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While sorting through some things I found this 1941 dated paper cutting of a wartime cartoon. I thought it very amusing, funny in 1941 and still funny today. Look at how the sun has been drawn to look like Churchill's face, complete with cigar, and Hitler's "wings" have caught fire by flying too close. Obviously the real joke is based on the Greek mythology of Icarus.
Icarus - Wikipedia
Here a cartoon that I save from 1968Attachment 126475
Here's another one from 1941.
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...4917fb_o-1.jpg
Clever cartoon; both the bravado of weakness and an expression of sheer resolution. The "great man theory" of history is no longer fashionable, but without him, the "logic" of Britain's strategic weakness in 1940 would have led to an "accommodation" leaving Germany what Hitler really wanted: "freedom in the east".Quote:
Originally Posted by Flying10uk
It took a far-reaching mind to see past the doom and desperation of the moment to realize that peace in 1940 would have merely delayed the mortal struggle and in fact made Britain's ultimate defeat certain, for Hitler's desire to preserve Britain and her Empire was certainly not shared among the German leadership.
And today there would be no conflict in Ukraine, for there would be neither Russians nor Ukrainians nor Poles, except that rump allowed to exist as serfs in Germany's lebensraum.
By such threads hang the fates of nations.
Yes by 1941 any idea of a "peace deal" with Hitler was considered a joke by just about everyone.
Well, I wouldn't want to stretch that bow too far; the political class had nothing to offer remotely comparable to WSC, and the general mood among them was bleak, albeit stoic.
Sir Edmund Ironside was certainly not lacking in physical or moral courage, or intelligence, in fact he had so much that he seems to have frankly stated what was in fact true: militarily defeat was apparently inevitable in early to mid 1940. Many lesser figures civil and military felt the same from what I have read. It was after all, the objective reality! To defy that reality was the act either of a madman, a fool, or a visionary - depending on one's point of view. Fortunately Hitler was his own worst enemy, but who predicted that in 1940, when previously his strategic instinct appeared uncanny?
For his pains Churchill pushed Ironside out as a defeatist despite their friendship and Britain lost the services of probably the best general she had at the time. Irony of ironies, but history is full of them.
I think we can sure that Hitler was covertly encouraged to think that "an accommodation" was possible in 1940-41 - it would have been madness not to encourage that belief - but the details have gone to graves or up chimney's long ago I suspect!