Anyone care to have a stab at what were Britain’s biggest mistakes in the following…
Battlefield (specific battles, campaigns or operations)
Non-Battlefield (i.e. production decisions, etc.)
Political (alliances, promotions, demotions, etc.)
I think the one to bribe Hitler’s gardener to put estrogen in/on Hitler’s food was an… interesting, if not loony idea.
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Greece. Idiotic and pointless commitment of troops for political reasons to shore up political support from the obviously doomed Greeks, who didn’t matter strategically or tactically. Drew troops and naval forces and LOC away from North Africa to no purpose. Idiocy and pointlessness and drain on resources then re-confirmed in Crete.
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Hamstringing Percival in Malaya by requiring him to await an established Japanese attack rather than allowing him to advance into Thailand to deny the Japanese targets to Japan, to achieve the political aim of making Britain look to America like the victim of Japanese aggression.
In both cases Churchill deprived his forces of the air forces his commanders advised and knew were necessary for success, because as a politician he subordinated military to political considerations and to his own curious strategic visions, as he did in WWI with similarly disastrous results in trying to capture the Dardanelles.
Beer is very high in estrogens.
I’d volunteer to be killed that way. 
I would add the pursuance of the “Mediterranean Strategy” long after the War in Italy outlived its usefulness and became a place where Allied forces were bogged down. The hopes of Churchill and Brooke of pushing into Austria through the “soft underbelly” and through the Alps was characteristic of Churchill’s sometimes suspect military judgement and made absolutely no military sense beyond a debatable point after Sicily was taken. Although he was a wartime political leader second to none, certain flaws like Gallipoli taint him, I think the fact that Marshal Brooke had a good deal of influence over him as well as his trust, along with the fact that Ike just learned to say “no!” after a certain point to Churchill may have saved the Allies from bigger blunders.
Don’t know where you’re buying your beer from, but I’d look elsewhere.
Hahaha, that’s a good one…
:mrgreen:
That’s just what I need.
It might get me onto the same level as my wife and daughter. Then I might be able to understand how their brains work.
At the worst, at least it won’t be me that always has to apologise, even when I’m not the one who should be apologising. 
Another one was Churchill arrogantly diverting the 6th & 7th AIF Divisions to Burma on their way back to Australia, in another of his strategic misconceptions flowing from an inability to balance the total military situation against his narrow political and imperial concerns.
The gravity of the situation caused the Australian Government, led by Prime Minister John Curtin, to decide in February 1942 to recall Australia’s AIF 6th and 7th Divisions from the Middle East to defend their own country. This decision was forced on Curtin by a realisation that Britain was more concerned to defend India against the Japanese rather than Australia, and that little material assistance in Australia’s defence could be expected from Britain. While the troops of the AIF 6th and 7th Divisions were on route to Australia, with most of their fighting equipment following them aboard slow-moving merchant ships, the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, tried to divert them to Rangoon for use against the Japanese invaders of Burma.
However, Curtin stood firm, insisting that the battle-toughened AIF troops were vital to the defence of their own country. At this time Australia was being defended by 250,000 hastily recruited militia troops. Although mostly led by capable AIF officers and NCOs, the raw militia troops were poorly armed and inadequately trained to meet battle-toughened Japanese troops on equal terms. Had Curtin not resisted Churchill, it is likely that Australia’s two AIF Divisions would have been swallowed up in the Burma disaster. As for Australia, without its AIF 7th Division, Port Moresby would almost certainly have fallen to the Japanese in September 1942. With Port Moresby in Japanese hands, Japanese bombers would have been able to strike deeply into the Australian mainland and Australia would have been exposed to a very substantial risk of Japanese invasion.
http://www.users.bigpond.com/battleforAustralia/battaust/JapaninvadesNewGuinea.html
As a general observation, Churchill when dealing with military strategy had a gift for creating the circumstances for military failure and, not content with that, then committing the cardinal military sin of reinforcing failure. For all the reasons outlined so far in this thread, and more.
Then again, he wasn’t any worse than Hitler or Stalin in their own ways, all of whom were a long way behind Mussolini’s brilliant ability to get into losing campaigns.
But Churchill was probably much worse than Roosevelt, who determined grand strategy and pretty much left it to his military commanders to achieve the military aspects of it.
Yeah, FDR did give his commanders a much freer hand. The fact that he had little personal military experience and none in uniform may have actually been a bit of an advantage over the Austrian & Italian Corporals, the Admiral, and the Marshal…
Though I believe that Roosevelt was an assistant secretary of the Navy to bolster his political career in lieu of actual uniformed service…In some ways, FDR was perhaps even a little wiser than his generals early on --rejecting the early plans for the invasion of France in 1942 and siding with the British commanders…
Even allowing for hindsight, an invasion of France in 1942 would have been the biggest mistake of WWII. As Dieppe and Torch proved in 1942, for the Allies lacked everything necessary for a successful invasion of France, whether cross Channel or, less likely, cross Mediterranean.
John Curtin, our wartime Prime Minister during the period it mattered, after December 1941, was similarly devoid of military experience and similarly disposed to set grand strategy and then leave it to his military commanders to achieve.
Mac was his main military commander, although not directly under Curtin’s control. Nonetheless, they got on quite well and produced sound results in the critical year of 1942 but less so as the war progressed and Mac pursued his own and American aims. http://john.curtin.edu.au/macarthur/assessment1.html
Curtin was actually in the anti-war camp in WWI and never served in the military, but he didn’t lack the courage of his convictions. http://john.curtin.edu.au/resources/biography/details.html
The Times conducted a pole, asking ‘‘What were the 10 greatest mistakes in British history’’
The top of the list was ‘‘Appeasing Hitler’’
I´ll vote for the Greek adventure, the Greeks did even want that help (famously they´d rather have the boots of the Britsih soldiers, than British soldiers), and just when the British was kicking Italian butt in Africa.
FDR did insist on a large production programme of sub hunters too small to hunt subs, but what the h… the US could endure to produce stuff it didn´t need, alongside stuff it did need.
(Churchill: tell me more about the gardener plan (even though it can´t be called a major war deciding mistake-?)
I read it in a book about stupid people. If I can find it I’ll post more about it.
Edit: Ok, here’s the story:
"The plot to kill Hitler’s mustache
US intelligence operatives tried to win WW2 with hormones. In the midst of the war, the OSS comissioned a wild ranging study of Hitler’s health and habits. Among other findings, the report suggested that the Fuhrer wasn’t as virile as he would have liked the world to believe. In fact, he was “close to the male-female line”, Rights Stanly Lovell, wartime director of R&D for the OSS. “A push to the female side might make his mustache fall out and his voice become soprano.” There was also a good chance he would grow breasts.
Natually, a smooth-shaven, big-busted Hitler would quickly become a national laughingstock and be driven from power(imagine crowds of smirking Germans saluting each other in the street with a breathy “Heil Hitlette!”) To make it happen, the OSS bribed Hitler’s personal gardener to inject large quantities of estrogen into carrots headed for the Fuhrer’s table.
Inevitably, this absurd “destabilisation program” failed. Lovell speculates that either Hitler’s official tasters noticed something funny about the carrots or, more likely, the gardener was a double-crosser who kept the bribe and threw away the hormones."
Difficult to figure why they didn´t try some more potent poison while they were at it.
Returning to British failures; non battlefield type:
It took them the entire war to develop a useful allround tank with sloped armour. That must constitute a failure of some magnitude.
Biggest mistakes by Britain [and France] was probably the appeasement of Hitler in the lead up to the war.
In January 1936 Hitler decided to reoccupy the Rhineland.
It was a major gamble and although France was the only country that could actually do something about it, virtually no one in Britain raised any opposition to it, most Brits thought it was no more then the Germans taking back what was theirs, The British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden actually discouraged military action by the French and was against any financial or economic sanctions against Germany.
Almost the lone voice from Britain to challenge the remilitarization of the Rhineland, was at the time a backbench MP…Winston Churchill.
Hitler himself later said:
“The forty-eight hours after the march into the Rhineland were the most nerve-racking in my life. If the French had then marched into the Rhineland we would have had to withdraw with our tails between our legs, for the military resources at our disposal would have been wholly inadequate for even a moderate resistance.”
The most devastating blunder by Britain and France, once the war started, would probably be convincing themselves that no major armored attack could come through the Ardennes, although there were many clear signals of Germany’s plans, according to E. R. May, a professor of history at Harvard and the author of ‘‘Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France’’
If the French and British had anticipated the Ardennes offensive, it is doubtful that they would have been defeated when and as they were. The whole affair, May argues, was a classic case of intelligence surprise.
Speaking of that… Somehow… Why didn’t the Allies(Britain and France) attack Germany in the winter of '39-'40? If they had done that, they probably could have ended the war sooner. No?
You mean when the Germans attacked Poland?
Yep, that was another case of letting Hitler off the hook, although I doubt the 100 French divs. facing 25 German divs. quoted by the Germans after the war, was as one sided as that.
But it was a real feeble attempt by France in the Saar offensive.
That’s what happens when you have massive defensive fortifications, and the mind set that goes along with it.