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Of course Churchill was perhaps one of the biggest idea guys of the lot. He did plenty, but he also interfered and had bad ideas a plenty too. Thankfully, he wa

Of course Churchill was perhaps one of the biggest idea guys of the lot. He did plenty, but he also interfered and had bad ideas a plenty too. Thankfully, he was mostly open to being told to butt out. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (SOE) was a famous Churchill enthusiasm, yet he had many useless impractical ones, that were a huge distraction, too.

smacktoward 8y ago
And sometimes worse than just useless or impractical. (cough Gallipoli cough)
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Gallipoli. Norway. Gutting the Royal Navy as chancellor in the 1920s. Those were the truly damaging ones. Of the impractical, well, he was a great believer in the boffins, so he supported SOE and other secret warfare, Bletchley, tanks etc. Yet he also promoted research into death rays, aerial mines, The Great Panjandrum (a huge 20 foot rocket powered catherine wheel intended to clear minefields. Test footage on YT), Project Habakkuk (An aircraft carrier made of pycrete - ice). I could go on all day. :) Yet to get the good science, he probably had to let the boffins explore the bad and the silly too, so frankly I'm glad he had some of those seriously oddball thanks to hindsight ideas.
  - smacktoward 8y ago
    I generally describe Churchill as an object lesson in how history can decide that getting one big thing right (that Nazi Germany was an existential threat that needed to be taken seriously) outweighs getting basically every other thing wrong.
    - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
      I'm not nearly as harsh about it. He got some impressively big stuff wrong, and right. Above all he wasn't afraid to act. Above all, that's what was needed right then. He'll always be controversial for his more extreme examples of being wrong. Such is what seems to make a great general or wartime leader. More he was a wartime YC - he backed all sorts of clearly idiotic ideas, and a few of them turned out to be platinum. Would Lord Halifax, Chamberlain or Atlee (or worse May, Johnson or Corbyn) have poured the equivalent of billions into tanks that were crucial in WW1, or into Bletchley that turned out to be the golden goose, or radar? Nope, almost certainly not, they'd have all have died as unproven too, and we'd probably have lost. An aircraft carrier made of ice is clearly an absurd idea. Yet if it had closed the Atlantic gap, as intended, millions of tons of shipping would have been saved.
      - grandinj 8y ago
        Actually no, not an absurd idea at all: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk
        NeedMoreTea 8y ago
        Aye, the scale needed killed them. Often held up now, from 70 years on, as one of his especially silly ideas.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    WW2 was an existential struggle for all parties involved. No stone was left unturned in the pursuit of victory. Most wacky ideas never lead to anything. A lot of wacky ideas seem like sure bets in hindsight. In 1939 things like constructing fully welded ships was futuristic delivering meaningful bombs with rockets was science fiction and making bombs by splitting atoms was pure fantasy. By 1945 we had liberty ships, ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads.
    - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
      Quite so, that's rather my point. He backed the really wacky ideas if he saw potential, and saw potential in so much. I don't believe May or Corbyn, or any of the current generation of professional politicians of any nation, could have got close to that role with any amount of advisers or instructions. Churchill was an amateur scientist, and amateur lots of other things. He was interested in the world, a life outside politics, and in technology, in ideas. May would win the war by keeping people on message. Except that's how one gets Panzers in Parliament Square. Tanks. The clearest example I can give of that Mr Churchill not knowing when to keep his nose out of things that don't concern him. One notable time he would not be told to butt out. They almost certainly would never have arrived in WW1 without him. When would war have ended, 1920, or later? The naval blockade was working, but so very slowly. The Americans, joining in 1917, still duplicated for themselves every mistake of the Allies in 1914 and 1915, except compressed into a far shorter time span. Machine guns without mobility made it inevitable. It needed an idea guy. I hope that doesn't sound too cliched, I'm far from Churchill's biggest apologist. Churchill adopted tanks as his pet project. As First Lord of the Admiralty, whilst running the Navy, by taking funding from naval things. He formed the Landship Committee, and appointed a naval architect. The Army had thought them pointless. They were initially called land ships because the navy were the only ones who actually did see the point. The Army saw the point after first use. Then wanted lots more of them. The rest, as they say, is history and quite a few tanks have been built since. Edit: What provokes downvotes here? Surely not for comparing current politicians poorly?
    - pmoriarty 8y ago
      "Most wacky ideas never lead to anything. A lot of wacky ideas seem like sure bets in hindsight." I was just reading how a French inventor offered one of the first submarines in existence as a gift to Napoleon. He refused it. Imagine if France had instead started massively supporting submarine research and development instead. They could have had a couple of hundred year lead on the rest of the world in submarines and perhaps dominated the seas from then on. Of course, even then it wouldn't have been so simple, as there'd likely be technology theft and simple inspiration by others that would make their lead not so great. But the potential to make a great difference was there and it was squandered by an otherwise extraordinary leader.
- in_hindsight 8y ago
  Wasn’t Gallipoli disaster a result of admirals not providing support Churchill requested? And the plan that was implemented wasn’t something Churchill actually advocated for?
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    Pretty much, and the Navy wanted to run things differently to the army. Then they ran into far more resistance than expected. Churchill gets the blame from history. Such is the way of things.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      Didn't Napoleon say something about how a general fought the war by fighting his subordinates?
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  They navy messed that up by thinking they could do it all and not waiting for the planed joint operation with the Army. And they ran into the best Turkish General
  - jopsen 8y ago
    IMO, it was shown again and again during WWI that mobility/logistic issues always favored defensive strategies when a determine force was present on both sides. I doubt there's 1-3 things that would have dramatically altered the outcome.
- cletus 8y ago
  So Dan Carlin spoke about Gallipoli in his superb podcast "A Blueprint for Armageddon" [1]. It's more complicated than you might think. Basically, Churchill recognized that the old battleships they had were, well, now useless. Given that, the idea was to use them to try and open up the Dardanelles because they were essentially zero cost to lose. The Admirals, who were quite attached to their ships, viewed this plan differently and rather than striking with no warning (damn the losses), went in and out and gave the Turks time to entrench themselves. The plan was basically never to land anywhere there, let alone Gallipoli. Now obviously the buck stops with Churchill being in charge of the Admiralty but there was a confluence of errors that produced that particular clusterfuck. [1] https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-52-blueprint-for-armageddon-iii/ https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-52-bluepr... (Part 3 of 6, starting at about 2:50:00)
- secfirstmd 8y ago
  Sending the Black and Tans to Ireland was another one of his ideas...
joshklein 8y ago
Well put, though he did have the distinct responsibility of communicating leadership decisions. “Ideas” are not a responsibility, but “communicating decisions” certainly is (in organizations scaled beyond the threshold for effective informal interpersonal communication, i.e. bigger-than-tribal).
MrEldritch 8y ago
If you actually try and implement your ideas, or can successfully get other people to do the work of trying them for you, you're not an idea guy.

smacktoward 8y ago

And sometimes worse than just useless or impractical. (cough Gallipoli cough)

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Gallipoli. Norway. Gutting the Royal Navy as chancellor in the 1920s. Those were the truly damaging ones. Of the impractical, well, he was a great believer in the boffins, so he supported SOE and other secret warfare, Bletchley, tanks etc. Yet he also promoted research into death rays, aerial mines, The Great Panjandrum (a huge 20 foot rocket powered catherine wheel intended to clear minefields. Test footage on YT), Project Habakkuk (An aircraft carrier made of pycrete - ice). I could go on all day. :) Yet to get the good science, he probably had to let the boffins explore the bad and the silly too, so frankly I'm glad he had some of those seriously oddball thanks to hindsight ideas.
- smacktoward 8y ago
  I generally describe Churchill as an object lesson in how history can decide that getting one big thing right (that Nazi Germany was an existential threat that needed to be taken seriously) outweighs getting basically every other thing wrong.
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    I'm not nearly as harsh about it. He got some impressively big stuff wrong, and right. Above all he wasn't afraid to act. Above all, that's what was needed right then. He'll always be controversial for his more extreme examples of being wrong. Such is what seems to make a great general or wartime leader. More he was a wartime YC - he backed all sorts of clearly idiotic ideas, and a few of them turned out to be platinum. Would Lord Halifax, Chamberlain or Atlee (or worse May, Johnson or Corbyn) have poured the equivalent of billions into tanks that were crucial in WW1, or into Bletchley that turned out to be the golden goose, or radar? Nope, almost certainly not, they'd have all have died as unproven too, and we'd probably have lost. An aircraft carrier made of ice is clearly an absurd idea. Yet if it had closed the Atlantic gap, as intended, millions of tons of shipping would have been saved.
    - grandinj 8y ago
      Actually no, not an absurd idea at all: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk
      - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
        Aye, the scale needed killed them. Often held up now, from 70 years on, as one of his especially silly ideas.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  WW2 was an existential struggle for all parties involved. No stone was left unturned in the pursuit of victory. Most wacky ideas never lead to anything. A lot of wacky ideas seem like sure bets in hindsight. In 1939 things like constructing fully welded ships was futuristic delivering meaningful bombs with rockets was science fiction and making bombs by splitting atoms was pure fantasy. By 1945 we had liberty ships, ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads.
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    Quite so, that's rather my point. He backed the really wacky ideas if he saw potential, and saw potential in so much. I don't believe May or Corbyn, or any of the current generation of professional politicians of any nation, could have got close to that role with any amount of advisers or instructions. Churchill was an amateur scientist, and amateur lots of other things. He was interested in the world, a life outside politics, and in technology, in ideas. May would win the war by keeping people on message. Except that's how one gets Panzers in Parliament Square. Tanks. The clearest example I can give of that Mr Churchill not knowing when to keep his nose out of things that don't concern him. One notable time he would not be told to butt out. They almost certainly would never have arrived in WW1 without him. When would war have ended, 1920, or later? The naval blockade was working, but so very slowly. The Americans, joining in 1917, still duplicated for themselves every mistake of the Allies in 1914 and 1915, except compressed into a far shorter time span. Machine guns without mobility made it inevitable. It needed an idea guy. I hope that doesn't sound too cliched, I'm far from Churchill's biggest apologist. Churchill adopted tanks as his pet project. As First Lord of the Admiralty, whilst running the Navy, by taking funding from naval things. He formed the Landship Committee, and appointed a naval architect. The Army had thought them pointless. They were initially called land ships because the navy were the only ones who actually did see the point. The Army saw the point after first use. Then wanted lots more of them. The rest, as they say, is history and quite a few tanks have been built since. Edit: What provokes downvotes here? Surely not for comparing current politicians poorly?
  - pmoriarty 8y ago
    "Most wacky ideas never lead to anything. A lot of wacky ideas seem like sure bets in hindsight." I was just reading how a French inventor offered one of the first submarines in existence as a gift to Napoleon. He refused it. Imagine if France had instead started massively supporting submarine research and development instead. They could have had a couple of hundred year lead on the rest of the world in submarines and perhaps dominated the seas from then on. Of course, even then it wouldn't have been so simple, as there'd likely be technology theft and simple inspiration by others that would make their lead not so great. But the potential to make a great difference was there and it was squandered by an otherwise extraordinary leader.
in_hindsight 8y ago
Wasn’t Gallipoli disaster a result of admirals not providing support Churchill requested? And the plan that was implemented wasn’t something Churchill actually advocated for?
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Pretty much, and the Navy wanted to run things differently to the army. Then they ran into far more resistance than expected. Churchill gets the blame from history. Such is the way of things.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    Didn't Napoleon say something about how a general fought the war by fighting his subordinates?
C1sc0cat 8y ago
They navy messed that up by thinking they could do it all and not waiting for the planed joint operation with the Army. And they ran into the best Turkish General
- jopsen 8y ago
  IMO, it was shown again and again during WWI that mobility/logistic issues always favored defensive strategies when a determine force was present on both sides. I doubt there's 1-3 things that would have dramatically altered the outcome.
cletus 8y ago
So Dan Carlin spoke about Gallipoli in his superb podcast "A Blueprint for Armageddon" [1]. It's more complicated than you might think. Basically, Churchill recognized that the old battleships they had were, well, now useless. Given that, the idea was to use them to try and open up the Dardanelles because they were essentially zero cost to lose. The Admirals, who were quite attached to their ships, viewed this plan differently and rather than striking with no warning (damn the losses), went in and out and gave the Turks time to entrench themselves. The plan was basically never to land anywhere there, let alone Gallipoli. Now obviously the buck stops with Churchill being in charge of the Admiralty but there was a confluence of errors that produced that particular clusterfuck. [1] https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-52-blueprint-for-armageddon-iii/ https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-52-bluepr... (Part 3 of 6, starting at about 2:50:00)
secfirstmd 8y ago
Sending the Black and Tans to Ireland was another one of his ideas...

joshklein 8y ago

Well put, though he did have the distinct responsibility of communicating leadership decisions. “Ideas” are not a responsibility, but “communicating decisions” certainly is (in organizations scaled beyond the threshold for effective informal interpersonal communication, i.e. bigger-than-tribal).

MrEldritch 8y ago

If you actually try and implement your ideas, or can successfully get other people to do the work of trying them for you, you're not an idea guy.