I can't accept that Halifax was right.
Do you really think that Germany, having solidified its position in Europe, would just allow Britain to maintain its position? Do you really believe that if Britain had signed a non-aggression pact with Germany that Hitler would honour it? They ruthlessly stabbed Russia in the back after such a pact and, given Hitler's poor track record in keeping to such agreements, it'd be naïve in the extreme to assume that it'd be any different.
Hitler was certain that war with America would come at some point. He'd need Britain out of the way, a Britain whose navy effectively controlled the seas in the Atlantic. Conflict in the future would have been a certainty.
In fact, conflict with Germany was inevitable from the moment Hitler came to power. After Chamberlain's capitulation at Munich where Czechoslovakia was sacrificed, Hitler promised that that was the extent of his territorial ambitions. Another broken promise.
The Empire was already in decline in the late 1930s. Making peace with Hitler would have speeded it up considerably and its fragmentation would have been far less orderly. The outcome for Britain by not going to war would have been far worse than fighting one. A Nazi controlled Europe doesn't bear thinking about. We had to fight them.
Spot on.
Any other assessment greatly diminishes the impact we had in the War.
We had our behinds handed to us in Dunkirk, Greece and Tobruk. But Dunkirk and its less reported aftermath depleted considerable Axis resources and undoubtedly facilitated a Free French army. And the North African campaign? A breeze for the Italians with little effective resistance given no British or commonwealth engagement.
More importantly, no Afrika Corps, no Battle of Britain and no Mers el Kebir, thus handing the French navy over to the Kriegsmarine.
And let us not forget that the effective resistance movements in ALL occupied nations were trained and resourced by the British.
Stirling talks about us building our military to defeat the Axis powers. However, the whole point of Halifax is we would not have done that. With Churchill ostracized and wholly sidelined, nor was there any other candidate who would. So, we would stay neutral... and hope.
All German personnel and whole swathes of ready and willing volunteers from all the occupied nations, thus, free to attack the USSR... not in October 1942 but in April/May 1942 as planned. The USSR would have fallen in 6 months, tops, as they would have secured control way before the winter set in. Remember, the Axis forces were at the gates of Moscow and Leningrad before, like Napoleon, the elements defeated them. This gave the USSR time to relocate their factories east and out of harms way and time to secure US aid via the North Atlantic convoy - boots, trucks, food. The latter would not have happened without US intervention...
Oh, did I mention that the US would not have intervened without us in the game and - wait for it - the isolationists would have won that battle. Even had they entered, they lacked the massive aircraft carrier base to launch attacks at the Continent i.e. the UK. How else would they have defeated them?
The USSR could not move without US aid; and their troops would have been starving.
With Europe from the Azores to Vladivostok under Axis control, how many hours would Hitler have needed to break his appeasement pact with the UK?
It is not chest thumping. We were a crumbling husk of our pre War nation and reduced to a footnote by the Americans in the post war settlement. However, we were still a better nation than the one we would have been under German colonial rule.
And try telling the Jews and other "untermensch" of this country and those who only survived the Holocaust because we would not buckle that Halifax was right.
On topic, our stance against Russia is equally important and is not escalating steps to war, it is halting it. Stirling's reference to mythical "elites" controlling the agenda is straight out of the US populist conspiracy playbook and can, thus, be wholly discounted.
England
