Word: wintringham
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Last week doughty, democratic, battle-scarred Thomas H. Wintringham, 43, was allowed to resign from the leadership of Britain's Home Guard Training School, which he so largely created. Many an observer of Britain's war effort wondered whether the War Office-at times seemingly bow-&-arrow minded-was trying to lose...
Veteran of World War I and of the Spanish Civil War, in which he commanded the British battalion of the International Brigade, Tom Wintringham wrote and harangued against the spit-&-polish, close-order drill snobbery of Sandhurst. In a handbook called New Ways of War (TIME, Nov.11), he insisted that the only way to repel an invasion was to supplement Britain's regular forces with an army of 4,000,000 civilians trained with maximum democracy and efficiency. To this end the Home Guard Training School was organized, and Tom taught his men sniping, barricading, bombing with homemade bombs...
...nationality is, what political positions I may have held -these I consider are my personal concerns." Readers of Battle for the World might guess that he was a Red Army officer if his name was not Max Werner. Reviewing Werner's Military Strength of the Powers (1939), Tom Wintringham, organizer of Britain's ubiquitous People's Army, thought that Werner must be "from Central Europe." His reason: Werner's forecast for World War II ran counter to the experiences of the Spanish Civil War. Reviewer Wintringham "was appalled at the theory of warfare, the idea...
...France's, and France's Army fell. Furthermore, Britain's Army lost plenty in Flanders. Britain's small reformed Army would have more than it could handle in the face of a full-dress Blitzkrieg. The only way to beat the Blitz, argued Wintringham, was for 4,000,000 civilians to teach themselves how to fight democratically, efficiently and freed of the myths and snobbery of military convention. The only way to meet total attack is total defense. Britain must fight now not to the last Frenchman, not to the last British soldier...
...Greek citizen armies defeated huge Persian armies of slaves. The unarmored English longbowmen of Crecy and Agincourt beat the armored French knights who were "their liege lord's men." Washington's burning militia trounced the paid Hessians of George III. "Cromwell's New Model Army," said Wintringham, "is still the best model for British fighting men." But can a People's Army stop modern motorcycle troops, whose guns can cut a man in half in two seconds at 100 yards, planes with their nerve-raveling noises? Wintringham thinks so. His book tells how. In person...