How Churchill nearly lost WW2: In a version of history many will find hard to stomach, how our greatest hero - fuelled by alcohol and self-doubt - refused to sign up to D-Day... until forced to by the US President - Daily Mail UK

[TomSea]

"Our greatest hero" is their's of course, in the UK. This is just what a historian says but is interesting about D-day.

How Churchill nearly lost WW2: In a version of history many will find hard to stomach, how our greatest hero - fuelled by alcohol and self-doubt - refused to sign up to D-Day... until forced to by the US President

    Historian Nigel Hamilton pieced together a very different picture from the unreservedly heroic that one that Churchill had portrayed
That is the story of how he covered the traces of his repeated attempts in 1943 to abandon Allied plans for D-Day
Instead he argued the Allies ought to invade Italy and then exploit the huge gap in the Adriatic and the Balkans to attack the Third Reich
In the nicest yet firmest way President Roosevelt categorically 'expressed disagreement of Italian invasion beyond the seizure of Sicily and Sardinia'

It was to be the turning point of the war: victory, rather than disaster, would now be the order of the day.

At Casablanca in 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, leaders of the two main Western democracies, had gathered with their chiefs of staff to plan their further strategy against Germany, Italy and Japan.

This would culminate in 1944 in a challenge even Hitler had balked at in 1940 with Britain on its knees: a massive cross-Channel invasion – D-Day, as it would become known.

In May of 1943, more than 300,000 troops launched the final offensive in North Africa, and Montgomery's Eighth Army entered the city of Tunis for the unconditional surrender of Axis forces there.

With plans for a million US combat troops to be ferried to Britain, Roosevelt saw every prospect of mounting a successful 1944 Second Front, and winning the war that year, or early in 1945. The President had been under the impression his partnership with Churchill, his 'active and ardent lieutenant', was a firm and happy one. Had the two leaders not motored together after the Casablanca Conference to Marrakesh, the fabled Berber city, and sat and surveyed the vast Atlas mountain range?

Why, then, three months later in June 1943, was Churchill on his way to Washington on the Queen Mary to argue against a cross-Channel invasion, even in 1944, and reverse the agreements he'd made at Casablanca? It was to become one of the most contentious strategic debates in the history of warfare.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3602939/How-Churchill-nearly-lost-WW2-version-history-hard-stomach-greatest-hero-fuelled-alcohol-self-doubt-refused-sign-D-Day-forced-President.html#ixzz4HmdVa8Ub
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[Joe Wooten]

Churchill also fought the Dragoon landings in Southern France that took place in August 1944. He still clung to that fantasy of driving through the mountainous terrain of Yugoslavia would end Germany's war effort faster. I think the logistical challenges would have made that plan moot. They were bad enough on the much shorter route through France.

[geronl]

Then they explained it as Dunkirk in reverse

[dfwgator]

It was only because of the Italy campaign that D-Day was possible.

Remember that the day before D-Day, Rome was liberated.

[skeeter]

Churchill also fought the Dragoon landings in Southern France that took place in August 1944. He still clung to that fantasy of driving through the mountainous terrain of Yugoslavia would end Germany's war effort faster. I think the logistical challenges would have made that plan moot. They were bad enough on the much shorter route through France.

Churchill may have understood the navy but he wasn't much of a land war strategist. During WWI he birthed the Gallipoli campaign and supported Jackie Fisher's plan to land Russians from the Baltic to march on Berlin.