P.M.H. BELL’S OPENING QUESTIONS (Chapter 4)

Was World War II “an inevitable war or unnecessary war?”Was it a “planned war or improvised war?” Did Hitler take office with a blueprint for aggression or respond to opportunities created by the blunders of other Powers?Was it “Hitler’s war or just another German war?”Was it an “ideological war or a war for reasons of state?”

Bell argues that these questions remain devilishly hard to answer if we only study developments through the year 1939. Only in his last chapter does he take a stand.

THE SUDETEN CRISIS, SEPTEMBER 1938

• May 1935: Konrad Henlein’s Sudeten German “Home Front” wins majority of votes in the Czech Sudetenland. • November 1937: Neville Chamberlain sends Lord Halifax to Hitler. • March 1938: German Anschluss with Austria.• May 1938: War scare caused by false rumors.• August 1938: Runciman Mission studies Sudeten German grievances.• September 15, 1938: Chamberlain in Berchtesgaden, agrees with Hitler on a plebiscite for the Sudetenland.• September 22/23, 1938: Chamberlain in Bad Godesberg; Hitler raises new demands that are rejected.• September 29/30, 1938: Mussolini offers a “compromise” at the Munich Conference.

David Lloyd George andCharles Lindbergh both

expressed great admiration for Germany during visits in

1936

The Berlin Olympics, 1936:

Here German athletes who have won the

gold & bronze in gymnastics salute their

Führer.

When Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister in 1937, he believed that the Versailles Conference had

committed injustice by applying national self-determination where it harmed Germany, but NOT in

Austria, Danzig, or the Sudetenland

Danzig street scene 1937Chamberlain’s confidant, Viscount Halifax, meets

privately with Hitler, November 19, 1937

THE HOSSBACH PROTOCOLL:Minutes of a secret conference on November 10,

1937

Hitler told his top national security advisors that he was resolved “to solve the question of Lebensraum” by 1943/45 at latest. He hoped that a solution might come sooner, if France fell into civil war or a war with Italy in the Mediterranean. Arms spending and the quest for autarchy must therefore be accelerated. Foreign Minister Neurath, War Minister Blomberg, and Army Commander-in-Chief General Fritsch all protested that Germany must not risk war with France and Great Britain. Economics Minister Hjalmar Schacht, not present, had long argued that arms spending must be decreased to avoid inflation.Within four months the protesters were all removed from office.

In February 1938 Austria’s Chancellor Kurt

von Schuschnigg

sought to forestall

Anschluss by proposing a referendum.

Hitler greeted by cheering throngs as he enters Vienna

on March 14, 1938,and a poster urging voters to

approve the Anschluss

Hitler & Mussolini celebrate their

“Axis” in Rome, May 1938

(this had been a joint propaganda

slogan since November 1936)

Charlie Chaplin as Adenoid

Hinkel and Jack Oakie as Benzino

Napoloni: The Great Dictator

(1940)

A cordial Hitler welcomes Chamberlain to Berchtesgaden, September 15, 1938

German map of the ethnic composition of Czechoslovakia (1938):

Hitler and Chamberlain agreed in principle that the League should conduct a referendum in the gray zone

At Bad Godesberg on September 22,

Hitler demanded the

immediate German

occupation of all disputed

territory, and Chamberlain

refused.

BRITISH MILITARY INTELLIGENCE EXAGGERATEDGERMAN STRENGTH IN SEPTEMBER 1938

(see P.M.H. Bell, pp. 199-209)

Actual combat-ready German aircraft

British intelligence estimate

Fighters 453 717

Bombers 582 1,019

Dive-bombers 159 227

Great Britain had only 2 army divisions that it could send to France if war broke out in September 1938.

An RAF memorandum from October 1936 estimated 150,000 civilian casualties from bombing raids in the first WEEK of a war with Germany.

The heads of government in Munich, 29 September 1938:Chamberlain, Edouard Daladier, Hitler, & Mussolini

Neville Chamberlain announces to a cheering British crowd that he has brought them “peace in our time.”

The Implementation of the Munich Pact

CHURCHILL IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, 5 OCTOBER 1938

“The utmost that [Chamberlain] has been able to gain for Czechoslovakia has been that the German dictator, instead of snatching his victuals from the table, has been content to have them served to him course by course.”“The maintenance of peace depends upon the accumulation of deterrents against the aggressor, coupled with a sincere effort to redress grievances.”Great Britain should have responded to the Anschluss by arranging a joint declaration with France and the USSR to guarantee the territorial integrity of Czechoslovakia.“I think that in future the Czechoslovak State cannot be maintained as an independent entity.” Within years or perhaps just a few months, it would be “engulfed by the Nazi regime.” Great Britain and France had suffered a “disaster of the first magnitude.”

CHAMBERLAIN’S REBUTTAL

“War today is a different thing not only in degree, but in kind from what it used to be…. When war starts today, in the very first hour, before any professional soldier has been touched, it will strike the workman, the clerk, the man-in-the-street, and his wife and children in their homes.”“As regards future policy, there are really only two possible alternatives. One of them is to base yourself upon the view that any sort of friendly relations with totalitarian States are impossible, that the aussurances which have been given to me personally are worthless, that they …are bent upon the domination of Europe.” On that premise Churchill would be correct that Britain should “arm to the teeth” and form alliances. But that policy contains “all the things which the party opposite [Labour] used to denounce before the War—entangling alliances, balance of power and power politics. I reject it… because to my mind, it is a policy of utter despair.”

PROFITEERS FROMCZECH MISERY

Polish tanks rumble into Teschen on

October 2, 1938

Admiral Horthy leads Hungarian troops into southern Slovakia, November 5, 1938

ORIGINAL LEADERS OF THE CONSERVATIVE RESISTANCE

Carl Goerdeler (DNVP),Mayor of Leipzig, 1930-

36;Reich Price Commissar,

1931-32, 1934-36

Colonel-General Ludwig Beck, Army Chief of

Staff, who resigned in protest in August 1938

ALMOST EVERY GERMAN SYNAGOGUE

BURNED ON REICHSKRISTALLNACHT

November 9/10, 1938(scenes from Siegen,

Bielefeld, & Berlin

Hitler cultivated ties with the Slovak leader, Father Josef Tiso, and persuaded him to declare in

March 1939 that Slovakia had seceded from Czechoslovakia

(Tiso and Ribbentrop in Salzburg, July 1940)

GERMAN TROOPS OCCUPY PRAGUE,

MARCH 15, 1939

The German press did not seek to

conceal the rage of the Czechs

The Chamberlain cabinet issued an unconditional guarantee of Polish independence on March 31, but no

alliance was forged. Did Hitler assume that Britain would back down again?

General Edmund Ironside

confers with Field Marshal Edward Rydz-

Smigly in Warsaw,

July 18, 1939

In May 1939 Chamberlain followed Churchill’s advice to open talks with Stalin for a Grand Alliance. But the

Franco-British military delegation did not arrive in Moscow until August 11

A Gallup Poll in April had shown that 92% of British voters supported the idea.

HOW SHOULD WE INTERPRET STALIN’S DEMAND FOR “TRANSIT RIGHTS” IN POLAND IN CASE OF WAR?

Bell regards it (pp. 300-05) as a blatant demand for territorial expansion, concluding that the French and British could never win this bidding war with Germany. (The Soviets apparently leaked details of these talks to Berlin.)At the time, however, Chamberlain took Stalin’s demands at face value and urged the Poles to accept. Poland’s refusal created a dilemma in London.Chamberlain’s policy was determined by advice from the Committee of Imperial Defence that Poland had a STRONGER ARMY than the USSR. The CID concluded that the whole Soviet system would collapse within six months of the outbreak of a war with Germany, and that Poland’s “splendid cavalry” represented a major strategic asset.Bell’s distinction between Realpolitik and “ideology” may be unrealistic, psychologically.

Joachim von Ribbentrop and V.M. Molotov sign the “Hitler-Stalin Pact,” August 23, 1939