Throwing Stones at Barking Dogs

In the early stages of WWII victory for Germany in Europe looked almost inevitable.?

The new tactic of blitzkrieg had rapidly overwhelmed the great power of France.

Italy seeing the opportunity to join the winning side quickly allied with Germany.?

And Germany had already struck a treaty with the other great European power, the Soviet Union, to keep them on the sidelines.?

All that was left was Britain and the remains of their retreating forces.?

Britain was demoralised, outgunned and isolated.

Churchill was a strategist?

He had a big, simple plan.?

He knew that the only way Britain could win was to get America, the new industrial superpower, involved.

But the U.S. was isolationist and didn’t want anything to do with the battles between the old European powers.?

Churchill focused his efforts on a prolific campaign to convince the U.S. to support Britain and join the war.

Traveling through war zones at great danger to himself and the leadership of the country, Churchill spent more than a year (of the five year war) travelling abroad to tie up alliances.

He met U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt nine times (and Stalin four times) and wrote a staggering 1,300 telegrams to Roosevelt.

Churchill left the running of war to his generals, giving them objectives and leaving the tactics to them, so he could the spend the bulk of his efforts delivering his strategy.?

Hitler was a tactician

Hitler didn’t have a clear strategy to win the war.

He made his generals pass every decision by him, and because Hitler had no strategy to focus on, he kept interfering in the tactics.

Germany followed the defeat of France with an attempted invasion of Britain.?

Initially Germany focused on destroying the RAF, but Hitler soon became bored with the tactic, so he moved to bombing civilians.?

The change allowed the RAF to recover and win the battle.

After failing to destroy Britain, Hitler switched tactics and opened up a second front by attacking Russia.?

It was the biggest mistake of the war.

Initially the blitzkrieg towards Moscow looked to be working, but Hitler kept changing the objectives.?

Instead of continuing to drive towards Moscow, he forced the army to move south to attack some of the Soviet troops they had bypassed.?

By the time they were ready to move north again, the Soviet armies had dug in, been reinforced by winter specialists from the East, and resupplied by the British and Americans.

The initiative was lost, the debilitating Russian winter struck and the core of the German army was decimated.?

In December 1941, the Soviet Union started to push back the Germans and in the same month the US formally entered the war.

Churchill’s strategy was realised and the unlikely alliance he had worked tirelessly to create, eventually won the war. ?

You need to have a strategy and the resilience to see it through to have the best chance of success.?

“You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.” - Winston S. Churchill