To Lose a Battle (10 page)

Alliances Undermined

The significance of the defensive posture the French Army had adopted by the end of 1935 far exceeded simple military considerations of protecting France’s own soil. Most important, it gravely impinged upon the system of alliances painfully constructed since 1919 as breakwaters against possible German aggression. From the very beginning, the Quai d’Orsay had realized that they could no longer count on the traditional ally of 1914, Russia, to contain Germany by means of the deterrent which the threat of a war on two fronts imposed. The Allies’ policy of intervention, their subsequent instinctive mistrust of Bolshevism, and Russia’s own multitudinous internal problems all made this quite clear. By way of a substitute, France had had to rely on diplomatic accords with the small nations of Eastern Europe, which had been carved out of the rump of Austria-Hungary, Germany and Russia herself. On paper, the combined sum of their military forces seemed impressive enough, and the Poles (advised by General Weygand) had, for instance, proved themselves doughty warriors against the Red Army; but, as the aftermath of Munich was to prove, they would never be combined, in so far as they would just as soon cut each other’s throats as form a coherent front against Hitler’s Germany. In 1914, as the Germans surged through Belgium to the Marne, it was Russia who came to France’s aid by taking the offensive. Now, it should have been obvious to any amateur strategist, France was faced with a reversal of the situation, and in the event of war she would in all probability have to rush to the aid of her weaker eastern allies. Yet with that all too typical Gallic arrogance, all she asked was ‘How can they help us?’ and never ‘How can we help them?’ And France’s defensive posture of the 1930s made it increasingly doubtful whether she could effectively help her allies at all. Ironically, the creation of Poland was to benefit Germany more than the Allies; instead of providing a
cordon sanitaire
to protect Russia from the Germans, it meant that, when the crucial moment came in 1939, Russia would be unable (even if she had wanted) to help France, because a mistrustful Poland lay in
the way. For France, the only hope of helping her eastern allies, threatened by Hitler’s Germany, was for her to replay 1923 (and how unpopular that had been!) by marching into the Rhineland, the one part of Germany directly vulnerable to her. Yet, as General Maurin had revealed with painful clarity, the Maginot Line strategy virtually discounted this possibility. So, as with Poland in the east, in the west the Maginot Line indirectly came to be a
cordon sanitaire
protecting Germany, as well as France!

Herein lay a fatal contradiction between France’s diplomatic and military policies. And exploiting this contradiction, Hitler was soon to slam the door to the Rhineland in France’s face by one swift, brutal act.

Reoccupation of the Rhineland

On 5 March 1936, William Shirer, the C.B.S. correspondent in Berlin, noted down in his diary: ‘Very ugly atmosphere in the Wilhelmstrasse today, but difficult to get to the bottom of it.’ Two days later the mystery solved itself, and Shirer could add, melodramatically: ‘Tonight for the first time since 1870 grey-clad German soldiers and blue-clad French troops face each other across the Upper Rhine.’ Acting with the lightning speed which was to characterize all his subsequent actions, Hitler had moved into the demilitarized Rhineland. Although rearmament had already been overtly under way for the past year, the new Wehrmacht was still a feeble infant which could only afford three battalions with which to make the initial crossing of the Rhine, and these had orders to withdraw immediately in the event of any French reaction. As yet unarmed planes of the Luftwaffe flew from airfield to airfield to create an impression, and (so some German sources allege) as soon as they landed new identity marks were painted on them. Three battalions and a handful of planes cocking a snook at what was still rated as the world’s most powerful land force! It was one of the most remarkable gambles in history. Would it come off? Extreme nervousness gripped the German Army. During the crisis, Shirer met General von Blomberg, the Minister of War,
‘walking along with two dogs on the leash. His face was white, his cheeks twitching. “Has something gone wrong?” I wondered.’ Later even Hitler admitted that ‘the forty-eight hours after the march into the Rhineland were the most nerve-racking in my life’. All the world looked at France to see how she would meet this gross breach of the Versailles Treaty.

In her turn, France looked towards Britain. But Britain was preoccupied with Italy and Abyssinia; besides, had not France declared impatiently, just two years previously, thereby killing the Disarmament Conference, that ‘France will henceforth guarantee her security by her own means’?
¹¹
In any case, a large portion of Englishmen thoroughly agreed with Lord Lothian’s historic comment about the Germans ‘only going into their own back-garden’. So Britain told France that this was her problem. The French Government called in General Gamelin, Weygand’s successor as Army Commander-in-Chief. Gamelin, already revealing himself a master of political if not military manoeuvre, temporized and equivocated in the style that was to prove so fatal to France four years later. Of course his Army was ready for instant action; but did the Government realize that the Germans had nearly a million men under arms, 300,000 of them already in the Rhineland? It was an absurd exaggeration (see below, p. 75), deliberately intended to avoid action and pass the responsibility on to the politicians. Without conceding that the Army might in any way be unfit for a swift offensive operation, Gamelin pointed out that it was numerically under strength owing to the reduction in military service (of course the fault of the politicians, he implied). Then he dropped the bombshell that, if it were to act over the Rhineland, the Government would have to face up to the prospect of general mobilization.
¹²
The French Ministers looked at each
other in horror. Mobilization! And six weeks before an election? It was madness. The electorate would never stand for it. Parliamentary defeat would be certain – why their very jobs were at stake! It was impossible. Now both the military and the politicians had their excuses. It remained to blame Britain for their joint paralysis of will. This was, however, said Churchill, ‘an explanation, but no excuse’; and indeed, at least in the opinion of Paul Reynaud, had France acted alone, in defence of her vital interests, Britain would have been bound to back her up.

Belgium Opts Out

So France did nothing, and Hitler got away with his first and most desperate gamble. The consequences were not long delayed. The most immediate followed with the reaction of France’s ally, Belgium. That gallant sovereign who signed the Franco-Belgian Alliance of 1920, King Albert, had died tragically in 1934, and his son, Leopold III, did not inherit the full measure of his wisdom and moral courage. Instead of the protective belt of the demilitarized Rhineland, the new King now saw armed German soldiers once again on Belgium’s frontier, while behind him he saw an apparently impotent France. Wherein lay the security of Belgium? On 14 October 1936, Leopold III revoked the Franco-Belgian Treaty, thereby opting for a return to the neutral status of pre-1914. Said the King, with the optimism of the imprudent little pigs: ‘This policy should aim resolutely at keeping us apart from the quarrels of our neighbours…’ For France it meant that, in the event of war, she could not enter Belgium until Hitler had already invaded. In one stroke the whole of her Maginot Line strategy lay in fragments. Belgium’s neutrality now confronted France with two fearful alternatives. No longer could there be any
‘rush into Belgium’ carefully co-ordinated with the army of an ally; instead, either she would have to meet the invading Germans somewhere on the defenceless Flemish plains, in a hastily improvised battle of encounter, such as her defensive-minded Army was least suited for, or prepare to meet them once again on French soil, the prospect dreaded above all others. The only way to certain safety now lay in prolonging the Maginot Line to the sea. But the 87 existing miles of ‘fortified regions’ had already cost 7,000 million francs, and it was obvious that to extend the Line all the way to the sea, through the industrialized north, would prove infinitely more expensive. So the politicians of the Third Republic resorted to that time-honoured expedient of deceiving their constituents – and their allies – by
pretending
to do something which they recognized to be beyond their powers.

Meanwhile, in the reoccupied Rhineland itself, Hitler hastened the construction of his own powerful line of concrete forts, opposing the Maginot Line – the West Wall, or ‘Siegfried Line’. As Churchill predicted in a remarkable prophecy on 6 April 1936, those fortifications would

enable the German troops to be economised on that line, and will enable the main forces to swing round through Belgium and Holland. Then look East. There the consequences of the Rhineland fortification may be more immediate… Poland and Czechoslovakia, with which must be associated Yugoslavia, Roumania, Austria and some other countries, are all affected very decisively the moment that this great work of construction has been completed.

Indeed, its completion would make it virtually impossible for France to render any effective aid to her eastern allies. Hitler could henceforth mop up in the East at will, then, with his rear secured, deal with an isolated France when the moment came.

The reoccupation of the Rhineland marked the watershed between 1919 and 1939. No other single event in this period was more loaded with dire significance. From March 1936, the road to France’s doom ran downhill all the way. In Germany, Hitler was rearming with terrifying speed.

Chapter 3

Fortune Changes Sides

Before the year was out it seemed as if Fortune, recognising her masters, was changing sides.

WINSTON S. CHURCHILL
,
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples
, Vol. iii (on the coming of Pitt)

There are only two powers in the world… the sword and the spirit. In the long run, the sword is always defeated by the spirit.

NAPOLEON

Sunday, 17 March 1935 was Heroes’ Remembrance Day in Germany. At a ceremony in Berlin’s State Opera House, Hitler presided, flanked on the right by the veteran August von Mackensen, Germany’s last surviving Field-Marshal, and on the left by Crown Prince Wilhelm, the heir to the deposed Kaiser and one-time commander of the army attacking Verdun. The whole of the stalls was a sea of military uniforms; to William Shirer, it was ‘a scene which Germany had not seen since 1914’. Far from being one of sober commemoration of the Great War dead, the atmosphere was charged with jubilation and thanksgiving. Amid powerful acclaim, Blomberg declared: ‘The world has been made to realize that Germany did not die of its defeat…’ It was a fact; for the previous day Hitler, in full defiance of Versailles, had announced to the world his intention to rearm, and to do so by introducing conscription.

Hitler Rearms

The sequence of events which led to the nightmarish rise of the Third Reich lies still too close to us for anything new to be added here – even if it belonged to this story. But, having sketched in the decline of the French Army up to the Rhineland crisis of 1936, one needs to examine briefly the aweinspiring process by which Hitler, within the following four
years, was to create a force not only crushingly superior to the combined might of France and Britain, but indeed the most dazzling instrument of war the world had yet seen. By the end of his first year in power Hitler had already secretly ordered the Army to treble its statutory strength of 100,000 men, imposed by Versailles, before October 1934. During that year the defence budget was drastically raised from 172 million Reichsmarks to 654 million. Then, on 10 March 1935, Hitler deliberately leaked to the British Press, as a
ballon d’essai
, the news that he already possessed an air force in the shape of the infant Luftwaffe.

His pretext was that France had just ‘expanded’ her own Army by retaining a class of conscripts (which had been done, in fact, simply to mitigate the consequences of the ‘hollow classes’). No more than a blast of protest was registered by either France or Britain, so, on 16 March, Hitler went ahead and published his brief decree announcing the creation of a new German Army, based on compulsory military service. In peace-time alone, the number of its divisions would comprise the imposing total of thirty-six. This was many more than was wanted by even the grateful generals congregated in the State Opera the next day; they realized the mountainous difficulties that digesting this huge expansion would present to the small regular cadres. In fact, as has already been seen, by the time of the reoccupation of the Rhineland the new Wehrmacht was still a relatively feeble, small and lightly armed force; as yet no more than 5 per cent of Germany’s national product was being spent on rearmament. But then, as later, what Hitler lacked in actual hardware he made up for by the loudness and terrorizing effect of his boasting. After 1936, there followed the ‘quiet’ two years of semi-respectability, the years of no territorial adventures, during which the expanding Wehrmacht assumed its definitive shape. By the beginning of 1937, its Army divisions numbered thirty-nine; by 1939, fifty-one.
¹
By 1939 it had also added to its potential the manpower of both Austria and the Sudeten Germans.

Seeckt’s Bequest

When Hitler began the task of rearming Germany, daunting though it was, he was presented with a number of advantages denied to the French. First, as the vanquished party, the German Army was not saddled with the victor’s impedimenta of obsolescent ideas and equipment. Secondly, Hitler inherited some remarkably solid groundwork in the shape of Colonel-General Hans von Seeckt’s Reichswehr. As Mackensen’s Chief of Staff on the Russian front, Seeckt had been responsible for the spectacular breakthrough at Gorlice in 1915. His monocle and hard features, making him seem like a traditional, rigid Prussian Junker, in fact concealed a remarkable elasticity and breadth of vision. From the moment of taking over command of the Reichswehr on the morrow of defeat, his guiding principle had been to ‘neutralize the poison’ in the clauses of the Versailles Treaty by which the German Army had been disarmed, and to create a nucleus from which a new and greater army could one day be formed. When the Allied terms had forced the Reichswehr to purge some 20,000 of its officers, Seeckt made sure that it was the élite who remained. Every subaltern was trained to command a battalion, and every field officer a division. At one moment, out of the 100,000 men permitted by Versailles, 40,000 were N.C.O.s, and each of these was regarded as potential ‘officer material’. Mistrustful of the unwieldy mass armies of conscripts of 1914–18, so lacking in mobility, Seeckt selected the rank and file of the Reichswehr all from carefully vetted volunteers. Determined to safeguard traditional values, at the same time he introduced a new, closer and more comradely relationship between officers and men, based on mutual confidence. Gone was the stiff social segregation, which to a large extent still afflicted the French Army, and gone too was much of the harsh bullying, or
Kommiss
, of the old days. The result was a remarkably professional, technically efficient Force in miniature.