A World at Arms (29 page)

At first it looked as if Great Britain would lose practically its whole army including the professional officers who would be needed for the rebuilding of any substantial new land force. The stubborn fighting of the British and French troops, however, slowed down the Germans even as British naval, merchant, and small private ships began to lift soldiers off the piers and beaches near Dunkirk. The evacuation of the majority of the British–about 220,000–and a substantial number of French soldiers–about 120,000–was unwittingly assisted by the German decision on how to deal with the divided forces of the Allies.
¹⁷

On May 24 Hitler and General Gerd von Rundstedt, the Commander-in-Chief of the German Army Group whose forces had made the great breakthrough, agreed that the armored forces moving north be halted so that they could be repaired and refurbished for the advance southward against the new front Weygand was building up.
¹⁸
The first thought also was that the soggy, canal-crossed terrain of Flanders was inappropriate for tanks, many of them worn down by the prior movement and fighting. The destruction of the cut-off Allied forces could more easily be left to the German air force, which threw itself into this task with abandon.
¹⁹
In practice, however, poor weather delayed Luftwaffe employment, and then the Royal Air
Force–here based on its home airports–was able to intervene effectively in the battle. The German air force initially believed that it was succeeding in its efforts,
²⁰
but this proved to be an erroneous assessment. A renewed push north by the Germans ordered on May 26 meant a second reversal in direction for the German armor and could not be immediately implemented. Hitler was confident that few of the British would escape
²¹
–the later suggestion that he hoped that the British might be encouraged to make peace by being allowed to get away is a fabrication–but his confidence was misplaced. A check was administered to the German air force which lost heavily in the fighting over the beaches;
²²
the political import of the Dunkirk evacuation will be examined subsequently.

The French, who had effectively lost a large proportion of their best units in the north, now attempted to establish and maintain a new defensive line across France. Weygand’s sole hope was that his weakened forces could hold the Germans until reinforcements were available to strengthen his lines; reinforcements which could only come from the evacuated northern units once they had been refitted in England. For a few days in early June this might have appeared to be the direction of developments. The renewed German offensive, launched on June 5, was briefly held; while General Brooke, the evacuated former commander of the British II Corps, had been ordered to France via Cherbourg to organize and command a new British Expeditionary Force, which would combine those British and Canadian forces previously south of the German breakthrough with units to be returned to the continent from the United Kingdom.
²³

All this was, however, a play with shadows. In severe fighting, the Germans broke through the French front, overwhelming whatever resistance some French units still put up. On June 14 German troops entered Paris; on the same day they broke into the Maginot Line. The French army was in a rapid process of disintegration, and General Brooke, instead of commanding a new British Expeditionary Force, was organizing a second evacuation of British troops. As German units raced rather than slogged through France, the real question was whether or not the French government would fight on from the French empire and whether or not the British would fight on from the home islands if possible or from the British empire if necessary?

The superficial appearance of a war ending in German victory moved other countries to act, or begin to act, even before these questions had been definitely answered. Italy had stood aside in the
fall of 1939, and the Italian government had toyed with the idea of helping negotiate a compromise peace for a moment after the defeat of Poland. But then, in spite of irritation over the German–Soviet agreement and the resulting German support of Russia in the latter’s attack on Finland, Mussolini had returned to his basically pro-German policy. On March 18 Hitler and Mussolini held a meeting at the Brenner Pass near the border, in which they reconfirmed their friendship and explained their respective policies to each other. Hitler pointed out that he had moved in the fall of 1939 since waiting would only have provided Britain and France more time to rearm; Mussolini set forth the situation of Italy which made it impossible for her to sustain a long war. He would be ready to enter in three to four months but only if the German offensive in the West was successful.
²⁴
Hitler returned to Germany enthusiastic about Mussolini,
²⁵
and, anticipating a great victory for the planned German offensive, now assumed that Italy would join the attack on France. In the interim, he kept Mussolini informed about the invasion of Denmark and Norway, had his ambassadors in Rome and Moscow work on repairing the rift in Italian-Soviet relations (with Soviet encouragement),
²⁶
and made sure that there were no Italian missteps in the Balkans which might cause difficulties there at a time when Germany had her forces concentrated for the offensive in the West.
²⁷

As that offensive got under way, Hitler kept an increasingly enthusiastic Mussolini up to date about the progress of operations. In a conversation that took place between Germany’s Scandinavian and Western offensives Mussolini had rejected as absurd the notion that a German victory in Europe might subject Italy to German hegemony,
²⁸
and he now turned aside all approaches and appeals from France, England and the United States to stay out of the war.
²⁹
In view of his contempt for the democracies, the Italian leader could not conceive of any extended hostilities once the main French forces had been defeated by Germany. Accordingly he planned to enter the war formally as soon as this issue was clear but
without
making sure that his military leaders had made any plans and preparations for action.
³⁰
Italy accordingly joined the war formally on June 10 but made no serious moves to attack French or British positions anywhere, an omission that was to prove costly indeed for Italy and her German ally.
³¹
Until the string of Italian defeats began in the late summer of 1940, the only memorable aspect of her entrance into the war was the famous comment of President Roosevelt: “The hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor.”
³²

Mussolini was not the only carrier of daggers in the spring of 1940. The leader of Spain, Francisco Franco, had, like Mussolini, stood aside in the fall of 1939. Given the weakening of Spain by the terrible civil war which had ended only a few months before the outbreak of World War II, as well as the country’s dependence on imported food and oil, it was understandable that Franco was exceedingly cautious, but caution in no way affected his appetite. Spain had wanted to recover Gibraltar from the British ever since its capture in 1704, but the Franco regime–with its military roots in Spain’s North African empire–also looked forward to an enormous expansion of that empire at the expense of the French. The Spanish ruler’s appetite even extended to portions of French Africa which had been German before World War I! All such dreams obviously could be realized only with German assistance and in the event of a total Franco-British defeat.
³³

In view of this combination of almost unlimited ambition with extremely limited resources and capabilities for their attainment, the Spanish leader followed a policy combining caution with bravado. He would cautiously assist the Germans by relatively riskless measures until the latter had won the war;
³⁴
then with great bravado he would offer to join them provided he were promised both the assistance he needed and the loot he coveted. Until German troops actually appeared on the Spanish–French border, caution still prevailed over bravado; even the entrance of Italy into the war on June 10 did not induce Franco to follow suit. Unlike Mussolini, he preferred to have clear assurances from the Germans
before
taking the plunge.

The Spanish government warded off approaches from Britain and France–except for signs of possible surrender from the latter which were promptly passed on to Berlin. Spain also notified her demands in a general way through a press campaign that called for Gibraltar, all of Morocco, and the expansion of Spain’s colony on the Guinea coast (Spanish Guinea or Rio Muni, now Equatorial Guinea).
³⁵
Only the international zone of Tangier was actually occupied by Spanish troops on June 14 in a move unlikely to call forth dangerous complications under the circumstances.
³⁶
But as Franco began to edge closer to war, the two firm assurances he received from Hitler were not yet enough. On June 10 Hitler promised to support Spain’s claim to Gibraltar and asserted that Germany merely had economic interests in Morocco.
³⁷
The former promise required Spain’s going to war with England, if it were to be implemented; a step Franco would take only if there were greater loot to be had.
³⁸
As for the second
commitment, the Germans themselves would break it in a manner that gravely affronted the Spanish dictator. For a few weeks, the issue was still open as Spain hesitated on the brink.
³⁹

The Soviet Union had watched the development of the war with great care, had joined in the attack on Poland, and obtained the right to station troops in the Baltic States, but had then attacked Finland and become involved in far more serious and prolonged hostilities than anticipated. This sobering experience had made Stalin extremely cautious. The push forward in the Balkans was shelved temporarily, a steady stream of supplies was provided to Germany,
⁴⁰
and the war with Finland was brought to a quick and victorious end. That war, however, left the city of Leningrad and the important port of Murmansk in greater danger than ever because now, instead of a neutral Finland which had rejected German pre-war treaty offers, there was now a Finland likely to ally herself with Germany or England to try to regain the territory lost in the March peace settlement.
⁴¹

Under these circumstances, Stalin had been most careful to keep Germany and England out of any role in Soviet relations with Finland, using Sweden as intermediary. The German invasion of Norway was hailed by Moscow which had assisted the key German operation at Narvik.
⁴²
Now there was no further possibility of Scandinavian complications involving the Soviet Union in a war with the Western Powers, and Germany’s triumph in Norway also reduced the potential of difficulties from the British nickel-mining concession in the Petsamo area. We do not as yet know much about Soviet prior knowledge of the German plans for the offensive in the West, but the almost total denuding of Germany’s eastern areas of military units can hardly have remained unnoticed. Whatever apprehensions remained were removed by the German attack of May 10; if the invasion of Norway had caused a sigh of relief in Moscow, the strike at the West was welcomed with enthusiasm.
⁴³

Once Germany and the Western Powers were fully engaged in major hostilities in Western Europe, the Soviet Union could resume its advance in the Baltic and Balkans without concern over either of the warring sides being able to interfere. To make sure that there was no trouble in East Asia while new steps in Europe were under way, a border settlement was worked out with the Japanese, culminating in an agreement signed on June 9. This was designed both to prepare for “positive action on our western border,” as a Soviet document put it, and to encourage Japan to move south and provoke western, especially American, resistance, the latter greatly hoped for in Moscow as long as United States-Soviet relations were not harmed
by too close a Soviet–Japanese alignment. While this condition could be met by looking toward the eventual signing of a neutrality pact with Japan rather than a non-aggression treaty, the “positive action” on the western border of the Soviet Union was already under way.
⁴⁴

By late May, the Soviet government was moving to implement new policies apparently decided upon as soon as the extent of Germany’s victory in the West was evident. The first major troop movements to the Romanian border were being reported by May 21, and the first steps looking toward the annexation of the Baltic States were taken on May 25, with Lithuania, the country between Germany and the other two Baltic States, being dealt with first. New pressures on Finland followed soon after, and the Soviet Union also explored the possibility of utilizing its recently improved relations with Italy for further Balkan expansion.
⁴⁵

In the middle of June, after a series of ultimata, the Red Army occupied all three Baltic States, ending the independence of their peoples and arranging for their subsequent formal incorporation into the Soviet Union as Soviet Socialist Republics. The broader political framework for this had been provided in the secret agreements with Germany; but since the Red Army occupied all of Lithuania, including the small portion that was to have been taken by Germany, this left a tricky problem for future resolution. Germany’s considerable economic interests in the Baltic States could be accommodated by Moscow easily enough, and the remaining people of German cultural background were allowed to leave. Moving on the Romanian and Finnish portions of the Soviet Union’s western border was to prove a bit more complicated.

The earlier Soviet pressure on Romania had been relaxed during Moscow’s preoccupation with the war against Finland. In the winter months, there was a tug-of-war between the Germans and the Western Powers over petroleum deliveries from that country to Germany and Italy,
⁴⁶
but Germany had the stronger hand. She could offer the Romanians arms either produced by themselves or captured from Poland; she might conceivably offer some protection against Soviet demands; and she had an obvious interest in the maintenance of an independent Romania able and willing to produce and sell oil to Germany.
⁴⁷
The British and French, on the other hand, had no arms to sell, made it clear that their guarantee of 1939 did not apply against the Soviet Union,
⁴⁸
and were more interested in wrecking the Romanian oil wells than in maintaining their productivity. The German victories in Western Europe in May 1940 quickly ended whatever doubts still existed in Bucharest: Germany was the obvious
country to lean on. The only question was whether a reorientation of Romanian policy toward Berlin could be implemented quickly enough.