Sarah Paine: evaluation

Transcript context

…It turns out that the possibilities for maritime and continental powers are a little different. Basically, a small subset of countries can defend themselves primarily at sea. That opens certain possibilities. Others can't. That opens and closes certain possibilities. I'm going to talk about this story from Britain's point of view, the country with the 360° “you can't get me” moat. It's an instructive case for the United States, of the possibilities and the perils of having this sort of position. So that is my game plan today. You can look at the great peninsula of Europe where Britain is located. You can see this northern coastline for Britain, where it's uncomfortably close to the continent. Its enemies are sitting there and it's an interesting neighborhood. So here's my plan. I'm going to talk about these continental problems that Britain has been dealing with. If you think about it, Britain was always fighting France. In 1871, Germany unifies and then the problem's Germany. I'm going to pick up the story in 1939 when things are really bad for Britain. I'm first going to talk about these continental problems, and then I'm going to talk about how Britain tried to deal with it. First it has to do with getting sea control, and then once you can do that, finding some peripheral theaters where you might be able to fight and deal with the continental problem. You probably need allies. So those are the first four topics. That was then and now is now. The continental problems now are China and Russia. We will see what this case study might reveal about the ongoing things. So here's Britain uncomfortably close to the continent. If it wants to get to Russia, which is its big ally in World War I and World War II, it's either got to go way up north around the Norwegian coastline—you get up into places like Murmansk and Archangel—or it's got to go way around through this very narrow sea, the Mediterranean, through the choke point of choke points, which is the Dardanelles and the Bosporus, into the Black Sea. The main point port back in the day was Odessa. If you compare French and British access to the high seas, France has got a pretty good coastline that just gets it right into the oceans. Germany, if it wants to send merchant traffic or naval traffic, it's got to go through these narrow seas. Then it's got to get by Britain, which is its big enemy in the two world wars, which is the dominant naval power. So that's complicated. For Britain, if it wants to get to its empire back in the day, it wants to go through the Suez Canal. That requires the cooperation of Spain, France, Italy. If it wants to get to Russia, it requires Turkey as well. Well, Turkey didn't cooperate very well in either war. If you think about World War II—the Fall of France, fascist sympathies of Spain, Italy as part of the Axis—Britain is in real trouble. What do you do about this? Britain has this big empire that it wants to protect. out World War II—the Fall of France, fascist sympathies of Spain, Italy as part of the Axis—Britain is in real trouble. What do you do about this? Britain has this big empire that it wants to protect. It's got a massive basing system, more bases than anybody else does in order to protect this empire. From this, which is a very resentful Germany. Doesn't much like the Versailles settlement of World War I. It's a divided country in that a Polish Corridor separates East Prussia. The Germans start trying to solve this problem. Initially they're taking Austria, the Sudeten German parts of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Then they take all of Czechoslovakia in 1939. They've already dealt with the Rhineland, which is supposed to be demilitarized per the terms of the Versailles Treaty. They ignore that and remilitarize in 1936. This is important because there are a lot of industrial resources and factories and things there. It turns out that Hitler's plans require—it's not optional— it requires the resources not only of the Rhineland, but also Czechoslovakia and Poland and Romania, which is going to have the oil for them. You get to 1939, when Russia and Germany are dividing up Poland between them. This is the part of the history that Russians don't like to talk about, but it's exactly what they were doing. This triggers World War II because the French and the British honor their alliance with the Poles to help deal with this. So in 1940, Britain's in a world of hurt. It faces this massive blue problem. Then there's this growing green disaster. It's facing two continental powers, Germany and Russia, that both have these expansive empires they want to create. They want to divide Europe and then the rest of the world. Bad news for Britain. But 1941, Hitler decides he needs Russia too. Then Russia decides, “Ah, the one that's attacking me is probably the major problem, not the other one.” So Stalin is going to swap sides and he's going to be coordinating with Britain. That's better from Britain's point of view than having two continental powers to deal with. So now it's down to one. Once the United States has gotten into the war, this is what the world looks like. You have a big cancer in Europe from the British point of view. But it's all surrounded by oceans that Britain can get to. A lot of allies are neutral states. So Britain has access to those places. Then there's a separate cancer in Asia where Japan's trying to work its magic. I say separate because the Axis never coordinated these two theaters. So this is looking at the world from a maritime perspective. What you're looking at are all the oceanic routes that connect everything. Britain's problem is how to leverage the miracle of sea transport that basically can access you the whole world, versus a logistical nightmare of land transport where you can only drive through countries that will let you drive through. The seas give you mobility, they give you access to theaters, markets, resources, allies, and. They also give you sanctuary at home. If you're surrounded by them, it makes it harder for people to invade. So Britain's trying to leverage all of that against the armies of the continental armies. . They also give you sanctuary at home. If you're surrounded by them, it makes it harder for people to invade. So Britain's trying to leverage all of that against the armies of the continental armies. It's going to try to strangle them economically, diplomatically and militarily. Now, the generation that led World War II in Britain—not just Britain but elsewhere—were the conscripts of World War I, which was supposed to end all wars. They knew full well, in the midst of World War II, that it did not remotely achieve that promise. They learned a whole series of lessons. I'm going to do a comparison of what was done in World War I versus World War II. They are the greatest generation, not their children who claim the title. Lesson number one is don't go beyond the culminating point of attack. What's that? The terminology comes from Carl von Clausewitz, who is the Western guru on conventional land warfare. It means if you're attacking in a battle, if you go too far you'll weaken yourself because the enemy will counterattack and send you further backwards than you would have otherwise been. In the case of World War I, you're sending young men over trenches into ongoing machine gun fire. What do you suppose is going to happen to them? This profligate waste of life in these assaults out of trenches… Maybe you took a little territory in the first two weeks, but after that, nothing. These offensives would go on for months and months, racking up hundreds of thousands of deaths. No more doing that in World War II. You can look at the death figures for World War I and II. In World War I, the British army gets the multi-million man army that they had coveted. They deploy it on the main front from start to finish and chalk up twice as many deaths as they did in World War II when they have a peripheral strategy. In World War II, they do make the mistake of landing the big army on the continent as an opening move, but it doesn't do well. Then they reassess and get that army off the continent immediately. This is what the Dunkirk evacuation is. The French are covering the British as they're decamping from the continent, saving the British army. This is why France has such large casualties, even though France isn't in the war that long. It's going to be a long wait before the British get back on the continent. It’s also a long wait also for the United States to get in the war. There's no more going beyond the culminating point of attack. The way diplomacy is run is also completely different. In World War I there were exactly two conferences trying to coordinate things among the Entente powers—the December 1915 and November 1916 Chantilly Conferences. All they are are the military heads. Well, the Russian Romanov dynasty is overthrown in early 1917. It is too late. What happened in World War I is that the Germans focused on the Western Front in 1914, Eastern Front in 1915, back to the Western Front in 1916. In World War II the idea is you want to squeeze them simultaneously from all fronts so they can't divert people back and forth.…

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