(Continued from Part 1)
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, 1938
France was relying on a system of political alliances with eastern European countries like Czechoslovakia and Russia and with Belgium. But its military posture was overwhelmingly a defensive one which "completely undercut" their diplomatic strategy. Record writes:
Both deterrence and coercive diplomacy rest on credibly threatened force, and France lacked the political will and military capacity to make credible threats of force. French diplomacy called for a military hammer, but the French military provided only an anvil.
In this regard, Hitler’s military reoccupation of the Rhineland in March 1936 was a much greater strategic disaster for the democracies than the sellout of Czechoslovakia in September 1938, but not because the Rhineland remilitarization blocked a French attack into Germany; France, as we have seen, had no intention of attacking Germany even through an undefended Rhineland. The disaster lay in the irreparable blow to French prestige. French failure to fire a single shot at token German military forces entering territory so vital to France’s security advertised France to the rest of the Continent as a feckless security partner. French inaction reinforced Belgium’s decision to drop its alliance with France in favor of neutrality, exposing France to the very German attack that was delivered through Belgium 4 years later; it encouraged Mussolini, who in thwarting a Berlin-sponsored Nazi coup in Austria 2 years earlier had handed Hitler a major foreign policy defeat, to move closer to the German dictator; it left Austria exposed to virtually certain German annexation, thereby compromising Czechoslovakia’s defense; and it undermined the Eastern allies’ confidence in France. The Rhineland debacle even prompted Pope Pius XI to tell the French ambassador that, “Had you ordered the immediate advance of 200,000 men into the zone the Germans had occupied, you would have done everyone a very great favor.” (p. 18; my emphasis)
This, in turn, undercut France's diplomatic strategy. Even Belgium rejected a military alliance and adopted aneutral stance. But again, the problem was not for France to show that their God was bigger than Hitler's God, to borrow a notorious phrase from Bush's "war on terrorism". The problem was that France had adopted a military policy inconsistent with it political strategy and failed to evaluate realistically the risks involved.
In the end, France was not adequate prepared militarily to defend itself against Germany.
But it was not only French leaders who failed to realize it. Britain was severely overstretched with its colonies. A major attraction of the appeasement policy for Britain was the need to limit its military obligations in a potential European war. And, as Record observes, an overly-optimistic view of French capabilities was a major factor in Britain's misjudgment:
Until 1939, British political leaders and such influential strategic thinkers as B. H. Liddell Hart believed, or at least wanted to believe, that Britain could limit its liability in a future European war by restricting its role to the provision of naval and air power. (During the Napoleonic era, noted Liddell Hart, Britain’s main contribution to France’s defeat had been sea power and the extension of financial credits to continental coalitions that provided the ground forces.) Determined to avoid a repetition of the trench warfare horrors of 1914-18, increasingly fearful of the German air threat ..., and persuaded that France and its Eastern allies, which from 1935 on included Czechoslovakia and nominally the Soviet Union, would not require a major British ground force contribution in a war with Germany, British governments in the 1930s focused increasing defense expenditure on the Royal Air Force at the expense of the army. (my emphasis)
France, on the other hand, was very much aware of its own military dependence on Britain. So, even though France was banking heavily on eastern European alliances, French leaders did not believe France could undertake a defense of Czechoslovakia in 1938 without Britain's support. Thus, France regarded itself as obliged to go along with Britain's appeasement policy at this time.
Record states very clearly that it was dishonorable for France to abandon its treaty ally Czechoslovakia. But he also reminds usthat far moreconcrete factors were in play than vague notions of Will and testosterone:
But for both Britain and France, more than French honor was at stake. Czechoslovakia may not have been sustainable as a national state over the long run, but in 1938 it was the only democracy in Central Europe and formed a significant strategic barrier to German expansion into Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Indeed, a major failure of British diplomacy during the run-up to Munich was its almost willful disregard of Czechoslovakia’s formidable military capabilities. During the Czech crisis of September 1938, the German Army fielded 37 divisions (5 of them facing France) to Czechoslovakia’s 35 divisions (plus 5 fortress divisions). Moreover, the Czechs enjoyed three strategic advantages: they were on the defensive, operated along interior lines of communication, and possessed formidable defensive terrain and fortifications along the German-Czech border. Czechoslovakia also had the largest armaments production complex in Central Europe (the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1939 boosted Germany’s arms production by 15 percent, and the arms and equipment of the disbanded Czech army were sufficient to fit out 20 new German divisions). ( my emphasis)
Record spells out one aspect of the Czech crisis that rarely appears in poipular accounts of the "lessons of Munich". That is that Hitler wanted war with Czechoslovakia. He was actually angry when Britain and France agreed to his demand to annex the Sudetenland. Rightwing (or badly confused) revisionists make use of this fact to argue that the sellout of Czechoslovakia was a good thing.
Record certainly does not make that argument. He quotes a 1948 history by J.W. Wheeler-Bennett saying that Britain and France "had made so wholesome a surrender of Czechoslovakia that even Adolph Hitler could not find an excuse to go to war".
This aspect of the crisis might not fit neatly into the standard "lessons of Munich" narrative. But it's important in understanding Hitler's goals, methods and intentions.
Record also poses this counterfactual question, also one rearely discussed:
A most intriguing if unanswerable questionabout Munich is: what if Czechoslovakia had decided to fight anyway? Anglo-French abandonment did not dictate Prague’s renunciation of the inherent right of self-defense. The Czech military strongly favored resistance, and Churchill believed that a Czech decision to fight would have shamed France into war. And who knows what might have happened then? At a minimum, Czech resistance would have bloodied Germany militarily and postponed Hitler’s turn on Poland probably into the spring of 1940. Maybe his own generals would have moved against him. Moreover, as the Soviet Union was also a nominal treaty ally of Czechoslovakia though the two states shared no common border, a fighting Czechoslovakia, especially if joined by France, almost certainly would have delayed, if not altogether eliminated, the emergence of any incentive on Stalin’s part to cut the kind of strategic deal he made with Hitler in August 1939. [Czechoslovakian] President Benes’ decision not to order the defense of his own country for fear that a vengeful Hitler would slaughter the Czech nation may have been a more fateful one than the Anglo-French capitulation to Hitler on the Sudetenland issue.
He mentions how the highly punitive provisions of the Versailles Treaty promoted German revanchism that Hitler and his National Socialists (Nazis) exploited. But there was a difference in perspective on the Versailles Treaty between Britain and France that affected their ability to conduct a joint policy of containing Germany. France wanted to continue enforcing the restrictions of Versailles. Britain took the perspective by the 1930s that the treaty was too severe.
The Versailles Treaty had bad results
There are a lot of things to be said about the Versailles Treaty, which is almost universally recognized now as having been a bad peace treaty, particularly in its provisions relating to Germany. The important point for the 1930s appeasement policy is that the difference between Britain and France toward the treaty provisions blocked a common policy of containing Hitler Germany, which gave Hitler opportunities that he sucessfully exploited:
The British opposed risking war to enforce a treaty they believed to have been a mistake in the first place, and they believed it inevitable that Hitler would rearm and cast off other Versailles restrictions on Germany. Indeed, in anticipation of inevitableGerman rearmament, Britain cut a naval deal with Germany in 1935 that violated the Treaty of Versailles and gave Hitler a green light to start building a navy, including submarines. The Anglo-German Naval Treaty, which Hitler repudiated just 4 years later, permitted Germany to construct tonnage up to 35 percent of that the Royal Navy. Since Germany was starting from scratch, the agreement invited the Third Reich to build a navy as a fast as it could. The agreement shocked the French, who had not been consulted in advance, and encouraged Mussolini to believe that the British were too scared of Hitler to oppose the aggression he was about to launch in Abyssinia. Not until March 1939, when Hitler broke the Munich Agreement, did British and French policy toward Germany converge on a willingness to go to war to stop further Nazi expansion.
B-17s in combat during the Second World War
It's also important that not only did the leaders of Britain and France underestimate the German threat in general, part of their hestiation came from an overestimation of the capabilities of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe). This included overestimating the specific air power resources Germany had, a belief in the air power zealots' mistaken views on how devastating and decisive air power would be, and an unrealistic British policy not back up by sufficient air power. These all served to inflate the German air power threat in policymakers' minds.
(Continued tomorrow in Part 3)
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