Comments by "Keit Hammleter" (@keithammleter3824) on "Churchill Must Go | The Crown (Claire Foy, Matt Smith, Greg Wise)" video.
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@peterbrongers Mountbatten was given those high status jobs because he was royal or if you like because of his connections. The real Elizabeth was apparently very fond of him, but he was certainly not highly respected, in part because of incompetence and in part because of his sexual perversions and his wife's sexual carrying on with different people, which he did nothing about.
He was in fact not very bright, and generally went about those high status jobs in an incompetent way.
Mountbatten was responsible for a vast number of deaths in India because of the terrible way he handled partition. As SAC SE Asia, he split Korea and Vietnam each into two, thus setting them up for the Korean and Vietnam wars later.
A clear indication of how dim-witted Mountbatten was, was that on meeting Stalin at a war coordination conference, he told Stalin that he (Mountbatten) was a distant cousin of the Russian royal family and would like to visit them when the war is over. As you can imagine, Stalin's reaction was "interesting". In case you don't know, Stalin's predecessor had the Russian royals all shot, so they could never cause trouble.
His dimness did have one benefit though. In the 1920's he was put in charge of the Royal Navy school for radio technicians (then known as wireless telegraphy and telephony). He was unable to understand the textbooks, and made the instructors write new ones in simple language so that he could. These became known as the Admiralty Handbook of Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony and three generations of military and civilian radio techs were raised on it. I have a copy - it is indeed easy to understand for such a highly technical subject.
Churchill always regarded Asia as unimportant. Making Mountbatten SAC SE Asia was Churchill's way of keeping Mountbatten away from anything important while keeping face with the royal family. Pretty much the same strategy as when Churchill sent the incompetent general in charge of forces in North Africa to command India instead. The strategy means you don't have to affect public morale in letting them see that the men in charge have been fools.
Britain seems to have had a habit of appointing upper class fools as First Sea Lord and hoping they don't meddle too much. The wartime Dudley Pound comes to mind.
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