Why Great Britain always emerged victorious in the fight against European countries

In 1932, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill, who had been vegetating on the back bench of the House of Commons for several years, went on a trip to Europe. He was writing a book about his ancestor, the commander Duke of Marlborough, and wanted to visit the sites of past battles of English troops with the enemy. Most of the journey passed through Germany, where the retired politician along the way asked the Germans about the Hitler phenomenon. This is how Churchill met Ernst Hanfstaengel, the Fuhrer’s assistant for press relations. The meeting with the leader himself was upset at the last moment. So two men who would later lead their countries in a fierce battle missed the chance to meet in person. But Churchill’s stay in Munich for the dual purpose of writing the history of the Duke and reconnaissance of a possible future enemy also had a symbolic meaning. The epic, begun by the first Duke of Marlborough at the beginning of the 18th century during the War of the Spanish Succession, was completed by his great-great-great-grandson in the mid-20th century.

In this story we highlight three decisive trials where the fate of Albion was at stake, and its defeat would mean the end of Anglo-Saxon civilization. But every time, no matter who opposed John Bull - Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm II or Adolf Hitler, the fight ended in London's favor, although often England was left alone against all of Europe. What, besides geography, saved the island?

Supply Battle

Great Britain did not want war with revolutionary France. In the 17th century, she had already fought with her four times, acting as the guarantor of the balance of power in Europe, and each time she beat the self-confident Gauls. The last war, superimposed on the struggle with the North American colonies, plunged the country into debt of £250 million - a gigantic sum at that time. Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger wished for peace. In 1787, he concluded a trade agreement with Paris on a mutual reduction of duties and the abolition of passports for travel from one country to another.

But a revolution began in France. The country was sliding into a bloody chaos of anarchy and hysteria of suspicion. The favorite topic of the leaders of the street crowd, and indeed of many deputies of the Convention, was the search for “English spies”, of whom there were no more in Paris than in 1937 in Moscow. In early 1793, having executed King Louis XVI (Pitt abandoned attempts to save his life for the sake of peace with France), the republic declared war on England, challenging tradition on behalf of the revolution.

The population of France was almost twice that of England. Its revolutionary armies crushed Austria and Prussia, subduing Italy and capturing Spain. By 1809, almost all of Europe from the Pyrenees to Prussia, from Dalmatia to Holland was under the rule of Bonaparte. Russia was his ally, and England opposed him alone.

France broke with feudal traditions, opening the way to everything new. Every soldier who received full civil rights could rise to the rank of marshal; the criterion for promotion was valor, not origin. The metric system was introduced, the optical telegraph was invented for communication with troops, and the newly invented hot air balloon was used in battles for observation. The country had the strongest centralized government, which introduced a conscription system and comprehensive police control.

England was almost the complete opposite. It had a small standing army (only 40,000 men in 1793), recruited from the scum of society. “To go for the royal shilling” (to enlist as a soldier) meant giving up on oneself, admitting the inability to earn money in any other way. The commander-in-chief, the Duke of Wellington, called his soldiers scum and scoundrels.

The officer corps, on the contrary, was formed exclusively from “gentlemen”; ranks and positions had to be officially purchased. Government power was divided between the crown, ministers and houses of parliament, which were always quarreling among themselves. Unlike the French, no one eradicated “feudalism,” and even a hundred years later, in 1894, only 10% of the land belonged to those who cultivated it. Nevertheless, the great commander’s plans to crush the British Empire failed, and he himself went to live out his life in exile under the control of the British.

Albion fought all its wars, outmaneuvering the enemy with finances and logistics. In order to reduce the national debt after the unsuccessful war with the American colonies, Pitt raised taxes and established the so-called sinking fund, into which “above-plan” tax revenues went. From the fund, £9.5 million was paid per year - interest on government obligations to private creditors, so that they would not worry and continue to lend to the government further, or at least not sue the crown and not panic.

On the contrary, French finances, strained by the military support of the Americans who rebelled against Great Britain, did not stabilize at all after the revolution of 1789. The sale of “national assets” did not help, and the country, whose economy remained semi-subsistence and largely agrarian, plunged into hyperinflation, which destroyed the regime of the Directory, which was replaced by Napoleon. Under him, in his own words, “the war fed the war” - it was financed by the conquered countries, which paid indemnities and were forced to support the occupying forces. The economy was hooked on the needle of endless aggression.

Meanwhile, industrial and commercial England, thanks to strong finances, was able to quickly increase the number of warships from 303 in 1794 to 646 in 1799. The ground forces increased to 250,000, not counting the militia and territorial defense. Every sixth man took up arms - without harming the economy.

The second decisive step was the reorganization of logistics after the war with the American colonies, which London lost, unable to supply troops overseas. The government-sponsored Maritime Food and Transport Board established supply bases and gunpowder depots at key points around the globe, so supplying expeditions thousands of miles away was not a problem for Britain. The war with France and its allies was global, the British did not give rest to the enemy in Indonesia and Ceylon, in South Africa and Argentina, in Egypt and Haiti.

Napoleon never solved the problem of supplying troops, which was one of the main reasons for his defeat. The Emperor plunged the Grande Armée into the catastrophe of famine in Russia in 1812, but more remarkable was another, no less important, logistical failure in Spain.

The 1808–1814 campaign in the Iberian Peninsula was a battle of supply services. The Duke of Wellington's expeditionary force was supplied by sea one and a half thousand kilometers more efficiently and reliably than the French troops across the border. Moreover, in order to avoid the plunder of civilians by the Spanish allies and prevent guerrilla warfare, the Duke took the supplies of the Spaniards at his own expense.

The emperor’s gesture of despair was the announcement of a continental blockade of England in 1806. By closing European ports to British goods, Napoleon thought to strangle Albion, but the opposite happened. Thousands of French traders and manufacturers went bankrupt, losing markets and suppliers. The port cities fell into disrepair, and the streets of Bordeaux, the largest trading center, were overgrown with grass. On the contrary, British industrialists and merchants, in the absence of competitors, became stronger and even through smugglers supplied cloth for the uniform of Napoleon's soldiers. By the end of the blockade, the British controlled 20% of world trade and 50% of trade in manufactured goods.

The British convincingly demonstrated the superiority of their economic and political system. Despite its archaism compared to the French, it had the most important property - dynamism and flexibility. Formal disadvantages turned into real advantages. Thus, if the agriculture of France, where peasants received more rights after the revolution, stagnated, then, according to the historian, “in Britain, feudal estates turned into prosperous agricultural farms, perfectly suited for commercial use” - thanks to better protection of property rights (in including through “fencing”) and the motivation of tenants who worked primarily for the market. In France, peasants who were freed from feudal dependence and bought land often conducted subsistence and semi-subsistence farming.

Much more important politically was the industrial revolution, which occurred in England but was late in France. London defeated Paris by introducing a large number of steam engines and a variety of machine tools, which made large-scale factory production possible, including weapons and ammunition. The inventions of Montgolfier and Cugnot were of little use to the French; the stagnant industry could not master and implement them. The innovative economy of England instantly absorbed any innovation. Napoleon considered Robert Fulton a charlatan and rejected the Nautilus submarine project, while Pitt gave orders to waste no time in using the American's inventions. The British did not consider it shameful to borrow combat missiles from their enemy Tipu Sultan in India, which, improved by William Congreve, burned Boulogne, Copenhagen and Danzig.

Habeas corpus act, parliamentary control, political competition and freedom of the press proved stronger than dictatorship. They provided the ability to quickly learn lessons. Thus, Frederick, Duke of York, after the defeat in Holland in 1799, carried out an effective reform of the army, but a few years later he himself was almost brought to trial by a parliamentary committee on charges of corruption - an unheard of thing on the continent. Wellington said: “Napoleon can spend people without counting, but if I lose 500 people without urgent need, I will appear before the House of Commons.”

Without changing the state system, English society has learned to promote young, talented leaders. Pitt the Younger became Prime Minister at 24, the future Prime Minister Henry Palmerston was appointed Junior Lord of the Admiralty at 23, and Minister of War at 25. At the same time, the British did without much bureaucracy. Wellington, who later became Prime Minister, wrote all his letters in his own hand, responding to every request that came in, and Palmerston, having arrived at the Foreign Office, directed world politics with a staff of less than 45 officials. The logical finale of the twenty-year struggle was Waterloo and the Congress of Vienna - in many ways a triumph of British diplomacy, which guaranteed Europe a hundred years of relatively peaceful life.

Victory in the rear

From 1815 to 1914, Britain was at the height of its power, the center of a world empire on which the sun never set. London played a role in world affairs similar to that played by Washington today. But by the end of the 19th century, new forces began to emerge in the world, challenging the Pax Britannica.

The most dangerous was Germany, united in 1871 by the genius of Bismarck. She was quickly catching up with England. Already in 1910, Germany produced 14.8 million tons of steel, and Great Britain - only 10.2 million tons. The Kaiser's empire became a world leader in the chemical and electrical industries. AEG, Siemens, BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, Krupp, Thyssen have become synonymous not only with monopoly capital, but also with technological progress. Germany was covered with a network of higher technical schools and schools that graduated thousands of engineers.

Germany demanded a place in the sun, complained that it had been shortchanged in the division of the colonies, and was determined to challenge British rule. A good example is the “dreadnought race”. Admiral Tirpitz, who hated Britain, believed that if the German fleet became equal in strength to the British, England would avoid confrontation. By 1914, there were 17 German battleships for every 29 British battleships.

Like France at the end of the 18th century, Germany created the strongest army in Europe with impeccable discipline, training, equipment and the best General Staff at that time. By 1914, the British army consisted of 11 infantry divisions and three cavalry divisions, being equal in size to the Serbian army. Its 113 combat airplanes opposed 384 German ones (plus 30 airships).

The reasons that led to the First World War are countless, but if we consider it simplistically, the main one is the rivalry between England and Germany. The latter acted as a revisionist force that threatened to destroy the old system, whose guarantor was London, around which France and Russia rallied, fearing German claims to world leadership. The shot in Sarajevo turned out to be the match that exploded the heated atmosphere of uncontrollable nationalist and imperialist passions.

Great Britain entered the war later than the others - on August 4, 1914 - due to Germany's violation of Belgium's neutrality, of which London was the guarantor. Having seized the initiative, the Kaiser's troops occupied Belgium and approached Paris. A positional war began, in which the front line remained almost unchanged for four years. The confrontation between the Entente and the Central Powers came down to whether the enemy would be the first to strangle the enemy economically, or would he be able to inflict defeat before his forces were exhausted? London relied on a total blockade of Germany, effectively interrupting its sea communications with the outside world. The Kaiser's dreadnoughts did not dare to go out into the open sea for a breakthrough, turning out to be unnecessary and expensive toys. Albion, having destroyed the scattered enemy cruisers, was the master of the world's oceans for all four years.

On February 1, 1917, Germany, in response to the blockade, announced the beginning of unrestricted submarine warfare. Ships from all countries were sunk without warning in a zone declared forbidden. According to the calculations of German economists, if it were possible to destroy merchant ships with a total displacement of up to 600,000 tons every month, Great Britain, having lost its merchant fleet, would sue for peace in six months. At first it seemed that this would happen: in February 105 ships (540,000 tons of displacement) were sunk, in March - 147 (594,000 tons), and in April the lost tonnage exceeded 880,000 tons. Strategic reserves in England remained for six weeks.

But the answer was found quickly - from now on, merchant ships sailed only as part of a heavily armed convoy. Already in May 1917, British losses decreased, and by the end of the year they no longer affected supplies. But the German loss figures went up. If during the entire war until February 1917 they lost 48 submarines, then from February to the end of the year - 61. The next year their losses amounted to 69 submarines. They lost more boats than they could build.

In no time, the island was transformed. In 1916, compulsory conscription was introduced for the first time. The trade unions reached an agreement with the industrialists, and the economy did not know labor conflicts. In 1915–1916, as the historian writes, “an industrial and social transformation of the state took place, and an unprecedented mechanism of state and collectivist control arose.” It spread from mines and railroads to trade. The Ministry of War Supply was created, headed by former Treasury Secretary and future Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Along with it, previously unrepresented ministries arose, such as shipping, aviation, and even blockade affairs, which coordinated the economic struggle with Germany. In 1918, to win the propaganda war, the Ministry of Information was established, headed by the colorful English-Canadian businessman, newspaper oligarch Lord Beaverbrook, whom we will meet again 20 years later.

England, unlike Germany, did not know famine. Labor leader Ramsay MacDonald estimates that more was done during the war to protect social rights than in the previous half century. Free primary education arose, construction of municipal housing began, and medical care became accessible to all. The Kaiser’s Germany saw nothing like this, where, in fact, a military dictatorship headed by General Ludendorff reigned, while in England parliamentary procedures were not violated for a minute, and in December 1916 Lloyd George, a former left liberal and pacifist, headed the coalition cabinet.

It can be said without exaggeration that the main victory was won in the rear. While the people of Britain showed unity in the face of the enemy, despite enormous casualties and a protracted war, Germany collapsed as a result of the revolution. And this was at a time when not a single enemy soldier trampled on its territory, and under the rule of the Kaiser as a result of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty there were about a million square kilometers of Russian territory. The British model of democracy, with its emphasis on tradition, proved superior to the aggressive, authoritarian monarchy of the Prussian style.

"We will never give up!"

The UK government, as a democracy, was forced to follow the will of the voters. And voters most of all did not want a repetition of the horrors of war. The disgust at the massacre that had been experienced was so strong that in order to never see anything like it again, London agreed to turn a blind eye to the militarization of Germany that began under Hitler.

The Fuhrer returned conscription to the Wehrmacht and began a massive rearmament program - Great Britain preferred to turn a blind eye to everything, according to the principle “as long as there is no war.” This policy of appeasement until 1939, before the occupation of Czechoslovakia, met with the broadest support in Britain. After 1918, ground forces, aviation and navy were radically reduced, and weapons modernization was carried out sluggishly. Therefore, on September 3, 1939, England, like 25 years ago, faced the war half-prepared at best.

But the situation for Great Britain in 1940 was worse - the USSR was an ally of Hitler, France was defeated and occupied, Italy declared war on it, and a year later almost all of Western Europe was under German control. If in the First World War German submarines had to break into the open ocean, now they had the best ports in France at their disposal. But it was in 1940–1941, when the British Empire fought alone against Hitler and Mussolini, that the island's most difficult victory over the continent was achieved. In this decisive year, Britain demonstrated once again - in the face of unprecedented danger - the ability to quickly mobilize and turn its weaknesses into strengths.

After the defeat of France, when the threat of invasion of Albion loomed, Winston Churchill made his famous speech in Parliament: “We will go to the end ... we will fight on the seas and on the oceans, ... we will defend our island, whatever the cost, we will fight on the coast, we will fight at the landing points, we will fight in the fields and in the streets... We will never surrender! Churchill later wrote: “Hitler was convinced that England was a pacifist and degenerate country. He did not understand, however, what profound changes take place in England and throughout the British Empire when the call to arms is heard, that the very people who most zealously advocate peace are instantly transformed into tireless workers in the name of victory.

In August 1940, when the air Battle of Britain began, the British had 704 serviceable fighters and about 900 pilots. The Germans outnumbered them by at least one and a half times. But Britain was the first in the world to develop radars for an air defense system and completely “closed” its coast, detecting the enemy’s approach in advance. Against the Luftwaffe's secret radio navigation system, the RAF developed effective jamming techniques that sometimes resulted in German pilots landing on British airfields thinking they were already in German territory.

The Ministry of Aviation Industry was created, headed by Lord Beaverbrook, who was distinguished by an extremely unorthodox approach to management. He located the ministry's apparatus on his own estate, widely attracted people from business, and abolished the usual bureaucratic formalities. If in the first four months of 1940 638 fighters were manufactured, then by the end of the year since the establishment of the ministry - 1875. Britain produced 2.5 times more aircraft than Germany. A service was organized that distributed orders for aircraft repairs among private firms, thanks to which another 1,900 aircraft were returned to service during the same time.

Even at the peak of the devastating bomber raids in the capital, the work of all public services continued, the business activity of the City did not subside, moreover, work continued on landscaping its suburbs, and in 1943 the construction of the next bridge across the Thames - Waterloo was completed.

Although the Germans were in a much better position than in the First World War, they failed disastrously in their attempt to undermine England's economy by disrupting its trade links by sea. The British did not go hungry for a day: most of the ships sailing to and from the country arrived at their destination. In contrast, the German navy lost 783 submarines, killing 30,000 sailors—three-quarters of all German submariners. The British, coordinating efforts through the Ministry of Economic Warfare created by Churchill, blockaded the enemy from the first weeks, forcing the Germans to suffer from a shortage of necessary raw materials.

Nothing better illustrates the difference between totalitarian and democratic military management than the choice of priorities in the development of new generation weapons during World War II. Hitler, famous for the fact that he knew by heart all the indicators of guns, planes, and tanks of the Wehrmacht, relied on weapons of retaliation (Wunderwaffe) - V-1 projectile aircraft and V-2 missiles. The program to create them did nothing to slow down the Allied advance towards Germany, turning out to be one of the most notorious failures in history.

At the same time, the Anglo-Saxons, whose leaders never went into the smallest technical details, and most importantly, did not impose their opinions on the military and designers, opted for the creation of an atomic bomb, which turned out to be truly capable of changing the course of the war, although only at the end of the war. in the case of Japan. Let us recall that Britain was the first to begin work on nuclear weapons (the MAUD research committee and the Tube Alloys project) back in 1940, and then transferred its developments in this area to America.

Another project during the Second World War, comparable in importance and scope to the Manhattan one, was Operation ULTRA - the decoding of secret enemy messages by British counterintelligence at the highest level, right up to the Fuhrer's headquarters. At Bletchley Park, a group of up to 12,000 people worked to decipher German radio intercepts. It attracted people from a variety of professions - not only mathematicians and linguists, but even experts in solving crossword puzzles. The Germans could not achieve anything like this. Contrary to the myths, their intelligence was weak and disorganized. Unlike the British, they had little idea of the enemy’s plans - at the very beginning of the war, all of their few spies in Britain were arrested and converted, which became part of Operation Double Cross. Through them, the Germans received false information, which played a role in ensuring surprise during the landing in Normandy.

While not inferior in technical ingenuity (the same V-2 and, for example, the Me-262 jet fighter were outstanding achievements of their time), Nazi Germany yielded to England in the main thing - in organization, that is, management, logistics and production. Extreme subjectivism, lack of system, and inability to complete what was started were integral features of a totalitarian state.

History cannot be deceived, and World War II was the last great battle of England, after which the decline of the British Empire began. But in 1939–1945, Albion accomplished the main thing - it defended its freedom. And the model of Anglo-Saxon civilization—democracy coupled with tradition—continues to flourish.

Britain and Europe: three centuries of confrontation