personal direction (he would still be First Lord in this TL). Historically Halifax and his Deputy R.A. Butler went (supposedly behind Churchill’s back but the Cabinet records for this period and on this topic have been very carefully sealed) through Swedish and other intermediaries to try and arrange a separate peace. Churchill supposedly had a fit and squashed the efforts (see John Lukacs in three books: 5 Days in London – May 1940, The Last European War – September 1939 – December 1941, and The Duel: The 80 Day Struggle Between Churchill and Hitler. Those who can read partisan histories would do well to look at the two David Irving volume on Churchill’s War but do check the footnotes as Mr. Irving by this stage in his career clearly has an agenda).

Prime Minister Halifax would have carried the discussions through to their inevitable conclusion. Presume a peace conference instead of the second half of the French campaign. Germany, France and the UK attend with Italy ‘mediating’ and Russia fuming.

The French terms would probably have been similar to the actual terms but without the occupation. A French treaty army limited to 100,000 men with few heavy weapons on the mainland. The loss to France of preWW1 Alsace – Lorraine plus some additional frontier ‘corrections’ to get the Vosges, the Lorraine Iron Ore fields, and some of the coal fields in the French north into German hands. The French Fleet would have been ‘exiled’ to Dakar instead of being disarmed at Toulon. A giant indemnity would have been levied with some German police and military units allowed free roaming in France to inspect that the terms were being complied with. France would have broken with Britain and assumed a place alongside Italy as a subordinate in the New Europe.

France and Britain would probably have been compelled to give Germany back her old African colonies. Britain would probably have been rewarded with the Belgian Congo. A good British negotiator would have traded Southwest Africa being kept by Britain for France losing Madagascar. Hitler wanted Madagascar to dump the Jews. France was more desperate for peace than Britain. Southwest Africa was important for keeping the Nazis from having direct access to their Afrikaner extremist friends (there had been an attempted rising in 1939 with tens of thousands under various forms of detention).

Italy would probably have been thrown a few crumbs. Hypothetically they leave the conference with Malta and Cyprus from the UK, the Azzou Strip and Djibouti from France, Corfu and South Epirus from Greece, and Dalmatia from Yugoslavia. Spain would get an additional chunk of Morocco and give bases to Germany, especially in the Atlantic Islands (Canaries and Maderias).

Britain would withdraw from the continent. British European investments would be given to Germany, to be paid for with European investments in the New World, Pacific, and British Empire. The British would also take the Dutch and French American colonies, the French Pacific Colonies and the Dutch East Indies. They would pay Germany a reasonable price for them in goods from the British Empire. Germany would get back her merchant fleet and be allowed a free hand in Europe. The British would be allowed to keep the Danish Atlantic Empire (Faeroes, Iceland, and Greenland). Britain would not deploy heavy bombers in the Home Islands. The New Europe would live with the Anglo-German naval treaty of 1935. The French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese (hereafter the Latins) would not be allowed new fleet construction or building new colonial bases to threaten the British Empire.

The Latins get to be treated as German junior partners instead of as direct satellites. Although Hitler said many contradictory things over the years, the basic outline seems to have been that war in the West was necessary to get a free hand in the East. Hitler did not want to racially mix the Aryans and Latins. So taking Scandinavia and the Benelux made racial sense to him. Taking the Latins would have been seen as a racial mistake.

In other words, Hitler basically saw no reason to fight the British. They were a tough nut to crack (remember that his WW1 service was against the British army). If he took the British Isles, he felt that America, Russia and Japan would get the loot in the form of the British Empire. He had just won power ball. His only two further dreams were ridding Europe of the Jews and his Eastern war. This gave him both.

So the year between France and Barbarossa is spent by Hitler with an even worse case of victory disease than in OTL. He doesn’t have North Africa or the Balkans to distract him. He doesn’t have the diversion of spending on U-Boats or to replace planes lost in the Battle of Britain. Instead he’s buying trucks and Spitfires from the UK. He will go into Russia with the Continent united behind him (except Switzerland which will still be sending guns). The British and Latins are hauling Europe’s Jews to Madagascar.

However, in OTL Stalin wasted most of the year squabbling with Hitler. His war preparations were hindered by his fear that the British were tricking him into a war with Hitler to get themselves off the hook. In this TL he knows the hammer is going to fall. The Red Army is fully ready, dug in, instead of being completely strategically surprised in the middle of a messy reorganization. Stalin has taken the winter to get all his war industries out of western Russia.

There is no initial blitz. It is a bloody slog from one entrenched Russian position to the next. The Nazis do take Leningrad this time but never get near Moscow. By the end of 1941 they have reached the Vokholov, the Vladi hills, Rzhev, Tula, Orel, Kursk, Kharkov, Belograd, the Mius River and the Kuban. The larger Pan European Army has lost 2 million men to Stalin’s six million. The slaughter has begun. The two sides will beat each other half to death. Eighty million Soviets and twenty-five million Europeans will die to finally bring the European Army to the line Archangel – Astrakhan, which is the line they were supposed to reach in one year. The former Soviet territory they have taken will be a burned over mostly unpopulated wasteland, a victim of war and the scorched earth tactics of both sides. After Hitler’s death from the side effects of his doctor’s drug injections, Goring will make peace in late 1946.

The Japanese will still be at war with China. The Maoist menace will have been removed by a mixture of Japanese punitive campaigns and Stalin repeatedly having Mao send him manpower to save the Soviet system. The remnants of the Chinese and Korean Reds will finally be allowed by Japan to leave for Russia when peace comes on Chiang’s death in 1950. The Nationalist remnant in Chunking will take Russian protection along with the warlords of Sinkiang and northwest China. Japan will rule the rest of China through its puppets.

There will have been no Pacific War. Without an oil embargo to force them Japan would have muddled on forever in China. India will have been given its independence in 1947. Pakistan will never have been formed. India will also have Ceylon, Burma, Tibet and part of Afghanistan, with Russia taking the balance.

So the world of the early 1950’s will see the US, Japan, the British Empire, the Soviet Union and Europe all as nuclear powers. There will be no United Nations, no League of Nations, and no Israel. The British will have a mostly Jewish self-governing dominion of Madagascar. Everyone will be maneuvering for the next round. Each block will be largely autarchic. The British and US will share the trade of South America. India will be out of the Empire but still mostly in the British trade zone (Stirling Block). Basically Britain will be better off at the expense of most of Europe.

Oh yes, and with many fewer Jews to slaughter the SS will have slaughtered more Slavs, Romany, homosexuals, Reds and liberal dissenters. They were all slated for death. The Jews were just at the head of the line in OTL.