Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman
The likeliest candidate is Clement Attlee. There was no Deputy Prime Minister at the time, but Attlee would be appointed about a month later, on the 19th of February 1942. Attlee became Prime Minister after the 1945 General Election.
A potential problem is that Attlee was leader of the Labour Party, and Conservative MPs might not have taken well to the PM no longer being a member of their party. The most likely Conservative candidate would be Anthony Eden.
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Reich-2 diverts with Lord Halifax becoming PM (and negotiating an armistice). Though in real life he turned it down because he was a Lord, something that would still be the case here.
If no Churchill (I'd previously heard of a divergence point when he was almost hit by a car when visiting NYC), I think it would be whoever rose in his stead. Yes, likely Anthony Eden, with Attlee as deputy.
Eden would likely have followed the same policy as Churchill, to continue the war, if not with the same rhetorical flourish or friendship with FDR.
One idea I had about Dixie is that there was no Churchill, as his mother was American, thus even that high-inertia parallel could diverge. I also thought that there would be no (American) Wallace Simpson, thus no Abdication, and Edward VIII would still be King (friendly with Imperial Germany & the CSA, instead of Nazis).
Thus the United Kingdom of Dixie, already coming out of losing The Great War, stripped of Africa (and previously half of Canada), and quite possibly still trying to keep Ireland, would have much worse leadership during The Alliance War (their version of WWII). A "Conservative-Fascist Moseley" government is mentioned.
Homeline cliodynamic theorists like would have rated an absence of Churchill as a prime reason why Britain loses The Alliance War and quits overseas.