Let us suppose Neville Chamberlain had not acceded to Hitler’s demands at Munich and the Second World War had started a year earlier. Would anything have been substantially different? Was the balance of forces much the same in 1938 as it was in 1939? If it were is it likely that the war would have followed roughly the same course or were there other on which the timing might have had an impact?
Also the events at Munich seemed to have had an enormous influence on later leaders, perhaps affecting important decisions. President Johnson said of Vietnam, “We’re not going to have any men with any umbrellas,” clearly in reference to Chamberlain and I think both Bush and Blair have talked about appeasement and Munich in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq. It does make a person wonder just how many conflicts might have been avoided if Munich had not made appeasement such a dirty word.
German generals had planned a coup against the over-reaching Hitler, timed for just before his adventure into Czechoslovakia. When Chamberlain handed Hitler the keys to Czech, the generals stood down in awe of Der Führer’s genius.
Even that early, Germany would have had some early successes with proto-Blitzkrieg tactics. Maybe not enough to defeat France in one astonishing throw of the dice, but enough to win a war of maneuver and still reach Paris.
Poland is still toast.
Russia? No chance. The extra time would allow Stalin to prepare. More likely is that sometime in '42 or '43, Russia invades westward, and enjoys the same slow, slogging victory.
Postwar, Russia comes out way ahead, sitting on all of Germany, not just half.
I doubt they would’ve even have been able to steamroll Czechoslovakia (without taking prohibitive causalities) as extensive defences had been built along the border, one of the main worries of the Oster conspiracy. Hitler either going to war at that stage or backing down would probably have finished him, the generals would’ve overthrown him.
Even in the mid 30s British front line fighters were bi-planes. The entire navy had to be rearmed and upgraded. There were almost no munitions factories. Mechanisation meant the final army units converted from horse in 1941. Army conscription began in April 1939 - 1 million were conscripted in 9 months.
Given how relatively unprepared for war everyone seems to have been, it’s hard to see how Hitler could have been overcome much more quickly.
The time to stand firm was when he invaded the Rhineland in defiance of the Versailles Treaty. A humiliation at that point might well have been fatal to Hitler’s rule. Or so I’ve heard it claimed.
What would be the public reaction if President Trump announced we had to send a massive invasion force back to Iraq to refight the Iraq War?
He’d be dragged out of the Oval Office and hung from the nearest lamppost, and that would be by Republicans.
Now imagine that the Iraq War was 100 times worse, and you will have an idea about the French and British citizens attitude towards fighting another war with Germany. You can’t imagine the destruction and horror of World War I. Avoiding another war wasn’t appeasement, it was a matter of national survival.
Unfortunately a war can be started by one side. The Allies completely underestimated how willing to gamble Hitler was. Germany wasn’t strong enough to win another war, and people knew this even in 1936. And they were right, by 1945 Germany was a smoking ruin.
Along with this many nations like Poland, Denmark, and Norway set aside plans for call ups or other military preparedness and part of this was from British pressure to not do anything to aggravate Hitler. For example Poland could have called up I believe nearly a million soldiers and gave out their anti tank rifles. Norway didnt start to rearm until it was too late and German gliders and paratroops took Norwegian airfields without opposition. Belgium and Holland were also not ready.
So if the British had lead a campaign of neutral countries to arm and ready themselves for war Germany would not have won so easily.
Eh? Churchill condemned the Munich Agreement in the strongest possible terms. He attacked how it utterly upturned the balance of power in central Europe to Germany’s advantage without a single fight.