This takes a too limited a view of the situation. These decisions were likely made on far more more factors than one of purely material.
Geopolitically Germany had the the advantage of singular national focus, it had no allies to coordinate with either strategically or tactically (at this stage). The UK and France were two very separate and independent states, who were not necessarily strongly aligned, there would have been a deep rooted sense of mistrust (which has existed for centuries).
Another aspect is military doctrine; France had a decidedly defensive doctrine at the time, based of the perceived success of WW1 (the victor always fighting the previous war and all that). The UK military was also very much geared for holding onto an empire and not necessarily fighting large scale military operations across Europe. A decisive military strike was just not in the nature of the nations at the time, they lacked the necessary aggressiveness and sense of purpose to carry it out.
All up the French and British were a little too risk adverse, rightly so I suppose because they had a lot to lose. Unfortunately taking no action was a decision as well and one that would cost them in the long run far more dearly than they might have imagined at the time.
I don’t think the author is trying to make the point that the UK and France were right or wrong to pursue appeasement. Rather he is trying to debunk a very specific argument that they went with that strategy in order to buy themselves time to mobilize. In fact, they were not significantly more prepared for war in 1939 than in 1938 and ended up on worse footing, according to his argument.
So I think your point stands, but we can also question when someone justifies the appeasement strategy by saying that UK/France needed more time to mobilize. In fact, they were probably more taking a gamble to see how things would play out.
> These decisions were likely made on far more more factors than one of purely material.
That's the same point the author is making: If the decision was made based on logistics the war would have to have started in 1938. So the decision was made on something else and only rationalized later with the "time to prepare" argument.
Though I'm actually not convince there is any prevaling narrative that the goal of appeasement was rearmament, most narratives are that it was born from a policy of pacifism with a desire for geniunely avoiding a conflict that some in the UK felt could not be sustained.
Churchill was very much a Hawk all through the 1930s and was pretty much ignored, Chamberlain was Dove through and through not playing some game buying time for a decisive strike.
> Geopolitically Germany had the the advantage of singular national focus, it had no allies to coordinate with either strategically or tactically (at this stage).
I’d argue this was an advantage to Britain, not a disadvantage. Many of Britain’s ‘allies’ did as they were told and while theoretically had control of their troops destiny, actually did not.
Having supplies and manpower that could be built up and trained with little or zero threat of attack was very helpful.
Which allies are you referring to? those that made up the dominion of the empire such as Canada and Australia? then yes. But they can only really supply some troops and resources.
The UK needed France and they were not nearly as cooperative with each other as you might think, and France had little to no interest in an offensive war.
If the war started early, perhaps. But later on, not really. Britain and the dominion had one hell of a lot of resources.
There is a good book on this topic by David Edgerton titled ‘Britain’s War Machine’. It’s largely debunking the idea of the plucky underdog and shows the great strength of Britain relatively to Germany. It was more a question of how long it would take Germany to fall, rather than anything else. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13647996
An invasion of mainland Europe was tough. Not only logistically but also geopolitical, as hard is might be to believe there could be a large push back from an unilateral British invasion of Europe.
Also the UK had great access to men and resources, definitely better on the latter than Germany. But did it have industrial capacity necessary is the question. Most of the manufacturing was concentrated in mainland UK, by design as that's how the empire made its wealth. The UK had to purchase a lot of both naval and land assets from the US.
UK was unlikely to take on Germany alone, it couldn't mount a unilateral invasion of Germany imo.
Therefore the UK needed to coordinate with a foreign power (France) both strategically and operationally. There are some examples in the battle for France where comms and coordination between UK and France General Staff was pretty woeful.
Germany made one agreement with USSR to divide Poland and then basically shipped it's Army around mainland Europe stomping everyone west of Poland.
If you like military history (and this style of writing) I highly recommend 100 Decisive Battles From Ancient Times To Present. It gives an overview of 100 engagements that changed the world: the strengths of each army, the expected outcome, and usually some "twist" that turned the tables.
Is there a list of indecisive battles that changed the world? Battles like Jutland, Guadalcanal, the Atlantic, the North Russia Convoys, Stalingrad, Siege of Malta, along with all the knock-down guerilla warfare in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the Syrian Civil War, etc. These are almost more informative, because
a.) they seem more representative of what most war is like
b.) the turning points of most wars actually fall during them, eg. Guadalcanal rather than Midway was the turning point of the WW2 Pacific Theater, the Battle of the Atlantic rather than Dunkirk or Normandy was the turning point of the European theater.
c.) oftentimes, the long, brutal experience of these types of battles is what led to the logistic and technical improvements that actually wins the war
Similarly, it'd be interesting to read war histories that focus on logistics and technological development. D-Day has had zillions of movies made about it; codebreaking has had one or two; and the logistics of assembling an army of millions and shipping them across the Atlantic in secrecy to land on hostile territory has had none that I know of.
the logistics of assembling an army of millions and shipping them across the Atlantic in secrecy to land on hostile territory has had none that I know of.
If they made a movie like that, it would be so boring. Just endless meetings, with the highest drama being some argument about the supply chain. And yet I would love it, and watch it over and over.
Retention of Midway was important, but, more importantly, the Japanese were unable to accomplish any of their desired goals: to gain a necessary bastion to protect their Far Eastern frontier or to destroy the remaining U.S. fleet in a massive surface engagement. The U.S. loss of Midway could have spelled the loss of Pearl Harbor and the Hawaiian Islands. If Japan had taken them, the United States may well have been forced to sue for peace. Even without a Japanese invasion, the key position that Midway represented could well have slowed or stopped U.S. offensive moves for some time to come. It is for this reason that Midway, and not Guadalcanal (launched 7 August 1942, the first offensive of the United States against the Japanese), is included in this work. A U.S. loss at Guadalcanal in late 1942 to early 1943 would have forced a longer war and attacks at other locations. A U.S. loss at Midway, however, may have precluded any U.S. offensive into the Pacific.
> a.) they seem more representative of what most war is like
Yes, that's true. I'd highly recommend With The Old Breed. It's sort of the inverse of 100 Decisive Battles: a single soldier put his pen to paper and recorded everything he remembered about the Okinawa conflict, from start to finish.
It's a daft idea that we would have been forced to sue for peace had we lost Hawaii.
Japan certainly did not have the logistical capability to take and hold Hawaii (Morison and Toll agree on this point) at any point in the war, so I'm suspicious of the argument that Midway was decisive. It represented one instance in a chain of many of Japan's fixation on the decisive battle. Guadalcanal, on the other hand, represents the American strategic fixation on continuous pressure and attrition. When the United States fought the battles Japan wanted to fight, we won (repeatedly; Midway, Philippine Sea, and Leyte). When Japan fought the battles the United States wanted to fight, they lost repeatedly. That suggests that none of the battles themselves were decisive, rather the strategic concepts of the respective nations.
You are right but with the benefit of hindsight. Japan hoped the USA would be like Russia in 1905, in that once it became clear that regaining a lost fleet would take years Russia lost the will to continue the war. The US was ready structurally and politically for a long war of attrition.
At the time the Japanese did not know that the USSR would overcome Germany. An invasion of Midway, with US CVs sunk to boot, would give Japan at least another year of offensive operations. They could have used that time to threaten Australia, incite insurrection in India, secure ocean supply lines and train pilots. The US and the UK would have the means to resist and the US would certainly still have the means to overcome Japan eventually. But with all those challenges ahead-- in Europe and the Pacific-- maybe the US would negotiate.
As far as logistics go, I'd easily believe military planners in the early 1930s were not accounting for a Blitz into france, because they probably had been planning on the last-war assumption that germany would field a coal-powered, not a synfuel-powered army.
An emphasis on energy sources also puts the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad as the crux of WW2, because the mechanisation of warfare in the 20th century meant that failure to get to caucasian (let alone middle-eastern?) oil foretold failure of the Nazi project.
Similarly, I believe the current US position is that it globally controls the waves, but the navy with which it does so is still largely oil-fueled. Does shale change that catch-22?
Well, both sides were extremely surprised that the invasion of France worked ot the way it did. The French, The British and the Germans as well. Becaue by all acounts, it shouldn't have worked.
IMHO, Germany lost the war in late 1941 when they failed to knock out the USSR. The same way the lost WW 1 already in 1915 when they failed to knock out France on the continent. After 1941, Germany had no clear path to victory anymore in a global, industrial war of attrition. And the fate was sealed with the US entering the war. And sill, millions more of people had to die until it was over.
I recommend reading George Orwell's collected letters and essays from this period of time, to get a feel for what it was like living through it without the benefit of hindsight.
His other books are also great - though not particularly relevant to the subject at hand. ‘Down and out in Paris and London’ is painful but eye opening. ‘Homage to Catalonia’ is good. In it, Orwell’s description of trench warfare is completely horrifying, it made my heart race reading it.
On the other hand, Germany would have been far more ready to face England and France in 1942 or 1943. In particular the Kriegsmarine was completely unready to threaten the UK, which it was much more able to do in 1914. More submarines, cruisers, battleships to complement a superior Luftwaffe. Another few years to prepare and Germany might have been able to knock the UK out of the war.
So the allies may have been unwise to not confront Germany in 1938, but the fascists were probably unwise to force the issue in 1939.
i wonder what would have happened if strategic planning in France would not have been centered on the Maginot line. It may be that they were too much focused on defensive fortifications and didn't use the tanks they had effectively.
"The failure of French tanks was owed to obsolete tactical concepts, compromises which led to undermanned tanks and busy commanders, lack of air support and very poor communication aggravated by a rigid, scattered chain of command. In short, French armor could have had prevailed if better commanded and with better coordination and supplies. The ensuing losses were an incredible waste of military might, reproduced almost to the letter by the USSR in the summer of 1941."
More arms here and there would not have made a big difference in the battle of France, given that the system failed as a whole.
The maginot line worked rather well, at the end the fortresses were surrounded, and yet most them surrendered after the armistice and were not conquered.
I seems a little bit like a combination of surperiour command and control and luck on the German side, and bad luck combined with bad and lacking C&C on the allies side. I always wondered how thins would have played out, if the western allies would have invaded the western part of Germany when the Wehrmacht was still busy in Poland. Same way I wonder how the Pacific war would have developed had the Japanese destroyed the oil depots in Pearl Harbour or even launched an invasion. I guess it would just have prolonged the war and killed even more people, in case of Pearl Harbour.
I don't know, if the French army would have done better during the failed Saar offensive of 1939 then it would also have done better in 1940.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saar_Offensive
The issue wasn't so much the emphasis on the Maginot Line; it was diplomatic failure of appeasement. tl;dr French security strategy relied heavily on a strong alliance with Belgium, and they threw that away in 1936-8
Since the First World War, when Belgium's territory had been used by Germany as a route into France, Belgium had been in an alliance with France. This meant that while they built up fortifications on the German border, they expected to use the Belgian fortifications (places like Fort Eben-Emael) on its border with Germany as a northern extension of Maginot.
When France and Britain failed to oppose the remilitarisation of the Rheinland in 1936, however, Belgium lost confidence that France would actually honor its security guarantees and declared neutrality again. They extended the Maginot fortifications along the Franco-Belgian border, but not didn't have the time or money to build it up to the standard of the rest of the line. Meanwhile, in 1940, instead of being manned by a fully-mobilized wartime army and probably elements of the French and British armies, the Belgian fortifications were held by skeleton crews of an only-moderately-alert neutral army.
This author takes the perspective of Great Britain's war planners. This is not an unreasonable starting point for an understanding of the military readiness of the nations that would eventually go on to fight in the war, but a full understanding mustn't stop there. War planners always assume war will break out because that is their job, and given that Britain and France did ultimately decide to declare war on Germany, the war can appear like an inevitability after the fact. In truth, no one at the time saw it as inevitable and indeed it wasn't. The case P. E. Caquet should be making (and isn't) would be that Germany's ambitions extended beyond the pre-Versailles central European boundaries of Germany and Austria.
Those boarders were surely larger, but had existed just 19 years prior and did not threaten the existence of France or Britain in all the years between German Unification and the Versailles treaty. Nothing in Germany's public proclamations nor the documents uncovered after the war suggest this hidden larger ambition, despite it being central to Churchill's case for granting the war guarantee to Poland (and his ultimate declaration of war against Germany)
The underlying reality is that England has always been the weakest of the European powers due to its small population. It built its empire with trade, espionage and its navy not large armies. England made itself more relatively powerful by playing the larger continental players against each other and against non-Europeans, always taking the side of the weaker countries against the strongest. England aided the Prussians to defeat Napoleon, and the Ottoman Turks against Russia in Crimea. The public arguments made at the time to morally justify England's geopolitical stratagems should not be uncritically assumed to be true and do not constitute a sound starting point for a correct historical understanding of World War II.
Saying germany did not aim for continental domination once the Nazis took over is just wrong. Hitler wanted, and alsways has, Lebensraum in the East. The attack on the USSR was his plan all along. As was a revanche in the West. As was an invasion of Britain once the war has started.
Perhaps, but El Alamein was what Churchill was discussing in his speech from which that quote comes.
“ On 10 November, knowing that El Alamein was a victory, he delivered one of his most memorable war speeches to the Lord Mayor's Luncheon at the Mansion House in London, in response to the Allied victory at El Alamein: "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
From: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill#%22We_shal...
Piłsudski proposed to do preventive invasion of nazi Germany in 1935. At the time it would have been a walk in the partk. France and Great Britain declined because they played "balance of power" and wanted Germany to be a counterbalance to soviet Russia.
WW2 and Holocaust were only possible because of all the egoistic diplomatic games all the powers played at the time.
What happens in the alternative universe where the west crushes Germany in 1935? It seems really hard to guess these things.
Do they have the attention span to keep it divided for another half-century until things cool down, or do the hawks get voted out as crazy people, and they walk away after a few years leaving simmering hatred?
Does the USSR get its act together and finish what they failed to do in 1920? Perhaps on the same side as Japan since war in the pacific was also brewing... then we get WWII with different teams. Does the US still get the bomb first? Probably. Does the communism end up occupying the space nazism has in our culture, as the great evil, or does it still sound too tempting afterwards?
Or maybe the plan was to have Germany attack the Soviet Union from the beginning. They could have easily defeated Germany prior to the war, had they tried.
Part of the point of the article is we don't need to guess, the people involved explained why they did what they did. We also have their correspondences and memoirs, and those of their confidantes and associates to back that up. We can also examine whether their actual actions match up with such speculation.
The Soviet Union in the very early 1920s was a very different military beast compared to the Soviet Union of the early 1940s. Industrialization had taken place in the meantime and I dare say that the Soviets’ military school was better compared to the Tsarist’s regime.
Except they executed most of their experienced generals. So technically they had better equipment but used pure brute force because of lack of trained staff.
All countries wanted Germany to attack Soviet Union: UK, France, USA. It's not a secret. It was almost openly said that the best outcome is for Germany and USSR to weaken each other so much, that USA can join later and kill off the significantly weakened party. It didn't really matter whether Germany or USSR will win because it was assumed that the winner would be too weakened to fight one more war.
Proof, please. The US started Lend&Lease in, what, 1940? That was geared exclusivley against Germany. And all US actions were geared against Germany as well, the war against Japan being, strategically, a second priority. As agreed upon between Roosevelt and Churchill.
Not that secretly. The major US players, press, finance, industry were all open NAZI supporters. They financed Hitler and the industry to start the war against communism. Eg they gave them free oil patents, took over IG Farben, the chemical industry to produce the needed oil for the tanks to invade Russia. They gave them huge credit lines to overcome the desastrous WW1 reparation payments. They financed the military buildup.
All played well for western fascists until Japan sided with Germany to take over China, South East Asia and esp. Singapore. When Singapore was threatened, US changed sides. The US certainly never thought Russia will win over Germany. That was their nightmare scenario. Workers rights, socialism. This would have killed their idea of freedom of private contracts over civil rights. Workers would demand 10 hours workdays. Or even less. Workers demanding their rights couldn't just be shot down, as in the Coal wars. Smaller companies threatening the big ones could not just be eliminated by the national guard and army, as in the Texas oil war, and the Railroad commission. The German NAZi system was the big goal of the US industry. A fancy "democracy", well liked all over the world, with a bright film industry, and a beloved charismatic leader.
Japan and Germany were barely allies; Japan signed a non-aggression pact with the USSR and the Germans were happy about it because they didn't want any competition for the spoils they thought they would have. This is one of the pivotal things that led to German defeat because it freed Siberian troops to reinforce Moscow and reverse the German advance in winter 41. Hitler compounded the situation by declaring war on the US after pearl harbor freeing Roosevelt to open supply and support the allies, I think this is one of his biggest mistake. I think you exaggerate the amount of support the Nazis had in the US but there was certainly a strong neutrality movement. If anything the Nazis admired America and manifest destiny and tried to emulate it with lebensraum.
>Hitler compounded the situation by declaring war on the US after pearl harbor freeing Roosevelt to open supply and support the allies,
Except that's not how that went down at all. The Lend-Lease[0] policy was in place long before Pearl Harbor or the German declaration. What's more, Roosevelt strongly supported the Allies even before that.
You are both right. After Germany declared war on the US, the US full transformed into a war economy. Something they wouldn't have done without that declaration. And Germany never switched to a full war economy, not that it would have changed a lot, so, if they did.
Is interesting to read the words of Trotsky just after the Munich agreement was signed, predicting the upcoming Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the upcoming war:
If you listen Hitler-Mannerheim birthday party recording in 1942, you understand that Hitler had realized already he had fucked up totally. Hitler complains bitterly: "Russians had moved Panzer factories to the Urals and making 100 new ones every day, what can I do?".
That is why Hitler even made the hazardous trip to Finland. There was no other sane person anywhere near him to ask advice. It was decided there and then that Finland will stop advancing and aim to some kind of deal with the Russians. After the defeat Germany will have some kind future, but Russians will exterminate Finnish people totally like the have done to all other Finnic nations.
I was referring to the somewhat strange impression that you seem to be agreeing to yourself in your second post ("Yes.") but maybe you just wanted to add something and did not notice because you're not a native English speaker (neither I am).
And I was replying "Yes" to the Down Voting Crew, who did not seem to be believe some part my theory. Unfortunately they dont have to justify their votes, so I dont truely know which part was the offending part.
Germany got extraordinarily lucky at many points between 1938 and 1941 (just prior to Barbarossa), but two of its most decisive lucky breaks happened in 1939 and 1938.
First break: in 1938 when Hitler was essentially gifted the Sudetenland by the Munich accords and by the inaction in an absurdly limp response from the Czech government. This particular region of Czechoslovakia was deeply protected by heavy military defenses and these in turn were backed up by a strong army run by a country that was (though it may seem a bit strange today) at the time one of the more robust and sophisticated industrial powers in Europe. Had the Czechoslovak government simply said "No, if you want it, you'll have to fight for it", Hitler's army would have likely suffered catastrophic losses invading the Sudeten region in 1938 and its entire later drive to conquest would have been ruined before it even really began. Instead, Beneš and Prime Minister Milan Hodža caved to pressure from Chamberlin and from Hitler as well, and lost their single best chunk of protective territory (not to mention the sheer morale loss that this entailed. From then, it was a simple thing to swallow the rest of Czechoslovakia in early 1939, further reinforcing the German war drive and industrial power. Had Hitler attempted to actually fight for the Sudetenland in 1938, his own generals knew that the Wehrmacht was still completely unfit for such an undertaking and they believed this to the point of being on the verge of a military coup attempt had it come to war. This was all (for Hitler) very luckily nullified by the completely counterproductive Munich agreement. Hitler came out of that looking like a political genius when in reality he was a frustrated fool who had desperately wanted war over the Sudeten region instead of diplomatic victory, despite it being a terribly bad idea.
Next, the lucky break of 1939: Yes, the German army was superbly equipped and armed by September of that year, but it was materially and numerically inferior to that of the French forces. Thus, when Hitler sent the vast majority of his forces into Poland in September, the only thing protecting Germany in the west was a thin screen of scant divisions along the border with France. Had France actually had the drive and political will to take its declaration of war in defense of Poland seriously and energetically, it could have mobilized fully and sent the full force of 40 divisions that the country's already prepared, ready, fully deployable "Saar Offensive" plan called for into the heart of western Germany. Doing this while Hitler was busy with Poland, in mid September would have been a catastrophe for the Germans, and would have completely ruined later plans to invade France. Instead, the French only advanced 30 divisions TO the Saar border, did essentially nothing more, and shortly afterwards, once the Polish campaign was over, Germany quickly reinforced this region with its own offensive action in October, 1939, causing the French to pull back completely. What an enormously wasted opportunity for boosting morale and war footing ahead of the game and crushing obvious future German aggression.
Wrote this before even reading the article linked (bad habit) and it nicely backs up some of the above, especially about Czechoslovakia. The article's points about the superior strength of the German army in 1939 are good but again, with the German forces occupied in Poland, a French offensive in that same year during the Polish campaign would have been a catastrophe for the Germans even if the French were inferior on some military specs.
Not only the coup against Hitler was a real possibility if Britain defended Czechoslovakia, but also the british knew about it first hand. Kleist, a german emissary of the anti-Hitler faction in the Wehrmacht, was secretly visiting Britain just before the Munich agreement talking about the coup plans with MI6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Canaris#Munich_Agreeme...
Yet they still pushed through the atrocious, worthless Munich agreement that so completely eviscerated Czechoslovakia, despite knowing not only that the Nazi war machine had no realistic hope of major conquest against fully intact Czech territory, but also that the High command of the Wehrmacht itself was near mutiny at the idea of trying such a thing. Had Chamberlain simply shown more spine at that point, there very likely never would have been a genocidal Nazi conquest of Europe. I know that the what-ifs of history are full of unknown unknowns but given what did happen, It's hard to imagine a rejection of German demands in 1938 possibly having lead to as bad, let alone worse..
Probably he wanted to be in good terms with Hitler and get it closer to attack the USSR. Chamberlain had a very antisoviet stance (even in contrast with other cabinet members) and maybe he reasonably thought Hitler would not overextend by also opening a west front. In that line of reason, having Hitler in the government and not disturb it with a coup was a positive for him.
After Germany declared war and invaded Poland. Poland was an ally of both Britain and France. No question who started WW2, and who wanted it from the get go. It was the Germans.
Geopolitically Germany had the the advantage of singular national focus, it had no allies to coordinate with either strategically or tactically (at this stage). The UK and France were two very separate and independent states, who were not necessarily strongly aligned, there would have been a deep rooted sense of mistrust (which has existed for centuries).
Another aspect is military doctrine; France had a decidedly defensive doctrine at the time, based of the perceived success of WW1 (the victor always fighting the previous war and all that). The UK military was also very much geared for holding onto an empire and not necessarily fighting large scale military operations across Europe. A decisive military strike was just not in the nature of the nations at the time, they lacked the necessary aggressiveness and sense of purpose to carry it out.
All up the French and British were a little too risk adverse, rightly so I suppose because they had a lot to lose. Unfortunately taking no action was a decision as well and one that would cost them in the long run far more dearly than they might have imagined at the time.