June 22, 2015

Finest Hour 106, Spring 2000

Page 33

Alternative to Churchill: The Eternal Bondage, by Inder Dan Ratnu, Jaipur, India: self-published, 1995,314 pages, illus., softbound, published at Rs./1000, member price $40


The theme of this book is “the Eternal Relevance of Churchill,” which the author demonstrates by combining fact and fiction. Alternative to Churchill is similar in approach to Norman Longmate’s If Britain Had Fallen (reviewed FH 33), factually relating the course of World War II up to a point—then presenting an imagined scenario if a few things had happened differently.

For Longmate, the turning point is Hermann Goering’s decision to concentrate the Luftwaffe assault on RAP bases instead of London, leading to a successful German invasion and the fall of Churchill, defending Number Ten Downing Street from the onrushing Wehrmacht, dying with his pistol ablaze. For Ratnu, the turning point (which he calls “the diversion”) is the decision of Chamberlain’s critics— Amery for the Tories, Lloyd George for the Liberals, and most of the Labour Party—to mute their May 1940 attacks on the Government for the sake of national unity. Thus Churchill does not become Premier on May 10th—or any other time. And there hangs our tale.

2024 International Churchill Conference

Join us for the 41st International Churchill Conference. London | October 2024
More

Although the surviving Chamberlain delegates increasing military authority to Churchill, the two split fatally over Reynaud’s call for Britain to fling the bulk of her air force into Battle of France, which Chamberlain feels he cannot deny. As the British Expeditionary Force is beaten back, Chamberlain fails to withdraw around Dunkirk in a timely fashion, and 300,000 British troops are captured or killed in the greatest military disaster in British history. “Because of the absence of a dynamic, daring and driving personality at the top,” Ratnu concludes, “the British fell short of taking appropriate measures well in time at every stage.”

What happens next is sudden and frightening. There is no “Battle of Britain,” with the RAF maintaining daylight mastery of the air. Instead there is a “Battle for Britain,” fought first on the English Channel and then on the beaches and the landing grounds. Churchill directs the Royal Navy in a heroic defense against “Operation Sea Lion,” but (as actually happened in another sphere) he underestimates the power of hostile aircraft against ships. The navy succumbs to an all-powerful Luftwaffe, German troops storm the Channel coast, and Blitzkrieg methods so successful in France are applied anew in southeast England. Like the French before him, Chamberlain chooses surrender. His successor, Halifax, signs the armistice while a raging Churchill sails with the remnants of the fleet to Washington. Rebuffed by a Roosevelt still unwilling to declare war, Churchill departs for exile to the Falkland Islands, there to organize an international resistance movement.

Hitler occupies Britain and spends 18 months preparing for the final settlement with Russia. In the spring of 1942, with no Western Front to divert him, the Fiihrer flings 300 blooded divisions and a waxing Luftwaffe against Russia, which quickly collapses. In concert with Japan, Germany pours troops and material into a cowed Canada, invades America, and finally puts an end to the extended war by dropping atomic bombs on New York and San Francisco. The years go by, and the former USA becomes known as the “United States of Germarica,” its capital (so help me) “Hitlerington.”

Ratnu convincingly describes a world dominated by the Axis in every aspect of life, along with certain biographic sketches: Too old to take part personally in the Resistance, Churchill picks up recruits over the years. Gandhi, Churchill considers, will remain “a moral beacon” but cannot be counted upon to lead a guerrilla force. A fiery young revolutionary, Nelson Mandela, joins the African Resistance on the grounds that the Nazis intend the same fate for black men as they have meted out to the Jews. Margaret Thatcher, “The Tigress,” is a Resistance fighter caught and shot by the Gestapo. Richard Nixon, “a clever trickster,” tells Churchill the Germans should be bombed to death, but Churchill considers him untrustworthy. WSC appoints John F. Kennedy to head covert operations, and a Texas oil man, George Bush, to coax Arabs to disrupt German oil supplies. Young Boris Yeltsin holds some promise as a freedom fighter, but is easily caught and disposed of. Although the British Royal Family is exiled on what I suspect is Madagascar, Prince Charles marries an Indian beauty and recreates the royal union of Britain and India. (There’s hope for him yet.) Churchill dies in 1965 in his Falklands stronghold, buried under a boulder inscribed, “Founding Father of the movement to uproot Nazidom from the world,” his mission unfulfilled.

Mr. Ratnu has as you see quite an imagination. His “Alternative” even has Churchill speculating on what might have happened “if Chamberlain had not lost the Battle for Britain”—similar to what Churchill himself speculated in his own what-if story, “If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg.”

Incidentally, Ratnu has Churchill issuing “immortal words” even under “Alternative” conditions. His speeches, the author states, “have been worked out on the basis of his actual speeches and emotions under the ‘Real’ conditions, though of course the emphasis is more on the philosophical (freedom and democracy) than it is on fighting a war.”

This is clearly not something you run into every day. Though laden with typos, particularly of people’s names (how would you do if you had to write a book in Hindi?), it is a diverting and chilling reminder that history often turns on very small events…and is written by the winners.

A tribute, join us

#thinkchurchill

Subscribe

WANT MORE?

Get the Churchill Bulletin delivered to your inbox once a month.