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Epic stuff!
Richard North 06/05/2012 It's grim ooop north (4)
COMMENT: "GRIM OOOP NORTH" THREAD
Richard North 06/05/2012 A three pillar war – part V
For this part, I promised to explore how and why the confusion came about, and this becomes our starting point, rehearsing some of the issues raised in the previous piece.
That there is this confusion is relatively easy to establish, if we take as our starting point the official account of the battle. This was published in 1946 with the title, "The Battle of the Atlantic", its sub-title referring to "the fight against the U-Boats", thus locking in stone three fundamental misconceptions.
Firstly, this was not a "battle" as such. It would not even be accurate to describe this as a series of battles, or engagements, as that would give a lie to the multi-faceted and complex nature of the conflict.
After all, Hitler – who started the whole thing off – called it "the struggle against the English war economy" and his Führer Directive No. 23, which set off the most intensive phase of the battle, was entitled "guiding principles for the conduct of the war against the English war economy".
Standing aside from that for the moment, whatever this struggle actually was, it was by no means confined to the Atlantic, which makes for the second misconception. Hitler's "war against the English war economy" was conducted on a far wider canvas than just the Atlantic. The struggle as a whole is termed World War Two, and this part of the war reflected this – it had global dimensions.
This brings us to the third misconception, and that is the projection of the battle as one against the U-Boat. While there is no question that the submarine played a major part in the fighting war, the war was multi-faceted so a single weapon type could not – and therefore should not – be taken to represent the extent or nature of the battle.
Thus, we have an interesting problem here. We have a conflict described as "the Battle of the Atlantic", characterised as the war against the U-Boats, which wasn't a battle, it was by no means confined to the Atlantic, and the U-Boat was not the sole or even, necessarily, the most significant weapon.
As to the structure of this conflict, at least the official account has it starting with the beginning of the war, and ending with the end. Author Andrew Williams, in the BBC book "The Battle of the Atlantic" also has it beginning on 3 September 1939 and lasting to VE day. It is the one element that continued throughout the entire war – although, as we observed in the last piece – Churchill, the war leader, says differently.
But, if there is some agreement on the duration of this conflict, the structure is not universally agreed.
If one takes the official account, there are eight phases. The first runs from 3 September 1939 to June 1940 (the fall of France). Next we go from June 1940 to mid-March 1941. The third phase goes from there to 31 December 1941, by which time the US is in the war. The full list of phases, according to the official narrative, is opposite.
There is another official history covering this "battle", this one published in 1944 entitled "Merchantmen at War". It too talks of phases. The first is also September 1939 to June 1940, while the second is June 1940 to June 1941 (rather than mid-March), given the label "long haul". Nevertheless, the third brings the period back to harmony, ending in December 1941.
More modern accounts differ. The Canadian author, Marc Milner, in his "Battle of the Atlantic" has September 1939 to March 1940 as the "opening skirmishes", while his battle proper starts in April 1940. His first phase ends in March 1941 and the second phase runs from April to December 1941.
Interestingly, the official historian, Captain S W Roskill, agrees about the timing of the second phase. In his "War at Sea", he describes it as starting on 1 April and ending on 31 December 1941.
From a wider selection of accounts, more differences emerge as to the precise structuring of the "battle", but there is generally uniformity amongst historical narratives that the conflict spanned the period of the entire war – with one major exception: Winston Churchill.
In his book, Volume III of his history of the Second World War, Churchill himself assumes the Battle of the Atlantic to have begun on 6 March 1941, "in view of various German statements". One of those statements was Adolf Hitler's speech in Berlin on 30 January 1941, from which Führer Directive No. 23 arose.
Churchill's assumption was made in a then secret directive, but he states that the label emerged when he told the First Sea Lord, Admiral Pound, that he intended to "proclaim" the Battle of the Atlantic. This, he said, "like featuring the Battle of Britain nine months earlier, was a signal intended to concentrate all minds and all departments concerned upon the U-Boat war". And to that effect, he brought into being the Battle of the Atlantic Committee.
It was about that time that the term "Battle of the Atlantic" started to appear widely in the media, with references in the press seen on 12 March following a reference to it by the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair. And from that stems the folk memory of the battle starting then .
Putting this start date in perspective though, in Volume II of his history, Churchill tells us, "The only thing that really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril", going on to say, "I was even more anxious about this battle than I had been about the glorious air fight called the Battle of Britain".
This gives us a tidy chronology which has in sequence a glorious air war against the Luftwaffe, and then, following on afterwards, a war against the U-Boats.
That neatness, as recognised now by most historians, did not exist in real life. There is a general acceptance that Churchill's "glorious air fight" and the sea battle were being fought at the same time. What is missing still it that they were simply parts of the same struggle.
However, it is Churchill who is confusing the issues. Previously, as the battle was unfolding, he had recognised that the air war was part of a bigger event. This is evidenced by his own terminology. For instance, on 2 September 1940, to his cabinet colleagues, he referred to the "air battle of Britain". Only after the war, in his historical narrative, did the Battle of Britain assume the identity of an air war alone.
The question then is why, in effect, Churchill was seeking to airbrush out of history the first part of Hitler's "war against the English war economy".
My thesis on this is that, during the summer and autumn of 1940, Churchill wanted to keep the focus on the air war. To him, the "Few" were an example of the power of the technocratic élite, and he was using them role to legitimise his view of how the nation should be governed – by an technocratic élite. This is his autocratic, top-down view of government, over which he was locked in battle with the Labour Party and its socialist vision of a People's War.
Thus, in his books on the Second World War, we see a man writing a history of events in which he played a pivotal role, but also using events to illustrate his own world view.
The thing about Churchill, though, is that he writes not as a dispassionate historian but as a participant with a reputation to preserve - and as an active politician. In the latter role, he has been unexpectedly ejected from office in 1945 and, while writing his narrative, has expectations of his party being re-elected to government and his resuming his tenure in No. 10.
Understandably, Churchill is going to glide over detail that is unfavourable to him personally, and which does not assist his cause. There can be no criticism attached to him for so doing. That is what politicians do. The criticism lies with ourselves, for accepting the Churchill narrative as anything other than a biased, self serving account.
It is in this context that we see his obduracy during the second half of 1940, in keeping escorts from the Western Approaches, insisting that they remained immediately available for anti-invasion duties. But it must be unsurprising that we find no mention anywhere in Churchill's account of the representations from the First Lord of the Admiralty, the First Sea Lord, the Shipping Minister, and the Food Minister – to say nothing of the C-in-C Home Fleet – that escorts should be released.
Intriguingly, we do find in Churchill's book a reference to being "frightened of fog", this on a fine 16 September, when he was concerned that low visibility could provide cover for a snap German invasion.
Given that he went on to withhold naval escorts desperately necessary to deal with the U-Boat peril for this reason, it would be fair to say that fog actually frightened Churchill more than U-boats. For other reasons, he allowed Bomber Command priority in the supply of aircraft, depriving Coastal Command of modern, long-range aircraft to keep the U-Boats at bay. This also suggests that, in 1940, his fear of U-Boats was not the supreme determinant of his priorities.
The failure to protect merchant shipping, from the beginning of the war to the end of 1940, gave rise to the loss of over three million tons of shipping. Thus, at the very least, we have indications that Churchill is re-writing history, glossing over his own failings and focusing attention on his successes.
Be that as it may, this is by no means the most interesting dynamic at play. What is intriguing is the contrast in the way historians are prepared to treat the two "battles". They ignore Churchill's attempt to define the battle of the Atlantic, and impose a post-war definition which did not exist at the time, yet the structure of the Battle of Britain remains sacrosanct.
Both, by Churchill's own account, however, are artificial constructs. And while they may make sense in propaganda terms, for the purpose of managing the popular perception of the war, they do not make sense in terms of understanding what was going on.
I am by no means alone in judging that historians have done a poor job of knitting it all together. Next week, in what I hope will be the last part of this series, I will try to do just that.
COMMENT: A "THREE-PILLAR WAR" THREAD
Richard North 06/05/2012 World Wide Fraud
Originally set up in 1961 by Julian Huxley, Prince Philip, Prince Bernhard and others, for the admirable purpose of campaigning to save species endangered by human activity, Booker tells us it has morphed in the last 20 years into something very different, more akin to a multinational corporation.
The WWF empire now derives a very hefty chunk of its income from partnerships with governments, or the EU, or actual multinationals, such as Coca-Cola and Sky, which like to use its iconic panda logo (originally designed by the naturalist Peter Scott) to give an "eco-caring" gloss to their commercial activities.
And, of course, no good multinational corporation these days is worth its salt unless it has bought into the crise du jour, the "battle to halt climate change". This is the chief reason why WWF has so greatly increased its wealth and influence, having aligned itself with other lobby groups, such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace.
But, pushing to the top of its agenda that most fashionable and lucrative of environmental causes has led WWF into some rather odd little tangles, such as those which have recently emerged over its activities in Tanzania.
The work in this quaintly termed "less developed country" is a vast ponzi scheme devised under the aegis of the UN known as REDD+ ("reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation"). Currently, it is financed by the UN's £17 billion Fast Start programme. Britain, being so flush with funds that it can't get rid of our money fast enough, is pouring £1.5 billion down that particular drain, second only to Japan in a prolonged attempt at ritual suicide.
Supporting the programme is the world leader in hypocrisy, no less than Prince Charles, who has found his true role in life as president of WWF UK. Last November, he flew out to Tanzania on a PR mission for his greenie mates, handing out "Living Planet" awards to five "community leaders" involved in WWF projects around the Rufiji River delta.
This area holds the world's largest mangrove forest and part of the WWF scheme is to halt what they call "damage" to this pestilent swamp, stopping local farmers from clearing it in order to grow life-sustaining rice and coconuts.
The justification for what is known as "eco-imperialism" is that these swamps are supposed to store unusual amounts of "carbon" (CO2), which means that, to make it look good, the farmers had to go.
Thus, shortly before Charlie Boy's carefully orchestrated arrival, it emerged that thousands of villagers had been evicted from the forest, their huts in the paddy fields torched and their coconut palms felled.
To allow for plausibly deniability, this was carried out by the Tanzanian government's Forestry and Beekeeping Division, with which WWF has been working. But Stephen Makiri, then head of WWF Tanzania, was quick to insist that WWF had never advocated expelling communities from the delta, and that "the evictions were carried out by government agencies".
Booker kindly informs us that, at this point, two American professors intervened. They had just published a study of the delta in an environmental journal entitled, "The REDD menace: resurgent protectionism in mangrove forests".
Being an honest production, it was highly critical of the so-called "fortress conservation" policy advocated by WWF under REDD+, interfering with natives who had been farming and fishing in the area for centuries. The claim was that this slow-motion genocide (for that, in effect, is what it is) was seriously damaging the traditional life of those local communities – which is what slow-motion genocide tends to do.
Predictably, this provoked a vehement riposte from Mr Makiri, who claimed in turn that the paper had seriously damaged the reputation of his staff who had been working on the REDD project.
By then, however, these saintly examples of the human race had been involved in a furore over false expenses claims on a massive scale, amounting to more than £1 million. One can only presume that they had been watching rather too closely British parliamentary practice.
It was pretty obvious that this needed to be kicked into the long grass – the longer the better – so in December, WWF responded in time-honoured fashion. It expended untold thousands of donors' money by hiring one of the most expensive international auditors in the business, Ernst & Young, who could be relied up to investigate the thefts in the right way.
Unfortunately for Mr Makiri, that meant he had to go and, in February, his resignation as head of WWF Tanzania was announced. This gave sufficient distance for the local office of Britain's Department for International Development (DfID) to leap in to say "nothing to do with us guv". It only gives the money to WWF in the UK and lets it decide how it gets stolen.
Officially, that meant that, while it "eagerly awaited" Ernst & Young's report, DifiD wished to emphasise that, although it has a general funding programme with WWF in the area, it had not been responsible for funding any of its projects directly.
Aware of the possible international implications of the theft, that left WWF US to pitch in with a statement, seeking to protect its half-billion dollar annual revenue stream. In March, it thus told us that, "so far 13 employees have left the organisation, along with two managers who had oversight responsibility".
Booker has tried to get more detail from DfID, but they passed him on to WWF, which is doing everything it can to burying this. The report, which was due out in February is not yet available and has become a "series of reports" not all of which "have yet been completed". But a summary of their findings will be published "in due course".
And this is only about half of the Booker article which also takes in how the WWF has hijacked the IPCC, and the exhaustive analysis by Canadian Donna Laframboise, which led to he recent book on the IPCC, The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert.
At the conclusion of his report, Booker notes that an indication of how far WWF has travelled from the noble purposes for which it was set up was perfectly symbolised by the way it chose as its chief marketing tool the slogan "Adopt a polar bear".
If the WWF still had concern for endangered species closest to its heart, he writes, it would know that the idea that polar bears are dying out due to global warming is no more than sentimental propaganda. But then that is the main business that WWF now seems to be in – very much at the expense of the rest of us and, of course, those communities in the Rufiji delta.
COMMENT THREAD
Richard North 06/05/2012 Some triumph
How is getting elected on 16.8 percent of the popular vote a "triumph"?
COMMENT: "MINORITY REPORT" THREAD
Sunday, 6 May 2012
"All the pillars of the Cameron delusion have now collapsed. The Tory Party cannot win a majority by any method", writes Peter Hitchens. "Nobody trusts it, and it stands for nothing except getting posh boys into office".
He adds: "Mr Cameron is not a secret patriot waiting for the chance to rip off his expensive tailoring and reveal his inner Thatcher. He is exactly what he looks like, an unprincipled chancer with limited skills in public relations".
The city centre may not be everyone's cup of tea, not least because our masters have just spent £27 million on building a king-sized puddle outside the town hall - the proceeds of the sale of our share of Leeds-Bradford airport.
As you can see with your own eyes, it is truly grim - not a place where anybody would want to visit.
As we left Part IV of the "three pillar war", and the journey of discovery that it entails, I was pursuing the confusion surrounding the labelling and terminology of the so-called "Battle of the Atlantic", and why, seventy years on that confusion remains.
Booker also deals with our earlier work on REDD, a scheme so mired in corruption that it is ready-made for the likes of WWF, to which dissimulation comes as second nature.
"Boris Johnson is being tipped to become the next Tory leader following his triumph in the London Mayoral race and a humiliating drubbing at the polls for David Cameron", says the Daily Wail.
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