Writing in the mid-20s about the Great War, Winston Churchill wrote that the grotesque casualties of the Battle of the Somme and others might have been avoided "if only the Generals had not been content to fight machine-gun bullets with the breasts of gallant men, and think that that was waging war.”
I'm just writing to say I like that line.
General Douglas Haig, who would have been understood by even casual readers of that line on its first publication as among its targets, if not indeed the chief of its targets. is said to have been (understandably) furious over it.
What is more interesting for me is the role that this conviction might have played in certain strategic arguments between Churchill and Roosevelt during the following war. Roosevelt wanted a US/UK front in northwestern Europe as soon as possible. Stalin understandably agreed -- a new front would at the least tie up German resources and take some pressure off the eastern front on which the Red Army was fighting.
Churchill repeatedly delayed, pressing for a "soft underbelly" strategy. The Mediterranean was in his view the soft underbelly of the Axis powers, and a successful campaign in Italy could lead to a crossing of the Alps and an entry into the heart of the Reich from that direction, perhaps without any risky channel crossing to the north.
Did he fear that what became the Normandy campaign -- twenty years after he wrote that line -- was too much like Haig's tactics? young men's chests wading ashore fighting an uneven combat with machine gun bullets? One can make the case that what Eisenhower was doing with regard to the beaches of Normandy WAS analogous to what Haig had done with regard to the opposing trenchworks at the Somme, throwing a mere quantity of flesh at a defended position.
The development of air power had intervened, the scale was much greater, and the result at Normandy was of course favorable to Churchill's side. All analogies limp.
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