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The next one is underway, no worries. The focus will still be on Africa, dealing with the fate of former Italian colonies. After that I'll most likely post something about the postwar defense policy of Britain.
And since people still show interest to this, it's time for another poll: what would you like to read about next?
* Decolonization and it's effects on Africa and Asia
* South America
* Postwar China
* US Presidential elections of 1956
* Soviet domestic and foreign policy
* Impact of the Middle-Eastern War in New Europe
And since people still show interest to this, it's time for another poll: what would you like to read about next?
* Decolonization and it's effects on Africa and Asia
* South America
* Postwar China
* US Presidential elections of 1956
* Soviet domestic and foreign policy
* Impact of the Middle-Eastern War in New Europe
All of the above mentioned topics
OK, if I have to choose, the bolded ones look most promising.I suppose the Italian Missile Crisis you mentioned earlier is still a long way off...?
"Greeks in this new empire" - British Foreign Policy after Istanbul
The long political career of Anthony Eden culminated on the Middle-Eastern War, where he managed to gain a tremendous boost to tarnished British global prestige and to secure Britain's prominent position in Middle-Eastern politics for decades to come. Ironically his victory in Middle-Eastern War and the renewed confidence of British public mood made the turning point of 1960s all the more difficult for Eden's successors after the old statesman had been forced to retire due his deteriorating health soon after the Istanbul Summit.
"We British have had very early and increasingly to recognize the limitations of our power and influence, great though it be, in the gaunt world rising from the ruins of this hideous war."
- Anthony Eden, 1947
"We regard ourselves as one of the powers most vital to the peace of the world. The very fact that we fought so hard for our own liberty, and paid such a price, warrants our retaining that position, and indeed it places a duty upon us to continue to retain it. We still have our part to play."
- Harold Macmillan, 1954
"Our influence in the world cannot for ever continue unaffected by this running pattern of need for financial help, internationally, at frequent intervals. Indeed, that influence depends not only on our military strength but also on our economic power and the respect (or lack of it) which other nations have for our economic performance."
-Richard Austen Butler, 1957
American policymakers resumed by default that the mantle of Western leadership was theirs for the taking after World War II, owing to their unmatched resources and prosperity in a world filled with rubble. They considered leadership their right also by virtue of their unmatched devotion to the defense and creation of a new world order built upon the interwined foundations of liberal trade and cooperative security, mutually guaranteed by American wealth and military might. British policymakers did not disagree with these American goals. They too wanted a safe and prosperous world instead of the uncertain status quo where whole cities could vanish in a fiery instant. Having fought twice in a generation to save their own vision of Western civilization and having led the international system as a banker and policeman for centuries, they merely objected to their country's playing only a supporting role in this new partnership.
While Britain readily accepted the fact of life that the United States had emerged the war as the leading superpower, the actions of Britain soon showed that she was more than willing to work and sacrifice to maintain her position as a world power enjoying a special relationship with the United States. The logic behind early postwar foreign policy was that only by wielding independent power of its own could Britain hope to continue to play its desired dual role as trusted American ally and heeded American adviser. A sound special relationship could only come if Britain were able to build up her own prestige and safeguard her inherited interests in the economic as well as the political and military spheres. The prize of such foreign policy was heavy, but there were few possible alternatives. British policymakers knew full well the likely result should the world come to blows again. Their country would be the first to be attacked and atomized, and there was little they could do to avoid this fate save to keep war from happening in the first place. Having a say to American foreign policy towards Neuropa thus served a very real purpose if extinction was the alternative. The decision to manufacture nuclear weapons in January 1947 when Britain was virtually bankrupt was the first sign of the British willingness to pursue national security and maintain her international prestige in the outskirts of New Europe at any cost. Such was Britain's outlook after Zürich.
After the successful Middle-Eastern War had ended to an Allied victory, Harold Macmillan who had acted as wartime Defence Minister and Foreign Secretary succeeded Anthony Eden as the new Prime Minister on 1956. During his premiership the economically prosperous late 1950s came to a depressing end as severe economical troubles rocked British reconstruction efforts, while Macmillan himself was ousted after political scandal in 1962. Globally Britain was preoccupied by the Malay Emergency and other local crises in former imperial territories in Oman, Kenya, Malaya as well as UN Trusteeships in Indochina and Indonesia.
Yet it was soon evident that Britain was increasingly dependent on the United States for the restoration of her war-torn economy and for her own national security as well. Her defense expenditure was hardly one-tenth of that of the United States despite partial American demobilization, and Britain was struggling to maintain even this level during the 1950s. In the new international situation it was thus only natural that British policy looked to United States and the Commonwealth to cooperate in the task of safeguarding the security of the Free World, containing hostile Fascist ambitions globally. To meet these demands military expenditure had to remain high, and demobilization was slow. For British strategists the bond of common interest between Britain and the United States was the necessity of maintaining in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean a power matching that of Germany.
Despite the recognition of the increasing importance of the "special relationship", the postwar pattern of British foreign policy was slow in taking shape and even slower in being accepted by the British people. After all those years of hardship there was bitter reluctance to face that hard fact that the war itself had demonstrated that Britain no longer possessed the military potential for primacy in world affairs. But while the public mood in Britain was slow to change, globally the relative decline of British power was quick to bring about major changes in international geopolitics. After the end of WWII the internal relations of the various parts of the British Empire entered into a new era. The earlier level of control metropolitan Britain had formerly had was now being steadily replaced by the conflicting economic and strategic interests of increasingly independent Dominions. Another alarming fact for British leadership was the fact that the war had also swept away much of the former prestige that imperial power had formerly held in the colonies, especially in Asia. At the same time the urgent need to reconstruct war-torn British economy gave imperial possessions new, vital importance as sources of raw materials and markets. In the face of Britain's growing weakness as a global power in relation to Germany and the United States this fatal mixture meant that decolonization was prone to meet difficult obstacles along its way. As the Empire was beginning to transform and dissolve due a steady process of decolonization, British planners were facing new challenges everywhere in their former sphere of interest.
In addition to commitments dating before the war era - facing up to the situation in the Middle East, garrisoning of bases in Gibraltar, Malta, and Aden - imperial interests "East of Suez" proved to be increasingly costly and difficult to credibly protect and maintain. As the resources to meet all prewar commitments effectively were no longer available, the focus of British interests was thus increasingly fixed on Middle-East where the conflicting American, German and Soviet interests towards the strategic petroleum reserves of the region made continued military presence increasingly important. However, even if domestic and global political and economic considerations dictated the abandonment of formal and direct control of many former British possessions in Asia, withdrawal from Empire did not mean abandonment of all imperial designs. Informal control with minimal costs and considerable advantages was still possible, and widely used as well. Initially the postwar withdrawal from India and other parts of Asia did not seem to hurt British influence in the region as much as the critics had predicted. In postwar 1940s Britain was still clearly the paramount power in the Middle-East, and Arab leaders were eager to send their best sons to Harrow and Sandhurst. But with Empire wounding up in Asia and decolonization slowly proceeding on the African continent as well, Middle-East remained the sole region over which British suzerainty could still be exerted. Initially the new British policy in the region was focused to securing the economic welfare of locals. With the rising new generations of disenchanted and angry young Arabs, British colonial leaders were quick to realize that future British policy should be based "on peasants and not pashas." The importance of this change was further underlined by the rise of Baathism as a new, radical form of political Arabism. The conflict between this rising political force and old British imperialism culminated on Operation Damask and the following Middle-Eastern War.
Richard Austen Butler was a long-standing figure in British politics, and he finally managed to outwit his long-time competitor Macmillan and manouvre himself to the Premiership in 1962, right at the beginning of turbulent 1960s.
After the conflict it was clear that in order to secure her victory and to maintain the political control in Middle East Britain would have to develop an economic and social policy that would make for the prosperity and contentment of the area as a whole. Overall objectives in the postwar Middle East were after all political stability to insure a steady flow of oil from Kuwait and Iraq, to keep the approaches to Africa from falling to hostile states and to retain influence in the region as symbol of British power. British interests in the region would be best served also by keeping Iran on Western camp and by opposing all future attempts of Fascist and Communist domination well in advantage. Simultaneously it was also agreed that Britain should carefully maintain her image as a prominent military power in the region in order to maintain "law and order" in the main oil-producing Arab countries and to provide credibility to the recently formed METO alliance. The commitments to METO were also a convenient way to justify the presence of network of British military bases in the region in strategic locations such as Suez and Aden. Re-established as a joint UN facility after the war, the Suez base alone once again occupied an area about the size of Wales, supported by air and naval bases scattered around the Middle East. Being another key base in the region, Aden was also the center for British deployment elsewhere, providing staging facilities for aircraft and forces moving along British direct lines of communication to Asia, and by acting as a supply center for supporting "possible peace-keeping operations" in East Africa and the Indian Ocean.
But while the post-Instanbul British presence in Middle-East was formidable and seemed firmly secured, in the end it was a castle build on sand. On late 1950s Long-Term Study Group led by Philip Rogers, the Deputy Secretary of the Cabinet, was formed as a new sub-committee of the DOP Official Committee. The group, which comprised officials from the Foreign Office, the Treasury, the Commonwealth Relations Office, the Colonial Office, the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Defense was instructed to produce three papers on Britain's future responsibilities in Mediterranean, Middle East and Far East during the 1960s. The papers on the Far East and Middle East were to examine the subsequent nature and scale of Britain's influence in these areas. The third paper was to explore the possibitilies of reducing Britain's troop commitments in Mediterranean. During the course of the work of the Committee, members from the Boards of Trade and Treasury contented that Britain should in future rely primarily on normal diplomatic and commercial procedures to promote her global interests, while the Foreign Office believed that maintaining military presence was also an important element in preserving British influence, especially in ensuring the security of oil supplies in Middle-East. The Foreign Office tented to priorize the "East of Suez" role and global partnership with the US, while the Board of Trade, the civilian officials of the MoD and, to some extent, the Treasury were inclided to question the sharply rising costs of Britain's overseas commitments. These critics were doubtful whether the maintenance of this role would really enhance Britain's leverage over American policy and maintain her own security at home. There were strong arguments for "pulling back to Mediterranean" and relying on commercial considerations to protect British economic interests elsewhere. The final report fully accepted that during the 1950s Britain had been maintaining "an influence disproportionate to" her economic strength. "If that influence necessitates the maintenance of commitments which impose a disproportionate strain on our resources, there must come a point at which the advantages of influence are outweighted by the weakening of our economy. To maintain the commitments beyond that point would be disastrous to our whole position", the Far East paper grimly concluded - and the general mood among the planners was that that very point was approaching fast.
The main argument of Far East Paper was that short term-maintenance of Singapore base remained essential as a means of influencing US policy in the region, resisting growing Red Chinese interference in the area and defending Malaysia against Indonesia. Alternate facilities or bases in Australia, Philippines or Thailand were considered to be theoretically possible, but the study concluded they would require long negotiations before they could be established and even in that case they would prove prohibitively expensive. Despite the fact that after the war and during the Malay Emergency Britain had worked hard to reassert her control over the economically vital rubber and tin of Malaya while the former Dutch and French imperial possessions were taken over by the UN Trusteeship Council, the predicted future economic interests in Southeast Asia were small and did not justify maintaining the base indefinitively. The paper took a strong stand for decolonization by suggesting that Britain should aim for "neutralization" of Southeast Asia, including Indochina, thus rendering continued occupation of the Singapore base unnecessary.
Closer to Home Islands the dark experiences of Dunkirk, Normandy and Italy lingered in public memory and affected to the spirit of Mediterranean Paper. Having sustained over 300 000 military personel and 45 000 seamean casualties during WWII, the British public was extremely critical to the idea of British land armies fighting on European continent ever again. The man in the street was clear on his opinion: the defense of South Italy should be the job of Italians themselves, and while air and naval support could certainly be provided, that was to be all. Strategically British planners noted that the security of British Commonwealth dependend first and foremost on protecting the United Kingdom and maintaining vital sealine communications by securing the Middle East and Mediterranean as defensive striking bases against New Europe.
When the Long-Term Study Group published the three reports on late 1950s, British Army had 400.000 men deployed around the globe, with some 54.000 troops in Southeast Asia alone. Meanwhile the cost of Britain's overseas commitments was rising rapidly through the decade. Then came the early 1960s and the Sterling crisis, followed by a humiliating recovery of British economy a major US aid package of $3,000 million worth of international loans. Britain had finally reached the point where "the advantages of influence" were outweighted by budgetary crisis. As the Macmillan Government studdered and PM Butler took over, defense spending became prime target in need to increase exports and to impose tight controls over public expentidure. As Britain was forced to act quickly, Middle-East and Southeast Asia were about to experience new radical changes in relatively short time.
The long political career of Anthony Eden culminated on the Middle-Eastern War, where he managed to gain a tremendous boost to tarnished British global prestige and to secure Britain's prominent position in Middle-Eastern politics for decades to come. Ironically his victory in Middle-Eastern War and the renewed confidence of British public mood made the turning point of 1960s all the more difficult for Eden's successors after the old statesman had been forced to retire due his deteriorating health soon after the Istanbul Summit.
"We British have had very early and increasingly to recognize the limitations of our power and influence, great though it be, in the gaunt world rising from the ruins of this hideous war."
- Anthony Eden, 1947
"We regard ourselves as one of the powers most vital to the peace of the world. The very fact that we fought so hard for our own liberty, and paid such a price, warrants our retaining that position, and indeed it places a duty upon us to continue to retain it. We still have our part to play."
- Harold Macmillan, 1954
"Our influence in the world cannot for ever continue unaffected by this running pattern of need for financial help, internationally, at frequent intervals. Indeed, that influence depends not only on our military strength but also on our economic power and the respect (or lack of it) which other nations have for our economic performance."
-Richard Austen Butler, 1957
American policymakers resumed by default that the mantle of Western leadership was theirs for the taking after World War II, owing to their unmatched resources and prosperity in a world filled with rubble. They considered leadership their right also by virtue of their unmatched devotion to the defense and creation of a new world order built upon the interwined foundations of liberal trade and cooperative security, mutually guaranteed by American wealth and military might. British policymakers did not disagree with these American goals. They too wanted a safe and prosperous world instead of the uncertain status quo where whole cities could vanish in a fiery instant. Having fought twice in a generation to save their own vision of Western civilization and having led the international system as a banker and policeman for centuries, they merely objected to their country's playing only a supporting role in this new partnership.
While Britain readily accepted the fact of life that the United States had emerged the war as the leading superpower, the actions of Britain soon showed that she was more than willing to work and sacrifice to maintain her position as a world power enjoying a special relationship with the United States. The logic behind early postwar foreign policy was that only by wielding independent power of its own could Britain hope to continue to play its desired dual role as trusted American ally and heeded American adviser. A sound special relationship could only come if Britain were able to build up her own prestige and safeguard her inherited interests in the economic as well as the political and military spheres. The prize of such foreign policy was heavy, but there were few possible alternatives. British policymakers knew full well the likely result should the world come to blows again. Their country would be the first to be attacked and atomized, and there was little they could do to avoid this fate save to keep war from happening in the first place. Having a say to American foreign policy towards Neuropa thus served a very real purpose if extinction was the alternative. The decision to manufacture nuclear weapons in January 1947 when Britain was virtually bankrupt was the first sign of the British willingness to pursue national security and maintain her international prestige in the outskirts of New Europe at any cost. Such was Britain's outlook after Zürich.
After the successful Middle-Eastern War had ended to an Allied victory, Harold Macmillan who had acted as wartime Defence Minister and Foreign Secretary succeeded Anthony Eden as the new Prime Minister on 1956. During his premiership the economically prosperous late 1950s came to a depressing end as severe economical troubles rocked British reconstruction efforts, while Macmillan himself was ousted after political scandal in 1962. Globally Britain was preoccupied by the Malay Emergency and other local crises in former imperial territories in Oman, Kenya, Malaya as well as UN Trusteeships in Indochina and Indonesia.
Yet it was soon evident that Britain was increasingly dependent on the United States for the restoration of her war-torn economy and for her own national security as well. Her defense expenditure was hardly one-tenth of that of the United States despite partial American demobilization, and Britain was struggling to maintain even this level during the 1950s. In the new international situation it was thus only natural that British policy looked to United States and the Commonwealth to cooperate in the task of safeguarding the security of the Free World, containing hostile Fascist ambitions globally. To meet these demands military expenditure had to remain high, and demobilization was slow. For British strategists the bond of common interest between Britain and the United States was the necessity of maintaining in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean a power matching that of Germany.
Despite the recognition of the increasing importance of the "special relationship", the postwar pattern of British foreign policy was slow in taking shape and even slower in being accepted by the British people. After all those years of hardship there was bitter reluctance to face that hard fact that the war itself had demonstrated that Britain no longer possessed the military potential for primacy in world affairs. But while the public mood in Britain was slow to change, globally the relative decline of British power was quick to bring about major changes in international geopolitics. After the end of WWII the internal relations of the various parts of the British Empire entered into a new era. The earlier level of control metropolitan Britain had formerly had was now being steadily replaced by the conflicting economic and strategic interests of increasingly independent Dominions. Another alarming fact for British leadership was the fact that the war had also swept away much of the former prestige that imperial power had formerly held in the colonies, especially in Asia. At the same time the urgent need to reconstruct war-torn British economy gave imperial possessions new, vital importance as sources of raw materials and markets. In the face of Britain's growing weakness as a global power in relation to Germany and the United States this fatal mixture meant that decolonization was prone to meet difficult obstacles along its way. As the Empire was beginning to transform and dissolve due a steady process of decolonization, British planners were facing new challenges everywhere in their former sphere of interest.
In addition to commitments dating before the war era - facing up to the situation in the Middle East, garrisoning of bases in Gibraltar, Malta, and Aden - imperial interests "East of Suez" proved to be increasingly costly and difficult to credibly protect and maintain. As the resources to meet all prewar commitments effectively were no longer available, the focus of British interests was thus increasingly fixed on Middle-East where the conflicting American, German and Soviet interests towards the strategic petroleum reserves of the region made continued military presence increasingly important. However, even if domestic and global political and economic considerations dictated the abandonment of formal and direct control of many former British possessions in Asia, withdrawal from Empire did not mean abandonment of all imperial designs. Informal control with minimal costs and considerable advantages was still possible, and widely used as well. Initially the postwar withdrawal from India and other parts of Asia did not seem to hurt British influence in the region as much as the critics had predicted. In postwar 1940s Britain was still clearly the paramount power in the Middle-East, and Arab leaders were eager to send their best sons to Harrow and Sandhurst. But with Empire wounding up in Asia and decolonization slowly proceeding on the African continent as well, Middle-East remained the sole region over which British suzerainty could still be exerted. Initially the new British policy in the region was focused to securing the economic welfare of locals. With the rising new generations of disenchanted and angry young Arabs, British colonial leaders were quick to realize that future British policy should be based "on peasants and not pashas." The importance of this change was further underlined by the rise of Baathism as a new, radical form of political Arabism. The conflict between this rising political force and old British imperialism culminated on Operation Damask and the following Middle-Eastern War.
Richard Austen Butler was a long-standing figure in British politics, and he finally managed to outwit his long-time competitor Macmillan and manouvre himself to the Premiership in 1962, right at the beginning of turbulent 1960s.
After the conflict it was clear that in order to secure her victory and to maintain the political control in Middle East Britain would have to develop an economic and social policy that would make for the prosperity and contentment of the area as a whole. Overall objectives in the postwar Middle East were after all political stability to insure a steady flow of oil from Kuwait and Iraq, to keep the approaches to Africa from falling to hostile states and to retain influence in the region as symbol of British power. British interests in the region would be best served also by keeping Iran on Western camp and by opposing all future attempts of Fascist and Communist domination well in advantage. Simultaneously it was also agreed that Britain should carefully maintain her image as a prominent military power in the region in order to maintain "law and order" in the main oil-producing Arab countries and to provide credibility to the recently formed METO alliance. The commitments to METO were also a convenient way to justify the presence of network of British military bases in the region in strategic locations such as Suez and Aden. Re-established as a joint UN facility after the war, the Suez base alone once again occupied an area about the size of Wales, supported by air and naval bases scattered around the Middle East. Being another key base in the region, Aden was also the center for British deployment elsewhere, providing staging facilities for aircraft and forces moving along British direct lines of communication to Asia, and by acting as a supply center for supporting "possible peace-keeping operations" in East Africa and the Indian Ocean.
But while the post-Instanbul British presence in Middle-East was formidable and seemed firmly secured, in the end it was a castle build on sand. On late 1950s Long-Term Study Group led by Philip Rogers, the Deputy Secretary of the Cabinet, was formed as a new sub-committee of the DOP Official Committee. The group, which comprised officials from the Foreign Office, the Treasury, the Commonwealth Relations Office, the Colonial Office, the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Defense was instructed to produce three papers on Britain's future responsibilities in Mediterranean, Middle East and Far East during the 1960s. The papers on the Far East and Middle East were to examine the subsequent nature and scale of Britain's influence in these areas. The third paper was to explore the possibitilies of reducing Britain's troop commitments in Mediterranean. During the course of the work of the Committee, members from the Boards of Trade and Treasury contented that Britain should in future rely primarily on normal diplomatic and commercial procedures to promote her global interests, while the Foreign Office believed that maintaining military presence was also an important element in preserving British influence, especially in ensuring the security of oil supplies in Middle-East. The Foreign Office tented to priorize the "East of Suez" role and global partnership with the US, while the Board of Trade, the civilian officials of the MoD and, to some extent, the Treasury were inclided to question the sharply rising costs of Britain's overseas commitments. These critics were doubtful whether the maintenance of this role would really enhance Britain's leverage over American policy and maintain her own security at home. There were strong arguments for "pulling back to Mediterranean" and relying on commercial considerations to protect British economic interests elsewhere. The final report fully accepted that during the 1950s Britain had been maintaining "an influence disproportionate to" her economic strength. "If that influence necessitates the maintenance of commitments which impose a disproportionate strain on our resources, there must come a point at which the advantages of influence are outweighted by the weakening of our economy. To maintain the commitments beyond that point would be disastrous to our whole position", the Far East paper grimly concluded - and the general mood among the planners was that that very point was approaching fast.
The main argument of Far East Paper was that short term-maintenance of Singapore base remained essential as a means of influencing US policy in the region, resisting growing Red Chinese interference in the area and defending Malaysia against Indonesia. Alternate facilities or bases in Australia, Philippines or Thailand were considered to be theoretically possible, but the study concluded they would require long negotiations before they could be established and even in that case they would prove prohibitively expensive. Despite the fact that after the war and during the Malay Emergency Britain had worked hard to reassert her control over the economically vital rubber and tin of Malaya while the former Dutch and French imperial possessions were taken over by the UN Trusteeship Council, the predicted future economic interests in Southeast Asia were small and did not justify maintaining the base indefinitively. The paper took a strong stand for decolonization by suggesting that Britain should aim for "neutralization" of Southeast Asia, including Indochina, thus rendering continued occupation of the Singapore base unnecessary.
Closer to Home Islands the dark experiences of Dunkirk, Normandy and Italy lingered in public memory and affected to the spirit of Mediterranean Paper. Having sustained over 300 000 military personel and 45 000 seamean casualties during WWII, the British public was extremely critical to the idea of British land armies fighting on European continent ever again. The man in the street was clear on his opinion: the defense of South Italy should be the job of Italians themselves, and while air and naval support could certainly be provided, that was to be all. Strategically British planners noted that the security of British Commonwealth dependend first and foremost on protecting the United Kingdom and maintaining vital sealine communications by securing the Middle East and Mediterranean as defensive striking bases against New Europe.
When the Long-Term Study Group published the three reports on late 1950s, British Army had 400.000 men deployed around the globe, with some 54.000 troops in Southeast Asia alone. Meanwhile the cost of Britain's overseas commitments was rising rapidly through the decade. Then came the early 1960s and the Sterling crisis, followed by a humiliating recovery of British economy a major US aid package of $3,000 million worth of international loans. Britain had finally reached the point where "the advantages of influence" were outweighted by budgetary crisis. As the Macmillan Government studdered and PM Butler took over, defense spending became prime target in need to increase exports and to impose tight controls over public expentidure. As Britain was forced to act quickly, Middle-East and Southeast Asia were about to experience new radical changes in relatively short time.
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A very interesting look at postwar Britain.
It seems out of place for Eisenhower to have a museum, given his fall after the D-Day failure.
Richard Austen Butler was a long-standing figure in British politics, and he finally managed to outwit his long-time competitor Macmillan and manouvre himself to the Premiership in 1962, right at the beginning of turbulent 1960s.
It seems out of place for Eisenhower to have a museum, given his fall after the D-Day failure.
I didin't have time to edit that image properly, allthough I did notice the same thing.
I didin't have time to edit that image properly, allthough I did notice the same thing.
By the way, what happened to Eisenhower after D-Day?
Feeling (quite correctly) that he had been unjustly turned into the main scapegoat for Normandy fiasco he removed himself from public life to a bitter retirement and focused on writing his controversial memoirs, dying of a heart attack on September 1955 soon after they were published.
Poor guy.
If only history was different, i bet he could have became a President of the United States.
Before D-Day even happened, he wrote a "just-in-case" speech declaring that "if any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone." If anybody made Eisenhower the main scapegoat, it was himself.
Poor guy.
...And curse us with Nixon.
I actually quoted it somewhere along this AAR if I remember correctly. I'm referring to the Allied political leadership that pushed for Overlord in a high-risk gamble that aimed to turn the uneasy truce in the Ostfront back into shooting war despite the objections of military leaders. And once Normandy turned into a bloodbath they turned the blame to the top military leaders in order to keep the public motivated for continuing the war after the defeat in Normandy. So Ike was caught up in a nasty gamble where he was willing to risk his own career in order to maintain the morale of home front in a case of failure. Once that sacrifice was disregarded in Zürich he understandably felt betrayed.
Just wait for the next Presidential elections
Just. Awesome. Please do continue. Looks like we are still stuck in the '50s with some glimpses of the '60-'90s.
(As a side note I bet that NeuEuropa students have better handwriting than Americans because of the lack of computers and printing equipment...:rofl
(As a side note I bet that NeuEuropa students have better handwriting than Americans because of the lack of computers and printing equipment...:rofl