1. FAMILY (a classic hypothesis in the tradition of conjectural realism)
From September's History Today: “Friendly Bombs; The French airmen who bombed France to help liberate it,” by Karine Varley:
To prepare the way for the D-Day landings, in April 1944 the Allies embarked upon the Transportation Plan, strategically bombing French railway lines, bridges and marshalling yards. From the outset, however, the Plan was hugely contentious, claiming the lives of 16,000 French civilians and incurring the opposition of Winston Churchill, the British war cabinet and Arthur Harris, commander-in-chief of Bomber Command. Writing to Franklin D. Roosevelt on 7 May 1944, Churchill raised significant ethical concerns about bombing targets in populated areas, warning that “the slaughter is among friendly people who have committed no crimes against us.”
The president conceded that the losses were regrettable but maintained that he was “not prepared to impose from this distance any restriction on military action” that might “militate against the success of [Operation] Overlord or cause additional loss of life to our Allied Forces of invasion.”
Churchill’s concerns about the pre-D-Day bombing of France were more political—primarily, anxiety about Communist influence in post-war France—than ethical. But there also was an emotional element in the British reticence, unusual in the geopolitical deliberations of sovereign states.
England and France were—are—more than just allies and neighbors; they are blood relations. Their long, complex history reads more like a soap opera about a multi-generational family feud than a study in international relations.
Unlike the American Joint Chiefs of Staff when they were weighing whether or not to bomb France prior to D-Day, in the minds of the British High Command were considerations that had nothing to do with the Allies’ immediate war aims: defeating Germany and keeping the U. S. S. R. out of Europe. For the British, bombing France would be only the most recent of 900 years of interactions with France, many of which were not just historical events, but had become chapters in the Legend of England.
The France that the Americans wished to bomb was...
the France where two million British and French soldiers died just thirty years earlier,
the France which the British had abandoned to the Germans forty years before that,
the France which was Britain’s ally against Russia just ten years before that,
the France which spawned Napoleon whose greatest renown, from the English point of view, was to be defeated by Wellington at Waterloo,
the France which lost Canada so gallantly that in the Legend of England the name of the defeated French general in the Battle of Montreal is forever linked with the name of the English victor,
the France which was England’s cunning rival in the plundering of Spain,
the France which took Calais while the British were looking the other way just as, a century before, it had taken Gascony while the English nobles squabbled over the crown,
the France which for centuries carried on an assiduous seduction of the Scots,
and the France, in fact the specific province of France, which had invaded England and ruled over it for 200 years.
Hypothesis: Deep in the British High Command’s overcoming its reticence about bombing France lay the agony and ecstasy of 1066 and Agincourt.
Now, after a break for refreshments, available in the lobby, another hypothesis, even more breathtaking than the first.
2. SUBJECTS (in the midst of the glut of audaciously speculative hypotheses, an unusually rational offering)
Let’s consider the History Today factoid in light of a recent Drapers Guild Quotation of the Day: a passage from William Hazlitt’s “Life of Napoleon”, a sentence from his discussion of Napoleon’s decision to invade Russia.
Had he entered the lists as a legitimate sovereign, as a parchment Emperor, he might have gone forth and had a tilting-bout with Alexander, either on the Niemen or the Don, in summer or winter, and returned as he came, not much the better or worse, with a battle lost or won, with more or less fame, with so much influence or territory added or taken off; but in his case he never fought but for his existence.
Not only an elegant thought elegantly expressed, but an elegant expression of Hazlitt’s unwavering loathing of legitimacy. (He cannot write the word without hissing.)
That loathing of the concept of legitimate rule is behind Hazlitt’s coldly cynical attitude towards European history. (Excepting the American and French Revolutions. Then he goes to the other extreme and rhapsodizes about them.)
The flippancy with which Hazlitt treats what various monarchs and popes had gotten up to over 1,500 years is based on his dismay that the mass of Europeans in the otherwise enlightened 19th century still adhered to the tenuous, irrational and anachronistic principle of monarchical legitimacy. He was bewildered by the fact that most of his friends and acquaintances, his intellectual peers, and just about the whole world were content to be ruled by a particular person or family or privileged group whose power rested on nothing but their own say-so.
By Hazlitt’s time, the once revolutionary French had restored the Bourbons to the throne, joining their fellow Europeans in fealty, if not to particular monarchs, still to the idea that the right to legitimately rule a country belonged exclusively to those whose names were preceded by titles bestowed by similarly “legitimate” monarchs of the past.
Of course, if Hazlitt were doing his thinking and writing in 1945 he would have had to obsess about some other social absurdity uncomplicated enough to be described and mocked in one paragraph. Patriarchy would have done the trick. In 1945, for a mind as clear and unfettered as Hazlitt’s, the custom of endowing persons who happen to be male with power over persons who happen to be female, like the custom of monarchic legitimacy in the 1825, would have been doubly absurd, since it was an arbitrary and irrational arrangement accepted by most everyone, those who were oppressed as well as even the most well-meaning and liberal of their oppressors.
A Hazlitt of today, of course, would have to look for another hobbyhorse of absurdity to ride. Just as, in the early 19th century, there was a core of anti-royalists that would snowball into a majority and then a near unanimity so that by 1945 any kings who remained on their thrones were quaint, powerless throwbacks, in 1945 there was a core of feminists which, in our time, has snowballed into a majority on its way to near unanimity.
Please excuse the digression. To get back to Hazlitt, Churchill and bombing France prior to D-Day:
Britain in 1945 was, as it still is, unique in retaining most of its monarch’s traditional royal prerogatives, even though it had, in a slow and steady process over centuries, completely eliminated the most important of them: the power to rule. Those vestigial royal prerogatives, even today, make King Charles III the supremo of every non-political aspect of society, buttressed by pomp, circumstance, and a widespread sentimental patriotism that is distinctly British.
Without the power to rule that once accompanied the status of sovereign, the British monarchy resembles that primitive kingship described in “The Golden Bough” with its numerous examples of isolated, powerless kings who appeared in public only for such ceremonial purposes as sanctifying a new menstruation hut or purifying, by royal urination, a polluted water source or, in King Charles’ case, laying the cornerstone for a new nursery school or opening Parliament with a speech entirely written by the governing party, in which even the de rigeur stirring patriotic flourishes have been approved by a committee.
While not, like Frazer’s examples, doomed to become a human sacrifice, the activity of a King or Queen of England is just as strictly curtailed. Prince Charles could use his prestige to campaign for sustainable agriculture; King Charles III may not.
I’ve digressed again, for which I again apologize. I can only hope that it was as much fun to read as it was to write. To return once again to Hazlitt, Churchill and bombing France prior to D-Day:
One vestige of monarchy which the United Kingdom has preserved, unlike any other Western country, is to refer to its nationals not as citizens of the United Kingdom, but as subjects of its current King or Queen.
The American soldiers who were to invade Normandy, whose chance of surviving it were improved by the bombing of France beforehand, were American citizens; so were Eisenhower and Roosevelt. The British soldiers who were to invade Normandy were subjects of King George V, as were Churchill and the rest of the High Command.
Words have distinct meanings. There is a discrete difference between being a citizen and being a subject. Subject implies obedience, submission, duty. Citizen implies autonomy, parity, consensus.
Hypothesis: The difference in the attitudes of the British High Command and the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, when weighing the success of the invasion and the safety of their troops against the negative reaction of the French to being bombed by the Allies, rests in part on the fact that the British thought of themselves as subjects.
The American forces and their commanders were American citizens, participating in a national policy to which (theoretically) the majority of their fellow citizens had consented. For the British forces and their commanders, it was their duty as subjects to carry out their country’s policy. Unlike the consensual national policies of other democracies, the U. K’s national goals were (theoretically) those of the King, who had iterated them on the opening of Parliament.
From September's History Today: “Friendly Bombs; The French airmen who bombed France to help liberate it,” by Karine Varley:
To prepare the way for the D-Day landings, in April 1944 the Allies embarked upon the Transportation Plan, strategically bombing French railway lines, bridges and marshalling yards. From the outset, however, the Plan was hugely contentious, claiming the lives of 16,000 French civilians and incurring the opposition of Winston Churchill, the British war cabinet and Arthur Harris, commander-in-chief of Bomber Command. Writing to Franklin D. Roosevelt on 7 May 1944, Churchill raised significant ethical concerns about bombing targets in populated areas, warning that “the slaughter is among friendly people who have committed no crimes against us.”
The president conceded that the losses were regrettable but maintained that he was “not prepared to impose from this distance any restriction on military action” that might “militate against the success of [Operation] Overlord or cause additional loss of life to our Allied Forces of invasion.”
Churchill’s concerns about the pre-D-Day bombing of France were more political—primarily, anxiety about Communist influence in post-war France—than ethical. But there also was an emotional element in the British reticence, unusual in the geopolitical deliberations of sovereign states.
England and France were—are—more than just allies and neighbors; they are blood relations. Their long, complex history reads more like a soap opera about a multi-generational family feud than a study in international relations.
Unlike the American Joint Chiefs of Staff when they were weighing whether or not to bomb France prior to D-Day, in the minds of the British High Command were considerations that had nothing to do with the Allies’ immediate war aims: defeating Germany and keeping the U. S. S. R. out of Europe. For the British, bombing France would be only the most recent of 900 years of interactions with France, many of which were not just historical events, but had become chapters in the Legend of England.
The France that the Americans wished to bomb was...
the France where two million British and French soldiers died just thirty years earlier,
the France which the British had abandoned to the Germans forty years before that,
the France which was Britain’s ally against Russia just ten years before that,
the France which spawned Napoleon whose greatest renown, from the English point of view, was to be defeated by Wellington at Waterloo,
the France which lost Canada so gallantly that in the Legend of England the name of the defeated French general in the Battle of Montreal is forever linked with the name of the English victor,
the France which was England’s cunning rival in the plundering of Spain,
the France which took Calais while the British were looking the other way just as, a century before, it had taken Gascony while the English nobles squabbled over the crown,
the France which for centuries carried on an assiduous seduction of the Scots,
and the France, in fact the specific province of France, which had invaded England and ruled over it for 200 years.
Hypothesis: Deep in the British High Command’s overcoming its reticence about bombing France lay the agony and ecstasy of 1066 and Agincourt.
Now, after a break for refreshments, available in the lobby, another hypothesis, even more breathtaking than the first.
2. SUBJECTS (in the midst of the glut of audaciously speculative hypotheses, an unusually rational offering)
Let’s consider the History Today factoid in light of a recent Drapers Guild Quotation of the Day: a passage from William Hazlitt’s “Life of Napoleon”, a sentence from his discussion of Napoleon’s decision to invade Russia.
Had he entered the lists as a legitimate sovereign, as a parchment Emperor, he might have gone forth and had a tilting-bout with Alexander, either on the Niemen or the Don, in summer or winter, and returned as he came, not much the better or worse, with a battle lost or won, with more or less fame, with so much influence or territory added or taken off; but in his case he never fought but for his existence.
Not only an elegant thought elegantly expressed, but an elegant expression of Hazlitt’s unwavering loathing of legitimacy. (He cannot write the word without hissing.)
That loathing of the concept of legitimate rule is behind Hazlitt’s coldly cynical attitude towards European history. (Excepting the American and French Revolutions. Then he goes to the other extreme and rhapsodizes about them.)
The flippancy with which Hazlitt treats what various monarchs and popes had gotten up to over 1,500 years is based on his dismay that the mass of Europeans in the otherwise enlightened 19th century still adhered to the tenuous, irrational and anachronistic principle of monarchical legitimacy. He was bewildered by the fact that most of his friends and acquaintances, his intellectual peers, and just about the whole world were content to be ruled by a particular person or family or privileged group whose power rested on nothing but their own say-so.
By Hazlitt’s time, the once revolutionary French had restored the Bourbons to the throne, joining their fellow Europeans in fealty, if not to particular monarchs, still to the idea that the right to legitimately rule a country belonged exclusively to those whose names were preceded by titles bestowed by similarly “legitimate” monarchs of the past.
Of course, if Hazlitt were doing his thinking and writing in 1945 he would have had to obsess about some other social absurdity uncomplicated enough to be described and mocked in one paragraph. Patriarchy would have done the trick. In 1945, for a mind as clear and unfettered as Hazlitt’s, the custom of endowing persons who happen to be male with power over persons who happen to be female, like the custom of monarchic legitimacy in the 1825, would have been doubly absurd, since it was an arbitrary and irrational arrangement accepted by most everyone, those who were oppressed as well as even the most well-meaning and liberal of their oppressors.
A Hazlitt of today, of course, would have to look for another hobbyhorse of absurdity to ride. Just as, in the early 19th century, there was a core of anti-royalists that would snowball into a majority and then a near unanimity so that by 1945 any kings who remained on their thrones were quaint, powerless throwbacks, in 1945 there was a core of feminists which, in our time, has snowballed into a majority on its way to near unanimity.
Please excuse the digression. To get back to Hazlitt, Churchill and bombing France prior to D-Day:
Britain in 1945 was, as it still is, unique in retaining most of its monarch’s traditional royal prerogatives, even though it had, in a slow and steady process over centuries, completely eliminated the most important of them: the power to rule. Those vestigial royal prerogatives, even today, make King Charles III the supremo of every non-political aspect of society, buttressed by pomp, circumstance, and a widespread sentimental patriotism that is distinctly British.
Without the power to rule that once accompanied the status of sovereign, the British monarchy resembles that primitive kingship described in “The Golden Bough” with its numerous examples of isolated, powerless kings who appeared in public only for such ceremonial purposes as sanctifying a new menstruation hut or purifying, by royal urination, a polluted water source or, in King Charles’ case, laying the cornerstone for a new nursery school or opening Parliament with a speech entirely written by the governing party, in which even the de rigeur stirring patriotic flourishes have been approved by a committee.
While not, like Frazer’s examples, doomed to become a human sacrifice, the activity of a King or Queen of England is just as strictly curtailed. Prince Charles could use his prestige to campaign for sustainable agriculture; King Charles III may not.
I’ve digressed again, for which I again apologize. I can only hope that it was as much fun to read as it was to write. To return once again to Hazlitt, Churchill and bombing France prior to D-Day:
One vestige of monarchy which the United Kingdom has preserved, unlike any other Western country, is to refer to its nationals not as citizens of the United Kingdom, but as subjects of its current King or Queen.
The American soldiers who were to invade Normandy, whose chance of surviving it were improved by the bombing of France beforehand, were American citizens; so were Eisenhower and Roosevelt. The British soldiers who were to invade Normandy were subjects of King George V, as were Churchill and the rest of the High Command.
Words have distinct meanings. There is a discrete difference between being a citizen and being a subject. Subject implies obedience, submission, duty. Citizen implies autonomy, parity, consensus.
Hypothesis: The difference in the attitudes of the British High Command and the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, when weighing the success of the invasion and the safety of their troops against the negative reaction of the French to being bombed by the Allies, rests in part on the fact that the British thought of themselves as subjects.
The American forces and their commanders were American citizens, participating in a national policy to which (theoretically) the majority of their fellow citizens had consented. For the British forces and their commanders, it was their duty as subjects to carry out their country’s policy. Unlike the consensual national policies of other democracies, the U. K’s national goals were (theoretically) those of the King, who had iterated them on the opening of Parliament.