A friend, David Harrison (whose father knew WSC), and I were chatting recently, primarily about Sir Walter Raleigh, but the conversation turned to Churchill. We started talking about the North Africa battles in WW2 and wondered about Churchill's decision to send British troops to Greece in the spring of 1941 to oppose the Nazi invasion of that country. As a consequence of this move, the reduction in British forces in North Africa allowed Rommel to seize the initiative and push the remaining British forces back toward Egypt. The troops who were sent to Greece eventually had to be evacuated with considerable losses. But, the Wehrmacht had been expecting to romp through Greece against only token opposition from the local Greek forces. Instead, they had to fight top-of-the-line British troops, which delayed their timetable considerably, even though they eventually completed the conquest of Greece. The key fact, though, is that the Greek diversion delayed the initiation of Operation Barbarossa (the invasion of the Soviet Union) from about May 10 until June 22. If the German panzers had begun Barbarossa in mid-May, they almost certainly would have reached Moscow before the snow began to fly, the Soviet Union would have likely collapsed, and Hitler would have won the war, with the USA and Britain unable to stop him. The Nazis and the Japanese would have together controlled the entire Eurasian land mass. As it was, the Nazis never reached Moscow, although they came close. The Battle of Moscow involved seven million troops on the two sides, with two and a half million killed. It was the biggest and bloodiest battle in world history, and was, in retrospect, the turning-point of the war. Anyone interested in a detailed analysis of the Battle of Moscow may wish to read "The Greatest Battle," by Andrew Nagorski. Here we have another example of the "butterfly effect," wherein one small action has an enormous effect on future events. I doubt that WSC had any explicit realization of the importance of this action, but it displayed his incredible prescience in dealing with this supreme world crisis. CES 5/01/10
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