A World at Arms (19 page)

A number of other European neutrals were of particular importance to Germany. Sweden, as already mentioned, provided the German economy with a substantial proportion of her high-grade iron ore. In spite of German efforts to exploit her domestic ores, especially through the new works of the Four-Year Plan, Germany imported enormous quantities of ores from Sweden, which in 1939 and 1940 provided 40 percent of her total iron supply (measured by Fe content).
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Although the proportions dropped thereafter to about 25 percent because of German conquests in Western and Eastern Europe, the contribution of Swedish ores to a central segment of Germany’s war economy is obvious. In recent years there has been a controversy in the scholarly literature about the extent to which Germany could or could not have managed without these imports from Sweden, an argument revolving around the provocatively formulated question: “Could Sweden have stopped the Second World War?” and eventually answered with a qualified “no” on the grounds that the German economy had other reserves and possible alternatives.
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Whatever the final judgement on this question, there was no doubt in anybody’s mind at the time. The Germans believed the supplies were essential to them; the Swedes were entirely willing to sell Germany what she wanted;
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the Germans could never be certain whether or not the Swedes would blow up the mines if Germany tried to seize them;
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and the Allies always considered the ore supplies from Sweden an essential element in the German war effort. The enormous contribution Sweden thereby made to Germany’s industry was heightened by two further aspects of these deliveries; the ores were of very high iron content and hence required far less processing effort and material than any alternative ores, and the Swedish merchant marine provided delivery service to German ports.
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From the beginning of the war, therefore, the German government was interested in maximum exploitation of the Swedish economy for her own purposes and could always postpone the risk of Sweden’s destroying the mines until the Third Reich had attained its anticipated victory and could then terminate the independence of Sweden without having to worry.
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In the interim, the Swedes could make lots of money and the German government would, when appropriate, be careful of Swedish susceptibilities.
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After the conquest of Norway and Denmark, the Germans would feel able to pressure Sweden into
greater concessions, but to begin with all they wanted was the iron needed for their war effort.
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If Sweden had been providing much of Germany’s iron ore, Turkey was important to Germany for its deliveries of chrome. The complicated diplomatic negotiations of Turkey with Germany, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France in the summer and fall of 1939 had eventually led to an alliance of Turkey with the Western Powers on October 19, 1939. The combined pressure of Germany and the Soviet Union on Ankara had not succeeded in preventing this Turkish step; in fact, their cooperation looked especially dangerous to the Turks, who had previously counted on Soviet support against Germany’s Balkan ambitions. As long as Turkey could believe in the strength of the Western Powers, she could allow a situation in the economic sphere to continue in which the absence of agreement with Germany meant no chrome deliveries by Turkey and no arms delivered by Germany. For a while Britain regained her economic position in Turkey, which also looked more kindly upon a France which had just ceded a piece of the mandate of Syria to her.
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The German victory in the West in the spring of 1940 would open a new chapter in Turkey’s position in the war. She had remained neutral up to that point; the price of neutrality would change thereafter.
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Economically important to the German war effort in Southeast Europe were the countries of Yugoslavia and, even more, Romania. Yugoslavia was potentially a major supplier of copper; Romania of oil. Both countries preferred to remain neutral and tried to resist German pressure; both made some concessions. In the case of Yugoslavia, as long as France was still considered strong and Italy remained neutral, the government in Belgrade could maintain a degree of independence. It promised to send some copper to Germany in exchange for arms deliveries promised by Germany earlier but not yet supplied and now deliberately held up. Pushed by both sides of the developing conflict, the government, led by the Regent Prince Paul, certainly preferred a victory by Britain and France but was reluctant to defy Germany, tried to use the establishment of diplomatic and economic relations with the Soviet Union as a counterweight, and made some concessions on trade. It was made known, however, that Yugoslavia would fight if attacked, and Belgrade encouraged the French and British to open a Balkan front against Germany by landing forces at Salonika as they had done in World War I. Nothing came of these projects; the main worry in Belgrade continued to be the likelihood of an attack by Italy.
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For all the belligerents, Romania was of enormous importance because it was, after the Soviet Union, the major petroleum producing
country in Europe. The Germans had been trying hard for some time to secure as large a proportion of Romania’s oil exports for themselves as possible while the British and French, whose nationals owned a large stake in the Romanian oil industry, had begun to fight back. In the fall of 1939 and the following winter this silent struggle over Romania’s oil went forward, complicated by Soviet, Hungarian, and Bulgarian territorial ambitions on portions of Romania’s territory and Britain’s (unsuccessful) efforts to sabotage the oil fields as well as the transportation system used to deliver oil to Germany.

As long as the situation in Western Europe remained essentially unchanged, the Romanians could get by with minimal trade concessions to the Germans, designed in part to reduce German complaints about Romania’s allowing numerous Poles to flee into and eventually across her territory.
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They would trade some oil for weapons; they would allow the Western Powers to use their ownership powers in the oil fields to restrict exports to Germany; and they could hold on to their territory because the Soviet Union became embroiled elsewhere–as a result of its attack on Finland-while Hungary and Bulgaria were restrained by fear of becoming involved in the war. Once France was defeated, all this would change.
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Outside Europe, the most important powers in 1939 were undoubtedly Japan and the United States. Japan was at the time already deeply involved in hostilities with China. After seizing the northern provinces of that country in 1931 and organizing them into the puppet state of Manchukuo, Japan had tried to protect its rich loot and to expand its influence in China by a series of interventions, particularly in the rest of northern China. These steps had not surprisingly produced a rising tide of anti-japanese sentiments in China, which in turn led the Japanese to embroil themselves even more deeply into Chinese affairs. When this tendency to interfere in China was combined with a degree of internal confusion and incoherence within the Japanese government that made the Chinese warlords of the time look well organized, new trouble was almost certain to follow.

An incident near the Liukiachow Bridge at Peking in July 1937 became the occasion for hostilities between steadily increasing Japanese forces and the Nationalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek. Although the Japanese built up their forces in China slowly and the Nationalists-in part trained by German officers–fought hard, the Chinese were unable to hold the Japanese back. Sometimes with the approval of all the authorities in Tokyo and sometimes without, the Japanese army pushed forward. Various efforts to mediate the conflict failed. The most promising of these, that by Germany, which preferred for her East Asian friends
to confront the Western Powers rather than each other, foundered on the steadily escalating demands of the Japanese and the insistence on these demands by the civilians in Tokyo, led by Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro, when for once the Japanese military were more agreeable to a settlement.
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The war between Japan and China ground on. Ever larger forces were committed by the Japanese who also tried hard and violently to end all Western influence in and support of China. As the war continued, the Japanese conquest of much of China weakened the Nationalist government and provided the Chinese Communists with a great opportunity to increase their influence.
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The authorities in Tokyo, however, had their attention focused on the Nationalists. They tried to end their war with the latter by a variety of generally self–contradictory policies. They periodically mounted new military offensives; they at times tried to negotiate with Chiang through various intermediaries; they hoped to pressure other countries into cutting off any supplies to the Nationalists; and they attempted to split the Nationalists by creating an alternative Nationalist regime under Wang Ching-wei, a defector from Chiang’s movement who had occupied prominent positions in the Nationalist Party.

The Japanese military advances were far too limited to accomplish the intended purpose. It was not until 1944 that, as will be discussed subsequently, the Japanese launched offensives that were comprehensive enough to crush Chiang’s armies–but by that time only the Chinese Communists could benefit since Japan was being defeated by the United States. The soundings for a compromise of some sort with Chiang, of which the first began in November 1939, were never carried forward with any real coherence.
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A comprehensive study of them remains to be written,
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but their only real effect was to strengthen Chiang’s hand in extorting aid from the United States by always projecting the possibility of an accommodation with Japan as an available alternative to the policy of continued resistance.

The Japanese hopes of obliging Chiang to give in by cutting off his foreign sources of supply were first implemented by seizure of most Chinese ports. Pressure on France to restrict use of the railway crossing northern French Indo-China into China, what was known as the Yunan railway, came next. Later on, the territory that railway crossed would itself be occupied by Japanese troops and there would be pressure on the British to close the road which ran from the end of the railway at Lashio in northern Burma (and the Irrawaddy riverlat Bhamo) to Chungking, the Nationalist capital. The other route across which supplies reached the Nationalists was a long land route, which ran from the
Soviet Turk-Sib railway at and north of Alma Ata in Central Asia across Sinkiang and Inner Mongolia to Chungking, a distance of over 3000 miles, but of enormous symbolic if not equivalent practical importance.
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The Japanese government, which saw this supply route as both substantially and psychologically very important for the Nationalists, periodically tried to include its closing as an aspect of improved Japanese-Soviet relations whenever they pursued that line of policy.
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Finally, they hoped either to arrange a substitute for Chiang or to frighten him into agreement by establishing a new government for China under Wang Ching-wei. This project the Japanese themselves undermined by imposing on Wang conditions so onerous as to make him an obvious puppet of Japan rather than a credible alternative to Chiang.
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At the time Germany began the war in Europe, the Japanese were in the last stages of being defeated by the Soviet Union in bitter and bloody fighting on the border of Manchuria and Outer Mongolia in what was called the Nomonhan (Khalkhin-gol) Incident.
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This fighting and its settlement by an armistice on September 15 has already been discussed in the context of Soviet policy; what needs to be stressed here are some ramifications of this crushing defeat for Japanese policy then and in the following years. It made some within the Japanese military yearn for revenge, but it led many of them to rethink their plans for the future.
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The Soviet Union was clearly a formidable power, and now that it was relieved by agreement with Germany of any immediate danger in Europe, all the more able to develop its military potential in East Asia. This suggested to many in Tokyo that a reorientation of Japanese policy might well be desirable. The navy had long looked southwards rather than northwards for expansion; the army now began to do an about face as well. The Japanese would protest formally–and rather sheepishly–gainst Germany’s violation of the secret protocol to the Anti-Comintern Pact by signing the Nazi-Soviet Pact,
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but the new policy being developed in Tokyo could draw a benefit from the surprising turn of events. Since Germany now had such good relations with Moscow, she could assist Japan in improving relations with the Soviet Union.
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A Japanese-Soviet rapprochement might conceivably be used to put pressure on Nationalist China, but it would in any case facilitate a Japanese move southward.
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This meant potentially a clash with the Western Powers, and since the Germans had long been urging precisely such a course on Tokyo, the Japanese could feel confident of German support.
And although on occasion Hitler would self-righteously explain that Germany could crush Britain all by herself, on most occasions then and until December 1941 he urged Japan to attack southwards, particularly against Great Britain, which he saw as Germany’s most dangerous and determined enemy.
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Such a course, however, meant for the Japanese the real possibility of a clash with the United States and for this they did not consider themselves ready. The Japanese navy had long contemplated the possibility of war with the United States and developed plans for such a contingency.
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The construction program of the Japanese navy was geared to this contingency; in fact the huge super-battleships planned since the fall of 1934 were specifically designed to outclass American ships and, once they had appeared in action, confront the United States government with the dilemma of building equal ships, which would be too wide to pass through the Panama Canal and would be restricted to one ocean, or to continue building inferior ships.
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But the advacates of moving forward were not yet in control in Japan.
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The new government of Abe Noboyuki insisted on neutrality in the European war and held to that line until its fall in January 1940; but, as the most careful recent analysis of this period shows, no really pro-Western course could be followed.
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Approaches were made to the United States primarily because she had given the required notice in July 1939 that the Japanese-American trade agreement would lapse. The hope in Washington had been that such a step, by which the commercial treaty would expire in late January 1940, might restrain Japan.
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The United States’ policy of limited aid to China, particularly in the financial field, was clearly designed for the same purpose, as well as to make it more difficult for Japan to obtain complete control of China and then turn her attention in other directions.
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Minimal Japanese gestures toward the United States in the fall of 1939 indicate that this was not an entirely hopeless idea; but because continued advance in China remained basic to Japanese policy–and it was precisely on this point that the United States expected at least some concessions from Tokyo-nothing came of these efforts.
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