Churchill somehow managed two movies this year, and this is the lesser known of the two (Gary Oldman just won the Golden Globe for his portrayal in the other). It is set on the eve of the invasion of Normandy, known as D-Day going forward. In this film, he is at heart against it, preferring a more nuanced and broad based attack, whereas Eisenhower and Montgomery were pusjing him aside, more than implying he didn't understand modern war fare.
True or not? Here is what the history books and Churchill's own letters tell us. Churchill and Roosevelt met together with Stalin at Teheran in December 1943, Churchill tried to avoid the
massive, single-front invasion across the Channel. With Passchendaele,
Dunkirk, and the disastrous raid on Dieppe in mind, he feared a
bloodbath. Stalin insisted that an invasion of northwestern France was the only
acceptable military strategy. Churchill did not prevail. Churchill supported his version of a cross-Channel invasion consistently
from start to finish, but just as consistently argued for a peripheral,
“closing the ring” strategy—a series of smaller, widely separated
attacks to wear down
German strength and disperse German forces. While he accepted and then
supported the OVERLORD Second Front, he never became its advocate,
telling one adviser in April 1944 that “This battle has been forced upon
us by the Russians and the United States military authorities.”
Only a month before D-Day Churchill had told the dominion prime
ministers that he was “in favor of rolling up Europe from the
South-East, and joining hands with the Russians.” The Americans insisted, prompting Churchill to complain that “They had been
determined at every stage upon the invasion in North-West Europe, and
had constantly wanted us to break off the Mediterranean operations.” So he was on the record as ambivalent and bullied, which this film depicts. With he not in good humor about it.
Thursday, January 25, 2018
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